Trump’s nepotism is ‘extremely scary’ but not new

Rasa - US President Donald Trump’s nepotism is “scary” yet it is not anything new in the history of American politics, says a New York-based academic.

News ID: 428698

Date: 06 April 2017 - 23:15

RNA - Daniel Shaw, an adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York, made the remarks Wednesday in regard to comments by a son of Trump’s about nepotism.

In an interview with Forbes, the second son of the new President, Eric Trump, asserted that "Nepotism is kind of a factor of life."

With their father at the helm of the White House, Eric and his 39-year-old brother, Donald Trump Jr., have been running the family company but Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, have turned into highly influential White House figures.

“These are mediocre individuals without any experience in government,” Shaw said, adding that their grip to power is maintained “purely because of who their father is and because of his billions of dollars in assets and property.”

That is how they have been “catapulted to the very summits of power in the country and in the world,” noted the political commentator, calling the situation “extremely scary, considering their complete lack of experience in politics.”

The analyst further asserted that nepotism “should not be part of politics,” yet the United States appears to have a “really long history” of it.

“They speak so much about democracy and everyone as an equal opportunity here,” he stated, further acknowledging that “it’s who you know; it’s not how your grades are.”

“We’ve seen generation after generation of the ruling elite in the United States benefit from this type of nepotism, which is now personified in the highest ranking office of the land,” he concluded.

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