The blushing bride and the POTUS, shortly after he discussed sensitive items of national security in public.
Nashville socialite and hunter Vanessa Falk married Cincinnati native and American Financial scion Carl Lindner IV on Saturday night. According to pictures sent by a tipster, the bride looks lovely, her bridesmaids look happy, and, oh yeah, that's the president of the United States crashing the wedding shortly after he held a rushed press conference with the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe — and right after he discussed sensitive matters of national security in public, using the flashes on unsecured camera phones to read documents over dinner. Not good, Donald!
The Scene is very happy for Vanessa and Carl, and we hope they are on a honeymoon (or hunting trip) and missing all the brouhaha Trump's appearance has caused. Surely when they planned to hold the wedding at the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, they weren't expecting that the president would be there or that, you know, he would even be the president. (Although Lindner's father, Carl III, is a major Republican donor, he is a Bush loyalist and does not seem to have donated anything to Trump or a PAC supporting Trump, per the most recent FEC filings.) So when we saw on Saturday night that Trump had attended the event, we were a little surprised — wasn't the president entertaining the prime minister? Was he invited to the wedding just for the hell of it, or do the Falks actually know him? As U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn's son Chad attended, it's not a stretch — and someone has to have that club membership anyway.
But as CNN reports, Trump actually did crash the wedding, after holding an impromptu press conference with Abe to address North Korea launching a ballistic missile:
But even as he confronted one of the gravest matters of his office, Trump nonetheless found it impossible to resist dropping in on a nearby wedding reception, already underway in his treasured Grand Ballroom. Trump designed and built the space himself after purchasing Mar-a-Lago in the 1980s.Entering the ornate room, Trump took a photo with the bride and her bridesmaids, who posed in red gowns next to the commander in chief, mimicking his signature thumbs-up.
Then he grabbed a microphone.
"I saw them out on the lawn today," Trump said of the bride and groom, who were standing nearby. "I said to the Prime Minister of Japan, I said, 'C'mon Shinzo, let's go over and say hello.' "
"They've been members of this club for a long time," Trump said of the newlyweds. "They've paid me a fortune."
Trump's impulsive behavior at such a serious event has drawn widespread criticism since CNN broke the specific details on Sunday night. Even more concerning than posing for pictures, however, was his aides' reported use of the flashlight feature on their phones to light the table — which had only candles — for Trump and Abe to read documents while servers continued to bring and clear dishes.
As The Washington Post explains, this is really, really dumb:
Why is this important? Mobile phones have flashlights, yes — and cameras, microphones and Internet connectivity. When Edward Snowden was meeting with reporters in Hong Kong at the moment he was leaking the material he’d stolen from the NSA, he famously asked that they place their phones in the refrigerator — blocking any radio signals in the event that the visitors’ phones had been hacked.
Plus, as the paper notes, Trump is still using his unsecured Android phone, which is almost certainly compromised, and his tweets indicate that phone was in use over dinner.
So please, Vanessa and Carl, enjoy your travels off to whatever exotic locale you have chosen, and please don't stress out too much about the lax security standards shown by our new president. We are totally sure there will still be a country for you to return to — although for how much longer, at this rate, we cannot honestly say.
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn's son was in attendance with his wife.
