Walter Shaub, the departing head of the Office of Government Ethics, is continuing to blast President Donald Trump for not taking any measures to ameliorate his conflicts of interest while in office. In an interview with the New York Times, Shaub laid into the president's ongoing conflicts, saying it reflects badly on the world to have a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do president.
“It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility,” Shaub told the Times. “I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.”
Shaub's interview, as the Times noted, came as Trump was at his private golf club in New Jersey — one of three Trump-owned, Trump-branded golf clubs he's visited since taking office. The golf club trips — which nearly always include Trump taking a round of golf, despite saying he never would — are only one of the Trump family's numerous conflicts of interest as the White House mixes business with governing.
The ethics head slammed Trump when announcing his resignation earlier this month. In prior interviews, Shaub said that Trump was "in a position where he’s going to have to send young men and women to die in combat potentially, or risk their lives at least. They’re paying a much higher price. So, no, it’s not too much to ask for somebody to incur a bit of a financial loss if they have to sell things off.”
"We need to send a message to the world that the United States is gonna have the gold standard for an ethics program in government, which is what we’ve always had,” he added
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