I found this article in "ProPublica" to settle the argument regarding "The Emoluments Clause."

Everything the Executive Branch receives as gifts by sovereign countries fall under the Emoluments Clause. The Nobel Peace Prize received by President Obama was exempt from this law because the Nobel Committee is not a "King, Prince or foreign state." The operative word is "sovereign."

A picture is worth a thousand words.

December 13, 2016
By Richard Tofel

...In any event, (click here) presidents starting with Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, in 1830, have sought congressional approval for the acceptance of gifts under the Emoluments Clause. As Tillman himself notes, Martin Van Buren, president No. 8, and John Tyler, No. 10, also looked to Congress in these circumstances. All of the modern presidents’ attorneys general who considered the matter opined implicitly or explicitly that the president was bound by the Clause, most recently in an opinion regarding President Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. Tillman insists that all of them are wrong....

Donald Trump has a very big problem; he shoots from the hip.

He admits he does not receive daily briefings regarding the security of the USA. If he isn't attending to the daily briefings he does not have all the facts. Additionally, many of these issues are not addressed to the public by the President. The only time the President of the USA speaks to the people about these occurrences is when assets are being dedicated to an effort that will sustain beyond 90 days. There are press briefings that occur everyday, but, rarely is the President delivering information regarding any incidents that occur.

As to this incident, China is a copy cat. China has not been able to grow a superior military because of it's lack of ingenuity. The USA does not rely on stealing or happenstance ownership (ie: helicopter at bin Laden compound), but, China does. China took the USA helicopter to exploit it's stealth capacity. There is no doubt stealing the drone was to mimic it's capacity.

The USA military needs to identify the waters, international or not, near China as dangerous and requiring military escorts regardless the benign nature of the assets of the USA.

What concerns me is that every incident that can be perceived as aggressions against the USA will be political fodder. Political fodder will escalate these incidents and we will be at "The Gulf of Tonkin" all over again.

It is highly doubtful the leaders of other countries will be tweeting their thoughts.

December 17, 2017

By Nafeesa Syeed, Nick Wadhams and David Tweed

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (click here) slammed the Chinese navy’s capture of an American Navy underwater drone in international waters in the South China Sea, just hours after the country signaled it wants to resolve the issue smoothly.

“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters -- rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” Trump wrote Saturday in a Twitter post. In an earlier tweet, Trump misspelled the word as “unpresidented.”

The tweet was sent hours after the Chinese government said it has been in touch with the U.S. military about the incident.

“China and the U.S. are using their military channels to properly handle this case,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement sent to Bloomberg on Saturday, without elaborating further. Earlier, the Global Times -- a newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party -- cited a Chinese military official saying the drone was taken during a security check and the incident would likely be “resolved successfully.”...