Trump's new economic adviser says the rich can't be corrupt. Let's look at the Trump administration.

Daily Kos Staff

Friday March 16, 2018 · 7:23 AM PDT

2018/03/16 · 07:23

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 26: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (C) and his family (L-R) son Donald Trump Jr, son Eric Trummp, wife Melania Trump and daughters Tiffany Trump and Ivanka Trump cut the ribbon at the new Trump International Hotel October 26, 2016 in Washington, DC. The hotel, built inside the historic Old Post Office, has 263 luxry rooms, including the 6,300-square-foot 'Trump Townhouse' at $100,000 a night, with a five-night minimum. The Trump Organization was granted a 60-year lease to the historic building by the federal government before the billionaire New York real estate mogul announced his intent to run for president. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump’s new top economic adviser, is famous for being wrong about everything, in some very dramatic ways. And boy, was he ever wrong about the Trump administration and the effects of wealth. Back in late 2016, Kudlow explained why it was a good thing that Trump was putting so many billionaires and multi-multi-multi-millionaires on his cabinet:

“Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” he wrote, referring to the rich conservatives Trump has added to his incoming team. “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”

About that. Members of Trump’s cabinet had an estimated combined net worth of $4.5 billion (though it seems that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may have seriously inflated his wealth). Let’s check out the record of non-stealing and non-corruption they’ve racked up, shall we?

Tom Price became the former Health and Human Services secretary because he spent as much as $1 million on charter and military flights. His net worth is a reported $10 million.
Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin is with Price in the military flights club, having taken seven military flights totaling $1 million rather than flying commercial like his predecessors. He even tried to get a government plane to take him on his honeymoon. His net worth is a reported $385 million.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, with a personal net worth of $22 million, made headlines for a $31,000 dining set he and his wife chose, then denied knowing anything about, for his office.
Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin’s reported net worth of $17 million didn’t stop him from using a few overseas meetings as an excuse for touristing around Europe at the government’s expense.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is a relative pauper worth just $1.9 million, but he’s repeatedly chartered planes for government business only to show up at nearby Republican fundraisers and the like, as well as spending $139,000 on office doors.

But most of all, there’s Trump himself and his family of grifters. From the galas and fundraisers being held at Trump’s properties—for a hefty fee—by groups looking to suck up to him, to the shell companies and foreign governments renting real estate from him to the overseas deals being smoothed by governments looking to curry favor, Trump is corrupt right up to his questionable hairline. Meanwhile son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner—himself from a family of wealthy real estate developers—has gotten a series of suspicious loans. And that’s not even getting into the little stuff like Don Jr.'s trip to India to give a foreign policy speech and sell some condos, or the $1.5 million a year Ivanka is getting from Trump companies while working in the White House.

Yeah, that whole “rich people don’t need to be corrupt because they’re rich” thing holds up about as well as Kudlow’s 2007 insistence that there wasn’t going to be a recession.

Trump's new economic adviser says the rich can't be corrupt. Let's look at the Trump administration.

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