Lloyd Blankfein, then chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., smiles during a discussion at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Lloyd Blankfein hit back at Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Thursday, after she singled him and two other billionaires out for greed as she pressed for higher taxes on the wealthy.
“Vilification of people as a member of a group may be good for her campaign, not the country,” Blankfein, the 65-year-old Goldman Sachs senior chairman, said in a tweet.
“Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA,” Blankfein added in an apparent dig at Warren’s much-criticized prior claims of Native American ancestry. President Donald Trump has also mocked the Massachusetts U.S. senator over her claims, often calling her “Pocahontas.”
He served as CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs from 2006 until the end of 2018.
Blankfein was responding directly to Warren’s most recent campaign ad, which aired on CNBC on Thursday and takes aim at him and other billionaires who have blasted her rhetoric and policies, most notably her proposed wealth tax on the richest Americans.
Blankfein has contributed to and endorsed Democratic presidential candidates in the past, including Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 election. But he also criticized another 2016 candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, saying his campaign “has the potential to be a dangerous moment.”
Blankfein appears in Warren’s ad, alongside other billionaires including Cooperman and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts.
“She probably thinks more of cataclysmic change to the economic system as opposed to tinkering,” Blankfein is quoted as saying of Warren in the TV spot.
After his clip, a text overlay claims Blankfein “EARNED $70 MILLION DURING THE FINANCIAL CRASH.”
Blankfein’s net worth is listed as $1.3 billion in Warren’s ad.