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California billionaire and gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer He avoided directly answering whether he agreed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., comments about rich people.
“She said, ‘No one ever makes a billion dollars. You need a billion dollars,'” journalist Mehdi Hasan asked Steyer on his show.Unfiltered Mehdi” Monday. “He basically argued that billionaires in this country exploit low-wage workers to get where they got. Do you agree with her?”
“Well, let me start by saying something, just so you can turn the dial down a little bit,” Steyer responded. “My wife, Kat Taylor, and I have committed to donating most of our money while we’re alive. And we’re doing it. I think we have too much inequality.”
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claims billionaires can’t “make” a billion dollars without abusing the law. (Reuters/Jeenah Luna)
He continued, “But the truth is the reason I started a business, I made a lot of money, and I quit 14 years ago, and I said we’re going to donate most of that money to support progressive causes, to support workers, and to support environmental protection.”
Steyer reiterated his belief that billionaires like him should pay more taxes, although he did not clarify whether he believed their wealth was legitimately earned.
He also admitted that many Democrats might not want a billionaire governor, but argued that Californians “want someone who will stand up to the billionaires and the corporations.”
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Tom Steyer is one of several candidates running for governor of California. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
“I’m the only billionaire on the ballot, but I’m far from the only billionaire in this race. There are corporations and billionaires investing tens of millions of dollars in this race,” Steyer said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Steyer’s campaign for comment.
Ocasio-Cortez faced backlash last week after claiming that billionaires cannot “earn” their wealth without abusing the laws.
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“You can’t make a billion dollars,” Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday. “You can get market power. You can break the rules. You can do all kinds of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than they are worth. But you can’t earn that, right? And then you have to create a myth… you have to create a myth about how to earn it.”
Tom Steyer argued that he was the only candidate who could take on billionaires and corporations. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME)
she has done it since duplicate and triplicate about that position, even going so far as to affirm that the American Revolution was against the “billionaires of its time.”
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“The largest form of theft in America is wage theft. $50 billion a year is stolen from American workers,” he wrote in
