In the days since Tucker Carlson and Fox News “parted ways,” there has been much speculation regarding what led the network to dump its most popular personality. On Wednesday, Newsmax’s Carl Higbie questioned whether investment firm BlackRock had any say in the matter.
He argued that Carlson‘s takes over the years on issues such as environmental, social, and governance scores may have led the firm, which manages trillions of dollars, to pressure Fox to let him go.
“Wanna get to the bottom of anything? Follow the money,” Higbie began. “The abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson has raised some questions, some that deserve to be looked at … There is a company called BlackRock. It’s the world’s largest investment firm, with about $8.5 trillion under management.”
Higbie went on to quote a story from Forbes that suggested Carlson’s openly anti-ESG agenda “courted controversy by taking on … BlackRock, which has been a leading advocate for ESG investing.”
The NewsMax host showed a number of clips in which his former Fox News counterpart slammed the concept of ESG, saying, “The poorer you get, the more suffering there is, the higher your ESG score, and that’s important because companies will not invest unless you have a high ESG score.”
Higbie pointed out that in the months following Carlson’s attacks on ESG, a number of states pulled their pension investments from BlackRock, causing the investment firm to lose a substantial amount of money. Then in February 2023, BlackRock announced that it had acquired 15 percent in Fox Corporation stock, which according to Forbes was “enough to get a seat at the table.”
Higbie also highlighted the fact that Carlson often went after big pharma and the arms industry, both of which BlackRock was heavily invested in.
“There is no proof that BlackRock fired Tucker Carlson, and I am certainly not asserting that,” he concluded. “I just think it’s an interesting trail of money.”
