Listening to the whole interview I think Carlson was going to try to ride two horses at the same time.
Horse number one: The rich aren’t paying enough taxes and you and I are both heroes for saying that out loud, even if I only do it occasionally, and you did it at Davos to all the billionaires.
Horse number two: You don’t have any good ideas for how to fix this, do you, just like any other left wing person. It’s a different society now, and we need thoughtful tax ideas, which can only come from the extreme right, and only after we’ve kicked out all the immigrants.
You can see the outline of horse number two in his attempt at replying seriously. “But this country was sustained by an industrial economy at the time that was broad and deep, that created a middle class. That doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s an entirely different economy. I wish it did exist.”
But instead of accepting that premise and allowing Carlson an opportunity to claim that increased taxes aren’t as important as bringing back coal mining (or whatever stupidity he had planned to say), Bregman dismisses it as irrelevant, and when Carlson delivers an attempt at a gotcha with “Tax rates work the same way in an entirely different economy?” he has a well formulated reply about where Carlson’s very large paychecks are coming from and have been coming from. And Tucker just doesn’t have a counter argument.