President-elect’s Cabinet shaping up to be richest in recent history
The Washington Post
When George W. Bush assembled his first Cabinet in 2001, news reports dubbed them a team of millionaires, and government watchdogs questioned whether they were out of touch with most Americans’ problems. Combined, that group had an inflation-adjusted net worth of about $250 million — which is roughly one-tenth the wealth of Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary alone.
Mr. Trump is putting together what will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history. His announced nominees for top positions include several multimillionaires, an heir to a family mega-fortune and two Forbes-certified billionaires. Rumored candidates for other positions suggested that Mr. Trump could add more ultra-rich appointees.
Many of the Trump appointees were born wealthy, attended elite schools and went on to amass even larger fortunes as adults. As a group, they have much more experience funding political candidates than they do running government agencies.
Their collective wealth in many ways is seen as defying Mr. Trump’s populist campaign promises. Their business ties, particularly to Wall Street, have drawn rebukes from Democrats.
But when McClatchy Newspapers checked in with several dozen voters in Central Pennsylvania — one of the swing states that swung the White House to Mr. Trump — to see how they defined the “swamp” in Washington that the Presidentelect promised to drain, most didn’t really care.
A few voters compared the issue to reports Mr. Trump may have paid no federal income tax for 18 years, according to portions of his 1995 tax returns that were leaked. Mr. Trump and his campaign responded that it showed his business savvy in using the system for his advantage.
“Of course he’s going to take on smart people — doesn’t matter whether they’re lobbyists or not,” said John Walton, 29, a truck driver from Pittsburgh who was in Port Matilda, Pa. “They’re the ones who know how to run [things].”
Mr. Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary is industrialist Wilbur Ross, who has amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion through decades at the helm of Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and his own investment firm, according to Forbes.
Mr. Ross’ would-be deputy at the Commerce Department, Todd Ricketts, is the son of a billionaire and the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Steven Mnuchin, who Mr. Trump named to head the Treasury Department, is a former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge fund executive and Hollywood financier. Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who was nominated as Mr. Trump’s education secretary, is the daughter of Richard DeVos, the cofounder of Amway. Her family has a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes. Elaine Chao, the choice for transportation secretary, is the daughter of a shipping magnate, and also is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — a situation seen as blending family and political power in a way Mr. Trump fiercely criticized campaign rival Hillary Clinton for.
It is a group that has long spent big to influence politics. Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Ross and Ms. DeVos each made hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions within the last two years, according to OpenSecrets.org.
In their first interviews Wednesday after being unveiled as Cabinet nominees, Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Ross —both of whom also have financial links to Mr. Trump’s White House bid — pitched their business experience as beneficial to the goals of boosting workers.
“Wilbur and I … [we’ve] been in the business of regional banking, and we understand what it means to make loans,” Mr. Mnuchin told CNBC.
Amid the speculation, Harold Hamm — a self-made oil industry executive who ranks 30th on the Forbes 400, a list of the wealthiest Americans, with a net worth of $16.7 billion — was on Mr. Trump’s shortlist for secretary of energy.