Sunday, April 23, 2017

President is Exempt from Conflict of Interests: So, Let 'er Rip — Ka-ching

Like a giant spider web and just as sticky

Interesting poll to say the least 
(Notice how the Trump voter base stays in line)

While Trump himself has done pretty well through this week’s conflicts of interest (from Salon.com) his children have received unusual attention for their own shady activities. And, this is directly related to this story here from The Atlantic (another interesting analysis of the Trump quagmire – at least in my view). And, speaking of quagmires how about this one re: the Kushner’s (Jared and Ivanka) – with their own ties and conflicts. But, as long as they skate, so what, who cares, right? (Hint: That’s what they count on: Public apathy). So, here we go: Taxpayers flipped the bill for Eric Trump’s business trip to Ireland.
Maybe we could suppose it’s forgivable that Eric Trump needed to spend $11,261 of taxpayer money on Secret Service protection during his trip to the Trump Doonbeg Golf Course in Ireland. After all, although it’s questionable whether he actually needs to do all this globetrotting at this time in his life — and that would all be moot were the president to completely relinquish control of his companies to his blind trust, and not to his kids — it at least makes sense that a presidential child should receive protection when he does so.
But $4,030 on Eric’s personal limousine.
Just as her father’s company began notoriously receiving Chinese trademarks after the president recognized a “One China” policy, so too has Ivanka received recently three new trademarks in China after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his recent dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Considering that Ivanka Trump is now one of her father’s chief White House advisers, she lacks her brother’s ability to claim that there is nothing improper about mixing business with geopolitics, right?
It now turns out that, on the day when White House counsel Kellyanne Conway made an unethical plug for the first daughter’s business line, sales spiked by 10,700 percent for Ivanka products over what they had been on the same day from the previous year.
Then just as March ending, Ivanka’s sales were still up by 262 percent from where they had been in March of the previous year.
Violating basic ethics rules can pay at least if you’re a Trump.
Also, who says you can’t make money running for president? This is why people make a big deal about Trump not divesting himself from his companies:
In the first three months of 2017, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign (yes, he’s already started that) has spent almost $500,000 on hotels, golf clubs and restaurants owned by the Trump family. It’s almost as if the same president who allegedly applied political pressure to diplomats from other countries to go to his Washington hotel doesn’t see any separation between his business goals and his political ones.
One supposes that when son Eric admitted last month that he also discussed “the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that” with his father, but that it didn’t mean like most people think it means, um?
Check poll chart above one more time … see a pattern here – not that it matters, right?
Just imagine the time this man and his clan still has in office … scary isn’t it?
Stay tuned and remember what Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said during the whole Watergate mess: “Follow the money.”
That was good advice then and still is today. Where it leads, well, that’s anyone’s guess.

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