Demolition crew
Book tells of Trump’s effort to gut & corrupt the gov’t
A NEW YORK CITY animal rights group is calling on Lara Trump to extend her love of animals beyond the local dog shelter and into the wild — where her husband, Eric, has enjoyed trophy hunting.
New Yorkers for Clean and Livable Streets, or NYCLASS, is best known for seeking to ban horse carriages on city streets — but now the group is calling on Lara Trump, who has advocated on behalf of shelter dogs, to also push for an end to trophy hunting and poaching.
It’s “not just cute, furry companions that need your help. It’s also leopards like the one your husband Eric killed and countless other wild species,” the group wrote to her in a letter signed by NYCLASS Executive Director Edita Birnkran.
The missive also praises her for her dreams of a rescue dog in the White House and her advocacy for shelter dogs and research beagles. The group said legal trophy hunting can help enable illegal poaching by creating a market for trophies — and as such all trophy hunting should be banned.
“Ms. Trump, you have the power to begin reducing the kill list now. You can start small by imploring your family to disentangle their passion for marksmanship and their interest in majestic wildlife,” they wrote. “And then we urge you to use your considerable standing to influence national policy.”
Birnkran went on to suggest that if the Trump brothers must “shoot” animals in Africa, they should do so with cameras.
“Our organization, NYCLASS, is happy to send your family top-of-the-line cameras if they promise to put their guns down and leave the leopards, and other animals in Africa, alone,” she wrote.
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. ANOTHER BOOK offering an unfiltered look at the Trump administration is sure to get under the President’s skin this week.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston’s forthcoming “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America” shines a light on explosive activities taking place behind the scenes as the author explores the dismantling of worker protections and who is actually benefiting — surprise, Mexico! — from administration policies and practices.
While the tome doesn’t offer the salacious palace intrigue exposed in Michael Wolff’s explosive “Fire and Fury,” it does provide insight into what the administration has accomplished while the President spends his time watching Fox News.
Trump’s war on “job-killing regulations” includes the quiet August removal of data on workplace deaths, and the Labor Department’s move to revoke a rule requiring most employers with more than 10 workers to keep a record of serious job-related injuries and illnesses.
In his 320-page book, Johnston points out several ways in which Trump is pushing the envelope of decency and ethics by barely distancing himself from his business empire and constantly staying at his namesake properties.
“The Trump presidency is about Trump. Period. Full stop,” he writes. “Trump is the first President to pose numerous questions about whether he is receiving income from foreign governments, which the framers of the Constitution felt was inherently corrupting.”
It’s not only worker safety that’s under assault from the Trump team, but also the overall economy that the President loves to tout on Twitter, which has gaping holes in it, according to Johnston.
Since Trump took office, the net balance of trade between Mexico and the United States increased in Mexico’s favor by more than a third, despite promises of renegotiating better trade deals.
Additionally, agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency are no longer out to aid Americans and curb pollution, but instead are set on helping corporations earn higher profits.
“The spigot sustaining complex corporate anti-pollution prosecutions is being turned off,” Johnston writes.
The author was thrust onto the national stage last year when he received and reported part of Trump’s 2005 tax return. But he’s known the President for decades, first covering his casino days in Atlantic City while working as a reporter in Philadelphia and later writing the 2016 “The Making of Donald Trump.” Johnston describes Trump’s “sad need for attention and public adoration,” which he claims fuels “his fundamental character, narcissism.”
The waves created by Wolff’s unflattering portrayal of a chaotic White House have increased interest in Johnston’s book, due to be released Tuesday, his publisher said.
“In some ways, Johnston’s book is a complement to Wolff’s,” Cary Goldstein, vice president and executive director of publicity and senior editor at Simon & Schuster, told Publisher’s Weekly.