WASHINGTON — First Lady Michelle Obama is making nice with private-equity billionaire Steve Schwarzman — who once compared her husband to Hitler.
On her whirlwind trip to China, which starts Thursday, the first lady plans to recognize the Blackstone Group CEO for donating $100 million to fund a new scholarship program in Beijing, while helping raise another $200 million.
The Schwarzman Scholars program, modeled on the Rhodes Scholarship, will allow US, Chinese and other students to spend a year studying Chinese culture, politics and other fields at Tsingua University in Beijing.
It’s an unusual shout-out for a major New York Republican bundler, who raised big bucks for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012.
But that wasn’t Schwarzman’s biggest black mark in the eyes of Dems.
Democrats slammed Schwarzman in 2010 when he blasted Obama’s plan to raise taxes on “carried interest,” which hedge-funders use to have their earnings taxed at the lower capital-gains rate.
“It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” Schwarzman fumed four years ago. He later apologized.