The SUITE of POWER
At the bar of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, you can order a crystal spoonful of Hungarian wine for $140. Cocktails run from $23 for a gin and tonic to $100 for a vodka concoction with raw oysters and caviar. There’s a seafood pyramid called “the Trump Tower” that costs $120, or you can hit BLT Prime, a restaurant where the $59 salt-aged Kansas City strip steak comes with a long-shot chance of seeing the President sitting nearby. It’s the only restaurant in town where he has dined. If the urge to shop strikes, there’s a Brioni boutique in one corner that offers the same Italian suits the President favors, starting at a few thousand a pop. Downstairs, a 90-minute couples massage at the Spa by Ivanka Trump will set you back $460—roughly the rack rate for a recent night in a standard room, where the Trump brand adorns everything from the shampoo bottles to the wine in the minibar.
People pay these prices for more than just booze, caviar and back rubs. This is the new town square in Donald Trump’s Washington. Tourists perch on the blue velvet sofas in the lobby, snapping cell-phone pictures as power players stream across the dark marble floors and cream carpets: international businessmen, Republican operatives, wealthy donors, foreign diplomats, former Trump campaign aides, the occasional Administration official.
That’s partly because a President who once promised to “drain the swamp” of influence peddling now owns the city’s newest bog. According to Trump’s 2016 financial-disclosure statement, he owned a 76.7% stake in the limited-liability company that controls the hotel, which is now headed by his son Donald Jr. The place has been a magnet for the capital’s political
