Tag: President Corrupt

Trump says his glorious Doral golf dump HAS NO BEDBUGS. Well all right then.

The president would like to make one thing clear: The Trump National hotel in Doral, Fla. — which he’s pushing as the site for next year’s G-7 meeting — does not have bed bugs.

“No bedbugs at Doral,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “The Radical Left Democrats, upon hearing that the perfectly located (for the next G-7) Doral National MIAMI was under consideration for the next G-7, spread that false and nasty rumor.”

Not a rumor so much as a widely-reported news item.

The “nasty rumor” to which he refers stems from a 2016 lawsuit brought by Eric Linder, a New Jersey man who claimed his room in the Doral’s Jack Nicklaus villa had a bed bug infestation. Linder reached a settlement with the property in 2017, according to the Miami Herald.

Linder’s lawsuit reemerged in the media discourse Monday after Trump told reporters at the G-7 meeting in Biarritz, France, that the hotel would likely be the venue for next year’s conference. Trump could stand to profit from the influx of diplomats, politicians and staff to the hotel.

Could? There’s no “could” about it. If the G7 is held at Trump’s swamp he will make big $$$.

Bill Kristol sums up:

FDR: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
JFK: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Trump: “No bedbugs at Doral.”

The emoluments case is going ahead.

A U.S. district court judge has now ruled that discovery can proceed in a lawsuit that the attorneys general of Maryland and the District have filed against Trump. The president had tried to stall the lawsuit, but failed.

This discovery process will now entail an effort to peer into the finances of the Trump International Hotel in D.C., which has become a magnet for spending by foreign governments and dignitaries. The lawsuit alleges that by profiting in this way, Trump — who declined to divest himself of his business holdings as president — is violating the emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking such benefits from foreign (or state) governments unless Congress okays it.

…

To grasp the real significance of this, we need to look at why the court has allowed this lawsuit to move forward. In July, the court denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the suit. Trump had tried to define “emoluments” very narrowly. But the judge instead accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that they constitute “profit,” “gain” or “advantage,” i.e., the sort of profits that go to Trump’s businesses.

Importantly, in so doing, that ruling affirmed the idea that the goal of the constitutional ban on emoluments is to remove any doubt that a federal official is letting his private profiteering influence his decision-making on behalf of the public. The framers “made it simple,” the ruling said. “Ban the offerings altogether.”

The thing about Trump, of course, is that he couldn’t possibly care less about that. The money is almost the whole point for him. I say almost because there’s also the narcissistic reward, but the money is key. Being president is a golden opportunity to make big bucks, and any ideas about putting the country ahead of his personal profit might as well be the tooth fairy as far as Donnie Two-scoops is concerned.

[T]his case goes directly to the core of Trump’s blending of private and public interests, which this presidency has taken to an extraordinary degree. For instance, we have no clear idea of just how much money his family made off the corporate tax cuts he signed. Meanwhile, in recent days, questions have mounted on other fronts. We cannot dismiss the possibility that Trump’s refusal to hold the Saudi crown prince responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is related to his financial entanglements with the Saudis, something that Democrats will separately be investigating.

I’d call it the likelihood rather than the possibility.

Meanwhile, in this context, it’s worth looking back at Trump’s response to Cohen’s admissions. Trump blithely conceded that he pursued the Moscow project, and said there was nothing wrong with it:

“I was running my business while I was campaigning,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”

That. That idiot corrupt question has been haunting me since last week. Why should you lose lots of opportunities, you greedy sack of shit? Because you’re supposed to be working for the country now, not for your bank account. Because a president needs to be free from direct financial motivations, that’s why.

(It would be nice if they could also be required to be free of indirect financial motivations too. I think both Clintons were way too keen to make rich and powerful friends while they were in the White House, but that’s a kind of corruption that would probably be impossible to legislate out.)

