Dems label anyone opposed to neo-liberalism an insurgent

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Dems label anyone opposed to neo-liberalism an insurgent

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald sounds off 'new domestic war on terror' on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 20, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Happy Inauguration Day. It's a big moment for the country. The changing of the guard, a peaceful transfer of power, another reassuring display of the awesome pageantry of constitutional government. 

There were solemn speeches today; sworn oaths, belted anthems, all echoing against the backdrop of 26,000 smartly attired Federal troops who are guarding our capital city from unseen threats. There's quite a display. It was all a lot to take, really. 

So like many of you, we flipped on the tube to see what it meant. Here's what we learned. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe Biden respects government. He respects people who disagree with him. He listens to them. 

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that Joe Biden is going to train us to see the world differently. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He plans to usher in a new era of hope, and the action he is promising the minute he takes office. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've gone from indecency to decency. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He filled that empathy void. 

JONES: There was not one part of that that wasn't just medicine in the wound. 

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Those lights that are -- that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool, I look -- it's like almost extensions of Joe Biden's arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new President came to town. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: So to recap, Joe Biden respects people's differences, but at the same time, he is going to train us to be very different from the way we are. He will bring hope and decency. He will fill the yawning void where our empathy should be. He is medicine. 

Joe Biden's arms lean and hard from decades of empathetic labor on our behalf will encircle us like lights from the Lincoln Memorial. And at that point, well, God knows, anything is possible. 

If there's a thin bead of sweat forming in your upper lip, as you think about all of this, that's okay. Don't feel shame. Shame isn't necessary now. Joe Biden is here. 

And not just Joe Biden, Jill Biden, too. Mrs. Biden, Dr. Biden. -- together, the two of them, MSNBC informed us will redeem this nation through their love. Behold. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What a story though. What a great love story between Jill Biden and Joe Biden. It's just a different kind of marriage. 

This is a love match, like the Obamas were, so I think that'll be healing for the country, too. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Biden's marriage is healing for all of us, for the country. The Biden's love is America's love. Jill and Joe are the mother and father of this nation. From their loins, we are born and yet reborn. May their names emerge from our lips in praise forever, and so on. That was cable news today. 

The funny thing is, and there are many funny things going on right now, every person with a microphone in every TV studio in America today knew the fuller truth when they said things like the ones you just heard. They knew, for example, for certain that Joe Biden isn't well. Everyone in Washington knows that, but no one said it out loud, not a word. They withheld that news from you as they have for months, so much for speaking truth to power. 

On the other hand, what did you expect? You've watched the lying for years now. You know what it is. You figured out how it works. 

So it dawned on us today that maybe we ought to stop playing all these stupid media clips every night. It's like watching the town drunk throw up on himself over and over again. Obviously, it's repulsive and shocking. It's hard to turn away. But can you really be surprised by it? 

Throwing up on themselves is what town drunks do. If you keep watching them as they do it, maybe after a while, you are part of the problem. Maybe so. In any case, we flipped off CNN and decided to check out Joe Biden's speech for ourselves. And it was interesting, actually, both for what it said and for what it didn't say. 

One particular part of the speech stuck out especially. Now, we didn't support Joe Biden for President, you probably guessed that. But if we're being totally honest here, and we want to be honest, we have to say it was very hard to disagree with this specific part of the address. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: On this January day, my whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I asked every American to join me in this cause. 

With unity, we can do great things, important things. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Bringing America together, Biden said. Uniting our people, uniting our nation, to which we said as we watched it and we meant it when we did. Amen. Unity. That is precisely what this country needs more than it needs anything. We are all in this together, every single American and we have no choice but to hang together. 

Let's finally accept that we are one country and act like we are and make this a better place for everyone. Unity. No decent person opposes that. 

If Joe Biden can bring unity to this country, he will be a legitimately great President. But there's a catch. There always is a catch. 

We're going to bring America together, Joe Biden told us today, but not everyone is going to be included. Unity doesn't mean every single American because not everyone who is born within our borders really is an American, some of us are beyond the pale of citizenship, morally. We may have American passports and birth certificates, but effectively, we are hostile foreigners, we are the enemy, we must be defeated. 

Here is who Joe Biden says those people are. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

BIDEN: A rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront, and we will defeat. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: We will defeat political extremists, domestic terrorists, white supremacist, those are America's enemies. We must wage war against them. We must, quote, "defeat" those people. That's what Biden said today. 

It seemed like a highly significant part of his speech and maybe a significant part of the Democratic Party's governing agenda going forward. We're not imagining this. We weren't the only ones who noticed it. People who voted for Joe Biden heard it, too. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard a declaration of war against white supremacy and against the lies that brought our democracy to the brink. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And President-elect Biden will inherit an unprecedented domestic security crisis. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: A declaration of war against white supremacy. Now, you may not have noticed that because then on one level, it's not very remarkable. Not many Americans support white supremacy. Most people in this country find it disgusting, of course, and they should. 

