The Friend’s Comments

My buddy, Bob Hoesch, sent an email out to his beer-drinking buddies last night. Liking it, I received his permission to share.

If any single image can sum up the tenor of an era, I would suggest this as a legacy photograph for the Trump Era.

Yes, that’s Don the Don, hawking Goya foods on the Resolute Desk in the oval office, because the owner of that company had just publicly praised him.

I didn’t know this until now, the Resolute Desk has been in the White House since it was gifted to the United States by Britain, during the tenure of Rutherford Hayes. FDR had it modified to accommodate his wheelchair while he ran WWII. The name comes from the decommissioned British warship HMS Resolute, whose lumber was used to make the desk.

Trump’s innovation was to use the desk to promote canned foods to the Mexican-American community. He should be remembered for that, as the most openly transactional national politician we’ve ever had.

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” — John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977)