Blind? Trust?

Give the Trumps credit. They aren’t hiding what they intend to do. Take this week’s farcical remarks by Trump, Ivanka, and Don Trump, Jr. about how Trump will place his businesses into a blind trust if he’s elected.

Trump could barely be bothered to complete his sentences when asked this question.  I’m paraphrasing, but he said, “If I’m elected, I’ll be so busy . . . .  All the winning . . . . I’m not going to have time to . . . . My businesses will be in a blind trust. You won’t believe how tin-cup, Mr- Magoo- blind it will be.  A blind trust, and my kids; they are here today; my kids will run it.”

Later in the day Ivanka (So smart! So stylish!) repeated that she and her brothers will run his companies, including the several hundred liability shield subsidiaries.  Many financial experts have pointed out that such a vague arrangement would be neither “blind” nor a “trust.”

A blind trust is George W. Bush or John Kerry placing their considerable wealth under third-party management, without their knowledge of how the money is being invested.  Trump already knows how much money he owes to Russian investors.  He already knows how much he owes to Chinese banks.  He already knows who the vendors are that he’s suing in civil court.

If Trump were elected “President”, if he were even a little bit magnanimous, he’d drop every active law suit that his companies are involved in on favorable terms to the other party.  Does anyone think for a minute that he’d do such a thing?  Or that he wouldn’t use the power of the presidency to put the screws to these people? Does anyone doubt that a “President” “Trump” would do the following:

Continue to run his global branding business from the White House.

Start a cable news network that he’ll run from the Oval Office.

Use the prestige of the presidency to intimidate small and medium businesses in civil court.

Use the prestige of the presidency to sue his critics in civil court for libel.

The banana-republic (not the stores)-level of corruption we can expect from a Trump Administration goes far beyond what terms like “conflict of interest” describe.  It’s why Trump has had success.  We need a new language to describe him. Although, “jagoff” is pretty good.

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On a separate note Don Trump, Jr. told the truth in Pittsburgh yesterday when he said, that his dad won’t release his taxes because it would turn 300 million Americans into tax auditors. Yeah, it’s a democracy. That’s kind of the point of requiring candidates to release their tax returns to the public.

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