President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday poked fun at former campaign rival Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Russian hardliner who has criticized the mogul for his cozy relationship with Moscow.

"Lindsey Graham," a smiling Trump said toward the end of an hour-long press conference Wednesday, his first in nearly six months.

"I've been competing with him for some time. He's going to crack that 1% barrier someday," Trump said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-jabs-russia-hard-liner-lindsey-graham-article-1.2943940

Somebody, please tell Golden Don that the election is over. He isn't competing with Senator Graham anymore. We are talking about the best way for the nation to deal with Russia.
What a schmuck!

Last edited by Goose (1/12/2017 6:03 am)

TheLagerLad wrote:

However, it will play well with his supporters from a political standpoint because it's the same ill defined red meat he's been throwing in front of them throughout the whole campaign, and they'll continue to eat it up.

To that point, I would like to get feedback from Common, Tim, The Man, and any other Trump supporters who watched today's press conference and get their feedback.

 

Saw little bits of it. From day one of Trump announcing his run I said he was a disruption candidate and that he at times he uses reckless speech. Both were front and center at this news conference. If anyone thinks that Trump will dramatically change  I just don't see that happening. Of what I saw there were two areas that gave me concern.
I really despise the Hilter/Nazi Germany reference. We all know what happened with Hitler. To use that reference cheapens what happened to millions! I personally don't think it's a good idea to air issues/concerns you have with the IC folks. I really don't think that any good can come of it. I would pick up the phone, set up meeting and hash it out.

From what I understand the president or vice president can not have a conflict of interest.
He(Trump) has decided to put his assets into a trust and relinquish control of his business to his sons.
He will not take any role in his former business. The Trump group will no do any deals outside of the United States while he is president. And the last thing I heard the Trump group will have an ethics attorney to vet any deals made. The trust was put in place by   Sheri Dillon, a partner at the global law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.


I have to say that the level of hate/vitriol directed at Trump on The New Exchange is really off the charts! Trump has not taken the oath of office, he has not taken one official action as president! The smears directed at the President-Elect before he takes office are troubling.

Common Sense wrote:

TheLagerLad wrote:

However, it will play well with his supporters from a political standpoint because it's the same ill defined red meat he's been throwing in front of them throughout the whole campaign, and they'll continue to eat it up.

To that point, I would like to get feedback from Common, Tim, The Man, and any other Trump supporters who watched today's press conference and get their feedback.

 

Saw little bits of it. From day one of Trump announcing his run I said he was a disruption candidate and that he at times he uses reckless speech. Both were front and center at this news conference. If anyone thinks that Trump will dramatically change  I just don't see that happening. Of what I saw there were two areas that gave me concern.
I really despise the Hilter/Nazi Germany reference. We all know what happened with Hitler. To use that reference cheapens what happened to millions! I personally don't think it's a good idea to air issues/concerns you have with the IC folks. I really don't think that any good can come of it. I would pick up the phone, set up meeting and hash it out.

From what I understand the president or vice president can not have a conflict of interest.
He(Trump) has decided to put his assets into a trust and relinquish control of his business to his sons.
He will not take any role in his former business. The Trump group will no do any deals outside of the United States while he is president. And the last thing I heard the Trump group will have an ethics attorney to vet any deals made. The trust was put in place by   Sheri Dillon, a partner at the global law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.


I have to say that the level of hate/vitriol directed at Trump on The New Exchange is really off the charts! Trump has not taken the oath of office, he has not taken one official action as president! The smears directed at the President-Elect before he takes office are troubling.

 

My point is made by this response. Defending Trump by attacking those who criticize his words and actions is the only argument that can be made in favor of his constant and consistent mistakes. Trying to cover up for his ignorance of the job he will be performing with juvenile attacks is unacceptable.

As far as Trump's document display and his attorney's presentation of his dissemination of his business interests to his sons, extricating him from any hint of conflict of interest, and distancing himself from any constitutional separation of business dealings from his presidential duties, many constitutional scholars, ethics and business law experts have said the presentation lacked insight, knowledge, truth, and consideration of alternatives.

Trump says he'll turn over company to his sons, but ethics questions persist –

Los Angeles Times

By cited in article | Published January 12, 2017
President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday he won’t be selling his company, virtually ensuring that his administration will continue to face questions about potential conflicts between his public duties and private interests.

Instead of divesting his hotels, golf courses, office buildings and other assets, Trump will create a trust for his Trump Organization holdings and turn over management to his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.

Trump will have nothing to do with any decisions involving the company, and it will avoid any foreign deals while he is president, said Sheri A. Dillon, a lawyer for Trump who outlined the plan during a news conference the president-elect held at Trump Tower in New York.

