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Positive views of capitalism among American adults have hit a record low of 54%. Sixty-five percent say the country is headed in the wrong direction. And 54% of Americans say they have little to no confidence in the FBI to investigate Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination impartially. Support for this nation is eroding, and it\u2019s being accelerated not just by the predictable agitators on the Left, but increasingly by figures on the horseshoe Right.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker Carlson sits at the center of this grievance party phenomenon, where progressive socialists and former-right podcasters converge to paint a portrait of a broken America. As someone whose friends and colleagues are being pulled in by these takes, it\u2019s time we acknowledge that \u201cjust asking questions\u201d has gone too far, it\u2019s tiring, and it\u2019s doing real damage.<\/span><\/p>\n Carlson has been telling audiences that the American capitalist system is \u201ccompletely doomed,\u201d made up of a \u201ccorrupt oligarchy\u201d that hoards wealth while destroying the working class. He says this with the same energy as Hasan Piker and Bernie Sanders. You can dress it up in flannel, a navy blazer, or a Twitch hoodie \u2014 the message is still a lie.<\/span><\/p>\n The U.S. unemployment rate sits at 4.3%. Prime-age labor force participation is at a multi-decade high. Young people are not \u201cscrewed,\u201d they\u2019re competing in the most dynamic economy on earth. Over the last century, free markets lifted America to the world\u2019s largest GDP, providing the tax base for infrastructure, defense, and schools. Because companies compete for your money, they are forced to innovate. That competitive drive gives you the internet, the iPhone, and medical treatments keeping your grandparents alive. The American Dream <\/span>exists<\/span><\/i> because capitalism rewards labor, skill, and entrepreneurship, regardless of starting point.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker even wants to thwart capitalism\u2019s future. He told Ben Shapiro he would ban self-driving cars to protect Midwest truckers \u2014 a specious position that would cost the rest of us dearly. Autonomous vehicles are projected to cut logistics costs 30\u201350%, add upwards of $70 billion to the GDP, and create high-skilled jobs in software, fleet management, and data analytics. Tractors didn\u2019t kill farming; they multiplied output, allowing farmers to do more with less, and freed labor for entirely new industries. Every major innovation follows that same pattern. Short-term disruption equals massive long-term gains for everyone. Tucker\u2019s demagoguery doesn\u2019t save families; it raises prices, slows growth, and guarantees the stagnation he claims to hate.<\/span><\/p>\n His position is not conservative. It is the exact mirror of the grievance-party Left.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker\u2019s worldview, that nefarious forces are conspiring against the American people, doesn\u2019t stop at the economy. In his recent New York Times interview, he stated explicitly that President Donald Trump \u201chad no choice\u201d but to join Israel in striking Iran, calling him \u201cmore a hostage than a sovereign decision-maker.\u201d He claims Israel, Jewish donors, and evangelical Christians control U.S. foreign policy. He said Citibank poses a bigger threat to Americans than Hamas and Hezbollah. When asked about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion \u2014 a proven 1903 forgery by Russian secret police \u2014 <\/span>he waved it off: \u201cI don\u2019t know what that is. I\u2019ve heard references to it. It\u2019s like czarist forgery or something.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to unpack there.<\/span><\/p>\n First of all, Trump\u2019s decision to strike Iran was driven by the nuclear and ballistic missile threat that the Islamic regime posed and a decades-long urge to take out the world\u2019s largest funder of terrorism, which had been bullying America and her allies for decades. That is America First. That is not some slavish loyalty to Tel Aviv. Trump defied neocons, pressured NATO, brokered the Abraham Accords without a single American troop, and has repeatedly pressured Netanyahu to stand down. He is not anyone\u2019s puppet. He never has been.<\/span><\/p>\n The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbies like every other interest group, including Saudi Arabia, Big Tech, and public sector unions. There is no evidence of \u201ccontrol.\u201d Tucker\u2019s \u201cspell\u201d and \u201chostage\u201d language is the same occult-tinged conspiracy he once mocked when it came from the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n As for the Protocols, that document was debunked in 1921 by The Times of London, weaponized by the Nazis to justify genocide, and has zero basis in reality. Tucker knows this. His \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is not intellectual humility. It is a deliberate wink. There are 15 million Jewish people worldwide, 6 million of whom live in America among 340 million citizens. Jewish Americans succeed through the same merit, education, and entrepreneurship available to everyone. If you want to talk about foreign influence operations, look at Qatar funding Ivy League campuses, Chinese influence in our social media ecosystem, and Shanghai billionaires funding anti-American protest movements. Those are documented. Those are real.