 So after waging a class war on the working class for decades and lobbying the federal government to shift the tax burden away from them and onto the working class, all of a sudden the rich are wondering why they're getting so much pushback, why we're talking about a wealth tax, why they're being demonized and discriminated against by the working class. Now if it's not obvious to them by now, it's never going to be obvious because we're sick of it. We are sick of rich people, we're sick of them shifting the tax burden on to us, we're sick of them having it all. So we're at a time where income inequality is at an all time high, where wealth inequality persists when people can't even afford to put food on the table and we have a bunch of whiny billionaires crying especially now that we're talking nationally about a wealth tax and I find it absolutely enjoyable because whenever a billionaire cries that makes me very happy, it warms my heart. Now I want to talk about Leon Cooperman who is a multi-billionaire hedge fund manager who has been especially vocal and outspoken about the wealth tax and he's so mad about the prospect of a wealth tax that he penned an angry open letter to Elizabeth Warren after she dared to suggest that billionaires like him should pitch in a little bit more and in an interview on CNBC he explained why the wealth tax is a very bad idea. Take a look. Well, I don't need Elizabeth Warren or the government giving away my money. Just tell me what you think the maximum tax rate should be. Stop talking about 2% where you're basically misrepresenting the facts. It's 2% of wealth. Just think about this. If Jeff Spazos' wealth is tied up all in Amazon stock, he's going to be forced every year to sell 2% of his stock regardless of what the outlook is for the company. That's just wrong. It's wrong. You need inappropriate actions in the economy that are counterproductive. You're not the only one who makes that point. In fact, I was going through Twitter this morning in preparation for our interview and Mark Cuban the other day said a very similar thing. Wonders about the impact on the stock and other liquidity markets. If people like you, other billionaires, maybe Bezos or whoever is forced to sell stock, for example, to raise cash to deal with a wealth tax. Well, I don't have the problem of concentrated wealth. I'm very diversified. My problem is I think what she's recommending or suggesting is just morally wrong. So let me get this straight. You don't want the government giving away your wealth that you earned. But if they're giving it away, who are they giving it away to and for what? Healthcare? Education? So in other words, you don't want the money that you've made by being a greedy hedge fund manager to be taken from you and given to poor people for healthcare and education. But yet you call a wealth tax morally wrong. You're not the one with the moral superiority here, buddy. You're the one in the wrong. You are the one in the wrong. Now he tries to reason with us a little bit and he does this by defending Jeff Bezos. He says, think about this. If Jeff Bezos' wealth is tied up in Amazon stock, he's going to be forced every year to sell 2% of his stock. OK, Bama. Great. Is that supposed to be a negative? Jeff Bezos is the richest human being on the planet. He can afford that. He can afford that. But you see the way that this individual comes off and I think makes him even more insufferable is he tries to pitch himself as a reasonable, nonpartisan person. And maybe he is nonpartisan. He probably only cares about one thing, his wealth. But he doesn't like Elizabeth Warren. He doesn't want anyone who's even moderately progressive to win. But he also doesn't like Donald Trump. And no, it's not the fascism that he doesn't like about Donald Trump. He doesn't like that Donald Trump isn't presidential enough and is too mean. So he reacted to the state of affairs, the possible choice between, you know, Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump. And it literally brought him to tears. Not kidding. I mean, I think it's kind of obvious people can not only see the emotion on your face, but hear it in your voice when you talk about this, Lee. Why? I care. That's it. That is so pathetic. Wow. Life must be so hard for him. I'm so sorry. Like maybe we are being too hard on billionaires. So let me try to reason with him. He tried to reason with us. Let me try to reason with him. OK, you don't want the wealth tax. Fine. I'll give you one of two options. Either we impose a wealth tax on the rich or we eat the rich. Which one would you prefer? Because those salty tears would be delicious with your flesh. So pick one. Because like you can only hoard your wealth for so long before the working class, before the peasants take to the streets with pitchforks and come after you directly. So which one do you want? You've been waging this class warfare. Your class has been the ones that initiated this class warfare. We didn't choose to start this. You did. So now we're just responding. And we're asking very reasonably so, I think, to pitch in so you can help us out just a little bit. But that's too much. So billionaires are absolutely insufferable. And there was a reference to Mark Cuban in that first clip. And I forgot to throw in a fuck you to him as well. But I don't want to be too hard on Mark Cuban on Leon Cooperman because there's another billionaire that I want to talk about, Bill Gates. Excuse me. And he's someone who, even though he doesn't like Donald Trump, well, he also isn't too keen on the idea of a wealth tax as well. And he didn't rule out possibly going chud in order to protect his own wealth. OK, so let me make it complicated for you. You have been a polite, we say, public about your misgivings about our current president. If Elizabeth Warren were the other candidate, what would you do? You know, I'm not going to make political declarations. But I do think no matter what policy somebody has in mind, a professional approach is even, as much as I disagree with some of the policy things that are out there, I do think a professional approach