Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was recently asked whom she would choose as her ideal running mate. The person could be living or dead.
The second-term senator gave a surprising answer: Former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt.
“He took on the trusts. And he didn’t care how many people were going to be mad about it. And he did it — this is what’s amazing — for the right reasons. It wasn’t just that they were big. It wasn’t just that they were dominating an economy. It wasn’t just that they were putting farmers out of business and competitors out of business and small companies out of business,” Warren told MSNBC host Ari Melber, according to the Washington Examiner.
“It was that they had too much political power,” she continued. “And it was the very fact of that political power that caused Teddy Roosevelt to say I’m going to be a trust buster. Man, I’d like to have that guy at my side.”
Roosevelt was a surprising answer, and actually shows Warren knows some history. Roosevelt famously left the Republican party to form the progressive “Bull Moose Party.” As the Examiner explained, this party was built on the progressive agenda of Roosevelt’s domestic policies known as the Square Deal, which included his corporate reform efforts.
I wonder how long until animal rights activists pounce on her for lionizing the former president. Though he was a conservationist, he was also an avid hunter. A rhino he shot in Africa is on display at Washington, D.C.’s Natural History Museum. By the standards of today’s Left, Roosevelt would be considered on a level even lower than the guy who killed Cecil the lion in 2015. (He had a permit, improperly carried out by his guides, but that didn’t stop Internet Outrage Mobsters from vandalizing his home and trashing his business.)
Warren has actually made references to Roosevelt in the past.
In May 2017, she tweeted a quote from a Center for American Progress (CAP) conference which said, “It is time for us to do what Teddy Roosevelt did – and pick up the antitrust stick again.”
In August 2018, the Nation wrote about Warren’s potential presidential run while noting the similarities between her and Roosevelt’s platforms.
“Campaigning against corruption is as honorable an American political tradition as you will find. Teddy Roosevelt ran more than a century ago as a fierce anti-corruption crusader,” the Nation wrote.
Slate also ran an article in early January 2019 about Warren and Roosevelt, including a photo of both politicians at the top of the piece. An opinion piece by Paul Krugman in The New York Times in late January also compared the two politicians. The Nation and the Times each provided their own Roosevelt quotes to bolster their claims about Warren.