But the question is, what is it exactly? Now that we're waging war on white supremacists, can somebody tell us in very clear language what a white supremacist is? That's not some Picayune semantic question. Joe Biden isn't a high school debate coach, Joe Biden is the new President of the United States. 

Joe Biden controls the largest military and largest law enforcement agencies in the world. He has now declared war. So we should know specifically and precisely who exactly he has declared war on. We have a right to know that. 

Innocent people could be hurt in this war, they usually are. There could be collateral damage in this war, and the casualties will be Americans. 

So again, what is a white supremacist? You might be surprised to learn just how broad the definition for that has become. Bloomberg News has described a wall on our southern border as, quote, "a monument" to white supremacy so be certain not to support that. 

Colin Kaepernick who seems to have the unequivocal support of Corporate America calls the Fourth of July an example of white supremacy. So you'd better put away the fireworks and the hotdogs. 

The United States Army, a trusted institution, if there ever was one has used an entire manual on what is and what is not white supremacy. So you should know this. Among the telltale signs of a committed white supremacist are these: celebrating Columbus Day, using the term American exceptionalism, any support for Federal border security or English only measures or, quote, "education funding from property taxes," all white supremacy. 

Using the phrase, "There's only one human race" is white supremacy, too, according to the Army, and of course, voting for Donald Trump, all white supremacy. 

Here's the problem. Let's say you don't buy those definitions. Let's say you're, for example, white foot poor, and you have trouble accepting the idea that you're benefiting from some kind of structural advantage. We better shut up about it if you know what's good for you because according to the United States Army, the quote, "denial of white privilege" is a classic sign of yes, white supremacy, so no complaining. 

You can see the problem with this, we definitely can see the problem. This show was not on the air for six months before there was an organized and highly aggressive campaign by prominent Democrats to denounce us as white supremacist. The first time it happened, the people who work on this show, many of them kids, were shocked and horrified by that. White supremacists? What's worse than that? 

The phrase evokes images of burning crosses and lynchings. It's awful. 

In our case, it was totally undeserved. This show is completely opposed to the practice of judging people on the basis of their skin color. We have said that repeatedly every week for four years. No show in all media has said it more or meant it more sincerely. 

Why have we said that? Why are we opposed to judging people on the basis of their race? Not simply because we were taught to oppose doing that though we were, but because it's immoral, and it's immoral because we believe in God. That's the real answer. 

Believing in God doesn't make you a good person, unfortunately. But believing in God does answer the question of where we came from. God made us, that's what believers believe. Once you understand that, it is impossible to think that any one race is inherently better or worse than any other race, because God made every person. 

God assigns an identical moral value to every individual. God cares about all of us equally. So we are judged by what we do, not by how we were born. We really believe that. Most Americans really believe that. 

It's not an accident that Martin Luther King was a Christian Minister and that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were not. Secular leaders are the ones most likely to count their populations by race, and then to embrace collective punishment. Through history, they often have. We've said all of that before in the show many times. 

So the question is, why have they kept denouncing us, as of all things, white supremacists? We thought a lot about that, you should think a lot about it, too now that the Biden administration has declared war on people they claim to have white supremacist ideas. 

In our case, it all started when we began criticizing the people in charge. Other channels fill their air with attacks on so-called Proud Boys, whoever they are, or the QAnon enthusiasts or gun owners in Central Pennsylvania who fix air conditionings for a living and tend to vote the wrong way. They go after those people, and you can see why. Attacking those people isn't hard. None of them have real power. They don't -- let's be honest, they don't. 

But private equity does have power, a lot of power. So does Google, so does Citibank, so does the government of China, so does even silly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her massive social media accounts. Those are the people who run our country. They don't like to be criticized. 

On the other hand, they don't care to defend themselves directly with reason and fact, often they can't do that. So instead, they denounce you, your critics, their critics, as white supremacists. And then they just ignore what you say. Fine. We've dealt with this for years, we're used to it. It no longer hurts our feelings, we understand what's going on. 

But there's a new regime in power starting today and they seem to be planning to accelerate things dramatically. They're getting the F.B.I. and The Pentagon involved in this hunt for people who may criticize them. That's a very big change, and you should understand what it's really about. 

Jason Whitlock is a journalist. We're always happy to have him on the show. Jason, thanks so much for coming on tonight. 

No one ever says this, but I think it's true that the bulwark against white supremacy, supremacy of any kind, racial supremacy of any kind is faith. And that people of faith are far less likely, in fact, they're commanded not to judge people on the basis of how they were born. Why does nobody say that? 

JASON WHITLOCK: Tucker, I'm so glad you're going there because you're speaking the absolute truth. This is secular values blossoming and coming into power, and the left and this power elite, I just can't blame just the left. Political elites are demonizing the people they are supposed to represent. This is an attack on the American people. 

Black people, as I said on Monday are being fooled into thinking this is some sort of defense of us. It is not. 

When you start talking about basically a war on white supremacy, basically a war on people that you disagree with politically, because that's all this is, whoever the left disagrees with, gets painted as a white supremacist. 

It's happened to me, I'm black. I'm proudly black with two black parents, black siblings. I'm in no denial. I'm actually -- I'm proud of being black. But now because I express conservative values, conservative non-political values, I'm seen as a friend of white supremacists. I'm a white supremacist. 

Anybody that disagrees with the left is a white supremacist. And now with this war on white supremacy, just like the war on drugs was an attack on the working class and poor, we are about to see it all over again. And I just want to reach out to black people and quit -- let's quit being used as a pawn by a political organization, the left, Democrats. 

They're punching down. They're attacking 75 million people that voted for Trump. And in that attack, they're also attacking you, trust me. 

CARLSON: Exactly. 

WHITLOCK: At some point, they're coming for you as well. This is not a defensive view, this whole thing. I've lived long enough to know the racial progress America has made. And so we're -- so today, in his speech about white supremacy and people, Nicolle Wallace talking about truth and the lies that have been told that have justified this violence at the Capitol. What about the lies we listened to all summer about the police killing black people randomly? And they got everybody wound up and riots and violence all across the country. 

Police officers assassinated, citizens assassinated. No one gets blamed for that. But people walk into the Capitol, unarmed. And this is the -- this is Pearl Harbor. This is 9/11 all over again. And we have to have a war on white supremacy, like we had a war on terror. 

They've got to cut it out, Tucker. They've got to cut it out, this is dangerous. 

CARLSON: I agree. I'm worried and it is about power, or else they would make the faith base case against racism, which is one that you and I grew up with in this country. Don't judge other people, because what matters is inside. Right? 

I wonder, you mentioned the BLM Movement that really kind of took over a lot of the country, funded by our most powerful corporations over the summer. That is a political movement. Put it in context for us, what would you compare that to? 

WHITLOCK: Well, I compare Black Lives Matter to the KKK. I really do, and some people don't understand it. But if you go back to the 1860s, after the Emancipation Proclamation, the KKK was started, and it was the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party. 

And what's the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party right now? Black Lives Matter and Antifa. They will come to your home and violate your home, try to intimidate the people in your home, if they disagree with you, politically. 

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization. Marxism is hostile towards religion. That's why I'm glad you went there today. These are atheist values being expressed from our leaders, demonizing individual citizens here in America, branding them as white supremacists because they decided, because we disagree with their opinion about something. This is lunacy. And it's dangerous. 

CARLSON: What I love about your analysis, and I think the reason you're able to see this so clearly, when so many others don't is you understand these struggles, as about power, as one group trying to impose its will upon another. That really is the central dynamic in politics. It is power. Right? It's not primarily race, its power. And I don't know why that's done obvious to more people. 

WHITLOCK: They've come up with a strategy Tucker, the Democrats. You've got to tip your hat to them. It's an evil strategy, but it is working. They have convinced the public, if you want to not be considered racist, support Democrats, support the left. That's the way to inoculate yourself from ever being accused of racism or being a sellout to your black race. 

That is their political strategy. That's what they're offering the people. 

We can protect you from being smeared as a racist. Joe Biden offered no policies today. There were platitudes and generalizations and attacks on President Trump. There was no vision expressed for America and how we move this country forward. There was no offer of unity. 

Again, as we said, a week or two ago, you have to reach out to these 75 million people and say, hey, I know you're struggling, and I know you're frustrated with this country. Let's have a conversation and let's quit smearing each other. Let me hear your concerns and try to address some of them. 

We're not doing that, so I don't see any unity being promoted. 

CARLSON: And boy, would I think all of us would be so grateful for unity. Jason Whitlock, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you for your clarity. 

So Joe Biden doesn't seem like an extremist; probably, he isn't an extremist. He seems like kind of a gentle older man. But if you listen carefully to what he said and what his allies have been saying for the past couple of weeks, we are now in a new war on terror, but it's a domestic war focused inward on the people of this country. 

What does that mean for the rest of us? Glenn Greenwald will assess what it means after the break. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: Not a lot of actual policies talked about at the Inauguration today, but the new President, Joe Biden did declare a brand new war on domestic terrorism which does seem like the headline. We've been waiting for this for a little while. The country's intelligence establishment seems to be salivating at the thought of treating fellow Americans like ISIS. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER C.I.A. DIRECTOR: We are now looking forward that the members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed, are now moving in laser like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we've seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, Nativists, even libertarians. 

And unfortunately, I think there has been this momentum that has been generated as a result of unfortunately the demagogue rhetoric of people that's just departed government, but also those who continue in the Halls of Congress. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Oh, an unholy alliance, if you will. Because I am stupid, I speak exclusively in cliches, but I was still able somehow to run the C.I.A., which ought to tell you something a lot really about the rottenness of our system. 

But the headline here is insurgents. What you're hearing is the people who disagree with me or may criticize me or in fact, insurgents. And of course, politicians love the idea of this. 

Brad Schneider, for example, is a congressman from Illinois. He has introduced something called the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, to make it a lot easier to spy on the Americans who are paying for the spy agencies. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

QUESTION: Would you like to see more monitoring of radical Domestic movements? 

REP. BRAD SCHNEIDER, D-ILL.: Well, the short answer is yes. That's the purpose of this bill. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Yes, short answer is yes for the purpose of this bill. Glenn Greenwald, is the most independent of independent journalists. He writes on "Substack," where we hope you support him. He joins us tonight. 

Glenn, this is starting to make me a little bit nervous. Do the rest of us have cause to be concerned about this trend? 

GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: Absolutely. A lot of times, if you warn of a danger, you have to piece things together in order to demonstrate that it's actually coming in this case, you don't have to. They're explicitly saying precisely what they want to do. 

The thing that struck me so much about that John Brennan video is it would be one thing if they were saying, look, there's a band of people 20 here 50 over here who wear swastika armbands, who still are in the KKK, there's maybe 2,000 we need to -- that's not what they're saying. 

What he is saying is the exact opposite. Every group he lifted, even libertarians. Essentially, he is defining the insurgency as anyone who has an ideology, other than neoliberalism. In other words, other than the ruling class of you that is about to congeal and merge with the power of the state. 

And what they're talking about explicitly, Tucker, is using the tools that they used to take ISIS off the internet, the tools that they used to destroy al Qaeda. They're talking about it as a second war on terror, and that first war and terror no matter what your views were originally at the beginning of 9/11 ended up eroding, not civil liberties, just elsewhere, but here at home as well. One that is born by name of being a domestic orienteer designed to essentially criminalize any oppositional ideology to the ruling class. 

There is literally nothing that could be more dangerous, and it's not fear mongering or alarmism to say it. There are bills pending by Adam Schiff as well that would simply take the existing war on terror legislation always aimed at foreign governments and foreign actors and simply amend it to say we can now do that within the United States. 

CARLSON: Who is going to stand up in opposition to this? I don't see any of the Corporate Republican Caucus really even noticing. I see a lot of people I thought were liberal turned out to be not liberal at all, but more authoritarian. So how do we prevent this from happening? Any idea? 

GREENWALD: Well, one of the things -- one of the things I'm really hoping for is that we can finally get out of enough people believing that the way to understand Washington is Democrat versus Republican and that you side with one team and believe they're on your side and defending your interest and the other team is your enemy. It is not true. 

There is a ruling class elite that is extremely comfortable with the establishment wings of both parties. They love Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and everybody as much as they love Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. Those are the people who they fund equally, because those are the people who serve their agenda. 

Then there's a whole other huge group of people at whose expense they roll in. Some of them consider themselves on the left and some consider themselves on the right, and it's time to break down those barriers. 

I was super enthused to see a group of eight left-wing politicians, including Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and others say, we will not allow a new war on terror because we know how dangerous it can be. Let them stand with right-wing members to break down this artificial false fraudulent prism that the way to understand Washington is thinking that one of the two parties is on your side, neither of them is. 

CARLSON: I don't think a lot of people are going to be saving that permanently what you just said on their DVRs. And I certainly hope they do because you're right. 

Glenn Greenwald, thank you very much. 

GREENWALD: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: So the censorship campaign that we're living under now and that appears to be accelerating, it just took an entire social media platform off the internet and disappeared it, but it began to begin in earnest in October right before the election when Big Tech united as one to censor a very specific story that ran in "The New York Post," the country's oldest newspaper, and that story as you'll remember was about the Biden family's influence peddling operation. 

Now the Big Tech companies told us that was disinformation. It wasn't, it was all true. In fact, there is still an active Federal investigation into Joe Biden's family, excuse me, his son about his overseas business dealings. 

Just before the election, we spoke to a man called Tony Bobulinski, who was in fact a business partner of the Bidens and knew the details. Here's part of what he told us. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

TONY BOBULINSKI, FORMER BUSINESS AFFILIATE OF HUNTER BIDEN: And so then Hunter and his father and security came through the bar. And obviously, I stood up out of respect to shake his hand. And Hunter introduced me as, "This is Tony, dad. The individual I told you about that's helping us with the business that we're working on and the Chinese." 

CARLSON: So it was clear to you that Joe Biden's son had told him about this business deal. 

BOBULINSKI: Crystal clear. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Now, the White House aligned with Silicon Valley has to make a decision. Will the media -- will they allow the media effectively to cover the story anymore? It's hard to imagine we're even asking that question in this country. But we have to because it's a real question. 

Miranda Devine is a columnist for "The New York Post." She has been on the story since the first day it came out and reporting on it for us. Miranda, thanks so much for coming on. 

So this raises a really interesting and obvious question I have not heard asked before, which is what do you do about a story about the President and his family now that the President is actually the President? 

MIRANDA DEVINE, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK POST: Hi, Tucker. Well, I don't really hold out much hope that a very incurious media is going to change their tune. You could say that Joe Biden won the election because of the censorship and the favorable reporting that he received. 

