Donald Trump Works For Wall Street, Not Russia

The evidence is overwhelming and indisputable at this point. Donald Trump is a phony, who has given his administration over to Wall Street crooks even more enthusiastically than his predecessors, and his predecessors were very enthusiastic.

I’ve written about this many times, and I warned throughout the campaign that my biggest fear was Trump is far too cozy with the finance industry, fake populist statements aside. His latest hire for the number two position at the Treasury Department once again proves the point.

As David Dayen reports in his excellent article at The Intercept, Donald Trump Isn’t Even Pretending to Oppose Goldman Sachs Anymore:

The continuity of Wall Street’s dominant role in American politics — regardless of what party sits in power or how reviled the financial industry finds itself across the country — was perhaps never more evident than when Jake Siewert, now a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, on Tuesday praised the selection of Jim Donovan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, for the No. 2 position in the Treasury Department under Steve Mnuchin, himself a former Goldman Sachs partner.

America will never recover until this is dealt with, and Trump has made it perfectly clear he will not deal with it.

“Jim is smart, extraordinarily versatile, and as hard-working as they come,” Siewert gushed. “He’ll be an invaluable addition to the economic team.”

The punch line? Siewert was counselor at the Treasury Department to Timothy Geithner, as well as a White House press secretary under Bill Clinton.

The ubiquity of Goldman Sachs veterans across numerous presidencies throughout history, both Republican and Democratic, has been well documented. But Donald Trump sold himself as something different, an economic nationalist determined to rankle Wall Street. He even ran campaign ads savaging bankers like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein for their role in a “global power structure.”

That populist smokescreen is long gone now.

Mnuchin and Donovan are just two of five Goldman expats in high-level positions on Trump’s team. Steve Bannon spent a limited time at Goldman Sachs, but White House assistant Dina Powell, who headed the bank’s philanthropic efforts, and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Goldman’s former president, had higher-ranking positions for a longer period. Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for the Securities and Exchange Commission, was a partner for Goldman’s main law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus reportedly blocked Donovan from Treasury initially, amid fears of an image problem with too many “Goldman guys.” But Donovan got the post anyway.

You know it’s bad when Reince thinks there are too many Goldman baby squids around.

Even in areas where populist sentiment was seen as pre-eminent, Trump has reportedly succumbed to the Wall Street advance. A dramatic piece in the Financial Times described a “civil war” within the White House over trade, pitting Trump’s hard-liners like Bannon and trade policy adviser Peter Navarro against the likes of Cohn. It stated that Navarro was being sidelined, with Cohn taking a larger role in the negotiations over NAFTA, and with foreign leaders working through the National Economic Council rather than Navarro in trade talks. AFL-CIO official Thea Lee said in the story, “It appears the Wall Street wing … is winning this battle.”

At the NEC, Cohn hired Andrew Quinn, a chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to coordinate international trade and development. A stewing Breitbart News called Quinn “the enemy within.”

Drain the swamp baby.

Banks have celebrated since Trump’s election, composing the lion’s share of the “Trump bump” in stock prices. Goldman Sachs shares have risen from $181.92 on Election Day to around $250 today, an increase that accounts for as much as one-fifth of the total rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average over that period.

It’s now completely obvious that the Trump administration has been hijacked by Wall Street, so where’s the resistance? When it comes to the self-proclaimed leaders of this “resistance,” the corporate media and the Democratic Party, the resistance is nowhere to be found. They’re simply too busy focusing on invented Russia conspiracy theories to deal with the provable conspiracy right in front of their faces. I find that quite curious.

It doesn’t take much critical thinking to immediately discover why. Russia fear-mongering is the perfect way to superficially oppose Trump, without actually opposing him. Corporate media and Democrats don’t dare focus on Trump’s Wall Street embrace because Wall Street owns their asses too. That’s the dirty little secret here.

While that’s bad enough, the only reason Trump is actually able to get away with such an obvious betrayal and lack of swamp drainage, is because his supporters allow him to. His power resides in his base, and if his base shrugs as he sticks a knife in their backs, then he’ll continue to stick the knife in. As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday.

Trump’s core supporters have a lot more to lose than I do if he continues along this path. Get angry or get screwed over, the choice is yours.

Unfortunately, I’m not hopeful. As we should all know by now: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”