On Thursday, Home Depot co-founder and former director of the New York Stock Exchange Ken Langone ripped into Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) over her attacks on America’s wealthy and her extreme “ultra-millionaire tax” plan.
Langone did not hold back, calling Warren a “liar” and a “phony” and blasting the Democrat for her alleged economic illiteracy.
Reacting to a segment of Warren from Wednesday night’s Democratic primary debate, where she criticizes the rich as “free-loaders,” Mr. Langone told the hosts of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that he doesn’t care what the senator thinks about him.
“They can call me whatever they want. I still go to work every day, okay? What I am is a grateful American, because what happened to me in my life only happened because my grandparents came to America,” the businessman said. “She can call me whatever she wants, she’s a phony, she’s a liar — we know that. We know she’s a liar, a horrible liar.”
Mr. Langone was then asked by co-host Steve Doocy about Warren’s plan to have “super wealthy people” pay an extra tax on their wealth.
The plan, as previously reported by The Daily Wire, would implement a 2% surtax on folks with a net worth over $50 million, and a 6% tax on people with more than $1 billion. The senator’s initial plan included 3% tax on billionaires, before she had to up it to 6% to pay for her radical socialist proposals.
“Look, it’s been tried before. It doesn’t work, okay?” Langone replied. “What do they say about insanity? It’s when you do the same thing twice and expect different results.”
An op-ed for The Wall Street Journal published last week similarly argued that Warren’s “ultra-millionaire tax” plan “would sink stocks, raise interest rates, and confiscate far more than she admits.”
Additionally, The Washington Post hit the Democrat over her lack of transparency about the plan, giving Warren “Three Pinocchios” for misleadingly boasting about the tax in a campaign ad.
Mr. Langone also leveled a charge of hypocrisy at Warren.
“She’s a phony! She’s a phony! She’s been created by the media,” he said of Warren. “She’s worth $18 million dollars. All I want her to do — I don’t want to see her tax returns [because] they’d make me sick because she does nothing to make it. All I’d like to see is how much money have she and her husband given to charity over the years, as a percentage of their income or as a percentage of their net worth.”
“What happened to me, could only happen in America,” the businessman continued. “There’s no place on earth where a poor kid whose parents were uneducated could be in this country and — look at what’s happened to me! Look at may wife, myself, our kids, our life. Let’s not flog this thing too much because it works.”
Speaking of the broader rhetoric, particularly on the Democratic side, to vilify the rich, Langone insisted that “human nature is alive and well,” noting that “one of the seven deadly sins in envy.”
“I can’t stop that,” he explained, but “the one thing I have to live with everyday is my conscious.”
Mr. Langone highlighted that he currently employs 480,000 at his Home Depot stores and bluntly stated: “The worst people go into politics, not the best.”
To watch the interview, click here.