Tucker: Biden is losing the ability to regulate his emotions

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Tucker: Biden is losing the ability to regulate his emotions

Fox News host reacts to Biden going off script to criticize Putin on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 28, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

Joe Biden announced he was running for President again in April of 2019. It was Biden's third or fourth attempt at the office, depending how you count. So, at that moment, most Americans thought they knew who Joe Biden was. After 50 years in office, they were familiar with his face, but it turns out they weren't familiar with his new face.

Two months later, Biden appeared on stage in Miami for the first Democratic primary debate and he was hard to recognize even for people who had known him. Extensive plastic surgery made him look like a different person, but most jarring was the fact that he did not sound like the old Joe Biden.

You probably remembered Biden as blustery and jovial, Irish charm by the bucket load. He was famous for that. And yet, on stage, Biden came off as remote and muted.

He seemed to be at times afraid to speak for fear of tripping over words or forgetting them. Several times, the camera caught him just staring out into the distance. He was apparently absorbed in memory.

When Biden did manage to focus his attention, he seemed highly annoyed. Whatever the cause, Democratic primary voters were not impressed by his performance. Joe Biden's numbers dropped 10 points overnight.

Now, the Biden campaign has never explained what exactly happened to Joe Biden that night in Miami, but whatever it was, it never got fixed. It continues. From that day until now, probably the most authentic feature of Joe Biden's public performances has been his anger. It seems to come over him in waves. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), THEN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Focus on this man (Trump) and what he's doing, that no President has ever done -- no President.

No, I haven't taken the test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man. That's like saying, you know, before you got in this program, you take a test where you're taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?

I'm not out of time. He spoke overtime and I'm going to talk.

Here's the deal. Here's the deal. The fact of the matter is, look at what's happening here.

Well, that's not true. You're saying things you do not know what you're talking about. No one said that. Who said that? Who said that?

You said I set up my son to work in an auto company. Isn't that what you said? Get your words straight, Jack.

PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterms?

BIDEN: That's a great asset. More inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So you know exactly what that is. You've seen it in people around you, people you love. It has nothing to do with politics. What you just saw is a man who is losing the ability to regulate his emotions. Uncontrollable flashes of anger are common among people who are aging, particularly among men, and they often accompany senility. Losing it is a very frustrating experience and your heart goes out to anyone who is.

We have deep sympathy for anyone in that position, including Joe Biden, but Biden is the President of the United States, and this is the single most volatile moment in the recent history of our country. Biden is leading the U.S. toward war and so it's fair to assess the effect on the rest of us of his mental and emotional conditions, not simply about age, Biden is 79.

Biden is clearly unable to speak with precision and when you're President of the United States and the world hangs on your every word, when your words constitute American policy, when you can change American policy, particularly America's foreign policy, simply by saying so, it is essential that you speak the words you intend to speak, that you not get carried away because you're mad and say something you don't mean that might threaten the long-term interests of this country, threaten the families and the children of the rest of us and our future, but he is. That's exactly what he's doing.

That's not a partisan attack. It's true.

If you doubt that it's true, watch his performance just over the past week. On Thursday, for example, Joe Biden was asked how the United States would respond if the Russian government used chemical weapons in Ukraine. Now, that's a hypothetical question. Presidents at the podium often get those. Presidents rarely respond to hypothetical questions for a very simple reason. They don't know the circumstances ahead of time, so there's no reason to risk American prestige or to terrify the rest of the world by saying the wrong thing. So, they don't.

Biden had no obligation to answer that question. Very few Presidents would have answered it, but Biden did answer it and here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: And to clarify on chemical weapons: If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO?

BIDEN: It would trigger a response in kind; whether or not you're asking whether NATO would cross, we'd make that decision at the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So he's closing his eyes trying to remember what the cue card says. What's our policy? And when he comes out with is, if Russia uses chemical weapons, the U.S. will respond in kind. If Russia uses new chemical weapons, the United States will use chemical weapons.