For Trump, it’s simply not part of the equation that American voters might have been entitled to know that he was pursuing a lucrative real estate deal that required Kremlin approval, even as he campaigned on a promise to pursue better relations with Russia — and even as he publicly absolved Russia of the direct assault it was wagingon our democracy on his behalf. Of course, Trump was aware that revealing this would be bad for him, so he lied to keep it concealed.

But steady, insistent inquiry by news organizations and law enforcement — and, now, via the advancing of the emoluments lawsuit — is cracking the fortress. And the cracks are only likely to widen.

Here’s hoping.

Then there’s that lawsuit filed today by the AGs of Maryland and DC:

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia have announced they’ve filed suit against President Donald Trump, alleging he violated the Constitution by retaining ties to a sprawling global business empire.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh made the announcement at a jointly held news conference in Washington, confirming the suit has been filed in federal court in Maryland. Frosh and Racine cited Trump’s leases, properties and other business “entanglements” around the world as the reason for the suit, saying those posed a conflict of interest under a clause of the Constitution.

“The president’s conflicts of interest threaten our democracy,” Frosh told journalists. “We cannot treat the president’s ongoing violations of the Constitution and his disregard of the rights of the American people as the new acceptable status quo.”

The RNC attempted to brush it off with the usual lies:

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee says a lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia “is absurd.”

Lindsay Jancek said Monday that Trump has been committed to “complete transparency and compliance with the law.” She says the lawsuit represents “the kind of partisan grandstanding voters across the country have come to despise.”

Trump has been committed to complete transparency? Really? Even though he has never released his tax returns? Even though during the campaign he said he would eventually, but then when he got in he said no he wouldn’t? Come on. A lie that blatant would make a statue blush.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer says it’s “not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations” in the lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump. He says the Trump administration will continue to move to dismiss the lawsuit in the normal course of business.

Of course it’s not hard to conclude that, and it’s probably even true, but that does nothing to erase the facts about Don’s self-dealing and conflicts of interest and furtiveness.

NPR reports on that lawsuit.

A team of ethics experts and legal scholars filed a lawsuit in federal court this morning that says President Donald Trump’s overseas businesses violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars presidents from taking money from foreign governments.

The group says it is asking the court “to stop Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments” with ties to Trump interests. The lawsuit states that:

“These violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause pose a grave threat to the United States and its citizens. As the Framers were aware, private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders, and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious threat to the Republic.”

Trump is partying up his inauguration…and he’s doing it at his hotel. That means he’s profiting while he parties, which is sleazy as fuck. Tomorrow at 12:01 Eastern it will become more than sleazy.

With sirens blaring, a fleet of limousines and security personnel raced down Pennsylvania Avenue twice in less than the last 24 hours to deliver Donald J. Trump to inauguration events.

But he was not heading to the White House. He was going to Trump International Hotel.

The hotel he leases from the federal government, and runs as a profit-making venture.

Conflicts that for months have been theoretical are now about to become real — most immediately a possible challenge by the federal government. It owns the building that houses Mr. Trump’s hotel and has granted him a 60-year lease. From the moment he is sworn in as president at noon Friday, Mr. Trump may be in violation of that lease, given a provision that appears to prohibit federal elected officials from renting the Old Post Office building, the Pennsylvania Avenue landmark that houses the hotel, from the government.

Guests at the hotel include foreign diplomats and politicians who could be looking to curry favor with Mr. Trump — but even the act of paying their bills as they check out after the inauguration may open Mr. Trump to a challenge that he has violated the United States Constitution, which prohibits federal government officials from taking payments or gifts from foreign governments.

Maybe the whole thing – Trump, the Old Post Office, all 50 states – will slide down into a crack in the earth’s crust tomorrow and vanish with a fearsome roar. I hope Canada and Mexico will be unharmed.

Members of Mr. Trump’s new cabinet are also staying there this week, as are dozens of big-ticket donors to his presidential election campaign and inauguration. The hotel will also be the site of a prayer breakfast on Friday before Mr. Trump is sworn in. All these bookings mean payments to the Trump Organization for the hotel rooms, meals and other accommodations.

