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How the ‘Python Cowboy’ plans to solve Florida’s snake problem

Mike Kimmel tells 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' how he aims to restore balance to Sunshine State’s ecosystem

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 29, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening, and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. Happy Friday. What a week. A lot going on in this country right now, but maybe the single biggest mystery when you take three steps back is why Democrats became so vicious after they won.

So, Joe Biden got the White House, his party took the Congress, you'd think they'd be thrilled. That's what they wanted. You think they'd be celebrating? But no. Instead they started a purge.

Within hours, Democrats began crushing even the mildest dissent. They shut down an entire social media company called Parler, not because Parler had done anything wrong, but simply because they couldn't control it. They couldn't take the chance that somebody on Parler might criticize them, so they eliminated it.

Then two days ago, they arrested a man and threw him in handcuffs brought him up on federal charges because he made fun of Hillary Clinton on Twitter, that man is now facing 10 years in prison.

Democrats then declared war on their rival political party, not by the way, a metaphorical war, but an actual one: soldiers and paramilitary law enforcement and the world's most powerful Intelligence Agencies. They denounced Republicans even the fairly moderate establishment figures who pose really no conceivable threat to anyone.

They denounce them as dangerous terrorists, they linked them to ISIS and al Qaeda, and anyone who complained about this or fought back in any way, was threatened with expulsion from Congress.

In other words, it doesn't matter what voters decided in November, in the name of democracy, you can no longer serve in the Congress. That's what they said. Nor are dissidents permitted in the Federal bureaucracy. No one who disagrees with our beliefs, Democrats have announced can work in the U.S. government.

We're not overstating it; that all actually happened, and you saw it. Nothing like that has ever taken place in this country before. This is the most sweeping and audacious assault on civil liberties in American history.

So, the question is, what accounts for this? Why are they doing it? It's worth figuring that out.

On the most basic level, of course, it's a power grab. We said that from the first day and it remains true. The Democratic Party doesn't exist to serve some abstract principle, liberty and justice or the Bill of Rights. No. Nor is its primary goal improving the lives of its voters. If you've been to Detroit, you know that's true.

No, the Democratic Party exists to accumulate power, all of it. Some is never enough. The impulse is to control everything. So that's what they're trying to do now amidst the chaos and tumult.

But that's not all that's going on right now. There's more. Look around: watch as Democrats erect a permanent steel prison fence around the United States Capitol. Why is that fence there? Well, to protect the people inside, to keep the public out of what we used to call the People's House. That's happening tonight as we speak.

Then notice the thousands of armed soldiers and law enforcement agents stationed outside that fence. What's their purpose? Again, protecting the people inside.

Then ask yourself why are House Democrats planning to use Federal committee funds to pay for more personal security for themselves? Why the renewed push to seize firearms from law-abiding Americans who have committed no crime? Why does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seem on the verge of tears as she describes as she was almost murdered on January 6 at the Capitol.

She is not entirely putting it on, she seems to mean it.

If you're sensing a theme here, there is in fact a theme and the theme is panic, fear and it's real. You are looking at leaders who are genuinely afraid of the people they are supposed to be leading.

Here's the really interesting thing: they seem much more afraid now that Donald Trump has left office. With Donald Trump gone, they sense that a period of actual populism has begun, real populism, and they may be right.

Look at what happened this week on Wall Street. A group of guys on Reddit trading stocks in their boxer shorts exposed the entire American finance establishment as the corrupt and fraudulent scam that it often is. That's a pivotal moment in this country.

Once you see something like that, you can't un-see it. Once someone pulls the mask from your face, he still remembers your face. People's attitudes about our economy will change forever because of what happened this week. It's a big deal.

The Biden administration's response to what happened this week. Their first impulse was to brag about having the first female Treasury Secretary. That's what they said. That's not an adequate response to what happened, and even the Biden people know that it's not, but that's all they had.

The truth is our leaders don't have answers. They don't even have explanations for what's going on. Worse than that, they themselves are deeply implicated in the systemic problems. In some cases, the crimes that are dragging the country down. They know all this. They know their guilt. Here's the thing: they know that you know it, too, and that's why they're afraid. They know why populism is rising, and it is.

