Donald Trump’s past attacks on politicians who profit while in public office came back to haunt him thanks to a damning supercut aired on Laura Coates’ CNN show.
After Trump’s latest financial disclosure this week revealed that the president’s income had surged during his second term, largely because of cryptocurrency earnings, Coates recalled one of his longtime campaign themes of attacking politicians who enriched themselves while in office.
“Remember, ‘Drain the Swamp’?” she asked. “Do you remember speech after speech where he pointed the finger at the establishment for getting rich at the expense of the little guy?”
She then played a montage of Trump, in speeches delivered between 2016 and 2020, railing against “the insiders” who “wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money,” the “corrupt politicians” who “got rich bleeding America dry” and the lawmakers who “went to Washington and they lined their pockets with special-interest cash.”
After the montage, Coates noted: “For nearly a decade, that has been his case against Washington. Now, his own financial disclosure: Is it Exhibit A against him?”
“I don’t have to tell you that Americans are still living with huge economic uncertainty,” she said, noting how Trump’s economic polling numbers are plunging and “voters are rebelling against a system they say is way too expensive, way too tilted toward the powerful.”
“It’s the very same anger that Trump used to get into the White House and now he’s the establishment he railed against,” Coates added. “His business empire is flush with fresh cash, and Americans, they are still asking, who is this economy working for?”