The White House’s current defense against charges that he made improper demands on Ukraine is that President Trump is a passionate opponent of corruption and self-dealing. This argument became much harder to believe on Thursday afternoon after the White House announced that it will be hosting the G-7 summit at a Miami country club Trump owns.
When the president uses his presidential powers to funnel business to his own companies, that reeks of corruption. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney argued feebly that there was no self-enrichment here because the hotel would offer everything at cost. But first off, “at cost” is not always a clear-cut number, as any government procurement veteran attest. It’s pretty easy to make a profit by padding the “costs” in nonobvious ways.
But even if this really is a simple break-even event for Trump’s club, it still enriches the president. His hotels and resorts are in a slump. In a slump, hotels famously offer discounted rooms in order to keep the staff happy and pay the electricity bills. Plus, you can be sure that the resort will use its hosting of this event as a marketing point: Come stay where world leaders stayed!
It also reeks of wastefulness: What are the odds that the safest, most convenient, most cost-efficient place to hold this summit just happens to be the president’s own property?
But even that is beside the point. Even if you generously stipulate that Trump will see no personal gain from having the summit at his resort, this still isn’t the action of someone who wants to battle corruption. A president eager to root out corruption would steadfastly avoid even the appearance of corruption in his own actions. Avoiding the appearance of impropriety helps clear out the brush in which corruption can easily hide.
While showing this total disregard for corruption, Trump is pinning his impeachment defense on the claim that rooting out corruption is of preeminent importance to his administration. This is supposedly why has he expended so much diplomatic capital on sniffing for illegalities or improprieties by Joe or Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Trump argues that of course he’s not using the power of the presidency to punish or hobble political opponents, he’s simply passionate about trying to end corruption around the world.
But he has just made that line a lot more difficult to swallow.
