Moochers-in-Chief

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From what I can tell from a bit of googling, it’s not normal for the adult children of presidents to get Secret Service details, except under extraordinary circumstances. Yet here we are [emphasis added].

When the president-elect’s son Eric Trump jetted to Uruguay in early January for a Trump Organization promotional trip, U.S. taxpayers were left footing a bill of nearly $100,000 in hotel rooms for Secret Service and embassy staff. …

…The Uruguayan trip shows how the government is unavoidably entangled with the Trump company as a result of the president’s refusal to divest his ownership stake. In this case, government agencies are forced to pay to support business operations that ultimately help to enrich the president himself. Though the Trumps have pledged a division of business and government, they will nevertheless depend on the publicly funded protection granted to the first family as they travel the globe promoting their brand.

Here comes the WTF? section:

The bill for the Secret Service’s hotel rooms in Uruguay totaled $88,320. The U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, paid an additional $9,510 for its staff to stay in hotel rooms to “support” the Secret Service detail for the “VIP visit,” according to purchasing orders reviewed by The Washington Post.

I mean, seriously, WTF? Which staff? Security? What if the embassy had been attacked? Or were the embassy staff being supplied to Eric for other reasons? How does he get off using embassy staff as if they were his employees?

Trump’s business arrangements are flat-out unacceptable.

While the president says he has walked away from the day-to-day operations of his business, two people close to him are the named trustees and have broad legal authority over his assets: his eldest son, Donald Jr., and Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. Mr. Trump, who will receive reports on any profit, or loss, on his company as a whole, can revoke their authority at any time.

What’s more, the purpose of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is to hold assets for the “exclusive benefit” of the president. This trust remains under Mr. Trump’s Social Security number, at least as far as federal taxes are concerned. …

…While the trust structure, outlined in documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by ProPublica, may give the president the appearance of distance from his business, it drew sharp criticism from experts in government ethics.

“I don’t see how this in the slightest bit avoids a conflict of interest,” said Frederick J. Tansill, a trust and estates lawyer from Virginia who examined the documents at the request of The New York Times. “First it is revocable at any time, and it is his son and his chief financial officer who are running it.”

Handing the business over to Uday and Qusay apparently isn’t separating the Trump business and the thing in the Oval Office even a little bit, considering that Eric Trump can go on a business trip to Uruguay and treat U.S. embassy staff as extensions of his entourage
Whenever the Orange Atrocity is pried out of the White House, we’re going to need a Constitutional Amendment to prevent something like this from happening with future presidents.

13 thoughts on “Moochers-in-Chief”

  1. To Dumb and Dumber – t-RUMPLE-Thin-Skins skin-flint hatchling’s:

    I pay my way when I go to a place, you should have to pay Uruguay!

  4. The way I see some on the Left acting, like they’re never going to vote Democrat or “establishment” again, it’s hard to see him getting moved out of the White House anytime soon.

  5. KC – as soon as Trump’s popularity with republican voters falls off, Trump has left an easy and automatic impeachable offense in his business dealings. It will be a huge – “Gambling in Rick’s Lounge?!! – I’m shocked – shocked.” moment as the Emollients clause is suddenly discovered but the GOP will pull it off.

    The divorce proceedings between the GOP Congress and the Emperor with No Clothes will begin shortly after the republican citizens finally realize health care is absolutely beyond their reach and members of their clan begin dying and/or get bankrupted by medical costs. The firing squad won’t be circular – it will be Trump v GOP Congress because I don’t think they can put together a bill that will make it to the Senate for the democrats to filibusterer. So, it won’t be an easy task to say the democrats sabotaged a better plan.

    The thing about the blame game is Congress can impeach Trump but Trump can’t impeach Congress – that Constitutional foible will become apparent after the fact. I’m trying to figure out if Trump’s ego will allow him to resign in disgrace or will he fight it all the way to the Senate vote.

    Stock up on popcorn.

  6. Uday and Qusay Trump should be pitied rather than condemned..They’ll never get out from underneath their father’s shadow. They might have all the trappings of success, but nothing they’ve achieved by their own merit. Mother Nature’s gifts of talent, skill, creativity or innovative intellect has been denied them. Their only accomplishment in life they can truly claim as their own that is free from their father’s control is when they were competing as sperm in their mother’s uterus. And judging from them as being the winners in that race for life you’d have to conclude that that competition wasn’t all that intense.

  7. This is an Imperial Presidency, in every sense of the term. At least that’s how Herr Trump sees it. The Office is a perk to be enjoyed and exploited by his entire family, the ultimate platform for a narcissistic con man to indulge every whim of a dangerously fragile ego. Financial exploitation of the Office and autocratic rule by Twitter is his “right” for “winning.”

    MAGA was nothing more than a re-branding of the Tea Party, which was itself a post W Bush era re-branding of neocon inspired conservatism. From Buckley to Reagan to Trump, its the same old sh**. They have to re-brand after every shot they get, because every shot ends in failure. Everything the Tea baggers did ensured the hole the WWC was in got deeper.

    And everything Trump’s done thus far, from rule by reality changing lies to the immigration disaster, is in the wheelhouse of the extremist legacy of the “modern” GOP. Politically, domestic or foreign policy would not be much different with Pence or Cruz in the white house; just the degree of embarrassment might be significantly lower. Ryan, McConnell et al would still be rushing headlong to undo everything Obama ever did; they’d still be salivating over the opportunity to take the country legislatively back to the 19th century, as they are now.

    Trump is a dangerously sick symbol, but at the end of the day, what we’re seeing is really the logical next step in the sick trajectory of what the GOP likes to call “movement conservatism.” Even if it is possible for the GOP to reach peak shame, and I don’t think it is, and they impeach him, it won’t be cause for the Who in Whoville to start singing. Its not the Grinch, but those who spawned him that’s the real problem.

  8. My take on Trump is he will never admit defeat and resign. His main goal in everything is to WIN. How he will go I don’t know but I am sure it will not be pretty. It’s only been 2 weeks and look at the chaos. He thrives on it. If he lasts 6 months I will be surprised. In the meantime he is getting plenty of attention and he loves it. In spite of everything, I have hope. Trump is the catalyst for change. The question is, what will the change be?

  9. Yep, Melania and Barron in NY cost NYC 1 million daily, the trip to mar a lago 3 million and then to hear that the adult kids are getting SSsecurity to go make money, security they can afford to pay for is just absolutely ridiculous, especially after the right wing pissed their pants if Obama got a golf ball

  10. Swami, you can pity and condemn at the same time. They were raised to be assholes, but that shouldn’t give them a free ride through life. In fact, it seems really likely that the only possible way they could learn to not be assholes, and thus have a chance to improve themselves, is for someone to condemn them for being assholes. That should be their parents, but it wasn’t and certainly won’t be; it could be their friends or other relatives, but it hasn’t and living in the bubble they live in means it’s unlikely to ever be. Their only chance in fact is afforded by the fact that they’ve become high profile and can now suffer the condemnation of a great many people. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll change for the better (far from it) but it does provide them with a chance to do so. Probably the only chance they’ll ever have.

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