Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary took a dig at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) on Friday for how she fought Amazon‘s 2018 efforts to build a headquarters in her district, quipping that she “is great at killing jobs.” He explained how some politicians are making investors look elsewhere beyond financially unfriendly states such as New York to add jobs.
The business investor appeared on CNN This Morning discussing how there is a “competition of states now,” and investors are “not investing” in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California.
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“Those states are uninvestable,” he said. “The policy here is insane. The taxes are too high.”
He described the regulatory environment in New York as “punitive.” The millionaire investor explained how he tried to build a global data center in New York and dealing with the state got “so bad” that they moved the project “with thousand of jobs” to Norway.
“That’s New York — uninvestable. Sorry!” he told the CNN hosts. “Don’t shoot the messenger. Just telling you the way it is.”
CNN co-host Kaitlin Collins pushed back, suggesting that New York lawmakers would disagree with O’Leary’s assessment.
“I’ll debate them any time of the day you want, particularly AOC,” he responded.
O’Leary called out Ocasio-Cortez as a politician who has made New York more difficult for business investment.
“She’s great at killing jobs,” he said. “She kills jobs by the thousands!”
O’Leary pointed to Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts to prevent Amazon from establishing its second New York City headquarters in Queens, which cost the area thousands of jobs.
The TV star added, “Where did Amazon take their jobs? They took them away from her. She threatened to sue them if they created jobs. I mean, this is a reality.”
“There’s a little more to it, but let’s not re-litigate that,” CNN co-host Poppy Harlow interjected.
CNN co-host Don Lemon backed up O’Leary’s claims, “He’s saying what a lot of people are saying, especially with what happened here with Amazon.”
On Friday, Ocasio-Cortez cheered on the delay of the construction of Amazon’s Virginia headquarters in Pentagon, Metropolitan Park, amid company job cuts.
When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York bc it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us.
Billboards went up in Times Sq denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-Eds & CEOs insulted my intelligence.
In the end, we were right. https://t.co/F1sNvZcISq
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 3, 2023
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“When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York bc it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us,” she tweeted. “Billboards went up in Times Sq denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-Eds & CEOs insulted my intelligence. In the end, we were right.”
She called her fight in New York “worth it” and says she “protected” New Yorkers “from a scam deal to drain public dollars from schools & infrastructure in exchange for empty promises of ‘Amazon jobs.'”