So, this really is the time to make a decision about how to respond to it. What our leaders do next will define what America looks like going forward. It wouldn't even be hard to begin the process of fixing things or bringing actual unity to a country that badly needs unity.

In a democracy, the first step to unifying the country is always the same. Leaders enter into a power sharing agreement with the people they lead. They do the obvious thing, they stop lying to their own citizens, they stop attacking them, and they respect their culture. They don't try to control people's beliefs. That's not their role.

They treat their own citizens like adults, meaning they treat them fairly. And above all, they cut the public in on some of the fruits of the country's success. If all the benefits of our economy seem to be accruing to a small number of people, that's a problem and they try hard to fix it.

Wise leaders know that unequal countries are volatile countries. They know that caste systems are not compatible with democracies. But our leaders don't seem to know any of that. Instead, they tell us that solar cars and mandatory diversity training are the real solutions to our problems. But no one buys that, those are not real solutions, they are a smokescreen. They're a diversion tactic.

Populism starts when people start to figure that out, and they have. And that's why everything suddenly feels so unstable right now, because once again, real populism is brewing.

In the face of all of that, the people in charge are doing the single stupidest, most counterproductive thing that any leader could do in the face of a populist movement. They're refusing to admit their role in the decline. They're refusing to admit their failures, and instead, they are blaming the people they have failed. They're literally declaring war on their own population. How's that going to end?

And if you think we're overstating it, we're not. Here's the former C.I.A. Director describing what the enemy looks like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER C.I.A. DIRECTOR: And this threat from domestic violence extremists is much more challenging, I believe, than it was in terms of going after foreign terrorists. The domestic violent extremists are much more pervasive, their numbers are much larger.

When we're going after al Qaeda or other types of terrorist group cells in the United States, their numbers were in the single digits of dozens and was finding needles in a haystack.

Here, there are a lot of haystacks with a lot of needles in them. They have the wherewithal, they already have the weapons that if they so choose to use them, they can in fact, carry out these deadly attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So many problems in this country, evident to anyone who is paying attention, but John Brennan, the former C.I.A. Director has isolated the real problem. The real problem is you.

According to Brennan, anyone who disagrees with say, Susan Rice is worse than Osama bin Laden and more dangerous. These people meaning you, quote, "Have the weapons," these terrorists. By terrorists, Brennan means tens of millions of American citizens who might have a firearm at home and didn't vote for Joe Biden. They're the threat and we need to hunt them as we hunted al Qaeda.

You just saw the clip. That's what he said. It is hard to imagine a leader saying something more destructive and more reckless than that on television in a moment as fraught as the one we're in. It's terrifying in its stupidity, and in its certain effect.

This isn't crying fire in a crowded theater, this is using a flame thrower in a crowded theater. What are the implications of a former C.I.A. Director talking like this? It's not going to make anyone more moderate. That's for certain, just the opposite.

John Brennan is creating more extremists than a Pakistani madrasa. And it's not just him, all the news other than this one right now are repeating this now official line that the American government is now at war with its own population. Here is CNN's version.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: My colleague, Jim Sciutto, he has covered international terrorism for 20 years and says that the parallels to the domestic terror threat are frightening. And he points to and I quote here, "radicalization online, demonization of the enemy to justify violence, draw to a cause greater than themselves devotion to a cultish leader."

That said, are we doing enough to combat this threat?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This is the way law enforcement looks at the domestic terror threat now is equal or greater than international terrorism. If we compared that to a U.S. politician propagating Islamist terrorist thought, materials, lies, et cetera, imagine the reaction. And yet sadly, there's still a partisan reaction to this, some denying that the threat is real and that the lie behind the threat is dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: American citizens are more dangerous than foreign terrorists. You often hear people say, "Oh FOX is so extreme. The FOX News is so extreme." No show on this would ever put that on the air -- ever. And if anyone did, people would resign in protest because that is completely untrue and completely reckless.

For once we're not even going to mock Don Lemon for being a mouth breather, though he demonstrably is. The problem is much bigger than that, it's not funny. He and that former Obama official you just saw told their viewers that millions of American citizens are terrorists.

