Bill Cohan, the co-founder of Puck News and a former banker, along with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, criticized billionaires Bill Ackman and Elon Musk on Tuesday for sharing their political views.
“America’s super rich have been very loud lately on social media, complaining about pretty much everything,” Ruhle said in her introduction to the show. She also mentioned Cohan’s early-February article for The New York Times, “How Loud Billionaires Convert Their Wealth Into Power.”
She summed up his claims that the wealthiest people in America can now turn their money into social capital, to the extent that billionaire Bill Ackman’s criticism of Harvard President Claudine Gay “ended with her resignation.”
In response to a question concerning how the ability of money to shape public opinion has evolved, Cohan stated that it is now much more pervasive because social media has allowed local business owners who owned news outlets to gain enormous influence. This is especially true now that Elon Musk has changed how X approaches speech.
“So, people like Bill Ackman just go hog-wild on it,” added Cohan. It’s not illegible at all either. He’s undoubtedly well-meaning and his response is well-considered. However, he writes the types of things that someone else who wasn’t self-employed, independently affluent, or a billionaire would have fired long ago.”
