In 2016, the world saw two events of monumental importance: The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, and the United States elected Donald Trump as president.
During a keynote session at Becker's ASC 26th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs on Oct. 25, Tucker Carlson, the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight and founder of The Daily Caller, explained what these two events signaled and how, in his eyes, the aftermath undermined democracy.
At the end of World War II, the global consensus favored a liberal democracy led by the U.S., according to Mr. Carlson. That model was promoted in Europe, Japan, and later, South Korea. Arrangements like this, Mr. Carlson said, need reassessed at a certain point.
That reassessment came in 2016, when citizens in the U.K. and U.S. voted on, essentially, whether they wanted a continuation of the way things were going. Unsure what it would mean to leave the EU — or exactly how a Trump presidency would look — they decided to roll the dice and take their countries in a new direction, Mr. Carlson said.
"You had the most straightforward exercise of democracy. You asked the population of two of the most advanced powerful nations in the world what they wanted," he said.
But three years later, Great Britain hasn't left the EU and President Trump's efforts to fulfill campaign promises that voters supported have been thwarted, according to Mr. Carlson. These issues, he said, prove voters' worst fears: that they aren't really the ones in charge of change, and we're living in a "fake democracy."
As a result, Washington, D.C., is more intense than Mr. Carlson has seen it in the 35 years he's lived there, and people have become "hysterical" about the state of things, he said. The only way to restore peace — and create a place where people are comfortable enough to barely remember the president's name, which Mr. Carlson views as ideal — is to give the power back to voters, he said.
"I just hope that going forward, the people who are administering the system in D.C. will respect the views of voters, no matter who they elect," Mr. Carlson said. "If we stick to that model, things will calm down."
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