Tucker Needs Help
The Pros And Cons Of Going Solo
Getting fired from Fox News gave Tucker Carlson the freedom to do whatever he wanted with his new show, and he has done some valuable work, such as giving Russian President Vladimir Putin his first longform western interview in years. But independent Tucker has lost part of what made his Fox show great: his savvy staff members. His latest interview, with Nikola founder Trevor Milton, exemplified that.
Here's Tucker's summary of his interview:
How Wall Street short sellers worked with the media and federal prosecutors to destroy Trevor Milton’s company and put him in jail for life. This is a shocking story.
That interview prompted Nate Anderson, the founder of the former short-selling shop Hindenburg Research, to rip Tucker a new one on X. I've posted Anderson's response in full below, but first, in the interest of full disclosure, I ought to note my past difference of opinions with Hindenburg.
Portfolio Armor Versus Hindenburg Research
Before closing shop, I believe Hindenburg's last short call was against Carvana (CVNA). Portfolio Armor subscribers and I took the opposite side of that trade.
— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) February 21, 2025
I didn't take issue with any of the past corruption claims Hindenburg made about Carvana's founder and his father. I bet against Hindenburg for two forward-looking reasons, as I explained in that post:
The first was Carvana was a Portfolio Armor top ten name. Since December of 2022, our top ten names have returned 19.55%, on average, over the next six months, versus an average of 12.45% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY 0.49%↑).
And the second reason was that the day before, Hindenburg's bearish thesis had been effectively invalidated, when Ally Financial, Inc. (ALLY 0.33%↑) renewed its financing deal with the company.
Since Carvana being a Portfolio Armor top name at the time was one reason we placed a successful bullish trade on it, I should mention two things about Portfolio Armor's top names, before we move on.
- We're going to be posting our weekly Top Names post in the Portfolio Armor Substack Thursday night. If you want a heads up when it goes out, feel free to subscribe to our Substack/occasional email list below.
- You can access Portfolio Armor's top names daily via our website or iPhone app.
With that air cleared, below is Nate Anderson's response to Tucker.
Authored by Hindenburg Research founder Nate Anderson on X
Responding To Tucker's Bizarre And Fantastical Interview
I am Nate Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg Research referenced repeatedly in this bizarre and fantastical interview. During my career, I helped expose numerous financial scams, including over a dozen Ponzi schemes and numerous instances of public companies lying to and stealing from investors: https://hindenburgresearch.com/about-us/
I am immensely proud of that career including our work on Nikola Motors referenced in the interview.
Trevor Milton is a convicted fraudster held criminally responsible for the incineration of hundreds of millions of dollars in retail investors’ hard-earned money. As should be unsurprising, Milton in this interview seems to just fabricate key events and information out of thin air – unfortunately with zero critical questioning or pushback from Tucker.
For starters, contrary to Trevor Milton’s implications that his prosecution was some sort of Biden administration conspiracy, conveniently neither Milton nor Tucker share that the investigation into Milton was started and disclosed in September 2020 – under the first TRUMP administration and well before the 2020 election.
There were numerous inaccuracies throughout the interview. The claim that Hindenburg paid employees for inside information is patently absurd. The key whistleblower discussed in the interview was only briefly a contractor for Milton. He was so horrified by what he viewed as Milton’s repeated false claims that he did a tremendous amount of research on his own, unraveling numerous additional suspected lies that Milton peddled to the investing public.
Further, Hindenburg didn’t “coordinate” anything with media or the DoJ. Such entities ran their own investigations for their own purposes unconnected to us. There was ample evidence that Milton misstated numerous aspects of his business, as the company itself later acknowledged.
It would take hours to write about all the other absurdities, half-truths, innuendos and false statements in this interview but in the interest of correcting some of the record, here’s a handful:
- Milton waxes on about his pardon, but no one mentioned that Milton’s lawyer was Brad Bondi—the brother of AG Pam Bondi. Nor did anyone mention that Milton donated $900 thousand to Trump in October 2024, less than a month before the recent election—strategically timed well after his criminal conviction and immediately prior to the presidential election. Trump acknowledged he had never heard of Milton before being asked to pardon him but relied on others for the recommendation.
- Milton failed to mention that immediately prior to his resignation from his company, beyond the extensive allegations of fraud, he was also publicly accused of multiple instances of sexual assault, including by his own cousin, who went on-the-record with her allegations.
- I can only wonder what kind of investigation Tucker undertook of the fraud allegations against Milton before having him on. Milton literally video-taped a truck rolling down a hill implying that it was driving under its own power. He also went up on stage and said a truck that didn’t work “fully functions and works.”
- Waxing poetic about hydrogen in the interview echoes Nikola’s lies to retail investors that it successfully produced hydrogen at a cost ~81% lower than anyone on earth, a feat that would have upended the entire energy industry had it been remotely true. Nikola’s head of hydrogen production, presumably in charge of this world-changing scientific breakthrough, turned out to be Milton’s own brother, who had no scientific background and previously did odd construction jobs in Hawaii.
- These weren’t one-off misstatements—there were dozens of examples like these. As the DoJ said – and proved in court – Milton “made false claims regarding nearly all aspects of Nikola’s business.” The company itself admitted to many of these false statements, agreed to a $125 million fine, and won an arbitration against Milton holding him personally liable for his conduct.
- Milton claimed that Hindenburg made $30m-$100m on our Nikola investment—this isn’t even close (we made a fraction of that). Trevor seems to just be making these numbers up out of thin air.
Hilariously, Tucker opened by suggesting that short selling was illegal until 2007, a claim that is completely false. After confirming that he knows nothing about the subject, he went on to suggest that short selling should be criminalized outright.
Short selling has existed for hundreds of years, and for good reason. Short sellers play a critical role in the functioning of healthy markets, similar to the role of investigative journalists, (which I presume Tucker considers himself akin to).
Most companies are a force for good and economic growth. However, some companies lie and engage in fraud. Short sellers have exposed nearly every major corporate fraud in the past several decades because just as there is an economic incentive for identifying the good companies, there is also an economic model for identifying the scams. This is how free markets and free speech works—helping weed out the bad companies and those stealing from investors so good companies have more room to thrive.
Claiming to be a free speech advocate while casually advocating for the imprisonment of anyone who dares to speak critically about public companies is a contradiction of the highest order.
In short, Tucker, I highly suggest you actually vet the people you welcome onto your platform. If you find yourself staring, mouth agape at your interviewee, repeatedly saying “Wow! This is unbelievable!” it may in fact be because it’s unbelievable.
You reach a lot of people and this one was an avoidable miss. Good day.