Tucker: Leaders blame spike in crime on coronavirus
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host says liberal politicians' excuses are 'just not true'
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 27, 2021. 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.
One Sunday afternoon last September, a 16-year-old boy called Aaron Pryor was shot to death in a driveway near his home in Oakland, California. Even by the standards of midday drive-by shootings, it was an awful crime.
Surveillance footage showed the killer firing more than a dozen rounds before fleeing.
No one was arrested for the murder, but local media did not seem especially interested in finding out who did it because they already knew. The coronavirus killed Aaron Pryor. That's what they told us.
When local television station noted that violence in the area had risen since the pandemic began, they must be connected.
Aaron Pryor's football coach agreed with this. It was COVID that really killed this kid, he told reporters. The coach didn't explain how exactly COVID had done this killing or what COVID's motive might have been. But no one asked.
Everyone, particularly people in power seemed happy to blame COVID, the pandemic did it. You've heard that a lot, and not just in California.
Across the country in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed rising crime rates squarely on the virus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Police organizations will say that part of the reason that crime is up is because there has been a cut in funding to the NYPD. What do you say to that?
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: This predates any funding decisions. That's just the truth. The perfect storm I mentioned started in March and April when everything shut down and we saw the violence start in earnest May into June, into July. And it's clearly because things came unglued.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Right? It must have been the pandemic. That makes sense. The quarantine did it. We forced everyone to stay home and that's why there are many people on the streets shooting each other and pushing strangers into oncoming subway cars.
Does that make sense to you? No. It doesn't make sense to anyone. But thankfully, experts soon emerged to explain why something so obviously untrue must in fact be true, quote, "Because of the stresses of the pandemic, they are everywhere," explained the former C.I.A. officer called Jeff Asher to "The New York Times." "You're seeing this everywhere." Except we're not seeing this everywhere. That's not true.
The coronavirus may be global, but rising crime rates are not global.
Police in Canada, for example, reported that crime fell by 18 percent between March and October of last year. In the U.K., crime saw its biggest annual decrease in a decade. In Sweden and Russia, crime dropped, too. Even in Mexico, which is in the middle of a drug war. There were fewer homicides in 2020 than there were in 2019.
So for normal countries, pretty much all countries, the pandemic meant more Netflix, but less killing. Not here. In the United States, the opposite happened. A lot of Netflix, even more killings. You're seeing the data on your screen right now. It's from a nonprofit called the Council on Criminal Justice and researchers at the University of Missouri.
It shows the average weekly homicide rate in 21 major cities. Killings spiked in late May, well after the pandemic began. According to Council on Criminal Justice, quote, "Homicides, aggravated assault, gun assaults rose significantly beginning in late May and June of 2020. They jumped by 40 percent during the summer and 34 percent in the fall when compared to the previous summer and fall.
So far this year, these sad trends have continued. Murders are up 800 percent in Portland, Oregon. They're up 56 percent in Minneapolis, scene of George Floyd's death. They are up 27 percent in LA, 22 in New York, they're up 40 percent in Philadelphia.
So you have to ask yourself -- because your life may depend on it -- why is this country different from say, Sweden or Russia or Mexico? And you know the answer. It's not COVID. It's that in our country, stupid, malicious people took full control, the Democratic Party took full control of the country, and their policies resulted in a huge number of killings.
That's not speculation. They bragged about it. Here they are bragging about their plans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The folks in law enforcement that share the goals of reimagining police.
REP. JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): Reimagining policing in the 21st Century.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rethinking and reimagining policing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Community efforts to reimagine policing.
REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): Reimagine policing.
AL SHARPTON, MSNBC HOST: We have to reimagine what policing looks like.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Reimagining policing, reimagining our public safety.
ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST: Reimagine a citizen-led approach.
JULIAN CASTRO (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We can begin to reimagine law enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reimagine public safety in this country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What can we do to reimagine public safety?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reimagining public safety.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To reimagine public safety.
KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We must reimagine what public safety looks like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, they definitely reimagined public safety, they made the public much less safe. According to a report in AXIOS, 20 major U.S. cities have slashed their police budgets in the last year, they defunded the police. Collectively, they cut more than $840 million from law enforcement.
In Atlanta, in a story that we love to read, one city councilman who voted to strip $73 million from the police, a genius called Antonio Brown just had his car stolen in broad daylight by children who were not held back by the police, they had been defunded. It must have been COVID that did it.
Meanwhile, at least 25 cities have pulled police out of public schools.
They've canceled the contracts. How's that going to work? You know the answer?
At universities, activists have pushed for the same, total abolition of the police When they said we're going to defund the police, they meant it.
At the University of Chicago, dozens of students swarmed the home of the college President. One of them, an especially entitled young lady called Madeline Wright shouted this through a megaphone, quote: "We're going to fight to abolish this effing system, not reform it."
Professors at the school joined her. One of them a character called Damon Jones led seminars on the problem of over-policing in the neighborhood around the University of Chicago, it is called Hyde Park. It is where Obama is from.
The Professor have dozens of posts on Twitter last summer explaining that because the University of Chicago's police stop more African-Americans than white people in a predominantly black neighborhood, keep in mind, they are racist.
What's interesting is that Damon Jones hasn't said anything on Twitter about the police since January of this year. Why January? Well, that's when Yiran Fan, a 30-year-old PhD student at the University of Chicago was murdered in a killing spree on Chicago's south side along with two other people killed for being there.
And at that point, it's possible that even morons like Damon Jones realized there's a reason the University of Chicago has one of the largest private police forces outside the Vatican. Why? Because the neighborhood around the school is a very dangerous place. That's not the fault of the police.
That's the reason they have police.
And that can be true for the entire City of Chicago, which is dangerous and becoming more so by the day. Now, why has that happened? It's happened because people with a political agenda have taken over law enforcement.
It was in Chicago, for example that BLM activists declared that looting, stealing is a form of reparations. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARIEL ATKINS, BLACK LIVES MATTER CHICAGO ORGANIZER: They get upset when people start looting. People in this city are struggling through a pandemic. So I don't care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy's or a Nike because that makes sure that person eats, that makes sure that that person has clothes, that makes sure that that person can make some kind of money because the city obviously doesn't care about them. Not only that, that's reparations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So you've got to steal from Gucci to eat, stealing is reparations.
Now that's insane and only a very sick society would listen to someone like that, someone like that would be dismissed automatically in a healthy society. But in this case, not a single Democratic politician pushed back.
So, guess what happened?
Well, in the City of San Francisco, for example, Walgreens has closed 17 different stores. Why? Because prosecutors in San Francisco and in many other places throughout the State of California, for example, but not just there, no longer charge shoplifters. So people steal whatever they want.
There is so much theft on such a scale that the stores cannot afford to stay open. They're not closing as a political statement, they are closing because they can't afford to have their merchandise stolen.
This is not the country you were born in. Here's what it looks like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): The Walgreens at Van Ness and Eddy in San Francisco will close the stores for good, November 11th. Customers say the store is known for being a notoriously easy place to shoplift.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've heard the Walgreens is really easy to steal for them --
QUESTION: Why is that?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because they don't chase you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): And neighbors agree, shoplifting has been an ongoing problem at this location and may be a major factor in why it will soon be closed. Customers say the shelves are bare, the company not even bothering to restock.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So to be clear, it's not that Americans have become more prone to steal, it is that stealing is now allowed. And when you allow something, you get more of it. So, this is the result of intentional policies designed to give us more stealing, designed to give us more murder, more rape, more pushing strangers in front of subway cars. It's happened because the people in charge allowed it to happen.
And it's happening everywhere. It's particularly happening in New York.
