The most xenophobic and isolationist
American president in modern history has been selling America to foreign powers
for his personal benefit. That’s an impeachable offense.
President Donald Trump says he
withdrew American troops from the Syrian-Turkish border—leaving our Kurdish
allies to be slaughtered and opening the way for a resurgent ISIS—because it
was time to bring American soldiers home.
A more likely explanation is that
the Trump Towers Istanbul is the Trump Organization’s first and only office and
residential building in Europe. Businesses linked to the Turkish government are
also major patrons of the Trump Organization.
Hence, Trump has repeatedly sided with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been intent on eliminating Kurds.
Hence, Trump has repeatedly sided with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been intent on eliminating Kurds.
Back home, Trump wants to protect America’s borders from illegal immigration. But guarding America’s geographic borders isn’t nearly as important as guarding the integrity of American democracy—which Trump has repeatedly compromised for personal political gain.
He did this on July 25, when he
asked the president of Ukraine to do him a personal “favor” by digging up dirt
on Joe Biden, his most likely 2020 opponent.
Last week, his adviser on China conceded he spoke with Chinese officials about the former vice president.
Trump’s entire foreign policy has
been about Trump from the start.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia sought to help Trump get elected, and Trump’s campaign welcomed the help.
Now Trump is playing at being a double foreign agent—pushing the prime minister of Australia, among others, to gather information to discredit the Mueller investigation.
Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s private
secretary of state, substituting Trump’s interests for American interests. On
Wednesday, two of Giuliani’s business associates were arrested in connection
with a criminal scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for office,
including donations to a super PAC formed to support Trump.
Last Friday, in an opening statement
for congressional impeachment investigators, Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S.
ambassador to Ukraine, said people associated with Giuliani “may well have
believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our
anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, even as Trump spews
conspiracy theories about the Biden family, his own children are openly
profiting from foreign deals. Eric and Don Jr. have projects in the works in
Ireland, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Turkey and the Philippines.
Trump himself is pocketing money
from foreign governments eager to curry favor by staying at his hotels. The
practice has become so routine that during Trump’s July 25 phone call, the
Ukrainian president assured him that the “last time I traveled to the United
States, I stayed in New York near Central Park, and I stayed at the Trump
Tower.”
Foreign governments spent more than
a million dollars at Trump’s businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump
International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Trump will pocket even more if he
carries out his plan, which he announced last month, to host next year’s G-7
meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida.
All this is precisely what the
Founding Fathers sought to prevent.
When they gathered in Philadelphia
232 years ago to write a constitution, a major goal was to protect the new
nation from what Alexander Hamilton called the “desire in foreign powers to
gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
To ensure no president would “betray
his trust to foreign powers,” as James Madison put it, they included an
emoluments clause—barring a president from accepting foreign payments.
They also gave Congress the right to
impeach a president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.” During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph noted
that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving [help] from
foreign powers.”
You don’t have to be an originalist
to see the dangers to democracy when a president seeks or receives personal
favors from foreign governments. There is no limit to how far a foreign power
might go to help a president enlarge his political power and wealth, in
exchange for selling out America.
Donald Trump is a xenophobe in
public and international mobster in private. He has brazenly sought private
gain from foreign governments at the expense of the American people.
This is shameful and criminal. At
the very least, it is impeachable.
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The
Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding
editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning
documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix
original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.