Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani Sunday pushed back on a suggestion that President-elect Donald Trump's private business interests could create problems for him in the White House, telling CNN that the New York real estate billionaire didn't run for the White House to become more wealthy.
"You have to have some confidence in the integrity of the president," Giuliani told CNN's Jake Tapper on the "State of the Union" program. "The man is an enormously wealthy man. I don't think there's any real fear of suspicion that he's seeking to enrich himself by being rich. He wouldn't have run for president."
But Tapper pointed out that Trump had said during his campaign that his adult children, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric, would run the business as a blind trust.
"That's not a blind trust," said Tapper. "Blind trust is an independent trustee who directs it without your input or any input from anyone around you."
"You realize that those laws don't apply to the president, right?" Giuliani responded. "The president doesn't have to have a blind trust. For some reason when the law was written, the president was exempt. I think he's in a very unusual situation."
The former mayor, who is serving as the vice-chair of Trump's transition team, said it seems that if there was a clear document showing Trump is not involved in his business."
"It's kind of unrealistic to say, you're going to take the business away from the three people who are running it, and give it to some independent person," said Giuliani.
Meanwhile, the three siblings, along with Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, are a "huge part" of his advisory team, and Kushner has been mentioned as Trump's chief of staff.
But once Trump is sworn in, the three will not be advising him, as "there will have to be a wall" between them regarding government matters.
"If you thought the issues between the Clinton foundation and Hillary Clinton's state department were big, fasten your seat belts," replied Tapper.
"Jake, Jake, Jake, I think that's a very unfair suggestion," Giuliani told him. "There you were talking about enormous amounts of cash...I don't see that happening in a Trump administration. This man didn't run for president because he wants to get rich. He's rich already."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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