Donald Trump Wants To Put Poker-Playing Banker Buddy “In Charge of China”

One of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s biggest complaints against ‘Crooked Hillary’ is that she’s part of the establishment and is beholden to Wall Street and billionaires. He’s constantly railed against her, sometimes even using Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric, in describing her as someone who will give positions in her administration to big donors, allowing them to influence her.

Of course, since this is Trump we are talking about, the rules he applies to others don’t impact him. During a speech on Thursday night, The Donald told Dallas rally-goers that if he’s in the White House, he’d send over Andy Beal, a Texas banker, to China to take care of the nation’s trade deals. In fact, he’d make Beal “in charge of China.”

From NBC News’ recap of the rally:

“We just a had a meeting and we had some fantastic folks, I mean like Andy Beal … one of the great business people,” Trump told a crowd in Dallas, Texas.

“You take somebody like Andy Beal, you put him in charge of China: ‘Okay, Andy, do me a favor, renegotiate our trade deal.’ You know what, we can all go home, relax, have dinner.”

Now, it should be noted that Beal backs a pro-Trump Super PAC, Great America PAC, and has reportedly donated quite a bit of cash to the effort.  would be illegal, as Super PACs are, by law, supposed to be independent of political campaigns and have no direct contact with the candidates. Yet, here’s Trump, boasting about having a meeting with Beal.

Also, it is a bit ironic that now that we’re in a general election, not only is Trump fine with Super PACs — remember all the stink he made about being self-funded in the primary? — but he’s touting one of his donors as a potential member of his administration. This is the very definition of quid pro quo, something else that is highly illegal.

Beyond all that, proposing Beal as the new guy to be “in charge of China” — what about Carl Icahn? — is hilarious on its own merits. Beal is perhaps most famous for losing $16.6 million dollars in a high-stakes poker game in 2004. The embarrassment of the loss led him to quit the game for two years. (He got back on the wagon in 2006.) So we really want someone who has lost millions at cards (estimates are he’s lost as much as $50 million in one stretch) to be in charge of trade negotiations?

Only if you want to Make America Great Again!