Reading the story, I started off, “Wow, Trump was being an asshole… oh wait, here’s another way he was being an asshole… and another way…” It’s such pure Trump - violate all the norms to screw other people over and make money for yourself.
And how much the working of the country have been protected by presidents, even when incredibly selfish, who put the country before themselves. It wasn’t until Trump came in with no love for the country at all (and limitless selfishness) that it became clear what previous presidents could have done in various situations that would have benefited them at the expense of the country, but decided not to.
That just means what he did wasn’t illegal. The norm is for the official White House photographer to publish a book of photographs and for presidents to write a foreward (for free). Trump violated the norm by demanding a cut of the book sales, then while stonewalling her on the book, secretly made plans to cut her out of it entirely and release his own, making money off her photographs. Since the market for the book is pretty much limited to Trump fans, it completely undercuts her ability to release a book at this point. (Non-Trump-fans absolutely don’t want a book full of that fucker’s face, no matter how unflattering the pictures - which is basically all of them anyways. As official photographer, all her pictures are in the public domain, so it’s not like there’s juicy stuff held in reserve, either.)
But a) she agreed to be that fucker’s official photographer, and b) she approached him to write the forward for the book (so obviously the plan was for flattering photographs). She really should have known better.
They should (I mean, in theory - they can’t even pass the important legislation they need to keep their voters happy), but a problem here is that Trump broke tons of actual laws while in office - but nothing’s happening about that, either. The system of accountability for the president has been revealed to be completely broken, and a few more laws won’t change that, unfortunately.
Those photos are already out there and we’ve all seen them. But that’s just the day-to-day reality of Trump to which we long ago became inured.
I don’t know that’s true because Trump’s just a grifter. He has nothing to actually offer in exchange - he makes his money by inserting himself in a money flow and siphoning some off as a parasite.
In this case, a president would normally recognize that this is a means for the photographer to make some money off of their work, and “noblesse oblige” obliges the president to help. Ex-presidents make their money by lending their prestige, by selling their insight, by giving hugely over-compensated speeches to groups of wealthy people. But Trump can’t do any of that - he’s got no prestige, certainly no insight, and he can’t even string together a coherent sentence. He could sell over-priced hats to suckers, but he can’t do it any better than thousands of other vendors, so all he’s really got is his grifts.
