The United States is a country where the lives and working conditions of the average person are shaped by business and oligarchy to a unique extent. US workers lack the benefits and protections that most of the world takes for granted. They pay some of the world’s highest prices for medicine and health care, in a system that leaves them sicker and financially devastated. And their communities are plagued by exceptionally high rates of poverty, debt, homelessness, and deaths of despair.

Over the past ten months, we saw a series of political battles over fixing or at least alleviating some of this — battles over raising the minimum wage, lowering drug prices, or keeping people housed in a pandemic, to name a few. They were battles that someone with one of the most watched cable news shows on TV could, in theory, have influenced for the benefit of working Americans.

So what has Tucker Carlson, the so-called right-wing populist who’s taken to criticizing corporate America, championing the working class, and calling for an economic system that puts people before markets, had to say about all of this?