Month: December 2016

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design. 

The whole system is set up so the president — and only the president — can decide when to launch.

Running this again because …

The difference there is that General Michael Flynn will be right there whispering in his ear telling him to do it.

Trump’s pollster agrees it was the Comey effect

by digby

Trump’s pollster and Clinton’s pollster talk about the race. Trump’s man says that the race came down to four counties in Florida and one in Michigan. Five counties, people.

“When you really drill down on this election, if you change the vote in five counties, four in Florida, one in Michigan, we’d be having a totally opposite conversation right now,” Fabrizio said of the race. “For all the money that was spent, for the all the effort that was made, literally four counties in Florida, one county in Michigan puts us at 261 [electoral] votes and makes Hillary Clinton the president. So, remember that.”

In Michigan, Fabrizio is likely referring to Macomb County, which neighbors Detroit, where Trump beat Clinton by nearly 50,000 votes. The county voted for President Obama twice and was the birthplace of Reagan Democrats. The vote differential here played a huge role in the small 10,000-vote margin by which Trump won Michigan overall.

In Florida, Trump outperformed previous Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Lee County (Fort Myers), Pasco (Dade City), Polk (Bartow), Pinellas (Clearwater) and Volusia (Daytona Beach). These areas are mostly white and older than the rest of Florida and were key in delivering his 1.2 percent margin of victory.

That is not a landslide folks. With Clinton winding up winning between 2.5 and 3 million more votes it’s a lucky fluke.

This is even more interesting if totally depressing:

Both men characterized the race as having a measurable degree of movement in the final month and as Benenson put it, Clinton’s campaign was tracking “defectors” from both candidates who had favorability ratings that were underwater.

Fabrizio said that the Trump campaign did not do national polls but rather made aggregates of battleground states.

“One of the things that we saw in the data was that when you looked at the data across all of the states, it was really good for us to get a sense of what was happening writ large,” Fabrizio said. “But there were things that were occurring so frequently in this—we would see our support drop with Republicans ten points in a week after he says something.”

In these instances, the voters would move towards Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or the undecided category. But throughout the process, Fabrizio was certain that those voters would come back because they weren’t ever going to Clinton.

In the final week after FBI director James Comey released a vague letter saying that the agency was examining new emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, Benenson said that Clinton’s defectors just didn’t come back.

“Ours were coming back after the third debate,” Benenson said of the Clinton defectors. “We had actually solidified our lead for a period of days after that debate. Comey happens on that Friday, eleven days out, and that’s when we see—our defectors leave, their defectors get loyal and that keeps moving and probably in the end tips the balance.”

Fabrizio completely agreed with him and said if one didn’t understand the polling fluctuations, “you’d think the bottom fell out.”

The groups Fabrizio was tracking, specifically “Trump targets”—a cohort which they consistently tried to sway from supporting Johnson and/or Clinton—drastically decreased in the final week after the Comey letter. They all essentially came home.

But Fabrizio said they “held their breath” because just days later Comey cleared Clinton once again. Benenson said that second announcement did not help them either “because it just put it back into the conversation again.”

There are a lot of reasons why this election turned out the way it did. Both candidates were widely loathed by half of a polarized country which made it a difficult sell on both sides. They all knew it would be close and were just trying to keep people from defecting in the last week.

This is where Giuliani delivered for Trump. He was clearly working with the FBI agents in the New York office and Comey either maliciously or stupidly went with the plan. It was timed perfectly and it worked.

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by digby

American Nazi rally Madison Square Garden 1939

Trump held a rally last night and he meandered as usual onto talking about himself and his glories and hatreds. But in the midst of all that he also had a prepared speech which he delivered in dribs and drabs.  With the exception of the very last bit, it was obviously written by Steve Bannon.

This was the message:

For too long, Washington has tried to put us in boxes. The separate us by race, by age, by income, by place of birth, and by geography. They spend too much time focusing on what divides us. 

Now is the time to embrace the one thing that truly unites us. You know what that is? America. 

Because when America is unified, nothing is beyond our reach. I mean that. You will see… 

We’re going to have a country that is so great, in so many different ways. 

We hear a lot of talk about how we are becoming a “globalized world.” But the relationships that people value in this country are local. Family, state, country. They are local.  

We wil compete in the world. We will compete in the world where is a two-way road — not the one way around. The advantages will come back to our country, and they haven’t for many years. 

There is no global anthem. No global currency. No certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag and that flag is the American flag.  

[cheering] 

From now on it is going to be: America First. Okay? America first. We’re going to put ourselves first.  

We seek peace and harmony with the nations of the world, but that means recognizing the right of every country –including our own– to look after its citizens. We would put other countries first, we had people running our country that truly did not know what the hell they we’re doing.  

[cheers and applause] 

We will defend the American worker… look what has happened right here. They forgot the American worker. They forgot that it was the American worker who truly built our country. We will not forget. 

One of the reasons we are so divided today is because our government has failed to protect the interests of the American workers, and their families, making it too easy for us to see ourselves as distinct groups, and not unified as a whole. We’re not unified. We’re going to be.  

Washington politicians have spent so long appealing to particular interests, that they have forgotten how to appeal to to the national interests. How to muster the skills and the talents of our people in common cause. And we have unbelievable talent. But that is all about to change.  

Our goal is to strengthen the bonds of trust between citizens, to restore the sense of membership in our shared national community. 

Global is wonderful, but right now we want to focus on our national community.  

Never anyone again will any other interests come before the interest of the American people. It is not going to happen again.  

[applause] 

Over the last two weeks since the victory, I have spoken to many foreign leaders. And I will tell you they have such respect for us. They all tell me how this was amazing, how they sat in their magnificent rooms –the leaders, the prime ministers, the presidents, all of them. How they sat in their magnificent rooms, watching in wonderment, hearing how people came to vote that had not voted in 20 years, people came to vote how have never voted before. And they had Trump shirts on, and ‘Make America Great Again’ hats, and they thought it was amazing.  

[applause]  

And honestly, one of them told me: I truly respect the United States again because of what happened.

You will come together. We are going to be united. No more dissent. Circle the wagons. The Homeland comes before all. That’s white nationalism.

I suppose that might sound like a return to isolationism to some of you. But that’s not what it sounds like to me. It sounds like this:

Remember the first America First campaign:

I realize that Hitler comparisons are somewhat overwrought.  Nothing ever happens exactly the same way. But the old George Santayana quote is worth remembering at times like this as well:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I don’t know why you would want to watch it, but Trump’s Nuremberg Victory rally can be seen here.

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Nothing to see here folks. 

by digby

Just remember this has no meaning. It is completely irrelevant.:

FBI, pneumonia, FBI.

Awesome.

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Listen to what Trump actually said on economics

by digby

Mike Konczal did that and it’s very, very important to hear what Trump was actually promising. We will be arguing about all the things that horrible woman  did wrong, but if what Konczal gleans from Trump’s promises is true, the lessons Democrats are taking from all this aren’t going to solve the problem.

Learning From Trump in Retrospect

Photo by Gage Skidmore

I’ve started to rewatch Trump rallies from the month before he was elected President. I’ve seen some of them before, but that was always with the presumption he was unlikely to win; now I watch them trying to figure out how he did it, and how the Democrats can rebuild their economic message out of this mess. There’s the virulent ethnic nationalism, but there’s also a way of approaching the economy that sabotages where Democrats are, even when they are strong.

There was a time I assumed if the Democrats “moved left” they could win over the working class, even those who don’t usually vote. Now, spending time thinking about agendas and messaging, I realize that this move is far more complicated than simply getting past neoliberalism. With Trump at the helm of the conservative movement for the foreseeable future, it’ll be even harder.

