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Thus far, the debate over Donald Trumps refusal to sell his assets has focused on whether he might use his position to make himself even wealthier, in ways that most people would regard as corrupt. But earlier generations of Americansincluding the founders of our countrywould have seen his actions in a far harsher light. They would have viewed Trump as a traitor, someone who was willing to become a stooge of foreign powers.

Treachery was the language used at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to describe a president in foreign pay. Pennsylvania delegate Gouverneur Morris believed that the Constitution needed an impeachment clause because a future president may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the First Magistrate in foreign pay, without being able to guard against it by displacing him. Morris conceded that although most leaders wouldnt be tempted by foreign money, there were exceptions. In the 17th century, Britains Charles II received a pension from the French king Louis XIV, and simultaneously avoided conflict to such a degree that one contemporary despaired that Englands role in the world was to greaten France. Morris described Charles IIs actions as taking a bribe. The Executive ought, therefore, to be impeachable for treachery, he concluded.

Traitor was also, incidentally, the word used by Hillary Clintons opponents because of her relationship to the Clinton Foundation, among other things (more on that later).

On the day that Donald Trump takes office, his family will be in foreign pay. The Trump Organization will be getting a substantial paycheck from the Chinese government by way of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest tenant of Trump Tower. Trump will also be paying interest to China: Hes invested in a partnership that borrowed $950 million from lenders including the state-owned Bank of China. Each of these rolesas landlord and debtorputs Trump and the country in a position of vulnerability to China. The Chinese government has the capacity to make him richer or poorer, and can use that capacity to influence trade policy and military decisions.

Corruption is not a show of ruthless strength or power, but rather of weakness and vulnerability.

I cite China as an example not because its the country most likely to exercise that leverage, but because the language around Trumps businessesentanglements, hundreds, complexcan obscure the fact that they involve a number of powerful nations with specific goals in relation to US foreign policy. These countries will have every incentive to use their leverageand well have a president who has repeatedly shown a remarkable insecurity regarding his business interests. During a Comedy Central roast of Trump in 2011, for example, the participants were allowed to joke about all kinds of his foibles, but according to The Huffington Posts Daniel Libit, Trump Tower made it known that two subjects were off-limits: Trumps past bankruptcies, and any suggestion that he was not as wealthy as he claimed to be. So if you think that Trump hasnt exposed himself to leverage by foreign governments, youve got another thing coming.

* * *

On January 11, responding to widespread concerns about the potential for foreign bribery, Trump announced that he wasnt planning to do anything meaningful about it. He said that he refused to sell his business and that his children would manage it instead. This means that he will be violating the Constitutions emoluments clause from the moment he takes office.

Trump also made some incoherent claims in his press conference. For instance: I have no dealings with Russia. We could make deals in Russia very easily, if we wanted to; I just dont want to because I think that would be a conflict. This raises the question of why his deals in and loans from other countries do not constitute a conflict.

Trump also said that there would be no new foreign deals, which is essentially impossible. No new deals would mean no lease renewals or term negotiations, both of which are inherent in any business relationship. To take just one example, the Trump Tower lease held by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is up for renewal in 2017. That lease renegotiation would be a new deal.

Donald Trumps business interests provide huge opportunities for foreign governments and financial partners of the Trump Organization to influence US policy. These groups are fighting back:

Public Citizen: An organization that seeks to reduce corporate influence on government and hold government officials accountable for misdeeds. citizen.org

Rootstrikers: An online organizing project that targets banks, corporations, super PACs, and other entities that buy political influence. rootstrikers.org

MayDay.us: A grassroots movement to fight corruption by electing reformers to all levels of government. mayday.us

Finally, Trump contradicted his own claim that hell be removed from his businesses management when he told the press that he had turned down a major deal as recently as a few days prior. Someone not involved in management has no power to reject deals.

In the last few months, several news organizations have reported that foreign leaders and diplomats plan to stay at Trumps new hotel in Washington, DC, in order to curry favor with him. Trump addressed this at the press conference by saying that any profits coming from these hotels would go to the US Treasury. But Trump has no authority to make that decision unilaterally: According to the Constitution, payments from foreign governments (yes, including hotel bills) must be approved by Congress, which might then approve a donation to the Treasury. This has been standard practice throughout the history of our country. For example, when President Martin Van Buren received a horse from the imam of Muscat, Congress reviewed the gift and gave it to the Treasury; Van Buren didnt act unilaterally. Moreover, hotel visits are tiddleywinks compared with the chess game that we should anticipate from major financial partners of the Trump Organization attempting to influence who we tax, impose tariffs on, andmost dangerouslyinvade (or whether we refrain from military action). And because the Trump Organization is an ongoing business enterprise, there will always be new players seeking to develop their own leverage.

