This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 26, 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."

You are watching the free speech channel: that's what it is, the last one left. For the next hour, we're going to say exactly what we believe is true. Period. It's still America.

The first point to make, an obvious point that has now been banned as a thought crime in the rest of the media is that the United States government should never, under any circumstances favor one race of people over any other race of people. Period. That is immoral.

We're all citizens. We're all human beings. We're all created by God. We are all equal.

Every one of us has a right to equal treatment by our government. That right is guaranteed by our Constitution. It's the heart of countless laws passed with well-deserved fanfare by our Congress over many decades. That right is inscribed on a monument on our National Mall to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who would be shocked and disgusted if he watched Susan Rice on television today.

Susan Rice is Joe Biden's Chief Domestic Policy adviser. Rice is in charge of changing our country to conform to the orthodoxies of the Democratic Party. How does Susan Rice plan to do that?

Well, going forward, she announced this afternoon, quote: "Every agency in the U.S. government," a government that is by the way, the largest and most lavishly funded organization in human history, every one of them will, quote, " ... place equity at the core of its policy design," specifically, and for the benefit of, quote, "marginalized communities."

Now, Susan Rice's speech was carried live by many news outlets, but as far as we know, not a single one of them paused to ask what exactly she was talking about, and they should have.

The Federal government is, above all, an enormous printing press. It manufactures U.S. currency, it dispenses trillions of dollars every year. According to Rice, much of that money will now be distributed on the basis of equity. That means it will go to people who do not possess, quote, "privilege."

So let's get very specific about what that means. What precisely is privilege? Can privilege be measured? If so, how exactly are we measuring it? Can we see the privilege formula? We should see it because a huge amount turns on the definition of this word.

Some Americans won't get jobs because it's been decided they have too much privilege. Others won't get into college or get promoted or win Federal contracts. Others will see their neighborhoods change dramatically in ways they may not like because of their privilege. They'll tell you that's not true, but it is true.

And before any of that happens, the rest of us deserve a clear explanation of what's going on. Who's getting rewarded? Who's getting punished? And why?

We don't have to ask politely, we're American citizens. This is our government, no matter who we voted for, we're paying for it. So we can demand an answer. But of course, there isn't an answer. That's the point. They can't really define privilege.

They can't tell us who in a country with no majority culture actually qualifies as a quote "minority." They don't want to have this conversation in the first place at all, because their views are indefensible. That's why they are general rather than precise. That's why they're trying to make us be quiet.

You see those efforts all around you now. Never in American history has there been press censorship on this scale. As we noted at the top, FOX News is the last significant media organization remaining in this country that allows its employees to tell obvious truths in public. The rest of them have been muzzled or shut down completely.

The last to go was the social media site, Parler, which was created as a free speech alternative to the Silicon Valley monopolies like Twitter and Facebook. A few weeks ago, those very same monopolies pulled it right off the internet. Parler no longer exists.

When the history of this period is written, the destruction of Parler will get its own chapter, and so will these people. The mindless corporate shills who applauded its destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Parler has zero moderation. The whole point is that this is a completely free community that you can say what you want. What it tends to have done is attracted very hard right conservatives, conspiracy theorists, racist.

It's garbage. I mean the stuff on Parler is remarkable garbage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, the stuff on Parler is remarkable garbage, announces some low IQ thug on television. Therefore, it's totally fine. Virtuous, in fact.

For Amazon Web Services, the largest internet hosting service in the world, to simply unplug it, to destroy it with no debate or even coherent explanation for why they did it. Why did Amazon do that? It wasn't because they were morally offended by Parler. That can't be true.

Last year, according to the Group Parents Together, a total of 69 million photos and videos of children being sexually abused reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, yet, only eight of those reports came from Amazon Web Services, which was hosting quite a few of them. Why is that?

