Shaw, the story goes, found himself seated next to a pompous woman at a dinner party.
After enduring one sanctimonious pronouncement after another from her, Shaw asked her if she would sleep with him for a million British pounds.
The woman, thinking Shaw’s question was just party chatter, said yes.
Shaw then asked her if she’d sleep with him for 10 pounds.
“No!” the woman exclaimed. “What do you think I am!”
“We’ve already established what you are,” Shaw said with acid in his voice. “Now we’re merely haggling over price.”
The story is likely apocryphal.
If it isn’t, it doesn’t reflect well on Shaw—who used a broadsword rather than a needle to deflate the poor woman’s preening self-regard.
But the tale does illustrate a point.
Some Republicans—former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky—have begun to criticize President Donald Trump’s gluttonous maneuvering to accept the gift of a $400 million luxury airplane from Qatar that will become his personal property when he leaves office.
The president’s greedy grabbiness doesn’t pass the smell test, they say. They add that it’s unseemly for the commander-in-chief to accept such an obvious bribe from a nation that, among other atrocities, funds Hamas’ terrorist activities.
They are shocked, shocked, shocked to discover that he might violate the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution. That clause says: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Where, oh where, could Donald Trump have got the idea he could do something like this, they wonder.
Please.
Donald Trump never has hidden who he is, a slick hustler who was willing to pilfer anything that wasn’t nailed down and under the protection of an armed guard.
Trump, after all, is the man who buried the body of his first wife—the mother of his children—on a golf course just so he could secure a tax break on the property. He’s the man who took sensitive classified documents to his home in Florida and left them lying around unsecured for no other reason than to show foreign visitors he was trying to scam that he had knowledge they might be willing to pay for.
Republicans such as Haley and Paul didn’t just condone Trump’s actions.
They enabled him and encouraged him to continue his constant grasping for goodies.
Ten years ago, when he first ran for president, Trump declared he wasn’t going to release his tax returns because, he claimed, the Internal Revenue Service was auditing him. He was the first president and remains the only president since Richard Nixon to refuse to show the American people his books.
He also refused to place his personal financial and business affairs into a blind trust.
A decade down the road, Trump no longer bothers to conjure up transparent excuses for refusing to release his returns. He doesn’t want the voters to see how and from whom he gets his money—and he knows the members of his own party won’t do anything about it.
When he was president the first time, Trump owned a high-end hotel just a short walk from the White House. The most expensive suite in the place cost $100,000 per night.
Foreign dignitaries quickly learned that the easiest way to get the president’s attention was to book rooms in his hotel, the more expensive, the better. Pay to stay translated easily into pay to play.
Republicans in Congress, of course, knew that foreign countries were funneling cash into the president’s pockets—sometimes at the rate of $100,000 per night—through his hotel.
But they chose to tolerate it.
What’s a few hundred thousand dollars—or several million—among friends?
But $400 million?
What does Donald Trump think the members of his party are?
Well, the Shaw story answers that one.
The members of the GOP who ignored Trump’s pattern of purloining and pillaging already have established what they are.
Now, we’re merely haggling over price.
