SIO2: Trump's Cabinet: Filling the Swamp

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm your host Thomas Smith. This is episode number two. As you probably just noticed, hopefully, uh, we are so close to the name change being 100%. It is about 97%. The only holdout is Facebook. I, uh, tried to change the name, they said, nope, can't do it. Rejected it. Uh, I tried, it said I could appeal, so I did an appeal, and, uh, didn't hear anything. So then three days later I tried it again, it said, nah, can't do this. It said, but you can appeal, and I said, okay, I'll appeal again. Again, and apparently they just have a system where you appeal and nothing happens. It's just if I go and look, it just still says open like it doesn't. Nobody's looked at it. Nobody cares.

0:01:14 Thomas: So I don't know if I can ever change the Facebook page name. I mean, I'm trying. I'll keep going back and forth with Facebook, I guess, or just back. It's not— there's no fourth. I'll just go back with Facebook and probably try again. And we'll see. Other than that, I think it's totally done. Here's the important note. I am now patreon.com/seriouspod. Everything is pretty much Serious Pod, it's good. I got seriouspod.com, I got thomas at seriouspod dot com is my email now, it is great. So, patreon.com/seriouspod is the place to go for the bonus stuff and here is a little note, this is the only thing that is a bit unfortunate and I apologize profusely, but there is no way around it. If you were subscribed to the Patreon RSS, which if you're a patron, you should be.

0:02:03 Thomas: It's a great way to get the show. It's a great way to get the Bonus Material. I make it so that's the only feed you need should you want that feed to use that one. You're going to have to change the RSS because I thought Patreon would be equipped to do this, but I think it's something maybe they haven't ever considered before. By changing to patreon.com/seriouspod, it changed your RSS URL. So if you can go into wherever you had that plugged in and edit it and just replace Atheist with Serious Pod. Otherwise, you can Go to patreon dot com. If you're logged into your account and you're a patron, you'll see the RSS link and you should be able to get to it again. If you have any trouble whatsoever with that, comment, get at me somehow, email, facebook, facebook.com Thomas podcast is my personal profile that you can friend me on and talk to me there. Seriously, if you have any trouble, I'm happy to help.

0:02:57 Thomas: Sorry for that inconvenience, especially since it's to my patrons. It pains me that you had any inconvenience but your pledge is all still there. That part's fine. I converted the page, your pledge is all intact. Thank you so much for it. And this is the only minor inconvenience Other than that, we're all set. I'm really happy to say that everything except that stupid Facebook page is good Okay, on to today's show. Now, this is part of what I've been wanting to do with the show and take it to different places. Haley and I, especially Haley, I want to thank, big thanks to Haley for, you know, the next few episodes, because we've done more work on this than probably any other episode I've ever done. Tons of research. We're still learning, by the way. I think we researched so much that I don't know, not all of it's going to make it in, but that's kind of what you have to do.

0:03:48 Thomas: And you know what? It struck me that I kind of feel like maybe a tiny percentage of Of what it might feel like to be Dan Carlin over at Hardcore History when he's doing just tons and tons of research and books and all that, because when you're in charge of it, there's really no, no one's telling you to stop. It's not like a job, a day job where you, you know, you turn something in, someone's like, oh, that's fine. I could just research forever. And we did, Haley and I both, just hours and hours on these people. And it's funny. So we're still learning, but there was an immense amount of research put into this. And it's what I kind of want to start doing now that I have the time and I've got Haley, Through your generous support over on patreon.com/seriouspod, I have the ability to pay Haley to help out with the show and to redo, in this case, an immense amount of research.

0:04:36 Thomas: So I hope you enjoy it. We're still learning how to do this best, but we've got what I think are the most interesting Trump cabinet picks, and Actually, we started off researching all of them. I mainly did quite a bit of research on every single one. When I started doing it, I realized this will be 9,000 episodes. So we've kind of got it down to the best five. So what you're going to hear is the best 5. It's still it's divided. It's going to be the next two episodes. In episode one, I'm going to cover a big one, which is Secretary of State. That's one of the most important positions, maybe the most important. And what might be the second most important, in some respects, the Secretary of Treasury. And there's some interesting stuff to look at when you compare who Trump picked to who Obama picked to even who Bush picked.

0:05:29 Thomas: And you look at the differences between their credentials and their experience. And that's the question I set out to answer with all of this and what I told Haley was, I want to know, what are these picks? How unprecedented are they? Maybe they're not, Maybe they are. My hunch is, of course, that they are pretty unprecedented. But who knows? Maybe I'd be proven wrong. Maybe Trump actually was making good picks. I wanted to know. So we did some real comparing and contrasting. So that's what you're about to hear. This is part one. And of course, part two, as, as pretty much always, will be available early over on patreon.com/seriouspod. If you'd like to get signed up over there, I'd very much appreciate it. Uh, as a reminder, that's how the show exists now and that's my living. So yeah, definitely. If you want that early episode, I would really appreciate it, but yeah, I'm happy to make that available.

0:06:19 Thomas: And part two is going to be a little more action packed. It's got Attorney General, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Energy. It's fun stuff. So look forward to that, but we're going to talk about the Secretary of State and Secretary of Treasury in today's show. So as something to note before getting into these picks, Trump promised to drain the swamp. And I found a great article explaining why he's failing at that. I'm just going to read a little bit of it. I'll include it in the show notes as well, but this is great. The core promise, this is from Politico. The core promise was a five-point ethics reform plan unveiled under the Drain the Swamp headline on October 17th, the first time he publicly used the phrase.

0:07:05 Thomas: Trump promised to ban executive officials from lobbying for five years, ask Congress to do the same for its own members and staff, expand the legal definition of lobbying so it would close all the loopholes that former government officials used by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists, ban senior administration officials from lobbying for foreign governments, and stop foreign lobbyists from raising money for U.S. elections. Now, this actually sounded pretty good at the time. I have to be totally honest. I mean, ignoring the fact that it's Trump who's saying it, some of those things sound pretty cool. I think those are things that Bernie might have gotten behind, or other Democrats may have even gotten behind. So that was an interesting thing. But because it's Trump, and you can't really believe anything he says, let's look at what's actually going on with all that.

0:07:51 Thomas: So the article goes on here, and they get out just a couple paragraphs where it talks about what's happening with those promises. The transition reiterated the five-year ban in November, but it doesn't appear to apply to people working on the transition itself, and it isn't enforceable without an act of Congress. While it's still early, so far the only lawmakers who have shown interest are Democrats. There's John Sarbanes of Maryland and Peter DeFazio of Oregon. Those are the only people. And Congress has shown no interest in strengthening its own lobbying ban. Trump also repeatedly promised a constitutional amendment imposing congressional term limits, but hasn't mentioned it since the election. And in any case, Congress would almost certainly refuse to pass it. Yeah, that's never happening. That is absolutely not going to happen. The piece about closing the loopholes has been conspicuously absent from Trump's rhetoric in his team's actions since the election.

0:08:43 Thomas: Quite the contrary, the transition rules on lobbyists explicitly use the legal definition of registered lobbying that Trump criticized. Lobbyists are already talking about avoiding registering in order to serve clients before the Trump administration, according to Miller, the head of the Lobbying Association. And just one more quick little thing I found in this article that was interesting was, uh, Trump and his allies are now using the phrase "drain the swamp's" ambiguity to deny any hypocrisy. Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, justified his new lobbying firm, housed in the same building as Trump's transition team, which is located one block from the White House, by claiming "drain the swamp" referred to cutting bureaucracy and creating jobs. So just, that's a little interesting way to kind of frame these next episodes, where we go through some of Trump's more important and maybe perhaps more outrageous picks for his cabinet.

0:09:37 Clip: We are going to use our smartest and our brightest people. And I know who they are. I know so many. You know, I've been there.

0:09:43 Thomas: Alright, first up is... The Secretary of State. Now, this is arguably the most important position that there is in the cabinet, but along with the Secretary of Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General, those are the four most important, but this is the highest next in line to become president. That is the highest among appointees. So obviously the first is Vice President, then it's Speaker, then President Pro Tempore of the Senate, then Secretary of State. So the highest in that, if you want to look at it that way, if something happens to those three people and Trump, this is the next in line. Whoever the Secretary of state is will be the next in line to be President. So that gives you some indication of the hierarchy there.

0:10:29 Thomas: So what exactly does the Secretary of State do? I know we all have some vague idea, involves foreign policy or something, maybe some of us know more than others, but But let's just look at the details here, to give a good indication of what kind of person we might want to look for, if you and I were president, you or I were President, and we were nominating somebody. First and foremost they supervise the Department of State. So the entire State Department is under their supervision So, what exactly is the State Department, or the Department of State? It's referred to both ways. Well, it's the federal executive department that advises the president and leads the nation in foreign policy issues. So, I wanted to look up, just for fun, how many people are a part of this, how people are in the org chart there.

