Joy Reid takes dig at McConnell for refusing billionaire tax: ‘He married into money’
On "The ReidOut," the MSNBC host pulls no punches in calling out what she sees as hypocrisy by GOP lawmakers.
MSNBC host Joy Reid pulls no punches when it comes to calling out what she sees as hypocrisy by Republican lawmakers.
On Tuesday night’s episode of TheReidOut, the host highlighted a Democratic effort to impose a minimum tax of 15% on companies that report more than $1 billion in profits.
Reid noted that even embattled Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has pushed back against many of her party’s legislative agenda items, supports the tax.
“This proposal represents a common-sense step toward ensuring that highly profitable corporations — which sometimes can avoid the current corporate tax rate — pay a reasonable minimum tax on their profits, just as everyday Arizonans and Arizona small businesses do,” said Sinema in a statement on Tuesday.
Additionally, Democrats are proposing to tax billionaires on their assets, including unrealized gains from securities, such as stocks. Reid noted that the proposal would affect about 700 taxpayers in the U.S.
Republican billionaires like SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney oppose the bill, but Reid pointed out the irony in statements made by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also opposes the bill.
“And then there’s grim reaper Mitch McConnell saying the quiet part out loud, that people who don’t have vast sums of money only have themselves to blame and shouldn’t be helped,” Reid said. “Did I mention he married into money?”
On TheReidOut, she played a clip of McConnell saying, from the Senate floor: “This harebrained scheme would have the IRS penalizing people who’ve invested wisely and compensating people who have invested poorly.”
Reid retorted that McConnell “invested wisely in marrying a really rich woman.”
McConnell grew up relatively middle-class in Georgia and Kentucky; his family founded a funeral home, and his father was in the Army. After graduating college, he pursued a law degree and a career in politics.
He married Sherrill Redmon in 1968, and the couple had three daughters before divorcing in 1980. In 1993, he married former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, the daughter of shipping magnate James Chao, and someone who’d become first Asian American woman to ever hold a Cabinet position.
According to a report from Mediaite, McConnell’s net worth ballooned from $3.1 million in 2004 to an estimated $34.1 million last year, thanks to his inheritance of a tax-free money market fund valued at up to $25 million after the 2007 death of his wife’s mother.
Elaine Chao — who was labor secretary under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009 — also served as secretary of transportation for former President Donald Trump‘s administration, but after helping to enact his agenda for years, she resigned her post in the waning weeks of his presidency, citing the Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection as her reason.
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