‎She comes to Washington at the request of Harry Reid to head a special congressional oversight entity, pursuant to the Wall Street collapse and bailout, does a sterling job, has a heavy cross-examination of Timothy Geithner in public. He didn’t like that, and he never forgot that. And she is—then finds herself in Treasury, wondering whether she’s going to be the new head of this agency, which passed as part of the Dodd-Frank bill.

And it turns out that she was allowed to build it. She recruited very competent people in the agency. I think it sets the standard for American consumer protection, in terms of competent staff. And then she wants the job. Everybody knows she wants the job. But listen to how this coward in the White House handled it yesterday. He said, “Elizabeth Warren, you’ve done a great job building this agency, and one of your charges was to find a director. And you have found a great director, Richard Cordray.” Imagine. He puts the words in her mouth, when he knows very well that she wanted this job as the culmination of her career. And it’s too bad that the leading women’s organization, such as NOW and [Feminist] Majority and others, did not take a strong stand, because this was a legitimate women’s issue, not just a consumer issue. There was sexism involved here. They’re too involved in other things, and they didn’t take a strong stand for her on behalf of all the working women in America, many of them poor, many of them chief candidates for continued Wall Street ripoffs and crimes.

See and hear the Democracy Now! interview with Ralph Nader.