During a panel discussion on MSNBC's AM Joy, writers Paul Waldman and Kurt Eichenwald warned that President-elect Donald Trump and his family will use the power of his presidency to reap billions of dollars from foreign governments vying for favors from his administration and putting the U.S. at risk.
Noting that the Wall Street Journal recently called for Trump to liquidate all of his holdings in order to avoid conflicts of interest, Waldman explained Trump's business model and how he could profit as the most powerful leader on Earth.
'Trump is going to be turning over his business to his children and they are going to be going around the world doing deals in which it's very possible that not only foreign interests but even foreign governments could directly be putting money into Donald Trump's bank account," Waldman explained. "You have to understand that the way that Trump makes most of his money these days is with brand licensing. Buildings these days? He doesn't really do a lot of that. He'll go someplace and say to a developer in some foreign country, 'You're putting up a hotel or a resort and if you put the Trump name on it, I'll let you do that nad you'll pay me a couple of million dollars a year for the privilege of using that name."
"And that is a business that is absolutely just ripe for people who want to exercise influence with the United States government and shape the United States government policy by putting money into Donald Trump's bank account," he continued. "They could say, 'Okay, we'll give you this licensing deal, Ivanka, or Eric, or Donnie, and we'll pay you twice what you thought you were going to get.' And then when it comes time for the United States to make policy related to that government, is that going to affect the decisions that are made? I think it's becoming more and more clear that Trump is going to be using the presidency as an opportunity to make millions and millions and maybe even billions of dollars."
Eichenwald then pointed at the national security risk.
"The only way to avoid a conflict of interest where the financial interests of the president of the United States and his family are not playing a role in national security is through the liquidation of the Trump organization," he remarked. "It's simply not going to happen. so we are in for four years of what's driving American foreign policy, what goes into Donald Trump's pocket, what benefits his family, are they going to be in on other meetings, do they get to play the role of business people and then on the way out the door say to the prime minister of Japan, 'Oh, we're dealing with one of your friends on a hotel deal.' It is one of the most appalling things I have ever seen in government."
BEDMINSTER -- President-elect Donald Trump arrived at his golf course in northwestern New Jersey on Friday night for a weekend of meetings as he and his transition team continue to plot out who will serve in the Republican's administration. Gov. Chris Christie, and one of the team's vice chairs, was not in tow as Trump's motorcade…
Donald Trump on Saturday defended his decision to settle lawsuits over his Trump University real estate seminars for $25 million, saying he does not have time to fight the fraud cases in court now that he is headed to the White House.
The lawsuits cast a shadow over the Republican's presidential campaign and led to one of the more controversial moments of his run for the White House when he claimed the judge overseeing two of the cases was biased because he was of Mexican ancestry.
While denying any wrongdoing, Trump agreed on Friday to pay $25 million to settle the lawsuits.
"I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country," Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning.
"The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!" He said in a second tweet.
In announcing the settlement, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the deal followed repeated refusals by Trump "to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university."
In a statement, Schneiderman called the settlement a "stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university."
Students had claimed they were they were lured by false promises into paying up to $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate investing secrets from his hand-picked instructors. Trump's lawyers denied this.
The deal covers three lawsuits relating to Trump University: two class actions suits in California and a New York case brought by Schneiderman. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego must still approved the settlement.
During his election campaign, Trump said that Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, could not be impartial because of Trump's campaign pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to control illegal immigration.
(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Alistair Bell)
The recent U.S. election exposed two major intersecting fault lines in America that, if left unchecked, could soon produce an era of social and economic upheaval unlike any in our history.
First, it revealed deep divisions across racial, ethnic and gender lines that led to a surge in hate crimes last year, particularly against Muslims. Addressing this will require a sustained effort to heal these growing divisions and will be very difficult to resolve without strong leadership and a renewed willingness to listen to each other’s concerns.
The key to resolving this fault line – and the focus of this article – lies in mobilizing all sectors of society to work together to create good-quality jobs and get wages rising again for all. In short, America needs to build a new social contract based on mutual respect and attuned to the needs of today’s workforce and economy.
What do I mean by that? A social contract is what ties together the main stakeholders of an economy, its workers, business leaders, educators and government, and ensures each group meets it obligations to each other while also pursuing its own goals. Workers, for example, want good wages and careers and have an obligation to work productively and contribute to the success of their enterprise. Employers have to balance the expectations of investors, employees and customers.
Unfortunately, America’s social contract broke down in the 1980s when the gap between wage growth and productivity growth first started to appear, creating the conditions that spawned the frustrations we saw on the campaign trail this year. With the election of Donald Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, we should suffer no illusions that the process of building a new one will be led from Washington.
But as history teaches us, most social and economic shifts that improve lives don’t actually begin with a national policy anyway.
Thousands of spectators cheer as over a quarter million marchers show support for the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in a parade on Fifth Ave. in New York City on Sept. 13, 1933.
AP Photo
‘Laboratories for democracy’
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called states our “laboratories for democracy,” places where innovations and social movements are born and tested for their ability to address emerging tensions and show how to turn them into national policies.
That was how America’s last social contract, which grew out of the New Deal, began. The policies that composed it didn’t start with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s signature legislation establishing unemployment insurance, social security, disability pay, collective bargaining and minimum wages.
Rather, workers themselves laid the groundwork in the first few decades of the 20th century, when Sidney Hillman, then the leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, organized immigrants and developed the basic principles of collective bargaining.
States like Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New York, pressed by labor activists, enacted unemployment insurance, minimum wages and overtime protections. John R. Commons, who taught at the University of Wisconsin, has been called the intellectual father of the New Deal because he and his students helped shape and study these state-level innovations. They then went to Washington to help President Roosevelt write them into the laws that helped end the Great Depression and laid the foundation for an expanding middle class.
Changes like this rarely if ever begin in the corridors of power. They begin with just a few people, such as Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the suffragettes movement to get women the right to vote.
Unfortunately, the social contract broke down in the 1980s amid deregulation, attacks on unions, growing globalization and a deep recession that decimated Rust Belt manufacturing industries. The failure to replace it is a root cause, I would argue, of the wage stagnation, anger and political divisions the election brought to the fore.
President Roosevelt signed the Farm Relief-Inflationary Bill, which gave him extraordinary powers over monetary inflation as part of the New Deal, on May 12, 1933.
AP Photo
Workers at the forefront
With the election in the rear-view mirror, it is now time to begin the long process of building a new social contract that fits today’s economy, workforce and society, one that gives a genuine voice to the frustrated and channels their anger into action.
The good news is we are already well on our way, with many grassroots innovations across society that, if accelerated and expanded, could identify and shape its key features. The workforce itself is leading the way, with the help of labor organizations, community coalitions and what we might call “worker-centered entrepreneurs.”
Consider the Fight for 15, referring to efforts to secure a US$15 minimum wage. Its first visible victory was achieved in 2015 in Seattle. The strong public support there sent shock waves around the country, leading another 18 states to increase their minimum wages, including four in last week’s election.
Other new advocacy groups like Coworkers.org are using information campaigns and social media and other technology-aided apps to induce companies like Starbucks to reform scheduling practices to provide more advance notice and certainty over work schedules.
Unions and worker centers around the country are battling wage theft (failure to pay minimum wages or overtime), expanding training programs to more women, minorities and immigrants and supporting efforts to promote “common sense” economic strategies that provide good entry-level jobs, wages and career ladders.
Finally, a number of entrepreneurial ventures are emerging around the country such as the Workers’ Lab, an incubator that supports start-up nonprofits that are specifically designed to build new sources of bargaining power for worker and contractors. For example, Uber drivers in New York City and Seattle are beginning to organize into unions and guilds to gain a voice in the terms governing their compensation.
Out of these and still yet-to-be-invented strategies may emerge a techno-savvy, grassroots labor movement for the next generation.
