Tom Homan: Migrant families are coming in at record numbers because they know we can't detain them all

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Tucker: Gillibrand thinks immigrants are better than you

2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand speaks out on immigration and illegal immigrants.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 20, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST. Tonight, we're going to have a show for you in just a minute. The President as you know, if you've been following it is speaking right now in Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

He is talking about the political establishment, that's something we're going to address at some length in tonight's show. We're going to go back to the President in Pennsylvania dipping there. We're going to see you in just a minute, so don't go away.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To protect our national security, we also imposed a 10 percent tariff on foreign aluminum and a 25 percent tariff on foreign steel and what that's done for your aluminum and steel in this country is incredible.

Now, just this month, United States Steel announced that it will invest more than $1 billion to completely transform and make new the "manoir." You know that? You know what this is? Right next to Pittsburgh -- in Pittsburgh. Does anyone know? Mine Valley Works near Pittsburgh is spending over a billion dollars, thousands of jobs, the newest, the finest equipment in the world. They're going to make steel again in our country.

They haven't been building new plants for decades. Together, we're putting Pennsylvania's steel back into the spine of America.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: And as we defend our jobs, we're also defending our borders and it's tough as I said, no betrayal of American workers has been worse than the Democratic Party's pursuit of open borders. They want everybody to come in, and they're coming up by the thousands. And I'll tell you what, our Border Patrol, our law enforcement, ICE, they are working. They are apprehending 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people at times. I mean, just in short periods of times.

The laws are so bad. If you don't release them, they arrest you. They arrest people that are working in law enforcement. It's a disgrace. Democratic-backed policies have left our borders overrun, our detention facilities overwhelmed as fast as we build them, they fill up. And our hospitals, schools and public resources, overburdened. Our country is full. We don't want people coming up here. Our country is full. We want Mexico to stop.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: We want all of them to stop. Our country is packed to the gills. We don't want them coming up.

(Cheering and Applause)

CROWD: (Cheering "Build that wall.")

TRUMP: Democrats claim to take care of the poor. That's what they want to do. It's not happening that way. The poor are being hurt, the middle income are being hurt. We would lose our businesses. We would lose everything if we go with the people that you see that are running for office.

You saw that. Last night I watched Alfred E. Neuman.

(Laughter)

TRUMP: What's going on with Fox by the way? What's going on there? They are putting more Democrats on than you have Republicans. Something strange is going on at Fox.

[Booing]

TRUMP: There's something very strange. Did you see this guy last night? I did want to watch. You always have to watch the competition, if you call it that, and he was not knocking the hell out of Fox and Fox is -- but somebody is going to have to explain the whole Fox deal to me.

Democrats even want to give welfare and free healthcare to anyone who crosses our border. They want free healthcare, free education, free anything.

[Booing]

TRUMP: Republicans believe we should take care of our own people, our citizens because we have no choice. That's why we don't want them to come. And that's why my administration has published a new rule to ensure our limited supply of public housing is safeguarded for low income Americans, not for illegal aliens who are fighting to get it.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: We will soon be taking further action to ensure that Federal benefits are preserved for hardworking citizens who need them the most.

We're also outlining historic Pro-American Immigration Reform. It's working his way through. I must tell you, some of it not going to happen unless you vote for Republicans in the upcoming election. And I will tell you, it's not very far away, and you're going to have great immigration laws.

People had no idea how bad they were. You have to remember even three or four weeks ago, they were saying, "There's no emergency at the border." Now, everybody is admitting, "I agree. There's an emergency." I've been saying that for two years. The choice is simple. Republican policies protect U.S. workers. Democratic policies protect smugglers, traffickers and even criminal aliens and drug dealers, like you've never seen the drugs. We're capturing them. We don't let them go. We capture them. And we do it very, very --

Sadly, it's almost like routine. But you have drug dealers coming into our country and making our people sick. And we're capturing them. And just one example, the sanctuary city of Philadelphia released a previously deported illegal alien from prison rather than cooperate with Federal authorities. After his release, that criminal alien raped a very young child.

Republicans believe our cities should be sanctuaries for law abiding Americans, not for a criminal alien.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: And we always stand with the heroes of I.C.E. and Border Patrol and law enforcement. Our police have been incredible. And we want to thank them, too, because I'll tell you what, even tonight I see the way they are working. And I hope the cameras get to see this crowd.

