Robert Reich
1.12.2017
1. During his business career Trump has carried billions of dollars of debt.
2. Such debts amount to a potentially gigantic conflict of interest, because Trump could “pay off” his debts by making decisions as president that benefit creditors but don't benefit (or even harm) America.
3. As to Russia, we know Trump’s business empire has relied on Russian money in the past. In 2008, his son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and continued, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
4. Virtually all money pouring into U.S. assets from Russia has been from hugely-wealthy oligarchs, closely allied with Putin.
5. But we don’t know the extent to which Trump is now indebted to those Russians. So we don’t know if, as a result, Trump would accommodate Putin’s interests rather than America's interests.
6. All we have is Trump's word for it. Yesterday, Trump tweeted that “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I have nothing to do with Russia – no deals, no loans, no nothing!” But we can’t rely on Trump’s tweets. He has lied before.
7. The reason we don’t know how much Trump owes and to whom is we don’t have financial information on Trump’s debts. He did not include debts on his financial disclosure form from 2016. And Trump hasn’t shared any recent tax returns, which would reveal his debts.
Without information on Trump’s worldwide debt, and without Trump’s willingness to put his financial holdings into a blind trust administered by an independent trustee, we simply have no way of knowing whether he'll be making decisions to benefit creditors -- including Russian oligarchs -- rather than America.
This is a big reason why his administration begins under a large cloud of distrust.
What do you think?
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This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
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