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Tucker: The Democratic Party is now a religious cult

Radical Democrats turn on party leadership.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," July 8, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Elite colleges are the pathway to the American ruling class. How many of our overlords went to Harvard? Almost all of them.

Admissions are supposed to be based on merit. But if that's true, if only the best people get in, then why are the children of so many Democratic politicians at Yale? We've got the numbers. It's fascinating. We'll bring that investigation in just a minute.

But first tonight, after almost 200 years, the Democrats were a political party with conventional political goals. That's no longer true. The Democratic Party is now a religious cult with all that implies. Dissent has been banned. Anyone who questions the party's leftward fringe is denounced as a racist heretic.

The party has descended into a purity spiral and nobody is safe, not even the party's own leaders. Nancy Pelosi for example, she is the most left- wing Speaker of the House in the history of the United States. She has been a fire breathing liberal for longer than, I don't know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been alive.

But none of that has been enough to save her. Ocasio-Cortez and a tiny group of House freshmen demand explicit socialism in this country right now. They want to open the borders, empty the prisons and take over the entire U.S. economy in the name of fighting climate change.

Now, Pelosi may agree with these goals, but she has contempt for their total ignorance of how laws are made. They're against the democratic system itself, and Pelosi has expressed that contempt repeatedly in public, including here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLEY STAHL, AMERICAN JOURNALIST: She likes to minimize the conflicts within her caucus between the moderates and the progressives.

You have these wings, AOC and her group on one side.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): That's like five people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So for saying things like that, Pelosi tonight is facing a revolt from within the Democratic Party. She's being denounced. Guess what they're calling her? You know, a racist.

Here's Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib explaining that Pelosi is oppressing people of color.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): More people like us, people of color, have been missing in the chamber, because most of us and Ayanna Pressley says it more beautifully, people that are closest to the pain needs to be at the table making these decisions.

Guess what? We know what it feels like to be dehumanized. We know what it feels like to be brown and black in this country.

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS REPORTER: What would you say to Nancy Pelosi? What would you say directly to Nancy Pelosi.

TLAIB: Uplift the women, especially the women of color within your caucus that are out there because I'll tell, you more people like us, more people like me that come out to vote. We win. All of us win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "Give us power because of our skin color," that's the argument Tlaib is making. Many make that argument, Ocasio-Cortez made the very same case during her Democratic primary campaign last year.

By definition, it is a racist pitch. It's every bit as repugnant as a white candidate making the same appeal. And many Democrats did make that appeal -- that racial appeal -- under Jim Crow. "Vote for me because of my race." It's disgusting. But it's everywhere now and Democrats applaud it.

Yesterday, for example, former Obama spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted, Ocasio-Cortez and her faction provides, quote, " ... the vision and moral center of today's Democratic Party." That's a view that is widely shared, and it is bad news for people like Joe Biden.

Like Pelosi, Biden has dedicated his entire life to the Democratic Party. As Pelosi has, Biden has beautifully moved left with the party over the years and hasn't complained about it. He is currently running for example, and free healthcare for illegal aliens. But none of it has been enough. People like Joe Biden are the past in the Democratic Party, and like so many others he is being denounced. Wait for it, as a racist.

It's over for Joe Biden. A bitter end to what might have been a decent political career. Only he seems to be unaware of that.

On Saturday, Biden groveled one last time in a doomed effort to save himself. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now was I wrong a few weeks ago, to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes, I was. I regret it. I'm sorry for your pain or misconception they may have caused anybody.

That's why I chose here in South Carolina, and chose an audience that in fact is, would be the most likely to have been offended by anything that was said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: But it's pointless. It's spitting in the wind. The Democratic Party remorse is a sign of weakness and the weak are eaten.

Shortly after Biden spoke those words, Michelle Obama was asked her view of Joe Biden. Now, a decent person might have said a kind word about her old friend, Joe. He was the man after all help make her husband President and served under him for eight years. That's not what Michelle Obama did. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What, if anything, would you like to say about the Kamala-Biden dust up? He apologize today. You've been following that. Do you have any thoughts about that?

MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: I do not.

QUESTION: Okay. Let me ask you this. Moving on. Moving on.

OBAMA: I've been doing this rodeo far too long.

QUESTION: Yes, moving on. Moving on.

OBAMA: Like, no comments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "Moving on, no comment." Joe Biden not worth defending. He's over just like Thomas Jefferson and Betsy Ross and all kinds of other people who aren't absolutely aligned with the modern woke left.

The Democratic Party demands absolute perfect fidelity at all times. Anyone who fails to measure up is finished forever. Now, that attitude is an effective way to terrify weak people and keep public figures in line. But the question electorally is, will it work on the country?

