Elizabeth Warren defends capitalism as 'force for good,' splitting with Ocasio-Cortez

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Elizabeth Warren has 'zero' sympathy for parents charged in college admissions scandal

Critics pounced on Warren who herself has been embroiled in controversy over her alleged Native American heritage.

Elizabeth Warren has come to the defense of capitalism … sort of.

Sen. Warren, D-Mass., agreed that capitalism historically has been a “force for good” during an interview Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

The 2020 presidential candidate also referred to herself as a capitalist “down to [her] bones,” before saying regulations must be in place to make the system run smoothly.

“I believe in markets, I see the benefits that markets can produce,” she said. “When there's a cop on the beat, those markets start to work again."

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"Banks, in that case, are forced to develop their profit models, not on cheating people, but on actually offering a better product.”

Warren added: “I think it also, when it doesn't work, it's been a force for bad, but that's been true of every form of government that we can identify. We've gotten it right sometimes, and we've gotten it wrong sometimes. When you let markets work with rules and with people on the beat to enforce those rules, we can produce a lot of wealth in this country.”

The Massachusetts Democrat’s comments run counter to some remarks made by members of her party recently, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Speaking at the SXSW conference last weekend, Ocasio-Cortez slammed capitalism as “irredeemable”.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., officially announced her 2020 presidential bid on Feb. 9. (AP)

“The most important thing is the concentration of capital and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else and we seek it at any human and environmental cost. That is what that means. To me that ideology is not sustainable and cannot be redeemed,” she said.

”What we are reckoning with are the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society.”

The recent rise and dominance of a hard-left faction in the Democratic Party has opened the door for conservatives to sound warnings that the party is lurching toward "socialism."

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President Trump, in a new interview, tore into Democrats for campaigning on what he called “seductive” socialist policies despite potentially dire consequences.

“You always have to be very careful, because socialism is easy to campaign on but tough to govern on, because the country goes down the tubes,” Trump told conservative website Breitbart.

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“But when you tell people free medical, free education, no more student loans—all of the different things that you say—it’s a great thing to campaign on, but then ten years later the country is down the tubes. It’s gone.”

The president then suggested the 2020 election could come down to a “referendum on socialism versus capitalism,” according to the website.

Trump’s remarks come shortly after Vice President Pence accused Democrats of openly advocating for socialism with policies such as "Medicare-for-all" and the Green New Deal -- a system he said had “impoverished millions of people around the world.”

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, Pence said: “Under the guise of Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century.

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“That system is socialism.”

Fox News' Adam Shaw contributed to this report.