Trump shouldn’t ‘put his children out of work,’ Giuliani says
WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani, a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, said Sunday that it would be “unrealistic” to remove Trump’s children from their roles in running his business empire and place the assets into a strict blind trust like the ones used by previous presidents.
“I think he’s in a very unusual situation,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He would basically put his children out of work,” he added, “and they’d have to go start a whole new business, and that would set up set up new problems.”
As president, Trump will not be required to sell his assets, which he has valued in billions of dollars. But the vast scope of Trump’s assets and business dealings is likely to lead to questions about how his actions as president would affect the financial fortunes of him and his family.
Most modern presidents have elected to use a blind trust, which puts their assets under the control of an independent trustee.
The financial arrangement was one of a number of questions surrounding Trump’s transition efforts, as his team moved toward announcing staff positions, tried to clarify the president-elect’s agenda and sought to reassure those still questioning his fitness for office.
Giuliani, a vice chairman of Trump’s transition team who is believed to be under consideration for various posts in the Trump administration, including attorney general, said that fears of a conflict of interest were groundless. He also said that Trump’s three adult children, who hold leadership positions in his businesses, would not advise him as president.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s surrogates on the campaign trail, in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
The three children, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, as well as Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, are members of the executive council of Trump’s transition committee. Once Trump takes office, Giuliani said, the president will erect “a wall between them with regard to government matters.”
“You have to have some confidence in the integrity of the president,” Giuliani said. “The man is an enormously wealthy man. I don’t think there’s any real fear or suspicion that he’s seeking to enrich himself by being president. If he wanted to enrich himself, he wouldn’t have run for president.”
Trump took to Twitter on Sunday morning to attack The New York Times for what he called “very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” of his rise. He said The Times had issued what amounted to an apology to readers.
The president-elect was apparently referring to a letter to readers from The Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its executive editor, Dean Baquet, that noted the unpredictable nature of the election and said The Times aimed to “rededicate” itself to “the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
In another Twitter post, Trump said The Times had falsely reported that he believed that additional nations should acquire nuclear arms.
However, in an interview in March with The Times, Trump, asked about the North Korean threat to its neighbors, said he thought that America’s allies might need their own nuclear deterrent.
“If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us,” he said. Later, he added, “The bottom line is, I think that frankly, as long as North Korea’s there, I think that Japan having a capability is something that maybe is going to happen whether we like it or not.”
Trump’s Twitter flurry came just days after he had said in an interview to be shown Sunday night on “60 Minutes” that “I’m going to be very restrained” on Twitter, “if I use it at all.”
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, batted down questions on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about who would fill key positions in the coming administration, and she argued that Trump’s victory had already demonstrated that he could bring together Democrats and Republicans.
Conway said she disagreed with Hillary Clinton’s remarks to donors on Saturday in which the candidate blamed the FBI director, James B. Comey, for her election defeat. The Clinton campaign “misread America,” Conway said, and ought to take ownership of its loss.
“I just can’t believe it’s always somebody else’s fault,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to take a look in the mirror and reflect on what went wrong.”
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, seeking to outline a prospective Republican legislative agenda for Trump’s first days in office, said on Sunday that Trump’s border security efforts included no plans to create a deportation force — a specter raised during the campaign.
“That’s not what we’re focused on,” Ryan said on “State of the Union.” “We’re focused on securing the border. We think that’s first and foremost before we get into any other immigration issue.”
