Donald Trump brushed away criticism after appointing a number of billionaires and millionaires to his administration by saying that he wants “people that made a fortune!”
The president-elect compared his picks, which have the accumulative wealth of around $14.5 billion, to athletes during a speech at his ‘Thank You’ campaign rally on Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.
“A newspaper criticized me and said, ‘Why can’t they have people of modest means?'” He said to a crowd, Huffington Post reports. “Because I want people that made a fortune! Because now they are negotiating [for] you, OK?… It’s no different than a great baseball player or a great golfer.”
Trump has come under fire in recent days over putting too many members of the super-rich in top positions. On Thursday, he appointed billionaire Linda McMahon, a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to lead the Small Business Administration—increasing the bevy of billionaires in Trump’s prospective cabinet to four.