Trump Brand. A Secret Weapon to Control Trump

Message to Democrats:  Don't Criticize Trump for Cashing in on his Brand.   Trump's self-dealing Cronyism is a tool for Democrats.

Democrats should not sweat this.

Trump's family has been in the news for cashing in.  Trump supporters don't mind.  They knew it going in when they voted for him.

It is actually a restraint on him.  Democrats should notice that it is a Republican who is objecting.  

Melania Trump re-filed a lawsuit on February 7 saying that a blogger posted, then retracted, a story saying that she was paid money for sex during a period when she was in this country modeling and this caused "plaintiff's brand" to lose "significant value."  She filed for $150 million in damages for the "major business opportunities" and "multiple millions of dollars" she would otherwise have made during or after the "multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world."   

Melania Trump has a brand to protect

Really.  She is admitting in a lawsuit that her intention was to cash in on the fame the expected to get as the wife of a candidate and as First Lady.

Her court filing said "Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person. . . to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships."

First Lady:   Ka-ching!!

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was in the news for tweeting that Nordstrom did daughter Ivanka Trump wrong by dropping her clothing line.   The media noted that Trump was ignoring the duties of his office to pay attention to the business of family members.  Plus, there was the problem that promoting a daughter's private business from the oval office is prima facia conflict of interest.  And tacky. 

Presidents are not subject to Executive Branch ethics laws but employees are.  Kellyanne Conway, a top aide,  went onto Fox News and said people should go out right now and buy Ivanka's clothes on line if not at Nordstrom and that she herself was going to do so immediately.

It caused some media pushback.

                                                       A businessman friend of mine contacted me with a comment on media coverage of the Trump tweet:  "I love the drive by media this morning criticizing Trump for commenting on Nordstrom dropping his daughter's line.  Their position was that Trump needs to stay focused on governing the nation and the issues.  This is the same media that spent hours interviewing Obama on his picks in the NCAA Basketball brackets."

This is a very revealing comment.   The focus is not on Trump  but on the media coverage of Trump.  Isn't Trump doing cronyism and personal enrichment from the Oval Office?  Of course.  Trump supporters don't care.

Neither should Democrats.  

There is a message here for Democrats, and a warning:  Trump supporters are not surprised or concerned that Trump mixes promoting family businesses with the office of the president.  They like Trump and they expected Trump to promote the Trump brand when they voted for him.  Trump does not hide family favoritism so it isn't sneaky. It is flaunted, so it comes across as natural family pride and simple business.  If you have fame, use it.

It is noteworthy that the "punishment" for Conway's crime was to be "counseled" by the president.  Sean Spicer made clear that her being counseled meant--if anything at all--being congratulated for her loyalty and sound choices in wardrobe.   Trump did not embrace the supposed rebuke; he scoffed at it.

Chaffetz is trying to protect the GOP agenda

Democrats should take a second warning:  Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz immediately spoke out against Trump's cronyism. 

Note that Chaffetz is a partisan bulldog who warned that if voters elected Hillary Clinton he promised nonstop hearings investigating her.  Chaffetz is not the Democrats friend here and they should not take comfort in Chaffetz's criticism.  They should understand it for what it is, a recognition of a major weakness in Trump and a lever that might be used to weaken Trump and the Republican agenda of rolling back progressive changes of the past fifty years.  

Trump vulnerability: the value and prestige of the Trump brand.

Trump is exquisitely sensitive to threats to the Trump brand.  As Trump climbed to the top, smashing the Bush, McCain, Rubio, Cruz, Obama, and Clinton brands he did not appear fully to internalize that winning the office and having the responsibility of governing would inevitably damage, not enhance, his brand.  Possibly he expected to lose the election and then, as a critic of Hillary's inevitable misfortunes, drive the Trump brand even higher as an outside critic and businessman.  In fact, he won.  Now he will inevitably disappoint, and he will disappoint more if he makes hard choices.

The problem for Republicans is that hard, unpopular choices are coming.  The best way for Trump to avoid real criticism is to make a show out of popular things like frightening Carrier and Ford into keeping a US factory open but also to back off entitlement reform and lowering marginal tax rates for the wealthy.  What is popular is borrow-and-spend not cut taxes and reduce spending.  The conservative agenda of trickle down and austerity for the middle class, and actually ending abortion would be massively unpopular if actually enacted.  Its unpopularity is the reason it went nowhere since its attempted implementation by Reagan in 1981.  Trump ran against that platform, not for it.

Conservatism is unpopular but populism is popular.  Trump want to be popular. 

Chaffetz is smart and strategic in wanting Trump to separate his business brand from his political brand.  Chaffetz wants Trump to do the right thing--i.e. the conservative thing-- not the popular thing, and if Trump understands that his business brand will suffer along with his political brand he will be all the more reluctant to do the hard things.

Democrats, understanding this, should give Trump a pass on crony business dealings.  Let him enrich his family.   Let him make deals to put hotels in foreign capitals and let his kids figure out how to make more and more money from licensing the Trump name.   If Trump thinks his kids have billions of dollars at stake in his staying popular, all the better.   If he does it from the Oval Office, best of all.

Of course it is tacky and vulgar.  His supporters don't mind.  They voted for him in full knowledge that he was tacky and vulgar.  

Really, who does it hurt if Trump tells people that Melania's jewelry and Ivanka's clothes are fashionable and his golf courses are the best and his hotels are great values and the public should spend money there.   His detractors will be appalled and his fans will like it.  So what?

Trump's self-cronyism will make him ever more reluctant to roll back Great Society entitlements and it will make him more resolute than ever in fact to replace Obamacare with "something great", not something austere.  Trump understands that foreign wars start off popular but very quickly become unpopular.   He saw what happened to Lyndon Johnson.  He saw how the war in Iraq was a hammer to use against Hillary.   Democrats want popular things, which is why Trump was a Democrat until he decided to run as a Republican against the parts of the Democratic platform that had become unpopular: its political correctness, smugness, and corporatism.

Chaffetz knows full well that Trump will abandon conservative principles immediately if they threaten the value of the Trump brand, which is wrapped up tightly in his ego and his notion of his family legacy and fortune. Chaffetz's criticism of Trump is a guide.  The tighter Trump is invested financially in his political popularity, the better for Democrats.

So, if Trump wants his family to cash in of the popularity of the Trump name,  Democrats should sit back and let him have at it.   The people who will try to stop that are Republicans, and they have already started.   Democrats should take notice.  Trump cronyism helps Democrats, not Republicans.