<\/span><\/p>\n On Citibank being a threat to Americans\u2026there was a Hezbollah-linked shooting in Michigan last month, and I use Capital One, pay my bills, and budget monthly. So no, Citibank isn\u2019t keeping me up at night, and if it does for Tucker, I would suggest he lay off the ALP pouches.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker\u2019s final avenue for institutional sabotage is the FBI\u2019s handling of Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination. Listen, friends, I understand why many of us are skeptical of the FBI. Both President Barack Obama and Joe Biden\u2019s DOJ weaponized federal power against conservative leaders, grandmothers, and a sitting president in ways this country had never seen. That consequential distrust was justified, but here the goalposts have moved to an unrecognizable place: Trump is in office, Kash Patel is running the FBI, Dan Bongino walked out and told us everything, and somehow, even now, it\u2019s all still a cover-up. At some point, the conspiracy has to end, and the evidence has to begin.<\/span><\/p>\n The fact is that Tyler Robinson\u2019s guilt is overwhelming. Prosecutors have matched DNA on the rifle trigger, the towel wrapped around the bolt-action, and the spent casing to Robinson. ATF ballistics confirmed the weapon. Before the shooting, Robinson wrote a letter to his roommate stating he \u201chad the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I\u2019m going to take it.\u201d He posted confessions on Discord. Video placed him on the Utah Valley University campus hours before the shot. He surrendered voluntarily within 33 hours after his father tipped off authorities. The investigation wasn\u2019t sabotaged; it was solved.<\/span><\/p>\n Carlson isn\u2019t defending Kirk\u2019s legacy. He\u2019s exploiting a martyr\u2019s death to erode trust in the institutions conservatives fought to reclaim.<\/span><\/p>\n Carlson has been transparent about where this is all heading. He wants a new political party: isolationist on foreign policy, restrictionist on immigration, and \u2014 crucially \u2014 interventionist in the economy. Ben Shapiro identified it correctly: that\u2019s a National Socialist Party, and history has a unanimous verdict on that experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n Every government that has tried centrally managed economies \u2014 the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela, Cuba \u2014 followed the same arc. First, they promise protection from the chaos of the market. Then, they pick winners and losers. Next, shortages, stagnation, and repression follow, inevitably. The Soviet Union\u2019s GDP per capita in 1990, after 70 years of central planning, was one-seventh of America\u2019s. Venezuela, once the wealthiest country in Latin America, saw its economy collapse 75% between 2013 and 2021 after nationalizing industries and freezing prices. These aren\u2019t outliers, they\u2019re the rule. Carlson\u2019s \u201ccarve-outs\u201d for truckers and banks are just the polite, populist entry point to a far uglier destination.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is the uncomfortable truth about why we\u2019re even having this conversation: America is so extraordinarily prosperous that we have the luxury of entertaining these ideas. Our poor have air conditioning. Our working class has smartphones. Our life expectancy, even accounting for recent dips, is historically high. When you\u2019ve never known genuine scarcity \u2014 not theoretical scarcity, but Cuban-pharmacy-shelf scarcity \u2014 it becomes very easy to romanticize the idea that the system is rigged.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s <\/span>precisely<\/span><\/i> the audience Carlson is playing to: comfortable enough to be frustrated, not desperate enough to remember what actually fails.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker Carlson is not a conservative. He\u2019s not America First. He is Tucker Carlson First. He\u2019s a man who has found that grievance sells, that \u201cjust asking questions\u201d about Jewish cabals and FBI cover-ups generates more clicks than defending the free market ever will. His brand is built on the premise that America is broken. He loses his audience if America heals. That is not patriotism. That is a business model.<\/span><\/p>\n Reagan proved the alternative. Trump is proving it again. Free markets, applied honestly, have produced the greatest reduction in poverty in human history. They\u2019ve lifted over a billion people out of it in the last three decades alone. Strong borders, enforced consistently, are not racist; they\u2019re necessary. An America First foreign policy means striking Iran when our nation is threatened, not when Tel Aviv asks. Rejecting antisemitic conspiracy theories is not defending Israel \u2014 it\u2019s defending logic, because 15 million people do not secretly run a planet of 8 billion. Sorry.<\/span><\/p>\n Tucker Carlson is a talented broadcaster who chose the wrong hill to die on. He can come back, but until he does, I would treat his content the way you\u2019d treat a teenager having a tantrum: acknowledge the emotion, reject the premise, and don\u2019t let her near the car keys.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n