How failing at a self-serving goal can help Trump minimize trouble

For a public official who professed to turn over his business affairs to his adult sons, President Donald Trump has openly paid a stunning amount of attention to promoting his private properties.

The latest storm over potential self-dealing arose when Trump argued at an international VIP conclave for his revenue-challenged Doral resort in Miami to host the next G-7 conference.

This kind of presidential pitch used to be unheard of. For now, Trump's best route out of a whopping conflict of interest might be to let a sensible adviser or two talk him out of the idea.

Trump's previous failures to get his plans carried out produced the happy side effect of stemming potential corruption.

According to his own ex-White House counsel's sworn testimony, Trump sought to fabricate a conflict-of-interest charge against Robert Mueller as a prelude to firing the Russia-scandal investigator. Counsel Don McGahn refused. 

As revealed earlier this year, the Trump Organization tried throughout the 2016 campaign to reach a big construction deal in Moscow. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, now imprisoned, admitted he lied to Congress about how long those talks went on.

Imagine how much sleazier it all would have looked if President Vladimir Putin and his favored oligarchs agreed on a project with Trump just before, or even after, the Republican president took office. 

Or what if Trump had succeeded in cutting a trade deal with China early on, right after First Daughter Ivanka Trump got trademarks approvals from the government in Beijing for her fashion brand? As it turned out, she closed the troubled enterprise a year ago with no quid pro quo suspected.

Other Trump initiatives have gone belly-up after scandals blossomed. 

Last year the Donald J. Trump Foundation, touted as his charity, agreed to dissolve and give away its remaining assets under court supervision after the New York State attorney general's office found it was "functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests."

Fraud claims arising from the defunct Trump University had earlier been settled for $25 million in federal court.

Still other cases showed further how failure can be an alibi. When Donald Trump Jr. and others from the 2016 campaign met with connected Russians, following their offer of "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, they apparently didn't get what they wanted and left. 

If the meeting had been a success, would it not have met the dictionary definition of collusion?

Lucky for everyone, perhaps, that the meeting proved to be another Trumpian dud. 

This week The Washington Post reported that Trump issued unusual directives to start up plans for his long-stymied border wall. One senior official was quoted as saying of the Oval Office: “They don’t care how much money is spent, whether landowners’ rights are violated, whether the environment is damaged, the law, the regs or even prudent business practices."

Nobody will need to worry about that, however, as long as the wall project remains stalled.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.