After the second day of a Republican National Convention whose proceedings trampled over long-established lines between governing and campaigning, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, scoffed at concerns that President Trump and other top officials were abusing federal offices and property for political gain.
“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Mr. Meadows said in a video interview with Politico, adding, “This is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things.”
Mr. Meadows said in passing that “there are a couple of things that you can do to make sure that you’re in compliance with the Hatch Act,” the federal law prohibiting the use of government resources for campaign purposes. But he did not explain how the administration had avoided violating the law when Mr. Trump led a naturalization ceremony at the White House that became a featured convention event; when Vice President Mike Pence spoke from a national park; or when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on an official trip, spoke from Jerusalem and became the first top diplomat to address a convention in at least 75 years.
Americans “expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values, and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” Mr. Meadows said. It was not clear what he meant, particularly given that President Obama, during his re-election campaign in 2012, did not test the boundaries Mr. Trump repeatedly broke on Tuesday.
“You can’t break the law — you shouldn’t do it,” Mr. Meadows said. But he added that “the law, in the way that it was originally intended, never thought that we would be on Zoom talking to people live.” It was also unclear how that applied to the question of whether it is appropriate to use federal resources for political benefit.
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