Dell CEO Michael Dell and Susan Dell joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to celebrate the launch of Trump accounts.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
In recent days, President Donald Trump has announced Walmart is lowering prices, and took credit. He went further last week when he cheered Michael Dell for funding Trump Accounts to the tune of $6.25 billion.At an Oval Office celebration for the investment accounts for children with the CEO and his wife, Trump issued this exhortation: "Go out and buy a Dell computer."Average Americans may like cheaper groceries or no-cost nest eggs for their kids. They may be pleased that the president is pushing for what he wants from corporate America.The president's penchant for mixing business and politics has others concerned that his pattern of playing favorites meddles with free enterprise and could distort incentives in the economy. Another concern — he has bought shares in both Dell and Walmart this year."It's a clear violation of misusing public office for private gain, and also sort of implying that there is some sort of government-wide endorsement of Dell products over competitors for laptops and electronics," Don Fox, former general counsel and acting director of the US Office of Government Ethics, said in an interview."For anyone else, it would be a clear-cut violation, and frankly, in any other administration, no chief executive would ever have done this, and if one of their staff members had done it, they would have been called to the carpet on it."Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office under President George W. Bush, said that during the Bush administration, ethics officials were so careful of perceived favoritism that they rarely allowed high-ranking officials to appear at company-specific events. When such events did occur, Painter said they "bent over backwards" to ensure they did not improperly lend the president's imprimatur.
