“Shark Tank” star and celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary joined Fox News & Friends Weekend urging Americans to go to the polls this November to “protect the brand of America.”
Kevin O'Leary: First of all, you can't have a robust economy without energy. It's the core. Energy security and independence are a very good mandate. There's no doubt about it. The debate we have, raging in the country is which energy?
So if you go back a few months to the climate meeting in Dubai, I was at that meeting. It's the first time the world is finally saying, 'Okay, there's no such thing as a transition out of oil, there's just diversification into other energy sources.' So we'll probably need oil for the next 200 years, maybe longer. We have it in the United States. If we wanted to, we could produce 18 to 21 million barrels per day.
You've heard Trump mention Anwar, and I'll tell you why that's very interesting. Anwar is a remarkable asset. It's in Alaska. Not only would it produce a huge amount of oil, but think about that. What Norway did in 1978 was: 'We discovered a ton of oil offshore. “We're going to charge a small royalty on every barrel in perpetuity and balance that against the national debt.”
We have a lot of debt in this country. Anwar could solve some of that problem on a grand scale. Because when you open it up and say, 'Look, we're going to charge a 6% or 7% royalty on each barrel', but it has to be by law, this is the key because you know how politicians like cash to assume. It must be compared to the national debt.
I think this mandate would cause a lot of people to say, “Why don't we do that to solve this debt problem and make ourselves energy independent at the same time?” That's how you sell it, because I understand the whole raging debate about green and climate and all that, but this is America we're talking about. We need energy. We must have it.
Rachel Campos Duffy: I think it's a super smart plan. It's the kind of plan where I could see Donald Trump saying, “We're going to do this.” I read your article in the Daily Mail. It was fantastic because I think you solved the problem for America economically because of the verdict. You said, “Banana Republics are bad for business,” and you talked about the American brand being dragged through the mud and the reputation we're getting internationally. Explain to our viewers how this affects business.
Kevin O'Leary: So I was in London raising money. As you know, I'm trying to buy TikTok. I'm just trying to get my act together for this deal, it'll probably happen in January, February. It was at the same time that the testimony, the porn star thing, came along. Speaking of lustful sex and condoms and all that stuff, no one understood what that had to do with campaign finance. But why did it happen?
It really dominated the conversation, the institutional meetings, asking me, 'What is this? Is that really America?' Because G20 countries, G7 countries, you usually don't do this to former leadership, because you are protecting the sovereign brand, the mother egg of the United States of America, the White House, no matter who is in it, it doesn't matter. Every president really needs to raise the bar. If they kill someone or are accused of doing so, you might be able to file a lawsuit. But if you look at any G7 country, they are protecting the sovereign brand.
Somehow we stopped doing that. Look, I'm not saying… I don't want to get partisan about it. I'm just saying we need to protect the brand of America. And think about this: whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, what we're doing to ourselves is a question.
And then the remarkable unintended consequence that I want you to think about here. Just 24 months ago, about a third of his party began considering replacing Trump because he was controversial. They thought, maybe we need new leadership in the Republican Party.
Then Bragg makes these accusations, and the entire party immediately rallies behind him. The country is biafricaert. Suddenly, and I know this sounds crazy, but I believe it's true, in five, ten years, history will look at this situation and say, “How did Trump become president again?” Alvin Bragg was the kingmaker. He did it for him. I know it sounds perverse, but that's what he did. That's called an unintended consequence. I don't know if he is happy about that, but that is how he will be marked in history.
Will Cain: Kevin, you bring up the other people in the Republican field looking to replace him. He talked to us about that yesterday. He talked about how he's really the only one who could be in this environment and come out and keep that brand of America.
Donald Trump: These are bad people. These people are sick and do things that are so destructive. I mean, look what they did from the day I got there. I don't know, a lot of people said, we have no choice but to elect Trump. Republicans, because he's the only one who can resist this. Remember, if it wasn't me, they'd go after someone else. And I know a lot of the competition wouldn't do so well. They wouldn't be doing so well now. They would say, Mom, take me home. I want to go home. This is brutal. But these are sick people. And for example the 51 intelligence agents, who comes up with these? And they think about it the same way when they say, I'm guilty of… And all this information was from so many years before the election. It was before the elections.
Rachel Campos Duffy: That clip, what he was talking about there, in addition to what we were talking about with what Alvin Bragg did, all of this is hurting the brand of America, correct? I'm just curious: why do you think, who are these people? Why are they willing to destroy America for him? What's with Donald Trump? What about his policies? This is unique. We've never seen anything like it.
Kevin O'Leary: I would ask everyone, regardless of your political leanings, to think about the big picture and what America means to the rest of the world. It is the largest economy on earth. It has the best legal system, including the appellate system, which Trump will now go through. If there is something wrong with his process that has not been done properly, the appeals system will notice it. That's what people believe about the American justice system.
Because of its transparency, it also attracts more foreign capital than any economy in the world. You want to think beyond Trump. You want to think beyond Bragg. You want to think about after Biden.
What have we done to ourselves here? That should be the question.
When this conviction happens, and it will happen on July 11, everyone should ask themselves: Do we want to denigrate someone who was in the White House, make him pick up trash on the street, or jail him?
I mean, this is the American brand we're talking about. It's not just about Donald Trump. It's the White House.
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