Bloomberg’s political duo, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, seemed to take conspiracy theories about a Donald Trump presidency to a new level Monday evening’s With All Due Respect, when they speculated that the president-elect would “openly” and “with impunity” profiteer off of his elected position. And in the process, they implicated both President Lyndon B. Johnson, Senator Harry Reid in such money grabbing schemes.
“I think he wants to get rich off being president, and will do everything he can as long as a lawyer tells them it's ok,” declared Halperin before predicting that one of the events that would stop Trump would be an indictment. The other two events, according to Halperin, would be one of his adult children warning him he’s hurting the brand, or a White House lawyer telling him he needed to liquidate his company.
“I think that is pretty outrageous, if true,” responded Heilemann, “I don't disagree that all the signs are horrible.” He proceeded to explain that the only real way for Trump to avoid perceived conflicts of interest would be to sell off all of his company’s assets and put it in a blind trust where his kids could not manage it.
A skeptical Halperin sarcastically asked, “You know when Donald Trump do that? You know when he’ll do that?” “I know, when monkeys fly out of a place I can’t talk about on television. But it is the only solution,” Heilemann joked.
Heilemann had a warning for the president-elect, “If he is going to be a profiteering president, if that’s what he’s going to do openly, and thinking he can do it with impunity, he is going to be mired in scandals throughout the entirety of his administration.”
“I bet he’s thinking of Lyndon Johnson and Harry Reid, two guys who got much wealthier while they were in public office,” guessed Halperin, trying to get into Trump’s mind, “And he’s like, ‘Everybody does this. What's the big deal?’” But by using both public figures for Trump’s reasoning he’s implying, if not admitting, that profiteering is how they became so wealthy.
“Well clearly, both of those analogies are variously true,” Heilemann admitted as he tried to qualify Trump as special case, “But none of them were multibillionaire occupants of the oval office who then used the presidency in a blatant way to try to profiteer.”
The conversation was triggered by recent meetings Trump had had with business partners since the election. In his opening monologue, Heilemann noted that foreign diplomats recently attended a sales pitch at Trump’s new Washington, DC hotel. It would have been nice if the media was this concerned, during the election, by the foreign diplomats and heads of state giving huge donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for meetings.