Columnist Bill Press tells the Hill he misses the days when Democrats and Republicans were party adversaries, but not enemies. Those were the days when a politician could properly vet his ideas on the proving grounds of honest debate rather than handing his very worst to "loyalists" who say nothing but “how high” when President Donald Trump says “jump.”
“Apparently, there’s nobody willing to tell him the truth,” says Press, referring to plans like Trump’s recent call to restore Alcatraz as a maximum-security federal prison.
“It has to be the dumbest of all the dumb ideas Trump has ever proposed as president,” said Press. “But rather than tell Trump he’s wrong, Bondi and (Interior Secretary Doug) Burgum, like the sycophants they are, went out to Alcatraz on July 17, trying to sell his plan. They’re wasting their time. It’s never going to happen.”
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Its walls are crumbling, said Press. The island has no running water or sewer infrastructure. All food and water must arrive by boat, and all trash and human waste has to leave the same way. A 1959 report even revealed the prison was three times more expensive to run than the average American prison.
Putting a prison back on the island means razing all existing structures and building a new prison from scratch. That will cost $2 billion, says Axios, and management would still have to bring in food and water every day and ship off waste.
“No matter how badly Trump would like to see it happen, $2 billion’s a lot of money to spend for a prison we don’t need,” said Press. “… [T]hese facts about Alcatraz should be enough for Burgum, Bondi or chief of staff Susie Wiles to tell the president: ‘This is a dumb idea. It’s too expensive, it’ll take too long, and we don’t need it.’”
And they may as well include other “dumb ideas” Trump needs to know about, added Press, “like buying Greenland, revoking (actress) Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship or forcing the Washington Commanders to change their name back to ‘Redskins.’”
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“That’s one of the most important functions of any political staffer: the willingness to tell your boss he’s dead wrong,” said Press. “It’s too bad there’s nobody like that around Donald Trump."
Read the full Hill report at this link.