'Shark Tank's' 'Mr. Wonderful' Says He's Done with New York After Trump Ruling
“Mr. Wonderful” is on a media tour that’s going to make New York as miserable as liberals want to make Donald Trump.
In the wake of Friday’s appalling order by a New York state judge fining Trump $350 million for an imaginary crime without even imaginary victims, software entrepreneur and investor Kevin O’Leary, known to most Americans for his starring role on the “Shark Tank” reality show, took to the airwaves with a warning about what the ruling means for the Empire State.
And it doesn’t mean anything good.
In interviews with CNN, “Fox & Friends Weekend” and Fox Business Network, O’Leary touted the same message: Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling in the Trump case is going to do serious damage to New York’s business future.
Trump was convicted in a civil case brought by New York’s ambitious, Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of allegedly defrauding the value of his properties while using them as securities for business loans. The loans were repaid. There were no complaints from Trump’s bankers. There were no victims.
There was only a progressive New York Democratic Party and self-evidently corrupt legal system out to bury a man for political reasons that have nothing to do with the rule of law.
“Even the governor herself is concerned about what this looks like to investors all around the world,” O’Leary told CNN’s Laura Coates on Monday. “It’s not just U.S. domestic. All around the world, people are talking about what happened here.
“Do you really think people want to invest money in New York after this?”
Check it out here. Coates, as can be expected from a personality on the leftist network, clearly didn’t want to hear it.
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary is back again, this time scorching CNN’s Laura Coates:
“Excuse me, what fraud? This is no longer about Trump. I care about America.”
The exchange gets heated quickly when Coates defends the judgment against Trump, and asks why companies would… pic.twitter.com/C4jNrRaxBI
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 20, 2024
He made the same point over the weekend on Fox.
“Forget about the Trump factor,” he told “Fox & Friends Weekend,” according to Fox News.
“It’s not about that. What does this say to everybody that wants to do work in New York and wants to risk capital? … It’s an atrocity. It’s an embarrassment, but it’s an assault on real estate.”
In an interview Monday with Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” O’Leary was even more brutal.
He’s done with the idea of investing in New York — and he thinks financiers around the world agree with him.
“New York was already a loser state, like California is a loser state,” he told Cavuto in a scathing summary.
“There are many loser states because of policy, high taxes, uncompetitive regulations.
“It was already at the top of being a loser state. I would never invest in New York now. And I’m not the only person saying that.”
Check it out here:
An internationally known investor, O’Leary’s words shouldn’t be taken lightly.
As he told Cavuto, according to Fox: “Each of us as investors, we vote with our capital.”
What happened in a New York courtroom on Friday was the kind of judicial fiat investors fear in the banana republics of South America or in African states where power resides in the junta with a gun rather than with the rule of law.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a standout of an embarrassment even for a state with a history of embarrassments for governors, inadvertently proved the point in her statement on Engoron’s absurd ruling, attempting to explain why it shouldn’t scare investors off.
“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” she said on a New York radio show Sunday.
Hochul might be used to dealing with progressive Democrats, so she might be forgiven for thinking her audiences are stupid, but in this case, it no doubt included the leaders of some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.
What they doubtless heard was “this was just for Donald Trump” and made the next logical jump that, next time, “this could just be you.”
One of the greatest strengths of the United States is investors’ ability to rely on the centuries of integrity behind its legal system — the sanctity of contract law being a prerequisite for the success of capitalism.
Capitalism, unlike socialism, depends on the honor and productivity of the humans who engage in it. That means it needs laws to defend them. Socialism just needs a gun.
Engoron’s egregious ruling gutted that reliance — and put his own state on the level of backwater jungle countries where the rule of law means whatever the man in power says.
New York liberals might be celebrating Engoron’s atrocity now, but they’re going to have a long, long time to regret it.
If they have any questions, O’Leary will be happy to explain.
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