Apparently, Jeff Bezos didn't consider sexual abuse videos garbage. As the Director of Parents Together, put it, quote, "Amazon Web Services has vast resources, controls a third of Cloud infrastructure services, and handles billions of uploads and downloads. Their abysmal failure to report child sex abuse material makes it clear they're not looking for it."

And of course, they're not looking for it. Whatever you think of kiddie porn, it's not like it is right of center politics, so Jeff Bezos doesn't need to censor it.

We should also tell you that Amazon Web Services provides hosting services to Twitter, and according to their lawsuit, Twitter quote, " ... benefited from and neglected to remove an exploitive video featuring a minor boy and another minor, which was retweeted thousands of times and received at least 160,000 views on its platform," on Twitter.

The lawsuit says that the minor and his mother repeatedly asked Twitter to take down the video, the sex abuse video, but Twitter refused to do so until the Department of Homeland Security intervened. That's what it took.

You're getting the picture. There's a lot of quote, "garbage" floating around on Amazon Web Services and on Twitter. But according to our media class, none of it would justify shutting down Amazon Web Services.

Incidentally, you should also know that Amazon Web Services provides web services for the C.I.A. You're paying for it.

Amazon has built datacenters in China. According to a report by the Horizon Advisory Group, Amazon runs a quote, "Innovation Center" in close partnership with the Communist Party of China. It's not clear what they are innovating. But whatever it is, it's not a problem for our leaders because no one in the Chinese government voted for Donald Trump. It's not like they're dangerous.

But you know who is dangerous? Any American citizen who doesn't agree with MSNBC? Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole idea of prevention needs to be examined by the new Congress. What do I mean by that? We still don't have a domestic terrorism law. We still don't treat this like we do international terrorism, change the religion of some of those people that entered the Capitol and you've got violent jihadists.

You've got the F.B.I. with undercover informants, electronic surveillance, and agents in their groups and organizations because we've designated them as potentially violent. We've got nothing like that going on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, so the government should change the religion of those people. The government now has the right to change religion. According to the G-Man on TV. That's a big change. When did this become a theocracy?

The rest of us thought we were allowed to believe any religion we wanted to believe, even ones that "Morning Joe" doesn't understand or approve of. We imagine that was the whole point of America. Not anymore.

Equity and inclusion means that you will believe what they tell you to believe. Period. Or else you're a terrorist and they can hurt you because we hurt terrorists.

Listen to America's new Grand Inquisitor, Adam Schiff of California.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF.: We have been urging for some time that the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security raised the priority to domestic terrorism to white nationalism as it threatens the country, and we're going to continue sounding the alarm and make sure that they're devoting the resources, the time and the attention, just as we did after 9/11 to the threat from international terrorism, we need to give the same priority and urgency to domestic terrorism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Got that. Vote the wrong way and you are a jihadi. You thought you were an American citizen with rights and just a different view. But no, you're a jihadi. And we're going to treat you the way we treated those radicals after 9/11, the way we treated Bin Laden.

Get in line, pal. This is a war on terror.

Keep in mind as you listen to people talk like this, Adam Schiff is far from the only one. Keep in mind, they are talking about American citizens here. They're talking about you. But nobody seems to notice or care.

One who does notice and cares quite a bit, one of the only Democrats willing to stand up and oppose this transparently fascist purge -- that is what it is -- is Tulsi Gabbard, the former Member of Congress from Hawaii.

Gabbard published a video message today explaining exactly what's at stake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TULSI GABBARD, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed the Capitol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: What you just heard her say is true. No matter what they tell you, no matter how much they attack the person who said it -- oh, she's a tool of Assad -- it is absolutely true. That is true. And God bless Tulsi Gabbard for saying so out loud. She joins us right now to say more times.

Congresswoman, we appreciate your coming on tonight.

GABBARD: Thank you.

CARLSON: So I don't think of you as someone given to hyperbole you're not throwing wild charges out there, you measure your words. You said, you are concerned that we are moving towards a police state. Tell us why you're worried?