And now, you saw just from the first press conference just a little over an hour ago that the media is really eating out of the Biden administration's hands. Only one reporter, that was Peter Doocy, from Fox News, asked a question that was difficult and that was one about unity. How can you possibly be preaching unity when you're trying to impeach your predecessor? So I don't think that anything will change. 

And all we saw before the election was that the media was quite happy to accept some complete nonsense from people like John Brennan and his former colleagues, the spooks, so-called, who told us that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Well, it wasn't. But now they have a new bogeyman, and as you rightly said, Joe Biden put it out there in his supposedly unifying inauguration speech today, it is domestic terrorists. It is white supremacists. And the definition of that depends on whether you're with us or you're against us. 

CARLSON: That's exactly right. I can't imagine a less unifying way to organize your administration. Miranda Devine, I know that you will continue to be on the story. I appreciate your coming on. Thank you. 

DEVINE: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: Think for a minute, by the way, just to pause about John Brennan. John Brennan, we can't say this enough, ran the C.I.A., the most powerful Intel gathering agency in the world. And yet now that John Brennan is regularly on TV, you know his secret, which is John Brennan is not very smart. He's just like a dumb partisan. He's not even a very good talking head. 

How did our country promote over decades someone as totally mediocre as John Brennan to a position of authority like that? We need to figure out what we're doing wrong here. When people like John Brennan ascend to the top of the C.I.A., it's a broken system. 

Well, up next, in the name of unity, Joe Biden has just hired someone who believes that disciplining children in school is, of course another tool of white supremacy and racist. That's not just a dumb opinion. It's an opinion that's going to have actual effects on schools and your kids. We will tell you what those may be, after the break. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: If you've been flipping around the dial, you may have noticed that all the other news channels have basically connected their cameras directly to what we call the pool feed, and they're just carrying completely unaltered footage right from the Joe Biden celebration. 

We don't mean any disrespect to the presidency or even to the person who occupies it as of tonight when we say there's a lot going on, and so we're going to bring you news for this hour. Instead, we will I think dip in briefly as Joe Biden speaks for the first time in primetime. 

But in the meantime, we want to tell you what's going on because it matters. So Democrats and the media are welcoming what is in effect, the military occupation of your capital city, 26,000 Federal troops. There are more than who were there in 1864 during the Civil War. 

But just last year, our political class had a very different view of the National Guard and indeed, the whole topic of law and order. Heather Mac Donald knows more about law and order and the effective use of the police may be anyone in America. She's a fellow with the Manhattan Institute and wrote a great book on the topic. We're happy to have her tonight. Heather, what do you make of what we're seeing in Washington right now? 

HEATHER MAC DONALD, FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: It's hilarious, Tucker. This summer, The New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton merely broaching the idea of calling out the National Guard to quell the murderous anarchic riots that were tearing apart American cities. This op- ed was viewed as so injurious to the health of The New York Times black employees that the op-ed editor had to resign. 

Now those same New York Times employees and the rest of the mainstream media are cheering on the militarization not just with the nation's capital, but of all 50 state capitals. Now, why might this be, Tucker? Is there a sudden newfound respect for law and order and for the police officers of this country? Of course not. 

The Biden administration has already declared that it's going to reinvigorate the war on cops that the Obama administration prosecuted. Now the reason that they are loving the tanks, the barbed wire, the guys in military riot gear is because they serve as a visual symbol for what is going to be the dominant theme of the Biden administration, which is that the greatest threat in America today is the so-called rising tide of systemic racism and white supremacy. 

That's a lie, but it's a lie that allows them to get to an even bigger agenda, something you've been covering relentlessly, Tucker, that is the biggest worry right now to our constitutional liberties, which is the use - - the attempts to destroy First Amendment protections for conservative speech on the idea that it is giving rise to this threat of domestic terrorism. 

CARLSON: Well, sure, if they can tell you what you can say, they can control what you think, and once they can do that, they can do anything to you. So it does seem to me it's not just hypocrisy, they were against it, now, they're for it. It's revealing of their actual agenda, like they don't have any problem with force or fascism, obviously. 

MAC DONALD: Well, obviously, yes. For them, they want it. If anybody else in the suburbs or in the inner city, says actually, we need the cops. You can't say that, because that entails more systemic racism and the lie that governs the left. 

But as soon as they don't have any need ideologically for the cops, they're going to be right back in the dog trash heap, which is where they've been for the last 10 years under Democratic ideology. 

CARLSON: Totally true. The Great Heather Mac Donald, thank you. 

MAC DONALD: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: And they put a finer point on it by the way, as we reported the other day, Democrats in Congress has been working to ban the civilian ownership of body armor, a completely defensive measure that people take to prevent getting killed by bullets. 

They don't want you to be able to have that, to possess that, it would be a felony to have it in your house. Democratic Members of Congress today announced they were wearing body armor at the Inauguration. Meditate on that for a minute. 

Meanwhile, Catherine Lhamon is Joe Biden's picked to be the Deputy Director of something called the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity, not equality, which is what we are in favor of, all Americans are, but equity, something very different. 

