Last weekend, the New York Times published an outstanding, meticulously reported investigative story about Trump’s financial conflicts of interest — the sorts of things that could lead to forced divestiture, impeachment, or worse, triggering a tweetstorm from the president-elect about an imaginary, millions-strong cohort of fraudulent voters.
However, the story about Trump’s conflicts is still in the news — it refuses to die the way that Trump’s $25,000,000 fraud settlement did — so Trump is scraping the barrel for new things to distract the press with.
One of those subjects is flag-burning, a form of political speech twice deemed constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court (Trump says it isn’t, that people should be imprisoned and stripped of citizenship for participating in). Trump will get to appoint between one and three Supreme Court justices, and he says he’ll opt for a “strict constitutionalist” meaning that his court will uphold the First Amendment protections for flag-burners, so this isn’t a story.
The other subject is a revival of Trump’s evidence-free claims of voter fraud. These remain totally evidence-free (the only source for them, literally, is Alex Jones). Trump has attacked CNN for pointing this out. However, as he has nor provided any evidence to back his claim, this also remains a non-story.
The only story here is Trump’s conflicts of interest, and his manifest panic at the their exposure. Go re-read the Times story now and find out what’s got Trump so worried.
(Images: US flag burning, Jennifer Parr, CC-BY; Trump, Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA)
