SCARAMUCCI: Why is it so bad to be a billionaire

     

                                     

  Why is it so bad to be a billionaire?' Trump adviser mocks attacks on rich cabinet members: 'It's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills'

• Financier and Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said it's 'categorically unfair' to oppose rich cabinet members just because they're rich
• 'It's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills,' he said: 'Their money is actually in their businesses'
• Trump has appointed billionaires to lead the Treasury, Commerce and Education departments
• President Obama has also had wealthy Americans in his cabinet, including super-rich Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker
• President Eisenhower's rich cabinet because known as 'nine millionaires and a plumber'

A top Donald Trump adviser told reporters on Friday that he has heard enough of 'categorically unfair' sniping aimed at billionaires tapped for key positions in the coming administration.

SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said in the lobby of Trump Tower that Americans who 'have been able to amass that kind of wealth' are 'super talented, or in what the president-elect says, they're actually "killers".' 

What you'll find about some of the nation's billionaires – it's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills,' he said. 

'Their money is actually in their businesses, they're in the capital accounts, the capital equipment structure of their businesses and they're putting people to work in those businesses.'

Anti-Trump lawmakers in Washington wasted no time complaining after the president-elect announced this week that he would make former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin his treasury secretary, and chose investment guru Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department. 

'I'm not shocked by this,' said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a reliable voice on the Democratic Party's far left wing. 

'It's a billionaire president being surrounded by a billionaire and millionaire cabinet, with a billionaire agenda ... to hurt the middle class. The appointments suggest that he's going to break his campaign promises,' Brown said in a statement on Wednesday. 

This 'demonization of success' is part of what Trump is pushing against, Scaramucci said Friday, praising the 'super successful' people Trump has decided on.

They also include future education secretary Betsy DeVos, who married into the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune; and Ameritrade scion Todd Ricketts, who co-owns the championship Chicago Cubs. 

'We want super bright people. We want super bright academics. We want super bright military experts. We want super bright people along a whole cross section of the economy, diplomats et cetera,' Scaramucci told reporters.

'I really want to push back very strongly on this whole billionaire criticism. Why is it so bad to be a billionaire, okay?'