Tucker: Making someone pay to live on your property is now a federal crime
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host calls out Biden's unconstitutional eviction moratorium
On New Year’s Day of this year, Rochelle Walensky was just a college professor in Massachusetts. You’d almost certainly never heard of her. You definitely didn’t vote for her at any point, because Walensky had never run for office. As of January first, Walensky’s political power was precisely the same as yours and everyone else’s in this supposedly self-governing republic: she had one vote out of a nation of 320 million people. And then, just a few weeks later, everything changed, for her, and for the rest of us. Joe Biden appointed Walensky to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. At the time, it didn’t seem like a huge deal at the time. The CDC is not a legislative body. It is a public health bureau. It was originally designed to fight malaria, and it did a good job.
The CDC gathers information about diseases and then releases guidance about those diseases to the country. The CDC does not make laws in this country. It’s not allowed to. Under the U.S. Constitution, making laws is the exclusive role of Congress. You vote for your senators and congressmen and they decide what the rules are. That’s known as representative democracy. It’s been our system for nearly 250 years. But apparently, it is now over. Rochelle Walensky now makes the laws. Walensky announced today that she has decided to nationalize America’s rental properties, millions and millions of them from Maine to California. Tenants are no longer required to pay their rent.
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Property owners cannot evict them under any circumstances. Making someone pay to live on your property is now a federal crime. Try it, and you can wind up in prison, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. At the same time, you should know, property owners will still be required to pay the banks that hold their mortgages. There’s no moratorium on mortgages. Why? The banks are huge Democratic donors, and they’re getting the treatment they paid for. Sandy Cortez and The Squad aren’t calling for the banks to do their part. It’s property owners who will suffer, many of them members of the rapidly disappearing American middle class.
It’s hard to overstate what a momentous change this is. It means among other things that private property no longer exists in the United States. You thought you owned your home. Not anymore. Rochelle Walensky does. She’ll decide who can live there, under what circumstance and for how long.
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Is this a good idea? Of course not. It’s totalitarian. But there’s an even more pressing question at the center of this story — a principle that defines what kind of country this is and what kind of country it will be going forward: Where did Rochelle Walensky get the power to do this, to suspend private property rights in America? The answer is, she simply asserted the power. Walensky claimed she had the authority, and no one stopped her from exercising it. This morning she signed an official-looking order declaring that her opinion is now the law, and so it is the law. But wait, you say. That doesn’t seem very American. Shouldn’t somebody vote on this? If we’re going to continue to pretend this is a democracy, and you hear that on television constantly, then shouldn’t our elected lawmakers make the laws? Nope. And they’re not going to. Nancy Pelosi has refused to call a vote on the matter, and she runs the Congress, she decides. Most Republicans haven’t said a word. That means that an unelected college professor you hadn’t heard of six months ago is now in charge of your country.
If you’re wondering how all of this can possibly be legal, rest assured that it’s not — it’s not even arguably legal. We know for a fact that it’s not. The Supreme Court just ruled on the question, specifically. The court found that the CDC does not have the right to institute a nationwide eviction moratorium. Period. Only Congress can do that. Now, the court didn’t make us guess on their view on this, the court put that in writing, in the clearest possible language. There's no debate about that. The Biden Administration just ignored what the court said.
How can they do that?
Congresswoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles understands exactly how they did it. Waters is hardly a genius. It’s likely she’s never read an entire book. But one thing Maxine Waters knows well is how third-world regimes operate. When you want something, you simply take it. You’ve got the guns. Who’s going to stop you? Might makes right. The Fidel Castro method. Waters explained that out loud today, as she pushed Rochelle Walensky to suspend private property in America.
"I don't buy that the CDC can't extend the eviction moratorium," Waters wrote on Twitter, perfectly aware that the Supreme Court had already prohibited it. "Who is going to stop them? Who is going to penalize them?"
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Well, good question, nobody. And Nancy Pelosi knows that too. Pelosi knows that what Rochelle Walensky just did is illegal by definition. She also knows that openly ignoring a Supreme Court ruling will mean the end of our current system. That’s fine with Nancy Pelosi.
"The CDC has the power to extend the eviction moratorium," Pelosi said. She didn’t explain where that power comes from. She simply declared that it exists, as dictators do.
Keep in mind that even Joe Biden, who knows very little, knows that what his administration has just done is against the law. He said it on camera yesterday:
JOE BIDEN: I've sought out constitutional scholars. To determine what is the best possibility, that would come from executive action or the CDC judgment. What could they do that was most likely to pass muster? Constitutionally. The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it's not likely to pass constitutional muster. Number one. But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it's worth the effort.
So the eviction moratorium has been in place for months, it has just been extended as of today. So people have debated this, jurists have weighed in on it, and so we know, it won’t pass, "constitutional muster," says Biden. In other words, it’s illegal. The people doing it are criminals. That’s the word we use for people who knowingly break the law. But like most criminals, they’re not embarrassed by breaking the law, that’s what they do.
Here is Joe Biden's "senior adviser" -- a thoroughly oily character called Gene Sperling -- telling you that the rule of law just isn't relevant here.
GENE SPERLING: To date, the CDC director and her team have been unable to find the legal authority, even for a more targeted eviction moratorium, that would focus just on counties with higher rates of COVID spread. … This is a president who really understands the heartbreak of eviction. The reason why he is pressing and pressing, even when legal authority looks slim, is because he wants to make sure we have explored every potential authority.
These people are so filthy, but they’re self-righteous. Did you catch that? We don’t have the legal authority to do what we’re doing. But we’re doing it anyway. Because who’s going to stop us?
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Republicans? Mitch McConnell? Please. Mark Milley doesn’t report to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell doesn’t control the FBI or the intelligence agencies. Mitch McConnell is unarmed. What’s he going to do about it? Give a grumpy speech and drive back to his condo?
That’s what they’re saying. That’s what criminals always say when they shake you down at gunpoint. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what they’re doing. That’s exactly who they are.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the August 4, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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