Tucker Carlson: Coronavirus response is being driven by politics

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Tucker: Coronavirus response is being driven by politics

It's likely that Americans have never been as unhappy as they are right now. And for Democrats, that's a win.

The president announced Thursday that the Republican Party has canceled its traditional nominating convention in Florida next month.

The reason: coronavirus.

DONALD TRUMP: This afternoon, my political team came to me and laid out our plans for the convention in Jacksonville, Florida. It's a place I love. I love that state. 

TRUMP EXPLAINS DECISION TO CANCEL JACKSONVILLE PART OF GOP CONVENTION: 'SETTING AN EXAMPLE'

But I looked at my team and I said the timing for this event is not right. It is just not right with what's happened recently, the flare-up in Florida. To have a big convention is not the right time.

Well, that news will certainly inconvenience some people. It's without precedent in recent history. But in the end, it's hard to believe that canceling a political convention will affect the outcome ultimately of this year's presidential election.

Yet it is very likely that the coronavirus lockdowns themselves will affect the outcome. And here's why.

The most basic question political polling never changes, is your country on the right track or the wrong track? In a reelection campaign especially that is always the central question, and every political consultant in America knows that.

There is no poll the Biden campaign pays closer attention to than the daily right track, wrong track numbers, especially now. The presidential election, in fact, believe it or not, is almost here.

In some places, early voting begins in just over a month. The results of that voting will define the country's future. If Democrats take both the Senate and the White House, and they could, you will not recognize America a year from now.

Think about how much things have changed just over the past six months. Now, imagine what would have happened if there had been no meaningful opposition to the mob, if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been able to impose her plans without any restraint.

That's exactly what they intend to do if they win. They're not hiding it.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS.: If Mitch McConnell tries to do what he did to President Obama, then we should get rid of the filibuster.

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants. (All Democratic candidates raise hands)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS I-VT.: That is why we will implement legislation based on the principles of the Green New Deal.

DAVID MUIR: Are you proposing taking away their guns and how would this work?

BETO O’ROURKE, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am if, it's a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield...Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.: It's funny because when people ask me, what does a world where we defund the police, where you know defunding police looks like, I tell them it looks like a suburb.

Well, say what you will about the people you just saw, they are not moderates. This is not the Democratic Party you remembered. Dopey liberals with flaccid ideas that you probably had contempt for, but in the end could live with.

No, these are radicals. They despise the country they seek to govern. They plan to remake it completely. These people want power with an intensity that you as a normal well-adjusted person cannot even begin to understand. They will do anything for control.

So the question is, what are they doing to win? Well, they're working the right track wrong track numbers. Democrats understand that the unhappier Americans become, the more likely they are to win.

Unhappy people want change. It is not complicated.

So every ominous headline about the state of the country makes it more likely that Donald Trump will lose his job. The more that people suffer, the greater Joe Biden's advantage.

Democrats have a strong incentive, therefore to inflict as much pain as they can and that's what they're doing.

On March 1st, New York State confirmed its first case of the coronavirus. At the time, you may not remember, the media was still attacking the president for taking the Wuhan coronavirus too seriously. They said his travel ban on China was hysterical and xenophobic.

Two days later, citing the pandemic, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine banned spectators from a sporting event, and The Washington Post scoffed at him.

The paper called DeWine's restrictions quote, "radical." On that day, March 3rd, more than 40 percent of Americans thought the country was headed in the right direction, and for the Biden campaign that number was way too high.

Then within a week, higher education began to shut down and life really started to change for many people. Hundreds of thousands of idle college-aged kids returned home. Stores began to empty. Hand sanitizers, cleaning supplies disappeared.

On March 12th, the National Hockey League canceled its season. Major League Baseball followed suit. They ended spring training. Suddenly there were no sports.

Movie theaters closed, so did bowling alleys. And yet still, 40 percent of Americans continued to believe that their country was headed in the right direction and that was bad news for the Joe Biden campaign.

So then came the shutdowns. The CDC recommended canceling all public events with more than 50 people present. Public schools closed, so did bars, restaurants, gyms and churches.

Critically, millions lost their jobs when businesses were shuttered. The unemployment rate rose to the highest level in nearly a century. Now, at the time, they told us that mass quarantines were essential. They were a public health measure. We were saving lives with our suffering. Most people wanted to believe that because most Americans are decent people.

But as summer approached, it became clear that the people telling us that were lying. Science had nothing to do with this. Studies from around the world showed that being outside was far safer than staying at home. That was conclusive.

And yet governors continued to maintain mandatory shelter-in-place orders. In Michigan, which not coincidentally is a swing state, Democrats banned citizens from visiting their own weekend homes or using outboard motors. In New Jersey, people were arrested for going to the beach.

After a while, the authorities issuing these orders stopped trying to pretend that they were backed up with reason or data. Anthony Fauci, who for a long time, seemed like a serious man of science, announced that it was very dangerous to shake hands with the people you love, but it was fine to have sex with strangers you meet online.

Like Anthony Fauci himself, the coronavirus lockdowns were revealed to be capricious and transparently political. Above all though, and this was the point, they made Americans miserable. Prescriptions for antidepressants rose 21 percent in a single month.

By the end of April, the right track wrong track number inverted. Just 22 percent of those polled believe the country was on the right track, and yet for the people pushing Joe Biden for president, that number was still too high. So, we had riots.

As the entire country watched in real-time, mobs looted and burned a police station in Minneapolis. We saw Americans dragged from their stores and beaten unconscious on camera, some were killed.

Most people watching were horrified by this, of course, but professional Democrats were thrilled by it. They slashed police budgets to ensure it would continue -- and it did.

Crime rates soared. The crackdown on normal people accelerated. Your kids weren't allowed to have graduation ceremonies or get married. But hundreds of thousands of confirmed Joe Biden voters were allowed to flood the streets and break things.

And then mid-summer camp, with the election just months away, America’s suffering had to be intensified. It was a political imperative. So schools across the country announced they would stay closed in the fall. No one bothered to explain the science behind this because there wasn't any.

Schoolchildren remain nearly immune to the fatal effects of the coronavirus. To this day there is not a single recorded case in the entire world of a student passing COVID-19 to a teacher, not one case. But schools shut down anyway.

Desperate parents wonder what they were going to do with their kids in September. Good luck, they were told. Figure something out.

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Residents of Washington, D.C. were told they would be required by law to wear masks everywhere they went for the foreseeable future. And yet, the people who made that law exempted themselves from it. They already know they're voting for Joe Biden.

Everyone else in the country became dramatically unhappier. Nearly three-quarters of Americans now say their country has become a much worse place than it was.

Doctors have prescribed so much Zoloft, the antidepressant, that it is now on the federal drug shortage list. In fact, it is likely that Americans have never in the history of this country been as unhappy as they are right now.

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It's a tragedy, but for Democrats, it's a win. According to polls, Republicans may now lose once-safe Senate seats in Iowa and Montana, just to name two.

So say what you will with the destruction of America, but as a political matter, it's been a stroke of genius.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on July 23, 2020.

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