Tucker Carlson Highlights ‘NYT’ Tax Return Story to Warn About Power of Billionaires and ‘Tyranny of Selfish Oligarchs’ — But Never Criticizes Trump
Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out the New York Times’ blockbuster story uncovering two decades of President Donald Trump’s federal returns — in which most years he paid little to no federal income taxes — and then railed against a rigged tax code that facilitates the “tyranny of selfish oligarchs.” And yet, Carlson went out of his way not to criticize Trump during the segment.
On his Monday show, Carlson weighed in the bombshell news that Trump paid zero taxes for a decade before becoming president and only $750 in both 2016 and 2017, because of massive write-offs from alleged business losses. The damning details have led some legal experts to warn that Trump could be in jeopardy of facing another Special Counsel or even federal prosecution once he leaves office.
Carlson looked past these headlines, however, to focus on deeper implications of the Times story.
“The second takeaway from the piece is that, in some years, Donald Trump paid a strikingly low effective federal tax rate, probably lower than the rate you are playing. Trump’s accountants took advantage of the many provisions in the tax code to make it possible. What the president did was legal and all but universal for the affluent who earned their money from investments rather than from salaries,” Carlson explained.
“Should the president use the conventional tax loopholes to his own benefits?” Carlson then asked, before notably refusing to answer his own question or from passing any judgment on Trump’s actions. “We’ll leave that question to the professional hyper-ventilators on the other channels, who are probably talking about it right now.”
“Of course they are,” Carlson then added, the acid in his tone unmistakable.
But he then pivoted to railing against the very tax code that allowed Trump to all but avoid paying federal income taxes for more than a decade.
“Far more interesting is this question: Why does our tax code remains so obviously, so grotesquely unfair?” Carlson asked, his brow deeply furrowed. “Billionaires should not be paying a lower rate than your are paying, no matter who they are, no matter who the president is. The main problem with America right now is that a shrinking group of people controls a growing share of our nation’s wealth of power. It’s lopsided and getting more lopsided every year. It makes the country more unstable.”
Carlson, however, did not mention Trump’s own 2017 tax cuts, which, according to one analysis found that is lopsided benefits to corporations and wealthy individuals supercharged the inequality between what billionaires pay in taxes and the rates for everyone else. Instead, the Fox host accused “left-wing tech oligarchs” who he said, “can tell you what to say and think” and who he blamed for making young people uninterested in starting families.
“That’s why your grandchildren are almost certainly earning less than you do,” Carlson added, and then cited that inequality — which Trump has apparently long been taking advantage of — for fueling Trump’s run for president in 2016. “Americans could feel that something was profoundly wrong with the way our country was structured. Suddenly, it did not feel like we’re all in this together. It seemed clear to the people in charge they were in it for themselves. To fix it, voters went outside the system.”
“Four years later, some good things have happened,” Carlson said, providing no details. “But the core drivers of the crisis that we faced, a dying middle class and the growing hegemony of billionaires, remain unresolved. This is not a small problem. If we don’t fix it soon, it’s a guaranteed disaster. No nation can live for long under the tyranny of selfish oligarchs.”
“If we don’t flatten our economy and make it possible once again, for normal people to live happy, productive lives,” Carlson warned, “America will become a very radical place and quickly.”
Watch the video above, via Fox News.
