Just days after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump solidified his anti-anti-establishment creds by hiring none other than a former Goldman Sachs executive to chair his national campaign fundraising.
As noted by Zero Hedge:
“Trump announced that heading up his own personal fundraising operation as national finance chairman will be Steven Mnuchin, a long-time business associate, chairman and CEO of the hedge fund Dune Capital. More importantly, however, he spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs where he was most recently a Partner, having built a fortune of $46 million before launching his own hedge fund.
“While employed at Goldman, he purchased the remains of IndyMac Bank (now known as OneWest Bank), the Pasadena, California-based mortgage lender that collapsed in 2008. ‘Notoriously press-shy, the executive endured 2011 protests on the lawn of his Bel Air mansion by foreclosed homeowners angered at his lender’s handling of soured mortgages.’”
After digging a little deeper, it turns out Mnuchin has an even more surprising former employer: none other than democratic political financier, billionaire, and Hillary Clinton donor George Soros.
“In addition to Goldman, Mnuchin also worked at Soros Fund Management, whose founder, George Soros, has funded many left-leaning causes. Where it gets even more bizarre is that Mnuchin has donated frequently to Democrats, including to Clinton and Barack Obama.”
Making matters even worse, it turns out that Mnuchin profited handsomely from the 2009 Wall Street bailouts. According to Mother Jones, after buying the bailed out IndyMac Bank for pennies on the dollar, “Mnuchin and his partners, who named their new bank OneWest, ended up doing spectacularly well. They parlayed their $1.55 billion investment into a $3.4 billion payday.” He was able to do this because taxpayers took on all the risks of the bank’s bad assets, costing taxpayers an estimated $13 billion in losses. All the while, the bank continued to foreclose on homeowners who were no longer able to make mortgage payments.
These developments come only a few days after Trump’s former opponents, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, dropped out of the race — all but guaranteeing Donald the nomination.
Trump also recently announced he will forgo the “self-funding” he has relied on so far in the primary, promising to raise $1 billion from supporters in conjunction with the Republican party in preparation for the general election.
Further, Trump has begun to surround himself with neocon Republican establishment icons. As Dan Sanchez explains:
“Trump’s circle now includes such mainstream warmongers as Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie, Richard Haass (current president of the Council on Foreign Relations), and Senator Jeff Sessions. Trump has even identified John Bolton, an Iraq War architect and close ally of the neocons, as a ‘go to’ expert for advice on national security.”
It appears Donald Trump’s days as an anti-establishment outsider have come to a close now that he’s gearing up for the general election (most likely) against Hillary Clinton — another politician with ties to Goldman Sachs. It appears that regardless of who winds up winning the presidency in 2016, Goldman Sachs will remain the unbeatable incumbent.