George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and magnate lashed out at US President Donald Trump in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
"I have built a kind of a mental picture of him [Trump], as the ultimate narcissist," the billionaire said. "I don't think that he was at all prepared to win the election."
When asked what he felt during the election night of November 9, 2016, Soros admitted that he was "surprised," adding that although Hillary Clinton was not a good campaigner, she "would make a very good president."
"There is a real danger that we are going to destroy ourselves and our civilization. And that's the real thing that I'm really afraid of and with Trump we have come very close to it, because as a narcissist he's perfectly willing to destroy the world in order to maintain his narcissism," Soros said, pledging to "redouble" his efforts to "confront" the "threat."
However, some Twitter users do not share Soros' alarmism.
"When George #Soros thinks things are going wrong, things are assuredly going right," a user who calls himself Lost Owl noted.
"Billionaire and liberal donor George Soros blasts Trump's presidency. Blasts Trump for thinking he is all powerful. That's rich, coming from a man who once opined he feels like God," a user named Joe Bastardi wrote, referring to the billionaire's remark "I fancied myself as some kind of god" in his book The Alchemy of Finance, published in 1987.
Soros' pessimism regarding the outcome of the 2016 presidential election is quite understandable: The magnate placed his bets on Hillary Clinton and lost.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) non-profit, a nonpartisan research group, the billionaire reportedly provided Clinton's campaign with $10.5 million. In addition, he "lost nearly $1 billion as a result of the stock-market rally spurred by Donald Trump's surprise presidential election," The Wall Street Journal reported on January 13, 2017.
It is believed that Soros was behind a series of mass protests which erupted after Trump's victory. It was documented that some Soros-linked organizations were involved in demonstrations against the US president's "anti-migration" executive order in 2017.
As Kenneth P. Vogel of Politico warned on November 14, 2016, the billionaire and "other rich liberals" kicked off "full-on trench warfare against Trump from Day One."
Soros' prognosis for the EU was similarly gloomy: According to the magnate, the European block is heading to yet another financial crisis at full throttle.
While speaking at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris on May 29, 2018, the investor pinned the blame on Germany's right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Italy's Five Star Movement Party and Lega Nord, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban and, above all, US President Donald Trump, who did nothing short of "effectively destroy[ing] the transatlantic alliance."
However, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman immediately rejected Soros' claim, calling it "ridiculous": "I don't think we [the EU] are facing an existential threat at all," Gorman told Bloomberg Television in Beijing on May 31.
Likewise, Soros' open discontent with the win of Italy's coalition consisting of the Five Star Movement Party and Lega Nord was ridiculed by Lega's chief economist Claudio Borghi, who noted: "Soros worried by the Italian government? Then it means that we are going in the right direction…"
For his part, Italy's new Interior Minister Matteo Salvini lambasted the billionaire for the latter's hint that he, Salvini, could have been "funded" by Moscow: "I have never received a lira, a euro or a ruble from Russia… I consider Putin one of the best statesmen (in the world) and I consider it shameful that a speculator without scruples like Soros was invited to talk in Italy."
The billionaire has repeatedly been subjected to criticism from Hungary, Poland and Israel. It appears that things have definitely gone wrong — not for the world, but for George Soros, "the man who broke the Bank of England" in 1992 and fancied of being "some kind of god."