NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–November 23, 2016
It’s the White House on the inside.
In his Tuesday interview with the New York Times, Donald Trump made it clear that, when it comes to business, he can do as he pleases.
Pressed to respond to criticism in other areas, he was defiant. He declared that “the law’s totally on my side” when it comes to questions about conflict of interest and ethics laws. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest,” he said.
Of course, Donald Trump is 100 percent wrong. Of course the president can have a conflict of interest. The president is faced with the possibility of conflict every time his personal desires are at odds with what’s best for the nation. However, Trump is also 100 percent right in saying that the conflict of interest regulations that bind most government officials don’t apply to the president.
The conflict is completely real. The law, totally absent. Instead, handling these conflicts is left up to the president, with the assumption that a sense of common decency and pressure from the public, will prevent egregious abuse.
And when you get someone with no sense of decency empowered by voters who hold him to no standards whatsoever …
Mr. Trump did not dispute reports that he had used a meeting last week with Nigel Farage, the U.K. Independence Party leader, to raise his opposition to offshore wind farms. Mr. Trump has long complained that wind farms would mar the view from his golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
That just one conflict of interest among many that Trump generated in a single week.
Mr. Trump rejected the idea that he was bound by federal antinepotism laws from installing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a White House job. …
“The president of the United States is allowed to have whatever conflicts he or she wants … ”
Donald Trump views the presidency as an unbounded position, where the executive is open to enriching himself as he desires. He has already demonstrated that belief in the UK, where he not only encouraged Farage to re-launch conflicts about wind, in discussions about how his new status might be leveraged for property deals in India, and he’s reported to have urged the Argentinian president to hustle along a building permit.
And Russia?
The president-elect said that he had talked with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since winning the election, but he did not elaborate.
Trump has an unknown level of debt and other obligations to Russia. What kind of deals is a man who doesn’t believe in conflict of interest making right now?
Source: http://dailykos.com
