annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Presidential Graft
Nearly every week in Washington brings another example of how the Trump Administration actively promotes the business interests of the Trump Organization around the globe. That is, we see how government is used to enrich the president. Which means—if you happen to sweat the small stuff—the president is in violation of his oath of office to faithfully execute the responsibilities of the presidency and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a functioning constitutional republic, he would be subject to impeachment.
But instead, it’s just Trump being Trump. “To ethics lawyers, the most extraordinary aspect of the daily merging of Mr. Trump’s official duties and his commercial interests both in Washington and around the world,” noted New York Times reporters Eric Lipton and Annie Karni last week, “is that it has now become almost routine.”
It made a small ripple when the media noticed that Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage arranged a two-night stay early this month at a Trump hotel and golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, even though Pence was traveling for meetings in Dublin, some three hours away by car. Likewise, a few eyebrows were raised when Politico reported that the House Oversight Committee is looking into a series of military stopovers at an airport in Scotland that happens to be near a Trump resort, where Air Force crew members sometimes lodged at a steep discount and golfed for free. “Taken together,” Politico reported, “the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat—the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.”
Everyone who wants to curry favor with the president knows they are expected to patronize his properties. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., has become de rigueur for right-wing Trumpian conferences and parties. Attorney General William Barr has already booked the Presidential Ballroom for his annual holiday party in December, the Washington Post reported last month. But there’s more than just Trump-style cronyism at issue here. As last week’s Lipton and Karni Times story about the Trump Hotel in D.C. observed, “The single biggest known tab was paid by the government of Saudi Arabia, which disclosed that it spent $190,273 at the Trump hotel in early 2017, as well as an additional $78,204 on catering.”
It’s that fact that shows how brazen this president is about ignoring his constitutional responsibilities. Trump has been in violation of the Constitution’s ban on receiving gifts and income from foreign governments since the day he was sworn in. Because he refused to follow precedent by divesting himself of his commercial properties, he waded into a swamp of daily ethical conflicts. In fact, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released a report in August documenting more than 2,300 conflicts of interest in his term so far. These include the more than 360 times the president has visited his own properties at taxpayer expense, as well as the visits by at least 250 administration officials, ninety members of Congress, and more than a hundred visits from officials of sixty-five countries. . . .
Nearly every week in Washington brings another example of how the Trump Administration actively promotes the business interests of the Trump Organization around the globe. That is, we see how government is used to enrich the president. Which means—if you happen to sweat the small stuff—the president is in violation of his oath of office to faithfully execute the responsibilities of the presidency and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a functioning constitutional republic, he would be subject to impeachment.
But instead, it’s just Trump being Trump. “To ethics lawyers, the most extraordinary aspect of the daily merging of Mr. Trump’s official duties and his commercial interests both in Washington and around the world,” noted New York Times reporters Eric Lipton and Annie Karni last week, “is that it has now become almost routine.”
It made a small ripple when the media noticed that Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage arranged a two-night stay early this month at a Trump hotel and golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, even though Pence was traveling for meetings in Dublin, some three hours away by car. Likewise, a few eyebrows were raised when Politico reported that the House Oversight Committee is looking into a series of military stopovers at an airport in Scotland that happens to be near a Trump resort, where Air Force crew members sometimes lodged at a steep discount and golfed for free. “Taken together,” Politico reported, “the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat—the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.”
Everyone who wants to curry favor with the president knows they are expected to patronize his properties. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., has become de rigueur for right-wing Trumpian conferences and parties. Attorney General William Barr has already booked the Presidential Ballroom for his annual holiday party in December, the Washington Post reported last month. But there’s more than just Trump-style cronyism at issue here. As last week’s Lipton and Karni Times story about the Trump Hotel in D.C. observed, “The single biggest known tab was paid by the government of Saudi Arabia, which disclosed that it spent $190,273 at the Trump hotel in early 2017, as well as an additional $78,204 on catering.”
It’s that fact that shows how brazen this president is about ignoring his constitutional responsibilities. Trump has been in violation of the Constitution’s ban on receiving gifts and income from foreign governments since the day he was sworn in. Because he refused to follow precedent by divesting himself of his commercial properties, he waded into a swamp of daily ethical conflicts. In fact, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released a report in August documenting more than 2,300 conflicts of interest in his term so far. These include the more than 360 times the president has visited his own properties at taxpayer expense, as well as the visits by at least 250 administration officials, ninety members of Congress, and more than a hundred visits from officials of sixty-five countries. . . .
