Tucker: Our leaders are trying to intimidate truckers for speaking out.

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Tucker: Canadian truckers are being treated like a terror group

‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host argues leaders are trying to intimidate truckers for speaking out.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Feburary 7, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: You have the sweetest giggle I've ever heard, and we're going to have to have you back.

NAIA OKAMI, IDENTIFIES AS WOLF: Yes, I'd be more than happy.

WATTERS: All right, thank you so much.

That's all for tonight. Tucker Carlson is up next, and remember, I'm Watters and this is my world.

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

"Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose, but your chains." That's from Karl Marx, of course. He wrote that famous phrase in 1848. The weird thing is, it's pretty likely that Marx himself never met an actual worker.

Wait a second. He didn't spend a decade in a cotton mill witnessing the oppression firsthand? No. Karl Marx never spent a moment in a factory. He was a rich kid who became a journalist. Of course, he was.

But for more than 150 years, Karl Marx inspired generations of other rich kids who also became journalists to repeat his line or variations of it. Over time, workers became working men or working class, and then with feminism, working people or working families, but the idea itself never changed. Ordinary people, wage earners are getting shafted.

So they've got to unite. They've got to come together for protection and for dignity. This was the idea of course behind the organized labor movement.

And every Democratic President from Andrew Jackson until now has made the very same point over and over again, the noble people of Scranton, you hear it even today.

So Democrats have repeated that line often enough, you would think they really mean it. Do they really mean it? Well, let's take the test just so you know.

Watch what happens when actual workers, working people from working families who constitute the working class, actually come together as a group to protest how things are going. What happens then?

Does the intellectual class greet these workers as heroes through a parade? Listen intently to their stories? Does NPR do a sympathetic feature on them? Or do self-described progressives recoil in revulsion and horror at the grubbiness of the people who as we used to say, work for a living? Do liberals immediately denounce them as Nazis and called for their suppression by force? That's the question. What's the answer?

Well, ask Trump voters what happens, they'll know.

Or consider what's happening right now in Canada. Thousands of truck drivers have descended on Ottawa, the capital city, to protest the tyranny of Justin Trudeau's government. Justin Trudeau does not like truck drivers. He thinks they are revolting.

Justin Trudeau likes private equity barons and tech moguls and other people who give him money. Trudeau is not in Ottawa right now. In fact, he and his family fled when the truck drivers arrived and they've been in hiding ever since.

So when the revolution he has been calling for finally arrived, Justin Trudeau wasn't there to see it. He ran away in terror, kind of sad. So instead, in his place, his friend Mark Carney has been speaking for him. Carney is a former Goldman Sachs executive, who many believe will replace Justin Trudeau if Trudeau ever decides to give up power.

In a recent op-ed, Mark Carney vented his rage of the impudent truckers in Ottawa and anyone who sent the money on the internet, quote: "... anyone sending money to the convoys should be in no doubt," Carney wrote, "... you are funding sedition. Foreign funders have an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start."

Got that? It's not a protest. It's sedition. It's an insurrection.

Clearly, Mark Carney has been watching a lot of CNN up there in Canada and that is why he has included the truckers should be crushed by force, quote: "Those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of law." People who sent the money should be prosecuted. If they're not prosecuted Mark Carney fears quote, "... the constant blaring of horns at all hours will bankrupt our businesses."

Are you laughing yet? So the very same finance ghouls who cheered lockdowns for two solid years are now deeply concerned that small businesses might be hurt by the trucker protests. Hilarious.

It would be interesting by the way to poll small business owners in Ottawa to see what they think. How do they feel about the truckers? Somebody would know exactly what those results would be, but no one's doing that poll, of course. Instead, they found an easier way, Justin Trudeau has just ordered police to shut the whole thing down.

How do you do that? How do you stop a truck protest? Simple. You seize their fuel. That's exactly what police in Canada are doing. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, in fact, yes, they are taking fuel away from people as they attempt to fuel their vehicles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so we are through much practice, connoisseurs of irony. So let's pause a moment to savor the irony here. The very same people told us we had to defund the police are now telling the police to seize fuel from working class Canadians who are trying to stay alive in arctic temperatures. As they used to say in the 1960s, scratch a liberal and you will find a fascist. That was a Black Panther slogan actually. They weren't entirely stupid. In fact in this case, they were absolutely right.

According to Justin Trudeau, possessing gasoline in the City of Ottawa is now a crime. Now, to be clear, Ottawa didn't declare the state of emergency because the truckers lit a courthouse on fire, shot someone or leveled a church, BLM did all of those things, but Justin Trudeau strongly supports BLM. He reaffirmed his support the other day.

Here is the problem, and we're going to let the mayor of Ottawa or Ottawa as it is correctly pronounced Jibowu (ph) explain why peaceful truck drivers pose an imminent danger to Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JIM WATSON, OTTAWA, CANADA: It's disturbing when you see the protests turning into what looks like some kind of a fun carnival where they've got bouncy castles and hot tubs and saunas, a complete insult to the people who are putting up with this nonsense for the last seven days, and it shows a great deal of insensitivity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: They've got bouncy castles for kids, growls the childless mayor of Ottawa. Let's hurt them.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's a dark scene in Truckistan tonight. The kids are on the bouncy castles. Of course, at the same time, their parents are flaunting the authority of the people in charge and that is the crime.

Watch this protester, a white supremacist explain his motives for protest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where the hell were you? You weren't there. But, now you want to come out in the freezing cold to oppose my fundamental human rights and freedoms.

I'm not going to have it. I'm a Black man standing beside my brother right here. This is my brother right here and none of you have the right to tell me who to associate with and who not to associate with me because you did not come out and voice your concerns for the fact that Justin Trudeau banned me from leaving this country because of my medical decision, because I made a decision that he did not like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Shut up, racist. Go back to Jamaica with your white supremacy nonsense.

By the way, no one in Canada's government or the media in Canada, which is mostly controlled by the government, is engaging with any of the arguments of people like that. Instead, they've gone directly to force as crumbling regimes always do. They don't have an argument to make, all they have is police power and they're using them.

Officials in Ottawa just threatened to criminally investigate the California company, GoFundMe because truckers raised about $10 million on the platform. Here is Ottawa's Police Chief bragging about stealing that money.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF PETER SLOLY, OTTAWA POLICE: We have, through the efforts of Deputy Bell, Christian Henow (ph), the mayor and his staff, we've been able to shut down the GoFundMe program. That's a temporary reprieve because the funds are already moving in different directions.

We are now going after supply and fuel coming into the area through investigations and intelligence operations and interdictions, all of which were underway yesterday, fully underway today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Intelligence operations? This is a peaceful, political protest. No one has shown any evidence to the contrary. It's not a drug trafficking or human trafficking operation. It's not al-Qaeda. These are Canadian citizens who drive trucks for a living, but they're being treated like a terror group.

GoFundMe announced it would redirect the $10 million raised by supporters of the truckers to charities of its choice, presumably BLM, which it has supported since the very beginning. In other words, GoFundMe plan to steal that money.

They were stopped from doing this, by the way, by a number of American Attorneys General who threatened to sue the companies. So the company backed off and they're going to refund the money, supposedly. But still, the truckers, the people for whom this money was intended, will not get it.

So, in the absence of GoFundMe doing what it's supposed to do, others are filling the gap. An alternative crowdfunding website called GiveSendGo has stepped up and raised already more than $5 million for the truckers. How long until they try to shut that down, too?

Some Canadians are clearly worried about that. They're turning to cryptocurrency. Tally Coin, for example, is a small crowdfunding service that uses Bitcoin. It's not controlled by banks. That's the point. They're hosting a fundraiser for the truckers. Now, why is this appealing? No one can steal the money. No government can pressure anyone to turn the money over because governments don't control crypto.

Bitcoin goes from person A to person B and all the intermediary does, the company, is connect the two.

It's pretty appealing and you can imagine the long-term consequences here. If the people in charge, in this country and in Canada, want to make the U.S. dollar irrelevant, they'll keep acting like this and soon, it will be.

Either way, it's becoming very clear that the only way around the stranglehold, the technology has on our human rights is decentralization. That doesn't apply just to crowdfunding, but more than anything to communication. You can't organize if you can't talk to other people.