Well at least he’s probably giving them a discount, right?

The minimum nightly rate at the hotel will be $735. One suite during inauguration week was offered for $500,000, with various perks. On Thursday, the president-elect attended a lunch with Republican leaders of Congress, cabinet members and hundreds of others in the hotel’s enormous Presidential Ballroom, which features nine glass chandeliers and gold and white walls. “This is a gorgeous room,” Mr. Trump told the gathering. “A total genius must have built this place.”

Yeah, Donnie from Queens the total genius.

Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s press secretary, defended Mr. Trump’s continued close ties to the hotel. “That he’s going to his own hotel? I mean, I think that’s pretty smart,” Mr. Spicer said. “I think the idea that he’s going to his own hotel shouldn’t be a shocker. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a place that he’s very proud of.”

Mr. Spicer added: “It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you all to go there if you haven’t been by.”

They’re making us all proud.

Damn, I missed one. Too busy documenting his tweets, no doubt. Ten days ago he met with three business partners from India, who tweeted a photo of the four of them thumbs-upping.

President-elect Donald J. Trump met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump described the meeting as a courtesy call by the three Indian real estate executives, who flew from India to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election victory. In a picture posted on Twitter, all four men are smiling and giving a thumbs-up.

The tweet seems to be gone now. At any rate – there’s no such thing as a “courtesy call” in this context. You can’t brush it off or polish it up by calling it that. This is the pres-elect putting his business interests ahead of his job as president.

The three Indian executives — Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia, and Kalpesh Mehta — have been quoted in Indian newspapers, including The Economic Times, as saying they have discussed expanding their partnership with the Trump Organization now that Mr. Trump is president-elect.

Sagar Chordia did not respond to a request for a telephone interview. But in a series of text messages with The New York Times early Sunday, he confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Trump and members of his family had taken place, and that an article written about it in the Indian newspaper, which reported that one of his partners said they had discussed the desire to expand the deals with the Trump family, was accurate.

Washington ethics lawyers said that a meeting with Indian real estate partners, regardless of what was discussed, raised conflict of interest questions for Mr. Trump, who could be perceived as using the presidency to advance his business interests.

It’s pretty hard not to see it that way. What he’s selling here is his name, his brand, and it would be fatuous to try to claim that name and brand are not worth more after his election. Of course he’s using the presidency to advance his business interests.

“There may be people for whom this looks O.K.,” said Robert L. Walker, the former chief counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee, who advises corporations and members of Congress on government ethics issues. “But for a large part of the American public, it is not going to be O.K. His role as president-elect should dictate that someone else handles business matters.”

In an account of the meeting that appeared in The Economic Times, Mr. Trump was quoted as praising the United States’ relationship with India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

…

Internationally, many properties that bear Mr. Trump’s name are the result of marketing deals — like the one in India — in which he is paid by someone for the use of his name but does not actually own the underlying property. He has such marketing agreements in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the Philippines and Turkey, according to a list published by his company.

So that’s a major conflict of interest with all those countries.

The one in Turkey. There is a Trump Towers Istanbul.

Donald Trump’s company has been paid up to $10 million by the tower’s developers since 2014 to affix the Trump name atop the luxury complex, whose owner, one of Turkey’s biggest oil and media conglomerates, has become an influential megaphone for the country’s increasingly repressive regime.

That, ethics advisers said, forces the Trump complex into an unprecedented nexus: as both a potential channel for dealmakers seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House and a potential target for attacks or security risks overseas.

The president-elect’s Turkey deal marks a harrowing vulnerability that even Trump has deemed “a little conflict of interest”: a private moneymaker that could open him to foreign influence and tilt his decision-making as America’s executive in chief.

But we should just trust him, right? He’s always shown himself to be an honorable, fair-minded, impartial, idealistic man, right? We’ve always known him to be motivated by the public good rather than his own bank account, right?

No.

