Gary Cohn, Trump's former economic adviser, criticizes shutdown
Gary Cohn, President Trump’s former top economic adviser, is sharply criticizing the government shutdown, as he heads to Harvard for a fellowship.
In an interview with the Globe, Cohn called the shutdown, prompted by an impasse over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, “completely wrong,” and said the furloughing of thousands of federal workers “makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”
“I don’t understand what the outcome is here, and I don’t understand where we’re going with it,” said Cohn, a free-trade advocate who resigned last March after Trump announced he was imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. “I’m confused as to what the White House’s strategy is on this a little bit.”
Cohn will be one of 10 new fellows at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, a group that hopes to model civility and the free exchange of ideas at a time when bitter political divisions have led to the longest shutdown in history.
A Democrat and former president of Goldman Sachs, Cohn will co-lead a study group with Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat who just lost her Senate seat in North Dakota. The study group, called “The Real State of the Union,” will explore fiscal, health care, and trade policy.
“When you lead with ideology and you paint yourself into a corner, you miss an opportunity to solve problems,” Heitkamp said in a phone interview with Cohn on Wednesday. “That’s a major theme of the work we’re doing with the IOP.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/as-he-heads-to-harvard-cohn-criticizes-shutdown/ar-BBSmGn2?li=BBnb7Kz
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