Is Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, an alligator? HBO’s John Oliver seems to think so.
Oliver spent most of his latest episode of “Last Week Tonight” assessing how little President Trump has followed through on his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C., referring to a plan to fix problems in the federal government by getting rid of individuals seeking to help themselves or their industries by cozying up to regulators. Oliver pointed to former executives from Goldman Sachs, such as Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin, who are now part of Trump’s cabinet, Wilbur Ross, an investor known as the “king of bankruptcy,” who is the Commerce Secretary, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who is now acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Scott Angelle, the former lieutenant governor of Louisiana and oil industry advocate who is head of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates offshore oil drilling.
Oliver also referenced Mulvaney’s ties to the payday lending industry, which he now oversees and regulates as acting director of the BCFP. Mulvaney reportedly received $60,000 in campaign contributions from “payday lending interests” while as a member of the House of Representatives and is now working to block rules that would place restrictions on how payday lenders operate.
“Mick Mulvaney has been actively working with the payday lending industry to block rules reining them in,” Oliver said during his broadcast. “Why would he do that? I don’t know. What I do know is that, as a Congressman, he took $60,000 in campaign contributions from payday lending interests. And, earlier this year, he told a room full of bankers this amusing anecdote,” which then cut to a report from CNN regarding comments made by Mulvaney earlier this year where he said that he would only meet with lobbyists who donated money to his campaign while he was in Congress.
See the full segment here:
