Trump’s Presidency for Sale?

The Oath and The Office

This episode of 'The Oath and the Office' examines the constitutional implications of Donald Trump monetizing presidential communications th

Key takeaways

• Trump's Truth API effectively turns presidential communications into a paid commodity, enabling wealthy subscribers to gain early access to information that could influence financial markets.
• The monetization of presidential content violates the Constitution's emoluments clauses, which prohibit presidents from profiting from their office.

Main topics

• Monetization of presidential communications
• Emoluments clause violations

Notable quotes

'It's like you're monetizing the bully pulpit and then at the same time use the same technique to allow people into the orbit of those who look like they've already been engaging in insider trading.'

Conclusion

The episode underscores how Trump's actions represent not only personal profiteering but also a broader

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) If you're enjoying all the good news here at Good News for Lefties, then I have a feeling you're going to like our new podcast, Good Chats for Lefties. It's a brand new show, hosted by me, Beowulf Rocklin, where I talk with some of the people who help make good news happen. Officials, activists, organizers, and generally good people who I talk to about positive, progressive news and how we can get more of it. So keep calm, carry on, and listen to Good Chats for Lefties. Good Chats for Lefties. It's available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to quality audio content. Speaker 1 (0:47) Welcome to another episode of the Oath in the Office podcast, coming to you live from the United States of America, where we lead the world in presidents who hide in the back of food carts. I'm John Fugelsang, along with the star of the show, the author of The Oath in the Office, and the presidents and the people. If you needed a good reason to go study the Constitution in Ivy League universities, it's this man, Corey Brett Schneider. Good to see you, sir. Thanks so much, John. I'm looking Speaker 3 (1:12) forward to the discussion. It's, you know, depressing stuff that we're talking about, but talking to you somehow makes it uplifting at the same time. We find the hope in all of it. And, you know, one thing that's been on my mind since we've started the podcast is how much of the story is just about Trump and how much of it is about him spreading his corruption more widely. There's an idea in particular that a lot of political scientists are interested in. And I'll mention actually the law professor Aziz Hook has been writing about this, trying to look at the ideas of a Nazi era dissident who had an idea called the dual state. And the idea of the dual state was, look, Hitler has basically declared himself above the law, but there still is the apparatus of law operating in the background for everyone else. And so one of the questions of our own time is, is this something that's just about Trump or is the corruption going to spread? And as much as he remains the center of the story, I think some of the things that we'll talk about today are about the corruption spreading beyond him and beyond even his family. Speaker 1 (2:17) I mean, I think, you know, The stories we're going to cover today really speak to me to this subject we've covered before. What happens when a president keeps treating the powers and information of the presidency as his personal property rather than a public power? And I think the first story is the most constitutionally fascinating. And that is that Trump's media and technology group has launched this truth API, which is a service that costs about $100,000 a month. for all you MAGA voters out there. So you can get early access to posts from prominent true social accounts, including Trump's. Now, The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation professor have sued, and they're arguing that this whole setup really monetizes access to presidential communications for a privileged few. Reuters says the plaintiffs are contending the service could give paying subscribers an advantage when Trump's posts move financial markets. which to me sounds like they're admitting this is for rich douchebags manipulating the stock market. But what is your immediate constitutional reaction, sir, to the idea that a sitting president's communications can effectively be put behind a $100,000 a month paywall? Speaker 3 (3:24) Oh, it is a wild idea that you would charge journalists for access to the president, something that it's as if you're monetizing the bully pulpit and then at the same time use the same technique in order to basically allow people into the orbit of those who look like they've already been engaging in insider trading. We've talked before on this show about the fact that there's an account that hasn't been identified, but it seems to almost perfectly match notifications about the news of whether or not there's a ceasefire in the war in Iran and manipulating and betting to short oil markets in order to benefit from the ceasefire. Betting that oil will again go down in price when a ceasefire has been declared. That looks like it's either Trump or his family or somebody connected to him who has access to this instant information. So Speaker 2 (4:14) as the criticism comes, I guess he realized, well, I could monetize this. I don't just have to limit it to my Speaker 3 (4:19) accounts. We could give people early access. And