But the ethics experts eyeing Trump’s empire are now warning of many others, found among a vast assortment of foreign business interests never before seen in past presidencies. At least 111 Trump companies have done business in 18 countries and territories across South America, Asia and the Middle East, a Washington Post analysis of Trump financial filings shows.

So, really, from the point of view of conflicts of interest, we could hardly have chosen anyone worse.

Also from the point of view of character and motivation…we could hardly have chosen worse. Trump is driven by greed – for money, for status, for dominance, for power, for sex – and not much else. He’s a giant Appetite, with no apparent altruism or empathy or public interest of any kind.

The business interests range from sprawling, ultraluxury real estate complexes to one-man holding companies and branding deals in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Panama and other countries, including some where the United States maintains sensitive diplomatic ties.

Some companies reflect long-established deals while others were launched as recently as Trump’s campaign, including eight that appear tied to a potential hotel project in Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Arab kingdom that Trump has said he “would want to protect.”

I guess we should be thankful that Bangladesh is not oil-rich.

“There are so many diplomatic, political, even national security risks in having the president own a whole bunch of properties all over the world,” said Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

“If we’ve got to talk to a foreign government about their behavior, or negotiate a treaty, or some country asks us to send our troops in to defend someone else, we’ve got to make a decision. And the question becomes: Are we going in out of our national interest or because there’s a Trump casino around?” Painter added.

Oh well maybe by that time the national interest and the Trump interest will have become one and the same.

The Argentina deal.

Three days after the phone call between Trump and Macri on Nov.14, Trump’s associates at Buenos Aires firm YY Development Group announced that the construction project would go ahead, in an interview with La Nación (link in Spanish). The tower’s construction had reportedly been held up for years, for various reasons, with YY Development actively restarting construction permit requests when pro-business Macri took over from statist former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Jan. 2016.

There’s nothing substantive to confirm that the phone call and construction announcement are linked, but local news media have reported that the call itself was arranged in very unusual fashion. Macri, who is son of one of Latin America’s richest men and has reportedly known Trump since beating him at golf in the 1980s, had backed the wrong horse at the election, openly supporting Hillary Clinton. Accordingly, a crisis meeting was called to work out how to put relations on the right track (Spanish language) with Trump’s administration.

La Nación reports that foreign minister Susana Malcorra eventually made contact with Trump’s son Eric, with the assistance of close Trump business associate Felipe Yaryura. A Buenos Aires-based businessman and a co-owner of YY Development, Yaryura was with the Trump team and family at the post-election celebrations in the Hilton hotel in New York. Malcorra and Eric Trump reportedly had a “nice and cordial” conversation, with Eric telling Malcorra that his father would talk with Macri when his timetable allows. He then put her in touch with Trump’s foreign affairs team.

This is the “populist” “drain the swamp” “outsider” president-elect.

Under normal circumstances, the State department would be in charge of arranging contact between the president-elect and foreign leaders, rather than having the president-elect’s family speak to senior foreign officials. But Trump’s team has so far eschewed using the government’s services for this, and a State department spokeswoman refused to comment on the phone call, referring us to Trump’s transition team. Trump representatives have not responded to emailed requests for comment. We will update with their comments if they do.

Whether or not the convoluted web of phone calls is related to the sudden spurt in developments surrounding the Trump Tower Buenos Aires, the case underlines anti-corruption campaigners’ arguments that Trump needs to put his assets in a real blind trust, not one run by his family, and fully disclose his business interests. Otherwise, as Transparency International vice-president Shruti Shah says, all his actions can be derailed even by the very perception of corruption.

That’s not what worries me; what worries me is that all his actions will be corrupt.

