NYT publishes damning, deep look at Trump’s commercial/presidential conflicts of interests, so Trump tweets crazy fake-vote conspiracy
As George W Bush taught us: “fool me twice, we don’t get fooled again.”
Remember when Donald Trump’s $25,000,000 fraud settlement was a one-day news cycle because we were all focusing on Trump’s insane vendetta against Hamilton?
Well, today, Donald Trump responded to the New York Times’s deep dive into his conflicts of interest – even as a consensus is emerging among constitutional scholars that the exotic emoluments clause will require Trump to sell off much of his business empire – by tweeting a series of bizarre, ghastly-fascinating conspiracy theories about alleged “millions of people who voted illegally.”
OK, that’s just bullshit.
There’s going to be a recount. We’ll find out what we find out. Even if it turns out – as is likely – that fraud and irregularities are small-scale and add up to too small a hill of beans to affect the election outcome, we should totally be auditing votes cast with electronic voting machines, in every election, both randomly and in close-run ballots.
But the real story this weekend is Trump’s conflicts of interest, lavishly documented by the attentive Richard C. Paddock, Eric Lipton, Ellen Barry, Rod Nordland, Danny Hakim and Simon Romero of the New York Times.
* He has business interests with Jose E. B. Antonio, who is also Philippines dictator Rodrige Dutarte’s Special Envoy to the USA
* Similar conflicts potentially exist is some 20 known countries where the Trump organization has dealings
* Trump also has a long, undisclosed list of foreign creditors, potentially including sovereign wealth funds
* Trump has used his political campaign to curry favor with foreign leaders: after his businesses in Turkey were threatened as a result of his call for a ban on Muslims entering the USA, he stood up for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s firing of 100,000 public servants and shuttering of 129 news agencies, rescuing his business interests in the process
The Times goes on to report, in detail on Trump’s political and business conflicts in Brazil, India, Turkey, The Philippines, Ireland, Scotland, and around the world – including filing a trademark on “The American Idea,” among other trademarks, that (according to the application), Trump will use to link his global holdings to the office of the US President.
The Times story also includes interactive features and videos, and will reward your close scrutiny (unlike the fact-free accusation of three million fraudulent votes).
https://boingboing.net/2016/11/27/nyt-publishes-damning-deep-lo.html
“President?
Do you have any idea how much power I’d have to give up in order to be President?”
Or
That time fictional cartoon supervillain Lex Luthor understood more about how American politics work than Actual Human and American citizen Donald Trump apparently does
I wouldn’t entirely write this off as a distraction. The Republicans have been attacking voting rights for awhile now, and every indication is that President Donny will usher in an even more robust Campaign of Disenfranchisement.
