That's not true, boss. It was the whole problem with the Clinton Foundation, in fact.
Trump's sense of self is completely tied up with his business empire. I'm guessing nobody can talk him into liquidating his interest in it, or giving up a sense of personal control over it. That means this whole Presidency is going to be one scandal after another.
6 comments:
If the President does it, that means it's legal.
And
What's good for General Motors is good for the country.
Too, Trump is correct as far as he goes: no law requires him to divest his holdings or put them in a blind trust or do anything else with them. Laws concerning conflicts of interest won't be straightforwardly applied.
In the end, though, we'll have to wait and see. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's just trolling the NLMSM and the Left with such talk.
Eric Hines
It's not that he's wrong as a point of law. I'm sure you're aware of the lively debate over the Emoulments Clause, and whether or not it applies to the President. (As an originalist, I'm convinced by the fact that Washington and the first Congress didn't treat it as applying to him that it doesn't.)
However, there's no way to avoid the appearance of impropriety. It's going to be a scourge of his administration if he doesn't move on this. I just doubt he can, given how much of his life and ego (in the technical sense of the term, not the sense of being conceited) are built around his business empire.
Liquidating your entire holdings at a tremendous loss (and possible economic disruption for entire cities, considering the size of them) does not seem like a good way of avoiding the appearance of corruption. There's no way for him to sell his real estate holdings in two months at less than a huge loss; indeed, I suspect it's not possible to do it in that time even with the huge loss.
I think I understand Grim's qualms, but it is not really a reasonable thing to expect.
On the bright side, it's hard to bribe a billionaire. And my guess is that Trump will leave office no better off financially than he was when he entered it, and that's more than you can say about most presidents including the present one.
I borrow the language from the Wall Street Journal, which I assume knows a lot more than I do about what is involved in liquidating holdings. :) I'm far from an expert on financial transactions bigger than a credit card payment. I'm certainly open to the idea that this solution isn't the right one.
On the other hand, this is going to be a huge issue if he doesn't address it in some convincing way. Even if he isn't actually influenced at all by these things -- and it would be very difficult not to be, if only subconsciously -- there will be a constant stream of scandals about it.
there will be a constant stream of scandals about it.
Certainly. But don't lose track of the fact that, in these particular times, the NLMSM and the Progressive-Democratic Party will manufacture scandals in a constant stream over any matter, small, large, or made-up. And they would do that today, regardless of which Republican might have won this particular election.
Eric Hines
Normally the Trum Empire would have been inherited by one of his sons already.
The way the old guard keeps a grip on such things, must make things interesting for the younger generation of Trum.
On the bright side, it's hard to bribe a billionaire.
Epstein already knows how to bribe billionaires and those with even more power.
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