Investor Bill Ackman says the Democratic Party has become a crazy, radicalized, anti-American force and sits in the worst place in the nation's 250-year history.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman unloaded on the Democratic Party in an interview on the Katie Miller Podcast, arguing the party itself has drifted far from the high-quality Democrats he still respects in individual seats.
Fox News reported that Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, framed the party's condition as historic and severe, and tied that decline to career incentives that punish independence and reward loyalty over judgment.
His critique landed on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, on party pressure around controversial candidates, and on the kind of leadership choices that leave taxpayers and lawful voters stuck with the consequences.
Ackman drew a bright line between individual lawmakers and the institution they serve. He said some senators and congressmen remain strong. The party brand, in his view, does not.
In the podcast interview, Ackman told host Katie Miller the damage runs deep.
"I think the Democratic Party is in the worst place it's ever been, in the 250-year history of the country,"
He continued in the same exchange, making the charge more pointed.
"I think it's become like this crazy, radicalized, you know, anti-American thing. I think it's, and by the way, I think there's some very high-quality Democrats, you know, senators and, sure, some congressmen, but the party itself, I think, is in a very bad place."
That split matters. Ackman did not pretend every Democrat shares the same record. He said the party apparatus now rewards people who bend to it, and punishes those who do not.
He described the mechanism in plain terms: politicians who treat office as a career either get with the party or face primaries. In his telling, that pressure turns values into optional extras.
Ackman said he once had a good relationship with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and thought he was a good man. Recent years changed that assessment.
"You know, actually, Senator Schumer, I had a good relationship with him over the years. I thought he was a good man. But in recent years, I felt he's just trying to keep his job."
Schumer's office did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment. The silence left Ackman's charge about career-first politics standing without a rebuttal from the minority leader's shop.
Party strain is already visible elsewhere in the caucus, including episodes where Schumer publicly courted Sen. John Fetterman amid talk of fracture and exit pressure.
Ackman went further on what he called the low point for politicians: compromising values to back candidates the party demands. He pointed to a Michigan Senate race and used harsh language about the kind of figure he believes the party is now willing to tolerate.
"And, you know, that's the really low point for politicians when they'll compromise on their values, and they'll support, you know, a quasi-terrorist, perhaps running for Senate in Michigan, because they have to for the party."
He added that supporting what he called a terrorist supporter is, to him, deeply concerning. Those labels are Ackman's framing. The underlying fight, as reported, centers on contested claims about family history and party cover for controversial contenders.
Coverage tied Ackman's Michigan reference to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has faced questions over alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has denied those ties.
In a recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," El-Sayed said, "I have no ties; we have no ties." At a town hall on a Saturday, when a man identified as Tommy asked whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed answered, "Sure," then, "Yeah, absolutely. But I want to ask the question that you're asking: Why are you asking the question?"
The Washington Free Beacon reported on a 2012 social media post by El-Sayed's half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, that described a talk with their mother, Fatten Elkomy, about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 1970s while she was in college in Egypt. Abdelhadi wrote: "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early '70s while she was in college #respect."
El-Sayed's campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. The public record in the reporting remains a mix of family social-media history, direct denials, and party-adjacent politics, not an adjudicated finding.
Internal Democratic fights over nominees and loyalty are not limited to one state. In Montana, a state Democratic chair stepped down and backed an independent over the party's own Senate nominee, another sign of elites refusing to defend the brand as it stands.
Y. David Scharf, chair of Morrison Cohen's government strategies and controversies practice, told Fox News Digital that Ackman's challenge is about courage inside the party, not conversion outside it.
"Chuck Schumer has been in Washington long enough to know exactly what's happening to his party. The question isn't whether he sees it. It's whether he's willing to do anything about it."
Scharf also pointed to the political cost among Jewish voters and framed Ackman's demand as a call for consistency, not a party switch.
"There's something remarkable about watching one of the most powerful Jewish Democrats in America struggle to stand up to the very people in his party who are alienating Jewish voters," Scharf said. "Bill Ackman isn't asking Schumer to become a Republican. He's asking him to act like the Democrat he spent decades telling us he was."
That same tension has surfaced when Schumer pleaded with Fetterman to stay in the caucus during party fractures over Israel and related fights, pressure politics aimed at holding the coalition together while the underlying disagreements keep spreading.
Ackman's warning did not stop at Capitol Hill. The New York Post reported that he dismissed likely 2028 Democratic contenders as failures in waiting and said he could not name a Democratic presidential candidate who would earn his vote.
He singled out Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom as disasters. In the same stretch of remarks, he said he has not seen a good presidential candidate among the familiar names now circulating.
Closer to home, Ackman restated his opposition to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. "I'm not a fan," he said. He called Mamdani very smart, very charismatic, and very good at politics, then added that the decisions Mamdani is making are very bad for New York.
Asked about a possible mayoral run of his own, Ackman left the door cracked while preferring another path: "I would say possibly, but I think I could achieve a lot more by helping a very talented person do that job."
Local party machinery has been under stress as well, including in Brooklyn, where a Democratic chair stepped aside after a rule-change fight that exposed how progressive factions now drive internal power struggles.
Ackman's core argument is not complicated. When politicians treat the party as the employer that controls their future, they will protect the party first. Primaries become the enforcement tool. Values become negotiable. Voters who wanted accountability get another round of excuses.
He still allows for decent Democrats in individual offices. He refuses to pretend the party brand matches them. That distinction is the point. Institutions that punish dissent and reward compliance will keep nominating the same problems, then demand loyalty when those problems surface.
Even members who publicly fight their own caucus have drawn hard lines about staying put, as when Fetterman ruled out leaving the party while still blasting elements of it, another reminder that criticism inside the tent has not yet forced a cleanup.
Schumer's office and El-Sayed's campaign offered no immediate answers to the latest round of questions. Ackman did not wait for permission to describe what he sees: a party that has radicalized, drifted from basic American commitments, and trained its veterans to survive first and lead second.
Voters can live with tough politics. What they should not accept is a major party that treats values as disposable whenever a primary threat appears.