Ethics experts questioned whether the steps Trump outlined would significantly reduce the potential for conflicts of interest. But Dillon said any further moves, such as selling assets or creating a blind trust, would be unfair and unworkable.

“President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built,” she said.

Trump, in a raucous exchange with reporters, said he does not believe the public cares much about his business dealings. He made it clear he would keep ownership of all properties throughout his presidency and planned to resume management of the company when he leaves office.

He also said he had no plans to release his tax returns to provide transparency about his finances, a practice started by Richard Nixon and followed by every subsequent president except Gerald Ford.

“The only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters, OK?” Trump said.

As for voters, he said: “I won. No, I don’t think they care at all.”

He also noted that, as president, he is exempt from the federal conflict of interest law.

“I could actually run my business and run government at the same time,” he said. “I don’t like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that if I wanted to.”

The government’s chief ethics officer criticized that assertion and called Trump’s plan “perplexing.”

It is “quite obviously not true” that the president can’t have a conflict of interest, Walter Shaub Jr., director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said in remarks at the Brookings Institution.

Although the main federal law on conflicts doesn’t apply to the president, that doesn’t mean no conflicts will occur, he said. “For that reason, it’s been the consistent policy of the executive branch that the president should act as though the financial conflict of interest law applied,” Shaub said.

“Stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict-of-interest perspective,” Shaub added. Trump’s plan, he said, “doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met.”

“The only thing this has in common with a blind trust is the label ‘trust,’” Shaub said. “His sons are still running the businesses, and, of course, he knows what he owns.”

A leading outside legal expert agreed.

“I think there’s going to be lawsuits. I think there’s the possibility, if it’s serious enough, of impeachment proceedings down the road. So I don’t think this begins to solve the problem,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Irvine and an expert on constitutional law.

Trump appeared to concede that he could face actual conflicts, if not legal ones, when he asserted he had no business dealings in Russia.

“We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to, because I think that would be a conflict.”

With more than 500 corporations, hundreds of millions in outstanding debts and real estate deals from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to a hotel down the street from the White House, Trump’s business represents unprecedented potential conflicts with his duties as president.

To deal with those issues, Dillon said Trump would resign from any positions with his companies and turn over control to his sons and a company vice president, Allen Weisselberg. Trump will not participate in any decisions, nor get any information about how individual properties are doing — just a general profit and loss statement, Dillon said.

The trust agreement requires that all pending deals, more than 30 of them, be terminated, she said. While the company will do no new foreign deals while Trump is president, domestic deals will still be permitted but only after written approval from a new ethics officer who will work for the Trump company, she added.

Dillon said it would be infeasible for the Trump Organization to sell properties like Trump Tower and the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida or to unwind the dozens of deals in which Trump gets paid a licensing fee for his name.

That would “greatly diminish the value of assets and create a fire sale,” she said.

Selling the assets would exacerbate conflicts, not cure them, Dillon said. The sons would have to take on huge debts to buy out their father’s interests, and that would raise questions about the terms of the loans and whether the lenders were trying to curry favor with Trump, she noted.

Dillon also maintained that Trump was not in danger of violating a provision in the Constitution, known as the emoluments clause, which prohibits U.S. officials from getting certain payments from foreign powers. Trump is already drawing heat because his Washington hotel is getting business from foreign governments.

Dillon said that payments for services, as opposed to gifts, are not emoluments and that, in any case, Trump would donate any hotel profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury.

“Nobody seems to think, other than his lawyer, that this solves his emoluments problem,” said Norman Eisen, chief White House ethics lawyer in President Obama’s first term.

Dillon compared Trump’s business empire to the fortune held by Nelson Rockefeller when he became vice president in 1974, “but at that time, no one was so concerned.”

In fact, the nomination of Rockefeller to become vice president after Ford ascended to the presidency was held up for months because of concerns about conflicts of interest. Rockefeller, heir to an oil fortune, was one of America’s richest people at the time and promised to put all his securities into a blind trust. The Senate did not impose such a condition before confirming him.

Democrats jumped on Trump’s refusal to sell his holdings or to release tax records.

“They’ve not been transparent,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, noting that Trump, facing questions about dealings with Russia, could release documents proving that he has no dealings there. “But they’ve refused to do so. That kind of secrecy only serves to sow public doubt.”

Some Republicans also criticized Trump. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-N.C.) called the decision not to release tax returns a “grave mistake.”

“This is about upholding precedent and encouraging transparency,” he said.

The trust was put in place by Sheri Dillon, a partner at the global law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Is this the law firm that just received the Russian Law Firm of the Year award?
 

Thanks, Doug. I was aware of that.
The optics are unbelievably unfortunate, but the law firm thing doesn't go anywhere beyond that.

The news conference was a real shitshow. It will indeed be a rocky ride.