Okay, that took me a moment but I applaud you for it.
Personally, I hold the president to a higher standard than “there’s no law against it”, but YMMV.
Lately I’ve been seeing and hearing the old refrain that sounds too much like “it isn’t illegal if the president does it”
I’m cynical and I think it’s far worse than just that.
They wanted an exciting and close “horse race”. So, in order to do that they had to go easy on him, hammer Clinton, treat his babble as “news” instead of calling him on ALL his lies and bullshit, while going after her on non-existent “scandals”.
And then there is money - money of the owners with an agenda, and the money of rich benefactorsand agitators with agendas.
Almost forgot… and then there are the Nazi “news” outlets of Breibart and infoWars, which were being treated as if they were legit… and the assholes who read and believe all that crap.
In short, count them as being among the faithless liars.
AND the so called legit “news” agencies that reported the shit from Breibart and InfoWars and Nazi tweets as if they were true.
^ This.
…And the profits he’ll make off of his Trump Brand Insider Trading will be YU-uuuge…!
Maybe a true “blind trust” isn’t possible-I don’t know for sure. What would make me more comfortable is if he did these two things:
- Forbade anyone directly associated with his companies from being a part of his White House, even on a consulting basis, and
- Took no actions that directly benefitted his holdings.
Is it wrong to want to see the U.S. President in bankruptcy court, and I mean in a really big way - not some petty failed casino but if, say, all his Chinese creditors called in at once and all his properties in China nationalized in retaliation because Congress passes a tough trade bill and overrides his veto?
But for the global economic impact, I quite enjoy the notion.
Here’s how it’s gonna work. George Washington Plunkitt lives–and he’s gonna be President!
I can sort-of see that value of so-called “honest graft” in the sense of the city needs a new road or a new bridge and though some wheels might get greased to speed the process along, the end result is the city gets that road or bridge, and it’s sufficiently well built to be useful for decades. Compare that to straight-up parasitism, where lots of people are taking a cut and nothing of lasting value is being built.
I’m not personally sure where Trump’s building projects would be - are they generally considered urban improvements made possible by his involvement? Does he play some creative role in their design, or is he more of a "make it bigger and shinier!"kind of guy? Have any of his projects been considered revolutionary, in that they helped advance or showcase the sciences of engineering or architecture?
I find I have a pretty good tolerance for cutting corners in the name of getting things done, and I could understand the Clintons maintaining their own e-mail server if that made things easier for them as they were getting things done. In the interest of fairness, I’m willing to cut Trump some slack on this, but he going to have to produce results, and lasting results at that.
Secret Service considering renting a floor at Trump Tower to protect future first family.
So the Secret Service winds up paying Trump to protect him at home.
No way he’s going to stay in the White House now.
My mileage depends upon the specific question being asked.
The general approach surrounding this issue has been to hint that Trump’s statement evoke’s Nixon’s more blanket claim that the President could evade the law. Even Nixon was not making a claim that no law ever bound the President, but he at least was arguing that certain laws which, on their face, applied to the President actually didn’t because of the Constitutional unique position.
Trump, on the other hand, is making the entirely unremarkable and totally correct claim that the conflict of interest laws for federal employees specifically exclude from their reach the President and Vice-President.
So when people elide this distinction they are not arguing fairly. They’re relying on the confusion that the similar words used by Nixon and Trump creates in the listener to advance their preferred interpretation, instead of explaining the truth of the matter and going from there.
Prepare for a long wait.
Who is eliding this distinction? Not me. Anyone here?
OK we can go on.
Imagine if Hillary had won and included Chelsea in her transition meetings; had her run the clinton foundation and the family portfolio; said that this was a “Blind trust”; intended to not show tax returns and didn’t; tried to be president using her home address and soaking up taxpayer $ to do it; and floated the idea that she could run a personal business as well as serve as president? How would you react?
Trump gained attention and support as the guy that was not going to do this. He is doing this. Are you happy about that? It’s really odious to defend liars and scum, con men and cheats.
In light of what Trump has been saying the last few days, my thread title seems naive and not a little bit ironic. He’s told us the answer, and it is “no.”
Wrong. Some of us are able to grasp that the mish-mash of statutes that by happenstance happens to be the Law of the Land is not magically identical to the totality of moral law.
Whether it is wrong for Trump to use his position to enrich the Trump Organization at the expense of the country he has been elected to serve doesn’t depend on the letter of any law, nor the ruling of any judge. It is manifest to good-spirited citizens. Going to law school is, it appears, an impediment to understanding moral law.
My take is that the Conservatives are just keeping this stuff in their back pocket so that they can impeach and remove a questionable President and have him replaced with their boy Pence.
The New York Times published a very revealing article today.
It helps to quote some text from an article instead of just posting a link. For some, the NYTimes links are behind a paywall. This is a really long article, but worthwhile. It goes through Trump’s international connections in some detail, country by country.
There’s much more.
My bold. “If only slightly”? Are you fucking kidding us?
I am 100% anti-Trump, but I don’t think the Founding Fathers anticipated a multi-Billionaire running for office who will need a heck of a lot more than between Nov 8 and December 19 or even Inauguration Day, to devolve himself of all his businesses. Hell, many of his sales, if he does so, might be held up in court until well after he leaves office!