In the ongoing joke that is the Trump administration, where the press secretary is fielding questions about an alleged affair with a porn star, the secretary of state is getting fired via social media, the secretary of education is flunking quizzes on national television, and the boss is spending his days getting into one-sided Twitter feuds with everyone from members of his own party to professional athletes to the Academy, it’s tough to come out looking more ridiculous than the day or hour prior. If the last year has taught us anything, however, it’s that this group of people always rises to the occasion. And on Wednesday, they outdid themselves, hiring a Reaganite TV economist who blew the financial crisis—along with virtually every other call he ever made—as the president’s top economic adviser.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump has definitively asked Larry Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn as National Economic Council director, and Kudlow has accepted. The White House confirmed the report on Wednesday afternoon, and a formal announcement is expected on Thursday. In Kudlow, Trump apparently saw a track record that was too good to pass up, what with Kudlow’s time in the Reagan administration espousing trickle-down economic theories that have never once worked; his years at Bear Stearns before he was eventually forced to resign (he reportedly gave up drugs not long after); and his time hosting The Kudlow Report on CNBC, during which he published blog posts with predictions like, “I’m going to bet the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner,” just months before the global financial crisis. For a president who apparently gets his national security news not from daily briefings but from the gang at Fox & Friends, Kudlow is the perfect guy to dole out economic advice.

Wall Street, however, isn’t sold. As my colleague Bill Cohan, a former investment banker, told me, “While I respect Larry for his political and economic insights, I would have preferred if Trump had chosen someone less wed to the ideas of trickle-down economics. I am old enough to remember that that didn’t work the first time a president listened to Larry 35 years ago.” Even people who like Kudlow have their doubts. “Larry is a very congenial guy, he’s a gentleman,” said Westwood Capital Managing Partner Daniel Alpert. “But I go back to my time in the middle of the crisis, when we were on TV together quite a lot, and he’s really a virulent Tea Partier who believes the government has absolutely no place in the economy. I like him personally . . . but he’s really horribly opposed to government influence of any sort.”

Earlier this year, Kudlow actually sounded momentarily sane when he came out against the president’s tariff plan. But it appears that Trump has already begun to beat that urge out of him, telling reporters yesterday that Kudlow “has come around to believing in tariffs.” Nevertheless, some on Wall Street are apparently looking on the bright side. “People here think it’s good news that he loves capitalism and corporations and profitability,” a senior executive at a large investment bank told me. “He knows that business isn’t evil.” That said, “I have no idea how bright he is or if he has good predictive skills.”