Winslow, King, and their extortion target
Wow. Talk about having defective ethics alarms.
Bestselling novelists Stephen King and Don Winslow (he’s a best-selling detective novelist; I assume you know who King is) have offered to donate $200,000 to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital if White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham will finally hold a press conference, something the Administration stopped having ten months ago.
I assume you can quickly assess what is wrong with this, even though these successful, wealthy, adult men cannot:
- They seem to think their wealth entitles and empowers them to manipulate the President of the United States,
What hubris. What arrogance.
- The two writers are using sick children as their hostages to try to bend the White House to their will.
Nice.
- They reveal that they have ample money to give to Danny Thomas’s remarkable charity hospital for sick kids, and a more worthy object of charity one could not find. But they don’t really care about the children; they care about using them as leverage for petty partisan grandstanding.
Step by step, stage by stage, stunt by stunt, the Trump Deranged, be they celebrities, journalists, professionals (once journalists qualified as professions, but no more, not in this country) or elected officials, reveal their own rotten character and values, even as they use their stated revulsion at the President’s character to rationalize their conduct.
Ironically, this is the reason the press briefings were suspended. The Trump Derangesd reporters weren’t using the briefings to inform the public, They were using them to pursue a partisan agenda of undermining the elected President. Reporters like CNN’s Jim Acosta playing the roles of, as Glenn Reynolds says “Democratic operatives with press credentials.” There are, I think, better ways of dealing with this problem than ending press briefings entirely, but King and Winslow have no right or qualifications to dictate to the White House. Like so many successful people in narrow spheres of endeavor, they think they have perception and expertise in other areas where they know nothing or next to it.
And like so many members of “the resistance” since Trump became President, all their machinations have accomplished is to reveal their own hypocrisy and unscrupulousness.
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Ethics Alarms 
What an opening for Trump. He outs them by pointing out that they have money they could easily give to help kids, but they’d rather get involved in a frivolous political stunt and attempt to manipulate the POTUS than do so! “So typical of Trump Derangement Syndrome Democrats!”
They just can’t handing him heads on platters can they!
The weird thing? This was a Trump trick! It’s basically what he tried to troll Obama into producing his birth certificate.
… can’t help handing.
and I proof read it twice!
Oh very good: Virtue signaling combined with blackmail. Stephen King should stick to writing his repetitive horror fiction with cartoonish characters.
Isn’t it illegal to bribe cabinet officials? (and kind of stupid to do it so publically) Just because the money is earmarked for a charity doesn’t make less a bribe, And would they still get the tax benefit, so that increases to grandstanding, doesn’t it?
While I would love to be as sucessful a writer, I have to mark voting and the occasional op-ed to be the limit of interactions. I just do not have the time to understand the arena enough to leverage anything usefully.
Well, would it be illegal to, say, offer a reward of a million dollars to some charity if Trump and his cabinet would dance the Kalinka?
Yeah but the bribe is to do something related to her job and responsibilities. Dancing with the stars was silly, but not telling her what to do, countering what her boss wants. And what her boss wants (not wasting time and money on hostile people unwilling to negotiate) is not an illegal act. Once you throw large amounts of money around, it cannot escape the call of influence peddling, like the Teapot Dome scandal nearly a century ago. Appearance of impropriety on the press secretary’s part.
The kids just plain deserve the donation, and it is a dick move to tie it to anything but being a good example to others and helping the hospital.
OK, OK, I see your point.
Let us suppose — these are Trumpians so you’d expect such a ‘deal’ counter-offer — that the administration formally came back and said: “We agree to put on a press conference if King and Winslow will raise their charitable offering to $500,000.00”.
Would it be illegal — some sort of ‘felonious collusion’ — if St Jude’s accepted the money?
I would not doubt that Trump might counteroffer for jollies.But I doubt he would want to appear to be bought by rich celebs. He really enjoyed firing arrogant celebs on his show.
