The Ivanka Trump thing really annoys me…probably partly because it’s such a grotesque inversion of feminism. No no no no no no no, feminism is not about boosting unqualified inexperienced daughters into jobs in the Executive Branch because their daddies are president. No. That’s the opposite of feminism. It’s a grotesque leering parody of feminism. It’s insulting.

And it’s just all wrong. Heads of state don’t bring their toddlers with them to global meetings, and have them “sit in” while they’re away for a few minutes. They don’t bring their adult children either, or their cousins or siblings or any other relatives. That’s not how any of this works. It’s a break from diplomatic protocol.

Former NATO ambassador Nicholas Burns, who served as a diplomat under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said the incident was a breach of protocols for such summits. Those traditions are intended to send a clear message to world leaders about who has power in the government.

Burns said in his experience at summits, the secretary of state would take the president’s place at the table.

Of course Trump’s Secretary of State is also grossly underqualified, but at least he’s not a relative.

“This is a group of the 20 most powerful leaders in the world in the 20 most powerful countries in the world,” Burns said. “It conveys that impression and we are a democracy and that’s also important here.”

“Authority is not conferred upon family members because of the president’s position,” he added.

And normally, everybody knows that. Everybody.

Trump and other world leaders of the G-20 sat around a massive table for a working session on “Partnership With Africa, Migration and Health” when Ivanka relieved her father, who had to leave the room for additional meetings. The move placed her squarely between British Prime Minister Theresa May and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Yes, it stuck out,” said a senior European official who took part in the G-20 talks and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “The very fact that his daughter is senior adviser smacks of the kind of nepotism not seen since John F. Kennedy named Robert F. Kennedy as attorney general.”

At least Robert Kennedy wasn’t a fashion marketer.

Some critics online compared Ivanka Trump’s presence at the table to a “banana republic” and argued that she is both “unelected” and “unqualified” to step into a role usually filled by officials with policy expertise.

What need is there to argue? Of course she’s neither elected nor qualified, and of course a job like that requires policy expertise. Ivanka Trump sells shoes and jewelry. She’s not qualified.

There were some tweets.

Ivanka Trump, unelected, unqualified, daughter-in-chief, is representing the US at the G20 summit next to May, Xi, Merkel. Photo @LanaLukash pic.twitter.com/fvs0EMy8z7

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) July 8, 2017

Ivanka fills in for her dad beside Xi Jinping. To me, it feels banana-republicky for the US to be represented by an inexperienced daughter. https://t.co/lDDlyCeFp9

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) July 8, 2017

The G20 is not Take Your Daughter to Work day. https://t.co/wOlfQkBfEM

— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) July 8, 2017

Why the hell is Ivanka Trump sitting in for daddy at G20 meetings?! What are her qualifications? Who voted for her?

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) July 8, 2017

Having Princess Ivanka represent US at G20 table a slap in face to other G20 leaders, other top admin officials, American people. Grotesque.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 8, 2017

Henry Farrell explains why Trump’s exciting new plan to team up with Russia to battle The Cyber is not all that practical.

First he points out that some co-operation even with rivals can work, as an Obama agreement with China has largely worked.

But.

As Trump has described his discussions with Putin, both want something much more far-reaching than the deal that Obama reached with China. Instead of setting up dialogue, Trump wants to engage in true cooperation. He wants to set up a joint “unit” that would handle election security issues so as to prevent hacking. This unit would, furthermore, be “impenetrable.”

It’s not hugely difficult to spot the flaw in that plan.

If the proposed cybersecurity unit were to work effectively, the United States would need to share extensive information with Russia on how U.S. officials defend elections against foreign tampering. The problem is, however, that information that is valuable for defending U.S. systems is, almost by definition, information that is valuable for attacking them, too. This is one reason U.S. officials have not previously proposed any far-reaching arrangement with Russia on cybersecurity. Providing such information would almost certainly give the Russians a map of vulnerabilities and insecurities in the system that they could then exploit for their own purposes.

