Americans were glued to their black and white TV sets for the 34 days of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, at the height of the red-baiting McCarthy era. An estimated 80 million tuned in.

There was a pivotal moment during the hearings when the demagogue was brought low by a question posed by a respected attorney and special counsel to the Senate subcommittee investigating alleged Communist influence in the Army.  Joseph N. Welch, the elder esteemed counsel to the committee, from Boston, had wanted to bring on an assistant from his law firm.  U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.) charged that Fred Fisher, the young lawyer, was a security risk as a former member of the left-leaning National Lawyers Guild.  Welch said he’d known that for six weeks and had chosen another associate in his place. But McCarthy persisted.

Finally, on  June 9, 1954, Welch had had enough.   “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy had no response.  Americans watching saw nothing but his cruelty on display.  Effectively, his one-man crusade that had ruined lives and reputations, was over.  He had no sense of decency, and no shame, and soon after that he had no power. Censored by the Senate and in an alcoholic haze, Joseph McCarthy proceeded to fade away.

Now, in 2025, we find ourselves in the midst of a “no decency” presidency.  While 42 million faced SNAP cutoffs, the president showed off on social media his gold-plated “renovation” of the Lincoln bathroom .  It was a let them eat cake (or toilet paper) moment.  More than tone deaf, it was downright cruel. But it wasn’t the first or the worst.  His masked ICE thugs tasked with enforcing Trump’s mass deportation edict were terrorizing neighborhoods, beating and detaining even citizens and legal documented workers without due process, tasering innocents and invading even a Spanish immersion preschool without a warrant.

Meanwhile,  Trump was literally taking a wrecking ball to one third of the White House — its East Wing — after publicly stating that his deconstruction to make way for a grandiose $300 million ballroom would affect only the facade and leave the annex intact.  He lied, but where was the headline that said that?  For the “no decency” president, lying is almost a verbal tic, which I had previously seen firsthand.

Near the end of the Obama administration,, the General Services Administration — technically, the federal government’s landlord — put the renovation of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Ave out for bids. Trump won the contest to turn the historic old building that had towered over the avenue since the turn of the last century into what would became another Trump-branded hotel.

I was then writing commercial real estate stories for The New York Times, and the conversion of the Old Post Office was perfect grist for that newspaper’s mill.  My reporting required interviewing Trump, and also his daughter Ivanka, whom he had charged with working out the interior details of the $200 million renovation.

That’s seemed like a pretty expensive do-over.  I asked Trump how was he going to pay for it?  Trump assured me, and through me, New York Times readers, that “mostly” it would be his own cash, not borrowed money. As I wrote in The Times, “Uniquely, Trump will be mostly investing its own equity in the project, rather than relying primarily on outside financing.  “’Much of it will be cash up front,’ Mr. Trump said.”

Ivanka went even further to say that none of it would be financed. “We’re putting up all the equity ourselves,” she told me in an interview, which, she acknowledged, is “really unusual.”

But in documents Trump was required to file with the GSA, the truth was revealed: Ninety percent was being financed by Deutsche Bank — Trump’s lender of choice, whose other loans to The Donald would later draw scrutiny.

Then, when Trump became president in 2017, GSA officials who were usually accessible were nowhere to be found.  It seemed just about any position within this key government agency was filled by someone who was “acting” and could not be reached for comment.

The nearby J. Edgard Hoover FBI building was also a “subject of interest.”  Trump had told me he had no interest at that time in acquiring the site for redevelopment. Plans years in the making had come down to two final sites for the new FBI headquarters, one in suburban Virginia, the other in suburban Maryland, which would replace the crumbling Brutalist building at 9th and Pennsylvania.  Half a dozen major developers had submitted proposals. The choice seemed on the verge of happening when, suddenly, crickets.

That, to me, was a story. To my New York Times editors, there was no story without a news peg, and nothing happening was no news.  But soon after taking office, Trump killed the entire project that had taken years of studies, planning, consultants, and considerable investment by prospective bidders to move forward.  In Trump II, the FBI is moving to the Reagan building a few blocks away.

As for the Hoover FBI building,  whose site could be developed for mixed use, Trump during my earlier interview said “We may look at it.” It was, he said, in “a fabulous location… [but] our focus is totally on the Old Post Office.”  Still, watch that space.

Meanwhile, back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his planned $300 million gilded ballroom, precipitating demolition of the entire East Wing, would be 90,000 square feet, twice the size of the White House, and he proceeded without vetting it with two local agencies normally in the loop.

