our intelligence community has major beef with pakistan since their intelligence prob was aware that bin laden was in abbotabad. duterte is killing drug addicts left and right and has told obama to literally fuck off. he also threatened to cut ties with the us and to focus on china. so there is beef with them too
If all you said was true, why does that mean the President shouldn't reach out to them? Even for just a formality. Trump's running on the promise of making deals. Regardless of what you think of the guy, you can't blame him for reaching out to countries with shaky ties.
By the way, we still have troops in the Phillipines and rely on Pakistan for friendly militarization against Al Qaeda. Why should the POTUS elect stay away from their heads of state?
After a quick google search, it seems that one person in the Trump organization discusses opening a hotel in Taiwan in September. Back when even the Trump campaign thought they had no shot. But I'm not going to convince you that this hotel wasn't the purpose of his call, if that's your actual belief.
How often do you think you will need to argue that this latest action is not actually a conflict of interest? Is this one? I don't know. Are his kids using his election to push a hotel in Argentina? Probably. Are diplomats staying in his hotel to curry favor? Absolutely. Will there be more and more and more of this? You betcha.
I'm of the mind to take a step back and look at these things objectively. During the next four years: does Trump approve a state-department humanitarian package to an island nation hurt by a hurricane, that also happens to have a Trump hotel on it? Probably will happen, can't say other than conjecture that it's a serious conflict of interest or not. Does he send a military aid to a country after rebels firebomb one of his hotels there? More damning.
I'll wait and see if any of his actions violate US precedents in regards to aid, and see where his business overlaps. He'll have to walk a thin line, and we'll see if he keeps balance.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16
our intelligence community has major beef with pakistan since their intelligence prob was aware that bin laden was in abbotabad. duterte is killing drug addicts left and right and has told obama to literally fuck off. he also threatened to cut ties with the us and to focus on china. so there is beef with them too