So, no American President has said anything like that in your lifetime. You grew up assuming the United States would never use chemical weapons because the United States is not a rogue state. In fact, our role globally is to suppress rogue states. They tell us that's what we're doing right now and yet in a flash of pique, because he couldn't remember the correct words, Joe Biden, the President of the United States, reversed a hundred years of American security policy in the middle of a war.

This did not escape the attention of his own National Security adviser, who instantly responded by restoring the status quo or attempting to, quote: "The United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances," said Jake Sullivan, flatly contradicting his boss. No one who works for the President wants to do that, but Jake Sullivan had no choice.

He works for a man who cannot even pronounce his own Vice President's name consistently and yet is in charge of the United States at the most delicate moment in our lifetimes, but Biden didn't slow down. He kept going.

The next day, his advisers allowed him to fly to Poland to quote, "rally the international community in support of Ukraine," and while in Poland, Biden met with soldiers from the 82nd airborne. They're currently stationed there. As cameras rolled, Joe Biden informed these soldiers that they would soon be sent to Ukraine.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: The average citizen, look at how they are stepping up, look at how they're stepping up, and you're going to see when you're there -- and some of you have been there, you're going to see, you're going to see women, young people stand in the middle in front of a dammed tank saying, "I'm not leaving. I'm holding my ground."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So the previous President was often criticized, sometimes with justification, for not using words precisely. You're the President, you can't just tweet out anything. That's the case you heard for four years and again, it was often rooted in truth, but the last President never said anything that even approaches the crazed recklessness of what you just heard.

"You're going to see when you're there." Where? In Ukraine. So, the 82nd Airborne apparently is going to Ukraine. Their Commander-in-Chief, just told them that. Of course, they had no idea. Neither did their families. Neither did anyone in the United States until Joe Biden said it live on Friday. The White House didn't even know.

FOX News reached out to Biden's spokesman after those remarks and no one there, no one in the White House, seemed aware that those remarks have been caught on tape.

So, how to explain this abrupt change in American foreign policy? Quote: "The President has been clear we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, and there is no change in that position." End quote.

So, for the second time in three days, the administration has to flatly contradict the Commander-in-Chief and not on a minor question. These are often written off as a gaffe. No, a gaffe is when you mispronounce somebody's name. Telling troops they're going to be sent to Ukraine, pledging the United States is going to use chemical weapons -- these are not gaffes. These are something else. They're dangerous, that's for sure.

So, the best the White House can do is telling us, "Well, the President, by saying he's sending American troops to Ukraine, is reaffirming our policy of not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine." Thanks for the clarification. What else could they say? And it got even weirder from there.

On Saturday, once again completely out of nowhere, with no warning whatsoever and apparently no forethought, Joe Biden called for regime change in Russia. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase the people's love for liberty. Brutality will never grind down the road to be free.

For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Doing his Churchill routine, fine. When things aren't going well at home, all Presidents seek solace abroad, where they're taken much more seriously than they are by their own voters, but he couldn't stop himself. "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Joe Biden said of Vladimir Putin.

Now, set aside how you feel about Putin. You probably don't like him and for good reason. Our policy, according to the President of the United States, is to take Putin out, to remove him as head of state.

To be clear, regime change in Russia has never been American policy, and this is hardly the first time we have tangled with Russia. We've had far more threatening circumstances than this one.

The United States, you'll recall, waged a proxy war against the Russian government for 11 years in Vietnam. Nearly 60,000 Americans died in that war, and yet no American President mentioned regime change at the Kremlin. Why? Because they were soft on the Russians? No, because Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons.

So, let's say we eliminated the Russian head of state and of course, that country's central government. What would happen to those weapons? Well, let's see. In Iraq, Saddam's weapons stockpiles, all conventional, wound up in the hands of militia that used them to kill Americans. So, Russia has a large and restive population of Islamic extremists. Do we think it's possible that with no one running the country, because of course, we have no chosen successor to Putin, is it possible, if we did that, that one of those 6,000 nuclear weapons might wind up in the hands of some anti- American terror group and be used against our civilian population here? A nuclear weapon.