0:11:15 Thomas: And it looks like they have 13,000 foreign service employees, 11,000 civil service employees. And that says 45,000 Foreign Service local employees. So that's a lot of people. Here's just a quick little breakdown of what that is from the Department of State website itself. While the department's Foreign Service employees travel far and frequently, generally rotating assignments every two to three years, civil service employees remain stateside, primarily serving in Washington, D.C. Civil service professionals are involved in every area of the department, from human rights to narcotics control to trade to environmental issues. Some are the domestic counterparts to our consular officers abroad, issuing passports and assisting U.S. citizens overseas. Now, as for you heard, so that was the 11,000 civil servants, 13,000 foreign service, and then the 45,000.

0:12:07 Thomas: Those are people here. It says right here, foreign service national employees, often referred to as locally engaged staff, are citizens of the countries in which the department maintains diplomatic posts and consulates. They are valued members of our mission teams, providing continuity for the transient American staff and possessing local language and cultural expertise. So that makes sense. So that's a lot of people actually who are citizens of the countries that we're in, that we have diplomatic ties to. So, that's certainly no small organization, and as with any governmental thing, you know, I worked in government up until very recently, it's not as though the Secretary of State, like, talks to all of them, or is involved in micromanaging everything they do, but it's a large organization and leadership does trickle down, so that's a lot of responsibility, and it's very visible and a very major part of our foreign policy.

0:13:02 Thomas: So that's the State Department, a little brief overview there. So, in addition to overseeing the State Department, the Secretary of State also advises the President on matters relating to U.S. foreign policy. That seems pretty straightforward. That would be the one thing I thought I already knew that they did. They also advise on the appointment of diplomatic representatives to other nations. Thank The Secretary also participates in high-level negotiations with other countries, and there's a lot of other stuff that is pretty detail-oriented, ensures the protection of U.S. government to American citizens abroad, you know, so very involved in foreign policy, obviously, like THE person in charge of foreign policy and the first, the highest-ranking cabinet member, as I mentioned earlier, so a very, very important position.

0:13:53 Thomas: Another little interesting note, to me anyway, is that there's no actual fixed term length for this position, but it seems as though in modern history for the last, I don't know, 40, 30, 40 50 years, it's pretty much like one per term, which is interesting. I'm not sure why, it must just be how it evolved and how, you know, they decided they wanted to do it, but But it looks like there's no reason why someone couldn't be secretary of state theoretically forever, obviously.

When a new president takes power, they tend to want to go with their own person, of course. But it's interesting that it doesn't look like anyone goes for two terms. Like whenever the president is reelected for a second term, it seems Seems to be that they don't stay on for the second term, what I can find looks like just due to how exhausting the job is, it It has happened in the past, in the distant past, not since, before not since the 60s, so it's been a while. It seems to be in, in the modern times here that the, uh, the job is too demanding, and there's... there's multiple reasons that, and the appointees are usually older, so those factors looks like combined to mean that they only usually serve about roughly, uh, the same as one presidential term. Thank you for watching. So let's take a look at the past candidates.

Let's kind of work our way backward. Before we look at who Trump has nominated, we can get an idea of the history first. I think that would be a good way to do it. So, of course, currently serving as Secretary of State is John Kerry, he, I mean, from the 2004 campaign, I'm sure we're all obviously pretty familiar with him, lost to George W.

0:15:29 Thomas: Bush, of course, 2004, but he was in the Naval Reserve in 1966, 1968, and 69, served a four-month tour of duty in Vietnam as the officer in charge of a swift boat. He was awarded combat medals, the Silver Star Medal, Bronze Star Medal and three Purple Heart Medals. He has his JD from Boston College Law School. He worked as an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts. Then he was lieutenant governor under Dukakis from 83 to 85, and he was elected to the Senate in 1984, and that's where he's been. He was reelected in 90, 96, 2002, and 2008 until he was appointed as Secretary of State. So as you can kind of see there, there's a lot of experience.

0:16:17 Thomas: There's a lot of different kinds of experience, there is military service experience, there's lot of governing experience in being a lieutenant governor, and of course there's experience in the Senate as well. Oh, and in the Senate, he was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, so that, again, foreign policy experience there. I want to take a second to say that I'm not going to emphasize too much ideological differences. I'm going to try to say someone is or is not qualified merely because of a political opinion, opinion, because I recognize the fact that any president who's elected is for the most part going to nominate people who are a Democrat if they're a Democrat and are a Republican if they are a Republican.

0:17:06 Thomas: So in doing research, I've been trying to find what criticisms there were of Kerry and of Hillary and of other people. And a lot of it is partisan. And I'm not really too interested in that because I'm interested in comparing sort of apples to apples in terms of how qualified for the position these people might be. So I think it's safe to say that that's a pretty experienced person. John Kerry, you couldn't really make the argument that he was unqualified for the position.

So let's move further back. Of course, Hillary Clinton before John Kerry. I think, given the recent election, I don't need to talk too much about Hillary's experience. I think we've all gotten a lot of that, but I'll go through the bullet points just to compare. She, of course, attended Wellesley, graduated in 1969, and J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973. She served as Congressional Legal Counsel, co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978, first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, first lady of Arkansas. She led a task force whose recommendations helped reform Arkansas public schools and served on several corporate boards. And then, of course, she was elected in 2000 as the senator from New York, first female senator from the state of New York.

And she was in that position from 2001 to 2009. And And of course, that's when she lost the primary to, or right before that, when she lost primary to Obama. And so that's, when I suppose we'd want to look at her foreign policy credentials and her general experience to be secretary of state.

0:18:48 Thomas: You know, it's funny in the research, looking back that I'm doing, I'm seeing that one of the major news kind of trends at that time, when I'm googling, like, you know, what criticism of her would have been at the time, the emoluments clause came up again. You may have heard that brought up with Trump, but I guess because during her term in the Senate, for, you know, sometime from 2001 to 2009, that would be the salary for the Secretary of State was increased. And therefore, it's against the rules for her to go into that position. It's funny how big of a deal people were making about that, or maybe not a huge deal, but a lot of people were writing about it. And the solution, I think, is something like you can just keep the salary the same for her and then let it go up next time.

0:19:37 Thomas: And it's so funny that that would be such a big concern when it was bumped from something like $178,000 to $183,000 a year or something like Like she even cares about that salary. But I thought that was funny. It was interesting to see that that criticism came up back then. Maybe that's just something that someone brings up whenever it's at all applicable. But I don't believe it ever really poses any sort of problem. I can't find too much about her being inexperienced or unqualified. I found a couple of conservatives who thought she was qualified at the time. I mean, you could you could argue either way, of course, like being first lady for eight years. I think that's kind of what you make of it. I think she could have either been really involved, which I think she was, or you could be a first lady who's less involved in foreign relations and stuff like that and more involved in just domestic issues.

0:20:29 Thomas: But I think she was tended to be more involved than your typical first lady at the time and senator for eight years. That's good experience. It's hard to argue with that. But it's not as though she was a diplomat or she was, you know, I think he was a maybe a little less experienced than John Kerry. And it seems to be that her getting the appointment from Obama over John Kerry was little bit unfair, but it was probably some sort of deal they struck or some sort of agreement. The biggest criticism that came up when I'm researching this is Bill Clinton's business ties throughout the world. And there's one particular example that people keep bringing up. And this is a lot of stuff that I think was brought up during this election as well.

0:21:15 Thomas: But at the time, the big thing was this meeting between Bill Clinton and the president of Kazakhstan and a Canadian financier who later donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation and also entered into a deal with Kazakhstan's state-owned uranium agency. So that was kind of the conflict of interest at the time. The only thing I keep coming—and that's a little shady and I get it—but the only thing I keep coming back to is the Clinton Foundation is rated at 88 percent of their money going to charity. So it's just a bit of a different thing to look at when you look at, sure, Bill and that was mainly Bill Clinton at the time and Hillary and Chelsea and all that. Sure, they're they're getting a lot of money through their foundation, but their foundation is also donating 88 percent of its money, which is a great rate.

0:22:08 Thomas: There's not a lot going to overhead there. It's utilizing all that money for charitable purposes, so that's a little different than what we might look at with conflict of interest in... Trump's nominee, which we'll get to soon. But first, let's turn the Wayback Machine all the way to 2005-2009, I suppose, when we had Bush's second nominee. We're kind of going backwards in time. Second nominee, Condoleezza Rice, you might remember. She was the first female African American Secretary of State. Pretty cool. But her qualifications, looking back at her life, so she graduated from high school at 16. At age 19, she had a BA in Political Science already. So that's a precocious person right there.

0:22:53 Thomas: At 26, she had a Ph.D. in political science from the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Rice was a professor of political science at Stanford University from 1981 to 1987. She was promoted to associate professor in 87 until 93. She also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President H.W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification. So, lots of credentials. So that's That's that's through 93. So then going into Bush's first term, she was the national security advisor for him, being the first woman to serve in that position. So strong credentials right there.