GABBARD: Well, Tucker, the very first thing that any President does after they've gotten elected, any Member of Congress and every one of us who has served in the military is we take an oath and we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The reason that this is the first thing that we do is because our Constitution is the foundation of this country and who we are. It is what guarantees us our civil liberties, our freedoms that are endowed to us, not by any man or person in government, but are endowed to us by our Creator, and so this is something that we must all unite around.

This is something that we recognize that those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 trying to stop Congress from fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities, they were acting as domestic terrorists undermining our Constitution.

As you pointed out in my video, those like John Brennan, Adam Schiff, and others, are also acting as domestic terrorists because they are also undermining our Constitution by trying to take away our civil liberties and rights that are guaranteed to us.

If you don't mind, I'd like to just quote John Brennan directly so that people can't say I'm taking this out of context, directly, John Brennan says: "Members of the Biden team who have been nominated or 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 they've seen overseas where they germinate in different parts of the country and gain strength and bring together an unholy alliance, frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascist bigots, racist, nativist, and even libertarians."

This is the extent that they are going to try to undermine the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to every one of us, and it is incredibly dangerous.

CARLSON: It is so dangerous and it's also happening on a greater scale we've ever seen before, because as you point out in the video that I hope every one of our viewers will find on the internet, it isn't simply government officials and our Intel and law enforcement agencies, it's also private businesses. It's these giant tech monopolies.

What can the rest of us do to protect ourselves to keep free speech alive in a moment when it is being crushed all around us?

GABBARD: First of all, keep speaking. I think this is the most important thing at a time when there is so much fear and threats, and the kind of fomenting of fear that we're seeing coming from the likes of John Brennan, take a stand. We must all take a stand and unite around these principles in our Constitution and continue to speak freely, whether it be in person on the street corner, or on these virtual public squares, these town squares that exist online.

You know, Big Tech is culpable in this in that they are using their monopolistic power to pick and choose whose voices are heard and whose voices are squelched, whether it's based on who they agree with, disagree with, political affiliation, who you voted for, or whatever.

I think there are alternative platforms, I've got one on tulsi.locals.com It's a place where people can come and speak freely and have open dialogue and conversation around different issues based on respect and this appreciation for our constitutional rights and freedoms.

But I think most importantly, we need to urge President Biden and every Member of Congress how critical it is they take a stand and denounce the likes of John Brennan and Adam Schiff's actions, because if we do not, and if they do not, then this country that we love and cherish will no longer exist.

CARLSON: I think that's right. When you ran for President as a Democrat, I watched the leadership of the Democratic Party try to subvert your campaign. They disliked you more than they disliked Donald Trump almost. And now, I think we know why because you're defending the basic institutions of our country and I appreciate you doing it on this show.

Tulsi Gabbard, thank you.

GABBARD: Thank you.

CARLSON: Well, of course, you will likely recognize our next guest. His name is Mike Lindell. He runs My Pillow. He advertises every night on this show and across FOX News. He is one of our biggest sponsors and we are grateful for that. He is sponsoring free speech when he does it.

But of course, the enforcers of orthodoxy are not impressed. They're enraged.

For the crime of having different opinions, Mike Lindell has just been banned from Twitter. Several retailers have also stopped selling his products. That happened today. That would include Bed Bath and Beyond, Kohl's and Kroger. Again, Bed Bath and Beyond, Kohl's and Kroger. Those are just a few.

When you support freedom of speech, you're no longer allowed to speak. That's the new rule. This network is one of the last places in this country where Americans are allowed to speak. We're honored to have Mike Lindell on tonight to give his perspective.

One note for you, the transmission line that connects his studio to our studio got cut minutes before the show. We are not exactly sure how, but thankfully, Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow has FaceTime and he is on it right now.

Mike, thanks so much for coming on.

MIKE LINDELL, CEO, MY PILLOW: Thanks for having me on Tucker. That list is bigger. There's also HGTV, the shopping channel, Shop HQ. I mean, they just keep, you know, turning in their POs and saying, we don't want My Pillow anymore.

