Tucker: Academic standards in America are in freefall

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Tucker: Academic standards in America are in freefall

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines forcing kids to wear masks and indoctrination in academia

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," August 11, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

It is mid-August, summer is almost over, amazingly enough. Kids are going to resume their education, not just in this country, but around the world.

In Ireland, as kids begin to return to school recently, authorities there faced a choice. Now, the most obvious course would be to blindly accept guidance from self-described public health experts in the United States, that's what many countries have done, is they've sought to come up with a COVID policy.

And following the United States would mean, among other things, forcing children as young as two to wear moist paper burqas for eight hours a day in the classroom. The other option would be to follow the science and the Irish chose that course.

The Irish commissioned their own research on masks and here's what they found. According to the Irish Health Authority, masking children in the classroom is not a legitimate medical precaution, it is child abuse. Masks can quote, " ... exacerbate anxiety and breathing difficulties." They impair quote, " ... the development of human communication and language skills particularly for very young children."

Now, we know from previous research the mask can also contribute to high levels of carbon dioxide in the human body and that's especially true in children. Masks often become breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria. That's conclusive in the studies. It's possible that masks even affect facial development.

In other words, there are very serious downsides to forcing masks on children. The question is, what's the benefit of doing it?

The Irish government looked into it and decided there is no benefit. Kids in Ireland are not getting sick from COVID, they are not transmitting COVID either. So in the end, based on the scientific research using the disappearing art of rational decision making, the Irish government refused to implement mask mandates in schools. It's an interesting story. Have you heard that story? Maybe not.

Maybe telling you what's happening in Ireland could raise uncomfortable questions here, such as, why are we doing the opposite in the United States? Why are we forcing masks on children? What data are we using to justify that decision?

Well, it turns out we don't have any data to justify it. As of today, there has not been a single comprehensive study in the United States showing that children should wear masks in school or that mask would help them or anyone else in any way. What do we have then? Well, the closest thing we have to research is an op-ed that just ran in the renowned medical journal known as "The New York Times," which you can buy from homeless people in Penn Station, if you want to take a look.

That article was written by two people from Duke University in North Carolina. Here is the headline, you may have seen it: "We studied one million students. Universal masking works." That sounds definitive, a million students. That's a major study. We're impressed.

But there was one skeptical man out there, a journalist called David Zweig who wanted to know a little bit more about it, so he decided to look into the numbers. And as he did, the first thing he noticed was that every single one of the one million students, Duke's researchers had quote "studied" went to schools that already had mask mandates. Those were the only kids they studied. In other words, there was no control group; therefore, by definition there was no way for the researchers to determine whether or not mask mandates worked.

That's the most basic scientific rule. If you tried something like that with your sixth grade science project, the teacher would laugh at you and you'd get an F, but they did it anyway, because they're at Duke.

So, David Zweig with this in mind reached out to the so-called researchers. Initially, they agreed to talk to him, why wouldn't they? Then he asked them to explain why they had ignored schools that don't have mask mandates? Schools in big places like Florida or Ireland or many other countries in Europe. These schools, it turns out have not seen a surge in COVID cases.

You'd think that it would be worth knowing. How is that not relevant data if you're studying mask mandates? Why in the world was it not included in this study? What kind of study was this?

Guess how the researchers responded? They didn't. They just ignored David Zweig. Is that science? No. But these are the people who now control your children's lives. Fake experts, fraudulent scientists, partisans in lab coats; people seeking terrifying levels of control over what was until recently a free country, people who are drunk with power, people who've lost all sense of proportion and restraint.

Watch this school board member from Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma tell you that maskless kids in classrooms could be committing murder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's insane to sin five and six and seven and eight all the way up through 11 year olds that don't have a choice about vaccine, to sit in a classroom where people can spread a deadly disease and not even know they're sick. It's just not okay for kids to commit murder by coming to school without a mask.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Your four-year-old goes to school without a mask and is committing murder. Where is this all going? Will it stop here? It hasn't so far.

So, if you want to know what our future may look like, take a look at what is happening on the distant fringes of the Anglosphere, in the formerly reasonable Australia, a country all Americans love, you're seeing footage right now of decontamination tents that have been set up in people's yards in Sydney, Australia.

The Australian Military is now enforcing Martial Law. What's the justification for this? Because nine people died of COVID this summer, nine people in the entire nation of Australia. Australia's Chief Health Officer is now commanding citizens not to speak to their neighbors. Speaking to other human beings is just too dangerous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to limit our movements. We need to consider whenever we leave our house that anyone with us and anyone we come into contact with could convey the virus, so whilst it is in human nature to engage in conversation with others to be friendly, unfortunately, this is not the time to do that.

So even if you run into your next door neighbor in the shopping center, don't start up a conversation. Now is the time for minimizing your interactions with others that as we go about our daily lives, we do not come into contact with anyone else that would pose a risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's humiliating, obviously, and it is cowardice and it is lack of proportion, but it's also scary. It is human nature to communicate with other people. No, it's a human need to communicate with other people.

When the government tells you who you can speak to and where, when it tells you not to be friendly to your neighbor, you've crossed a line into totalitarianism and that's where we're heading.

Many parents are now realizing this. They may not have thought it through, but they can feel it. Our friend, Clay Travis just said so to his school board in Franklin, Tennessee. Here is part of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAY TRAVIS, HOST, "THE CLAY TRAVIS AND BUCK SEXTON SHOW": I feel bad for all these people walking around in masks engaging in cosmetic theater thinking that they are making a difference against COVID, they aren't.

Here's the truth. Our kids, under 25-year-olds, one in a million chance that they are going to die of COVID. They are more likely to be struck by lightning. They are more likely to be struck by lightning. They are more likely to die of the seasonal flu.

Have any of you ever mandated mask for the seasonal flu? Well, shame on you because every kid in Williamson County Schools has been under more danger from the seasonal flu every year than they are for COVID.

I would tell every parent here, don't let your kids wear masks.

[APPLAUSE]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, there you have a man reading the numbers publicly available numbers as of today anyway on the risk of children dying from COVID and the people to whom he is speaking sit blank face, they don't want to hear the numbers. They're not interested in the science.

But the interesting part of the clip is what you hear in the rest of the room, the crowd. They explode. That's how frustrated they are. They have had it, and they've had it because the schools to which they've entrusted their children now seem committed to hurting those children.

And not just on COVID, teachers demanding tribalism, demanding it as a matter of policy, telling students to judge one another based on their skin color and then academic standards. The whole point of school in free fall across the country. We could give you a hundred examples. Here's the latest.

The State of Oregon has just announced it is scrapping proficiency requirements for Math, Science and Reading comprehension. Why? Because equity, and equity means ignorance. No more learning. Learning is racist.

We've reached Jonestown at this point.

So you have to wonder how much longer parents will tolerate this. These are their children we're talking about, maybe not too much longer.

This was the scene at a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In March, my child had to watch a TED Talk in English class, not on anything related to English, but rather oppression and acknowledging privilege. Any parent with a pulse knows that this is wrong.

Why has public school become so mired in extremist politics and a permissive culture that seems to celebrate the latest popular fads like gender fluidity?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we oppose your efforts to impose critical race theory, an overtly racist doctrine that teaches our children to judge and categorize others based solely on the color of their skin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are you willing to sacrifice our children on the altar of the Cultural Revolution, is it for popularity? For money? To be on the right side of history?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you've done nothing except train teachers in cultural competency. What about our kids? Come on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their job is to teach our kids, Math, Science, Biology, Literature and that's it; not ideology.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I equally dislike all of you, you all have equally done a really bad job, and maybe it's a good time to change something, maybe start right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The saddest were the immigrants. They moved to this country, you've got to think in a lot of cases because they wanted a better future for their children and their children show up at school and the teacher puts some on one side of the room and others on the other side. You're the Tutsis. You're the Hutus.

That's what they're doing. They're creating tribalism. They're exacerbating the worst instincts in people and they're doing it to little kids. Is there anything darker than that?

One teacher in Loudoun County, Laura Morris quit during yesterday's school board meeting. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA MORRIS, TEACHER: I was told in one of my so-called equity trainings that white Christian able-bodied females currently have the power in our schools and that quote, "this has to change." Clearly, you've made your point. You no longer value me or many other teachers you've employed in this county.

So since my contract outlines the power that you have over my employment in Loudoun County Public Schools, I thought it necessary to resign in front of you.

School Board, I quit. I quit your policies. I quit your trainings, and I quit being a cog in a machine that tells me to push highly politicized agendas on our most vulnerable constituents -- the children.

I will find employment elsewhere. I encourage all parents and staff in this county to flood the private schools.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Someday, if we make it through this, someone is going to write an amazing book about this moment and the atrocities being committed. We play a tiny fraction, of course, the publicly available fraction of what's happening in our schools right now, but there's a lot going on and it's really sad and parents are just about over it.

Clay Travis is proof of that. He is one of the parents who spoke out to the school board, to their faces. He is a busy man. He is the host of "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show." He's also the founder of outkick.com, one of the only websites covering sports and politics that you would want to read, he joins us tonight.

Clay, thanks so much for coming on. So, I love the clip. I know it was a much longer speech that you gave and God bless you for doing it, and it was entirely fact-based. The reaction from the other people in the room really struck me. What is your sense of where parents are right now with what's happening in schools?

TRAVIS: First, Tucker, thanks for having me. Second, we're in the middle of what I think is a grassroots mobilizing parent movement to take back this country. I really -- I know that there are a lot of people out there frustrated because the reaction that I saw demonstrated that and where we are in Williamson County, I think there are countless people all over the country who feel the same way that we do, that we have to go right to the root, right?

Tucker, you've got a television show, I've got a radio show. We make good livings doing our jobs, but the most important job we have is being a parent. Being a mom, being a dad and I think what happened during COVID is many parents became aware of what their kids were being taught.

Look, I'm a public school kid, Tucker. I went to Nashville City Public Schools, K through 12. My kids, two of them are in public schools right now. I want for them to fit in in the society and make the world a better place, but it has to be a fact-based reality, and right now it isn't, and I'm excited about how many parents are now rising up.

Over a thousand people, Tucker, showed up at that school board meeting here just outside in Nashville to combat the decisions being made by the board.

CARLSON: I think that's the only way. I mean, you have been engaged in this and other people have for the last year trying to reason with the people in charge of the schools, from the Biden administration, to the teachers unions, to the school boards, to the teachers and say look, this is poison. You can't create Tutsis and Hutus in America, like you'll wreck the country, and they just won't listen.

I mean, I don't think there is another option other than for parents to say no more.

TRAVIS: That is the option. Tucker. I'd encourage everybody out there. I'm saying this is a mom-led revolution because if you look at the crowd, moms have had a lot put up on them for the last 18 months. They had to bear the brunt of child care when we had 15 days to stop the spread, Tucker, and they are just fed up with it.

And they are leading this charge and that's what I'd encourage everybody to do, speak out, go to the grassroots, confront your school board members, demand that they use fact-based analysis, and we will win. I'm telling you, Tucker, we're going to win. I can see it. It's going to grow and spread and become even bigger than it already is.

The anti-mask, the anti-CRT, it may well be the new Tea Party.

CARLSON: Boy, I hope -- that's the first hopeful thing I've heard in a while. Clay Travis, I sure appreciate your coming on tonight and for doing that, thank you.

TRAVIS: Thank you, Tucker. Thank you very much.

CARLSON: So, if you're a parent with kids in school, this is not something you're worried about. This is the thing you're worried about. They're going to hurt my children permanently. They're going to distort my children permanently.

What's crazy is that in a system that's supposed to be representative, virtually no one holding office is addressing this, as if it matters. Virtually no one running for office is acting like it matters.

Blake Masters is an exception to that. He is running for Senate in the State of Arizona. He has spoken out against racism in schools. Here is part of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLAKE MASTERS, ARIZONA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: You've heard of critical race theory. All it does is teach kids to identify in racial terms, right? You are good or bad depending on what you look like.

At this point, it is straight up anti-white racism. I don't think we're allowed to say that, but let's call it what it is. It is toxic and it does not belong in our schools.

[APPLAUSE]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh someone told the truth in public. That's not allowed. Blake Masters, go away. But he won't go away, Blake Masters joins us tonight.

Blake, thanks so much for coming on. So, there's something about telling the truth in the clearest possible language that jars people, that awakens them to what's actually happening, but that infuriates the merchants of lies.

Tell us what the response to your obvious observation has been?

MASTERS: Oh, I think the left went completely just up in arms about it. You know at this point, a Republican politician or candidate is allowed to say critical race theory is bad and I think, some of the braver ones are even allowed to say it's racist, but if you actually go and unpack that a little bit more and say this is straight up anti-white racism, I mean, the hit pieces just flow in. They can't handle that, even though it's what everybody knows to be true.

CARLSON: Well, I mean they say it out loud in the most explicit possible - - let me just pause and say one thing really quick. Many times we thought well, we could just run a list of headlines on the screen that run in the popular media, but they're too upsetting, I can't -- I personally can't even bear to read it. It's so anti-American and wrong. Anyway, I just paused there.

You're absolutely right about what's happening there's kind of no debate about it, but give us the examples if you would.

MASTERS: Yes, it's like, just last night I went to a school board meeting and there was a small but very vocal group of people that was demanding that the school district teach kids that the United States is fundamentally racist, fundamentally and irredeemably evil because it was created by racist white men, and it's like that is just such garbage. How could you possibly have a good country if you teach our young people that?

And then just today, there was a report that came out that said, dozens of school districts in this country are teaching a book. They are they're assigning a book to elementary school kids. It's called "Not My Idea." And the book is about whiteness.

And the character in the book is a devil and the devil portrays whiteness and whiteness is portrayed as stealing lands from people of color and stealing souls. I mean, this is the most toxic stuff imaginable and the people who come up with this garbage, they have a racial pecking order in mind. It is so obvious, I think it's bad for white kids, I think it's bad for all kids.

It's not good for black kids or Latino kids or Asian kids to learn to fundamentally mistrust white people. I mean this stuff is so toxic and we just -- we have to get it out of our schools. It is existential. We won't have a good country unless we get this stuff out of our schools.

CARLSON: Or maybe not a country at all. I don't know how a country hangs together if its leaders encourage tribalism. I mean that's a sincere -- it's not even about this or that racial group, it's the racial groups who are encouraged to wall off, go into their corners and hate each other. How do you remain a country?

MASTERS: Well you don't, and maybe that's part of the plan on the other side. I don't know. Last night, when I was at the school board meeting supporting parents who were imploring the school district to keep CRT out of the schools, Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly my opponent here in Arizona was in D.C. voting to spend Federal dollars on CRT.

CARLSON: Yes, no, well we noticed. Blake Masters, I appreciate you coming on tonight. Thanks very much.

MASTERS: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So from his very first day in office, it's been a very busy seven months so far, Joe Biden decided to crush our energy independent oil and gas sector, the only really thriving sector of the American economy. You'll notice that gas prices hit record levels, but now, the administration has a solution and it's good news for the lunatic theocracies in the Middle East that hate this country.

It's a story that's almost hard to believe, but we'll tell it.

Also the book, "The Long Slide" came out yesterday. Many stores are selling it at a discount if you pick it up in person this week. It's available at Costco, Books-A-Million, and Barnes & Noble. You can also order it right now on tuckercarlson.com. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So, for decades, they told us it was essential, the United States becomes energy independent because we didn't want to rely on the Middle East because they hate us, we have to fight all of these wars to preserve our access to energy.

So, we did become energy independent. We produced enough energy for entire country. In fact, it is the most robust sector of our entire economy so Joe Biden naturally decided to crush it from day one in office. We had to do that, he told us because climate change and AOC and all of that.

In fact, it wasn't that long ago that Joe Biden called for fossil fuel executives to be jailed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), THEN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just have to set sort of guide rails down now. So between the years 2021 and 2030, it's irreversible the path we've set ourselves on.

And one of which is doing away with any subsidies for fossil fuels, number one; number two, holding them liable for what they have done particularly in those cases where your underserved neighborhoods and you know the deal, okay.

And by the way, when they don't or when they're deliberate, put them in jail that's what I'm for -- I'm not joking about this. I'm not joking about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so energy in the energy grid is both incredibly complex and essential, so let's put a guy with a functional IQ of 75 in charge of sorting it out. That's what we've done, and as a result of that, gas prices are out of control and people don't like that. Nobody likes out of control gas prices because we need gas, we don't have solar cars yet.

So now, Joe Biden has changed his view. Climate change isn't that big a deal, carbon emissions aren't a huge problem not when they're coming from China or the Middle East, but that doesn't mean he is going to end his campaign against our own energy industry. They are still in trouble facing prison time.

Instead, Joe Biden today called on Middle Eastern theocracies, members of OPEC to pump more oil so gas prices here will go down. What do we make of this?

Salena Zito is with "The Washington Examiner," she joins us now. So, this - - I don't think I've seen -- we don't do a lot of energy stories on the show, but I mean, I don't think I've seen a more perverse and revealing policy than this one. Explain what is going on here, if you would.

SALENA ZITO, "THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Actually, it's sort of befuddling what's going on. You know the energy -- as you pointed out, the energy industry in the United States has been one of the most robust sectors in our economy leading right before the pandemic, we produced more oil than any other country in the world and we were self-sufficient in that area. And not only was that a job creator and not only just directly within the energy industry, but also the downstream industries that support it, and the communities that then thrive off of it and then the school districts that benefit for it.

It also was very important in national security, so which is, I thought it was curious today that the national security head was telling or essentially begging uh the OPEC countries to produce more oil and oil has been -- I mean the energy industry, Joe Biden has put his foot on their neck since day one and that's not -- there's no exaggeration in that statement.

From his Executive Orders on the Keystone Pipeline to halting and or pausing production on Federal lands with fracking in New Mexico and also oil production in Louisiana, he has impacted lives, American lives profoundly right there.

CARLSON: We've got to get energy independence, so we do. Now, they're telling us we have to be more dependent on the countries that hate us in the Middle East. This is a pretty dark moment. Salena Zito, I appreciate your coming on tonight and summing that up for us. Thank you.

ZITO: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: So, no matter what product they're selling you may have noticed, pretty much every corporation in the country sounds pretty much the same, they are promoting BLM, China, fringe gender theories. How did that happen exactly? And can you have a democracy in an environment like that?

Vivek Ramaswamy has been in the business world for a long time. He succeeded quite grandly in that world, but he has left his job in biotech to fight what he calls the woke industrial complex. He joins us to explain why he did that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, for decades, we stupidly imagined that when they took your civil liberties away, it would be the government doing it. But no, it turns out it's Apple and Nike and the MLB and Delta Air Lines, people who determine what you can say, what information you have access to, turn out to be corporations. How'd that happen exactly?

Vivek Ramaswamy knows the answer. He founded a very successful biotech firm years ago and then he left because he was so concerned about what was happening in the business world. He wants to tell the rest of us about it. We just talked to him on an episode of "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's part of the conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, BIOTECH ENTREPRENEUR AND AUTHOR, "WOKE, INC.": When I think about the health of a democracy, really any democracy, but especially American democracy, it's really simple. It is the percentage of people who are willing to say what they actually believe in public.

And right now, we are doing abysmally on that metric, and when I reflect on it, first personally as a human being, I wasn't free to say what I actually believed as CEO. That's why I had to separate my voice from my company, but now I am as a citizen and I'm not going to mince words about what I think we need to do about the cultural epidemic that we're facing as a people.

And so, what you have is a bunch of people in my generation, a bunch of woke millennials, get together with a bunch of big banks. Together they birth woke capitalism and then they put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption, and that's really when wokeness met capitalism. That's when it went from a fringe theory in the academy to becoming supercharged with the potency of capitalism.

And when it mixed with capitalism, that's when wokeness became unstoppable.

CARLSON: Talk about an axis of evil. I mean, this might be the ugliest most dangerous alliance in American history. I can't think of anything more destructive than what you just described.

RAMASWAMY: Yes, the funny thing is, it's an arranged marriage, but not of love. It is more like mutual prostitution because each side in this marriage secretly has contempt for the other. They have secret contempt for the other and any marriage in which each side secretly disdains the other, it isn't going to end well.

But right now, it is working because each side is getting something out of this.

CARLSON: Can we skip to the part where they eat each other and we enjoy it while we watch?

RAMASWAMY: Well, there is a part that comes in between them, which is where this -- this bilateral arranged marriage actually turns into what I call a threesome, which is the Communist Party of China getting in on the act, right?

So they see what's going on here with this arranged marriage and they say okay, this is actually an opportunity. And the opportunity is this, if we can get those companies to criticize the United States in the United States, but stay silent about our actual human rights abuses here in China, we can do the things that we could have never done with our nuclear arsenal, and that is to undermine the moral standing of the United States on the global stage.

So they got in on this act. There is a Chinese word for wokeness, as you well know, which literally refers to woke white people and they used to laugh at us, but it's not just a joke. They are now using that as a geopolitical to say, oh, Nike and Disney and the NBA and Marriott, you want to criticize the United States, have at it.

If you criticize China, we're going to build a Great Chinese Wall and you can't enter our market, but if you criticize the United States, we're going to roll out the red carpet to you, and by the way if you're Airbnb, we're going to roll out the red carpet if and only if you give us the consumer data that you gathered from your progressive consumers who love it when you post a black square on Instagram, a condition for Airbnb's entry to China that's a little known secret that "The Wall Street Journal" reported on last year.

But that's how this game is played --

CARLSON: You're upsetting me.

RAMASWAMY: It makes my blood boil.

CARLSON: But I know all of this. I don't think I've ever heard it as clearly explained as you just did.

RAMASWAMY: Well, I spent a year and a half thinking about it for the book, so I better be able to tell you a little something about it, but it's -- it is maddening to watch the way in which -- they are playing us like a Chinese mandolin and it is working and the way they've done is they have turned these corporations into Trojan horses that undermine the United States from within because they are now the new international arbiters of moral justice.

And so China can go to the U.N., and if they're pressed about the Uyghur human rights crisis by European -- by the E.U. as they were last year, the first thing that comes out of Xi Jinping's mouth is actually Black Lives Matter shows that the United States is no better.

But now, you don't have to take it from Xi Jinping, you could take it from Nike. You could take it from the NBA. You could take it from Disney. The neutral arbiters of moral justice who actually make a better buck because they can enter the Chinese market if they shut up about China, but they criticize the United States.

But for China, they get something out of that trade, back to that mutual prostitution, it's now a three-way prostitution where China is able to get something out of it, which is the people who are known to criticize injustice never criticize injustice over here. That creates this false equivalence between Chinese idealism -- Chinese nihilism and American idealism, and when that happens Chinese nihilism wins every time. Thank you, LeBron James. Thank you, Disney. Thank you, NBA. That's the world that we live in.

And so that is what I call the birth of this woke industrial complex. It is a new leviathan, a new monster that is far more powerful than what Thomas Hobbes might have envisioned 400 years ago and it is the biggest threat to individual liberty today, it is not big government alone.

Conservatives are reciting lines that they memorized in 1980 thinking that big government was the threat to individual liberty, maybe it was in 1980, it's not today. It is this new hybrid of big government and big business and big government not just in the United States, but big government in places like China co-mingled with big business creating the actual threat to our liberty and our prosperity and it's really hard to know what to do about it when we have spent the last 40 years defending the castle of capitalism from the front door without recognizing that that castle was invaded through the back door from woke activists to the Chinese Communist Party.

And I think the defining challenge for us, as Americans today is how do we actually sterilize that castle without burning the whole thing down?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Vivek Ramaswamy, man is that guy smart, very clear and right. You can watch the full interview on "Tucker Carlson Today" right now on foxnation.com. It is streaming and then this, Sunday, at 10:00 p.m. on the FOX News Channel, Vivek will be hosting a special called "Woke Inc." which you should watch.

Well, you may have noticed that humor has been banned in the United States and that's bad news for the people who do it for a living. Andrew Cuomo was a hero not that long ago on late night television, the hosts were calling himself Cuomo-sexuals, but not anymore.

We can't resist. We've got the tape, we'll show it to you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, we told you a few minutes ago that the most robust sector of our economy, the energy sector has been withering thanks to the Biden administration. But that's not the only part of our economy that's in trouble.

For generations, America produced the most and the best comedians in the world. This was the funniest country on Earth, because it was a free country. Comedy requires above all independence and honesty. You can't be reading talking points from anybody. You have to be telling the truth about them. That's the whole point. And the second you start sucking up, you only humiliate yourself.

Well, late-night television, they've been sucking up to people in power for several years now. They haven't resigned their jobs because they pay well, but they do continue to humiliate themselves.

If you tuned in at any point over the last year, you saw things like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, TALK SHOW HOST: The Cuomo brothers, you and your brother Chris tied as the most desirable men in New York. Now as an older brother, can you abide by a tie? Do you want to do anything right now to push yourself over the top in terms of desirable-ness, or you want to loosen the top button? You want to give us a smoldering stare? Anything?

JIMMY FALLON, TALK SHOW HOST: I have to ask for a friend. They want to know -- I won't say her name, she wants to know what phase of dating are you currently in?

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Zero, I'm at phase zero on dating. There's no duration on phase zero. There is no automatic time that you go to phase one. You could stay at phase zero for months. I think New York City will be fully reopened before I get out of phase zero on dating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's so awful to watch the fake overeager girl laughter, the stupid lines, the endless sucking up and the saddest part is some of these guys, the people you just saw used to be legitimately talented. They were funny, but they gave it up in order to read the script. Sad as hell to watch.

Last night, the new version of the script told them, you better change your opinions at Andrew Cuomo. No more sucking up, so dutifully, they did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FALLON: Well, guys, it was a big day here in New York as Andrew Cuomo announced that he's resigning as governor. During his remarks, he said it was best that he step aside, then every woman in the room took two steps aside.

[LAUGHTER]

FALLON: During his announcement, Cuomo said that he's stepping down in 14 days. I'm sorry, is this really a two-week notice type of situation?

[LAUGHTER]

COLBERT: Beautiful day here in New York City. Oh, yeah. 85 degrees 75 percent humidity. And this afternoon, Andrew Cuomo resigned.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

COLBERT: Don't let the door hit you on the butt on the way out.

[LAUGHTER]

COLBERT: But if it does, that door should also resign.

[LAUGHTER]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Do you think when he comes home his wife says, "Good job. Good job. You're really funny." Ah, no self-respect at all.

Mark Steyn has self-respect and clarity and honesty, and above all perspective on the world. So he is hilarious by definition. He joins us now to assess what happened to everybody else.

Mark Steyn, great to see you. How sad did that make you watching that? I mean, some of those guys were legitimately talented at one point.

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: At one point, but I've got to say after those last clips you paid of Colbert and Fallon, the boy that -- say what you like -- that Cuomo-sexual conversion therapy really works fast. I mean, they turned it around in 10 minutes. They were they were full blown Cuomo- sexuals, and now they're doing crackerjack material.

Like, what was that? What was that line that is writers wrote for him? Oh, Cuomo said he was going to step aside, and then all the women took two steps aside. It's amazing to me, they have like 37 writers on the writing staff and they met for hours and they tested those lines and that's the best they can come up -- now, you have to see the problem from Fallon and Colbert's point of view.

They can't do anything genuinely funny about the guy being a blood soaked butcher. They can't do any sharp comedy on that. They can't do any comedy about how pitiful it is that they're all going on about how sexually they have the hots for him, and those mugs where he is bare-chested, the Cuomo- sexual coffee mugs, and they fallen for an obvious racket because the last three governors of New York, all Democrats, have now all resigned in one sexual scandal after another.

You could do with your 37-man writing team, you could do some jokes about how Spitzer needed a room at the Mayflower in Washington, D.C., and that's like a thousand bucks a night. And then David Paterson may do with the Days Inn on 94th Street in Manhattan, and that's only 130 bucks a night and then this guy saves you the hotel bill altogether, because he just gropes everybody in the office, but they can't do anything, even with the 37-man writing team.

And I feel most sorry for my dear Commonwealth cousin, Trevor Noah from South Africa, whom I once saw at the London Palladium and who was marginally less unfunny. And what's interesting is that 10 minutes after landing at JFK to get his big job on The Comedy Channel, this guy, who's got all kinds of interesting perspective of South Africa via London, all the rest of it, he is suddenly as instantly boring as all the rest of them.

It's the death of comedy. It's no laughing matter.

CARLSON: It's totally Soviet. They weren't very funny either. Mark Steyn, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: So remember, you heard all the liberals getting all paranoid about how the Russians are spying on us. We thought it was a pose, oh, they really believe it.

One prominent American Democrat believe the Russians are spying on his sex life. We have that tape.

The book, "The Long Slide" has just come out. You can find it about every store that sells books or you can buy it directly from tuckercarlson.com. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: One of the questions we never asked last fall, and maybe we should have, how many laptops did Hunter Biden have? Well, it turns out, at least one more than we thought he did. FOX's Matt Finn is here with us tonight with that story Hey, Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, new explicit images and videos have emerged of Hunter Biden reportedly engaged in sex acts with a prostitute, according to "The Daily Mail."

In a video, Hunter Biden tells a woman about a third laptop of his that went missing and has graphic sex videos on it. "The Daily Mail" reports the images and video were pulled from the same Hunter Biden laptop that was found at the Delaware computer store two years ago.

In a video from that hard drive, Hunter Biden allegedly tells a prostitute that he went on an 18-day bender in Las Vegas in 2018, paying up to $10,000.00 a night for a penthouse. At one point, Biden says he ended up with a group of men including a drug dealer and a woman he described as a Russian brunette.

Biden says he then blacked out in a hot tub by himself. The group thought he might be dead, but Biden came to. After that night, Biden realized his laptop was stolen and was worried the group he was with in Vegas might blackmail him for compromising sex videos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does the computer have to do with it?

HUNTER BIDEN, SON OF JOE BIDEN: They have videos of me doing crazy [bleep] sex, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, how long did this happen? Summer?

H. BIDEN: So, it would have been out already if they. No, no, no. Because my dad (inaudible) running for President. He is, he is, he is -- I talk about it all the time (inaudible). If they do, he also knows I make like a gazillion dollars.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They'd try to blackmail you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "The Daily Mail" reports Hunter's story about his stolen laptop raises the possibility Biden could have been targeted as part of a foreign intelligence operation. Hunter Biden wrote about the gritty details of his drug and alcohol addiction. Today, he is married and claims to be sober -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matt Finn, thanks for that.

You can watch our interview -- amazing interview with Vivek Ramaswamy on foxnation.com, and we hope that you will, it's worth it.

And now ladies and gentlemen, Sean Hannity takes over.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: All right, Tucker, I'm going to pick up right there.

Welcome to HANNITY. Tonight we are tracking multiple developing stories including some of the footage that you just saw, Hunter Biden's laptop from hell. It shows the President's son expressing blackmail concerns while in bed with a female companion.

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