As you might expect, that means she is not for equality or against racism. She favors overt racial discrimination for the benefit of groups she believes vote for the Democratic Party. She was in the Obama administration. And at that time, Catherine Lhamon threatened several school districts with civil action. Why? 

Because more African-American students were getting suspended than white students. Therefore, she concluded by definition, those schools must be racist. She couldn't think of another explanation. 

Then in April of 2018, Lhamon came on this show to defend race based admissions policies. I've got to give her credit for saying it out loud. She did. 

Just like Kristen Clarke, Joe Biden's pick to head the D.O.J. Civil Rights Division who is actually kind of a lunatic for real, Catherine Lhamon believes that someone's appearance matters more than what they do. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: There are groups in America, particularly African-Americans who were discriminated against historically and this is a way of making good on that for trying. So how does it make you feel when you see the numbers that foreign born black students, displace African-American students, especially at prestigious schools at really high rate, and then the school gets the say the word diverse when they're letting in, you know, the kid of the Nigerian Ambassador? Does that seem a perversion of the purpose? 

CATHERINE LHAMON, PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S NOMINEE AS DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF DOMESTIC POLICY COUNCIL FOR RACIAL JUSTICE AND EQUITY: Well, I think it might be a perversion of the purpose. I haven't seen those numbers. And that's not my experience from investigating the school. 

So I again, need to resist your reduction of the applicant to a particular characteristic rather than looking at the whole picture. 

CARLSON: Well, the schools, of course, reduced them to that. I mean, they are totally race conscious ... 

LHAMON: No, they don't. 

CARLSON:  ... in the way that they do admission. 

LHAMON: You know, let me tell you that that is just not true. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: That's really funny. You can't reduce people to their race. You've got to look at the whole person. Which is the point we were making and make every single night. 

Peter Kirsanow makes that point and has for decades. He is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He works with women you just saw on that tape, we're happy to have him on tonight. Peter, what do you think of this choice? And what will its effects be? 

PETER KIRSANOW, MEMBER, U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS: Well, the effects will be perpetuation of racial and identity politics on steroids, even more so than we've seen the last year. 

The clips that you've played with respect to Catherine and her position with respect to race, especially with respect to education, we've had hearings at the Civil Rights Commission where positions and in fact, if you look at her opinions that she has written after we've had hearings, make it very clear that what we're about to engage in is, again, racial politics on steroids. 

The presumption is it's a demonstrably false and indeed inane presumption that almost every disparity on the basis of race is the result of systemic racism or outright white supremacy. And, you know, there are no other reasons for disparities. And it results in things like the school discipline policy that she enforced while she was a member of the U.S. Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education that presumed that disparities in suspensions and discipline in schools is a result of racism. 

So schools in order to abide by this guidance engaged in quotas. Now, what that also resulted in in terms of suspensions, so you had kids who are violent and acting out remaining in class, and as a result of that, predictably what happened was that the amount of violence in schools skyrocketed. 

We had a hearing in which teachers testified that they were being beaten, one suffered brain damage. Hundreds of thousands of students per year polled said they missed at least one day of school because of fear of going for school, it was a concrete disaster. But this is what happens when you count by race. This is what happens when you don't take into consideration very well-known reasons for why there are disparities that have absolutely nothing to do with racism. 

And in 2021, the good news is, it is rarely vanishingly rare the case that racism promotes or is the cause for disparities on the basis of race, but we're going to see more and more stress on identity politics, more and more stress on structural causes of racism that permit for the kind of social engineering under the guise of trying to remedy racial disparities. 

CARLSON: Man, they're going to hurt the country. No hope for unity under the regime you just described, unfortunately. Peter Kirsanow, I appreciate it. It's sad. 

KIRSANOW: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: Thank you. Well, the media class has already established some pretty firm ground rules for the Biden administration. For example, you cannot talk about Kamala or is it Kamala -- hard to know -- you noticed that Justice Sonia Sotomayor got it wrong, maybe we think -- in any way that's not fawningly positive. That's deeply sexist, if you do. Go get reprogrammed, misogynist. Of course, that rule does not apply to the media. 

When CBS News runs entire segments on Kamala Harris's shoes, it is not offensive. It is indeed empowering. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll tell you when you walked in, I checked out, is she wearing them? You're not wearing your Chucks today. 

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is the story? 

HARRIS: It became a story, I've always worn Chucks. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, what's the story? 

HARRIS: It's my casual go-to, you know, I grew up with Chucks. I just love them. They are comfortable. 

DOUG EMHOFF, HUSBAND OF KAMALA HARRIS: I can attest. There are several closets full of them. 

HARRIS: He is exaggerating. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Can you imagine? You're interviewing one of the most powerful people in the world, maybe the most powerful person in the world. You're a journalist, your job is to inform your viewers and your readers about what they can expect from their government. But instead, you degrade yourself by asking about her shoes. Quick slobber over Kamala's shoes.  