CARLSON: So your views on politics, whether our viewers or anyone else agrees to them or not-- are the views of millions of other people, and you've expressed them, you have now been shut down. It seems pretty clear, they are sending a message.

People -- the public recognizes, we cannot step out of line because you might convince others to do the same. Do you take another message? Or do you think that's why they're doing this to you?

LINDELL: Well, this one, you know, I've always backed this great, great President Donald Trump. I've always had his back since 2016 when I first met him. But when I went back to Minnesota in 2016, to say, hey, I met the candidate Donald Trump. I was attacked by bots and trolls, and I reached out to the media and did a press release, and I was just called a racist and everything you could imagine.

And I thought, wow, are these people real? No, they weren't real, they are attack groups and their bots and trolls, so I've been through this before. Last spring, I spoke out at the Rose Garden and said we should all get in our Bibles and reach out to Jesus, stay in the word, spend time with their families. We were attacked then.

So we're used to this and my job. But this time is different.

This time about 17 days ago, when someone put up on the on the internet, actual machine, new machine election fraud, I retweeted it and they took my Twitter down. Now, when they took it down -- this is interesting, they didn't take it down all the way, I just couldn't do anything and they were running my Twitter like they were me.

My friends were going, you're not tweeting very much and when you do -- I said, I'm not doing that. So I tried to take it down and I got a tweet, a thing from Germany saying these are the Twitter rules and you cannot do this, take anything down.

So they ran my Twitter for about 14 days to 15 days. Then yesterday, they put it back up so I could run it and I made one tweet and the tweet was a good a good letter written by one of my employees because I'm getting attacked about my integrity and stuff, and they took it down five minutes later.

And then a week ago, they did -- Dominion went on TV and said they were going to go after Mike Lindell. Well, they did. They hired hit groups and bots and trolls, went after all my vendors, all these box stores to cancel me out.

This cancel culture, fake stories coming out to attack my Lindell Recovery Network, which helps addicts across the country. It's just a shame, Tucker, what the -- if they can do it to me, believe me, they can do it to anyone out there. But we're not -- I'm not backing down. We cannot back down out of fear this time. Nobody can.

CARLSON: I totally agree.

LINDELL: I told these -- you guys, these aren't real people. These are trolls and bots. The real people will buy the products and will support you. You can't do this just because they cancel you -- trained cancel culture.

CARLSON: May I ask you one question since you grew up in this country, if they disagree with you, or think that you're saying things that are incorrect, why don't they explain what those things are and why don't they try to convince you that you're wrong? I mean, I thought the rules were if you think someone is saying something incorrect, you explain how it's incorrect and you convince his audience that actually you're right and he is wrong. When did that go away? When did we decide force was the only answer to disagreement?

LINDELL: Right. And you know, I can't even live stream on Facebook, they've shut it down. But you're exactly right, Tucker. What I say to them with this particular thing that's going on now, I've been all in trying to find the machine fraud and we found it. We have all the evidence.

So what all these -- all these outlets that have been calling me from The Washington Post and New York Times, every outlet in the country, they go Mike Lindell, there's no evidence, and he's making fraudulent statements.

No, I have the evidence. I dare people to put it on. I dare Dominion, just sue me because then it would get out faster.

So this is -- you know, they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to say it. They just say, oh, you're wrong. And I'm going --

CARLSON: They are not making conspiracy theories go away by doing that. You don't answer -- you know, don't make people kind of calm down and get reasonable and moderate by censoring them. You make them get crazier, of course. That's ridiculous.

LINDELL: Yes. You know, why wouldn't everyone want to know the truth of this country? Just let the truth be told. If there's nothing to hide, let's bring it out so we all can see it. Instead, they are trying to erase Mike Lindell and erase My Pillow.

Well, I'm not going to be erased. I mean, all of these -- all my friends that lost their -- they lost their YouTube channels, they lost their Facebook, two million followers, one guy has 12 employees, he's gone. His livelihood he built up is just gone.