So Facebook, for example, just shut down the "Convoy to D.C. Group," which had amassed 134,000 followers in just two days. No one is allowed to promote the organization anymore. Facebook, all day today, has been suppressing positive articles about the truckers in Canada. Of course, they are. That seems like a story, but our media have ignored it.

Instead, everyone in New York and D.C. and Los Angeles is cheering on the national security state and its alliance with Silicon Valley as they come together to crush a human rights movement. It makes sense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Those with the so-called freedom convoy say they're staying put until vaccine mandates are dropped, the masks come off, and life returns to the way it was.

JAMES MACDONALD, PROTESTER: This whole event has gone beyond just vaccines and it is now about the entire ordeal.

SUZANNE AND PAUL, PROTESTERS: We're asking for our freedom. That's all we want.

NEWTON: So, they've been free, free to park big rigs right next to the Prime Minister's Office, free to set up camp in front of the country's National Parliament. Ottawa Police say they have learned much in the past week, especially after reports of assaults, intimidation and allegations of hate speech and symbols.

SLOLY: This remains, as it was from the beginning, an increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous demonstration.

NEWTON: And it is spreading like a contagion itself right across the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's spreading like a contagion. Now, you knew that CNN was the Praetorian Guard for our ruling class. Did you know they serve the same role in Canada and what other countries? How much money does CNN take from the government of Canada? That'd be worth finding out.

They described what's happening in Ottawa as a, quote: "violent and dangerous demonstration." Really? Where is the violence coming from? The only people getting injured or have been injured so far are the protesters, the truckers.

In Winnipeg on Friday, an anarchist called David Zegarac drove his jeep into four people who were protesting vaccine mandates. You're seeing that on the screen right now.

Zegarac didn't stop after hitting the people, he fled. Police shortly, they arrested him. Of course, police are treating the incident like a hit and run. Nothing political. It's not domestic terrorism or anything. David Zegarac, his views, they agree with. He's a progressive, a true believer. How much is he a true believer?

Well, if you look closely, you'll notice that Zegarac has his mask on driving alone in his car during the assault, prima facie evidence of mental illness, something you see in this country all the time, and it makes you wonder: If you're driving alone with a mask on, do you pose a danger to pedestrians? Entirely possible. Someone should fund a study on that. That seems like a big story, especially since it's happening just an hour from our own border, all of this.

The question is: How long before protests like this come here? Clearly, our media are worried about that. Watch the morning news anchors on MSNBC. They're deeply, deeply concerned about these uppity working-class people. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Where were these protests when people were required to give their children five vaccines?

MIKE BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: They were in the doctor's office getting vaccines.

SCARBOROUGH: They were in the doctor's office getting vaccines and they were making fun of left-wingers on the West Coast for being loopy anti- vaxxers. Now, they have met the enemy and the enemy, their enemy, is themselves because they've become what they hated. It's a cult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So here you have Joe and Mika sneering from their studio in Florida at the freezing wage earners stuck outside in Ottawa in February because they want their human rights. Screw them.

Will Joe Scarborough say that to their faces? Probably not.

Scarborough is famously tough on young female employees. Some say he's an absolute killer in the office, but it's hard to imagine Scarborough talking like this if there was an actual Canadian trucker in the room.

Truckers in this country are watching all of this, and you wonder: What do they think about it? What would happen if American truck drivers decided they'd had enough of people like Joe Scarborough and went on strike? What would happen then?

Well, this country would stop immediately, no more deliveries of anything. Over time that would mean starvation for people in the cities, but even in the short term, there would be profound suffering in this country.

For example, and this is something that too few people outside of television even consider, the world's entire supply of Botox is manufactured on the West Coast of Ireland. That's a long way from here. In fact, it's a 4,000 mile long supply chain from the Allergan plant in Westport, Ireland to Jupiter, Florida.

Now, people at MSNBC might not be aware of this, but our country has no domestic Botox production, along with vitamin C, and antibiotics. It's one of the lifesaving pharmaceutical products we have recklessly offshored.

So if the trucks stop delivering, the Botox stops coming and suddenly your morning television anchors are going to look like they're 58 years old, which actually they are.

