Elizabeth Warren Seeks To Cash In on Anti-Wealth Rhetoric by Selling 'Billionaire Tears' Mugs
Seeing a surge in popularity in recent months, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is making yet another play for young, far-left voters.
Unveiling the addition of a “billionaire tears” coffee mug to her line of campaign merchandise, the radical progressive Massachusetts senator seems to be looking to cash in on the popularity of anti-wealth messaging among certain segments of the Democratic base.
Team Warren debuted the addition Wednesday night on Twitter, saying it had been prompted to start selling the product by “popular demand.”
“Savor a warm, slightly salty beverage of your choice in this union-made mug as you contemplate all the good a wealth tax could do,” the product description reads, promising such a tax would create “universal childcare, student debt cancellation, universal free college, and more.”
By popular demand:
— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) November 14, 2019
Since the outset of her campaign, Warren has often invoked the concept of a so-called “wealth tax,” claiming a tax hike for America’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and investors would pay for her many billion-dollar social, health and environmental policy proposals.
The Wednesday announcement, however, marks an aggressive shift in Warren’s rhetoric surrounding the topic.
According to The Hill, the announcement came on the same day the senator’s campaign announced a minute-long advertisement boasting of the fear her policy proposal has supposedly instilled in billionaires like Leon Cooperman, Joe Ricketts, Lloyd Blankfein and Peter Thiel.
Once again taking direct aim at a select few wealthy Americans, Team Warren’s product description for the mug seeks to embarrass Cooperman, a former Goldman Sachs executive, for allegedly being “brought to tears on live television while discussing the prospect that a President Elizabeth Warren might require him to pay his fair share in taxes.”
Team Warren’s rebuke is one of many in an ongoing public feud between the two figures, which began in September when Cooperman jokingly told reporters at CNBC and Institutional Investor’s joint conference “Delivering Alpha” that markets “won’t open” should Warren win the 2020 presidential election.
Fear of a major drop in stock values would prevent it, he argued.
The two proceeded to trade blows on Twitter, in television performances and even in a letter, according to a subsequent CNBC interview on Nov. 4 — in which Cooperman did, in fact, tear up live on “Halftime Report” with CNBC’s Scott Wapner.
But Cooperman’s emotions ran high not while discussing Warren’s tax policy, but when referring to President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to be “presidential.”
With regard to Warren, the former Goldman Sachs executive would tell CNBC in a later interview, “In my opinion she represents the worst in politicians as she’s trying to demonize wealthy people because there are more poor people than wealthy people.”
Warren is not the first left-wing presidential candidate to field such ideas as a “wealth tax,” however, with many claiming her newly aggressive anti-wealth rhetoric is directly lifted from competitor Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential election playbook.
Regardless, that rhetoric seems to be proving more beneficial for Warren, considering that the current RealClearPolitics polling aggregation shows the Vermont senator trailing her in national support by an average of 3 percentage points since her breakout surge began in September.
But despite a marked drop in support for former Vice President Joe Biden, Warren has been unable to pick up enough steam to clearly or consistently surpass the longtime front-runner in the 2020 Democratic primary.
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