Several candidates for Mayor of New York, people running to replace Bill de Blasio have announced that anyone who opposes stealing is quote "criminalizing poverty." Who are the people with views like that? They're not normal people. They are, it goes the saying, pampered out of touch liberals. They are the only ones who can afford views like that.
Actress Cynthia Nixon certainly fits that description. Nixon expressed outrage the other day that the CVS in her neighborhood was trying to prevent thieves from walking off with their entire inventory. Quote, "I can't imagine thinking that the way to solve the problem of people stealing basic necessities out of desperation is to prosecute them."
So you've got to wonder what would happen if you showed up at Cynthia Nixon's place tonight and tried to help yourself to some quote, "basic necessities." Would Cynthia Nixon understand your theft is a profound form of social protest? As a form of social justice? Will she applaud it? Or would she tell her bodyguards to shoot you? And then thank them profusely when they did?
It's not a tough question. You'd be dead in seconds.
Cynthia Nixon doesn't mean a word of what she says about crime. None of them mean a word of what they say about crime. They're just trying to feel like good people in a world that confuses destruction for virtue. These people need to help, they should be nowhere near power.
Unfortunately, at the moment, they run the Democratic Party and all of us are seeing the results of that.
Tania Owen lost her husband in October of 2016. He was a police sergeant murdered in California. She is working to make Los Angeles a safe city again, it's an uphill battle. We're happy to have her join us tonight, Tania Owen, thanks so much for coming on.
TANIA OWEN, WIDOW OF SGT. STEVE OWEN: Thank you.
CARLSON: So, your city is maybe the country's clearest example of how policies -- bad policies -- cause crime. George Gascon, the Soros-backed prosecutor who is refusing to prosecute in Los Angeles County has made the city far more chaotic and far more dangerous. What do you all who live there trying to do about this?
OWEN: Well, George Gascon has really turned the justice system upside down in Los Angeles County, and he is really for the criminals. He is not for the victims at all. In fact, George Gascon is saying that he is a progressive DA, it's quite the opposite. He is a regressive.
He is trying to unwind three major reforms, and those are the three strikes law. And, you know, the three strikes law was in effect back in 1996 as a result of the murder of Polly Klaas by Richard Allen -- I can't remember his last name at this point. But anyways, he went and took her from her bedroom, raped her and murdered her. And that individual was an extremely violent felon. And so he had to be held accountable and as a result, the three strikes law came into effect.
The other is the gang enhancements as well as the gun enhancements. I mean, who shows sympathy to these individuals? These are repeat violent offenders that George Gascon is trying to let out in the streets of LA.
CARLSON: So you and many residents of LA like you are trying to recall George Gascon. There is no reason that a single lunatic backed by an anti- American creep like George Soros should destroy our second largest city, and you're trying to recall him? Where are you in that effort?
OWEN: Absolutely. Yesterday, we kicked off the recall effort and the County Registrar's Office finally approved of the petition. So we are now starting to collect signatures. We need a total of 590,000 signatures by October 27th. And I know -- I'm very -- I feel very positive that we will get those and as a result of that, we should have a special election take place in early 2022.
So, at this point, we are asking people --
CARLSON: Because you're not Black Lives Matter, I don't think Citibank has sent you $20 million. Is anyone or any businesses or any -- just bluntly rich people -- supporting your effort?
OWEN: Honestly, this is a grassroots effort by victims of crime and there are many of us. In fact, there are more victims than there are murderers because for every murder, every crime that occurs they leave a trail of victims behind.
So yes, at this point, we're trying to get that recall effort going. We are urging folks to go to the recallgeorgegascon.com website, and print up those sheets and have as many people as possible sign them.
CARLSON: I really hope powerful people come to your aid. It shouldn't just be crime victims acting on their own behalf. I mean, people in charge should be helping you and I hope they will. Tania, great to see you Thank you.
OWEN: Thank you. Thank you so much.
