Sigh.
Once again Republicans with super sexy florescent prison palors (closer than you think guys) and perverted fantasies you have to pay extra for (but they won’t because they’re not just thieves but poor tippers) are complaining that acquaintances who have to tolerate them at work but realistically fear that any off site interaction will result in rape, don’t find them attractive and they are thus involuntarily celibate.
Young Trumpies Hit D.C.
By DANIEL LIPPMAN and BEN SCHRECKINGER, Politico
June 22, 2018
Washington is a hipper city now than it’s ever been, a place where staffers, especially young staffers who want to drink and date and live normal millennial lives, would want to live.
Ok. I have to stop right there. While D.C. may be hipper than it’s ever been it’s never been hip at all and in general compares poorly with the very seediest sections of Hartford and Bridgeport. New Haven is waaay hipper (also very dangerous) and even nowhere rundown mill towns like Wallingford/Meriden/New Britain, Willimantic, and Waterbury pack more pizzazz in a square foot than D.C. does in a square mile (yeah, we like our “Ws” in Connecticut, what’s it to yah?).
It’s the only town I know that can ruin a Bertucci’s (normally a safe choice if you like chain Italian).
It’s a mosquito infested stinking (try it in summer) swamp that’s totally uninhabitable for 3 months of the year and when it finally cools off enough to breathe you realize nobody knows how to drive when it’s damp. Or snowy. Or at all ever really. The streets make no sense and it’s a true thing I’d rather be trapped on I-95’s Logan Airport access road during rush hour because at least Bostonians are trying to get somewhere and aren’t simply being evil for spite.
The problem is, if you work for Trump, it’s also more hostile territory than it’s ever been. The president campaigned against the very idea of “Washington,” slammed cities as “war zones” and ran a racially charged campaign whose coded messages weren’t lost on the diverse, Democratic-leaning residents of D.C.’s buzzing neighborhoods. The bar-filled areas that became synonymous with young Washington in the Obama era—Columbia Heights, Shaw, U Street, H Street—are full of anti-Trump T-shirts and street art. Even old Republican redoubts like Spring Valley in upper Northwest aren’t very Trump-friendly.
So, what’s a young Trumpie to do? Many still do live in D.C., and to understand what their lives here are like, we interviewed more than 30 millennial staffers from the Trump White House and across the administration, both current and former (many have already left), as well as a smattering of their friends and outside observers. Nearly all spoke on the condition of anonymity, to talk candidly about their personal lives or because they were not authorized by their bosses to comment. They told us their horror stories about being heckled on the street and their struggles to get a date. Unlike their predecessors, who made their mark on the city’s social scene, they largely keep to themselves, more likely to hop between intimate apartment gatherings than to hit the town. “Instead of folks looking outward,” explains one young White House aide, “more folks look inward.”
Faced with open antagonism, Trump’s millennials over the past year and a half have quietly settled on the margins: a stretch of Washington that spans from the Wharf—a shiny new development three blocks south of the National Mall—southeast along the Waterfront and into Navy Yard, on the banks of the Anacostia River. It’s a string of neighborhoods that peer out over the water, separated from most of the city by an interstate, and facing away from official Washington. It’s a bubble within the Washington bubble: Here, young Trump staffers mix largely with each other and enjoy the view from their rooftop pools, where they can feel far away from the District’s locals and the rest of its political class.
Finally, some non-obvious and useful information. Now I’ll know where to stay far, far away from.
Trump’s young crew have, by and large, avoided the heart of the city. Their prime stomping grounds, from the Wharf to Navy Yard, is a swath of real estate at once more sterile than the vibrant urban neighborhoods preferred by their predecessors and more sightly, with clean new apartment towers and waterfront views. Trump staffers cluster in upscale buildings like Lex & Leo next to the Waterfront Metro stop and Navy Yard’s One Hill South, which features two rooftop hot tubs and rents go as high as $3,000 a month for one-bedroom apartments. The president’s two most famous millennial aides, senior adviser Stephen Miller and former communications director Hope Hicks, both took up residence at CityCenter, in the heart of downtown within walking distance of the White House, an area where many Washingtonians work but relatively few live; at the opulent mixed-use development, majority-owned by the government of Qatar and studded with luxury storefronts, a studio apartment rents for about $3,000 a month.
Unlike most of the rest of D.C., where gentrifying newcomers find themselves rubbing shoulders with lifelong Washingtonians, this Wharf-to-Navy-Yard stretch is mostly devoid of true locals—meaning young staffers living there are less likely to be bothered by unwelcoming neighbors. Instead, you’ll find yuppies, tourists and affluent empty-nesters visiting from the suburbs. Stocked with brand-new boutiques and restaurants, as well as chains like Ben & Jerry’s, the area imports the feel of a high-end northern Virginia shopping plaza to D.C. Snobbier millennials might call it “basic.” In other words, it’s right in the comfort zone for staffers who are unabashedly Republican but also carry chips on their shoulders about the elite insiders they beat out in 2016.
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When the Trump crowd ventures beyond those sprawling new apartment buildings, they tend toward eateries more upscale, conventional and close to work. The bar and steakhouse at the Trump International Hotel, of course, offer the most obvious safe space. Perhaps even more so than their predecessors, Trump’s young staffers also rely on old standbys near the White House: POV, the rooftop bar at the W Hotel that overlooks the White House; Old Ebbitt Grill, a quintessential antebellum Washington establishment; and Joe’s, a seafood and steak spot, are favorites. So are the nearby restaurant-bar The Hamilton and Blackfinn, a gastropub off Farragut Square. Some staffers prefer the Exchange Saloon, a no-frills sports bar just west of the White House. One young former Health and Human Services official confides that Rebellion, a Southern-themed establishment farther north, near U Street, is “one of the few closet Trump bars” in town.
Even before the era of ubiquitous cellphone cameras and viral social media scandal, young White House staffers sometimes stirred up trouble in public. After the 2008 election, photos emerged of Obama’s young speechwriter Jon Favreau groping a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton; years later, he was caught on camera again, this time playing drinking games shirtless with fellow staffer Tommy Vietor at a barbecue joint in Georgetown. Trump staffers are perhaps wary of these risks. No one wants to end up like Hope Hicks and White House staff secretary Rob Porter, whom paparazzi caught on a date this past winter. The attention was soon followed by allegations of previous spousal abuse by Porter, who quickly resigned; Hicks departed Washington soon afterward. The caution starts high on the food chain: When the White House arranged for a focus group of four young staffers to sit down with us and sound off on their lives in Washington, we arrived to learn that the session would take place “on background,” the ground rules more often used to brief reporters about sensitive matters of national security.
“There seems to be a lot of paranoia among people inside the White House that if they step out of line, that they will get their heads chopped off by the president’s Twitter feed,” says John Arundel, a magazine journalist and close observer of the Washington scene who says he has known Trump for 30 years. “They don’t want to be seen as acting inappropriately or being seen out with the wrong person. They feel like they’re targets.”
Why? Because they’re bigots, racists, and misogynists who are likely to abuse you sexually or verbally and physically just for sport?
Who wouldn’t fall for a dreamboat like that?
As a former Trump appointee explains, her young peers in the administration are old enough to know that, as divisive as American politics is at this moment, some things about the capital never change. “They don’t care that people are hostile to Trump,” she says. “They still have some semblance of power and access, the things that matter in D.C.”
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