Speaking to investors on a conference call Monday, casino mogul Steve Wynn lashed out at President Obama, saying “this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime” and pointing to Obama's “speeches about redistribution” as evidence.
Unsurprisingly, Wynn's comments were in heavy rotation on Fox News last night, receiving extensive coverage on every one of the networks opinion programs.
On The Five, Eric Bolling declared (from Nexis): “Steve Wynn is right. Obamanomics, it may be socialist in nature, like Steve Wynn points out, but it's certainly not capitalism and it's certainly not working.” Bill O'Reilly devoted his “Talking Points Memo” to the comments and cited the “perception on Wall Street that Mr. Obama is primarily interested in social justice and not capitalism.” And Sean Hannity lauded Wynn as “the embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit in this country.”
Of course, Wynn's comments (and Fox's coverage of them) ignore the millions of jobs created by President Obama's stimulus and the near-record profits that corporate America is currently enjoying.
But Fox also ignores how well Steve Wynn has done under “the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime.”
Here's the stock performance for Wynn Resorts, Ltd. over the last five years (via Yahoo Finance):
After taking a tumble during the economic crisis, the stock's value is right around its pre-crisis peak.
In fact, during the very conference call in which Steve Wynn sounded off on Obama, here's how he described his company's corporate earnings:
We had a great first quarter, the best in our history. And we went through it -- we were just around $400 million in the first quarter. We are $447 million this time, and that quarter was about 59% better than a year ago. And in fact, for the 6 months, we're 62% better than a year ago. We are all, in this organization, heartened by the results.
Odd how Wynn was able to have his best first quarter despite Obama's “speeches about redistribution.” I guess that's why he's the “embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit.” Typical that Fox would ignore the tension.