17 May 2017 — 1726 mdt
Come on, Democrats: Gianforte is not bankrolling ISIS
Today’s Huffington Post reports that Greg Gianforte, whose wealth may exceed $300 million, has an individual retirement account that includes $47,000 of stock in LaFargeHolcim, a French cement company with a factory in Syria. According to HP:
Payments made to local armed groups to secure the factory may have unwittingly ended up in ISIS coffers, the French newspaper Le Monde reported last year. CEO Eric Olsen resigned from the firm last month.
This is neither a BFD nor a LFD, neither a tempest in a teapot nor a squall in a saucer. It’s just an attempt to smear Gianforte, who has not displayed conspicuous enthusiasm for settling Syrian refugees in Montana, as a funder of terrorists who have beheaded Americans.
It’s dirty politics, opposition research run wild.
Almost everyone with a diversified investments portfolio owns a piece of something that stinks. That’s the price of fiscal prudence. Neither Gianforte nor anyone else orders his investments banker to buy stocks in slimy corporations that bribe foreign officials and finance lunatic insurgencies.
This is the second time Montana’s Democrats have tried to question Gianforte’s patriotism by flagging a dubious stock in his investments portfolio. A few weeks ago, the MDP tried to tie him to the Russians because he owned Russian stocks.
Give it a rest, Democrats. Gianforte’s problem with wealth is not the stocks that he owns. It’s that like Mitt Romney, he’s lost touch with the middle class.