FNC’s Carlson: GameStop Saga Shows System Is ‘Not the Capitalism We Were Promised — Not Even Close’

Thursday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson opened his program with his thoughts on the fallout of the GameStop short-squeeze situation unfolding that has caused financial elites to question the retail investor’s role in financial markets.

Carlson said the backlash showed the U.S. economic system was not living up to its intended billing.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: Quite a day in financial markets, not a phrase we use a lot on this show, but a lot happened today and there are massive implications for all of us. Dave Portnoy joins us in a moment to explain what those are, but first some context of what we’re watching right now.

Last March, as the country began to panic about the arrival of a strange new coronavirus from China, a billionaire called Bill Ackman went on television in an attempt to make America even more afraid than it already was. “Our economy may be done at this point,” he said, over, dead, not coming back.

Bill Ackman went on like this for 28 full minutes, terrified CNBC viewers watched slack-jawed as he ranted. Here’s part of his performance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL ACKMAN, CEO, PERSHING SQUARE CAPITAL: Hell is coming. This was a feeling like I’ve never had like there’s a tsunami coming, right? The tsunami is coming in and you feel it in the air, right? The tide starts to roll out. Okay. And on the beach, people are playing and having fun, like there’s nothing going on. And that is the feeling I’ve had for the last two months. Okay. And my colleagues at work, okay, thought I was a lunatic.

We need to shut it down now. America will end as we know it, okay, I’m sorry to say so. Okay, unless we take this option.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Bill Ackman was afraid, and he wanted you to be afraid. Ackman was especially frightened for the future of Hilton Hotels. Hilton Hotels, Ackman proclaimed quote: “Is going to zero along with every other hotel company in the world.” Every hotel is going to be shut down in the country — everyone. Talk about scary.

But in the end, not for Bill Ackman. Not long after that appearance, we learned that Ackman’s firm had made more than $2 billion from trading in the stocks that many people believed he had pushed down with the hysterically dire predictions you just saw, including Hilton Hotels.

So, it was Ackman’s rant on CNBC part of a very dishonest investment strategy? It seemed pretty obvious, so we said so on the air. Ackman’s lawyers immediately threatened to...

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