Anybody -- any business and churches that supported the President, that's a whole another issue, they are being attacked and they're going to be just now canceled.

CARLSON: No, I've noticed. Michael Lindell, I really appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you very much.

LINDELL: Well, thank you, Tucker. Thanks for having me on. And God bless you. Thank you.

CARLSON: Amen. God bless you. Mike Lindell, he sells pillows. Why is he even censored? But by the way before you say, oh, it's Mike Lindell -- anyone who is censored has been wronged as an American. Period. And the censorship of any person diminishes the rest of us and diminishes this country. Period.

It doesn't matter what they're saying. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them. In fact, if you disagree with them, you should argue more forcefully that their voice should be heard and then argue against the points they are making.

Anyone who is been censored is welcome on this show as one of the last venues where you can speak for real anyone, whether they agree with you or not.

Well, up next, a major court decision has just come down on Joe Biden's deportation order. It's a decision that completely upends that order. Pretty amazing news. We'll bring it to you in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Joe Biden's 100-day moratorium on deporting people, foreign nationals here illegally, will have massive consequences that most Americans have no understanding of.

Last night on this show, former White House adviser, Stephen Miller outlined some of the implications.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: The 180,000 people that I.C.E. removed last year, those same 180,000 people could not be removed this year as a result of that deportation moratorium. Now, of those 180,000 people, Tucker, 92 percent of them are criminals, either charged or convicted of a crime. In this memo, there is no exceptions clause for criminals.

So beginning in just a few days, about 12,000 criminals a month are going to be released into U.S. communities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well, tonight, there has been a major court decision on this order from the administration. FOX's Rick Leventhal joins us now to explain exactly what it is. Hey, Rick.

RICK LEVENTHAL, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. As you've been reporting, President Biden's effort to remake immigration policy caused a lot of confusion with I.C.E. agents and officials and a Federal Judge in Texas is now blocking that pause for at least the next two weeks.

The Judge's ruling is an early legal setback for the new administration, which hope to stop sending immigrants here illegally back over the border. U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton ruled on a challenge filed by the State of Texas, which argued it's a violation of Federal statutes and the Constitution to not enforce Federal law.

The Judge criticized Biden's maneuver made on his first day in the Oval Office writing, " ... the January 20 memorandum not only fails to consider potential policies more limited in scope and time, but it also fails to provide any concrete reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations."

The Texas lawsuit argued any change in policy would require at least 180 days' notice and that the moratorium violates an existing agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.

The judge found the pause could cause imminent and irreparable harm to Texas, but his ruling applies to the entire nation. In a statement, the White House says, it is confident the moratorium was quote, "wholly appropriate, and it will prevail in court." But for now, Tucker, arrests and deportations of people living illegally in the U.S. can continue -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Amazing. Rick Leventhal for us tonight, thank you so much.

LEVENTHAL: Sure. Well, as we mentioned a moment ago, the White House held several press briefings today about something called equity. It's not equality, its equity.

According to Susan Rice, the Chief Domestic Policy adviser at the White House, enforcing equity will now be the primary mission of every agency in your Federal government.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN RICE, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER: Every agency will place equity at the core of their public engagement, their policy design and program delivery to ensure that government resources are reaching Americans of color, and all marginalized communities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Now, we should be really clear, and we can't say this enough, because there's a rhetorical sleight of hand going on. Equity is not equality. Not everyone got that point.

At one point, as he often does, Joe Biden forgot his line. He thought he was there to promote equality, you know, the principle this country was founded on. Fortunately, the new President caught his mistake very quickly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I believe this nation in this government need to change their whole approach to the issue of racial equality -- equity. That means we need to make the issue of racial equity, not just an issue for any one department of government, it has to be the business of the whole of government.

Advancing equity has to be everyone's job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So you're 78, you spent your life using the word equality as Americans have for let's say, 250 years. It takes a while to figure out; now, we're talking about equity and the concepts have nothing to do with each other. In fact, they are opposites.