There’s a petition urging Congressional investigation of Trump’s massive conflicts of interest. It includes a useful list:

Here are the examples of potential corruption that have emerged just since Nov. 8:^7,8,9

• Trump’s children have a role in the presidential transition, despite claims that they will take over the Trump business from their father.
• Ivanka Trump attended a meeting with the Japanese prime minister and reportedly joined a phone call between her father and the president of Argentina.
• A long-stalled Trump project in Argentina mysteriously got the green light to move forward days after that phone call.
• Trump reportedly used his meeting with British politicians to push them to block offshore wind farms that he believes will sully the view from his Scotland golf courses.
• Indian real estate developers bragged about meeting with Trump post-election and expanding their work with him now that he has the power of the presidency.
• Trump paid $25 million to settle charges that he defrauded students of Trump University.
• News broke that immediately before the election Trump launched eight mysterious companies to build luxury real estate projects in Saudi Arabia.
• Foreign diplomats told The Washington Post that they would deliberately book rooms at Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel in order to curry favor with the president
• Government ethics experts who served under Republican and Democratic presidents have agreed that Trump’s potential conflicts of interest might be unconstitutional
• The U.S. Secret Service might pay millions of dollars to rent two floors in Trump Tower to protect him and his family, with Trump pocketing the proceeds.
• Trump praised his Turkish business partner, who had butted heads with Turkey’s government, in a phone call with autocratic Turkish President Erdogan.

I didn’t know the Argentina project had been given the green light. I didn’t know about the eight companies to build luxury projects in Saudi Arabia.

Time to sharpen the Google and begin work.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker on the elephant in the room: Trump’s conflicts of interest and his cheery refusal to do anything about them.

Last week, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization said the family was “in the process of vetting various structures,” and insisted that whatever arrangement they settled on would “comply with all applicable rules and regulations.” But this was yet another empty statement. For historical reasons, Presidents are exempted from many of the conflict-of-interest laws that apply to other federal officeholders, such as Cabinet members.

This exemption dates back to the earliest days of the Republic, when Presidents tended to be wealthy plantation owners with large holdings of land and slaves. The Founding Fathers were well aware that men of this ilk would see their fortunes affected by some of the policies that the federal government would pursue, such as those relating to agriculture and tariffs. Rather than forcing a President to recuse himself from dealing with these issues, or to sell off his holdings, they decided to cut him some slack.

Ah, did they. I see. That makes so much sense – they saw that presidents were going to have huge conflicts of interest, so they decided to do nothing about them. Brilliant.

And of course those conflicts of interest to due with owning slaves did indeed help to warp government policy for many decades, spoiling the lives of millions of people and entrenching racism in the fabric of the country. So it all worked out well then.

“Because the president of the United States is the single most consequential decision maker on the planet, Congress has decided his hands shouldn’t be tied on any issue because of conflicts of interest over any potential financial or personal gain,” Norman Eisen, a former ethics counsel to the Obama Administration, who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year.

Again, the reasoning seems perverse. The president’s decisions are consequential, therefore it’s fine if they’re shaped by the president’s personal financial interests. Wtf?

Once you grasp the geographical spread of Trump’s interests, it is hard to see how the potential conflicts of interest could ever be resolved. Take the Middle East, a region of the world that every modern American President has had to focus on. According to the Post, in addition to the Trump-branded real-estate development in Turkey, Trump has business ties to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, two oil-rich countries that have funded radical Islamic movements. And, just last year, Trump registered eight companies named after Jeddah, the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia.

It’s not just that Trump won’t be seen as an honest broker in the Middle East. He wouldn’t be seen as broker of any kind but as a principal and business partner of some of the region’s repressive governments and their cronies. Even if, for the duration of his Presidency, Trump were to put his businesses into a properly independent trust, run by business executives not connected to him, the Trump-owned and Trump-branded companies would still be generating income for the President and his family. He and his advisers would know that. The governments of the countries where the companies are located would know that. And so would the rest of us.

Yes but he’s the populist choice, so none of that matters! Right? He’s filthy rich and he always acts in his own interests, but hey, he’s sexist and racist so that’s all cool.

Trump is clearly not going to do anything about it, so we can rail but it won’t make any difference. Thanks, “Founding Fathers.”