Watching Trump with fresh eyes shows that we need to think clearer about how our policy forces people to concede to changing social norms, how to convey the rich as the problem, how to have clear messaging, how to deal with trade, and how to deal with wages and power. I don’t have the answers, certainly not here and now; but getting the questions right is the first step.
Get Back, Way Back, to Work

Trump talked about jobs. All the time. This gets lost in the coverage, which focused on the inflammatory scandals. Watch:
“When I win on November 8th, I am going to bring back your jobs. The long nightmare of jobs leaving Michigan will be coming to an end. We will make Michigan the economic envy of the world once again. The political class in Washington has betrayed you. They’ve uprooted your jobs, and your communities, and shipped your wealth all over the world. They put new skyscrapers up in Beijing while your factories in Michigan crumbled. I will end the theft of American prosperity. I will fight for every last Michigan job.” -Donald Trump, Michigan, October 31st, 2016

It’s the first and most consistent thing he discusses. It’s implied it is a specific kind of job, a white, male, bread-winning manufacturing job. He doesn’t discuss “the economy” and how it could work for all, he doesn’t talk about inequality, he doesn’t talk about automation and service work; he makes it clear you will have a high-paying manufacturing job when he is President.

So what? Much of the Democratic platform is based on pushing through the fact that this political economy was anachronistic decades ago. As Daniel Rodgers writes, “Many of the economic planks in the Democratic Party program were not pitched” for Trump voters, who sensed the platform reflected that “that the culture wars had finally come home.” Family leave, child allowances, and universal pre-K acknowledge that we need to look beyond male breadwinners as the core economic unit. Fight for $15 is about turning service work into a decent, secure, working-class life. Efforts to try and disentangle commodities like health-care and retirement from employment run into the hope that employment would be sufficient to provide them. Voters won’t want to hear this.

2. Not Eating the Rich

Trump never blames the rich for people’s problems. He doesn’t mention corporations, or anything relating to class struggle. His economic enemies are Washington elites, media, other countries, and immigrants. Even when financial elites and corporations do something, they are a combination of pawns and partners of DC elites.

21st Century Populism?

It’s important to watch that trick, of who has agency under runaway inequality. From a June speech in western Pennsylvania: “Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization — moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas. Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.” The rich buy politicians (and Trump can’t be bought) but he doesn’t turn around and denigrate those rich people.

Trump was smart to do so. As Joan C. Williams noted in an important essay, “the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich.” The WWC doesn’t encounter rich people, but “professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money.”

Now even if the WWC doesn’t resent the rich, Trump is likely to push it as far as it can go with a plutocratic administration. But there’s a reason his appointments aren’t sounding alarm bells right away, and it’s this logic. The media messed this up, assuming random vindictive statements amounted to policy, or not understanding how his tax plan worked, instead of seeing this consistent, deeper message.

We’ll need to do better putting populist energy against the bosses and owners. The mechanical, bloodless algebra of Piketty and income statistics probably won’t be enough by itself. We need a story of owners and investment to go with it. We need to talk about monopoly power, especially as Trump doesn’t take it up. Meanwhile we should feel out our own case against professionals. Tying professionals to commodification, the people who get in the way of needed goods (especially with whatever TrumpCare ends up looking like), might be a way to go there.

3. Policy, Policy Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

Trump and his team were a mess on campaign discipline. But when it comes to the economic platform in his speeches he remained disciplined and clear: he’s going to crush undocumented workers, roll back globalization, and cut taxes and regulations in DC. He has catch-phrases and symbols for each (the wall, rip up trade deals, drain the swamp), and it’s easy for his (white) voters to see how those line up with a better economic situation for themselves. As I’ve emphasized, this is what policy is, and Trump was fantastic at it.

What were Clinton’s three things to benefit workers? There was policy everywhere, but none of it clear for voters. An infrastructure deal, though would that even happen and didn’t Obama already try that? Anyway, Trump promised to do it twice as big. After that it wasn’t clear what was a priority.

Stuff that actually got to worker’s lives was technocratic and vague. “Short-termism” instead of the idea that bosses would rather give money to shareholders than invest. “Shadow banking” instead of Wells Fargo ripping you off and the CFPB stopped it. I use these terms — they are purposefully confusing because they need to mimic the nomenclature of microeconomics — but I’m not running a political campaign.

