Because the Trump White House is a business with the shades closed — the visitor logs no longer available to the public, the
tax returns a dark secret — we cannot know how extensively the Trump clan is making foreign policy to help its holdings.
Turning management over to his sons is a farce, one you would expect from a man who ran a casino into bankruptcy, stiffed plumbers
and carpenters, and defrauded thousands of people at a phony “university.”
Trump makes money every time a foreign diplomat or favor-seeking industrialist stays at one of his hotels or becomes a tenant in one of his buildings.
The same administration that wants to zero-out public money for the arts used
public money to inform people of Trump’s exquisite taste in private property.
It’s clear now that the reason Trump — in defiance of all ethical standards for the office — has refused to divest his business interests is
that the levers of executive power directly help Trump Inc.
He spent four hours at the White House with Sarah Palin
and Ted Nugent, the no-talent musician who called President Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” The guests posed, in thug mode, before a portrait of Hillary Clinton — a fitting image for a host who has turned the home of Lincoln and Roosevelt into a House of Grifters.
The family has extensive entanglements in China, the Philippines and Turkey, to name just a few “conflicts.”
And Jared Kushner, who has a far-reaching diplomatic portfolio, is also a beneficiary of many businesses
backed by unnamed foreign partners, as my colleague Jesse Drucker reported this week.
