Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been blasting a “small, insecure” Donald Trump for capitalizing on the 2008 housing crisis, but she has forgotten to mention that she made a killing buying foreclosed houses and cashing in on a floundering economy.
“I’ll tell you exactly what kind of a man does that — it is a man that cares about no one but himself. A small, insecure, money grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he gets a profit of it.”
Warren has been attracting vast media attention during the last few days as she bombarded the presumptive Republican presidential nominee with a series of Twitter tirades. But on Tuesday night, Warren devoted nearly 10 minutes of her speech at the Center for Popular Democracy to calling out Trump for his 2006 and 2007 comments, during which he said that he was “excited” and “sort of hope[d]” for a housing collapse.
“The rest of us were horrified by what happened during the 2008 financial crisis, by what happened to millions of families … but Donald Trump was drooling over the idea of a housing meltdown because it meant he could buy up more property on the cheap,” Warren said during the Tuesday speech. “What kind of a man roots for people to get thrown out of their house? … I’ll tell you exactly what kind of a man does that — it is a man that cares about no one but himself. A small, insecure, money grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he gets a profit of it.”
But in her anger at Trump’s words and his choice of financial investments, Warren failed to mention that she, too, had taken advantage of the housing market by flipping houses around and making her own big profits.
Warren flipped at least five houses before the 2008 housing crisis – including one that she bought in 1993 for $30,000, before selling it five months later at a 383 percent gain of $115,000, the National Review reported. The irony of the entire situation was not lost upon Trump.
“Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes known as Pocahontas, bought foreclosed housing and made a quick killing. Total hypocrite!”
“Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes known as Pocahontas, bought foreclosed housing and made a quick killing. Total hypocrite!” Trump calling her Pocahontas was an allusion to the ancestry controversy that plagued Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign, during which she was found to have listed herself as a Native American on the Association of American Law Schools directories.
But Warren responded in kind, tweeting back, “Fling as much mud as you want, @realDonaldTrump. Your words & actions disqualify you from being President — & I won’t stop saying it.”
In the midst of Warren’s own hypocrisy, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a swipe at Trump’s housing history while on the campaign trail herself.
“Well, I got to tell you, Trump said the other day – and we saw him doubling down on comments he made a couple years ago – because he said that a mortgage crisis would have been good for his business,” Clinton said during a Tuesday appearance in Riverside, California. “And I’ve got to tell you, why on Earth would we elect somebody president who actually rooted for the collapse of the mortgage market?”
But Don Vessels, the grandson of the woman who sold her house to Warren in 1993 for only $30,000, told the National Review that the senator’s actions did not surprise him.
“What’s said and what’s done in politics are two different things,” Vessels said.
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.