NBC's Gregory: White House Rhetoric 'Anti-Business,' 'Could Really Discourage Businesses' in U.S.

Wow. Just wow. Has one of the standard-bearers of the media elite recognized that the Obama administration’s populist, anti-business tone is inhibiting the U.S. economy?

On the June 18 broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” NBC “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory was asked to respond to a June 18 New York Times article by David Sanger suggesting the Obama administration may be “overstepping” and discouraging business growth in the United States. Gregory told “Squawk Box” viewers that he thought they were and called it “a real problem.”

“It is, certainly beyond Washington,” Gregory explained. “You all know it talking to business leaders every day and I do speak to business leaders quite often as well and I hear it time and time, again, that what you got at the administration are two problems. One, you’ve got nobody in the inner sanctum of the president’s advisers who has ever run a business – who have never run a business. And that's a real problem. I think there's a level of recognition about that being a problem in the West Wing as well. But the rhetoric and the policy substantively, a lot of people feel, is anti-business and getting to a point where it could really discourage businesses in the United States and certainly the multinationals working here as well. That’s a problem and I think that element of criticism from Joe Barton, while off the reservation substantively, got to that larger point, which is this populist strain.”

Gregory elaborated on the lack of business experience in the president’s inner circle and explained it has hurt the White House’s ability to get solid policy measures in place.

“I think they would like to have more people advising thepPresident who have that business acumen,” Gregory said. “But let’s call it what it is. They made a decision early on in this financial crisis they were going to demonize anybody from Wall Street. They wouldn’t take anybody who had the quote, unquote ‘taint of Wall Street’ and that's a problem because you have the expertise that they could have leveraged, brought inside, to try to deal with financial regulation and all the rest. He's going to get financial reforms. But nevertheless, they made the decision, going back to the AIG mess and the bonuses. And that has carried forward.”

And Gregory said he thought the White House was second-guessing their decision to take this route.

“I think there is [second-guessing] because I think they recognize that, look, they're at a point on stimulus alone, who's going to create the jobs here? Forty-one thousand private sector jobs last month. The private sector has to start to feel like it’s got more confidence to lend more, to start more business investment, to stop hoarding cash. And a lot of that’s going on – again, I realize you know this better than I do because of the question marks and – all of the uncertainty coming out of Washington and particularly this administration.”

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