Watching a risky career move unfold in real time.
Gary Cohn, the current head of the National Economic Council, likes to say he is a fan of bad decisions. “I’m really good at making mistakes,” he told business-school students at Sacred Heart University last year. And at American University, his alma mater, in 2009: “I always saw 95 percent of my great decisions start out as bad decisions.”
Last November, when Cohn walked into Trump Tower, he didn’t expect to be making decisions of any kind. He was there, like Floyd Mayweather before and Kanye West after him, because he had been summoned. In his case, to impart the macroeconomic wisdom he possessed as president of Goldman Sachs onto the newly elected president of the United States: Donald Trump, the man the smart money said would never win.
“It was crazy,” Cohn told a friend later of the meeting, which was supposed to last 15 minutes but stretched to an hour and a half. He found himself explaining to the former star of The Apprentice why a stronger dollar led to a weaker economy. The meeting concluded with Trump wondering aloud if he should make Cohn his Treasury secretary. This was awkward because Trump’s campaign-finance chair, Steven Mnuchin, whom Cohn had worked with in the same partner class at Goldman, was sitting right there and already had dibs on the position.
Ha-ha. Trump was only kidding.
Though seriously, he later asked, what about director of the National Economic Council? Would Cohn want that job?
“That I would consider,” Cohn told him.
Afterward, Cohn’s New York cohort would debate which part of this story was the craziest: Was it that Trump had offered the job to a 26-year veteran of Goldman Sachs—a bank whose greedy sibilance Trump had repeatedly invoked on the campaign trail, and whose CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, was targeted in a campaign attack ad that the Anti-Defamation League denounced as anti-Semitic?
Denne historien er fra June 12–25, 2017-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra June 12–25, 2017-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Enchanting and Exhausting
Wicked makes a charming but bloated film.
Nicole Kidman Lets Loose
She's having a grand old time playing wealthy matriarchs on the verge of blowing their lives up.
How Mike Myers Makes His Own Reality
Directing him in Austin Powers taught me what it means to be really, truly funny.
The Art of Surrender
Four decades into his career, Willem Dafoe is more curious about his craft than ever.
The Big Macher Restaurant Is Back
ON A WARM NIGHT in October, a red carpet ran down a length of East 26th Street.
Showing Its Age
Borgo displays a confidence that can he only from experience.
Keeping It Simple on Lower Fifth
Jack Ceglic and Manuel Fernandez-Casteleiro's apartment is full of stories but not distractions.
REASON TO LOVE NEW YORK
THERE'S NOT MUCH in New York that has staying power. Every other day, a new scandal outscandals whatever we were just scandalized by; every few years, a hotter, scarier downtown set emerges; the yoga studio up the block from your apartment that used to be a coffee shop has now become a hybrid drug front and yarn store.
Disunion: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
A Rift in the Family My in-laws gave me a book by a eugenicist. Our relationship is over.
Gwen Whiting
Two years after a mass recall and a bacterial outbreak, the founder of the Laundress is on cleanup duty.