Activist like this one helped convince four more states to increase their minimum wages this year.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
How business can help
Business leaders, for their part, are beginning to get the message that the era of prioritizing shareholders over all else needs to end. None other than JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, one of Wall Street’s most respected titans, said last summer that he would raise his employees’ wages because doing so is a good long-term investment.
He and his peers should use the same logic when they advise clients. By emphasizing long-term investing, they could help end the short-termism that has held back corporations from investing in workforce training and research and development – so essential to job creation.
Wall Street could also help lead the way and perhaps in concert with labor by creating infrastructure funds to help rebuild our roads and bridges, generating a good rate of return for their investors and the economy. Leaders from many groups – including President-elect Trump – recognize the need and value of repairing the nation’s infrastructure. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the power of bipartisanship, public-private partnerships and business-labor cooperation.
Some main street business leaders are already doing their part by competing on the basis of high-productivity, high-wage strategies that research shows achieve both strong profits and create and sustain good jobs for American workers.
Jamie Dimon said he gave his workers a raise because he believes doing so is a smart investment.
Photo by Paul Morigi/Invision for JPMorgan Chase & Co./AP Images
The role of education
In today’s knowledge-based economy, education leaders need to be counted as among the key stakeholders critical to building and sustaining a new social contract.
They and some philanthropic leaders active in funding education innovations are embracing what evidence tells us: There is nothing more important to educational attainment than a good teacher. And in states as diverse as Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois, teacher unions and education leaders are working together to expand learning time, support teacher development and encourage online courses aimed at helping workers refresh their skills in a world of fast-paced change. These efforts should be extended across the country.
If knowledge is power, then these educational innovations will equip today’s and tomorrow’s workforce with the tools they need to meet the challenges they are bound to experience over the course of their careers.
Seeds of a new social contract
So these are some of the seeds I see growing into a new social contract that restores hope among the marginalized.
What’s needed next is to bring these different stakeholders together to learn about what works and how to inform national policymakers so that successes can be spread.
We are doing just that in an effort to make MIT a place where leaders of these innovations come together to share experiences, stimulate research needed to document their successes, failures and lessons, and figure out ways to diffuse those that work to broader settings.
We started a “Good Companies-Good Jobs Initiative” with the Hitachi Foundation and are supporting efforts to improve relations and better manage and resolve workplace conflicts, such as through meetings, workshops and online courses. Our aim, as we expand these efforts, is to serve as a catalyst for further innovation to show our leaders what a new social contract might look like.
More than anything else, we all should continue to encourage local activism, protest and innovation. If history is a guide, that’s what it will take to eventually get leaders in Washington to listen and do their part to address these problems.
'Hamilton' actor Brandon Victor Dixon curtly replied to President-elect Donald Trump's early Saturday morning Twitter complaints that Vice President-elect Mike Pence was "harassed" by the cast of the popular play.
Saturday morning, Trump tweeted: "Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!"
The president-elect added: "The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!"
Trump's comments were misguided, as it was the audience who booed Trump, with a member of the cast reading a simple statement at the end of the evening stating that they hoped Pence learned something from the performance.
Resounding to Trump, cast member Dixon tweeted: "@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen."
CNN commentator Angela Rye made the rounds on Friday and appeared on a panel with Don Lemon to discuss some of the latest picks for President-Elect Donald Trump's administration.
Lemon started the segment off by asking panelists, "Can we just not fight, 'cause I am so tired."
Quoting Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Lemon said, "Instead of embracing the bigotry that fueled his campaign rallies, I urge President-Elect Trump to reverse his apparent decision to nominate Senator Jeff Sessions."
"How harshly do you expect Democrats to push back on this confirmation hearing?" Lemon asked the panel.
"Well they've already started and rightfully so," Rye started. "It's interesting to hear commentators all day say 'oh we're judging him off his record from 30 years ago' and that's not exactly true. There are a number of women who are frustrated about the fact that this is the same man who voted against the Violence Against Women's Act," she said.
She noted how Sessions also voted against "fairness in pay of women and men."
