Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE \/ the national interest June 21, 2017 06\/21\/2017 5:12 pm By Jonathan Chait Share Donald Trump. Photo: Jim Watson\/AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon delivered a speech that became famous for his self-defeating boast, I am not a crook. The windup to the infamous phrase consisted of Nixon defending his aggressive, but legal, tax-avoidance strategies. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service I have earned every cent, he insisted. (This was perhaps half-true.) And in all of my years of public life, he continued, I have never obstructed justice. (This was not true the year before, Nixon had tried to get the CIA to quash the FBI investigation into Watergate.) <\/p>\n
Like Nixon, Donald Trump denies having engaged in obstruction of justice, even though he plainly has (both by asking intelligence agencies to push back against the FBI, according to reports, and by firing the FBI director over the Russia investigation, by Trumps own admission). Unlike Nixon, Trump does not deny profiting from public service. He does it brazenly and flamboyantly. <\/p>\n
If he were a normal president, rather than one who produced calamities at an unprecedented pace, Trumps open profiteering would receive five-alarm media coverage and threats of impeachment. The Washington Post recently reported that Trumps budget slashes funding for a wide array of low-income housing programs, the one notable exception being a program that his own firm benefits from. The story connects this shady decision to an even shadier one: Trumps appointment of Lynne Patton a wedding planner close to the Trump family who possesses zero relevant experience and who has falsified her rsum to oversee the Department of Housing and Urban Developments programs in New York City. That is, Trump is using his budget to suspiciously single out for favoritism a program from which his firm benefits, and then installing a wildly unqualified personal loyalist in a position where she could protect his funding stream. This scandal alone could shake a non-Trump presidency to its foundations. <\/p>\n
That it has caused barely a ripple helps to explain why Trump feels emboldened to locate the first fundraiser for his reelection campaign at his hotel in Washington. Trumps Washington hotel has already raked in cash from lobbyists and government officials, foreign and domestic, seeking to curry favor with the First Family. Trump has gotten away with it because his party has evinced zero interest in restraining him. The GOP Congress has quashed investigations of his profiteering or demands that he produce his tax returns. Now the party elite will literally be suborned at an event conjoining his public duties and the fattening of his own wallet. <\/p>\n
History has mostly forgotten what Nixon said after his famous line: I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got. The premise of that statement was that a president who enriches himself through office is a crook. So, what does that make Donald Trump? <\/p>\n
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Mitch McConnell apparently is not any nicer than Paul Ryan. <\/p>\n
The president wont get the meeting he asked for, chairman Cedric Richmond wrote in a letter. <\/p>\n
Holding his first fundraiser at his own hotel is a message that the president wants to flaunt his self-enrichment. <\/p>\n
You guys care much more about that stuff than I do, he told reporters. <\/p>\n
Who among us? <\/p>\n
All three trademark requests have been granted since the election. <\/p>\n
But officials say the evidence indicates the attack was more spontaneous than premeditated, though the investigation continues. <\/p>\n
Some Senate Republicans are realizing that theres a tension between solving the opioid epidemic and throwing millions of people off health insurance. <\/p>\n
Hes tired of them asking snarky questions to get on TV. <\/p>\n
Founded with an Australian billionaire and Brett Ratner, the company was also behind Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad. <\/p>\n
Democrats again outperformed historical markers but disappointed those looking for a breakthrough. What does that mean for 2018? <\/p>\n
King Salman has made his ambitious and hawkish 31-year-old son next in line to the Saudi throne. <\/p>\n
The presidents budget demands draconian cuts to public housing but maintains a subsidy to landlords that nets him millions each year. <\/p>\n
The bus smashed into a church, several other vehicles, and sent one person to the hospital. <\/p>\n
Declining values of three NYC office buildings are responsible for the dip. <\/p>\n
Gone is much of peoples power to sue federal officials who engage in egregious violations of constitutional rights. <\/p>\n
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Five major shareholders demanded that he step down following months of bad news for the ride-sharing company. <\/p>\n
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Donald Trump Is a Crook - New York Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE \/ the national interest June 21, 2017 06\/21\/2017 5:12 pm By Jonathan Chait Share Donald Trump. Photo: Jim Watson\/AFP\/Getty Images On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon delivered a speech that became famous for his self-defeating boast, I am not a crook Continue reading