'It was a mistake': Former Obama official admits key error that led to Trump's rise

Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama, made a revealing admission about a key mistake he and his one-time boss made that he thinks led to the rise of Donald Trump.

Writing in the Washington Post, Emanuel acknowledged that the Obama administration's failure to punish the Wall Street CEOs whose reckless greed crashed the American economy in 2008 led to a major disillusionment with the American political establishment that allowed someone like Trump to slide into the picture offering an alternative.

"Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention," Emanuel wrote. "It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some had called for at the time."

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That said, Emanuel also believes that Trump's cozy ties to big business and his zeal for shoveling out more tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy provide Democrats with an opportunity to regain public trust as the party of genuine economic populism.

"Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it," he argues. "We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.

"With everyone from Big Oil to Big Pharma lining up for their share of the spoils, we will need to be strategic in how we strip away Trump’s populist veneer. By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected."

Read the whole piece here.