- Wall Street's Democratic donors are warning that they won't back Sen. Elizabeth Warren if she wins the party's nomination and that they might even support President Donald Trump, according to CNBC.
- "You're in a box because you're a Democrat and you're thinking, 'I want to help the party, but she's going to hurt me, so I'm going to help President Trump,'" a senior private-equity executive told CNBC.
- Warren has said she plans to break up the big banks, crack down on private equity, and regulate executive pay if she becomes president.
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Wall Street's Democratic donors are warning that they won't back Sen. Elizabeth Warren if she wins the party's nomination and that they might even support President Donald Trump, according to CNBC.
"You're in a box because you're a Democrat and you're thinking, 'I want to help the party, but she's going to hurt me, so I'm going to help President Trump,'" a senior private-equity executive told CNBC.
Warren, a vocal critic of big banks, has said she plans to crack down on the financial industry if she becomes president.
In response to CNBC's tweet promoting its story, she said that "wealthy donors don't get to buy this process" and vowed that she "won't back down."
The Massachusetts senator's presidential plans include breaking up the big banks, dividing commercial and investment banking, and forcing private-equity firms to shoulder debts and pension costs tied to businesses they buy.
She said she also intends to get rid of sweetheart tax rates, protect workers when their employers go broke, penalize bankers for failed risky investments, and reverse the Trump administration's deregulation of the financial industry.
"To raise wages, help small businesses, and spur economic growth, we need to shut down the Wall Street giveaways and rein in the financial industry so it stops sucking money out of the rest of the economy,"Warren wrote in a Medium blog post in July.
Warren appeared to top the latest CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll with 22% support among likely Iowa caucus voters, outstripping former Vice President Joe Biden's 20% share; the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they held a favorable view of her, and the poll found that 32% of her supporters were "extremely enthusiastic," compared with 22% for Biden.
Her recent momentum means that among wealthy Democratic donors and fundraisers in business circles, the idea of withholding support and potentially switching to Trump "is becoming widely shared," CNBC reported.
Bank executives and hedge-fund managers "will not support her," a big-bank executive told CNBC, adding that Warren's policies would be worse for the industry than President Barack Obama's changes.
"It would be like shutting down their industry," the executive said.
Wall Street executives are saying that Warren "has got to be stopped," Jim Cramer said on CNBC's "Mad Money" this month.
In response to the video, the senator tweeted, "I'm Elizabeth Warren and I approve this message."
The prospect of Warren revealing Trump's tax cut to be a gift to the wealthy has also turned Wall Street off Warren, a hedge-fund executive told CNBC.
"I think if she can show that the tax code of 2017 was basically nonsense and only helped corporations, Wall Street would not like the public thinking about that," the executive said.