Wednesday, November 23, 2016

It's been a week, and Trump is well on his way to becoming most crooked president in history

By Hunter  
Sunday Nov 20, 2016 · 4:16 PM EST

It took one week. Within one week of becoming the nation's president-elect, Trump's newest hotel was already advertising itself as a way for foreign diplomats to curry favor with the newest president.

The event for the diplomatic community, held one week after the election, was in the Lincoln Library, a junior ballroom with 16-foot ceilings and velvet drapes that is also available for rent.
Some attendees won raffle prizes — among them overnight stays at other Trump properties around the world — allowing them to become better acquainted with the business holdings of the new commander in chief. [...]

Guests at the Trump hotel have begun parking themselves in the lobby, ordering expensive cocktails, hoping to see one of the Trump family members or the latest Cabinet pick. One foreign official hoped Trump, famous for the personal interest he takes in his businesses, might check the guest logs himself.

He might, of course. Nobody sincerely believes Donald Trump to be so principled a man that he would be above checking which diplomats were or were not lining his pockets before deciding whether to meet with them—or what favors America might do for them. On the contrary, the interviewed diplomats seem to be quite clear on what advantages staying at Trump's self-named hotel might bring them. When you meet with the next president you can either mention to him that you are staying in one of his own hotels, or you can not. Guess which one he will find most pleasing.

There is a bit of a legal problem here, in that a president accepting gifts from foreign diplomats is explicitly barred in the Constitution itself, and it doesn't take a great deal of deduction to presume that diplomats staying in hotel that funnels cash to Trump's own pockets counts as a gift. It's still a gift if the company is run by the president's daughter. The press and Republican party usually works itself into an orgy of reprobation and over even the optics of such a thing. There would be hearings. There would be Fox News specials. Both Sean Hannity and the New York Times front page would both be shouting in all-caps about something like that—during other times, or if the news touched seemingly any other candidate but this one.

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