tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/jared-kushner-37735/articlesJared Kushner – The Conversation2024-03-14T12:44:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222152024-03-14T12:44:55Z2024-03-14T12:44:55ZTrump nearly derailed democracy once − here’s what to watch out for in reelection campaign<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580558/original/file-20240307-22-g07jxw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6390%2C4780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We did win this election,' said then-President Donald Trump at the White House early on Nov. 4, 2020, on what was still election night.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-combination-of-pictures-created-on-november-04-2020-news-photo/1229450800?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elections are the bedrock of democracy, essential for choosing representatives and holding them accountable. </p>
<p>The U.S. is a flawed democracy. The Electoral College and the Senate make voters in less populous states far more influential than those in the more populous: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/how-fair-is-the-electoral-college/">Wyoming residents have almost four times the voting power of Californians</a>. </p>
<p>Ever since the Civil War, however, reforms have sought to remedy other flaws, ensuring that citizenship’s full benefits, including the right to vote, were provided to formerly enslaved people, women and Native Americans; establishing the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/369/186/">constitutional standard of one person, one vote</a>; and eliminating barriers to voting through the 1965 <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43626/15">Voting Rights Act</a>. </p>
<p>But the Supreme Court has, in recent years, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">narrowly construed the Voting Rights Act</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/18-422">limited courts’ ability to redress gerrymandering</a>, the drawing of voting districts to ensure one party wins. </p>
<p>The 2020 election revealed even more disturbing threats to democracy. As I explain in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/How-Autocrats-Seek-Power-Resistance-to-Trump-and-Trumpism/Abel/p/book/9781032625843">my book</a>, “How Autocrats Seek Power,” Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 but refused to accept the results. He tried every trick in the book – and then some – to alter the outcome of this bedrock exercise in democracy.</p>
<p>A recent New York Times story reports that when it comes to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-voters.html">Trump’s time in office and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election</a>, “voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics.” This, then, is a refresher about Trump’s handling of the election, both before and after Nov. 3, 2020.</p>
<p>Trump began with a classic autocrat’s strategy – casting doubt on elections in advance to lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable outcome.</p>
<p>Despite his efforts, Trump was unable to control or change the election results. And that was because of the work of others to stop him.</p>
<p>Here are four things Trump tried to do to flip the election in his favor – and examples of how he was stopped, both by individuals and democratic institutions.</p>
<p><strong>Anticipating defeat</strong> </p>
<p>Expecting to lose in November 2020, in part because of his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, <a href="https://time.com/5514115/trump-rampant-voter-fraud-texas/">Trump proclaimed that</a> “all over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant.” He called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/politics/trump-michigan-vote-by-mail.html">mail ballots “a very dangerous thing</a>.” Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and aide, declined to “commit one way or the other” about whether the election would be held in November, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/13/jared-kushner-election-delay-coronavirus/">because of the COVID pandemic</a>. No efforts to postpone the election ensued.</p>
<p>Trump warned that Russia and China would “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/us/politics/mail-in-voting-foreign-intervention.html">be able to forge ballots</a>,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/26/trumps-corruption-election-just-took-hit-theres-still-problem/">a myth echoed by Attorney General William Barr</a>. Trump illegally threatened to have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/trump-election-day-sheriffs/index.html">law enforcement officers at polling places</a>. He falsely asserted that Kamala Harris “doesn’t meet the requirements” for serving as vice president <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-2020-election.html?searchResultPosition=3">because her parents were immigrants</a>. Asked if he would agree to a transition if he lost, he responded: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/trump-power-transfer-2020-election.html">There’ll be a continuation</a>.” </p>
<p><strong>Threatening litigation</strong></p>
<p>Aware that polls showed Biden ahead by 8 percentage points, Trump declared, “As soon as that election is over, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/02/trump-lawyers-election-biden-pennsylvania/">we’re going in with our lawyers</a>,” and they did just that. Adviser Steve Bannon correctly predicted that on Election Night, “Trump’s gonna walk into the Oval (Office), tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/14/steve-bannon-leaked-audio-trump-jan-6-investigation/">Game over, suck on that</a>.’” </p>
<p>Trump followed the script, asserting at 2:30 am: “we did win this election. … <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/13/book-excerpt-i-alone-can-fix-it/">This is a major fraud in our nation</a>,” though the actual results weren’t clear until days later, when, on Nov. 7, the networks declared Biden had won.</p>
<p>Although many advisers said he had lost, Trump kept claiming fraud, repeating Rudy Giuliani’s false allegation that Dominion election machines had switched votes – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/us/politics/trump-jan-6-criminal-case.html;%20https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/us/politics/trump-meadows-republicans-congress-jan-6.html;%20https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">a lie for which Fox News agreed to pay $787 million</a> to settle the defamation case brought by Dominion.</p>
<p><strong>Taking direct action</strong></p>
<p>Trump allies pressured state legislators to create false, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/06/fake-trump-electors-ga-told-shroud-plans-secrecy-email-shows/">“alternative” slates of electors</a> as a key strategy for overturning the election. Trump contemplated declaring an emergency, ordering the military to seize voting machines and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-justice-department-overturn-election/2021/01/22/b7f0b9fa-5d1c-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html">replacing the attorney general with a yes-man</a> who would pressure state legislatures to change their electoral votes. </p>
<p><strong>Encouraging violence</strong></p>
<p>Trump summoned supporters to protest the Jan. 6 certification by Congress, boasted it would be “wild,” and encouraged them to march on the Capitol and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/11/14/million-maga-march-dc-protests/">“fight like hell,” promising to accompany them</a>. Once they had attacked the Capitol, he delayed for four hours before asking them to stop.</p>
<p>Yet Trump’s efforts to overturn the election failed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd of people with someone holding a sign that says 'Trump won the legal vote!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of Trump supporters, fueled by his spurious claims of voter fraud, flooded the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, protesting Congress’ expected certification of Joe Biden’s White House victory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowds-of-people-gather-as-us-president-donald-trump-speaks-news-photo/1230451810?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Resisting Trump</h2>
<p>Trump claimed that voting by mail produced rampant fraud, but state legislatures let <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-elections-coronavirus-pandemic-election-2020-campaign-2016-f6b627a5576014a55a7252e542e46508">voters vote by mail or in drop boxes</a> because of the pandemic. Postal Service workers delivered those ballots despite actions taken by Trump’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, that made processing and delivery more difficult.</p>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-election-2020-ap-top-news-politics-us-news-dc647214b5fc91cc29e776d8f4a4accf">DeJoy denied any sabotage</a> in testimony before Congress. </p>
<p>Most state election officials, regardless of party, loyally did their jobs, resisting Trump’s pressure to falsify the outcome. Courts rejected all but one of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2021/01/06/trumps-failed-efforts-overturn-election-numbers/4130307001/">Trump’s 62 lawsuits aimed at overturning the election</a>. Government lawyers refused to invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize the military to seize voting machines. The <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/12/19/trump-reportedly-asked-advisors-about-deploying-military-to-overturn-election/?sh=486535eece2b">military remained scrupulously apolitical</a>. And Vice President Mike Pence presided over the certification, in which 43 Republican senators and 75 Republican representatives joined all the Democrats to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-justice-department-overturn-election/2021/01/22/b7f0b9fa-5d1c-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html">declare Biden the winner</a>.</p>
<p>That experience contains invaluable lessons about what to expect in 2024 and how to defend the integrity of elections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222215/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard L. Abel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results. But the work of others, from lawmakers to judges to regular citizens, stopped him. There are cautionary lessons in that for the 2024 election.Richard L. Abel, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899812022-09-07T20:08:03Z2022-09-07T20:08:03ZJared Kushner’s memoir is a self-serving account of a hero’s triumphs but contains a great deal of fascinating detail<p>Jared Kushner is not the first presidential son-in-law to have held high office. President Woodrow Wilson leaned heavily on his talented and experienced Treasury Secretary, William McAdoo, who just happened to be his daughter’s husband. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Jared Kushner: Breaking History: A White House Memoir (Harper Collins)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>McAdoo, however, was a skilled politician, and his appointment had to be ratified by the US Senate. Kushner, who spent much of Donald Trump’s period in office as a senior advisor, and even at times a de facto chief of staff, was previously a real estate developer. </p>
<p>Kushner’s marriage to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was facilitated by Rupert Murdoch and his former wife. But that friendship had its limits, as Jared would discover when Rupert refused to override the call made by Fox News in its coverage of the 2020 elections that gave Arizona to Trump’s adversary, Joe Biden.</p>
<p>Kushner was one of Trump’s inner circle, with a wide-ranging set of briefs that appeared to cut across half a dozen departments. Breaking History reads rather like a dutiful student’s account of “what I did on my summer holidays”, except in this case Jared actually influenced US policies in a number of areas.</p>
<p>While making sure to properly acknowledge the <em>pater familias</em>, Kushner claims some big personal achievements: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Across four years, I helped negotiate the largest trade deal in history, pass bipartisan criminal justice reform, and launch Operation Warp Speed to deliver a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time … In what has become known as the Abraham Accords, five Muslim-majority countries signed peace agreements with Israel. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some of these claims are justified. In particular, the Trump administration did support some relaxing of the draconian penal restrictions that mean the US leads the world in incarcerations. Kushner’s account of building a bipartisan movement to modify some of these laws is important, even as it reminds us of the barbarity of much of the US justice system.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482902/original/file-20220906-25-uh3nfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kushner, left, and Ivanka Trump, right, sit with Kim Kardashian West, one of the celebrities who advocated for criminal justice reform, at the White House in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Evan Vucci/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kushner spent considerable time working with selected gulf states to develop what became the Abraham Accords, which saw four Arab states recognise Israel. His insight was that the various royal despots would ultimately collaborate in abandoning the Palestinians in the greater interest of building an anti-Iranian alliance, where they shared common concerns with Israel. It seems Kushner never met a ruler he didn’t like, nor one whose record on human rights was worth questioning.</p>
<p>Kushner seems blithely oblivious to the fact his close ties to Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which go back to childhood, and his own strong support for Israeli ambitions, might have restrained Palestinian enthusiasm for his peacemaking efforts.</p>
<p>In this he reminds one of his father-in-law, who never let sentiment get in the way of enthusiasm for making a deal. Remember how well that went with Kim Jong-un – and, yes, Jared and Ivanka were there when the two presidents met at the Demilitarised Military Zone between the two Koreas, but tactfully no more is said about the beautiful friendship Trump claimed was established.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482910/original/file-20220906-18-d3h2rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little is said about this ‘beautiful friendship’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">KCNA/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/personal-diplomacy-has-long-been-a-presidential-tactic-but-trump-adds-a-twist-105031">Personal diplomacy has long been a presidential tactic, but Trump adds a twist</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Telling silences and a magic touch</h2>
<p>After the outbreak of COVID, Kushner became a central player, along with Vice-President Mike Pence, in organising the national response. As with his account of the Abraham negotiations, there is a great deal of fascinating detail obscured by his need to be centre-stage. </p>
<p>That the US suffered <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=92adc94cf9f01fa6JmltdHM9MTY2MjMzNjAwMCZpZ3VpZD0wMWM1NDRjYi1lZGZjLTY4NmMtMWVlZi00YTUyZWM2YzY5NzgmaW5zaWQ9NTIwNQ&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=01c544cb-edfc-686c-1eef-4a52ec6c6978&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy5qaHUuZWR1L2RhdGEvbW9ydGFsaXR5&ntb=1">among the highest COVID death rates within rich countries</a>
is apparently not worth mentioning beside the achievements of our hero in mobilising the private sector and pharmaceutical giants.</p>
<p>In Kushner’s world everyone is at fault, except the Trump family. President Trump, it seems, was constantly let down by his advisers, the Republican establishment, foreign leaders – by everyone, in fact, but Jared and Ivanka. Donald’s wife and sons barely appear (thankfully Melania, Eric and Donald Jr were hardly noted for their interest in policy).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482905/original/file-20220906-22-7qwjay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Kushner’s world, everyone is at fault except the Trump family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Evan Vucci/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor, one might note, do either of the Australian prime ministers who dealt with Trump rate a mention. Kushner seems largely uninterested in democratically elected governments, although he does tell us of his friendship with former UK prime minister Boris Johnson. It seems that for four years, only the steady hand of President Trump, supported by his daughter and son-in-law, steered the US through perilous waters.</p>
<p>Breaking History suggests there were few areas of government where Jared’s magic touch was not required. As he says, when the president calls, you answer, even if it means missing sleep and meals. He notes the rapid turnover of officials in the administration, and has little praise for most of the cabinet, other than former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasurer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mnuchin">Steven Mnuchin</a>.</p>
<p>But sycophancy has its limits. One of the most revealing lines in the book comes in a reflection on the days after the 2020 elections: “Like millions of Americans, I was disappointed by the outcome of the election.” </p>
<p>Kushner makes no attempt to support claims the election was stolen, and passes over the attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, which he acknowledges was “wrong and unlawful”. His claim that had Trump anticipated violence he would have prevented it from happening has been essentially disproved in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-23/what-will-the-january-6-hearings-mean-for-donald-trump/101257384">recent hearings</a> into the January 6 attack.</p>
<h2>Analysing a morally corrupt presidency</h2>
<p>Donald Trump is known to be a lazy reader, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/25/trump-reading-kushner-book-breaking-history">although Kushner claimed last month</a> his father-in-law had started reading his book. Will he wade through the 400 or so pages of praise that come before the admission of electoral defeat? </p>
<p>One wonders whom else the book might attract. The prose is flat but grammatical, far removed from the overblown rhetoric and denunciations so beloved of the MAGA crowd. The book has been predictably panned by the New York Times and Washington Post, and largely ignored by Trump’s true believers, who far prefer the fiery speeches of Don Junior. But it would be wrong to ignore the insights into Washington and Middle Eastern policy-making that Kushner provides.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482900/original/file-20220906-5391-1cwez0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jared Kushner (right) and Benjamin Netanyahu make joint statements to the press about the Israeli-United Arab Emirates peace accords in Jerusalem, August 30 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Debbie Hill/EPA</span></span>
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<p>Even a morally corrupt presidency leaves a mark on the world that needs to be analysed. The plethora of books that have already appeared around the Trump presidency bear out Kushner’s claim to have been a key player across a number of crucial portfolios. </p>
<p>Indeed, the only other person to remain in “the room where it happened” through the entire four years was Pence, until his final break with Trump over the results of the 2020 elections. Now there’s a story Lin Manuel Miranda might consider as a follow-up to Hamilton.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Breaking History reads like a dutiful student’s account of ‘what I did on my summer holidays’. But Kushner provides useful insights into the Washington and Middle Eastern policy-making processes.Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843422022-06-07T13:31:40Z2022-06-07T13:31:40ZHow a public hearing is different from an investigation – and what that means for the Jan. 6 committee<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467251/original/file-20220606-13060-6986u0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C8155%2C5457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pro-Trump protesters approach the entrance to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/asset_images/467251/edit?content_id=184342">Win McNamee/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Thursday, June 9, the <a href="https://january6th.house.gov/">House Select Committee</a> to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol holds the first of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-donald-trump-government-and-politics-election-2020-presidential-elections-181597f4bcdb646eae9351bad301bd3a">several public hearings</a>.</p>
<p>The committee aims to lay out the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/05/us-capitol-attack-televised-hearing-january-6">results of months of investigative work</a> into the involvement of President Donald Trump and his political allies in the 2021 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. </p>
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<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Committee members and staff <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/04/jan-6-committee-set-make-its-case-public-with-prime-time-hearing/">reviewed more than 125,000 documents and conducted more than 1,000 interviews and depositions</a> with key witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies.</p>
<p>Blockbuster hearings are fascinating and even fun; they dominate the political and cultural conversation and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp8kFqycfFM">prompt movie stars to show up in “Saturday Night Live” cold opens</a>. But what do they actually accomplish? </p>
<p><a href="https://claireleavitt.com/">I am a scholar of Congressional oversight</a> and, in 2019, spent a year working on the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The question I field most often from curious students and peers is a simple one: What do these hearings do? </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of men and women, looking down at notes as they sit at a high table, all in a row." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467248/original/file-20220606-20-60gofv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson delivers remarks during a January 6th committee business meeting on Capitol Hill, March 28, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chairman-rep-bennie-thompson-delivers-remarks-during-a-news-photo/1239592215?adppopup=true">Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Culmination of the process</h2>
<p>First, a crucial distinction: Investigations are meant to acquire information, hearings are meant to present it. </p>
<p>While the committee’s public hearings will reveal new information about the insurrection to the American public, it is far less likely that the committee itself will learn something new. </p>
<p>The committee has not yet provided a list of witnesses, but former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, conservative lawyer and former Pence adviser J. Michael Luttig and former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/04/jan-6-committee-set-make-its-case-public-with-prime-time-hearing/">are likely to appear</a>. Recorded testimony of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner may be showcased. </p>
<p>High-profile hearings tend to be choreographed affairs, presenting a tightly woven narrative to the public. By now, most of the investigative work has already been done, and public hearings are best viewed as the culmination of the process. </p>
<p>This is not to say that public hearings are substantively unimportant. The upcoming hearings will outline, in detail, what happened in the weeks after the 2020 election and on the day of the attack. They will show the public “how one thing led to another, how one line of effort to overturn the election led to another and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adam-schiff-justice-department-mark-meadows-dan-scavino-deeply-troubling-face-the-nation/">ultimately led to terrible violence</a>,” as committee member Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, put it on June 5, 2022. </p>
<p>Official documents and witness testimony presented at committee hearings are compiled and maintained by the House and Senate. Committees publish most transcripts of public hearings. This public record serves as an important baseline and cache of information for future investigators, both inside and outside of Congress, and ensures that any member of the public has easy access to the most significant evidence. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Former President Donald Trump in a black coat, standing in front of many American flags, pointing his gloved finger at something." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467256/original/file-20220606-12-10i1yj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Defeated President Donald Trump at the rally in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6 to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory in the 2020 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-greets-the-crowd-at-the-stop-the-news-photo/1294918247?adppopup=true">Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>‘Just the facts’ approach</h2>
<p>More broadly, public hearings establish a shared foundation of facts that can inform short- and long-term debates – around the dinner table, in the media, in Congress and among scholars – over how major events should be interpreted. </p>
<p>Hearings also serve as a kind of preemptive justification for specific legal and legislative actions that may follow the investigation. For example, if the committee does end up <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/politics/jan-6-trump-criminal-referral.html">recommending criminal charges against Trump and his allies</a>, the hearings have already explained the legitimacy of these charges to the public. If the committee makes <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/05/january-6-committee-electoral-college-reforms">legislative recommendations to reform elections</a>, the public will have a better idea of why these changes are necessary.</p>
<p>The big question is whether these hearings will convince anybody of anything. </p>
<p>Political scientist Paul Light has said that the most effective investigative hearings are the ones that focus on careful, thorough and objective fact-finding rather than “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-the-house-should-investigate-the-trump-administration/">bright lights, perp walks and brutal questioning</a>.” </p>
<p>The reality is that hearings also provide members of Congress valuable opportunities to build their own “brands” by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1350218">staking out clear positions on controversial issues</a>, often by <a href="http://fordhamlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Chafetz-November-7.pdf">using dramatic and overwrought language</a>. These “presentational styles” <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/representational-style-in-congress/AD32D8ABA29E78C048B41077D64BDD9A">affect constituents’ views about how well they are being represented</a>. </p>
<p>Members recognize this dynamic themselves: In 2019, Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, referred to the House Oversight Committee on which he served as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/new-members-areprepared-%20battle-house-oversight-committee-n963751">“theater committee,” and maintained</a> that “you could make a grandma feel bad about making cookies for her grandkids if she’s sitting in front of you.” </p>
<p>Political science research has also established that investigative hearings are very useful weapons in the partisan wars: Inquiries targeting the president and the executive branch <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381613001448">can significantly diminish the president’s public approval</a>. </p>
<p>Thus, members on an investigative committee often find themselves facing contradictory options: They want the committee’s work to appear legitimate to the American people, but they also don’t want to pass up opportunities to burnish their own reputations and go viral on social media.</p>
<p>The Jan. 6th committee appears to have opted for a just-the-facts-ma’am approach to the public hearings. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/23/capitol-attack-panel-public-hearings-trump">Committee lawyers will do the bulk of the witness questioning</a>, deliberately making the witnesses’ information the focus rather than the personalities and rhetoric of the committee members. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dark-haired woman carrying a water bottle and with a bag slung over her should, leaves a building and walks on snow-covered pavement.." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467250/original/file-20220606-13103-f3rhii.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary for former President Donald Trump, departs on Jan. 5, 2022, after participating in a deposition meeting on Capitol Hill with the House select committee investigating the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/stephanie-grisham-former-press-secretary-for-former-news-photo/1362996682?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Aiming for credibility</h2>
<p>Committee members’ personalities will likely not play as big a role here as they ordinarily would. That’s especially important to the current panel’s credibility, considering its origins. </p>
<p>In May 2021, the Senate killed legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the attacks that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-riots-terrorist-attacks-donald-trump-capitol-siege-ac4cf46ad3e0617a045eb926d21945eb">would have been modeled on the 9/11 Commission</a>. The House instead established a select committee, with the support of only two Republicans. </p>
<p>Select committees are <a href="https://history.house.gov/Education/Fact-Sheets/Committees-Fact-Sheet2/#:%7E:text=Select%20committees%20are%20created%20by,studies%20rather%20than%20consider%20measures.">established by Congress to investigate a specific issue</a> and exist for a finite time period. Both Democrats and Republicans ordinarily serve on select committees, each appointed by their respective party leaders.</p>
<p>However, in an unprecedented move, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed two of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s picks, Trump allies Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana, arguing that their participation would jeopardize the “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/21/politics/nancy-pelosi-rejects-republicans-from-committee/index.html">integrity of the investigation</a>.” McCarthy responded by refusing to appoint any Republicans to the panel. </p>
<p>Two Republicans, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, agreed to serve as Pelosi appointees on the nine-member committee. Pelosi’s decision <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/03/trump-january-6-hearings-republicans">delegitimized the committee’s work in the eyes of Republican stalwarts</a>. But the Democratic speaker’s appointment of these two Republicans also made it possible for all members of the committee to work together collaboratively. Pelosi chose actual bipartisanship against the mere appearance of it. </p>
<p>And she may not even have had to sacrifice appearance: A staunch conservative like Liz Cheney and an outspoken progressive like Adam Schiff working alongside one another, I believe, presents a compelling picture of bipartisan cooperation to the larger swath of the public that doesn’t pay close attention to politics. </p>
<p>It is no accident that Cheney was made vice-chair of the committee and regularly appears alongside Democratic chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi at press conferences and committee meetings. There is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/02/house-jan-6-committee-popular-republicans-526092">broad public support for the Jan. 6th investigation</a> even as <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-are-moving-on-from-jan-6-even-if-congress-hasnt/">public attention to the attacks themselves has begun to wane</a>. </p>
<p>Pelosi may have gambled that having prominent and outspoken Trump allies on the committee would do more harm than good, since there is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00522.x">some evidence to suggest</a> that negative partisan attacks can diminish overall political engagement among the public. Public reception of the hearings will demonstrate whether Pelosi’s gambit paid off.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Leavitt has received funding from the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy. </span></em></p>On the eve of public hearings held by Congress’ January 6 investigative committee, a former oversight staffer for the House of Representatives explains what such hearings aim to accomplish.Claire Leavitt, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies, Grinnell CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1465102020-09-22T16:34:17Z2020-09-22T16:34:17ZProsecute Donald Trump for coronavirus crimes? No, but maybe Jared Kushner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359182/original/file-20200921-24-16pq36x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C99%2C5132%2C3203&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White House adviser Jared Kushner listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus at a White House briefing in April 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>He knew. He lied. People died.</p>
<p>This is the general argument for a potential criminal prosecution of U.S. President Donald Trump in light of journalist Bob Woodward’s recent revelations in his new book <em>Rage</em> about the president and COVID-19.</p>
<p>“This is deadly stuff,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658">Trump noted</a> in a February interview with Woodward. “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.” </p>
<p>Unable to stop talking, the president blathered on about his intention to “play down” the threat so as not to scare people — that is, the stock market.</p>
<p>Could these conversations become Exhibit A in a formal prosecution of Trump? Does his handling of the pandemic constitute criminal negligence rather than garden-variety incompetence? </p>
<h2>Criminal negligence</h2>
<p>Federal and state laws in the United States define criminal negligence as a <a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-15-05.html">gross or reckless</a> disregard for human life, resulting in serious injury or death. The prosecution must show that the defendant wasn’t just careless or mistaken, but that he acted in ways that no reasonable person ever would, with clear and deadly consequences for others. </p>
<p>A classic example — and, in the U.S., <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/121632/why-are-states-so-reluctant-prosecute-gun-negligence-crime">an all too common one</a> — is that of a parent leaving a loaded gun within easy reach of a child.</p>
<p>This spring and summer, Trump’s repeated statements about the coronavirus were in direct conflict with information that he knew to be true. His manifest disdain for safety measures certainly put people in danger; indeed, his recent <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/america-votes/trump-s-nevada-indoor-rally-site-fined-us-3-000-for-violating-state-law-1.5105080">rally in Nevada violated</a> that state’s pandemic guidelines.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trump plays down the threat of COVID-19 at a White House news conference. Source: CBC News, The National.</span></figcaption>
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<p>And yet the fact that he’s president also gives Trump some get-out-of-jail-free cards.</p>
<p>Criminal prosecutions generally require clear, one-to-one relationships between perpetrator and victim. Prosecutors would need to show that Trump himself caused the deaths of specific other persons. It’s much harder to establish guilt for collective suffering, especially with all the variables of COVID-19 infections.</p>
<h2>Wide range of responsibilities</h2>
<p>In his capacity as chief executive, Trump also receives a daily briefing about a huge range of national security threats. Whether he listens is unclear, but he could plausibly claim that being president involves a unique range of responsibilities and decisions — that he’s less akin to a negligent parent leaving a pistol next to his kid’s tricycle than to a fireman who confronts many fires at once. </p>
<p>He could also point to his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/business/china-travel-coronavirus.html">early ban on travel from China</a> as evidence that he acted on his information.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Trump speaks at the White House next to a COVID-19 graph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C288%2C5178%2C2485&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359179/original/file-20200921-14-czzgy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump speaks during a news conference on COVID-19 at the White House in July 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, government officials in general, and the president in particular, are often immune from prosecution for their actions in office. That principle isn’t as bad as it sounds. </p>
<p>After all, constitutional government depends on peaceful transitions of power, which in turn require that former office-holders live without fear of state sanction. Imagine a precedent that could enable a Republican administration, through the Attorney General’s office, to pursue Barack Obama for the deaths of U.S. personnel in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/17996104/benghazi-attack-clinton-obama">Benghazi</a> in 2012.</p>
<p>In short, Trump’s actions here were morally repellent, but they would be very hard to prosecute as criminal. In legal terms, he should be more worried about the more than two dozen women who have accused him of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/amy-dorris-donald-trump-women-who-accuse-sexual-misconduct">sexual assault</a>, not to mention further accusations of sexual misconduct, in ways he boasted about in 2005. </p>
<h2>A civil action?</h2>
<p>But the law offers another path to justice when it comes to the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>On April 2, 2020, shortly after Trump’s conversations with Woodward, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, announced that he would be helping Vice-President Mike Pence’s coronavirus task force with supply issues. Kushner also pledged to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-adds-coronavirus-to-duties-without-disaster-experience-2020-4?r=US&IR=T">“think outside the box.”</a></p>
<p>He did deliver a cache of N-95 masks to New York City. Yet Kushner’s outside-the-box thinking also brought a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/10/trump-murderer">sudden shift</a> in pandemic responsibilities from the national government to the various states. The task force also seems to have nixed its own plan for nationwide testing.</p>
<p>These decisions were objectively disastrous. Unable to draw on federal resources, states competed with one another for equipment. Testing lagged for crucial weeks, resulting in more infections and dead Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Jared Kushner points from behind a podium as he speaks at a news briefing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359181/original/file-20200921-24-gtpu1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Kushner speaks at a news briefing at the White House in August 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>At the time of these events, Kushner and some <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air">other members</a> of the task force —among them a Morgan Stanley executive and a Silicon Valley billionaire — were not elected officials. They were private citizens who, despite having no public health expertise, had assumed a specific responsibility to protect American citizens from the pandemic. They failed to do so. </p>
<p>According to a health official who worked closely with Kushner’s team, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-axed-for-political-reasons-report-2020-7">this failure was deliberate</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The political folks believed that because [the pandemic] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that will be an effective political strategy.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We may never know for sure. But we don’t have to. </p>
<h2>Monetary damages</h2>
<p>The relatives of people who died due to the wrongful or neglectful behaviour of other parties can bring a civil suit, seeking monetary damages rather than prison time. </p>
<p>In these “<a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/estates-powers-and-trusts-law/ept-sect-5-4-1.html">wrongful death suits,</a>” the plaintiffs don’t have to prove evil intent and deadly action beyond a reasonable doubt. They have to show a “preponderance of evidence” in support of the claim that another party is responsible for their loved ones’ death. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers wearing protective equipment place coffins in a trench." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359188/original/file-20200921-14-cmzsb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this April 2020 photo, workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York, where thousands died of COVID-19 infections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Minchillo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So the relatives of dead COVID-19 patients from those Democratic states could allege that Kushner’s team mishandled their specific responsibility. They could argue that the task force behaved in a negligent, careless or even malicious manner — that they were derelict in the performance of their duties — and that this resulted in the loss of a mother, a son, a sister, a father.</p>
<p>Monetary damages alone cannot set the world to rights. But by reminding us that many COVID-19 deaths in the United States were <em>wrongful</em> as well as tragic, they might also remind the American people that, against all the evidence from the past four years, justice can still be served.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146510/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J.M. Opal receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Could Trump’s remarks about the coronavirus to Bob Woodward become Exhibit A in a formal prosecution of the president on criminal negligence charges? Or is it Jared Kushner who should be worried?Jason Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1446512020-08-20T13:02:33Z2020-08-20T13:02:33ZWhat’s next for Arab-Israeli relations after the UAE deal?<p>Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have signed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/13/israel-and-uae-to-form-diplomatic-ties-says-donald-trump">a historic agreement</a> which makes the Emirates only the third Arab state to recognise Israel after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. </p>
<p>As part of the deal, dubbed the Abraham Accord, Israel has suspended highly controversial plans to annex the West Bank. But it has been viewed as a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/palestinians-gaza-rally-israel-uae-deal-200819114138805.html">treacherous betrayal</a> by many Palestinians. </p>
<p>For the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the normalisation of diplomatic ties between the two countries is hugely symbolic, leaving him as one of only three Israeli leaders to have brokered a peace agreement with an Arab state. Since the deal was signed on August 13, a flurry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/israel-and-uae-open-phone-link-after-historic-deal">of activity</a> has already taken place, both building on existing ties as well as opening up <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-israel-uae-ties-come-out-of-closet-businesses-are-abuzz-with-excitement/">new economic opportunities</a> heralded by many in Israel and the Emirates.</p>
<p>But though some have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/israel-uae.html">described the accord</a> as a “geopolitical earthquake”, the reality is that it changes very little. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/historic-israel-deal-wont-likely-bring-peace-to-the-middle-east-144480">'Historic' Israel deal won't likely bring peace to the Middle East</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Despite Palestinian anger, the Emirati decision to sign the accord has been met with a collective shrug from most states in the region, perhaps reflecting the shifting sands of regional security in recent years. Some Arab states may even be pleased at the deal, and Israel’s withdrawal of its threat to annex the West Bank. </p>
<p>This apathy is not surprising. In late 2017, the Trump administration <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-recognition-of-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-israel-means-for-the-middle-east-88722">recognised Jerusalem</a> as the capital of Israel. In previous years, this would have prompted widespread protest and strong rebukes from leaders in the region, yet there was little by way of criticism. </p>
<p>Looking back, it’s clear why the Trump administration, particularly the president’s son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner, portrayed the recognition of Jerusalem as a symbolic step in their broader efforts to cultivate a realignment in the Middle East, in which Israel and the UAE have increasingly found themselves on the same side.</p>
<h2>A common enemy</h2>
<p>Clandestine relations between Israel, the UAE and Gulf Arab states have <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/fraternal-enemies/">existed for decades</a> – driven by shared security concerns about Iran. But in recent years an informal normalisation between Israel and these states has also taken place through cultural, political and economic exchanges – perhaps most visibly in an Israeli invitation to the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-confirms-participation-in-2020-expo-world-fair-in-dubai/">2020 Dubai Expo</a>. </p>
<p>Although relations had improved from the 1990s, they picked up pace with the emergence of Iran as a common enemy. The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been at the forefront of regional politics since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Although the two countries experienced an apparent period of rapprochement in the decade before the US-led War on Terror, the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq opened up a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Saudi_Arabia_and_Iran.html?id=i-o_uQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">new front in their rivalry</a>. </p>
<p>After the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iranian actions in the region became increasingly belligerent, much to the chagrin of Gulf Arab leaders and their Israeli counterparts. During the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad between 2005-13, rhetoric from Gulf rulers <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13530194.2017.1343123">often matched</a> that of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM5qHo-Emgc">Israel</a> in calls for strikes against Iran.</p>
<h2>Realpolitik</h2>
<p>Israel fought a war with an Arab group, Hezbollah, as recently as 2006, and continues to exert control over Palestinian territory. But the shift brought by the formalisation of ties between the UAE and Israel has sacrificed some Palestinian grievances on the altar of realpolitik. </p>
<p>Alliances have long been burgeoning between the Gulf monarchies and Israel. The WikiLeaks cables revealed that in 2006, King Hamad of Bahrain <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06MANAMA1849_a.html">spoke of the need</a> for “real peace” with Israel so “we can all face Iran”. The new Israel-UAE agreement will do little to change the construction of this alliance against Iran, but it could open up broader intra-Sunni rivalries in the region, most notably with Turkey. Ankara has begun to play a more assertive role in regional politics and is increasingly positioning itself on the other side of issues to Israel and the UAE, <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-libya-security-emirates-turkey/uae-official-tells-turkey-to-stop-meddling-in-arab-affairs-over-libya-idUKKBN24X3KQ">notably in Libya</a>. </p>
<h2>No expectations for Saudi Arabia</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/analysts-more-countries-follow-suit-after-israeluae-agreement">Many expect</a> Bahrain, Morocco and Oman to follow the Emirati lead but don’t expect Saudi Arabia follow suit quite yet. This is <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-economic-interests-normalise-israel-jared-kushner">despite claims</a> by Kushner that it would be “very good” for Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel.</p>
<p>Unlike the UAE, the Saudi state derives a great deal of its legitimacy from being the protectors of Muslims across the world. The Palestinian cause has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Kings_and_Presidents.html?id=QR6DDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">occupied a central, if superficial</a>, role in the kingdom’s regional activity since before the establishment of the state of Israel. This has <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/fraternal-enemies/">not stopped</a> Saudi Arabia from engaging with Israel in a clandestine manner – but broader engagement will not be forthcoming <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/donald-trump-expects-saudi-arabia-join-uae-israel-deal-200820070824861.html">until there is a peace accord</a> with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>This points to perhaps the most serious tension across the region – between <a href="https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/9781526126474/9781526126474.00014.xml?rskey=5W9X5w&result=5">rulers and ruled</a>. While rulers may be open to formal relations with Israel, there remains a <a href="https://www.arabbarometer.org/2020/01/israel-or-iran-which-is-the-greater-perceived-threat-copy/">widespread perception</a> among people in the region that it is Israel, and not Iran, which poses the greater threat to regional security. </p>
<p>The coronavirus pandemic has <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/07/14/na071420-five-charts-that-illustrate-covid19s-impact-on-the-middle-east-and-central-asia">exacerbated</a> existing political, social and economic pressures across the Middle East. With these tensions straining relations between rulers and ruled, it’s likely that many rulers will be cautious about following the Emirati lead, out of fear that it may provoke unrest at home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Mabon receives funding from Carnegie Corporation. </span></em></p>Why other Arab states may be cautious about following the Emirati lead and normalising relations with Israel.Simon Mabon, Professor of International Relations, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1160242019-05-06T10:37:11Z2019-05-06T10:37:11ZWhy the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan shouldn’t be released<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272087/original/file-20190501-113835-12nshju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the same day, May 14, 2018, Palestinians protest near the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip (left) while dignitaries applaud the opening ceremony of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem (right). </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Israel-Palestinians/c1d294196a1e4f9790b26b834db5a9d0/6/0">AP/ADEL HANA, LEFT, AND SEBASTIAN SCHEINER</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dead on arrival. </p>
<p>That’s what almost every expert predicts will be the fate of the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>As the author of the new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-9780190625337?cc=us&lang=en&">“The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know,”</a> I share this view.</p>
<h2>Low expectations</h2>
<p>Developed in secrecy for the past two years by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, along with Trump’s longtime lawyers Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman (now U.S. ambassador to Israel), the <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/424071-us-envoy-uss-peace-plan-for-israel-and-palestinian-delayed-several">peace plan’s release has been repeatedly postponed</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/kushner-middle-east-peace-plan-to-be-unveiled-after-ramadan/2019/04/23/bc231efc-65e1-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html?utm_term=.84d854421c7c">According to news reports</a>, it will finally be made public sometime next month. That’s after the new Israeli government is formed and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends. </p>
<p>You might think that a plan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinian-trump/in-leaky-white-house-trump-team-keeps-middle-east-peace-plan-secret-idUSKCN1RM2GQ">cloaked in secrecy</a>, aimed at achieving what President Trump has called the “deal of the century” to end the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, would be eagerly anticipated and widely welcomed. </p>
<p>But it seems that no one is enthusiastically waiting for this plan or ready to embrace it, least of all <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/israeli-minister-dismisses-trump-peace-plan-as-waste-of-time">Israelis</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/42463144-5d14-11e9-939a-341f5ada9d40">Palestinians</a>. Even President Trump has kept his distance from the plan and, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/it-might-be-the-trump-peace-plan-but-officials-say-he-hasnt-actually-seen-it/">reportedly, hasn’t read it in full</a>.</p>
<p>About the only thing the Trump administration’s peace plan has going for it is the fact that nobody expects it to succeed. With expectations so low, there’s less risk that the likely failure of the plan will trigger another round of Israeli-Palestinian violence. </p>
<p>That’s what happened previously when U.S.-led efforts to make peace failed. The Second Intifada, for example, <a href="https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/220/378#a105">erupted shortly after the failure of the peace talks at Camp David in July 2000</a>. </p>
<h2>Dim chance of success</h2>
<p>There are many reasons why Kushner’s peace plan seems doomed to fail. Some of these are the Trump administration’s own making. </p>
<p>President Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html">recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017</a> – with no mention of Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem. Since then, relations between his administration and the Palestinian leadership based in the West Bank have gone from bad to worse. </p>
<p>The administration has taken a series of punitive actions against Palestinians. They include <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/us/politics/trump-unrwa-palestinians.html">ending U.S. funding for the U.N. agency responsible for Palestinian refugees</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-palestinians/trump-cuts-more-than-200-million-in-u-s-aid-to-palestinians-idUSKCN1L923C">slashing aid to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/10/trump-plo-office-close-washington-813574">closing the PLO’s office in Washington, D.C.</a> and even <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/410345/us-eliminates-funding-for-israeli-palestinian-coexistence-programs/">eliminating funding for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence programs</a>.</p>
<p>But those actions have not forced the Palestinian leadership to be more compliant and compromising. </p>
<p>Instead, the measures <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5495813,00.html">stiffened their resistance to American pressure</a> while angering and alienating the Palestinian public, who have <a href="https://www.apnews.com/3fad5d9e1fb94159a95decb08623e7d2">suffered as a result of the cutbacks in U.S. aid</a>.</p>
<p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/rejecting-trump-abbas-at-un-says-us-too-biased-to-mediate-talks-with-israel/">railed against the Trump administration’s pro-Israel bias</a>, and the Palestinian Authority that Abbas heads has <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-aide-we-wont-meet-with-kushner-greenblatt-or-any-us-officials-on-peace/">refused to meet with or talk to Trump administration officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Political aspirations vs. money</h2>
<p>Even if President Abbas were not so hostile to the Trump administration and vice versa, he would never accept the terms of the peace plan that Kushner and company have devised. </p>
<p>Although its details remain secret, its broad outlines have gradually emerged. </p>
<p>In exchange for a massive infusion of aid and investment financed by wealthy Arab gulf states, the Palestinians would have to accept Israeli settlements deep inside the West Bank, Israel’s permanent control over the Jordan Valley and a long-term Israeli military presence in the West Bank, where <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html">roughly 2.8 million Palestinians live</a>. </p>
<p>The Palestinians would also have to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/jordan/.premium-why-jordan-is-worried-about-trump-s-peace-plan-1.6198909?=&ts=_1529868895903">abandon their demand for a capital in East Jerusalem</a> and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-s-peace-plan-will-not-include-sovereign-palestinian-state-report-says-1.7120374">maybe even give up their decades-long quest for sovereign statehood</a>. </p>
<p>No Palestinian leader would agree to these terms, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/01/23/israeli-palestinian-conflict-is-not-bankruptcy-sale-pub-78208">which effectively amount to a surrender to long-time Israeli demands, not a peace agreement based on mutual compromise</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-un/un-bemoans-unsustainable-palestinian-economy-idUSKCN1LS2ON">Palestinians desperately need economic opportunities</a>. But I doubt they will pressure their leadership to capitulate – <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/jared-kushner-criticizes-abbas-in-rare-palestinian-newspaper-interview-1.6200287">as Kushner apparently hopes they will</a> – or forsake their long struggle for national self-determination. </p>
<p>And many younger Palestinians, who are less committed to the goal of Palestinian statehood, would <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2018/07/20/palestinians-israel-abbas-gaza-west-bank-peace-pa-palestinian-authority-hamas-1016978.html">prefer to have Israeli citizenship</a> than live in a small, fragmented, autonomous Palestinian entity. </p>
