Charade

   The highly touted and long anticipated "news conference" promised by President-elect Donald Trump was little more than a pretext to announce his plan to put his business interests in a trust, to be run by his two sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
   Trump took a total of eleven questions from the roomful of reporters, but refused to allow a question from Jim Acosta, senior White House correspondent for CNN, after severely criticizing the network for its news coverage of a report about his dalliances circulated by Russian intelligence agencies.
   So much for a full and open press conference.
  But while the full session lasted nearly 90 minutes, nearly half that time was taken up by a Trump attorney presenting the plan to put all business decisions in the hands of the two younger Trumps.
   Moreover, all pending international deals will be stopped, and there will be no new foreign deals, Trump said. There will be domestic deals, he noted, but they will be vetted by an ethics expert.
   To be named by the Trump family.
   A blind trust it ain't.

   Trump insisted that conflict of interest laws do not apply to the President or the Vice President, but he claimed that he was resigning all posts with his company to avoid the appearance of conflicts.
   Even so, there will be no way to be sure, since the family relationship remains.
   In response to a question about possible conflicts and his international business relations, Trump refused once again to release his tax returns because, he said, they are still under audit.
   The Internal Revenue Service has said repeatedly that while the agency does not comment on audits, or even whether an audit exists, Trump is free to release his at any time. Other Presidents and Presidential candidates since Richard Nixon have released their full tax returns.
   As for the Constitutional ban on emoluments or payments and benefits of any kind paid to government officials, which could be said to include rents paid to Trump-owned hotels, the Trump lawyer said all profits from such activities will be donated to the U.S. Treasury, which she said would comply with the law.
   However, any accountant worth his degree knows there are ways to arrange income and expenses so there are no profits, utilizing Generally Accepted Accounting Practices. And every cynic knows that this GAAP is as wide as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep.
   Finally, as to recent stories dealing with improprieties perpetrated by Trump, supposedly gathered by Russia, Trump blamed the leak on American intelligence agencies, calling it "unfair to the country," and attacked Buzzfeed and CNN for running the story.
   Other news outlets have since pointed out that the story had been circulating in Washington for several months, but was not yet ripe for publication because they had not been able to verify the information.
   The bottom line is this: The American people have no way of knowing anything about the incoming President's business interests or potential conflicts, or whether he acts on them, or whether his family keeps him informed of international business activities, or what compensation he has received in the past or might receive in the future, or what his income really is, or where it comes from.
   In fact, the public knows very little about his financial entanglements, except what he says.
   "Trust me," he insists.
   Why?
   As for his hidden tax returns, what's he hiding?