Normal Americans know they're not racist. They don't think their neighbors and friends are racist either. They don't care about that, they care about their jobs, their safety, their families, their country.

For years, they've watched in despair as both major parties drifted away from those concerns. They took a chance selecting Donald Trump because he seemed willing to put the basics first. Will they reelect him is the question. Will Democrats continue to act like this? Absolutely, they will.

Charlie Hurt is opinion editor of "The Washington Times." He has got a brand new book out tomorrow. It's fantastic. It's titled, "Still Winning: Why America went all in on Donald Trump and why we must do it again." Charlie Hurt joins us tonight. Charlie, thanks a lot for coming on.

CHARLIE HURT, OPINION EDITOR, THE WASHINGTON TIMES: Thank you, Tucker. Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: So we are watching the -- and I don't think we're overstating this. We are watching the Democratic Party change from one thing into something completely different. What is the current Democratic Party stand for?

HURT: Well, I think that if you listen to these people in Washington, you know, the party has become the party of open borders, post-birth abortion. They support human smuggling at the border. It's absolute lunacy.

And as you pointed out with Joe Biden, he is now hawking free healthcare for illegal aliens. Just five years ago, Barack Obama would have never gotten elected. He wouldn't have gotten the nomination running on this kind of crazy nutso platform.

But these kids have taken over the entire party. And, you know, I go back and forth between feeling sorry for Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and kind of laughing at them because they've gotten what they deserve.

They have been little weenies afraid to stand up to these people, afraid to call out these people and at times use some of their exact same tactics.

You know, when, when Joe Biden announced his campaign, how did he do it? He began it by accusing Donald Trump of being a racist and lying about what happened in Charlottesville, and in my book "Still Winning," I have a whole chapter devoted to what a complete total lie that is that Democrats keep spreading.

But you know, my goodness, this is why Donald Trump will get reelected, if you ask me. This is why he is quote-unquote, "still winning" is because his opponents, he is blessed by having the worst opponents peddling the worst ideas you and I have ever heard in our lifetime from supposedly serious politicians.

CARLSON: What's so interesting to me is a sober political party would look at the last election and say, "Wow, Donald Trump got elected. Nobody expected that. Why did this happen?" Maybe there's a lesson in this that we can learn and apply it in the next election.

And yet nobody in the Democratic Party seems to have done that. Why?

HURT: Because I think that they're so terrified of what they learned there and then their reaction to it is to try to -- and I think in a lot of ways, they're trying to imitate Trump. But because they're so -- all of them are so full of it, they're not -- they're just simply not capable of doing it.

When Donald Trump says something that's outrageous, that shocks the system, and everybody in Washington freaks out about, he is saying something that everybody like 90 percent of Americans agree with.

Their saying, "Huh. No one has ever said that. But he's got a good point here." When Joe Biden or one of these other people says something that's supposed to be shocking, and outrageous to the system, everybody in America is like, "What in the hell is she talking about? She's talking about drinking out of toilets on the border? What the hell is wrong with this woman?"

And I think that that sort of disconnect is very, very -- it's very clear to American voters, even if it is completely lost on our colleagues in the media, which apparently it is.

CARLSON: Yes, it's not helping the Democratic Party in any way. And I agree with you completely at this stage.

HURT: And it's bad for America because, you know, Tucker, we need a good opposition party, keeping people honest. We can't trust Republicans to keep themselves honest. They need good smart people keeping them honest. And these clowns aren't doing it. They're not capable of doing it.

CARLSON: No, it's such a smart point and a wise point, as is your book, Charlie Hurt, great to see you tonight and congrats on the book.

HURT: Thank you so much, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, as extremism is the order of the day for the Democratic Party, well, the American middle class is barely breaking even compared to just 30 years ago.

The left demands that they finance unlimited free giveaways for illegal immigrants. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: If you could, would you take the wall down now here?

BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes.

HAYES: If you had a wall.

O'ROURKE: Absolutely.

HAYES: You'd knock it down.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Offer a home to refugees, that is who we are, that's our values. That's part of what we do.

JULIAN CASTRO (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So instead of building a wall or closing the border, we should choose compassion instead of cruelty.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We welcome refugees, and bring people out of the shadows.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Immigration is not a security issue. It is an economic and a humanitarian and a family issue.

BIDEN: I think undocumented people need to have a means by which they can be covered when they're sick. People need -- this is just common decency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Richard Goodstein is a lawyer and former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He joins us tonight. The old Democratic Party, Richard Goodstein, look, you're not responsible for what's happening to your party and I don't want to imply that you are. And it's in some sense, cruel to hold you accountable for the lunacy that we just are witnessing now.

But I can't help but ask you, Joe Biden is supposed to be the moderate in this race, and there he is, endorsing free healthcare for illegal aliens. You look at that and tell me do you recognize that party?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN, FORMER ADVISER TO BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON: You know, I think this is going to be a contest of views. One side is going to talk about open borders, the other side is going to talk about the immorality of kids in cages. One is going to talk about post-birth abortion. That's lunacy.

I'm sorry, what Charlie said is nuts and I understand it. You will here at every single day on this network. That's fantasy. But 75 percent of the people in this country believe that Roe versus Wade should be protected.

CARLSON: Okay, but the Roe versus Wade does not allow what the Governor of Virginia endorsed --

GOODSTEIN: You're distorting.

CARLSON: Allowing new -- no I am not distorting it. You can -- we can play the clip.

GOODSTEIN: He was a pediatrician, Tucker.

CARLSON: Which makes it more repulsive, because he knew exactly what he was saying. And I have to say --

GOODSTEIN: Sorry, twisted.

CARLSON: The fact the Democratic Party sanctioned him for some dumb costume he wore in college and said nothing about that tells you a lot about what their party is.

But I just want to get to the very -- this thing I asked you about.

GOODSTEIN: Yes.

CARLSON: Which is healthcare for people here illegally. Now, that's not kids in cages. It's not a rhetorical -- it's not a bumper sticker. Okay. That's a real public policy. And there's literally no way we can afford that. What do you make of that? Can he run and win on that? Are you for that? I mean, what do you have to say?

GOODSTEIN: What I hear when Democrats are talking about giving healthcare to somebody who is sick, who is inside the U.S. borders is that the country is better off with people who are well than versus people who are sick.

So if you're in the United States borders, and you're sick, we're all better off if you become well. That's what they're talking about. They're not talking about --

CARLSON: No, no. They have said that. But that's not true. I mean, first of all, they're not our people.

GOODSTEIN: That's what Biden said.

CARLSON: They could leave and go get well -- no, no, Biden and everyone else in the race that I'm aware of has said that universal healthcare, the program -- Medicare, Medicaid -- would apply to illegal aliens. Now that's just demented as you know. Yes, they raised their hand and said that in the last debate.

GOODSTEIN: He hasn't said Medicaid. No, no. You're putting words in that simply are fiction. Nobody is saying that Medicaid for illegal immigrants. Sorry, you know, that's fiction.

CARLSON: Universal -- hold on. Universal healthcare, whatever you're going to call it, those are our current programs, it doesn't matter the name. They're saying universal coverage would apply to people who are here illegally.

I hate to keep repeating myself. I just can't overstate what a huge deal that is. We're acting like, "Oh, of course." No, not of course, we can't afford that. That will bankrupt the country. And it will draw the rest of the world here. That's nuts.

GOODSTEIN: Again, this discussion you just had with Charlie is twisted in this way. We just had a controlled --

CARLSON: I am not twisting. That's what they've said.

GOODSTEIN: We just had a controlled experiment between the moderates and the liberals in the House of Representatives, overspending on the border and the moderates won. This notion that AOC is calling the shots, it's fantasy.

I understand why people might want to hear that and make them feel a little bit better. It's just a fiction. It's a fiction. Just like this talk --

CARLSON: Is it moderate -- hold on, but is it moderate to say that people who are breaking our laws who are foreign nationals have a right to government, to taxpayer financed healthcare? That's a moderate position now. That's freaking nuts.

GOODSTEIN: All I'm saying is what I hear and I'm listening as closely as you are when these candidates are talking about these issues, what they're saying is that something somebody who is inside our borders is better off well and functioning than sick.

CARLSON: I am sure they are better off but we're not better off. We're not -- Americans are not better off when we promise to pay for the healthcare of the rest of them. We can't afford our own healthcare.

I know people who are going under because they can't afford their own premiums. And now Joe Biden is wildly promising the rest of the world free healthcare? What?

GOODSTEIN: And when his boss Barack Obama was President, we had higher deportations than Donald Trump will ever see.

So this notion that somehow Democrats want open borders, again, is a fiction when we had Democrats in the White House, the House and the Senate, we had to deportations higher than ever.

CARLSON: Right. They are promising open borders. They are promising to decriminalize -- okay.

GOODSTEIN: That doesn't square with the narrative.

CARLSON: Look, I'm just responding to what they're saying every day on television. Yesterday, almost all of them promised to decriminalize illegal border crossings. That is the definition of open borders. Okay, and I think they're too literal for this moment.

GOODSTEIN: I think when we have a nominee, they will be in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, like the Democrats passed with 16 -- Republicans in 2013.

CARLSON: Good luck.

GOODSTEIN: Yes, I agree.

CARLSON: I think we're -- I think we're way, way past that. But we'll see. I hope you're right. Richard Goodstein, great to see you.

GOODSTEIN: Thank you.

CARLSON: Meanwhile, in San Francisco, politicians are destroying art, historic murals of George Washington, because they don't match the current political agenda. Politicians destroying art. Does it sound like the Taliban to you?

When will Democrats stand up to the new cultural revolution? To the vandals destroying our cultural heritage? It'd be interesting to know. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: George Washington High School in the City of San Francisco features 13 giant murals. They show the life of George Washington. The murals were painted in the 1930s as part of FDR's New Deal and they feature images of enslaved African-Americans and dead American Indians.

The point is to capture both the good and the bad of George Washington's legacy. It's art. It's serious art, actually. But the San Francisco School Board has just voted to spend $600,000.00 to destroy the murals, not temporarily, but forever. They say they are too offensive to survive.

Every Democrat running for President this year ought to be asked, do you support this? Politicians destroying art they find politically disagreeable? Don't count on that question being asked.

We contacted several museums and art critics and see if they were concerned about art being destroyed. Only one even responded to our question, the art critic for a New York publication. He called it a fake story. No problem. Politicians destroying art doesn't seem to bother the art community at all.

The Taliban blew up Buddha statues, Mao's Red Guards destroyed books and art that represent old ideas. Just like that, the modern left has no use for art that isn't propaganda.

Dave Rubin hosts "The Rubin Report" on YouTube. He joins us tonight. Dave, did you ever think that you would live to see a day where liberals were calling for the destruction of art?

DAVE RUBIN, HOST, THE RUBIN REPORT: Tucker, well, I cannot believe that something completely bananas and insane is coming out of San Francisco, of all places, the bastion of sanity that is San Francisco.

I mean, look, George Washington, like every single leader we've ever had, like all of us has a complex past. Just a couple of months ago, I actually went to Mount Vernon, which is outside of D.C., and that was his home. And you know, they are upfront that George Washington, he had that complex past.

Look, he led the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and then one of the first things he did as President was set aside that power. That is an incredibly amazing thing that he did that we should honor.

Now at the same time, George Washington did own slaves, that is something we have to recognize. He freed his slaves when he passed away, but Martha kept her slaves.

CARLSON: He saved --

RUBIN: Right, well, so that's the point that everyone, every historical figure is just someone of their time, including us. And the idea that we're going to erase the past, you know, you're right to compare it to the Taliban or compare it to ISIS, it sounds over the top at some level, but it actually is what we are doing.

There seems to be this movement by the progressives that if you erase the past, or if you change the nature of words, if you change the word "owner," so an NBA owner is no longer an owner, he is a governor, that that somehow will erase what slavery was. And we see these things consistently happening and actually, not only do they not erase the past, they make us unable to navigate the future because we can't figure out where we were last time and that's what we have to grapple with.

And I'd rather have honest conversations about these things, than just destroy everything in the name of tolerance or something like that.

CARLSON: But where's the so-called the art community? I remember Republicans in the 80s taking a lot of heat because they didn't want to fund certain art projects with tax dollars. But here you have politicians saying we need to affirmatively destroy, deface, vandalize art and by the way, art that's been there for 80 years and whose intrinsic value no one has questioned.

Why is nobody raising the alarm? Where are decent liberals saying, "Wait a second, you know, along with book burning, this is too far? We can't do this." But they're not saying that.

RUBIN: Yes, you know, Tucker, this exact issue that you're bringing up where are decent liberals? This is exactly what I've been talking about for years as the progressives that you referenced earlier in the show, as they've gotten more radical, as they've gone more to the left, as they've gone more to socialism and far leftism. They've silenced the good liberals because when you call everyone racist and bigoted and the rest of it, it is the greatest chilling effect that you can possibly do.

And they they've done this really effectively and the good liberals, they don't know where to turn anymore for allies. And what I've found as someone that does still consider myself to be liberal is I've found that I can break bread and make allies with people like you, and people that are on the right that are open and willing to have some disagreement.

But what they're afraid of is if they dare say, "Don't destroy art, let's not remove the past of the first President of the United States of America," they think that those cries, those false cries, by the way, because they're almost always false. They think that those false cries of racism and bigotry will be used against them, and that's what they fear the most.

And what I would want most of your listeners to understand is this is why people have to start speaking up. This is a hysterical minority that I think if more of us started speaking up, I think we could actually get them to quiet down for a change.

CARLSON: It's kind of amazing that we're going to stand by and allow politicians to destroy a work of art using $600,000.00 in tax money. It's hard to believe we're going to allow that to happen and I really hope we don't. Dave, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

RUBIN: Yes.

CARLSON: Well, Harvard, Stanford and other elite colleges offer their students a fast track to success and influence, but admissions are not an even playing field. They tell you, "Oh, only the most impressive kids get in," that's not true. How do you know? Because the children of Democratic lawmakers seem to be disproportionately represented at Harvard, Yale and Stanford. We've got some of the numbers for you, after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: If you've ever watched Chris Cuomo over on CNN, and you may have wondered, how did this guy get a TV show? Sure, he's got well defined abdominal muscles and good for him. But he can barely speak English.

There are nights when Cuomo omits entire paragraphs that mean nothing at all -- just pure gibberish, like Pig Latin or dogs barking. It's kind of remarkable. Was this guy educated in the United States? Let's check Wikipedia.

Wait a second. The entry says that Chris Cuomo went to Yale University in Connecticut. That can't be right. Yale has famously high admission standards. Your kids couldn't get into Yale. No chance. They'd have to be incredibly smart geniuses, really.

Is Chris Cuomo a secret genius? Does he have some amazing talent that's invisible on television? Maybe he speaks flawless Urdu. Maybe he has a deep grounding in Particle Physics. Perhaps he can calculate pi to the final digit.

Actually no. Chris Cuomo can't do any of that. It turns out he has an even more impressive qualification. His father was the Governor of New York. If you want to get into a top American college, it's best to have a parent who is a well-known Democratic politician. That's the most effective credential of all and don't take our word for it.

Ask Dante de Blasio, the son of Bill de Blasio, the incompetent mayor of New York City. There's no evidence that the younger de Blasio did remarkably well in high school. And yet, like Chris Cuomo, he somehow got into Yale.

Once there, Dante de Blasio have found himself surrounded by people just like himself, the thoroughly average children of other prominent liberals.

According to press reports, that would include the offspring of at least three Democrats currently serving in the U.S. Senate: Michael Bennett, Amy Klobuchar, and Sheldon Whitehouse. All of them sent kids to Yale. Did you? No, but they did.

Their colleague Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, meanwhile, is one of a stunning number of Senate Democrats who have sent children to Harvard University. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is a Harvard parent. So is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Schumer sent both his kids to Harvard.

Barack Obama sent one of his, so did former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The all-time record, though, must go to former Vice President Al Gore. Al Gore sent four. Imagine that. Four kids in a row to Harvard. What are the odds of that occurring in nature?

Well, statistically, it's about as likely as getting hit by lightning every single day for a year. And yet somehow the Gore family pulled it off. Congratulations Gore family.

Andrew Cuomo, the sitting Governor of New York sent one of his kids to Harvard, but the other two went to Brown. That's also an Ivy League university that your kids could never get into.

Brown is, as they say, highly selective, at least for the children of non- politicians. But for pure 200-proof exclusivity, nothing beats Stanford University outside San Francisco. You can live your entire life in this country and never meet a single person who went to Stanford. It's that rarified.

And here's the amazing part, Hillary Clinton's daughter breezed right in. How did Chelsea do that? Was it her formidable brainpower? Well, you can check out our Twitter feed and judge for yourself.

Now, there's a chance that Chelsea is intentionally misleading us, it's possible that her entire public persona is that kind of performance art, a subversive Borat-style parody of mindless lifestyle liberalism.

If that's the case, Chelsea Clinton is utterly brilliant. She is the Jonathan Swift of our time. But it's also possible that Chelsea isn't joking at all. It's possible indeed, it's even probable that she is every bit as dough and self-serious as she appears to be.

In that case, not only is Chelsea Clinton profoundly sub brilliant, you've got to wonder how she holds a paying job. How does someone like that get into Stanford?

You would have the same question about some of the kids at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Georgetown's alumni magazine is available online. So next time you've got a second free. Take a look. You recognize many of the names inside: Biden, Pelosi, Kennedy, these are the children of famous Democratic politicians.

Are they impressive, hardworking kids who deserve to be at one of this country's most prestigious universities? Possibly, maybe some of them. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. In fact, it's irrelevant. They're the offspring of prominent Democrats. That's the point. And that's why they're at Georgetown.

So how does this happen? What happens because our meritocracy is a sham, it's fake. They tell you that only the most accomplished students get into these schools, but they're lying. Their friends' kids get first dibs, fellow members of their social circle, kids whose families can help them down the road.

The children of sympathetic politicians are an obvious priority for admissions officers. These are the same politicians who funnel billions in tax dollars to colleges and universities every year.

So letting a senator's kid into Harvard is just smart business. The quid pro quo is obvious. It's a kind of unregulated lobbying.

Remember, the Varsity Blues scandal in California where a group of socially anxious soccer moms tried to game the college admission system? Well, this is far more corrupt than that, except that nobody is going to prison for it.

So how many Chris Cuomo's get into Yale every year? It'd be nice to know, but we don't know. Like almost everything about higher education, it's opaque. Prestigious schools can pretend that they admit only the most qualified applicants because nobody can prove otherwise.

The real admissions numbers are secret. They're hidden from public view, even though we pay for those schools because all of them take massive amounts in tax dollars.

Elite colleges are like public companies that lie about their balance sheets. They're cooking the books to defraud shareholders. In this case, the shareholders are the entire country.

A handful of elite schools form the gateway to success in America. If you go to Harvard, you're all but guaranteed to make more money over the course of your life than someone who didn't go to Harvard. It's that simple.

And so when you rig the admission system, what you're really rigging is American society. You're creating an impenetrable class system for your own benefit. And that's exactly what they're doing.

You often hear progressive said that they worry about income inequality. They don't mean it at all. How do you know they don't mean it? Because if the left really cared about the stratification of American society, they would make college admissions transparent.

They'd force Stanford, for example, to open the books and show the rest of us how exactly they were assembling this year's freshman class. That's what they do. And yet Democrats in Congress haven't done that and won't do that. They seem strangely incurious about how the process works. Like they don't really want to know all the details.

In fact, they already know precisely how the admissions game works, and they strongly approve. Why wouldn't they approve? Their kids are benefiting from it.

Joe Biden is now promising free healthcare to illegal aliens. You think that's crazy? Kamala Harris can top it. She is promising giving housing subsidies based on skin color. For real. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: It's getting hard to stand out in the Democratic Party these days. Everybody wants healthcare for illegal aliens, for example. Most are now open to race based reparations. But Senator Kamala Harris of California is going even further than this. She is offering a plan to spend $100 billion on housing down payments, but not for everyone, only for people of a certain skin color. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: A typical black family has just $10.00 of wealth for every $100.00 held by white family. So we must right that wrong. And after generations of discrimination, give black families a real shot at homeownership.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Harris's bill would also loosen credit standards with the goal of creating more home loans. If you feel like you've heard that before, you have. In fact, that's exactly how we tanked the entire U.S. economy back in 2008.

Maybe Senator Harris missed that interlude in American history. Melissa Francis did not. She is co-host of "Outnumbered," and hosts "After the Bell" on Fox Business. She knows a lot about the economy, and we're happy to have her rejoin us again tonight.

Melissa, that does sound very much like how the subprime meltdown happened 11 years ago, does it not?

MELISSA FRANCIS, FOX BUSINESS HOST: Oh, it's exactly like that. And it's when we decided that homeownership is a value and is something that everyone should have and is an automatic good and the government should favor it and spend money on it. It is how we got into that crisis in the first place.

But let me back up to what she said there. So she was talking -- she used some numbers, which always interests and excites me, because I think people are doing math. It later ends up not being true. But that's beside the point.

She went on to say that this program would close the wealth gap between black and white families by 31 percent, and I thought, "How interesting. Where did she get that number?"

So I read through her website, and then I went to the Demos Study that she cited and they basically did a study where they said, well, if all values of homes go up -- go up -- first of all, and go up by the same amount over time, then this would close that wealth gap.

So she is assuming home values always go up and no matter where you buy them, they go up by a lot. Well, if there's one thing we all learned in the last housing crisis and financial crisis, it's that that's not true. I think there are a lot of people out there like myself, who have lost money owning a home, it's not always a bargain. It's not always a good thing.

CARLSON: Oh, of course.

FRANCIS: And in fact, it's very sticky. So she is advocating for the government sponsoring down payments for people saying it'll close the wealth gap. And first of all, that's just not true. And the math they're using is ridiculous.

But then beyond that, you're right. This is what caused the housing crisis. If you look back at the at the home values over time, it was actually during the Bush administration, when we decided that homeownership was a value everyone should have and HUD invested heavily in that, that we created the bubble that burst and crippled a whole bunch of people.

So you're right, this could actually be really bad for families who took her up on her offer.

CARLSON: Exactly.

FRANCIS: And dug in, in a neighborhood and bought a house, where then values dropped.

CARLSON: This is -- the problem with not punishing anyone for the disaster of the meltdown in our ways is we didn't learn the lesson. But under her program, if I'm getting this right, one family can go to the government and say, can I have help buying a house and be told no, you're the wrong color. Another family would be told, you're the right color, yes, you can have money to buy a house. Why is that not racist?

FRANCIS: It certainly appears that way. And when you look at her website, she talks about people who have lived in a red line district for the past 10 years. And then she says that those are black families. I don't know if you can for sure make that distinction. I don't know what areas she is talking about.

CARLSON: Well, that's exactly right.

FRANCIS: But if you're talking about buying in a neighborhood where values haven't gone up, that's a risk in and of itself. And if you talk to millennials nowadays, they don't want to own things because they've seen the hazard in that, the risk in that when you buy a home, you're stuck there, you can't walk away.

And she talks about -- this is really interesting. She says it's the credit rating that's holding everyone back. So she wants to make a Fair Credit Reporting Act that includes rent payments, cell phone payments, and utility payments go towards your credit score. That's a really interesting idea that could cut both ways.

Can you imagine for young people, your cell phone payments, utility payments or rent payments, if you don't make those that also destroys your credit score. That's what she's advocating for. So I don't know if this is very well thought out, Tucker.

CARLSON: It doesn't sound like it is, but the details are interesting. Thank you for digging into that. Melissa Francis, great to see you.

FRANCIS: My pleasure.

CARLSON: Well, the Democratic plan to give free healthcare, college and more to people who are in the country illegally would be risky, even if the party cared about enforcing the border. But of course they don't. Instead, every major candidate is competing to see you can be more brazen in backing completely open borders.

It's gotten so bad that even President Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson can't take it anymore. In a new column in "The Washington Post," Johnson accuses his party of extremism and says the policies that the candidates for President advocate would in fact amount to open borders no matter how much they pretend otherwise.

Rob Smith is a Turning Point USA spokesman, he joins us tonight. Rob, so when Jeh Johnson, who I don't think anyone would describe as some kind of right-wing plant starts calling you an open borders extremist, I mean, that's kind of the end of -- that's kind of proof, I would say, would you?

ROB SMITH, SPOKESMAN, TURNING POINT USA: I would say the same thing, I would say the proof is in the pudding. You know, the Democrats continue to go on and on again, with these radical agendas. And they say over and over and over again that it's not open borders. They say it's not open borders, but you just played a clip of Beto O'Rourke literally saying that he would tear down the section of the wall at the border that he was being filmed at right then in there, so it is.

And I do have to say as a black American, illegal immigration hurts black Americans the most. It hurts us very, very badly. You know, when I was watching that Democratic debate, and I watched every single Democrat candidate for President raise their hand when they said that they would advocate for free healthcare for illegal immigrants. I looked and I said, what American of any color thinks that the Democrats have anybody else in mind other than illegal immigrants?

So they have totally turned into the party of illegal immigration, and it is hurting black Americans. It really is.

CARLSON: And I -- I mean, looking at the poll numbers on the question. I mean, there's no group of Americans that supports this. Okay.

SMITH: No, not --

CARLSON: But among African-Americans, support is -- and by the way, Hispanic-Americans don't support it. But African-Americans, the support is low. So how can the leaders of the Democratic Party --

SMITH: It's so low.

CARLSON: Right, but, are they not? They don't care what the poll numbers say or -- explain that.

SMITH: Here's the thing. First of all, African-Americans are not stupid, okay? Because if we were, we would have elected Hillary Clinton as President. So that tells you that we're not stupid. So we see what's going on here. And we see people advocating for things like free college, free healthcare and of all these different things.

And the number one we ask is who is going to pay for it? Obviously, it's not just going to be the rich, obviously, it's going to be the middle class. And another thing Democrats do when they try to attract Latino Americans is that they try to pretend that Hispanic and Latino Americans are all illegal.

I know a lot of legal Hispanic Americans that are absolutely against immigration, absolutely against open borders and what I see honestly as a voter, as an African-American as somebody who turned conservative within the past couple years specifically because of this illegal immigration issue, what I've seen is that the party that was historically supposed to be for African-Americans is selling us out for illegal immigrants.

I'm telling you the conversation on the streets, people are talking about the same thing. I hear conversations in my black barbershop in Brooklyn that would make both you and I blush, Tucker, you know, you and I would both probably not speak as freely about that.

CARLSON: People know what's going on.

SMITH: People know what's going on. African-Americans absolutely know what's going on. And I think that going into 2020, I think the Republicans are going to make a large play for African-American voters.

When you look in 2016, when you look at the fact that Donald Trump got more black voters than the previous two Republican nominees combined, right, and you see the RNC and Donald Trump and the Republicans are actively going for African-American voters, we have to talk to African American voters and say, "Do you want to vote for Republicans or do you want to vote for the party of open borders? Do you want to vote for the party that is --"

CARLSON: Right, that is shafting you in this --

SMITH: That is shafting you.

CARLSON: No, it's true.

SMITH: That is opening up the doors for illegal immigration.

CARLSON: Right. Rob, thank you for that. Good to see you tonight.

SMITH: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: U.S. foreign policy has for years been focused almost exclusively on preventing rogue states for getting nuclear weapons. But there's another threat out there that may be ignored by too many. Dr. Marc Siegel investigates for us night the danger of bio weapons which is imminent, potentially, it's certainly real. That's after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, North Korea has been one of the President's biggest foreign policy concerns in 2019. It's easy to see why. The country has nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons are a threat. But they're not the only threat capable of killing millions of people.

As genetic engineering grows more sophisticated experts are warning about the danger of bio weapons. Dr. Marc Siegel is a Fox medical correspondent. He just wrote a piece about bio weapons and he joins us tonight to terrify us.

MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker.

CARLSON: Doctor, thanks very much for coming on. How concerned should we be about bio weapons?

SIEGEL: I am going to terrify you tonight because there's something called synthetic biology. We used to look at the anthrax threat or the smallpox threat and say, well, we have vaccines for smallpox and for anthrax, it's not contagious. That's in preexisting days.

But now we've entered an era where we can put together a novel virus called synthetic biology. The Department of Defense put out a report on this last year. It's terrifying because tools that are out there, Tucker, like CRISPR-CAS9 that is a genetic editor. It's a scissor that can splice your DNA. But guess what else it can do? It could splice up a virus, put it back together in a different way. Make it more deadly, make it something your immune system hasn't seen, make it something that spreads easily that we don't have vaccines for.

Now, I have news for you. Iran is working with that with this tool. Now the scientists working with it in Iran are not terrorists. But of course, Iran sponsors worldwide terrorism. So what happens if this somehow gets into the wrong hands? Not the tool necessarily, but someone makes one of these viruses and then spreads it into the wrong hands. That is something that's possible. And it's something that a steering committee put together by HHS in the fall is looking at.

But this is mushrooming into a much bigger threat than we ever thought. Because again, we can see new viruses that we've never seen before, that are much more deadly and spread much more easily. A pandemic flu for example, like 1918, somebody could take a flu virus, change it just a little bit and we have 1918 again.

CARLSON: Well, I mean something like that can so easily boomerang on the person deploying it, though, couldn't it?

SIEGEL: Well, sure. And not only that, we are looking at ways to try to combat this, like I said, flu, we're looking at the idea of a universal flu vaccine that would work even against a synthetic flu.

But as you know, again, not to scare people, but terrorists are not exactly thinking about their own health or social responsibility, that's for sure. So this could really get out and end up being a worldwide threat.

I think we need to be thinking about this more. The steering committee is fine. But you know, we're talking today about enriching uranium in Iran. We also should realize that Iran has a bioterror program, North Korea has a bioterror program. And in North Korea, the bioterror program is predominantly existing threats that are already out there.

We've talked on the show here about how Ebola is so deadly. But Ebola doesn't spread easily. But Tucker, you could take an Ebola virus and genetically engineer it and then it starts to spread more easily. That's what we have to be concerned about right now.

CARLSON: Well, that just sounds horrifying. And it sounds like something that we should be genuinely concerned about. Dr. Siegel, thank you for that.

SIEGEL: Thank you, Tucker. Very important.

CARLSON: We want to end tonight's show with an important announcement. Ed Henry is really one of the best people here at Fox, he is not just a talented reporter, though he obviously is, he is a genuinely loving person. You don't need proof of that.

But here it is, anyway, tomorrow Ed will be temporarily taking leave of Fox in order to save the life of his sister Colleen. She's got a degenerative liver disease so Ed is donating much of his own liver in order to save her life.

As in all surgeries, there is a risk of complications, but for Ed, it was worth it to help his sister. The prayers of our entire show staff are with Ed Henry and his sister, Colleen at this time and we know that all of the Fox is behind them as well. Godspeed, for sure.

That's it for us tonight. We'll be back tomorrow, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. DVR it if you know how that works.

In the meantime, have a great night and prepare yourself. Live from New York City this evening comes the host of the 9:00 p.m. show on FOX News Channel.

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