TUCKER CARLSON: Americans are having to defend themselves

We haven't taken a poll, but it's possible on this Thursday evening you may be wondering what the hell is going on in our country. There are so many unanswered questions, some of them lingering. How, for example, did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his former boss, rock star, crowd surfer Barack Obama? Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle? Honestly, we don't know and we don't expect to get an answer to it tonight.  

So, let's move instead to more immediate questions like all these weird things shooting through the sky over the United States and Canada that nobody seems able to positively identify. Should we be worried about these things? What about our infrastructure, the steel and concrete parts of America that the Biden administration has shown strange contempt for possibly because they were built by those dreaded White construction workers that Mayor Pete dislikes so much. Our critical infrastructure appears to be falling apart. Is that a problem or can we, in the bright new transhumanist future our leaders envision feed ourselves with McKinsey consultants alone? If we can, how do they taste?  

You may be wondering all of this or maybe you're not wondering any of it because you have no clue what we're talking about because the media hasn't told you about it. A press corps that's willing to spend a full week ignoring a toxic mushroom cloud over Ohio will ignore pretty much anything. So, in case you're not up to date, here's a partial recap of events. Last night there was a massive and as yet, unexplained fire at a plant nursery just south of Orlando. The fire burned more than two acres of plastic planters.  

Now, burning plastic releases a lot of bad chemicals, including dioxins, which you don't want and that's why you don't do this in your fireplace. When a single plastic beaker melted in Stanford's science building last year, the school evacuated the area, but outside Orlando, there was no evacuation. Residents were told to stay in their homes. None of the environmentalists in the Biden administration, the people who claim ostentatiously to care about the environment, said anything about it. Nor do they have a lot to say about what happened in Tucson on Tuesday. 

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A tractor trailer carrying nitric acid rolled over on I-10. Nitric acid is a carcinogen. Within two hours of the crash, authorities evacuated a small number of residents. They told everybody living within a mile to shelter in place. Then two hours after that, they lifted the shelter-in-place order, but then the next morning, authorities announced that they had "reinstated" the shelter-in-place order for a one-mile perimeter around the incident and then they told residents to "turn off heaters and/or air conditioning systems that bring in outside air." Oh, outside air! No air for you. Well, why did they give this order? Because the first order, it turns out, was wrong. It wasn't safe for people to move back into their homes.

So, just as in East Palestine, Ohio, authorities, for whatever reason, exposed people to dangerous chemicals. If this is incompetence, there seems to be an awful lot of it lately. Then today it nearly happened again. A freight train derailed about 30 miles west of downtown Detroit. It's a Norfolk Southern train. That's the same company that operated the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Thirty cars went off the tracks. Fortunately, if the information that we are getting tonight is accurate, we can't vouch that it is, the car containing liquid chlorine did not overturn, apparently.  

That is, however you slice it, an awful lot of drama on our roads and rails in a single week. Who's in charge of our roads and rails anyway? Well, that would be the secretary of transportation. That would be Pete Buttigieg. He's in charge. He was asked about it today. In response, he pointed out that train derailments are not a big deal. "Settle down. They're very common. Train derailments happen on average nearly three times every day."

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PETE BUTTIGIEG: Look, rail safety is something that that has evolved a lot over the years, but there's clearly more that needs to be done because while this horrible situation has got a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing.  

Wait a second. You think East Palestine is a big deal, a thousand trains derailed every year in the United States, says Pete Buttigieg, who presumably has the stats on that, did you know that? Are you OK with a thousand trains a year derailing in your country? Don't a lot of these trains carry highly dangerous chemicals through highly populated areas? Yeah.  

So, if you were Pete Buttigieg, put yourself in his tiny position for a moment, if you were him, wouldn't fixing that, this ongoing disaster, be your very first priority? Well, of course it would be, but you're not Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg doesn't care about trains derailing. He cares about equity. Trains derailing? That's fine. You're fine. You're so fine with the people who show up to test the air and the water after a train derailment wearing hazmat suits because the air and water are perfectly safe as long as you're wearing a hazmat suit.  

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See, there's a simple solution to this: Stop whining. Now, what does Norfolk Southern think of all this? We'd love to know, but we don't know because the company skipped the town hall last night in East Palestine, Ohio. Hundreds of locals had gathered to ask obvious and for them pressing questions like: Why are thousands of fish and animals dying? Why? Executives at Norfolk Southern didn't show up at the event. Why? Because they were worried for their own safety.  

REPORTER TO EAST PALESTINE MAYOR: Why is the company not here?  

EAST PALESTINE MAYOR: Because they're scared for their safety.  

LUCAS TOMLINSON, FOX NEWS: Hundreds of anxious residents packed a school gym here in East Palestine on Wednesday night looking for answers almost two weeks after a huge train derailment released hazardous chemicals into their town contaminating much of the surrounding area, but there were notable absences from the town hall meeting, including the rail operator, Norfolk Southern. Also not attending, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.  

The mayor says he's had limited contact with the White House, leaving folks here frustrated, angry and complaining about a lack of information from the Feds and Norfolk Southern. State officials and the EPA say the water and air are both safe, but residents here tell a different story. They say they've been getting sick and so have their pets.  

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"It's so safe, we're not going there. Our oxygen tanks are empty and by the way, there are elderly, low-income people on crutches there. We don't feel safe around them." But from the perspective of the people who live in East Palestine, it looks a little different. You would think if you live in the United States and you send by force at gunpoint half of your annual pay to Washington, someone in Washington would care when your town is poisoned by a train derailment. Oh, but you thought wrong. Who do you think you are, a Ukrainian? Nobody cares about you. Is this Kyiv? No, it's Ohio. Shut up. The Biden administration has other priorities, by the way, like shooting down $300 weather balloons with $400,000 missiles and yes, apparently they did that. Joe Biden himself admitted it today.  

