Saturday, November 4, 2017

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made a special trip to a Trump-branded property in Hawaii.

Trump passed through Honolulu last night, a common rest and refueling point for presidents en route to Asia. He stayed at the Ritz (a hotel he does not own), but pulled his motorcade over en route to the airport to make a previously unannounced visit to the Trump International Hotel Waikiki. The visit lasted ten minutes, but it did provide White House press secretary Sarah Sanders (a public employee) with an opportunity to promote the "tremendously successful" hotel on the record.

Trump, who has flatly refused to obey ethics directives about personally profiting from his office, has found an excuse to shine the presidential spotlight on his hotel and resort properties with a personal visit on 96 of his 288 days in office to date, or exactly once every third day. 

Who cares?

  • Trying to profit from a public trust is the essence of corruption.
  • A president whose priorities involve promoting his businesses every third day is a president whose priorities are wrong.