After a disastrous week the GOP presidential candidate, alleged billionaire, Donald Trump introduced his economic advisors, a veritable who’s who of what’s wrong with the US economy as pointed out by economist RJ Eskow.
Trump’s team isn’t just monochromatic and male. At least four, and perhaps as many six, of the men are billionaires. They range in age from 50 to 74 – or, from “younger old white guy” to “older old white guy.”
Five team members are named Steve – which means that eight of them are not. For diversity, that will have to do.
There are only two economists on the team – and one of them believes in the flat tax.
But hedge funds are represented. So is fracking. And tobacco. And guns. And banking. And steel. And there’s the guy who mismanaged Chrysler before it was rescued by a government intervention.
Trump’s advisory team is a “suicide squad” for the American economy – which seems fitting, since a funder of the new “Suicide Squad” movie is on it, too.
Three team members – economist Peter Navarro, steel magnate Dan DiMicco and real estate investor Thomas Barrack Jr. – have criticized the bad “trade” deals supported by both major parties over the last 25 years. That’s a start, I suppose. But it’s not enough, not by a long shot.
Not one of these men represents unions, workers, the middle class, minorities, woman or, for that matter, any one who isn’t in the top 1%.
In an attempt to appear reasonable, the flaming yam went to Detroit to deliver his revised economic plan. Obviously reading from a teleprompter, the speach was interrupted several imes by protester but, Trump, apparently well coached, held his tongues and smiled as each was removed from the auditorium. As Charles Pierce noted in a debunking of the lies that were spewed:
“What are the odds that “Ignore Protesters” were written in all caps on the teleprompters? His handlers are lucky he didn’t read it.
It didn’t take Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to take to twitter for a scathing barrage of tweets skewering the speech point by point.. Frances “blue gal” Langum at Cooks and Liars has an article with all them. Priceless and an education.
Then last night economist and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich and investigative journalist and author David Cay Johnston joined MSNBC’s “All In” host Chris Hayes for an even more thorough thrashing of Trump’s junk economics.