If you thought Donald Trump wasn't in the presidency for the money, think again. He and his family are rolling in a tsunami of profits. Jill Abramson writes:
This week, [Jared] Kushner’s new financial disclosure records were released, showing the considerable rise in his assets. Their value ranged between $179m and $735m, up from a range of $137m to $609m the previous year. (White House officials are required to report their assets in broad ranges). For Jared, it was a very good year, indeed.
Just last month came the happy news that Ivanka’s brand had won seven additional Chinese patents for items ranging from cushions to books. The new patents were issued at the same time that her father vowed to save ZTE, a major Chinese telecommunications company, from going bust – a rare and surprising move for a president who is a foreign trade hardliner. The New York Times noted: “Even as Mr Trump contends with Beijing on issues like security and trade, his family and the company that bears his name are trying to make money off their brand in China’s flush and potentially promising market.”
Then there is the president himself. His Trump International Hotel is doing brisk business, its lobby always full of White House favour-seekers, its pricey rooms often filled with industry executives and lobbyists. The hotel is siphoning business from other local hotels and convention centres, according to the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland, which have both filed lawsuits. They charge that Trump’s profits from the hotel violate the US constitution’s anti-corruption clauses. The Justice department, unsurprisingly, has defended the president’s continuing role as a hotelier, but a federal judge on Monday sharply criticised the department’s legal reasoning. The case is probably heading for the US supreme court.
Donald Trump is the personification of neo-liberalism and the values it espouses:
David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, recently summed up the “Trumpian world-view” writing, “Trump takes every relationship that has historically been based on affection, loyalty, trust and reciprocity and turned it into a relationship based on competition, self-interest, suspicion and efforts to establish dominance.”
Those values were recently on full display at the G7 conference. It's not about public service. It's about me and the money, stupid.
Image: Bloomberg
4 comments:
Can anyone say 'kleptocracy,' Owen?
It's one of those words that has too many syllables fr some, Lorne. It describes the situation exactly. But it appears that lots of people don't know what it means.
Another sure indicator of societal decline. The most worrisome part is that we can neither predict nor control how this ends.
Agreed, Mound. Perhaps what Lord Action said about power could also be said about money.
Post a Comment