This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 3, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Tucker Carlson: As well as in the campaign against ISIS. Though he was little known to the American public, Soleimani was among the most famous living figures in Iran and also among the most powerful. According to some accounts, second only to the supreme leader of that country. The Iranian government has already vowed to extract what it has called forceful revenge against the U.S. in response to his death. Now whether that will happen and what form it might take remains to be seen. But it's no exaggeration to say that by the next time this show airs we could be engaged in a conflict, a real conflict, with Iran. From Iran's perspective we're already there. If Iranian forces killed the chairman of our joint chiefs of staff, for example, would you consider it an act of war? You would. So, what happened yesterday wasn't just another symbolic bombing sortie of the kind we've seen in Syria, it was a pivot point. Neo-cons in Washington understood that immediately. "Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qasem Soleimani," tweeted disgraced former national security advisor John Bolton. "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." That of course has been the neo-con objective all along. The president, though, has for years opposed that objective and in a statement said that regime change and war are not the point at all.

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Donald Trump: We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war. We do not seek regime change. However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now if Americans anywhere are threatened we have all of those targets already fully identified and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary.

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Tucker Carlson: According to secretary of state Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, Soleimani was killed to forestall planned attacks on Americans. But as he later conceded, those attacks would've occurred in the Middle East not here in America.

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Mike Pompeo: President Trump's decision to remove Qasem Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives. There's no doubt about that. He was actively plotting in the region to take action, a big action as he described it, that would've put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk. And last night was the time that we needed to strike to make sure that this imminent attack that he was working actively was disrupted.

Male Speaker: Was there any imminent threat to the U.S. homeland?

Mike Pompeo: These were threats that were located in the region.

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Tucker Carlson: Threats in the region. If you don't live in Washington, here's the translation. That would be in hostile middle eastern countries, places where American troops would never be in the first place were it not for the insistent demands of non-geniuses like Max Boot [spelled phonetically] and John Bolton. But nevermind. No one in Washington is in the mood for big picture questions right now. Questions, the obvious ones, like is Iran really the greatest threat we face and who's actually benefiting from this and why are we continuing to ignore the decline of our own country in favor of jumping into another quagmire from which there is no obvious exit? By the way, if we're still in Afghanistan 19 years -- sad years later, what makes us think there's a quick way out of Iran? And so on. Nobody is thinking like that right now. Instead, chest beaters like Senator Ben Sass of Nebraska are making the usual war-like noises, the ones they always make. "This is very simple," Ben Sasse wrote in a statement last night, "General Soleimani is dead because he was an evil bastard who murdered Americans," which is essentially true. Soleimani was certainly a bad guy but does that make killing him "very simple"? It does not. Nothing about life and certainly nothing about killing is ever very simple and any politician who tells you otherwise is dumb or is lying. Yes, Soleimani was linked to the deaths of Americans. Nobody mourns his passing. But Mexico and China are also linked to the deaths of Americans. Each has flooded our country with narcotics from which tens of thousands of Americans die every single year, not that anyone in power cares. So, does that mean we get to bomb Oaxaca? Can we start assassinating generals in the People's Liberation Army? Maybe. Maybe Ben Sasse will call for that, too. He's a former consultant and a very tough character. But before we enter into a single new war there's a criterion that ought to be met. Our leaders should explain to us how that conflict will make the United States richer and more secure. There are an awful lot of bad people in this world. We can't kill them all. It's not our job. Instead, our government exists to defend and promote the interests of American citizens. Period. That's why we have a government. So, has the killing of Soleimani done that? Maybe. No one in Washington has explained how. Instead, like Ben Sass, they're telling us what an awful person he was. He clearly was. So? That's irrelevant. Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that things could start to move in the wrong direction pretty quickly. We're praying they don’t, but they could. How do we know that? Because we've seen it before. We fought quite a number of wars around the Middle East in recent decades. We attacked Saddam Hussein twice, as you know. In the end we killed him. We invaded an occupied Afghanistan. We toppled Moammar Gaddafi in Libya. We fought ISIS in Syria and then for some reason stuck around. We're still there. We joined humanitarian missions in Lebanon and Somalia. Our special forces have been quietly fighting in Yemen, Pakistan, Niger, who knows where all else. Many other places. In every single place each of these conflicts has turned out to be longer and bloodier and more expensive than we were promised in the first place. The benefits? Often, they've been non-existent. A lot of lectures about how the people we're killing deserve to die. Certainly, they did. Hope that makes you feel better. What do the American people think about all of this? Not that anyone cares. Well, it's too soon strictly speaking to know. The killing of Soleimani happened just last night. But just five months ago after months of supposed Iranian provocation. American's didn't seem to view Iran as a major concern, not even close. In a Gallop poll taken last August, just 18 percent of Americans said that they backed military force to shut down Iran's nuclear program. Seventy-eight percent said they prefer diplomacy and economic sanctions alone. So, in a democracy you'd think this would matter but as is so often the case the preferences of actual Americans don't enter the equation at all. They're immaterial. In 2016, Donald Trump ran on a promise of fewer foreign adventures considering the ones we'd embarked upon didn't work very well. He vowed instead to focus on our problems here at home, which are growing. Against the odds he won that election, probably because of that promise, but ever since Washington, including some around the president, have been committed to ignoring the results of that election and its implications. Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades. They've been working toward it. They may have finally gotten it. Douglas Macgregor is a retired U.S. army colonel. He's an author of the fantastic book, "Margin of Victory," a frequent guest on this show and he joins us tonight. Colonel, thanks so much for coming on. Where do you think we're likely to go from here?

