Bev

“That stack of folders beckoned the world’s corrupt leaders and oligarchs to do what developer Donald Trump would have tried to do in their position, to use money to influence government decision-making. And the public would never know if his decisions were made to benefit his country or his bottom line.”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“The losers, according to the Times: “People Buying Health Insurance,” “Individual Taxpayers in the Future,” “The Elderly,” “Low-Income Families,” and people in high-income, highly taxed states like California and New York. “In the long run, most Americans will see no tax cut or a tax hike,” the Washington Post wrote in its own analysis.38 The final loser was the US Treasury, and government itself: by the end of the fiscal year in which the bill went into effect, the deficit had grown to $779 billion.39”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

“The Emoluments Clause states: “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” This was a profoundly American idea, Teachout had written. “It showed a real split from the old European corrupt ways. The new Americans were insistent on this clause even though it caused some problems with diplomacy because there had been a lot of financial interchange between diplomats before. I had used it as an example of the American commitment to anti-corruption. I had never expected there would be a president who would blatantly violate it.” Corrupt governments and oligarchs had plenty of experience with Trump’s new corporate structure: you turn over a company to your children to wink at the world that”
― Andrea Bernstein, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power