Equity means dividing people according to categories they cannot control, ones they were born with, like the color of their skin or their sex. And according to Joe Biden, we need a whole lot more of that. Why? Because in May, a guy called George Floyd died.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Those eight minutes and 46 seconds that took George Floyd's life opened the eyes of millions of Americans and millions of people around -- all over the world. It was the knee on the neck of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: What you didn't realize when George Floyd died was equality was going away to be replaced with equity. What does that mean for the rest of us? Bob Woodson would know. He is a Civil Rights activist for more than 50 years. He founded the Woodson Center and we're happy to have him on tonight. Mr. Woodson, thank you for joining us.

ROBERT WOODSON, FOUNDER, WOODSON CENTER: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: If you wouldn't mind, as someone who has put the goal of equality at the center of his life for many decades, tell us what equity means?

WOODSON: Equity, I mean, they are using inequality to both equity. Equity means if you're sitting at the gambling table, everybody gets the same winnings. So you don't have to win, you just -- you'll be given -- you'll be getting rewarded because you are who you are.

You know, Tucker, this whole discussion of equity reminds me of a place -- a car that has four flat tires, and we argue over the race or sexual orientation of the driver. The system that --

CARLSON: That's good.

WOODSON: It doesn't matter, you know, if the system is broken, and so there are several problems with it. Whenever you generalize about a group, all blacks, all gays, all women, and then you try to apply remedies for problems that that group has, it always benefits the elite at the expense of the ones at the bottom, always ends up being unequal.

For example, they generalize about all women. And the #MeToo Movement was started when a woman in Harlem, I mean, in New York, tried to find a forum for abused, black, low-income black women to express themselves. Well, middle class, elite, black and white women sees that movement and then promoted, quote, "equality for women," which meant that white rich and privileged black and white women were required to go on Boards of Directors and jobs and corporations. In the meantime, black women in prison, their needs were ignored.

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: And whenever -- and so -- but they use and the conditions of low income women to promote remedies that does not help them. The other problem when you're looking at it through a racial prism, is that if evil wears a black face, it escapes detection and correction.

For example, Geraldo Rivera did a two-hour documentary some years ago on sexual abuse of women in prison. Every one of the victims was black, every one of the victimizers was black. It did not generate any discussion of equality, because it didn't fit the racial narrative.

CARLSON: Exactly.

WOODSON: And that's the problem when we try to do that. And also what we do is we dumbed down standards.

CARLSON: Well, we've been dumbed in fact.

WOODSON: So --

CARLSON: No, I've certainly noticed that and it doesn't -- it doesn't help people at the bottom. I appreciate your coming on, Mr. Woodson. And of course, we'll see you again and I look forward to it. Thank you.

WOODSON: All right. Thank you.

CARLSON: So if you don't live in Washington, you might not know that there are still thousands of Federal troops in our nation's capital. What are they doing there exactly? Why aren't they leaving? What is this about? We'll investigate it after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, right now, plans are being made to keep thousands of National Guard troops in Washington at least through the end of the month, possibly into March. That's partly due to concerns about the upcoming impeachment proceedings, as well as other major political events that could attract violent fringe elements to the nation's capital.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Thousands of soldiers are in our capital city, CNN is not curious about that at all, they are happy just to repeat the talking points. Oh, it's about -- who knows, but it's good for the country. Shut up. Stop asking questions.

Is it good for the country? What is it about? Senator John Kennedy represents the State of Louisiana. He joins us tonight. Senator, I'm glad you came on tonight. I think this is a huge topic. It's being ignored by everybody.

Why do we have thousands of soldiers in our capital city, seriously?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY, R-LA.: Tucker, I'll have some things to account for on judgment day but one of them will not be being ungrateful for our National Guard and all law enforcement officials. God bless them.

