A free commercial
Dayum, they just don’t get it, do they – they are not allowed to use the office to flog their merchandise. That’s forbidden.
Yet Kellyanne Conway did just that, on television.
Conway, speaking to “Fox & Friends” viewers from the White House briefing room, was responding to boycotts of Ivanka Trumpmerchandise and Nordstrom’s discontinuation of stocking her clothing and shoe lines, which the retailer said was in response to low sales and which the president assailed as unfair.
“I’m going to give it a free commercial here,” Conway said of the president’s daughter’s merchandise brand. “Go buy it today.”
They’re setting a new benchmark for shameless public corruption. “Hi, I work for the president of the US, go buy his daughter’s dreck.”
Attorneys, including Campaign Legal Center general counsel Lawrence Noble, said Conway’s endorsement directly conflicted with OGE rules designed to separate government policy from private business dealings.
“I don’t see what their defense is,” said Noble, who is also former counsel for the Federal Election Commission.
“She did this on television. She was very clear it was advertising. Hopefully at the very least they will acknowledge this is wrong.”
Don W. Fox, former general counsel and former acting director of OGE, told The Washington Post that “Conway’s encouragement to buy Ivanka’s stuff would seem to be a clear violation of rules prohibiting misuse of public office for anyone’s private gain.”
He added: “This is jaw-dropping to me. This rule has been promulgated by the federal Office of Government Ethics as part of the Standards of Conduct for all executive branch employees and it applies to all members of the armed forces as well.”
But it’s a rule without enforcement, apparently. It seems we can say it violates rules all we like, but it seems that no one can stop them.
Enforcement measures are largely left to the head of the federal agency — in Conway’s case, the White House.
So that’s that then. The hen is cordially invited to send her complaints to the fox.
The fix is in
The fox is in
The f-x is in?
Alt-fax? Pox is on.
— stochastic quotidian poetry (unknown)
Pretty incredible stuff.
Nobody should be surprised if retailers who decline to stock Ivanka’s dreck get paid a visit by a pair of heavily built humourless men who tell them: ‘nice little business you’ve got here. Pity if anything was to happen to it.’
Nothing Trump does surprises me any more. He is the sort of president the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the US Constitution.
Well, obviously they did not draft hard enough.
In another memorable and strangely similar context, President Harry Truman said of the yet-to-be-impeached Richard Nixon: “I don’t believe the sonofabitch knows the difference between telling the truth and lying.”
Omar, this is exactly it. I recognize Trump; I grew up with him. Or at least his clone, or something. And no, my brother does not recognize the difference. The moment something comes out of his mouth, it is de facto true. I suspect Trump is the same. He has no idea from one moment to the next that what he is saying is in direct opposition to the truth, or that it is in direct opposition to something else (equally untrue) that he said earlier.
My brother left school early because he “knew more than the teachers”. He tried college, but found they weren’t impressed with his knowledge, and seems to believe that he failed classes for disagreeing with the teacher, which in some sense might be right, if that means putting down blatantly wrong answers and blustering in his own defense that he knows things they don’t know.
My brother is also of the belief that what was wrong with America can be fixed by getting rid of all the laws designed to make sure white men were in a submissive class, and kick out all the women and minorities who are ruling everything, and allowing those with natural superiority (read: him) be the decision-maker in chief.
I recognize this pattern, and I never once wanted it to get within a million miles of the Presidency.
iknklast:
It is I suggest the difference between immorality and amorality.
To be immoral in one’s own eyes, one must first recognise some moral code, and make some distinction between ‘right” and ‘wrong’.
But amoral people have no such code, and often finish up behind bars as a result.
Trump appears to men to be a man of principle: the principle being ‘do whatever maximises the day’s take’.
Or perhaps should that be ‘do whatever facilitates the day’s grab.’.