Heres the important thing to understand about corruption: It is not a show of ruthless strength and power, but rather of weakness and vulnerability. Trumps decision to keep his business open is an invitation to strategic efforts by other countries. Not all of them will succeed, but it is likely that some will. And the mere fact of this weakness will call into question the integrity of almost all of his major foreign-policy decisions. Does he decide to hold back on confronting another countrys military aggression because its the right thing to do, or because hes worried that the country might retaliate by changing the terms of repayment on money that his business owes? Does he push for greater tariffs on one kind of goods because hes been influenced by business partners in another country whose government has the capacity to block or approve a major project he wants? Is he enthusiastic about our relationship with a particular government because of the profits that will flow to his organization (and his ego)?

At the Constitutional Convention, the framers sought to protect against exactly this kind of corruption and treachery by insisting on one of the most stringently worded sections of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 reads: No title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

During Hillary Clintons campaign, a number of commentatorsmyself includedwarned that her husband or daughter taking foreign money for the Clinton Foundation created dangerous conflicts of interest and threatened a violation of the emoluments clause. I believed that her relationship with the foundation when she served as secretary of state was extremely unseemly, at best. Had Clinton been elected president, I would have called for her absolute separation from the foundation.

However, while I have no interest in making apologies for Clinton, theres a significant difference here. Clintons role may have been illegal had she maintained familial ties to the foundation. In the case of President-elect Trump, theres no doubt that hes engaged in a blatant violation of the law, since hes receiving direct and personal financial benefits from foreign governments.

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Congress has an obligation to approve or reject every foreign payment to Donald Trump. The ultimate remedy for violations of the emoluments clause was, and is, impeachment. Charles IIs bribe was uncovered by a parliamentary investigation, and the same will be required here. Violations of the emoluments clause epitomize the very reason behind the impeachment clause: Submitting to the seductions of foreign states is a breach of the public trust so serious that it cannot wait until the next election to be remedied.

Trump has an intuitive if not actual understanding of the danger of his position. Its an affront to his campaign slogans: He is putting America second. Its a daily betrayal of his country, and one that goes straight to the heart of his popularity: How can he Make America Great Again if hes beholden to business cronies in other countries? But Trump cannot bear to let his aura of financial power go, and its a weakness precisely because he cant. It is also one of the most significant dangers he poses to this country.

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Donald Trump Will Violate the Constitution on Day One - The Nation.

Donald Trump has consistently sought credit for the several high-profile jobs announcements made by big companies in the weeks following his election.

"Because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States and taking them from other countries," Trump told reporters back in December. On Twitter, he's boasted about his role in creating and keeping jobs in America.

But is the president-elect, still days away from his swearing-in ceremony, actually behind what might appear to be a hiring bonanza? Economic evidence suggests otherwise, indicating instead that he did not cause most of the new hiring.

GM announced it was creating 450 new American jobs on Tuesday, for example, and moving 6,000 existing technology jobs back to the United States. The company's official announcement does not mention Trump or the federal government. Instead, it casts the steps as part of a four-year efficiency plan. GM's financial materials and previous corporate statements support that assertion.

Mary Barra, GM's CEO, is on President-elect Trump's economic policy team. Yet she has specifically rebuffed his argument, made in tweets and speeches, that American companies should move more car manufacturing into the U.S.

Speaking at a car show this month, Barra said GM will continue to "build where we sell," citing the company's supply chain of production and sales in China and the U.S.

Prior to this week's announcement, Barra has emphasized that long-term global business fundamentals drive the company's personnel strategy.

GM employs 215,000 people across 6 continents, including 97,000 in the U.S. and 15,000 in Mexico. As Barra told bankers on a conference call this month, profitability and efficiency considerations mean some GM "products are in Mexico," while the company "will continue" to also hire in America. On the same call, Barra cited GM's ongoing effort to insource certain positions, touting "11,000 IT jobs" that returned to the U.S. "over several years."

In GM's Monday announcement, most of the jobs cited are actually from the long-term program for insourcing its existing IT jobs. The 450 new U.S. jobs comprise 0.46 percent of the company's domestic workforce.

