Business tycoon and “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary ripped into Democrats’ economic policies and specifically went after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for being “great at killing jobs.”
O’Leary explained Friday on “CNN This Morning” that New York was an “uninvestable” state, detailing a project being pulled from The Empire State and moved to Norway.
“The regulatory environment is punitive,” the investor said. “I had a project in Upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity — a global data center we were building. Eventually, it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy we moved it to Norway, and all the jobs. Norway has it now — thousands of jobs coming out of that.”
“I mean, that’s New York: uninvestable,” O’Leary added. “Sorry, don’t shoot the messenger. Just telling you the way it is. That’s it: uninvestable.”
“I think we’d get some pushback from our elected officials in New York,” CNN co-host Kaitlan Collins chimed in, before New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul was named.
“I’ll debate them any time of the day you want, particularly AOC,” O’Leary responded. “She’s great at killing jobs. She kills jobs by the thousands.”
“Where did Amazon take their jobs? They took them away from her. She threatened to sue them if they created jobs. I mean, this is a reality,” he added.
“He’s saying what a lot of people are saying, especially with this Amazon thing in New York,” co-host Don Lemon acknowledged.
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Amazon pulled out of a proposal to build a massive headquarters in New York City four years ago following opposition from Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats. The project was expected to produce some 25,000 jobs.
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O’Leary, who’s expressed a mixed view on politics, last year praised Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter, ripping the company for censoring views and board members for being ineffective.
Months later, in October 2022, Musk indeed became the owner and CEO of Twitter.
“The best way to look at this is, you gave them a decade, why not get the whacking stick out and just start all over again?” O’Leary proposed. “And that’s what Elon Musk is proposing.”
“The cost of free speech, the cost to society, is allowing the lunatic fringe to have a voice,” the businessman emphasized. “And that’s always been the case, back to when they were writing newspapers by hand.”
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How strong is the job market really? The number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell to 190,000 last week.@kevinolearytv is here to discuss pic.twitter.com/DgkfJtZNpn
— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) March 3, 2023
Related: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Boosts Elon Musk Bid, Slams Twitter Censorship, Says ‘Fire’ Board Members