GOP lawmakers echo Beck's claims against Soros By Elise Viebeck - 06/23/10 03:11 PM ET Two GOP lawmakers seemed to echo talking points from Fox News host Glenn Beck about a deal made by investor George Soros..
Reps. Dan Burton (R-Ind) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) questioned whether Soros, who backs a number of liberal causes and Democratic candidates for office, had invested in a Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, with the knowledge that President Barack Obama might temporarily ban deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We don’t need to be spending Mr. Soros's money in Brazil, so he can make more money by doing offshore drilling with our taxpayer’s money," Burton said.
Burton's implication was that Soros, an investor with Petrobras and a major Obama campaign donor, profited from a loan made by the U.S. Export-Import bank to Petrobras.
Gohmert made a similar point later during a congressional special orders speech.
"This country, apparently standing for two billion dollars to help Brazil do deep exploration — and that’ll make hundreds of millions for Soros, happy dream, they make lots of money — but sometimes people in this body are torn between their constituent service, or being a part of a powerful team," he said.
Their comments echoed several made by Glenn Beck the night before on Fox News, seen after the jump:
BECK: I'm not sure if he [Soros] knew that the administration would be making a $2 billion preliminary commitment for Petrobras, for Petrobras, for exploration, just days after he strengthened his investment. Isn't that weird? You see, he's got some connections here, but I'm sure he had no idea what was coming on the other side of the circle? No. It's probably just another one of those bad luck situations for Obama, because this doesn't seem to pass the smell test at all. No. Billionaire investor dumps money into a state-controlled Brazilian oil company; days later the American administration dumps $2 billion into the exact same company. What are the odds, Gilligan?
Let's go here. George Soros starts the Center for American Process with John Podesta. John Podesta, Center for American Progress, selects the Obama transition team. Soros buys $900 million in gasoline powered bras. Then, in a completely unrelated story, BP has their oil spill. But wait a minute, who's this guy? John Podesta. John Podesta is the guy who does all the lobbying for BP? Certainly — I'm sorry, Tony Podesta — certainly no relation to John Podesta, other than they're brothers. We'll have to come back to that one later in the show. So then Center for American Progress starts to make Obama policy. This one, we'll show you, laid out by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. One of the policies: cap and trade, which goes right to Crime Inc. and all of the Obama friends with the Climate Exchange in Chicago. That's weird.
Then Obama suspends the deepwater drilling at 1,500 meters. He says "Hey, hey, that's dangerous! Fifteen hundred meters, that's crazy." Petrobras is drilling at 2,777 meters. Obama knows it and loans $2 billion to Petrobras. Last stop, Petrobras shareholders get rich. Oh my gosh, we're back at the beginning: shareholder, Petrobras. Getting rich. You getting screwed. You see how this works?
