As we noted earlier, there are likely half a dozen different stories out now showing the various ways that President-Elect Trump is combining the public’s business and his own private business ventures. As I noted a few days ago on Twitter, we’re about to learn with a little more context what the phrase “conflict of interest” actually means.
As we noted earlier, Argentine President Macri says he didn’t speak to Trump about the building permits for his new office tower in Buenos Aires. But now we learn from this new report from The Guardian that he did talk to Ivanka during the call. But he didn’t talk with Ivanka about the development project either. “He spoke with Ivanka only briefly to say hello because he met her when she
was just a kid,” Macri’s spokesman told The Guardian. “They did not speak about it. The president doesn’t speak about city building permits.”
In an interview with Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Macri addressed it himself: “In the call, I also talked with his daughter. I have known her since her infant days.”
Here’s a deep dive on the background of Trump’s Buenos Aires development. And here’s more on the two families’ history going back four decades.
We’ve got yet another example. After his surprise election win, Donald Trump met with Nigel Farage, head of the UKIP along with at least one major financial backer of the Brexit campaign. Trump’s big ask was to help shut down some big off shore wind farms which Trump believes will mar the view of his Scottish golf course. Farage’s direct influence in current UK politics would seem limited. But it’s likely a different story for Brexit campaign’s major financial backers.The Times has the story.
You may have seen this account from The New York Post of Donald Trump’s meeting with major network media executives yesterday. Needless to say, coming from the Post, we should not necessarily assume any of it is true. The Post had Trump essentially reading the execs and top anchors the riot, yelling, getting red in the face, essentially telling them to fall in line or else. In the memorable words of one Post source, “It was like a f−−−ing firing squad.”
So what actually happened? CNN’s report on the meeting was quite different.
I guess there’s something new in the air in recent weeks, for whatever reason. But it’s a bit hard not to notice a certain status anxiety or attempted snobbery in WaPo’s and Politico’s coverage of the Trump/Macri story. We will see how that develops.
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Another day, another failure by Trump to navigate even the rudiments of logistics, scheduling and communications. Organizing an international summit conference or bilateral talks? Please. Team Trump is struggling to pull off a meeting with the New York Times.
Note this reassuring gem from the Times’ own report on this morning’s bumbling:
It turns out there’s even more behind the story of last week’s call between Donald Trump and Argentine President Mauricio Macri, separate from a report on Argentine television that Trump asked Macri for help getting approval for a planned Trump-branded office tower in Buenos Aires. Both parties denied Monday that the two leaders discussed the project on that call.
However, the Argentine press also reported that Macri was able to get through to the President-elect in the first place because Trump’s partner in the Buenos Aires project facilitated their connection. That detail was surfaced last night by Susan Simpson, a lawyer who specializes in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and went on a tweetstorm about the Trump project in the capital.
We’re seeing yesterday and today that Donald Trump and his advisors are signaling that he doesn’t plan to seek the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. “I don’t want to hurt them,” he told 60 Minutes earlier this month.
For the Thanksgiving edition of my podcast I’m answering your questions. Got a question? Send it to our main comments email at talk (at) talkingpointsmemo (dot) com – the election, TPM, the Trump administration, the Democrats, whatever you want. Put the subject line: Podcast Question. I’ll be recording the next episode tomorrow. So get them in today and I’ll do my best to answer.