Team Trump struggles to hide its indifference toward ethics laws
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/team-trump-struggles-hide-its-indifference-toward-ethics-laws-n1233884?cid=sm_fb_maddow&fbclid=IwAR2VldDcAO6_BH9wrw-hsx6JKC24qjlzlYs_8_CjhOvsmeprns8pLN62zrU
At a White House event last week, Goya CEO Robert Unanue said, We're all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder. This, not surprisingly, didn't sit well with some Goya customers, who responded to the CEO's comments by saying they'd take their business elsewhere.
The White House is now pushing back in the opposite direction.
Ivanka Trump tweeted support for Goya Foods on Tuesday after comments from the company's top executive in support of President Donald Trump last week prompted calls to boycott the brand. If its Goya, it has to be good, the presidents daughter, who serves as a formal adviser to the president in the White House, tweeted late Tuesday in both English and Spanish along with a photo of her posing with can of black beans.
What the public saw, in effect, is a prominent White House official using her platform to do a commercial for a private company. If you're thinking there must be federal ethics law prohibiting such an abuse, you're right.
In fact, federal ethics laws are not ambiguous in areas like these: "An employee shall not use or permit the use of his Government position or title or any authority associated with his public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise ... "
*snip*