What a snowflake! Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had a contentious meeting at UCLA this week. Because he was challenged and heckled at the lecture, he has refused his consent for the video of the lecture to be released, as originally planned.
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was taunted with hisses, heckles and profanity during a lecture and moderated discussion at U.C.L.A. this week. Protesters were carried out by armed police officers. A sixth grader in the audience questioned him about the fairness of passing permanent tax cuts for companies and expiring cuts for individuals.
Sixth graders really can be brutal.
"The Burkle Center and Treasury Department officials had an agreement to post the video of Secretary Mnuchin's lecture at U.C.L.A. to the center's website following the event," said Peggy McInerny, a university spokeswoman. "Treasury Department officials subsequently withdrew their consent to post the video."
Although Mr. Mnuchin did not want to give additional publicity to those who disrupted him, the shielding of the video has drawn more attention to the series of tense exchanges. Snippets of the scene that were captured on cellphones have ricocheted around social media in the days since the event. American Public Media’s "Marketplace," whose host, Kai Ryssdal, moderated the discussion, published the complete audio.
Here's one of those audience videos, showing a protester being removed by police. Mnuchin didn't just take issue with the audience, he thought Ryssdal was picking on him. When Ryssdal suggested that the "analysis" Treasury eventually produced showing the great economic benefits the tax scam would create was engineered by his department, Mnuchin got huffy. "Well, you must seem to have a bias," he accused, "because you're using the words 'engineered.'"
The good news is that withdrawing his consent for the video's release and suppressing it, Mnuchin's drawn much more national attention to the embarrassing encounter.