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Trump: The President Who Is Still A Businessman

President Trump is in a peculiar position: He runs the country, advised by his daughter and son-in-law — while also profiting from his own worldwide Trump Organization, run by his sons.

This arrangement has spurred a number of ethics and conflicts-of-interest concerns, numerous lawsuits and a consistent stream of headlines. Though President Trump has stepped down from managing his 500+ businesses and put them in a trust, he continues to own them. The top government ethics official has decried Trump's arrangement as insufficient.

Meanwhile, the specifics of Trump's financial ties — including his debts and actual sources of wealth — remain unclear. As the president often uses his own for-profit properties to host foreign dignitaries, and his Trump Organization continues to operate overseas and do business with foreigners, an archaic word emoluments has entered the daily lexicon of ethics watchdogs. It refers to an obscure but newly relevant constitutional clause.

Check out the video at the top of the page for a brief walk-through of what all this means, how it happened and why it matters.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Alina Selyukh is a business correspondent at NPR, where she follows the path of the retail and tech industries, tracking how America's biggest companies are influencing the way we spend our time, money, and energy.
Marilyn Geewax is a contributor to NPR.
Kara Frame is a video producer for NPR and pursues personal projects in her free time. She most often produces for NPR's explainer series, "Let's Talk: Big Stories, Told Simply." She's crafted stories about housing segregation in Baltimore, MD; motherhood in a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece; and food deserts in Washington, DC. Frame enjoys a break from the news when filming the Tiny Desk Concerts.