Warren no fan of Trump’s Treasury Department pick

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/12/01/warren-no-fan-of-trumps-treasury-department-pick/

 

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has once again driven U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren apoplectic, this time with his pick to run the Treasury Department.

Earlier this week Warren labeled Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s selection for treasury secretary, as “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis,” a reference to the 1994 blockbuster in which a seemingly dim-witted man manages to make his imprint on history. “He managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street.”

Mnuchin’s resume includes a 17-year stint as a partner at Goldman Sachs. Warren continued her tirade against Mnuchin on Wednesday during an exchange with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“Donald Trump tapped into that anger and he promised when he was running for president that he would break the connection between Wall Street and this congress,” Warren told Cooper.  “And then what does he do — he turns around and picks the guy who had actually been one of the people who helped do all of those lousy mortgages that not only broke the economy but broke millions of families.

“And after the crash, a guy who turned around and bought a bank that then became infamous for how hard it squeezed families that had already been cheated and was the foreclosure machine.”

Warren’s reference to the “foreclosure machine” is a jab at the now-defunct IndyMac Bank, which Mnuchin and others bought out of bankruptcy for $1.6 billion in 2009. With Mnuchin as chairman, the bank was renamed OneWest and later sold outright in 2015.  

Warren later teamed up with Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to issue a joint statement denouncing Mnuchin as “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 duo added.

While Trump for the time being has stopped haranguing Warren on social media, GOP fundraiser and Trump backer took Warren to task for “name-calling.”

On Thursday, however, Warren in a surprise move threw her support behind one of her former rivals who is openly seeking Trump’s nod to run the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In an interview on Boston Public Radio, Warren said former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown — a Republican she defeated in 2012 — would be an ideal fit to lead the department.

“If Scott Brown is the nominee for Veterans Affairs, I have no doubt that he would put his heart and soul into trying to help veterans,” she said. “And I would put my heart and soul into trying to help him do that, you bet I’d support that.”

Brown later went on Twitter to thank his old foe.