<p>Nor will Arab states like <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/saudis-say-u-s-peace-plan-must-include-e-j-l-as-palestinian-capital-1.6319323">Saudi Arabia force the Palestinians to accept such a one-sided deal</a>. Kushner’s friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, might be <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-Arabia-offered-Abbas-10-billion-to-accept-Trumps-peace-plan-report-588294">willing to offer Abbas billions of dollars</a>, but that won’t entice Abbas to give up Palestinian political aspirations and territorial demands.</p>
<h2>Prelude to Israeli annexation</h2>
<p>While the Palestinians are bound to reject the Trump administration’s peace plan, the Israelis are unlikely to fully embrace it, despite its decidedly pro-Israel bent. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu will certainly be careful not to antagonize President Trump, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/middleeast/netanyahu-trump-election-scandal.html">with whom he has forged a friendship and political alliance</a>. </p>
<p>But he will also be careful not to lose the support of his coalition partners on which the survival of his government depends. </p>
<p>It seems likely that Netanyahu’s government will include <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-slate-to-offer-pm-immunity-law-in-exchange-for-settlement-annexation/">far-right parties that want Israel to annex the West Bank</a>, in whole or in part. They will object to any plan that cedes West Bank territory to the Palestinians, since they regard it as sacred land that belongs to the Jewish people for eternity.</p>
<p>I believe there is a real risk that a new, right-wing Israeli government will seize upon Palestinian rejection of Kushner’s peace plan to justify annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-settlements/israels-netanyahu-says-plans-to-annex-settlements-in-west-bank-if-reelected-idUSKCN1RI0JY">television interview</a> shortly before the recent Israeli election, Netanyahu promised to extend Israeli sovereignty to its settlements in the West Bank. This was undoubtedly a last-minute bid by Netanyahu to convince right-wing Israelis, especially settlers, to vote for his Likud Party. </p>
<p>Yet Netanyahu may have no choice but to fulfill this promise if he forms a right-wing government with a slim parliamentary majority. The inevitable failure of Kushner’s peace plan might give him the perfect opportunity to do this – with American acquiescence, if not support.</p>
<p>To avoid this danger, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/trump-israel-golan-heights.html">potentially dire consequences that could follow from Israel’s annexation of its West Bank settlements</a>, I think it would be better if the Trump administration just kept its peace plan to itself.</p>
<p>Releasing the plan will probably do more harm than good. It almost certainly won’t bring peace, and it could ultimately lead to a severe deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dov Waxman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>About the only thing the Trump administration’s peace plan has going for it is the fact that no one expects it to work. And the plan’s likely failure could trigger more Israeli-Palestinian violence.Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, International Affairs and Israel Studies, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1011502018-08-10T10:24:14Z2018-08-10T10:24:14ZWhat Jared Kushner’s ‘deal of the century’ would mean for Palestinian refugees<p><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-tried-strip-palestinians-refugee-status-1058860">Leaked emails</a> from Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and appointed steward of the Israel-Palestine conflict, are shedding light on his planned “deal of the century” for peace in the Middle East. In extracts published by <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-israel-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refugee-status-for-millions-of-palestinians-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-unrwa-israel-palestine-peace-plan-jared-kushner-greenb/">Foreign Policy magazine</a>, Kushner proposes “disrupting” the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency (<a href="https://www.unrwa.org">UNRWA</a>) and ending the refugee status of 5m Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.</p>
<p>Although the emails have not been published in full, these snippets are highly revealing. Kushner’s move against UNRWA marks the next stage in the Trump administration’s plan. In January 2018 – the same month that Kushner sent these emails – Trump announced <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-cuts-aid-to-palestinian-refugees-and-throws-their-future-into-doubt-90282">drastic cuts</a> in <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948322497602220032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E948322497602220032&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F01%2F03%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-tweets-nuclear-button.html">US aid to UNRWA</a>.</p>
<p>There are signs that defunding UNRWA is just the first stage of a much grander strategy; Kushner is also reportedly <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143">pressuring Jordan</a> to strip the 2m Palestinians living there of their refugee status. But even taken on its own, dissolving the agency would have catastrophic consequences.</p>
<h2>Out of the picture</h2>
<p>UNRWA currently provides <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/what-we-do">emergency aid, education and healthcare</a> to the Middle East’s millions of Palestinian refugees. Many live below the poverty line, and would have little or no support if UNRWA’s services were to end, with their host states lacking the necessary resources to step in.</p>
<p>The impact would be political as well as humanitarian. The <a href="http://www.fmreview.org/palestine/rempel.html">status of the refugees</a>, who lost their homes in the 1948 war, has long been one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians. UNRWA’s work by definition implies <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-with-anti-unrwa-campaign-trump-tries-to-destroy-a-palestinian-asset-1.6358965?utm_term=20180807-10%3A01&utm_campaign=Amira+Hass&utm_medium=email&writerAlerts=true&utm_source=smartfocus&utm_content=www.haaretz.com%2Fmiddle-east-news%2Fpalestinians%2F1.6358965">international recognition</a> of the refugees’ situation and underlines their lawful <a href="http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/palestinian-refugees-and-the-right-of-return-in-international-law/">right of return</a>. </p>
<p>If UNRWA were dissolved while the refugees remained stateless, <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2018/02/funding-legacy-american/">that would imply</a> that the contentious <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/543787384.pdf">question</a> of their future and status had been resolved. On these grounds, the Palestinian Authority has <a href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/reports-reveal-kushner-plan-to-dismantle-unrwa/">condemned</a> the Kushner plan as an attempt to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-abbas-kushner-report-proves-u-s-wants-to-erase-palestinian-issue-1.6341547">remove refugees from the equation</a> and erase their right of return, effectively denying them any chance of future citizenship in Israel-Palestine.</p>
<p>On the other side, critics of UNRWA – including Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/11/israeli-pm-calls-un-dismantle-palestinian-aid-agency/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_fb">Benjamin Netanyahu</a> – contend that the agency <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/paradoxes-unrwa-palestine-refugees-israel-usa-trump-cuts-2">perpetuates the Palestinian refugee crisis</a> by supporting the refugees in their current situation rather than helping pursue a political solution, and by <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace-humanitarian-goals-and-hate-free-education/">promoting anti-Israeli feeling</a>. According to this view, the agency’s dissolution would improve prospects for peace.</p>
<p>The reality suggests the opposite. UNRWA is <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/perpetuate-conflict-perpetuates/">a product rather than a cause</a> of the conflict, which will continue even if the agency is abolished. Stripping millions of people of basic welfare is more likely to heighten tensions than calm them. Israel would pay a price too; as an occupying power, it is legally obliged to safeguard the basic needs of the population living in areas it controls, but since UNRWA currently alleviates some of its obligations by providing essential services to 800,000 registered refugees in the <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/west-bank">West Bank</a> and more than 1m in <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip">Gaza</a>, the Israeli government is under far less pressure than it could be to take primary responsibility for their welfare.</p>
<p>Kushner himself seems aware of the potential damage, writing in one email that the US should “risk breaking things” to get results. None of the leaked extracts includes any provision for minimising the fallout. But the US administration’s opposition to UNRWA isn’t just about the refugees it serves. This is part of a broader strategy to redraw the fundamental contours of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” as a whole.</p>
<h2>Dismantling Oslo</h2>
<p>For more than 20 years, this process has been operating on the framework laid out in the 1993 <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">Oslo Accords</a>. <a href="http://www.acpr.org.il/publications/books/43-Zero-oslo-accord.pdf">Oslo</a> established terms for a five-year interim period, to be followed by a full final peace agreement. It identified seven so-called <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198298915.001.0001/acprof-9780198298915-chapter-14">permanent status</a> issues – including that of the refugees – to be determined as part of this final agreement.</p>
<p>While every previous US administration since 1993 has endorsed this framework, Trump has been steadily working to take each of the permanent status issues off the table.</p>
<p>First, the administration recognised <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-recognition-of-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-israel-means-for-the-middle-east-88722">Jerusalem</a> – deemed the most important final status issue – as the unified capital of Israel. Appearing to acknowledge his strategy, Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948322497602220032">explicitly described</a> the move as “taking Jerusalem off the table”. The recent opening of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-embassy-in-jerusalem-opens-amid-violence-4-essential-reads-96590">new US embassy</a> in the city dashed Palestinian hopes that East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of their future state.</p>
<p>According to the Oslo framework, the Palestinian refugees’ future is the second most important permanent status issue; by mooting the abolition of UNRWA, the Trump administration seems to be planning to take this one off the table too.</p>
<p>The evidence suggests that the administration has similar plans for the third issue: Israeli settlements. In contrast to the Obama administration’s strong <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/choosing-not-to-veto-obama-lets-anti-settlement-resolution-pass-at-un-security-council/">condemnation</a> of settlement activity in the West Bank, Trump has been mostly quiet on the issue. Kushner, along with ambassador David Friedman, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/PLO-Secretary-General-Nation-State-Law-destroys-two-state-solution-563237">supported</a> Israel’s recent <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-bill-explained-apartheid-netanyahu-democracy">Nation-State Law</a>, which promotes “Jewish settlement” as a national value.</p>
<p>The four remaining permanent status issues are security arrangements, borders, international relations, and common interests such as allocation of water supplies. The Trump administration’s plans for each of these remains to be seen. Yet even if they are left on the table, the elimination of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements will leave the Palestinians – already the weaker party – exceptionally vulnerable. By gradually eliminating the permanent status issues, the Trump administration is working to severely restrict the scope of any final deal, with the aim of compelling the Palestinians to capitulate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Irfan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It seems the Trump administration is determined to unpick the delicate threads of the Israel-Palestine peace process.Anne Irfan, Teaching Fellow in Middle Eastern History, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/933822018-03-14T15:09:57Z2018-03-14T15:09:57ZRex Tillerson and the shambles of Trump’s ‘family and friends’ foreign policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210314/original/file-20180314-113482-1hc81kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To fire one adviser is a misfortune. To fire two appears careless. To fire yet another through Twitter can really only be described as an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43391982">omnishambles</a>.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear. As Donald Trump uses a tweet to dismiss secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the conduct of US foreign policy is at its most chaotic point since 1945. Even in the dying months of the Nixon administration, with Henry Kissinger trying to prop up an often-drunk and sometimes-drugged president, there was a semblance of competence and order.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"973540316656623616"}"></div></p>
<p>In 2018, we have a chief executive who relies on Fox TV and was called a “f****** moron” by the secretary of state he has now removed. The State Department is gutted: seven of nine top posts are now vacant even after current CIA Director Mike Pompeo is confirmed to replace Tillerson. Hundreds of other positions remain unfilled or have been slashed, and a budget cut of more than 30% looms on the immediate horizon. In its place, foreign policy is driven on an ad hoc basis by the whims of Trump and the interests – political and financial – of family and friends: son-in-law Jared Kushner, hard-right adviser <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/12/stephen-miller-31-year-old-senior-adviser-behind-donald-trumps/">Stephen Miller</a>, yes-man Pompeo, billonaire commerce secretary Wilbur Ross. </p>
<h2>No crossing the Trump ego…or the family</h2>
<p>Tillerson’s termination was both long-planned and sudden. The main driver for his departure is a combination of a president who needs to be in the spotlight and a son-in-law who wants to share that light as chief foreign policy adviser.</p>
<p>Trump never forgot the “f****** moron” remark – reportedly made during a meeting of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/16/rex-tillerson-at-the-breaking-point?irgwc=1&utm_medium=10078&utm_campaign=Online%20Tracking%20Link&utm_source=IR&irgwc=1&utm_medium=Skimbit%2C%20Ltd.&utm_campaign=Online%20Tracking%20Link&utm_source=IR">top security advisers</a>. He bristled whenever Tillerson made a comment which grabbed media attention, such as when he revealed last December that the US was ready to talk to North Korea.</p>
<p>In the hours before he was fired, Tillerson had again taken over from Trump. This time he declared that the US would stand in alliance with the UK over Russia’s suspected attack on former spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Julia on English soil. The president had himself been notably quiet on the topic and certainly did not offer his overt support to the UK.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/jared-kushner-37735">Kushner faction</a> saw Tillerson as a major obstacle, too. Trump’s son-in-law might be the envoy to the Middle East, declaring that he will bring peace to the region. He might be the key contact for Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammad Bin Salman. He might have Russian links – some of which involve his business. He might see himself as the mover-and-shaker in discussions with China, Israel, the UAE, and Mexico (all of whom identified Kushner’s eagerness and financial interests as vulnerabilities which can be exploited). But as long as Tillerson was in post, Trump’s wannabe Kissinger would always play second fiddle.</p>
<p>So last December, Kushner’s group started telling the media that the secretary of state was out and would be replaced by Pompeo by the start of 2018. They could not quite get Trump to pull the trigger then, but the pressure was sustained with the help of allies in the media, who cast doubt on Tillerson’s loyalty to Trump. There was a foreign element, too – both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with ties to Kushner, railed about Tillerson because he called for moderation in their blockade of Qatar. His position was further weakened because of staff demoralised by department cuts.</p>
<p>The Kushner camp’s chance came when Tillerson left for Africa while Trump fumed over the Russia investigation. With the president desperate for credit for his I’m-meeting-Kim manoeuvre – and possibly seeing Tillerson as casting shade on it – the pressure paid off.</p>
<h2>McMaster next to go?</h2>
<p>Last summer, after months of White House turmoil and amid the expanding Russia inquiry, the story was that the military figures in the administration would maintain a semblance of order over foreign policy. General Jim Mattis was the bulwark as defense secretary since Trump took office. General <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/hr-mcmaster-threatened-to-quit-white-house-trump-2018-3?r=US&IR=T">H R McMaster</a> had replaced Michael Flynn (forced out because of his Russia links) as national security adviser. General John Kelly became chief of staff.</p>
<p>But Kelly, far from containing Trump, has increasingly provided cover for the president’s whims. And with Tillerson out of the way, McMaster could be vulnerable.</p>
<p>The Kushner faction are no fans of the national security adviser, and he is also a villain for the hard right which has had so much influence with Trump. An immediate threat was removed when White House chief strategist and hard-right icon Bannon was dismissed last August, but paradoxically the firing only fed the determination of Bannon’s allies – using outlets such as Breitbart and Fox – to oust the general.</p>
<p>A #McMasterOut campaign, fed on social media not only by domestic opponents but by Russian-linked accounts, came up short in the autumn. But already, as Trump hinted at more dismissals on Tuesday with his “I’m close to getting the Cabinet I want”, McMaster’s name is at the top of the list for Downfall of the Day.</p>
<p>Tillerson’s firing means that almost half of the White House staff from January 2017 are gone. The chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, was the most recent to give up, after the protectionists surrounding the president – such as Wilbur Ross – got their tariffs on steel and aluminium. Even Trump’s close confidante, communications director Hope Hicks, has jumped.</p>
<p>As special counsel Robert Mueller closes in on Trump, and as foreign affairs are just too complicated to understand let alone control, the president has an ever-decreasing inner circle to give him comfort and the affirmation that he is #Winning.</p>
