Mark Lennihan / AP
Carl Icahn's resignation Friday from an unpaid post as Trump's adviser on deregulation was because he knew The New Yorker was about to drop a deep piece of reporting about him, according to AP:
"[T]he magazine points out potential conflicts and even possible criminal law violations involving obscure rules that require oil refineries to blend ethanol into gasoline."And Icahn resigned after the White House had already disavowed him to The New Yorker. "[T]here was never a formal appointment."Here's the juicy New Yorker piece, "Trump's Favorite Tycoon ... Carl Icahn's Failed Raid on Washington," by staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe: "Icahn is worth more than the Trump family and all the members of the Cabinet combined — and, with no constraint on his license to counsel the President on regulations that might help his businesses, he was poised to become much richer.""In conversations with me, financiers who have worked with Icahn described his appointment as a kind of corporate raid on Washington. One said, 'It's the cheapest takeover Carl's ever done.'""In our conversations, Icahn was unfailingly polite about President Trump. But it struck me that it must vex him that Trump — the lesser intellect, the lesser businessman, the little-brother tagalong — may now be too busy to take his phone calls."This is a great sentence: "Trump may want to govern like a businessman. But Washington is a club like any other, with some codes and protocols that even the brashest arrivistes cannot ignore."The whole thing is worthy of your time.