At least a scoundrel knows when he is doing wrong. But the president is blind to the very idea of public interest

Private transactions can’t be wrong or immoral because, by definition, they require that every party to them be satisfied. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a deal For example, absent a public interest, there can’t be conflicts of interest.

So when lobbyists representing the Saudi government paid for an estimated 500 nights at Trump’s Washington DC hotel within a month of his election, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, rented so many rooms at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan that its revenues rose in 2018 after years of decline, Trump saw it as half of a private transaction.

The other half: Trump would continually go to bat for Saudi Arabia and the crown prince, even after the Senate passed a resolution blaming him for the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

via In Trump’s mind, all deals are private. ‘Public interest’ means nothing to him | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian