WHO IS PLAYING NOW

Would you like to rub shoulders with the nation’s new First Family?  Or better still, have a seat at the table where world shaping decisions are made?

All you need do is write a check with a whole bunch of zeros and your dreams will come true.

Ivanka Trump sets up an online auction. The winning bid gets to have coffee with the President-Elect’s accomplished daughter. Bidding is at $70,000.

A charitable non-profit corporation is set up in Texas.  Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump are listed as ‘directors.”  The non-profit website tells us that for a mere $1,000,000 “donation” to this “charity” you and sixteen of your best friends will go on a hunting trip with one of Trump’s sons, get a photo-op with the President-Elect and have a seat at one of the inaugural balls celebrating Trump’s historic landslide victory.

Donald Trump’s cabinet is loaded with millionaires and billionaires.  Not a blue collar middle-class American nor Democrat to be found.  Each of Trump’s cabinet appointments donated huge sums of money to Trump’s campaign.  Coincidence?

Donald Trump has refused to release his tax returns.  The only knowledge we have of his finances is via the unaudited financial disclosures documents he had to submit in order to run for office.  The documents tell us Trump is involved in hedge funds that own between $3M-$15M in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock.  Trump appoints Goldman-Sachs alum Steven Mnuchin head Treasury.  The very next day Mnuchin announces he and Trump intend to pull the US government out of its ownership stake in Fannie and Freddie.  The value of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock soars 150%.  Another coincidence?

Trump Land scoffs at any intimation that these events are in any way examples of “pay for play.”  They are quick to remind us of the 1990’s when President Bill Clinton turned the White House into a fund raising machine…selling overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom like a cheap hourly rate flop house. 

Here’s the thing…two wrongs don’t make a right.  The pay for play nonsense that existed in the Clinton White House of the 1990’s was just as sleazy then as what we see going on with Team Trump today.

What makes the stench of Team Trump’s behavior all the more nauseating is that ridding Washington of this type of corruption was a major component of Trump’s campaign.  Not a stump speech went by without Trump telling us how he was going to “drain the swamp.”  He even threatened to put “Corrupt Hillary” in jail for engaging in this very behavior.  Yet here he and his family are up to their hips in the same muck.

 I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the recklessness of selling access through online auctions or bogus non-profits may have gone un-noticed if not for the work of the “dishonest media” that Trump has worked so hard to demonize.  The online auction was taken down and promises of a hunting excursion with Trump’s sons is no longer available. These actions occurred not out of some selfless action on the part of the Trump Family.  Rather it was the glare of the media spotlight that forced Team Trump to do the right thing.  No wonder Donald Trump keeps the media at a historic arm’s length.   

To be fair Donald Trump and his adult children don’t know what they don’t know.  They are used to living in a business world as monarchs where they can do what they want when they want with little blowback. 

But Donald Trump will soon be President of the United States.  His every word and action subject to a level of scrutiny unlike anything he or his family have ever experienced.  Trump has lived in the public eye; but nothing like this.

I have said before that if Trump’s presidency fails it will not be because of his relationship with Putin, his denigration of minorities or his questionable foreign and domestic policies.  His downfall will come because he refused to build an impenetrable wall between his presidency and his business interests.

Chinks in the amour are already beginning to show.