Well, that's not just possible, it's likely and that's if we were to succeed in killing Putin. What if we don't kill Putin as apparently is now our policy? The President of the United States just informed the Russian government that he seeks its overthrow. So, you have to ask yourself: Does hearing that make Vladimir Putin more or less likely to use a nuclear weapon against the United States and Western Europe? Hmm. How do trapped animals behave? Well, they lash out with fangs and claws. Desperate people are dangerous people, of course.

So it would be in the interest of the United States, and that's the only interest that matters from our perspective, to cool the rhetoric a little bit. Or when you employ overheated rhetoric, to do it for a reason, in the service of a clearly articulated goal that helps the United States and not just because you're old and pissed, which is exactly what you just saw -- a guy who just lost control of what he was saying because he was too mad.

It's all pretty obvious. No one in Washington has spent 30 seconds thinking about what would happen if we knocked off Putin or if we talk about knocking off Putin. In fact, our foreign policy establishment spent the weekend congratulating Joe Biden on saying the wrong thing. They compared him to Ronald Reagan.

Washington loves regime change. It's what comes after regime change they'd rather not consider and have no track record of pulling off, but for now, they were thrilled.

Bill Kristol compared Biden's threat to Reagan telling Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" because everything in D.C. is cliche based. Rick Wilson agreed, quote: "Biden did 'tear down this wall' for our era." Again, the cliches. Dumb people speak and think in cliches because they have no other terms at hand.

Former White House correspondent CBS News Mark Knoller said Biden was even better than Ronald Reagan, quote "Tops Reagan's 1987 'tear down this wall' speech." Okay.

To its credit, for once, the White House did not run toward the applause they're apparently still un-adultered to working there and they immediately tried to tell us that Biden hadn't actually meant what he told us on camera. He didn't really mean it. Any statement that begins this way is a lie. "The President's point ." Okay, we can discern his point, he said it, "The President's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia or regime change." Right.

Well, that's of course, not true, but at least it's reassuring to know our policy remains the same. Neocons in D.C., of course, were highly distressed. C.I.A. operative Rodney Faraon, for example, wrote, quote: "This would have been Biden's 'tear down this wall' moment, but for White House staffers watering down his meaning afterward."

A few hours ago, Biden once again stepped in front of the microphone and reaffirmed that the words that had accidentally slipped out of his mouth over the weekend because he was mad and he has no self-control are actually officially U.S. policy.

Here is Joe Biden.

KELLY O'DONNELL, NBC NEWS REPORTER: Do you believe what you said, that Putin can't remain in power? Or do you now regret saying that because your government has been trying to walk that back? Did your words complicate matters?

BIDEN: Well, yes. Three different questions. I'll answer them all. Number one, I'm not walking anything back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I'm not walking anything back." So, regime change in Russia is now our policy. That's what the President of the United States just told us, and as he did, he rebuked the people who worked for him, which is fine with us. They spent all week correcting statements that he makes up on the fly and hasn't thought through in any way, purely reactive.

Hey, Joe Biden, what would be the long-term effect in the United States of what you're doing? No idea. Don't have to think about the future now, when everything is suddenly at stake. There's never been recklessness at this level in the White House and yes, that includes the last President who was often attacked for being reckless. Nothing he said compares to this.

FOX's Peter Doocy asked for clarification and in response, Joe Biden revealed that he is completely unaware that his staff has been continuously updating American policy all week as he changes it on the fly. Watch Joe Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Are you worried that other leaders in the world are going to start to doubt that America is back if some of these big things that you say on the world stage keep getting walked back?

BIDEN: What's getting walked back?

DOOCY: It made it sound like, just in the last couple of days, it sounded like you told U.S. troops they were going to Ukraine. It sounded like you said it was possible the U.S. would use a chemical weapon and it sounded like you were calling for regime change in Russia and we know --

BIDEN: None of the three occurred.

DOOCY: None of the three occurred?

BIDEN: None of the three.

DOOCY: Mr. President?

BIDEN: You interpret the language that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: What's getting walked back? To be clear, he's not fit to lead, particularly right now. Bernie Sanders scared the hell out of the banks. Democratic Party short-circuited his campaign and installed Joe Biden. Biden seemed kind of passive for a lot of voters. That was a welcome respite from the last President, who seemed kind of loud.

That's what actually happened. No one anticipated at that moment that we would be on the cusp of a war with a nuclear armed power in less than two years, but that's exactly where we are now and under those circumstances, to have someone who has literally no idea what's going on, he doesn't even know that he's changing longstanding policies that adults have thought through when he does it, is it scary to describe that? No, it's worse.

So, Biden just said everything that he has said for the last week is true and none of it has been corrected by people who work for him. The truth is, Joe Biden has no idea. Joe Biden has no idea what his publicists say when he goes to sleep, that midway through his answer, Biden starts walking back his own comments. He does that just minutes after saying he would never walk back his own comments. "None of that occurred," Biden said.

Look, it feels almost like we're being mean to the guy by quoting him, and no one wants that. No one is making fun of his age or his diminished condition, only trying to defend the country. Then moments later, Biden declared that no reasonable person would think he wants regime change in Russia.

Watch this if you can stand it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Because it's ridiculous. Nobody believes we're going to take down - - I was going -- I was talking about taking down Putin. Nobody believes that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: All right. Joke's over, too much is at stake. If there was ever a time, if there was, in U.S. history, ever a time, to invoke the 25th Amendment, it is now.

As Joe Biden himself put it, "For God's sakes, this man cannot remain in power," for all of our sakes.

Tulsi Gabbard is a former Member of Congress who has been following this topic very closely, taking a lot of heat for it, but telling the truth regardless. Congresswoman, thanks so much for coming on tonight.

TULSI GABBARD, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So, you know, it's not even a personal attack on Biden, and I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone in his present condition. But the United States, the future of the country hangs in the balance. And I don't understand how the Democratic Party can continue to support someone who is completely out of control.

GABBARD: I think what we're seeing here, Tucker is you're focusing on his comments about regime changes, it was not a gaffe at all, President Biden just said out loud what the aims and objectives of his administration's policies are, which is regime change in Russia, to get Putin out of power.

And, you know, they are doing so through using the primary weapons of economic warfare, they're doing so by waging this modern day siege against Russia, you know, isolating, containing, destroying their economy, starving the Russian people in the hopes that the Russian people or the military will rise up and revolt and overthrow their government and get rid of Putin.

And the reason why they're lying about this to the American people, Tucker, is they know that we are sick and tired of our country waging regime change wars. We remember how costly and devastating these wars in Iraq and Libya and Syria and others have been, and we rejected them wholeheartedly.

So if they were to come out and tell the truth, their polls would tank even more than they already are and their politics would suffer. And that is where we have to --

CARLSON: So may I ask you --

GABBARD: Yes, go ahead.

CARLSON: I believe you completely, that, clearly they want that. But what comes after? Killing people is relatively easy, building things is really hard. So this is a real country with 140 million people living in it, huge energy reserves. Putin goes -- then what? Have they thought that through?

GABBARD: I mean, the answer to that is clearly no, and this just my opinion. We have history to look forward to the answer to this question and every one of these regime change wars, we've seen how the answer to the question: What happens next? Who takes charge after you topple that dictator? What weapons will they have under their control?

They never have an answer to that question and what we're seeing play out before us is following that exact same track record only more dangerously so because the American people are smart enough to know that a regime change war against a nuclear armed Russia is very different from any other that's been waged before and will result in disastrous consequences that go beyond anything we could even imagine.

CARLSON: Yes, thank you. I mean, these people couldn't keep track of their own dangerous biological agents they are funding in Ukraine, they have no idea where they are, obviously, they're going to keep track of 6,000 nuclear weapons? I don't think so.

So you are saying things that almost nobody else in the public sphere is saying? You've said recently that Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has been suppressing your message. Here is the clip of you explaining.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GABBARD: When people try to type my name into the search box on Instagram or the Discover box, my account does not show up. I'm also getting a lot of reports from people who are trying to add me at my name, @Tulsi Gabbard, or mention me in their Instagram stories or posts, and they're getting a warning that says this account has posted false information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So we're fighting for freedom in Ukraine, but we can't speak freely in this country. That's kind of the conclusion I'm coming to.

