President-elect Donald Trump was supposed to have a press conference this week to tell us how he plans to separate his business from his presidency. He has conveniently postponed the press conference until after the Electoral College votes on Monday (December 19). Here are some of the things we would’ve liked to have asked him:
1. Why was your daughter sitting in on calls and meetings with foreign leaders?
Ivanka Trump is on the President-elect’s transition team, and she may be running her father’s businesses after he takes office. She sat in on some calls with foreign leaders, which would be fine if it was just about business. With her father about to be POTUS, there’s a major conflict of interest there. Trump needs to explain why he did this. In a “congratulatory call” with the president of Argentina, Trump was talking about his properties over there.
2. How will you handle your children AND your businesses?
Donald Trump’s adult children Ivanka, Donald Jr, and Eric, have been helping their father run the Trump organization. That’s why he says that they will be running it while he is president. However, where will they draw the line with conversation? How will they decide which things about the business they can share with their father? How will the president-elect keep his presidential dealings separate from his children? He has been told to put the business in a blind trust, but the Trumps don’t seem to get that concept.
3. Why are you skeptical of the multitude of intelligence agencies who say that the Russians were involved in the election?
Take off the tinfoil hat, Trump. All 17 intelligence agencies agree that there was tampering in the election. Trump seems to be fine with it since they threw the election in his favor. This was the statement from those agencies:
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
4. Are we supposed to take your tweets seriously?
Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said:
“This is the problem with the media — you guys took everything Donald Trump said so literally. And the problem with that is the American people didn’t. They understood that sometimes when you have a conversation with people, you’re going to say something, and maybe you don’t have all the facts to back that up, but that’s how the American people live.”
How do we know what to take literally and not to? All of Trump’s tweets and comments seem pretty serious.
Featured image via Twitter
