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Fri Dec 2, 2016, 01:15 PM Dec 2016

Trumps Wealthy Appointments Contrast With Populist Campaign Tone

President-elect Donald Trump, who ran a populist campaign, so far is assembling one of the wealthiest administration teams in recent memory. In the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has appointed three fellow billionaires to top administration positions, and at least two other millionaires to his cabinet.

Mr. Trump has often said that he admires those who, like him, have succeeded in the business world, and that he wants to attract people who can transfer those skills into government.

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All told, Mr. Trump’s choices for four cabinet positions—Treasury, Commerce, Education and Transportation—have a combined net worth of at least $8.1 billion. That is more than four times the net worth of President Barack Obama’s appointees for those posts in 2013 and about 20 times the worth of President George W. Bush’s picks at the outset of his second term, according to an inflation-adjusted Wall Street Journal analysis of Forbes net-worth estimates and financial-disclosure forms. All of the appointees’ net worth included their extended families in the Journal’s analysis.

Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition, called the prospective appointees a “cabinet of winners,” and said their backgrounds give them insight into how to improve the economy for the middle-class workers in America.

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His rhetoric helped him win over voters in the $50,000-$99,000 household-income bracket, 50% of whom backed him over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who got 46% of their votes. Among voters making $30,000 to $50,000, he lost by just 9 percentage points, down from Mitt Romney’s 15-point losing margin to President Obama in 2012.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-wealthy-appointments-contrast-with-populist-campaign-tone-1480626264

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