Tucker Carlson: Why are thousands of federal troops still in Washington?

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Tucker: Why is National Guard still in Washington after inauguration?

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host sounds off on continued occupation of nation's capital

As of Wednesday night there are nearly 10,000 federal troops in America's capital city. Why are they there? How long will they be staying? No one is being very clear about any of that.

So you're left to draw your own conclusions, which people naturally are doing. By the way, it's not making anyone more moderate. If you're really worried about extremism, you probably wouldn't put 10,000 federal troops in your capital city, making everyone more radical and crazy. But they don't care about that. The point of this whole highly militarized exercise is to remind you of what Mao Zedong once famously said: "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun."

Unfortunately, that is true in every country at all times. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is no genius, but he does understand that. As he explained Wednesday, as long as his political opponents exist, those soldiers will stay:

MURPHY: The threat to the country is not over. We still have 5,000 National Guard members surrounding the Capitol complex. Why? Because there are still existing threats, present threats to the security of the Capitol. And so, so long as Donald Trump is empowered by Senate Republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the Capitol ... The threat is still very real to American democracy.

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So as long as there are people in this country who persist in disagreeing with Chris Murphy, explains Chris Murphy, we're going to need to keep thousands of heavily armed soldiers on the scene. Why? Because "the threat is still very real to American democracy."

But wait, democracy requires soldiers? We thought it was voluntary. If you're starting to think that maybe someone at some point secretly redefined the term "democracy," changing its meaning roughly 180 degrees from what it was just last year, you may be onto something.

What we're looking at now is not democracy in the classical Athenian sense, where everyone gets to vote and the voice of everyone matters equally. No, now we're looking at democracy in a 1970s Eastern Bloc "People's Democratic Republic" sense. This new version of democracy is a democracy where everyone fervently agrees with the people in power, or else they go immediately to jail.

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, explained Wednesday that we're not letting these soldiers go home until they do what our Special Operations Forces did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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RYAN: Who in our government and our military have had experience around crowd control, maybe even Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Like, how can we learn everything we need to learn to reset the posture on Capitol Hill? And we're not going to let the National Guard go home or we're not going to create an unsafe environment for the country's business until we have that figured out.

Oh, they're specialists in controlling unruly populations. We get it. Rather than answer our questions or improve our lives, you're bringing in people with guns to remind us that you're in charge and dissent is illegal. That's a big change.

You may have thought you were a decent American in good standing. Ten years ago, nobody in this country would have called your views extreme, because they weren't extreme then. You don't think they're extreme now. You've always considered yourself a pretty moderate person. You live your life and get along with others. But that's not possible now, because the rules have changed. You are now a dangerous insurgent, no different from a bloodthirsty Pashtun in Helmand Province or an ISIS terrorist in Irbil. You're part of a guerrilla insurgency. (Or maybe it's a gorilla insurgency. That's possible, too. Have you seen the pictures from Jan. 6? Some of those terror leaders seemed suspiciously furry.)

Thankfully, they arrested Chewbacca Guy and the rest of his marauding band of terrorists, many of them well over 65 years old, so there is still a little justice in this country. But hairy stoners in Viking hats are not the only threat that Sandy Cortez faces, far from it. There are the other members of Congress to worry about. Some of them are Republicans, and you know what that means. At any moment, these people are likely to open fire indiscriminately on the House floor purely out of racism. And of course, she's worried about that.

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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.: We still don't yet feel safe around other members of Congress ... The moment you bring a gun onto the House floor in violation of rules, you put everyone around you in danger ... I don't care if you accidentally set it off. I don't care if you intentionally set it off. I don't care if you don't set it off at all, you are endangering the lives of members of Congress. And it is absolutely outrageous that we even have to have this conversation. 

"Absolutely outrageous," said the leader of America's Narcissism Party, the fastest growing party in the country. Even on the House floor, surrounded by other elected members of Congress, democratically-elected Sandy Cortez did not feel safe. And that, my friends, is why we need tens of thousands of armed federal troops right outside her office, so that Sandy Cortez can finally, for once, take a breath and get back to the vital business of making perky Instagram videos about herself. The business of the people must go on. 

Speaking of the people, the actual people, you've got to wonder what they think of all of this. No one in power cares what they think, obviously. None of this is about the millions of people who are actually suffering in our country. No, we're watching one of those rare revolutions in world history that's being waged not on behalf of the general population, but against it. All of this is being done expressly for the oligarchs. None of it is being done for you.

Of course, if you live in Washington, D.C., you already knew that very well. Federal troops are not protecting your home tonight. Sandy Cortez doesn't care if you get robbed or carjacked, as is happening to more and more people in our nation's capital. As crime skyrockets, Sandy Cortez and her friends want to abolish your police, not their police.

Here's a scene from the rest of the city of Washington: Last month, Carmelo Duncan, age 15 months, was shot and killed. Investigators say at least two people opened fire on the car his father was driving, striking it at least 10 times. 

Carmelo died strapped in his car seat right next to his father. That happened within walking distance of the Capitol, but no one inside that domed building, the ones who are so afraid of Chewbacca Man, noticed or cared.

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So whatever else you conclude from this tale of two cities (if you'll forgive the dip into the cliche bin for a moment), here's one thing you can be certain of: It's not actually violence that Sandy Cortez and her fellow Democrats are worried about. No, it's something else.

So why are all those federal troops at the Capitol?

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the Jan. 27, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight"