The brilliance of Donald Trump's "drain the swamp" ethos is that profiting politically off its deployment requires adherence to only one rule: Stay on message. You can do whatever you want: charter flights to Oklahoma, buy a solid-gold dining set for your office, put fish tanks in your Suburban, whatever! As long as you remember to swear fealty to the promise of a leaner, truthful, and more transparent federal government whenever you find yourself behind a hot mic, all else will be forgiven, likely over a very expensive meal.

On Tuesday, in remarks delivered at a conference in Washington before an audience of some 1,300—that's one thousand three hundred—banking-industry types, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Mick Mulvaney said the quiet part out loud. From The New York Times:

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” [said] Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina... “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

At the top of the hierarchy, he added, were his constituents.

Right! Them.

“If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions,” said Mr. Mulvaney, who received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his congressional campaigns.

He concluded by encouraging attendees to redouble their efforts to influence banking legislation, reminding them that members of Congress "will never know as much about your issues as you do," and "will not know that it is as important to you as it is until you tell them." Mulvaney even referred to these industry attempts to shape the policymaking process as one of the "fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy," just like free speech and equal protection.

Watch:

Why Was Meek Mill in Jail?