Related: Companies Are Recycling Their Old News to Avoid Being Blasted in a Trump Tweet

Trump has repeatedly tweeted about companies that have announced new jobs since his election and tweeted negatively about companies like Toyota, reported to be building a new plant in Mexico.

NBC News reported on Tuesday that some companies, eager to avoid becoming a target, have preemptively or retroactively announced plans to create U.S. jobs. On Wednesday, after a Today Show fact check reported that GM's hiring was not a direct response to his tweets, Trump took to Twitter to respond.

Michael Hicks, an economics professor who studies the government's impact on the economy, says public companies do not typically make employment decisions on a Twitter timeline.

"Business expansion plans are probably the result of many months, if not years, of restructuring and business planning," says Hicks. He adds that many politicians exaggerate their influence over the economy.

While corporate employment and manufacturing plans take a long time to develop, there have certainly been a series of jobs announcements since the election.

Industry experts say that wave of P.R. looks like a response to Trump, even if the underlying hiring is not.

"Many of these moves we anticipated," says Michelle Krebs, an industry analyst for Autotrader.com.

Car companies have simply began "timing" announcements, she says, to appease the president-elect.

"They are packaging their news that they otherwise might kind of dribble out," Krebs tells MSNBC, "and doing some storytelling around it in an effort to get out of the crosshairs of Trump."

Maryann Keller, another industry analyst, told Bloomberg News that car companies are clearly "announcing investments that they would have made anyway."

Alan Tonelson, an economic analyst sympathetic to Trump's trade critique, argues that while the president-elect does not deserve credit for some of the announcements, he could ultimately impact corporate conduct.

"It can't possibly be coincidental that all of these announcements have been made since early November," says Tonelson, author of a book about "America's Failed Trade Policies" with China.

"He is going to use that presidential bully pulpit" to target offshoring, Tonelson tells MSNBC, adding, "history has shown that presidents have considerable power to change corporate norms."

Mark Muro, a manufacturing expert at Brookings, says there's no doubt the auto industry uses a "long term" timeline for "major capital investments," so recent moves were not caused by Trump's words. But he also argued Trump could promote American jobs by prodding CEOs.

Trump is "standing up for American-based production," Muro told MSNBC, "and conveying a norm that says that advanced manufacturing, and advanced industries, are particularly important."

Public companies certainly respond to multiple stakeholders, from traditional investors and consumers, to broader pressure from politicians, activists, or "bad P.R." in general.

Related: Plant Workers Still Losing Jobs Tell Trump: Don't Forget About Us

Even rhetorical pressure, however, has its limits.

"It's always convenient for politicians to take credit for job creation announcements, but no CEO of a Fortune 500 company is going to respond to sort of off-the-cuff policy considerations," says Hicks, the economist. "they have a board and stockholders to answer to."

Those board members and stockholders pursue global profits, and the law is also on their side.

GM, like most Fortune 100 companies, is incorporated in Delaware. That means its executives are bound by the state's business laws, which require executives only make corporate moves to increase the company's stock value.

Even if an executive believes a certain action would be a good thing say, hiring more Americans or donating to charity they can only take the action to the extent it economically benefits the company.

CEOs "must make stockholder welfare their sole end," as the top judge on Delaware's Supreme Court explained the rule, in a 2015 treatise on corporation law.

Laws can, of course, change.

In the Trump era, the big question for American corporations is not ultimately what the president says. Trump's words on Twitter can largely be managed by more words, as corporations learn to couch their announcements accordingly a process that business experts say is relatively insignificant for the economy.

The billion dollar question is what the president does. Will he actually alter corporate law, or federal policy, or international trade? Then executives would have a reason to change more than their press releases.

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Fact Checking Donald Trump's Job Creation Claims - NBCNews.com

Just a week away from Donald Trumps inauguration, Americans are still expressing historically low approval for the president-elects handling of the transition.

According to a Gallup poll released Friday, more than half of people (51 percent of those surveyed) said they disapprove of Mr. Trumps transition performance. Just 44 percent expressed approval of the president-elect, who has faced a number of controversies in the weeks following his Nov. 8 win. Thats a drop of four percentage points from the 48 percent of people that approved of the president-elect in early December. Four percent of those polled say they have no opinion on the issue.

Those numbers are substantially lower than the ratings of other presidents-elect before him: In 2009, 83 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Obama in the days leading up to his inauguration. In 2001, 61 percent said the same of George W. Bush, while Bill Clinton had a 68 percent approval rate in 1993.

