In a rare joint statement Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Steven Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary “hypocrisy at its worst.”
The two progressive icons who have focused on reeling in Wall Street excesses joined forces to denounce Trump’s decision to nominate a former Goldman Sachs executive.
“During the campaign, Donald Trump told the American people that he was going to change Washington by taking on Wall Street. Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, is just another Wall Street insider. That is not the type of change that Donald Trump promised to bring to Washington – that is hypocrisy at its worst,” the statement reads.
“After his bank pocketed billions in taxpayer dollars from the bailout, Mnuchin moved on to make a fortune running another bank that aggressively foreclosed on families still reeling from the crisis,” it continues. “This pick makes clear that Donald Trump wants to cater to the same Wall Street executives that have hurt working families time and again.”
Mnunchin, after spending 17 years at Goldman Sachs, started his own hedge fund, Dune Capital. During the financial crisis, Mnuchin led the purchase of the failed California-based bank IndyMac, later renamed OneWest Bank, which was accused under his leadership of inappropriately aggressive foreclosure practices and racially discriminatory lending practices.
In a statement on Tuesday, responding to news that Mnuchin would be Trump’s Treasury secretary, Warren called him the “Forrest Gump of the financial crisis.”
