Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell on Tuesday said that there is a big possibility President Donald Trump’s business interests are influencing his foreign policy decisions regarding Russia, China, and Turkey.
“I think the reason that he drew himself so closely to the Russians was that the Russians liked him and they invested in him. And he has made decisions that seem to favor them more than what would be our national security interests,” Swalwell said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“With China, they did the same thing,” he added. “Turkey, he has projects over there. When you ask, why does he like President Erdogan so much? Well, there’s a Trump Tower over in Turkey. So it does seem like the simplest explanation is the correct one – it’s money.”
Swalwell’s remarks came after Trump in his Sunday Tweet said that he was working with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on a way to save Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE.
ZTE last week announced that it would stop with their major operations as a response to U.S. sanctions, imposed because of its business dealings with Iran and North Korea.
Trump in his tweet also said that ZTE’s failure had cost too many Chinese jobs, which is unusual for a president that repeatedly has been saying about putting “America first” and bringing jobs back to the U.S.
Meanwhile, Huffing Post on Monday reported that just days before Trump said that he would work to save ZTE, the Chinese government agreed to put as much as $500 million in loans into a theme park and resort in Indonesia, where the Trump Organization reportedly has a deal to license the Trump name to the project.
Since entering the White House, Trump has been regularly criticized because of his business dealings.
The president has declined to divest from his business empire upon taking office.
He still has ownership of the Trump Organization, though he handed day-to-day management of the company over to his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
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