<p>Still, there is always Jared and daughter Ivanka. Stephen Miller, the scourge of immigrants and the author of Trumpian insults like “Little Rocket Man”, holds forth. Pompeo is brought in as a defender of the camp. That won’t reassure American allies, from Canada to South Korea to Europe. But Donald Trump’s priority is not American allies. It is not even the presidency, at least in the orderly and effective manner in which it is supposed to operate.</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s priority is Donald Trump. All else – including a US foreign policy for a modicum of stability – falls before this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The secretary of state entered the firing line even before he uttered his infamous ‘f****** moron’ comment.Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/914462018-02-20T13:46:56Z2018-02-20T13:46:56ZWhy it’s so hard to make sense of Trump’s foreign policy<p>Under Donald Trump, trying to predict, dissect and understand the US’s attitude to the world has become almost impossible – not that plenty of observers aren’t giving it a go. Tellingly, they’re all coming to different conclusions.</p>
<p>Some see a spiral into outright chaos, citing the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40026828">strain on crucial alliances</a>, Trump’s <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/trumps-vladimir-putin-national-security-nightmare">strange embrace of Vladimir Putin</a>, and his reckless rhetoric, which sometimes gets to the point of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/trump-warns-north-korea-threats-will-be-met-with-fire-and-fury.html">implicitly threatening nuclear war</a>. </p>
<p>Other analysts claim to identify some semblance of order, but they disagree profoundly on what that order is. To some, Trump’s “America First” theme is an <a href="http://time.com/4820160/trump-america-first-global-leadership/">isolationist rallying cry</a>, with its implications of economic protectionism and rejection of international agreements; others see an administration <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/01/the-trump-presidency-ushers-in-a-new-age-of-militarism/?utm_term=.76e06dd80664">even more committed to military intervention</a> than its predecessors. And still others say that for all Trump’s sound and fury, <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-foreign-and-defence-policy-trumps-us-is-more-about-continuity-than-change-76201">not much has changed</a> – that US foreign policy, for better or worse, is hewing to the same methods and objectives pursued in the Obama era.</p>
<p>So how can we cut through all this noise and really make sense of it all? In the interests of clarity (and perhaps sanity) the first thing is to recognise that there isn’t just one Trump foreign policy. There are several. They frustrate each other with various irreconcilable differences. And collectively, they add up not to a coherent US strategy, nor even an incoherent one, but instead a gaping hole where a strategy should be.</p>
<h2>The family-and-friends foreign policy</h2>
<p>One key difference from his predecessors is Trump’s promotion in certain areas of a foreign policy set and pursued on an ad hoc basis by his family and their business allies. That approach has radically altered, even dismantled, the longstanding US approach to the Middle East – and in particular to the Israel-Palestine conflict.</p>
<p>Instead of assigning someone with relevant experience to handle what may be the world’s single most intractable dispute, Trump instead tapped his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner has no grounding in Middle Eastern affairs, nor even in diplomatic negotiations more generally. Having failed to disclose his meetings with foreign officials before Trump became president, he <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-without-security-clearance-after-one-year-white-house-783965">doesn’t even have a full security clearance</a>. And yet Trump reportedly <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/1/16077600/jared-kushner-middle-east-peace-leaked-interview">told him</a>, with not a hint of irony: “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can.”</p>
<p>The reckless cronyism doesn’t stop there. To assist Kushner, Trump chose <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/an-unlikely-negotiator-jason-greenblatt-is-pushing-ahead-by-listening-up/">Jason Greenblatt</a>, the executive vice-president and chief legal officer to Donald Trump and The Trump Organisation. The administration’s chosen US Ambassador to Israel, <a href="https://il.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/our-ambassador/">David Friedman</a>, was previously a member of the law firm Kasowitz, Hoff, Benson and Torres – which represents Donald Trump. Along with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-kushner/for-hardline-west-bank-settlers-jared-kushners-their-man-idUSKBN15G4W2">Kushner</a>, both have <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-does-trump-s-negotiator-think-about-a-two-state-solution-1.5478326">helped</a> <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/friedman-blasts-haaretz-after-writer-calls-out-settlement-donations-1.5806064">support</a> (individually or through foundations) Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while the Kushner Company continues to do business in Israel. </p>
<p>With Trump’s family and friends running the show, it seems that American influence in the Middle East writ large is no longer a sure thing. More than a year later, as Saudi Arabia still goes about its deadly business in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-yemeni-women-are-fighting-the-war-89951">Yemen</a>, and the Syrian conflict <a href="https://theconversation.com/syria-update-why-no-one-is-really-winning-the-war-89947">remains intractable</a>, this triad’s chief accomplishment has been to antagonise most of the world and endanger the peace process by having the US <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-recognition-of-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-israel-means-for-the-middle-east-88722">recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital</a>.</p>
<h2>The Twitter foreign policy</h2>
<p>Then there are Trump’s tweets, which too often drive the global news cycle at the US’s reputational expense. His 280-character missives can recalibrate America’s foreign policy posture in an instant – whether <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/914497947517227008">contradicting his own secretary of state</a> on North Korea, <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/trump-germany-3294763-Mar2017/">denouncing fellow NATO members</a>, blowing hot and cold over <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/946416486054285314">China</a>, or souring the “special relationship” with the UK by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/04/trump-berates-london-mayor-sadiq-khan-terror-attacks">deriding the mayor of London</a> and blithely retweeting videos from the far right Islamophobic group <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-britain-first-the-far-right-group-retweeted-by-donald-trump-88407">Britain First</a>.</p>
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<p>What matters here isn’t just the content, but that Trump actually revels in the chaos it creates. As he <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-05/trump-s-unpredictable-starting-now-foreign-policy-already-here">said</a> in his first speech on foreign policy during the campaign: “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.” </p>
<p>Trump probably did not think of his statement as a reworking of the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-madman-strategy-north-korea-nuclear-weapons/">Nixon-Kissinger “madman” ploy</a> of the 1970s. Nor is he likely to have thought through its effects. What matters, in the end, is capturing the world’s attention and settling petty scores.</p>
<h2>The alt-right foreign policy</h2>
<p>Before Trump’s ascendancy, the “alt-right” had little direct influence on policy of any kind. But with Trump elected, its leaders suddenly had their foot in the door. Led by hard right White House chief strategist <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/steve-bannon-launches-his-big-foreign-policy-crusade-22881">Steve Bannon</a>, they pushed for confrontation with China and detachment from NATO as well as protectionism and departure from international agreements such as the Paris climate agreement. Bannon put himself on a key committee of the National Security Council, along with Fox News commentator-turned-Deputy National Security Adviser <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/03/politics/kt-mcfarland-donald-trump/index.html">K T McFarland</a>.</p>
<p>As 2017 unwound, the the “firebreathers” were eventually checked by pragmatists. General H R McMaster, brought in as National Security Adviser in March, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/5/15191532/bannon-removed-nsc-mcmaster-trump">removed Bannon from the National Security Council</a> (he was later <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-bannon-back-at-breitbart-what-will-war-mean-for-the-white-house-82787">fired by Trump altogether</a>). Senior staff <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/derek-harvey-trump-middle-east-adviser-dismissed-241037">Derek Harvey</a> and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/nsc-ezra-cohen-watnick/index.html">Ezra Cohen-Watnick</a> were dismissed, as was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/09/kt-mcfarland-national-security-council-singapore-ambassador">McFarland</a>.</p>
<p>But one of the alt-right’s polyps is still at the heart of the Trump operation. <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/stephen-miller-duke-donald-trump">Stephen Miller</a>, who within two years went from e-mail spammer of Washington journalists to senior White House adviser, is not only the main architect of the crackdown on immigration but also the speechwriter behind Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly/">provocative UN General Assembly debut</a> in September 2017 – an address that railed against “a small group of rogue regimes”, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, and called its leader Kim Jong-un “Rocket Man”. </p>
<p>As far as Miller is concerned, it seems, the more incendiary and derisory the US government’s tone, the better – whatever the diplomatic and strategic consequences.</p>
<h2>The institutional foreign policy</h2>
<p>These competing tendencies are a brutal test for the structures of US foreign policy, and the stewards of those institutions are clearly on high alert. </p>
<p>McMaster, Defence Secretary James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are all trying to contain Trump and his inner circle. They have championed the US’s traditional alliances, taken charge of operations in areas such as Afghanistan and Syria, toned down Trump’s fire-and-fury threats to North Korea by discreetly encouraging a diplomatic path, and tried to curb some of the family’s inclinations – especially a Saudi-first approach that threatens the security of a key American military base in Qatar.</p>
<p>But it’s hard to win a fight against true chaos. Kushner and his allies can brief the media against the pragmatists. Trump’s profound impulsiveness can unsettle any plan, especially given his widely reported <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.1d12a0afa593">lack</a> <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/666931/donald-trump-allknowing-knownothing">of</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/the-wolff-lines-on-trump-that-ring-unambiguously-true-1515262293-78cf5551-daf2-4c2e-a3de-83da6971f578.html">knowledge</a>. And those who do know what they’re doing are jumping ship: Tillerson has overseen a dramatic depletion of expertise at the State Department, with <a href="http://www.govexec.com/management/2018/02/state-department-lost-12-its-foreign-affairs-specialists-trumps-first-8-months/145874/">12% of foreign service officers departing in just eight months</a>.</p>
<h2>America on the sidelines</h2>
<p>Amid all the competing philosophies and factions, the only thing that’s certain is <a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-missile-test-how-trumps-unpredictability-changes-the-game-77908">unpredictability</a>. The administration has issued a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/new-national-security-strategy-new-era/">National Security Strategy</a>, but with all the chaos and policy clash the inexpert Trump constantly introduces, any “strategy” is doomed to the paper shredder.</p>
<p>And just as Trump’s agencies try to contain him, other countries try to contain the US by sidelining it. Russia has <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/middleeast/2017/10/syria-war-russia-dominates-astana-talks-171031162925260.html">seized the initiative in Syria</a>; Iran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-iraq-iranian-power.html">wants it in Iraq</a>; Saudi Arabia pursues it from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29319423">Yemen</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-lebanon-faces-another-crisis-and-what-saudi-arabia-stands-to-lose-87287">Lebanon</a>; Turkey warns that it may <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-us-alliance-with-turkey-just-lunged-toward-the-breaking-point/2018/01/23/ebd8c576-008d-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html">walk away from the Americans altogether</a>, and China increasingly calls the shots in East Asia, from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-leaders-and-citizens-are-losing-patience-with-north-korea-75262">North Korean problem</a> to the <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2133864/chinas-rising-challenge-us-raises-risk-south-china-sea">South China Sea</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-silk-road-is-all-part-of-its-grand-strategy-for-global-influence-70862">economic development</a>. Even European partners are thinking twice about their reliance on what no longer looks like a dependable superpower.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, US-based analysts scramble to find a framework that can express what’s going on while still conveying some sense of American primacy. “Soft power”, which under Obama became “<a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/06/hillary-clinton-doctrine-obama-interventionist-tough-minded-president/">smart power</a>”, is now proclaimed as “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-01-24/how-sharp-power-threatens-soft-power">sharp power</a>”. And all the while, US power – if measured in the respect for America at the centre of global affairs – plummets in the opinion polling of peoples across the planet.</p>
<p>In his UN speech in September, Trump declared, “As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interests above all else.” It remains to be seen, for all his “American First” front, how his multiple foreign policies are defending those interests.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>On February 21, Scott Lucas joined the panel for The Conversation’s joint event with the British Academy, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trump-how-to-understand-an-unconventional-president-tickets-42320948095">Trump: How to understand an unconventional President</a>. You can watch a video of the discussion on our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConversationUK/">Facebook page</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump doesn’t have one foreign policy – he has several, and they all clash.Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/896752018-01-12T13:46:10Z2018-01-12T13:46:10ZTrump is an unfit president – when will his backers run out of uses for him?<p>A week after the release of a book depicting him as not intelligent enough and not mentally fit to be trusted as commander-in-chief, Donald Trump has done it again. On the same day he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42657954">cancelled a visit to London</a> to open the new US embassy there, a move many interpreted as an attempt to avoid embarrassing protests, he embarrassed himself further by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politics/trump-shithole-countries.html">demanding</a> to know why the US deigns to accept immigrants from “shithole countries”.</p>
<p>Before this latest outburst, the White House had spent a week trying in vain to rise above the account of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, which uses the words of people in Trump’s White House and inner circle to argue that Trump, in the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/16/rex-tillerson-at-the-breaking-point">alleged private words</a> of secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is a “fucking moron”. Having failed to block the book’s publication and instead <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/04/trump-lawyers-book-steve-bannon-white-house">hastened it</a>, the White House pivoted instead to denigrating Wolff and one of his primary sources, the former White House chief strategist and Trump ally Steve Bannon. </p>
<p>Trump pursued the mission with both anger and enthusiasm via his favourite medium, Twitter, slamming the book as “really boring and untruthful” and dismissing Bannon as “Sloppy Steve”.</p>
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<p>Besides reinforcing his image as a temperamental, ill-informed man-child, Trump’s counter-attack misses the point. Even if Wolff is a huckster peddling dubious quotes, as <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/04/michael-wolff-fire-fury-credibility-325399">more than a few journalists</a> claim, others have been <a href="https://www.axios.com/the-wolff-lines-on-trump-that-ring-unambiguously-true-2522675021.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic">spreading the message</a> publicly and privately since the day Trump took office.</p>
<p>Chief among them, via his own actions and words, is Trump himself. But there’s also <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-senators-overheard-hot-mic-crazy-susan-collins-jack-reed-senate-subcommittee-a7860221.html">Democratic senator Jack Reed</a>, who in July 2017 told his Republican counterpart Susan Collins, “I think – I think he’s crazy. I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.” Collins responded: “I’m worried.” Republican senator Bob Corker, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/bob-corker-criticizes-trump-charlottesville/index.html">said</a> that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful” and later <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-bob-corker-white-house-republican-adult-day-care-center-donald-twitter-president-attack-a7989176.html">called the White House</a> “an adult day care centre”.</p>
<p>The cabinet, too, are more than worried. Besides Tillerson’s reported contempt, Trump’s secretary of defence, James Mattis, and his chief of staff, John Kelly have reportedly <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/john-kelly-james-mattis-donald-trump-us-generals-marines-secret-pact-white-house-defence-homeland-a7872116.html">made a pact</a> that one of them will be in the US at all times. </p>
<p>But in Wolff’s account, the foremost figure to question Trump’s faculties is Steve Bannon, the hard-right ideologue who arguably <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-radical-anti-conservatism-of-stephen-bannon/496796/">propelled Trump to victory</a>.</p>
<h2>Treasonous and unpatriotic</h2>
<p>Wolff depicts a Bannon out for himself and his agenda, even at the cost of tearing down Trump and his family. “Javanka”, the husband-wife team of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka, meet with Bannon’s unbridled derision: Kushner is financially compromised, including by Russians, and Ivanka is “dumb as a brick”. The elder Trump himself, meanwhile, is a pliable simpleton.</p>
<p>But far more importantly, Wolff’s Bannon inserts the Trumps into the middle of the alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr., Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort are “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for a June 2016 meeting with three Kremlin-linked envoys in Trump Tower in New York City, arranged by Trump Jr. to discuss Russia’s provision of material damaging to Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>In Wolff’s rendering, Bannon thinks the ultimate downfall of Trump and Co. will be revelations of Russian financial input into the campaign: “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They [Mueller’s team] are going to go right through that.”</p>
<p>After the book dropped, Bannon did not deny any of his statements. Under pressure from his billionaire backers the Mercer family, he clarified that the words “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” refer only to Manafort, who is <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/manafort-trumop-analysis/index.html">already under indictment</a> on financial, tax and lobbying charges related to the Trump-Russia investigation.</p>
<p>Bannon has become the most conspicuous casualty of the Fire and Fury fallout, not only dismissed as “sloppy” by Trump but now <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/breitbart-post-bannon-landscape">ousted from his position</a> at far-right soapbox Breitbart. But even with Bannon mostly stripped of his influence, the complaints against Trump raise a disturbing question: why are so many people who think Trump is mentally unfit still willing for him to remain in office? </p>
<p>The answer is that no matter how unstable and vacuous he may be, Trump is a very useful vehicle for other people’s ambitions.</p>
<h2>The useful idiot</h2>
<p>Even after his supremely unedifying first year, Trump still serves as a conveniently empty vessel for all manner of enablers. Having resuscitated his career after six bankruptcies by playing a businessman on reality TV, he now plays the role of chief executive so industries can get pesky regulations rolled back. </p>
<p>As he keeps up his stream of offensive, irresponsible pronouncements, GOP legislators put up with it so they can finally secure their $1.5 trillion tax giveaway. And as white supremacists proclaim their moment has come: as David Duke, former KKK Grand Wizard, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/charlottesville-violence-runs-much-deeper-than-being-just-about-a-statue-10986689">explained</a> at the violent Charlottesville march in August 2017: “We are going to fulfil the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in.”</p>
<p>As long as Trump serves that purpose, it does not matter how many <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/democrats-demand-investigation-of-whether-trump-is-violating-the-emoluments-clause/">conflicts of interest</a> he has, how many women accuse him of <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/22/16809934/sexual-misconduct-trump-the-reckoning">sexually harassing or assaulting them</a>. It does not matter how many memoranda or constitutional clauses he does not read or understand. And it does not matter how many Russians he and his inner circle might have met and assisted.</p>
<p>But Trump’s usefulness might well expire when Robert Mueller completes his work. That could be sooner than many people would like – with Manafort indicted and former national security advisor Michael Flynn <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/01/politics/michael-flynn-charged/index.html">pleading guilty to lying to the FBI</a>, the next probable target is <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-birthday-russia-investigation-776836">Kushner</a> – and from there, it’s only one rung up the ladder to Trump himself. Then again, Mueller’s probings could take months or years more to get there. Until then, this emperor’s new clothes nightmare continues with no end in sight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are just enough people who need Donald Trump to keep his excruciating presidency going.Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888412017-12-08T22:03:49Z2017-12-08T22:03:49ZWhat will Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem mean to Palestinians?<p>When President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F12%2F06%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-embassy-jerusalem-israel.html%3F_r%3D0">recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel</a>, he not only effectively endorsed Israel’s <a href="https://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm">de facto annexation</a> of East Jerusalem, which Palestinians have also long claimed as their own – he also radically altered the direction of American foreign policy in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Since 1993, successive American administrations have <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/the-peace-process-a-short-history/">insisted</a> that direct, U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and Palestine could end the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars">Arab-Israeli conflict</a>. Their aim: a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine/two-state-one-state">two-state solution</a>,” in which a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem exists harmoniously alongside Israel.</p>
<p>This was always a bit far-fetched. Now, because Trump has taken Jerusalem – one of the central tenets of the two-state solution – off the table, it’s basically impossible. </p>
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<p>Yet while the decision has been <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/06/trump-move-embassy-jerusalem-israel-reaction-281973">globally condemned</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hamas-calls-for-uprising-as-palestinians-protest-trumps-jerusalem-stance/2017/12/07/ecee91e0-daca-11e7-a241-0848315642d0_story.html">protested in Palestine</a>, it may just allow for more just and creative visions for peace to take hold in the future. As an American scholar of Palestinian descent who <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23697">has written a book on</a> Palestinian history and the Israel-Palestine conflict, I take the longer view here.</p>
<p>To be sure, Israel will likely use Trump’s announcement to consolidate its hold on East Jerusalem, leading to further <a href="http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem">marginalization and discrimination</a> against Palestinians there. And violence may well <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.827778">increase in the short term</a>. But as the U.S. and the international community realize that the era of the two-state plan is over, other solutions may start to take shape.</p>
<h2>Jerusalem and the two-state solution</h2>
<p>To understand why Jerusalem is so divisive, it’s important to understand the city’s meaning in the Israel-Palestine conflict. </p>
<p>In the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel <a href="http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/timeline.htm">captured</a> much of historic Palestine, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It also occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem, whose old city houses holy sites like the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Aqsa Mosque. These places are sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.</p>
<p>Shortly thereafter, the U.N. Security Council <a href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7D35E1F729DF491C85256EE700686136">passed</a> Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw from “from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” </p>
<p>The international consensus is that this decision applies to virtually <a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-security-council-agenda/israel-palestine-and-the-occupied-territories/land-and-settlement-issues.html">all</a> of these occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel, however, contends the U.N. resolution requires only a <a href="http://jcpa.org/security_council_resolution_242/">partial withdrawal</a> – and only in the context of a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians. </p>
<p>In the 50 years since the Six Day War, Israel has been consolidating its hold on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, building Jewish <a href="http://www.btselem.org/settlements/statistics">settlements</a> on the land it seized. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset unilaterally <a href="https://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm">declared</a> all of Jerusalem – including East Jerusalem and several nearby Palestinian towns – as the capital of Israel. </p>
<p>To try to make this declaration a reality, Israel has moved an estimated 208,000 Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem over the past 50 years, in <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session34/Documents/A_HRC_34_39_AUV.docx.">violation</a> of international law. It has also been quietly removing Palestinian residents from East Jerusalem. Since 1967, the residency permits of nearly <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/08/israel-jerusalem-palestinians-stripped-status">15,000</a> Palestinians living in the city have been revoked.</p>
<p>Palestinians still living under Israeli <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/">occupation</a> also suffer regular human rights violations. As documented by Amnesty International and other international organizations, Palestinians are <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/06/israel-injustice-and-secrecy-surrounding-administrative-detention/">detained without trial</a>, <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdf/mde150272009en.pdf">denied access to water</a>, <a href="https://muftah.org/back-school-education-threat-palestinian-children/#.WiqzK7T83Vo">deprived of adequate schooling</a> and <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/record-number-demolitions-and-displacements-west-bank-during-2016">displaced through home demolitions</a>.</p>
<p>Palestinians in Jerusalem also complain that they are <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2014/gapal1296.doc.htm">cut off</a> from friends and family in the West Bank by a wall that <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/West_Bank_Access_Restrictions__September_2014.pdf">snakes deep</a> into the occupied territories, isolating Jerusalem in the process.</p>
<p>Israelis, for their part, insist that the separation wall exists for <a href="http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp513.htm">security reasons</a>. They point to a string of <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/palestinian/pages/suicide%20and%20other%20bombing%20attacks%20in%20israel%20since.aspx">suicide bombings</a> carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups inside Israel from 1994 to 2005. These bombings dropped dramatically once the wall was built. </p>
<p>Many in Israel’s current right-wing government also reject the notion that what they’re doing is even occupation. Recently, when the BBC asked Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely about Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, she <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-deputy-foreign-minister-palestinians-occupation-settlements-judea-samaria-tzipi-hotovely-a8033611.html">replied</a>, “I deny the idea of occupation. This is Judea and Samaria.” In calling the West Bank by its biblical name, Hotovely was rhetorically erasing any Palestinian claims to that land. </p>
<p>The same is true for East Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly <a href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/260749840068259843">declared</a> that “united Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital,” eliminating Palestine from the equation.</p>
<p>But the status of East Jerusalem under international law hasn’t changed: For the U.N. and its member countries, the city is still <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm">illegally occupied</a>. That’s why not a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-explainer-intl/index.html">single country has recognized Israel’s claim</a> or moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – until Trump announced the U.S.’s intention to do so this week.</p>
<h2>Two-state solution no more</h2>
<p>Ample <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Essfc0005/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Oslo%20Peace%20Process.html">research</a> suggests that the power differential between a militarily strong Israeli state and the stateless Palestinian people gave Israel very little incentive to recognize Palestinian claims to begin with.</p>
<p>The rightward <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-too-late-for-a-two-state-solution-in-israel-palestine-48803">political and social shift</a> in Israel likewise diminishes the chances that an Israeli government would be willing or able to acknowledge any Palestinian rights to the contested lands.</p>
<p>Given this imbalance, many Palestinians have long <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/thinking-outside-the-two-state-box">seen a two-state solution as a nonstarter</a>. </p>
<p>Still, American analysts and politicians – <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/israel-palestine-peace-solution-jeopardy-161228164553383.html">including, most recently, former Secretary of State John Kerry</a> – have clung to the idea. To broker this elusive deal, successive American mediators have pressured Palestinians to give up ever more territory. </p>
<p>Aaron David Miller, an American negotiator who worked with multiple U.S. administrations on the Arab-Israeli conflict, has even described America as “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200883.html">Israel’s lawyer</a>” in peace talks. </p>
<p>For me, then, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is simply the acknowledgment of this reality. The president has now stated publicly what previous U.S. administrations – both Democrat and Republican – have been reluctant to admit: that the U.S. is unwilling to pressure <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-military-aid-israel/">an ally like Israel</a> hard enough to achieve peace. </p>
<p>Rather than insist, as his predecessors have done, that a two-state peace deal is just around the corner, Trump has essentially pronounced its death. That is a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-jerusalem-trumps-speech-sparks-scenes-of-joy-outrage/2017/12/06/d76cfc2a-da08-11e7-a241-0848315642d0_story.html">relief for Israel and a blow to Palestinians</a> – if not a terribly surprising one. </p>
<p>Now that the two-state solution is over, perhaps the region can start looking at <a href="http://time.com/4675067/israel-palestinians-one-state-solution-trump/">alternative</a> visions for a genuine peace that actually represents the rights and claims of all people living on this land.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maha Nassar is a 2017-2018 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. </span></em></p>Even before Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was far-fetched. Now it’s all but impossible. And that might not be a bad thing.Maha Nassar, Assistant Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812962017-07-20T01:49:53Z2017-07-20T01:49:53ZCan Trump use the presidential pardon to thwart the Russia investigations?<p>Speculation is mounting that President Donald Trump could issue a pardon to members of his family and close associates who are suspected of colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign.</p>
<p>Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/13/15966866/donald-trump-jr-russia-mark-warner-senate-intelligence-interview">recently cautioned</a> about “the possibility of presidential pardons in this process.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-agent-idUSKBN19Z189">June 2016 meeting</a> of Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and Russian go-betweens promising dirt about Hillary Clinton raises the specter of criminal liability under campaign finance laws. Those laws <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/11/110.20">prohibit foreign nationals</a> from “directly or indirectly” making “a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value … in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.” Damaging information on an opponent could certainly be considered a “thing of value” during a campaign.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobfrenkel/2017/07/17/what-charges-special-counsel-mueller-will-consider-involving-donald-trump-jr/#7fba16d82da3">Not everyone agrees</a> that Trump’s son, son-in-law and Manafort committed crimes. We are a long way from knowing whether there will be criminal prosecutions in these matters. But the mere possibility of a criminal prosecution could lead the president to invoke <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/articles/article-ii#commander-in-chief">his authority</a> under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution to grant “Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.”</p>
<p>My <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8018.html">research on clemency</a> shows how chief executives have used this power, in particular the power to pardon, to halt criminal prosecutions, sometimes even before they begin. </p>
<h2>‘For any reason at all’</h2>
<p>The pardoning power, as Founding Father Alexander Hamilton <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed69.asp">explained</a>, is very broad, applying even to cases of treason against the United States. As <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed74.asp">Hamilton put it</a>, “the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.”</p>
<p>Throughout our history, courts have taken a similarly expansive view. In 1977, Florida’s State Supreme Court <a href="http://campuspress.yale.edu/capitalpunishment/files/2014/12/Class-13-Part-2-Clemency-Execution-w0pt0n.pdf">said that</a> “An executive may grant a pardon for good reasons or bad, or for any reason at all, and his act is final and irrevocable.”</p>
<p>In 1837, the <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/71/333.html">United States Supreme Court held</a> that the president’s pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pendency">pendency</a>, or after conviction and judgment.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178923/original/file-20170719-13558-alwfl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Gerald Ford on Sept. 8, 1974 grants former President Richard Nixon ‘a full, free and absolute pardon.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/07/preemptive_presidential_pardons.html">prospective pardons</a> are quite rare. The most famous prospective pardon in American history was granted by President Gerald Ford in September 1974. He <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4696">pardoned former President Richard Nixon</a> after he was forced to resign in the face of the Watergate scandal. Ford pardoned Nixon for “all offenses against the United States which he… has committed or may have committed or taken part in” between the date of his inauguration in 1969 and his resignation. </p>
<p>In other cases, presidents have halted criminal proceedings immediately after they began. President <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-25/news/mn-2472_1_iran-contra-affair">George H.W. Bush</a> pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger just after Weinberger had been indicted for lying to Congress about the sale of arms to Iran by the Reagan administration.</p>
