Entanglements
Then there’s that lawsuit filed today by the AGs of Maryland and DC:
The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia have announced they’ve filed suit against President Donald Trump, alleging he violated the Constitution by retaining ties to a sprawling global business empire.
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh made the announcement at a jointly held news conference in Washington, confirming the suit has been filed in federal court in Maryland. Frosh and Racine cited Trump’s leases, properties and other business “entanglements” around the world as the reason for the suit, saying those posed a conflict of interest under a clause of the Constitution.
“The president’s conflicts of interest threaten our democracy,” Frosh told journalists. “We cannot treat the president’s ongoing violations of the Constitution and his disregard of the rights of the American people as the new acceptable status quo.”
The RNC attempted to brush it off with the usual lies:
A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee says a lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia “is absurd.”
Lindsay Jancek said Monday that Trump has been committed to “complete transparency and compliance with the law.” She says the lawsuit represents “the kind of partisan grandstanding voters across the country have come to despise.”
Trump has been committed to complete transparency? Really? Even though he has never released his tax returns? Even though during the campaign he said he would eventually, but then when he got in he said no he wouldn’t? Come on. A lie that blatant would make a statue blush.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer says it’s “not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations” in the lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump. He says the Trump administration will continue to move to dismiss the lawsuit in the normal course of business.
Of course it’s not hard to conclude that, and it’s probably even true, but that does nothing to erase the facts about Don’s self-dealing and conflicts of interest and furtiveness.
‘Partisan politics!’ Sez the folk who spent eight years shutting down the government of the other side’s President, after having impeached the previous President of that party on the most transparently (swidd?) dourious grounds. Who spent their intervening eight years in office trashing alliances, stacking the courts, normalising torture, and committing the country to intractable and unwinnable conflicts on the far side of the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/opinion/trump-and-the-true-meaning-of-idiot.html
Truly the GOP has fallen far from the lofty heights of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower…
@3,
Roosevelt GOP ?
@4:
Teddy?
@5,
Yes, I suppose… but he pales before his namesake. If I had to pick a third Republican – maybe even a second; Eisenhower was a great general but never lived up to his potential as a president; he shied away from what would become the most pressing issue of the postwar era: civil rights – I think I’d pick Grant. His record on civil rights (in the 19th century) is second only to Lincoln’s.
Helene, the problem most people have with Grant is that his administration is regarded as one of the most corrupt. That puts him more in the class with Trump than out, at least for most people.
@7,
Unlike Trump, Grant himself was no businessman and never profitted personally from any of the various scandals that swirled around his administrations. In fact, some modern economists feel that had they not been stymied, his efforts to rein in the wild-western financial system might have precluded the disaster of 1929. Regardless, it’s his tough, principled stand on civil rights that interests me. Though he largely ignored their culture, he worked hard to bring native Americans into the political system. And he was one of the first politicians anywhere to see where the rising tide of antisemitic pogroms was leading in Europe (he had expelled Jews from some southern territories in 1862 but made amends after the Civil War and encouraged Jewish immigration from Russia and Romania.). And some elements of his Civil Rights Act of 1875 might have been written in the 1960s. He had his faults, to be sure (mainly in not rooting out corrupt officials), but his legacy is largely positive. Eisenhower, another great general, should have used his prestige to better effect in regard to civil rights.
Trump’s a step down even from the likes of Nixon, who was at least competent on foreign policy and whose political crimes and lies did minimally respect the intelligence of the audience.