Cooked fish: the quiet tyranny

At Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's favorite of the private clubs he owns, government safety inspectors discovered that fish intended to be served raw wasn't being inspected for parasites; that chicken, duck, beef, and ham were being dangerously stored at temperatures of 49 to 57 degrees F; and that the kitchen staff weren't washing their hands in a way that would sterilize germs. They learned this days before he was going to host Japan's Prime Minister there.

Trump, like any of the other Republican candidates would have (and like the Republican congress has repeatedly voted to do), is dramatically slashing the number of government safety inspectors, and attempting to repeal many safety regulations altogether.
In other words, the Republican America is one in which problems like this wouldn't be caught. Given the scam-like nature of Trump University, of course, and his use of the "charitable" Trump Foundation as a personal slush fund, Trump's distaste for government rules-enforcers is understandable.

The only real surprise in this story is that I'd expect most Republicans to be competent enough not to poison *people paying $200,000 a year to share a club with them*. In some ways I find Trump's equal-opportunity ineptitude refreshing. Most Americans eating at Mar-a-Lago are probably not people whose personal health I'm in favor of. Heck, if food inspectors are supposed to enforce the killing of parasites, they could loosely interpret their work as justification for shooting the owner. (It would be one way to protest the slashed budget....)

In other ways Trump's incapacity is sort of terrifying, of course. He (and the Mar-a-Lago cooking staff) are the U.S.'s current image on the world stage. It may be a more honest costume than it's normally advisable to wear.