Initial Thoughts on Eichenwald's Article and Trump's End Game

I don't think he was in it to win it at the beginning; like many others, I assumed it was a vanity project that he would use to leverage his brand.  It's been clear for some time that a Trump presidency would be a national security threat with negative implications on a global scale -- due to the combination of his infantile temperament, mind-numbing ignorance of world affairs and how government works, and unfettered Islamophobia, his election would likely de-stabilize the world and upend U.S. alliances, among other negative consequences.

This striking piece of journalism from Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald takes a different look at the national security threat that Trump poses to this country.  It's a truly critical read that exposes the unavoidable corruption and conflicts that the Trump family's personal financial interests would infuse into geopolitics were he to be elected.  It also exposes, once again, what a deeply despicable person Trump is:


But for the Trump Organization, Qaddafi was not a murdering terrorist; he was a prospect who might bring the company financing and the opportunity to build a resort on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. According to an Arab financier and a former businessman from the North African country, Trump made entreaties to Qaddafi and other members of his government, beginning in 2008, in which he sought deals that would bring cash to the Trump Organization from a sovereign wealth fund called the Libyan Investment Authority. The following year, Trump offered to lease his estate in Westchester County, New York, to Qaddafi; he took Qaddafi’s money but, after local protests, forbade him from staying at his property. (Trump kept the cash.) “I made a lot of money with Qaddafi,’’ Trump said recently about the Westchester escapade. “He paid me a fortune.”

These conflicts and this attitude standing alone are insupportable, but combined with Trump's extraordinary list of other disqualifications, it should be inconceivable for him to win.  In fact, the man ought to be a pariah, drummed out of society, rather than the nominee of the Republican party.  Yet not only is he the nominee, he most certainly could win, and I doubt this article will sway a single supporter. But for those on the fence, or trying to thread the needle of not endorsing and not supporting but not disavowing him, like John McCain and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, this has got to be the end of the line, at long last, of their equivocation.  Will they demand he at a minimum shut it down or sever all ties?  And even if he were to promise to shut his business interests down and keep his family members away from the Trump Organization, where would the proof come from? How could he be prevented from picking it right back up again after leaving office, with the biggest brand of all time?

Though there is a very real risk of his winning here, the more likely outcome remains that he loses.  What then?  He will still be around, his brand bigger than ever, burnished by his nomination and his having nearly beaten a seasoned candidate of superior qualifications, experience, intellect, ideas, and character; he will not have released his tax returns or medical records; he will not be made the pariah he should be; and he will likely continue to be, as he likes to brag, "very, very rich."

One other thing:  Kurt Eichenwald is already getting anti-Semitic death threats with overt oven references. Will reporters demand that Trump denounce the hatred?  Or will he, as he did with the Julia Ioffe piece on his wife Melania, refuse, and instead praise the "passion" of his supporters.   I want those reporters to ask whether the anti-Semitic threats are deplorable. And let's see what he says.