President
or Pitchman?
By Phil Mattera in the Dirt Diggers Digest
Aside from being another example of his compulsive need to boast, the statement seems to demonstrate an astounding ignorance of what the disclosure process is all about.
It
also raises questions as to what Trump’s entire candidacy is all about.
Since announcing his bid for the Republican nomination last June, Trump has made countless statements about his supposed business prowess and the success of his various enterprises.
Since announcing his bid for the Republican nomination last June, Trump has made countless statements about his supposed business prowess and the success of his various enterprises.
He
even insisted that multiple corporate bankruptcies were indications of
shrewdness rather than failure, and he downplayed the long series of controversies
and scandals that have marked his business career.
Trump is not the first candidate to try to use a business track record as the springboard to the presidency. Mitt Romney did essentially the same thing, though in his case he had already distanced himself from Bain Capital and had transitioned to the public sector by serving as the governor of Massachusetts.
Yet
in Trump’s case, the objective seems to be more than simply asserting his
qualifications based on past business activities. To a great extent, he has
used his candidacy to promote his current endeavors.
He
uses every opportunity to tout his portfolio of businesses, and in March he
literally put his wares on display by holding a news conference surrounded by piles of Trump Steaks,
Trump Wine and other branded products.
He
has also employed the campaign to promote the size of his personal fortune,
demonstrating a preoccupation with asserting a net worth of $10 billion in the
face of substantially smaller estimates by the likes of Forbes ($4.5 billion) and Bloomberg ($2.9 billion).
A
decade ago, Trump brought an unsuccessful $5 billion defamation
lawsuit against an author who claimed that he was actually worth less than a
billion.
Initially,
it appeared that Trump’s unrestrained comments about Mexicans would harm his
business interests as companies such as NBC Universal, Univision, Macy’s and
Serta cut ties with him.
Yet
the newly released disclosure form suggests something different. The Washington
Post concludes that “business has boomed in
Donald Trump’s financial empire during the time he has run for president.”
This
raises the question: Is Trump primarily interested in serving the country or
serving his business interests? The candidate seems to have done little to
separate himself from those interests during the campaign.
In
1992 Ross Perot resigned as CEO of his computer services
company while running for the presidency. Trump has made no secret of the fact
that he continues to be involved in commercial endeavors.
Trump
has not committed to selling off his interests should he reach the White House.
He has suggested that his adult children would get more involved in managing
those operations, but it is difficult to believe that he would recuse himself
to any great extent.
Moreover,
Trump’s businesses are so bound up with him personally — his name, his image,
etc. — that it is difficult to see how he could separate himself even if he
wanted to.
This
brings us back to the financial disclosure form. Trump apparently views it as
an opportunity to “document” his net worth, but the real purpose, of course, is
to identify possible conflicts of interest.
In
Trump’s case, with hundreds of companies under his control and licensing deals
with many others, those potential conflicts are endless.
Trump
appears to be oblivious to the issue. If his goal was actually to make the
Trump Organization, his holding company, great again, he may very well have
succeeded. It remains to be seen how the rest of the country fares.
——-
Note: Subsidy
Tracker, the corporate welfare database I produce with my colleagues
at Good Jobs First, has reached two milestones: 500,000 entries and $250 billion
in taxpayer-funded giveaways.