A Fight Over Ethics in the Age of Trump
The 2016 presidential election and its aftermath have highlighted the extent to which a deeply divided American public interprets events and information through a partisan lens. After all, Oxford Dictionaries even picked “post-truth” as its Word of the Year. Under Donald Trump’s administration, even basic ethical standards in government appear poised to become a subject of political controversy.
On Wednesday, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency, publicly denounced Trump’s to turn control of his business empire over to his sons—a plan that a as the best approach “from a conflicts and ethics perspective.” By contrast, Walter Shaub, the federal ethics chief, the president-elect’s strategy effectively “meaningless” as a proposal to prevent conflicts of interest.