Over at MSNBC, her shoes were not the highlight. They were focused on more important matters like how Michelle Obama was dressed today. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can I just remark of how flawless Michelle Obama is? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be obsessive. She really understands how to dress for the moment and how to look stylish, but also powerful. She really is just masterful at it. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: She's just masterful. Would it be hilarious if someone on the set said, I don't think she looks that good. Honestly, it's not really flattering. You wouldn't lose your job if you did that. I'd love to see it though. 

Speaking of losing their job, Jim Acosta at CNN lost his job, you may not have read that. He is no longer going to be their Chief White House correspondent. He's still oppressed though. Today, Jim Acosta celebrated the ouster of a dictator, a fascist so bad that Jim Acosta got a book deal out of criticizing him. 

Those words are behind us now, thank God. Jim Costa is celebrating, the dictator is gone. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: So Anderson this is looking like, you know, a President or a foreign Head of State, leading Washington. And, you know, in a way, because the President is defying these traditions of not being a part of the inauguration of President Joe Biden, he is almost leaving town like an autocrat ousted from power heading off into exile. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: It's just hilarious that someone who is literally wearing a black mask on camera is calling someone else a fascist. Why are you wearing a mask? You're not going to get COVID outside at a live shot. This is just performance art, and it's very tiresome. Please stop. 

Will they stop? How long will this go on exactly? Steve Krakauer is the editor of the "Fourth Watch" podcast. He joins us tonight, 

Steve, one of my hopes is to be able to watch television, again, without gritting my teeth, just like basic news coverage. Are we ever going to get that do you think? 

STEVE KRAKAUER, FOUNDER, "FOURTH WATCH": Yes, I don't know. Because it does feel like the pendulum is starting to swing a whole different direction right now. 

Look, I think if there was one positive that came from the Trump era, it was the journalists sort of rediscovered the idea that the press should serve the public and be a check on power, and it should have an adversarial relationship with the power now. 

Now, the press in the Trump era went completely overboard and became you know, this is this evil, you know, dictatorship that we're covering. But at least that's, you know -- maybe if you could take some of those lessons and bring that to the Biden era. 

CARLSON: Right, I agree. 

KRAKAUER: I think we're going to -- yes, I'm not sure we're going to see that. You know, I had Olivia Nuzzi, who is one of the few reporters in D.C. who I actually trust may keep that adversarial relationship go into the next era. 

She was on my podcast and she described that a lot of D.C. based journalists are motivated by the reluctance to make one's social life uncomfortable. So the idea is, look, you can be mean to Kayleigh McEnany and you can interrupt her all day, and you're just going to get praised on Twitter and no one is going to care. Everyone's going to beat -- you know, you're going to get more Twitter followers. 

If you start doing that to Jen Psaki, you start interrupting her, you're going to be -- you know, you're going to be a misogynist, or you know, a mansplainer, and you're not going to get invited to the same parties that probably Jen Psaki is going to. And you're certainly going to get, you know, railed against on Twitter. 

So, yes, I'm very concerned about the way that this is going to go, and I think that, that what we're -- if it's any indication of where things were in the Obama years, and frankly, even a little bit in the Bush years, I think that we need to have a press that is motivated to be adversarial. 

And I'm not sure we're seeing that, particularly, as I'm seeing all of these tweets right now from people saying that they are so tired and exhausted from the last four years, kind of not giving good signs of where things are about to go next. 

CARLSON: I totally agree. And I agree with you about Olivia Nuzzi by the way. I don't know her politics are, but she's smart. A lot of dumb people in the media. I think all the smart ones went into finance or something. 

It's kind of the slow second son goes over to work at NBC. It it's very sad, because we kind of need a competent media. Hey, great to see you tonight. Thank you. 

KRAKAUER: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: Well, Joe Biden, as we told you at the outset, we applauded it, as he did called for unity today, which is the thing we need more than anything. So if you really meant it, why wouldn't he? And well, he is the question. Call on his allies in the monopolies in Silicon Valley to stop censoring people, Americans.' 

Vivek Ramaswamy has thought a lot about that question, a lot. He's a tech entrepreneur, author of the forthcoming book, "Woke, Inc.," which we plan to read. Vivek, thanks so much for coming on. 

So if you wanted to unify the country, why wouldn't you just say, look, people get to speak freely. And I may disagree, but I can handle it because I'm an American. Do you think he will do that? 

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, TECH ENTREPRENEUR: Look, as an American, I hope he does. But the single most powerful thing he could do tonight is get on the phone with Jack Dorsey and call on Big Tech to give Donald Trump's Twitter account back and to do the same thing for thousands of conservatives who were removed over the last few weeks because as Americans, we don't just silence the people we disagree with. We engage with them. We debate them. 

And for the President of the United States to step up and do that would be a small step actually, for Joe Biden, but I think it would be a big step forward for this country. 

CARLSON: No, I think that really would. I mean, I would unequivocally praise him. I think all people of principle would do that. So do you think that he will? 