It would not only provide the fox with a map of the henhouse, but give him the security code, the backdoor key, and a wheelbarrow to make off with the carcasses. U.S. officials have determined that Russian hackers have probed U.S. election systems, presumably to discover vulnerabilities that they could exploit. Although there is no evidence that Russia actually manipulated machines to alter the vote in the 2016 election, there is excellent reason to believe that Russia has carefully considered the pros and cons of direct intervention, as well as the hacking and leaking that it did engage in.

And we don’t actually want to help them do that even more.

But hey, look at it from Trump’s point of view. His ratings are in the toilet, so he’ll need extra help if he runs in 2020 (frankly I’m hoping he’ll be removed long before then). Maybe if he gives the Russians the security code and the key they’ll help him get re-elected.

Furthermore, when Trump says that this unit would be “impenetrable,” he implies that Russia and the United States would cooperate on making it secure against outside hacking by third parties. Again, such cooperation is wildly unlikely to work well. To make it work, the United States would have to share sensitive methods with Russia, as well as vice versa. Neither side is going to want to do this, because again it would provide potential adversaries with a deep understanding of protective measures, which might allow those adversaries to penetrate them.

In short, the kind of cooperation that Trump is proposing would be very hard to accomplish between close allies with deeply shared security interests (the United States shares a lot of secrets with select allies — but it does not share everything, for the same reasons that they do not share their deepest defensive secrets with the United States). It is more or less impossible to carry off with a state that not only is often an adversary but has recently demonstrated its desire to hack U.S. elections, if only it could get away with it.

Wouldn’t you think Trump could have figured this out for himself? Even as clouded and confused as he is?

Peter Beinart decodes Trump’s Warsaw speech.

In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.

The West is not a geographic term. Poland is further east than Morocco. France is further east than Haiti. Australia is further east than Egypt. Yet Poland, France, and Australia are all considered part of “The West.” Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not.

Poland is not always considered part of “the West,” I think. It’s considered liminal, semi-Western, Westernish. But for Trump? That’s another matter.

The West is not an ideological or economic term either. India is the world’s largest democracy. Japan is among its most economically advanced nations. No one considers them part of the West.

Well, again – sometimes the word is used to mean mostly economically advanced, and it does include Japan. It’s become a very baggy word that way.

But Beinart’s basic point is that Trump wasn’t using it that way.

The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Where there is ambiguity about a country’s “Westernness,” it’s because there is ambiguity about, or tension between, these two characteristics. Is Latin America Western? Maybe. Most of its people are Christian, but by U.S. standards, they’re not clearly white. Are Albania and Bosnia Western? Maybe. By American standards, their people are white. But they are also mostly Muslim.

“Preferably Catholic” is doubtful too. Italy, Portugal and Spain (and of course Poland) used to be considered almost third world, and certainly not in the same league as the Protestant countries.

Beinart says usage changed when the Cold War ended; that US presidents stopped identifying with “the West” and instead talked about universal values.

Every president from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama emphasized the portability of America’s political and economic principles. The whole point was that democracy and capitalism were not uniquely “Western.” They were not the property of any particular religion or race but the universal aspiration of humankind.

To grasp how different that rhetoric was from Trump’s, look at how the last Republican President, George W. Bush, spoke when he visited Poland. In his first presidential visit, in 2001, Bush never referred to “the West.” He did tell Poles that “We share a civilization.” But in the next sentence he insisted that “Its values are universal.” Because they are, he declared, “our trans-Atlantic community must have priorities beyond the consolidation of European peace. We must bring peace and health to Africa. … We must work toward a world that trades in freedom … a world of cooperation to enhance prosperity, protect the environment, and lift the quality of life for all.”

…

Bush’s vision echoed Francis Fukuyama’s. America and Europe may have been further along the road to prosperity, liberty, capitalism, and peace than other parts of the world, but all countries could follow their path. And the more each did, the more America and Europe would benefit. In deeply Catholic Poland, Bush sprinkled his speeches with religious references, but they were about Christianity as a universal creed, a moral imperative that knew no civilizational bounds. By contrast, when Trump warned Poles about forces “from the south or the east, that threaten … to erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition,” he was talking not about Christianity but about Christendom: a particular religious civilization that must protect itself from outsiders.

