Donald Trump said during a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that he wouldn’t want to appoint a poor person to a cabinet position tasked with managing the economy, just cause.
He doesn’t like poor people.
Trump was on a roll Wednesday night, cracking jokes about how super rich people, like Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin, would never endure the strict poverty of a government job running the economy unless they loved being in charge of the country a lot, when he added, “And I love all people—rich or poor—but in those particular [Cabinet] positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that makes sense? If you insist, I’ll do it—but I like better this way.”
Business Insider noted that Trump’s rhetoric seems to contradict sentences he once strung together in a fame-addled stupor on the campaign trail. For instance, last year in Iowa he said that, “Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us.”
But this kind of brazen, off-the-cuff remark has been Trump’s MO for a long time now. So far it works in his favor precisely because everyone realizes on some plane of their consciousness that it’s motivated by horrendous prejudice, and that means his staunchest supporters are nodding along like, “damn, I hate poor people too, so glad someone finally had the BALLS to say it.”
And, yes, I can anticipate the think pieces of tomorrow going on and on about how rich people always get appointed to these sorts of positions and Trump was actually just being really candid, if crude. But, no, longstanding political cronyism and entrenchment of Wall Street interests inside White House walls—phenomena Trump’s administration only further exaggerates—should not occlude the fact that Trump, in glibly not giving his reason for wanting to work only with rich people, is openly signaling exactly what that reason is.