Trump selects yet another Goldman Sachs executive for key post

President-elect Donald Trump has offered Gary Cohn, the current president and Chief Operating Officer at Goldman Sachs, the position of director of the National Economic Council. Cohn joins Steven Mnuchin and Steve Bannon to become the third Goldman Sachs alumnus offered a position in the Trump administration.

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly accused Hillary Clinton of being “owned” and “bought and paid for” by Wall Street, including tweeting out this absurdity:

#CrookedHillary is nothing more than a Wall Street PUPPET! #BigLeagueTruth #Debate pic.twitter.com/skhBWG6AQ3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2016

But as President-elect, Trump seems more than happy to not only engage with Wall Street, but to appoint veterans of the financial crisis to his cabinet.

As my colleague Alison R. Parker previously observed: Goldman Sachs executives seem particularly curious choices, given:

[A]s Eric Levitz noted at New York Magazine, Trump’s final campaign ad used an image of the Goldman Sachs chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, “as an embodiment of the global elite that has ‘robbed our working class.’”

Cohn is a particularly egregious choice, as he oversaw Goldman Sachs during the lead up to the financial crisis. In 2008, while people who had sub-prime mortgages were foreclosed upon, Cohn raked in $42.3 million. And in April 2016, his firm was fined $5 billion for their role in securing toxic assets that were, in fact, bad loans and sub-prime mortgages.

Trump’s appeals to working class voters during the campaign frequently came with insults toward Wall Street, including statements like “Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us.”

But he is stacking his cabinet with Wall Street denizens who have actively worked against the interests of the American people.