Populist blowhard Ed Schultz secretly flies on his own fleet of corporate jets while demanding 'no more corporate jets'
MSNBC host Ed Schultz, who has repeatedly criticized opponents for owning private jets, owns multiple private jets and conceals his flight data from the public.
Schultz owns Ed Schultz Broadcasting, LLC and has owned at least three Cessnas and one Piper. Schultz has owned two Cessna 560s, which typically sell for more than $5 million per plane. (He sold one plane—tail number N421LT — to Lakin Tire West Incorporated in 2011). Schultz also owns one Cessna 208B which is worth over $1.5 million. He also owns a Piper Cheyenne turboprop, estimated at more than $2 million.
Those hefty price tags don’t include the salaries of the two pilots, the fuel, or the maintenance costs. It costs more than $1,295 per hour to operate a Cessna 560, making it one of the more expensive private jets.
Nor do we know where one of Schulz’s planes — his Cessna 560, tail number N469ES — actually goes. Schulz has been given special permission not to reveal his flight routes.
...In any event, at the same time that Schultz has flown around on his private plane, both Schulz and his guests have criticized private plane use over the years.
“If you look at the agenda that the Democrats have got on the table, it is, you know, they’re – all of these issues are polling favorably. This is what the American people want,” Schultz told Larry King in 2007 “They want stem cell research. They want federal funding for it. They want minimum wage. They want border protection. You know, they want ethics reform – no more corporate jets, no more golf trips.”
The Ed Show guests shared Schultz’s antipathy.
“Why should a guy that is a billionaire get a tax break for his private new jet? Why can he get a tax break because he can hide his money in the Cayman Islands”? asked United Steelworkers rep Leo Gerard on “The Ed Show” on March 1, 2013.
On September 20, 2011 Schultz criticized Fox News hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, saying, “It’s really easy to go buy any house you want, depending on how you want to live, eat in the finest restaurants and fly on private jets.”