We had some nut jobs violate the Capitol on January 6. We brought in National Guard troops to ensure that President Biden had a safe inauguration. He did. Inauguration is over.

But if you look around Capitol Hill, parts of it look like a scene from Mad Max. I mean, there's razor wire, there's fences, there are barricades. There are Humvees. There are automatic weapons; at one point, they had tanks. And the news media is always filming this stuff.

If you ask our Democratic leadership, which is in charge, they don't tell you, well, we have all this here to keep you safe.

I'm a pretty simple guy, Tucker. I like breakfast food and straight answers. And I'm not accusing anybody of anything. But Washington, D.C. being Washington, D.C., a cynic might think there's a political angle here. A cynical person might surmise that the Democratic leadership with the news media is trying to send a message to the American people and that message might be the Republicans couldn't keep you safe, but we, the Democrats can, which should cause you --

CARLSON: May I interrupt you -- may I interrupt you right there?

KENNEDY: Sure.

CARLSON: I spent my whole life in D.C., and the neighborhood where I spent my life, there are carjackings. There are police. No one is protecting the people of Washington. We had riots in the city.

They burnt -- they tried to burn the oldest Episcopal Church in the city and no one did anything about it. I mean, this isn't protecting anybody except the people in power. I mean, truly.

KENNEDY: Well, you're right. And the cynic who just might be seeing the message I just described, would also see the irony, because the Democrats want to defund the police. But the second message that the cynic might see is a message from the Uber elites and that message would be something along the lines of we, the Uber elites are very busy, important people. We're very smart. We're very virtuous.

We have a second home with a long driveway and we're telling you, you need to be very, very afraid of anybody who didn't vote for Joe Biden and that's why we need to call in the National Guard.

CARLSON: Yes.

KENNEDY: Now, I'm not accusing -- I'm not accusing anybody of anything and I probably just blew any chance I ever had of having Katie Couric be a friend of mine on Facebook, but I think that's a legitimate point of view.

CARLSON: I think it is, too, at least. Senator, it's great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.

KENNEDY: Thank you.

CARLSON: At some point, somebody in Congress needs to say, get your troops out of my city. Now.

We learned this weekend that one of the top figures in the financial community sent more than $150 million to Jeffrey Epstein. Don't ask questions. It's totally normal, just like having thousands of troops in your capital is totally normal.

What? Are you crazy? Maybe we are, because we're interested in why he did that and we'll get into it after the break.

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CARLSON: There was a major development over the weekend in the Jeffrey Epstein mystery because fundamentally, it is on the most basic level still a mystery.

The development involves the CEO of Apollo Global Management. That's one of the top investment firms in the world. FOX's Matt Finn has been following the story and joins us tonight with an update. Hey, Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, Apollo's former CEO, Leon Black, is stepping down after an investigation into his ties with Jeffrey Epstein revealed Black paid Epstein $158 million for fees related to tax and estate planning on Leon Black's yacht, but new details from a probe by an outside law firm insist there's no evidence that Black was involved in Epstein's crimes.

Black even denied wrongdoing and condemned Epstein's conduct. But the Dechert law firm says it reviewed more than 60,000 documents, more than 20 witnesses were interviewed and portions of that investigation reads, quote, "Epstein would at times allude to their personal relationship when attempting to negotiate aspects of their business relationship."

And "Epstein made repeated efforts to ingratiate himself with other senior executives at Apollo. In the beginning of 2016, Black and Epstein's professional and personal relationship deteriorated over a payment dispute that had long been brewing with black refusing to pay Epstein tens of millions of dollars that Epstein believed he had earned."

The reports as Leon Black believed Epstein saved him up to $2 billion in taxes. Black asked for the outside review of their relationship -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matt Finn, thanks so much for that.

Ghislaine Maxwell who is accused of sex trafficking minors on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein is still awaiting trial in this country, her lawyers are now trying to get the charges dropped in the name of -- wait for it -- equity.

