Trump's Massive Debt Makes Him A National Security Threat, Warns His Biographer
President Donald Trump’s massive debt highlighted in a New York Times report Sunday exposing his astonishingly low federal income tax payments makes him vulnerable to foreign influence — and a threat to national security, his biographer warned Monday.
Trump is in a position to use the power of his office to erase some of his $421 million debt revealed by the Times by obtaining lucrative deals for his international companies from foreign interests looking to curry favor with the U.S. government.
Due to Trump’s “indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat — a threat that will only escalate if he’s reelected,” Timothy L. O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation,” warned in a Bloomberg column.
“The trade-offs someone like him would be willing to make to save his face and his wallet taint every public policy decision he makes — including issues around national security,” he wrote. If Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, can hypothetically “backchannel a loan or a handout to the president, how hard is Trump going to be on Russia?” added O’Brien, a former HuffPost executive editor.
Other observers agreed with O’Brien’s risk assessment.
Trump entered office with the biggest debts of any president in modern times. Deutsche Bank is a key Trump lender, but not all the sources of his loans are publicly known.
“Fundamentally, there’s the concern that a president who is personally on the hook for significant loans that come due while he’s the president might take official actions, or appear to take official actions, that are meant to alleviate the personal financial pressure he faces,” University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck told Rolling Stone magazine.
“Indeed, there’s a reason why the federal government generally won’t give security clearances to those...
