Elizabeth Warren may be one of the strongest anti-Trump weapons in the Democrats’ arsenal.
In the past few weeks, the Massachusetts Senator has unleashed rants on social media slamming the presumptive GOP nominee, at one point referring to his campaign as a “toxic stew of hatred and insecurity.” Her Twitter duels with Trump have served as an unfiltered Democratic voice against the Republican candidate that stands in sharp contrast to the more measured critiques coming from the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.
Warren’s language got even blunter Tuesday night at a reception for the Center for Popular Democracy, an economic justice organization, as she pounced on comments Trump made prior to the financial crash and stated, quite starkly, that the billionaire businessman will never ascend to the White House.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Mrfu4yE-w]
Warren cited reports last week that in 2006, Trump said he was hoping for a real estate crash. “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy,” he said in an audiobook from Trump University.
Those remarks were red meat for Warren, who’s staked her reputation in Washington on anti-Wall Street rhetoric.
She said in her speech that most people were “horrified” by the 2008 housing market crash, “but Donald Trump was drooling over the idea of a housing meltdown because it meant he could buy up more property on the cheap.”
A man who “roots for people to get thrown out of their homes,” she said, “is a man who cares about no one but himself—a small insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he makes a profit off of it” and someone “who will never become president of the United States.”
She bashed Trump for pledging to be tough on Wall Street but then also vowing to dismantle Dodd Frank because the legislation is hard on bankers. “Donald Trump is concerned about helping poor little Wall Street,” Warren said. “Let me find the world’s smallest violin to play a sad, sad song.”
And she attacked the GOP nominee for saying that paying taxes is the equivalent of throwing money down the drain.
“Let’s be clear,” she said. “Nurses, and teachers and dock workers pay their fair share to keep Trump’s businesses going. Programmers and engineers and small business owners, they pay their fair share to support our military who show courage and sacrifice every day. Donald Trump thinks that supporting them is throwing money down the drain? Then I say we throw Donald Trump down the drain.”
Trump has responded to Warren’s previous criticism by referring to her a “goofus” and a “basketcase.” He’s also poked fun at her claims that she has some Native American heritage, at one point calling her “Pocahontas.” His campaign did not immediately return a request for comment on her most recent remarks.
Last year, Warren dismissed calls within her party to run for the Democratic nomination, and she’s now being mentioned as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton.
In one Tweet, Trump acknowledged those rumors: “I hope corrupt Hillary Clinton chooses goofy Elizabeth Warren as her running mate,” he posted earlier this month. “I will defeat them both.”
