Former President Donald Trump always knew he was “fighting for the little guy,” a former top economic adviser says.

In an interview with Epoch Times’ TV program Crossroads, Kevin Hassett, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 through 2019, said Trump pressed policies that countered a drift into socialism — and as a result, was an “absolute success story for the little guy.”

Trump “absolutely understood that he was fighting a very big, powerful historical force … and he also knew 100 percent that he was fighting for the little guy,” Hassett told Crossroads.

The Trump administration prioritized policies that cut taxes and regulations that fueled a boom economy, Hassett told Crossroads, adding that during the years he served, “income inequality dropped sharply for the first time since World War II, wages grew faster for people in the bottom 10 percent of the wage distribution than for people at the top, as did wealth.”

“The homeownership grew startlingly for people at the bottom 10 percent, seven million people went off food stamps, [and] three million people went out of poverty,” Hassett told Crossroads. “It was an absolute success story for the little guy. And yet, the more the good news came, the angrier and angrier the left wing got.”

Despite the economic successes, Hassett lamented that some Republicans — including former President George W. Bush and his supporters — weren’t on board.

“All these people that became never-Trumpers, that distanced themselves from Trump, [it was] because they were afraid of losing their own respectability,” Hassett told Crossroads, saying those included “Bush Republicans [who] never came to the defense of Donald Trump’s people even when they were fighting for the right policies.”

According to Hassett, the left uses the “respectability” created by left-leaning universities and media.

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