Now, that's a lie. For one thing, it is just not true. Press a little and you'll find the Department of Homeland Security which has been upping up the domestic threat for the past week, at great cost to people's sanity. D.H.S. has no actual evidence that Trump voters are planning to hurt anyone, there is no evidence of a plot of any kind, they can see that. Trust us, they would tell you if they found a plot.

But the question you have to ask yourself is what kind of effect do lies like that, the ones you just heard are calculated to terrify you? What kind of effect do they have on the country? Especially over time? This is not new.

When you tell people they're evil because of how they vote or how they look, and our leaders are definitely telling them that every single day, when you train a population to tally every group of Americans by race and ethnicity, first and foremost, keep track of people's genetic background every time you see a picture. Really? What effect does that have when you promote group identity, even as you intentionally destroy national identity?

If you do all of those things, what kind of country do you get at the end? Well, you get a scary divided country, the kind of country where you need steel fencing outside the national legislature.

It's very obvious where all of this is going. And it's very, very bad. Part of the solution is to stop talking like this immediately. No more aging spies on cable news declaring war on American citizens, " ... domestic political enemies more dangerous than al Qaeda." What?

No more power mad Members of Congress dividing people by race so they can conquer. White fragility, white supremacy, white sounds, those are racial attacks, let's stop lying about it. We shouldn't talk that way in public.

Those attacks are making people crazy. And by the way, over time, possibly making people dangerous. For real, too threatened, too nuts.

Watch this clip and ask yourself what kind of effect this woman is having on the United States right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): There are legitimate white supremacist sympathizers that sit at the heart and at the core of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives.

There's no consequences for racism, no consequences for massaging, no consequences for insurrection, and no consequences means that they condone it.

We are now away from acting out of fealty to their President that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fealty to white supremacist organizations as a political tool.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wait. Let's just be honest, for a second, that woman is a tool of corporate power posing as a truth teller. Look at her campaign contributions. Who is supporting her campaigns? People who want to change the subject away from economics to identity politics. That whole pose is fraudulent in her case.

But listen specifically to what she says and think about the effect on the people listening, people standing in airports will hear her say that, quote, "Fealty to white supremacist organizations as a political tool." What does that even mean? We're not even sure who she is talking about, apparently, the Republican Party and its Grand Kleagle, Kevin McCarthy of California.

That's not true. But it's worse than that. This is a fantasy. It's a very dark fantasy, designed to terrify people and make them easier to command.

Over time, probably not long now. It will have other more insidious effects. Talk like that, from our leaders, from our elected officials is going to turn some of our citizens very, very radical. You don't want to live in a country with very, very radical people.

So to be clear, whatever you hear about Fox News being radical, we want to live in a country that looks like -- I don't know, 2005, where your race is not the most important thing about you, where you have a chance to get ahead by playing by the rules. That's called moderate. That's called democracy. That's the republic that we want, and talk like this, which is everywhere, all of a sudden, is the enemy of the country we once lived in.

Jason Whitlock is a journalist and the truth teller, and we're happy to have him on tonight. Jason, I appreciate your coming on here.

Here's my worry. So, you have this weird confluence of events where populism is clearly rising as people decide, hey, the system is actually corrupt. And it disenfranchises me and they're mad.

At the very same time, you have the people benefiting from the system, refusing to acknowledge that and instead attacking the people who were mad. I don't -- I'm not sure where that goes, but it really worries me.

JASON WHITLOCK, https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__OUTKICK.COM&d=DwICAg&c=cnx1hdOQtepEQkpermZGwQ&r=tgDLkJy54PfJyWJwul3dKe54qGxqO7b7d5vjo7RcZds&m=1_YVAuuSz_5tfYiFYR0bqRhedGXggo9wNOhba5Qdln8&s=HibDRt0M9XZ1vdAlzevnVLIwS8WL8sAqblR1-z_fAbA&e= : Tucker, great monologue and my reaction, perhaps a little different than what you expect. But Tucker, I just believe they're using race and identity politics as a distraction from the real agenda, and AOC and others don't believe in the founding principles of this country.