She said, "He's not an advocate for people of color, for Latinos and other folks who immigrate into the country. He's been a very strong opponent for black people — we can check the record — from calling a black man 'boy' while he was a USA attorney in Alabama."
"You have this major issue where this man's record consistently, from the '80s to today, flies in the face of what the Justice Department should be all about," she said.
Lemon asked Rye, "Following in the footsteps of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, how different do you think this department will be under Senator Sessions?"
Rye spoke truth, as usual, stating, "Well, we should call it the Department of Injustice, because that's exactly what it would be. He would undo everything they've done to work so hard to establish the Civil Rights Division and to make it a beacon of hope in this country."
President-Elect Donald Trump ran a campaign that he claimed he had funded on his own, in order to avoid the influences of lobbyists if he were to win the election. Trump claimed he didn't want to be bought, and that he would serve his supporters because of that.
Now a week after winning the 2016 election, Trump's transition team continues to receive advising from lobbyists — even after claiming that they would be removed from his team.
The Washington Post reports that some lobbyists remain directly involved in the transition team, while others serve as informal consultants.
Those who continue to work with Trump's transition team have reportedly filed paperwork to "deregister" from their lobbyist posts, which allegedly allows them to continue working with the Trump team, despite its new ban on lobbyists.
The ban was announced on Wednesday in response to backlash over the Trump team going back on their word.
Two lobbyists working with the team on energy policy, Mike McKenna and Mike Catanzaro, announced their resignation.
McKenna said in a statement, "Although I have reluctantly decided that I cannot continue on the transition in an official capacity, I am excited about continuing to work to make America great again."
On Friday night, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence took a break from leading Donald Trump's transition team and went to see "Hamilton" on Broadway.
Apparently when Pence entered the theatre for the show, he was booed by a lot of people, and the internet is loving it. Many people were shocked last week when Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, and they are not happy about Pence being in the White House either.
So, seeing Pence attending "Hamilton" had a lot of people up in arms, some thinking about how the "GOP is truly taking everything" good in life. Some New Yorkers have even planned to greet the former Indiana Governor outside the venue at 10:30 p.m. ET in protest.
UPDATE: At the close of the musical, the cast had a special message for Pence. "We are the diverse America that are alarmed and anxious that you and your administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir," he began. "We hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us."
Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who was joined by writer Jonathan Allen on Friday night, focused on an excerpt from Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions' 1986 confirmation hearings in which Sessions allegedly referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as "un-American" and "Communist."
Sessions faced scrutiny on Friday as many were quick to point to his past racist comments, such as referring to a black attorney as "boy" and joking that the KKK was only problematic after finding out that they allegedly smoked weed. These comments surfaced from a 500-plus page transcript of Sessions' confirmation hearings, as Right Wing Watch reported.
Carlson was not happy by the allegations that Sessions is racist, arguing that "Before you call someone racist ... you might have some facts." Allen pointed to Sessions' comments on the NAACP as fact, or proof of racial bias.
Carlson shot back, "Really? Because I think the NAACP is a totally discredited group," before asking, "Does that make me a racist? I mean, let's get back to reality a little bit."
The mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts is being attacked for his homosexuality with multiple messages and tweets. One note, however, went a little too far, he said.
According to a Mass Live report, 27-year-old Mayor Alex Morse received a hand-written note reading:
Alex,
You are one of the most selfish people that I know due to your "gay" lifestyle. You are going down.
It wasn't signed. He posted the message on his Facebook page Friday and said that most "anonymous mail" doesn't concern him. This letter he felt he needed to share, however. Since the November election, many LGBTQ people have been the target of homophobic and anti-gay attacks.
"Given we have a President-elect who just announced the appointment of an Attorney General who will do nothing to protect LGBTQ Americans and people of color, it's important to bring to light the progress we need to protect and the challenges still ahead," Morse wrote on his page.
In a separate interview with the Boston Globe, Morse said that this letter felt different.
