The White House has confirmed worries and fears about President Trump’s conflicts of interest, bolstering the case that he must sell his hotel business.
When the president chastised Nordstrom on Wednesday for dropping its commercial relationship with Ivanka Trump’s brand, that was typical Trump — questionable and unorthodox (though not exactly unprecedented).
But White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the White House was at war with Nordstrom because the retailer’s decision was “a direct attack on his policies and her name.”
That may be true, but even if it is, why should it be White House policy to retaliate against a business that takes an action on those grounds? When a company refuses to do business with a Trump-family company, perhaps (or even probably) because it wants to display its opposition Trump’s policies, does this warrant a counter-attack from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?
Were politics involved in Nordstrom’s decision to drop Ivanka’s products? There are three answers, all true: we don’t know, of course, and it doesn’t matter.
Nordstrom says it was a business decision. If sales dropped off because of boycott threats, then it was both business and politics. If the store did it to satiate liberal urban clientele, then it was both business and politics. And if Nordstrom dropped Ivanka just because it doesn’t like Trump, then it’s a story of a company conducting its affairs according to the conscience of its decision-makers, which conservatives properly think is no one else’s business, certainly not the federal government’s.
The petty and contemptible liberal campaign to boycott the business partners of the Trump family will continue. Flexing their muscles in corporate America and the media is a rare way for the out-of-power liberal elite to exert influence these days. Trump supporters will threaten counter boycotts. Let these partisans have at it. But the White House needs to stay out.
Kellyanne Conway’s endorsement of Ivanka’s brand Thursday morning, saying “go buy Ivanka’s stuff” on MSNBC, appeared ingenuous, but nevertheless stepped across an ethical line and violated well-founded rules.
The deeper problem here, though, goes far beyond Ivanka’s diamond earrings and pointed pumps. The Nordstrom drama and Spicer’s comments about Nordstrom’s “attack” on Trump show Trump’s continued business holdings throughout the world really do create conflicts of interest.
If the White House takes it as “a direct attack on his policies” for a retailer to discontinue its business relationship with Ivanka, it is the administration, not its critics, making the connection between the two.
When a foreign government revokes a business license of a Trump hotel, will the White House and the @POTUS Twitter account come out swinging?
There could be a thousand reasons, political, personal, business, rational, irrational, for businesses and governments to change their relationships with Trump’s businesses. It doesn’t matter that the president isn’t involved in managing the businesses. His sons run them, as Ivanka runs her product line. And Trump still owns much of the company.
“No new deals” overseas doesn’t mean no renewing of old deals. Donating the overseas profits to charity for the next four or eight years doesn’t remove Trump’s vested interest in the value of the properties, which will persist after he leaves the White House.
Now, after the White House has stepped in to defend Ivanka, every business partner, tenant, landlord and municipal authority knows that an adverse business decision could incur White House wrath.
The most prominent person who will suffer if this situation is not changed is Trump himself. He champions many policies that would be wholly good for America. But he will undermine his ability to put them into effect if his actions are constantly liable to be seen, or be excoriated by his opponents, as tarnished by material self-interest.
