Tucker Carlson: The price of US gas now qualifies as a catastrophe

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How a Latina Republican's victory in Texas primary flipped the media narrative

Glenn Greenwald joined 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to discuss Republican Mayra Flores' win in a heavily Hispanic district in Texas, held by Democrats for a century.

This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on June 15, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

Here is one rule we try to follow: You probably should distrust anybody who draws quick and dirty partisan conclusions in the hours after a national disaster. You see this happen all the time.

People on TV, for example, telling you the gun lobby is somehow responsible for the latest school shooting even as the ambulances are still arriving, or how climate change caused those tornadoes in a trailer park in Indiana. Bill Nye, the Science Guy blaming your pickup truck for extreme weather.

These are not people who are speaking in good faith, they're not trying to solve problems, they are not even interested in what actually happened, they are lying. They're unscrupulous, and they will say anything, if they think it will make them more powerful, so best to ignore them.

On the other hand, and this is also true over time, it is possible to draw legitimate connections between decisions that politicians make and the catastrophes that follow. The rise in gas prices, for example.

The price of gas in America now qualifies as a catastrophe. That's true no matter how you feel about carbon emissions, you still probably assumed you'd be able to afford to drive to work every day or take a vacation with your kids this summer or buy dinner in a restaurant once in a while. But now, you can't. And gas prices are the reason you can't. Nothing makes the country poorer or faster than rising energy prices.

So, how did this happen? Well, we're going to let you decide. We're going to play you a tape from a campaign event during the last Democratic presidential primaries in New Hampshire. This video was shot in 2019, at a moment when not a single person in the country really believed that Joe Biden had any chance to win his party's nomination.

So because they gave him no chance, not a lot of people were paying attention when Biden was asked whether he would continue to take donations from the oil and gas industry. Here is how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), THEN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Kiddo, I want you to just take a look. Okay, you don't have to agree. But I want you to look in my eyes: I guarantee you, I guarantee you, we're going to end fossil fuel and I am not going to cooperate with them, okay?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "We're going to end fossil fuel." End fossil fuel? The basis of the entire American economy. How are we going to do that? And why?

Biden didn't explain and again, because no one believed he was actually going to win, no one thought to ask. The assumption then was the Biden was only running for President because he was old and sad and didn't know what else to do with his retirement. It's not like he was going to get anywhere.

So Biden kept saying this, not noticed by many.

As President, he pledged, quote: "No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period."

Well, then something unexpected happened. Bernie Sanders so terrified the Democratic Party's top donors that they gave the nomination to senile old Joe Biden. And then Biden became President and then as President, he immediately started doing exactly what he had promised he would do.

Biden stopped issuing new permits for oil and gas leases. He cancelled Federal drilling permits and pipelines. Then just a month ago, the administration cancelled three oil and gas leases in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and then eliminated more than a million acres of potential drilling sites.

Then to cap it off, you may have noticed, Joe Biden imposed an oil embargo on Russia, which is one of the world's biggest energy producers because democracy or something.

So what happened next? Well, gas went to over $5.00 a gallon, inflation exploded, India and China got a whole lot more cheap Russian oil to keep their economies humming, and then the ruble got even stronger than it was before the war on Ukraine.

So everyone got rich, except us. We got poorer. Those are the facts.

Now, what would you conclude from those facts? Well, you might start to think that Joe Biden had something to do with rising gas prices because when you restrict the supply of something, when you have less of something, it costs more, like oil, for example.

Now this is a principle known to elite professional economists as supply and demand. Less drilling gives you more expensive gasoline. You might conclude that, but you would be wrong.

In fact, if you believe that, you're an idiot. You probably still think Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election. You're naive, you're credulous, and you're a sap.

The truth is much more obvious. Gas prices are high right now because Vladimir Putin made them high. How did Putin do that? Simple. From his lair in a torture chamber deep beneath Lubyanka Prison in Moscow surrounded by empty vodka bottles in the severed heads of his enemies, Putin signed an executive order raising the price of unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel in the United States.

And also while he was at it, of cauliflower and Wheat Thins and dimensional lumber and plywood and plumbing parts and fish tacos, as well as a whole bunch of other things you buy. In fact, of everything you buy.

Vladimir Putin singlehandedly caused inflation and high gas prices. He did this on purpose just as he got his orange accomplice elected President of the United States five years ago. Putin did that.

Why did he do it? As if you even needed to ask. Putin did this because he hates our freedoms. That's why. The freedoms that Joe Biden gave us that Putin wants to take away.

As Joe Biden himself wrote in a letter today, scolding the oil companies for not selling more oil, quote, "We're living with the economic challenges that Vladimir Putin's actions have created for American families." See, it's a darn Putin again.

But Biden has got a plan to fight the Slavic cast gas crunch. He's going to impose a new tax on energy. That way gas prices will drop because when you make something cost more, actually, it's cheaper to buy.

Does that make sense? Joe Kernen may be the one sane person left on CNBC. Here was his assessment of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CNBC NEWS ANCHOR: Here's the final two lines of the letter: "Vladimir Putin is Price Hike," which price hike are both capitalized. I'm not sure why, but "Vladimir Putin's Price Hike (all caps) are driving up costs for consumers. I appreciate your immediate attention to this issue and your efforts to mitigate the economic challenges that Vladimir Putin's actions have created for American families."

So Putin is mentioned five times I think. There's your last paragraph. Let's get the oil and gas companies to respond.

JOE KERNEN, CO-HOST, "SQUAWK BOX" ON CNBC: This is pure demagoguery. It's not going to help the issue. It's getting your eye off the real problems, and listen, I just something I want to tell you, Becky, I lived through the Carter years, every day I get a stronger sense of deja vu.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, Jimmy Carter, another great Democratic leader undone by the Russians, in his case Leonid Brezhnev. In 1980, it turns out, Jimmy Carter did roughly what Joe Biden wants to do, he imposed an excise tax of 70 percent on the value of oil sales in excess of $12.80. So what happened next? Well, we know because it was studied.

The Congressional Research Service found that that tax had the effect of crippling domestic oil production by between 1.2 and eight percent. Our reliance on foreign oil, meanwhile, went up by as much as 13 percent and that doesn't really make sense if the point of the tax was only to prevent, quote, "price gouging," how did this happen?

Well, in 2018, a paper in "The Journal of Economic Policy" answered that question. "The Journal" found that increased taxes on oil have the effect of discouraging oil producers to take risk on oil production. And those risks are actually high.

At the Tax Foundation, they found that, quote, "Energy was the most volatile sector of the stock market in the 2010. So when the pandemic arrived, more than a hundred oil companies went bankrupt and the major producers significantly rolled back their operations."

So those are risky investments, whether you agree with them or not. If you make them even riskier, production will decline even more. That seems like the obvious conclusion. And when production declines, prices get higher, and that seems to be according to some people what's happening.

The CEO of Chevron, Mike Wirth, whatever you think of Chevron knows a lot about oil has just predicted, and we're quoting, "I personally don't believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again. What we've seen over the last two years are shutdowns. We've seen refineries closed. We've seen units come down. We've seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refiners (we can burn food in our cars) and we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce."

So when you don't allow people to produce something, what they once produced becomes scarce, and therefore highly expensive. And if you depend on it every day, you're screwed. That's what they're saying.

But of course, that sounds like Russian disinformation. It sounds like something Putin himself wrote. And indeed, that's what it is.

What's really happening, according to our Energy Secretary is this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, U.S. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: Our oil and gas producers have a responsibility. We're on a war footing.

The price of oil, the price of gas is precipitating the high cost, the high percentage of inflation around the world. And so he's asking upon our domestic and international producers to produce more.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused the price of gas in the United States to go up $1.70 a gallon since the invasion occurred. Ultimately, the solution to make us energy secure, to make the Baltic states energy secure, to make the entire world energy secure is to move to clean energy. No country has ever been held hostage to access to the sun or to access to the wind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, now you may be asking yourself, why would you put someone like that who has never had a real job and achieve precisely nothing in her life and actually doesn't know anything about anything, why would you put her in a key position like Secretary of Energy? Because she knows the science and she just told you sun and wind are the most reliable forms of energy. It's not like clouds could block the sun or the wind might stop blowing. That's insane.

And don't think about nuclear power, ramping up domestic energy production, that's what Putin wants you to do.

So, to keep our democracy safe, we can't do anything that helps Putin. We should tell you that not all White House officials agree with this, logical as it seems, according to Bloomberg, quote: "Biden officials privately express concern that rather than dissuade the Kremlin as intended U.S. sanctions have instead exacerbated inflation, worsened food insecurity, and punished ordinary Russians -- punished more than Putin or his allies."

Now, you might be tempted to agree with those Biden officials. If you look at this chart showing that the value of the ruble, as we told you, as measured against the dollar is skyrocketing.

So we've helped Putin with the sanctions, Biden promised we would, quote, "Reduce the ruble to rubble," cutting Russia off from the rest of the world. Maybe that's why food is so expensive. Sorry. We were repeating Russian disinformation again.

Jen Psaki set us straight on that months ago. It turns out food is expensive because the meat conglomerates are greedy. They're greedy. They're so greedy, they don't want to sell their products. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, THEN WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think the President thinks the way people across the country, American families digest inflation is by price increases, and if you look at industry to industry, it's a little different.

So for example, the President, the Secretary of Agriculture have both spoken to what we've seen as the greed of meat conglomerates. That is an area, one where people go to the grocery store, and they're trying to buy a pound of meat, two pounds of meat, 10 pounds of meat, it is -- the prices are higher.

That is in his view, and the view of our Secretary of Agriculture, because of -- you could call it corporate greed, sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So let's get someone who couldn't find a spark plug on a lawn mower to explain economics to us. Oh, it's greed. Again, not a defense of corporate America, which is indeed greedy and dark, that's for sure. But the idea that prices are going up simply because of greed may leave a few links out of the chain, but Elizabeth Warren buys it completely. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): We live in America where there's a lot more concentration in certain industries. Look at the oil industry, look at meat industry, look at groceries generally, what's happened is these companies have said, you know, we'll pass along costs, but while we're at it, and everyone is talking about rising costs, let's just add an extra big dollop of cost increases to expand our profits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: If we're going to get lectured all the time, can we at least get a lecture from someone with an IQ over 100 with some kind of track record of doing something useful over the course of her entire 70 years on the planet just for once? Can we get an impressive person to shatter us?

No. We can't.

What's interesting is that greed, of course, is causing all of this. Greed that Putin decreed, the companies adopt. But it's also true that trucks full of food are being turned away at the U.S.-Canada border, so meat can't get to processing plants. Why is this happening?

Well, it's happening because of COVID vaccine mandates, which are still being enforced by the Biden administration and they require unvaccinated drivers to quarantine for 14 days, because COVID is so dangerous, and a lot of drivers can't do that. And by the way, if they did, the contents of their trucks would spoil.

So you might think that might have something to do with the supply chain issues that are making it impossible for you to fill your grocery cart. We're not going to hear that in the media. You know why? Because like Big Meat and like Big Oil, and like Vladimir Putin himself, according to Joe Biden, the media aren't giving him a fair shake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: A lot of major things we've done, but what we haven't done is we haven't been able to communicate it in a way that is -- let me say it another way.

JIMMY KIMMEL, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE" HOST: Well see, that's kind of perfect. Yes, you haven't been able to communicate.

BIDEN: But look how the press has changed. Look at how the press has changed.

KIMMEL: It has changed. Oh, listen, I get it.

BIDEN: I know you get, you over stand it. You don't just understand that, you over stand it.

But here's the deal: One of the things is that it's very difficult now to have -- even with notable exceptions, even in a really good reporters, they have to get the number clicks on nightly news.

So instead of asking a question -- anyway, just everything gets sensationalized and weighs in -- but I'm convinced we can get through this. We have to get through it.

And one of other thing is look --

KIMMEL: I'm going to take a break and then we'll talk a little bit more, if you don't mind.

BIDEN: I don't blame you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: I can't complete a sentence, but the reason I can't communicate is because the media aren't sympathetic enough, they're not really on my side, they haven't helped me at all. And you know why? Because they just want to get clicks on the nightly news, which is now some sort of website.

Look, we could go on, but the theme is really simple. Nothing is Joe Biden's fault, not gas prices, not media prices -- meat prices, not the media's coverage of inflation, none of it and whose fault it is? It's Vladimir Putin's fault.