0:23:40 Thomas: I mean, again, I want to go back to avoiding really talking about political disagreements. I'm sure there's plenty of stances that we could agree or disagree with all of these people on. But just looking at experience, know-how, qualifications, Condoleezza Rice seems extremely qualified at the time when she received this nomination to Secretary of State. So I don't think that would have been a valid criticism. And I love looking at the example of George Bush because, of course, as we'll all remember, he was allegedly the stupidest president ever, just a complete know-nothing guy. You would expect that if you were to compare Bush to Trump, you would expect there to be similarities if they're anywhere on the same level. But so far, in looking at just the secretary of state here, Condoleezza Rice, Very qualified.

0:24:32 Thomas: And then of course for his first term it was Colin Powell. He was a retired four-star general. He was national security advisor from 1987 to 1999, commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 89 to 93. So far the first and only African-American to serve on the Joint chiefs of staff. Interesting. He had an MBA but but also obviously a lot of military military experience. Awards include two Presidential Medal of Freedom, President's Citizens Medal, Congressional Gold Medal, Secretary of State. So obviously, being a general, he had a lot of military experience, he also had experience with the first Bush, which I think a lot of Bush's cabinet probably did. A lot of, sorry, a lot OF George W.

0:25:17 Thomas: Bush's cabinet probably had a lot of experience with George H. W. bush. So maybe that gave him a little bit of a leg up in who who he's picking, but nevertheless, a qualified person, somebody with experience. And that brings us to our current nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Well, let's see, let go down the list of qualifications here. He has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, that's something you, yeah, certainly need for Secretary Of State, and joined Exxon Company as a production engineer right after that, and he's currently the president and chief executive of Exxion Mobile. Mobile. So that's, that's his qualifications. I suppose if one were to try to construct the best case for Tillerson, it would involve the fact that he's negotiated, like, With, for example, Yemen in the past to build a natural gas export plant, there's a story in the New York Times about him flying into a rage during these negotiations and throwing a book or something, and who knows if maybe that had some impact on negotiations, but it makes sense, actually, that that would be something that Trump would be looking for.

So, I suppose, once again, to try to make that case, you could say, well, for one, it's an easy get-out-of-jail-free card now to say, well, he's not the establishment. Indeed, I think that's what Trump said. Oh, he is not part of the, you know, elite. He's not part of the foreign policy establishment now. And so, that gets you out of jail free. That gets you anything.

So, you can hire anyone for the job, because if they're not established, I mean, that's literally identical to having, like, no experience, because any experience you have can tie you to this establishment.

0:27:03 Thomas: But you can say, okay, he's anti-establishment, he is not part of the establishment, and he's got some history of negotiations, he has done business with Russia, that's, I mean, I suppose Trump is making the case that that's a plus. Now, it is incredibly weird, and a theme of a lot of these nominees is, it's incredibly weird the 90 degree turn on Russia that the Republican Party is starting to make. Thank you for watching. The Republicans used to be incredibly anti-Russia and they, you know, made fun of Hillary for her Russian reset button way back when, and now this is that to an extreme. This is literally, it is a Russian reset. They're actually calling it that, but it's not just a reset. It's a let's get cozy with them and be allies with them.

0:27:48 Thomas: And if you listen to Sam Harris's latest podcast with, is, Gary Kasparov, he has a lot of interesting things to say about Russia really not being an ally, or it shouldn't be an ally. It shouldn't, because it's a dictatorship in a lot of ways. And I mean, I could do a whole nother show on that. But anyway, I, I suppose that's the case one might make, and it looks like he has a lot of corporate diplomacy experience. I don't, I mean, I guess we'll see how that translates. But here's the thing about business diplomacy experience versus actual foreign policy experience in the government: is it comes with a lot of conflict of interest. For example, the sanctions on Russia, it's estimated, have cost ExxonMobil a billion dollars, as much as a billion dollars.

0:28:41 Thomas: And he, of course, as Secretary of State, and not to mention Trump as president, will have the say over whether whether those sanctions are continued. He will theoretically be advising Trump on that matter, and Trump will have the say on that. So, if that's not a conflict of interest, I don't know what is, but there, this is who the nominee is, so it's interesting though, because there have been some Republicans who are voicing their concerns, and I would hope, I mean, it's just like when Trump was elected, and just like all through the when he was nominated as the primary candidate, people sort of Republicans sort of stood up and then they would just kind of sat back down. Well, one of those Republicans, Marco Rubio, is on the Foreign Relations Committee, and that committee has to approve the pick before it goes to a Senate vote, and there's some other other members of that committee who are not too thrilled with Tillerson.

0:29:36 Thomas: So I'm actually seeing something saying it could be not a shoo-in, you know, it could, but honestly, with how everything has gone in the past year with Republicans, I just have no faith in that. Like maybe I'll be proven wrong, but my prediction is that these cowardly Republicans will fall right in line, just as they have done with Trump throughout this entire past year. I really think that's what will happen. Rubio tweeted something about being a friend of Putin, which actually, so I forgot to mention, Rex Tillerson has actually received this Friend of Russia award. He's gotten an actual medal for being a Friend of Russian. I've also read that liberals are making a little too much out of that, like lots of weird people have gotten that, but it's not nothing, I would say.

0:30:23 Thomas: I mean, it does definitely indicate a business relationship because the reason he got it was for for spending millions of dollars and making millions of dollars in business with Russia. So it's not nothing, but it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean he's, like, personal friends with Putin, but it's, it's again, it- it's not nothing. So if you want to be optimistic, which sounds foolish at this point, you can hope, hope that he's not going to get through confirmation, but I personally predict he will, just like the Republicans have backed down this entire year, I think they will do so again, and it's going to be really funny if Rubio does so after all he's done with, like, sort of standing up to Trump and then just hiding and not at all actually standing up several times throughout this year. So I predict he'll make it, and even if he doesn't, who's going going to be the next in line.

0:31:11 Thomas: It's going to be what's going to be like some John Kerry lookalike. Somebody who's exactly as qualified as John. No, it'll be some some other person like this. So I don't even hold much hope for that. And my prediction is he'll get through.

0:31:24 Clip: They are using right now political hacks. They're using people that gave campaign contributions.

0:31:30 Clip: So we have to use our best people. We

0:31:33 Thomas: We're gonna look at the Secretary of the Treasury. Now, you might not think it by the name, but this is actually maybe the arguably the one of the most important positions and it's fifth in In the presidential succession chart right after Secretary of State, so that's one indication of its importance. Let's look over some of the responsibilities for this position. So, responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial, economic, and tax policy, participating in formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, managing the public debt, that seems pretty important, oversees the activities of the Treasury Department in carrying out its major law enforcement responsibilities, serving as the financial agent for the U.S. government, manufacturing coins and currencies, oversees some other stuff.

So the Treasury Department is maybe a lot bigger than you might think from first hearing that because they oversee something called the IRS and the United States Mint. So those are two huge departments. The IRS is certainly the bulk of the employees and the dollars, so there's 86,000 employees, and the IRS has like 79,000 of those, so that's a huge department, $14 billion budget for the Treasury, so a very large department. Position has no fix term length. It's appointed by the president, of course, requires advice and consent of the Senate, and it seems to be the term lengths have been a little weird.

0:33:04 Thomas: Actually, it hasn't been exactly one per term. It has been a little bit like that, but then there's some differences here and there that's not worth going over. But so for whatever reason, there seems to to be more than one per term on average. But anyway. The incumbent in the position is Jack Lew from 2013 to present, so roughly speaking from Obama's second term. He's got his degree from Harvard, he's got a JD from Georgetown University Law.

Uh, like he started out as the legislative assistant to Representative Joe Moakley and senior policy advisor to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He was a deputy in Boston's Office of Management and Budget. Getting some budgetary experience in there. In Then, in 1993, he began work for the Clinton administration as Special Assistant to the President, 94, served as Associate Director for Legislative Affairs, Deputy Director for the Office of Management and Budget, where he was Director from 98 to 2001 and 2010 to 2012, Executive Vice President for Operations at New York University from 2001 to 2006, COO at Citigroup from 2006 to 2008. So that's interesting. So he does have a little bit of private sector experience there. Apparently COO of Citigroup. First deputy secretary of state for management and resources from 2009, 2010. So a mixed bag of experience, but definitely seems like he has a lot of years of governmental experience, has budget experience. He's got different, like I said, COO at Citigkroup. So, he's got all kinds of experience.

Which is always something to keep in mind when we're going to contrast with Trump's nominee. So, before him was Timothy Geithner. He's kind of interesting. He's got a lot of experience. Maybe it's not worth going into all the details of it, but he was a degree in Asian Studies and then MA in International Economics from Johns Hopkins.

