RE: The suggestion that Trump has "lost money" as a result of becoming president (because his very shady numbers are reportedly less in 2017 than in 2016, says Forbes)...
That is one way of looking at it. Another - I think more accurate - way of looking at it is that ALL other presidents divested themselves from their businesses. Thus, all other presidents made $0 from their businesses while in office.
Trump, on the other hand, refused to divest from his businesses. As a result, he continues to make tens of millions of dollars - maybe more - from his businesses.
He does so largely in secret and with unnamed, offshore accounts so we don't even know who he is doing business with. He is the least transparent of presidents. And so we do not really know the state of his financial affairs... who is making money with him from him and who he's making money with and from.
+++++++
Regardless, making FEWER tens of millions of dollars is not a sign that one has not profited from the presidency. His money is complex. It involves his income, but also his outgo (in settling lawsuits and paying off bribes and mistresses and other more shady dealings... also, how much of his supposed loss is due to his own damned incompetency, cheating, lying and payoffs? Becoming president may have nothing to do with any losses, other than the light was shining on his shady dealings more and people were maybe more likely to not cave to his bullying).
PROFITING LESS - even if it turned out to be true, and frankly, I'm dubious - is still profiting.
Take-away:
All other presidents' profit from their businesses? $0, because they divested.
Trump's profit? Tens(?) of millions of dollars.
+++++++
"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
~Jesus
3 comments:
“...and lose his soul”
Not a thing.
There is no Constitutional requirement that forces a president to divest himself from his businesses. It isn't even practical in most cases to attempt to do so, and evidently far less so in the case of Trump and the types of businesses he owns or controls.
However, that he doesn't gives certain haters the perfect opportunity to presume he's abusing his position as president to profit privately, because that's what these certain haters do.
Is Trump abusing his position for personal profit? I don't know. These certain haters don't need absolute proof to believe he is. They only need the notion to have crossed their morally corrupt minds.
Marshall loves the bare minimum in ethics. The quality of his faith drives him down to the curb of the gutter.
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