Since the 1960s, almost every U.S. president has acknowledged he should not personally profit off the job – or, at least, should avoid the appearance of doing so. Early in their terms, Democratic and Republican leaders alike have issued ethics guidelines for their administration. President Donald Trump did so shortly after taking office in 2017, using some of the same language as Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s ethics pledges.
This year, President Trump has not made such a promise.
He did not sign an ethics pledge for his presidential transition process, as is called for by law. And hours after being sworn into office, he rescinded former President Joe Biden’s ethics rules – without issuing a pledge covering his own administration.
Why We Wrote This
U.S. presidents traditionally have been expected to keep their own financial interests separate from political ones. President Donald Trump’s actions have defied norms and are causing some ethics watchdogs to say new laws are needed.
Even if Mr. Trump does eventually sign such an order, it’s unclear who will enforce it. In his first week in office, he fired the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, as well as 17 – or about 1 in 4 – of the inspectors general who serve in watchdog roles at various federal agencies (disregarding the 30-day notice to Congress required by law).
Of course, pledges themselves don’t guarantee ethical behavior by presidents or their administrations. During his first term, Mr. Trump raised ethical red flags by refusing to divest or put his financial holdings in a blind trust as did other presidents, saying that he would maintain a “wall of separation” between himself and The Trump Organization, which would be run by his sons. Foreign dignitaries frequently booked stays at Mr. Trump’s golf clubs and hotels throughout his tenure, which critics called a blatant form of currying favor. And Mr. Trump himself spent substantial amounts of time at his own properties during those four years, often with other high-level government officials – at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.
Now, less than three months into his second term, experts on ethics say Mr. Trump is pushing boundaries in new ways, reaping millions of dollars in the process. They also say that, given the prominence of business dealings in Mr. Trump’s own life and in his family, it becomes hard to know whether personal interests are operating alongside his political priorities for the nation, in actions ranging from tariff negotiations to a reshaping of government.
“In the first administration, what Trump was doing to make money off his presidency closely mirrored how he had always made money,” says Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington. But this second Trump term, he says, “is shaping up to be fundamentally different, both in type and scale.”
To the president’s supporters, such concerns are overblown. Mr. Trump has long had a reputation as an aggressive businessman unabashedly pursuing wealth and success, they say – and now he’s doing it for the country as well as for himself. Whether he’s following every ethics guideline or worrying about possible conflicts of interest doesn’t so much matter as long as he’s delivering results for America. Many also point to the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter as an example of how other first families have blatantly profiteered off the power of the presidency.
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, deputy press secretary for the White House, emailed in response to an inquiry for this article.
Still, ethics watchdogs say presidential self-dealing appears to have reached an unprecedented scale, with potentially huge amounts of money at stake. CREW estimates that during his first stint in the White House Mr. Trump made, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars – separate from the question of whether ethical lines were crossed or not. That far exceeds the $400,000 salary that he has declined. And it doesn’t include other administration officials and advisers with apparent conflicts of interest who could benefit personally from access to information and influence.
Tesla cars on the White House lawn
Before Mr. T
