This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," October 29, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST, TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Over the weekend, Americans gathered around the country in churches and synagogues to pray for the 11 innocent people who were murdered in Pittsburgh on Saturday. They bowed their heads. They asked God for healing. They thought hard about how to bring the country together, how to improve themselves, how to be kinder to the people around them.

That's the America that you grew up in, a decent place full of decent people trying to do the right thing. But there's another America too. It's the America of cable news and social media, of CNN and Twitter.

In that America, political operatives rushed to the scene of human tragedy hoping to leverage it for political gain. They make snap judgments on the basis of incomplete evidence in order to implicate their political opponents in crimes they did not commit. They use fear and rage to accomplish what reasoned argument could never accomplish. They commit moral blackmail.

Typically, their aim is gun control. A crazy person committed an evil act, therefore you must be disarmed. But this time that's not their goal. This time, their goal is more comprehensive than that. They want to take charge of what you are allowed to say and think.

How are they trying to do that? By blaming you and your opinions for the crime. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIA IOFFE, AMERICAN JOURNALIST: This man was -- the flames of his hatred were fanned by a president who kept talking about this Caravan of refugees, as if they were terrorists or as if they were coming to commit atrocious crimes in our country, which they're not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, did you catch the message there? It wasn't subtle. The murderer was angry about illegal immigration. If you oppose illegal immigration, you are very much like the murderer.

Even if you've never killed anyone your views have inspired others to kill. You are implicated in this atrocity. You are a monster, just like the lunatic in Pittsburgh. You must change your beliefs. Otherwise, you will be punished.

This is how free speech dies, and free thought along with it. The range of acceptable opinion narrows until it mimics the CNN script. Before long, everyone is nodding piously along in unison. There is no disagreement. There is only conformity. Obedience serfs chirping the party line. That's the goal.

After a century of defending free speech, the Left is now its enemy. Just last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a list of demands for tech companies. Anyone who disagrees with the SPLC, they explained, must be prevented from operating a website or raising money online or organizing events or publicly expressing their opinions. That's an order, says the SPLC.

Well it goes without saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center has no moral standing to make any of those demands. None of the people making demands do. And yet, as always, the least virtuous are invariably the most self-righteous.

Watch former DNC Chairman, Howard Dean explain that American politics is no longer really about politics, which is to say about competing ideas of what might work and what doesn't work. Instead, politics is a spiritual battle between light and dark, between God and Satan himself. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD DEAN, POLITICAL CONSULTANT, COMMENTATOR, FORMER CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: It's now become a struggle about good versus evil. And the President of the United States is evil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Evil. Now, that is not the language of American civic life. It never has been. That is the language of Holy War, evil. Well evil people can't be reasoned with. They shouldn't be listened to. They must be crushed and destroyed.

Did Howard Dean really mean that? Well we're going to assume, for the sake of this country, that he did not mean that, and none of the other people talking like Howard Dean right now mean it either.

We're hoping all of them have lost their senses temporarily and, at some point, they're going to wake up feeling chastened, and ashamed, and ready to rejoin the adult conversation in progress. That's our hope. Either way, we do not plan to stop talking, no matter what they say, no matter what they demand.

Every American has an absolute right to express his views, regardless of what Twitter thinks. It's our birthright. It's the most important freedom we have. We're not giving it up on this show. In our set, you are always free to say what you believe, even if we disagree with you. Free expression does not cause extremism. It solves extremism.

Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he joins us tonight. Professor Hanson, I wanted to talk to you first tonight because I think you have perspective that is lacking in this conversation.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN CLASSICIST, MILITARY HISTORIAN, COLUMNIST, FARMER: Yes.

CARLSON: Are we overstating it? Do you think that speech is at stake in our current debate?

HANSON: No, I -- I think it is in a way, I think, all of us still want a safe space, if I could use that Left-wing term, where we -- we don't want to turn the television for NBA, NFL or Grammys or Tonys or White House of course and be lectured at. And we don't--

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: --we don't want to spend Thanksgiving as if it's eight -- 1861. So, we want -- we want it to tone down. But we don't know what the rules are, Tucker, because we sort of established that James Hodgkinson, to take one example, did not shoot Steve Scalise because of what Biden and Maxine Waters or Madonna said on Inauguration Day.

He was just nuts and that might have -- he had other, you know, criteria. But it wasn't just what the opponents of Donald Trump or the conservatives said.

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: OK. We accept that. And then, all of a sudden, with these latest two incidents, with the pipe bomber, Mr. Sayoc, and with the Synagogue shootings, we're told that it's somehow Donald Trump, but it's not -- we don't know anything about the cause and effect.

We don't know whether he was too pro-Israel and, therefore, he brought people out of the woodwork, and they're angry with him, or that he was too anti-Israel and he empowered the Alt-Right. They can't even get it straight.

So, we don't get -- the American people think, well, wait a minute. I don't like hate speech or tough speech. But I don't know what the rules are--

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: --they're not -- it's not symmetrical. It looks like it's a Left- wing electronic, you know, reign of terror. These are -- these self- appointed Facebook Robespierre in a nanosecond can guillotine you.

And they don't -- people don't like that. So, we're saying, what are the rules of speech? And from what you and I and others have seen of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, the Masters of the Universe in Silicon lack either the intellect or the morality to tell us what is permissible speech.

So, we don't -- we don't know what -- who to turn to in this confusion. So maybe, we just go back to the Sermon on the Mount and say to ourselves, "Let's treat people the way we would like to treat them."

And I would tell that to -- to Hillary Clinton maybe -- when -- when Mitt Romney lost in 2012, he didn't say I'm not going to be civil until the next election, or when George Bush quite graciously accepted the, you know, that he was out of Office in 2009, he didn't go around the country, as Obama is now, calling the President of the United States, "An inveterate liar."

So, I think it's asymmetrical and people understand that--

CARLSON: Yes.

HANSON: --until the adjudicators know they can't adjudicate us because they don't have the -- the moral high ground.

CARLSON: Well they definitely don't have the moral authority to decide who speaks. But I wonder if their assumption is right. So what -- what they're saying is that certain ideas are so bad that they cause violence.

HANSON: Yes.

CARLSON: And I wonder if it's even possible for any society to ever squelch ideas. Doesn't that cause, and I'm not just saying this is a Left-Right phenomenon, it's such a human phenomenon, when you try and prevent people from having unapproved thoughts, don't you create extremism?

HANSON: Yes. I -- I think that's a -- an age-old dilemma. It goes back to the Greeks. And we, in the West, have decided that we don't want the medicine to be worse than the disease of censorship and setting up as -- a censor board that tells us who can say what.

So, we -- we err on the side of free speech. And it's especially pertinent when the people who are wanting to censor free speech right now don't want to do it symmetrically. They feel that--

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: --because they're more noble or that Donald Trump is some type of ogre that they have deserved because of their noble ends, any means necessary, to further their moral project. And I think that's got people very, very angry, and -- and sort of alienated.

CARLSON: Well I mean anytime you have what is, in effect, a religious conversation, theological conversation that begins with "I'm a good person and you're not," how can you hope to make progress? How can you solve anything if one side believes itself to be saved, and the other damned?

HANSON: Yes. You -- you can't. And you have to be empirical. So, you have to say this particular act in this particular person's mind occurred because he heard this particular person say something or a climate. Nobody's been able to make that cause and effect--

CARLSON: That's right.

HANSON: --and in absence of that, as I said, in a nanosecond all these half-educated people get on at some of the clips you played, and then they say, "I accuse you of all this."

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: And nobody -- everybody's afraid. I mean we -- one -- you -- you and I are one, and you, especially, are one nanosecond away, one slipped word from being your head electronically chopped off.

CARLSON: Yes.

HANSON: And that's--

CARLSON: I'm aware of that.

HANSON: --that's what we don't want.

CARLSON: Every day I think that.

HANSON: Yes.

CARLSON: But I think it's important -- more important than it's ever been to tell the truth and be honest. Professor -- thank you, professor. It's great to see you.

HANSON: Well you have to speak up against it, yes, absolutely.

CARLSON: Yes, I -- I think it's important.

HANSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: Robert Woodson is the President and the Founder of the Woodson Center. He's the Author of The Triumphs of Joseph, and he joins us tonight.

Thank you very much for coming on, Mr. Woodson. You're one of the people we go to at a time like this. The obvious question is what do we do? I don't think either side wants to see the level of political intensity and rage that we're seeing right now. What's the answer to it?

ROBERT WOODSON, THE WOODSON CENTER FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, AMERICAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT LEADER, "THE TRIUMPHS OF JOSEPH" AUTHOR: Well, we've been here before. During the 60s, during that era, when four little girls were blown to death--

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: --blew up in the church and Emmett Till was killed--

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: --and we -- we had the bombings of Dr. King's house, almost killing his wife and his child. Even in the presence of that, what -- what stimulated solutions were the Civil Rights Movement engaged in debate within itself.

The movement, there was a lot of debate as to what -- what is the way forward, and it caused a fracturing in that movement. But the fracturing caused SNCC and other organizations but each one developed an agenda to change it.

We did not demonize a political party. We didn't look for villains and victims. We came together around solutions. And -- and that is what -- what -- what -- but it was backed by a spirited debate. Debate is missing now.

The -- the issues today is the loneliness, the feeling of the lack of content and meaning in people's lives are leading to suicide--

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: --and record number of violence, isolation. And so, and right now, for anyone to speak up to address that problem, they're being vilified because you either have to declare yourself as being on one side of it or the other.

But the answer though is to give the people suffering the problem their own voice. Right now, people on the political Left and Right, the extremes, presume to speak for Whites on the Right and others who -- presume to speak for minorities on the Right -- on the Left.

I believe that Whites in trailer parks have more in common with Black and Browns who are in these toxic communities. In my organization, the Woodson Center, we have 3,000 of these groups who come together and meet, and racial antagonism is never an issue.

The problem is that the groups that we represent, they are not given a voice. There are -- the others, they are represented by people who really don't represent their real interest.

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: And they're -- and these are intellectuals, elites, who are getting to -- denigrating the values of this country that -- and those values of our founders may be used as political tools by both the Left and the Right.

But for grassroots leaders who are struggling with drug addiction, loneliness, those principles and virtues are life enforcing. They are the ones -- these values are the foundation over which transformation and redemption is.

CARLSON: Right.

WOODSON: So, what we need is to give the people who are experiencing the problem their own voice. There's no place in this country where a low- income White, Black, Hispanic can come together and say to the country, "These extremes do not speak for us."

CARLSON: Right.

WOODSON: Woodson Center is trying to promote that kind of--

CARLSON: And the people who claim to be our leaders weren't elected by us and they're--

WOODSON: No.

CARLSON: --not our leaders.

WOODSON: And our Civil Rights Movement has morphed into a race grievance industry, and it's lost its moral authority.

CARLSON: I wonder since you were there for the Civil Rights Movement, right in the middle of it, the last time this country felt like it was coming apart as it does now, I wonder if -- if that could have been peacefully resolved if social media had existed then.

WOODSON: That's a good question. But I really think that the commitment of people there to -- this was a movement of inclusion, not exclusion.

CARLSON: Right.

WOODSON: We believe that we were holding America to live up to its promise. Right now, people are denigrating those values and saying to Blacks because of the legacy of slavery and discrimination that America is to be ever condemned. And we reject that notion.

The very fact that Blacks fought in every war in this country and not one was ever convicted of treason--

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: --because we believed. I was coming through the train -- the airport the last summer, and I saw 90 veterans being wheeled in to come to a ceremony here, and I just wept--

CARLSON: Yes.

WOODSON: --because I thought about the sacrifice that they have made. Blacks and low-income Blacks and Whites in these low-income working-class neighborhoods are America's Patriots.

CARLSON: That's right.

WOODSON: They are the ones who've been -- who should be given a voice to speak for themselves, and not let these extremes speaks for them.

CARLSON: I agree with that completely. Robert Woodson, thank you, as always--

WOODSON: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: --for the perspective. I appreciate it.

WOODSON: We should add that free speech is discussed at great length in a new book called Ship of Fools. You can order it now. It's online.

Meanwhile, it was driven off the front page for a couple of days but the migrant Caravan is a real thing despite what they may be telling you on television. There are actual people in it. And it raises actual questions that as a citizen you have a right to debate openly. And we're going to do that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This caravan is not. They're wasting their time. They are not coming into the country.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST, THE INGRAHAM ANGLE: What's the military going to be able to do? Obama--

TRUMP: They'll be able to treat this fine.

INGRAHAM: Obama and Bush both sent the National Guard.

TRUMP: But they're not me.

INGRAHAM: It had no effect.

TRUMP: They're not me. This is the -- I'm sending up the military. This is the military. And they're standing there. And one thing that will happen--

INGRAHAM: No leave for folks though --

TRUMP: --when they are captured, we don't let them out. What has been happening, and we're not, as of pretty recently, we're not letting them out. What happens is they would catch and release. We're catching. We're not releasing, so if they want to come over. But we're not even doing that. We're not letting them into this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That was the President of the United States, of course, speaking to Laura Ingraham. The full interview airs tonight at 10:00 Eastern on her show.

Well, the original purpose of soldiers in this country was to protect America's borders. Washington has forgotten that completely, but they're being reminded. In response to the migrant Caravan still making its way through Mexico, the President has ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 U.S. troops to assist the Border Patrol.

This is deeply offensive to some people, for some reason.

David Tafuri is an attorney, and former Obama campaign adviser. He joins us tonight. David thanks a lot for coming on.

So what -- I'm -- here's what I find sincerely confusing, and in the spirit of trying to bridge the gap and continue civil discourse, I'll just put it as honestly as I can. Why is it offensive for a country to try and maintain territorial integrity, to defend its borders?

DAVID TAFURI, ATTORNEY, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL, FORMER OBAMA CAMPAIGN ADVISER: We should maintain territorial integrity. We don't have to let anyone into our border who doesn't comply with the law. But it's also hyperbole to call this an invasion. This is not an invasion.

These are people who are economically in trouble, who are also facing security concerns in Honduras, and they're trying to come here to apply for political asylum. They may not deserve--

CARLSON: At least I'm sorry to -- I just -- I just want to question your assumption. How do you know that? Has there been a census of this group? Do we know anything about them?

TAFURI: Well--

CARLSON: I think we know nothing about them. We don't--

TAFURI: We -- we do know --

CARLSON: --we don't know their -- we don't know their names. We don't know their motives. I mean that's -- isn't that kind of the point? We actually don't know. And I'm not calling them terrorists or saying -- I'm not attacking them. I'm just saying we don't know, right?

TAFURI: Well, we know they don't have weapons. And we know they're not a foreign army. And some reporters have spent time with them. And we know that some of them are economically depressed persons, some of them are young children, old people.

CARLSON: Sure.

TAFURI: These are not people coming to attack us. But they also don't necessarily deserve to come into the U.S.

CARLSON: So let's say you had, and I know we're very concerned about foreign entities affecting our life in this country. We're very concerned about Russia, right? What if you had 22 million foreign nationals living using fake documents within your own borders, what would you call that, 22 million, all of them, again, using fake federal documents, here illegally? Why would that not be an invasion? What would that be?

TAFURI: It's not an invasion. It's a--

CARLSON: 22 million?

TAFURI: --it -- we have illegal aliens here, people who are here unlawfully. And we need to do--

CARLSON: Sure. But -- but--

TAFURI: --something about that.

CARLSON: --but if you had 22 million foreign nationals living in your country under false pretenses, subverting federal documents, wouldn't you be completely freaked out about that?

Let's say they were Russians. They're all from Belarus. There aren't even 22 million Belarusians, I don't think. But if there were, you would be hair on fire upset, wouldn't you?

TAFURI: I would be hair on fire and -- upset if they were doing things to compromise U.S. security, if they were doing things to compromise our foreign policy or to compromise our Constitution, compromise rule of law. But many of these 22 million are actually gainfully employed. They have family.

CARLSON: Well most of them.

TAFURI: They're in school.

CARLSON: No. But most are decent people. I mean, look, I'm not attacking them. I never attack them.

TAFURI: OK.

CARLSON: I think they mostly come here because it's a great country. I get it. But isn't the lesson of 9/11 that you want to know who's in your country?

TAFURI: Yes.

CARLSON: We have a Real ID Act in response to 9/11 that says that federal documents cannot be forged, you can't use fake ones. If I try that in an airport, I go to jail. We've got 22 million people doing it every single day. And that's not a security concern because what because they vote Democratic, sincerely?

TAFURI: No. That is the concern. And that's why we need an immigration law that deals with these people orderly. Some of them need to be--

CARLSON: Well wait why --

TAFURI: --some of them need to be sent back to their country, some of them need to be processed so they become legal. That's what the -- that's what Congress is supposed to--

CARLSON: So -- so -- so -- so if--

TAFURI: --sort out--

CARLSON: --OK, so if--

TAFURI: --and it has not sorted out.

CARLSON: --if I go down to my bank and trying to open an account using fake federal documents, will the response from the cops being like "You know, we need a comprehensive approach to this. It's cool that you did it. I get it. You've got a family. You're just trying to open a fake bank account because, you know, you're probably a good person. We need a -- a broad comprehensive" -- no. They say "No. Felony. Jail."

TAFURI: Exactly. And people--

CARLSON: So why are we allowing 22 million people to do that and I can't do it? In other words, why are we giving the benefit of the doubt to 22 million foreign nationals but not to American citizens? And the reason, of course, is because the Democratic Party is hoping that they'll be Democratic voters.

TAFURI: Tucker, you can't put this all on the Democratic Party.

CARLSON: Well, what's the average?

TAFURI: Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party together have utterly failed to pass an immigration law that would deal with this problem that you're rightly concerned--

CARLSON: You know what? I would -- let me just stand corrected.

TAFURI: --about.

CARLSON: Actually, you're saying something that's basically true. Democrats are hoping to make them all voters. But the Republican Party, which just watched Trump get elected on the promise of building a Wall, and then didn't, deserves a lot of blame. I actually agree with you. So, I'm sorry that I -- I didn't mean to sound partisan. You're right. They're both responsible.

But, so, given that fact, which is like a complete disaster and makes a mockery of our laws, the rule of law itself, why shouldn't we be pretty concerned about thousands of unknown people demanding entry? Would -- they just turned down residency in Mexico because they said, "We have a right to come to America." Why shouldn't that bother us?

TAFURI: None of them said they have a right to come to America.

CARLSON: Yes, they did.

TAFURI: They want to come to America.

CARLSON: No, they think they--

TAFURI: And, by the way, they are coming to America, they have announced their presence. We all know they're coming. They're going to come to a border. They're going to try to apply for political asylum. Many of them will be denied and should be denied.

CARLSON: And why wouldn't they all --

TAFURI: What they are not doing--

CARLSON: --why wouldn't they --

TAFURI: --what they are not--

CARLSON: --all right.

TAFURI: --it's important to note though, what they are not doing is what you're complaining these 22 million people did, which is came here illegally--

CARLSON: No, no, no--

TAFURI: --across the border without people knowing.

CARLSON: No.

TAFURI: This group is actually going to come here--

CARLSON: That's not true, actually --

TAFURI: --announce their -- announce their arrival--

CARLSON: --false, false--

TAFURI: --and apply for political asylum.

CARLSON: --false.

TAFURI: Yes, they are.

CARLSON: A lot of our aliens without documents, undocumented, whatever -- illegal aliens in this country came as--

TAFURI: Came here legally and became unlawful--

CARLSON: --refugees and never went to court because they're released into the interior of the country and 90 percent of them stay here, as you know. So, that's exactly how people got here in many cases.

But I guess the point is if they want to apply for asylum, why didn't they do it in Tegucigalpa? I mean why should we take seriously claim of asylum if you don't go to the embassy--

TAFURI: Well I have an easy answer for that.

CARLSON: --in the country you live in?

TAFURI: You don't -- you can't apply for political asylum in the country you're from. You have to leave your country in order to apply for political asylum.

CARLSON: No. But why can't you apply to come here --

TAFURI: That's a basic aspect of--

CARLSON: --legally.

TAFURI: --political asylum.

CARLSON: There's not a war going on in Honduras. It's just a poor country. It's mismanaged. I get it. I feel bad. But there's -- these are illegitimate claims by their nature. Apply legally like everybody else.

TAFURI: Right. They -- well, they have to go to a foreign country to apply, so you could -- a better argument that you could make is why aren't they applying in Mexico rather than--

CARLSON: No, but why aren't they applying for--

TAFURI: --U.S.

CARLSON: --to come here legally like everybody else at the embassy in Tegucigalpa--

TAFURI: Well, I think we can--

CARLSON: --Honduras.

TAFURI: --both agree the reason they're not doing that is because they know they will be denied.

CARLSON: Exactly. Then why should we take this seriously --

TAFURI: They will be denied but the most--

CARLSON: --if you're trying to subvert my laws --

TAFURI: --important point, Tucker, is that--

CARLSON: --for today --

TAFURI: --all of these remedies that we're looking at now are Band-Aids.

CARLSON: All right.

TAFURI: What we really have to do is help countries like Honduras fix the problem, fix their rule of law problems, fix their security problems--

CARLSON: OK.

TAFURI: --so they don't come here.

CARLSON: Actually--

TAFURI: That's in their interest and our interest.

CARLSON: --what we really need to do?

TAFURI: And it takes leadership, leadership that neither Democrats nor Republicans--

CARLSON: Really? Because we--

TAFURI: --have showed so far.

CARLSON: --because 50,000 people died last year of drug ODs. There are hundreds of thousands of people, Americans, sleeping on the street tonight in this country, and relieving themselves on the sidewalk. I think our first obligation is to them. I really do. I really believe that. No one else seems to think that. I think that.

TAFURI: I agree with you.

CARLSON: OK. Then, maybe way down the list would be the people of Honduras because--

TAFURI: Well--

CARLSON: --they're not Americans.

TAFURI: --but you're sitting here talking about how worried you are that thousands of Hondurans might--

CARLSON: I'm support --

TAFURI: --come here to the U.S. What I'm saying is we can solve that problem if we help Honduras improve the economy--

CARLSON: OK. We've been trying--

TAFURI: --improve security so they -- people don't want to leave.

CARLSON: OK. OK that's not--

TAFURI: That's the solution.

CARLSON: --our job. Our job is to watch over Americans. And we should start doing--

TAFURI: It's more than it's not our job.

CARLSON: --that.

TAFURI: It's in our interest.

CARLSON: Yes. But you know what? It's super complicated. No one knows how to do it. We've been trying for a long time to make those countries better. It hasn't worked.

TAFURI: I believe America has faced tougher problems and we've overcome that.

CARLSON: Yes, I don't think -- I don't think we've overcome any of those problems, actually.

TAFURI: Look at the --

CARLSON: Bidding for an army is a lot--

TAFURI: --look at the Marshall Plan--

CARLSON: --easier than improving--

TAFURI: --after World War II.

CARLSON: --yes, OK.

TAFURI: We helped fix Europe.

CARLSON: Germany is not Honduras. But before we -- OK, we're out of time. They're telling me. I'm sorry. I appreciate your coming on.

TAFURI: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you.

Mid-term elections a week from now. Every day brings huge changes to the campaign landscape. Where are we as of tonight? We have a snapshot, the most recent polling numbers for you when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: San Francisco is a great American city, maybe the prettiest place in the North American continent. But it has an awful lot of problems. Housing is ruinously expensive. Needles litter the streets. The whole town increasingly smells like human waste. Go there if you don't believe it.

City officials aren't interested in fixing these problems, though, they have a much bigger priority, helping foreign nationals, non-citizens, including illegal aliens, vote in elections. The city, believe it or not, spent $310,000 this year trying to sign up non-citizens to vote.

Officially, this was just for the school board election, though, obviously it won't stop there. After months of trying this, the campaign has managed to drum up a total of, brace yourself, 49 votes. In case you can't do the math in your head, that's $6,326 per vote.

The tragedy, of course, is this is money that could have gone, should have gone, to clean up the streets, fight drug addiction or do literally anything to help the many Americans suffering, literally, on the streets of San Francisco. But, of course, helping Americans is exactly why San Francisco would not do that because they don't care.

A week from the election, both parties doing everything they can to turnout every vote possible. Races across the country going down to the wire, where are we in the mid-term elections?

For that question, we go to Independent Women's Voice Senior Fellow, Lisa Boothe. So Lisa--

LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CO-HOST, OUTNUMBERED, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S VOICE SENIOR FELLOW: Hi, Tucker.

CARLSON: --without pinning you down in a way that's going to embarrass you on YouTube eight days from now--

BOOTHE: Yes, please don't.

CARLSON: --where do you think we are?

BOOTHE: I think I do a good enough job on my own for that.

CARLSON: I do too.

BOOTHE: Well look I -- I think with the House -- remember, we had gone from there's going to be this massive big Blue Wave to now people don't know if there's going to be a wave.

CARLSON: Yes.

BOOTHE: It's too close to call. You have Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics saying that recently that the House is a toss-up right now, too close to call. So, I think that's good for Republicans.

But when you look at the numbers, look, Democrats just need to pick up 23 seats in the House to take it back. There are 24 districts that are currently in Republicans' hands that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

And there are enough seats that either a Lean Democrat or a Likely Democrat or toss-up races for Democrats to get to that number of 23. So, the path is certainly possible. It is plausible for Democrats to take back the House. But I think the fact right now that it is not a foregone conclusion bodes well for Republicans.

CARLSON: Structurally, it's -- it's -- it's tough, as we said from the beginning. There's been awful lot of retirements, most of them Republican, it's hard.

BOOTHE: Right.

CARLSON: The Senate, where's that -- where's that, as of tonight?

BOOTHE: Well, I -- I think the Senate -- look, right now, it looks like Republicans are certainly going to keep the Senate. I think they might even pick up seats.

You look at North Dakota, Kevin Cramer has just taken the lead and, you know, ran with it. He's been up by double-digits in that race against Heidi Heitkamp, so North Dakota is probably definitely going to go Republican.

I also think Missouri and Indiana look like potential pick-up opportunities for Republicans. You want to talk about the Kavanaugh effect. That is real in the State of Missouri. Josh Hawley, his first campaign ad that he ran was about the Supreme Court. He ran another ad--

CARLSON: Yes.

BOOTHE: --after the confirmation hearings about the circus and attacking Claire McCaskill for her vote being against the President as well. So, I think that plays out there.

And you look at places like Arizona and Nevada where Democrats are hoping for pick-up opportunities. Those races have been in the margin of error--

CARLSON: I know.

BOOTHE: --but Heller has been up in some of these polls. So, I actually think Republicans will retain Arizona and Nevada.

CARLSON: That would be -- that would be a huge -- a huge win, I think, for them.

BOOTHE: But I don't want to embarrass myself.

CARLSON: OK. We're going to -- we're -- we're saving the tape. Lisa Boothe, thank you for the update.

BOOTHE: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: We'll see you again.

Well thanks to the tech industry, children today, your children, probably are being exposed to tablets and smartphones before they're even potty- trained. Is it good for them? Well the people who make the technology know it's terrible for them, and that's why they protect their own children from the products they make. We've got details on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: It's almost impossible effect, in fact, it is impossible for a kid to grow up in America right now without constant exposure to screens. Not only are children addicted to smartphones, but the schools, public schools, especially, are filled with laptops, tablets, and online homework.

Why? Because Silicon Valley pushed that on our schools. They're profiting from it. You know what they don't want? That garbage in their own kids' schools.

According to The New York Times, Tech Elites are keeping screens out of their children's schools and teaching them to play with real toys instead of digital ones. Why? Because they know screens are poison. They should know. They make them.

Tom Kersting is a licensed psychotherapist, Author of the book, "Disconnected: How To Reconnect Our Digitally Distracted Kids."

Tom, I know that you remember very well and, maybe some of our viewers will too, it was only five or six years ago that all the dumb people, the fad adherents were telling us the most important thing we could do was to put iPads in every school in America, and our kids would magically get brilliant.

This was a lie pushed by Apple. And they all believed it. What do we now know about--

TOM KERSTING, PSYCHOTHERAPIST, DISCONNECTED AUTHOR: We--

CARLSON: --that?

KERSTING: --we now know that that is absolutely false, something I've been lecturing about for 10 years. I've been going out there--

CARLSON: Yes.

KERSTING: --you know, stomping the ground, trying to get parents to really see what's happening, what this stuff is doing to kids' brains, how that is affecting their kids' emotions, why we have so much anxiety and depression, why the suicide rate is through the roof?

And now you have the Tech Execs in Silicon Valley that are actually preventing their own children from using these devices. And when I saw that piece, I was thrilled to hear that because maybe now, you know, we can educate other parents that aren't as aware as the Silicon Valley Tech execs are.

CARLSON: But I mean Philip Morris executives never gave Marlboros to their own kids.

KERSTING: Right, right, right.

CARLSON: So, I guess this shouldn't surprise us. What surprises me is that none of the people selling this garbage to our children, marketing it to them, pushing on them through their schools where they have to obey, are ever held accountable for what they've done. Why is that?

KERSTING: I -- it's -- it's unbelievable. It's got to be -- it had -- must have something to do with behind-the-scenes lobbying and special interests and things of that nature. Now, these Tech Execs if you read -- if you read some articles on it, there's a -- a large amount of students that go to the Waldorf schools out in Silicon Valley.

CARLSON: Yes.

KERSTING: And those schools do not allow any form of electronic devices. It's all paper and pen learning. And I think in one of them, 70 percent of the students in one of those schools are the sons and daughters of Silicon Valley Tech Execs. So they -- they know things that the average parent out there doesn't know, and I'm glad we're having this discussion right now.

CARLSON: But they sell the products anyway.

KERSTING: They sell them anyway.

CARLSON: And they don't alert the rest of us and--

KERSTING: Right.

CARLSON: --school district after bovine school district continues to believe that technology is the key to education, and they never warn anybody about the threat that they clearly perceive.

KERSTING: Right. And -- and I work at a school during the day for 22 years, in addition to being a psychotherapist, and the biggest thing that we're trying to get a handle on is the mental and emotional well-being of our children. So--

CARLSON: Yes.

KERSTING: --23 years ago, it was really more about education. You'd have a school counselor that would help kids with their schedules. Now it's -- it's part mental health and part education under the public school umbrella.

CARLSON: How -- how many, as since this is your world, how many educators do you run into who really understand the magnitude or the imminence of this threat to kids from--

KERSTING: Well--

CARLSON: --technology.

KERSTING: --the educators that I run into, that I speak with, they see -- they know it anecdotally because they see it, you know, firsthand in front of them every day. But what they need to do is read more, like my book really underscores everything--

CARLSON: Yes.

KERSTING: --statistics to back it. We need to get out. We need to get parents out there hearing experts, like myself, discuss the ramifications not just mental health but also the family system.

CARLSON: Yes.

KERSTING: You know, when you look at families nowadays, it's sort of I -- I like it like this (ph), an average family of four is really more like four individuals living a solitary life under the same roof staring at a screen.

CARLSON: Exactly. But, by the way, people can't read anymore because their brains have been trained to read 50 words at a time by the iPhone--

KERSTING: Yes.

CARLSON: --their brains have been destroyed, all of ours had been.

KERSTING: True, yes.

CARLSON: We're going to look back on this moment and say I can't believe we were so passive in the face of something--

KERSTING: Absolutely.

CARLSON: --that was killing us.

KERSTING: You better believe it.

CARLSON: Tom, thank you very much.

KERSTING: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well Hillary Clinton just made an awkward, racially tinged joke. Should we give her the benefit of the doubt? Does anybody get the benefit of the doubt anymore ever? Mark Steyn joins us next to discuss

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: We've got a new video for you. This is Hillary Clinton sitting with one of the least impressive people in American media, Kara Swisher, at a Q&A in New York, last Friday.

Watch this. Clinton makes a small racially tinged joke for real.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARA SWISHER, AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS JOURNALIST, RECODE CO-FOUNDER, THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION SECTION CONTRIBUTING WRITER: What do think of Cory Booker's new comment and, you know, feel free to--

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE,: Oh, I -- I adore him--

SWISHER: --you know, what do you think about him saying, "Kick them in the shins" essentially, start to get to that kind of political--

CLINTON: Well, that was Eric Holder.

SWISHER: Yes. Eric Holder -- oh, Eric Holder, sorry.

CLINTON: Yes. Yes, I know they all look alike.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well we disagree with Hillary on just about everything, obviously. But in this case, we're willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She seemed like she was just making a joke.

We don't assume that she's suppose -- exposing some kind of latent racism. We're not here to publicly shame her, not over that, anyway, lots of other things you could shame her over.

The question is though would Hillary, and any of the people who support Hillary, extend that same benefit of the doubt, that same courtesy to you? Author and Columnist Mark Steyn has some ideas on that question, and he joins us tonight.

Mark, do you think, if you said something like that Hillary Clinton would say, "You know, Mark Steyn like I don't know it was hard, you know, I'm willing to judge him on the case he makes. I'm going to let, you know, he's probably was kidding." You think she'd say that?

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR, COLUMNIST, STEYNONLINE.COM: No. And she wouldn't say it about if -- if you had made that remark either. Nevertheless--

CARLSON: Oh.

STEYN: --I'm inclined to agree with you that there are 40,000 reasons to hound Hillary Clinton out of public life.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: But this is -- this isn't one of them. And I -- I -- I go back to what Victor Davis Hanson said at the top of the show when he used that line the cure is worse than the disease.

The cure is worse than the disease head a society that destroys people over one remark like this is actually a very ugly and evil society, whatever wrongs it might think it's trying to right.

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: Hillary here, by -- by the way, I'll -- I'll say something else too. Hillary is not the most sophisticated kind of communicator.

CARLSON: No.

STEYN: Here she -- she is someone who can tell Cory Booker from Eric Holder. One's got a mustache. One has no hair. It's not difficult. So, she's not actually using the line that all Black people look alike to her. She's actually ironically teasing about an old cliche--

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: --that she is not using for real. And -- and actually, that kind of ironic sense has all but been obliterated from public life now, where if you say something that is sly and ironic like that, you're assumed to mean it for real and you--

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: --have to be hounded from--

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: --public life.

CARLSON: And -- and what -- what I guess gets me is look, I -- as someone who said a lot of dumb things, and I'm sure will in the future, I hope that I always have a chance to explain what I meant. And--

STEYN: Right.

CARLSON: --it seems that nobody has the right to have an apology taken seriously or an explanation considered seriously. It's "We caught you. It's over." I don't know--

STEYN: Well -- well--

CARLSON: --who makes these rules.

STEYN: --well one -- one of the consequences of that is that everybody then winds up going around tiptoeing on eggshells--

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: --and you can never -- and you can never tiptoe enough. Steve Martin made some -- made a lasagna joke. He tweets 1,000 times and he obviously -- he thinks "Oh, this tweet's a bit edgy. This one's a bit provocative."

He had no idea the lasagna joke was going to have people urging him on Twitter to just go and kill himself or to finish him or to obliterate his career. And we can't have that. At a certain -- at a certain point, we have to let Hillary survive her, you know--

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: --all -- they all look alike joke because the price of living in a world where one little remark absolutely destroys you that well that -- that is the cure is worse than the disease.

CARLSON: I know. And I wonder if all these --

STEYN: And it's the last --

CARLSON: --people encouraging the mob on these cable channels--

STEYN: Right.

CARLSON: --and they think about the country they're creating.

STEYN: Right.

CARLSON: All right. Take a look, very quickly, at this horrifying image. This is CNN's Lester Holt, of course, of NBC dressed up as Susan Boyle, the singer. He has changed his appearance in a way that is now very controversial. He wore that costume for a Halloween episode of the Today Show.

Megyn Kelly, of course, was just fired for dress -- for suggesting that it wasn't always bad to dress up as a member of an opposite race. Look, I just -- I want to be clear. I'm not drawing -- and I don't think there's an equivalence between the two.

There's a long history of one and not of the other. But I also wonder -- I don't think there are like five people in America who'd be deeply offended by what Lester Holt did. I'm not offended by it.

Maybe though if you dress like that, you should be slightly less self- righteous in the face of--

STEYN: Well I think--

CARLSON: --other people's transgressions. I guess that's the point--

STEYN: --I--

CARLSON: --I would make.

STEYN: --I think there's an element of Susanboylophobia in that White face, which is offensive to, you know, Northern English women of a -- a certain age. But the fact is, again, it's not about anything real.

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: There is no -- the -- the minstrel tradition, the Blackface tradition in America is dead as a -- a doornail. Bing Crosby, 1942, he wore Blackface for an Abraham Lincoln number in Holiday Inn.

10 years later, when he made the film White Christmas, he did a minstrel number in Whiteface. Somewhere between 1942 and 1952, an entire tradition no longer became respectable. And again, the cure is worse than the disease.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: I was down in Australia when a -- when a Kanye -- I believe, a Kanye West fan, she went to a party. He was her favorite celebrity. So, she went to a party dressed as Kanye West. She's a nobody. She a 19 -- 22 years old. She's at the start of her life, and the entire Australian media wanted to destroy it. This is actually--

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: --evil. I would like Lester Holt--

CARLSON: It is.

STEYN: --to do the news as Susan Boyle for a week. We should all get over this stuff.

CARLSON: I know. Let people apologize. If there's no forgiveness then you can't have--

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: --a functioning society. Mark, thank you very much--

STEYN: No, that's right. That's true.

CARLSON: --as always.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well one of the Mueller investigation's top cooperating witnesses now says he doesn't want to cooperate. He says he was framed. He'd like to get out of the plea deal he made with the government. George Papadopoulos is that man. And he joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Former Trump Campaign fallacy -- Foreign Policy Adviser, George Papadopoulos has already pled guilty to a criminal offense. Now he says he may seek to undo a deal he made to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.

Papadopoulos says now that he was quote, framed and the victim of serious misconduct by government investigators. George Papadopoulos joins us tonight. George, thank you very much for coming on.

GEORGE DEMETRIOS PAPADOPOULOS, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: Thanks a lot for having me.

CARLSON: And I should just note at the outset that despite having your life turned upside down, there's no evidence to this day that you spied for Russia. And so, I feel for you in that way. But to get specific here, this saga began for you when you met with this guy, Professor Mifsud, if I'm even pronouncing his name correctly.

Where is -- it seems like we should hear from him. Where is he today, this man?

PAPADOPOULOS: Thanks a lot for hosting me, Tucker.

So, this was a very important person in this entire investigation. Professor Joseph Mifsud, the man that everyone is looking at in this picture is allegedly a Russian agent who had information that the Russians possessed Hillary Clinton's emails, which he--

CARLSON: Right.

PAPADOPOULOS: --then passed -- passed along to me. Now, new information has come out recently from this man's lawyer. And what his lawyer is telling the world is that this person, Joseph Mifsud, was not working at the behest of Russia when he was encountering and interacting with George Papadopoulos and the Trump campaign. He was under the guidance of the FBI.

Now, this information, if it's true, and I have -- there's no reason to believe that his lawyer is slandering his clients and going against the interests of his own clients, if it is indeed true, this information alone upends this entire investigation in my eyes and the narrative of -- of any Russia conspiracy, Russia collusion --

CARLSON: Well that's -- that's -- that's for sure. And I wish -- now I wish we had an hour to talk. We don't. We have about 45 seconds. Where is this guy? Why -- why isn't he on Capitol Hill explaining himself?

PAPADOPOULOS: I -- I'm going with -- first of all, you know, I would -- did not receive certain exculpatory evidence that if I had that information beforehand, I probably--

CARLSON: Right.

PAPADOPOULOS: --would not have pled guilty. But that's an entire other issue that we can talk about probably at in a future time. This person is hiding somewhere in Europe, apparently, according to his lawyer. He's being represented by a top law firm in London--

CARLSON: Yes.

PAPADOPOULOS: --that's dealing with his negotiations with the Special Counsel. And, apparently, he's going to be coming out public once this investigation is over. So when I--

CARLSON: Yes me -- yes, have --

PAPADOPOULOS: --say I was framed--

CARLSON: --having wrecked our political system he'll -- he'll emerge, George, and -- and your life--

PAPADOPOULOS: Yes.

CARLSON: --by the way. I hope you'll come back. It was great to talk to you tonight. That's all tantalizing, and I hope we get to the bottom of it soon. Thank you.

PAPADOPOULOS: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

CARLSON: We're out of time. That was a packed hour. We'll be back tomorrow 8:00 P.M. the show that's the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and, especially, groupthink, all ubiquitous and bad.

Sean Hannity, right now.

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