Saturday 19 May 2018

Trump's lasting damage to the US political system


The overt corruption of the American presidency is happening more or less in plain sight. 


This past week news broke about a number of recent deals involving Trump, his family, hangers-on and his enablers, that show that the worst fears about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest expressed prior to his election were entirely justified.  Last year’s efforts by Michael Cohen to enrich himself based on his closeness to Trump pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump’s family is raking-in through the patriarch’s political position.  The dealings of the Trump Organization, now under the notional management of Trump’s two adult sons, but still owned by the President, are prime examples of the corrupt self-dealing enrichment evidently going on. The China and the Lido City project in Indonesia is a good example – Trump promising to save jobs in, wait for it, China, and disregarding his own administration’s concerns about cybersecurity lifting sanctions against ZTE in the process – and in apparent return, receiving Chinese financial backing for his next mega development in Indonesia.