0:34:56 Thomas: He worked for Kissinger Associates from 85 to 88, and then he joined the International Affairs Division of the US Treasury Department. So it sounds like he worked in the Treasury Department for a while, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Monetary and Financial Policy, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. So he kind of came up a little bit more through the Treasury, which is interesting. And then he was the in 2003, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And he was that from 2003 until 2009, when he was appointed by Obama for the secretary of the Treasury. So makes sense. Seems to make sense. Experience wise, lots of direct Treasury experience in different positions. But I think what's interesting about him that I saw was that he had to oversee the allocation of the 350 billion of funds from TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

0:35:51 Thomas: That was signed into law by Bush right before he left in order to try to bail out, you Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, and he oversaw the allocation. I mean, think about it's a lot of money, 350 billion dollars, and TARP ended up, I think, making a profit, and people think of it as a bailout where we bailed out all these private firms, and we did, but then they paid us back, and so we actually, the government actually made money on it. So interesting, seems like he did, must have done an okay job, so seems, seems like he's got pretty good qualifications. Kind of interesting to take a look at Bush's appointees. First, or sorry, not first, but going backwards in order as I've been doing, was Paulson, 2006-2009, Henry Paulson. He's interesting because he had a little bit of government experience, kind of had an MBA from Harvard, he was the staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon from 70 to 72, worked for Nixon's administration as kind of an assistant to somebody.

0:36:49 Thomas: But then he joined Goldman Sachs and was the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sach's from 1999 to 2006. So that's kind of interesting, the Goldman SachS connection there. Bush's first appointee, Jon Snow, was one of Ned Stark's best- Oh, no, sorry, wrong notes. Jon's- different Jon's. Jon W. Snow was, uh, he was- seemed like more of a... public sector qualified kind of guy. It's kind of interesting looking back at Bush's appointees. They started with John Snow, who was, uh, uh worked in government, uh professor at law. Let's see, professor at Law, George Washington University, uh general counsel for department of transportation, deputy assistant secretary for policy.

He, this guy, uh John Snow had a lot of government experience, a lot, a lot, and, um, but then it's, it's interesting to see Henry Paulson, who Who didn't have a ton of government experience, a little bit, but was more was it was a Goldman Sachs CEO for seven years before accepting that position, which is so it's interesting when you compare that to Trump's Trump's nominee of Steve Mnuchin, Mnuchen, I think is how you pronounce it. Now I think this story is just hilarious and great on so many levels.

First off, let's just look at there's a little description here in on Wikipedia as to how he became a part of Trump's campaign. Here it says, uh, Mnuchin had been an early supporter of Trump and attended his victory party after the New York Republican primary victory on April 19th, 2016, after he had received a last minute invitation, he was called the following day by Trump, who asked him if he wanted to be the national finance chairman of his campaign.

0:38:33 Thomas: I love it. So it's like, I, I feel no one wanted to to be a part of this terrible campaign, because so many of the stories that I heard during this was that there was just no campaign infrastructure. Now, all that being said, he, he won. So he did something right. But still, there was no infrastructure. There was no collection, like there was no finance apparatus. There's like nothing. And it's so funny to me that he's just, this guy is at a party. He's like, who's that? Oh, yeah, he's some guy with a bunch of, you know, know, he's been with Goldman Sachs. He's got some financial experience. Oh, let's have him just be in charge of my entire, you know, finance portion of my campaign. Like, just call him up, have him do that, because there was no one else, I guess. And it looks like this really paid off, because after managing that, after being the finance chairman, national finance chairman of Trump's campaign, Mnuchin hit the jackpot, because Trump won, and thus now he's nominated for secretary of treasury.

0:39:32 Thomas: So there's still so much hilarious stuff about this. First of all, interesting guy, this Mnuchtin, his mother had invested in the Bernie Madoff scheme and the Mnutchins pulled their money out. Just happened to be right three years before the whole thing came down. And the people who were not allowed to keep their money was anyone who pulled their money within the last two years. So they just, they got very lucky or they knew something, one or the other. But either way, just barely made that deadline there to make a ton of money off Off of that Ponzi scheme, so, they're pretty fortunate. Lots of examples of kind of shady business dealings going on. Here's one little one. Mnuchin also benefited, this is from a ProPublica.org article, Mnuchtin also benefitted from what may have been a nice little fluke.

0:40:24 Thomas: He served as the co-chair of Relativity Media, a film and entertainment company, for about eight months until May 2015. Relativity filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2015. Just before it collapsed, Relativity paid off a $50 million loan to Mnuchin's bank, One West, in full. Paying off one creditor in full just before filing for bankruptcy looks questionable, especially when there is the appearance that such a deal isn't at arm's length, meaning somebody had a conflict of interest going there. But the point is, regardless of those kind of allegations, you can't really prove anything, and there's a lot more in that article, I'll probably link it in the show notes. Regardless of all that, this is someone with zero government experience, and a lot of Goldman Sachs experience.

