As the Washington Examiner argues in an editorial, it would be unethical and ill-advised to host next year’s G-7 Summit at President Trump’s Doral resort. But the fact that Trump has been making the pitch not only signals a willingness to personally enrich himself through the office of the presidency, but also gets at a much deeper problem.
Since taking office, Trump has never been able to grasp that being president, in addition to coming with new powers, also comes with certain restrictions about what he should say or do. There are statements and actions that may be acceptable or even innocuous outside the context of being commander in chief that become wildly inappropriate when done by a president. This has been a central problem in many of the controversies that have consumed his presidency.
His business actions and aggressive pitches of his properties can create conflicts of interest. His rant about “disloyal Jews” has much more weight coming as a president with an influential following. His regular Twitter tantrums aren’t the same as when he was a private citizen; they can move markets and uproot our nation’s foreign policy.
Regardless of whether one believes the actions outlined in Robert Mueller’s report amount to obstruction of justice, it’s clear that he would have had significantly less to work with had Trump recognized that as president, his words have more serious ramifications. His chat with James Comey about “loyalty” and his tweets about witnesses, among other actions, were clearly improper even if one doesn’t believe they were illegal.
As he enters the 2020 election, his biggest vulnerability may be his utter inability to grasp the gravity of the office — specifically, the ways in which it limits what you can say or do.
