#DrainTheSwamp | #WhatTheyVotedFor
“This kind of thing is becoming routine in Trump’s administration, in part because he’s fostering a culture of corruption in the government, and in part because Republicans in Congress have decided to let him get away with it. They could put a stop to the routine self-enrichment fairly easily, or force him to divest his assets and set up a blind trust, but they have chosen instead to do nothing.”
If one believes in morals to the story, then there ought to be something of value in the latest outrage to earn a few seconds notice in the presidential pageant of deviant misadventure. Via The New Republic:
Donald Trump is using taxpayer dollars to enrich himself while asking Congress to fund his government. Multiple State Department websites were found promoting President Trump’s private club at Mar-a-Lago Monday, and not in particularly subtle ways.
Once upon a time, Republicans complained about this sort of thing.
It always seems strange how the conservative protest never seems to properly fulfill itself. How does one who hopes to restore some asserted balance of power to Main Street, the little guy, the average American, come to expect Donald Trump, an icon of bourgeois excess, will deliver such an outcome? A balance of power involving the proverbial little guy is counterintuitive to his business outlook. How does one who frets about rumors of corruption come to elect Donald Trump, long infamous for heavy-handed business strategies and tactics most generously described as working the periphery of ethical propriety?
It just makes the complaint harder to believe. Crying wolf is one thing. Shepherding the wolf makes exactly no sense.
And this is the #trumpswindle. Meet the New Swamp, even more apparent than the Old Swamp. And the scandal of it all, of course is that this is, apparently, precisely #WhatTheyVotedFor. Beutler notes the watchdog suggestion that, “this appears to violate the same federal conflict-of-interest rules Kellyanne Conway broke when she promoted Ivanka Trump’s fashion line from the White House briefing room, though this is far more intentional”; at ninety-four percent job approval, Trump voters do not seem to have much of a problem with the President’s naked campaign of self-enrichment and family benefit. That is to say, real corruption does not appear to bother them as much as the rumors they invent out of hot air.
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Note: Originally posted at #trumpswindle, 25 April 2017.
Image note: President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, 12 April 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Beutler, Brian. “Donald Trump is using taxpayer dollars to enrich himself while asking Congress to fund his government”. The New Republic. 24 April 2017.
Clement, Scott and Chiqui Esteban. “Americans size up Trump’s first 100 days in Post-ABC poll “. The Washington Post. 23 April 2017.
This Is 