They don't believe in the Declaration of Independence. They don't believe in the Constitution. They don't believe in the Emancipation Proclamation. They don't believe in what we accomplished in the Civil Rights Movement, under the leadership of Martin Luther King.

They are the insurrectionists. They are the ones trying to take this country, a very dangerous direction. They are distracting everybody with claims of race and racism, while they try to usher in socialism, Marxism and make this country very secular. That is what's going on.

Those of us who are believers, those of us who believe in the principles that we were founded upon, and I'm just sorry, if it upsets people, this was founded in Christianity this country was, and that Christianity led to a lot of progress. It ended slavery. It ended Jim Crow.

It brought freedom to all Americans and laws that protected all of our freedoms and they are trying to undo all of that and they are distracting us with talks of race, and anybody that is a believer and believes in our founding principles and believes like, America was pretty good when it was Christian-Judeo society, they're trying to silence us, calling white people racist and calling black people that believe in those things Akun or an Uncle Tom, and silence them, and make all those -- all of us that believe in our founding principles, we are the bad guys. Don't listen to them. They're racist. They're sellouts.

They don't believe in this new America that we're bringing in, this global society that we're bringing in that's going to make everything better. It's not going to make things better. We're already seeing the evidence. It makes us worse. It has us at each other's throats. It has us at the brink of destabilization.

CARLSON: I think that's right. I mean, the difference in vision is really simple. Most religious people, certainly Christians are Universalists. They think that every person is equal before God, because we were all created by God, so we all have equal value.

They're selling something very different, in my view, and much darker than that.

WHITLOCK: They're selling something very secular. They're creating a godless country. And I'm sorry, and I know Joe Biden is a practicing Catholic. But just based on the actions, based on the people that are being empowered, based on the way they are trying to demonize 75 million Trump supporters and voters the way we're trying to demonize them, it is just unfair, it's inaccurate.

Those people have a voice in this country, a well-earned voice in this country. They can't all be reduced to oh, my God, I have impure thoughts. Everybody that has walked this planet except for one person, in my opinion, Jesus Christ has had impure thoughts, has been a sinner.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, certainly a sinner; Martin Luther King, an idol to me, and icon, certainly a sinner, impure thoughts.

I'm just sorry that this little fantasy world where liberals and Democrats are these perfect people, and everybody else is evil, and racist, and a sellout. This is a fantasy land.

They are not Jesus Christ. I'm just sorry. And I know they have appointed themselves that and it's driving a lot of people crazy, including me, I've got to be honest with you, I'm so concerned about this country and I'm so concerned about the people that are being silenced.

And if those of us that are believers and believe in these founding principles, if we don't put our differences aside and come together, and stand together and stand on the truth that we know, the country is going to fall.

CARLSON: I believe that completely. You're a brave man. Jason Whitlock, thank you.

So we're kind of trying to keep track to give you some outline of the scope of the crackdown on civil liberties now underway and trying to bring you individuals who suffered under it. Here's one.

A literary agent in New York, works for literary agency in the city recently fired not because of what she said online, but because she maintained accounts on Parler and Gab, those are free speech alternatives to corporate social media.

The employee's name is Colleen Oefelein and she joins us tonight. Colleen, I appreciate your coming on. So I really wanted to talk to you just to make sure I got this right.

You were fired, not because you said something outrageous or immoral online, but because you used specific social media platforms.

COLLEEN OEFELEIN, FIRED FOR USING PARLER: Tucker, thank you so much for having me tonight. And thank you for all your hard work. I really think you hit the nail on the head in your monologue. But yes, you are correct. That's what I got fired for.

I created a profile on Parler and I created a profile on Gab. I posted the same exact content on Twitter as I posted on those social media platforms and that's what I got fired for.

CARLSON: What I'm so struck by here is you work for -- worked for a literary agency, and the basis of course of literature is free thinking. And so you would think that a literary agency would be kind of the last line of defense against this kind of Stalinism, what did your bosses say to you?

OEFELEIN: Actually, it was an e-mail --

CARLSON: Of course.

