Despite bankrupting FTX and causing investors in the cryptocurrency exchange to lose as much as $2 billion through what critics say was basically a Ponzi scheme, Sam Bankman-Fried has apparently not been shunned by the mainstream media.
As Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson explained in a segment of his program on Wednesday night, the disgraced tech CEO was featured at an event hosted by The New York Times this week.
“What do you have when you find Sam Bankman-Fried, [Treasury Secretary] Janet Yellen, and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky of Ukraine in the same room?” Carlson asked. “A federal grand jury proceeding? That would be a good guess.”
Instead, the three controversial figures were prominent guests at the Times’ Dealbook Summit.
“Sam Bankman-Fried seems to have been the biggest fraud in history,” Carlson added. “As the chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen bears responsibility for the destruction of the entire U.S. economy. President Zelensky, meanwhile, sits atop a money-laundering scheme so brazen the Democrats won’t allow it to be audited.”
Instead of receiving the federal investigation they “could badly use,” he noted that they are “being celebrated, held up as uniquely fascinating people by The New York Times.”
The crux of Carlson’s argument is that “good liberals can always be forgiven, even when the things they’ve done are objectively very, very bad.”
Cancel Culture has wiped out a lot of people yet the @WSJ and @nytimes still trying to rehab and protect the imagine of Sam Bankman-Fried. So many young people looking to make their way in life have been wiped out.
The "elites" protect their own even under a microscope. pic.twitter.com/ZaUjLi7TTz
— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) November 24, 2022
Meanwhile, he said that the media outlets like the Times demonize conservatives who have “reprehensible” political views.
“You can’t be in the same room with them, you can’t talk to them, you can’t ask them questions,” he said of the treatment some Americans receive from the outlet. “Their opinions are like smallpox, communicable and deadly. These are the thought criminals and thought crimes are the only crimes that matter. Other crimes, not such a big deal.”
During the recent summit, Bankman-Fried had an opportunity to explain away the apparent fraud that led to FTX’s collapse.
Although he admitted making “a lot of mistakes,” he insisted that he “never tried to commit fraud” during his time as CEO.
In a class-action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of investors, however, his operation of FTX was described as “truly a house of cards” in which the company “shuffled customer funds between their opaque affiliated entities.”
