'Ingraham Angle' on Democrats COVID handling

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Ingraham Angle: Masks on, masks off

Democrats are scrambling to cover their COVID tracks, but we will never forget what they did to us

This is a rush transcript of "The Ingraham Angle" on February 8, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Thank you for being with us. We hope you'll set your DVR, so you never miss an episode of "HANNITY." You could always watch it in the morning. I put you to sleep. That wouldn't be good.

In the meantime, let not your hearts be troubled. Laura Ingraham takes it away. Where are my presents? They didn't come in the mail today.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: The package is enroute. Meaning--

HANNITY: Enroute.

INGRAHAM: It should get there, I don't know next year.

HANNITY: You have a rounding number for me.

INGRAHAM: Yes. It should get there next year at some point, given the way things are going.

HANNITY: Let's do the post office.

INGRAHAM: Yes, exactly. But I think it's the right size. I'm looking at you. If you gained a few, now you're very trim. So it's going to look--

HANNITY: It's getting strong oohs.

INGRAHAM: Yes, it'll look great. So, Hannity, you got to give me the review once you get them. OK. So that'll probably be tomorrow, I hope.

HANNITY: I don't know what you're up to. I really don't know. But it is - whatever it is, there's no good coming out of this. I can sense it now.

INGRAHAM: You got it. Freedom matters, my friend. Great show, as always.

HANNITY: Have a great show.

INGRAHAM: We'll see you tomorrow. I'm Laura Ingraham. This is THE INGRAHAM ANGLE from Washington tonight.

Masks on, masks off. That's the focus of tonight's 'Angle'.

All right. Prediction. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is going to be celebrated in the press tomorrow for dropping her idiotic mask requirements for businesses only. What wisdom and leadership she's demonstrated? Not so fast, Kath.

As Democrat governors are scrambling to cover their COVID tracks by slowly dropping their mask mandates, we must never ever forget what these people did to us.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

INGRAHAM: Now, that viral video from the early days of the pandemic was a sign of very bad things to come. Film just about a month after Dr. Fauci insisted masks weren't necessary.

Yet blue state mayors and left-wing governors slavishly followed unelected federal health experts and started treating us like guinea pigs.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

INGRAHAM: Yes. This guy's got a lot less friendly. All because our so- called expert class thought a two ply piece of cloth was going to prevent COVID transmission one seat away.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

INGRAHAM: Shirley, we won't let them slink away after what they did, even to our little ones.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just got kicked off the flight, because our two- year-old would not put on a mask and were banned off of United forever. Because a two-year-old would not put on a mask.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: The damage that they left and their power tripping (ph) wake, using their emergency authority to enforce a new normal. We never liked that phrase. A new normal that was never grounded in science, and which turned American against American.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

INGRAHAM: We became a nation of mask snitches.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This massive crowd, again, not many of them wearing a mask. I spoke to the Tampa Police and I asked them what are you doing about this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Now, when it became cool to report on COVID violators to be a COVID tattletale, you knew we were in trouble here. And then, Biden thought he'd placate all of you by asking for just 100 days of masking, which turned into a year.

But none of this ever mattered, did it, for the elites and the well- connected? Like Gavin Newsom at the French Laundry, and the Obamas in the heat of the Delta wave celebrating Barack's 60th with a blowout bash in the vineyard. No masks, no problem.

These celebrity covipocrites always had an explanation though, didn't they? For violating the rules that regular people still had to abide by.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wore my mask the entire game. And I - when people asked for a photograph, I hold my breath and I put it here and people could see that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: But during this mask and nightmare, the rest of America was still denied entrance to bars and kicked out of gyms and even chased off beaches.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did they cite you first or did they just put you in handcuffs?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did they cite you first, or did they just put you in handcuffs?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They didn't site me. No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: And the entire time, the bureaucrats and the politicians who claim to care so much about children's health, only let the kids back into the classrooms if they wore filthy bacteria-filled masks for several hours a day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And failed by the public health office.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All we're asking is that we work in safe and fair conditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: But then that wasn't good enough either, because suddenly the goalpost shifted again. The cloth and the surgical masks at some point just stopped working, I guess. We just needed N-95s and KN-95s.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: We continue to take additional steps to ensure that Americans have what they need to protect themselves, including by making hundreds of millions of N-95 masks available for free to all Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Have you ever gotten yours? We haven't. As usual, Biden's right on time. Just in time for Omicron to kind of fade away and even liberal governors to announce that they're slowly dropping the mandates.

