Sen. Ron Wyden’s son is keeping up the pressure against his father’s proposal to tax the unrealized capital gains of billionaires.
Adam Wyden, a successful investor and the founder of Miami-based ADW Capital Partners, was asked on CNBC on Monday about his relationship with his father after a wild series of tweets last week, which featured him siding with billionaire Telsa founder Elon Musk over the elder Wyden.
“I think we have a mutual respect for one another, and there’s obviously a natural separation between church and state,” Adam Wyden said. “Those comments on Twitter were made a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Twitter is a platform where you can get voices out there and get a discussion going.”
SON OF ‘BILLIONAIRE TAX’ BILL AUTHOR BACKS MUSK OVER FATHER IN WILD TWITTER SPAT
Ron Wyden, who represents Oregon in the Senate as a Democrat, started the dust-up last week when he promoted his billionaire tax plan in response to a tweet from Musk asking his followers whether he should sell more than $20 billion worth of Tesla stock as a response to the senator’s tax proposal.
Musk then made a crass reference about the senator’s profile picture, and Adam Wyden joined Musk in hitting at the senator.
“Why does he hate us / the American dream so much?!?!?!?!” Adam Wyden wrote. “Reality is: most legislators have never built anything … so I guess it’s easier to mindlessly and haphazardly try and tear stuff down.”
“Thankfully, I think I can compound faster than my dad and his cronies can confiscate it,” he added.
On Monday, the younger Wyden emphasized that taxing the unrealized gains of billionaires, a notion that his father has championed for years, is an issue that “hits very close to home” for him.
“I started my fund with $400,000 on the second floor of my mother’s home. I have been very fortunate in life. I got my education paid for,” he said. “But I built everything brick by brick, and as it relates to the legislators, I think it’s clear to me that the people who are making these policy decisions have never experienced the ups and downs of running a business. They don’t understand what it takes to build a business.”
Adam Wyden said he is fearful that “the culture of innovation” and the building of major companies could be in danger because of tax plans like his father proposed.
The younger Wyden has been able to develop his savings and bar mitzvah money into a fortune and now manages a $350 million hedge fund, according to reporting from Forbes earlier this year.
Despite the criticism for his father’s tax policy, Adam Wyden noted that his father “has done a lot of great things for this country.” He cited the senator’s work for senior citizens, the disabled, the environment, and net neutrality.
Wyden is not the first child of a prominent lawmaker to buck their parents’ political views publicly.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s daughter Porter McConnell is the campaign director for Take on Wall Street, a group that says it is working to fight “the predatory economic power of big Wall Street banks and billionaires.”
The daughter of Kellyanne Conway, a top White House aide during the Trump administration, amassed hundreds of thousands of followers after denouncing the former president and her family’s ties to the administration.
The siblings of Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar have repeatedly spoken out against the Republican and even endorsed his political opponents.
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The elder Wyden’s tax proposal calls for a 23.8% annual tax on billionaires’ unrealized capital gains. It was raised as a way of paying for the Democratic climate change and social spending bill, although the proposal was quickly rejected in favor of applying a surtax on those earning more than $10 million annually.
Adam Wyden said on Monday that he would be spending this year’s Thanksgiving with his in-laws.
