RUSH: Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas Steve Wynn, had his company’s fourth quarter financial result conference call yesterday with reporters. And during the Q&A a female reporter said to Steve Wynn, ‘Is it too early to say that maybe 2011 would be better, in other words, how do your 2011 bookings versus 2010, or just any comments on the volume of bookings or rate of bookings for 2010 or ’11 just to get a sense of whether you see any change at all?’
WYNN: There are more questions afoot in this market in America that will impact ’11 than I have hair on my head, I’m happy to say, and I still have a full head of hair. I have more pessimism than I’ve had before, and it’s based upon the political environment in which we are living today. And it definitely is impacting Las Vegas. The president of the United States hasn’t missed one single opportunity to squelch Las Vegas. We get phone calls — and I’m not going to mention the names of the companies — from chairmen who say we don’t want to appear to be profligate because Barack Obama said this or that about Las Vegas.
RUSH: Okay, so for you in Rio Linda, what Wynn is saying there is he knows a lot of CEOs that call him and say: ‘We can’t afford to come out there because if the word gets out we’re going to catch heat because Obama is telling everybody not to go.’ So Wynn then continued. He was just getting warmed up here.
WYNN: It is preposterous that businesses are under attack in the United States of America. Anybody that makes over $250,000 in the form of a personal income tax return is now, by Washington definition, a rich person, when everybody who has got a college degree knows that the personal income tax rate in the United States of America is the business tax of America. I am disgusted and angry at the apparent ignorance of the administration and the Congress to recognize the fact that the individual tax rate in the United States of America is in fact a business tax of America. And if you keep banging on that, you will destroy the incentive for job formation in the United States of America. And that’s simple truth.
RUSH: Steve Wynn, who voted for Obama, I believe. It’s preposterous that businesses are under attack. So finally, somebody else is joining my chorus because he’s right, they are under attack. And Obama’s out there saying, (imitating Obama) ‘Oh, no, I’m business friendly. I only want the private sector to do well.’ It’s a crock. You ask, ‘What did Wynn think would happen?’ This is why I say we’re going to have to really teach ideology. The only thing that woulda saved us from Obama is if people knew what a liberal is, but people couldn’t get there because two things had happened. I’m going to simplify it, maybe more than two, but the media and the Democrats had done a great job of drumming up absolute hatred for George W. Bush, which led them to believe that anybody else from the Republican Party would be just as bad, would be continuing just the same rotten policies, and America being hated, and then you couple it with a guy, historical nature, first black president, no criticism, no investigating, no information — who is the guy? Ideology was trumped, it didn’t stand a chance.
I’m sure that a lot of people looked at this just like the ‘Magic Negro’ song said: okay, we can get rid of our racist past, we can get rid of our guilt, we can vote for this guy and will say we’re good people. And, of course, there’s the desire for all this pap that liberals talk about during campaigns to actually happen. Oh, it would be wonderful if it would all come true but it never does with these people, and it never has a chance to come through, because their policies are diametrically opposed to whatever this great utopian version that they think they can create is. For me, it’s easy to explain why somebody like Steve Wynn would be fooled, because Steve Wynn wasn’t thinking ideology. Steve Wynn probably still doesn’t much like Republicans, either, I don’t know, but there’s a story in the stack here, second one I’ve seen in a week about more and more Wall Street companies and banks now contributing in greater numbers to Republicans than Democrats. Here’s the final sound bite from Steve Wynn. This is a conference call with reporters on his company’s fourth quarter earnings results and what he thinks the future holds.
WYNN: Why I’m pessimistic about Las Vegas, because those are our customers! Those people out there hustling their businesses, and God forbid, showing that they made a million dollars as a partnership or as an individual. Yeah, they’re the enemy now, they’re the rich folks. Well, until we get over this, America is in for hard times. The people that are gonna suffer from what’s going on are the working class of America. My 15 to 20,000 employees, they’re the ones that are in trouble, and until my employees get the drift of what’s being done to them, America is in trouble.
RUSH: Yeah, these are the people that work in his casinos and throughout the hotel operation. And he’s exactly right. But it’s not new. Steve, it’s not new that the rich people are the enemies of the Democrats. It’s been out there for one and all to see for as long as I’ve been alive. So anyway, some eyes are being opened, but I wanted to play that for you because this is pulling no punches and now you’ve got this guy saying that business is under attack by this administration. He’s got the guts to say it and join the chorus, and I’m all happy about that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, I am told, ladies and gentlemen, that Steve Wynn did not vote for Obama. I want to be right about this. Steve Wynn did not vote for Obama but that his wife, Elaine, did. And I think she held some fundraisers for Obama. But I’m told Steve Wynn did not.