Nordstrom decided not to stock Ivanka Trump’s clothing line for this season. Although some suspected it was in response to the #GrabYourWallet campaign urging people to boycott businesses that support Trump and his family’s subsidiaries, Nordstrom’s official position is that they dropped the line due to its recent poor sales, saying “over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.”
Ivanka’s father, Donald Trump, tweeted a complaint on his personal Twitter: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom… Terrible!” This is well within his rights as an inflammatory celebrity user of a social media site. But he crossed a political and professional line when he then retweeted the complaint to the official POTUS Twitter. Oh yeah, and he also apparently tweeted this 21 minutes into an intelligence briefing.
The President wasn’t the only one to publicly support Ivanka, his counselors have too. Sean Spicer even said that Nordstrom dropping the line was “a direct attack on the Presidency,” which is ridiculous. Kellyanne Conway also publicly supported Ivanka Trump and even endorsed her products, saying: “I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.” Conway expressed no regret for her actions, tweeting that she had a meeting with Trump following the statements, and that he “supports [her] 100%.” It would seem that she’s received no more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist. While Spicer said she was “counseled” for her actions, he declined to elaborate on what that meant.
This is a flagrant ethics violation, as the U.S. Office of Government Ethics not only disallows but also clearly forbids “[u]sing public office for their own private gain for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom they are affiliated in a non-government capacity” but also “[e]ndorsing any product, service, or company.” While a letter was issued by the OGE to the deputy counsel, it says that despite being counseled, “[the] OGE has not yet received notification of any disciplinary or corrective action against Ms. Conway.”
These events characterize the slow movement of the government towards becoming more dictatorial. The President (and his administration in general) is unable to separate their personal interests from their political ones. Even though Nordstrom’s decision was purely financial (the line wasn’t selling well) and didn’t have anything to do with Ivanka’s connection to the presidency, the government is meddling in what should be private business affairs and making them a public issue.
Kavya Seth
TRUMP v NORDSTROM