There was a time, not long ago, when Republicans and Democrats actually got along. They considered members of the other party adversaries, not enemies and, after sparring during the day over policy disagreements, they’d often hang out together, even become friends.
When I read that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum were visiting Alcatraz last week, hailing it as the site of a new federal prison, I remembered my own friendship as a Democrat with the late Tony Blankley, then one of the Republican Party’s brightest stars. Born a Brit, Blankley came to the U.S. and became a force in American politics: deputy attorney general of California; speechwriter for President Reagan; staffer for Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Calif.); and press secretary to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
He loved working for Gingrich, Blankley once told me, because he was such a policy geek. He’d come in every morning, Blankley related, with at least ten new ideas he’d thought of in the shower. But only one or two of them, Blankley quickly admitted, might be viable. The rest, he’d tell the Speaker, weren’t even worth considering.
That’s one of the most important functions of any political staffer: the willingness to tell your boss he’s dead wrong. It’s too bad there’s nobody like that around Donald Trump. He’s filled his Cabinet and White House staff with nothing but loyalists who ask, “How high?” when he says “Jump.” Apparently, there’s nobody willing to tell him the truth.
Like the truth about Trump’s plan — reportedly hatched after watching a rerun of Clint Eastwood’s film “Escape from Alcatraz” — to restore Alcatraz as a maximum security federal prison. It has to be the dumbest of all the dumb ideas Trump has ever proposed as president.
But, rather than tell Trump he’s wrong, Bondi and Burgum, like the sycophants they are, went out to Alcatraz on July 17, trying to sell his plan. They’re wasting their time. It’s never going to happen.
Alcatraz was shut down as a federal prison in 1963, sixty-two years ago, for good reason. Because of constant exposure to salt spray, its walls were literally falling apart and in need of support. The island had no running water and no sewer system. All food and water had to be brought in by boat every day, and trash and human waste taken out. A 1959 report indicated the prison was three times more expensive to run than the average American prison and far too expensive to maintain. At first, the Bureau of Prisons tried to make improvements, then gave it up as a lost cause.
I’ve been there recently. It’s in even worse shape today. In fact, the existing structures are beyond repair. Engineers agree that the only way to recreate a prison on the island would be to raze all existing buildings and build a new prison from scratch. According to administration officials, as Axios scooped last week, that project would cost $2 billion, take years to complete, and they’d still have to bring in food and water every day and take out the waste.
No matter how badly Trump would like to see it happen, $2 billion’s a lot of money to spend for a prison we don’t need. In fact, 84 new federal prisons have been built since 1963, making a total of 120 facilities today. All of which have plenty of room because America’s prison population is rapidly declining. According to The Atlantic, from a peak of 1.6 million inmates in 2009, the prison population declined to 1.2 million in 2023 and is expected to sink to 600,000 by 2026.
Those are the facts, which everybody seems to know except Donald Trump. But, surely, the facts about Alcatraz should be enough for Burgum, Bondi or chief of staff Susie Wiles to tell the president: “This is a dumb idea. It’s too expensive, it’ll take too long, and we don’t need it.”
And, while they’re at it, maybe they could talk Trump out of a few other dumb ideas, like buying Greenland, revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship or forcing the Washington Commanders to change their name back to “Redskins.”
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”
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