Could that happen? Is it impossible? No, it's not impossible. The people in charge aren't really thinking this through. Most of the time, trends start in the United States and they move north to Canada, but this time, the opposite could happen.

Ezra Levant is the founder of "Rebel News," one of the very few brave and independent media organizations in the nation of Canada, and we are honored to have him on tonight.

Ezra, thanks so much for coming on. So it seems like the Trudeau government has so completely overreacted to what appears to be a thoroughly peaceful protest that my read is an outsider, a non-Canadian is that they're very weak if they are terrified of the truckers, you know that this is not a strong government.

EZRA LEVANT, FOUNDER, "REBEL NEWS": Yes, I mean, Trudeau calls them violent. His MPs say they're terrorists. But today in Court, the most a Judge would give them is that they're enthusiastic horn honkers, and they have asked the truckers to stop honking at night. That's it.

There was an opinion poll that showed 32 percent of Canadians see themselves reflected in the truckers. In our multiparty system that would make them the leading party if the truckers formed a political movement.

I think Justin Trudeau is more scared that he lets on because these are supposed to be his people. They are young, they're ethnically diverse, they are working class people, but they are not following the script that they normally do for him.

CARLSON: Can he stop this protest? I mean, do you think he can successfully shut it down from wherever he is in hiding right now?

LEVANT: Well, I mean, taking away the diesel fuel is a low blow. It's very cold in Ottawa and most of these truckers are living in a little cab in their truck. So they need diesel fuel for heat. So by taking away their diesel fuel, as you showed, he's really freezing them out.

And by the way, there are some families, there are even some kids. I don't know what legal justification they have. The diesel fuel is not illegal. Selling it, owning it, having it is not illegal. I think he's just sort of thinking, well, what are they going to do to me? You know, these police go in heavily armed, brandishing their arms, taking the diesel fuel, and so many of Canada's checks and balances have failed.

There hasn't been a significant court ruling against the lockdowns and Trudeau is sort of hoping that they will be able to starve or freeze these truckers out. I don't think it's going to work though.

It's not just in Ottawa. There are trucker convoys in many other parts of the country, including hundreds that have blocked the Montana-Alberta border for over a week now.

It's in the middle of the prairie, hundreds of huge trucks and agricultural equipment, they can't be towed away. The Mounties tried to move that blockade, the burly truckers stood them down. So, I think this problem is bigger than Trudeau knows how to solve unless he goes full Castro on them.

CARLSON: Well, he is already going there as far as I can tell. It is tyranny and I hope they continue to resist. And Ezra, thank you for covering this fairly and honestly. Your role has been unique in the entire country. So we appreciate it as Americans.

LEVANT: Thank you.

CARLSON: Thanks. So here's a story that you think everyone will be covering, and it only came to our attention because of the guest we are about to talk to, but life insurance companies are reporting that Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 are dying at astronomical rates, much higher rates than normal. They're not dying of COVID. What the hell is going on? And why does nobody care? That's straight ahead.

Plus, the White House demanded that Spotify censor Joe Rogan. Spotify has now censor Joe Rogan. How is that not a violation of our First Amendment? Glenn Greenwald on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: if you don't watch the White House press briefings with Jen Psaki, and we sympathize with you if you don't, you may have missed this. We played it before because it was really one of the amazing moments in American politics. None of the people noticed it.

Jen Psaki from the podium in the White House Briefing Room the other day called on Joe Rogan's boss, Spotify to censor Joe Rogan. Here is what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This disclaimer, it's a positive step, but we want every platform to continue doing more to call out mis and disinformation while also uplifting, accurate information.

But ultimately, you know, our view is it is a good step. It's a positive step, but there's more that can be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So what the apologists have told us for the past four years, as we point out, censorship after censorship after censorship, book burning, it's all totally fine because the government is not doing this. It has been "National Review's" position for five years, so long as the government then really, says David French, the First Amendment doesn't apply.

But here you have the government, the President's own spokes chick demanding censorship, and then the company obey. Spotify has removed 70 episodes of Joe Rogan's show.

So this seems like a crime, actually. But what do we know? We're not lawyers. Glenn Greenwald is. He is also an independent journalist. He joins us tonight.

