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Meanwhile, that week at the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., a lobbyist for one of Japan’s auto makers paid a visit (“#working”), Indonesia’s deputy coordinating minister of maritime affairs (in town for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting) had breakfast, and the wife of a Republican candidate for county judge in Ohio praised the hotel’s beauty. No, the president and the Trump Organization haven’t made public his properties’ guest lists. We learned about all of these activities via Instagram. If Trump’s Twitter account is his personal id, where he rants and raves and indulges every primal instinct, then Instagram reflects his presidency’s ego. In his tweets, the president sets his agenda, alternately praises and criticizes aides and allies, skewers his foes, and makes headlines. But it’s on Instagram where the ethos of the Trump administration and his global business empire—playing it loose with rules about conflicts of interest, the naked ambition, the impulse to create your own reality, the shameless salesmanship—is on full display. On Instagram, players in the president’s pageant tag themselves at Trump hotels and golf courses, validating with duck-face pouts and middle-distance gazes some of the biggest concerns about Trump’s presidency: the potential for undue foreign influence, access for sale, and kickbacks. That the photo-sharing platform is the go-to app for Trump World’s plandids isn’t too much of a surprise: Trump has been a lifestyle brand for decades. And Instagram is our social media destination of choice for engaging with brands: the Facebook-owned platform claims 80% of its accounts follow a business, and in September 2017, its COO told Adweek, “In the last month there have been 180 million interactions with businesses.” “With this presidency and the business potential, there seems to be a celebrity aspect to it,” said Jordan Libowitz, the communication director for the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit government watchdog involved in three lawsuits regarding Trump’s businesses. Researchers at CREW monitor Instagram to see who’s tagged at a Trump business, finding the most activity at the Trump International in D.C. and Mar-a-Lago. They’re looking for U.S. and foreign government officials, which could be violations of the U.S. Constitution’s emolument clauses (which prohibit the president from accepting money from other countries and receiving financial benefits from the federal or a state government beyond his or her salary), as well as to see who has access to the president at his properties. “What I’ve been most surprised at has been how willing people have been to tag themselves, knowing the potential issues and potential firestorm that could come from it,” Libowitz said. Capturing visits by foreign officials and lobbyists Forget about Russian influence (seriously, you can do it, it’s only for a few minutes), foreign governments can try to sway Trump in ways far less titillating than pee tape kompromat. Book a room, host an event, or sip a cocktail at a Trump property, and the profits can go to the president: His trust is not blind, he’s allowed to withdraw money from his enterprises at any time, and while the Trump Organization claims it donates all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, it’s provided no documentation for how it calculated the $151,470 check it cut for 2017.

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Winning over the boss And Instagram shows which U.S. government officials—many of whom serve at the pleasure of the president—support his businesses, either directly or as an honored guest at a function (think of it as possibly a more refined version of Tony Soprano putting a guy in charge of trash pickup and then getting a cash-stuffed envelope once a month in return). Seven members of Trump’s cabinet have showed up at the Trump Hotel D.C. via Instagram: Vice President Mike Pence chatted up three U.S. senators at a lunch for donors, Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Chief of Staff John Kelly dined with Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions celebrated the American Spectator, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos smiled alongside Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. at the Museum of the Bible’s opening gala, HUD Secretary Ben Carson “introduced a new opera project,” and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke posed with Instagrammer snortyjordy after the State of the Union address. And here photos of BLT Prime diner with the President and Mnuchin at the Trump Hotel DC last night. https://t.co/KdT94krL8i pic.twitter.com/J4PtyJhjWI — Zach Everson (@Z_Everson) July 30, 2017 “He’s the vice president. He spends up to several hours a day with the president,” Pence’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, told Fast Company when asked via email if Pence was hoping his visit to a Trump property would curry favor with the president. “If he wanted to influence him or convey an opinion, he would simply speak directly to the president.” When asked about Carson’s visit to his boss’s hotel, HUD public affairs specialist Brian Sullivan wrote, “It’s impossible to respond to a picture taken by somebody else and posted onto their Instagram site without any context” and dismissed the idea that Carson’s visit to the hotel financially benefited the Trump Organization. As for whether the other Cabinet members hoped to influence Trump by visiting his properties, spokespeople for Kelly, Mnuchin, and DeVos did not respond to our inquiries. The U.S. Department of Justice’s director of public affairs pointed out that Sessions had been invited to an event, the location of which was beyond their control. And the press secretary of the Department of the Interior, Heather Swift, replied, “The Department cannot speak to what private citizens do with their own social media accounts.”

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