‘You think that’s pro-worker?’: Robert Reich schools Kayleigh McEnany on Trump’s labor secretary pick
ELIZABETH PREZA
08 DEC 2016 AT 20:51 ET
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Kayleigh McEnany and Robert Reich (CNN)
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Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tore into CNN commentator Kayleigh McEnany Thursday over Donald Trump’s choice of Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary after she attempted to criticize Reich for calling the president-elect’s choice “anti-labor.”
“I just want to quickly say to Secretary Reich, I thought it was really unfair the way you characterize the cabinet picks. You know Jeff Sessions is a great guy,” McEnany. “… I think the pick today, Mr. Puzder, is a guy who his employees have said he cares about the cashier the same way he cares about the business owners. I think it’s really unfair to characterize him that way.”
“Just because he’s conservative, it doesn’t mean he’s anti-worker,” McEnany added.
“I’m not saying he’s anti-worker because he’s conservative,” Reich shot back. “I’m saying he’s anti-worker because he’s anti-worker. The Department of Labor came into his restaurants and found that half his restaurants had wage and labor violations that violated the law off the United States. You think that’s pro-worker?”
McEnenany repeated her talking point about Puzder caring about the cashiers at his restaurant proving he should be Labor Secretary before Reich shot back: “You think it’s pro-worker that his weekly paycheck equals the average yearly paycheck of his workers and he’s against a minimum wage increase?” Reich asked. “You think that is pro-worker? I’m sorry I’ve never hear of that.”
McEnenany responded that she doesn’t “believe in socialism,” she believes in “democracy and capitalism,” adding people at the top shouldn’t be demonized for making a lot of money.
“But why should they be Secretary of Labor when they are in charge of enforcing the labor laws and they have a record of not even obeying the labor laws?” Reich asked.
After McEnenany offered up the eighties as an example of how deregulation helped the economy, Reich landed this truth-bomb on the political commentator: “Nothing—nothing—trickled down to typical workers [in the eighties]” Reich said.
Watched the exchange below, via CNN:
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