Special Edition: Setting the Record Straight on 60 Minutes's "Secretary of Commerce" Segment

Fact-Checking the Latest 60 Minutes Interview with the Former Rhode Island Governor.

Originally, I was going to do a full recap of the upcoming primaries this week. That will be delayed for now (though feel free to check the previous post already up from this past Saturday).

Instead, for my hardy group of about 4,000 subscribers across all my blogging networks, we now have a special edition to offer for you:

Via thetvdb.com. The iconic 60 Minutes logo.

This Sunday, 60 Minutes did a profile on US Commerce Secretary and former Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo. Unfortunately, it felt less like a piece of hard-hitting journalism and more like a 15-minute Gina Raimondo presidential campaign promo (are we sure Raimondo’s press aides didn’t write the segment script?)

This was especially surprising and disappointing, since producers assigned longtime CBS News correspondent and news legend Lesley Stahl to the story. Lesley Stahl is a reporter who started her illustrious career as a White House correspondent during the Nixon era. 60 Minutes has a tremendous legacy of investigative reporting, real-time journalism, and fascinating profiles/interviews of people across all levels of society. More recently, 60 Minutes has laudably worked around the clock to keep the American public’s attention focused on the war in Ukraine.

My critique is not meant to take away from the great work that 60 Minutes has otherwise done. Rather, it is to try to hold all their stories to the high standard they regularly set for themselves.

For new readers/subscribers, Gina Raimondo is President Joe Biden’s US Commerce Secretary. Before that, she was Governor of Rhode Island and State Treasurer of Rhode Island. Yet as these blogs have shown, there are many concerns and questions over her past conduct in Rhode Island and her present performance in Washington DC. Especially given how important the Commerce Department has become, her conduct should receive much more scrutiny than it has. To get a more detailed overview of all that, you can find a good summary in my past post entitled “The Gina Raimondo Files.”

With that in mind, let’s do a Daniel Dale-style fact check of the 60 Minutes piece:

1. Is Gina Raimondo A “Rising Star”?

I suppose that if a lie is told often enough, then the lie becomes the truth. With her formidable PR machine, Gina Raimondo has convinced many in the media that she is the future of the Democratic Party.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Her only political gift is her PR machine’s uncanny ability to spin a record of continual failures into successes. Take the “pension reforms” she often touts as her signature local accomplishment. To the contrary—as my brother once put it—these “pension reforms were not triumphs of ‘common-sense’ Democratic politics: they were unethical pieces of legislation with devastating consequences [for] the local community.” Pensioners were forced to go out and work to supplement their gutted pensions instead of enjoying their retirement. Groceries and necessities became an increasing hardship, due to the drastic reduction in retirement benefits they were entitled to, by contributing to the system that ultimately upended their lives. Raimondo’s pension reforms ensured that many retirees struggled and still struggle today to pay their mortgages. Additionally, the effects of pension “reform” included an increase in staff turnover for state jobs and staffing shortages across the board. Recruitment has become increasingly difficult since these reforms deflated morale of state workers and would-be state workers.

That is not success.

Then take her “appalling neglect of the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital, a hospital that houses patients with severe medical conditions, developmental disabilities, and psychiatric issues.” As I said in an earlier post, the situation there “was so bad that it required a full-scale turnaround plan from her successor Governor Dan McKee,” as well as the Rhode Island General Assembly. And “[f]or 3 years Raimondo has ignored any opportunity to address the patients and families impacted by her Administration’s decision-making” regarding the Eleanor Slater Hospital campus.

That is not success either.

Finally, take Rhode Island’s 2016 UHIP (United Healthcare Infrastructure Project) crisis, yet another glaring example of Raimondo Administration incompetence and mismanagement. “In September of 2016, her Administration went through with a premature rollout of the program despite repeated warnings from both federal officials and her own internal department employees that the system was not ready for use. Initial rollout costs [pegged] at $407 million ballooned to $656 million. The rollout was a costly burden for thousands of needy, at-risk people, who had to deal with months-long backlogs and delays in critical payments for basic needs for more than a year afterwards.

In the end, “the federal government penalized the state program with a sizable fine and subsequent RI General Assembly committee investigations led to the resignations of multiple top RI DHS officials.”

That does not sound like to success to me.

I could go on and on. I could go back to her time as Treasurer, or I could refer to more recent developments concerning the Washington Bridge in Providence (and how that bridge could have jeopardized the safety of our current US President and his team back in 2022). If you go back to “the Gina Raimondo Files,” you will find that she left the state with a dismal economic outlook. After her 6-year tenure, RI still ranks 42nd in the nation on infrastructure. In 2023, RI still ranked 45th in the nation on business climate.

Finally, right around the time Raimondo left Rhode Island headed to Washington, experts at Harvard University “gave Rhode Island a grade of ‘F’ on vaccine rollout.” That's right. Under Raimondo’s “steady leadership,” we were dead last in vaccine rollout.

What a trail of destruction. Here is the real truth. Raimondo was one of the most unpopular governors in the entire country. This was consistent throughout her entire tenure in office. Even after a booster (pun intended) during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, her approval ratings dropped back to pre-pandemic levels, when she was on par with Kentucky’s Republican Governor Matt Bevin.

In fact, Gina Raimondo is notable for having the lowest name recognition and the lowest approval rating in the entire Biden Cabinet. To put it nicely, most Rhode Islanders—across party lines—do not like Gina Raimondo. The majority of the American people will not like her either (especially the ones reading this very blog).

2. How Significant Is Raimondo’s Role on China & Ukraine?

Yes, yes, yes. Commerce Secretary Raimondo does have a big role in export controls for both China and Ukraine. She was also the first Commerce Secretary to visit China in approximately 5 years.

That is where the significance ends. Russia has faced export controls, but Putin has evaded them successfully. In fact, as recently as this April (and many times before), experts have called for the further tightening of export controls. So far, this has not been done.

As for China, she has conveniently declined to reveal how her husband worked for two AI companies—including one with significant ties for the Chinese Communist Party. Even as she currently leads AI regulation in the Biden Administration. But with her shining record of mismanagement and incompetence, what difference does another conflict of interest make?

3. Is Raimondo Doing An Effective Job On Broadband?

The US Commerce Department has roughly $50 billion to spend on rolling out broadband all across the country.

Unfortunately, despite the significant financial victory President Biden gave Raimondo, her Department has faced significant pushback for not aggressively staffing agencies in anticipation of broadband appropriation. Worst of all, she has been a welcome ally for Big Telecom as relates to broadband rates. A far cry from the admirable trust-busting work that Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan has done.

But Raimondo received no tough questions about this from 60 Minutes, nor she did get any inquiries on her other ties to Big Tech, AI businesses, and the cryptocurrency industry.

Watchdog groups like the Revolving Door Project and the Project on Government Oversight have detailed coverage on all of these issues, and Raimondo’s Big Tech connections have received criticism from people as prominent as Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal. Why were none of them interviewed for this Raimondo puff piece?

4. Has Gina Raimondo Handled the CHIPS Act Well?

The Raimondo PR machine would like you to think that she was somehow the only supporter of the CHIPS Act. Once again, her characterization is inaccurate. In 2019 and 2020, Congress sponsored multiple bills to invest in semiconductor manufacturing, and it was President Biden who worked with congressional leaders to pass the CHIPS Act.

However, regardless of the facts, she will continue to boast about her “leadership” on the CHIPS Act. But she will most certainly not take any responsibility for the mistakes she made along the way. From allowing companies to buy back stocks instead of fully supporting productive labor, to cutting funds for research & development, to giving a fifth of all grants to one single large microchip company (Intel), to even costing the Pentagon $3.5 million in penalty fees for one particularly bad CHIPS-funded project.

Bad leadership at work yet again. Just as it was in Rhode Island. But no mention of any of it this past Sunday.