They are saying the grand jury was quote: "Drawn from a community in which black and Hispanic residents are significantly underrepresented." Okay. What does that mean by the way? Are black and Hispanic jurors more tolerant of this? Is that what you're saying? Because they're not.

Tammy Bruce is the President the Independent Women's Voice. She joins us to assess.

Now, Tammy, now, I know it is a conspiracy theory to suggest that the richest people in the world may be up to no good -- conspiracy theory. But what do you make of all these developments here?

TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, look, clearly, there are some very fabulous people who are fabulously rich, but what we do have here and the left and the right recognize it is an unfair dual system of justice, that of course, with enough money, you should be able to -- you get the best lawyers, you are able to drag the system along, you have friends in high places, that creates the inequality, right, in the system.

And so when you're looking at someone like Ghislaine Maxwell, it is kind of shocking, I think it was shocking for Epstein that there was a little bit of attention paid to them and she is shocked. She is certainly not even out of prison, but I think there's a distraction there. This is really the tip of the iceberg.

This kind of money that we're discussing is enormous and it really does have an impact on the nature of how the system deals with you. And I think this is what Americans don't like.

But we've got to have more than gestures, right, than distractions in a certain way. Jeffrey Epstein and what they're doing with that kind of money, tens of millions, billions of dollars. There's questions, of course, about President Biden and the money from China when it comes to his son, and the amount of money that changes hands. Who has power and who does not?

And then of course, when it comes to taxes, if you've got enough money, like Mr. Black, you're going to be able to hire someone to get you out of a tax framework. All taxes are meant for the little people. Let's never forget that.

CARLSON: Yes. No, I think most of us are reminded of it quite a bit. Yes. Anyway, Tammy, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.

BRUCE: My pleasure. Thank you, dear.

CARLSON: As we said at the beginning of the show, because we meant it, this is the free speech network. It always has been. What we didn't expect was to be the only one left.

To protect speech, you can't be passive anymore. There is no option. You have to stand up for it or you'll lose it.

FOX's Brit Hume joins us straight ahead.

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CARLSON: Freedom of speech is the foundational freedom, without it you don't have freedom. This network exists to defend the freedom of speech, it always has. I didn't think we'd be the only ones doing it.

Few people understand the central importance of this right and the moment we're in like Brit Hume. He is our senior political analyst here on FOX, we're happy to have him with us tonight.

Brit, you spent your life benefiting from the First Amendment. What do you think of what you're watching now?

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS CHANNEL SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, what's most distressing to me, Tucker, about this period of time where you get all kinds of crackdowns on speech and different news organizations and so forth is the extent to which journalists themselves are now participating in it.

We're hearing this from a number of journalistic quarters and it astounds me, frankly, because I don't know that there's any chance that these efforts to shut down this channel and various other outlets will succeed. I suspect, they may not. However, it is alarming.

And it suggests to me, Tucker, that the people who are calling for this stuff don't really understand the basis of our concept of free speech, which is that our people are better informed by hearing a wide range of voices and tolerating them and that the answer to objectionable speech is not censorship.

Thomas Jefferson actually expressed this very well many years back when he said the following, "For here," he said, "We're not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it." That's the concept. Open forums, free speech. If you find speech objectionable, respond to it with something better.

Later on, later in 1927, there is a famous case called Whitney versus California in which Justice Brandeis had a famous passage, and he is talking about this very issue. He said, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies," he said, " ... to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be implied is more speech, not enforced silence."

What we're hearing and seeing now is journalists themselves trying to shut down other news organizations and channels and I find it astonishing and alarming.

CARLSON: I just never thought I would live in a moment where you and I were nodding enthusiastically about Justice Brandeis. But we are and for good reason. Brit Hume, great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.

HUME: Yes. Thank you, Tucker. You bet.

CARLSON: We'll be back tomorrow night and every weeknight to the show that is the sworn enemy of lying pomposity, smugness and groupthink.

We're happy you joined us tonight. We'll see you tomorrow.

Sean Hannity right now.

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