RAMASWAMY: Look, I have a big doubt as to whether he will, because he is the President of the United States today and no longer the President-elect or a candidate. So I'd like to give him a chance. 

But I think, Tucker, the real question is equally on the other side, as well for the conservative movement to ask ourselves: what is the real enemy today? And it isn't 1980 anymore. It isn't just big government. It is the - - you talked about it. There was a joke about an unholy marriage earlier on the show. 

CARLSON: Yes. 

RAMASWAMY: It's the unholy marriage of Big Government and Big Tech and Big Business that we really ought to take aim at. 

CARLSON: That's right. That's totally right. Way scarier than anything we've faced before. Vivek, I appreciate your coming on. I know we will see you again. 

RAMASWAMY: Thank you. 

CARLSON: So as we told you, Joe Biden, newly the President, speaking for the first time in primetime. We haven't been carrying the infomercial all night, but we want to dip in quickly to his remarks because it's news. 

BIDEN:  ... liberty, dignity and respect, and unite against common foes: hate, violence, disease and hopelessness. 

America's story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us, on we, the people. That's the task before us. The only way we'll get through the darkness around us. 

There are moments in our history, when more is asked of us as Americans. We saw that in the Civil War. We saw that with Dr. King dreaming from these steps across the Mall. We are in one of those moments now. The pandemic, economic crisis, racial injustice, the climate crisis, and threats to our very democracy. The question is, are we up to it? Will we meet the moment like our forebears have? I believe we must and I believe we will. 

You, the American people are the reason why I've never been more optimistic about America than I am this very day. There isn't anything we can't do, if we do it together and that's what you'll see tonight. 

Stories of ordinary Americans who do extraordinary things. That's how we'll celebrate America, and respect and represent America in our time in office. America, America, built of decency -- it is built of decency and dignity, of love and healing, of greatness and goodness, of possibilities. 

This is a story that guides us, inspires us, and unites us today and always. So thank you for this honor. I will give my all to you. 

May God bless America and may God protect our troops. 

CARLSON: Well, last two lines, we are in favor of, God bless America. God bless us. 

We want to end the show tonight on a happy note. There aren't a ton, but you're looking at a live shot of the Teddy Roosevelt statue at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Teddy Roosevelt, the greatest President we ever had, one of the greatest people who ever lived here. 

But since May, you have heard calls to tear the statue down. In fact, it is now planned to be torn down. The Mayor of New York said he will tear it down for reasons he has never really explained. 

But it is still standing tonight, and that's the point we want to make. And as long as it does stand, the country has not gone completely crazy. 

Mark Steyn joins us tonight to celebrate this and tell us what it means. Great to see you, Mark. 

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Well, I think, Tucker if you listened to what we've heard today, where they are talking about how, you know, Trump's the first guy in 152 years not to attend the Inauguration of his successor or something else about some tradition going back to 1837, people have a need for history. You can't tear down history. 

If you tear down history, you leave a void where something false fills it instead. That's the story of every totalitarian society. So it's great to see that this thing is still standing in defiance of the mobs we saw over the summer. 

CARLSON: Okay, that that's maybe my favorite line of the year so far. When you tear down a history you leave a void, into it's something false can go. That is totally -- and that's the point of it, right? It's not accidental. It is a manipulation of our shared history, of our culture, of who we are. 

STEYN: Right and everybody -- every society needs a history and even that's what all these shallow references to piffling traditions meant today, every society needs to be part of a great historical stream. You can't remove that, you can't dam it up. It's what it is. 

CARLSON: So smart. So I don't know why this strikes me in the way that it does, probably, because I love Teddy Roosevelt, but also because not everything was destroyed during that spasm of mob vandalism that we saw for months that our leaders did nothing to stop. 

This remains. 

STEYN: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's despite John Brennan, you know, demonizing all kinds of people, you know, nativist, libertarians, excitable centrists, moderates, you've had a third cup of coffee with all the domestic enemies. The statue still stands. 

CARLSON: Are you -- this is off topic, but I can't resist because you brought up John Brennan and this is my obsession for tonight anyway, are you ever surprised once you hear the people making these grand decisions speak by how unimpressive mediocre, inarticulate, just sort of banal they are? 

STEYN: Absolutely. That's why, you know, they are furious at any talk of pardoning Julian Assange because we have bozos running the most lavishly funded Intelligence Community in the world and they couldn't keep their secrets, because John Brennan isn't -- shouldn't be holding that job. 

CARLSON: None of these people should. I mean, it would just be funny to have, like, I don't know, an hour long, unedited taped conversation with Kamala Harris about, you know, what do you think about that? What do you think about the -- what are the principles you believe it? That would be the most devastating hour of television ever made, which is why they will do whatever they can to prevent it from being made. You used to wear Chuck Taylors. 

STEYN: Knock it off, Tucker. Ask a question about her footwear like a respectable member of the media. 

CARLSON: So good. Mark Steyn, it is great to see you. Thank you so much. 

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker. 

CARLSON: We are out of time. We will be back tomorrow night and every night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. 

Sean Hannity, right now.

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