Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) painted herself as a protector of the free market on Friday while defending the enormous (and shady) stock dump she made shortly after a private Senate meeting in January about the looming COVID-19 threat.
During an interview with Fox News, the senator said that she and her husband had liquidated their stocks to “make sure that we can’t be attacked for our success.”
“This gets at the very heart of why I came to Washington: to defend free enterprise, to defend capitalism,” she said. “And this is a socialist attack.”
Loeffler came under fire in March after the Daily Beast reported that she had sold millions in stock beginning on the day of the closed-door session on the coronavirus outbreak in January through mid-February.
The stock market began to plummet shortly thereafter as a result of the pandemic, and Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced the biggest one-day drop in history on March 16.
But even after her stock dump, Loeffler downplayed the outbreak and claimed the economy was “strong” on March 10.
Watch Loeffler below:
Sen. Loeffler says criticism over her stock dump is a "socialist attack." pic.twitter.com/mceDMjNgQ7
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) April 17, 2020
Ah, the old “you’re just jealous of my success” argument.
(it’s been a favorite put-down in right wing circles for the past several years).
Ahh, Ms Loeffler, your capitalism is selling off stock after receiving a privileged national security briefing prior to a global pandemic . All in favor?
From a different article, I had not realized that her husband was the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Not that there’s anything right with that…
Makes you wonder who has the better access to insider trading opportunities, him or her…
I’m sure this will go over well with the voting public. And since she has a Trumpist challenger on her right, she won’t get the chattering class of sycophants to repeat and magnify her whines of protest.
Virgil Sollozzo pushed heroin to make sure he couldn’t be attacked as an anti-vaxxer.