Hard to Drain the Swamp When YOU Are the Swamp

Photo Ryan McGuire

Trump's HHS nominee Rep. Tom Price personally benefitted from stock in companies that benefitted from legislation that Rep. Tom Price pushed in Congress. Purely a coincidence!

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Trump’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, has acknowledged during his confirmation process that he failed to pay more than $15,000 in state and federal employment taxes for a household employee.

Commerce Department nominee Wilbur Ross revealed that one of the “dozen or so” housekeepers he has hired since 2009 was undocumented, which he said he discovered only recently. Yeah, we believe that.

The Swamp-Drainer-in-Chief refuses to separate himself from the businesses that he can vastly advantage in the presidency, and he refuses to release his tax returns because there's stuff in there that might give his most loyal supporters a new form of indigestion.

This Trump administration already has a distinct odor of corruption that will only grow as the garbage piles up.

Trump's Team of Oligarchs

Trump promised to remember "the forgotten men and women."

He vowed to "drain the swamp."

Trump's closing campaign ad prior to the election blasted "the global power elite" and singled out Goldman Sachs as a pillar of the corrupt establishment ... which, Trump claimed, was rigging the election against him.

Presto change-o!

Trump's inaugural is shaping up to set a new standard for "pay-to-play" politics:

⭑ Those giving $1 million or more toward the inaugural party weekend will get perks including an “intimate dinner” with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife and a candlelight dinner with an appearance by Trump, Pence, and their wives. 

⭑ Those who can only afford $250,000 get an “intimate policy discussion and dinner with select Cabinet officials.”

Global elite?

✤ Would-be Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos -- family worth is $5.1 billion. 

✤ Commerce secretary pick Wilbur Ross -- he's worth $2.9 billion.

✤ Deputy commerce secretary choice Todd Ricketts -- his family fortune is also in the billions.

✤ Harold Hamm, paraded at Trump Tower as a possible energy secretary -- worth $15 billion.

✤ Former Goldman Sachs partner (and Hollywood executive) Steven Mnuchin has been named as Trump's treasury secretary. (Mnuchin is worth only about $40 million.)

✤ Trump's reportedly in talks to hire Goldman Sach’s No. 2 executive, Gary Cohn, to be his budget director.