Fox News host Tucker Carlson's attempt to take down Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen with a video clip badly backfired on Thursday.
The latest edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight featured the conservative pundit lashing out at Yellen for telling the Senate Finance Committee that "our banking system remains sound" despite a recent string of U.S. bank failures.
Carlson also took issue with Yellen's failure to agree with Republican Senator Ron Johnson's suggestion that government spending played a key role in current high inflation rates, insisting that she was "wrong" and "lying about it."
The Fox News host argued that it was "not the first time she's been wrong." He then introduced a clip by saying, "here she was in 2007, one year before the Great Recession."
As the clip played, the year "2017" was clearly displayed on screen.
The footage showed Yellen saying that it would be "going too far" to predict there would "never be another financial crisis" but that the country's economy was "much safer" and she did not think a crisis would come "in our lifetimes."
"Our mistake," a somber-sounding Carlson said after the clip played. "That was 2017. Clearly, she didn't see this crisis coming."
Tucker Carlson Janet Yellen Fox News Treasury
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is pictured on the left during an event in Hollywood, Florida, on November 17, 2022, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is shown on the right Thursday during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Carlson on Thursday was forced to quickly correct himself after attempting to take down Yellen with a clip from 2017 that he initially claimed showed her failing to predict the Great Recession in 2007. Jason Koerner; Chip Somodevilla
The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the second- and third- largest bank failures in U.S. history, have inspired fears of an impending financial crisis in the U.S. and abroad.
While Yellen said that the domestic banking system was "sound" during her Senate testimony, she admitted that "work needs to be done" on bringing down still-high levels of inflation.
The treasury secretary's positive assessment of the banking system appears to have restored some confidence among investors on Thursday, with surging prices among multiple U.S. bank stocks following her testimony.
Credit Suisse share prices also rebounded on Thursday, hours after the struggling giant announced a $54 billion loan deal with the Swiss central bank.
On the same day that the banking stocks were rebounding, Goldman Sachs economists warned that the chances of a U.S. recession happening in the next 12 months was 35 percent, up from 25 percent last month.
Yellen, the first woman to serve as treasury secretary, has had a long history of advising the government on economic issues. In 2007, the year that Carlson initially attributed to the video clip on Thursday, she was serving as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Yellen later served as the vice chair and eventually the chair of the Federal Reserve under former President Barack Obama, becoming the first woman to chair the Fed. She also held positions at the Fed and the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the administration of former President Bill Clinton.
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