<p>Those pardons evoked public outcry against what was perceived to be an arrogant interference with the legal process. Ford’s action may have contributed to his defeat in the 1976 presidential election against Jimmy Carter. And Bush’s pardon of Weinberger prompted accusations that he was engaging in a cover-up. Critics said that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-pardon.html">his action demonstrated</a> that “powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office – deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.”</p>
<h2>Rule of law</h2>
<p>Given such controversies about pardons and the the fear of being labeled soft on crime, presidents have been <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/20/obama-used-more-clemency-power/">increasingly reticent</a> about using their clemency power before or after conviction. Thus, while President Nixon granted clemency to more than 36 percent of those who sought it during his eight years in office, the comparable number for George W. Bush was 2 percent. President Obama <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/20/obama-used-more-clemency-power/">reversed that trend</a>, granting more pardons and commutations than anyone since Harry Truman.</p>
<p>Given President Trump’s commitment to being a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/09/donald-trump-criminal-justice/93550162/">law-and-order president</a>, it seems unlikely that he will follow Obama’s lead. Yet he may make an exception to shield Donald Jr., Kushner and Manafort from criminal liability. </p>
<p>Congressman Adam Schiff <a href="https://vimeo.com/225757422">predicted a negative public reaction</a> if Trump grants pardons. He said: “The impressions the country, certainly, would get from that is the president was trying to shield people from liability for telling the truth about what happened in the Russia investigation or Russian contacts.”</p>
<p>However, his prediction offers little comfort at a time when many venerable norms and rules of political life are being rewritten or ignored. No matter what explanation he might offer, any move by President Trump to pardon Donald Jr., Kushner or Manafort would not only hamper the Russia investigations, it would also deliver another serious blow to <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-trumps-definition-of-the-rule-of-law-the-same-as-the-us-constitutions-77598">America’s increasingly precarious hold</a> on democracy and the rule of law.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Presidents past have used this nearly limitless power to halt criminal prosecutions before. What’s to stop Trump?Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/808342017-07-12T13:42:27Z2017-07-12T13:42:27ZBig business prioritises climate change over labour rights – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177718/original/file-20170711-14468-tknf52.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to get noticed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/cartoon-characters-workers-wearing-overall-yellow-264933164?src=2S3YesBxoW5tH1Ie_mlk0A-2-26">Fred Ho</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Trump administration was <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-decision-to-quit-the-paris-agreement-may-be-his-worst-business-deal-yet-78780">still deciding</a> whether America should remain in the <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php">Paris climate agreement</a>, the president’s closest officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/us/politics/trump-advisers-paris-climate-accord.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fcoral-davenport&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=16&pgtype=collection">lined up</a> on different sides of the debate. Those in favour of the agreement included Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, a career property developer, and the secretary of state and former chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson. </p>
<p>The lifelong political operatives in the opposite camp were Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Mike Pence, the vice president. They said the accord threatened the US economy and was based on questionable science, arguments Trump himself had made during the 2016 election campaign. </p>
<p>It might seem surprising that the advisers with business backgrounds were the ones who wanted the US to maintain its commitment to cutting emissions. Of course Trump, the other businessman in the group, opted to leave the agreement. But his decision went against what has come to be the mainstream view of climate change in US corporate circles. </p>
<p>At the same time that Tillerson and Kushner were making their case, 30 chief executives of large corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange including Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical Company and Coca Cola <a href="http://bteam.org/announcements/30-major-ceos-call-on-trump-stay-in-paris/">took out an ad</a> in the Wall Street Journal urging the president not to withdraw. </p>
<p>This chimes with new research findings that we are presenting at the <a href="https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/conferences/upcoming-conferences/11-meetings-and-conferences/269-24th-international-conference-of-europeanists-call-for-proposals">International Conference of Europeanists</a> being held at the University of Glasgow. These <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0007650315613966">confirm that</a> multinationals are heavily engaged with environmental issues. On the other hand, they have largely neglected calls to discharge social responsibilities through the likes of the living wage, collective bargaining or taking action against forced labour in their supply chains. Why this difference? And what can be done about it? </p>
<h2>The research</h2>
<p>We analysed sustainability reports published by 150 large multinationals from Germany, the UK and the US from the late 1990s until the present. We found that firms from all three countries engaged earlier with environmental than social sustainability issues. They continue to publish higher quality data on their environmental impacts and have more ambitious improvement plans. </p>
<p>And firms from all three countries have converged around common environmental commitments while their commitments for most social issues are still substantially determined by the laws and the state of the debate in their home <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1449403515000478">countries</a>. </p>
<p>It is worth emphasising that this commitment to environmental responsibility is a sea change: for years big business, perhaps mainstream corporate America in particular, fought against climate action. Now many of these businesses are backing (some forms of) global climate regulation even in the absence of pressure from the US government. </p>
<p>This difference in attitudes to their environmental and social impacts is despite the fact that activists and NGOs have promoted the two issues in a similar manner. In both cases they have used voluntary certification schemes along the lines of the Fairtrade logo, for example. </p>
<p>According to interviews we carried out with a small sample of multinationals’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) managers, the difference is that their employers have come to view climate change as a future business risk. Investors are increasingly demanding evidence of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To help guide them, global standards to measure this risk <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638180802489121">are</a> being <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2015.1051325">developed</a>. </p>
<p>By contrast, labour rights issues are rarely seen by business as market imperatives. There is <a href="http://www.ilo.int/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---travail/documents/publication/wcms_162117.pdf">little evidence that</a> market actors such as the investor community exert significant pressure on multinationals to improve their practices in this area. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177720/original/file-20170711-14488-63twwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pink pulpit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-apr-24-2017-emmanuel-639839071?src=kDs8pcKrYz469Hbde8gZpw-2-19">Hadrian</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To explore this difference, we analysed how the Financial Times has covered climate change and the living wage – two prominent sustainability issues from opposite sides of the divide. By looking at coverage over the same period as the corporate reports, we found that the FT’s business section had paid far greater attention to climate change than wage equality – even after the financial crisis of 2008-09. </p>
<p>At one point in 2007, the FT business pages published more than 1,400 articles on climate change. The highest point of its coverage of wage-related issues was as long ago as 1997, and amounted to just 268 articles. </p>
<p>This corroborates what the CSR managers had suggested in our interviews. Investors and customers seem to be putting much more pressure on multinationals to deal with emissions and more broadly climate change. They appear to have turned these issues into a nascent, albeit still contested, market imperative. </p>
<p>Prominent business actors still frequently deny that addressing wage inequality is their primary responsibility. Warren Buffett, the star American investor, recently came out against excessive increases to the minimum wage in an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/better-than-raising-the-minimum-wage-1432249927">op-ed piece</a> for the Wall Street Journal. The working poor would be better served by earned income tax credits rather than “distortions to the market”, he argued. </p>
<p>If firms’ sense of social responsibility is ever to catch up with their sense of environmental responsibility, these kinds of attitudes will have to change. Persuading investors that labour rights issues are in the interests of big business is a major part of the battle. If it becomes the same kind of mainstay in the international business press as climate change, things might begin to look entirely different. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is part of a series on sustainability and transformation in today’s Europe, published in collaboration with <a href="http://www.europenowjournal.org">EuropeNow Journal</a> and the <a href="https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org">Council for European Studies (CES)</a> at Columbia University. Each article is based on a paper presented at the <a href="https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/conferences/upcoming-conferences/2017-ces-conference">24th International Conference of Europeanists</a> in Glasgow.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80834/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Kollman has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alvise Favotto receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Once investors put their shoulders to the wheel, everything changes.Kelly Kollman, Senior Lecturer, Politics, University of GlasgowAlvise Favotto, Lecturer in Management Accounting, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/757612017-04-19T22:34:12Z2017-04-19T22:34:12ZExplainer: The Trumps’ conflict of interest issues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165646/original/image-20170418-32689-1tp0btw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka walk to board Marine One.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ivanka Trump recently gave an <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivanka-trump-interview-full-transcript">interview</a> to CBS television in which she attempted to answer concerns about her role as an official adviser to her father, President Donald Trump, and potential conflicts of interest from her fashion business. </p>
<p>She suggested that such concerns were unwarranted, as she would no longer manage the company which had been placed into a trust, run by her sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Like her father, she has declined to sell off her assets, saying that would not be fair when the company (like his) bears her name. </p>
<p>Her responses do little to allay growing criticism about conflicts of interest as they pertain to both her and her husband <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-01-09/trump-son-in-law-kushner-to-take-senior-white-house-role">Jared Kushner</a>, and her father. A <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-business-conflicts-poll-20170111-story.html">majority of Americans</a> have said they are “somewhat” or “very” concerned about Donald Trump’s conflicts of interests.</p>
<p>I’ve researched and written about conflicts of interest for 20 years. Conflict of interest issues are not new in America. The fear and reality that government officials may be unduly swayed by their personal interests has existed since Colonial-era customs officials <a href="http://www.pem.org/library/blog/?p=5982">took bribes</a> to reduce penalties for smuggling. </p>
<p>From my perspective Trump’s conflicts of interest are unprecedented in scope. But conflict of interest laws are often not cut and dried. They involve interpretation by lawyers within the Justice Department and judges, who can give a stamp of legitimacy (or illegitimacy) to presidential practices.</p>
<h2>What’s at stake?</h2>
<p>Among the Trump Organization’s holdings are 16 hotels, 17 golf courses, a modeling agency, a production agency and at least 25 <a href="https://www.trumpinternationalrealty.com/listings/">residential real estate properties</a> (a minimum of 17 domestically and eight overseas). His over 500 companies have dealings in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/28/politics/trump-foreign-businesses/">25 countries</a> including India, Panama, Scotland and the Philippines.</p>
<p>That’s not all: Trump <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/23/news/trump-washington-hotel-gsa">leases</a> his D.C. hotel from the federal government and appoints the head of the agency that monitors his lease. Trump also owes <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/guide-donald-trump-debt">millions in loans</a>, including over US$300 million in loans to Deutsche Bank, which is under investigation by the federal government. He also owes money to at least seven other banks for his heavily mortgaged properties; one of his real estate partnerships has <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/302216-how-much-money-does-the-trump-organization-owe">a loan from the state-owned Bank of China</a>. </p>
<h2>What does the law say?</h2>
<p>Trump raised eyebrows when he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/23/trumps-claim-that-the-president-cant-have-a-conflict-of-interest/?utm_term=.c458a384c5d4">said shortly</a> after he was elected, “The law’s totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”</p>
<p>Legally speaking, though, he has a good case, with regard to several key statutes.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oge.gov/Web/OGE.nsf/Resources/18+U.S.C.+%C2%A7+208:+Acts+affecting+a+personal+financial+interest">basic criminal conflict of interest statute</a>, enacted in 1962, forbids federal executive branch employees from participating in government matters in which they – or their immediate family members – have a financial interest. </p>
<p>But the president and vice president have been considered exempt since 1974, when Congress <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/23/trumps-claim-that-the-president-cant-have-a-conflict-of-interest/?utm_term=.38aacc418d9f">requested an opinion</a> from the Justice Department on whether the law applied to Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller was the scion of a wealthy business family whom Gerald Ford had selected as vice president after he became the president, following the resignation of Richard Nixon. The DOJ was asked if a vice president could have any financial interest in a company that contracted with the U.S. government. </p>
<p>The DOJ responded in a <a href="https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/092074.pdf">letter</a> that the statute didn’t apply to either the vice president or the president. The letter pointed to the “uniqueness of the president’s situation” and argued that it would be unconstitutional to apply the law to the president, since it could constrain him to the point that he would be unable to perform constitutionally prescribed duties. </p>
<p>Subsequent statutes such as the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode05a/usc_sup_05_5_10_sq3.html">1978 Ethics in Government Act</a> and 1989 <a href="https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Authorizing%20Legislation%20and%20Oversight/6FED47DB4CB9B89585257F1C00752BC7/%24FILE/PL101-194.pdf?open">Ethics Reform Act</a> reinforced this argument. A <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/conflicts.pdf">2016 report by the Congressional Research Service</a> further reiterated it.</p>
<p>Members of Congress are subject to some stricter conflict of interest regulations. For example, according to the 1989 Ethics Reform Act, they must adhere to an outside earned income limit equal to 15 percent of their official salary. They are also subject to “revolving door” limits that restrict them from lobbying or working for foreign governments for a year after leaving office. The president is required only to make public any conflict of interest issues. </p>
<h2>Accepting gifts from foreign powers</h2>
<p>What about foreign governments, or companies controlled by foreign governments, that do business with the Trump hotels?</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-emoluments-clause-its-text-meaning-and-application-to-donald-j-trump/">Emoluments Clause</a> of the Constitution says that no person holding a federal office of profit or trust shall accept any “present, emolument, (or) office… from any king, prince, or foreign state.” </p>
<p>Even though the president clearly holds an office of “trust,” the clause does not name the president specifically, unlike other clauses in the Constitution. Opinions are divided on the issue. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gs_121616_emoluments-clause1.pdf">One study</a> argued that it would be inconceivable for a clause aimed at limiting influence by foreign governments not to apply to the president. According to this analysis, a member of the Constitutional Convention, who later became a member of George Washington’s Cabinet, specifically mentioned “the danger… of the president receiving emoluments from foreign powers.”</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretations/the-foreign-emoluments-clause-reached-only-appointed-officers">another historical analysis</a> reached the opposite conclusion, pointing to President George Washington accepting gifts from the French ambassador after he became president. Since Washington was not criticized at the time for this action, according to this author, the understanding of the president and the broader public was that this clause did not apply to the president.</p>
<p>The researcher also argued that if the president was intended to be included, he would have been specified by name, as he is in the impeachment clause. </p>
<p>Either way, the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/the_emoluments_lawsuit_against_donald_trump_is_an_audacious_gamble.html">has not ruled</a> on whether the Emoluments Clause applies to the president. </p>
<h2>Blind trusts and previous presidents</h2>
<p>Just because something is legal, however, doesn’t mean it is good. </p>
