Gary Cohn: experienced Democrat was singular figure in Trump's White House

Even for a lesser titan of finance, one without a reputation for deep self-regard, it would have qualified as a painfully humbling moment.

At a news conference in January, Gary Cohn, who was the Goldman Sachs No 2 for a decade, found himself called to the lectern by Donald Trump. The president had been asked by a reporter whether Cohn was happy in his job as director of the national economic council.

“Come here, Gary,” Trump said. “Are you happy?”

“Yes, I’m happy,” Cohn replied through a clenched smile. “How’s that?”

By Tuesday, Cohn was apparently no longer happy, becoming the most recent in a parade of departures from the White House. In a year in the Trump administration, Cohn had successfully engineered a huge deliverable for some of his peers in the financial community in the form of juicy tax cuts.

But privately, Cohn harbored strong objections to the president’s leadership, reportedly going so far last summer as to draft a letter of resignation after the president blamed “both sides” for racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Cohn also held a low personal estimation of the president, finding him “dumb as shit”, according to the journalist Michael Wolff in his book Fire and Fury.


Source :- theguardian