Money man Mnuchin helps Trump fend off a loss of privilege
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in the White House Rose Garden on Monday. Credit: AFP / Getty Images / Brendan Smialowski
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has come to personify the privileged aspect of a supposedly populist Trump administration.
The Yale alumnus, Goldman Sachs veteran and seasoned hedge fund manager belongs to a claque of wealthy investment bankers and others from the nation's economic elite tapped early on for key White House positions.
Unfortunately, he contributed to his own caricature in November 2017 by posing with his wife, Louise Linton, showing off sheets of freshly printed money. The photos went viral. They looked like Bond movie villains. Mnuchin, 56, said he didn't think the images would go public.
Linton already had left a certain impression by punching down on social media, slamming an Instagram critic of her lush lifestyle: "Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country?”
Nowadays, Mnuchin generates his own headlines, and by all accounts is closely advising President Donald Trump.
Last Tuesday, Mnuchin addressed re-election donors at a fundraiser. On hand were executives of industries regulated by Treasury.
The fete took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, but without Mnuchin listed on the program, according to The Washington Post.
Back in the 1990s, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin showed up at a fundraiser with top bankers at the White House. Republicans denounced it as a conflict of interest, and President Bill Clinton conceded it was a mistake.
A day earlier, Mnuchin found himself in what some might consider a more awkward position. He defended Trump's political interests by officially denying the House of Representatives' request for the president's tax returns.
As a real estate heir, Trump in 2016 exempted himself from the usual voluntary practice by which candidates and incumbent presidents reveal their tax filings. These disclosures began in the 1970s as an act of public confidence-building meant to show the people, as President Richard Nixon put it, that their president is "not a crook."
“I have determined that the Committee’s [tax] request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose," Mnuchin wrote to Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Mnuchin's expertise on what constitutes a "legitimate legislative purpose" is unclear.
Mnuchin also leads the administration's chorus in proclaiming credit for indisputably robust growth in gross domestic product and in talking up the president's tariffs as a prod against Chinese competition.“ There’s no question that some of the trade policies helped in the G.D.P. number,” Mnuchin was quoted as saying.
For all his on-message talk, Mnuchin sometimes draws internal heat at the White House, with Trump last year reportedly complaining to others about the secretary in connection with rising interest rates and a volatile stock market.
Early in the administration, adviser Steve Bannon tried to proclaim the new president the second coming of Andrew Jackson, who was lionized by generations of admirers for confronting "the money power" of entrenched bankers and big manufacturers of his time.
All kinds of historical comparisons are possible. Much as things now go their way, it seems difficult to cast Mnuchin and his boss as icons in a revival of Jacksonian democracy.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
