Donald Trump, supposed champion of the working class, is stocking his Cupboard with billionaires.
That’s a distinction along with his first go-round, when he proposed just one billionaire Cupboard choose: Betsy DeVos, as secretary of training, who funneled public funds into personal colleges.
On the similar time, Trump’s billionaire favoritism isn’t a lot of a shock, since his marketing campaign was largely funded by the billionaire class. Billionaires, on the entire, shortly forgave Trump after his try to overthrow the 2020 election. In any case, he promised to additional decrease their meager tax burden whereas reminding them of the $1 trillion enhance of their wealth throughout his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Right here’s a breakdown of the monied individuals who will doubtless quickly be in control of our authorities.
Linda McMahon: Secretary of Schooling
A former skilled wrestling magnate and billionaire, McMahon is Trump’s choose to run the Division of Schooling—one thing she has even much less of a background in than DeVos did. Nonetheless, contemplating that Trump and different Republicans have known as for the dismantling of the division, placing the previous WWE CEO in cost does observe a perverse sort of logic.
McMahon served within the first Trump administration’s Cupboard as small enterprise administrator earlier than becoming a member of the pro-Trump tremendous PAC America First Motion.
Howard Lutnick: Commerce Secretary
Howard Lutnick speaks at a Trump marketing campaign rally in Madison Sq. Backyard on Oct. 27, 2024.
A cryptocurrency fanatic and funding banking billionaire, Lutnick can be a backer of Trump’s probably disastrous tariff plans. He’ll oversee a division that features the Census Bureau, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Patent and Trademark Workplace, amongst others. All of these businesses have been earmarked for destruction, slashing, or privatization by the authors of Challenge 2025, the Heritage Basis’s plan for a second Trump administration.
Lutnick, a transition co-chair for Trump, claimed he wouldn’t “take a list from [Project 2025],” and Trump spent weeks pretending he had by no means heard of the wildly unpopular and fascistic plan throughout his marketing campaign. However now, after the election, issues have modified.
Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary
A billionaire hedge fund supervisor who overtly pushes for austerity measures to scale back the deficit, Bessent was tapped to steer the Treasury Division. That’s doubtless as a result of he helps Trump’s ill-advised tariff plans, even when these plans are incongruous along with his supposed aim of decreasing the deficit.
Steven Witkoff: Center East Envoy
Witkoff made his billions as a New York actual property developer and has ties to grease pursuits within the area he’ll doubtless develop into a liaison to. Are you able to say “conflict of interest”?
Jared Isaacman: NASA administrator
Jared Isaacman speaks on the Kennedy House Middle on Aug. 19, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Isaacman, a billionaire through a cost course of agency he based, is an advocate for privatizing area applications. He’s by no means labored for the federal government, a lot much less NASA, which Trump tapped him to go up. However hey, he did pay an undisclosed amount of cash to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to go to area twice, in order that makes him an professional, proper?
Warren Stephens: Ambassador to United Kingdom
Trump tapped Stephens, an funding banker and Republican megadonor (what a coincidence!), to be the subsequent ambassador to the U.Okay. In response to The Guardian, “Stephens held a 40% stake in a payday loan company, Integrity Advance, that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against in 2015 for allegedly employing predatory lending practices.” Candy!
Charles Kushner: Ambassador to France
Charles Kushner (household internet price of over $7 billion) is the daddy of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump pardoned the elder Kushner, a tax fraud felon, and now offers the slumlord an ambassadorship—nothing corrupt to see right here!
Elon Musk: Co-Chair of Division of Authorities Effectivity
What’s there to say concerning the world’s richest mid-life disaster? Musk poured billions into shopping for Twitter, turned it into X, and made it a right-wing propaganda cesspool in service of Trump’s marketing campaign. His wealth shielded him from significant penalties associated to his unethical (and probably unlawful) voter-registration lotteries.
Together with tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk will head the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not going to formally be a part of the federal government however is as an alternative a deliberate advisory fee. (In different phrases, this isn’t a Cupboard place.)
Vivek Ramaswamy: Co-Chair of Division of Authorities Effectivity
Vivek Ramaswamy at a Trump marketing campaign rally on Oct. 9, 2024, in Studying, Pa.
Ramaswamy made his cash by tricking large traders into believing in his burgeoning drug firm Roivant Sciences and its miracle Alzheimer’s drug, intepirdine, which he purchased at a cut price value from one other firm after the drug failed 4 trials. He then bought individuals on believing the dangerous reward could be price it—nevertheless it wasn’t. Ramaswamy was capable of safe large buyouts, turning into uber-rich whereas failing, and was free to faux he was a particular sort of businessman.
Ramaswamy does have one particular expertise that Trump cherishes: He’s a salesman.
A lot of Trump’s rich-as-hell picks have embraced austerity insurance policies which have already failed western democracies. Their disdain for presidency tasks to assist the non-rich is more likely to result in extra growth for billionaires and extra bust for the American individuals.