GABBARD: Yes, pretty much that's the conclusion is, you know, Big Tech is acting as this dictatorship telling the telling us what we're allowed to say, what we're not allowed to say, you know, that thing that they're saying I am spreading misinformation. Once again, there's no evidence, there's no examples. There's no notice from them saying: Hey, this is what you're saying that's false.

CARLSON: Right.

GABBARD: Absolutely. None of that. So it comes down to, if they don't like what you're saying, if you're shining a light on the truth, then you're going to be shut down or silenced.

CARLSON: Yes, well, I'd like to have some freedom here. I think that would be our first concern.

GABBARD: I agree.

CARLSON: Tulsi Gabbard, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.

GABBARD: Thank you, you too.

CARLSON: So if you've tried to fly like taking your kids on spring break, for example, you may have noticed that air travel is a mess, much more chaotic than it's ever been. Why is this exactly? What is going on? We have a report that explains it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So if you're going to have a country the size of a continent, and we do, thank heaven, you need consistent and reliable air travel. It's not a luxury, it is a necessity. The economy depends on it. And yet under this administration, the network, the very delicate and functional network of air travel that we built up over nearly a hundred years is falling apart.

SkyWest Airlines is the biggest regional airline in the country. They've just announced they have a major pilot shortage. They are planning to drop service in 29 different cities. Southwest also just announced, slashing flights in April and May because of staffing problems. It's not just staffing that is the cause, the vax mandates didn't help at all. This is all about to get much worse.

According to an aviation consulting firm, we are going to be short 20,000 pilots by the end of this year; within just six years, we will be short more than 60,000 pilots. So we have a Transportation Department that works pretty much full time on eliminating racist roads and other equity agenda items. Mayor Pete of course runs it.

Are they doing anything about this problem?

Jason Rantz is a radio show host. He joins us tonight with the report. Hey, Jason.

JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RADIO SHOW HOST: Hey, Tucker. Yes, you're right. The airline industry is crumbling, and Pete Buttigieg is lecturing us about racist highways, which kind of makes sense if you're a Green New Deal evangelist who doesn't actually want us flying much, which is exactly what he is getting.

Tens of thousands of flights are being canceled, thousands a week are being delayed making travel extremely difficult, especially in some of the smaller cities that you would think Pete Buttigieg might pay attention to. Good luck flying from North Texas to Louisville on Southwest Airlines. Some day flights were just cut. American Airlines slashed about seven percent of its schedule this month. Alaska Allegiant five percent.

United for the year is gutting some 20,000 flights largely due to a staffing shortage from the COVID vaccine mandates. Certainly one that was made worse as a result. Airlines were downplaying all those terminations. Liberal reporters, frankly supported the mandate, so they never did much digging.

But as of January, there were 31,000 fewer fulltime airline workers than before COVID, and while we were told pretty much everyone was complying, it turns out a lot of people were also quitting or retiring early.

It's gotten so bad that JetBlue is basically begging flight attendants to take on some open shifts. Alaska Airlines is paying double to take on extra work, but it was the number of retiring pilots that is the most alarming. Obviously no flights means -- no pilots means no flights. Alaska cut flight from Portland to Denver, United cut from Dulles to pretty much a bunch of destinations and what you mentioned with Sky West, they're looking to cut federally subsidized routes that connect small cities to larger hubs, so folks can actually get places, they're not profitable, because the customer base is too small, so the Department of Transportation subsidize it.

But what we're seeing are serious service impacts and threats of losing flights to cities like Pueblo, Colorado; Mason City, Iowa. Under Buttigieg, all the DoT has done so far was basically tell SkyWest, hey, you can't ditch these routes until the DoT finds another carrier to pick up these flights.

However, SkyWest only wants out because of the same pilot shortages that the other carriers are having. Airlines right now are desperate for pilots. They're kind of going into a hiring and training spree for pilots and for some others. They are paying more, they're lowering some education requirements. The regional carrier, Breeze Airways, they're using the E3 visa program to hire pilots from Australia, and obviously this is expensive and it is happening at a time where we're seeing a price surge for gas.

CARLSON: It's unbelievable. So if vax mandates did this the airlines, let's see you apply them to the Navy SEALs on the eve of a war. I wonder what would happen to your military.

Jason Rantz, appreciate it. Thanks so much.

RANTZ: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So ratings for the Oscars just decline every year because, watching insipid self-involved people talk about themselves is not that interesting. So this year, they had a brand new idea. Let's do something so degraded and violent onstage that everyone will talk about us. We're going to talk about them, too. Piers Morgan joins us to dissect it. He is also here to tell us about his brand new show, which we're excited about. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So it turns out watching airheads talk about themselves is not that interesting, so maybe not surprisingly, ratings for the Academy Awards have plummeted in recent years. Last year, the Oscars had their lowest ratings ever. So how do you get people to watch the Oscars more?

We're not in programming and we don't know, but last night this happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS ROCK, COMEDIAN: Jada, I love you. G.I. Jane 2, can't wait to see it. That was a nice one. Okay. I am out here. Uh-oh.

Oh. Wow. Wow. Will Smith just smacked the [bleep] out of me.

WILL SMITH, ACTOR: Keep my wife's name out of your [bleep] mouth.

ROCK: Wow, dude.

SMITH: Yes.

ROCK: It was a G.I. Jane joke.

SMITH: Keep my wife's name out of your [bleep] mouth.

ROCK: I am going to, okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well, it's a healthy country. Those are our cultural leaders. A few minutes after slapping the host on stage, the guy who slapped him got an award. He was not expelled. Of course, he explained in his acceptance speech, he just wants to be a vessel for love.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: Now I know, to do what we do, you've got to be able to take abuse, you got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you've got to be able to have people disrespecting you. I want to be a vessel for love.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wait a second. He slapped the other guy and starts screaming, but he's crying? Hmm. Why is it always the people who punch you in the face who tell you to stop hitting them? Kind of weird.

Piers Morgan is the host of the upcoming "Piers Morgan: Uncensored" on FOX Nation. We know we'll be uncensored, our friend. We're happy to have him join us tonight.

Piers, thanks so much for coming on. So let me just -- let me just give you -- I'm going to let you talk. I'm not going to get in your way. But let me just say, these are actors. I know a lot of actors they -- you know, good qualities, bad qualities, but not a single authentic public utterance or action ever because they're actors.

So like, I don't believe any of this. I'm just saying that. What do you think?

PIERS MORGAN, HOST OF UPCOMING FOX NATION SHOW: I think it was real and I think -- because I think it was real, it was actually one of the most entertaining moments in Oscars history. It may have saved the Oscars. Because let's be honest, normally this unbearable, sycophantic snooze fest of back slappers all telling each other how wonderful they are. I expected last night to turn into a series of ever more unctuous virtue signaling speeches about Ukraine.

But instead, we got a real life personal war erupt on stage between two bona fide A superstars, and it was absolutely riveting. I was like half asleep in my hotel room, and suddenly I was like, whoa, what the hell' is going on here? And at the heart of it, like all wars, it began with probably just a terrible misunderstanding.

Chris Rock, from what I gather, had no idea that Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith's wife suffers from this medical condition called alopecia that caused her to lose her hair, and made her shave all her hair off last summer. Had he known that, I don't think he would have done the pretty lame joke.

Will Smith, I think, thought that Chris Rock did know that his wife had the condition and was deliberately mocking it, and at that moment, as he said in his statement tonight of apology to Chris Rock and everybody else, he said: Look, I just lost it in the emotional moment of thinking this guy was mocking my wife's illness.

I can kind of sympathize with both guys. But I don't agree with you, Tucker. I don't think it was a fake. I don't think these guys were acting. I think it was the real deal. And at such, a unique moment of Oscars history.

CARLSON: Well, I'm all for authenticity. I'm against that kind of authenticity. But I mean, I like authentic things, of course. But Will Smith, I don't know anything about this, but I read about it today, he has just done a bunch of interviews talking about infidelity -- his, his wife's -- talking about stuff like no normal person would ever talk about in public, so he's willing to do that but someone makes a hair joke and he loses control?