Glenn, thanks so much for coming on. So, they've been telling us all this time like it's no big deal: Settle down, Glenn Greenwald. This is not a violation of the First Amendment, whatever it is. This looks like a violation the First Amendment.

GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: Right. And obviously that comment that you just referenced is in and of itself disturbing: Why should the White House be weighing in at all on who they think should be on Spotify, who they think should not be, what they think Spotify should and shouldn't be doing about their podcast hosts.

But it's even more alarming when you consider that it is actually part of a broad pattern, even an explicit strategy by Democrats to use their majoritarian power in Washington to coerce companies, to censor for them in ways the Constitution would prohibit.

They've repeatedly subpoenaed social media companies and explicitly said, if you don't start censoring more, you will face legal and regulatory reprisals. Remember, when Parler was taken off the internet when it was the number one most popular downloaded app, it was because AOC went online the day before and said: Hey, Google and Apple and Wall Street and Amazon, why are you allowing this app that I don't like on the internet? And three days later, it was gone.

So this is exactly the kind of coercion, Tucker, that the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment that the government can engage in without violating the First Amendment.

CARLSON: It's just so strange that lawmakers in the so-called opposition party sit back like there's nothing we can do. You know, these are private businesses, but as you just pointed out, these are not private businesses acting independently. They're acting in response to the threats of government, which regulates them.

GREENWALD: I think this is one of the key most overlooked parts of the whole censorship debate is these Silicon Valley companies never set out to want to censor, why would they? Why would you want to kick people off your platform? You want more people on your platform, and ideologically, they came out of Silicon Valley, which is about the free internet. So why are they now doing it?

It's in part because they got pressured by journalists, "The New York Times" and NBC saying if you don't censor, you have blood on your hands, and you're responsible for the destruction of democracy. But a big reason is they know that Democrats will start enacting laws and enforcing regulation against them if they don't censor more and they know that because Democrats are saying it explicitly over and over.

CARLSON: And there is no one they like to censor more than you, Glenn Greenwald on "Substack" to be clear. Great to see you tonight. Thank you.

GREENWALD: Good to talk to you, Tucker. Thanks.

CARLSON: So here is a shocking story. Look, you should care no matter what side you're on, above all about how Americans are doing and one of the main measures of how they're doing is how long they live. If you're dying younger, there's a problem, and a lot of them are dying younger.

This fact comes to us from the life insurance companies which keep close track of that, have noticed this according to their data. According to Scott Davison, the CEO of OneAmerica Insurance, reported deaths in the age range of 18 to 64, those are the working years, were up 40 percent in the third quarter of last year, compared to pre-pandemic and pre-vaccine totals.

Davison said, quote: "We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business -- not just at OneAmerica -- 40 percent is just unheard of." And again, these are the guys who do this for a living, and they're shocked.

So the question, what is causing this? It is clear leaders don't think COVID is to blame. Here is Stacey Abrams, maskless, in front of a roomful of masked children, and she has at least one very obvious comorbidity. Here is Barack Obama maskless in the face of his masked servants as they build his latest mansion in Hawaii.

So if corona is not causing these deaths, and it is not, what is causing these deaths? Forty percent increase.

Charlie Kirk is the cofounder of Turning Point U.S.A., he just wrote a piece on this. That's why we learned about it. He joins us tonight to assess.

Charlie Kirk, thanks so much for coming on. What is this?

CHARLIE KIRK, FOUNDER, TURNING POINT U.S.A.: Thank you.

We don't know. I mean, one business that actually tells the truth regarding the death of Americans is life insurance. They have to get this right. They have entire teams of actuaries that study this data all day long.

It's not the public health authorities that are warning this, it's a single CEO of a major life insurance company who says: Hey, by the way, there's kind of a 40 percent increase in death, 10 percent, he said would be a once in 200-year catastrophe. We have a 40 percent increase in death? And it's not because of COVID and we deserve answers.

And what is so amazing, Tucker, is that we've known this information and this data for a couple of weeks now. Where are the politicians? Where are the leaders? Where are the people we put in charge to actually care about the wellbeing of our people?

