Despairing Trump now hoping to survive 'the purge to come': Opinion

President Donald Trump was lauding his newly renovated but controversial luxury plane gifted him by the Qatari royal family on Friday. The president presented the plane as the new Air Force One, despite allegations of corruption surrounding the gift, and the fact that Trump treats the plane as a personal gift and has no plan to leave it in the possession of the president who replaces him. But he added that he intends to paint all of the planes in the fleet air force to look just like the new Qatari donation, making this just one more attempt by Trump to mark everything around him with his personal stamp or influence.

However, John Heilemann, Chief Political Columnist for the media company Puck says there is a reason Trump is desperate to mark every taxpayer-funded thing around him as his personal [property.

“He's obviously … into the notion of trying to build monuments to himself in various ways and to leave marks that he thinks will not be will not be able to go away, like to kind of build the arch to Trump, you know, change the reflecting pool, change the [White House] east wing, install the claw and leave it there over the White House forever,” Heilemann told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “I mean, Trump is pretty dumb sometimes, but I think he knows some of these things are more transitory than others, easier to tear down. But I think all of it reflects a sense that he recognizes, on some basic level, that that project of exorcising Donald Trump … getting rid of the [stain] of Donald Trump is going to be a big project for the Democrat who gets back in the White House.”

Heilemann said this labor will doubtless be in addition to the work require to restore American democracy and rebuild national institutions.

“You saw it when they took the Trump name down from the Kennedy center. That was a big moment for people. I think you're going to see a lot of that — and Trump knows that,” Heilemann said. “So … if he changes a whole lot of stuff, he probably thinks some aspects of him, some markings that he leaves, some bird droppings of his, will somehow survive the purge to come.”

Wallace said she predicted that, other than rebuilding the east wing, the next administration to “wash away the [Trum] spot pretty darn quickly. “

“I think it's going to be a giant national steam cleaning of everything he's touched,” confirmed Heilemann. “So it's going to be like, ‘okay, let's get in here, clean it all, scrub it all out.’

“And the gold,” quipped Wallace, referring to Trump’s overwrought White House slapped with gold paint. “I mean, I don't know who's going to be in charge of prying all that stuff off the walls.”

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