-Putting your assets in your suggested “blind trust” to be run by your adult children ignores the reality that a) you talk to your children and b) you’d know about the possible impact on your family holdings whenever you made presidential decisions, especially since your name of course is emblazoned on so many of your physical assets. (When you groused that some critics prefer that you “never ever see my daughter Ivanka again,” we assume that you didn’t intend this reductio ad absurdum to be taken literally.)

-Political commentators understandably discount any mention of impeachment pre-Inauguration because, among other reasons, there will be a GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee and Chamber for at least two years. While we may anticipate that Congress will now be your “shut-eyed sentry”, in Kipling’s phrase, we are here discussing morality and constitutionality, not political probabilities. Indeed, within two years of an actual presidential landslide, Richard Nixon was impeached in 1974 after Republican senator Barry Goldwater supported his removal from office.

-Supporters such as Rudy Giuliani contend that your holdings are so large that divestment is just unrealistic. But size does not erase principle. Self-enrichment is wrong whether an office holder is of modest or great wealth — indeed, if anything, the greater the amount, the worse the problem. We should not apply the much criticized banking ethic of “too big to fail” in this circumstance.