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ANALYSIS

Donald Trump's family settle in for the good times

Paul McGeough
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Washington: The Trump brain and its fabulous functioning will fascinate researchers long after POTUS 45 leaves the Oval Office. But as he arrives, we can only wonder at where Donald Trump sits on a great American continuum - at one end, sweet innocence and Willy Wonka; at the other, the ethical netherworld of Don Corleone.

There's an element of the Wonka chocolate factory in the crowds that queue around the block at Trump Tower in Manhattan, patient and wide-eyed as they wait to shell out $US100, even $US200, for a swag of hot new presidential memorabilia at the gift kiosk, which is sandwiched between the Trump Ice Cream Parlour and the Trump Grill on the ground floor.

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There are little chocolate bricks with "Trump" stamped on their foil wrappings; and sweaters, towels and glassware - all with a discreet Trump monogram. Fans can't leave without a MAGA baseball cap - Make America Great Again. There's even a Trump cologne for men - it's called Success.

But there are shades of The Godfather in how the Trump family permeates the business, the business permeates the presidency and the presidency permeates the family. And in defence of all this, the emerging argument, implied as much as stated, is that the Trumps ought to be trusted to do the right thing - and hiding in plain sight behind that, a dismissive "we don't care if you don't".

So, sons Eric and Donald jnr and daughter Ivanka help to run the executive overseeing Dad's transition to power; but the kids, we were told, were to be taking the running of the business off Dad's hands. The daughter moves seamlessly from Dad's meetings with foreign leaders, to Dad's meetings with foreign business partners.

While the daughter vets would-be cabinet members, her staff tend to an unprecedented new line in presidential product placement. And as a power behind Dad's throne, the daughter's husband, Jared Kushner, wants to be a White House adviser - and despite the obvious nepotism, he'll most likely get the gig, because Dad thinks he's capable of negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal - after he's purged the transition team of those he suspects as disloyal interlopers.

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We had a window into this family-first ethic in son Eric's priorities while commenting to CNN on Mike Pence's performance in the vice-presidential candidate's debate in October: "I really think he represented the family, and I think he represented the party incredibly, incredibly well tonight."

The family firm is booming - as Trump said this week, his stunning victory makes the Trump brand "hotter". The newest property, Trump International Hotel in Washington's old Post Office building, is booked out - and fawning foreign diplomatic delegations most likely will keep it that way.

As Trump flits between his Manhattan skyscraper; a New Jersey golf club, the entrance to which reminds him of 10 Downing Street; and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, which The New York Times likens to the Palace of Versailles, the President-elect keeps the firm's key brands in the public eye - ka-ching!

Meanwhile, business partners from Baku in Azerbaijan to Mumbai in India congratulate themselves on their very good foresight in getting into business with a realtor who they can't have seriously countenanced would become leader of the free world - ka-ching! ka-ching!

In all of this, and in the global web of Trump business, there are enough conflicts of interest to consume an army of ethicists and lawyers.

But in contemplating it all, it wasn't until Wednesday that a real OMG! moment dawned, when Politico magazine made a remarkable observation of Trump, who as a callow candidate had refused to publicly release his tax returns because he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service - but who confirmed with some pride during the campaign that he had paid no personal income tax for almost two decades, because of dubious losses worth almost $US1 billion.

In the global web of Trump business, there are enough conflicts of interest to consume an army of ethicists and lawyers.

As President, Trump gets to pick and appoint his own tax auditor, because IRS commissioner John Koskinen's term expires in November 2017 - or sooner if congressional Republicans succeed in a bid to drive him out earlier.

On another front, Trump's newly appointed Attorney-General could be taking over a Justice Department still locked in negotiation with the German Deutsche Bank, with which Trump businesses reportedly hold loans currently worth as much as $US360 million.

US federal regulators reportedly have levied a $US14 billion fine on the bank as punishment for its trading in toxic mortgages during the housing crisis that pushed the US to the brink of financial collapse in 2007.

There's speculation in the German media that Berlin might end up bailing out Deutsche Bank by taking an ownership stake - an outcome that would leave a President Trump as Borrower Trump, in a troubled bank that conceivably might see itself having commercial leverage over Client Trump who is President Trump; at the same time as the bank's newest shareholder, the Berlin government, might see itself having diplomatic leverage over Ally Trump who is President Trump who is Borrower Trump.

China is another case in point. The Bank of China is a tenant in Trump Tower and a major lender to a consortium, of which Trump is a member, which owns another New York office tower - but the bank also is a powerful financial instrument of the Beijing government, which Trump has threatened to designate as a currency manipulator and to target in a trade war.

Ditto Russia - the nature of Russian investment in Trump businesses or any Trump investments in Russia are unclear. But in 2008, his son Donald jnr told a property conference in New York that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets ... we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Ditto Turkey - during the campaign Trump confided to a radio interviewer that he had "a little conflict of interest" in Turkey that might impact his handling of US foreign policy were he to become president. "I have a major, major building in Istanbul. It's called Trump Towers. Two towers, instead of one."

And we can only guess about Saudi Arabia, which Candidate Trump recently declared needs his protection. In the course of the election campaign, Entrepreneur Trump reportedly established eight companies to develop luxury real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, and in August he told a rally in Alabama: "Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much."

