
As his fellow Republicans push for huge tax cuts for the wealthy, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife posed for photos with dollar bills in a strange photo shoot.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, posed with the first batch of $1 bills bearing Mnuchin's signature in a series of ill-considered photos.

The odd display of the multimillionaire Cabinet secretary exhibiting a sheet of money, while his spouse, who holds no official position, looked on, was oddly timed. The photo shoot occurred almost simultaneously with congressional hearings and votes on the Republican tax plan, which would give the Mnuchins a giant tax cut.

The GOP bill eliminates the estate tax and lowers corporate taxes, while hurting incentives for teachers and veterans. Perhaps those initiatives were on the minds of Mnuchin and Linton as the cameras clicked.

Steven Mnuchin, who baffled friends by becoming Trump's top fundraiser in 2016, gets his name on the dollar https://t.co/h9JdVWbcjv pic.twitter.com/qgkyMaPD3e — Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) November 15, 2017


Mnuchin was one of the major architects behind the legislation, alongside congressional Republicans. He would also be one of the key beneficiaries. Mnuchin is worth a reported $385 million, which much of his fortune coming from his time at Goldman Sachs and from the bank he ran that foreclosed on tens of thousands of homeowners.

Mnuchin came under fire for using a government airplane to fly with his wife to Kentucky to watch the solar eclipse from the roof of the Fort Knox gold reserve. Linton was also criticized after she was caught posting pictures of herself disembarking from the plane, touting the designer fashions she wore. When she was criticized for doing so, Linton attacked the financial standing of her detractors.

The trip is one of many such trips, taken at government expense, used to transport Trump officials around the world in the scandal described as "Billionaire Air."

The government under Trump has become a playground for the extremely wealthy. Now it is the backdrop for their strange, tone-deaf photo shoots and other extravagances.

Trump said he would drain the swamp, but along with Mnuchin and Linton, the swamp is growing and expanding.