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 only one billionaire Cupboard decide: Betsy DeVos, as secretary of training, who funneled public funds into private schools.
On the similar time, Trump’s billionaire favoritism isn’t much of a surprise, since his marketing campaign was largely funded by the billionaire class. Billionaires, on the entire, quickly forgave Trump after his try and overthrow the 2020 election. In any case, he promised to additional decrease their meager tax burden whereas reminding them of the $1 trillion increase of their wealth throughout his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Right here’s a breakdown of the monied individuals who will seemingly quickly be in command of our authorities.
Linda McMahon: Secretary of Schooling
A former skilled wrestling magnate and billionaire, McMahon is Trump’s decide to run the Department of Education—one thing she has even much less of a background in than DeVos did. Nevertheless, contemplating that Trump and different Republicans have referred to as for the dismantling of the department, 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 business administrator earlier than becoming a member of the pro-Trump tremendous PAC America First Motion.
Howard Lutnick: Commerce Secretary
A cryptocurrency enthusiast and investment banking billionaire, Lutnick can be a backer of Trump’s potentially 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 companies have been earmarked for destruction, slashing, or privatization by the authors of Undertaking 2025, the Heritage Basis’s plan for a second Trump administration.
Lutnick, a transition co-chair for Trump, claimed he wouldn’t “take a listing from [Project 2025],” and Trump spent weeks pretending he had never heard of the wildly unpopular and fascistic plan throughout his marketing campaign. However now, after the election, things have changed.
Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary
A billionaire hedge fund supervisor who brazenly pushes for austerity measures to reduce the deficit, Bessent was tapped to guide the Treasury Division. That’s seemingly as a result of he supports Trump’s ill-advised tariff plans, even when these plans are incongruous along with his supposed objective of lowering the deficit.
Steven Witkoff: Center East Envoy
Witkoff made his billions as a New York actual property developer and has ties to oil interests in the region he’ll seemingly turn out to be a liaison to. Are you able to say “battle of curiosity”?
Jared Isaacman: NASA administrator
Isaacman, a billionaire through a payment process firm he founded, is an advocate for privatizing space programs. 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 sum of money to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to go to house 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.Ok. Based on The Guardian, “Stephens held a 40% stake in a payday mortgage firm, Integrity Advance, that the Shopper Finance Safety Bureau (CFPB) took motion in opposition to in 2015 for allegedly using predatory lending practices.” Candy!
Charles Kushner: Ambassador to France
Charles Kushner (household internet value 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 in regards to 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 meaningful consequences 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 won’t 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
Ramaswamy made his cash by tricking big investors into believing in his burgeoning drug firm Roivant Sciences and its miracle Alzheimer’s drug, intepirdine, which he purchased at a cut price worth from one other firm after the drug failed 4 trials. He then offered folks on believing the dangerous reward can be value it—however it wasn’t. Ramaswamy was capable of safe large buyouts, changing into uber-rich whereas failing, and was free to fake 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 prone to result in extra increase for billionaires and extra bust for the American people.
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