Well, at least we know how many times Joe Rogan used a bad word in a podcast the last 10 years. I guess, we're getting our pronouns right for our six-year-olds, but we have a 40 percent increase in death amongst the supposed healthiest portion of the American population.

This is a catastrophe. We deserve answers. And some would conjecture: Hey, does this have something to do with the fact that we might have done a mass inoculation strategy. We know that there was deaths of alienation, suicide, and otherwise, but there's no answers. No one is talking about it.

CARLSON: So, I mean, isn't this the primary number they should be focused on if you're in charge of the wellbeing of the American people and the death rate jumps by 40 percent in a cohort, you know that is not supposed to die young, then like why aren't you hair on fire upset about it? I'm honestly confused.

KIRK: Well, it's either they don't care or they don't know how to talk about it or they are too concerned about GDP numbers or stock market increases or immigration quotas or whatever. It's a mass casualty event. It's that simple.

And the fact that the insurance companies are now warning us about it should have every politician in every political party across the country say regardless of your politics, we've got to figure out what's going on here.

The lockdowns contributed and there are other things that definitely contributed as well. This is probably the most important metric for our leaders to care about.

CARLSON: Well, that's exactly -- that's exactly right and they don't care. And I just really am grateful that you noticed this, it went over my head, and brought it to us tonight. Charlie Kirk, thank you.

KIRK: Thank you.

CARLSON: So if you thought the looting ended with the BLM riots a year and a half ago, no, the sacking continues right in front of security guards. We've got a lot of tape of this, we're going to show you one of most brazen robberies you'll ever see on camera in New York.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Like groundhog, Justin Trudeau who many say is Fidel Castro's son has just emerged from his lair in hiding to deliver a brief message to an emergency session of Parliament in Ottawa. Did he declare he is going to listen to the truckers? No.

He reiterated that he believes the truckers, anyone who is protesting government mandates and restrictions on travel within their own country, all of these people are racists. He said quote: "Individuals who are trying to blockade our economy and our democracy, and it has to stop," end quote. In other words, when you would express an opinion that Justin Trudeau doesn't agree with, you're attacking democracy.

Where did he learn that? Oh, from Liz Cheney.

Well, to our country now. Thieves in New York State have begun looting. They actually never stopped looting since the BLM riots, but now, they're doing it right in front of security guards.

Here is video from a Louis Vuitton store in White Plains, New York. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where are the [bleep] securities?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Where are the securities? Well, he is right there, standing by impotently as people loot the store. It does feel like the end of something, maybe civilization.

Blake Masters may know the answer. He is very smart guy, the CEO of Thiel Capital. He's a Senate candidate in Arizona. We're rooting for him. He joins us tonight.

Blake Masters, thanks for coming on.

So you see watch that video, what's your first reaction to it?

BLAKE MASTERS (R), ARIZONA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Oh my gosh. Well, Tucker, that video is shocking, but it's not that surprising, right? Criminals feel emboldened today because our system emboldens them.

CARLSON: Yes.

MASTERS: You know, a recent story for you out here in Arizona, Tyler Moldovan is a 22-year-old Phoenix police officer. He was recently attacked by a violent felon. Tyler was shot eight times. Now, amazingly, he survived. So let's all pray for a miracle recovery.

But Tucker, what was a seven-time repeat felon doing out on the streets of Phoenix that night? Like this thug who shot Tyler. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2017. But they let him out after just three years. And you know, that's not an isolated incident. We are seeing a nationwide crime wave under Joe Biden.

In Phoenix, homicides up 50 percent. In my hometown of Tucson, homicides up 87 percent since 2019. It feels like our cities are becoming ever more like Detroit or Baltimore or Portland, you know, these horribly dystopian urban hell zones. I mean, it seems bad.

CARLSON: Well, it is the equity agenda and it results in murder. So, you've got to wonder -- who are the people who support this? I mean, I don't -- I honestly, as a matter of faith, don't think most Democratic voters support this.

MASTERS: Well, the thing to remember is, it's not just low-level crime, right? You've got to look at who is in charge. Look at the people at the top, look at Joe Biden. Biden violates the Constitution like every single day and that's the highest law of our land.

