You may have heard the name Ken Langone before. He’s the rags-to-riches billionaire co-owner of the Home Depot empire. He’s purportedly worth more than $6 billion. He supported Donald Trump, and like the Koch brothers, helps to float most of the terrible GOP candidates you see. Back in 2017, Langone was the billionaire openly saying that food stamps are used “to buy marijuana that is illegal or cocaine or whatever the hell else that they use to get high.” Does that sound like a familiar old-timey racist myth you’ve heard recently?

Back in December, just days before Christmas, Sen. Joe Manchin gave out his newest reason for leaving working families in the lurch: Parents might use an expanded child tax credit to “buy drugs.” 

Guess what? Just a week or so later, Ken Langone decided to break his tradition of only supporting Republicans. He and his wife both maxed out an individual donation of $5,000 each to Manchin’s Country Roads leadership PAC. According to CNBC, those donations came on New Year’s Eve—a present for putting the screws to Americans with children, doing their absolute best to live through an uncontrolled pandemic. 

Manchin’s moves to court billionaire conservatives have been going on forever. But a chance for President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to make and pass historic legislation that would be appreciated by generations to come has given Sen. Manchin a chance to truly kiss the ring of his wealthier superiors. As Manchin blocked and dragged his heels on an infrastructure package—unwilling to even change filibuster rules to pass wildly popular legislation—Ken Langone began going on news outlets to sing his praises. In November, Langone went on CNBC’s business news show Squawk Box to talk say, “I don’t see leadership any place in this country. Thank God for Joe Manchin,” and also how Langone was “going to have one of the biggest fundraisers [Langone’s] ever had for him. He’s special. He’s precious. He’s a great American.”

CNBC reports that, with the exception of one other time, Langone has never donated to a Democratic official or candidate. The only other time he did was to try and get Third Way Chicago mayoral candidate Bill Daley elected over the more progressive candidate at the time, Lori Lightfoot.

Beginning in the new year, right after receiving that little boost from the conservative billionaire and fellow old-timey racist Langone, Manchin set about continuing his assault on the Biden Administration’s key piece of infrastructure legislature—the one that most Americans were hoping would pass. Manchin and other right-wing and traditional media were able to successfully say the word “inflation” enough to make people wonder if “inflation” was something they should be worried about, even though they wanted everything in Build Back Better to pass.

Manchin himself is a millionaire conservative. Millionaire conservatives in office are in some respects the most wretched people in the history of the world. They have so much more than most but are so craven and so envious of, and beholden to billionaires, it’s truly gross to watch. The willingness of people like Joe Manchin to humiliate themself, throwing away any shred of integrity he might have had, any shred of decency maybe still stuck to the bottom of the boots he licks, is depressing.

To be clear, Ken Langone’s ability to make money co-owning a big box store at a time when big-box stores were in economic ascension does not translate to him being particularly intelligent. This is a man that told a room full of cameras and microphones that Donald Trump “has the capacity to go down as one of our greatest presidents ever.” At the time, Langone also explained that “the American people elected [Trump] president, in my mind, for one reason: they don’t want incremental change. They want major change.”

Let’s think on this. Biden was elected by more votes, by a majority of voters (unlike Trump), and Langone’s position is that Biden wants to enact too much change?

This is my middle finger held up in front of Mr. Langone’s face.