Trump's Indian partners in a luxury residential project near Mumbai came to Trump Tower for happy snaps with their powerful partner - which they released to the Indian press as they confirmed that, of course, they had discussed future developments with the next president of the United States.

Both Trump and Argentinian President Mauricio Macri denied reports in the Argentinian press that when Macri called to congratulate the President-elect, Trump has asked Macri if he could nudge along the permit process for a long-delayed office development in Buenos Aires.

In Manila, the Trump-like leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, appointed Trump's local development partner as a trade envoy to the US.

Last week about 100 foreign embassy representatives attended a show-and-tell at the new Trump hotel in Washington - and several happily explained to The Washington Post that having their visiting delegations stay in the hotel was surely a good way to curry favour.

Think about this - at this hotel just a few blocks from the White House, Trump has appointed an executive to go after the business of foreign officials who will be coming to town to, um, see him. And of course they'll be coming for his inauguration - only $US20,000 a night for the penthouse, and bookings will be accepted only for five or more nights.

A further, minor complication with the DC hotel is this - because the Trump organisation leases the property from the federal government, Tenant Trump and Landlord Trump are technically one and the same.

More than 100 of Trump's 500 companies have done or do business overseas - including seven resorts, hotels and other projects, 11 more under construction and many more reportedly on the drawing boards in 18 countries, including Britain, Uruguay, Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump will be the first president to come to office while controlling a global corporate empire - a detailed description of which was mysteriously removed from Trump's greatagain.gov website in recent days.

A problem in all this is that despite Trump's occasional use of the phrase "conflict of interest", there is no sense that Trump understands its application to his circumstances - his tax policy leaves intact the developer-friendly loopholes through which he massaged his near $US1 billion losses onto the backs of American taxpayers, but eliminated those by which hedge fund managers, as he complained so bitterly, were "getting away with murder".

The take-away from Trump's meeting this week with staff of The New York Times was that at this late stage of the process, his thinking in response to repeated ethics-based demands, from both sides of the political aisle, that he divest and/or put all his corporate holdings in a genuine blind trust, remains vague and non-committal.

It's very probable that his talk of needing to do something with the business, at the very least to go through the motions of guarding against conflicts of interest by putting it in the hands of his children, will go the same way as the promised release of his tax returns - America, don't hold your breath.

Ben Carson, Trump's one-time rival for the GOP presidential nomination and this week Trump's nominee as the next US secretary of housing, is a neurosurgeon who claims to be "God's hands".

But as the absence of real restraints on the office of president comes under intense scrutiny, it's as though Trump will have almost godly freedom and power to act as he likes in the Venn diagram overlaps of his family, business and presidency.

A semblance of tradition and protocols, premised on a sense of decency, apply to conflicts of interest in American public life - but very little of the relevant law actually applies to the presidency. Nonetheless, presidents Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes voluntarily put their more meagre assets in "blind trusts" which were controlled by independent trustees.

Congress has no oversight powers on presidential conflicts of interest. What is called the Emoluments Clause in the constitution bars officials from accepting "any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state" - but its applicability to the presidency has never been tested legally.

"The level of entanglements here are unprecedented," Ken Gross, a lawyer who has advised presidential candidates from both parties, told The Washington Post. "He'll have to deal with conflict entanglements almost on a daily basis, based on the holdings he has, particularly those involving international issues. It's just going to plague him, one way or another."

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, told the Post: "There are so many diplomatic, political, even national security risks in having the president own a whole bunch of properties all over the world.

"If we've got to talk to a foreign government about their behaviour, or negotiate a treaty, or some country asks us to send our troops in to defend someone else, we've got to make a decision. And the question becomes: Are we going in out of our national interest or because there's a Trump casino around?"

Stripped back, the response of Trump, his offspring, their surrogates and lawyers amounts to a demand that he and his family be trusted - a big ask, given how much Americans now know of how Trump has conducted himself as a businessman and corporate citizen, - with a dash of arrogance.

"The law is totally on my side, the president can't have a conflict of interest," reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted from Trump's meeting with The New York Times' editorial staff. The Post's Chris Cillizza immediately nominated the quote for inclusion in the hall of dangerous political statements - right up there, beside Richard Nixon's "well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal".

Trump surrogate and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani had made a similar comment to CNN: "You realise that those laws don't apply to the president, right? So the president doesn't have to have a blind trust. For some reason, when the law was written, the president was exempt."

With that kind of talk in mind, it's worth pausing to think about Trump's election win and of what it reveals about the current mindset of American voters.

Here is a president who used social media to speak to voters over the heads of the MSM - the mainstream media; he was openly contemptuous of the MSM's clinging to fuddy-duddy principles of political propriety and integrity - what New York Times commentator Ross Douthat this week described as "Timesian sensibilities".

But it seems the voters were with Trump - a good number of them are contemptuous too.

The MSM looks for precise meaning and accountability in what Trump says. But a good number of Americans, for now at least, look for comfort in how he makes them feel. It's an asymmetrical engagement, one in which the risk of long-term damage to the national political psyche and institutions doesn't count for a lot because there's not a lot of respect for those making the argument that these things matter.

These are rare circumstances in which an unconventional president, who knows all about licensing his brand, may have been licensed by the people to get away with more than any of his predecessors.

Time will tell. Stay tuned - because as sure as hell, the Trump era will be a walk on the wild side.

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