Trump’s conflicts are unprecedented, but not unique A short history of Republican corruption
Channel: Trump Breaking News Network
Date: 2017-02-09

Trump Breaking News Network -Trump’s conflicts are unprecedented, but not unique A short history of Republican corruption.

President Trump’s conflicts of interest are so vast and ubiquitous (and transparent) that it has almost become a platitude just to mention them at this point. Everyone with common sense knows that Trump’s separation from his multi-billion dollar business — currently being run by his children, who are in regular contact with their father — is a charade. Yet only Democrats (and a tiny handful of principled Republicans) seem to care in Washington.

Trump’s dissociation from his business is analogous to the farce of modern campaign finance law, in which political campaigns are technically prohibited from coordinating with corporate-funded Super PACs, yet do it with impunity because Republican commissioners on the FEC refuse to enforce the law. In a speech at the Brookings Institution last month, Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, asserted that Trump “stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective,” and that “limiting direct communication about the business is wholly inadequate. … There’s not supposed to be any information at all.”

According to a recent New York Times report, however, it turns out that Trump isn’t “limiting direct communication” as much as he had suggested. The president will “receive reports on any profit, or loss, on his company as a whole,” write Times reporters Susanne Craig and Eric Lipton, and can revoke the authority of his eldest son and his CFO, Allen H. Weisselberg, “at any time.” In addition, the purpose of the “Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is to hold assets for the ‘exclusive benefit’ of the president.”

So Trump’s separation from his business empire is even more of a farce than previously thought. It would be naive to expect Republican politicians to change their tune in the near future. The GOP’s attitude towards corruption was made clear last month when Shaub’s uncontroversial remarks cited above, which only stated the obvious, prompted Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs the House Oversight Committee — and who never flinched at investigating the exaggerated misdeeds of Hillary Clinton — to threaten an investigation of Shaub himself, rather than the president. It should be obvious by now that opposing corruption has become a partisan issue in Washington, and that the vast majority of Republicans simply do not care about people in power breaking the law — unless, of course, such people happen to be Democrats.

Some liberals and Independents have been shocked at how shamelessly Republicans appear to disregard the endless conflicts of interest and open corruption of the new president. They shouldn’t be. Republicans have long been tolerant of powerful elites breaking the law — in government and the private sector — just as they have long been receptive to “alternative facts.” A politician who lies as blatantly and frequently as Trump does could only succeed in a party where falsehoods have become the rule, just as a politician as openly corrupt and hostile to the rule of law as Trump is could only succeed in a party that has become completely tolerant of corruption and unethical behavior by those in power.

Source: 

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/08/trumps-conflicts-are-unprecedented-but-not-unique-a-short-history-of-republican-corruption-tk/

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