Perhaps all that ash in the air around Seattle on Tuesday was coming from the fire burning inside Nick Hanauer.
The sometimes-heated and always opinionated tech investor let loose on Twitter with words for those who disagree with his stance on everything from workers’ wages to climate change.
It started with a couple retweets around mid-morning in which others were lobbing their own slams against the far-right site Breitbart News. From there it transitioned to a tweet showing a satellite image of Hurricane Irma, gaining strength in the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm and possibly headed for Florida.
On the heels of Hurricane Harvey’s massive destruction in Texas, Hanauer used the new storm as an opening for a shot at climate-change deniers.
Hey all you republicans in the south- how's that climate change denial working out for you? https://t.co/ZG8E4l61cc
— Nick Hanauer (@NickHanauer) September 5, 2017
A couple more retweets to his 33,500 followers came after that, including one in which Hanauer shared a post from Wired’s Ashley Feinberg in which she mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions. She said Sessions looked “f–king giddy for destroying people’s lives” during his announcement Tuesday on behalf of the Trump administration to end the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program, or DACA.
fucking giddy about destroying people’s lives pic.twitter.com/yTuWGuMTy6
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) September 5, 2017
Hanauer, a champion of the $15 minimum wage, also took on House Speaker Paul Ryan, by sarcastically saying we should return to the “good old days” before child labor laws.
Today's children are freeloader's. We should go back to the good old days- amiright @SpeakerRyan ?? https://t.co/Jj19ttCaQP
— Nick Hanauer (@NickHanauer) September 5, 2017
That was followed by a retweet alluding to the size of President Trump’s hands and another saying that the Canadian government has resorted to treating the U.S. as a failed state and is bypassing the federal government to deal with the states — or “local warlords” as the tweet put it.
By the afternoon, Hanauer had reached full boil and finally just came right out and told the white middle and working class to f–k off because that they had gotten what they deserve, presumably by voting for Trump. His tweet linked to a piece from the Economic Policy Institute headlined “Trump administration moves to take overtime pay away from workers.”
Fuck you, white middle and working class. You get what you deserve. https://t.co/DbK0ZPczaF
— Nick Hanauer (@NickHanauer) September 5, 2017
Hanauer, an early investor in Amazon and Juno Therapeutics among others, gained national attention earlier this summer with an essay in Politico in which he challenged his wealthy friends to step up and pay workers a fair wage. He argued that economic inequality could destabilize our democracy to the point of civil war.
Despite his close association with the tech community, no one seems to be advising Hanauer on that rule about reading and re-reading tweets before hitting post. But letting lose on Twitter only serves to add to his reputation as a political rabble rouser.
It’s a style of interaction he previously defended on stage at the 2015 GeekWire Summit.
“The truth is that all civic and social change is friction,” Hanauer said at the time. “Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction.”
