One of the biggest problems facing the Trump administration is the many conflicts of interest that will exist between President-elect Donald Trump’s role as the top executive of the federal government and his role as the de facto leader of a sprawling business empire, The Trump Organization.
It seems that every day a new conflict pops up. Here’s the latest, and perhaps most brazen example: a source has provided documents to ThinkProgress that show The Trump Organization recently pressured the Embassy of Kuwait into booking an event at the Trump International Hotel.
For years, the Kuwaiti embassy has celebrated National Day at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. But this year, just days after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, the embassy abruptly canceled its contract with the Four Season. Apparently, members of The Trump Organization called Salem Al-Sabah, the ambassador of Kuwait, and encouraged him to host the event at Trump’s hotel instead.
The Kingdom of Bahrain has also booked an event at the Trump International Hotel.
Obviously, this is all kinds of fucked up. These foreign governments know that throwing some money at The Trump Organization allows them to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump shouldn’t be opening himself up to that kind of influence, nor should he be profiting from his role as the president.
The General Services Administration, which is the federal agency that owns the building that the Trump International Hotel is in, has told Trump that he needs to cut ties with the hotel before Inauguration Day.
The Electoral College just had it’s official tally, and there was no last minute Hail Mary to stop Trump from winning the presidency. To deny Trump the White House, dozens of electors would have needed to defect from their state results, and they didn’t do so.
In fact, Hillary Clinton lost more ground in the Electoral College through faithless electors than Trump ( five electors tied to Hillary voted for someone else, while two electors tied to Trump voted someone else). Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. And he’s showing that he has no respect for standard political ethics whatsoever.
Of course, considering Trump’s unethical history in the private sector (renting apartments to black people in the 1970s was bad for business according to Trump) and his unethical behavior as a political candidate (do we really need to list examples?), we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s unethical as a public official as well.
All Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump’s net worth.
Featured image via Arabian Business.
