Nah, you are trying to restrict the conversation to a "sum of parts" because you don't have an argument.

By your logic if Trump awarded himself a 10 billion dollar construction contract with no other bidders it wouldn't matter as long as he lost 11 billion in another business even if his loss in the other business had absolutely nothing to do with his position as president.

*guy steals $100 from an old lady, then loses $150 at the poker table

police: 'freeze, scumbag! you're being arrested for theft!'
guy: 'what are you talking about? i'm $5,000 poorer than i was a day ago!'

trump supporter: 'yeah right! how can that guy be a thief when he's $2,000 poorer than yesterday? checkmate! get an economics degree, you idiot!'

This post was edited by fender on Nov 2 2019 03:14pm

Hypothetical scenario


Trump awards his personally owned business a contract resulting in 50 billion dollars of profit.

Within the next year he makes some bad moves and loses it all in the stock market.

Void thinks that as long as he didn't increase his personal net worth that contract is totally legitimate and any criticism of Trump for awarding himself a giant contract is moot.

It is a sum of parts dumb dumb because we are talking about a human which can't be divided into this part of Trump made money this part of Trump lost money. At the end of the day Person A either made or loss money on the aggregate. We don't dishonestly omit that he lost 200 dollars while focusing only on that he made 100. That's not how a logical and coherent world operates. In the intermediate yes, on the aggregate no.

By my logic your example is a non sequitur.

John Q. is elected to public office. He runs a business that loses 200 million dollars a year. John Q. then uses his position to award very profitable contracts to his own business that results in him gaining 200 million dollars more a year than he otherwise would have, resulting in a net zero in personal profit for the year.

Using your logic this is totally acceptable because he never made a profit.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Nov 2 2019 03:22pm

oh man, you're going to be so embarrassed when you find out about the emoluments clause...
the distinction we're making is not between his 'making money' and 'losing money' parts, but between what he (ab)uses the office for as opposed to his private business dealings.

don't you feel the slightest bit of shame bending over backwards to find ways to rationalise the crooked behaviour of that clown?

Lol going on with nonsensical examples that have nothing to do with our discussion.

John made 200 mil in business A
John lost 300 mil in business B & C

Johns net worth (profit) is x-100 mil.

Again you don't dishonestly look at parts, instead of accounting for the overall and trying to inject some biased dumb shit into a simple accounting problem.

Trump before presidency =x
Trump 2-3 year during presidency= x-1.4 billion
Trumps aggregate net profit= x-1.4 billion

Dodge

(Also Trump's aggregate net profit would be negative 1.4 billion, not x-1.4 billion. Math fail)

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Nov 2 2019 03:29pm

not only is the 1.4 bn pure speculation, literally no one is arguing he increased his net worth. what we're saying is that he abused the office to benefit his private business. you can't possibly be stupid enough not to see the difference between those two arguments...

This post was edited by fender on Nov 2 2019 03:33pm

Collective math iq between the 3 stooges doesn't crack 100 here.

He lost money because he took his office, that's fact, spelled out and explained in the Forbes article. You speculating about him abusing contracts is just that...speculation. If he did do that why aren't lawmakers going after him?