Trump shows how not to ease concerns over conflicts of interest
Trump discussed business deals as recently as last week with a "big player," who approached the president-elect about a billion-dollar opportunity.
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump poses for a photo after an interview with Reuters in his office in Trump Tower, in the Manhattan borough of New York, N.Y., May 17, 2016.
Donald Trump has clearly heard the complaints about his many conflicts of interest, but in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace yesterday, the president-elect said the public has nothing to worry about. The “Fox News Sunday” host raised the point about “foreign interests trying to curry favor” with the incoming president, to which Trump replied:
“If I were going to do new deals right now, I am turning down billions of dollars of deals. I will tell you, running for president, the money I spent is peanuts compared to the money I won’t make. And that’s OK because this is so important. What I’m doing is so important.”This is a calling. This is so — this is a movement. It’s not just me, it’s millions and millions of people. You got to see it firsthand. I’m not going to be doing deals at all. No, that would be — I don’t even know if that’s a conflict. I mean I — I have the right to do it. You know under the law I have the right to do it. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do deals because I want to focus on this.”But by my not doing deals, I turned down seven deals with one big player, great player, last week because I thought it could be perceived as a conflict of interest.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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