Thread by @WestWingReport

Thread: We’ve seen this movie before, you know.

We’ve had presidents who were used by members of their own family for personal gain. That was Ulysses S. Grant, president from 1869-1877.
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We’ve had presidents who stocked their Cabinet with mediocrities—greedy, self-serving bums who exploited the public trust to live lavishly, if not line their pockets. That was Warren Harding, president from 1921-23.
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We’ve had presidents who swore publicly to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, while flouting it privately—either personally or through the eager misdeeds of sycophantic aides and associates. That was Richard Nixon, president from 1969-74.
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And we’ve had presidents who had a sense of entitlement with women, seducing them with their power and fame, before discarding them like used kleenex. This was Harding again, this was John F. Kennedy, president from 1961-63, and this was Bill Clinton, president from 1993-2001.
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So what we’re seeing in the term of Donald Trump—which is now at the three-fifths mark—isn’t new. What is new, however, is that his presidency combines all of the characteristics listed above. Grant, Harding, JFK, Nixon and Clinton rolled into one. Let's take a closer look.
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Here are some of the messes—many self-made—that other presidents got into, and how Trump compares.
First: SELF-DEALING FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Ulysses S. Grant was an honest man, but some of the people around him? Not so much.
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In 1869, his own brother-in-law teamed up with two men to corner the gold market. Grant found out and ordered the Treasury Dept. to drive gold prices down by flooding the market with it. The resulting financial panic was called “Black Friday.”
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Six years later, Treasury officials conspired with whiskey distillers to defraud the govt. of millions; The so-called “Whiskey Ring Scandal” also snared the president’s private secretary - an example of what can happen when a president surrounds himself with shady, characters.
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In Trump's era, the self-dealing appears to start in the Oval and radiates outward. As president-elect, he said he wouldn't divest from his business empire, but would place it in a trust. Yet the “Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust” holds those assets for his “exclusive benefit”
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The trust remains under his SSN; Trump also continues to review profit and loss reports which are provided by trustees Donald J. Trump Jr., and others. It’s inconceivable, knowing what we do about Trump, to think he simply reviews these P&L reports passively
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Critics have tried to nail Trump on the so-called “Emoluments Clause,” a once-obscure part of the Constitution that prohibits Trump-owned businesses (like his hotels and condos around the world) from accepting payments from foreign governments. But...
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...this hasn’t stopped diplomats, representatives of govt.-owned businesses etc. from running up big tabs at Trump properties, buying property. etc. And that the Trump organization has jacked up prices sharply since his election—well, that’s just what the market will bear
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And like father, like daughter and son-in-law: Ivanka and hubby Jared Kushner have not only retained financial control of their businesses (making dozens of repeated errors on federal financial disclosures that would get lesser mortals fired), but have also...
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...have also made numerous official trips - ostensibly on official govenment business - to foreign countries which just happen to overlap with their own personal business interests
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Second: CABINET CORRUPTION
Warren Harding’s interior secretary, Albert Fall, leased government oil reserves to companies at low rates with no competitive bidding; he would later be convicted of accepting bribes and went to prison. But...
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...But the “Teapot Dome” scandal—perhaps the worst in U.S. history prior to Watergate—was only one of two major Cabinet scandals to rock the Harding White House. Veterans Sec. Charles Forbes stole the 2018 equivalent of $2.8 billion by making under the table deals and...
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...and selling off federal property at a fraction of its value. Forbes was convicted of bribery and corruption and sent to prison.
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No one in Trump’s revolving-door Cabinet has ripped off taxpayers on that kind of scale, but from gouging taxpayers for everything from private air travel (former HHS Sec Price and Treasury Sec Mnuchin), fancy trips to Europe for spouses (former Veterans Sec Shulkin),
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...$139K for new office doors (ex-Interior Sec. Zinke), $31K for dining room furniture (Housing Sec. Carson) and more. WWR hasn’t even mentioned ex-EPA chief Pruitt, who set the standard in this let-them-eat-cake administration. And remember: Trump hires "only the very best."
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Third: TRAMPLING ON THE LAW
Watergate remains the ultimate, the ne plus ultra of presidential scandals. There were break-ins. There were payoffs. There were coverups. There were dirty tricks. There was obstruction of justice.
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When all was said and done, some 40 govt. officials were indicted or sent to prison, including Nixon’s Attorney General (Mitchell), his Chief of Staff (Haldeman) and presidential attorney (Dean). To the very end, Nixon thumbed his nose at the system...
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...an attitude encapsulated in a comment he made three years after resigning in disgrace: “When the president does it,” he said, “it means it is not illegal.” To this day no scandal is complete without the suffix “-gate” attached to it.
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Trump of course, took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But those are just words in the Constitution itself. Trump has proposed violating it in numerous ways...
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...like shutting down mosques — “we’re going to have no choice,” he once said — and curtailing press freedoms. But 1A is hardly the only amendment Trump has proposed watering down. He has suggested that we ignore parts of the 5th Amendment, which deals with due process...
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...and the 8th, which prevents the use of cruel and unusual punishment. Trump’s ideas here largely concern the war on terror, which he says we’re fighting in a politically correct manner. But wait: there’s more.
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Trump has also attacked 14A and its equal protection clause, which forbids depriving anyone from equal protection under the law. He has attacked the judicial system, suggesting that decisions in certain cases have been made because of the ethnic heritage of federal judges.
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Trump claims he has read the Constitution. If this is so, he doesn’t understand or respect it. Here’s the irony: his demagoguery is why our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in the first place—to protect the citizenry from people like Trump himself.
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Four: GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS
Warren Harding was so sleazy that—as president—he once had sex with one of his mistresses in Central Park in broad daylight. He had an illegitimate daughter with one woman, a long affair with another who was suspected of being a German agent...
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...and trysts in the Oval Office itself—instructing Secret Service agents to keep his wife (Flossie Harding) away while he went at it.
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There was John F. Kennedy, who reportedly said “I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day”—so he did. His affairs were too numerous to mention—hundreds, it is believed, ranging from movie stars and wives of close friends to interns.
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When Jacqueline Kennedy was away, aides often snuck girls into the mansion for an afternoon quickie, and you know our White House briefing room? It used to be a swimming pool, where JFK often hosted nude swimming and sex parties.
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Kennedy also exposed himself to potential blackmail by bedding one women who was also having an affair w/a Mafia kingpin, and another who was believed to be an East German spy. JFK’s brother (Attorney General Robert Kennedy) had the woman deported in the middle of the night.
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Then there was Bill Clinton, whose lies about an affair with a White House intern got him impeached. His affairs (mostly occurring when he was Gov. of Arkansas) included beauty queens, state employees and TV reporters
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Clinton was impulsive and sexually reckless in ways that left a stain (literally and figuratively) on the presidency. In terms of volume and brazenness, Trump’s infidelities appear to fall short of Harding and Kennedy, but sleaze is sleaze: he has...
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...cheated on all three wives, and in the case of porn star Stormy Daniels, right after his third wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron. At least 19 women admit to affairs or unwanted advances—Trump as usual denies all and threatened to sue all of them, but hasn’t
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His contemptible attitude can be summed up in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he was heard bragging about assaulting women, grabbing their you-know-what and getting away with it because he was a “star.”
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Thus: many other presidents -Grant, Harding, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton (& others) - have either been tainted by scandal, blatant disrespect for the law and/or tawdry and reprehensible treatment of women. Extraordinary, as we examine history, to have one that checks so many boxes ##