Or he was talking about an amalgam of Christendom and Enlightenmentdom and popular culture – he was talking about What We’re Used To as opposed to What’s Different. Along with race, of course. He was talking about his knee-jerk dislikes and his loathing of foreigners, especially brown foreigners.

The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech—perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime—was his claim that “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” On its face, that’s absurd. Jihadist terrorists can kill people in the West, but unlike Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, they cannot topple even the weakest European government. Jihadists control no great armies. Their ideologies have limited appeal even among the Muslims they target with their propaganda. ISIS has all but lost Mosul and could lose Raqqa later this year.

Trump’s sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia. The “south” and “east” only threaten the West’s “survival” if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders. They only threaten the West’s “survival” if by “West” you mean white, Christian hegemony. A direct line connects Trump’s assault on Barack Obama’s citizenship to his speech in Poland. In Trump and Bannon’s view, America is at its core Western: meaning white and Christian (or at least Judeo-Christian). The implication is that anyone in the United States who is not white and Christian may not truly be American but rather than an imposter and a threat.

Pretty much. Anyone who is not like Trump and Trump’s family and acquaintances, basically. He likes his steak well done, he likes his chocolate cake, he likes to sleep in his own bed, and he likes to see people who look pretty much like the people he’s used to, and not scarily exotic and different. He’s a racist of the crudest kind, with no more deep thought to it than that.

America is racially, ethnically, and religious[ly] diverse. So when Trump says being Western is the essence of America’s identity, he’s in part defining America in opposition to some of its own people. He’s not speaking as the president of the entire United States. He’s speaking as the head of a tribe.

Of course. We’ve always known that. He’s speaking as the head of the tribe of rich white American guys, especially the ones who play golf.

Masha Gessen gives an unsurprising but deeply depressing summary of Trump’s date with Putin.

Mr. Putin has for years — 17 years, to be exact, for this is how long he has been in power — been clear about what he wanted from his relationship with the United States president: He wants to be treated as an equal partner on the world stage and not to be questioned about or pressed on the Russian government’s actions inside Russia or in what he considers his sphere of influence. Despite the friendly tenor of Mr. Putin’s relationship with George W. Bush and the offer of a “reset” made by Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Putin never achieved his objective — until now. His fourth American president has given him exactly what he wanted: respect, camaraderie and freedom from criticism.

The one accomplishment of the meeting — a limited cease-fire in Syria— is exactly what Mr. Putin wanted. Not the cease-fire, that is: He wanted an acknowledgment that the United States and Russia are equal negotiating parties in the Syrian conflict. He spent years cajoling and then blackmailing the Obama administration into accepting Russia’s decisive role in the Middle East. Now, Mr. Trump has handed him much more than that. He has demonstrated that Russia and the United States can negotiate Syrian life and death without involving any Syrians.

Trump and Tillerson both act as if they had no idea of any of that.

Gessen lists rights violations and suppressions that appear to have gone unmentioned (appear because of course we don’t know what happened during those two hours the two bros spent together). It’s a crowded list.

Since at least the 1970s, Russian leaders and Soviet leaders before them had to face questions about political freedoms and human rights whenever they met with their American counterparts. The Trump administration has ended that tradition. In May, Mr. Tillerson, in a rare public statement on policy, said that American economic and strategic interests had to take precedence over human rights advancement. When he traveled to Moscow in April, he declined to meet with human rights activists, breaking with decades of tradition. It is no surprise that Mr. Trump broached none of these issues. No wonder Mr. Putin and his news media view the meeting as a triumph.

It’s as if the Mafia had taken over the Executive Branch.

Dan Rather yesterday:

The first thing President Trump did when meeting Russia’s Putin in a social gathering in Germany today was shake his hand warmly, then pat him fondly on the back. There it was and remains for the world to see.

