Trump Leaves Bad Taste in Vermont's Mouth

The scene outside Burlington Vermont's Flynn Center for the
Performing Arts during the Trump visit Thursday. 

I know I covered this yesterday, but I can't help revisiting it.

The bottom line: We love visitors to Vermont. Most of them. Not all of them. One visitor most of us don't like is Donald Trump.

Let's just say he was rude.

The Burlington Free Press continues to tell us more details of what a lousy guest Trump and his minions were while in Vermont on Thursday.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger publicly angry. He's such a mellow, reasonable dude.

Weinberger remains reasonable, not he wasn't as mellow as usual this week. When it became clear that many more people were coming to see Trump than there was room for at the Flynn, Weinberger and his administration tried repeatedly to contact the Trump team about security plans and whatnot.

Trump's attitude was basically it's Burlington's problem to pay the city's police force oodles of overtime for security and crowd control. Trump's got money coming out of his ears. Most Burlington taxpayers don't.

Since it was Trump's event, shouldn't his campaign pay for it? After all, every time there's a major event in Burlington, the organizers either submit a detailed security plan to the city, or pay Burlington make the security happen.

Then there's the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Every time the Flynn has an event, or a concert, or anything, a contract is worked out over what is allowed during the event, and what is not.

This is mostly for safety and insurance reasons, and to keep the historic Flynn in tip-top, beautiful shape.

One of the rules, according to the Burlington Free Press, was no campaign signs indoors during the event.

But, of course the Trump campaign immediately distributed a bunch of signs to the crowd. Flynn staff naturally objected, but the Trump campaign ignored that.

"I said to the campaign manager, 'you lied to me' and I was met with shrugged shoulders,'" Flynn Executive Director John Killacky told the Burlington Free Press.

What kind of president would Trump be if he just ignored everyone else and did what he wanted? What if he kept saying any issue was somebody else's problem and just expected others to do something just because he told them to.

We already see a hint of that, with his harebrained proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it.

Good luck with that.

His money doesn't buy everything. What happens during a Trump presidency when a crisis erupts, and Trump dismisses it as somebody else's problem?

It won't be a matter of relatively powerless people and organizations, like the Flynn Center or Burlington, Vermont forced to put up with Trump. Other nations, terrorist groups, the economy and Congress won't just shut up and do what Trump says.

When and if that happens, we're all in trouble.