Tag: broken campaign promise

A year into his presidency, Trump is breaking one of his big ethics pledges

The following article by Melanie Schmitz was posted on the ThinkProgress website January 22, 2018:

A year into his presidency, no payments have been made.

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 10: The Trump International Hotel is shown on August 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. The hotel, located blocks from the White House, has become both a tourist attraction in the nation’s capital and also a symbol of President Trump’s intermingling of business and politics. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

An Associated Press report on Monday showed that despite President Trump’s pledge to donate all profits his hotels received from foreign governments, his business has not yet made a single payment to the U.S. Treasury.

In 2017, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted several events entertaining groups from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Kuwait, as well as another promoting business between the United States and Turkey. The initial deadline to make a donation of those profits was set for the end of last year, but the deadline came and went with no payout. Continue reading “A year into his presidency, Trump is breaking one of his big ethics pledges”

Trump has repeatedly broken his core campaign promise

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website July 18, 2017:

While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump talks to the media after arriving by helicopter on Aug. 15, 2015, in Des Moines. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

It’s not just that Donald Trump ran for president with a lack of interest in the details of policy or legislating, though both of those things were apparent from the outset of his campaign. Standing next to his helicopter near the Iowa State Fairgrounds in August 2015, Trump dismissed policy statements as something the press cared more about than voters. When asked how he would get legislation passed in Congress, a much different task than running a company, he waved away such pedestrian concerns. He’d twist their arms the way he forced permits through the New York City Council.

But, again, it wasn’t just that he was uninterested in the traditional systems by which laws were passed in Washington. It was that he embraced that disinterest as a solution. He was an Outsider, coming to D.C. without the encumbrances of having done this before. This was framed by his supporters as though he was the new sheriff in town, prepared to think outside the box. Others framed it less generously, as though a tourist had wandered onto an aircraft carrier and decided he was going to shoot down some MiGs. Continue reading “Trump has repeatedly broken his core campaign promise”