Mises Wire

Did Tucker’s Last Major Guest Lead to His Firing?

Speculation is still swirling about why Tucker Carlson was cancelled by Fox News. The major mainstream outlets have credited his dismissal to a few leaked text messages and video footage revealing Carlson making “crude and offensive” comments off air. Some outlets pointed to the lawsuit brought against Fox and Carlson by Abby Grossberg. Still others claim that the Dominion Voting defamation suit was the impetus for the ouster. I have given a different explanation.

Those who consider the removal of Carlson from mainstream media to be nothing more than showbiz nonsense fail to recognize that one of Carlson’s last shows featured an interview with the highly controversial US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If Tucker already posed a significant threat to the establishment with his trenchant opposition to the ongoing US-inflamed war in Ukraine; his exposure of the January 6 tapes and the role of Ray Epps in that “insurrection”; his platforming of Donald Trump and Elon Musk; his ongoing criticism of the immigration crisis; and his coverage of the “coincidental” fires at food processing plants and factories, then his platforming of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a bridge too far.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a not only a scion of the most famous political family in modern American history, but for the establishment, he also represents the most potentially damaging figure to throw his hat in the presidential ring in recent times. Bearing the most popular surname in US politics, Kennedy has not only denounced the covid lockdowns and vaccination regime; he has also struck at the heart of the deep state with his suggestions that the assassinations of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, were orchestrated by the CIA. That is, he argues that elements in the state murdered a sitting president and a presidential candidate.

Yet in recent denunciations of Kennedy and those who would support him, no mention is made of these latter assertions. Instead, he is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist” for his best-selling book, The Real Anthony Fauci, and his website, The Defender, which routinely savages the pharmaceutical industry—not only for the covid vaccines but also for the vaccine regimen administered to children, which he claims causes autism.

Kennedy asserts that the lockdowns represented one of the greatest transfers of wealth to the elite in US history. To a crowd of thirty thousand in Washington, DC, he went so far as to state that the vaccine mandates and covid lockdowns amounted to “fascism,” leaving families no escape: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” Kennedy later apologized on Twitter for this comparison, but the damage was done, and the recriminations nevertheless followed.

The main premise of Kennedy’s campaign, however, and likely a major source of regime resistance to his campaign, is the dismantling of fascism—the merger of corporate and state power. Kennedy argues that regulatory capture has corrupted every federal agency, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and the Department of Defense. And he has taken shots at the Federal Reserve for its inflationary printing of money and its wealth transfers to the rich. He has also argued that the FedNow payment program represents a slippery slope to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). He referred to the CBDC as slavery.

While Kennedy approaches corporatism from the wrong side of the equation—without these agencies and their regulatory regimes, there would be no regulatory capture—he nevertheless is striking some of the right targets. And although his welfare state economic positions are mistaken, he nevertheless represents a significant threat to the establishment.

This is apparent when one attempts to use Google to find his campaign website, which is buried deep in the results. But this is nowhere more apparent, although seldom if ever mentioned, than when he suggests that the deep state includes murderous gangsters who killed his uncle and father. Likewise, it is no surprise that Tucker Carlson Tonight was taken off the air the week following Kennedy’s appearance.

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