0:41:17 Thomas: And not that it EVER matters. Not that it ever makes one bit of difference when you point out the hypocrisy of Donald Trump. Makes- makes- no, does not matter. It's just every day there's another thing that he is a hypocrite about. But just for fun, uh, I found a few clips of Trump talking about Goldman Sachs. Uh, so I'll just play them for fun. He attacked Ted Cruz for having a loan from Goldman Sachs. He attacked him a lot, actually. Here's a clip.

0:41:44 Clip: He didn't report his bank loans excuse me didn't reported his bank loan say whatever you want he didn report bank loans that's okay he didn reported bank loans he got bank loans from Goldman Sachs he's got bank loans from Citibank folks and then and And then he acts like Robin Hood, you know, say whatever you want, but it doesn't work that way.

0:42:04 Thomas: Hold on, did he or did he not report his bank loans? I couldn't gather that from that very eloquent Erudite speech by Donald Trump. Did he or Did he not? Maybe that was the advantage. I mean that really was Trump's advantage He just said one thing a hundred times per minute and then everyone's like well crooked Hillary and You know Cruz didn't didn't report his back loan. They could just remember that one thing thing.

0:42:29 Clip: Well, I think that Ted Cruz has been severely affected by the Goldman Sachs loans, which he didn't disclose, and it was on his personal financial form, and the Citibank loans he didn t disclose. Couldn't that have just been a mistake? No, it could have been, but it's, you know, two loans, give me a break, okay? And he's supposed to be Robin Hood for everybody. He didn t disclose them because he didn d want to say that he's dealing with the bankers. Don't forget, he said he sold his assets.

0:42:50 Thomas: Yeah, Trump made a whole thing of attacking Ted Cruz, but he said we'll never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the people who rigged it in the first place, and he attacked, you know, Ted Cruz having connections to Goldman Sachs because of this, and his wife, uh, Ted Cruise's wife actually worked at Goldman Sach. And he also said, here's another one, a Trump quote, Quote, I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total control over Cruz, just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton. And meanwhile, he he he points this guy to manage his campaign finance just after he showed up at a party, really. He appoints him to be his national campaign finance chairman, and then he just makes him secretary of the treasury, just like that, for, you know, doing favors. I mean, somebody from Goldman Sachs who he attacked a ton for having, you now, Ted Cruz in their pockets and Hillary Clinton in their pocket, and yeah, so, there you go, there's his pick.

0:43:45 Thomas: So overall qualification wise, you could say he's slightly qualified, but corruption wise and hypocrisy wise, this is an F minus for Trump, especially after all the messaging during the campaign. So it's pretty outrageous. All right, and that does it for the two kind of the big ones, but some of the most important picks that I think are pretty much a disaster. Um, I also, you know, another reason I wanted to do this is as the show adjusts more toward being about, you know, politics and science, philosophy, all that kind of stuff. But, but I, I've really taken an interest in politics as a result of this entire election, an interest I didn't use to have. And I'm very curious to keep an eye on these people going forward. So we'll have to see, uh, does Tillerson and.

0:44:31 Thomas: Mnuchin, how are they going to do? It'll be fun to keep track. Maybe fun was the wrong word there. It will be interesting to possibly depressing and disastrous, disastrous depending on what happens, to keep track of these people going forward. There's still quite a few more in episode two to cover. Again, if you'd like that episode early, I should have it out very soon over on patreon.com/seriouspod. Please check that out. And speaking of, Thank you very kindly to my new patrons, Louis, Jill Rachel Mains, PreTheist, and And Zabby, thank you guys very much for the new pledges. And I've got to take a minute to thank my all-time greats.

0:45:17 Thomas: That is Midnight Movies Minneapolis, so that's a new one, Matt Garrett, Brian Gareford, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Blackhawks, Arrow Sign Sharks, Adrian Borschoff, Robert Shepis, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Maxson, Detective Maxson on the case, Andrew Waddington, David at the Ramble, blog.com. There you go. You get a little shout out. Zabby, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse Sakashite Fukasami, Fukasumi, Daniel Shower, Michael Sammy, and Hunter Ash. Thank you guys so very kindly for being my top patrons. And that does it for this week on Serious Inquiries Only. Looking forward to next week and when I get to dissect some even more ridiculous Trump cabinet picks. It's going to be fun. I'll see you then.