OOPS! Trump Is Just Fine With Tearing Down Ethics Office After All

As much as it hurts to agree with President-elect Donald Trump, sometimes he’s right.

Take the media, for example. Mr. Trump loves to tell us how often they get it wrong.

For once, we agree with him.

The Republican House tried overnight to pass a measure that would have gutted the authority of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. This is the nonpartisan office charged with overseeing conflicts of interest and breaches of ethics by members of the House of Representatives. 

Republican House members decided to meet behind closed doors in a late night session to pass an amendment that would have stripped the powers of the Office.

The backlash was quick, and it was severe. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren didn’t hesitate to blast the Republicans for the move.

There were other strong reactions, notably from the left. If the Republicans thought they were going to sneak this one through, they were wrong.

This morning, several media outlets reported that the amendment was dropped and the effort abandoned after the strong backlash.

Where they got it wrong was in reporting that it was Donald Trump’s opposition that prompted the turn around by the House.

Bloomberg Politics reported:

“House Republicans dropped their bid to weaken the independent Office of Congressional Ethics after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the move as counter to his call to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington.”

CNN Politics said almost the same thing. Along with other media sites, they claimed that Trump had tweeted a slam against the move.

To read these headlines, you would have thought that the President-elect was upset to see that his party was trying to make it easier for politicians to violate the federal ethics code.

Hahahaha.

No, he wasn’t.

Trump’s actual complaint was that the House made the move too quickly.  Look at what he wrote in the two tweets sent out this morning.

The unwritten part of this, of course, is that Trump meant “go ahead and eliminate the ethics restraints in a couple of weeks.”

Yup.

The “mainstream media” got it wrong this time.

Donald Trump did not complain that the Republican House was making it too easy for elected officials to violate ethics laws.

For once, Trump is correct. The media sometimes gets things wrong.

Damn. It’s so hard to agree with him.

Featured image by Wikimedia Commons.

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"