President Donald Trump criticized America’s top billionaires on Saturday for massively increasing their net worth during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I actually agree with this,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Too much income disparity. Changes must be made, and soon!”
The president shared a Business Insider video showing the net worth of wealthy CEOs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose net worth rose by an estimated $48 billion from March to June. The video lists billionaires such as Zoom founder Eric Yuan boosting his net worth of $2.5 billion, while former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s net worth increased by $15.7 billion, Casino magnate Shelden Adelson’s increased by $5 billion, and Elon Musk’s increased by $17.2 billion.
This is the first time the president has indicated that a growing wealth disparity was a problem in the United States that needed to be fixed.
The nine-minute video focuses on how the wealthy typically receive big financial profits during times of economic crisis and experience big tax cuts and breaks and store their money in offshore accounts.
The video also proposes forming a Pandemic Profiteering Oversight Committee, more regulations to keep billionaires from offshoring their profits, including an emergency ten percent millionaire income surtax, a wealth tax, a progressive estate tax, and dramatic federal spending on charities.