I have a confession to make. I go to Trump Tower in New York a lot. It’s an easy jaunt for a New York-based hack: where better to chat with Trump supporters than in its golden lobby or with opponents outside its golden doors? Maybe you’ll spot a celebrity like Kanye West or, if you are really lucky, Nigel Farage.
And occasionally the place becomes the story itself, whether it’s about the expense of the secret service renting an entire floor to provide security for the next president, or this week when a sniffy restaurant review – headlined ‘Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America’ – prompted a miffed president-elect to unload his umbrage on Twitter. ‘Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out,’ he wrote.
Of course, there is history here. In the 1980s Carter, the current editor of Vanity Fair, took to referring to Trump in print as a ‘short-fingered vulgarian’.
Against that background, you can see why the review looks like an exercise in New York snark, posing as analysis, but loaded with cheap parallels between a steak and burger bar and the president-elect.
Take this paragraph: ‘The restaurant features a stingy number of French-ish paintings that look as though they were bought from Home Goods.
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