Trump’s “Office of the Former President” shows he’s not giving up
Former president Donald Trump announced on Monday that he will open an “Office of the Former President in Florida. The title of the office is purposefully misleading. Mr. Trump is once again a businessperson and should not be representing himself as a spokesperson for the broader United States interest.
According to the press release, “The Office will be responsible for managing President Trump’s correspondence, public statements, appearances, and official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump Administration through advocacy, organizing, and public activism.”
As a rhetorician, I immediately notice problematic linguistic slippage in this statement. First of all, President Trump is no longer President. While he is correctly referred to as “former” president in the office’s title, the missive that has been widely circulated verbatim by the press drops the “former.”
Similarly, there is no longer a Trump Administration. Trump is now a private citizen and is opening, for all intents and purpose, a business to handle is post-presidential affairs. Referring to it as an “administration” perpetuates that idea that Trump is still in office.
Finally, and most problematically, the statement equates the “agenda of the Trump Administration” (which no longer exists) with “the interests of the United States.” As a private businessperson, Mr. Trump no longer speaks for the interests of the United States.
The decision to open the office comes just as the American people are learning that Mr. Trump’s campaign paid $2.7 million to organize the rally that led to the riot at the Capitol on January 6.
If a nearly $3 million dollar investment in anti-democratic violence is indicative of the kind of “advocacy” and “organizing” that is planned for Trump’s Office of the Former President, then it has no business aligning itself with the interests of the United States.
Certainly, in and of itself, Mr. Trump opening an office to handle his post-presidential affairs is no remarkable event. Former President Barack Obama spent the last eight years publishing a very successful (and I imagine lucrative) memoir and speaking across the country. That kind of work requires entrepreneurship and a team of paid staff to handle the logistics.
The problem is not that Mr. Trump is opening an office to handle his next career phase, the issue is that his language around the opening of the office purposefully confuses his private behavior with his role as a public official. If Mr. Trump wishes to open an advocacy office to pursue the kinds of “advocacy” that American witness over the past four years, then so be it.
But Mr. Trump should not present his personal business interests as working on behalf of the American people.