The sheer volume of it blurred out potentially useful items. When a really important fact sheet on fighting monopoly power was released, it got a paragraph 4,000 words into one speech (“As president, I will appoint tough, independent authorities to strengthen anti-trust enforcement and really scrutinize mergers and acquisitions, so the big don’t keep getting bigger and bigger”). It disappeared into a list of all the polices ever, rather than a clear statement of what was to be done. We need to remember a narrative of what has happened to workers and how we are going to fix it is more important than covering every potential base.

4. Trade

Trump is unapologetically against trade that harms American workers. I would have assumed he was fighting a straw man here, but one thing I’ve learned is how a certain class of liberals don’t approach job loss from trade with a regrettable sense of the trade-offs, but instead a more cutting sense that Americans don’t have any claim on the jobs that go away anyway. It’s all for the best, in the long-run.

The brilliant economist David Card gave me a useful point here during an interview: the divide among economists on trade is driven by the fact that labor economists study the real effects of unemployment on real people, where trade and macroeconomists treat people as just another commodity. (One of the people who broke the consensus on the effects of trade with China was David Autor, a leading labor economist. I had assumed from the literature the effects weren’t large enough before his writing.)

Can you store some humans along with the oil you keep at sea?

I’d phrase it this way: are people just like a barrel of oil? In the abstract models of trade economists, commodities like oil will always get sold at some price, they will get to where they need to get to do so, and they’re largely indifferent on the process. Even when commodity markets are off, oil can sit in tankers floating in the ocean waiting out price moves, and it makes no difference to the oil.

Oil doesn’t experience unemployment as the most traumatic thing that can happen to it. Oil moves magically to new opportunities, unlike people who don’t often move at all. A barrel of oil doesn’t beat their kids, abuse drugs, commit suicide, or experiencing declining life expectancy from being battered around in the global marketplace. But people do, and they have, the consequences persist and last, and now they’ve made their voices heard. It’s the the dark side of Polanyi’s warning against viewing human being as commodities.

For the life of me I don’t know why President Obama spent the summer of 2016 fighting hard for TPP when it was clear it was hurting Hillary Clinton, making her promise to pause trade deals not credible, and giving Trump live ammo. But he did. I don’t know if Trump or the people around him will be smart enough to use trade to split workers away from the Democrats much harder than they have, or if Democrats can come up with a better answer on trade and industrial policy that what they’ve done. But this is a live issue.

5. Taxes and Transfers and Places and Power

Trump also never mentions poverty. And while he talks a lot about reducing taxes, he never talks about increasing transfers, redistribution, or access to core goods. He talks about wages, full stop. He also talks about places. Dying towns that need revitalizing.

Democratic policy centers on poverty and transfers. There are a lot of reasons for this. Obviously, people in poverty are worse off than others, and there’s philosophical reasons to want a market system that allows for inequality as long as it benefits the worst-off in society.

But another reason is that you can measure this. I’m part of a group that wants to focus on getting wages up (the ugly term “predistribution”, but no longer using antagonistic term “pity-charity liberalism”) as a distinct yet complementary program to redistribution and also something that builds broader power for people. One obstacle I hit is that while getting wages up is a hazy and complicated process, redistribution can be done and measured with clinical precision.

It can also be taken away with that same precision. “Post-tax-and-transfer” inequality, the thing everyone was cheering as the way forward, is going to be a major causality in the next four years, probably the next 8 months even, conceptually as a Trump administration doesn’t think that way at all, and practically as the conservatives destroy transfers and progressive taxation. Getting a clearer strategy and narrative around pushing wages up, and getting a fuller agenda around places left behind, needs to be centered more than it is.

Going Forward

There are a lot of reasons Clinton lost. There was some made-up wishful thinking in retrospect: her unfavorables were “priced-in”, I heard, which isn’t a thing. What I haven’t seen an answer for is that for all the money and tech, they didn’t know their blue wall was much less safe from the people on the ground than the polling numbers in Brooklyn HQ would see. Something broke down there and it’s urgent to understand why.

