Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, said Monday that one of the responsibilities of her organization is to point out that the individuals who President-elect Donald Trump is picking for his Cabinet are "bad people."
"People do not seem to be broadly swelling in support of this Cabinet he is assembling, and I think that’s the role of organizations like ours to point out not just that you know they are bad people, but what they will do and what it means in the lives of real people and real families," Tanden said at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress.
The Washington Post's Greg Sargent spoke with Tanden in a discussion titled "How Progressives Can Defend the Working Class in the Trump Era."
Earlier in the event, Sargent had asked Tanden a question on Trump's openness about using tax loopholes to benefit his businesses.
"I mean, this question is a real one," he said. "So, he explicitly said during the election, that, you know, 'I have milked the system. I've ripped it off. You know, I've turned politicians into my little pawns.' Alright, he said that, right? Openly. Again and again and again, he said, 'That empowers me to reform it.' And we all laughed and said, 'What a joke. Ha ha ha.'"
"But now he won and so, I guess I wonder whether there is going to be a similar dynamic setting in with some of these Cabinet picks," Sargent continued. "I mean, you know, maybe these same types of voters don't really buy our argument that their corporate connections and so forth, somehow will show their actual priorities. I mean, how do you–"
Tanden said it was a fair question and that it does not seem to her that Trump is using the system to work for the people who voted for him. She said Trump is just trying to help himself and the people around him.
"You can't argue that this is an economically populist election and that populism is on the rise and then say that really what people voted for was ensuring that a bunch of gazillionaires control the levers of power in our country," Tanden said.