Douglas Macgregor: Well, I'm told that tomorrow the Iraqi parliament is going to vote overwhelmingly to demand the removal of our forces from Iraq. If that's the case I sincerely hope that President Trump will take advantage of it and get us out. We should've been out of Iraq and Syria a long time ago as the president pointed out, as you have reiterated. We gain nothing by staying in the country whatsoever. If these strikes, the follow-up strikes that we've had this evening, are designed to warn off the Iranians, we're going to leave but don't follow us then that makes some sense militarily. But if we are going to fight the Iraq order to leave and insist that we stay, then we're setting ourselves up for a larger disaster. As for the active killing Soleimani, I think we can say with some certainty that Iran will respond. Probably not in the way that we would. The Iranians are not like us. They do not emote. You've been listening to people emote about how much they hate Soleimani and blame the failure in Iraq on Soleimani. That's nonsense. We failed in Iraq. The generals and the politicians are responsible for the loss of American life and the squandering of our opportunities in Iraq. Soleimani simply took advantage of it and Iran now controls Iraq. And after this airstrike and killing of Soleimani, we've actually forced them together because the people of Iraq may not like the Iranians, but they don't necessarily want their country turned into a battleground between the United States and Iran. So, I hope we'll just leave. That's the key. If we get out, then we're going to have to watch for what the Iranians are likely to do, and we can talk about that if you like.

Tucker Carlson: My sense, my strong sense is that the president's preference is to leave, that it's always been that he's sincere when he says he doesn't want regime change and he's not trying to start any wars. He understands that those are not in America's interest and they're not in his interest either politically. I'm wondering, though, if the people around him understand that.

Douglas Macgregor: Look. He walked into a room at Mar-a-Lago with Senators Rubio and Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo, National Security Advisor O'Brien, the Secretary of Defense Esper, and I assume Jared Kushner. You're talking about a room full of neo-cons. You're talking about the people that you've been discussing that have been urging war with Iran forever. They seem to have persuaded him that this airstrike made sense and that we should take the opportunity and do it. And publicly he's said that. I think it was probably unnecessary for the reasons that I've already outlined. This is not going to do anything for us strategically. As far as sending the message is concerned, his deputy has already taken over. The deputy has been with him since '97. This is going to stiffen resolve against us, and it's going to make any attempt to reach any arrangement with Iran virtually impossible. So, from that standpoint, I don't think it made a lot of sense. It's not necessarily helping us and what the president says he wants to achieve in the Persian Gulf with Iran.

Tucker Carlson: And quickly and finally, do you think it's likely if the Iraqi parliament issues a demand that Americans leave Iraq tomorrow, that we will?

Douglas MacGregor: Again, I hope so. We have to recognize that Iran is a sovereign state. It has a sovereign government, whether we like it or not. If they tell us to leave, we should get out. Absolutely. No question. And I think President Trump should seize the moment, frankly, and get us out.

Tucker Carlson: I think he'd be relieved to do that. In which case, this would all be, I think, a win for our country. Colonel, thanks so much. Douglas Macgregor, great to see you.

Douglas MacGregor: Thank you.

Tucker Carlson: Johnny Joey Jones is a veteran of the war in Iraq, he lost his legs to an IED there. Soleimani is believed to have masterminded hundreds of IED attacks during the U.S. occupation of this country, so we thought it'd be interesting to speak to Jones. He joins us tonight. Johnny, thanks so much for coming on. You have a very personal connection to this story of course. We just explained it. So, I'm interested in your reaction to what happened yesterday.

Johnny Joey Jones: Well, I think it's impossible to separate the emotional appeal of killing someone who deserved to die and the overall strategic kind of cautionary tale of what are we going to do next? You know, I wrote for FoxNews.com today that the tactical decision to send troops into Iraq that I was a part of, the troop surge got the al-Qaida out of Al Anbar, but would we do next? What was the strategic goal after that? Same thing, I was a part of a troop surge in Afghanistan when I lost my legs. We got the Taliban out of the poppy fields, away from the opium trade, but what did we do the next day? And that was the problem, and I think a lot of this is that politicians that hold each other accountable, they throw each other under the bus. So, when we change presidents, sometimes we change policy for that purpose -- so that we can be a contrast, not necessarily more right or more wrong. And so, it's not so much that I take issue or really have an opinion over killing this guy yesterday. It's what are we doing next? What is the strategy, not the tactical, what did in this one operation, but what's the overall point here?

Tucker Carlson: That, I think, that's always the unasked question. It ought to be the first question posed to our policymakers. What do you think the guys serving there right now are thinking or the ones who are just deployed to Kuwait? What's on their mind now?

Tucker Carlson: They're thinking, let's get some. That's what they're trained to do. That's their job. Their job is to be there, be ready and to not question so much why as to how and when. That's their job. But when they go, and they experience war like I've done twice and they come back and maybe they have an injury, maybe they lost buddies. They get 10 years older, 10 years wiser. They pay attention a little bit more to politics. And they say, "Why was out there? What was I accomplishing, and what was I told? And how much of it was true?" I think President Trump at this very moment is as inclined for military as he is diplomacy. And he's thrown the ball in the court of Iran today with a tweet to say, "Listen, you're not going to win a war, but you might win at the negotiating table," because I think that is his end goal. And he may have made it through advisers or through his own wisdom to the point that he understands maybe that's all Iran will respond to. That's our hope. That's our hope today. Is that Iran responds to military force. We really don't have a playbook to see if they will, and it's quite a risk and a gamble. And it's ultimately the gamble of men and women just like myself.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah, I think that's right, and thanks for reminding us of that. Johnny thanks for coming on tonight.

Johnny Joey Jones: Absolutely.

Tucker Carlson: Absolutely appreciate it.

Johnny Joey Jones: Thank you.

Tucker Carlson: Jim Antle is the editor in chief at the American Conservative. He's thought a lot about the political implications of all this. Jim, thanks so much for coming on tonight.

Jim Antle: Sure.

Tucker Carlson: Where do you think this leaves the president politically?

Jim Antle: Well, a lot of it depends on what's going to happen next. I think President Trump --

Tucker Carlson: That's right.

Jim Antle: -- campaigned on the idea that we were going to shrink our footprint in the Middle East. I think that's what he'd like to do. I think he's trying to balance the fact that he would like to do that with the desire to be tough. The desire to protect American personnel that are still in the region, but he has a lot of advisers who are committed to the things that he ran against. He has a lot of George W. Bush retreads who are giving him advice on what to do with Iraq and with Iran, and the danger is that once you've done some of these things, once you've committed to some of these moves, you're going to draw more troops in rather than drawing down, as I think the president would prefer to do -- that there is no easy exit strategy; that there is no easy way out. So, the hope is that this strike is going to cripple Iran's capacity to be able to threaten our people. We can move on, and if Iraq does, in fact, decide that they don't want us to be there anymore, as was always likely once we put a Shiite government in charge of Iraq, that they were going to be friendlier to Iran than Washington was ever going to prefer, that we use that as a reason to get out, having accomplished everything that we're going to accomplish there. But there's no guarantee that that's going to be the case. And the big risk is that unwittingly, just as Barack Obama thought the Iraq war was a mistake. Donald Trump thought the Iraq war was a mistake, but the people end up doing some of the same mistakes, repeating some of the same mistakes that they campaigned against. What we really want to do is avoid an Iraq-like war with Iran.

Tucker Carlson: One group that absolutely does not think the Iraq war was a mistake are most Republican senators.

Jim Antle: Right.

Tucker Carlson: Who are living in a world that very much resembles 1999, and I'm, and they're part of the reason this happened. They're the group pushing the White House onward toward regime change. I'm wondering how long it will take to get representatives in Washington who represent the views of actual Republican voters. When is that process going to come to fruition? When are we going to get senators who actually agree with Republican voters?

Jim Antle: Right or even military veterans who've served in some of these wars who are now telling pollsters that they think that they were a mistake, that they, you know, they believe that they should not have been waged in the first place so that the people who know this combat situation the best don't think our politicians and our bureaucrats and our generals made the best decisions. And so, we do have this huge lag, especially on the Republican side, when we had a situation where the president called for drawdowns in Afghanistan and Syria, and the vast majority of Republican senators voted to rebuke him. And in the case of Syria, we're talking about a war that Congress never voted to authorize in the first place. Well, here we are in Iraq, and we have most Republican senators saying that they don't want Congress to vote on whether we have further strikes against Iran as a result of yesterday's strikes. I think that's a very big mistake, and in a closely fought election, which we might have this year, and with the types of people who are working to undermine and impeach the president on sort of Cold War 2.0 foreign policy assumptions, Republicans are really behind the times, and they're really allowing Democrats to sort of take away some of the issues that helped Trump win in 2016.

Tucker Carlson: That's right. It's exactly right. I mean, that's the difference in the parties. When Democratic primary voters want something, their party gives it to them. When Republican voters say they want something, their party gives them the finger and ignores them.

Jim Antle: Right.

Tucker Carlson: And that's tells you a lot. Jim Antle, great to see tonight. Thank you for that.

Jim Antle: Thanks for having me.

Tucker Carlson: Well, another war in the Middle East probably would not be in the benefit, to the benefit, of the United States. Instead, it is our real number one foe that would benefit and that is China. What does China think of what's happening between the United States and Iran? That's next.

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Tucker Carlson: We don't know where the situation with Iran is going but we can be certain that if it breaks into a full-blown war a few things will be true. It will likely cost much more than they tell you, possibly hundreds of billions of dollars. At the end America's likely to be weaker than it was in the beginning and we know this for certain, our biggest rival will be stronger. Who's our biggest rival? It's not Iran, despite what they tell you in Washington. It is needless to say, China. Well, we're continuing to squander money and blood in Baghdad and many other capitals in that region. China is growing its economy at home even as it expands its reach throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, even the heartland of the United States. One person who's paying close attention to this, one of the few who cares, is J.D. Vance, the author, of course, of "Hillbilly Elegy" and we're happy to have him on our show tonight. J.D., thanks so much for coming on. I don't think anybody mourns the death of Soleimani in this country anyway, but I wonder what the Chinese think as they watch this.

J.D. Vance: Well, I think one thing they're thinking is that just as the past two American presidencies have been bogged down in the Middle East in various ways this conflict risks escalating in a way that makes America focus on the Middle East for yet another few years, maybe another 10 years even as the Chinese grow in military might and economic power. And we know of course that they're planting various infrastructure and economic institutions all over Africa, all over Asia, that their entire economy is growing and flourishing and yet again we risk focusing on this small region of the world that is obviously important but not nearly as important as our biggest geopolitical rival continuing to gain strength and power.

Tucker Carlson: Well, that's exactly right. And so now especially that this country's energy independent we were promised for decades once we became energy independent we wouldn't have to focus all of our energy in the Middle East. Now we are and yet our energies are still focused there and we're still ignoring China. Why do you think that is?

J.D. Vance: Well, I think for a couple of reasons. One, we have an entire generation of American intellectuals frankly on both the left and the right who grew up thinking that the Middle East was just the most important region of the world. And so, one way of thinking about American policy really for the past 20 years, the George W. Bush administration, of course the Barack Obama administration, is that we had these successive wars. We basically had one new war per term, Iraq, and then -- excuse me, Afghanistan, then Iraq, Lebanon and Syria during the Obama terms and that's obviously terrible and I think you could make a good argument that none of those wars has actually been good for America's national interest but viewed from the Chinese perspective it's kept us constantly bogged down in these regions. Of course, the people who predicted that focusing on these regions would be good for America's national interests are still advising presidents, are still advising presidents, are still advising senators and diplomats, and the few people who recognize that China was a major, major threat are still a little bit on the sidelines of the mainstream foreign policy conversation. I think it's a disaster but if you understand sort of the American foreign policy establishment it's not that -- it's not actually surprising to understand why that's happening.

Tucker Carlson: I mean, just a macro question to end on. Why is it so hard for our elites to police themselves? If someone is consistently wrong about the big things, why is he still in the same job? If we allowed our heart surgeons to keep working with that kind of track record no one would survive surgeries. So, why do we allow our policymakers to be wrong time and again?

J.D. Vance: Well, Tucker, I'll give you a cynical answer and then a less cynical answer. I mean, the less cynical answer is basically that a lot of people just aren't very good and very smart at what they do and honestly I actually hope that's the answer because the more cynical answer is that as our country has successfully bungled or sorry successively bungled middle eastern wars and allowed China to rise, there is of course a group of people who've gotten very wealthy off of China's growing power and that's the financial elites who actually run the country who donate to the think tanks of course that produce the policy papers that so many of our politicians rely on and so I do think that one way of recognizing that there's been a massive failure here is that the people who have not been in service of the American national interests are still collecting a paycheck and the people who have gotten it right are still largely on the fringes and I think that's fundamentally a story of incentives and a story of who donors are benefiting from and who donors are paying to effectively issue what is propaganda.

Tucker Carlson: I don't think that's cynical. I think unfortunately you're exactly right and thank you for saying so so clearly and out loud. J.D. Vance, great to see you tonight.

J.D. Vance: Thanks, Tucker.

Tucker Carlson: Well, an armed civilian appears to have saved dozens of lives last week at a church in Texas. Really it was a wonderful, inspiring story. But on the left, at least an op-ed in U.S.A. Today argues those people shouldn't have been protected. Huh. We’ll tell you what they said and why after the break.

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Tucker Carlson: Like most of his party's leaders, departed presidential candidate Julian Castro believed in taking away your Second Amendment rights. But don't worry, he said good guys with guns were a myth like bigfoot.

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Julian Castro: More guns are not the answer. More guns don't make us safer. This idea that a good guy with a gun is going to stop a bad guy with a gun, it doesn't work that way.

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Tucker Carlson: Yeah, that's not true, actually. And we were reminded of that just last week. An armed civilian halted what could have been a massacre in Texas in a church, likely saving many lives. But over at USA Today on the op-ed page, they were distressed. The op-ed said we should be, and we're quoting now, "Horrified that so many civilians in that church were carrying guns." Dana Loesch, host of The Dana Show. She joins us tonight to assess this. So, Dana, we should be horrified about a scenario that worked as well as it possibly could. An armed civilian stopped a massacre. What's horrifying about that? What's terrifying about that?

Dana Loesch: No, I agree with you, Tucker. And thanks for having me. I find it horrifying that anyone at USA Today would actually find it horrifying to save lives, to defend innocent people, because that's exactly what happened. I was also, and the reason to remind everyone that we have this video to go by, is because sadly, the church was live streaming their service that Sunday morning, as they always do, and it ultimately was captured. But you see in that video, Tucker, there are about five other law-abiding individuals who also draw their weapons, which is probably what would happen at my church. And I'm one of the law-abiding people who carry in my church, and we are encouraged to do so. But five other people also drew their lawfully carried, lawfully owned firearms, and they held. They watched and waited and took in everything that was happening before then, which indicates a level of training and a skillset that shouldn't horrify people. In fact, it should encourage individuals, because we were always told that if there is more than one firearm present in an area such as this, that there's a mass casualty incident or someone armed comes in to do murderous intent, that it would turn into the Wild West. Well, it didn't. It took Jack Harris one shot and six seconds to neutralize this threat. God bless them and God bless Texas.

Tucker Carlson: It's just so interesting that you could look at this scenario and say of people who are literally in church on Sunday, you're the most decent, responsible people in our entire society. That it bothers you that they are exercising their Second Amendment rights. I mean, the contempt for those kind of people just baffles me. Don't you want more people like that?

Dana Loesch: Well, and it's -- yeah. And it's anti-science. You know, when you talk about Castro and Beto O'Rourke and Michael Bloomberg and all of these other individuals that want to circumvent our Second Amendment rights, when they talk about criminal usage, we can't have a conversation about firearms unless we are also including, Tucker, defensive gun usages. These are individuals who are in lawful possession of their firearms. And these numbers – defensive gun usage is, according to the CDC from Barack Obama when he commissioned this in 2013. It has therefore, it's -- I mean, it's been affirmed many times over, as you know, that they vastly outweigh instances of criminal possession. So, why -- my actual fear is that people find this bad, that there are good people out there who take the time to educate themselves, to learn about their firearm and to train, as we saw all those congregants at the church do just a week or so ago with Jack Harris. And then Jack Harris probably trained some of them as well. Now, that's -- people should want to be able, they should be able to defend themselves. And we should encourage and empower people to do so instead of trying to shame them or smear them or malign their character. I find that disturbing.

Tucker Carlson: Meanwhile, they're telling us that we're not allowed to take illegal firearms away from people. Stop and frisk is immoral, but we need to disarm churchgoers? I'm starting to think this isn't really about public safety. Call me cynical.

Dana Loesch: Right, right. No, I agree. And by the way, I said Harris earlier, and I have no idea where that came from, Tucker. I mean, Jack Wilson. But this whole situation with legacy media and many other individuals looking down their noses at good people who want to be able to protect themselves. I mean, for crying out loud, let's look at Maryland, for example. Maryland, back in just a couple of years ago, when they passed their National Firearms Act, I think this is 2013, 2014. It was all with the promise that, look, law enforcement is going to take care of you. The state is going to protect you. You don't need your firearms to protect yourselves. And then look what happened. Baltimore's homicide rate, their violent crime rate spiked by 300 percent. It's insane. People want to be able to defend themselves because they know that the state, even though the state promises them that they're going to do this, they never make good on it. In fact, some of the biggest errors that we have seen with previous mass casualty incidents had been because people in government have dropped the ball.

Tucker Carlson: Of course, of course. Trust us. You'll be fine. Yeah, okay, no thanks. Dana, great to see you tonight. Thanks so much.

Dana Loesch: Good to see you, Tucker. Thank you.

Tucker Carlson: So, it turns out disarming you is just one part of the plan to remake your life. Imagine a place where the streets are lined with syringes and human feces, where the police no longer have power and criminals operate with impunity. Where there are literally more drug addicts living on the streets than there are high school students enrolled. There's no need to imagine a place like that. Unfortunately, it already exists. It's called San Francisco. For a century, San Francisco was the crown jewel of the West Coast, the single prettiest place in America's richest state, our Cape Town. Well, today it's become a kind of hellhole that only left-wing leadership could create. And make no mistake, activists want to make certain that your town becomes San Francisco. So, on Monday, this coming at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, we're debuting an exclusive five-part investigation into what exactly has happened to San Francisco, into its collapse. We sent a crew out there for a week. The footage and interviews, they came on with our shocking. Here's a preview. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Female Speaker: It's like a minefield because you never know what's coming around the corner.

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Tucker Carlson: "American Dystopia" debuts Monday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern and continues all week. It's important, don't miss it. Well, up next, the Trump administration has allowed individual states to opt out of refugee resettlement, but it turns out virtually every Republican governor is asking for more refugee resettlement. Why is that? We've investigated. Plus, Boeing's outgoing CEO put his company into dire straits. In return, he could be getting 50 million dollars. What does that tell you about the way businesses are run in the modern American economy? We'll tell you just ahead.

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Tucker Carlson: Well, if you can remember that far back during President Barack Obama's second term, Republican leaders in the Congress made a big show of opposing the Obama administration's refugee policy. Obama wanted to settle tens of thousands of refugees who had fled Syria's civil war in the United States and at the time 25 Republican governors demanded the right to keep them out. Now, the left accused them of racism, of course, but there were good reasons to take the position they did. For example, properly vetting refugees is really hard. Often, it's impossible. Some of the refugees they pointed out might not even be Syrian. That was true for sure in Europe with the refugees. Some of them might be Islamic extremists. But terrorism was not the only worry they had. America's middle class is in decline. We already have more than 20 million illegal immigrants living here. The last thing many struggling communities need is more low-skilled migrants who may be great people but need a lot, stress the schools and the social programs, while not fully integrating. That's just true. And anyone who lives in a community where it's happened will tell you that it's true. As with illegal immigration the long-term agenda of refugee resettlement is to bring in future democratic voters obviously. So, before she became the most anti-American member of Congress, Ilhan Omar was a refugee. So, at the time the Republican governors got their wish and President Trump won the 2016 election. In 2019 he issued an executive order allowing cities and states to opt out of refugee resettlement. That's the last time we checked in on this story. Here's the amazing part. For some reason no Republican governors are taking advantage of that. Instead, you probably didn't read this in the New York Times but 18 Republican governors have explicitly requested that more refugees be sent to their states. Have their voters demanded this? No. So what's going on here? Ned Ryun is the founder of American Majority and author of "Restoring our Republic." He joins us tonight. So, Ned, I don't think there's any evidence that Republican voters in the states have been begging their Republican governors to move more refugees in. So, why are these governors literally asking the federal government to do this?

Ned Ryun: This is unreal, Tucker. I mean, again, you pointed out that Trump gave him a strong backstop back in September and said you can opt out of this with his executive order and now you have these 18 Republican governors saying no, we want more. And they're saying well, we're following our hearts. This is, you know, Christian charity in action. I got to say this, Tucker, as a active devout evangelical Christian, refugee resettlement has nothing to do with Christianity and has everything to do with the immoral behavior of these governors and quite frankly a perverse incentive for these government-funded charities that are acting as refugee contractors grifting off the American taxpayer. Michelle Malkin has written about some of this but the U.S. State Department is paying these refugee contractors over $2,100 per refugee of which they get to keep 45 percent and then they're doing this campaign on these governors saying you have to put your Christian charity into action and in an act of cowardice most of these governors from red states are giving in to this. First of all, --

Tucker Carlson: Wait. May I ask a question?

Ned Ryun: I can't believe the perverse incentive.

Tucker Carlson: I don't understand how this works. Well, so people who hate Christianity are demanding that in the name of Christianity Christian governors admit refugees, but the governors aren't actually housing any of the refugees in their own homes or paying any of their own money so how is it Christian virtue to take in other people's money by force and give it away?

Ned Ryun: It's fraudulent.

Tucker Carlson: I don't remember that part of the gospel.

Ned Ryun: I don't either and Christianity to me is obviously living and preaching the gospel of Christ and living a moral life. I find this deeply immoral and I can assure you they're not preaching the gospel of Christ. It's fraudulent behavior, Tucker, using taxpayer dollars.

Tucker Carlson: Yes.

Ned Ryun: To actually fund this. But the amazing part to me is the immoral behavior of these governors. They have one moral imperative. Their moral imperative is to advance the interest of the citizens of their state to do otherwise is to be immoral.

Tucker Carlson: Exactly.

Ned Ryun: We have entrusted them with political power and our monies to promote our interests, not the interests of non-citizens. I have to tell you, Tucker, this is idiotic on so many different levels, but this is how red states become blue and how America ceases to be America. You can't continue this behavior. At some point there are consequences. These are red state republican governors doing this and Trump is doing all the right things and they're abandoning him on this.

Tucker Carlson: Yes. I really wish we had run their names on the screen. I'm sorry we didn't. I hope you come back. I think we should keep hitting this topic.

Ned Ryun: Absolutely.

Tucker Carlson: Because it's important. Ned Ryun, great to see you.

Ned Ryun: You bet, Tucker.

Tucker Carlson: Thank you. For more than 100 years the Boeing company has led international aviation. To this day it's measured by dollar amounts. Boeing remains America's single largest foreign exporter. But now like so many American institutions, Boeing is in trouble. Last year the company's latest generation of 737 airplanes was grounded worldwide following several horrifying crashes. There's still no sign the planes will be allowed back in the air anytime soon. Production is being suspended. In business terms, this is a disaster, both for the company and for the airlines. How did it happen? Well, at least part of the responsibility lies with CEO Dennis Muilenburg who has been in charge at Boeing since 2015. Fittingly, Muilenburg is now being fired, which on the face of it sounds like good news. Someone in corporate America is finally being held accountable for screwing up. But before you celebrate, wait for the fine print. According to recent SEC filings, Muilenburg is walking away with more than $26 million in cash and stock, $26 million. That's his punishment. And by the way, that figure could more than double to over $50 million depending upon the final terms of the settlement. Here's some context for how much money that is. A rank and file employee at Boeing might make $60,000 a year. That's a decent salary in many places. It would take a worker more than 400 years to earn as much as the supposedly disgraced Dennis Muilenburg is getting in his severance package. In other words, for his work presiding over deadly airplane crashes, Muilenburg is walking off with enough money to pay the median income for 420 American households. And if that sounds perverse to you, keep in mind it's no longer unusual. Since 1978 CEO salaries in America's largest corporations have risen by a factor of more than 10. Meanwhile, and this is the critical point, average workers have seen their wages stagnate -- in some cases decline. In 1965, CEOs in this country earned 20 times as much as regular employees. As recently as 1989, they out earned employees just 58 to one. Today, that ratio has risen to 278 to 1. No wonder people are sending money to Bernie Sanders. That's what happens when you abuse the system. You discredit capitalism, and big business has in many cases done exactly that. Now, keep in mind, this isn't happening everywhere on the globe. In Europe, for example, the disparities are much less stark. Airbus CEO Tom Enders made 10 million dollars in 2017. That's a lot, but it was half as much as Boeing's Dennis Muilenburg made, and Airbus planes didn't even crash. This is an ugly trend, but it's actually worse than that. It’s dangerous for our country. Why? Well, because when normal people see their lives getting worse while failures like Dennis Muilenburg get rich beyond description, many, not surprisingly, conclude that our system is rotten and not worth keeping, and the polls show that's happening right now. Attitudes are changing fast. Thanks to stories like this one, Americans are warming shockingly to socialism. Six months from now, a socialist could be the Democratic nominee for president. In a few years, this could easily be a socialist country. What would that look like? Well, of course it would be a disaster. Socialism doesn't work. It never has worked, especially not in sprawling, diverse countries like this one. Under a socialist regime, hundreds of millions of Americans would see their lives get dramatically worse, while demagogic morons like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would become vastly more powerful. That's socialism. You think America is stratified and unequal now? Wait till we get a socialist system. It will be so much worse. That's coming, by the way and at high speed. Why? Because mindless Chamber of Commerce libertarianism has allowed greed and stupidity to flourish in corporate boardrooms and unless we rein that immediately, right now, we're going to lose the system that made this country great. As of tonight, America is sending thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, but the Iraqi government may soon say that they are not welcome there. So, what will happen next? We'll tell you as our coverage of the Iran crisis continues.

[commercial break]

Tucker Carlson: Thousands of American troops are headed to the Middle East tonight after Iran's promise to retaliate for the death of General Soleimani. But thousands of U.S. forces already deployed in Iraq may soon be ordered out of the country. A lot going on tonight. Foreign affairs correspondent Benjamin Hall is in Jordan for us tonight. He joins us with more. Benjamin?

Benjamin Hall: Yes. Good evening, Tucker. As you point out, the whole region has been on high alert all day, waiting for some kind of retaliation from Iran. But actually, what we heard reports of in the last couple of hours are possible strikes by the U.S. These are unconfirmed, we've heard conflicting reports. But there are suggestions that two cars were hit just north of Baghdad a few hours ago and that they contained more Iranian-backed Shia militias, including a key finance facilitated close to Qasem Soleimani. But of course, it is Qasem Soleimani that everybody is talking about. The head of the Al Quds Force, some people say the second most powerful man in Iran and the man responsible for so many hundreds of U.S. deaths. He was killed leaving Baghdad Airport early this morning, having flown in from Lebanon. A U.S. Reaper drone was waiting to take him out. And alongside him, the man who was in charge of the storming of the U.S. embassy. Five others also killed there. People are saying now that this strike may really severely strain U.S.-Iraqi relations. And in fact, the Iraqi prime minister spoke out earlier today and didn't mince his words. He said he condemned the targeting killing as a violation of the terms which underpin the U.S. troop presence in this country. And he went on to say that he has submitted a formal request for parliament to convene in order to adopt necessary measures to protect Iraq's dignity and sovereignty. He didn't say what those measures would be. But while some people are suggesting they might ask U.S. troops to leave the country, the U.S. is, in fact, sending more troops over. 4,000 to come into the region. They're coming from the Eighty Second Airborne. They're heading to Kuwait. 750 have already come into Baghdad to protect the embassy there. So, somewhat conflicting ideas at the moment. President Trump saying that he does not want war, that they killed Qasem Soleimani to avoid bloodshed because he was planning more attacks on Americans. But at the moment, suddenly heightened, heightened tensions here. Tucker?

Tucker Carlson: Sounds that way. Benjamin Hall. We're out of time tonight. We'll be back Monday. Have the best weekend.

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