For decades, presidents avoided even the appearance of profiting from their office.
Harry Truman refused to lend his name to any business, even in retirement. Richard Nixon so feared a brother might profit off their ties, he had his phone tapped. And George W. Bush dumped his individual stock holdings before taking office.
Donald Trump is taking a different approach.
The family real estate business is undergoing the fastest overseas expansion since its founding a century ago, each deal potentially shaping everything from tariffs to military aid.
Led by Eric, and his brother, Donald Jr., the family business has expanded into cryptocurrencies with ventures that brought in billions of dollars but raised questions about whether some big investors received favorable treatment in return.
We need to elect someone who, among other critical traits, is comfortable with approving bills to limit their own power and the power of their successors.
I don’t believe that will actually be possible.
More likely will be a congressional supermajority forcing through such bills. At any rate there are already laws supposed to stop many of these grifts, but they are not enforced.
Yeah, there’s an outside chance that we elect enough progressive candidates to force some action. Definitely unlikely though, as long as money is speech. Its like the silver spoon is a megaphone now. Or a whole news organization.
If an individual person can limit their own power, the next person will be able to strip those limitations just as easilly.
What we need is more direct democracy instead of just relying on representatives to do the right thing.
That’s not necessarily true. We would need the next president to be proactive about working with Congress to design meaningful restraints on the presidency so that they can draft the legislation and the president sign it into law. That way the next next president wouldn’t be able to unilaterally cancel all of those safeguards.
Trump didn’t unilaterally cancel the safeguards, though. He spent a decade forming a government of sycophants across all three branches of government. Combine that with the recent Supreme Court (6-3 conservative) ruling that the president is essentially immune from prosecution for a crime if it’s an “official act” and Congress (both branches being majority Republican) essentially giving Trump unlimited power by means of not pushing back in any meaningful way, and you get a leader who is allowed to act in a unilateral way. Without that decade of sycophancy buildup, Trump wouldn’t have the ability to act unilaterally.
We need to prevent this from ever happening again, and our current system just isn’t built for that. We need direct democracy. We need a hard wealth cap. We need to prevent a few people from having extreme amounts of power over a populace.
I’d like to see the ability to recall a sitting president added. Waiting for congress to step in is getting ridiculous.
And we should be able to directly pass laws, bypassing all branches of the government (including the Supreme Court).
That is fucking dangerous
So is entrusting all power to representatives, who, as we’ve seen many times over, inevitably become corrupt and/or drunk with power.
Yeah, thanks for the news flash… I kinda got that impression when they were advertising canned beans from the oval office.
I’ve not purchased a single goya product since that event.
Same!
So, those electric contraptions that catch fire and don’t let occupants exit are called canned beans?
Learn something new each day.
Enforcement of the emoluments clause is all it takes. Enforcement is what’s failing in the US.
You need to get the sycophants out of congress first. Theyre all intentionally complicit. Ds and Rs.
Yea. It seems wild the more I think about it that either party can be the same as the president. It’s become clear that people on Congress think they work FOR the president when one of their duties is explicitly checking and opposing the president.
Never again let Republican pretend to give a shit about family corruption.
Just more projection… It’s almost boring how it’s always fucking projection every time.
It frustrates the hell out of me that our mainstream journalists (who are actually able to interview politicians on both sides of the aisle) never ask the Republican congressmen how they feel about Trump’s blatant corruption. Why have they not asked about UAE “investing” $100s of millions in the Trump shitcoin company, and Trump immediately authorizing the sale of super high tech chips to them, which we’ve known for years would be immediately sold to China… which in fact did occur.
It should lead to prison and new laws and constitutional amendments.
No new laws needed. Just enforce the emoluments clause.
Most of the protections may only require legislation from Congress rather than Amendments, thankfully. I also suspect that Congress should be able to rein in the pardon power in a meaningful way without violating the Constitution. For example, I would think that requiring congressional approval would still be constitutional.
Or it could open the door to civil forfeiture of their crime money, with enough fines, penalties, and jail time to wipe the out for life. I like my way better.
We have laws against treason that just need to be enforced.
They will be, but only when a Democrat takes power.
This is naive. Democratic leaders are also rich pieces of shit that don’t give a shit about anyone.
Well, it looks like progressive Democrats are making inroads.
BTW, the fact that these new democrats are called progressive really shows how the Democratic party are now the conservatives, and the GOP are essentially far, far right.
We will need to hold their feet to the fire. Restoring normalcy will not be enough. Accountability for all of the crimes of this administration is crucial. We must make sure that they know that anything less would be interpreted as them being complicit.
The door’s been open…
It’s just trump is so bad at hiding it, everyone can notice.
The problem is most people still don’t understand it’s not new, just being obvious is new.
It’s not new, but the nazis are 100x more egregious… even more than Bush junior, who already deserved to be tried in the hague and imprisoned for life.
It’s not new, but the nazis are 100x more egregious
Yes…
That is a different way to say exactly what I had already said
Before Trump, the president who’s wealth increased the most from their time in office, was Obama.
Politics has always attracted way more sleazy types than honourable types. This just fortifies that. How do we attract the honourable types, who are capable, but want nothing to do with this current bullshit?
The capability had always been there but most people who reach that office understand who they’re there to serve: the people, not themselves. There’s also a fairly obvious conflict of interest along with it not being a particularly principled thing to do.
All of these things the orange moron lacks.
APNews is nothing but trump sane-washing now…
I wonder what repairs are the Dems willing to make, and what safeguards would they try to put in place. No optimism here.
