On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer argued conflicts of interest between President-Elect Donald Trump’s administrations and business are “an insoluble problem.”
Krauthammer said, “I think this is an insoluble problem. First of all, we’ve never had a president with holdings so widespread around the world. Second, as he himself has said in many of the depositions he’s done over the years, the value of his company fluctuates according to perception. And the main element of the values of a lot of his properties has to do with his name. Many of them are not his. they’re just — they slap his name on and the value increases and he gets a payment. So, the idea — what would you would normally do is you sell everything, because you can’t have a blind trust for a business that’s so visible. You have to sell everything. But that of course would impact the value. It would be a fire sale. He would never do that. He spent his entre life constructing this extremely closely held empire that all revolves around him and reflects him. It would require him to basically look back on the 30 years of his life he built this, and to say, that’s over forever. I’m now going to liquidate my holdings, and from now on, I’m president, and president only. Unless he does that, there is no answer to this. And every time he makes a phone call to a head of state where he has business interests, there will be questions.”
He added that the odds of Trump doing so are “close to zero, but then again, I said that about his chances of winning the presidency.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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