Chris Christie Says ‘Far-Left’ President Biden’s Capital Gains Tax is ‘Socialism’ as Angela Rye, Heidi Heitkamp Audibly Laugh

On ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Chris Christie and Angela Rye sparred over Joe Biden‘s policies after host George Stephanopoulos brought up recent poll results showing the president’s historically low popularity.

At the beginning of the segment, Stephanopoulos showed the result of an ABC News/Washington Post poll through Gallup that has Biden’s approval at “about 10 points better than President Trump but below every other former president of the modern era, basically.”

After some commentary from the panelists, with Christie saying that Biden has “governed as a far-left president,” and that every policy he’s put forward has been designed to “appease the far-left of his party.”

Heidi Heitkamp said that the reason that Biden hasn’t been able to get a bipartisan, unifying agenda is the toxicity of D.C. He could get bipartisanship if he’d focus on regular people and not Washington people.

Sarah Fagen said that Biden’s $2 trillion in spending “masked as infrastructure” is far-left social policymaking. He would get bipartisanship with infrastructure spending that was on infrastructure instead of social policy. Fagen then brought up Biden’s proposed near doubling of the capital gains tax on wealthy individuals as harmful to small businesses already suffering from the pandemic. “You’re talking about half the investment going into small businesses, and that is going to have a long-term, very devastating impact,” she said.

Rye responded to the discussion by attacking issues no one raised. “I think it’s so rich to hear people talking about Joe Biden’s far-left agenda.”

“If it is far-left to sign 60 executive orders overturning the hatred that was in Donald Trump’s executive orders, at least 23 of them,” she said.

“If it is far-left to rejoin the Paris Climate accord, ” she said with an affected laugh of contempt. “If it’s far-left to end the Muslim travel ban, if it is far-left to restore the partnership with the World Health Organization, then I think most of the country is far-left.”

Having finished her notes, Rye then agreed with Fagen that the infrastructure bill is full of leftwing social agenda items, but in a way that sounded like she was disagreeing. Which she wasn’t.

“When you talk about infrastructure, yes, there are some social things that need to happen in infrastructure because it just so happens that discrimination and inequitable conditions exist even in our infrastructure. That is not something that was originated in this administration,” she said. “So it is incumbent upon this administration to undo all of the hatred from the last one.”

Stephanopoulos then said it seems like the specific proposals Biden has made are “broadly popular, and Christie answered that “George, they’re not.”

“We could set up straw men and say he overturned this executive order, that executive order. That’s not what we’re talking about this morning,” said Christie.

“What Sarah just talked about, the capital gains issue,” he said, as Rye huffed indignantly, “is nothing more than income redistribution. It’s socialism.”

Rye and Heitkamp then both scoffed audibly.

“But a difference in the rate changes the capital gains tax into socialism?” asked Stephanopoulos.

“Of course it does, it’s redistribution of income, George,” Christie answered. He then predicted college savings and retirement savings will plummet under Biden. “That’s going to be the problem.”

Rye then unleashed on Christie.

“It’s so interesting, it’s so interesting to hear this allegation of socialism. I know these are buzzwords that work very well with the Republican party, so congratulations for using them this morning,” she snarked. “We have people in the middle of a pandemic that you said wouldn’t matter by the time we get to the fall, and on the left, there’s a conversation happening about student loan debt, how much should be forgiven, 50,000 versus 10,000.”

“And we’re talking about a capital gains increase when you all just had basically the reparations that my community’s been asking for in your last tax proposal, so I don’t even understand what we’re talking about here.”

That last bit, at least, seems accurate. It’s not clear who “you all” are on the topic of a tax that affects small businesses, retirement funds, or college savings. Nor was it clear how anyone is benefiting from a tax “proposal,” as opposed to the actual thing. But she was correct that there has been a pandemic so that’s something.

Pulling the discussion back to the actual point, Heitkamp blasted Christie’s characterization of a change to the rate shifting the nature from a tax to “socialism.”

“First off, let’s correct this idea you already paid on your capital gains, she said. You paid on the initial investment, which then you only pay on the actual gains from the initial investment. So let’s not say you already paid taxes on it,” she said. “You’re actually earning income. You’re actually getting dividends, or you’re getting interest, or when you sell it, you make money.”

“And this is one of the biggest scams in the history of forever on income redistribution. If you have a tax, if you have a stock, you can pass it on to your kids with stepped-up basis, and it’s never taxed! You know that there needs to be reform in unearned income!”

“And so to demonize it, and say it’s going to hurt the little guy, that just is not factual Chris,” she said.

Fagen responded by saying there will be reform on inheritance tax, but her follow-up didn’t really cap off the discussion the way Heitkamp’s systematic, point-by-point response did.

Watch the clip above, via ABC News.