Fox business host Charles Payne defends Trump's relationship with tech billionaires, claims “robber barons” increased wages and life expectancy
Payne: “We created the modern world, and it was the oligarchs who drove that”
Published
Citation
From the January 21, 2025, edition of Fox News' America Reports:
SANDRA SMITH (ANCHOR): You mention oligarchy because, of course, Biden used that word in his farewell address. President Trump was asked to react to that yesterday in that news conference and said this. Listen.
(VIDEO BEGINS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They were all with him — every one of them — now they are all with me. I don't know. It's not going to get anything from me. I don't need money. But I do want the nation to do well and they're smart people and they have, you know, they create a lot of jobs. And if they don't do it China's going to do it.
(VIDEO ENDS)
CHARLES PAYNE (FOX BUSINESS HOST): Yeah. And you know I did my special last week, last Thursday, town hall and I did — I talked about the gilded age as it went into McKinley and the one-two punch that made America — created the American century and all of the misconceptions. You know, when the so-called robber barons came in, for the hundred years before that, wages were like this. After this, they went like that for 100 years. Oh, when the robbers came in — robber barons came in, life expectancy in America was like this; all of a sudden, it went like this.
I mean, there was a positive impact. We were living season to season, praying that the seed would work, that the crop would come out of the ground. We created the modern world, and it was the oligarchs who drove that. And so, listen, we want to make sure that the people who are the smartest, who understand where the world is going, that we have — the Biden administration wanted to handcuff these folks, wanted to slow them down, wanted to control them, wanted to break them up.