All indications are that Putin helped orchestrate an attack on the sovereignty of the United States during the last U.S. election and has made similar moves in other Western counties, seeking to undermine confidence and stability in democratic institutions and ideals. Now he gets a pat on the back from the leader of the free world.

It was a disturbing if not sickening display. But it is theatrics for now. The real showdown comes when the two meet and talk formally.
Putin is widely known to respect strength and he has a nostril for weakness. He is an experienced and shrewd operator, while Mr. Trump has proven to be a bumbling novice who seeks affirmation. It is a recipe for disaster.

For all the damage Mr. Trump and his policies can do domestically, what is happening on the world stage – from dangerous posturing on North Korea, to risking a trade war with Europe, to pulling out of the climate pact – is truly frightening. The number one job of the President of the United States is to protect the safety and security of the nation. Mr. Trump is in far over his head, and the most dangerous thing is he doesn’t know it and his enablers who should know better don’t seem to care.

No one is arguing that seeking peace and lowering tensions with Russia isn’t necessary. But demonstrating strength and resolve, in ways small and large, is an imperative in trying to reach those ends. That and making it abundantly clear that mucking around in American elections will not be tolerated.

A pat on the back is not an encouraging way to start.

This is ridiculous and embarrassing. They all pretend it isn’t, but of course it is. Ivanka Trump sitting at the heads of state table at the G20 is ridiculous and embarrassing.

The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump’s seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health,” putting her shoulder to shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.

This is an ex-model turned fashion marketer. Period. That’s her CV; she has no relevant experience or education or training whatsoever. It was nepotism that Robert Kennedy was his brother’s Attorney General, but at least he was an actual lawyer with government experience. Ivanka Trump is someone who sells dresses and shoes. She shouldn’t be there. She shouldn’t be in the administration, she shouldn’t be part of the US delegation, she most certainly should not be sitting at the table.

President's daughter filling in at this AM's #G20 – sitting next to Chinese President Xi (Photo/@LanaLukash) pic.twitter.com/kzl8eahobG

— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) July 8, 2017

Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers or senior officials are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions. But she is both the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” who focuses on issues of women’s empowerment and workplace development, and she maintains broad influence in the administration.

Yes, she’s the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” and that’s why she should be nowhere near this event.

It isn’t the first time Ivanka Trump has participated in high-level meetings at the summit. On Thursday night, she and her husband, Jared Kushner, another Trump adviser, joined the president at a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Kushner also participated in Trump’s bilateral meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday.

All bad. They’re both relatives, so should have been excluded from the outset. They’re both wholly unqualified, so should have been excluded from the outset. They both have massive conflicts of interest, so should have been excluded from the outset.

Earlier on Saturday, Ivanka Trump and her father participated in a World Bank session on women’s entrepreneurship, an issue that she has been particularly focused on.

She can be focused on it all she likes; that still doesn’t make her qualified to meddle in it at this level. She’s a former model who markets clothing.

Ivanka Trump has taken up a slate of issues since taking a role in the West Wing, including workforce training, paid family leave and women’s economic empowerment.

Stop it. That doesn’t mean anything. That just normalizes this grotesque farce. “Taking up” a slate of issues means nothing; she’s not qualified to have a role in the executive branch. She’s Trump’s pretty daughter; that’s not a qualification.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker wonders if the US got much out of Trump’s date with Putin.

Some White House officials were reportedly so worried about the Russian leader taking advantage of Trump that they wanted to expand the meeting to involve other aides, such as H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, and Fiona Hill, a Russia expert on the National Security Council. Ultimately, though, all staffers were excluded from the meeting—there weren’t even any official note-takers in the room. (On social media, some of Trump’s critics lightheartedly noted that this would make it easier for the President to slip some state secrets to Putin, or perhaps promise him Alaska in exchange for a new hotel in Moscow.)

Lightheartedly? Because it was a joke? I don’t think it’s a joke; I think it’s the pathetic reality.

After the journalists left, the talks went on and on. As the world waited, it was tempting to speculate on why the confab was lasting so long. Putin chooses his words carefully; Trump, even now, is known to regale almost everyone he meets with details of his election victory. Maybe that was it.

