Ex-Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus was just one of several on Fox blaming “wokeness” for the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank – and ignoring how Trump rolled back regulations that could have prevented the failure.
On Saturday, Marcus visited the Cavuto Live show to push his MAGA propaganda about SVB bank and, coincidentally, let Trump’s banking deregulation off the hook:
MARCUS: All I know is that I can’t wait for Biden to get on the speech again, and talk about how great the economy is, and how it’s moving forward and getting stronger by the day, and this is an indication that whatever he says isn’t true, and maybe the American people will finally wake up and understand that we’re living in very tough times. In fact, the recession may have already started, who knows?
But it doesn’t look good, and I feel bad for all these people that lost all their money in this woke bank. You know, it was more distressing to hear that the bank officials sold off their stock before this happened, it’s depressing to me. Who knows whether the Justice Department would go after them? They’re a woke company, so I guess not.
Neil Cavuto seemed to doubt the diagnosis. “When you say a ‘woke company,’” he asked, “that’s a technology venture-capital-funded start-ups and all of that, they might have been disproportionately exposed to this. Do you think there are others like this bank out there?”
Yes, Marcus does, but not because of exposure to technology, but more wokeness.
MARCUS: I think there probably are, yeah. I think that the administration has pushed many of these banks into more concern about global warming than they do about shareholder return, and these banks are badly run because everybody’s focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on one thing they should, which is shareholder returns.
Instead of protecting the shareholders and their employees, they’re more concerned about the social policies, and I think it’s probably a badly run bank, they’ve been there for a lot of years, it’s pathetic that so many people lost money.
Cavuto was a voice of realism. He said Marcus “might be right on some of the woke stuff,” but “I just don’t see it here.” Cavuto added, “It might be simpler to say that they exposed themselves and were spoiled when we had interest rates at near zero percent. You had a lot of those bonds and a lot of those treasuries, they’re now under water when they have to cash out to get money to investors who want out, they lose money and it feeds on themselves.”
FACT CHECK: Donald Trump’s deregulation five years sowed the seeds for the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Funny how that was not mentioned.
FACT CHECK: Marcus’ own former company touts its own diversity, equity and inclusion. Nobody said Home Depot is in danger of collapsing. According to CNN, "The current consensus among 37 polled investment analysts" is that the stock is a "buy."
The same “wokeness” scapegoating was also seen on the Outnumbered show and Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co.
You can watch Marcus push weaponized propaganda over facts below, from the March 11, 2023 Cavuto Live.
