Trump v Nordstrom
Donnie from Queens tweeted four hours ago (so late morning in DC):
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017
Yeah that’s a good look – the president of the US attacking a private company for not marketing his daughter’s merch to his liking.
But wait, there’s more. There’s worse.
The POTUS account retweeted it.
So it’s not just Donnie from Queens saying it, it’s the president of the US saying it, in his official role as president of the US.
Josh Voorhees at Slate says Trump may have just provided Nordstrom with the necessary standing to sue him for his grotesque ethics violations.
What little pretense remained that Donald Trump would not use his position as president to help his children is now officially gone:
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
That message was then retweeted by the official @POTUS account operated by the White House communications team, giving Trump’s attack on the department store—one that can also be read as warning shot to any other company weighing whether to end its business relationship with his family—the imprimatur of the federal government. That, to use the president’s preferred language, is bad!
“Can be read” is putting it delicately. “Cannot help but be read” is how I would put it – it’s a “nice little place you got here” coming from the head of state, not in a whisper behind closed doors but in a bellow on social media.
Ethics watchdogs who have long warned of the potential conflicts posed by the Trump family’s business interests were quick to cry foul on Wednesday. Importantly, they also saw it as a potential new opening to take Trump to court.
Currently, the most high-profile legal challenge to Donald Trump’s business empire concerns what is known as the Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which bars U.S. officials from accepting payments from foreign governments. While many ethics experts agree that Trump is violating that law by accepting money from foreign diplomats who stay at his hotels and from state-run companies that lease office space in buildings he owns, the lawsuit ultimately faces a separate challenge: the question of standing.
In order to sue someone, plaintiffs generally need to prove that they were specifically harmed by the alleged wrongdoing in question. It is unclear, however, if the group behind the Emoluments suit—the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW—will be able to check that box. The organization claims that since its mission is to investigate corruption, Trump’s actions represent a drain on resources that would otherwise be spent investigating the group’s usual areas of interest, such as campaign finance. There’s some precedent to support such a claim but not a lot, and courts tend to be skeptical of such broad assertions of standing outside of the context of civil rights violations.
Which means that our much boasted-of “checks and balances” don’t work worth shit.
Trump’s Nordstrom tweet might be a different story, though. Norm Eisen, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the Obama White House and who is working with CREW, suggested on Twitter that Trump’s comments gave Nordstrom standing to sue him under unfair competition laws, particularly California’s state law, which protects against any business practice deemed “unfair,” “unlawful” or “fraudulent.” While the president is generally shielded from lawsuits over his official conduct while in office, that blanket protection does not apply to his private or business conduct. Nordstrom, however, would need to be able to show it was harmed economically. More immediately, though, the company would have to decide if it’s worth the risk of further angering a president who has yet again made it clear that he’s willing to single out specific companies that dare cross him.
I look forward to seeing billboards on the south lawn.
What is so “unfair” about a company deciding to discontinue a line of products? Don’t businesses have the right to do this, especially if they are not selling as well as it was hoped or expected to? Even if it were not for economic reasons but for political reasons, say like deciding that the “Trump” brand is now a liability or distasteful to them, (with potential follow on sales difficulties) is that not also within their rights? To me, unfair would mean something like banding together with other buyers to block sales or to extort lower prices. Unfair would be something like not paying suppliers for work done, or preventing unionization or defrauding people enrolling in what they thought was going to be a university. I hope Nordstrom sues his ass.
He really doesn’t get how petty and ridiculous this makes him appear, does he? He makes Dawkins’ use of Twitter look measured and statesmanlike in comparison.
I wonder if letting Trump bleat out his angst on Twitter is a way of keeping him distracted so that he doesn’t stick his nose into where Bannon thinks it does not belong? If they tried to wrest it from him he might spend his time causing more serious problems for his handlers. Twitterstorms are now business as usual and standard operating procedure. They are childish, tawdry and undignified, but it is now old hat.
Also, if she’s “always pushing me to do the right thing!”, then either it isn’t pushing hard enough, or they both have screwed up ideas about what the “right thing” is.
Broken Record Time: how can he not be embarrassed to throw these tantrums in public? They don’t make him look strong. They make him look like a child.
YNNB, it’s interesting how quick these free market sorts are to scream unfair whenever the market works against them. Trump wants no regulations that can stop business from doing all the nasty things they want to do – but he does seem to want to use the power of the presidency to protect his businesses, and his children’s businesses, from the workings of that same free market.
There is precedent, of sorts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hume. But Truman, of course, chose not to use the presidential twitter account.
Apparently Nordstrom’s shares took a hit after that tweet so, yes, they have a claim.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/08/nordstrom-drops-after-trump-tweets-daughter-ivanka-was-treated-unfairly.html
Just as with the stock dip/bounce experienced by Boeing, I’ve seen a lot of people saying that as the share price recovered almost immediately there’s no harm. Let’s be clear. If anyone else did this, and it could be proved that they or a related party traded those shares, it would be a crime. It’s market manipulation. Nordstrom experienced what amounted to around a 50 cent/share dip. While small in percentage terms that is plenty big enough to add up to major losses and gains for those trading over that 5 minute window.
It’s for exactly this reason the President and their Executive Branch are supposed to be very careful and considered in public statements. They become market participants at best and malicious market manipulators at worst. If Trump is impeached at some point expect to see this as at least a footnote.