A promise made by Donald Trump as he ran for office in 2016 in which he vowed to disassociate himself from the Trump Organization after assuming his presidential duties was exposed as a pack of lies by testimony in his Manhattan hush money trial, an analyst wrote Friday.
The Washington Post's Philip Bump, the New York businessman assured voters, "If I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company. It’s peanuts," before asserting he wanted to, "Make America rich again and to make America great again.”
On another occasion he suggested he, “Would probably have my children run it [the Trump Organization] with my executives and I wouldn’t ever be involved because I wouldn’t care about anything but our country, anything.”
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According to Bump, on Thursday former White House aide Madeleine Westerhout dismantled those claims and more by pointing out Trump remained fully in control of his company and finances by essentially turning the Oval Office into the defacto headquarters of the Trump Org.
"Westerhout would regularly ask questions of Trump Organization employees and vice versa, she said. She coordinated with Trump's Trump Organization assistant, Rhona Graff, on Trump's schedule, calendar and personal mail. She said that, at first, she and Graff spoke weekly, if not daily," Bump reported before adding, "Trump’s businesses continued to make money during his presidency and, therefore, so did he."
The Washington Post analyst also noted the former president also took a little bit of the presidency with him after he was unceremoniously rejected by voters in 2020.
"After he left office, however, Trump integrated the presidential seal into his activities — including parts of an LIV Golf tournament hosted at his club in New Jersey," he wrote before concluding, "The Westerhout testimony made explicit what was already obvious: Trump’s pledge to set his business aside while he ran the country was never implemented. The two were intertwined and remain intertwined as he seeks reelection."
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