The GOP's corporate slush fund currently allows for the White House to withhold the names of businesses that receive bailout cash, leading to concerns that Trump could inject money into his own businesses suffering from the shutdown
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Monday’s White House coronavirus press conference brought a slew of questions as reporters hoped to parse out why and when President Trump intends to lift the national social distancing measures and how the Republican stimulus bill would responsibly distribute a $500 billion corporate slush fund that currently allows for the Treasury Secretary to withhold the names of the businesses that receive bailout cash.
Answering the first question, Trump suggested that an extended economic shutdown would result in more “death” than the spread of a virus that in best-case estimates would kill tens of thousands of Americans. Answering the question of who would provide accountability for the unrestricted distribution of half-a-trillion dollars, Trump’s response was even less promising: “I’ll be the oversight. I’ll be the oversight.
Anyone with a cursory memory of Trump’s time in office should be hesitant to hand over a sum roughly equivalent to the GDP of Belgium to a figure that is legally not allowed to run a charity in New York state.
One obvious outcome of this financing arrangement would be to create the all-but-certain outcome that the Treasury would select the Trump Organization as one of the worthy recipients of its largesse. Trump’s vacation properties have indeed been forced to shut down, and while an unbiased manager might not select the Trump Organization over needier coronavirus victims, Trump himself probably thinks differently.
Earlier in the press conference, Trump also brought an unhelpful comparison out of retirement, comparing the mortality rate of the coronavirus to that of the flu. And for the second conference in a row, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was not in the room.
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