This week, Trump was intent on convincing the nation that he was fighting to raise taxes on himself. Looking at the administration’s package, cynics wondered how a real estate baron could suffer under a plan that calls for a reduction of the top income tax rate, the elimination of the estate tax and an end to the alternative minimum tax, which is supposed to impose some modest sacrifice on high-income people who would otherwise avoid paying anything.

Only his tax returns know for sure.

To hear the administration talk, the whole Trump tax initiative is one big assault on the wealthy, on behalf of the little guys. Who are their favorite, teeny-tiny people. Gary Cohn, the White House economic adviser, called them “our hard-working citizens that get up every morning and work as hard as any people in the world, to try and keep more of their hard-earned income.”

Cohn is a former investment banker who got a $285 million severance package from Goldman Sachs when he joined the government. Deeply cynical minds might have felt that his description of average Americans sounded a little … remote. As it did when he suggested that those hard workers could use their new typical $1,000 tax cut to “buy a new car.”

At a press conference, Cohn also seemed to believe that Typical American Family earned $100,000 a year. To which the actual TAF says, “We wish.” Anyhow, the message was that the whole tax effort was for the middle class, and the middle class alone. Although when asked whether every one of those humble folks would be protected from tax hikes, Cohn basically said he couldn’t “guarantee that.”

It was one truly awful presentation. We’d be talking about Cohn as Trump’s worst appointment if there wasn’t so much competition. Like the acting head of homeland security, who called the government response to the devastation in Puerto Rico “really a good news story.”