It does make that appearance of impropiety that Jack often mentions. Accepting donations is the hospital’s duty. I don’t think they have any onus for using the money, but I’m sure the more legal minds can give a better answer.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if the President would call out these political poseurs on their unethical stunt and then donate an equal (or larger) amount to St. Jude’s from his petty cash?
Some idiot calling herself Paula left this comment for you: “Trumps a scamer that’s why he won’t turn over his taxes. He broke. Hahaha. He’s a liar, how many lies has he been caught in?”
This is the typical level of grammar and logic I see from “resistance’ comments, and as such, they are spammed.
“The weird thing? This was a Trump trick! It’s basically what he tried to troll Obama into producing his birth certificate.’
Ah, so he’s ethically estopped. Sadly, I cant see that stopping him however.
Curious: those who are described, always by some other (never by their own self) as being ‘unethical’ and therefore ‘estopped’, often show areas where they themselves — again according to some other and never by their own self — are seen as being unethical and worse: immoral.
Declaring ‘estoppel’, unless confined strictly to a legal sphere, is a game and cannot be a serious pursuit.
Ethics & morals, as spheres where values are defined and recognized, cannot and will never function as jurisprudence functions. In ethics there really is no settled law.
Therefore the entire notion of declaring estoppel is misleading.
Ah yes…the ever-popular, never-gets-old Quid Pro Quo for political purposes. This has the liver-spotted hands of Joe Biden all over it…
…and that’s just about the best place for Biden’s hands to be.
When the President doesn’t walk into their trap, they will announce, “Guess he doesn’t care about sick kids” and they’ve got more fodder to use against him.
My snide remark aside, Winslow and King had probably decided to donate the money to St. Jude’s, but then added the “press conference” proviso as a publicity stunt. I believe St. Jude’s will get the money regardless, but now two authors get a bit of national coverage while poking the proverbial bear. I wonder if either of them is about to publish a book…it might be a veiled attempt to increase sales.
Dr. Lizardo, you’re exactly right. The President (maybe with Melania) could do just as you suggest and totally pull the rug out from under a couple of short-sighted writers. And still, the Deranged would hate the President for making a donation to help children.
Yes, if I were the press secretary, making my own donation without strings might show even more how scummy the announcement is. I’m not convinced they really plan to make the donation, as now they have an excuse to LOOK virtuous and NOT give to the kids. Talk about cheap publicity.
What would be even more embarrassing would be if POTUS turned them down and then gave St.Jude’s $400,000.00 $200,000.00 for himself and $200,000.00 to make up for the lost donation of the skinflint extortionists.
That would be my ideal answer, but it should sting so his opposition does not repeat this ploy.
Hold a press conference, take two or three questions from non-adversarial reporters, then end it with a request that the King of horror porn and his buddy send the $200K to St. Jude’s.
This is just one of the reasons I wasn’t hired to be on Trump’s staff.
Get it in writing first. A formal contract. And that the money be put in escrow and delivered to St Jude’s upon satisfaction.
If he did that, they would use that donation as a basis for impeachment.
If anything, he should laugh at them and say, “that’s my trick. ”
-Jut
Trump should take $200,000 out of his bank account and donate it to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and challenge both of those assholes to match it unconditionally, that’ll increase the coffers of St. Judes by $600,000. Stephen King and Don Winslow can go screw themselves.
Back in early August 2018 I took the initiative to submit a comment to the White House via their website Contact the White House form stating…
The reply I got from the White House was…
It was a small thing to do, but after seeing what a circus the White House press briefings had become I felt the need to voice my opinion with the White House. They stopped White House press briefings early in 2019. I’m certainly not saying that me contacting the White House had anything to do with their choice, but if my contact was a small piece of a LOT more similar comments it’s nice to think that just maybe the President of the United States and his staff are listening.
Get involved, voice your opinion, even if it’s only a small thing to do.