You know, usually they'll show like four people behind me. People will say, "Was it a large crowd?" I say, "Well, you could tell by the --" they can actually tell by the cheering, you know, it sounds like a big football game.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: They don't like to show the crowd. Explain that to me. You know, I'm trying to tell them, it's really good for television, to show the crowd. Don't you show -- they show it like this. There's three or four people behind me that will be very famous tomorrow. But they have lousy seats tonight. So I think you're better.

On the issue of the Democratic Party, it's never been further outside from the mainstream than it is now. These people have gone nuts. More than 120 Democrats in Congress have signed up for Bernie Sanders, total government takeover of healthcare.

Now tell me, many of you have phenomenal healthcare. You have private healthcare, 180 million people, they want to take it away from you. They want to take away your healthcare, your health insurance, they want to take it away. Democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late-term abortion, killing your Second Amendment and radical socialism.

[Booing]

TRUMP: The Republican Party is the party that America wants. That's what America wants. We are the party of the American worker, we are the party of the American family and we are the party of the American dream.

(Cheering and Applause)

TRUMP: Every day, we make good on our motto, "Promises made, promises kept." We've kept more promises than we've even made. You take a look at what we've done between regulations and taxes.

And I mean, think of it -- Right to Try. You know what Right to Try is? I won't go into it, you don't want to be there. But now we can give them the benefit of the great research we have the best in the world. And there's a lot of great things happening. I signed it eight months ago. A lot of great things happening with Right to Try.

We passed the largest package of tax cuts in the history of our country. We eliminated 30,000 pages of job-killing regulations from the Federal Register, and that's an all-time record.

CARLSON: "We've kept more promises that we've even made," said the President of the United States. President Trump speaking tonight in Pennsylvania. We will get back to it if and when he makes news in this hour, he likely will.

The President as you heard was speaking about the political elite and illegal immigration -- two themes he hits quite often. Two themes that help define the presidential race now in progress.

Kirsten Gillibrand is in that race and is not just a candidate, but really a living metaphor. Gillibrand is someone who has lived a remarkably fortunate life until about 10 years ago, she was a Member of Congress. Virtually nobody outside the mostly rural 20th congressional district in upstate New York had ever heard of her. She was considered a thoroughly average Member of Congress, maybe a little below average.

And then one day, Hillary Clinton decided to run for President and Gillibrand hit pay dirt. She was plucked from obscurity and handed one of the safest Senate seats in America.

Overnight, Gillibrand became a national figure without even having to win an election. Amazing. It was the political equivalent of inheriting a billion dollars. Maybe not surprisingly, Gillibrand's views changed accordingly.

She soon adopted the politics of the trust fund left. Before long, there wasn't a fashionable opinion she didn't have on any topic -- guns, abortion, immigration -- you name it. As her friends in Aspen and Martha's Vineyard became more decadent and more contemptuous of the country around them, so did Kirsten Gillibrand.

But this past weekend, when she appeared on "Face the Nation," Gillibrand was arguing against continuing to operate the United States as a sovereign country. "Let everyone in," she demanded, "Detaining anyone is immoral." Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS HOST: But you oppose even what the Obama administration did in terms of keeping families together or keeping them together for a longer period of time in detention?

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I wouldn't -- as President of the United States, I wouldn't use the detention system at all.

BRENNAN: Homeland Security, they are saying hundreds of thousands of people are crossing the border, and they need to go somewhere before their asylum claims are actually heard. What would you do with them?

GILLIBRAND: They don't need to be incarcerated. They can, if they're given a lawyer and given a process, they will follow it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people over time, where will all those people go? Well, they won't go to Kirsten Gillibrand's neighborhood, obviously. They're not headed to Martha's Vineyard, or Aspen or Southampton, obviously, but they're going to dying industrial cities that Gillibrand believes could use more Democratic voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GILLIBRAND: What the state of New York does well is we teach -- we actually take refugee families into our communities. We would be delighted to take refugee families into cities like Buffalo and Syracuse and Rochester, and Albany.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So think for a minute about what Gillibrand is saying here. She is arguing that anybody from anywhere in the world must be allowed into the United States, awarded a publicly-financed lawyer, given a free place to live along with free healthcare and schools -- all of it you pay for -- and allowed to stay indefinitely unless they lose a court case that by the way, they will definitely show up for. That's her core assumption.

The people who have demonstrated contempt for our laws will arrive in court when asked. Gillibrand trusts them to do that, and why wouldn't you trust them? That's the base. That's the whole immigration argument that she's making, which is that unlike you, regular Americans who are lazy and stupid and not worth helping, immigrants are basically perfect.

They're smarter, more industrious, and more creative than you or any of your American-born neighbors were or could be. That's what they believe. The facts suggest a more complicated picture.

Recently, I.C.E. launched a pilot program to conduct DNA tests of adults and children arriving at El Paso and McAllen, Texas, the border crossings there. When they checked, they found that nearly a third of the kids were not related to the adults they were with. It was fraud on a massive scale.

It also revealed something far darker. It reveals that our deliberate failure to protect our borders has made our own government party to the trafficking of children.

It would be hard overall to design an immigration system that's worse for a country, our country. But Democrats don't care. To a party totally controlled by identity politics, everything is about race or gender or sexuality. Nothing else matters including reality.

Watch Congresswoman Maxine Waters explain that giving preference to immigrants who speak English is, can you guess? Racist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): Some of that is very racist. It is not keeping with what this country is supposed to be all about.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: What exactly -- just so our viewers know -- are you saying as racist there?

WATERS: Well, you know this business about you must speak English, we're going to give you points for speaking English and we don't want poor people. We only want those people who are earning substantial wages already. I think that some of those policies are racist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Imagine the CNN anchor asking of Maxine Waters, just to be specific, what is racist? Everything, of course. But in this specific case, she and virtually everyone else in her party is arguing that Americans have no right to want immigrants who speak English.

Americans have no right to want immigrants with job skills. Nancy Pelosi explained that last week, Americans have no right to decide how many immigrants come here or how long they stay. And yet as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and others have just told us, Americans are required to pay for free healthcare for everyone who comes along with housing and education and lots of others. Got that? You can see where all of this is heading and fast.

In France, they're nearly there. This was the scene at Charles de Gaulle, the country's biggest airport yesterday. Hundreds of illegal immigrants from Africa took over a terminal to make political demands.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

CARLSON: At one point, a leader of that demonstration chanted this into a loudspeaker, quote, "France does not belong to the French. Everyone has a right to be here."

Kirsten Gillibrand would agree with that. America for Americans. That's racist. You don't deserve your own country. To Gillibrand and her friends on the left, America is not a nation, it's a pinata filled with 200 years of treasure. "Get some quick before it's gone." That's what Gillibrand is promising the world.

How long before groups of angry illegal aliens protest in this country? Where's our share of the spoils? They'll wonder, the one that Gillibrand told us about? That day is coming soon.

Our first guest is here to respond, but a quick reminder, we're monitoring the President's speech in Pennsylvania tonight, and if he makes news, we will bring you right to it. But for now, we're going to talk to Tom Homan, he is the former Acting Director of I.C.E. and has been following this story, of course, very closely. Mr. Homan, thanks very much for coming on.

TOM HOMAN, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR OF I.C.E.: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: So please assess as an expert, Kirsten Gillibrand's demand that we not put people awaiting asylum hearings in custody?

HOMAN: It is ludicrous. I mean, she obviously didn't do her homework. She didn't study the data and she certainly didn't study the history of immigration.

Look, the reason that family units and the children are coming right now are record numbers, unprecedented numbers is because they know, we can't detain them all, because of the Ninth Circuit decision to go home 20 days. So that's why the numbers have skyrocketed.

So her answer to that is detain less? That's going to cause a surge like you never believe. You think the numbers are bad now? That's just the problem, it is when politicians like her, say things that we don't want to detain anybody and she support sanctuary cities, she wants to abolish I.C.E.

When you have the open border attitude, more people are enticed to come into this country illegally. They're more enticed to put themselves in the hands of criminal organizations who come to this country. That's why they're coming.

Ninety three percent of every person that I.C.E. removed last year was removed from a detention bed. When you get released, chances are you will never be removed. Last year, 47,000 people got orders of removal in absentia, which means they didn't show up in court.

Right now, we're on a path where 70,000 in absentia this year. If you look at the people on the border claiming asylum, 49 percent, almost half never follow up with Immigration Court.

