Billionaire businessman and top Republican donor Seth Klarman lambasted President Donald Trump, calling him ‘awful” and a “threat to democracy.
Klarman’s comments came during an investment conference in New York last week where several influential billionaires made their feelings about Trump’s disastrous presidency.
The hedge fund manager and CEO of the Baupost Group lamented the state of the country saying it has become “awful” under the current White House inhabitant.
“The president is a threat to democracy. He has attacked journalists and he’s threatening to take away NBC’s license,” Klarman said in a speech according to New York Magazine.
“He’s attacking judges. He’s violating all sorts of democratic norms, from the emoluments clause to questioning the election and threatening to lock up his opponent. People don’t focus on this but Nazi Germany had a constitution before Hitler came to power and at the end of the war they had the exact same constitution. It lasted all the way through, but democracy didn’t,” he continued.
“The country is getting divided, whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s transgender people, whether it’s blacks, whether it’s Mexicans. It’s awful,” Klarman lamented.
And he wasn’t the only billionaire speaker who is not a fan of Trump. Billionaire real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht, who boasted that he has golfed with Trump, is unimpressed with his golfing buddy as president.
“I expected him to go to the middle, because I thought he wanted to be great,” he explained in a recorded interview. “I played [golf] with Donald and his golf game is like his presidency. He’s amusing as my friend, but he’s not very amusing as president of the United States. And I’m a Republican.”
