While Tucker Carlson has told his critics to “buzz off” following backlash over his chummy sitdown with notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes, it appears that at least one company has taken the former Fox News star’s words to heart and pulled its sponsorship from his podcast.
According to Popular Information, Rocket Money – which is a budgeting app through the financial services giant Rocket Companies – is no longer advertising on Carlson’s online show, and all references to its sponsorship with the right-wing commentator have been removed.
The Independent has reached out to Tucker Carlson Network and Rocket for comment.
In the wake of the growing uproar over Carlson’s friendly two-hour interview with Fuentes, which has launched a civil war within the Republican Party and sparked an “open rebellion” at a prominent conservative think tank, Popular Information highlighted all of the companies that were “sponsoring Tucker Carlson while he mainstreams white supremacy.”
Noting that the sponsorships, which included Rocket Money, were “not the result of automated ad placements,” Popular Information pointed out that Carlson “personally read ad copy for all three companies and promoted special discount codes for each company’s products.” It was through these ads, Popular Information wrote, that the companies were “financing Carlson’s efforts to mainstream white supremacy, anti-semitism, and other extremist views.”
During the November 3 edition of his podcast, which aired just days after his lengthy chat with Fuentes that included the infamous white supremacist criticizing “organized Jewry,” Carlson declared that he was “excited to partner with Rocket Money” before reading off an ad for the company. He also shared a promotional Rocket Money URL that featured his last name, which would allow customers to get a discount.
Two days after that story was published, all mentions of Rocket Money were suddenly scrubbed from Carlson’s YouTube page, and the URL was taken down.
“Further, Carlson initially promoted the Rocket Money URL, along with other sponsors, in the YouTube notes for his November 3 show,” Popular Information reported on Wednesday. “Though the other sponsors remain, the Rocket Money URL has been removed.”
Rocket Companies, which has a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion, boasts on its website that “the high road is not optional; for us, it’s the only choice,” adding that “trust is the most valuable thing” at the company. It also claims it is committed “to do the right thing” and ensure “our inclusive culture is guided by our core values.”
The fallout over Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has praised Adolf Hitler and leads the so-called “Groyper Army,” has caused fractures within the right-wing media universe over the future direction of the MAGA movement.
While some conservative media figures, such as Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, have blasted Carlson over the platforming of Fuentes and accused the ex-Fox host of peddling “anti-American propaganda,” others have defended Carlson and decried those who are trying to “cancel” him.
There was one moment in particular during the Fuentes interview that prompted intense anger directed at Carlson from the Christian right and Jewish conservatives.
“And then the Christian Zionists who are, well, Christian Zionists. What is that? I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy,” Carlson told Fuentes. “And I’m offended by that as a Christian.”
Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation has been thrown into turmoil over president Kevin Roberts initially defending Carlson against the “venomous coalition” and “globalist class” who were criticizing the pundit, whom he described as a “close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
Following a spate of resignations, including from the think tank’s antisemitism task force, Roberts has desperately tried to walk back his defense of Carlson in recent days. “I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution, and I’m sorry, period, full stop,” he said during a heated staff meeting last week.
Carlson, meanwhile, has attempted to shrug off the blowback over the interview while firing back at his conservative critics.“You know, do your own interview the way that you want to do it. You’re not my editor. Buzz off,” he groused in a chat with Megyn Kelly.
Whether Rocket Money is just a one-off or the sign of a coming advertising blackout, it wouldn’t be the first time that Carlson has experienced sponsors fleeing his program over his controversial comments and actions.
In late 2018, Fox News saw dozens of companies pull their commercials from Carlson’s primetime program after he insisted that immigration makes the United States “poorer and dirtier and more divided.”
The exodus continued throughout the following year amid Carlson’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, which included him calling white supremacy a “hoax” and saying it was “actually not a real problem in America.” Those comments came just days after a white Texas man shot and killed 22 people, leaving behind a white supremacist manifesto warning about a “Hispanic invasion.”