There was an article this week in the paper, 86 percent of families do show up. Eighty six percent of half. But the question is, not how many show up in court? How many abide by the order of the Federal Judge? Two percent.

So the 200,000 family units, only two percent --

CARLSON: Wait, this doesn't make sense because I just heard Gillibrand say that she trusts people who've already flattered our laws to show up once they're given a taxpayer-funded lawyer, but you're saying only 2 percent.

HOMAN: What? She just is not that smart or she is not doing her homework.

CARLSON: She doesn't care.

HOMAN: You know what? For people like that, who push that message out there, they entice more people to come with their open borders policy. We just had another child die in custody today, right?

This isn't just about enforcing law. This is about language she uses and things she says and other Democrats that entice people to put themselves in the hands of criminal organizations.

So if they want to blame -- who is to blame for this child dying in custody today? They need to look in the mirror. Because when you start preaching open borders, "We won't detain you." That's when more people come and that's when we're going to lose the border for all -- for good.

CARLSON: Why don't we just demand that people apply for asylum in one of our embassies or consulates in virtually every country in the world?

HOMAN: We really should do that. And what Kristen Gillibrand don't understand is that in FY14, when the family unit first started coming, I built a family detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. We held the families long enough to see a judge. It took about 40 to 45 days, 90 percent of them lost their case -- nine out of 10.

We filled a couple of airplanes full of them and sent them off. Guess what happened? The numbers on the border declined significantly.

But when the Ninth Circuit says, "Well, you can only hold them half as much time it takes to see a judge," the numbers come up.

If these people are really escaping fear and persecution, why would they not want to be detained in a family residential center long enough to see a judge and make their claim?

CARLSON: Because it's a scam, as you know. And as Kirsten Gillibrand knows, but she doesn't care. Tom Homan, thank you very much. Great to see you tonight.

HOMAN: I appreciate it.

CARLSON: Another reminder, we're monitoring the President as he speaks in Pennsylvania, we're going to bring you more of his rally in just a minute.

We should note the Democratic Presidential candidates are not just running to be the chief executive of the country, they're also going to be the high priest, America's supreme moral authority in a new religion of American liberalism. No sacrament is holier than abortion.

It is so holy, in fact that any restrictions and any limits at all are a mortal sin. Watch Mayor Pete Buttigieg explain that on Fox News last night during the town hall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Do you believe at any point in pregnancy, whether it's at six weeks or eight weeks or 24 weeks or whenever that there should be any limit on a woman's right to have an abortion?

PETE BUTTIGIEG, (D-IN), MAYOR, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I think the dialogue has got so caught up on where you draw the line that we've gotten away from the fundamental question of who gets to draw the line, and I trust women to draw the line when it's there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well, obviously, he is a slippery demagogue. But the point is the same. No. No limits whatsoever to the moment of birth.

Dr. Alveda King is Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece. She is the Director of Civil Rights for the Unborn, and she joins us tonight to assess this.

Alveda King, thanks very much for coming on. So when you hear a leading presidential candidate say that there ought to be no limits at all to abortion, what's reaction to that?

DR. ALVEDA KING, DIRECTOR, CIVIL RIGHTS FOR THE UNBORN: You know, Tucker, I think, it is very unfair that he is putting a terrible burden on women and women who are faced with the issue or the question of abortion, and I was faced with that a long time ago without enough information, and kept with a lot of secrets and trying to make my own decision.

So to say to a woman, "You make this decision. I trust you to make this decision." Now, she could have been raped, the victim of incest, a victim of abuse, a college student that has to try to figure out, "How am I going to finish college and help my parents and my family."

There are so many things that a woman has to consider, and you're going to put this terrible burden on a woman alone and give her the whole responsibility? "You decide."

And then without reminding her that that's another person inside of her body, who should have Civil Rights as well. And so you ignore the motherly instincts, the natural instinct of most women who are about to be mothers, and at that very high crisis period, you glibly say, "Oh, I'll just trust her to make a decision."

Now, then you want to legalize abortion all the way through nine months. It's just too much. It's immoral.

CARLSON: It is too much. It is.

KING: Yes.

CARLSON: Alveda King, thank you. It's great to see. We're going to be right back. The President just wrapped and we will be back on the air in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: America's various conflicts and obligations in the Middle East have, by some estimates since 9/11 cost this country about $6 trillion.

For perspective, that's more than the market caps of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google plus all the student loan and credit card debt in the entire country combined. Yes.

And in return for that, America got weaker and more divided, not stronger. There are still government factions, by the way, pushing America toward more wars in Syria and Iran. Why?

Well, at a weekend interview with Fox's Steve Hilton, the President gave a remarkably clear and honest answer to that. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Don't kid yourself. You do have a military industrial complex. They do like war, you know, in Syria with the caliphate. So I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate.

I say I want to bring our troops back home. They place went crazy. They want to keep -- you have people here in Washington, they never want to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: They never want to leave. And so we're still there. Douglas MacGregor is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and author of the fantastic book, "Margin of Victory." He joins us tonight. Colonel, thanks very much for coming on.

COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR (RET), U.S. ARMY: Sure.

CARLSON: So I don't think -- I've never seen a President be that honest about anything actually. He announces we're pulling all American troops out of Syria, as he just noted, the place went crazy - the place being Washington -- and we're still there. What happened and why?

MACGREGOR: Well, the President by now I think understands that he is surrounded inside the White House and within the administration by people who are part of this bipartisan globalist elite.

In other words, the inner circle of advisers, whether it's John Bolton or Mr. Pompeo from the State Department, or any number of other people, along with the general officers, the four stars, and the senior Intelligence operatives and officers, all of whom have risen to great rank over the last 20 years, since the result of their participation in these strategic failures that you're discussing, are absolutely committed to stopping any change.

They're defending in their minds what's left of the post-war liberal order that really crumbled back in the early 90s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So the notion of removing anyone from anywhere is anathema to the people.

And then finally, there's a possibility that if you start withdrawing forces, which by the way, in most cases are not needed, where they are today at all, two things will happen.

First of all, you're going to erode the support for the authorization for the use of military force and this slush fund, this $200 billion overseas contingency fund that is part of this massive spending exercise that Congress loves, and then secondly, you're going to watch as the various actors in places like Syria, and Iraq and elsewhere -- Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Turks and others -- all fall out with each other.

Which normally, you would regard as a strategically positive development, but we seem to want to force cohesion on them, give them a reason to stay together, and essentially ally against us.

CARLSON: But the reason being opposition to us. Watching the President say that as clearly as he did, did it give you a sense of a man being kind of held captive almost by the people around him? "I wanted to pull out the troops from Syria. They wouldn't let me," that's really what he is saying.

MACGREGOR: Yes, it's depressing. Two things the President should remember, at the end of the day, his is the voice that counts in the White House.

CARLSON: Yes.

MACGREGOR: He is the Commander-in-Chief. He is under no obligation to take more bad advice, to drink more poison from the poison well, and when he looks at these people, when he looks at the four stars that march in there, active and retired, when he looks at the various advisers that he's got on his staff, not just John Bolton, all of them. He needs to remember something.

All of these people have put into practice something Winston Churchill once said, "Success consists of moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." They've taken this to an extreme and he needs to get rid of them.

CARLSON: I'm sorry to laugh, but that's such a perfect quote, in this case. Do you think that there is hope for getting out just to pick a small example of Syria?

MACGREGOR: Of course, absolutely. But when Mr. Bolton runs in the room or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says, "Oh, no, you can't do that. The world will end." He has to say, "Thank you for your interest in national defense. We're leaving." And see what happens. And I think what you'll see is what we discussed, the falling out of the various actors, it will begin to tangle the --

CARLSON: It's not just them, it's the entire on-air staff of MSNBC and CNN and Max Boot and the rest of them. Colonel MacGregor, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

MACGREGOR: Thank you.

CARLSON: Well, recently, tensions as, you know, if you've been watching have risen between the U.S. and Iran. On this program, we've asked a couple times the obvious question, which is, what purpose would a war with Iran serve? How would it help the United States?

There's no obvious way that it would. But here's one conflict with Iran that could at least help a few Americans conceivably.

In 1983, two hundred forty U.S. servicemen were murdered by suicide bombers in Beirut, Lebanon -- the barracks bombings that year. The family members of those murdered servicemen have been seeking justice ever since.

Several court rulings have found that Iran's government was linked to the attack. But Iran's government of course has refused to honor any judgment against it. There is a pool of money $1.7 billion that was apparently laundered by a European Bank.

Currently, the fate of this money is tied up in the Federal courts. The Supreme Court has asked the Trump administration to weigh in on what should happen to this money. That was months ago.

So far, the administration hasn't weighed in, they still haven't submitted an amicus brief supporting justice for the Beirut families. So here's the question. Why not? Could it be that as long as those families don't have justice, it gives John Bolton another justification to bomb the country of Iran? We're not sure. We don't know. We can't know. But we do know that releasing that money into the hands of the widows and survivors of those Marines who were murdered would be a good thing for America -- we probably ought to do it.

Well, up next. Robert De Niro has become the latest celebrity to sacrifice his personal dignity on the altar of politics. Mark Steyn responds, after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Hollywood has always been a political place, but wow, the rhetoric has amped up recently. Actor, Robert De Niro was honoring Al Pacino with the American Icon Awards. What's that? Who can keep up with all the self-awarding going on, but it's an award show, when he suddenly derailed his speech to go crazy about the President. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT DE NIRO, AMERICAN ACTOR: The individual who currently purports to lead America is not worthy of any tribute.

(Cheering and Applause)

DE NIRO: Unless you think of this impeachment and imprisonment as a sort of a tribute. And that's how you can make America great again.

You didn't think you were completely going to get away without a [bleep] Trump moment, did you?

(Cheering and Applause)

CARLSON: There's something about Donald Trump that makes Robert De Niro go full "Taxi Driver" and always has.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DE NIRO: It's just beyond surreal what this guy has done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He called him a mutt?

DE NIRO: He is a mutt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You still believe he is a mutt?

DE NIRO: Every word I said then, I mean today.

This [bleep] idiot is the president. The guy is a [bleep] fool. Come on.

How dare he say the things he does? Of course I want to punch him in the face.

JOY BEHAR, COHOST, THE VIEW: Right. Yes.

(Cheering and Applause)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Angry old guy. Author and columnist, Mark Steyn joins us tonight to marvel at how much rich people hate Trump. It's almost like the same people are always going on about privilege. The more privileged you are, the madder you are about Trump. Why is that?

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Yes. That's the way to look at it. Robert De Niro lives better than 99.99 percent of people in the entirety of human history have ever lived. And he cannot accept that a close election in a 50/50 country didn't go his way. This is deeply bizarre.

You mentioned that you'd -- I've never heard of these American Icon Awards and I think it's a faintly stupid title for award. In Australia, they have an award called National Treasure, which again, doesn't seem like the kind of thing you get nominated for. I mean, these kinds of names are in the gift of the people and the general mood. But if you do actually have something called an American Icon Award, then the guy has to be an icon for all Americans, including the 60 whatever million people who voted for Trump. It's not just the Hollywood partisan icon awards.

And if I were Al Pacino, or anybody else at risk of getting an award speech -- prize presented to me by Robert De Niro, I'd start carrying the equivalent of an organ donor card saying, "In the event that I get nominated for a prestigious award, I don't want Robert De Niro coming and giving the speech because he talks about Trump for seven minutes and then says, oh, and by the way is a statue for Al Pacino."

This is -- this is ridiculous. This is this is beyond derangement. He has actually become more insane than Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver."

CARLSON: Well, what's interesting though, usually, you know, the revolutionary spirit is aimed upward, you know, give the finger to the man.

In the last two years, you've watched this parade of again, the most privileged people in our society, shouting down at Trump's voters. "Damn you working class Americans, you must be quiet. How dare you speak?" Has there ever been a revolution aimed in this direction down?

STEYN: Well, no, I think that's what -- it's interesting. It's a worldwide phenomenon, in some ways. The elites rising up against the masses.

CARLSON: Nicely put.

STEYN: No, but I think that's actually true. I think I saw something of it with Mrs. Thatcher in the United Kingdom, where essentially, privileged, elite, artistic people just regarded her as vulgar and lower class in the same way that they do with Trump.

But the fact is, they're killing themselves. There's a book out at the moment, "White" by Bret Easton Ellis, as you know, the novelist of "American Psycho." He voted for Hillary. He is gay. He is nobody's idea of a conservative or right wing. But he was dating this young millennial guy, and the young millennial guy went full Trump derangement syndrome, and had become impossible to live with.

And that's the same situation. Would you want to wake up in bed with Robert De Niro every morning? Boring on -- boring on about Trump. He is actually -- they shouldn't have American Icon Awards. They should have Best Cranky and Bitter Grandpa 40 years past his acting best award because he'd be a shoo in for that.

CARLSON: He would definitely be in the running. I would argue there are some other contenders.

STEYN: No, no. It's a crowded field. And it's not even an age thing as we saw with Bret Easton Ellis' insufferable millennial boyfriend. It goes right -- it spans the ages among the Hollywood elites.

CARLSON: The great Mark Steyn. Thank you, Mark. Great to see you.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, every child in school right now is taught about a mystical thing called white privilege. But if white privilege is real, why is Elizabeth Warren and so many others trying to pretend they're not white? Maybe it's not privilege. We will tell you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: If you've got a kid in school right now, it's almost certain they're learning that skin color is the key question about people. It's the most important thing. Some children's color makes them tainted. They have white privilege and must be punished for that.

But here's a question, if white privilege is real, and everyone in our ruling class seems to assume it is. If it's real, then why are so many people pretending not to be white? Such is Rachel Dolezal or Elizabeth Warren.

In the Varsity Blues college cheating scandal, parents were told to invent fake non-white heritage for their kids in order to improve their chances of getting into elite schools. One person may not be surprised to learn this. Joseph Ingam, he is the author of "Almost Black: How I got Into Medical School While Pretending I am Black." He joins us tonight.

Joseph, thanks very much for coming on. So it does make you wonder this is not in any way an attempt to pretend that American history isn't real, the ugly parts of it, of course, it is real.

But this idea that white privilege is the dominant fact of American life is challenged, I would say by this fact, wouldn't you say?

JOSEPH VIJAY CHOKAL-INGAM, AUTHOR: Well, of course. I mean, the Varsity Blues admissions scandal kind of shows that white privilege is somewhat of an archaic notion. Because in fact, Rick Singer advises clients to lie as you said.

It is actually quite common for white people and Asian-Americans to lie about their race in order to get admission to school, they call it the Pocahontas factor.

I did it, you mentioned, Senator Elizabeth Warren did it. They do it because they know it can improve their chance of admission.

Now, as an admissions consultant for sosadmissions.com, I recommend that my clients not disclose their race. If you are Asian-American or white, do not disclose your race and your application for college or graduate school, as it can be shown statistically, to reduce your chances of admission.

So the best option is not disclosing your race, which kind of indicates the opposite of white privilege if you kind of think about it.

CARLSON: Well, it kind of does, considering that -- and this is one of the points in your book, that elite college admissions, I mean, that's the doorway into the American ruling class. I mean, that's one of the pivotal decisions in a kid's life is where to go to college, what college can I get into, right? So if being white hurts you there, how does it help exactly?

INGAM: I would help -- it also hurts you in employment as well. But the truth is, is we're missing the point. You talk about going into an elite ruling class. The truth is that there are merit based factors in admissions, like your grades or your letters of recommendation or your essays.

And we need to move towards a merit-based system of admission. College admissions consultants like me, rather than encouraging people to lie about their race, why don't you help them to write a more effective resume or an application essay, or do well in an interview because by teaching someone to do well in an interview, or do well in a resume, you're teaching them skills that will help them not simply to succeed in their interview or their application, but you're teaching them skills that will enable them to succeed in life.

So rather than promoting a society where race is a huge factor, we should promote a society in which we focus on the merit-based factors and help people to give skills that will help them succeed in life because that is the purpose of an education.

CARLSON: Amen. Amen. I think you said it better than I could have. In the 30 seconds we have left since you do this for a living, do you think we're moving closer to that or farther away from that?

INGAM: Well, with the new adversity score, I'm just afraid that we're moving away from that because, of course, the adversity score can be manipulated simply by declaring you have a different address.

Focus on the factors that help you succeed for grades. Those are the things that will make a difference for the long term better of our education system.

CARLSON: I sure hope so. Joseph, thank you so much for your perspective. Great to talk to you tonight.

Up next, smartphones and the internet allow young people to stay in constant contact with everyone they've ever met anywhere in the world. So why are today's children the loneliest generation ever? There's a reason. I'll tell you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Thanks to cell phones and social media, it's easier than ever to talk to people all over the world wherever you want to, obviously, but it's not working exactly as you would expect.

Today's teenagers are the loneliest generation in American history. In 2017, for example, teens met with friends 68 fewer times than they did in 1990. Children have fewer friends, but more anxiety. They have fewer dates, but more depression, suicide rates are rising. So what is causing all this?

We put that question to one of the smartest people we know, Johann Hari, author of the book, "Lost Connections: Why you're Depressed and How to Find Hope." Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So this is one of those results that's the opposite of what was predicted, maybe then opposite of what you would have expected. Why is this happening?

JOHANN HARI, AUTHOR: I wanted to think about this a lot. So with my book, "Lost Connections," I went to the first ever internet rehab center in the world. It's just outside Spokane in Washington. I remember when I arrived, feeling really annoyed, I stepped out of the car and I couldn't check my cell phone. It wasn't working. I was like, "All right, you're in the right place."

So it's a really fascinating place. And I remember, I spent a lot of time there. They get a huge range of people in this internet rehab center, but they disproportionately get young men who become obsessed with these multiplayer role play games like "World of Warcraft."

I remember talking to the woman who runs the center, Dr. Hilarie Cash, and her saying to me, "You've got to ask yourself. What are these young men getting out of these games? They're getting the things they used to get from the culture, but they no longer get. They get a sense of a tribe. They get a sense of identity. They get a sense they're good at something. They get a sense they are actually roaming around." Because American kids now barely leave the house.

But what they're getting really is a kind of parody of those things. The more time I spent there talking to people who have become completely obsessed with social media or video games, or the more I spoke to the social scientists who study this, I began to realize, I think the connection between social media and social life is a bit like the connection between pornography and sex.

I'm not totally against pornography. But if your entire sex life consisted of looking at pornography, you'd be going around irritated and frustrated the whole time because that's not what we evolved for. We didn't evolve to look at screens for sex, and we didn't evolve to interact through screens. We evolved to interact face-to-face.

And when you have a huge decline in that and that leads to a big increase in depression and anxiety. It's partly a symptom, right?

Actually, loneliness have been supercharged already before the internet arrived. Part of what happens is the internet arrives, and it looks a lot like the things we've lost, right? You've lost friends, well, here are some Facebook friends. You've lost status in the economy. Here's some status updates. But it's not the thing we've lost. It's not filling the hole there.

CARLSON: So if young people and young men specifically have lost a sense of identity and tribe, and meaning and purpose, and the kind of useful risk that young men need, do we have a whole generation that's ripe for a demagogue to show up and say, "Here's an identity, here's a purpose, here's some risk." I mean, this is like -- it's a perilous situation for our society, isn't it?

HARI: Absolutely. One of the things that really shocked me for the book that I learned is there's scientific evidence for nine different causes of depression and anxiety. And there is one, I think, really relates to a question, Tucker.

So everyone knows that junk food has taken over our diets and made us physically sick. But there's equally strong evidence that our kind of junk values have taken over our minds and made us mentally sick.

For thousands of years, philosophers have said, if you think life is about money, and status, and showing off and thinking all the time, about how you look to other people, you're going to feel like crap, right? That's not an exact quote from Confucius. But that is the gist of what he said.

But weirdly, nobody had scientifically investigated this until an incredible man, I got to know called Professor Tim Kasser. And he discovered two really important things. Firstly, the more you think life is about money and status, and showing off, the things that social media trains you to do, the things advertising trains you to do, the more likely you are to become depressed and anxious.

And secondly, as a society, we have become much more driven by these junk values. Over time, there's been a really big increase. But it's also really hopeful things there.

Professor Kasser showed relatively small interventions can really help. So he did a program where you just get teenagers and their parents to meet in a group once every couple of weeks for four months, to just talk about moments they have actually found meaningful in their lives, right? Not buying Nike sneakers, not how many likes they got on Instagram, but meaningful moments, and they keep checking in to show, "Okay, how can we build more of our lives, about seeking those meaningful things and less about all this junk culture is constantly pumping?

And just doing that led to a really significant shift in people's values. And these values that are causing so much depression and anxiety.

CARLSON: Just having one authentic conversation, yes. I'm not I'm not surprised by that. But it's amazing that you're one of the very few people I ever hear say that out loud. Johann Hari, it's always an honor to have you on the show.

HARI: Totally my pleasure, Tucker. Thanks so much.

CARLSON: Thank you. I hope you'll come back.

We are out of time sadly. We'll be back tomorrow with the show that's the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

Sean Hannity right now.

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