But even without that loss there would have been a need to reboot. As Ezekiel Kweku writes in an excellent article, “The lesson we should draw from Clinton’s loss is not that white supremacy is unbeatable at the polls, but that it’s not going to beat itself…If the Democratic Party would like to keep more Donald Trumps from winning in the future, they are going to have to take the extraordinary step of doing politics.” Politics is informed by analysis and policy, and though it is clear we need policy to move beyond neoliberalism, that is only the first step. The journey to find this new path is just beginning.

I need to think a little bit more about this but I do agree that nationalism was a gigantic motivator for these folks. And,b y the way, it always has been. These are always the people who scream USA, USA! in crowds. Trump just repackaged it for economic purposes. But it comes from the same place it always comes from — and he’ll be able to call upon it when he decides to start his war.

And I do have to wonder if anyone other than Trump would be allowed to get away with such vagueness about policy. It’s easy to see how well it worked for him. But I think he’s sui generis and any Democrat trying his approach would be skewered by the press. But there are things to be learned from what he did right and I’m seeing very few people looking at this systematically from that perspective. This is helpful in trying to understand how he managed to defy all expectations.

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And the cameras kept rolling
by Tom Sullivan

As Rome burned, reporters from the Roman Times, the Empire Press, and the Daily Praetorian were on the scene live to bring coverage of Emperor Nero’s musical stylings.

Donald Trump’s team has led the press by the nose for over a year and they are not about to stop now. Several networks brought live coverage of Trump’s “victory” rally in Cincinnati last night. (So little time for the rookie public servant to get up to speed on running a nation of over 300 million, but he has time for his adulation fix.) With its coverage, the press all but hangs banners in the arena. Even to save themselves, they cannot look away.

Then there was this last night in The Hill: Scarborough: Trump considering Exxon CEO for secretary of State. Whether it is true or not is beside the point. Trump and his people want to keep every news cycle focused on him. So far, the press takes every bait.

The left had best give up any notion that, as they say on the right, America will “wake up” and admit what is happening. These people don’t admit mistakes; they double down on them. Admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness and to be avoided. Correcting them? That’s even harder. Granted, the Republican Party wrote up a postmortem on its 2012 loss. But Republicans promptly ignored it. The question now is can Democrats learn new tricks?

Ian MIllhiser at ThinkProgress worries they cannot:

Those of us who agree with the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed are poorly equipped to resist Trump. Those of us who agree that governments exist to secure “certain unalienable Rights” are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

We have brought a sheet of parchment and a set of abstract principles to a knife fight. We’re going to get cut.

That’s because believers in liberal democracy — people who believe generally that the theory laid out in the Declaration’s preamble is correct — must constantly fight a two-front war. We must defend the structures of liberal democracy while working within those structures to grasp the levers of power and use them to achieve just ends.

But Donald Trump — and the Republican Party generally, with its tactics of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and political litigation — threatens liberal democracy on both fronts. Trump is a paradox within democracy, a leader elected in a constitutionally legitimate process who seeks to undermine the Constitution itself.

To declare him illegitimate is to shake the foundations of the American system, but to fail to do so is to risk leveling those foundations to the ground.

Millhiser offers no way out of that paradox (and I have none this morning). But he does suggest this:

Similarly, every American should read Yale History Professor and Holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder’s “20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency.” Among his most important words of advice are “do not obey in advance,” to be wary if the Trump regime attempts to use a terrorist attack or similar tragedy to consolidate its power, and to adhere — especially if you are a lawyer, judge, government worker or other individual who may be called upon to shepherd Trump’s goals into fruition — to professional ethics.

If liberal democracy survives these next four years, then liberals must confront the fact that our current system of government has failed. We cannot have a system that makes a president out of the guy who came in second in the presidential election twice in sixteen years, or that allows lawmakers to suppress the vote of their opponents’ supporters, or that allows those same lawmakers to effectively choose who gets to vote for them, or that allows the minority party to sabotage a president’s entire agenda and then campaign on the fact that nothing gets done, or that places the entirety of American democracy at the mercy of a political court.

The fight at hand is not between Republicans and Democrats. Both parties have lost their way; the former having descended into madness. The fight at hand is between economic royalists and small-d democrats. It appears for the moment that the royalists again have the upper hand.

