I met Bernie Marcus, the good entrepreneur, philanthropist and free-market evangelist, last week at his spacious home in Boca Raton Fla. — and after all, he wasted no time letting me know the way he really feels.
“I’m in a very pissed-off mood,” Marcus told me as we sat down. “I’ve got loads on my mind. That is going to be some interview.”
I told him I expected nothing less.
Marcus is best generally known as one among the founders of Home Depot, teaming up with financier Ken Langone and businessman Arthur Blank to create from scratch an organization that employs nearly a half-million people working in hundreds of stores across the country.
Yet the fundamentals of the Home Depot story don’t do justice to Marcus’ legacy. He’s a voluble billionaire and a proud conservative activist who grew up in a fourth-floor Newark, NJ, tenement apartment.
“We were poorer than you can imagine. And my ambition in those days was to make $25,000 a 12 months and maintain my family.”
He did that and lot more. In Home Depot, Marcus created what’s now a $150 billion-a-year revenue business, plus tens of billions in wealth — and made a number of billion himself. He’s given many tens of millions of it away to charities and politicians he believes could make a difference in reversing the country’s devolution into near socialism.
Marcus retired from Home Depot in 2002 but that doesn’t mean he went off to some beach somewhere. He’s fighting the nice fight, writing checks to elect free-market types in state and federal government. Slightly greater than a decade ago, he created a free-market advocacy group, the Job Creators Network, which lobbies on behalf of entrepreneurs and small businesses.
“Charlie, I’m 94 years old. Unfortunately, I actually have a 60-year-old brain, a 94-year-old body,” he said during our wide-ranging interview, obviously concerned that he doesn’t have much time left to fight this good fight. “I’ve said this to all of my friends, anybody who would listen: if this election goes the way in which the last one went, this country will likely be a Third World country.”
Marcus in 1998.Getty Images
Biden a ‘dunce’
He blames much of America’s woes on President Biden, who beat Bernie’s friend Donald Trump within the 2020 election and can likely face Trump in 2024. He calls Biden a “dunce” and says he’s the “most divisive president we’ve ever seen.” Labeling nearly half the country as knuckle-dragging MAGA Republicans wasn’t a wise solution to heal the country, a goal Biden claimed was a priority.
Possibly worse, Marcus says, is Biden’s lack of mental acuity (“any person is feeding him like a puppet”), unforced spending and policy errors which have led to inflation and an explosion in federal debt.
As bad as Biden has been, Marcus says he also has misgivings about Trump. “Wages were up. Minorities were working. Inflation was down” in the course of the Trump presidency, Marcus said. “But he can’t keep his mouth shut.” Good point. I bring up Trump’s noxious Twitter feed and his role within the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots, whether he should step aside giving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, each successful politicians, a shot.
In Home Depot, Marcus created what’s now a $150 billion a 12 months revenue business.Christopher Sadowski
As bad as Biden has been, Marcus says he also has misgivings about Trump. “Wages were up. Minorities were working. Inflation was down” in the course of the Trump presidency, he said. “But he can’t keep his mouth shut . . . I’m afraid if he’s elected, the very first thing he does is go after his enemies, starting with the Republicans.”
Good points. I bring up Trump’s noxious Twitter feed and his role within the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots, whether he should step aside giving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, each successful politicians, a shot.
“I’m scuffling with it now,” Marcus said, “I believe [Trump] has the policies if he would just follow the script and do what he has to do.”
Marcus brings me back to his story as he describes why, for all its problems, America is value fighting for. In 1978, Marcus had just gotten fired as CEO of a hardware-store chain generally known as Handy Dan. Unsure what to do, he was talking about his future with Langone, the straight-talking financier.
Langone advised (in a really Langonean way) that Marcus pursue that entrepreneurial enterprise he had been mulling — something called Home Depot. “Kenny said, ‘You only got hit within the ass with a golden horseshoe,’ ” and offered to “put together investors and put me in business.”
Home Depot was born and has grown right into a $300 billion market-value company.
Handy Dan closed its doors greater than 30 years ago.
Could Marcus create Home Depot today? It wasn’t easy then; it will be nearly unattainable now, he said. “Regulations and all this woke crap” has made starting a public company nearly unattainable. You might have to satisfy not only shareholders, but “stakeholders” and asset managers who force CEOs to embrace woke management metrics like ESG.
“I ran a business for 60 years,” Marcus said. “I might never become involved with a social issue outside of business. That was not my business.”
However the American public is popping against left-wing economic policies. They hate Biden’s inflation and hate corporate wokeness, which offers Marcus some hope for the long run. He cited the travails of Budweiser that used trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a beer ad, no less.
“They were No. 1 . . . they usually turned silly overnight,” he said. “The American people remember; their sales are going to remain down.”
And the American people, he says, are value saving from what he believes is a really possible progressive apocalypse. “It’s why at 94 I’m spending plenty of my money attempting to make certain we bring the correct faces in front of” them.
Don’t stop, Bernie, don’t stop.
