>> We have more news on Pete Buttigieg today that I can't wait to share with you.
Pete Buttigieg has decided to completely move away from his so-called progressive labeling.
And that makes a lot of sense because, clearly, he's not a progressive and he does have a
lot of affection for the financial industry, especially Goldman Sachs.
One piece of evidence for that is that he just hired a former Goldman Sachs executive
as his National Policy Director.
Now, this got pretty good coverage at CNBC, but I'm not seeing it reported anywhere else
to be honest.
But it support- >> CNBC highly criticalized them?
>> Actually, to be fair, CNBC did a good job with this story.
>> Okay, good.
>> They fact check the Buttigieg campaign and so credit where credit is due.
>> In terms of what that person is actually done in their past.
>> Exactly.
>> Yes, okay, that's true.
>> So let's get to those details.
So who is this person?
Who's gonna be in charge of advising his campaign on National policy?
Well, her name is Sonal Shah and she worked at Goldman Sachs from 2004 to 2007.
Those years are pretty relevant.
As a Vice President, that's according to her LinkedIn page.
Now, she then worked for Google as its Head of Global Development Initiatives from 2007
to 2009.
So she's had some pretty big roles in many of the corporations that have had problematic
histories in some cases.
So she developed and managed Goldman Sachs' environmental strategy according to Chris
Meagher who is Buttigieg's campaign press secretary.
She trained bankers to ask environmental questions, manage the grants to nonprofits and worked
with their real estate team on how to build more green buildings.
>> That sounds good.
>> That sounds pretty good, right?
I mean, we like environmental stuff, right?
>> Yeah, and green infrastructure, that sounds good.
>> Well, CNBC did a little bit of fact checking.
In contribution records filed with the Federal Election Commission from the period, Shah
listed her occupation at varying times as investment banker, economist, and vice president.
Investment banker is a little bit different from some environmental activist within a
corporation, just putting that out there.
Now, in early 2017 Shah also cheered President Trump's decision to hire a former Goldman
Sachs executive by the name of Dina Powell.
And so she is, well, let's look at the tweet first.
Great choice, Dina Powell will be great.
Trump hires another executive from Goldman Sachs.
Okay, so she was hired as Deputy National Security Adviser.
So Buttigieg's campaign also claimed that Shah worked at the Obama White House after
the financial crisis.
She doesn't advocate for companies.
She cares about having the greatest social impact for people and finding new solutions
to tough challenges that require the public, private and social sectors to work together
to find them.
That's why she's teaching at Georgetown after leaving the White House.
So wow, that's big, you walk away from the White House pretty incredible job, lots of
prestige there and you decide I just wanna be a professor, we wanna connect with the
students.
But at Georgetown Shah was a professor and the founder of the Beeck Center for Social
Impact and Innovation.
The center was founded with a $10 million donation from investor Alberto Beeck, a former
Lehman Brothers investment banker who is now focused on mining, hotels, wealth management,
telecom and tech sectors.
>> Which one is the green one?
>> Lots of philanthropic work going on there.
>> Yeah, yeah, look and I'm sure if you go back through her past there's some good stuff
or whatever.
But it seems like they're presenting an image of her past that isn't necessarily supported
by a lot of evidence.
And even if it was, I think that this hire, it shows what they're worried about and what
they're not worried about what the Buttigieg campaign.
Because for Buttigieg to have a path going forward, he could either try to maybe reassert
his former, he made some comments that were very supportive of Medicare for All like a
billion years ago, it was two, but he's changed a lot since then.
>> Yes.
>> He could do that, but you don't do that if you're hiring Goldman Sachs people.
You understand full well what message that's gonna send to people.
And so if you're doing that, it gives us a pretty clear signal about which path he is
going to try to go for and it very much the one that Biden is receding from right now.
You can, and indeed should, hire people from Goldman Sachs if your fundraising strategy
is gonna be incredibly reliant on rich donors and from Wall Street specifically.
If you're doing that, then you're not worried at all about the appearance that you're hiring
people who, theoretically, might have been around that whole thing right before the economy
collapsed.
>> Right, I think that's a great point.
It's what a former Goldman Sachs VP represents at a time when wealth and income inequality
is at an incredible, you see this disparity between the rich and the poor in America,
and that gap continues to widen.
People are very much concerned about the inequality, and how you can redistribute the wealth in
the richest country in the world.
And Pete Buttigieg is yeah, the progressive thing, it didn't come across as authentic
because no one is buying it.
So this Biden guy not doing so well maybe I can go ahead and appeal to some of his voters.
So he's made a political calculation here, but it's important to keep in mind that on
one hand you have a candidate who has been consistent in fighting for the same issues,
the working class his entire political career.
And then on the other hand you have Pete Buttigieg, a 37 year old who's inexperienced, who was
a failure as mayor of South Bend.
The racial tensions in that county became much worse under his leadership or lack of
leadership.
And to see him just kind of have this like fluid political identity depending on what's
convenient for him in that moment, speaks a lot of who he is and what he represents.