According to Sandy Cortez, actually, you can blame White supremacists, too. And that may be exactly the same as Putin. That's the reason White supremacists, they only have 12 years to live. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): The climate crisis is a crisis borne of injustice and it is a crisis borne of the pursuit of profit at any and all human and ecological costs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Which means that we must recognize in legislation that the trampling of indigenous rights is a cause of climate change, that the trampling of racial justice is a cause of climate change, because we are allowing people and we are allowing ourselves to make sure -- we are allowing folks to deny ourselves human rights.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So the descendant of conquistadores is once again lecturing you about racism. Okay, Sandy Cortez. It's easy to mock her.

I'll let you open your mind. Larry Summers just told us that January 6th caused inflation. He once ran Harvard. He's a very smart man despite his repulsive table manners.

So the idea that your racism is making the planet warmer isn't actually that far out, it is plausible. We can't say we're not scientists. The one thing we can say for sure at this point, is that the people who screwed everything up are in no way responsible for what they did legally or morally, and in fact, they're blameless, and we can tell you that with confidence because the one thing we know for sure is that Vladimir Putin did it.

Shut up, traitor, he did.

Jimmy Dore is the host of "The Jimmy Dore Show." We believe he's a loyal American, not on Putin's team. He joins us tonight.

Now, are you keeping a list of all the things Putin is doing?

JIMMY DORE, HOST, "THE JIMMY DORE SHOW": Russia is very powerful. They control a lot of things. They overthrew our government, they committed a coup on America. They control the gas prices, and the Russia is responsible for our inflation.

And let me just tell you, last time I checked, Russia couldn't get their good vodka into Trader Joe's. So I don't think they're really controlling everything like they say they are, okay.

The Democrats right now are in power. They have complete control of government. And like all politicians, they don't want to take the blame for anything. They want you to blame everybody and everything or anybody and anything for the pain that you're feeling right now, except blame them, the people with the power right now.

And so that's why everything comes back to Putin because Putin is a proxy for their Trump hate. Right? And you said, Larry Summers blamed January 6th on inflation, which is an old Clinton adviser. So what they don't want us to realize is that we have a unipolar government, right?

So if you vote for Joe Biden, it is you're voting for Goldman Sachs. If you -- Mitch McConnell, the same thing. You're voting for our oligarchy.

CARLSON: True.

DORE: And they don't want you to know that, and as soon as people wake up, that we are being screwed by the same billionaires that control Joe Biden, that control the Republican Party, that's what scares them.

They don't want us to -- they don't want me on your show talking to your audience, telling them that people on the left, we smell a RATCLIFFE: and we know that Joe Biden is completely controlled by the oligarchy and the corporations.

And right now, the American people are paying the price. What are we paying the price for? Not for Putin's inflation, not for Putin's gas hike. This is Joe Biden's invasion. This is NATO's invasion. This is Joe Biden's policies.

These are Joe Biden's policies that are wrecking the dollar, that are propping up the ruble stronger than it's ever been, and they're blaming a foreign country. Imagine if Trump did that. They'd be making jokes about it every night on the nightly news.

Of course, they're not -- I mean, the nightly talk shows, but of course, they're not. They're all coddling. You saw Jimmy Kimmel have to coddle that old man, the guy who probably got stuck in a couch before he left that place.

This is who -- and you know, Joe Biden is not making the decisions. We all know that he's mentally impaired and we all know that Kamala Harris isn't making those decisions because she also can't speak in clear sentences. So who is really running the country? Well, whoever owns the Democratic Party, which is a handful of billionaires, those are the ones.

So if you're paying a higher price -- they did a controlled demolition of our economy with the COVID lockdowns and nobody wants to take responsibility for that.

CARLSON: That's right.

DORE: COVID lockdowns, which Johns Hopkins University proved saved zero lives. They didn't make any impact on the death rate, whatsoever, right? So they don't want to take responsibility for that. They want you to blame your neighbor.

They won't want you to be angry at the oligarchs or Fauci or Big Pharma or the media that controls you that makes you think that essential medicines are poison. They want you to blame your neighbor.

Everybody is a Trumper or they're not. It is with you're with us or against us and that is the only message they have left and then they have censorship left because they have failed, Tucker.

Why do you think it is that Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer are the leaders in the House and the Senate and Nancy is the leader in the House, because they're not leaders, those people have negative charisma. I wouldn't ask Chuck Schumer directions to the freeway. Why are they the leaders? Because they're the ones who take the most money from the billionaire class that actually runs this country.

They take the money from them and then they disperse it to the other Members of Congress, so they vote for them as leader, not because they're leaders but because they're the most corrupt.

CARLSON: Man, is that true. The Great Jimmy Dore, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.

DORE: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: Well, there was a legitimately stunning upset in a special election last night in that entirely Hispanic effectively congressional district in Texas. Republicans took control of that district for the first time since 1870. What happened and why? Fascinating.

Plus, an amazing and honestly shocking new report details how the FBI protected Hunter Biden after he committed a Federal gun crime -- protected him. Would they do the same for you? That's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, for years and years and years, we've been told that wanting a border is racist. Only White supremacists want borders, everyone else is an internationalist.

Well, it turns out that's not true. It never was true. But the results are in, it is completely untrue. Do you know who wants a border? Hispanic voters.

In 2020, Donald Trump flipped Zapata County in Texas. It is 95 percent Hispanic and last night, if you need more evidence, in a special election, a Republican called Mayra Flores flipped the district in South Texas that's 85 percent Hispanic. no Republican has represented that district since 1870.

So you have to ask yourself, why are so many self-described Latino voters voting for White nationalists? It's very odd.

Glenn Greenwald has noticed this trend. He is an independent journalist. His work is on "Substack." We're happy to have him join us tonight. Hey, Glenn.

So how does this work exactly?

GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: It is kind of odd that the media narrative holds that the Republican Party is devoted to a project of White nationalism and White supremacy.

And yet at the same time, large numbers of Latino, Asian, Muslim, and Black voters are either slowly or rapidly migrating to the Republican Party, which you would think would make people question whether that narrative could possibly be true, but you would be wrong. They're not questioning it. They're essentially attacking those people by saying they're too dumb and too primitive to understand their self-interest.

CARLSON: The Democratic Party -- and I just know this from personal experience traveling a lot -- it does seem like a party that's wholly dominated by and it caters exclusively to the instincts of 45-year-old affluent, personally unhappy, White women. That's just -- that's the way it seems to me. So how is that the multiracial party exactly?

GREENWALD: The split between the reality and what elite media and journalists and political people have been saying could not be wider. Under the Trump presidency, Trump was held up as this Hitler-like figure, one of the two or three most racist people who wanted to genocide, all non-White people.

He attracted more Black and more Latino and more Asian voters than any Republican in decades, and Joe Biden won for one reason and one reason only because affluent suburban White women voted Democrat after voting for Republicans for a long time. It's the exact opposite of what the media has been claiming.

CARLSON: And it is provable because we have the election result. It's just too unbelievable.

Glen Greenwald, great to see you. We will see you soon. Appreciate it.

GREENWALD: Yes. Good talking to you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So Joe Biden, in an effort to undo the entire Bill of Rights is now backing legislation that would effectively ban the sale of most guns in this country.

Now under Biden's bill, you get 10 years in jail for trying to buy, for example, a single magazine for your Glock handgun. How much is 10 years? Well, for perspective, that is 10 years more than Biden's son received when he committed a Federal gun felony, he lied on a Federal gun form about his drug use in order to get a handgun.

So we knew that. We've known it for a while, but "The Washington Examiner" just put some meat on these bones. It just uncovered Hunter Biden's text in the days after he bought that .38 revolver. And those texts reveal that on October of 2018, Hunter Biden acknowledged leaving that firearm in a car.

The vehicle according to his sister-in-law, and then girlfriend, Hallie, was unlocked with the window down and she was worried the kids were going to get it, so she tried to get rid of the gun. She threw it in the trash can near a school. And when she did that Hunter Biden melted down because the Feds became involved.

This is a direct quote: "You now have me as an abusive pedophile with homicidal tendencies," Biden wrote to Hallie. "And that's now in the hands of the FBI."

Well, wait a second? Abusive pedophile? Tell us more. What does that mean exactly? We don't know. We'd like to know more.

And then Hunter Biden berated his sister-in-law girlfriend for telling him his gun didn't belong in an unlocked car, quote: "What rights you effing have?" He said, but it turns out Hunter Biden had no reason to worry at all because he is Joe Biden's son.

So the FBI not only didn't pursue charges, they protected him, and in fact, it was Federal agents and Secret Service -- he was not entitled to Secret Service protection, by the way, at that time, you paid for it anyway -- the Secret Service on his behalf, on Joe Biden's behalf went to the gun store, the very one where Hunter Biden had lied on the Federal gun form committing a felony and tried to grab the paperwork, so no one would know.

The result of all of this, no one red flagged him, the crackhead accused of homicidal pedophilia tendencies. No. Instead, he was treated very gently by the media. Here's an example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY MASON, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Why did you have a gun?

HUNTER BIDEN, JOE BIDEN'S SON: Well, again, a period of my life that was difficult. It was -- but you know, I don't know.

MASON: According to the reporting, at one point, the Secret Service went looking for the record of sale. Do you know anything about that?

H. BIDEN: Nothing. No.

MASON: But you know about the Secret Service being involved?

H. BIDEN: No, I had no idea. I don't know whether the Secret Service were or why they would be or I don't think that that's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, but you didn't know because it's in your texts. You're lying. The Federal government covered up your crimes.

So to recap, you're not allowed to protect your family anymore, but the President's son can do whatever he wants with firearms. So can Ukrainians, by the way. Guns are not free, they are only for Ukrainians.

And the City of Miami just made that explicit and we are quoting: "In an effort to support Ukraine, the City of Miami will be hosting a gun buyback." Only Ukrainians get guns. Only Ukrainians, not you -- the Ukrainians.

So where does this leave the rest of us? Well, as long as selective enforcement of the law is the policy of the Biden administration, no American should feel obligated to follow Joe Biden's gun regulations because why would you if the law is clearly illegitimate, it's not even being applied to people who vote for or are related to Joe Biden, why should it apply to you?

A real question.

Gun owners by the way are now banned from adopting dogs at one shelter in California. Apparently, the dogs get to be euthanized if you don't support gun confiscation. True story. Details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: As if you needed more evidence that deranged lifestyle liberals have infected everything in this country with their politics, even the nicest things, there is this story.

A dog shelter in California is banning people from adopting dogs if they don't support gun confiscation. The shelter will now conduct a one-hour interview with people who want to adopt dogs, grilling them on whether they have the right politics. Here is local news report on it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KTTV REPORTER: Owner Kim Sill is asking this question on the Pet Adoption application: How do you feel about gun control?

KIM SILL, FOUNDER OF SHELTER HOPE PET SHOP IN THOUSAND OAKS: I don't think it's a bad thing to ask people how they feel about gun control. I don't -- I don't think that's bad. I think it's good to know how your neighbors feel.

KTTV REPORTER: The trouble began when Kim sent out a newsletter supporting gun control and announced her private rescue shelter would stop adopting out animals to anyone opposing gun restrictions.

SILL: We are a dog rescue. We're nonprofit. We get to choose who gets these dogs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So you deny a dog a home because you don't like the politics of the person who wants to adopt the dogs? And by the way, dogs love hunting with guns. That's a fact.

Lara Trump is an animal rescue advocate and strongly pro-dog. She joins us tonight.

Lara, thank you so much for coming on. I can't think of a story that -- there is something so grotesque about this and just absolutely awful, but I'll stop and let you assess what you think of it.

LARA TRUMP, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I mean, it's so tragic on every front, really, Tucker, this entire situation. It used to be that we had a few spaces left in our society that were not tarnished by politics, and obviously animals was one of those spaces. And unfortunately, as you just heard there, thanks to a shelter and no surprise, California, that apparently is gone as well.

And here are the numbers, because it's roughly six million animals a year that find themselves sadly, in shelters, they all are looking for homes. And unfortunately, just shy of about a million of those animals are euthanized every year because they can't find homes, and obviously, we know that shelters are overrun.

So what you have here is a situation where a group that claims to care about animals is telling us very happily that they care more about discriminating against people for Constitutional rights, for their Second Amendment freedoms than they do about finding good homes for animals and the two are not mutually exclusive.

It's not that you can be a responsible legal gun owner or be a loving pet parent because you're looking at a great example of that.

I happen to be a strong supporter of the Second Amendment along with my husband, Eric. We have two dogs that, believe me, take up more space in our bed at night than even the two of us. They're living a great life.

But the saddest part of this is all of those animals that of course, are not going to find a home now, because of people's just complete ignorance and total intolerance. It is so sad to see and quite frankly, a really awful commentary on our society as a whole at this point, I think.

CARLSON: Well, it is just so unbelievably cruel. And by the way, the people I know, who love and understand their dogs, they best hunt with their dogs. I mean, this is insane.

L. TRUMP: That's right.

CARLSON: And I appreciate your coming on tonight, Lara Trump, and for all you do on behalf of dogs. Thank you.

L. TRUMP: Thank you.

CARLSON: So we've got a long memory, it extends like two months back and we recall a time when anyone who suggested that maybe these sanctions against Russia wouldn't really hurt Russia, but would hurt this country was immediately denounced as a traitor to this country and threatened with arrest.

Well, that turned out to be true actually, that prediction. Now, the White House is admitting the sanctions have failed and have been counterproductive. They made Putin richer and you poorer.

Why is it not a front page story in "The New York Times?" We've got details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, we can get pretty absorbed in how we're losing our rights in this country, and we certainly are. But occasionally it is worth looking across the Atlantic to Europe from which we borrowed our culture and legal system to see how they're doing with human rights and the answer is even worse than we are.

Europe is no less safe and less free than it's been in living memory. Eva Vlaardingerbroek is a Dutch legal philosopher who has been chronicling this. She is sounding the alarm that things are happening in Europe that have not happened in a very, very long time in a remarkable conversation with her with a brand new episode of "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's a short piece of it.

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EVA VLAARDINGERBROEK, DUTCH LEGAL PHILOSOPHER: You can see even that the establishment goes after politicians who descend from the left-wing globalist rhetoric with legal means, and you can see that not just for politicians, but during COVID for example. We've seen that being used against ordinary civilians.

So they will have task force, even a military task force in the Netherlands, that is completely -- just has this one job and that is to crack down on free speech. And they will say everything that goes against the government's narrative when it comes to COVID, for example, forms a danger for society, therefore, it's disinformation. We need to take it down, so ...

CARLSON: And they'll use force to do that?

VLAARDINGERBROEK: Well, not yet. Well, you probably have seen, you know, all the demonstrations that we had where the police used force against protesters that they've done for sure, but not yet so much when it comes to freedom of speech in the sense that they crack down on disinformation, but they haven't done that with force yet. But they will delete a post.

CARLSON: If they have guns and they're telling you to stop doing something, the threat is inherent.

VLAARDINGERBROEK: Yes. And we don't have guns because like I said, we don't have a First Amendment, but we sure as hell don't have a Second Amendment.

CARLSON: So, it's not a free country, is what you're saying?

VLAARDINGERBROEK: No, it is -- I think it's an illusion. It's an illusion of a free country. If all the things that I find important for a free, democratic nation are not real. So if you are going to arrest -- the state arrest dissidents, you don't have free speech.

If you have politicians that are first of all, Geert Wilders, for example, is protected 24/7 because his life is not sure, because he's always under threat of radical Islamist that are also being imported by these same elites, and you have the state that comes after him and prosecute him for things that he says, I don't think that you can talk of a real free nation. No.

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CARLSON: She is not overstating it. In the U.K., a man was just arrested for making fun of George Floyd on a private social media and got arrested.

That episode is absolutely worth watching. It will come out tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM on FOX Nation.

So we may very well being called a traitor to the country by people like Chuck Schumer, who obviously don't care about the country for predicting that maybe the sanctions on Russia would be counterproductive.

Now Bloomberg is reporting that quote, "Some Biden officials are privately expressing concern that rather than dissuade the Kremlin as intended, American sanctions have been said exacerbated inflation, worsened food insecurity and punished ordinary Russians more than Putin or his allies." Bloomberg noted that quote, "The collateral damage from the sanctions has been wider than expected."

You think?

It wasn't hard to predict. We predicted it months ago. It was obvious even then. It was lunatic. It was pushed by Ron Klain, Biden's Chief of Staff who runs the country.

We said that out loud, we were denounced as traitors for it.

So here the original argument.

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CARLSON: In order to fight tyranny, the United States must embrace collective punishment: Hurt the children to bring justice. These are our values because Vladimir Putin is a moral monster."

Now these are not traditional Western concepts of justice, but Joe Biden wholeheartedly endorses that, and so does a dominant bipartisan coalition in the United States Congress.

The question is, is this a wise course? Now, we can't say. Far be it for us to suggest thinking through world changing policies in any way before enacting them, pausing to reflect we have learned is disloyal. Adult moral calculations are treason. Thinking about your own country is a crime.

The immediate goal, again, the bipartisan goal is to turn Russia into a pariah state. Now, again, the question isn't whether Vladimir Putin deserves that? It's more than a moral question. The question is, how will that work out for us, and for the world?

American citizens have a right to ask that question.

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CARLSON: Oh, but you don't have a right you should be arrested. You're committing treason, say people who actually don't like America at all.

So the question is, they got it wrong again, will they ever admit it? Will they ever pay the price for getting something huge wrong?

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. We're honored to have him join us again tonight. Professor, thanks so much for coming on.

So this all seemed kind of predictable. It's not a defense of Putin to say this was stupid. It was stupid. Now, they are admitting it is stupid. Will anyone ever be punished for this?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Yes, it's an age old rule, Tucker, of sanctions against autocratic governments that have impoverished populations. I mean, there's a paradox because the populations don't have a say. So they can't really, you know, they can't change policy unless they have a coup, and they are accustomed to a much lower standard of living.

So if it's a big country, like Russia that affects gas or something, we feel $7.00 a gallon gas in California here or lack of baby formula, a lot more than the Russians feel, a lot worse punishment.

These are people who lost 20 million in World War Two. So there is a paradox and that the solution was always in these Russian speaking areas that are contested, to deter him not to go further, and then to have a plebiscite and see if they want to be with Putin or Ukraine.

And how you get there is to resist his aggression, but the only way the Ukrainians are going to win very quickly is to do things that are unthinkable to a nuclear power, and that would be give them a shore to ship weapons or sink the Black fleet, as people have talked about, or take out more Russian Generals or conduct raids in Russia. That's really harebrained and that's the type of preemptive offensive defense that would maybe give them a chance, but in itself would be crazy.

And yet, the more this goes on, this Verdun-like attrition, there are going to be people thinking about it, and so it's better to just get people together and say, this is a tragedy and let's look at these people that speak a majority -- Russia and in these things -- and maybe we can have a plebiscite and sanctions can be ended, if people will agree in it.

It might not work, it probably won't work. But I don't want to see us fight to the last Ukrainian to get every single Russian out of Ukraine where the majority on the border is speaking Russian.

And that's not to excuse Vladimir Putin, but we've got some really crazy people saying crazy things about a very ill dictator who has got his finger on 6,000 nuclear weapons aimed at the West.

CARLSON: So reckless, it's unbelievable. So nicely put and Verdun-like is exactly right. Victor Davis Hanson, thank you so much.

HANSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So Elon Musk who doesn't seem to be very political, all of a sudden has announced who he is supporting for President in 2024.

We'll be right back. We've got that.

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CARLSON: So on Twitter today, Elon Musk who is buying Twitter posted that he voted Republican in Texas. He voted for Mayra Flores. Tesla is now headquartered in the state. Here's what he wrote: "I voted for Mayra Flores -- first time I ever voted Republican. Massive red wave in 2022."

And someone else on Twitter asked Musk who he is going to be supporting for President, his response, one word: "DeSantis."

Well, Governor Ron DeSantis before was asked about this today and here was his response.

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GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Elon -- so what I would say, you know, I'm focused on 2022, but with Elon Musk, what I would say is, you know, I welcome support from African-Americans. What can I say?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Pretty good. We're out of time, unfortunately.

Before we go, a public service announcement: Tony Fauci has COVID despite getting like 27 vaccine boosters. He has it.

And apparently he is infectious.

So if you see him, pretty small, but if you look down and you see him, stay away. He is a Typhoid Mary of Georgetown.

We will be back tomorrow night at 8:00 PM. Have the best night with the ones you love.

Sean Hannity next.

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