The president, while serving as leader of the country, has also maintained his private life as an influential, even if toxic, social figure. In that light, even though precedent demanded that he completely separate himself from his businesses upon taking office, he did not do so. Instead, he has maintained a financial stake in his businesses and spent a significant amount of time there — to say the least — in the just under one year that he’s been in office.
According to NBC’s count, Trump has spent 117 of his first 352 days in office at a property branded with his own name. Ninety-one of those 117 days have been spent on the golf course.
Among the many events at the president’s properties held since he took office was the recent New Year’s Eve party held at Mar-a-Lago, and a surprising guest popped up at that event — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s son, Paul Pelosi Jr.
At least, his presence at the event is no doubt surprising for many of us. Although he didn’t return the San Francisco Chronicle’s call seeking comment, the publication did get in touch with his older sister Christine, who said that the family was “hardly surprised” that Paul had attended the event.
As she put it:
‘He is just an adventuring guy. Maybe he had a golf game.’
The president himself, of course, is an avid golfer, having gone out to the golf course essentially every day of his Christmas vacation to Mar-a-Lago from Christmas onward. Such was in spite of his Twitter assertion that he would be getting back to work after Christmas.
As for Paul himself, he chronicled his visit to Mar-a-Lago with an Instagram post featuring images of him posing with Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and unpaid adviser.
As a caption, he wrote:
‘May 2018 be filled with #love, #health, #everythingyoueverdreamed#happynewyear’
Trump has, notably, feuded with Paul Jr.’s mother in the past, but that didn’t stop the two of them from attending the same party, evidently.
Besides Trump and his daughter, also present at the New Year’s Eve event at Mar-a-Lago were Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.
Concurrent to this human interest story, there was a more troubling detail to come out of the president’s New Year’s Eve party. As the Chronicle notes, the price of a ticket to the event went up 30 percent since last year, from $575 to a whopping $750.
Both the existence of the event and the price increase are troubling, since, essentially, the president’s businesses are making money off of selling access to the commander-in-chief. That’s not at all promising for the future of the president’s decision-making, which has long been compromised because of his connections to his businesses.
A hotbed of conflict of interest creation is the president’s Washington, D.C., hotel, which has proven to attract political interests either wanting to stay on the president’s good side or wanting to get there.
Featured Image via Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images