it looks like a scheme to basically allow for, you know, paid inside information in order to manipulate the markets. Oh, not Donald Trump, Speaker 1 (4:32) Professor. Not Donald Trump. I mean, suppose he posts, like, I'm imposing a 25 % tariff on X tomorrow, and then a hedge fund. paying a hundred grand a month gets that information a few milliseconds or a few seconds before everybody else does. Is there a constitutional issue with converting presidential information into a private financial advantage for a select few citizens? Speaker 3 (4:58) Well, I mean, I think we could talk about it on two levels. One is certainly in terms of when you think about Article 2 and the oath of office, the point of the podcast, the job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to turn the office into personal profit. We've talked often about the emoluments clauses, the idea that you can't use the office for profit. It's listed twice in the Constitution, a domestic emoluments clause and an international one. George Washington talked about the emoluments clause. and pledged to take no emoluments in his first inaugural address to not profit from the office. This is the extreme, I mean, this is wild, the idea to which this is actually truly monetizing the office, both to journalists, but again, to these insider traders. And I guess I think, too, it is trying to create a sort of space of people who are above the law, who really don't play by the other rules of others, because the idea is, well, you can... You can trade this information if you buy access to Speaker 2 (5:57) it. Whether or not Speaker 3 (5:58) it's Speaker 2 (5:59) illegal Speaker 3 (5:59) or not, it probably isn't because he's giving enough access to the information that it isn't truly trading on private information. So it's not that these people are necessarily going to be prosecuted. Trump himself, of course, has immunity, although it's only supposed to be for official acts. And this strikes me as the definition of an unofficial act. Part of what's incentivizing him to do all this is he thinks and believes that he'll never be prosecuted for it. And unfortunately, that might be right. I Speaker 1 (6:28) mean, let's point out that in the last 10 years, no Congress and no Justice Department and not the Biden administration or the Trump administrations have ever cared about the emoluments clause. I mean, no one cares, Corey, right? Like we could have impeached Trump for this one minute into his first inaugural address. No one's going to go after him. We've just decided, nope, he can do it. But to me, it's like this lawsuit saying that the presidential communications are getting monetized through a private company where the president himself owns a substantial stake. So isn't the constitutional problem stronger? Trump's not just making money from an ordinary private business, which would be a violation of the emoluments clause, but potentially making money from information generated by the office of the presidency itself. He's getting a taste of this. Speaker 3 (7:19) And then also basically spreading the corruption throughout this group of people who are going to buy in. And so, yes, it strikes me as an extreme of something that should be illegal under laws that would operationalize, that would make real the emoluments clause. I mean, let me just say what I mean by that, because that's a confusing statement. So we have these two emoluments clauses, and you might think he can't do that. Let's prosecute him. First of all, who's going to prosecute him? That's part of the problem. Todd Blanch, he cares about the law, sir. Todd Blanch is all about the law, nothing else. But there's a deeper problem, and we've talked about this before in the podcast, but here it's really becoming salient, that those emoluments clauses don't have obvious pieces of law, legislation passed by Congress that turn them into criminal laws that could be used to prosecute a president. And that is a failure of the Congress to not pass. emoluments legislation. Now, it's not that, you know, I'm always trying to lean into optimism at the same time that I... that I want to tell the truth about what's going on here. And the optimism is that there are bills that have been introduced to Congress to do exactly this. They haven't been acted on yet, and they won't be acted on until we have a Democratic Congress. But I do believe that if Democrats take the House, these bills will move to the floor and we'll get a vote on them. And, you know, let Republicans vote against a bill that says you can't profit from the office, against the emoluments clause. I'm not sure that once we're at that point, they'll be willing to do that. Yeah, they will. They Speaker 1 (8:50) know Fox News won't cover it. They know Fox News won't cover it. So the folks back home will never know, Corey. Speaker 3 (8:57) Maybe, but if Democrats control the House, my point is they won't need the Republican votes or many of them. You know, they'll be able to get them through at least through the House. The Senate, you know, well, we're waiting to see, too. There is a chance that Democrats will take the Senate. And if they do, you know, we'll have the votes to at least pass it. Now, you know, that becomes interesting. politics too, when Trump vetoes it, now we have an override vote. It's very hard to override a veto, but it is of course possible. And once that override vote happens, maybe there will be the votes to Speaker 1 (9:27) override and maybe he'll be weak enough. That's the only