Rest of America suffers as Russia hysteria takes over Washington

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Rest of America suffers as Russia hysteria takes over Washington

Why does the left want Russia as an enemy? NYU professor emeritus Stephen Cohen shares his expertise.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," December 18, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

If you've been seated in front of a TV all day watching the unfolding pageant and, obviously, we're hoping that you were, because it's our business, you know that Michael Flynn was supposed to be sentenced today. That would be for the crime of lying to FBI agents in his now-famous White House interview at the very beginning of the Administration.

For a number of reasons, you've probably already heard about, none of them very significant in the cosmic scheme of things, that sentencing has been postponed until the New Year. And, of course, we'll bring you the details when that happens.

In the meantime though, we thought we would seize this opportunity to take stock of all that we have learned, Michael Flynn being, of course, the first major target of the Mueller investigation. That was all the way back, if you can believe it, at the beginning of last year, 2017.

So, it's been just about two years, almost, and the hunt for Russian spies on our soil has not slowed down. It has metastasized into something vast and remarkable. It's now practically its own agency of government.

There are now, we think this is right, there could be more, but what we could find are a half a dozen separate Russia investigations now being conducted by the Justice Department.

That does not even count the separate Congressional inquiries or - four, five, maybe more, who knows, and then, of course, nearly a 100 percent of the attention of every news organization in Washington, almost everyone.

So, what have we learned after all that time and all that money and all that attention? Well, we know that the Russians spent a total of, let's check the math, $4,700 on Google ads during the 2016 election. Try to buy a car for that.

We also know that Jerome Corsi and George Papadopoulos, two people you probably had never heard of before, likely did something bad, like misremembering dates or emails, though apparently neither one of them spied for anybody. That's what we've learned.

We've also learned that, and people are not noting this, but we thought it'd be worth pointing out, virtually every issue that led voters unexpectedly to support Donald Trump in 2016 remains as of now unresolved, in some cases, not even addressed.

That would include the decline of the American middle class, the drop in life expectancy, the opioid crisis, our unsecured Southern border, crushing student loan debt, the global dominance of China, the quagmire in Afghanistan, infrastructure, healthcare costs, we could go on, you know, the little things.

You haven't heard a lot about any of that lately. The news anchors have not had time to tell you about any of that because they're too busy shouting self-righteously about Michael Flynn. "He lied. He lied." They, by contrast, never lie because they're good people, unlike Michael Flynn who lied.

So, I guess the point is there's been a cost to our Russia fixation. Years later, we may look back and wonder what happened during the last two years. How did everybody in America with an Ivy League education simultaneously go insane in the space of a single year?

Was there some kind of mass poisoning? Was it Ergotism? It happened in medieval France maybe - maybe that's what happened.

We're going to let historians sort that out. We're not really sure. For now, all we know for certain is that the people in charge have lost it, they really have. And if you don't believe it, listen to them explain the intricacies of the Russia conspiracy. They're mesmerized by it. It's a tale so complex, so riddled with internal contradictions, it sounds like an Eastern religion. Only they really understand it, but they mean it and they do understand it. To them, Russia is the touchstone. It's the comprehensive theory of everything.

Consider what happened, for example, last night in cable news, and it really could have been any night on cable news. MSNBC, CNN, take your pick. We just happened to be watching last night around 11:00 when this happened, so we're bringing it to you tonight because it's interesting, and it tells you a lot.

By the way, this is from the most serious news program that NBC offers on cable. It's called The 11th Hour. There are two people in this segment we're about to show you. The first is a man called Malcolm Nance.

Now, Nance identifies himself as a 35-year veteran of counterintelligence work, whatever that means. His most recent book is called The Plot to Hack America. It was a national bestseller, thanks to heavy promotion from MSNBC.

The second man you're about to see is Brian Williams who, of course, needs no introduction. He was the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, back when that meant something. Williams is widely regarded as - as a good guy by people who know him and he's absolutely in Washington anyway, is thought of as one of the smartest people in the news business.

The point is these are not kooks on late-night radio. They are considered highly impressive people. Keep that in mind as you watch this.

Williams opens the segment by explaining that Russian disinformation teams have been working to divide America and convince the population, among other totally implausible things, that Jim Comey and Robert Mueller might have political agendas.

Ridiculous, right? Williams asked Malcolm Nance to comment on that proposition and Nance says this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALCOLM WRIGHTSON NANCE, AUTHOR, MEDIA COMMENTATOR, FORMER UNITED STATES NAVY SENIOR CHIEF PETTY OFFICER: What Russia has done here and where the true brilliance of this intelligence operation comes from is way back in the early 2000s, the Russian military conducted a strategic study and started carrying out a disinformation plan, in which they said that instead of carrying out kinetic warfare against your enemies, the best thing we can do is create a disinformation and (ph) frame around that nation to the point where over time as we are constantly tearing them apart and feeding them with false information, they would actually welcome an invasion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Huh? Wait, wait a second here. This is what we in the news business call news.

So, for nearly 20 years, the Russians have been building a disinformation frame around the United States. What's a disinformation frame? And how does it manage to brainwash an entire population so thoroughly that they welcome a foreign invasion?

I mean that's got to be the most powerful mind control device in human history. More detail please. This - really this is the part of the interview where the anchor politely interrupts the guest and ask them to explain what the hell he's talking about.

But Williams does not do that. He just lets Malcolm Nance keep talking, so Malcolm Nance does keep talking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCE: So Russia has done that to the United States. And it began way before 2016. As a matter of fact, the earliest references I have with relation to Donald Trump shows that it started back in 2011 with Maria Butina and the NRA contacts, contacts with the fundamentalist Christian Right and the Alt-Right in the United States. Russia was pushing these disinformation themes then.

Then in 2013, they stood up the Russian Federation Internet Research Agency, which built all of these memes and tropes, which became the cruise missiles of fake news and disinformation designed to do what it did today, take one-third of the United States population and make them refuse to believe what they see before their very eyes and may have elected a president in the process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Holy smokes! This is a tsunami of news.

It turns out that Donald Trump's collusion with Russia began years before any of us suspected, way back in 2011. Here's the confusing part. In 2011, by all outward appearances, Trump was still a pretty conventional New York Liberal.

He went to David Letterman to read the Top 10 list. He endorsed gun control. It was all a cover, a sophisticated ruse. As Malcolm Nance reveals, Trump was, in fact, busy plotting with the NRA, Christian fundamentalists, and the Alt-Right.

Now keep in mind, this was years before there was such a thing as the Alt- Right, but that's just how stealthy this operation was. Even the Steele dossier missed it, so did the rest of us.

Well, that's not surprising, since as Malcolm Nance has explained, thanks to Russian brainwashing, one-third of the U.S. population can no longer perceive reality. That's Malcolm Nance's position.

What would you do if somebody repeated those exact same words to you on a city bus? You'd likely be worried. At the very least, you'd probably switch seats. Not Brian Williams. He'd move closer.

Williams didn't seem to consider Nance's explanation strange in the slightest. He was deeply impressed by it. Williams asked how the Russians could have pulled off an operation this extensive without the willing help of American accomplices.

Of course, Nance - Nance had an answer to that. Keep in mind, as you watch this clip, that we have not edited the tape in any way. This aired verbatim last night on MSNBC. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCE: They have played on the - the themes of far-Right conspiracy theorists from the 1960. The John Birch Society, a - a sideline group, you know, and the farthest extremes of the libertarian parties.

They have amplified racism to the point where the Alt-Right, Steve Bannon's own creation of Gamers is now the wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign and are believers in David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan, Richard - Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi, and Robert Spencer, the Islamophobe, to the point where they're mainstreamed. This is how effective this information warfare campaign has been carried out.

And let me tell you, this report shows how they went after to suppress the African-American vote. And there's no doubt in my mind or anybody else's in the intelligence community that doesn't believe that it took American citizens to assist them in really getting down to where these voters were who needed to be suppressed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wow! So, in case you weren't transcribing that as you watch, let's bottom-line it for you.

The Russia conspiracy just expanded to include a bewildering array of new figures. These would include the John Birch Society, the KKK, David Duke, people who play online video games, Steve Bannon, a religion blogger named Robert Spencer, and others.

Collectively, their goal was not simply to elect Donald Trump but to hurt African-Americans. Why would Russian intelligence want to do that, you might ask? Well if you have to ask, you're probably working for Vladimir Putin too, so shut up.

It goes without saying that all of this is completely insane. There's no evidence to support any of it. It is not true. Worse than that, it's irresponsible. Keep in mind this aired on a division of NBC News, so some large number of people are likely going to believe it.

They'll go to sleep worrying about the invisible disinformation frame that surrounds their country and the resurgence of the John Birch Society. And they'll wake up a little more convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is a tool of a foreign power because that is the real message here, and of this whole conspiracy.

There's no other side of the debate. There's only Russian propaganda. To a certain sort of fragile Liberal, that's probably comforting to know, but it's a lie. In fact, it's its own form of propaganda. No news organization should traffic in garbage like this. News anchors exist to push back against nutty claims like these.

Brian Williams bought them completely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC ANCHOR: Wow. Malcolm Nance, this is why we ask you all the time to come on this broadcast. Scary stuff, but it needs to be said, needs to be heard. Thank you, sir, so much for joining us once again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It needs to be said. It needs to be heard. This is why we ask you to come on this broadcast. Save that video. Future generations won't believe it.

And now to the actual monetary cost of all this Russia nonsense, what is it costing taxpayers? Trace Gallagher has been tracking that for us and he joins us tonight. Hey Trace?

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. If you back up the clock to June, President Trump blasted Robert Mueller on Twitter saying, quoting here, the Russian hoax investigation has now cost our government over $17 million and going up fast. Turns out, the President was right.

Brand-new filings by the Department of Justice show that $17 million number has now risen to $25 million and counting, and that does not include an additional $5.5 million spent by the Department of Justice on other expenses related to the Russia investigation.

Here's a quick rundown of how Mr. Mueller has spent your money over the past six months.

$2.9 million went to the salaries and benefits of Special Counsel employees and Department of Justice employees, 942-plus-thousand was spent on rent, communication, and utilities, $60,000 for printing supplies and materials, that's a lot of copies of something, $580,000 on transportation and travel, and $310,000 for IT services.

Bottom line, trying to find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is expensive, and working in IT for the Special Counsel is apparently lucrative. Tucker.

CARLSON: Trace Gallagher, thanks for keeping track.

Victor Davis Hanson is a historian. He's a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and, we're proud to say, a frequent guest on this show, he joins us tonight. Professor, thank you very much for coming on.

So, calculate--

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

CARLSON: --if you would in non-monetary terms what you think the costs of these various Russia investigations have been to the country.

HANSON: Well I think there's a - they're sins (ph) of commission and omission because why this is all going on, Tucker, we - we've cracked 3 percent GDP. We hadn't done that in 10 years. That's not an abstract number. That means millions of people who were not working now have an opportunity.

I really see it in where I live in Southwestern Fresno County, it's a human story. We have peacetime unemployment of 3.7. Remember, just two years ago, Larry Summers said you - this is - these were - this was the stuff of fairy stories, and Barack Obama said you need a magic wand.

We're increasing oil production at 1.5 million barrels a year. We're the largest oil producer in the world. Nothing hurts Russia more than that fact alone that we - there's no such word in the English vocabulary for Peak Oil anymore. So, there's just a human story going on.

This is not--

CARLSON: Yes.

HANSON: --even talking about progress overseas. And we're just completely uninterested in it. I don't know why because a lot of very poor people have leverage over employers for higher wages that they never had before.

And the second is there's a really in - inequality of the law. I mean we talk about the elites. But think of the - the array of people who have not told the truth.

Andrew McCabe was fired for lying to federal investigators. We don't know what's going to happen to him. So far, he hasn't faced criminal charges. But the Inspector General said he was lying.

James Comey's statements about the FISA Court and the role of the dossier are not true. James Clapper lied under oath to Congress. John Brennan lied under oath to Congress. Susan Rice lied when she said she did not request surveilled transcripts and have them unmask.

We know that Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills lied when they said they did not have knowledge of the email server of Hillary - of their boss, Hillary Clinton. That's not even getting into the deception of the FISA Court or the way that the investigations went on the email scandal or putting informants in a presidential campaign.

So, the second thing, it's really from a historical point of view, we've had a lot of wrongdoing by elites. And nobody's - there's been no consequences. So, the American--

CARLSON: Yes.

HANSON: --people are not paranoid. They're saying, well the Mueller investigation's going here but they're going after misdemeanors or nothing. And here these felonies go completely unaddressed. Then finally, this Mueller investigation's not in isolation.

We - we had, remember, from the day Trump was elected, we were told that the voting machines were fraudulent. We're going to sue. And then there was in a group, remember about the Electoral College, we had to overturn--

CARLSON: Yes, very well.

HANSON: --get to the electors. And then we went to the 25th Amendment that Trump was unbalanced, and then that didn't work. Then we went to the Emoluments Clause. He profit - even though his businesses had lost a billion dollars, and then we've gone to the Mueller.

And so, there's a slow motion, if you will. I don't want to be too psychodramatic like MSNBC guest.

But there is sort of a slow-motion coup to overturn the elections when we should just take a deep breath and say we have a chance to adjudicate this in the next two - '20 election, and we do not want to destroy 2.5 - you know, two - over two centuries of American constitutional jurisprudence, because we know historically, Tucker, when you have whether it's successful systems like ours or the Greek city-state of the Fourth Century or Rome in the Fifth Century A.D. or the Byzantines in the 6 - 15th Century or the ancient regime in Rome, why did they fall apart?

They fall apart because an elite no longer warrants the respect that they think that they deserve--

CARLSON: Exactly.

HANSON: --because they're out of touch with the people. And we have a whole bunch of people on questions of global warming, as we see in Europe, or immigration in Eastern Europe, or here at home, that feel that they can unhide, dictate to people and they're never subject to the ramifications of their own ideology and policy.

And it's like the emperor has no close (ph) and then they're - they're surprised that Trump won or surprised that people are rioting in Paris. What do they think was--

CARLSON: If--

HANSON: --going to happen?

CARLSON: --if they were wise and had perspective and made good decisions and cared about their countries, it wouldn't bother me. But they're none of those things, unfortunately, as you know. Professor, thank you very much.

HANSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: Well for two years, the Fusion GPS dossier has dominated our political conversation and has driven political events more than maybe any other fact. What parts of the dossier have proved true over the past two years?

Mollie Hemingway has been keeping track. Everybody should be keeping track. But she's one of the rare few who is, and she'll join us after the break to tell us what she's found.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well at the center of the two-year Russia investigation is the Fusion GPS dossier. Hard to remember now, but it was originally compiled as opposition research by the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign. It was then passed around to journalists and lawmakers, and finally released on BuzzFeed without its contents being verified.

Despite that, the dossier and its allegations have become more important than America's entire middle class. So, the question is with two years of thinking about it and poking around in the efforts of every news organization in Washington to verify it or not, how much the dossier wound up being true?

Mollie Hemingway has been following this. She's senior editor at The Federalist. We're happy to have her tonight. So, Mollie, I just want to go through a couple of the big claims in this, and you tell me if we - if this happened or not.

So, the first was Michael Cohen's trip to Prague. Remember the famous trip to Prague?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST SENIOR EDITOR, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: This is absolutely key. We're told that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal attorney, went to Prague, had a secret meeting with the Duma's Konstantin Kosachev that they discussed the collusion arrangement and that it - and that it went really, and that this was - this was a really important thing.

In fact, not only had did that meeting not take place, there's no evidence that the meeting took place. There's no evidence that Michael Cohen has ever been to Prague.

CARLSON: But that was repeated as fact repeatedly.

HEMINGWAY: Well, in fact, in just a few months ago, seven months ago, I think there was a news report that falsely claimed that the Mueller - that the Mueller team had evidence that that secret meeting had taken place.

It is just interesting to note, since we're actually in the sentencing phase and we're dealing with all - with sort of some resolution here, it wasn't even mentioned by Bob Mueller or anyone else--

CARLSON: And assuming they were not (ph)--

HEMINGWAY: --who's going after Cohen (ph).

CARLSON: --one of the things that always struck me about the dossier was it accused people of crimes, American citizens of crimes, and one of them was Carter Page, who was described, in effect, as a - as a mastermind Russian spy.

HEMINGWAY: Carter Page, again, was all over the dossier. And it was so important, the dossier was viewed so favorably by our federal government. They used this to secure a wiretap against him. They portrayed him as a mastermind spy who was setting up all sorts of important meetings and arranging, again, collusion.

We were told that he had a - got a stake in - in a large Russian oil company in exchange for the collusion. These meetings that we were told took place in the dossier, there's no evidence that any of them happened.

And it's interesting to note that Carter Page was surveilled for an entire year by our government, and has not been charged with any crime despite being portrayed as this - as the central linchpin of the collusion theory (ph).

CARLSON: But I do think it destroyed his life, so there's that.

HEMINGWAY: Yes.

CARLSON: Now, at the very center of this were the salacious claims that Trump was caught doing things with hookers, and he was subject to blackmail as a result of this. Did that happen?

HEMINGWAY: Right. So, this was - this was what made it so interesting and what made the journalists so excited when the dossier was first published, not just the tale of the - of the prostitutes at the Moscow hotel, but we were told that Russia had all sorts of compromising information on Donald Trump, and that he would be compromised and blackmailed by this.

Then you can look at his record over the last two years and see that if Russia has anything compromising on him they should have deployed it while he was going after them in such an aggressive fashion in foreign policy--

CARLSON: Yes.

HEMINGWAY: --and they haven't done anything of the kind. There is no evidence to support this. But a lot of people are, in fact, druthers (ph) on this.

CARLSON: Yes. Meanwhile, as Victor Davis Hanson just pointed out, the one thing they care about is energy, and America is now the world's largest oil producer, energy producer, so we haven't helped them too much.

The Trump Towers in Moscow, you hear that to this day.

HEMINGWAY: So, you need to have business interests in order to have this collusion theory make sense. The dossier said a bunch of actually kind of contradictory things that Trump was very interested in a business deal in Russia, and also that he'd been offered sweetheart deals.

Well if you've been offered sweetheart deals, I think we can reasonably assume he would have taken them. There's no evidence he has ever successfully accomplished any business relationship in Russia.

CARLSON: And finally, and this claim, again, persists to this day that Manafort manipulated WikiLeaks in order to hurt Hillary Clinton, and I think it's basically wrecked Roger Stone's life, this - this claim from the dossier. Is it true? Do we know that that's true?

HEMINGWAY: So, the dossier claimed that Manafort was really the one in charge of the entire collusion theory that, in fact, Carter Page was working on his orders. There's no evidence that they even met that he - we were told that Manafort was the one who came up with the whole WikiLeaks idea. There's no evidence.

And we have a lot of court filings where if there were any evidence of this, you know darn well that this would have been mentioned in any of these filings. Now the whole genius of this dossier is that it has a bunch of allegations that are improb - impossible to disprove.

And that's not the way that justice is supposed to be done in this country where you say, "Well if you're innocent, you have to prove that these things never happened." These are a bunch of wild allegations without evidence to support them, and we are now years into this--

CARLSON: No, you're right.

HEMINGWAY: --and it's--

CARLSON: I mean that's the--

HEMINGWAY: --it's a lie.

CARLSON: --standard we apply to Supreme Court justices, but not - not to anyone else. Mollie Hemingway, great to see you. Thank you for that.

HEMINGWAY: Great to be here with you.

CARLSON: For your rigorous look at that.

Well anti-Russia panic has reignited the Cold War and driven us apart from Russia. But is that good for American interests? Why should we be Russia's enemy? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: At the center of the Russia panic is an accusation that bears directly on a key foreign policy question that affects all of us, and it's this. By colluding with Russia, Donald Trump and his team agreed to sell out America's interests by aligning with Vladimir Putin's government.

That's what they're saying. In real life, of course, the opposite has happened. In the past two years, relations with Russia have deteriorated to historically bad levels, really the worst since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The question is has that helped America in some way? And what is wrong with improving relations with Russia? Donald Trump ran on improving relations with Russia and got elected, as you remember.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wouldn't it actually be wonderful if we could get along with Russia?

(CROWD CHEERING YES)

TRUMP: Wouldn't that be nice?

(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)

TRUMP: If we get along with Russia, we'd go out together with others and we'd knock the hell out of ISIS, wouldn't that be great?

(CROWD CHEERING YES)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Steve Cohen is a former NYU professor, one of the eminent Russia experts in America, Author of the new book, War with Russia: From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Russiagate, and he joins us tonight. Professor, thanks very much for coming on. So--

STEPHEN COHEN, NYU PROFESSOR EMERITUS, THE NATION CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, WAR WITH RUSSIA AUTHOR: Well, you've got quite a lot - you've got a quite a lineup tonight, all the skeptics.

CARLSON: Well it's what's just so interesting you - at the heart of this is a real foreign policy question, which is why we're always so grateful to talk to you.

And that question is does the United States benefit in some way from demonizing Russia? Should we be enemies with Russia? Or, could we benefit more from some kind of loose alliance with Russia?

That's really the question that Trump's raised (ph) and I'm starting to suspect that that view was so unpopular that it's driving the Russia investigation, at least in part, do you think?

COHEN: It's a mystery of our time. And I promise you that your kids and my grandkids and the historians of their generation will look back on this terrible era, this Russiagate era, and ask who started it, why it got such traction, and why it's done the damage it's done?

Now, one explanation, but I'm not sure it's a complete explanation is that when Trump said during the campaign, it would be great to cooperate with Russia, the enemies of such cooperation saw in Trump an enemy, and they began this, literally unproven, allegation that he was somehow under the control of the Kremlin.

But the damage it's done to our national security and to our institutions, the you - you may be the only person who's - who's - who's asked the question. But I guarantee you historians will ask it, what have been the cost of these two years of Russiagate?

They've been grave. I mean Victor Hanson pointed out the corruption of our elites. But what about the corruption of our institutions? The presidency, elections, suspicions, doubts have been cast on these basic American institutions.

And then I come to the thing that concerns me the most that I worry about in this book, War with Russia? I mean it. I think it's a possibility that Trump is not free to do crisis negotiation with Russia, and there's going to be a crisis soon, for sure, the way every president since Eisenhower has been.

CARLSON: Right.

COHEN: I've said that before on your show. It's virtually an existential constitutional duty of the American President in the nuclear age to be free and powered to deal with questions of war and peace with Russia the way John F. Kennedy was, Cuban Missile Crisis.

I can't imagine what's going to happen if we have such a crisis. Trump is shackled. Remember what happened in July. I think you and I might have talked about it on the air. Trump went to Helsinki for a perfectly ritualistic, normal summit meeting with Putin. Comes home--

CARLSON: Yes, we were there.

COHEN: --and he's accused of treason.

CARLSON: I remember.

COHEN: Accused for treason. So, that's the--

CARLSON: So - so let me--

COHEN: --cost.

CARLSON: --can I ask you - we only have a minute left. But I'm so interested in this question and I don't know the answer. What was the - what's the motive? Apart from disliking Trump, their political motives, obviously, but there is - part of our foreign policy establishment really believes that we ought to be in some sort of adversarial posture against Russia. Why?

COHEN: I - I don't know. And when you don't know you got to say it. But here is a theory that some people would offer you if asked that question. When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the Washington elites who controlled foreign policy saw a world dominated or governed by or run by the United States.

And that seemed to be a reality in the 1990s when Russia had a President who was ill, often drunk, and very compliant to Washington. And we got used to that. Russia is a kind of junior subservient partner in world affair (ph).

CARLSON: Right.

COHEN: And then came Putin, and it was a shock, and they've been reacting to the shock of Putin ever since. And I'll give you one quote.

CARLSON: Yes.

COHEN: Nicholas Kristof, a very influential New York Times Correspondent - Columnist, lamented in (ph) print, listen to this, that Putin did not turn out to be what he expected, namely, a sober Yeltsin, Yeltsin having been the President of Russia in the 1990s. So, part of this--

CARLSON: The - the arrogance and dumbness--

COHEN: --was done (ph)--

CARLSON: --of our - of the people who make our policy and influence our policy really will be the - the - the title of every history of this period. Professor, thank you. It's--

COHEN: I agree with that.

CARLSON: --great to see you and congrats on the new book.

COHEN: Thanks, Tucker. Thank you.

CARLSON: First it was Rudolph and bullying, now the Left's war on Christmas, which is not real, but still continues unabated, is targeting gingerbread men, man, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Recently, we interviewed a New York State Senator, a Democrat called Kevin Parker.

Parker is sponsoring a law bill in New York that will require anybody who wants to buy a gun to give the state the passwords to their social media accounts, so politicians can make sure they didn't say anything naughty that they disagree with, because when you say violent things online, according to Kevin Parker, you shouldn't have a firearm.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STATE SEN. KEVIN PARKER, D-N.Y.: This law simply says let's look at, you know, what people are putting out on social media as a, you know, the - you know, part of a -- a set of criteria that we're using to determine who gets handguns.

CARLSON: OK.

Do you think that people have a right to say outrageous things, maybe even things you disagree with, in public, do you think--

PARKER: They - they certainly--

CARLSON: --that that be good (ph)?

PARKER: --they certainly can say whatever they want to say. But we also have the right--

CARLSON: Oh, but then you punish them--

PARKER: --we also have--

CARLSON: --for saying that.

PARKER: --but we also have a right to deny them a gun permit if, in fact, we believe that the things that they're saying may lead to them endangering the people of the State of New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes. So, if you say something threatening online, he doesn't think you should have a gun. Well, as we've chronicled exhaustively on this show, there's something called projection, and that's what you accuse people you don't like of doing precisely the thing that you are doing. Freud wrote a book about that, I think.

Well this morning, Parker, the guy you just saw, tweeted this, Kill yourself!, at a GOP, I know I'm laughing because it's just hilarious, is it's so grotesque, at Spokeswoman - Republican Spokeswoman Candice Giove.

Parker, turns out, was mad at being accused of improperly parking on the streets of Manhattan. I'm sure that didn't happen. Well, the Spokeswoman was shocked, she tweeted this. "Did a Senator just write this to me?"

And the answer, of course, is yes. Kill yourself, he said. Unbelievable. That really does go into Hypocrisy Hall of Fame. We hope Mr. Parker will come back and explain it to us. I'm sure he will.

Well the war on Christmas is not real, they tell you that all the time. It's totally fake. And if you believe in it, you're dumb, you watch Fox News or something. But it's also, of course, going on. And it's being fought very fiercely here in America, but not just in America.

The war on Christmas is a global struggle. In the Parliament of Scotland, they have a National Parliament, the coffee shop has stopped selling gingerbread men. Why? Gender-specific. They're now called gingerbread people.

You don't want to give them a gender without their consent. You don't even want to know how many bathrooms there are in gingerbread houses now, a lot.

Tammy Bruce is a radio host and President of Independent Women's Voice, and she joins us tonight. Tammy, so I have this - have this sneaking suspicion that a lot of the people who are doing things like this are actually Right- wing plants there to discredit the progressives they live among.

Do you think that's possible?

TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S VOICE PRESIDENT: I don't. I think though that they're - it's--

CARLSON: You don't--

BRUCE: --I - I know. It's - it's very funny. And now I've been - starting to think about the complicated structure of gingerbread houses because of your comment. I'm just wondering, how many bathrooms can they get into one house? But look, here is the problem. And it just proves, of course, our point, in general.

The Left has worked now for a couple of generations to condition us to ahead of time worry about what we're going to say. Even your last segment, of course, is about that little bit of - of challenging people and threatening them and making sure that they know that there's danger in those thoughts.

And so, this baker, she said it was a whim that she just thought you just - like for no good reason that she should not call them gingerbread men and call them a gingerbread person, and I couldn't tell, obviously, because they're also not wearing clothes. So, it's hard to say what it is that there - they - they are, and what they're doing and what they're not doing.

But she said she was also shocked by the response. And that's the good news, Tucker, is that this is in - in, again, Scotland, the United Kingdom. And the backlash, she was apparently shocked that people were really upset about this.

And - and I contend after a series of, you know, living your entire life being kind of bullied into what you can and cannot say and presumptions that you're--

CARLSON: Right.

BRUCE: --bad people that it can be the smallest thing that tips you over the edge that's a - that's the tipping point. And in this case, it's, you know, calling gingerbread men a gingerbread person when obviously they're men.

CARLSON: Well, so maybe the lesson is that the rest of us shouldn't participate in our own spiritual neutering and that we should--

BRUCE: That's correct.

CARLSON: --at every step along the way say, I'm not - I'm not complying with that. I'm sorry--

BRUCE: That is correct.

CARLSON: --call HR on me, I'm not doing it.

BRUCE: And - and look, this Kentucky radio station is a very good example of that. You know, Baby, It's Cold Outside, the famous song has come under fire for being inappropriate. And a station in Ohio cut it off of their - their list.

Well a - a Kentucky radio station decided to put it on a loop five different versions they - because it's been covered by everybody, and they played it continuously for two hours. Obviously, Kentucky for two hours on Sunday was - was nirvana.

And they just play and everybody loved it. And they said, "Look, we've stand behind this. We're going to play it. We're not afraid." And that's a very good idea is that this is the one way to stop it is to do the thing that the bullies and the establishment tell you that you're not allowed to do in an effort to control you.

And as a statement, I think--

CARLSON: That's right.

BRUCE: --sometimes that's important.

CARLSON: I agree. And also being an independent thinker in a time of mandatory conformity pays off in the event (ph)--

BRUCE: Exactly.

CARLSON: --we've got to hope. Tammy--

BRUCE: Exactly.

CARLSON: --thank you very much.

BRUCE: Thank you. I'll get my gingerbread now. You too.

CARLSON: Yes (ph).

Well, Apple, the company that makes your phone and your tablet and your laptop is one of the most profitable companies in the world, have the biggest market cap in the world, may still. And yet, American taxpayers are still subsidizing Apple. Why is that? Our investigation into big tech continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TEXT: TECH TYRANNY.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well, for several years running, the tech giant Apple has been this country's most lucrative company. It regularly earns tens of billions in profits every year. Despite that, for reasons that aren't exactly clear, lawmakers are eager to give Apple tax breaks, tax breaks that you're not getting and could never get because sorry, you're not Apple.

For example, in return for expanding its campus in Austin, Texas, Williamson County, where Austin is, is prepared to give Apple a property tax break worth more than $20 million. Again, are you getting anything like that? Probably not. Why are they getting it?

Chip Roy is a Republican. He's the Congressman-elect for the 21st Congressional district of Texas, and he joins us tonight. Mr. Roy, thank you very much. Congrats, by the way, on winning, and thanks for coming on tonight. What - why in the world--

CHIP ROY, CONGRESSMAN-ELECT FOR THE 21ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF TEXAS, REPUBLICAN MEMBER: Good evening, Tucker. Thank you.

CARLSON: --would any County give Apple a tax break?

ROY: Well, you know, that's a great question. It's a question that I've been asking. And I know that there's a popular mode of doing business in this country now to try to pay businesses to move to your state.

But I don't think you need to pay people to move to Texas. Texas is a great state with low tax rates and--

CARLSON: Yes.

ROY: --good reasons to move here. So, I don't understand why we would give upwards of $50 million to a company that has up close to $250 billion in cash in the bank and a trillion dollar market cap, which is bigger than the GDP of about a 180 countries.

It's just more of the same corporate cronyism that we see at the federal, state and local level that I think voters are getting tired of. I know that - well I heard on the campaign trail, people are getting sick of that.

CARLSON: Nobody says anything about it. I mean when Amazon did this in New York, one of the only people, and I'm ashamed to say this, was not a Republican, just the opposite. It was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And everyone else on both sides were nodding, "Oh, Amazon good, Amazon good." Why does nobody raise an alarm over this kind of behavior?

ROY: Well I think a lot of people, particularly, on the Republican side of the aisle, hide behind job creation, and they think that well, we just throw money around, it's going to create jobs. And the fact of the matter is I think we are chasing, you know, good money after bad, while we throw money at corporations that have tons of - of resources.

And frankly, they don't - they're not sharing our values. Corporations are attacking our core--

CARLSON: That's for sure.

ROY: --Texas values, our core American values. You got Tim Cook lecturing us about border security, and how we're somehow inhumane because we want to have border security. What is inhumane is having cheap labor in China prop up your profits and then tell us how we should live our lives in Texas.

And I'm frankly kind of sick of it. I think it's inhumane that little girls are getting sold into the sex trade because we don't have border security.

And yet, we're getting lectured by Tim Cook about what we need to do and being held ransom for $50 million in Texas when they've got $250 billion in cash in the bank, and I just don't think that's the way things ought to fly.

CARLSON: I've been really hoping so fervently the Republican Party would change, and the fact that you just got elected is evidence that it is. So, thank you very much. Chip Roy, congrats again. God bless.

ROY: Thanks, Tucker, look forward to it, take care.

CARLSON: Instead of giving big tech huge tax breaks, what should lawmakers be doing about their growing influence? One person who's been thinking about this for a long time and getting no credit for it, believe it or not, is Ralph Nader, of course, the long-time consumer advocate, Author of the new book, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, he joins us tonight.

Mr. Nader, thank you very much for coming on. The reason I want to talk to you is I don't think you've gotten the credit you deserve for being a lone voice on the Left raising concerns about the concentration of power in the tech sector. What happens when you say that out loud?

RALPH NADER, POLITICAL ACTIVIST, LECTURER, ATTORNEY, HOW THE RATS RE-FORMED THE CONGRESS AUTHOR: Well the Congress always bemused by the razzle-dazzle of Silicon Valley and - and, you know, supposedly clean industry has horrible pollution coming in from the supply chain and all the rock (ph) when they dismantle the stuff. And they have no tech capability to ask the right question.

So Newt Gingrich in 1995 got rid of the Office of Technology Assessment in Congress, which is he not (ph) Professional Advisor. So, when they deal with things like, you know, ballistic missile defense or Facebook or Google, they would have the experts right there.

And so, there they are, they have these hearings and, you know, outrage and admiration came from the Members of the House--

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: --and the Senate that went nowhere. So, the question coming up in Congress is, are they going to regulate them like they, suppose, you know, they regulate cars or pharmaceuticals.

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: Or are they going to just have Quasi-regulation like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation does for banks or are they going to create a trade association to regulate them with standards overseen by some agency? It doesn't look good.

The Federal Trade Commission nailed Facebook in 2011, led by David Vladeck, the Consumer Protection Bureau, and haven't (ph) enforced at all. And Facebook has been violating or letting others, third-party, fourth-party, Cambridge Analytics violate that consent decree. And it's--

CARLSON: It's but - but wait (ph) - OK, so you became famous--

NADER: Yes.

CARLSON: 1965-ish going after--

NADER: Yes.

CARLSON: --General Motors.

NADER: Yes.

CARLSON: And the Right didn't like you because you were attacking business. But the Left loved you. You became this huge hero. You're saying the same thing now about the big tech companies, why is no one joining your side?

NADER: We don't get onto mass media. The civic communities that are raising issues of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, these kind of tax breaks, you know, for--

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: --Apple. Apple is just burning a $100 billion in stock buybacks, they aren't (ph) giving it back to the shareholders or the workers or the environment cleanup or the pension funds.

They want to buyback all that stock to increase the metrics for the Executive Compensation packages for Tim Cook and others. And you can't get on national TV on that. You can't even get on - NB - NPR and - and PBS.

CARLSON: Why?

NADER: And I've been talking about corporate welfare and the Right, it talks about crony capitalism, so we're converging, right?

I think there are a lot of issues in this country, as I pointed out in my book, Unstoppable, where Conservatives and Liberals back home where they work, live, and raise their families, right, never mind the ideology--

CARLSON: Right.

NADER: --red state, blue state. They bleed. They get ripped off the same way--

CARLSON: Exactly.

NADER: --disinfected, disempowered. And there's no publicity given - given to it at all. And that - so I'm - I've resorted to a fable. How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress. It's big rat infestation, you know--

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: --in D.C.

CARLSON: Literally.

NADER: Yes, literally. And they come up from the catacombs in this book and they get into the toilet polls (ph) first with the Speaker. You can imagine the result.

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: You try to suppress an increasing rat infestation, massive derision all over the country, it wakes people up. They look at 535 men and women in Congress, who are using their delegated power under the - we, the people, right?

Then they organize a mass movement and get control of Congress from the corporatists, from the Wall Streeters. You pointed out in your book, the ruling class should share power. Otherwise, they're going to lose in whatever Democratic institutions we have. So, Members of Congress have called this disgusting, outrageous, revolting, because of the opening pages. But you go back on this, this is a single most devastating document in--

CARLSON: Yes.

NADER: --indictment (ph) of Congress on one page.

CARLSON: I'm going to read it. I don't know. I remember at one point disagreeing with you--

NADER: Yes.

CARLSON: --on stuff. But I can't remember what it was. I now think that on this stuff anyway, you're an important voice--

NADER: Well--

CARLSON: --and I'm grateful that you came on this show.

NADER: You go to ratsreformcongress.org--

CARLSON: Ratsreformcongress--

NADER: --and you'll get in a (ph)--

CARLSON: I'm going to. And I probably agree with a lot of it that you're saying (ph).

NADER: You - you'll get instruction on how to organize back home--

CARLSON: I love it.

NADER: --Congress Ratwatcher Groups.

CARLSON: Ralph Nader, it's great to see you. Thank you.

NADER: Thanks for the sunglass (ph).

CARLSON: We've got a Fox News Alert.

The Senate has passed Criminal Justice Reform. The bill passed 87 to 12, wow, big margin. The President strongly encouraged Congress to act on the bill before the end of the lame-duck session. That bill now goes to the House. Obviously, we'll continue to follow the story.

And we'll be right back with an important holiday message for you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TEXT: SHIP OF FOOLS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well as the last hour has demonstrated, in fact, the last decade has demonstrated, America's ruling class has lost the ability to govern wisely. They're obsessed with trifles like the Russia investigation, or gender politics or whatever the nonsense fad (ph) of the day is.

Meanwhile, they ignore our dying middle class. They know nothing about falling life expectancy, they don't care. They're more interesting in the wellbeing of anyone other than their own citizens. They do nothing to counter the main threats to our wellbeing, big tech, or China.

Much of the time they directly enable these threats because they're getting rich from it. How'd we get to this place? Well, it's the subject of a new book called Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution. It tells the long, gory story. But it may be worth reading. We recommend it strongly.

That's it for us tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night 8:00 P.M, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and, especially, groupthink. Good night from Washington.

Sean Hannity is next. Sitting in though, the most famous judge in America, not Judge Judy, much better, Judge Jeanine. Hey, Judge.

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