Gary, Dina & The Shadow of Government Sachs

steve mnuchin, gary cohn, wilbur ross
Would Wall Streeters like Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and Wilbur Ross team up with Trump again? Photo: Jabin Botsford/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
September 11, 2022

The alarming possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House raises a number of profound questions, not least among them what support, if any, he might find on Wall Street if ever he manages to retake the presidency. Trump, of course, was always disdained by New York’s elite moneymen, and he found ways to repeatedly burn quite a few big banks—among them, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Chase Manhattan and UBS—over the years. Still, there is nothing that Wall Street’s top bankers like more than to imagine themselves in Washington—the icing on the cake of their fabulous careers. When Trump was improbably elected, in 2016, a number of highly pedigreed and otherwise respectable Wall Streeters—Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Jay Clayton, Jim Donovan, Wilbur Ross—appeared to set aside any misgivings about him to claim a seat at the power table. Most except for Steve Mnuchin and Ross fled long before Trump’s term came to a chaotic and violent end. Would any of them return?