Republicans and Democrats had differing views of how Mr. Trump has handled the transition, with 87 percent of Republicans saying they approved. Only 13 percent of Democrats said the same.

Mr. Trumps Cabinet nominations -- several of whom have already weathered Senate confirmation hearings -- are also facing low approval ratings. In sum, Americans rate Mr. Trumps Cabinet as worse than those chosen by Presidents-elect Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Fifty-two percent of people believe the president-elects Cabinet nominees are average or better -- a low number compared to 83 percent that believed that of Mr. Obamas and Clintons, and 81 percent that thought that of Bushs picks.

Forty-four percent viewed Mr. Trumps Cabinet nominees as below average or poor. Just 13 percent of people believed that Bushs Cabinet was staffed with below average or poor picks. Twelve percent believed that of Clintons and ten percent of Obamas.

The Gallup poll was conducted from Jan. 4-8, 2017, with a random sample of 1,032 adults, The margin of error is four percentage points.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Poll: Donald Trump approval still low as inauguration looms ...

- December 07, 2015 -

(New York, NY) December 7th, 2015, -- Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policyreleased data showing "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled, "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah." Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.

Mr. Trump stated, "Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again." - Donald J. Trump

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Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration

The Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar star says that the Hollywood community became bullies in their treatment of candidate Trump.

Zoe Saldana rose to the A-list after her compelling turns as the communications officer Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, filmmaker J.J. Abramss space adventure about a multicultural crew spreading pluralism throughout the galaxy, and that of Neytiri in Avatar, a sci-fi epic about environmental preservation in the face of corporate greed. She is also a Hispanic woman (birth name: Zoe Yadira Saldaa Nazario) of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, with African and Haitian roots.

All of these credits and traits seem to be at odds with President-elect Donald Trump, an orange-hued billionaire who spent the lions share of his campaign alienating minority groups, appointed a climate change denier as head of the EPA, installed a former Exxon executive as Secretary of State, and has expressed particular disdain towards the Hispanic immigrant community.

And yet, Saldanawhile not a Trump supporter herselfhas seemingly taken it upon herself to defend the indefensible, placing some of the blame for Trumps shock election victory on Tinseltown for bullying the worlds premier bully.

We got cocky and became arrogant and we also became bullies, Saldana told AFP of Trump, whos mocked a disabled New York Times reporter, called Megyn Kelly a bimbo, accused Ted Cruzs father of assassinating JFK, and has himself been accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women.

We were trying to single out a man for all these things he was doing wrong, she continued, and that created empathy in a big group of people in America that felt bad for him and that are believing in his promises.

There is this strange argument, one cooked up by the Trump campaign and propagated by the conservative media apparatus, that Hillary Clinton (and by extension her Hollywood surrogates) ran an ugly campaign against Trump. The reality, of course, is that virtually all of Clintons attack ads against Trump consisted of montages of Trump saying heinous things. Accusing someone of running an ugly campaign for merely highlighting the sexist, bigoted, hateful things her opponents said is textbook gaslighting.

Saldana is no stranger to controversy. The 38-year-old actress, who is currently starring in the Ben Affleck action-thriller Live By Night, came under fire last year for darkening her skin and donning facial prosthetics to play the iconic singer Nina Simone in the biopic Nina. Saldana and the filmmakers passionately defended the head-scratching decision, claiming that other actors who more closely resembled Nina had turned the project down, while large segments of the media and moviegoing public viewed it as another example of Hollywoods racist aversion to dark-skinned black actors.

The very fact that theres such a shallow pool of actors who look like Simone is not a non-racist excuse, but a sign of racism itselfthe same racism that plagued Nina Simone, wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates. Being conscious of that racism means facing the possibility of Simones story never being told. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that we live in a world that is not ready for that story to be told. The release ofNinadoes not challenge this fact. It reifies it.

Saldanas latest film, Live By Night, contains a sequence where Ben Afflecks bootlegger-gangster squares off against the Ku Klux Klana white supremacist organization that endorsed Donald Trumps presidency. The actress explained how if we all work together, we wont regress culturally.

Im learning from [the Trump win] with a lot of humility, she told AFP. If we have people continue to be strong and educate ourselves and stand by equal rights and treat everyone with respect, we dont go back to those times.

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Zoe Saldana Believes Hollywood Bullied Donald Trump - The ...