President Biden’s controversial, Soviet-born pick to lead a key branch of the Treasury Department admitted in a newly unearthed video that she “wants” traditional fuel industries “to go bankrupt.”
Saule Omarova, Biden’s pick to be the comptroller of the currency, was filmed calling coal, oil and gas “troubled industries” in which “a lot of the small players … are going to probably go bankrupt.”
“At least, we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?” she said in the now-viral clip.
The Cornell University law professor made the remarks in February during a “Social Wealth Seminar” event hosted by the Jain Family Institute, a nonprofit research organization, Fox News said.
By Thursday, they had been viewed more than 1.5 million times on Twitter after being shared by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF).
Proving it wasn’t “a slip of the tongue,” the AAF posted a second clip in which Omarova said that “the way we basically get rid of those carbon financiers is we starve them of their sources of capital.”
The organization had earlier shared a video in which she dubbed the financial services industry a “quintessential a–hole industry” full of “systematically a–hole-type behavior.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was among many who shared the bankruptcy clip, calling Omarova “a grave threat to our economy.”
“She wants to destroy energy independence, wants to nationalize consumer banks, & she has called to ‘effectively end banking as we know it,'” Cruz tweeted.
It comes as at least three Senate Democrats — Jon Tester of Montana, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — have raised concerns with the White House over Omarova’s nomination, Axios reported Sunday, stressing that the “list may grow in the coming days.”
That could put her candidacy in jeopardy, with all 50 Republicans expected to oppose her, the outlet noted.
A White House official insisted that “Omarova is eminently qualified” for the job.
“The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination,” the official told Axios.
