Saturday, April 8, 2017

The (Crab) Apple Doesn't Fall Too Far From the Tree

I've visited this subject before and I'm going to discuss it again.  Legally speaking, ivanka trump has no business in the White House.  There is a law that was passed in the late 1960's making nepotism illegal.  I have presented the particulars of the law in my post, Nepotism on 12/19/16, and here they are again:


(a)For the purpose of this section—
(1)“agency” means—
(A)
an Executive agency;
(2)
“public official” means an officer (including the President and a Member of Congress)
(3)
“relative” means, with respect to a public official, an individual who is related to the public official as father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, or half sister.
(b)
A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official. An individual may not be appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in or to a civilian position in an agency if such appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement has been advocated by a public official, serving in or exercising jurisdiction or control over the agency, who is a relative of the individual.
assistant to the president 
As I said in that post,"[y]ou know......I really do not need to write another word here, but I will anyway."

Gayle King of CBS's morning show CBS This Morning Interviewed half of jivanka on April 5th.  I read the full transcript and I believe she (ivanka) is as out of touch and as as narcissistic as her father.  She has been appointed by her father as "assistant to the president".  Right there and then, her position becomes invalid and illegal!  Instead of recognizing this obvious disregard for the law, ivanka said:

"So to me the-- this particular title was about giving critics the comfort that I’m holding myself to that highest ethical standard."


Huh?  she and her father completely ignore the law, which is all about ethics and morality and she makes that kind of statement?  You've got to be kidding me, right?

Gayle King noted that there are critics that ask, where is ivanka's voice on issues like Planned parenthood, gay rights, women's rights, climate change, and then King noted, "it’s, like, you’re being held personally accountable for not speaking up. "  Well hell, it's her larynx and her thoughts and views; who the hell else is going to speak for her except for herself.

i. trumps's response?  "I would say not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence. "  Conflate?  Ya know.........I'm a reasonably well read person.  I get the use of the word by its context in the sentence, but I'll admit, this is the first time in my 61 years that I've run into this word.  Its basic meaning is to blow or fuse together.  How many people that voted for her father know the meaning of this word, three?  I think that's even generous.  

"Where I disagree with my father, he knows it.  And I express myself with total candor. "  Again, I've said it many times in previous posts, if she has spoken bluntly and directly to her father (words used to define candor), steve goebbels-bannon would not have a place in the White House.  There is no Jew on this planet that thinks or feels goebbels-bannon is ok.  That would be the same as endorsing Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

Ms. King asked ivanka if she was the person that tells d. j[ackass] the "hard truths".  ivanka answered, "I do. And almost everyone he surrounds him with does."

Continuing on, King asked ms. trump to weigh in on "articles saying you are complicit [..........] in what is happening to the White House. Now before we look at i.trump's answer, let's define the word 'complicit'. Per Merriam-Webster, being complicit is not something that you want to be associated with; "helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way". Now this is a word I've understood for, say 45 to 50 years. i. trump's answer?

"If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit."

Well, she bandies about words that a large number of people do not use or know and then turns around a butchers a relatively commonly used and known word.  But, I'lll give her this, she is complicit, as I pointed out in the beginning of this post.  She is also complicit in another way.  

Even if she had the legal right to be an employee in the White House, she is still running afoul of the law.  She has not divested herself of her business interests completely.  The trust that has been created for her businesses are run by her husbands brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  So she still has the ability to involve herself.  That would not be possible with a blind trust.  

Furthermore, despite what she says, below, it is a known fact that the wording of the trust gives her the ability to make high level decisions.  Her interchange when King approached her on this subject was:

i. trump: I have no involvement with any of that. … I felt like proximity to my father and to the White House and-- with my husband taking such an influential role in the administration (which is also illegal per the nepotism law), I didn’t wanna also be running a business. So I put it into trust. I have independent trustees. I have no involvement in its management, in this oversight and its strategic decision making.

King: But the trustees are family members, right? Your brother-in-law and your sister-in-law?


i. trump: They are.
                             
King: So from the--


i.trump: But they’re completely independent. And I’m transparent about that. (what.....because she says she's transparent, that makes it so?)

King: But you can you see from the public point of view, yes, you put it in trust but it’s family members. They’re thinking, “Well, is she really not involved? Do you really not get on the phone and say, ‘What’s going on?’” You have no involvement--
                 
i. trump: I take--
                 
King: --whatsoever?
                 
i. trump: --I take a legal document very seriously and I wouldn’t go through the pains of setting this up if I intended to violate it.


Ya know, I believe her, she probably does take a legal document "very seriously",  she probably did "go through the pains of setting [it] up", so she wouldn't have to violate it.  The way it is set up is so that she can have communication with the trust holders and that she does have the ability, per the document, to intervene about and make high level decisions.

So, as I have said many times in previous posts, ivanka trump is no saint, as she tries to paint herself as being.  This interview with Gayle King, at least to me, exposes ivanka trump as being just as duplicitous and narcissistic as her father.  The (crab) apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivanka-trump-interview-full-transcript/



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