How did a Wall Street executive and “foreclosure king” like Steve Mnuchin become the Treasury Secretary for a populist like Donald Trump, and what is he doing to the country now that he’s there? David Dayen and Rebecca Burns tackle those questions in their book Fat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story(Strong Arm Press, 2018). They trace Mnuchin not-so-humble origins and his recurring presence in companies impacted by the 2008 market crash, which prompted Sen. Elizabeth Warren to call him “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis.” They argue that as Treasury Secretary, he has pursued policies that betray Trump’s claim to the populist mantle, rolling back bank regulations and performing lax enforcement. And they criticize the tax reform bill that Mnuchin championed, asserting that it helped the wealthy at the expense of the middle-class.

Bill Scher is a Contributing Editor for POLITICO Magazine. He has provided political commentary on CNN, NPR and MSNBC. He has been published in The New York Times, The New Republic, and The New York Daily News among other publications. He is author of Wait! Don’t Move to Canada, published by Rodale in 2006.

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