OEFELEIN: And pretty succinct that I had created a profile on Parler and Gab and that because of what they called my political activities, they had to take swift action and part ways.

CARLSON: Since you worked in the literary world, what do you think the future of literature and art is in a country where people can be fired for using the wrong social media platform?

OEFELEIN: It's chilling, Tucker. It's really chilling, because it used to be that being silent was safe on Twitter and in American publishing. But I feel like this signaled to those in American publishing that it's okay to get rid of people who aren't moderate, or who are moderate who aren't publicly left of center. They want people left of center.

And so, if you were -- obviously, if you were outwardly conservative, yes, you were vilified. Yes, you were silenced. But being silent used to mean you would be safe from those kinds of actions.

Now -- it is, you have to be publicly on the left, otherwise, you're out.

CARLSON: It's really a shocking story. I'm going to save this tape. It is a kind of period piece where we emerge from this. I hope it's soon.

Good luck, Colleen. Thank you for joining us.

OEFELEIN: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: If you're wondering why art has died in this country, the whole span from visual arts all the way to comedy, why nothing beautiful is being created right now -- that's why, because nothing grows in an environment like that.

Well, throughout the pandemic, the rich got very, very rich, which would be fine, except no one else got rich, everyone else got poorer. That trend seemed to hit a pause just for a moment this week and then infuriated some people. That straight ahead.

Plus, enormous foreign snakes are invading the Everglades, a person who hunts pythons is here to explain how many pythons are roaming the Everglades. It's Friday, so we're bringing that to you. Just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Crises have a way of accelerating trends already in progress and this one certainly has. A new analysis shows that billionaires in this country increased their wealth by nearly 40 percent since the coronavirus pandemic came here.

That trend was up ended very briefly this week, when an army of amateur day traders on Reddit collectively drove up the stock of GameStop. It's a video game retail that a bunch of hedge funds had shorted. Those hedge funds lost billions, and when they did, many brokerage houses jumped to the rescue by shutting down purchases of GameStop shares. Everyone saw it happen and many were appalled by it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYLER WINKLEVOSS, AMERICAN INVESTOR: I think this is a much larger issue in the thread of our country, and its fragility in what's happening in the inequality. And frankly, the hypocrisy of the political leaders who say, you can't open your business and run your business and make a living during the pandemic. We won't pass a stimulus bill in time. And oh, by the way, and now you can't trade. You know, what's the next thing they're going to control and say you can't do?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: One of the Winklevosses, the twins who came up with the idea for Facebook and then left. So what can you do in the face of this? Well, one thing you could do is leave negative reviews for the brokerages that stopped trading, change the rules in the middle of the game. Oh, but you can't because Google is on their side.

Google is in this, too. Google removed more than a hundred thousand negative reviews for the brokerage app, Robin Hood would change the rules middle of the game. Oh, so you're allowed to complain says Google. That's not all.

If you're a 22-year-old Best Buy employee in Iowa who just made 10 grands by trading GameStop stock, you're a bad person.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER ATWATER, PRESIDENT, FINANCIAL INSYGHTS: I certainly look at the evolution of this paradigm starting with sort of gamesmanship, people going online and using social media to make money almost as a game, then it became very greed filled.

There's a jealousy, there's an anger, there's a frustration at the system. And I think that the size of the crowd now encompasses that aspect. And don't get me wrong, there is always a striving to peaks in the market. But this has got anger behind it and the behavior of the mob, in many ways reminds me of what we saw at the Capitol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, yes, the people on Reddit are greedy. They're insurrectionists. Vivek Ramaswamy is a biotech entrepreneur and author of the forthcoming book "Woke, Inc.," and a very smart man. He joins us now.

Vivek, thanks so much for coming on. I'm actually sincerely worried about the way our leaders are handling this. The rest of us learned that, oh, wow. Wall Street is corrupt as every other institution, they're not acknowledging that and they're attacking the people who benefited for like three days from Wall Street for the first time.