On NPR, a conversation about the conflict of interest issue. Richard Painter advised Bush Junior and Norman Eisen advised Obama.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

President-elect Donald Trump shifted positions on several issues yesterday. But in a talk with The New York Times, he avoided placing many limits on his opportunity to profit while in office.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The president-elect, who has worldwide business interests, admits that he, quote, “might have requested a business favor from visiting British politicians.” His staff had previously denied that.

INSKEEP: His staff also denied that Trump sought a business favor when talking with Argentina’s president, but his daughter Ivanka – a vice president of his company – joined that call.

His daughter was on that call? Why? Why is no one putting a stop to all this?

GREENE: Ivanka Trump also joined Trump’s meeting with Japan’s prime minister.

INSKEEP: Two ethics lawyers – one Democrat, one Republican – now want Trump to do as other presidents have done. He can put his assets in a blind trust, where they will be sold. Richard Painter was President Bush’s top ethics lawyer, Norman Eisen was President Obama’s. They say federal ethics laws do not apply to the president but other laws do.

It’s unfortunate that federal ethics laws don’t apply to the president. I guess nobody believed we’d ever have one like Trump.

[pauses to have another moment of disbelief that this has happened]

Inskeep asks what’s the danger. Painter says well it gets too close to bribery.

INSKEEP: Is it – is the danger that someone in the Philippines or in Argentina or in Britain or name your country will do a business favor for the new president hoping that it might influence U.S. policy?

PAINTER: Here is where you get into the danger zone, when the government official starts talking about U.S. government business and then also talking about what personal business favors they might want. And when the conversation goes down that road, it does risk crossing the line into solicitation of a bribe. And people need to be very careful about these types of conversations, whether it’s I don’t like those windmills close to my golf courses or whatever it is. Those conversations should never take place at the same time as we’re discussing United States government business and what the – someone else might want from the U.S. government.

But Trump, astoundingly, doesn’t grasp that.

Eisen says there’s also the emoluments clause.

INSKEEP: What’s it say?

EISEN: Well, it says that presidents and other federal officials are not allowed to accept presents from foreign sovereigns. There’s already reports, for example, that the Trump Hotel here in Washington, D.C. is inviting representatives of foreign embassies to come and do deals with them to the extent they include presents, which is customary as part of these deals. That is a violation of the Constitution. And now we’re not only on criminal territory, we’re actually moving towards impeachment territory if a president violates the Constitution.

Why would we even want to be talking about this? Mr. Trump ought to do the right thing and set up a true blind trust and build a big beautiful ethics wall where Mr. Trump and his managers agree not to talk business in meetings with foreign leaders.

He absolutely ought to, but he has no intention of it, and when asked about it he babbles about never seeing his daughter again.

INSKEEP: Well, let me understand this because the Trump campaign has said, don’t worry about it, Trump’s kids are going to run his businesses. Isn’t that good enough?

EISEN: It is far from good enough. Every president has utilized the blind trust or its equivalent to reassure the American people that those presidents’ actions are motivated by the public interest, not their own personal special interests. So it’s not good enough.

PAINTER: And imagine where we’d be today if President Franklin Roosevelt had owned apartment buildings in Frankfurt and Berlin. You know, some of us might be speaking German. I mean, it is very important.

INSKEEP: Oh, you’re saying (laughter) – you’re saying what if the American president during World War II had had a financial stake in the future of Germany? Wouldn’t be good.

PAINTER: Well, yes, as many prominent American businessmen did. And those people who did often supported the America First movement and didn’t want us to stand up to Hitler. Are we going to be in a situation where we swap out the security of Israel so we can get a casino or a hotel in Abu Dhabi? I mean, this – the scenarios go on and on.

And nothing happens. Apparently no one will stop him.

INSKEEP: Why wouldn’t the president-elect respond to your concerns the same way that he responded to demands for his tax returns, just by declining to comply?

EISEN: Well, he’ll have an interval of goodwill. He’ll have a honeymoon period. And he may very well choose to decline. But just wait for that first scandal, that first impropriety to hit. The political pressure will become so intense that he’s going to be forced to do something.

Wait for the first scandal to hit if we know about it. He does it in secret as much as he can.