No doubt that was it for ten minutes or so…but that still leaves 125 minutes for giving away Alaska and giggling over Putin’s success at hacking our election.

[W]hen Tillerson personally delivered the post-meeting readout to reporters, he said that Trump had started out “by raising the concern of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. Tillerson went on: “The President pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.” The Russian leader also asked the U.S. side to provide proof of Russian involvement, Tillerson said.

Since Trump said as recently as Thursday that “nobody really knows” who interfered in the election, he was hardly in a position to contradict Putin’s denials, even if he had wanted to. In any case, Tillerson made clear that really confronting Putin, or punishing him, was far from the President’s intention. “He pressed him and then felt like, at this point let’s talk about, how do we go forward?” Tillerson said. The two leaders then moved onto other issues, including Syria, for which they discussed a new ceasefire that is supposed to go into effect in the southeast of the country, Tillerson said. “There was a very clear positive chemistry between the two. . . . There was not a lot of re-litigating of the past,” he said.

Ah yes, “re-litigating the past,” i.e. making it clear to Putin that it’s not ok for him to hack US elections. (The US has hacked other people’s elections, and worse; it has supported coups to overthrow elected leaders and install dictators. We should be making major reparations. That doesn’t mean Putin is the guy to punish us.) It’s interesting that the “Secretary of State” i.e. former Exxon CEO in way over his head thinks it appropriate to belittle the idea of holding Putin accountable for hacking our election.

It should be noted that Lavrov, Tillerson’s opposite counterpart, put a very different spin on the meeting when he spoke to reporters. Lucian Kim, NPR’s Moscow correspondent, tweeted, “Lavrov: Trump mentioned that in US certain circles still inflate subject of Russian meddling in elections, even though they have no proof.” In another tweet, Kim said, “Lavrov: Trump said he heard Putin’s statements that Russia didn’t hack election and accepts them.”

Without access to a transcript, which seemingly doesn’t exist, it was hard to know what to make of these two accounts of the meeting, or whether they can be reconciled. But a few things did seem clear.

Putin had got what he wanted from the meeting: a commitment from the U.S. to move on from the election controversy and normalize relations. In addition to working toward a ceasefire in Syria, Lavrov said that the two sides had agreed to name new ambassadors, establish a working group on cybersecurity, and open a channel of discussion about Ukraine. Speaking to Russian reporters, Putin himself said, “We’ve had a very long discussion with the U.S. President. Many issues accrued, including Ukraine, Syria, and other problems, as well as some bilateral issues.” He didn’t mention anything about Trump bringing up Russian meddling.

Trump, for his part, could claim that he had raised the question of Russian interference, even if he did so only in the most perfunctory of fashions. But, in substantive terms, what had he gotten back from Putin? There was no word from Tillerson on any Russian concessions on North Korea, a pressing issue on which Moscow has sided with Beijing in opposing further U.N. sanctions. Indeed, Lavrov mentioned North Korea as one of two issues the two sides couldn’t agree on.

Trump got to meet his hero. End of story. Can we move on now?

Tillerson says Putin denies hacking the election.

Ok, that settles it, we can all relax now.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who attended the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute meeting, said it did not focus on the United States moving to punish Russia for the allegations that it hacked and leaked information that would help Trump win the election. Instead, Tillerson said the two leaders discussed “how do we move forward from what may be simply an in­trac­table disagreement at this point” regarding the election-hacking issue.

“The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement,” Tillerson said. “President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.”

Tillerson said the White House was not “dismissing the issue” but wanted to focus on “how do we secure a commitment” that there will not be interference in the future.

Sure sure sure. Take Putin’s word for it and move on. Why not after all?

Tillerson would not say whether Trump flatly told Putin that Russia interfered in the election, saying instead: “He pressed him and then felt like at this point, how do we go forward?”

The meeting lasted much longer than expected. At one point, Trump’s wife entered the room to try to see if it could wrap up soon, but it continued much longer.

