Donald Trump made a lot of money in business before he ran for president, and he used his presidential campaign itself to make him and his family even more money. So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the reality TV star has assembled the wealthiest administration in modern American history.
To understand just how much money Trump's cabinet picks have, their combined wealth is more than the combined wealth of a third of all American households—or about 43 million households—Quartz reports.
That's right, Trump, who promised to "drain the swamp," has picked 17 people with a combined wealth of more than $9.5 billion, according to Quartz.
At least four of those picks are billionaires on their own. Just to match the combined wealth of Trump's picks Linda McMahon, Wilbur Ross Jr., Betsy DeVos, and Rex Tillerson, it would take 120,000 households with the median U.S. net worth (around $83,200).
According to Quartz, 13 percent of America's 126 million households have zero or negative wealth due to debt, which might make the inequality even more stunning. Notably, Trump hasn't even announced all his picks yet, so even more money could still be packed into the administration. But so far, at least six of Trump's cabinet picks donated a combined total of almost $12 million to Trump's campaign.
Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, will make "500 times the median U.S. household income" this year as the CEO of ExxonMobil—the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas company—according to the Washington Post.
According to NBC News, WWE co-founder Linda McMahon, who's been named head of the Small Business Administration, has a household worth of about $1.16 billion. Again, a billionaire has been picked to run the Small Business Administration, because, sure, why not?
Secretary of Commerce-pick Wilbur Ross has accumulated $2.9 billion after he "restructured failed companies in steel, coal, and telecommunications using leveraged buyouts," according to NBC News. Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education-pick, is worth $5.1 billion and comes from a family of wealth—her father-in-law co-founded Amway and her brother founded Blackwater.