PRESIDENT BIDEN: We don't yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing, nothing right now suggests they were related to China's spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country. The intelligence community's current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research. 

That's the "intelligence community" — air quotes now required. That's the intelligence community's assessment. "Oh, their kids sent a balloon up and we sent a sidewinder after. Mission accomplished." Well, a lot of questions that emanate quite naturally from that bewildering announcement, but Joe Biden didn't take any of them. He scampered off without taking questions. Begone serfs. Like Norfolk Southern and Mayor Pete, Biden knows he doesn't have to answer the questions because what are you going to do about it?  

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What are you going to do about it? Well, actually, they're starting to worry a little bit about what you might do about it. The people in charge are stupid, obviously, but they're not so dim they don't understand the consequences of serially mistreating the country over a period of many years. They're starting to get worried. They are afraid of the people they govern. How do we know that? Because they're moving at high speed to disarm the people they govern. Here's plastic surgery model Gavin Newsom of California last month.  

GAVIN NEWSOM: We've chosen this. This is our decision to live in these conditions. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. So, we've chosen this. We've accepted this. We can sit there and say "thoughts and prayers" or we can look in the mirror, say, "This is the price, I guess, of whatever, fill in the blank, freedom? This is the price of freedom." Freedom from what? 

"Prayer? How stupid is prayer?" says Gavin Newsom. "People who pray are idiots. I'm the only god here. Bow down before me. You can no longer defend yourselves. Only I have the right to defend your life." Now think about that for a minute. It's not a reassuring message, really. Anyone who strips you of your basic God-given right to self-defense is probably not your friend and anyone who does it in a moment of chaos like the ones we're living through, chaos that people like Gavin Newsom caused on purpose, anyone who does that is probably your blood enemy, but Gavin Newsom is not alone. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan has the very same message: Stop praying and obey. 

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GRETCHEN WHITMER: Firearms are getting more dangerous, too, thanks to 3D printing technology called Glock switches that turn semi-automatic weapons fully automatic. That's why we launched Operation Safe Neighborhoods, taking hundreds of illegal firearms off the street before they could be used in the commission of a crime, but we must do more, so the world our kids inherit is not more violent than the one we inhabit now. The time for only "thoughts and prayers" is over.  

Another low-IQ plastic surgery disaster lecturing us about things she has no understanding of. So, laugh at Gretchen Whitmer, if you will, but then think about what she's saying. She's mocking prayer. Really? Well, now that you mention it, Gretchen Whitmer, we might use a little prayer right now. Prayers work better than equity. Prayers are safer than Norfolk Southern. Prayers are more comforting than Kamala Harris's laugh. There's nothing wrong with prayers.  

What we don't need any more of is more totalitarian atheists with ill-gotten political power and designs on our lives. We've got enough of those, including you. So, when they're telling you that the two things you cannot have are guns and prayer, you know for a fact that those are the two things you need most and we're seeing a lot of evidence of that lately. Abandoned by their government to a world politicians have intentionally made chaotic, Americans are protecting themselves. They have no choice. Here's one recent and inspiring example from the state of Arizona.  

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BRIAN, SHOT SUSPECT IN SELF-DEFENSE: If he hadn't had a gun, my gun never would have come out, ever. That's all there is to it.  

ANITA ROMAN FOX10 PHOENIX REPORTER: Brian says it was around 5:15 Wednesday morning when the suspect walked into the Chevron, where he works the graveyard shift. 

BRIAN, SHOT SUSPECT IN SELF-DEFENSE: But I could hear him say rob money, you know, so, but in reality, he didn't need to say anything. The moment he pointed the gun at me, it was pretty obvious what he was there for.  

ANITA ROMAN FOX10 PHOENIX REPORTER: A suspect pointed the gun at Brian, but then Brian says he turned and pointed the weapon at a customer. Police confirm that's when Brian took action.  

LAUREN EVANS, AVONDALE POLICE COMMUNITY SERVICES SUPERVISOR: When he turned around, the clerk got out his own firearm and shot the suspect and was able to defend himself at that time.  

EMPLOYEE: I'm supposed to relieve him and I saw everything and I go, "Oh my God," but luckily the other employee is OK. 

ANITA ROMAN FOX10 PHOENIX REPORTER: Had the suspect walked in 30 minutes later, Brian says his coworker would have been behind the register. As terrifying as the situation was, he's glad he was the one to be there.  

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We're living through the most political moment in American history, but stories like the one you just saw transcend politics. We don't know who anyone in that tape voted for, but we know exactly how they felt as human beings, afraid and alone, and that's what happens when the government ceases conducting its most basic duty, which is to protect its citizens and they won't. 

They won't protect you. They've said that out loud and everybody knows it again, no matter who they voted for and so increasingly, Americans are having to defend themselves and once again, anyone who tells you can't defend yourself is your enemy.  

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Here's an example that is amazing and we think you'll agree that it is. In Tampa last month, a woman called Nashali Alma was working out in her apartment complex's gym. Because she's a kind person, she let in a man who was trying to open the door. That man then attempted to rape her. You're seeing the footage on your screen right now and Nashali Alma did not have a gun.  

She was in a gym, but she's extraordinarily tough and she was able to fight off the man who was trying to rape her. His name is Xavier Thomas-Jones. Thomas-Jones was later arrested after he tried to rape another woman in the apartment complex. The resilience and the strength you see in that video is so inspiring and so perfectly captures the best part of America that we wanted to speak to Nashali Alma tonight and she was gracious enough to agree.