Now, long ago, the 'Angle' told you that the Democrats would only pull the mask mandates when they decided that the issue was hurting them politically. Well, that time has come.

Governors Murphy of New Jersey; Ned Lamont of Connecticut; John Carney of Delaware; Gavin Newsom of California; now Kathy Hochul of New York, well, we're not celebrating your vision, or your COVID stewardship. We're outing you for your cynical, destructive and effective, meaningless, divisive, and frankly, illegal abuse of power these past two years.

Here's what California versus Texas COVID cases look like on a graph. The green is Texas. You get the point. The mask mandates made no difference. Dropping them isn't about cases declining, it's about Democrats' chances in November declining.

Although apparently the White House was willing to sacrifice the midterms for the masks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: CDC continues to recommend that any mask is better than no mask.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: They are really important tool to stop the spread, especially in a highly transmittable Omicron variant.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The guidance is very clear, which is that we recommend masking in schools. That is the recommendation from the CDC.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: They just can't stop themselves. And they call the America Firsters fanatics. Meanwhile, don't let any of the mass commissars off the hook. Instead, remember, they forced unmasked students to be corralled into many isolation centers, or kicked out of school altogether; or even threatened with criminal trespassing charges.

So one by one, they can drop their mandates. But we will never drop our demands for accountability until they're all driven from office once and for all. And that's the 'Angle'.

Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution senior fellow; and Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the Federalist and Fox News contributor.

Victor, I was looking back on some of these videos in the SEPTA, which is the bus system in Philadelphia. Agents ripping this maskless guy off. It looked like something out of China. I think we've experienced so much these past few years, we forgot just how bad these people were so consistently for so long.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTE: Yes, I think the Omicron variant really ironically showed that that their science is so out of date and antiquated. Because they told us just get the vaccination and you're not infectious, and you're not - you can't be infected, you can't be infectious. Even with three shots, you can. It'll mitigate the symptoms, but that whole vaccination narrative has been weakened.

And then the second one was the lockdown will protect you. But this variant is so easily transmissible, it will go anywhere. And then this idea that in addition to that, that you don't - you're going to get very ill. It's not as lethal as past variants and there's therapeutics. So it allows the individual to make decisions that we were told were impossible and not proper, or legal.

The second thing is, from the very beginning, Laura, this pandemic was weaponized. It destroyed the lockdown, destroyed a booming January 2020 economy. And they were - they didn't want to flatten the curve. They wanted to use it in a campaign and election year to change voting laws, to really harm the chances of Donald Trump. And then never in their right mind, did they think that this thing would linger and the vaccinations wouldn't be the magic bullet. And now the same process is in reverse. And it's really starting to hurt them both the economy.

And most importantly, this - this next midterm and presidential elections are going to hinge on that swing voter and the suburban voter. And they are the people who are most irate. They see their kids' schools being ruined and their education for two years devastated. There's working - lower middle class people that have to work. Moms can't work. They have to be home.

Here, where we are in California, a lot of Hispanic business people have been put out of business. And these people are being hectored by coastal elites that are zooming and came off - you know, they did very well.

INGRAHAM: All right. We got to get Mollie here. Yes. Stacey Abrams, Mollie, addressed her maskless photo op earlier tonight. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STACEY ABRAMS (D) FORMER GA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I took a picture and that was a mistake. Protocols matter and protecting our kids is the most important thing and anything that can be perceived as undermining. That is a mistake. And I apologize.

My responsibility, if I am lucky enough to be the next Governor of Georgia, is to look at the science, to follow the protocols, and to set the right example. And right now, that example is that we wear masks whenever possible. But we recognize that we can't be a hardline about this, because situations change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Mollie, they're opening the door, as we've heard a number of times to bring back the masks, even when the masks are dropped. Your reaction to Abrams' backpedal tonight.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE FEDERALIST: Well, I just - first of all, find it interesting that she claimed that anyone who criticized her for not just one picture unmasked, but many pictures of her unmasked, while children were forced to be masked in her presence.

She said that was racism. And now she's apologizing for it. So I wonder if - how that how that switched so suddenly for her. But this claim that there's scientific basis for forcing masking of children, and that the science has suddenly changed on that. So now you don't need to force masking on children. That's not actually true.

Throughout the world, there was not forced masking of school children. It was something that happened in the United States. The burden of proof for such draconian lockdown measures, like shutting down the economy, forced mandates of vaccination, forced masking, that burden of proof was never met by these people. And they should not be listened to ever again about anything, given how horribly they handled the response to what was a very bad global pandemic.

INGRAHAM: I think, this point, Victor, of accountability is something that fair-minded people have to keep in mind. I mean, we're not for persecuting anyone. Everyone makes mistakes. We get that.

But this doesn't - this wasn't an innocent mistake. These are smart people. They knew exactly what they were doing from beginning to end. And the abuse continues to this day of people with whom they disagree, continues to de platform them, et cetera.

HANSON: Whether convicted by their own words, we saw the email communications with the head of the CDC and Anthony Fauci trying to suppress the story of the Wuhan lab. If we hadn't known that from the beginning, we could have had a head start on the pandemic. But they were so worried about being accused of gain-of-function research that they suppressed the truth.

And we saw Neil Ferguson at the London - of the epidemiologist in London, who was modeling all of these fantastic and really - you know, they were just completely bankrupt ideas that millions were going to die within a few months. And they quoted him chapter and verse. He's never apologized. Fauci has never apologized.

He told us that travel bans originally wouldn't work. And masks were kind of superfluous. They kept changing the narrative as they win. And every time they changed it, they kept getting angrier that we didn't believe them.

All they had to do was say - show a little bit of humility and say, we don't know the answers yet. We're doing our best. They never did that. They were dogmatic and now they're suffering the wages of their own arrogance.

INGRAHAM: Yes, this is - the mask became a religious expression, something akin to religious expression for the left, Mollie. And many are still clinging to it, including the teachers union. Their boss, Randi Weingarten, still siding with the teachers over the students. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDI WEINGARTEN, PRESIDENT AMERICA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: The politicization, the stopping teaching of honest history, the mask debates, putting them into being mask police, all of this, they are exhausted. It is the hardest year. We thought last year was hard. This is the hardest year ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Yes, it was hard, Mollie, staying at home, zooming in classes. Exhausting. Reaction.

HEMINGWAY: You know, what the teachers unions did to families in this country is unforgivable. And I say that as the daughter of a union member who was a public school teacher, who was livid at what she saw her former union do. This is exactly what we're talking about.

It's true that masking in some contexts really is useful. Not thinking about the downside of masking, when you're talking about young children who need to learn and need to be able to see their teachers' lips in order to understand how to read. Learning facial expressions, having all of the good things that come from human interaction with each other. We have done a horrible disservice to our children in this country.

And I fear what they will do when they realize what this country put them through for years unnecessarily. And now you finally see people kind of agreeing that they need to get out of this. But you even see the teachers union still sticking with some of these draconian mandates that are not necessary.

INGRAHAM: Victor, I don't think they realize that they really kicked the hornet's nest to dovetail off what Mollie just said. The unions don't get it. They still think this is April of 2020. And parents are cowering at home trying to go over lesson plans with their kids and they're patient.

I don't think they - they don't get it. Parents are livid. They want their kids taught regular history, not lies, and not demonization, racial demonization. And most parents want the mask gone. They don't get it.

HANSON: Yes. We saw that with Virginia parents on the critical race theory and the truckers strike. They live in a world where they control Silicon Valley, and the corporate media and Wall Street, professional sports, universities K-12. But that's not the people.

So they hear that echo chamber and they get more confident, more arrogant. They see each other and they are in the same class. This by close to elite, but they have no idea that right beneath their noses, there's a whole revolution going on of middle class people and they're losing support daily and they know it.

But they can't - they're ideologues, so they can't admit it. They can't change. So they're going to have a reckoning, I think in November.

INGRAHAM: The reckoning. Victor and Mollie, thank you so much.

And joining me now is Dr. Peter McCullough, epidemiologist, cardiologist based in Dallas, Texas. Dr. McCullough. Now, I want to quickly talk about the hurt feelings of the COVID experts who've bought so much from the very beginning.

So after two years, Dr. McCullough, of them whaling on you and anyone, lot of us who questioned a lot of their COVID views, one of the worst offenders of Baylor, Dr. Peter Hotez is very upset at us. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER HOTEZ, TEXAS CHILDREN'S PEDIATRICIAN: I had Fox News target me for two nights last week. And it's very scary when that happens. This has become part of the new aspect of what the far-right has been doing, not only working to discredit the scientists - the science, but actually discrediting individual scientists, and going after them. So this is - it's a tough time to be a scientist, as we say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Yes, often wrong, never in doubt. What's the lesson they want us to learn here, Doc?

PETER MCCULLOUGH, MD, MPH, INTERNIST: You know, I tell you, I think each and every physician needs to have a great degree of humility. This has been a rapidly developing pandemic over the last two years. The information cycle is tremendous.

I think Fox has done a great job with its panel of medical advisors that have been true to the data, have cited the data. You just saw what I thought was mask chaos in the prior section of this show. And that it should have been clear once the study showed that the virus was not transmitted asymptomatically (inaudible) Maidwell, showed that the masks should have come off. The randomised trials disproved any effectiveness of masking well people.

And what we need to do from this point forward is have a great degree of humility and honesty from our public health officials and those in academia.

INGRAHAM: But Dr. McCullough, so many of them were so horribly wrong, and yet so highly pedigreed. Yet they continue to stand in positions of power and dismiss and denigrate those who actually were right from the beginning. Whether it's about vitamin D3 or therapeutics, like ivermectin. Social distancing not really working, spraying your food or your packages. All of it was false.

Yet they want to kind of glide along and say, Oh, well, you know, things change, science changes. Let's just move on. How important is it to look back and get it right, and hold people accountable for persistent and almost purposeful errors in judgment, scientific judgment?

MCCULLOUGH: You know, there's a term that we use in clinical trials and data safety monitoring. It's called being responsive to the data. And I wouldn't give high marks for our public health officials. And even those some in the media, in terms of being responsive to the data. It's always humbling to have a rapidly evolving virus and a viral pandemic, where there's so many unknowns.

And what we need now is we need just a fresh new start, where the emergency phase of the pandemic is closed. You see countries now dropping mandates across the board. I think when we drop all the mandates in the United States across the board, it'll become a national holiday.

INGRAHAM: Dr. McCullough, would you recommend that any child without a pre- existing condition, or just any child of decent health, get these vaccines at this point? Yes or no?

MCCULLOUGH: No. In the data, there's a paper from (inaudible) WR end of December from the CDC. The Safety Data children ages five to 11, Laura, doesn't look good. It looks like there is serious conditions for the first time. Now, we're seeing heart injury in children before puberty. They should not be given under any circumstances.

INGRAHAM: Dr. McCullough, you've been courageous, brave and most always, right. So thank you so much.

Now, in moments we're going to dissect Republicans' big choice surrounding the military industrial complex. Plus, if you think the people pouring over our border, they just want jobs Americans won't take. Come on, we have the viral video. That is frankly terrifying. Debunking that. Stay there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: After the total incompetence that our top military leaders demonstrated in Afghanistan, and then their continued commitment to divisive race and gender ideologies, are there really any conservatives who think that giving the Pentagon more money at this point is a really good idea?

Well, I give you the Liz Cheney acolytes, who still populate the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages. 'Time to increase defense spending'. "The U.S. will face challenges from the new alliance between China and Russia."

Well, we will face those challenges. But giving these people a salary increase is obviously a terrible idea, which is why my next guest argues in a new op-ed that the Neocon hawks are standing in the way of a new Republican Party.

Sohrab Ahmari is a contributing editor of the American conservative and a visiting fellow at Franciscan University. Sohrab, why should we pump more money into the military when it's apparently just populated, according to the AP with all these racist and biased, horrible people that they're trying to purge from it?

SOHRAB AHMARI, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE EDITOR: Yes, Laura. I think you nailed it. I mean, there is this reflex. And it's not really - we can't blame just the Democrats. I would call it a unit party reflex of an America that is always expansively trying to get involved in every corner of the world and expanding liberal democracy everywhere. And it's very, very misplaced, given the state that the country is in right now.

You mentioned race and gender ideology. We are a country that internally can't agree why the American Revolution was launched. We can't agree about what man and woman are.

And then more kind of materially speaking, we're a country that's facing a Fentanyl crisis, a huge border crisis, declining life expectancy for working class people, which is unheard of in the rest of the developed world. And so, in the face of all this, this kind of externally focused agenda, which is partly military, but partly all these NGOs, National Endowment for Democracy Freedom House, it's sometimes surreal.

I'm on their email list. You get an alert saying, you know, Gay rights and LGBT rights in Uzbekistan are under threat. And you wonder, step outside, step outside in Washington, look at the addicts at Union Station. Look at - or I live in New York City, look at the addicts, the mentally ill on our streets, law and order break down.

What universe does this kind of Washington blob live in? It just doesn't reflect our reality. So that's the argument in the op-ed is conservatives shouldn't be behind this kind of liberal imperialism expansionism anymore. It worked terribly the past two decades.

INGRAHAM: Yes, it's been rejected by the voters. First when they dumped McCain for Obama, elected Obama again, and then elected Donald Trump, who believed that we should be less extended all around the globe.

So the voters have been saying for year after year after year, stop. And the Republican Party keeps trying to lurch back to the - you know, the glory Bush days. But Sohrab, speaking of Bush, what he would say in response, and other Neocons would say is, Oh, you're just going back to isolationism. That's a disaster. That means freedom will not be on the March, and backward looking. And your response to that?

AHMARI: Well, I would say, first of all, there's nothing wrong with a nation saying, we're going to consolidate what we have here right now, because we're losing it internally. But second of all, there is a middle ground between total isolationism, which of course doesn't make sense. We're a huge continental nations with allies spread around the world. Doesn't make sense.

But it doesn't mean that we should, for example, try to constantly expand the NATO ambit, including into countries where it would obviously bring us into conflict with Russia, right. Why would we want to spark more conflict when we don't need to? And so, there's - you know, we should definitely defend our treaty allies in East Asia and in Europe.

But to mindlessly expand NATO, which by the way, what does NATO expansion mean? It means bringing more geographic space into the same kind of woke ideology that conservatives don't like at home. So, why press for it? NATO is as woke as our own military.

INGRAHAM: Sohrab, fascinating piece. And you annoyed all the right people with it. So great to see you tonight.

And now, the tale of two borders. Our northern one is finally getting the attention it deserves since Biden's vaccine mandate policies threw things into complete chaos up there. But don't take your eye off what's happening down at our southern border. It's in complete shambles with illegals pouring across by the hundreds of thousands every month.

And the open borders left wants you to believe that everyone coming here are just poor, downtrodden, oppressed, fleeing gang violence, nice, law- abiding people who just want to come and work at our local businesses. But the reality, it's far uglier. Sure, there are some poor people coming, a lot of them, but Biden and his DHS secretary are also letting people like this woman sneak into our country every single day. I hope you're sitting down for this one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to close the door. Stay right there. Before we move --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, hey, calm down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Back up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get your foot back in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get your foot back in there. Get your foot back in there, ma'am.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to have to tase you. You're not going to like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Wow. Now, if a phone call to the Ukrainian ambassador, that ends up somehow being an impeachable offense, the ongoing conspiracy to undermine our national sovereignty and rule of law should be a slam-dunk impeachable defense and conviction.

Here now is Don Rosenberg, president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime. Don, they don't even let you call it illegal alien anymore, right? That is verboten, can't do that. That woman, who seems demonic, or a good actress, is part of a crimewave coming into the country. And yet Alejandro Mayorkas's big focus this week, I guess, is the Super Bowl.

DON ROSENBERG, AVIAC PRESIDENT: Well, he seems to have his priorities always backwards, and certainly he does here. Your comment about people coming in and most of them are nice and want to work, there's a lot of truth to that. But the question that I have asked for 11 years is, how many people, in this case we will talk about over a million they just came in in the last year, what's an acceptable number of murderers, rapists, child molesters, and just regular criminal out of that group? And that's why we have an immigration system, to check that so they don't come in. But we just let them come in and pay to fly them around the country and actually gave them money to help them get here.

INGRAHAM: If the number is closer to 2 million, I believe, who we have encountered at the border, lord knows how many snuck through that agents were just not able to even apprehend, so the numbers, the shear numbers are staggering, Don. And yet, I think Americans are so overwhelmed with so much at one time, that the number is kind of numbing until plane-fulls arrive in a rural or more small suburban part of the country as we have seen over the last year. Does that change this dynamic once and for all?

ROSENBERG: I think it would change the dynamic if most of the media would show it. Turn on many of your competitors, look in the newspapers, you don't see any of that. It's all hidden. And the rare time when you do see something, they always turn it around and make those people the victims.

INGRAHAM: Don, we will never let this issue go. We care about all Americans of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. If you are here illegally, we want you to have the greatest life ever. If you're not, you need to get back in the line. Don, thank you.