MORGAN: You know, it's funny, I interviewed Jada Pinkett Smith a few years ago at CNN and Will Smith actually turned up unexpectedly and he sat in the corner watching. But before the interview started, he came up to me and he said, I don't know him. I never met him before, and he said, "Mr. Morgan, don't upset my wife. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

And I thought of that last night because he is right. Nobody would like him when he's that angry. So there's clearly another side to this guy. He is clearly a very emotional, possibly at the moment he looked quite disturbed. I don't know what's going on in his life, but he certainly came out of nowhere and I've been following before that, the Oscars last night, was following his normal unbearable route.

I thought that the absolute epicenter of woke hypocrisy, was watching one of the hosts Regina Hall, who was actually lusting after male stars on stage and then began to physically grope them.

And all I can think of, can you imagine if a male star had pulled up four female actresses and began to pull them on stage, that guy would have been destroyed and canceled in about five seconds.

So there was already a night of unparalleled hypocrisy going down. But in an odd way, there was nothing hypocritical about what we saw with Will Smith. It was a genuine act of take the blinkers off. This is what I really think about this guy, and I'm going to go smack him one, then, you know, I don't know, there might be guys watching this, Tucker, tonight. I wonder if your own wife was suffering from a medical condition like this and have been through a pretty traumatic time, can we hand on heart say if she was being apparently mocked about it in front of a billion people would we not have reacted emotionally and perhaps in a hothead way?

I can't guarantee I wouldn't have done so. I give him a slight pass for that. But I do think that when you look at it in totality, it was an extraordinary moment, probably the most extraordinary moment in the history of the Academy Awards, and quite where it leaves everybody in Hollywood with their constant moralizing is only you and I is to guess.

CARLSON: Well, that is a different way. I mean, they've set the bar pretty high. There's going to have to be a murder on stage next year to keep those numbers up.

MORGAN: We've got to be honest, we're all going to be watching it.

CARLSON: So you've got a new show. I would watch that. "Piers Morgan: Uncensored" premieres on FOX nation, April 25th. We are charter subscribers to this, Piers Morgan. Thank you.

MORGAN: Thanks, Tucker. All the best.

CARLSON: Great to see you. April 25th.

So the U.S. dollar has been the world's reserve currency for the lifetime of everybody watching and that is the key to our wealth. How do you stop making things, but stay rich? Well, you control the world's reserve currency. That could be ending very soon, thanks in part, to the way the Biden administration has handled the invasion of Ukraine. That's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Zac Kriegman spent six years working as a machine learning expert and data specialist at Thomson Reuters. Then last summer he was fired over an e-mail and denounced as a racist by his own colleagues.

He's not a racist. So why did they call him that?

Well, Kriegman pointed out that Reuters was lying. Reuters was manipulating data to support false claims by the Black Lives Matter movement. He couldn't buy the lying and they destroyed him for it.

We talked to Zac Kriegman for brand new episode of "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZAC KRIEGMAN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF DATA SCIENCE, THOMSON REUTERS: It noticed that after George Floyd's death, there was a sort of new racial orthodoxy spreading throughout the company. There was, you know, more and more references to like white fragility and the self-indulgent tears of white women and more and more.

CARLSON: What is white fragility? Did they ever explain that?

KRIEGMAN: White fragility? It is like --

CARLSON: Like if someone attacks you, and you don't like it, you're fragile.

KRIEGMAN: You know, I think basically just a way of disregarding any white person's opinions about racial matters, essentially.

CARLSON: Yes.

KRIEGMAN: But -- and there was also just sort of growing acceptance at every level of the core tenants of the Black Lives Matter movement and really uncritical adoption of those tenants. And they would bring, you know, Black Lives Matter activists in to educate employees about racial issues, and it was just sort of a general acceptance of those being voiced.

But, you know, I've been following the research, especially as a data scientist, I really wanted to sort of connect my beliefs to the actual underlying data, so I was aware of the research sort of showing that the core claim of Black Lives Matter that police more readily shoot Black people was false, and the research showing how that claim had been used to drive these reductions in policing that were having a devastating impact on the very communities that the Black Lives Matter activists were hoping to protect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wait a second, he said as he looked at the numbers, they're lying. Don't say it out loud. Truth has no defense, they fired him for that.

