Trump Says Obama Is Violating Emoluments Clause Even Though It Doesn’t Apply To Private Citizens

Donald Trump once against demonstrated on Tuesday that he knows very little about the laws of the country he’s supposed to be leading.

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During a taxpayer-funded campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump whined that people are upset that he’s profiting from the presidency. He deflected the criticism by accusing former President Barack Obama of violating the emoluments clause by signing a $65 million book deal.

“I got sued on a thing called ’emoluments,'” Trump said, according to NBC News. “Now nobody looks at Obama getting $60 million for a book. That’s OK, even though nobody in history ever got that much money for a book. … But with me, it’s everything.”

The only problem, of course, is that Obama signed the book deal after he left office in 2017, when he was no longer president of the United States.

As NBC News pointed out, “Barack Obama and Michelle Obama signed a joint book deal for $65 million in 2017, after Obama had left office. The emoluments clause applies to federal officeholders, not private citizens.”

In other words, Trump is accusing Obama of violating a law that doesn’t even apply to him anymore.

Trump is trying to distract from his own financial conflicts

By spewing nonsense about Barack Obama’s post-presidency book deal, Donald Trump is trying to distract from his own conflicts of interest when it comes to his business dealings.

While Obama signed a lucrative book deal after leaving office, Trump is profiting from the presidency each and every day.

As was previously reported, Saudi Arabian lobbyists pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Trump’s D.C. hotel in 2017 alone. In 2016, within a month of Trump’s election victory, the Saudis paid for a whopping 500 nights at his D.C. hotel, according to The Washington Post.

The Post also noted last year that revenue at Trump’s hotel in New York went up for the first time in two years last spring thanks to a boost from the Saudis.

Trump likes to complain, as he did again on Tuesday, that the presidency has cost him a fortune, but there is no evidence to support that claim.

In fact, the more we discover about Donald Trump’s financial interests, the more it appears he is profiting from the presidency.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.