CARLSON: So lots of people at risk from getting very sick or dying from COVID have happily taken the coronavirus vaccine and that makes sense. But there are tens of millions, maybe a hundred million Americans who face another question. If you've been infected with the coronavirus already, and you've recovered and you have natural antibodies, do you need to take the coronavirus vaccine? And if so, why?
If you do that, could you be harmed?
Well, no one has bothered to investigate that question until now for some reason, but we have an answer tonight. FOX's Trace Gallagher has that story. Hey Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey Tucker, as the data comes in, the argument becomes very compelling that the vaccination focus should not be on those who have already had COVID. For example, a study from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia shows that people already infected will make antibodies for most of their lives.
The study found two key things. One, that so-called memory B cells patrolling the blood looking for reinfection, and two, bone marrow plasma cells then produce antibodies for decades. Studies from Israel and the U.K.
have similar findings.
Meantime, talking about missing the forest for the trees, there has been almost zero response to a rather astonishing revelation made by the heads of our key health agencies. Here's the exchange, May 11th, Capitol Hill under questioning by Senator Richard Burr. It is 47 seconds and well worth it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICHARD BURR (R-NC): What percentage of the employees in your institute, your center or your agency of your employees has been vaccinated?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS
DISEASES: You know, I'm not a hundred percent sure, Senator, but I think it's probably a little bit more than half probably around 60 percent.
BURR: Dr. Marks?
DR. PETER MARKS, DIRECTOR OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION'S CENTER FOR BIOLOGICS EVALUATION: I can't tell you the exact number, but it's probably in the same range. Some people vaccinated at our facility and others at outside of the facility.
BURR: Dr. Walensky?
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We are encouraging our employees to get vaccinated. We've been doing town halls and education seminars. We have -- our staff have the option to report their vaccination status, but as you understand, the Federal government is not requiring it, so we do not know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: She doesn't know. So those in charge of propagating and dispersing the vaccines can't even get their own people to buy in. And Tucker, you of course will address all of this on your TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT special tomorrow night on the left's war on science -- Tucker.
CARLSON: The Great Trace Gallagher, thank you so much.
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CARLSON: It's kind of an amazing story. Right around half of employees at N.I.H. and C.D.C. have been vaccinated. Why haven't the other half taken it?
Sincere question, why? And since they haven't, why are we requiring college students, all of them to take the vaccine? Young people, many of whom have already recovered from COVID. What's the answer?
Hopefully we find one.
So we have an answer to one question tonight: who is taking over Rush Limbaugh's time slot on the radio? That has just been announced. The man filling his slot will join us after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Rush Limbaugh passed away in February after 30 years of completely dominating talk radio, of course, and since then, some have wondered who will be replacing him? Well, today we learned the answer.
Premiere Networks announced that Clay Travis the founder of "Outkick" and Buck Sexton who often appears in the show will take over the three hour time slot. The program, which is set to begin on June 21st will be called "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show." It's expected to air all over the country from noon to 3:00 p.m. Eastern. We will be listening.
In the meantime, Clay Travis joins us, and we're happy to have him.
Congratulations, Clay, it's amazing news. Are you nervous?
CLAY TRAVIS, FOUNDER, OUTKICK: I'm not nervous, Tucker. First of all, thanks for having me. You do incredible work. And I don't think you can be nervous about stepping in. There's not a replacement. Buck and I are not replacements for Rush Limbaugh because no one replaces a legend. But what you can do is continue the fight, and you know this because you do it every night.
There is so much insanity going on in this country right now, and I've done sports for the last six years, Tucker and it's slowly -- on Daily Sports Radio, slowly just spiraled more and more into the cataclysmically ridiculous. And so I'm excited finally to just be picking up a sword and be able to swing back every single day at all the ignoramuses out there and the idiots and the nincompoops and actually be able to stand up for, I think, a huge number of people out there who worry every time they get on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram and want to share their opinion and then
think: is it worth it? Am I going to end up losing my job over this?
I think you do and I think certainly, we will speak for a lot of people who don't feel like they can speak.
CARLSON: Amen. I envy you having three hours. You'll get through about three percent of the insanity. We get to about one percent. There's just too much, but I want to throw --
TRAVIS: Yes, no kidding.
CARLSON: I just want to throw a story right up into your grill and see how you respond. I want to get your thoughts on this advice that we read in slate.com. The "Dear Prudence" column, it begins this way. This is the advice column. "My husband won't take off his mask even for sex. We're both vaccinated now. When will this stop?" The author ads that our husband quote, "Does not change his mask very often, and it's smelly and soiled."
How many "Slate" readers do you imagine can relate?
TRAVIS: I just, first of all, the woman should -- probably far too many, Tucker, not a lot of FOX News viewers, I wouldn't imagine. I would say this. First of all, if the woman had any sense at all, she would leave her husband because if you're masking up at this point, like why do you want to be with such an emasculated loser and be betrothed to him for the rest of your life? I would lose my mind if I were this woman.
Having said that, you know, I'm about to go out to dinner with my own wife, Tucker, maybe I should put on four masks just to be safe, you know, so that I don't in any way manage to impinge on anyone.
I mean, this is just -- it has moved beyond the theater of the absurd to just a level of mindlessness that the party of science is now embracing fundamentally anti-science beliefs with no, no, no legitimate basis in reality, Tucker. It's just -- it's mindless, banal insanity.
CARLSON: I wonder though, I mean, once you've admitted that you wear a mask, a surgical mask, a soiled surgical mask in the intimate moments with your wife, but there's no going back from that. You've basically just told the world like I'm crazy, but you don't even realize you're crazy. I mean, can people like that recover?
TRAVIS: No, I don't think people can recover. And that's the thing. I mean, you've seen people as all of the mask mandates have thankfully, finally come falling down. You thought there would be a great mass of people running out into the streets to have a great deal of fun.
And I think what you're seeing is, this has become the security blanket of many left-wingers. They need to have the mask on because it gives them an identity. It is a security blanket for their life, and it is absolutely ridiculous and absurd.
CARLSON: Obedient little drones, they are. Clay, congratulations to you and Buck, and we will be listening. What a cool opportunity. I know you're going to kill it. Thank you for coming on tonight.
TRAVIS: Thanks by the way to Ed Hartman and also to Julie Talbot, who made this happen. Phenomenal people. I can't wait to do them justice on the show.
CARLSON: Amen. Thank you.
So for months, we've asked why your parents sitting by and allowing their kids to be propagandized, attacked, in some cases destroyed with racist propaganda. And the answer comes from the State of Maine. One father spoke up and said, no, I'm not for this. He was banned from attending his daughter's graduation. He joins us after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: A lot of Americans are unemployed right now, but not Patrisse Cullors. She has got the best gig you could have with the full backing of Corporate America. Citibank loves her. She is one of the founders of Black Lives Matter.
But today, Cullors announced that she is resigning. Why? Because she's just got too much good stuff in the future -- book projects, TV projects, all equity based, of course. So her resignation comes less than a month after a reporter, there was one out there called Andrew Kerr who found that BLM had been funneling money to a company connected to Cullors. Oh, what a surprise. Oh, it's a scam, we had no idea.
We also learned, of course that Patrisse Cullors use BLM money to buy millions of dollars' worth of houses. She bought at least four. Are you shocked by this? Is Citibank shocked by this? Shouldn't be.
Way back in 2015, Patrisse Cullors boasted on camera that, quote, "We are trained Marxists." What we didn't know was how good the training was.
Pretty effective.
On May 15th of this year, police in Maine told a father called Shawn McBreairty that he was not allowed to go to his daughter's graduation ceremony. Why? He had been banned by the School District from all school events. Why was he banned? Because he fought back against what the school was teaching -- racist propaganda, the equity agenda. We've seen it across the country.
