An "obscenely wealthy" venture capitalist came to the defense of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Beat" with Ari Melber on Wednesday.
Nick Hanauer, who knows Howard Schultz from Seattle, slammed the billionaire's potential 2020 third-party presidential bid.
Melber began by detailing the "political and policy juggernaut shaking the Democratic Party -- the AOC effect."
"It's easy to call what AOC is doing as far lefty, but nothing could be further from the truth," Hanauer explained.
"When you had advocate for economic policies that benefit the broad majority of citizens, that's true centrism," he noted.
"What Howard Schultz represents, the centrism he represents, is trickle down economics, tax cuts for rich people, deregulation for powerful people, wage suppression and benefit cuts for everyone else -- without the overt racism," he explained.
"He is not center the centrist, AOC is a centrist," he concluded.
"And I think one of her advantage is she is young enough not to be captured by the neoliberal lies that have framed so much of the politics -- by the way, in both the Republican and Democratic parties," he added.
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