They stopped making them because the 500 Euro note was the choice currency of transnational criminals.

It is all an act for people like Carlson and Owens. Carlson is much better at disguising his rhetoric in classical liberalism with a layer of “America first”. And Carlson might not be in it for the money as much as Owens is - he genuinely seems to like to create controversies for the sake of watching the world burn - but they are both hacks whose political opinions are dictated by what will get them the most clicks, the largest audience, the most fame, etc. They’re both trying to position themselves for a post-Trump world.

My conspiracy theory is that they intentionally made the internet search engines awful to force us to use AI.