WASHINGTON (AP) — Smithsonian museums are closed. There are no federal staffers to answer tourists' questions at the Lincoln Memorial. And across the United States, national parks are cluttered with trash. Yet despite the federal government shutdown, a historic clock tower at the Trump International Hotel remained open Friday for its handful of visitors, staffed by green-clad National Park Service rangers. "We're open!" one National Park Service ranger declared around lunchtime, pushing an elevator button for a lone visitor entering the site through a side entrance to ride to the top of the 315-foot-high, nearly 120-year-old clock tower.
The Trump Tantrum shutdown is now in its fourth week. “Shutdown plans at the Interior Department, which includes the park service, mandated idling all but the most essential staff.” As a result:
“Hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including National Park Service personnel, remain furloughed. Many of America’s public lands are ungated and largely unsupervised ... approximately a third of our national park sites are completely closed, including places like presidential homes, museums and cultural sites with buildings that can be locked. Gates at many other park sites remain open, but few if any staff are on hand to protect visitors and park resources, and many visitor centers and restrooms remained locked.”
Among the closed and/or unmanned sites in Washington, D.C. itself are the national archives, the Lincoln Memorial, Ford’s Theater, and all of the Smithsonian museums. Nevertheless, one site on the National Register of Historic Places has remained open for business, fully staffed, despite the shutdown. It’s a 120-year-old clock tower in a former post office. Which just happens to be very building that now houses the Trump Hotel International.
“The Trump administration appears to have gone out of its way to keep the attraction in the federally owned building that houses the Trump hotel open and staffed with National Park Service rangers, even as other federal agencies shut all but the most essential services.”
According to the General Services Administration, which owns the building and leases it to the Trump Organization, it’s just a coincidence.
Another in the long line of federal-government-related coincidences that somehow just happen to benefit Trump.