<p>Presidents are not required by any law to place their assets in blind trusts (just as they are not required to disclose their tax returns). But before Trump, starting with Lyndon B. Johnson, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/06/09/481351291/if-elected-president-would-trump-put-his-investments-in-a-blind-trust">most presidents</a> voluntarily placed their assets in blind trusts. This meant that any investments (but not cash or personal real estate) were managed by an independent entity, without the beneficiary knowing what they were.</p>
<p>The exceptions were <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2016/11/15/why-trump-wont-use-a-blind-trust-and-what-his-predecessors-did-with-their-assets/#38600f7c29c0">President Obama and President Nixon</a>. Nixon liquidated his limited assets and bought two houses. Obama chose not to place his assets in a blind trust, saying his family’s money was mostly invested in U.S. treasury bonds and other funds unlikely to cause a conflict. </p>
<p>While Trump has put his assets in a trust, the trustees are not truly independent. His <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-business-blind-trust-231179">two eldest sons are managing</a> the assets of the Trump Organization, which remain known to him and of which he maintains ownership.</p>
<p>Since it is highly doubtful that Trump will give in to pressure to liquidate his assets, potential conflicts will remain, indeed abound.</p>
<h2>Who will monitor the president’s conduct?</h2>
<p>The Office of Government Ethics isn’t of much use in policing the president. One <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-0072.1988.tb00592.x/abstract">study</a> shows that OGE is a weak and ineffective agency. </p>
<p>It has a <a href="https://www.oge.gov/Web/OGE.nsf/Resources/Budget+and+Appropriations">small staff</a> of about 80 full-time people and a budget of $15 million. Furthermore, the director is nominated by the president. </p>
<p>Its main authority is overseeing financial disclosure for legislative, judicial and executive branch officials, including the president. But the disclosure reporting categories are very broad and not very informative. Civil or criminal <a href="https://www.oge.gov/Web/278eGuide.nsf/Content/For+Ethics+Officials+Document%7E1.06:+Failure+to+File+and+Falsification+Penalties">charges for false disclosure</a> can be filed only by the presidentially appointed attorney general. There is a $50,000 maximum fine for false filing, but that is not much of a deterrent for very wealthy individuals.</p>
<p>Oversight of the president’s ethics could come mainly through two channels: Congress and the media. Congress has the power to impeach the president, by a simple majority vote of the house and a two-thirds vote of the Senate. </p>
<p>Congressional committees <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/03/27/520983699/who-oversees-the-president-s-ethics-a-reference-sheet">can conduct hearings</a> to investigate presidential and executive branch activities, as with the current House Intelligence Committee’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/19/no-new-evidence-to-support-trumps-wiretap-claims-house-intelligence-chairman-says/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.261b69a63b21">hearing</a> into Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped him. </p>
<p>Creation of an independent commission, such as the one that <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/">investigated the U.S. administration’s preparedness</a> for the 9/11 attacks, will require that Congress and the president sign off on such a commission.</p>
<p>The DOJ could also investigate and prosecute criminal violations by the president. The Supreme Court <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/520/681.html">ruled in 1997</a>
that the judiciary could review the legality of the president’s actions, both in his capacity as a private citizen and in his official role. But the attorney general has discretion over whether to pursue violations of federal criminal law.</p>
<p>The decisions by the president and his daughter not to create truly blind trusts mean that concern over potential conflicts of interest will likely persist. Many other questions, such as those about the fitness of Trump’s daughter and son-in-law as top advisers, are also unlikely to disappear. </p>
<p>Simply asking the American people to trust the president, his three eldest children and his son-in-law to do the right thing may not be satisfactory for many Americans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth A. Rosenson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conflict of interest laws are often not cut and dried. They involve interpretation by lawyers within the Justice Department and judges.Beth A. Rosenson, Professor of Political Science, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760762017-04-12T00:38:34Z2017-04-12T00:38:34ZDo Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have too much power?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164917/original/image-20170411-26736-6d26s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald and Ivanka Trump walk to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Feb. 1, 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much attention has been focused recently on President Trump’s “new” foreign policy.</p>
<p>This policy change is symbolized by the U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-attack-on-syria-four-takeaways-75970">missile attack on Syria’s Shayrat airfield</a>, which followed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical weapon attack on rebels in that country’s Idlib province.</p>
<p>The National Security Council has also been restructured. Former Director Michael Flynn <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/politics/michael-flynn-white-house-national-security-adviser/">resigned after lying</a> about his meetings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Deputy K.T. McFarland was <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cashiered">cashiered</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-09/mcfarland-to-exit-white-house-as-mcmaster-consolidates-power">became</a><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-09/mcfarland-to-exit-white-house-as-mcmaster-consolidates-power">U.S. ambassador-designate to Singapore</a>. They have been replaced by retired <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/us/politics/mcmaster-national-security-adviser-trump.html?_r=0">General H. R. McMaster</a> as director, and his deputy for strategy, Dina Powell. The removal of Trump adviser Steve Bannon from the principals committee of the council also represents an apparent move to follow more traditional foreign policy-making.</p>
<p>What is driving this apparently positive change? The movement toward an apparently more traditional approach suggests the greater influence of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/24/ivanka-trump-a-white-house-force-just-not-an-emplo/">who was recently named a regular employee of the White House</a>, and her husband Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the president over Bannon. Both may be trying to repair what “The Gatekeepers” author <a href="http://www.chriswhipple.net">Chris Whipple</a> has called “the most dysfunctional White House chief of staff and presidency in U.S. history.” </p>
<p>The two family members have strengthened a White House faction Bannon describes, not admiringly, as the “New Yorkers” or simply “Goldman Sachs.” Bannon himself leads an opposing <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/inside-battle-trumps-ear-can-bannon-beat-kushner-581572">faction</a> that is more nationalist, isolationist and populist.</p>
<p>However this rivalry plays out, what has been clear during the “honeymoon phase” of the Trump presidency is that influential individuals have created an incoherent, impulsive style of governance, dominated by personal decision-making processes, such as the overnight decision to bomb Syria. This spasmodic style, ignoring interagency reviews, is new in the modern presidency, even among presidents like Kennedy and Clinton, who involved family members in their administrations. Trump relies on personal relationships, rather than the institutions of democracy.</p>
<p>As a comparative political scientist who studies different types of governments, I’m interested in how personal rule linked to family can erode democratic institutions in favor of authoritarianism. Academics call this “sultanism.”</p>
<p>Let me explain.</p>
<h2>What sultanism means</h2>
<p>It was over a century ago that the famous political sociologist Max Weber developed the concept of sultanism, which, he wrote, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Economy-Society-Set-Max-Weber/dp/0520280024">“operates primarily on the basis of discretion.”</a></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153328/original/image-20170118-26555-l5ezbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">35th sultan of the Ottoman Empire and 114th caliph of Islam, Mehmed V.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sultan_Mehmed_V_of_the_Ottoman_Empire_cropped.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Sultans,” or kings, of the Ottoman Empire were absolute rulers, their power made legitimate by theology. They used arbitrary and despotic powers. Their lifestyles were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cTnMY_D63FMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ottoman+Empire+decline&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqtYXQ54DRAhWDRCYKHZxtB44Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=Ottoman%20Empire%20decline&f=false">lavish and decadent.</a> And over time they lost their power. While rival European empires such as the Hapsburgs’ Austro-Hungary and Weber’s native Germany <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jGboBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT233&dq=Hapsburg+Kaiser+Wilhelm+Bureaucracy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig04Pc6IDRAhUESSYKHdM3D1kQ6AEIUzAI#v=onepage&q=Hapsburg%20Kaiser%20Wilhelm%20Bureaucracy&f=false">were rising</a> in the 19th century as they developed impressive civil and military bureaucracies and procedures, the Ottoman Empire was declining. </p>
<p>Alfred Stepan and the late Juan J. Linz of Columbia University <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/problems-democratic-transition-and-consolidation">argued</a> that sultanism is both a regime type (like democracy and authoritarianism) and an adjective describing a style of personal rule that is possible under all regime types, including democracy. They wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The essence of sultanism is unrestrained personal rulership … unconstrained by ideology, rational-legal norms, or any balance of power.”<br>
Sultanism, in other words, is most common under authoritarian and autocratic rule, but it can also be present in democracies, when leaders personalize decision-making instead of following established institutional or legal processes.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153324/original/image-20170118-26582-2ax3mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier of Haiti in 1968.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some might assume it irrelevant to compare any U.S. leader to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rPNSnRYzIdgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sultanistic+regimes+juan+Linz&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT7tC_74DRAhVCwiYKHRanCr8Q6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=sultanistic%20regimes%20juan%20Linz&f=false">classic sultanistic rulers</a> such as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0ezGBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT202&dq=Francois+Jean+Claude+Duvalier&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjagv3Z7oDRAhWM24MKHSaBD9EQ6AEINzAF#v=onepage&q=Francois%20Jean%20Claude%20Duvalier&f=false">Duvaliers</a> of Haiti, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines or Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. These regimes were nondemocratic and dominated by a single personality with family members intensely involved. </p>
<p>However, like the U.S., South Korea is a democracy and its president, Park Geun-hye, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/12/south-koreas-president-was-just-impeached-this-is-what-it-means-and-what-comes-next/?utm_term=.0c810fad4782">was impeached Dec. 9</a> for corrupt activities, many connected to a close family adviser. The adviser, allegedly a <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/shaman">shaman</a>, is herself the daughter of another Rasputin-type religious figure <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/840b203a-b177-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1">who had also secretly advised</a> the president’s father during his 18 years in office. </p>
<p>Another example can be found in Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega – who packed his Supreme Court to allow him a third consecutive term – has as his vice president his wife, Rosario Murillo. She is one of the few leaders he trusts, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/world/americas/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-house-of-cards.html">having alienated much of his party.</a> </p>
<h2>American precedents</h2>
<p>For its part, the U.S. has had sultanistic tendencies of its own in the past. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153325/original/image-20170118-26582-1f1rmpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/274988824">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>President John F. Kennedy’s closest adviser and his attorney general was his younger brother, Robert, indispensable during the perilous time of the Cuba Missile Crisis. And JFK, while in office and sometimes with his brother Robert involved, took enormous risks in having flings with women with dubious political connections - from a <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/26/news/mn-14342">socialite with links to the mob</a> to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/30/reviews/971130.30powerst.html">possible East German spy</a>. This is not mere indiscretion.</p>
<p>The reaction of Congress to all this was to pass, in 1967, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3110">Anti-Nepotism Statute</a> – nicknamed the <a href="http://time.com/4574971/donald-trump-transition-jared-kushner-legal-anti-nepotism-law/">“Bobby Kennedy Law”</a> – to make sure close relatives no longer assume official positions. <a href="https://concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/06/nepotism-and-the-cabinet.html">Some suggest</a>, however, that the law does not exclude unofficial advisers.</p>
<p>Another example of sultanistic practices is Hillary Clinton, who was her president-husband’s lead and unpaid adviser on health care reform. </p>
<p>And then, in George W. Bush’s Cabinet, the two most powerful foreign policy advisers – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney – were both alumni of George H. W. Bush’s administration. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Bush’s approval, established <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/books/review/spies-and-spymasters.html">arbitrary policy</a> that permitted <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Official-Senate-Report-Torture-Interrogation/dp/1634506022/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=X8SN4WTC04VSQQA6MC6J">torture</a>, warrantless surveillance and targeted assassinations. </p>
<p>These Bush-era “law-free” zones in national security matters, which some have called <a href="http://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2013/2/Alexander.pdf">dictatorial</a>, were based on the legal concept of the “unitary executive.” The idea is that the judicial and legislative branches cannot check or regulate the president on “executive” matters, especially those involving national security.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Imperial_Presidency.html?id=zbLO9aNL6ncC">The unitary executive</a> facilitated sultanism by asserting that the president monopolizes all executive power, however exercised. As <a href="http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/senate%20judiciary%20sept_16_%202008.pdf">some noted constitutional scholars</a> have said, this theory basically places the president above the law. </p>
<h2>What makes Trump different</h2>
<p>Most modern American presidents have risen through the institutions of U.S. democracy – state political parties, Capitol Hill, the military. They have been vetted and embedded in institutional rules, attitudes and relationships. Someone like Trump, coming in “from the cold,” in contrast, brings his family and close associates and makes decisions outside of those formal and informal institutions. </p>
<p>Having masterminded his unexpected victory based on an unconventional campaign, Trump has already shown a tendency to trust his instincts on major decisions of governance, creating impulsive, unpredictable decisions. His past record as CEO and his outsider status make Trump self-reliant and assured that most of the world is misguided and only he and his few trusted advisers, including his family, have the answers. </p>
<p>When questioned, for example, on <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslim-immigration">his pledge</a> to ban Muslims from entering the country “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” Trump said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What I’m doing is no different than FDR. If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse … and he’s one of the most highly respected presidents — they name highways after him.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here Trump was evoking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States">1944 Korematsu decision</a>, which upheld almost unlimited executive powers over immigration to permit the detention of Japanese-Americans without any evidence (and none existed) of subversion. This decision is considered by many <a href="http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2015/12/trumps-muslim-comments-start-a-debate-with-constitutional-scholars/">constitutional scholars</a> as the most ignominious in Supreme Court history, a “tragic mistake that we should not repeat.” Even the late Justice <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/08/justice-scalia-on-kelo-and-korematsu/?utm_term=.dce59aacb4ae">Antonin Scalia disavowed it as an “error.”</a> </p>
<p>The U.S. presidency has always been prone to sultantistic tendencies, but under a Trump presidency what were once isolated incidents have predictably become a way of governing. When the closest advisers, both institutional (like Ivanka and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/09/tumps-son-in-law-jared-kushner-expected-to-join-white-house-as-a-senior-adviser/?utm_term=.1e5a5de2104b">Kushner</a>) and informal (in the case of his two adult sons), are dominated by family members, the decision-making process will not only be erratic and possibly influenced by private family interests but also tend to ignore legal procedures that have also met the test of time. </p>
<p>Instead of <a href="https://hbr.org/2009/04/leadership-lessons-from-abraham-lincoln">a “team of rivals”</a> under the rule of law, the Trump presidency may be akin to medieval monarchy, with decisions made by court politics, not legal procedures.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece updates <a href="https://theconversation.com/sultan-donald-trump-68921">Sultan Donald Trump?</a>, which originally ran on Jan. 20, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry F. (Chip) Carey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does Trump’s family have too much sway in the White House? We consider parallels ranging from the Ottoman empire to the Clinton administration.Henry F. (Chip) Carey, Associate Professor, Political Science , Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.