to the office. Whoever I decide would have the more professional approach in the current situation probably will weigh, is the thing that I'll weigh the most. And I hope the more professional candidate is an electable candidate. But what do you think of this larger idea that underneath all of this, you hear people who say there shouldn't be billionaires in society? And if you really understand what this wealth tax is about, in fact, one of our authors at The New York Times describes it almost as a cigarette tax with the ultimate goal of there being less of it. You know, maybe I'm just too biased to think that if you create a company that's super valuable, that at least some part of that, you should be able to have a little bit for consumption and hopefully the balance to do philanthropic things. So he was very obviously tapped to answer around that question. But by not answering the question, he gave you an answer inadvertently. He would consider voting Donald Trump. He would not rule out voting for Donald Trump and going full chud in order to protect his wealth. Unbelievable. And people like to say that Bill Gates is one of the good billionaires. I hope that this dispels that myth once and for all. There are no good billionaires. If you are a billionaire, if you are greedy enough to get that much wealth, you are inherently a bad person, period. Billionaires should not exist. And yes, we should confiscate that wealth. And if you're against wealth confiscation, then you should be speaking out against a particular type of wealth confiscation that affects the poor and working class. It's called civil asset forfeiture. So if a police officer pulls you over, it seems that you have a lot of cash and things that maybe that will be used for something illegal, they can just take that money from you. So we already have confiscation in this country. And I don't hear the anti-confiscation people speaking out against civil asset forfeiture. So if we can have that go on uncontroversially, then it's time we get real. We need to take their wealth. And really it's a misnomer to say that that's their wealth because you can't earn a million dollars. That's not your wealth. You stole that by exploiting the labor of your workers. That's what you did. So really by taking it back, we're just getting something that you stole from your workers, period. Now to really demonstrate how greedy he is, of course he said that billionaire should exist. That's a shocker. He also went on to talk about how much he's willing to give away because he's so charitable. He's known for his philanthropic endeavors and whatnot. Okay, this is going to prove to you once and for all what a greedy piece of shit Bill Gates is. You know, I've paid over 10 billion in taxes. I've paid more than anyone in taxes. But I'm glad if I had to pay 20 billion, it's fine. But, you know, when you say I should pay 100 billion, okay, then I'm starting to do a little math about what I have leftover. Sorry, I'm just kidding. What a funny joke. Look, he brags about the fact that he paid 10 billion in taxes. Great, he tried to make it seem as if he's reasonable because he'd even be willing to pay 20 billion. But when you start talking about 100 billion, then you're really talking about leading him dry. I mean, come on, let's be reasonable here. If we take 100 billion from Bill Gates, what's gonna be left for him? Well, I'll tell you, he's worth an estimated 106 billion in net worth. So even if we took $100 billion from Bill Gates, he would still be a multi-billionaire with double the wealth of the first billionaire dickhead we heard from at the beginning of this segment. And Adam Bass summed it up perfectly. He says in this tweet, even if someone was asking Bill Gates to pay 100 billion in taxes and nobody is, he would still have more money left over than Oprah and Richard Branson combined. In reality, his rate would either be 3% or 8%. The billionaire pity party is pathetic. Now Warren's wealth tax did tick up to 6% to fund Medicare for all. But regardless, think about this. Let's put this into a perspective for everyone. Out of every single one of your paychecks, you pay a payroll tax. In some states, you pay a payroll tax to your state government, right? If you own a house, you pay property taxes to a local government. Every time you go to the store, you pay a sales tax on items that you purchase. So you pay all of your taxes. But when we ask billionaires to chip in 6 to 8 cents, this is what happens. They throw temper tantrums and become unraveled. And the elephant in the room is that these billionaires don't realize that if Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, that's better for them than if Bernie were the nominee because Bernie Sanders is going to be harder on the rich and the billionaire class than Elizabeth Warren would be. So in the event Bernie Sanders were the nominee, could you imagine the reaction? They would be begging for an Elizabeth Warren nomination because Bernie Sanders is that much harder on them because that's what's warranted. If you have $1 billion less than both Leon Cooperman and Bill Gates have, that is a sum of money that is so large you will never be able to spend it in one lifetime, in 10 lifetimes. Because once you've purchased three or four mansions, once you've purchased your dream car and a private jet and a yacht, what do you do? You're never going to be able to spend that money. So what we're talking about here is extreme, extreme wealth. This level of wealth that people like Bill Gates have is unsustainable because in a capitalist system, money equals power. And when you have that much money, you have a lot of power. So what we need to do is tax the hell out of billionaires like Bill Gates and Leon Cooperman and if they cry, good. Because that means that we're just doing what we need to do to deliver public goods and services to the people in this country who need it the most. The working class and the middle class. So cry me a river. I absolutely have no sympathy for them. Keep crying because it's only making us hate you even more, you greedy pieces of human trash.