Our full conversation with Zac Kriegman is streaming now on FOX Nation. You can sign up for free at tuckercarlson.com. Absolutely.

So we've been telling you for months now that the United States is in danger of losing its status as the holder of the world's reserve currency and that is a huge problem for us and for our children. Bloomberg has now confirmed that, quote: "U.S. dollars dominance is being stealthily eroded," as they put it. Bloomberg is not concerned by this, though.

They said, actually, that could be a good thing.

So we thought in light of this, when Bloomberg tells you, yes, we're about to get a lot poorer, but be happy because China is getting rich, we should find out a little more about what's happening.

Harry Kazianis is a Senior Director at the Center for the National Interest, we're happy to have him join us tonight. Harry, thanks so much for coming on. So Bloomberg, of all news organizations does extensive business with China, of course, has just told us that yeah, this is happening. You're not paranoid, but don't worry. It'll be great. Will it be great?

HARRY KAZIANIS, SENIOR DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE NATIONAL INTEREST: Oh, no, Tucker, absolutely not. I mean, look, we have to be honest, the United States is the United States of debt, and the reason we can take out so much debt, which by the way, we've taken out $25 trillion in debt since the year 2000, financing regime change wars, tax -- you know, tax cuts, things of that nature. The reason we can do all this is because we are the world's reserve currency, because we can borrow from anybody at basically zero percent interest, or the Federal Reserve can print the money and everything is okay.

But if we're not the reserve currency, we are not able to do those things anymore, interest rates will start going up; and think about this, the United States this year will spend $392 billion just on servicing our national debt. That will go up because interest rates will go up faster. So this is a huge problem, and I really appreciate you covering it.

CARLSON: Well, I mean, it just seems -- you know, it's the pillar of our current affluence and it's sad to say that because monetary policy shouldn't be the pillar of your affluence, but it is. And so why in the world would Bloomberg say this isn't a bad thing?

KAZIANIS: You know, it's like, I have absolutely no idea, especially when the United States is full power and dominance and the whole international system is based on the United States being the number one superpower, and you cannot be a superpower if your economy is a train wreck.

I mean, let's face it, we're going to borrow something like a trillion dollars this year. The amount of interest that will pay on that is astronomical. If we are not the reserve currency anymore, the amount of money that we're going to spend on just servicing the debt is going to skyrocket on top of inflation, on top of how much that's going to grow even more.

So this is something we have to worry about. And what we also Tucker need to do is we need to get our fiscal house in order. We want to make sure that we're still the world's reserve currency. We can't be borrowing trillions of dollars every single year.

Just one fact, we spent $6 trillion during economic stimulus on COVID and you could debate that whether it's right or wrong, but that's more than we spent fighting World War Two. So the amount of money we spend on things, we really need to start thinking about how we spend it and why we spend it because someday we're going to wake up and we're not going to be able to do it anymore.

CARLSON: Yes, and that'll be a massive readjustment, of course. More than we spent on World War Two. It's really -- the outlines of that crime are not even clear now, but they will be.

Harry, great to see you today. Thank you.

KAZIANIS: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So Chris Cillizza over at CNN, not the worst person in CNN, but a very sensitive man. It is easy to make Chris Cillizza upset and this weekend someone made him very upset on an airplane, so he had the audacity to watch FOX News. We will you what happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Life isn't easy for CNN anchors, they feel things so deeply and that's why they typically commute from the apartment to Whole Foods to work. But sometimes they get out of that routine and go into the wider world. That happened to CNN's Chris Cillizza over the weekend and here is what happened next, quote: "A couple in front of me on the flight refused to wear masks. They were tuned in to 'Tucker' the whole time."

Can you imagine? We don't know who you were exercising your freedom on a commercial airline over the weekend, but if you're the people watching the show without masks, give us a call. We want to celebrate you.

Have a wonderful night with the ones you love. We will see you tomorrow.

END

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