And so this culture of lawlessness, it's propped up by powerful Democrats and by bad people, bad people like George Soros, right? Soros funds all these left-wing DAs and you get these DAs into office and they don't want to arrest anybody, because that would be racist.

I mean, Tucker, we've got criminals thriving at the bottom of our system because we've got criminals running it at the top.

CARLSON: It's such a good point. I mean, if the President of the United States violates Federal law every single day and importing people illegally from other countries into ours without consent of the governed, then why should you even pause before stealing from Louis Vuitton?

MASTERS: Well, exactly. And you know, the thing to really watch out for here is the weaponization of our justice system. The left has just completely weaponized it.

If you were a BLM activist in Minneapolis in June of 2020, you could burn down a police precinct and nothing would happen to you. But if you were in the Capitol on January 6th and you step over the line, you are hunted down and treated as a terrorist, right? Or look at how they're going after President Trump, and now his family. These left wing DAs, they want to prosecute the Trump's not because they did anything wrong, they didn't, but because he led the MAGA movement and that terrifies them.

So this political retribution, it's got to stop. We cannot let these left- wing psychopaths get away with this.

CARLSON: I agree with that. Blake Masters, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

MASTERS: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So you may have noticed it in yourself, it is hard to pay attention to anything. Everyone's got -- what's the acronym? ADHD? What's going on? It's so bad, by the way, we would give me a million measures, most people in this country will not read a single book this year.

So how does the democracy continue if people aren't informed and don't have the bandwidth to pay attention?

Johann Hari is a deep thinker, one of our favorites. He just looked into this question with a whole book on attention -- our disappearing attention spans, why is this happening? How do we fix it? We spoke to him for an hour on "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Isn't the nature of distraction that it makes us effectively passive. It is organized resistance to something if you can't pause to think about its outlines?

JOHANN HARI, AUTHOR: Yes, this is one of the challenges. This is probably my biggest pessimistic thought is in order to get our attention back, we have to summon attention, right?

And my worry is have we gone so far down the road --

CARLSON: Nicely put.

HARI: I don't think we have, but I do think it requires a shift in psychology and one of the shifts in psychology is we need to stop -- I'll stress again, there are loads of things we can do as individuals, I recommend more than a dozen things that everyone could do tomorrow, individually for themselves and their kids that will significantly boost their attention.

But we need to stop just asking for individual tweaks. It requires a shift in psychology. We are not medieval peasants begging the court of King Zuckerberg for a few little crumbs of attention from his table. We are the free citizens of democracies, and we own our own minds and our children own their own minds and we have dignity.

We have to push back on the forces that are doing this to us. We have to tell them, we don't tolerate this. We want a life where we can pay attention. We can focus, we can sleep, we can have deep conversations. This is what a good life is an these changes are --

You know, Dr. James Williams, who worked at the heart of Google said to me, I will never forget it. He had this moment, he decided to quit. He is a fascinating person, you should have him on your show, he is a fascinating and wonderful person -- he had a moment.

He's at the heart of this machine that's invading our attention. And one day he spoke at a tech conference to people who are designing the kind of things that your viewers' kids are using all day, right? The apps, and he said, is there anyone here who wants to live in the world that we're creating, if it is, put up your hand? And not one of them put up their hand.

But he said to me, much later when I interviewed him, he said to me, the axe existed for 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it. The entire internet has existed for less than 10,000 days, we can sort this stuff out if we want to, we don't have to live like this.

These are very recent changes, right? We remember a world before most of these changes, right? And we're not ancient, you know, we can absolutely deal with these things. This is not beyond the wit of human beings. Human beings have dealt with bigger challenges than this in the past. We're all the beneficiaries of these big changes. But I do think we have to understand why it is happening to us, and particularly our children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Johann Hari, he is one of those people who just opens his eyes and notices what is happening around us. And for that reason, we think he's one of the smartest observers there is right now.

That whole conversation is on FOX Nation. You can get it free at tuckercarlson.com.

So the Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing, no reason not to reward the Chinese government for unleashing corona on the globe. No one appears to be watching them except the ones who are paid to watch and the things they are saying are amazing. We've been keeping track. That's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So judging by the numbers, not a single human being is actually watching it, but the Winter Olympics are officially underway in Beijing, China. So what is our media's posture towards this? We will suck up to our new leaders, the Chinese.

