Reporters actually holding the powerful to account for practices detrimental to the U.S. economy should be required TV for any aspiring journalist. Today’s lesson is brought to you by Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
Baier grilled BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has effectively become the face of corporate America’s failed obsession with woke environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards that was being forced onto American consumers and businesses.
“The woke era — a failed experiment — the ESG, the DEI, the kind of push toward that,” Baier posed to a squirming Fink during the March 11 edition of Special Report. “When you talk about things now, you talk in a practical sense — what we’ve got to do and what we’ve got to get done. Looking back at that, how do you see it?” Despite being the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock’s recent actions like withdrawing from the globalist Climate Action 100+ plan indicate that even its leadership recognized that being woke doesn’t pay dividends.
Fink stumbled over himself trying to retcon his multibillion-dollar company’s actions: “Society moves — the pendulum moves all the time. Um, in BlackRock’s cases — you know — we are responsible for managing money for everybody.” Huh? What is he even babbling about?
Gallup released a poll in May 2023 showing that the plurality of Americans (40 percent) weren’t even familiar with ESG at all to begin with, and another plurality (48 percent) stated that ESG considerations should be excluded from investment decisions in favor of financial factors exclusively. Where exactly was “society” moving, Fink? If there was any pendulum shift at all, as Consumers Research Executive Director Will Hild pointed out in an X post, it’s “because [FINK IS] THE ONE WHO PUSHED IT THERE.” No kidding.
BREAKING: @BretBaier pressed @BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on his woke activism and Larry PANICKED 👇 pic.twitter.com/NPlkUE41JP
— Will Hild (@WillHild) March 11, 2026
It was clear that Fink wasn’t ready for this questioning by Baier. “And even today, as you said, — maybe these, uhm, renewables, are less talked about,” Fink stated incoherently. He still tried to flex BlackRock’s ESG bona fides to some degree, as if that was somehow going to make him seem less silly: “I can tell you right now, we have many investors worldwide who are investing in renewables, trying to emphasize solar, and other things like that. We’re working with Occidental Petroleum at building the best carbon capture factories in Texas right now!” He then let it slip that he believed the pendulum was in fact pushed too hard five years ago, but then tried to make it seem like he and his company were the pragmatic victims of circumstance:
“Do I believe we’re more prag— and I’m personally more pragmatic too!” It’s like watching a train wreck happen in real time. Baier, sensing that Fink was spiraling, tried to get him back on topic with a pointed question about his company’s role in the ESG movement: “ Do you think BlackRock pushed some companies a little bit further left than you thought?”
Fink then lied straight through his teeth: “It was never our intention because our job is to be — I got to be a fiduciary to everybody who gives us money.” But as most of these ivory tower lefties seem to forget, the internet is forever. Fink himself was personally raked over the coals for a 2017 comment he made during a New York Times interview where he blatantly admitted his company was forcing ESG/DEI compliance on American companies:
Behaviors are gonna have to change and this is one thing we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors, and at BlackRock we are forcing behaviors.
Larry’s comment that the pendulum simply swung too far to the left is telling, because HE’S THE ONE WHO PUSHED IT THERE.
He’s only now “more pragmatic,” because he and the Woke Cabal got caught and now they’re feeling the heat of antitrust investigations, lawsuits, etc.
If this… pic.twitter.com/T7lI0wPcWb
— Will Hild (@WillHild) March 11, 2026
Go pound sand, Larry.