What's the takeaway from this moment, do you think?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, BIOTECH ENTREPRENEUR: So this is the spotlight, Tucker on the woke industrial complex as we know it. A couple of weeks ago, we saw it with Silicon Valley; Twitter and Facebook taking their users off. Then it's the Google and Apple App Stores, taking entire applications like Parler off their App Stores.

I was wondering what are they going to do next? I was actually waiting for them to come after e-mail. I'm sure we're heading on a collision course to censoring hateful or racist e-mails. That's coming soon.

CARLSON: Oh, yes.

RAMASWAMY: But it turned out, I didn't pick what they were going to do next. Now it's betting stock trades, because Wall Street is getting into the same act as Silicon Valley.

But the worst part of it, Tucker, is actually a lot of people lost a lot of money this week. But then they whitewash the whole things with this woke white washing, claiming that it was hate speech. Facebook claiming that it was adult sexual exploitation. And this is getting increasingly farcical that we ought to, as consumers just see through what -- for what it is -- institutional lying at its worst.

CARLSON: But you can't keep cracking down like this forever before people go crazy and the system explodes. Don't they understand that? You have to, at some point, admit, okay, I'm wrong, I'm corrupt, or whatever. But you can't just turn it back on the people who expose your corruption, can you forever?

RAMASWAMY: No, it's not sustainable. I mean, crony capitalism 1.0, let's go back to the early 2000s. You take a Goldman Sachs CEO and put him in as Treasury Secretary. That's great. That's the vanilla version. But this 2.0 version is actually much more tricky, right, in 2020.

CARLSON: Yes.

RAMASWAMY: Where crony capitalism 2.0 is, then dress it up with these progressive values. These do-good work smokescreens. And then what they do is you actually trick liberals into adulation. Liberals should be incensed of all, but you trick them into adulation because of their love of woke causes.

And meanwhile, you go to the conservatives, and you trick them into submission because they've been taught since 1980 to memorize a line that says the free market can do no wrong, but fail to recognize there's actually not a free market.

And so it's actually inherently divisive. Divide and conquer. That's what Corporate America is doing, leaving our democracy in damage in its wake.

CARLSON: You're so right. So, you wind up having the Heritage Foundation defending corporations that hate them. It's just so amazing. Triumph -- when the libertarians meet the professional woke people like the rest of us, we are in deep trouble.

Vivek, it's great to see you tonight. Thank you for that. It was really smart analysis.

RAMASWAMY: Good to see you.

CARLSON: So, the World Health Organization is finally getting to the question of where did this coronavirus come from? Their conclusion: they can't really confirm it's from China. They just don't really know. Details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Almost immediately after being inaugurated President, Joe Biden did the most important thing he could do, he rejoined the World Health Organization, because they've done a fantastic job with COVID.

The W.H.O. for his part is still pretending like China had nothing at all to do with the virus from Wuhan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MICHAEL RYAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, W.H.O. HEALTH EMERGENCIES PROGRAMME: All hypotheses around the table and it is definitely too early to come to a conclusion of exactly where this virus started either within or without China.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That's right, more than a year later, it is still too early -- too early to stop shilling for Communist China which funds the W.H.O. So now, they are looking for another country with an earlier outbreak in a city that has experimental virus labs next to a market where people eat bats.

Remarkably, researchers who are not affiliated with the W.H.O. have now determined that the Spanish Flu that killed 50 million people a hundred years ago actually did originate not in Spain, but in China.

FOX News medical contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel has been watching all of this and joins us to assess. Good to see you, Doctor.

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Tucker, it's our anniversary. About a year ago when you and I were warning the world about an emerging virus, the World Health Organization was calling it a regional problem only and saying it was okay to travel.

So now they're being given a second chance, a year later, they're there on the ground finally in China, a place where horseshoe bats in Southern China had emitted a coronavirus 96 percent similar to this and wet markets they have to look at and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where people were reportedly according to the State Department got sick in the fall of 2019 with COVID-like symptoms.

With all of that to examine: bat caves in China, wet markets and the lab itself, they are talking about outside China? This reminds me of history and the person doing it, by the way is a physician, it's not Tedros, it is Dr. Mike Ryan, who is actually a public health expert and in charge of the COVID response.