The National Capital Planning  Commission had for years been an under- the-radar panel that commented on plans for the federal city, with power to approve, reject or modify them. A half century ago, for the Washington Post, I sat through many of their unheralded, frankly boring meetings, and I can confirm that few of their actions made headlines, much less the front page. Its members were largely anonymous and non-partisan.

There was also the Fine Arts Commission, a more lofty panel that passed on the aesthetics of proposed buildings in the capital region. Its reach even extended seven miles downriver from the District’s monumental core to a planned project on the Potomac at what would become National Harbor.  Vanity architect Philip Johnson wanted to erect a 52-story tower on the site below the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.  The commission said it would interfere with the viewshed of the capital, and the Federal Aviation Administration said it would also affect the flight path to (then) National Airport. The tower was never built.

You would think that such a momentous change to The People’s House would be subject to at least a minimum amount of federal scrutiny, and that White House would, if only for appearances, honor precedent.  But this is the no-shame, no decency administration that, as the weasel word headlines put it, is stretching the boundaries of the presidency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I never promised you a rose garden” (recorded and sung by Lynn Anderson, released 1970)

Tearing down the East Wing is not the only Trump destruction at the historic site.  The famed Rose Garden, an historic patch of lawn 125  by 60 feet,  has been paved over to match the Trump “imperial aesthetic.”  But there is another Rose Garden story in my memory bank.

It was the summer of 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson, the accidental president, was contemplating who would be his running mate in the upcoming election.  Since as vice-president he had taken office immediately upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, there was no vice-president in place and thus no apparent heir for the number two slot.

I was the kid-in-residence at the New York Herald Tribune Washington Bureau, reading, clipping and filing seven newspapers daily, occasionally going out on stories, and attending the weekly bureau meetings. Doug Kiker, later to become an NBC network correspondent, was the White House reporter. He would return to the bureau to tell LBJ stories that apparently were unfit to print. The Organization of American States “couldn’t pour piss out of a boot,” LBJ reportedly said when he sent marines to the Dominican Republic to stabilize that island republic.   Sometimes he fell asleep “before Ladybird can get her clothes off” was another unpublished memorable LBJ quote.

The Rose Garden gave rise to another anecdote.  The reporters were dutifully trekking along with LBJ on his daily walks there, trying to get him to spill the beans on his vice-presidential pick.  If his pick was in the future, the past was still present: Former president Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower was still very much alive and living in Gettysburg, where he would die in 1969.  The most popular campaign button during his two presidential campaigns said simply “I Like Ike.”  The Rose Garden walks with LBJ inspired a new pin: “We Like Hike.”

It’s unlikely that today’s paved over patch formerly known as the Rose Garden could inspire such sardonic humor. Or anything, for that matter.

 

Hail and Farewell

Bart Barnes,, a longtime friend and colleague at The Washington Post, died Oct. 5 at the age of 87.  Bart was my first editor when I went to work for the newspaper in February 1970.  His job then was District editor (as in District of Columbia; we never had a “city editor”).  Much later, Bart migrated to Obituaries,, where he finished his career in 2022.  For some time, he wrote “A Local Life,” a mini-biographies of local people who did not make headlines but were no less important.  Bart valued their stories as much if not more than the national and international figures whose obits he also wrote.  Sadly, today’s Post no longer features “local lives” in its obituaries. To read about them, you must go to the paid death notices that appear in the back of what’s left of the Post’s once proud Metro section.

Paul Valentine was the best of the best.  A damn good dogged  street reporter whose first novel “Crime Scene on O Street” captured well the fraught world of cops and crime in DC in the 80s. At the Post, he was the house expert on radical groups at both ends of the political spectrum. He was also the Post’s short-lived Baltimore bureau after he and his wife Elizabeth moved there. He was one of the reporters that best exemplified the creed of “without fear or favor.” On top of all that, he was one hell of a nice guy. Paul, 90, died on Oct. 15.

Neither Bart nor Paul were media “superstars” or “talking heads” opining on cable channels or elsewhere.  No preening. No self-aggrandizement. They were modest men of great if too often unheralded accomplishment.    They are what made the paper great. Each deserved the greatest accolade once heard in the news business and unheard in a long time:  “He was a good reporter.”

 

Veterans Day

On the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11 month of November, 1918, the Great War, later known as World War I, came to a close. This day was called Armistice Day. Eventually, it was changed to honor the veterans of all wars in which Americans fought and died. Many federal holidays have been turned into weekend-long events for “holiday” sales.  But Veterans Day/Armistice Day is still singular.