Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s new pick for chief economic adviser, has been open about his struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, but that hasn’t prevented the media from attacking him for his vices.
Kudlow was fired from a high-profile Wall Street job in the mid-1990s after his life spiraled out of control due to a $100,000 a month cocaine habit. He entered rehab, and in 2013 he told the Daily Mail that he had been sober for 18 years.
While talking about his new position in the administration on Wednesday, Kudlow seemed to reference his addiction by thanking his employer CNBC for giving him a “second chance” on life.
WATCH:
Despite his openness about his addiction and the hard work he has gone through to overcome it, some media outlets and media members decided to mock his struggles. Others decided that Kudlow’s former cocaine habit was more important to mention than his job at CNBC or his previous service in the Reagan administration.
Mediaite, for example, published the headline “Forget all of the cocaine, Trump’s new economic adviser Larry Kudlow is one of TV’s worst financial pundits,” while The Times referred to Kudlow as a “cocaine TV pundit.”
In another headline about Kudlow’s rise to economic adviser, Inquistr immediately referred to the pundit as a “former alcoholic and cocaine user” and insisted in the following article that Kudlow’s addiction made him a “controversial” pick for the Trump administration.
Kaleb Horton, a “writer for hire” who has bylines in Vanity Fair and Vice, jokingly referred to Kudlow as a “genius” and said, “I think the thing I love most about him is how much that cocaine abuse helped his brain.”
I can’t wait until Larry Kudlow from the TV steers us into another recession after the other recession we never recovered from. That guy’s a genius and I think the thing I love the most about him is how much that cocaine abuse helped his brain.
— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) March 14, 2018
I don’t know what’s more concerning:
The fact that Trump’s replacement for Cohn as National Economic Council director, Larry Kudlow, admitted to having a $100,000/month cocaine addiction, or the fact that he claimed the economy was going to boom right before the Great Recession
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) March 14, 2018
Journalist Ed Krassenstein insisted it was a “fun fact” that Kudlow had “frequent cocaine binges and alcohol problems.”
Fun Fact:
Larry Kudlow, the man who Trump just appointed as his top economic advisor, was forced to resign from Bear Stearns in 1994 because of his frequent cocaine binges and alcohol problems.
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) March 14, 2018
But the upside is that the WH now has potentially easy access to plenty of blow. Sniff Sniff https://t.co/Zf9XVQmPE4
— Tracie (@traciemac_Bmore) March 14, 2018
The fact that Larry Kudlow spent $100,000 a month on cocaine speaks directly to his fiscal incompetence. Any self-respecting coke head could secure the same quantity for half the price. Never fucking trust someone that overpays for drugs.
— Aiden Wolfe (@AidenWolfe) March 14, 2018
Don’t let this factoid about #LarryKudlow slip by: He joined Bear Stearns as chief economist in 1987, but was fired and entered rehab in 1995 for a $100,000 a month cocaine habit. https://t.co/JF77NZo1nd
— Joe Madison (@MadisonSiriusXM) March 15, 2018
It appears that Kudlow will be receiving little empathy from the media as he takes his new post in the Trump administration.