It reminds me of history. About a hundred years ago, as you've said, there was a virus emerging that killed over 50 million people worldwide. No country wanted to take blame for where it came from. We said it's not from our army barracks. France said it's not from us.

Spain got blamed for it, of course, but Spain couldn't protest. They didn't have enough power. But then it turned out in 2013, Tucker, Canadian researchers found out that Chinese laborers brought this virus. They were the first to have it. They brought it across the border.

Tucker, I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but could history be repeating itself, Tucker?

CARLSON: It does seem that way. That's a provocative point, Dr. Siegel. Dr. Marc Siegel joining us tonight, Friday. Great to see you.

SIEGEL: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So maybe the lesson is, it's not healthy to have a really, really crowded country. Maybe we should keep that in mind before we crowd ours.

Well, it has been three months since Election Day in November and here's something amazing. The race for Congress in New York's 22nd congressional district still has not been decided. Why is New York's election system worse than the election system in say, Honduras or Burkina Faso? Great question. We'll get the latest there, next.

Then pythons seem to be taking over parts of South Florida. A python hunter is standing by because it's Friday and we're interested. That's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, we've got a new President. Who exactly is running the Justice Department? We've got some exclusive reporting on that tonight. In one of his very first acts as President, Joe Biden appointed someone called Nicholas McQuaid to run the D.O.J.'s Criminal Division, the all-important Criminal Division. It turns out that's the same Criminal Division that's currently investigating Biden's son, Hunter.

So who is this Nicholas McQuaid exactly? Well, this show can tell you that he has a former business partner of Hunter Biden's new criminal defense attorney, a man called Christopher Clark. Hunter Biden apparently hired Clark in December to help him with the Federal investigation into his business dealings, the criminal investigation that D.O.J. is conducting.

Both McQuaid and Clark were law partners together at Latham & Watkins, they worked on the same cases right up until McQuaid took the job at the Department of Justice.

On January 21st of this year, the same day, Nicholas McQuaid was featured in a Justice Department press release. Lathan & Watkins filed a motion in court to withdraw McQuaid as an attorney he was working on with Christopher Clark.

So that means Joe Biden put as the head of the Criminal Division, the partner of the guy his son had hired to defend him against the Criminal Division. Whoa. We reached out to the Justice Department for comment on this. They refused to say whether McQuaid would recuse himself from matters involving Hunter Biden and his former partner who is representing Hunter Biden. It's all pretty amazing.

And another reminder, there's a lot going on within the Biden family. We got another reminder today from POLITICO. They reported this. Joe Biden apparently told his younger brother, Frank, last year during the campaign and we're quoting, "For Christ's sake, watch yourself. Don't get sucked into something that would first of all hurt you," end quote, but by implication would hurt me, too. Too late now.

So it's been three months since Election Day, and believe it or not, the race in the 22nd District of New York is still undecided. It's still exceptionally close. Mail-in voting rules led to massive delays there and many other places.

Republican Claudia Tenney currently leads that race by 122 votes. She has checked in with us a couple of times since Election Day. She joins us again tonight for an update. Congresswoman, great to see you. What is going on in the 22nd District of New York?

CLAUDIA TENNEY (R), NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Well, we have a combination of many things. But one thing is for sure, we're really happy to have a more commanding lead than we did before. We went from 29 votes to 122 which is a virtual landslide.

But the real problem and we've talked about this before is that so much of what Governor Cuomo did with Executive Orders is adopting the horrible legislation that you've discussed on your show. H.R. 1, the Democrats signature legislation.

CARLSON: Yes.

TENNEY: They call it The for the People Act, but I think it's for the Democratic takeover of the United States forever act. And this is -- my race highlights exactly why this is so bad and so dangerous to the integrity of our election process and I've lived it for the last almost 90 days, we'll probably have a decision more definitively by Monday which will be the 90-day mark.

But this is a disaster. Mail-in voting same day registration, registrations at the Department of Motor Vehicles and now registrations at colleges and universities as if those places are the place where we have to underscore the ability to ensure integrity in our voting system.

