He had contenders pose with him while entering and exiting his property in New Jersey as if the door to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster were America’s 10 Downing Street. Trump didn’t just privately ponder how candidates might look standing next to him in the Oval as he showed off big stacks of blank paper. He sees this as a business that relates to the public.” He was at the pinnacle of showbiz, and he thinks about showbiz. “He likes people who present themselves very well, and he’s very impressed when somebody has a background of being good on television because he thinks it’s a very important medium for public policy,” said Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media. When selecting his first batch of Cabinet officials, Trump was focused largely on aesthetics, as his friend Chris Ruddy told the Washington Post at the time. Let’s take a look back at that Great Cabinet Casting Call to appreciate just how much things have changed. Yes, the winter of 2016–17 was a wild, terrifying time, when Kanye West being offered a role in the new administration didn’t seem entirely impossible. For months, a cavalcade of down-on-their-luck GOP pols, Fox News personalities, and billionaires eager to destroy the administrative state proceeded through the doors of various Trump properties to … seriously audition for a job? Offer advice? Get their name in the press? The reasons for their audience with the president-elect were often unclear, but it was obvious Trump relished in the speculation the meetings generated. Case in point: Five years ago, Trump injected some reality-TV competition into the normally careful and secretive search for Cabinet members. The current hunt for a veep is a far cry from our showman-in-chief’s typical hiring process. According to Politico, his decision will reportedly be based on two key factors: “unquestioned loyalty and an embrace of the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.” With Mike Pence disqualified from serving as Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024 on account of having a shred of decency, the former president is conducting a search for his replacement even though he hasn’t even confirmed he’s running again. It would take about 120,000 households with the the United States median net worth of about $83,200 to match the wealth of just the four richest members of Trump’s cabinet-Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross Jr., Linda McMahon, and Rex Tillerson.Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer. It is worth noting that almost 13% of American households have zero or negative wealth because of debt, so we are adding together these households with those that have at least some wealth.Įven if we just compare the wealth of Trump’s cabinet to the median household, it is still an impressive concentration of riches. The estimates were adjusted for inflation and an increase in the number of American households. It is possible that the wealth of low-income Americans has changed since 2013, but trends over the last several decades suggest a large change is unlikely. Collected by the Federal Reserve, this survey is the most recent comprehensive data source on American wealth. The household data on which we based our comparison is from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances.