I am bewildered.
Donald Trump took time today to belittle the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, contained in the very first article of our nation’s governing document. He called it “phony.”
By bewilderment rests with the shocking non-response, the stone-cold silence among the president’s staunchest defendersĀ who in other arguments have argued on behalf of what they say should be a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. They are the “strict constructionists” who accept the founders’ work as the law of the land. There can be little if any deviation from what they wrote, these Trump defenders would contend.
Why, though, are they silent on the president’s denigrating of the founders’ words? The Emoluments Clause was written to prevent presidents from profiting during their time in office. They should accept no gifts or favors from “kings, princes or foreign governments.”
Yet there was the president, granting his own business — Trump Doral National Country Club — an expensive government contract to play host to the 2020 G7 summit of industrialized nations. Would he have profited from this event? Well ā¦ yeah. Bigly!
OK, he pulled it back after Republicans and Democrats alike condemned the decision to bring the G7 to Doral.
But then the president today blamed the media and Democrats for the pushback that erupted. That’s when he called the Emoluments Clause “phony.”
I have been waiting all day to hear from leading conservative politicians in Congress condemn the president in stark terms for his denigration of the constitutional provision. It is no phony document. It is real. It is vital. It is intended to prevent presidential corruption — although that last item clearly has taken deep and serious root in our executive branch of government.
The only “phony” aspect of this entire discussion, in my view, is linked to the idiocy that continues to pour out of the mouth of the president.
This individual is a disgrace.