Businessman Kevin O’Leary, known for being an investor on ABC’s Shark Tank, warned Democrats on Saturday that they may have made a “huge mistake” when they “anointed” Vice President Kamala Harris as their party’s presidential nominee.
After President Joe Biden exited this year’s presidential race on July 21 and endorsed Harris following a weak showing at the first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump, now the GOP presidential nominee, in Atlanta in late June, the Democrats only had a few weeks to unite and pick a Democratic presidential nominee. Harris accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Thursday.
O’Leary compared Harris’ nomination to that of former Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s nomination in 2016 while appearing on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning.
“If in fact, Harris loses—and it’s 50/50, she may win, she may lose—this whole party, the Democratic Party, is going to revisit what happened here because they did the same thing with Hillary Clinton. It was assumed she would win. They anointed her. She lost,” O’Leary told host Rachel Campos-Duffy.
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign via email as well as O’Leary and Clinton via social media direct message on Sunday afternoon.
Clinton, the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party, lost the 2016 election to Trump, who at the time was famous for being a New York real estate businessman and reality star. Although Clinton won the popular vote, receiving roughly 2.9 million more votes than Trump, she lost the Electoral College, an elector-based voting system used to pick presidents. Trump was elected president by winning 30 states with 306 pledged electors (270 electoral votes out of 538 are needed to win).
“Harris is assumed a winner by anointment,” O’Leary said on Saturday. “If she loses, the party will never do this to itself again because they missed the opportunity to run a process and suck up another week of airtime and they didn’t do it. And I’m not saying she’s going to lose.”
The vice president did not go through the traditional primary voting process since it was Biden on the top of the ticket when Americans cast their votes in this year’s primary elections. Clinton did go through the process and won. However, she was the clear favorite, with The Wall Street Journal calling the primary election cycle “the Democratic Party’s Clinton coronation” in October 2015.
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O’Leary then used a business world example to explain his point on Fox & Friends Weekend.
“I would have never let that happen if I’m selling a business. I tell my managers, ‘Never bring me one offer, bring me a process. Show me that there’s no other bid out there that I want, then I’ll make a decision if I’m selling,'” the investor said.
O’Leary mentioned other possible candidates that the Democrats could have picked from such as California Governor Gavin Newsom. Other names that floated around were Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
“I was amazed they didn’t do that here because Newsom made reference to it, there may have been other candidates or she could’ve emerged much stronger. But they didn’t do that. That may prove to be a huge mistake,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary has previously appeared on Fox News to slam the judgment in Trump’s New York civil fraud case. In February, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president to pay nearly $500 million and banned him from doing business in New York for three years after being found liable for business fraud. Trump has maintained his innocence, claiming the case is politically motivated and appealed the case.
