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Supporting POTUS, ‘Pawn Stars’ Rick Harrison Blames Obama For All Of His Business Woes

By Georgia Makitalo
Published on: 11:21 PST, May 22, 2017

Pawn Stars patriarch, Rick Harrison, took to Fox Business to express his continued support for President Donald Trump. As part of a discussion panel, Harrison was asked how Trump was doing in his first four months in office. The History Channel reality show described business in America as “literally a nightmare.”

“It’s death by a thousand cuts — just my pawn business. The Obama administration made it illegal for me to loan any money to anyone in the military. I have one compliance guy just for a pawn shop. It’s everything from Homeland Security, FBI, the local police department, IRS – all these regulations I have to keep an eye on constantly and it’s just overwhelming for a small business.”

Harrison mentioned several organizations such as the IRS, FBI, Homeland Security, and others without identifying what the possible compliance problems that Harrison claims the Obama administration could have so adversely changed to complicate his business transactions.

So the obvious question may be to ask why can’t the owner of the World Famous Gold And Silver Pawn Shop loan money to anyone in the military? What did the Obama administration do to make it illegal for pawn shop owners like Rick Harrison from lending money to the brave men and women of the United States military?

What Rick Harrison appears to be referring to is the Military Lending Act (MLA). This is the bill that was created in 2007, during the George W. Bush administration, stating that anyone in the military cannot be charged an interest rate higher than 36 percent on most types of loans, which means that they cannot pay more than 3 percent a month. Who is included in the MLA? Any active-duty service members, including anyone on active Reserve duty or who are actively serving in the National Guard.

According to Experian, this law was created to protect those in the military from lending abuses. This law affects less than 5 million people.

Although Harrison was not specific about his unhappiness with MLA, it could be assumed that the percentage rate that a pawn shop charges for money lending are far more than what is allowed under the MLA, thus, this small group of people is not legally allowed to obtain a pawn shop loan from Rick Harrison.

Is it fair that Harrison is blaming the Obama administration for his troubles? Having claimed to be a Libertarian, Harrison is not a fan of government interference of any kind, and he told Fox Business that he wants to get rid of regulations and get rid of Obamacare, and “lower my taxes.”

“Government’s the problem.”

But now, Harrison believes that things will change for the better with Trump as president. Why does Harrison believe that? He says it is because of some accounting.

“The effect of the eight years of Obama is finally showing up. We had.7 GDP [growth]…in the last quarter and if you figure GDP the way we did four years ago, that would be negative growth. Four years ago…they decided all R&D [suddenly] goes into the plus column instead of the expense column and…it was a way the administration actually boosted up GDP.”

What does he realistically think will get done? He thinks that the politicians will get the tax cuts done because they want to be reelected.

Rick was asked, “what has changed?”

Harrison could not say anything but “At least there’s hope now.”

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Chumlee’s boss is worth a cool $8 million. Calling himself a “serial entrepreneur,” Harrison not only owns the pawn shop, Pawn Plaza, where he leases out several shops and has his bar, he also owns a production company, a publishing company, and of course, stars in Pawn Stars.

Harrison stumped for Trump in October, and was invited, and attended the inauguration in Washington back in January.

What are your thoughts about Rick Harrison’s support of President Trump? Do you agree that Harrison is right that the new administration will improve the economy? Or do you think that this is a millionaire complaining about some restrictions to protect people? Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

[Featured Image by David Becker/Getty Images]

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