Ivankas store latest tenant at Trump Family Swamp

The presidency was never meant to be a profit center for a nepotistic, money-grubbing family. But that was before the Trumps moved in.

This scandal is lying in plain sight, overlooked because of the constant stream of missteps, outrages and distractions that come and go at an exhausting pace. While everyone watches his Twitter feed, President Trump is using the White House like a marketing agency for his family brand. This is not normal or acceptable — and it surely isn’t what laid-off factory workers and coal miners had in mind when they jumped on the “populist” Trump train.

Last week, Ivanka Trump opened a retail store inside Trump Tower, her father’s New York skyscraper, to sell her eponymous foreign-made handbags and other items. We can now finally dispense with the notion that she is an “unpaid” adviser to the president.

It’s not a very big store — more of a glorified kiosk, really — but the conflict of interest is obvious. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, are in positions where they can influence U.S. policy toward the countries where her products are made, such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. The store is located where it can siphon money from Trump-supporting tourists who make pilgrimages to Trump Tower while visiting the sights of Manhattan.

This is just the latest example of how the Trump family is seeking to monetize the presidency. We haven’t seen anything like it since 1977, when Jimmy Carter’s brother started hawking Billy Beer. (President Carter, at least, had the decency to be embarrassed.)

As is the case with other family members, including the president, Ivanka Trump has refused to divest herself of her business interests. Instead, the Trumps and Kushner have put them into trusts — but in a way that provides not even a fig leaf of probity.

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