“We went another hour [after] she came in to see us, so clearly she failed,” Tillerson said.

What? Why the hell did she do that? Is that normal? What – “Honey, your lunch is getting cold, it’s time to come home now – you can play with Vlad again tomorrow”? Is it normal for spouses of heads of state to try to bring an end to meetings?

That just sounds deranged.

Maybe she was worried that his cognitive issues would be getting worse and more obvious as the time drew out. I expect they probably were.

Trump earlier today at the G20:

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

That’s so typical of his tiny provincial mind. Is it likely that “everyone” at a global meeting is talking about some bit of minutia from US domestic politics / technology? Of course it’s not. Oddly enough people in the rest of the world have their own concerns, not all of which center on Donald Trump of Queens, New York.

John Podesta is more polite than I am:

1/ On a x-country road trip with my wife;

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

2/ Pulled in for a pit stop in E. Fairmont W. Va. to see that our whack job POTUS @realDonaldTrump is tweeting about me at the G20.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

3/ Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

4/ Maybe you might try to find a way to mention that to President Putin.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

5/ BTW, I had nothing to do with the DNC.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

6/ God only knows what you'll be raving about on twitter by the time we get to Utah.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

7/7 Dude, get your head in the game. You’re representing the US at the G20.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what his head is, or how to access it, or how to get it in the game. He has no control over any of this. He has only blurts.

The director of the Office of Government Ethics is resigning.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., the government’s top ethics watchdog who has repeatedly gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over conflicts of interest, said on Thursday that he was calling it quits.

Mr. Shaub’s five-year term as the director of the Office of Government Ethics is not set to expire until January, but with little chance of renewal and an appealing offer in hand from a nonpartisan advocacy group, he said the time was right to leave.

“There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” Mr. Shaub said in an interview on Thursday. “O.G.E.’s recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics program needs to be strengthened.”

But of course now that Trump will be appointing a new director, it won’t be.

In a short letter informing President Trump of his decision, Mr. Shaub did not offer a specific reason for his departure but extolled “the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain.” He had not been pressured to resign, he said.

A rather pointed observation, but it won’t make a dent in Trump, because nothing does. Narcissists are like that.

The intensity of feeling over what is usually an obscure job speaks to the central role ethics have come to play in Mr. Trump’s Washington, where the vast holdings of the president and his cabinet, as well as an influx of advisers from businesses and lobbying firms, have raised a rash of accusations of conflicts of interest.

A rash of accusations that reflect a rash of realities.

Mr. Shaub, 46, has faced an uncertain future at the agency since Mr. Trump took office in January. In the weeks between the president’s unexpected election victory and his inauguration, Mr. Shaub had taken an extraordinary gamble: He advocated very publicly on Twitter, and in a rare public speech, that Mr. Trump liquidate his vast business and personal holdings. The arrangement, Mr. Shaub argued, was the only truly ethical option.

Mr. Trump did not heed his advice, and by the middle of January, Mr. Shaub thought he might be fired. To minimize his attachment to the position, he packed up the personal possessions that filled his office.

But he was not fired, even as he continued to spar with Mr. Trump’s aides over a range of ethical concerns, including the ethics office’s authority to exercise oversight of the White House.

In February, he recommended that the White House disciplineKellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the president, after she made an on-air endorsement of the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. The White House Counsel’s Office disagreed and took no disciplinary action.

More recently, Mr. Shaub and the administration fought over a routine request by the ethics office for copies of waivers issued to White House appointees to work in the Trump administration. The Office of Management and Budget initially balked at the request, challenging Mr. Shaub’s legal authority even to ask for the information and asking him to withdraw it. After Mr. Shaub fired back with a stern 10-page letter shooting down the argument, the White House backed down.

The White House eventually released the waivers, showing it had granted at least a dozen exemptions for aides to work on policy matters they had handled as lobbyists or to engage with former colleagues in private-sector jobs. Mr. Shaub objected to the fact that many of the waivers were undated and unsigned, and that some gave approvals for acts retroactively.

In short, Trump presides over an ethical sewer.