Warren Buffett thinks Elizabeth Warren should dial down the anger.
“She would do better if she was less angry and demonized less,” said the Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO on Monday when CNBC anchor Joe Kernen asked for his thoughts on the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
“I believe in 'hate the sin, love the sinner,' and I also believe in praising by name and criticizing by category,” he added.
Buffett, who put out his annual letter to shareholders this weekend, explained that he believes senators on both sides of the aisle need to work together on legislation.
“It does not help when you demonize the people you’re talking to,” he said.
In his CNBC interview, the folksy billionaire reiterated his support for Hillary Clinton’s presumed run for president in 2016. Warren has repeatedly denied that she would run in 2016 -- though her name keeps coming up as a potential Clinton opponent.
Warren’s passionate defense of Main Street and the middle class, particularly during the financial crisis, helped make her name and arguably launched her into the Senate. It also made her a load of enemies on Wall Street. This quote, from a 2011 Vanity Fair piece, sort of sums up the sentiment: "On Wall Street, Warren was regarded, says one bank vice-chairman, as 'the Devil incarnate,' and, according to another executive, a 'showboater,' who didn’t really know what she was talking about."
Of course, as the story points out, Warren does very much know what she’s talking about, and her dogged pursuit of openness and fairness in the finance industry led to the founding of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and has earned her Wall Street’s enmity.
More recently, Warren told ABC's "This Week":
I'm worried a lot about power in the financial services industry and I'm worried about the fact that basically, starting in the '80s, you know, the cops were taken off the beat in financial services. These guys were allowed to just paint a bull's-eye on the backside of American families," Warren said. "They loaded up on risk. They crushed the economy. They got bailed out. What bothers me now, they still strut around Washington, they block regulations that they don't want, they roll over agencies whenever they can.
Still, Buffett isn't your typical Wall Streeter. Again and again, he's advocated for more taxes on the rich.
Watch the video above.