“It’s different than writing a note that says, ‘I don’t support gay marriage,’ or ‘I don’t support rights for someone,’" he explained. "But to demean someone’s humanity based on their sexuality takes it to another level.”
After the election of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, Morse said it's important we all stand up and fight back. “It’s more important than ever before to speak out and come together,” he said.
TV anchor Connie Chung joined MSNBC's Steve Kornacki on Friday afternoon to discuss the results of the 2016 Election and what the media may have missed in the process.
"It is the burning question for all of us in the media," Chung said. "What happened early on for instance during the Republican primaries, is the media really unwittingly became promoters of Donald Trump."
She explained that this was "because the outrageous, inflammatory things he was saying were not taken seriously by the media, but he was on the television by every single outlet, including print media, and unwittingly the media became part of the process."
Chung discussed the ways in which the media described his campaign positively, whether intentional or not, by using words like "momentum," "increasing," "big crowds." Chung said, "These kinds of words connote positive impressions of his campaign."
"So, we were complicit," she said. "And I don't necessarily think that we meant to be, but we were." Chung commented on how the media was too late to taking Trump seriously.
"When we finally realized that he was a serious candidate — he was not only the nominee, but he was being taken seriously by the electorate — we started piling on and investigating him, never having done that in the beginning," she said.
Kornacki mentioned how last time Chung joined him, the two discussed the possibility that the country might soon see its first woman president. He asked whether there was any single thing in particular that Chung believed played a factor in her defeat, above others.
"She was the wrong woman," Chung said. "She was the wrong woman eight years ago and she was the wrong woman this time too. People just obviously didn't trust her. That's the thing that we all know so clearly."
She continued, laughing, "There was only one woman who won this election and that was Kellyanne Conway. She manipulated her boss so perfectly."
Poking fun at Conway, Chung said, "You could even hear him say it. She would say, 'stay on the issues' and he said one time when he was speaking, he said, 'Donald, stick with the issues, stick with the message.' It was as if she echoed in his ears. She should be Secretary of State. She could get ISIS to lay down their arms."
"She's the best handler that anyone has seen in decades," Chung said of Conway.
Listen to Chung's full reflections on the 2016 Election below.
This story was co-published with The Guardian. I would like to express my gratitude to Jared Kushner for reviving interest in my 2006 book, “ The Price of Admission.” I have never met or spoken with him, and it’s rare in this life to find such a selfless benefactor. Of course, I doubt he became Donald…
Even for a 2016 election campaign marked by rhetorical invective, the remarks President-elect Donald Trump and Mitt Romney made about each other in the run-up to the Nov. 8 vote were especially harsh.
Those exchanges make all the more significant Trump's plan to meet Romney, the unsuccessful 2012 Republican presidential candidate, on Saturday. A source familiar with the meeting said they may discuss whether Romney should be considered for secretary of state in a Trump administration.
Here are some of the things, kind and unkind, that Trump and Romney have said about each other.
* "Governor Romney, go out and get 'em. You can do it." - Trump endorsing Romney in February 2012
* "Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to understand how our economy works ... It means a great deal to me to have the endorsement of Mr. Trump." - Romney accepting the 2012 endorsement
* "Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark." - Romney speaking at a political forum in Utah in March
* "He was begging for my endorsement. I could’ve said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees,' and he would’ve dropped to his knees." - Trump at a March campaign rally responding to the Romney speech and describing how Romney had sought his endorsement in 2012
* "Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities. The bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics. Now, imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does." - Romney's anti-Trump speech in March
* "He failed horribly ... Mitt is indeed a choke artist." - Trump in March assessing Romney's presidential run
* "Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University." - Romney in March
* "Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist - but I am least racist person there is." - Trump tweet in June
* "I think his comments time and again appeal to the racist tendency that exists in some people and I think that's dangerous." - Romney in a CNN interview in June
* "Mitt Romney called to congratulate me on the win. Very nice!" - Trump tweet five days after the Nov. 8 election
(Compiled by Bill Trott in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller)