Over one year ago, California police officer Matthew Dages' life was upended when he was falsely accused of a felony and handed over to the BLM mob. Now that he's been acquitted, he is here to tell us his story exclusively. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: In early 2021 the San Diego County district attorney offered up then police officer Matthew Dages as a kind of a sacrificial lamb to appease the BLM radicals. They charged him with the excessive use of force and gave the liberal mob license to make life hell for him and his family. For more on that we turn to FOX's Matt Finn. Matt?

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Laura, Matthew Dages is a former police officer here in southern California in La Mesa. He and his wife say the liberal politicians of La Mesa put them through, quote, the fires of hell for a 2020 arrest showing Dages appear to use a very low level of force to arrest a combative man. Police Officer Matthew Dages is questioning the black man in a basketful jersey. Body camera video shows the man swipe at or slap Dages. Dages grabs the man's shirt, forces him to sit down, and then instructs him he's going to be arrested.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You put your hands on me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bro, I didn't put nothing on you. It's on camera so you can check it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bro, you're all hell of goofy, bro.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm talking you, and you smacked me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody smacked you, bro. Where did I smack, you? Where did I smack, you? But why did you grab me though?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are going to be placed under arrest for a 241-C, OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right,

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's a 241-C?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Assault on a peace officer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FINN: The incident happened in May, 2020, around the time a George Floyd's murder. This video went viral with activists trying to compare to the Floyd incident. Dages and his wife say La Mesa politicians, quote, bowed to the mob, using Dages as a scapegoat charging Dages with filing up a false police report to arrest the suspect.

However, a California journey ultimately found Matthew Dages not guilty of that felony charge. Dages says the trial costs him close to $100,000, and now he is looking to get his job back. Laura?

INGRAHAM: Wow. Thanks for that update, Matt. Joining me now is Matthew Dages, former La Mesa police officer. Matthew, there was a frenzy after the killing of George Floyd in this country, and you were part of that, it looks like. Has the city of La Mesa apologized for what they put you all through?

MATTHEW DAGES, FORMER LA MESA POLICE OFFICER: No, unfortunately there has been no apology given. But it was quite a frenzy not only for me, I think, but for all law enforcement officers throughout the country during that time, and still as it is today.

INGRAHAM: Now, Matthew, I want to get into specifically what happened to you and your family as a result of these false charges, but this is from security camera footage outside of your home. You can see the BLM protesters marching. Matthew, how often did that happen? And how did they know where you lived?

DAGES: It never happens. And I don't think that's ever anything any police officer expects to happen. You, as a police officer, expect that the danger is going to be in the field. So when you go home at night, you want to feel safe, obviously, as everyone does, and you never expect to have a protest outside your house. And quite frankly, it was terrifying for my whole family.

INGRAHAM: Were they screaming? Was it every night? How frequent was it?

DAGES: It was a couple of days, and it led into that wild weekend in May which throughout the whole country, where the riots took place. Thankfully, my family and I, we were gone by then. We left the house at that point.

INGRAHAM: So they drove you out of the house? Did they drive you out of the house, is that a fair statement?

DAGES: Yes. We ended up having to sell the house as a result of that. It wasn't a safe place for me or for my family to be anymore.

INGRAHAM: Wait a second. You had to sell your house as criminals are let free in a revolving door of madness in California. A police officer was driven from his house?

DAGES: That's correct. Unfortunately, it was no longer a safe spot. You never think your home is going to be somewhere that is going to be under attack.

INGRAHAM: At this point, how much have you lost because of this? Financially, how much have you lost? Professionally, what have you lost? Emotionally?

DAGES: I describe it to people that I've lost everything, to be honest. I've lost my career. My family was under this terror for the last year-and- a-half now. Thankfully, we have come out victorious on that end. But also on top of that, me and my wife were set back about $100,000 in legal fees. So we have been put through the ringer in the name of, I guess, justice.

INGRAHAM: We are showing video of what happened after that incident. There was massive protests, lots of chaos in La Mesa, as we saw all across the country at that time. I'm thinking of you and your family. I want to figure out a way to do something for you guys. We will have to figure that out and how that can be organized. But do you have a job? Are you able to work now? You don't have to tell us where you're working, but do you have a way to your support yourself after all of this?

DAGES: I am still not working. My focus is getting back into uniform, and that is something that I have and still am doing. My wife and I are fighting to do that. We still are going through the court process to get me reinstated, to get my backpay, to get basically my life back, and to really get my name from any wrongdoing here.

