Welcome back to Barf Bag.
Perhaps you've heard the expression that every billionaire is a policy failure — with proper enforcement of laws on labor, anti-trust, and taxes, these obscenely wealthy people would have never accrued that much money. Well, if you're an alleged billionaire politician like President-elect Donald Trump, you look at billionaires and think "These people should be making policy!"
That's the conclusion we're drawing from the fact that Trump has nominated at least 10 billionaires to serve in his administration so far, and there are still more roles to fill! His picks — some of which require Senate confirmation while others don't — have a combined net worth of more than $340 billion, per the Guardian.
Here are the people he wants in various positions, along with their net worth, according to Axios:
- Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency (lol). Net worth: $300+ billion
- Vivek Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency. Net worth: $1 billion
- Linda McMahon, education secretary. Net worth: $2.6 billion
- Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior. Net worth: $1.1 billion
- Howard Lutnick, commerce secretary. Net worth: $2 billion
- Stephen Feinberg, deputy defense secretary. Net worth: $5 billion
- Warren Stephens, ambassador to the U.K. Net worth: $3.3 billion
- Kelly Loeffler, small business administration. Net worth: $1.1 billion
- Charles Kushner, ambassador to France (Jared's dad). Net worth: $2.9 billion
- Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator. Net worth: $1.9 billion
Plus three more
possible billionaires:
David Sacks, AI and crypto czar;
Scott Bessent, treasury secretary; and
Massad Boulous, Middle East advisor (and Tiffany's father-in-law).
This fact comes amid reporting that Musk spent more than $250 million to help Trump get elected, including $20 million on a deeply cynical PAC that ran ads trying to claim that Trump's position on abortion was like that of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that he opposes a national ban.
We officially live in an oligarchy. Prepare the guillotines.
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summoned some crocodile tears to whine about two Democratic judges reversing their decisions to retire after it became clear Democrats couldn't approve their replacements before Trump takes office. [The Hill]
- Right-wing troll Megyn Kelly asked embattled defense secretary nominee and accused sexual assailant Pete Hegseth: “Do you think you’re being Kavanaugh’d right now?" [The Recount]
- Hegseth's mother has reportedly been calling GOP Senators to try to save his nomination. [HuffPost]
- A Christian values PAC started by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker only raised a net total of $6,000. [Twitter/FEC]
- A xenophobic smear campaign against Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, appears to have its genesis in the story of a U.S. citizen who killed and ate a cat 170 miles away in Canton. The woman happens to be Black. [The Daily Beast]
- Fox News blamed the presence of migrants for the fact that the NYPD hasn't yet found the suspect who shot the United Healthcare CEO on Wednesday morning. [Washington Post]
- Scandal-ridden and pathetic New York City Mayor Eric Adams did not rule out switching back to the Republican party. [New York Times]
This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading!
