Tag: kleptocracy

Departing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’

The following article by Eric Lipton and Nicholas Fandos was posted on the New York Times website July 17, 2017:

As director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr. has often gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over conflicts of interest. Credit Vanessa Vick for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Actions by President Trump and his administration have created a historic ethics crisis, the departing head of the Office of Government Ethics said. He called for major changes in federal law to expand the power and reach of the oversight office and combat the threat.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., who is resigning as the federal government’s top ethics watchdog on Tuesday, said the Trump administration had flouted or directly challenged long-accepted norms in a way that threatened to undermine the United States’ ethical standards, which have been admired around the world.

“It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility,” Mr. Shaub said in a two-hour interview this past weekend — a weekend Mr. Trump let the world know he was spending at a family-owned golf club that was being paid to host the U.S. Women’s Open tournament. “I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.”

Continue reading “Departing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’”

Is Trump’s Attraction to Russia About Shaping the U.S. Version of Putin’s 21st-Century, Postmodern, Authoritarian, Kleptocratic Regime?

The following article by Timothy Snyder was posted on the AlterNet website July 3, 2017:

Yale historian Timothy Snyder asserts that Trump’s ties to Russia are far deeper and more dangerous than campaign collusion.

The links between President Trump and Russia will prove to be deeper and darker than many Americans now believe. This is according to Timothy Snyder, a noted historian of the 20th century’s tyrannical regimes in Eastern Europe, who said the U.S. is now moving down a cultural and political path that has much in common with Russia under Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian and oligarchic rule. Continue reading “Is Trump’s Attraction to Russia About Shaping the U.S. Version of Putin’s 21st-Century, Postmodern, Authoritarian, Kleptocratic Regime?”

For Trump’s golf course, PGA tournament is ‘the greatest marketing in the world’


The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold explains how President Trump’s brand stands to gain positive publicity from the Senior PGA Championship hosted at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. (McKenna Ewen,Jenny Starrs,Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

The following article by David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell was posted on the Washington Post website May 26, 2017:

A little after 1 p.m. on Thursday, anybody watching the Senior PGA Championship on the Golf Channel got to see a little bit of American history.

A man came on the screen during a commercial break to praise the golf course hosting the event — a course that happens to be owned by the president of the United States. Continue reading “For Trump’s golf course, PGA tournament is ‘the greatest marketing in the world’”

Ivanka Trump’s life of privilege undermines the credibility of her new book’s message

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch was posted on the Washington Post website May 8, 2017:

Donald Trump whispers to his daughter, Ivanka, during a January press conference at Trump Tower. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

THE BIG IDEA: Ivanka Trump’s new book unwittingly reveals just how out of touch she is with the lives of the working women who she believes she speaks for.

— President Trump dubiously claimed during the campaign that he was a self-made man. “My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars,” he told NBC during a 2015 interview, which he insisted he paid back with interest. “A million dollars isn’t very much compared to what I built!” During a primary debate, when Marco Rubio claimed that he had received a $200 million inheritance from his father, Trump replied angrily: “I took $1 million and I turned it into $10 billion.” Continue reading “Ivanka Trump’s life of privilege undermines the credibility of her new book’s message”

d In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese

The following article by Emily Rauhala and William Wan was posted on the Washington Post website May 6, 2017:

The event was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)

BEIJING — The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors in Beijing.

Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help them secure what’s known as an investor visa. Continue reading “d In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese”