Tucker Carlson clarifies report about dead Georgia voter

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Tucker Carlson clarifies report about dead Georgia voter

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host addresses the case of James Blalock and Mrs. James Blalock

Nov. 13, 2020 – This is a rush transcript from “Tucker Carlson Tonight” November 13, 2020. 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. There is a huge amount going on right now, as you know, really a torrent of news, historic amounts.

To begin tonight, we are going to ignore all of it. We've never done that before. This is a news show brought to you on a news.

But in this second Friday after the election, we'd like to take a 20-minute break from developments.

So many things seem so completely screwed up right now that it can be overwhelming, and over time, it's also misleading.

If you pay too much attention to what is happening, you can easily conclude that America is a rotten country. But that's wrong. It's not.

America is still the best there is. Two things about America make it great:

the country and its people. This is a truly beautiful place. That's the first thing.

If you're absorbed in your phone all day, it's easy to forget that, but look around. It's stunning. Switzerland has the Alps, Zimbabwe has Victoria Falls, but multiply that by an entire continent and you've got what we have

-- America.

From the islands of Puget Sound to the islands in Casco Bay, to the Rockies and the Badlands in the Upper Peninsula and the Appalachian Mountains in between. Spend a day hiking to the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. You might not see another person.

How can a place so gorgeous, be so empty? We've got a lot of those here.

Wake up in Big Sur, California some morning. The smell of redwoods and salt air will change you. You'll feel things you inherited from your ancestors coming from places the modern world cannot touch.

We are blessed to live in a place like this, more blessed than we acknowledge. No matter what happens next, no matter who becomes the President, now or in the future, nothing can diminish the dignity of an Eastern white pine towering above the spruce in the New England forest.

All of it is ours to enjoy. Thank God.

We've got a lot of people to enjoy it with an awful lot. Americans are still the best people misguided as we sometimes are. This isn't an especially religious country anymore, but surveys on churchgoing do not tell the whole story.

Even now, most Americans know they are not really in charge of the universe. They know there's something bigger out there, bigger than all of us combined. And when you understand that, when you know in your bones, how small you are and how short the ride is likely to be, you tend to treat people better. Americans do.

Don't let cable news fool you. Don't let us fool you. This is a profoundly nice country, the nicest in the world.

Americans are kind to children, to pets, to strangers. We give more money to charity than any other place. We tip our waiters more.

There's no country on Earth you'd rather be lost in. Someone will help you.

In America, we don't eat dogs, we rescue them. They sleep on the bed. We give them funny names. We cry when they die. It's a sweet country.

In some ways, it's getting better. The music is definitely improving, so is the food. Believe it or not, we still make things here and a lot of them are pretty good.

That probably won't change. Americans love innovation, but they are distrustful of anyone's radical plans for the future.

Most people here don't want an abrupt reshuffling of everything. They prefer incremental improvement. That's why we've had only one revolution.

It's why we fought off the metric system all these years, and thank heaven, we have.

It's why we still have Christmas, and always will. Christmas in America is great. Even if you don't really understand what it's about, and many people don't. It's still the happiest time of the year and therefore it's the most American.

America is a happy country, despite everything. Our happiness is fundamental. It's in our founding documents. It's in our people. Nothing happening tonight can take that away.

Mark Steyn isn't from America. He came here voluntarily, but he stayed an awfully long time. He joins us now to tell us why. Mark Steyn, why are you still here?

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Well, I first came here rather accidentally, and I fell in love with the small town in New Hampshire, which has had a tough time of it.

But it's interesting to me. What struck me, compared to say, France is that you can have a really nice town next to a really crummy town, because the people in those towns get to decide how to govern themselves. And I came very quickly to agree with Tocqueville that in that sense, the town government in New Hampshire is the best system of government ever devised.

And at a gloomy time like this, it's my observation that the integrity and the health of government diminishes as you go upwards from towns through states to the federal level. So, I think there's a lot to be said.

When you look at town government, you see that, as Tocqueville saw that Americans are still free to govern themselves, where it matters.

And to go to the broader point, which is what you've been talking about.

The purpose of politics is to enable life. So, if you're just obsessed with, oh, who is looking good for 2022? Do you like Nikki Haley for 2024?

Or do you prefer Kristi Noem? To hell with that.

There's nothing conservative about that. The point of being conservative, the point of politics is to enable life. And as you've said, in all those other areas of life, America has built a pretty good society.

We should not wall ourselves up in horse race politics, because if you're into politics, all the action is being made elsewhere. I mean, whatever you feel about, you know, transgenderism, it is not because Joe Biden and Hillary started advocating it, it's because they created the conditions for it in that great mass of 95 percent of life that has nothing to do with electoral politics, too much of which conservatives have abandoned.

And I think it's great at a time like this, just to get out into that space, and say, there were 73 million people here who want to be playing on that turf, too.

CARLSON: It does seem like we -- and this is a political show, and, you know, kind of what we do, but it does seem like a lot of people are utterly focused on the political system as you know, to the exclusion of everything else.

What should we be looking at if we really want to gauge the health of the country? And if we really want to appreciate the country?

STEYN: Well, I think you look on it on broader issues. One of the depressing things slightly, is the way things that used to be universally accepted such as free speech, for example, and now seen as weird right-wing obsessions.

And that's why, again, it's actually very healthy what has happened in the last couple of weeks? The 73 million people who turned out to vote for President Trump, that's an extraordinary number and even more extraordinary, when you consider how much turf the Republican Party and conservatives in general have just abandoned.

We don't play in the pop culture. We don't play on Big Tech. And yet, somehow, we manage to be holding up and surviving as a big mass. Now, if we just took that mass, target and tried to ban some book today that was allegedly transphobic, people push back and they got that reversed.

And the lesson there is, when you take 73 million people out into the great broad span of American life defined at its fullest, they are a real force.

And that's more important than everybody worrying about which congressman is going to be elected in which district in Ohio.

Life -- life is where you express your values, including your political values.

CARLSON: That's right. So I've just got to ask you, I've never asked you personal questions, but you you're born in one country, grew up in another country. You've lived in still other countries You really are international in the truest sense.

But I think you've married an American. You have American children. You live here. You chose to be here. What is it about Americans that you like?

STEYN: Well, it's the small things. When my first child was born, my daughter, I found out just from a casual conversation with the librarian in my town who was congratulating me, and she said, we always do a hand painted book plate for every new child, newborn baby and put it in the children's book. And it's there in the library for all eternity. I was just so touched by that.

The other thing I think, is the great span of American life. As you know, we are a couple of days away from the 400th Anniversary of the Landing of the Mayflower. My town's Overseer of the Poor, as they call it, elected office and the Fire Chief are descendants of John and Priscilla Alden from the Mayflower, as is Marilyn Monroe.

And the fact that Marilyn Monroe and the Overseer of the Poor in my small New Hampshire town could both be descended from this couple that happened to arrive at Plymouth Rock, 400 years ago, actually, I found oddly expressive of the great expanse of American life and how anything is possible.

That's just a small point. But actually, I always found it very touching, especially on this 400th Anniversary.

CARLSON: Well, it's wonderful. This is a wonderful country. We're grateful to have you. Mark Steyn, thank you. One of our favorite immigrants.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, here's another indication of how good we have it.

Journalists are now demanding that you capitalize certain letters, absolutely demanding it.

I guess we solved all the other problems. So what's wrong with this? Jason Whitlock has thought more about this thing. It seems like a small thing; he believes it's not. He thinks it tells you something much bigger. It's worth hearing. Straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: With everything going on, you may have missed the fact that the Associated Press has now decided that people who write the news must capitalize the B in the word black. According to the AP, the capitalization of B quote, "Conveys an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as black." Okay.

But the AP also says it doesn't want anyone to capitalize the W in white.

All right, why? Here is the quote, "White people generally do not share the same history and culture." Okay. So what does this mean? Is there a deeper meaning that we can take from it? And what effect does it have on the society?

Language changes the way we think. It is the means by which we communicate, but also the means by which we understand the world. So when the words change, so do our ideas and our understanding.

Jason Whitlock has thought more about this in anyone we know. He is, of course, one of the founders of Outkick, and he joins us tonight.

Jason, thanks so much for coming on. So, this is one of those little, little changes. It is capitalizing one letter. We're journalists, so we're paying attention. But you've thought this through and believe that this is actually a bigger deal. What do you think it means?

JASON WHITLOCK, OUTKICK : It's a much bigger deal. It is a way of defining to black people, that your most prized possession, your greatest asset, your most defining characteristic is your skin color.

And once you convince people that their skin color is their most important asset defining characteristic, they then start to cater all their behavior to show off that attribute. No one else has to live up to their skin color.

They are free to accentuate their intelligence, their faith in God, their commitment to family, their love of freedom.

But we as black people, as defined by the white liberals, in my view, running the mainstream media, running Hollywood, we have to live up to our skin color above all else and that's just not much of an attribute in terms of what -- it's a great packaging. I'm very proud of being black. But that's not my number one attribute.

I want to be defined by my faith in God. I want to be defined by my intelligence. That's what I want people to see when they think about me, not my skin color.

CARLSON: So you've got a completely different take. I think most people when they saw this to say, okay, this is an elaborate show of respect.

You're saying it's a means of control.

WHITLOCK: No question about it. Tucker, if you go back 400 years ago, when America instituted and leaned into slavery, black people's skin color was, hey, that's a special classification of people, they're black. Therefore, because of their skin color, they don't have as much freedom as everybody else.

Their skin color tells you all you need to know about them. That's their defining characteristic.

These people, 400 years later, these are the ideological descendants of those bigots from 400 years ago, saying, doubling down a written reminder to black people, your skin color is your defining characteristic, and therefore, we're going to limit your freedom.

You spend all of your energy trying to be unapologetically black. Everybody else gets to go out and try to be intelligent, responsible, God-fearing, and patriotic. Look, Asian-Americans come into this country and they don't try to live up to their skin color.

They are not sending their kids off into the world, be yellow. They consider that the word yellow, a slur and insult. They don't want to be defined by their skin color. They send their kids out to the world. No, you go be smarter than everybody else. Define yourself by your intelligence and ability to achieve in this country.

Black people unlike everybody else, you go out and prove to everybody how black you are, become unapologetically black, and we're going to celebrate it.

And then as black people, we don't even control what is black. That's told us by Chelsea Handler and every liberal running Hollywood, Joe Biden if you don't vote for him, you're not black. If you don't think all these liberal thoughts, you're not black.

We're not even in control of that, so we're actually trying to meet standards defined for us by other people live up to their standards and that's what -- and they're defining blackness, as a lot of things that just aren't healthy for us.

That just don't -- again, being a rapper and saying the N word is about the blackest thing you can do according to Hollywood. This is crazy.

This all started for me, Tucker watching Dave Chappelle's "Saturday Night Live" monologue last Saturday, and I was like Dave Chappelle is smarter than this. But he has been forced, like everybody else. That's black and a celebrity.

When they put you on their Hollywood stage, when the people in control of Hollywood grant you that stage, you go be black there. You go cuss, say the N word. Generalize about white people. Be racist. Be angry. You go be all of those things.

Don't lean into your intelligence, Dave. Lean into these things that we've defined as being black.

CARLSON: So smart. I haven't heard anybody say that, and I'm really glad that you did. And I hope that a lot of people just saw that and we'll see it.

Jason Whitlock, thanks for joining us.

WHITLOCK: Thank you.

CARLSON: Well, as you know, over the summer, the City Council in the City of Minneapolis, the formerly peaceful, prosperous City of Minneapolis voted to defund the police. What happened next?

Tonight, because we can't control ourselves, we will tell you the conclusion the City Council of Minneapolis has come to. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, in June, and you saw when it happened, BLM rioters destroyed entire neighborhoods in Minneapolis to avenge St. George Floyd. So local politicians decided they need to take action, not action against the rioters, no, of course not, against the police.

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to begin the process of replacing the Police Department with something called a community led public safety system. No one was ever clear exactly what that was, but they voted to do it.

They also cut $1 million in funding from the Police Department and gave it to the Health Department. Okay, so there's less hepatitis, but more murders. A few weeks later, something you could have predicted began happening, violent crime began rising.

What could have caused that? Well, in September, members of the Minneapolis City Council had a Zoom meeting. They put their heads together. Here's some of the brainstorm that resulted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would appreciate some more information on how we're addressing the carjackings. I know that there's been a number of them in the community and it really terrorized residents.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gun violence, drug dealing, intimidation, extortion, people are having to, to pay to get out of their alleys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last night I had yet another 17-year-old murdered in my ward. I would say that -- I don't have an exact number, but it's been at least five 17-year-olds have been murdered in my ward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: You could flip through the phonebook and find a smarter group of people, but those are the people who run the City of Minneapolis. "I'd appreciate some more information on carjackings," the politician says to the cops he wants to fire.

So, that was two months ago. Today, after a lot of careful thought, the Minneapolis City Council appears to have zeroed in on a potential solution to the crime wave wrecking the city. Here's the plan. They're going to spend half a million dollars to hire dozens of not health experts, additional law enforcement personnel.

So that's good news for the people being killed in Minneapolis, just this year, 74 of them have been killed; nearly 500 have been shot and wounded.

It is bad news for people like Bennett McNulty, a Philosophy Professor at the University of Minnesota.

Today, McNulty wrote this, quote, "It is unconscionable to give $500,000.00 from the city's contingency funds when there is housing insecurity in the city." A crisis of housing insecurity.

If you've ever wondered where the dumbest people in America live, you just saw it on the Minneapolis City Council and in your neighborhood Philosophy Department.

The people who are actually affected by defunding the police, it goes without saying, are not the ones who defunded the police, it is the woke professors with tenure who are destroying your kids at your expense.

The people in charge the country clearly have an enemy. It's not criminals.

It's the middle class. And the result is obvious, 500 people shot. Amazing.

Minneapolis of course is not the only city to face the consequences after defunding the police, lots of places tried it. In Seattle, homelessness and drug abuse have gotten worse than they were before and they were already bad.

The City Council there voted to defund a specialized program that helped move homeless people into shelters. No, they have a right to live on the sidewalk. They love it.

Local government said removing the homeless and their encampments was quote, "inhumane."

Jason Rantz is one of the few sane people who has remained in the City of Seattle, one of the prettiest cities in the world. He has been watching since the beginning and he joins us tonight with an update.

Jason, good to see you. How are things in your city?

JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RADIO SHOW HOST: It's pretty bad. Seattle, the City Council, this Mayor's Office, they are just irredeemably progressive, and as a result, they've created a homelessness crisis that no one thought could get as bad as it is.

I defy you to go anywhere in Seattle and find a park that hasn't been completely overtaken by tents, by homeless people who are shooting up, by homeless people who have set up these kind of bazaars where you can show up and purchase illegally stolen goods and it is completely overtaking the city.

And in large part, it's because of the defunding the police movement.

Getting rid of the navigation team because they happen to have police as part of this program to connect people who are living out on the streets with resources, but a part of what they were doing was actually sweeping these encampments as well.

But apparently, it is inhumane to sweep the encampments, but not inhumane to keep people living in these parks surrounded by used dirty needles and their own human waste. Something tells me that's the actual thing that's inhumane.

CARLSON: It is the most inhumane thing I have seen in a long time.

RANTZ: It is absurd and it is dangerous.

CARLSON: I can't control myself. I noticed there are lots of tents, I assume your local Episcopal Churches gave those to the junkie so they could feel virtuous. Is that where they came from?

RANTZ: Well, we'll try to figure that out. A lot of them happen to be stolen. I do know that the trash they are just picking up, and if you go in and you try to clean it up, they'll tell you that you're stealing some of their goods.

The city for the most part, doesn't want to sweep any of this up, but we're kind of forcing them to. Hopefully, it'll continue.

CARLSON: We didn't build the parks for heroin addicts. We built them for normal people and their children. It tells you so much.

Jason Rantz, thanks so much for that update.

RANTZ: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla. Recently said he had cold-like symptoms. So he took four coronavirus tests, all administered by the same machine. This is a guy fluent in science by the way.

He posted the results on Twitter. Two of Elon Musk's tests came back positive. The other two came back negative. Musk tweeted this quote, "Something extremely bogus is going on. If it's happening to me, it's happening to others."

So how do we trust the coronavirus numbers we're getting if the tests are inaccurate? Dr. Marc Siegel is a FOX News medical contributor. He joins us tonight to answer this question. Doctor, great to see you.

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Tucker, the answer is we can't trust the numbers. Now, fear is what drives this. Fear causes, Tucker these pseudo religions. Masks will make you invulnerable even if it's hanging off your face, a dirty mask. Lockdowns, right?

Now, Elon Musk, a visionary said at the very beginning that lockdowns were fascist and undemocratic. He said that in April.

Tucker, I must confess I'm a big fan of Elon Musk. In a way he reminds me of you. He is around the same age, he created something out of thin air that people said that he couldn't create much as you have done here. He created the Tesla, which competes with the Porsche and beats it off of the line.

Amazing, amazing, amazing visionary Elon Musk.

So a lockdowns from a medical point of view, of course, don't work because only rich people can afford to go to their country house, while poor people are stuck together not knowing if the person next to them, by the way, maybe actually has COVID-19 and there's a tremendous physical, mental and economic cost here that we've talked about.

So now, Elon Musk is facing another pseudo religion, Tucker, the pseudo religion of testing, and he is another -- once again, he is being a visionary. He is saying tonight, four tests, two positive, two negative and I thought before I learned from Elon Musk tonight, I thought that antigen test is pretty good.

When you have mild symptoms, we were told that that antigen test was quite accurate. Well, two positive and two negative? I want to submit to the viewer tonight that it's another pseudo religion, Tucker, and I want to tell you as a physician, a test may be helpful just like a mask may be helpful, lockdown not helpful at all, but a test may be helpful, but Tucker, a test is not a cure -- Tucker.

CARLSON: That's right. I think that's totally fair. And I also think you're right that Elon Musk is a legitimate visionary. I, by contrast, am a talk show host: big difference, but I appreciate it. Dr. Marc Siegel, thank you.

SIEGEL: You're about the same age, Tucker, about the same age.

CARLSON: No, I got that in common. That's pretty good.

Well, up next New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that bars and restaurants in his state must close by 10:00 p.m. What does that mean for the people who run those businesses and in many cases who are barely holding on?

Tyler Hollinger is the owner of the restaurant, Festival. It is in New York City. We talked to him some time ago. He opened that restaurant a little over two months ago. Despite the lockdowns, he did it anyway. We talked to him when he opened it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYLER HOLLINGER, RESTAURANT OWNER: I believe in the power of community. I believe in the power of New Yorkers.

Let's be honest, Cuomo, de Blasio, they didn't stop the virus. New Yorkers stopped the virus here and New Yorkers will survive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Tyler Hollinger is back, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Since March, more than a thousand restaurants have closed in New York City, not because people stopped eating, but because the city and state have crushed them with coronavirus lockdowns.

But that number apparently isn't high enough for some politicians in New York, they decided to close all bars and restaurants after 10:00 p.m.

unless it's for a dance party celebrating Joe Biden. Otherwise, it's very dangerous, that according to the party of science.

Tyler Hollinger is the owner of the Festival restaurant in New York City.

He opened a couple of months ago, even though the city has done everything it can to wreck his livelihood.

At the time we spoke to him a couple of months ago, he said New Yorkers will survive. Are they? Tyler Hollinger joins us tonight. Tyler, thanks so much for coming on. How are you surviving? And do you expect to --

HOLLINGER: Tucker, it's so good to be on the show again.

CARLSON: Thank you.

HOLLINGER: Tucker. First off, I want to say thank you to you and I wanted to say thank you to your community. Because after I came on the show the first time, the overwhelming support, love, compassion of your community, buying gift cards, coming to the restaurant was absolutely mind blowing and it is a testament to the beauty of humankind, that we look after one another and I want to say thank you.

CARLSON: Well, thank you for saying that.

HOLLINGER: Secondly --

CARLSON: We have the best viewers.

HOLLINGER: You have the most amazing viewers and this kindness is overwhelming and the gratitude is amazing. De Blasio and Cuomo will not stop us. Let's be clear. They will not stop New Yorkers. They will not stop New York businesses because they are temporary individuals and the businesses and the people that live in New York are permanent.

CARLSON: That's such a nice point. I wonder in the short term though, they are still here. Can you make a living if you have to close at 10? Ten being the hour at which coronavirus becomes dangerous, apparently.

HOLLINGER: Yes. Apparently those out after 10 get coronavirus.

CARLSON: Yes.

HOLLINGER: Apparently what Cuomo doesn't realize is that those individuals who wanted to dine late are just going to come an hour early on top of the people that are already there.

So what you've created is a bad situation for more crowding, as opposed to allowing people to spread out over time, enjoy their meal. Now, people are going to be more on top of each other, which is insane.

This government just allowed thousand person rallies to happen for Joe Biden all over the city. But yet you can't have Thanksgiving for 10 people?

Something is very, very wrong.

CARLSON: You make such a good point about forcing people to eat in larger numbers when you constrain when they can eat. Did you tell the city that or the state that? Did they consult you before shutting down your business at

10:00 p.m.?

HOLLINGER: The city has no interest in hearing what small businesses think.

Every day we are visited by another government official trying to shut us down trying to impose fines, legislations, restrictions, when we're just out there keeping people safe.

And this is the hypocrisy we are living in right now, but I can tell you one thing. The power of love, the power of kindness and respect for one another trumps anything that any of these politicians want to say because it's about neighborhood and it's about community and protecting those who you love.

CARLSON: That's an inspiring thing to say and great thing to hear. Tyler Hollinger, we are rooting for you.

HOLLINGER: I refuse to be negative about this, Tucker.

CARLSON: Amen.

HOLLINGER: I refuse to be negative. Oh, and we have a drink for you. A Perrier waiting when you come.

CARLSON: So embarrassing. That's exactly what I drink. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Notice the party of big business crushing independent businesses. See a theme?

Well, it's hard to believe a military coup could happen in this country, but in the interview this week, Jim Jeffrey, the outgoing U.S. Envoy to Syria and an adviser to Joe Biden admitted that he was part of just that.

Jeffrey said this, quote, "We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there in Syria." Jeffrey said that the actual number of American troops stationed in Northeast Syria is quote, "A lot more than the 200 troops the President said we were leaving there in 2019."

This sounds a lot like treason. You're not allowed to make your own foreign policy, only people elected by the public can do that. The chain of command is a secret structure that keeps us a democracy.

The media weren't bothered by that, though. They cheered it on. Liz Sly a "Washington Post" Bureau Chief covering Syria wrote this, quote, "The joke is on Trump who told so many lies for being so easily lied to by his officials."

So she hates Trump. Okay. But why is she backing a subversion of our democracy? Because that's what it is.

Back in August, Susan Rice -- you remember her -- went on television to say she was losing her mind over the President's planned withdrawal from Syria?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN RICE, FORMER UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: I woke up this morning to hear that news. And as I do, it seems like six days a week, I just put my head in my hands. This is bad [bleep] crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes, it's crazy to pull American troops out of Syria. But what are they doing there in the first place, Susan Rice? Anybody? Anybody?

Do we have any clue why American troops need to be in Syria at great expense waiting to be killed? No. No one explained. But they must be.

At the Democratic National Convention this year, a video montage with a stream of bureaucrats and Security State officials complaining about pulling out of Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our military policy to maintain our presence in Syria.

We actually came to the aid of the Kurds against ISIS and we helped stop the advance. President Trump told us to simply abandon the Kurds. Shameful.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joe Biden will be strong against dictators.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've heard him on the phone with some pretty tough characters. You know, you talk about Joe Biden's empathy, his decency. But Joe Biden is tough as nails, and everybody knows it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He will do the right thing, no matter the political cost.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've served for two Republican Presidents and one Democratic President, I have seen the Trump administration make decisions without any thoughts, without any preparation that have massive life and death consequences.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, these people, these people, the Kurds, we must protect the Kurds. So actually, the headline here is, Republicans come, they go; Democrats come, they go. But neocons remain.

Aaron Mate is a journalist with "The Grayzone." He hosts the show "Push Back." We're happy to have him on tonight. Aaron, thanks so much for coming on.

So I don't really think you need to be a partisan Republican or a Trump supporter to be bothered by the fact that people whose job it is to carry out policy were making it and lying about it. Why should we care?

AARON MATE, JOURNALIST, "THE GRAYZONE": Exactly. There's two main issues here. There's the principle of civilian leadership and then the policy of staying in Syria.

I'm not a supporter of President Trump. I never have been, but I respect the fact that he was elected. Nobody elected James Jeffrey, or any other unelected bureaucrat. And if we believe in the minimal standards of democracy, we'll respect that chain of command.

Then you have the policy itself. Why does James Jeffrey want to lie to the President and keep U.S. troops occupying Syria? It has nothing to do with helping out the Kurds. The U.S. has abandoned the Kurds for a very long time going back many administrations.

CARLSON: Good point.

MATE: We didn't care about the Kurds. The policy is, as James Jeffrey himself said earlier this year, he said "My job is to create a quagmire for the Russians." Why would you want to keep U.S. troops, put them in harm's way, steal another country's oil, cut off Syria from its own people, just so we can create a quagmire for another nuclear armed power?

We tried that in Afghanistan that led to the rise of al Qaeda. And similarly in Syria, the proxy war that we've been involved in for over a decade has also created the rise of al Qaeda.

James Jeffrey's predecessor, Brett McGurk said that in Idlib, al Qaeda now has its largest safe haven since 9/11. That's a result of the proxy war that we've been engaged in going back to the Obama administration under the incoming President Joe Biden.

So President Trump has an opportunity here. He is leaving in a couple of months. He was elected on an anti-war platform back in 2016. Millions of people voted for that. He criticized these wars.

He could end them now. He could pull U.S. troops out of Syria, tell James Jeffrey and John Brennan, and Joe Biden, that it's not our job to be occupying other countries. It's our job to bring our troops home and give Syria back to Syria.

CARLSON: What's so interesting is that the orthodoxy on this subject is absolute. You we're not allowed to disagree. Everybody is on the same side as Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton and John Bolton.

You're very well informed in this. You break actual stories. What are the chances you could get a job at "The Washington Post" and you're very left- wing, I should just say in case our viewers didn't pick that up. What are the chances you could get a job at "The Washington Post" with the views you have on Syria?

MATE: Well, look, it is not just Syria. It's any major national security issue, the media has been in lockstep with the National Security State, whether Trump is in favor of the policy or not.

You look at a major issue you've covered, Tucker, I've covered as well.

This scandal at the OPCW where you had inspectors go in, conduct an investigation in Syria in April 2018. Their investigation was covered up because it undermined this claim that Syria had committed a chemical weapons attack.

CARLSON: That's true.

MATE: No one in the media except for us basically has covered it. So on top of the cover up scandal, there's a media scandal as well.

CARLSON: Yes, they lied about a poison gas attack. They lied about it. The State Department lied about it -- flat out. And then we killed people in response to it. And we're not allowed to talk about that? It's one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen.

Aaron Mate, thank you for your bravery. And I hope "The Washington Post"

does hire you. They could use some sane people. Thanks.

We've got some good news tonight. And an apology. One of the people who voted in last week's election isn't dead. James Blaylock is still dead, we told you about him, but it was his wife who voted. She voted as Mrs. James Blaylock. It's old fashioned and we missed it.

Now, a whole bunch of dead people did vote. We showed you their names. We proved it. But James Blaylock was not among them. It was Mrs. James Blaylock. So apologies for that.

And of course, we're always going to correct when we're wrong and we were.

Well, CNN promises to have the governor's brother and Don Lemon bring you facts first. Well, here's a fact about CNN. Apparently, the company is for sale. And those supposed CNN fact finders aren't telling you much about it, but we will.

The great Charlie Gasparino joins us after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: One thing we can be certain of is the news media is going to change quite a bit over the last year. It's already changed an awful lot and not for the better.

We're learning tonight that AT&T is eyeing a possible sale of CNN, which it owns to pay its massive debt.

FOX Business senior correspondent, Charlie Gasparino broke this story and a lot of other stories, an actual reporter. We're happy to have him on tonight.

Charlie, thanks a lot for coming on. So what is the story?

CHARLES GASPARINO, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Anytime, my friend. Well, we should point out that CNN's brass, some of the suits recently said that they are not for sale, that they have great plans for them.

This came after some of our reporting on Jeff Bezos maybe being interested in it. Here is what I can tell you and why this is such a fascinating story and how it's not going to go away over the next four years and for all the column inches, you know, people write about us, the balance sheet over there is a real problem and that is what is fueling this, Tucker.

I mean, look at it this way. CNN does not have Donald Trump to kick around anymore.

CARLSON: Right.

GASPARINO: Their ratings will take a hit. They are work -- they are owned by a company that is financially unstable, $150 billion in debt AT&T has.

They need to cut cost. There's an activist investor out there, on the content part of AT&T. The other part is the wireless part and the distribution through satellite.

That content part is not analogous to the other content that they have there. It sticks out like a sore thumb. So you don't have synergies.

And you can probably get now a premium for it, maybe not two years from now. Hence, what you have is intense banker speculation that this is for sale. You have activist investors pushing it. I believe Elliott Management is one of the activist investors, and I could tell you, even after that Town Hall meeting that they had earlier in the week, where they said they had such great plans for CNN going forward. There isn't a single --

The people I know there, and I have a lot of respect for the people there.

I'm not a CNN hater. There's some really good journalists there. They believe that they are for sale, if you can find a buyer.

One of the problems that AT&T has here is there's not a lot of natural buyers. I mean, Jeff Bezos, his name came up, because he's got $200 billion and he can spend the $10 billion for it.

But if you think about it, tech is out because of antitrust. Comcast can't buy it. Again, antitrust, and the billionaires out there that have $3 billion can't afford it.

CARLSON: So Bezos would be allowed. I mean, he owns an effective media platform. Amazon is a platform for programming. He could buy it. He is allowed.

GASPARINO: Right. He could buy it, but you know, he would it, I believe on his own and that's what makes -- that's why his name is out there. And I can tell you, Tucker, I got this from prominent bankers, both in private equity and on the street that do this for a living.

There is this -- this rumor is real. I mean, it is what I used to do when I worked at "The Wall Street Journal" in the day is "Heard on the Street."

Not quite the story yet. But this is going to keep coming and we're going to hear a lot more about this because AT&T is a screwed up company.

And let me tell you something, CNN, it may -- like a lot of media, it may have hit its peak hating Trump.

CARLSON: I'll call Don Lemon after the show for an update. The Great Charlie Gasparino. Thank you Charlie.

We're glad you stayed with us. See you Monday. Have the best weekend.

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