INGRAHAM: Matthew, this is just going to have to be rectified, and we're going to try to help you do that. This just can't happen in the United States. This is absolutely insane. And I know the country watching this is with you tonight and your family. It's going to work out. But thank you for your service, and we are going to follow this, and I will be in touch with you off-line. This is ridiculous. This can't be our country.

The U.S. Capitol police force now under investigation for spying on Republican members of Congress. Yes, that's happening, too. Shocking details in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Lisa Cheney's January 6th revenge fantasy has taken another disturbing turn. The U.S. Capitol police are now under investigation by the outfit's inspector general for allegedly spying on sitting members of Congress.

Now, this is in response to a stunning "Politico" piece last month about how the Capitol police quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers after January 6th. But it gets worse. Consider the experience of Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas. According to him, a Capitol police officer entered his office on Saturday, November 21st of last year and snapped a photo of the whiteboard that had suspicious writings on it. Of course, these were ideas for legislation, but that doesn't matter. The Capitol police followed up by sending three plainclothes intel officers to grill Nehls' staff.

Joining me now Julie Kelly, senior editor at "American Greatness" and author of "January 6th, How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War of Terror against the Political Right." Julie, how is this all now just getting the attention it deserves?

JULIE KELLY, "AMERICAN GREATNESS" SENIOR WRITER: I think because Republicans have intentionally ignore the role of the Capitol police not just in what happened on January 6th, but ever since. Look, this intelligence unit was headed up by now by an Obama official who was hired right before Election Day. She has expanded this intelligence unit. Who knew Capitol police were allowed to even have an intelligence unit, composing these dossiers not just on lawmakers and staffers, but also their donors, and even their constituents.

So Laura, you know how this goes. They are going to collect all this information, they're going to leak it to the press. The press is going to anonymously source it to intelligence officials. And this is all part of an ongoing smear campaign. But the Capitol police are part and parcel to this. They are also an unaccountable federal law enforcement agency. They are not subject to FOIA, any FOIA requests. They're helping to conceal 14,000 hours of surveillance videos, all of their documents and communications, correspondence related to January 6th.

And so what is the Capitol police hiding while at the same time they are snooping around Capitol Hill trying to collect what they think is going to be damaging information against Republicans?

INGRAHAM: Congressman Nehls, Julie, was on with Tucker earlier tonight. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TROY NEHLS, (R-TX): They knew the extremist groups were going to be there and they did nothing with it. So I have exposed this. I am being targeted right now, and I believe that Nancy Pelosi is weaponizing the U.S. Capitol police to investigate me to try to silence me, intimidate me, and quite honestly, to destroy me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Julie, you and I talked about this on my podcast earlier today, but do you agree with that assessment, that it's Pelosi that's targeting him?

KELLY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And she has been using the Capitol police, she used them on January 6th. In some instances they were attacking protesters, in other instances they were letting hundreds of them into the building. Congress over about $2 billion to them in emergency supplemental funds that now, I guess, they are using to expand this intelligence unit.

But look, this is part of Capitol police, the J-6th committee, the Justice Department, as I write about in my book, all working collaboratively together to use the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill as a pretext to unleash this war on terror against Americans on the political right. And this goes from everyone from Donald Trump to congressmen and down to regular Americans who walked into the building for 10 or 15 minutes.

INGRAHAM: Julie, sorry to interrupt, but before I let you go, really quickly, how many people from your reporting are still being kept, if any, in solitary confinement, of the suspects, do you know?

KELLY: So there are about a little bit more of three dozen at what I call the D.C. gulag. They know have been locked down 22 hours a day in their cells as they were initially. And we do have political prisoners in the nation's capital. That is not an exaggeration.

INGRAHAM: Julie, we appreciate your reporting on this. Thank you.

And does New York City Mayor Eric Adams know the difference between veggies and fish? What is this about? The Last Bite explains.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: New York City Mayor Eric Adams has a diet message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS, (D) NEW YORK CITY: I eat a plant-based centered life. Some people want to call me began. Vegans eat Oreos, and they drink Coca- Cola. I don't. I eat a plant-based centered life, a plant-based centered life. I eat a plant-based centered life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Since Adams reportedly ordering fish to eat, I wonder what plant that's based in.

Tune in tomorrow, INGRAHAM ANGLE, Mark Wahlberg, 10:00 p.m.


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