CV NEWS FEED // In a March 2023 clip that went viral this week, investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary sharply criticized Democratic economic policies and called blue states “uninvestable” during an CNN appearance.
“I don’t put companies here in New York anymore,” O’Leary then told “CNN This Morning” cohosts Kaitlan Collins, Poppy Harlow, and Don Lemon. “Or in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey, or in California. Those states are uninvestable.”
“The policy here is insane, the taxes are too high,” explained O’Leary, who is widely known by his television nickname of “Mr. Wonderful.”
He explained that investors are instead putting companies in places like Fargo, North Dakota.
O’Leary mentioned a debate he took part in with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, when he said he told the lawmaker: “We’ve got to move the companies out of your state because you’re not investable anymore.”
The O’Leary Ventures Chairman said blue states like Massachusetts punish “people if they are successful … overtax them … hit them with a supertax.”
In the clip, Harlow asked the investor, “Why is New York uninvestable?”
“Try to do a project in New York,” O’Leary challenged her.
“Is it beyond the taxes?” Harlow asked.
“The regulatory environment is punitive,” O’Leary answered:
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. … Norway has it now. Thousands of jobs.
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Collins and Harlow both suggested that New York officials such as Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul would contest O’Leary’s assertion.
“I’d debate them any time of the day you want,” the “Shark Tank” star confidently stated.
“We would love to set that up,” Collins said.
O’Leary also singled out Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who he stated “is great at killing jobs. She kills jobs by the thousands.”
He referred to Ocasio-Cortez’s role in preventing Amazon from building a second headquarters in New York City in 2019, during her first Congressional term. Her actions were widely panned by critics across the political spectrum.
At the time, Democratic then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted the congresswoman’s decision and said it prevented about 25,000 jobs from coming to the city.
“Where did Amazon take their jobs?” O’Leary asked his CNN hosts. “They took them away from her. She threatened to sue them if they created jobs. This is a reality.”
Lemon appeared to partially agree with O’Leary, adding that the investor is “saying what a lot of people are saying, especially what happened with that Amazon thing here in New York.”
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“This is a tough message,” O’Leary said. “People are really critical about this but somebody has to call it out. Because this is a competition of states.”
“Over time,” he pointed out, “this is going to diminish New Jersey, diminish New York, diminish Massachusetts, and California – out of business.”
In 2017, O’Leary was a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. Although he was at one point considered the frontrunner to land the party’s leadership, he eventually withdrew from the race due to his inability to speak French fluently.
Last week, O’Leary told FOX News hostess Laura Ingraham that he wants to interview Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris about her proposed economic policies, particularly her plan to give “first-generation homebuyers” up to thousands of dollars of taxpayer-funded down payment assistance.
“I’m in the real estate business,” O’Leary said to Ingraham. “That’s a really bad idea, an immensely bad idea, an incredibly bad idea. And I think somebody should talk about that with her.”
“I’d like to interview her on that idea,” he said. “I’ll do the interview. I want it live!”