The hypocrisy of Donald Trump regarding Goldman Sachs is staggering; he repeatedly targeted the company during the primary season to attack his most dangerous rival, Ted Cruz, and also used Goldman Sachs as a foil to attack Hillary Clinton.
But on Friday Trump announced yet another high-ranking member of his administration will come from Goldman Sachs:
Here are the people either currently working for Goldman Sachs or having worked for them in the past whom Trump has already named to work with him:
- National Economic Council Director: GS COO Gary Cohn
- Treasury Secretary: Steven Mnuchin
- Senior advisor: Steve Bannon
- Top transition advisor: Anthony Scaramucci
Prior to the Iowa caucuses, the first real test in the GOP primaries, Trump repeatedly attacked Ted Cruz for his connections with Goldman Sachs:
Trump was still on the attack against Goldman Sachs in mid-February, before the South Carolina primary, this time including Hillary Clinton with Cruz as targets, snapping, “I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton,” as he added that Cruz was a “total fraud” and “the biggest liar I’ve ever seen.”
In late March, Trump again attacked Cruz, falsely accusing him of being responsible for an ad showing Melania Trump’s nude photo shoot for GQ. Trump tweeted:
Cruz fired back:
That prompted Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson to launch an attack against Cruz, vilifying Heidi Cruz for working with Goldman Sachs:
“Spilling the beans” is quite simple when it comes to Heidi Cruz; she is a Bush operative; she works for the architect of NAFTA, which has killed millions of jobs in this country; she was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who, in Senator Cruz’s own words, called a “nest of snakes” that seeks to undermine national sovereignty, and she’s been working for Goldman Sachs, the same global bank that Ted Cruz left off of his financial disclosure and who also has chairman on the board of the Federal Reserve, which is something that Senator Cruz promised to audit the Fed and didn’t show up for the vote. So “spilling the beans” on Heidi Cruz simply means that her entire career has been spent working against everything Ted Cruz says that he stands for.
The last ad the Trump campaign aired included an attack on Wall Street, and the last figure shown other than Trump was Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who appeared on screen as Trump intoned: “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”
So much for “draining the swamp.”
And so much for truth in advertising.