Fox News host Tucker Carlson ripped into Walmart on Wednesday after it chose to discontinue sales of certain gun ammunition, accusing the world’s largest retailer of siding with urban liberals in the gun debate while simultaneously destroying the economies of small American towns where the company mostly operates.



“The company more responsible than any other company for destroying and degrading rural America, for making our towns uglier and cheaper and poorer. The same people who pushed the appalling lie that brightly colored plastic crap from China is going to make us happy. That company is now lecturing normal Americans, the very Americans that they have hurt, how immoral they are for daring to protect themselves with firearms,” Carlson said during his monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

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“The same people who pushed the appalling lie that brightly colored plastic crap from China is going to make us happy. That company is now lecturing normal Americans ... for daring to protect themselves with firearms.” — Tucker Carlson



Walmart announced Tuesday it would stop selling handgun ammunition as well as short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber bullets used in military style weapons, after it runs out of its current inventory. The company, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., also asked customers not to openly carry firearms in its stores, even in states where laws allow it.



“And everyone in Washington, New York and Los Angeles is applauding them,” Carson said. He pointed out that though Walmart operates primarily in rural America, it’s difficult to gauge how rural Americans feel about the store’s decision to limit ammunition sales due to a lack of polling data.

Liberal network news hosts on MSNBC and CNN, meanwhile, are praising Walmart for being “more enlightened than government is,” Carlson said. He called this “a fascinating turnaround” because for years, “Walmart was the target of coordinated attacks from the left.”

“Progressives used to attack the company for destroying small town America and for exploiting workers,” Carlson said. “Walmart hired PR consultants and union busters to push back for years, but the company never really changed the way it does business. And, yet somehow the left has mostly stopped attacking them.”

Carlson explained that as liberals got richer, they traded economic issues for identity issues.

“Walmart meanwhile realized it could buy immunity from criticism from the left by mouthing left-wing pieties. That’s all it takes really. Sounding woke and they’ll leave you alone,” he added.

“Walmart ... realized it could buy immunity from criticism from the left by mouthing left-wing pieties. That’s all it takes really. Sounding woke and they’ll leave you alone.” — Tucker Carlson

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon called on Congress to ban many semi-automatic rifles as well to seize firearms from some Americans. The company is owned by the Walton family who are worth more than $150 billion. According to Carlson, Walmart cares only about money -- not the issue of gun control -- and got rich by “selling foreign goods to domestic consumers -- cheap Chinese garbage manufactured off shore in factories that pay slave wages, wages that American manufacturers could never match.”

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He added that the majority of Walmart employees work part time because, “if Walmart keeps employees hours low enough, it can avoid paying them benefits. Meanwhile, the federal government —you, taxpayers -- will subsidize their low wages with welfare benefits. In other words, 'You are working, so the Walton family won’t have to pay their employees enough to live,'” Carlson said.

“We’re not talking about it," he said, "because Walmart is now pushing gun control."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.