Soros matters: Network of corporate boardrooms pulled advertising from Tucker Carlson

Special to WorldTribune.com

Corporate WATCH

By Joe Schaeffer, March 21, 2019

A scrappy media watchdog organization uncovers a shocking truth about a popular TV news host, causing his show’s advertisers to quake and shudder at the disturbing and unacceptable revelations. Such is the drama presented to the American people.

But what if it turned out that the “watchdog” and a good number of the companies expressing their horror already belong to the same corporate and financial networks and are of one mind on the need to silence a populist conservative voice?

Advertisers are abandoning Fox News host Tucker Carlson in the wake of the earth-shattering news dug up by progressive organization Media Matters for America that he said some non-PC things on a shock jock radio show many years ago.

Media Matters has been targeting Carlson for some time and earlier  pressured companies to stop advertising on his show due to comments he made on immigration that were deemed beyond the pale by the professional Left.

Big-dollar progressive donors have backed Media Matters since its creation in 2004, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The website activistfacts.com reports “MMfA has received nearly $30 million from foundations since it started. The Tides Foundation is [one of] the largest contributors to MMfA and [Media Matters Action Network], giving nearly $4.4 million.”

The leftist Washington Post brazenly carried water for Media Matters by allowing its president Angelo Carusone to deceptively claim that Soros had not financially supported the organization for several years. But The Washington Free Beacon reports documents in its possession show Soros in 2017 gave $1.35 million to another group that shares its employee base with Media Matters. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is part of what the Free Beacon reports is a concerted campaign devised by Media Matters founder David Brock “to damage [President] Trump using [radical organizations] Media Matters, American Bridge, Shareblue, and CREW.”

“CREW’s address on its 2017 tax forms is the same as Media Matters, American Bridge, and Shareblue,” the Free Beacon reports.

Elizabeth L. Smith of Bloomin’ Brands / BizJournals

Media Matters has regularly lashed out at conservative media critics of Democrat candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Under the Internal Revenue Code, Media Matters, like all section 501(c)(3) organizations, “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

It is not difficult to connect these progressive foundation titans with the large corporations expressing their distaste for Carlson. Take Outback Steakhouse, the popular chain restaurant that announced it would stop advertising on the show in January.

Outback is owned by parent company Bloomin’ Brands. The Chairman of the Board and CEO of Bloomin’ Brands is Elizabeth L. Smith. She is also on the Board of Directors of UNICEF USA, the American affiliate of the United Nations’ child “advocacy” group. UNICEF is deeply involved in promoting the Third World invasion of the U.S. as well as abortion and other forms of population control, all under the guise of protecting children.

Mindy Grossman, president and CEO of Weight Watchers, also sits on UNICEF USA’s board of directors. She had been a member of Bloomin’s board as well before suddenly announcing her resignation, effective immediately, on March 18.

Edward G. Lloyd is president of UNICEF USA’s Impact In Kind Assistance Corporation (IKAC). He previously served as U.S. Fund for UNICEF Vice President of Finance and Administration. Lloyd happens to also be a member of the board of directors for the Tides Foundation, the multimillion-dollar backer of… Media Matters.

Mindy Grossman of Weight Watchers

Here’s another example. Pacific Life Insurance was one of the first companies to virtue signal its disapproval of Carlson’s anti-immigration remarks back in December. Julia Gouw is a Corporate Director of the Pacific Life Foundation, the charitable arm of the insurance giant. Gouw, former president of East West Bancorp, is listed as donating between $100,000 and $249,999 to the Los Angeles branch of a group called Asian Americans Advancing Justice in 2015. Gouw also sat on the East West Bank Foundation’s board of directors when it donated to the AAAJ on more than one occasion.

Pacific Life Foundation itself donated between $5,000 and $9,999 to the group in 2015.

Breitbart reports leaked documents reveal that George Soros tabbed AAAJ that very same year as one of four groups he was going to use “to help influence the methodology of the 2020 [U.S.] Census” via funding through his Open Society Foundations.

“Even prior to the 2015 Open Society Foundation memo, the [AAAJ] was attempting to influence the 2020 Census, joining with other groups to propose a set of 10 guidelines, titled ‘Redistricting Principles for a More Perfect Union,’ to influence the census,” Breitbart reports.

Claiming minority groups are under-counted and pushing for prison populations to be included as residents in redistricting planning are among the ways these leftist groups hope to shape the electoral map for 2020, the article states.

There you have it. From Pacific Life to Soros in two steps.

Julia Gouw donated heavily to a group, AAAJ, that is seen as key to the 2020 Census by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

And then there is Toyota, which “suspended all advertising” on Carlson’s program in December. The company is an enthusiastic supporter of illegal immigration and refugee migration. It is one of a handful of companies on the Corporate Board of Advisors for UnidosUS, which before camouflaging itself with a bland name was known as the National Council of La Raza, a militant Latino group that has worked with Chicano organizations seeking a “Reconquista” of U.S. states previously owned by Mexico.

The Toyota Foundation has also funded the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society at the University of Oxford in the UK. One of the center’s key financial backers is Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Not surprisingly, the center releases “research” projects with titles such as “Migration Making Places and Making People: New Narratives of Inclusion.”

Toyota also was enmeshed with the Clinton Foundation as a part of a multi-million-dollar Clinton Global Initiative program. Other Carlson-deploring companies to work with the Clinton Foundation include Farmers Insurance, Samsung and pharmaceutical goliath Pfizer, which gave Bill and Hillary between $1 million and $5 million.

Pfizer additionally happens to be an “Institutional Investor” for UnidosUS, aka the organization formerly known as “The Race.” Pfizer also is a “corporate partner” to the aforementioned UNICEF USA, giving the organization $1 million-plus in the past year, according to the UNICEF USA website.

Western Digital’s CEO Steve Milligan

Pacific Life Foundation is a UNICEF USA benefactor as well, donating $1 million-plus “over the history of the partnership.”

The overlap between organizations here is no coincidence.

Toyota isn’t the only Carlson-scolding corporation with a strident history of political activism on behalf of causes diametrically opposed to what the Fox News host champions on a nightly basis. SanDisk is a company that produces flash memory products. It is owned by parent company Western Digital. SanDisk pulled its advertising from Carlson’s show in December amid the kerfuffle over his immigration comments.

“We embrace diversity and inclusion, and work with advertising partners who share our core values,” a Western Digital/SanDisk spokesperson bloviated at the time, the Hollywood Reporter noted.

Indeed they do. Western Digital’s CEO Steve Milligan sits on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which takes a hardline pro-immigration stance. Milligan was among the signers of a public letter to President Donald Trump from the SVLG denouncing the “separation of families” of illegal aliens at the southern U.S. border.

In another statement denouncing Trump, the organization stated its unambiguous support for the ceaseless flow of mass immigration into this country. “Through this lens, we urge the Administration and Congress to never forget that we are a nation of immigrants, often refugees, whose diversity is the backbone of our unity,” the statement reads. “Our economy and quality of life are enhanced by waves of immigrants who continue to help build our Country.”

Corporate documents show Milligan was part of SVLG’s team working on its “No. 1a Federal Issues” priority item for 2015-2017 – high-skilled immigration reform. (See page 6).

Just as forceful as Milligan but in another direction is the company that owns Just For Men. The well-known men’s hair care brand stopped advertising on Carlson’s show in December, squawking about “aligning with partners who share our brand values.”

Related: Free Press showdown: Soros-funded group seeks to silence Tucker Carlson, March 13, 2019

And what brand values those are. Just For Men is owned by Combe Incorporated. Combe put an emergency contraceptive – i.e., an abortifacient – on the market in 2018. The company gained additional notoriety in 2017 by launching a vulgar campaign on behalf of its Vagisil brand. The “Vagina Challenge” had the company promising to donate $5 to Planned Parenthood every time somebody uttered the V-word in public.

In addition, Combe partners with another company that gives 10 percent of its profits to “reproductive health” groups including Planned Parenthood.

Corporate foundations and individual executives donating to Soros-front groups. CEOs on the board of a progressive internationalist organization with direct ties to a moneyed foundation that back Media Matters. A company devoutly promoting immigration for cheap labor and another financially backing Planned Parenthood as it hocks a product that terminates human life.



This is a cross-section of the delicate advertisers who just can’t bring themselves to support a populist conservative’s show anymore. The American people need to realize that the virtue signaling being flung down at them from corporate board rooms on high isn’t mere empty rhetoric spouted by large companies looking for cover. It is part and parcel of a collaborative, networked theatrical effort to squelch any and all criticism of the globalist world order.

In retrospect, what should viewers make of the “bold” revelations followed by the instantaneous pained responses from advertisers? It begs the question: Why do companies so offended by Carlson advertise on his show in the first place? What if the answer is… just so they can perform this theater?

Powerful corporations want to shape conservative thought, not ignore it, and when the gotcha moment drops they get to perform the extremely satisfying ideological task of virtue-signaling disapproval and yanking their advertising dollars, which certainly can be a highly effective way to influence a network.

This article, by Contributing Editor Joe Schaeffer, was made possible by FreePressFoundation.org.

[Would you like to see more more investigative journalism? 50 people donating $10 will fund future articles just like this, which take significant time and effort to research and report.]

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