It could be Ellis Island in reverse for Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
The pugnacious pundit has vowed he will quit the United States for his ancestral homeland of Ireland if Bernie Sanders is elected president.
Sanders' plans to expand Medicare and Affordable Care would mean “it would be much more than it is now,” O’Reilly scoffed on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday.
“And you know, look, I’m fleeing,” he warned. “If Bernie Sanders gets elected president, I’m fleeing. I’m going to Ireland. And they already know it.”
But no one in Ireland knows that O'Reilly – who has an estimated net worth of $85 million - has been contemplating becoming a tax exile there. Some Irish pundits are already claiming he'd be as welcome as someone who has just passed gas in a space suit.
Knowing that the thought of him shipping off to the Emerald Isle was probably delighting his critics on both sides of the Atlantic, O’Reilly added: “I shouldn’t say it publicly because that will get Sanders more votes. But I’m not going to pay 90 percent of my income to that guy. I’m sorry. I’m not doing it.”
O’Reilly might want to take a closer look at the nation he’s planning on fleeing to however. Ireland is the first country in the world to vote in favor of marriage equality for gays and its health and social welfare programs can make Bernie Saunders look like a fiscal conservative.
Perhaps instead of a world map, O’Reilly and other deep pocketed patriots might be better off looking for a time machine?
It’s the fourth time the Irish American pundit has threatened to quit the states and move overseas over taxes. In 2011, he vowed to retire if his income taxes went over 50 percent and to stop investing if his capital gains taxes went over 20 percent.
Then in 2012, he vowed to move his money out of the country rather than pay higher taxes. That same month, he had also threatened to stop “aggressively putting any money in the market.”
$85 million still isn't enough apparently. You can only buy so many falafel's on 15 million a year.
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