Art by Katie Murphy
By Michael Gold
How is it that in the midst of an international conflict with one of the most evil regimes on the planet, surging inflation, the government accumulating more than $38 trillion in government debt (we’re borrowing $2.8 billion every day just to pay the interest on that debt), and the recent attempted assassination of the President, all he can seem to think about is getting a ballroom built?
Many Americans are hurting. Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices are rising. Buying a first home seems to be getting out of reach. Young couples who want to have children are struggling with how to pay for child care, health care and education. The advent of artificial intelligence is taking huge bites out of jobs right now in technology, customer service, and banking.
And to top it all off, a very violent and wrong-headed young man tried to kill the President at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner on April 24th.
How does the President react to all this?
He immediately demands that he be allowed to build a ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House, which he demolished without anyone’s approval beforehand.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican legislators, including New York’s own Mike Lawler, immediately jumped into line and asked for the ballroom for the President too, as if this was the most critical problem the Republic faces at this difficult time.
Instead of needed conversations on the ills this country is suffering, we’re getting Republican legislators sucking up to the President by pushing to pass a bill to spend $400 million, so Trump can get his ballroom. He needs it, don’t you see? It’s important to him.
Do the nation’s taxpayers matter in this conversation? I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in paying for something so unnecessary for the welfare of the American people.
No, this not about us. It’s all about him. All the time.
We’ve elected our first consumer President.
President Trump sure seems obsessed with getting more stuff. He demanded a very large plane from Qatar. He got it. He’s building a golf course in Vietnam, which is essentially a gift from that country’s government, in exchange for a trade deal with the U.S.
England’s King Charles III just gave Trump a gold bell with his name on it. Switzerland gave him a gold Rolex desk clock and gold ingot. Israel gave him a gold pager, set in wood. Apple’s CEO gave him a glass plaque in a gold base.
He’s gotten a bronze, gold-plated “Peace Prize” from FIFA, the world soccer organization. Last year’s winner of a real peace prize — the Nobel — Venezuela’s Maria Corino Machado, handed Trump her medal as a gift.
He’s lunged at Greenland several times. He’s hungry for it, angry that Denmark just won’t hand it over. He’s eyed Canada too, which has done wonders for our relationship with that country’s population and government.
In a weird kind of way, it makes sense that we’ve elected Trump President twice. He’s the leading example of what I’m afraid is our own national personality at this point. Our country has become a consumer paradise, with other values falling away in favor of just acquiring more goods, without thinking beyond the next five minutes.
In 1961, President Kennedy said in his inaugural speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Kennedy called us together to action, to help the American community that we once were. He was asking us to think of others, to let go of our own worries and needs for a moment.
That statement ultimately set in motion a number of policies that provided Americans the opportunity to give of themselves either at home or abroad. Kennedy conceived of the VISTA program in 1963 to place people in poor communities, in order to help provide education and vocational training to those suffering in poverty. His successor, President Johnson signed the bill into law to make it a reality. It’s still around but struggling under budget cuts.
The Peace Corps, started by Kennedy in 1961, sent Americans overseas to work with farmers, grow local economies, help educate children and improve health. The Peace Corps is at work today, performing its honorable mission.
The world of 2026 is of course a vastly different one from 1961. We’ve become far more focused on ourselves and our own needs. Some genius has invented the word “self-care,” as if we weren’t self-caring enough.
Tik Tok and Instagram wouldn’t exist without our obsession with ourselves. We take photos of our bodies and zap them out on the Internet. Soccer stars, hip hop artists, singers, actresses and models post about their fabulous personal lives, corporate beauty partnerships and fashion shoots. There’s no escape from the Kardashian/Jenner clan and their endless product launches and ad campaigns. Snoop Dog isn’t far behind.
We work to strengthen and enhance our “brands,” whatever that means. It seems as if you’re not out there in front of the world hustling people to buy something, you’re nothing.
I was a first-grade student in New York when I learned of Kennedy’s words about helping the country. We read in class a kid’s-level biography of him in September 1963. His speech inspired me.
Despite Kennedy’s many flaws, I find his words still bring me hope, that we can rise above our obsessions with our own well-being and figure out a way to help other people, to get the country moving ahead.
Concerning our current President, I read Article II, Section II of the Constitution, to remind myself of the exact responsibilities of the executive. The President is commander in chief of the military. He can make treaties with other nations. He can appoint ministers, ambassadors and judges to the Supreme Court. He can hire people to staff the government. He can grant pardons, a task in which this President has obviously taken way off the charts.
Gifting yourself a ballroom isn’t in the job description.
Michael Gold is a Westchester based reporter whose work has been published in The New York Daily News, The Albany Times-Union, The Hartford Courant and other newspapers. He’s a volunteer trustee with the Putnam County Land Trust.
