Donald Trump has never truly sufficiently separated himself from his 400 businesses. Sure, he held a press conference and put stacks and stacks of new-looking folders with crisp, white papers on display. Folders and papers that reporters were barred from examining. In true Trump style, it seemed completely staged. The folders were nothing more than props on our new government reality show. At the press conference Donald Trump ceremoniously resigned from managing his companies, not divesting from them as ethics experts say is required—instead, turning company management over to his sons with a pinky swear they would never discuss business.
Fast forward to today and where are we now? Donald Trump has spent eight consecutive weekends at a Trump-branded property, hopping from playing 18 holes at a Trump International golf course during the day to dinner at a Trump-owned restaurant inside a Trump-owned hotel in the evenings. It’s been a two-month advertising blitz for the properties he never divested from and how convenient the course he spent the entire weekend at is in the midst of a PGA ticket sales blitz!
Mr. Trump has now made three visits to the Trump National Golf Club, a string of trips that started after Eric Trump came to Washington this month to promote the 2017 Senior P.G.A. Championship tournament. It is being held at the Virginia golf course on Memorial Day weekend.
Tickets to the event are being sold as Mr. Trump is pushing the golf course into the spotlight, with reporters and photographers in tow on Saturday for a daylong visit.
Ivanka Trump is about to settle into her own office at the White House for her as-of-yet undefined role of being in charge of … something. Is she also sworn not to discuss business with her brothers? If not, how convenient to have her as a conduit in an office close to dad. She spent last week in Aspen with her brothers, totally not discussing business. And her husband, billionaire Jared Kushner, is now being tapped by Trump as America's unelected, unapproved, uncontrolled CEO. He’s merely in charge of White House affairs, the State Department, overhauling federal bureaucracy and well, pretty much everything except the golf.
So how about Eric Trump’s pinky swear not to talk business with dear old dad? In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Eric Trump admits they do plan to share quarterly financial reports Trump:
“There is kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain, and I am deadly serious about that exercise,” he says, echoing previous statements from his father. “I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That’s kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it’s something that we honor.”
But less than two minutes later, he concedes that he will continue to update his father on the business while he is in the presidency. “Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that, but you know, that’s about it.” How often will those reports be, every quarter? “Depending, yeah, depending.” Could be more, could be less? “Yeah, probably quarterly.” One thing is clear: “My father and I are very close,” Eric Trump says. “I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”
The apparent contradiction troubles ethics experts. “The statement that the president made earlier that he wasn’t going to talk to his children about the business sounded good, but the reality was there was no way to enforce it,” says Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and a former chief ethics officer at the Federal Election Commission. “He is breaking down one of the few barriers he claimed to be establishing between him and his businesses, and those barriers themselves were weak to begin with. But if he is now going to get reports from his son about the businesses, then he really isn’t separate in any real way.”
So, there you have it. The so-called separation from Trump and his businesses is nothing more than a charade. He’s out there promoting his prize properties every single week, the kids are counting the cash and the entire family is laughing all the way to the bank.