Steve Hilton: Elitist hypocrite George Soros makes a fool of himself in Davos

Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros speaks during a panel discussion at the Nicolas Berggruen Conference in Berlin, October 30, 2012. REUTERS/Thomas Peter (GERMANY - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS HEADSHOT) - RTR39RO6

Liberal billionaire George Soros grabbed headlines at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday by attacking internet giants Google and Facebook. Conveniently ignoring his own investment in these companies, Soros branded them a “menace to society.”

“They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide,” Soros said. “This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies. Casinos have developed techniques to hook gamblers to the point where they gamble away all their money, even money they don’t have. Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human attention in the digital age. Not just distraction or addiction: social media companies are inducing people to give up their autonomy.”

Well, Soros would know about gambling: after all, he made his billions, by gambling in the casino of the financial markets. It worked out great for him, turning him into a fabulously wealthy plutocrat afforded the platform to pontificate pompously to his fellow elitists at Davos, and to indulge his personal political predilections by throwing his money at liberal causes.

But let’s remember: it’s money he made off the backs of the poor and the working class. Soros’ gambling happens to have wrecked the lives of millions of working people, not least in the United Kingdom, where his manipulation of the currency markets in the early 1990s caused a deep recession and untold misery for millions.

Of course, whatever the hypocrisy, many will agree with Soro’s characterization of the threat from Big Tech. But it was when he turned his attention to the Trump administration that he really went off the rails.

Soros claimed that President Trump is attempting to turn America into “a mafia state,” and – really amping up the hyperventilation (was it the mountain air?) – he argued that “not only the survival of open society but the survival of our entire civilization is at stake. The rise of leadership such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the United States have much to do with this.”

In this one absurdly overblown sentence, the ludicrous hysteria of the Trump-hating elite is revealed. What on Earth is Soros talking about?

So far, the key characteristics of the Trump presidency are substantial progress on the economic front – tax reform and deregulation, leading to faster growth, more jobs and higher incomes. Combine this with implacable resistance from the media, the left-leaning courts and most of the establishment. Hardly the end of civilization.

It is particularly upsetting to me personally to see Soros, a fellow Hungarian, make these over- the-top-claims, given our shared history. My father was a contemporary of Soros in Hungary, where both experienced an actual assault on the open society in the form of Soviet-backed communism.

Both my parents (and my stepfather), like Soros, fled Hungary to escape it. Soros simply makes a fool of himself when he describes the democratically elected U.S. president in the terms he used. He knows what real oppression looks like. He should know better.

But, like the rest of the Trump-hating elite, he can’t control his snooty impulses and can’t accept the real, tangible improvements that the Trump presidency is already making in the real lives of working Americans, who have suffered decades of economic insecurity as a direct result of the elitist policies that Soros personally supports.

Another prominent Trump-hater with apocalyptic warnings about the future of our democracy – David Frum, author of the new book “Trumpocracy” – will be joining me this Sunday night on “The Next Revolution” at 9 p.m. EST on FNC. Hope you can join us – I’m sure it will be a lively debate!