Free-market capitalist Larry Kudlow was celebrated by a power crowd at the Four Seasons restaurant Tuesday night.
The sharp-suited conservative economist was fêted at a dinner hosted by John and Margo Catsimatidis.
Billionaire magnate John read out a letter from “the last president that we all loved,” President George W. Bush, adding “I have to say that very diplomatically, I don’t want the IRS coming after me.”
Guests included Gov. Mike Pence, Gov. Scott Walker, economist Art Laffer, former senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Steve Forbes, who told Kudlow, “You should be heading the Federal Reserve today.”
Others toasting Kudlow included Fox News’ Monica Crowley and Melissa Francis, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Steve Moore, Roger Hertog and Mark Simone.
Kudlow said he was grateful to CNBC for “giving me a second chance” after rehab 20 years ago, and has remained sober since.
Thanking wife Judy, he said, “Sometimes you have to really see, looking into the abyss, an unimaginable bottom, in order to understand how important people are, how important life is.”
Of his show, he said, “I wanted the smartest people I could get . . . We had Robert Reich, Jared Bernstein and Austan Goolsbee before anybody ever heard of [them]. [After they joined the Obama administration] I asked President Obama, ‘You’ve taken Bernstein and Goolsbee away from me, Sir, my best liberals . . . But you left me with Robert Reich’.
Without batting an eyelid, President Obama said, ‘Yeah, to keep an eye on you.’ ”