President Donald Trump weighed in with his opinion about the Democrat candidate for Ohio governor, a man he’s had some experience with in Washington.
Trump singled out Richard Cordray during a speech Friday night before a Republican fundraiser in Columbus. Cordray spent six tumultuous years as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal regulatory agency that was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as the Obama administration’s answer to the 2008-09 financial crisis and mortgage meltdown.
Trump called Cordray a “far left candidate” who was “groomed by Pocahontas,” Trump’s nickname for Warren. “The legendary Pocahontas, no actually not that one – if it were that one we wouldn’t have a problem.”
Trump warned that, if elected governor, Cordray would likely over-regulate the business community, killing jobs and investment in the state.
“We had to get him the hell out of there,” Trump said of Cordray’s tenure as head of the new consumer watchdog agency. “He was destroying a lot of people’s lives … he was destroying people who had businesses for many years. He was terrible.”
“His name is Cordray and he’s trouble … It’s a very important thing, he will destroy your state. He spent the last six years in Washington trying to regulate community banks. Small businesses all over the place, they were going into oblivion.”
Trump said small-town bankers would approach him on the campaign trail asking about Cordray.
“Strong people, tough people, many of them with businesses that were 100 years old, people that were pillars of their communities, had tears in their eyes with what Cordray was doing,” Trump said. “He was putting them out of business, actually putting them out of business. What he did to those people was just terrible.”
The president also criticized an expensive renovation of the bureau’s offices on Cordray’s watch.
Trump poked Cordray’s opponent in the Nov. 6 gubernatorial race, the long-serving Attorney General Mike DeWine, saying DeWine should “never run again” if he loses to Cordray.
In an investigative article Monday, The Ohio Star delved into Cordray’s record of mismanagement at CFBP, where scores of EEOC complaints alleging a “toxic” and “retaliatory” work environment became the subject of five congressional oversight hearings in 2014 and 2015.
Trump devoted less time in his speech jabbing at Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running for re-election in the November midterm election.
“A very liberal Democrat,” Trump said of Brown. “I don’t see Ohio as liberal … I don’t get it.”
He called out Brown for voting against the GOP tax cuts, voting to preserve Obamacare and voting for “terrible and deadly sanctuary cities.” The president called U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, who is running against Brown, a “great businessman … a champion (and) a winner” and predicted he will defeat Brown in November.
