Trump properties in the crosshairs
I’ve been saying since at least 2016 that we had a big problem with buildings all over the world being emblazoned with the president’s last name and not just because they are fetid corrupt swamps. They are also perfect terrorist targets against the man who talks like a cheap thug in public and constantly begs for retaliation.
One month after Trump was inaugurated I wrote about conflicts of interest and foreign targets and said this:
Politics are dirty, we know that. And we know that all the politicians are corrupt on one level or another because of it. But this is something else, people. It’s not normal. And those who are insisting that some of us are being hysterical because Obama-Clinton-Kerry etc are just as bad are simply refusing to see what’s in front of their faces. This is next level and it’s extremely dangerous.
Let’s see what happens when one of Trump’s properties gets attacked. He’s already convinced of “l’etat c’est moi.”
This has been an obvious problem from the beginning. Are Americans on the hook for protecting his properties? Looks like it:
President Trump’s real-estate company owns or manages buildings bearing the Trump name in Canada, Dubai, India, Indonesia, Ireland, the Philippines, Scotland, South Korea, St. Martin, Turkey and Uruguay. Those properties are all listed on the company’s website.
“[Iran] will look for the most opportune chance to strike back in a way that hurts President Trump personally,” Iran scholar Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said on a recent Lawfare podcast. “I will assume security around any Trump property is enhanced.”
On Jan. 5, an Iranian official who advises the country’s president hinted that Iran is, in fact, tracking Trump properties. Hesameddin Ashena, who runs the Iranian president’s research outfit, posted a tweet, without comment, linking to a Forbes web page on Trump’s personal wealth that lists 19 Trump properties, mostly in the United States. The Trump Organization owns those properties. Most of the firm’s international properties are owned by others, with the Trump Organization branding and managing them.
“We have ZERO problems with the American people,” Ashena wrote, in English, in a separate tweet. “Our sole problem is Trump. In the event of war, it is he who will bear full responsibility.”
This is yet another reason why it is completely daft to allow a president to continue to be in business in the US and around the world while he is president, particularly when he puts his name in huge letters on everything. And to do it when that president insults every foreigner and half of his own constituents in the crudest terms and has no respect for anyone who doesn’t lick his boots is just begging for trouble.
I couldn’t care less about any financial losses Trump and his spawn may suffer. But the people who live and work in any of his buildings don’t deserve to be targets. And the US shouldn’t have to use its resources to protect the president’s personal financial assets all over the world because he refused to divest himself of his businesses like every other modern president before him.
.