The blurred lines with these government agencies and making multiple tasks is a huge part of it. But I think a lot of the intent here is the Democrats are interested in both trafficking. They're not interested in integrity, they're interested in getting the votes and getting the win and it is very concerning and it's troubling, and my race is a perfect example of how bad this is really in practice.

CARLSON: It's unbelievable. I hope you win for a lot of reasons, but mainly so you can take what you've just learned living under these insane rules to the Congress and save the rest of us from them. I hope you do. Claudia Tenney, thank you.

TENNEY: I intend to do that.

CARLSON: Amen.

TENNEY: Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

CARLSON: Thank you. So have you ever eaten pythons? Some have. The python cowboy joins us next to explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The State of Florida is teeming with refugees from the northeast, fleeing tyranny and mismanagement, but they not the only ones in Florida. Florida is also filled with pythons, big snakes slithering their way through the Everglades and messing with the food chain. So how does the State of Florida plan to restore balance to its very fraught ecosystem?

One man has thought a lot about this and he has a really interesting idea. His name is Mike Kimmel. He's a trapper, known in Florida as the Python Cowboy and we're happy to have him on tonight. Mr. Kimmel, thanks so much for coming on. So what is -- what is your plan to deal with the overabundance of pythons in Florida?

MIKE KIMMEL, PYTHON COWBOY: Well, it's really not just my plan, you know, a lot of people are involved with it and we need to hunt and we need to remove them.

And the state right now has different programs to do that, but we need more help. You know, we need the general public involved. And you know, we're doing everything we can to try to incentivize that.

CARLSON: So one of the kind of core ethical precepts of hunting is you eat what you kill? Do you eat python?

KIMMEL: Yes, sir. Absolutely. And if I don't need it, I definitely make use of it. You know, you can -- you only need so much snake, so you know anything, I don't eat myself, I feed to my different wildlife rescues and the livestock I have.

CARLSON: I mean, it goes without saying it tastes like chicken, so I'm not even going to ask you, but tell me how hard it is to hunt a python and how dangerous?

KIMMEL: It's definitely not easy. It's a labor of love. You know, it's something you've got to be passionate about something, you know, to kind of have motivation for.

I generally go out there for three to five days at a time. I'm sleeping in the swamp. And I'm hunting these invasive snakes either by boat or in my customized truck or I'm driving these levees that stretch out into the swamp and I'm looking for these snakes while they're hunting for our native wildlife.

CARLSON: Well, it looks like they're hunting for you. I'm watching video of blood all over your arm. You got bitten by a python. What was that like?

KIMMEL: Yes, you know, sometimes a job gets a little messy, a little dangerous and it's just a part of it. Recently, capturing a big almost 18- foot python, 135 pounds and it struck at me. I was able to dodge it strike, but it gave me another quick half strike. I wasn't expecting it. These older snakes, they are smart. They know what they're doing.

And it got me pretty good on my arm. Actually, it got a couple of main veins. I think it just missed an artery, but I had a little bit of a gusher coming out of my arm.

CARLSON: Where's that snake now?

KIMMEL: Here's the one that got me. But I ended up getting her.

CARLSON: That's amazing. What kind of firearm do you use for python hunting?

KIMMEL: Generally, I'm just using my hands. I capture them alive. For me, that's the safest way and the most humane way to do it. It's a lot harder to shoot a snake directly in the brain than you think it is. And generally these snakes, they're not scared of anything. They think they're camouflage.

You know, they're the top predator and I'm able to sneak up on them, grab them and once I grab them you know they're not going anywhere. It's becomes a wrestling match, but thankfully I get the better of them.

CARLSON: Well, it's sporting anyway. No one deer hunts like that though. I would recommend the 308, that's just me. But I am very impressed. Mike Kimmel, it was great to see you tonight. Good luck. Good luck.

KIMMEL: Thank you so much.

CARLSON: Thank you.

We're out of time, amazingly. A lot going on. Still a great country.

We'll be back, Monday night, 8:00 p.m., the show that's the sworn enemy of lying pomposity, smugness and groupthink.

Have a wonderful weekend with the ones you love. That's the whole point.

We will see you soon.

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