It has been quite a few weeks for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton. First, they fly a government jet to Kentucky to get a good look at the solar eclipse, which apparently could be seen best from inside Fort Knox. (Thomas Nast died much too soon.) Mnuchin explained his little jaunt this way. From The Washington Post:

“People in Kentucky took this stuff very seriously. Being a New Yorker, I don’t have any interest in watching the eclipse.”

So, either he’s telling us that he believes Kentucky to be the home of some kind of primordial sun-worshipping cult, or he’s telling us that “New Yorkers” are too jaded to care about once-in-a-century celestial events. In either case, Mnuchin is demonstrating that he and the missus not only are out of touch with regular Americans in two states, but also that they seem to be out of touch with any human beings who are not foot-servants.

Anyway, taxpayers and their representatives in Congress got a little frosted about paying for Mnuchin’s expedition to the Temple Of Ra in Kentucky, and they were further frosted by the revelation that he and Minton also had requested a government aircraft to fly to Europe for their extended honeymoon. Mnuchin was ready with an explanation for this one, too. From Politico:

“Let me be clear: I’m very sensitive to the use of government funds,” Mnuchin said. “I’ve never asked the government to pay for my personal travel, and this was purely about alternatives of how I’d be able to be involved for national security.” Mnuchin said he spends “probably over 50 percent” of his time on national security issues and sanctions and speaks to President Donald Trump and officials such as Defense Secretary James Mattis almost daily.

Let me be clear, as well. That’s your fcking job, ace. That’s why you had to explain to the Senate Finance Committee that you mysteriously forgot $100 million worth of assets in your disclosure documents. (Who among us hasn’t done that?) Let me be clear on this, also. You can set up a secure communications link on your own damn airplane. (Corporate oligarchs do this all the time, and you’ve got the government to do it for you.) You got wealthy enough running your foreclosure mill to pay for the installation and still have enough left over for your wife to keep herself in “adorable” Hermes and Valentino for the rest of her days.

I mention all of this so that, the next time anyone from this administration talks about the “culture of entitlement” that holds back poorer Americans, you can laugh in their face.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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