End Citizens United (ECU) President Tiffany Muller issued the following statement on Donald Trump assembling the richest cabinet in U.S. history:
“Donald Trump’s cabinet is a who’s who of billionaires and corporate executives who bought their way into power. This wasn’t a meticulous vetting process to determine who has the right qualifications to serve the American people; it was about rewarding the wealthy donors who bankrolled his campaign. By putting them in charge of government agencies, Trump has given them the green light to rewrite the rules in their favor, while working Americans are left to foot the bill. This open corruption is a betrayal of public trust and will spell disaster for the daily lives of American families.”
Read more:
USA Today: A billionaire presidential administration? Who Trump plans to nominate so far
- President-elect Donald Trump, who ran a reelection campaign promising to put the working class first, has so far invited five likely billionaires to join his administration.
- Trump himself is the country’s richest president, with an estimated net worth of $5.6 billion, according to Forbes. Having named a majority of traditional cabinet department heads and tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramasway, to lead a new proposed “Department of Government Efficiency,” he is setting up the wealthiest presidential administration in U.S. history.
- If the U.S. Senate confirms his picks, he will easily beat his own record. His first cabinet had one billionaire, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and a combined net worth of about $2 billion, according to Business Insider.
US News & World Report: All the President’s Billionaires: The Extraordinary Wealth in Trump’s Proposed Administration
- The total net worth of the billionaires in the Trump administration, as of the morning of Nov. 25, equals at least $344.4 billion – which is more than the GDP of 169 different countries. Since Musk and Ramaswamy won’t be part of Trump’s Cabinet, excluding them brings the net worth of Trump’s Cabinet to at least $10.7 billion, assuming all nominees are approved in the Senate.
- The figures are most likely significantly higher, but finding the net worth of Bessent, a known billionaire, is tricky, and therefore he’s been left out of the above calculations.
###