Tucker Carlson Examines Why Republicans Will Not Stand for ‘Economic Patriotism’
Shane Trejo
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FOX News host Tucker Carlson is under fire for praising the proposals of ‘Economic Patriotism’ made by presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on his show last night.
“She says the US government should buy American products when it can. And of course it should,” Carlson said. “She says we need more workplace apprenticeship programs because four-year college degrees aren’t right for everyone. Well, that’s true. She says that taxpayers ought to benefit from the research and development that they pay for.”
“She sounds like Donald Trump at his best,” Carlson said of her economic plan while noting that she is still a “race hustling, gun grabbing, abortion extremist.”
Carlson called out the consensus of “libertarian ideologues” who have dominated Republican economic orthodoxy for decades.
Here's what @TuckerCarlson last night extensively quoting and praising @ewarren's economic plan, contrasting it with the inability of the GOP to defend US workers because they're in servitude to the Koch Brothers, corporatism & libertarian economic theory pic.twitter.com/QljYNBonFc
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 6, 2019
The libertarian rag Reason Magazine, funded by Koch Brothers money, took special offense to Carlson’s assertion that the American people should be prioritized over the profit margins of multinational corporations.
“Like many Republicans in the Trump era, Carlson has been trending away from limited-government rhetoric for a while,” Reason associate editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote, “using his show to “yammer on” about why tariffs are good while still fearmongering about liberals and “socialists” (a category very broadly defined in the Fox world). But drape that “socialism” in a flag, and you just might win him over.”
However, this is a misrepresentation of the points Carlson actually made. He pointed out that market forces do not drive this economy, but rather the economy is driven public policy crafted by corporate oligarchs like the Koch Bros to favor their own interests. The facts bear his statement out.
Right now, the Koch Bros and their lobbying groups are subverting President Trump’s trade agenda and pushing to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) back on the table. The TPP is a trade agreement drafted by lawyers with thousands of pages of regulations affecting commerce at home and abroad. It’s not exactly free trade, despite the rhetoric of corporate propagandists.
The Koch Bros’ front groups are also pushing back against restrictions on immigration, calling for open borders and amnesty for illegals, when even the late free market economist Milton Friedman once admitted that “it’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”
Koch-funded entities are even making sure that nothing is done to reign in Big Tech corporations, who have used government privileges for years to gain monopoly power in the marketplace which they now use to snuff out dissident free speech and enact the Orwellian nightmare.
These are the libertarian ideologues who Carlson is specifically referencing in his dialogue, and they are arguably a more malign force working against Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda than anyone from the opposition party.
“There isn’t a caucus that represents where most Americans actually are: nationalist on economics, fairly traditional on the social issues,” Carlson argued.
The reason why this caucus is nonexistent is not due to lack of demand, but because powerful billionaires like the Koch Bros do everything in their power to make sure that multinational corporations always get their way even if the American worker suffers as a result.
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