Before retelling at length the story of his November 8 win last night, the Man Who Would Be Emperor made a stab at speaking of reconciliation and bringing the country together. The boisterous crowd went quiet:

We condemn bigotry and prejudice in all of its forms. We denounce all of the hatred and we forcefully reject the language of exclusion and separation. We’re going to come together. We have no choice. We have to. And it’s better. It’s better.

If I’m not mistaken, there were a few gasps and perhaps even a heckle. Such words feel unnatural coming from Trump’s puckered lips. They drew no applause from followers raised on red meat. Soon Trump was back to “braggadocious” form, retelling his story of election triumph and attacking the press and anybody who has done him wrong. In the press pen, the cameras kept rolling.

This is Not Normal 

by tristero

Please call the Flying Spaghetti Monster and cart me away:

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif called President-elect USA Donald Trump and felicitated him on his victory. President Trump said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif you have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way. I am looking forward to see you soon. As I am talking to you Prime Minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long. Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people. I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems. It will be an honor and I will personally do it. Feel free to call me any time even before 20th January that is before I assume my office.

On being invited to visit Pakistan by the Prime Minister, Mr. Trump said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people. Please convey to the Pakistani people that they are amazing and all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people, said Mr. Donald Trump.

Please. Stop. Please. Let me wake up. Please.

And for those of you who need a little extra help understanding why this is, as Teri Garr memorably said in Young Frankenstein, a nacht-mare, let Steve Benen explain it to you:

Tensions between India and Pakistan have intensified, which leaves the United States in an awkward position. The Obama administration has made a concerted effort to strengthen U.S./India ties, while also delicately maintaining financial support for Pakistan. 

Note, however, that President Obama is the first American president to ever visit India twice during his term, while Obama has not set foot in Pakistan. 

Trump, who probably isn’t aware of the diplomatic balancing act, apparently signaled to Sharif a very different U.S. posture towards Pakistan – up to and including a presidential visit to the country. 

If Trump does go to Pakistan, it risks alienating Indian allies. If Trump doesn’t visit after telling Sharif he would, it will further complicate an already difficult Pakistani relationship. And I can’t wait to hear what this means: “I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems.” 

Electing a president who doesn’t know what he’s doing carries real consequences.

Hell in a handbasket

by digby

It looks like two things made the difference in the  2016 presidential race: whether you think the country is generally going to hell in a handbasket and the personalities of the two candidates.

The November Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted one week after the 2016 presidential election, finds health care played a limited role in voters’ 2016 election decisions, with larger shares of voters saying the biggest factor in their vote was the direction of the country (31 percent), Donald Trump’s personal characteristics (15 percent), jobs and the economy (15 percent), or Hillary Clinton’s personal characteristics (12 percent), than who say the same about health care (8 percent).

I’m going to guess that everything now depends on the economy imporving enough for trump to take credit and some empty gestures on his part.

Democrats had better start recruiting a candidate  from outside the political realm and preferable one not from show business because only GOP iconoclasts can com from the entertainment field lest they be seen as Barbra Streisand squishes. I’m thinking athletics would be the right fit, one who can relate to the “working class” while also being super rich and famous and successful. Somebody like Tom Brady, only a Democrat. (Actually that’s not really necessary but would be nice.) After all, it clearly doesn’t even matter if he has a brain in his head or knows anything at all about politics so why should we have a president who is a member of the party or has any political philosophy at all?

Start looking for our next leader people. A “change agent” who will make sure the Real Americans feel like they’re the most important people in the whole wide world.

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Gotcher populism rye-cheeah

by digby

Mealnia Trump and baby Barron

Populism!

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.

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, one of whose family is worth as much as industrial tycoon Andrew Mellon was when he served as treasury secretary nearly a century ago. Rumored candidates for other positions suggest Trump could add more ultra-rich appointees soon.

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.

He will say that he’s hired the smartest people for the job. And they are obviously the smartest because they’re the richest! His voters will agree. And they think that if we let the rich guys run the country they’ll all be rich too!

These are not people who hate the rich. If they did they sure wouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump. They hate “other” people. And they like Trump because he hates them too!

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