In a stinging segment, Tucker Carlson attacked billionaire Paul Singer, and the methods used by the rich and powerful to extract the maximum amount of profit from companies without a care for the people or towns being cast aside when they do. Curt Mills detailed Tucker’s assault on the establishment at The American Conservative, writing (abridged):
Last week, Tucker Carlson assailed billionaire donor Paul Singer and his investing fund Elliott Management Company.
The segment—widely shared on social media and disrupting the conservative ecosphere in Washington—decried Singer’s “vulture capitalism” as “buying large stakes in American companies, firing workers, driving up short-term share prices, and in some cases, taking government bailouts,” all without accruing benefit to workers or the economy at large.
(Full disclosure: Carlson sits on the advisory board of The American Conservative.)
To illustrate this point, the Fox News host highlighted the effects of Elliott’s role in forcing Cabela’s sporting goods to merge with Bass Pro Shops—a business decision that put the town of Sidney, Nebraska, where Cabela’s was headquartered, into a slow but steady decline.
While Elliott Management and Singer initially declined to comment, the segment struck a chord with a surprising number of those on the center-right, and even some liberals lavished Tucker’s take with praise.
The fact that Carlson had prior business dealings with Singer shows the status quo for what it is: clubby, corrupted, and past its prime. Which, I believe, is the point Carlson was making, and has made, in scores of other segments in recent years challenging the consensus of a plainly faltering elite.
I’m told there is now one rule at a Washington mainstay, the American Enterprise Institute: “We don’t talk about Tucker Carlson.”
If he’s upsetting the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute, Tucker must be doing something right.
Read more here.
Dick Young contributed to this piece.
