Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary — a.k.a. “Mr. Wonderful” — ripped CNN for pathetically attempting to justify a radical New York judge’s bonkers ruling against former President Donald Trump.
Leftist CNN anchor Laura Coates appeared giddy as she touted the $355 million fine New York Supreme court judge Arthur Engoron slapped on Trump for allegedly inflating his assets to lenders, despite nobody losing money. O’Leary argued during the Feb. 19 edition of Laura Coates Live that this was a “victimless crime” due to the fact that Trump did nothing that was outside of the typical haggling that goes on between real estate developers and banks across the country. Coates got perturbed, cut O’Leary off mid-sentence and listed the alleged financial crimes Trump was charged with. “I take it your point is that these should not have been prosecuted,” Coates responded. O’Leary wouldn’t budge: “My point is there’s never been a case like this in 75 years.” O’Leary summarized that what Trump was being raked over the coals for by an activist judge with an axe to grind has been “done by every real estate developer everywhere on earth in every city. This has never, ever been prosecuted.”
Coates tried pushing back by trying to maneuver O’Leary with a “gotcha!” question: “Wouldn’t there be many companies who would not want to do business or loan money to people like yourself or investors if they know that they could get away with fraud and there’s no recourse to protect them?”
O’Leary didn’t take the bait and shot back by giving Coates a basic lesson in the mechanics of banking. “Excuse me, what fraud? This is not about Trump anymore. When you get a developer that builds a building and he says it’s worth $400 million and he wants to borrow $200 million from a bank — which happens every day, everywhere on earth, including every American city” O’Leary stated. He continued by noting that every developer is an entrepreneur and naturally shines “the light on their building and they say it's worth $400 million. The bank does its own due diligence — as was done in [Trump’s] case — because they’re good at it, the banks are very good — and they say, ‘No, it’s worth $300 million. We’re only going to loan you $150 million.’ That haggling has gone on for decades. That’s how it works.”
The Shark Tank investor further dismantled Coates’ argument by noting that the supposedly defrauded bank in Trump’s case, Deutsche Bank, “testified and said, ‘We didn’t lose anything. We want to do business with this guy again.’” But Engoron, O’Leary summarized, “said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no. Let’s penalize this developer for $355 million. And if we’re going to do that, let’s penalize all the developers all across America. They’ve all done the same thing. All of them should go to jail and we should stop building buildings.’ That’s what the message is from New York.”
O’Leary then trapped Coates with a question of his own: “Do you really think people want to invest money in New York after this?” Coates then stumbled over herself trying to cut O’Leary off, AGAIN: “Well, I think, I think there are people who would — I don’t want to cut you off but I want to converse with you instead.” O’Leary clapped back, “Well, you just did.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News at (818) 460-7477, CBS News at (212) 975-3247 and NBC News at (212) 664-6192 and demand they tell the truth about the holes in the logic of Engoron’s anti-Trump ruling.
