Public officials’ families should never benefit financially from that person’s political power, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said this week — and was immediately hit by a ferocious backlash.
Jordan took to the airwaves to defend an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden that has yet to uncover evidence of wrongdoing.
“When you do something that benefits your family financially and you’re a public official,” Jordan told Fox News viewers, “that’s not supposed to happen.”
Replied Shelby Kent-Stewart on X, “Jared and Ivanka, 'advisors' to Trump during his administration would like a word.”
Kent-Stewart was not the only viewer of Jordan’s problematic decree to take umbrage with his political allies’ financial forays.
MSNBC producer Steve Benen published Thursday a scathing screed both defending Biden and skewering Trump.
“I could spend a few paragraphs noting that there simply isn’t any evidence of Biden ever using his office to advance his family’s business interests,” Benen writes. “But that’s not the only problem here.”
The problem, for Benen and the thousands of people who’ve weighed in on X, is best summarized in a Politico report from January 2020, when Trump was still in the White House.
“Donald Trump has accomplished something no president before him has done: fusing his private business interests with America’s highest public office,” Anita Kumar wrote.
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“He has spent one out of every three days as president visiting one of his luxury resorts, hotels or golf courses,” wrote Anita Kumar. “He has leveraged his powerful international platform to promote his developments dozens of times. And he has directed millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to his businesses around the globe.”
As testimony from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization shows, Trump’s business was a family business.
This point was not lost upon viewers who took to X to comment.
“Is he joking here?” asked Dianne Callahan. “He perfectly described Donald J. Trump.”
Others took the opportunity to draw comparison to Rep. James Comer, who reportedly used a shell company and paid his brother $200,000, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom watchdog groups have accused of essentially laundering money through his wife Ginni.
“Hello,” wrote @DCelesteSpencer. “Comer did something that benefited him & his family.”
Added @dachipster, “I never expected Gym to come after Clarence Thomas so hard.”
