archie bunker wrote:
Doing business in any country can be illegal if a politician uses their position, and influence to aquire said business.
Or, does that just count for the red team.
Well, there are some fuzzy lines, I will admit. But there is one thing that is crystal clear to me. What rules apply to the red team also applies to the blue team.
With that in mind, I should remind you that Trump isn't in trouble because of his businesses. Yes, people complained that he didn't divest his businesses as previous presidents have done but no one was calling that a violation of the Constitution, just a departure from standard practice.
There were also complaints that he was using his position to enrich his businesses, which is one of those fuzzy lines created by the emoluments clause in the Constitution, but with Trump, the actions were pretty clear. He was using his office to arrange for events on his properties that he profits from. But he didn't actually get in trouble for that either and some people thought he should have, which put more pressure on the Democrats to take action... but they didn't.
Now as far as I know, there is no rule that says a politician's grown adult son can't sit on the board of a foreign company. In fact such a rule would be kind of stupid, wouldn't it? I mean what do we tell the grown adult with his own career? Sorry, but your mommy is a U.S. Representative so you have to quit?
The key question is, did Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden personally profit from the arrangement by leveraging their positions as lawmakers? THAT would be a violation of the Emoluments Clause, which again, the Democrats let Trump get away with. (So if the same rules apply, you can't take them down for that either)
But just having a son on the board of directors for some company doesn't prove any of that. Arranging for political events to be hosted by your business does. So the difference is Biden and Pelosi are suspected (so far without any evidence) of violating the emoluments clause and Trump is guilty beyond a doubt but just hasn't been prosecuted for it.
Now, what Trump DID get in trouble for is bribing the President of the Ukraine, which has got to be the dumbest thing any president has ever done.
So far, the red team hounds haven't found the slightest indication that ANY Democrat, much less the top ranking Democrats, have bribed or attempted to bribe (which is legally the same thing) or even acted like they were bribing anyone.
So if we ARE applying the same rules to both teams, the red team is losing BIG time.