Trump Unhealthily Mixes the Presidency and His Businesses - Rob Horowitz
Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™
Trump Unhealthily Mixes the Presidency and His Businesses - Rob Horowitz
This time around, the president is exercising no such caution. He is leveraging the presidency to boost his private businesses at full speed. While taking Qatar up on its offer to gift him a $400 million dollar plane to serve as a new Air Force One during his presidency and end up in his hands afterwards generated the most outrage, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) $2 billion dollar infusion into the Trump family crypto business was an even more troubling byproduct of his trip to the Middle East last week. This arrangement, according to CBS News, “will make the Trump family crypto business tens of millions of dollars per year from the investment.”
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And this is just one in a series of maneuvers to use the power and prestige of the presidency to boost the Trump family’s crypto business, which some observers estimate now represents about 40% of Mr. Trump’s net worth. “At a recent auction of Trump's cryptocurrency, bidders spent nearly $150 million on Trump's meme coin, a form of cryptocurrency typically inspired by viral trends or endorsed by celebrities,” reported PBS News Hour. “The reward? For the top 220 bidders, a private gala with President Trump at his golf course just outside of Washington, D.C., and the top 25 will receive even more exclusive access to the president, including a special VIP tour of the White House.” The Trump family and its partners have already raked in $320 million in trading fees on the president’s meme coin.
At the same time, President Trump is personally profiting from the industry, he has issued several executive orders designed to promote cryptocurrency and is rolling back crypto regulations. This is on top of the Securities and Exchange Commission “pausing investigations into a dozen crypto companies since his inauguration, a CBS News analysis found.”
In another departure from his first term, where the Trump Organization put a self-imposed restriction on pursuing new hotel and development projects in foreign nations, this time it has moved into foreign project overdrive. Capitalizing on foreign governments’ desires to do business with or at least provide a valuable assist to the president of the United States, there are 20 Trump-branded projects now underway in various locations around the world. “In nine foreign countries, these developers will seek subcontractors, buyers and permits from the government, creating massive conflicts of interest for Trump, as he weighs American foreign policy against his own financial incentives,” documented CREW.
Taken together, President Trump has provided several well-marked paths for people, corporations and foreign governments’ seeking favorable treatment or business from the federal government to personally line his pockets. Not surprisingly, these varied interests and entities are flocking to do so. This creates at least the perception of an American president who is for sale.
As Noah Bookbinder the president and CEO of CREW, told PBS News Hour, ”Some of these transactions may turn out to be kind of just on the right side of the law. Some of them may well end up violating the Constitution. But even where there is technical legality, where you have a senior government official getting personal benefits from people who have every reason to want to influence their policy decisions, that's inherently corrupt."
One thing is for sure: the American people deserve a president whose whole energy and sole focus is on the public interest--not one who is using his office to boost his own wealth.