Donald Trump has so many conflicts of interest between his role as a businessman and as future president, the media is going to have to come up with a set of new protocols for identifying those conflicts. If we’re ever going to get the full story about the Trump presidency, that is. Just listing Trump’s potential conflicts of interest shows how all-encompassing this issue is.
Take this list from Bloomberg. Trump has business interests—and potential conflicts—in 23 countries: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Bermuda, Canada, China, Cuba, Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Panama, Philippines, St. Martin, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay. Seriously, how is the media going to flag all of this? There should be some kind of standard thing where every time Trump is in official dealings with a country where he has business interests, it’s right there in the lede: “President Trump met today with the prime minister of _________, where he has licensing deals on a residential tower and a golf course.”
But it’s not just countries! Multiple government agencies are theoretically tasked with oversight of Trump’s businesses. When he appoints an IRS commissioner, we need to remember that the IRS audits Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, so he’s appointing his own auditor. When he appoints members of the National Labor Relations Board, remember that the NLRB has said his company is breaking the law by refusing to negotiate with the union at his Las Vegas hotel. Trump will have similar conflicts of interest with the General Services Administration over the lease on his Washington, D.C., hotel. And the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve. Again, this should be right there in the lede: “Donald Trump appointed ___________ and _______ to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that previously found his Las Vegas hotel to be behaving unlawfully.”
Voters deserve to know about all of this. When Trump says or does anything relating to a country or a bank or an agency that influences how much profit he’ll make, that’s relevant information. The profit motive is not incidental. It wouldn’t be incidental for anyone, but for Donald Trump? The evidence suggests it’s the biggest thing.