5. Raimondo’s Take On Manufacturing?

In her 60 Minutes interview, Raimondo said, “we allowed manufacturing in this country to wither on the vine, in search of cheaper labor in Asia, cheaper capital in Asia, and here we are. We just pursued profit over national security.”

Gee, I wonder why Madam Secretary.

Maybe it was because corporate CEOs, Wall Street financiers, and even venture capitalists like yourself wanted to find cheap labor and capital—especially via undermining unionized labor, as you did with your disastrous “pension reforms.” And maybe it was because Corporate Americans like you supported Wall Street-backed Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg over pro-union and working-class Democrats like the current President. In fact, she endorsed Bloomberg in 2020, whose campaign imploded within a month of her endorsement.

As I am sure you remember, your political role models (i.e, the Bloombergs and the Clintons) supported the very same trade policies that incentivized the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs (such as NAFTA).

6. Raimondo’s Upbringing

As should be expected, Raimondo did the usual song-and-dance about growing up in a working-class family with a watchmaker father. But she leaves a lot out in this misleading working class narrative.

She failed to mention that she went to an Ivy League Law School knowing she never wanted to become a lawyer. Instead, she was intent on using her law degree for public service.

Just kidding. She went on to become a Wall Street venture capitalist for Village Ventures and later founded the infamous Point Judith Capital, earning quite a hefty salary at both businesses.

Then, she ran for State Treasurer. That may seem like a noble gesture, except when you consider that Point Judith Capital had a deal with the state to enter the pension system by 2009. And when you consider that Point Judith Capital made even more money off the pensions when Raimondo passed the 2011 reforms that slashed benefits for both active and retired workers (Ted Siedle and Terry Mutchler can give you quite a rundown there).

In other words, she built her career on hypocrisy, advancing her own ambitions at the expense of the middle and working class—the very segment of the population which her father was a part of.

7. How Did Raimondo Really Leave Rhode Island?

Well, after saying she would not be Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary because “my focus is right here in Rhode Island,” she predictably left Rhode Island to lead the Commerce Department in 2021.

She left Rhode Island with a disastrous vaccine rollout, right as the state became an international hotspot for the coronavirus. Worst of all, she left her Lt. Governor holding the bag—who she isolated in the office for more than a year—to clean up her messes.

She had national ambitions for years. If any of you believe what she fed Lesley Stahl, I have a dilapidated Washington Bridge I would like to sell you.

8. What Was Her Record In Rhode Island?

We have gone over this before. But here is a basic rundown straight from the Gina Raimondo Files: pension gutting “reform,” Engage RI’s dark money, “Reinvent Medicaid” privatization, record budget cuts statewide, RI Commerce Corporation tax breaks to campaign contributors, the state’s loss of the Pawtucket Red Sox, the current problems with Providence Public Schools, UHIP, the DCYF debacle, the Veterans’ Home issues, “the Gina Traffic Jam,” and her support of power plants and natural gas facilities against the objections of local communities (if you want more on this, please check out the files).

But wait, there’s more. On my blog, I also talked about her role in Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) personnel problems and Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) nondisclosure agreements.

Sounds like a much different narrative from 60 Minutes, doesn’t it? Well, it is—and the producers at 60 Minutes heard about this narrative from me as early as October 2021.

It speaks to the reach of Raimondo’s PR operation as a whole. Pro-Raimondo editorialists like Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell and former Michael Bloomberg asset manager Steve Rattner have churned out a considerable number of puff pieces for the Commerce Secretary. Some pro-corporate outlets have even suppressed negative coverage of Raimondo.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask SEC pension whistleblower Ted Siedle about what happened to him at Forbes. Or talk to former Raimondo spokeswoman and former Providence Journal reporter Jennifer Bogdan Jones, who was on the PR frontlines back in 2019.

(CBS News, by the way, has done similar things in the past—at least as relates to stifling investigative journalism for good PR and profit. Just ask Dan Rather & Mike Wallace).

But puff pieces will not hide the truth. The reality of the U.S. Commerce Secretary’s record will eventually catch up to her. If this blog has any say in it, her reckoning will come sooner rather than later.