Trump Just Laughed At His Voters With Surprise Treasury Secretary Pick
Donald Trump has named a former-Goldman Sachs investment banker who served as his political campaign’s finance chair to the crucial Cabinet position of Treasury Secretary. Steven Mnuchin becomes the second Goldman Sachs banker with no government experience named to hold high office by the President-elect. However, he does have significant Hollywood experience and has worked for one of George Soros’ hedge funds, after growing up the son of a Goldman Banker and attending Yale University. Mnuchin does have significant experience with super heroes:
Mr. Mnuchin, 53, was the national finance chairman for Mr. Trump’s campaign. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner, before creating his own hedge fund, moving to the West Coast and entering the first rank of movie financiers by bankrolling hits like the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar.”
“Nobody’s going to be, like, ‘Well, why did he do this?’ if I end up in the administration,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in August.
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to consult closely with Goldman Sachs about his transition, hosting the bank’s current President Gary Cohn today. As The Times noted:
Mr. Trump, in a campaign ad intended as a closing argument, portrayed the chief executive of Goldman Sachs as the personification of a global elite that the ad said had “robbed our working class.”
The reality here is that Steve Mnuchin is being rewarded with the Treasury Secretary role for his loyalty to Donald Trump and for being a good business partner with the President-elect in the past:
In 2004, Mnuchin founded his own hedge fund, Dune Capital Management, named for a spot near his house in the Hamptons, and got hundreds of millions of dollars from Soros. The firm invested in at least two Trump projects, a branded condo in Waikiki and a Chicago skyscraper. Trump sued Dune and other lenders over the Chicago deal before settling.
Steven Mnuchin helped Donald Trump borrow a lot of money from George Soros, he financed the Republican’s campaign for President and cut the deal with the RNC that he needed to outsource much of his campaign.
Now, Mnuchin will get his name printed on the money that we carry itself in the bargain.
Trump fans thought they were voting against Wall Street’s interests, against the international flows of capital that have used their party to disassemble worker’s protections and unions, against the neoliberal economics that have kept their wages stagnant and shipped their jobs overseas. Instead, Republicans are intent on installing the very people that Trump promised he would protect Americans from.
