Yesterday, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics caused a stir when they sent a series of tweets directed at Donald Trump, mocking the president-elect for refusing to take any meaningful steps to address the numerous conflicts of interest associated with his business holdings.
The tweets lavished sarcastic praise upon Trump for his decision to divest from his own companies, except Trump has done nothing of the kind. Instead, he announced his plan to transfer ownership and management to his children while still retaining his financial ties, an empty gesture that does nothing to relieve conflicts of interest.
That sarcasm was apparently lost on Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Thursday morning. He devoted an entire segment to the U.S. OGE’s tweets, completely missing the sarcasm and barely maintaining his composure at the thought of a government agency praising Trump.
Hemmer’s guest, the Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn, tried his best to rescue the segment from its clueless host, but Hemmer just kept digging.
“What I read from these tweets…is that there were ongoing discussions, clearly, between Trump’s counsel and the government, and the government saying ‘Listen, if you want to be free and clear of all of this stuff, do A, B, and C, and if you do A, B, and C, we will reward you publicly, and that appears to be the case,” said Hemmer, who is totally aware of what sarcasm looks like.
Bipartisan ethics experts have been pressuring Trump to place his holdings inside a blind trust, like virtually every president before him. But Trump has balked, preferring instead to keep his fortune tied to the businesses his own children will now run. Even months before he takes the oath of office, Trump has already signaled a willingness to leverage the presidency for his own financial benefit, bringing daughter Ivanka—who will be an integral part of his business operations—to meetings with foreign leaders and profiting off of dignitaries who are booking events at his hotel properties, in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.