way. I mean, like I'm stuck on this, Corey, if a president can monetize access to their official White House communications, what stops this presidency from just becoming a subscription service for oligarchs? Right. I mean, could a court actually order the president to change the way he communicates? Could that happen? Speaker 3 (9:48) Oh, I think you could make it, you know, just because something is communication doesn't mean that it's necessarily protected free speech or protected by a president. So if I order a I'm not going to do this, let's take a hypothetical person orders a murder over the phone. That's speech, but it's obviously illegal. Well, you could criminalize certain forms of corruption, including selling the office for profit. And that's what this legislation. would do. The other thing I don't want to lose sight of, and this is the optimism, again, if Democrats take the House, I'll just remind listeners, the way impeachment works, and this would be the third, we've only had four impeachments voted up by the House. We've never removed a president. Two of them were Donald Trump, one for the Zelensky demand for dirt on Joe Biden and his son in exchange for basically arms and funding to Ukraine, to Zelensky, that was the first. The second, January 6th, extremely paradigm, I think, of what impeachment is supposed to be about. And this would be the third. And you just need a majority of Democrats to do it. And I would put emoluments violations exactly these cases and this idea. I love how you said it, John. I don't want people to miss it. A subscription service to the presidency. That is almost the definition of an emoluments violation. So, you know, legislation, it gives us the need when you see the crimes and you think this isn't illegal. How could that be? that calls out for a vote on this kind of legislation. And then also, Absolutely. Top of the list impeachment for Speaker 2 (11:19) emoluments violations. And Speaker 3 (11:21) just to be clear, Speaker 2 (11:22) too. Sorry, I'm getting a little. Speaker 3 (11:23) Please, please, please. No. But just because we don't have criminal laws yet that make this illegal doesn't mean it's not a high crime and misdemeanor. You don't need a crime in order to have an impeachable offense. You need basically actions that undermine the office that are an assault on democracy. And this is a paradigm of what that means. Yeah. I mean, he's profiting off Speaker 1 (11:45) the office. And let me just. I'll get off this. I just, I have one last question on it. Does the constitution recognize any kind of real distinction between Donald Trump, the corrupt, amoral private businessman and Donald Trump, the corrupt, amoral president? Speaker 3 (12:00) You know, we could talk about what should be the case and then what is. And increasingly, the, you know, the way that the unitary executive theory has unfolded is it has, you know, I think the people who defend that theory, any constitutional scholar will say, of course, the president has certain obligations. In fact, when you look at Article 2 that creates the presidency, it's filled with duties that you have to pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Article 2 requires a president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And in my mind, there would be legislation, criminal laws that say if you violate those duties or if you attack democracy, you could be subject to not just impeachment, but to prosecution. Speaker 2 (12:46) But Speaker 3 (12:47) this Supreme Court has just done so much to enable a president. who, you know, they claim they're thinking about Ronald Reagan, but when they're dealing with a president who's using this powerful office to commit crimes and make money, they've just undone so much of what we would need to do. And front and center, of course, is that horrible immunity case that says that a president can't be prosecuted, Speaker 2 (13:10) at least for official duties. Speaker 3 (13:12) They Speaker 2 (13:12) want Speaker 1 (13:12) a king, Corey. They just, they want a king who's not held back by your woke laws. And can we wade deeper? Speaker 2 (13:18) into the corruption Speaker 1 (13:19) professor because the swamp is getting nastier. In many ways, it seems to be like the new corruption is just not going after existing corruption. And the government's willingness to investigate corruption itself is now on the chopping block. So Donald Trump put out an executive order in February of last year that directed the DOJ to stop any new investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. While the White House was reviewing their enforcement policy. I mean, I know with all the illegal wars and murdering Americans in the streets, this got overlooked. But the White House more or less said, stop looking for corrupt practices from foreign countries right now. And they said it on the grounds that the the FCPA enforcement would hurt American economic competitiveness and would interfere with presidential foreign policy authority. By investigating crimes committed by corrupt, amoral people, the president likes more than 99 percent of the population. This story is a little bit complicated, which makes it a bit more hard to outrage the American people. But, Corey, holy crap. Can a president just tell the DOJ to stop enforcing a federal criminal statute that Congress enacted? Can a president just say time out on enforcing these laws? You know, increasingly, Speaker 3 (14:40) you know, my answer is going to be the same. The more that you