Watch the Moment Tea Party Founder Rick Santelli Loses It Over Lockdowns Live on-Air
Rick Santelli is a long-time CNBC contributor. He is conservative, he is smart and he is a champion of freedom. He also has a fiery temper.
Reporting on the bond market from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in February 2009, he became increasingly more angry over the recent policy decisions of the Obama Administration and delivered an epic rant “heard around the world.”
Many credit Santelli’s rants as “the founding document” of the Tea Party.
Santelli’s famous temper flared again on Friday during an exchange with his CNBC colleague, Andrew Ross Sorkin.
In the video below, Santelli came out with guns blazing during a discussion of the lower than expected nonfarm payroll numbers which had just been released.
The topic turned to the latest round of lockdowns and specifically the economic impact on restaurants after many of them had been forced to close their doors for a second time.
“Therefore, there is actually and should be, an ongoing debate as to why a parking lot for a big box store, like by my house, is jam-packed. Not one parking spot open,” Santelli told the panel.
“Why are those people any safer than a restaurant with Plexiglass? I just don’t get it. And I think there’s a million of these questions that could be asked.
“I think it’s really sad that when we look at the service sector and all the discussions we’ve had about job losses that that particular dynamic isn’t studied more, isn’t worked more, we don’t put more people in a room and try to figure out ways so that these service-sector employees and employers can all come back in a safer way,” he continued. “You can’t tell me that shutting down, which is the easiest answer, is necessarily the only answer.”
All of the sudden, Sorkin, who had not been part of the panel, joined the conversation. Now the last time we saw the far-left Sorkin was when he tried to explain to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, why the media was ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in October. You would be right if you thought Cotton must have swatted him down like a fly.
Sorkin, in that condescending, ‘I’m the adult in the room’ way that he has about him, appeared on the screen and addressed Santelli. “As a public health and public service announcement for our audience, the difference between a big box retailer –“
“Wait, wait, first of all, who is this? Who is this?” Santelli interrupted.
“Hold on, it’s Andrew,” He put up a hand to stop Santelli from speaking.
Annoyed, Santelli folded his arms across his chest and listened.
“The difference between a big-box retailer and a restaurant, or frankly even a church, are so different it’s unbelievable,” Sorkin told him.
“I disagree. I disagree. I disagree,” Santelli interrupted and he shouted, “You can have your thoughts, and I can have mine.”
“It’s science. I’m sorry. It’s science. If you’re wearing a mask, it’s a different story,” Sorkin replied.
Santelli fired back, “Five hundred people in a Lowe’s aren’t any safer than 150 people in a restaurant that holds 600. I don’t believe it. Sorry.”
Sorkin is a member of the liberal elite. In addition to his gig at CNBC, he is a columnist for The New York Times.
In the exchange with Cotton referenced above, he said, “Senator, I wanted to make two points. One is that the media industry, at least the media industry that I know, has been trying to investigate this and has not been able to corroborate the story. … So just to clarify, it is not that news organizations are not looking into this, it’s that they haven’t been able to corroborate the story. And a responsible news organization wouldn’t therefore report it.”
“Now the next piece of this is you’re talking about the tech companies censoring such quote-unquote news. If, in fact, the tech companies had quote-unquote liability like news operations do, you wouldn’t want them to be reporting something that they couldn’t corroborate, no?” Sorkin looked to the Senator for agreement.
Unmoved by Sorkin’s recitation of the liberal talking points, Cotton, with a dead-pan expression on his face, promptly dropkicks him.
“Do you mean like the Russian collusion hoax and the Steele dossier that you reported on for four years Andrew?”
Stunned, for a moment Sorkin is rendered speechless.
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