Peter Baker on Trump’s Investment Deal with Saudi Arabia: ‘Monetization of the Presidency’

EXCERPT:

BAKER: “Yeah, you’re right. It is open. It is transparent in the sense that nobody is pretending that it’s anything other than what it is. It’s the monetization of the president in a way we — presidency in a way we’ve never really seen. We’ve never had a president who was doing these kinds of deals, whose family was doing these kinds of deals at the same time that the president was in the the White House. Now, the White House says that conflict rules don’t apply to the president, that he can do anything, basically, and that there are no rules that bind him that way. And they also point out that, well, you know, this is his sons doing, this is the sons who are actually managing, he’s not managing the business, but he — financial disclosure forms do show, of course, he has a financial interest in all of this. And of course, his sons are pulling in, you know, enormous amounts of money through these projects. This is, of course, it was the same Trump family that complained about Biden’s family profiteering off of his name.”