Here is one talking head from ESPN explain that we don't have the moral authority to criticize China's human rights record.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.A. ADANDE, ESPN: Who are we to criticize China's human rights records when we have ongoing attacks by the agents of the state against unarmed citizens, and we've got assaults on the voting rights of people of color in various states in this country?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Can we deport that guy? Probably not. That's a shame. What a lie, all of it. You'd have to do like a moron to say something like that. Clearly, he is.

Pretty embarrassing, but he's not the worst offender. No one has sucked up to their new masters in Beijing more assiduously than NBC News, which paid a lot of money to broadcast the Olympics this year. Here is one of their main script readers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC NEWS: ... choice by Xi Jinping to have one of the members of the Uyghur population, the subject of much scrutiny, the population that the U.S. has been a subject of genocide in Northwestern China, to have a member of that community as one of the two that would light the Olympic flame.

I have to turn to Andy Brown in this moment and ask you, it does seem so striking and so provocative by Xi Jinping in a real message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: A real message. No, the Uyghurs are fine. Are you kidding? They are fine. Stop your whining about the Uyghurs, please, says NBC News.

Clay Travis is the founder of Outkick and the cohost of "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show" which is fantastic. He joins us tonight. Clay, thanks so much for coming on.

So why are you whining about the Uyghurs? Anyway, I just learned from NBC, they are fine. They're in the Olympic Games.

CLAY TRAVIS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Man, Tucker, first of all, thanks for having me on. This is what I've actually been talking about you with for a long time. It is as crazy as you think the political media is and biased as you think the political media is, Tucker, sports media is a billion times worse.

I mean, we just had on ESPN, by the way, people come home from work, they want to pop a beer, they want to find out who won a game, and the next thing you know, you're watching J.A. Adande, who by the way, is a Northwestern journalism professor, tenured guy to my knowledge getting paid there as well, spreading direct Chinese propaganda.

That is what China tries to argue: Oh, we may have genocide. We may have actual slave labor being used by Uyghur Muslims who are being made to pick cotton to make tennis shoes, by the way.

But you know, in the United States, there are disputes over whether or not Georgia has too restrictive of a voting bill. So, it would be unfair for the United States to point out Chinese genocide. That is a Chinese propaganda message that is being propagated directly by ESPN.

And it's so noxious, Tucker, because it is occurring. It's not like you're watching MSNBC or reading "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post," or CNN and you might expect it if you're reasonably intelligent, hey, I'm being talked to in a dishonest manner. They're insinuating it within their coverage of sports, which is why it's particularly fertile, and probably why Disney is currying favor in that manner with China.

And by the way, Tucker, nobody argued against that. Nobody said, hey, you know, maybe comparing the Georgia Voting Bill, which is more expansive than what exists in New York, and also Delaware, where our President is from with genocide is a bad example to be trying to make here.

And oh, by the way, maybe holding corporations like Coke, by the way, Tucker, who said: Hey, we can't have this Georgia bill. We support the Major League Baseball All-Star game being pulled out of Atlanta. You ask them what they think about Chinese genocide, and suddenly they can't say a word. It's all ridiculous lies and sports media is being used to try to spread as much Chinese propaganda as there can be.

CARLSON: But to be fair, there are still states in this country in which it is required to show voter ID before you vote. So, I think that's okay.

TRAVIS: Hey, to be fair, Tucker, they are more strict in New York if you want to take your kid to McDonald's in terms of being able to show an ID than if you want to vote. That's not even hyperbole. That's the truth.

CARLSON: Exactly. But your Digital Health Pass will be required. We're reaching piquancy.

TRAVIS: Yes.

CARLSON: Clay Travis, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

TRAVIS: Hey, appreciate you, Tucker. Thank you.

CARLSON: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Oh we are out of time and no one is sadder about it than we are. You probably want a break.

By the way, you can watch our conversation with Johann Hari on FOX Nation. If you like, you may head to tuckercarlson.com.

We will be back tomorrow night, 8:00 PM and every week night, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink..

And now, to The Great Sean Hannity.

END

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