The United States Constitution expressly contains two relevant “Emoluments” Clauses, intended as anti-corruption measures for Federal Officials, notably, the President, from accepting gifts from foreign or domestic sources. viz., [ Article 1, sec. 9] without Congressional Approval and the Domestic Emoluments Clause [Art.2, section 1,] which restricts the American President from receiving gifts beyond his salary.
Donald J. Trump, who has brazenly and ubiquitously repudiated the Nation’s Constitution, has, among his other reprehensibly illegal acts, repudiated its strictly construed Emoluments prohibition, by accepting from foreign governmental leaders: a personalized gold bar, worth $ 30,000, an expensive Rolex desk clock, a valuable handcrafted leather book, a Saudi gold dagger worth $ 24,000, an expensive crystal bowl, a full set of Olympic Gold Medals. a personalized golf club, and most notably, a Jumbo Jet from the Qatari government, worth no less than $ 400,000,000. The complete list of illegal gifts may conceivably be greater; however, this writer is only aware of the foregoing items.
Such a list, of course, does not include the ubiquitous acts of extortion practiced by our unprincipled Chief Executive, nor his tasteless, shameless, and inappropriate use of the Nation’s venerated Oval Office as a retail shopping center, for such items as the retail sale of watches, Bibles, golden sneakers, and a virtual “Sears Catalog” of retail merchandise. Whether such bizarre misuse of the White House may be legally included in Trump’s cornucopia of emolument violations or not, the same is embarrassingly tasteless and irrefutably inappropriate.
The media advises that Trump’s entrepreneurial grifting has earned him, to date, in excess of four billion dollars.
We cannot resist observing that while Donald J. Trump is reality testing the full extent of unprincipled and illegal grifting, the media reports that no less than 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck; the latter in great part the proximate result of Trump’s incapable and self-centered policies, including his misunderstood “tariff” policy and his insecure”kowtowing” to the billionaire class.
This dystopic miscreance is but one of the plethora of Trump improprieties, but it well may be the most patently vulgar and demonstrative.
-p.
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