It is evil and very few parents have said anything, but Shawn McBreairty did.
There have been reports tonight that the School Board may have reversed its decision. Shawn McBreairty is here to give us an update. He is a parent as we said, he is the main Chapter Head of the Group No Left Turn Education which fights this nonsense.
Shawn, thanks so much for coming on.
SHAWN MCBREAIRTY, BANNED FROM CHILD'S GRADUATION: Thank you very much for having me.
CARLSON: So just to the news part, right at the top, has the School Board reversed its decision? Can you go?
MCBREAIRTY: So as far as I know right now, I can't go to the band concert on Tuesday night.
CARLSON: Yes.
MCBREAIRTY: There was some word salad that the superintendent sent me, which essentially said, if I met some conditions, he might let me go to graduation --
CARLSON: To your own daughter's graduation?
MCBREAIRTY: Yes. And I have twin daughters, twin senior daughters. But right now, it's still a little up in the air.
I pushed back a couple of times on that, because frankly, I don't think there should be conditions set to me going to graduation. I don't know if he wants me to stand on one leg and rub my belly the whole time. I have no idea what these conditions are.
CARLSON: I suspect you want. So what's interesting -- and good for you -- what's interesting is that this stuff has happened all over the country.
You live in Southern Maine. Even in Southern Maine, this is happening.
You're one of the rare parents who has pushed back and you've gotten -- a lot of you suffer, but you've also got a lot of, I think, positive attention for doing it. Tell us specifically what you did is an inspiration to other parents.
MCBREAIRTY: Yes. When I when got the -- we got a white supremacist letter, essentially on last June 2nd, and when I read that, I felt assaulted. This wasn't how I grew up. It wasn't how I taught the girls. And frankly, I didn't want the school teaching this kind of information to my kids.
CARLSON: Yes.
MCBREAIRTY: And so I pushed back to the superintendent and said very politely, look, as Minneapolis is burning to the ground, you could have talked about the First Amendment and peaceful protest. And frankly, I live in the safest town in Maine and our police department is top notch -- and he missed all of that. And he kind of said, sorry, you took it that way.
He then doubled down on that a couple of days later, with a you're-not- woke-enough-to-understand-what-I'm-talking-about letter. And he initially -
- he basically divided the entire community just like our nation is right now.
CARLSON: They're always passive aggressive. They never -- they never fight back immediately. So then what did you do?
MCBREAIRTY: Yes. So I went to the School Board meetings. I asked them to make some changes on some things that I had found, and they basically said no. And from there, they tried to cancel me. And once that occurred, I took the fight to them. I really held them accountable to their public comment policy. I used my First Amendment rights, and really tried to push the envelope to help them understand that as a parent, I just didn't want that in my community that I've lived in for over 20 years.
CARLSON: Yes. And you're from the state and a lot of School Board members, I noticed because I checked are not actually from Maine, they kind of showed up from liberal environments, and then tried to spread their poison in your state.
MCBREAIRTY: Yes, correct. Absolutely.
CARLSON: So you named one of the School Board members.
MCBREAIRTY: Yes. So Ann Maksymowicz is one of the more radical folks on our School Board. She is committed to her radicalism. But I took a picture of her when she was not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance to honor our troops. And before I left the room, I put that on, on social media. And half the town lost their mind, they couldn't believe that I took a picture of a government official, elected official, and then sent that out to the world.
From there, I made a small political sign of Ann. I brought that to a meeting which Jeff Porter kicked me out of, and then I put that sign right beside the road where I live on across the street, illuminated 24 hours a day. And frankly, the leftists lost their mind, Tucker.
CARLSON: So this is someone who is trying to hurt your children and attack them on the basis of something they can't control, their skin color.
MCBREAIRTY: Right.
CARLSON: You called this to public attention. You're the bad guy.
MCBREAIRTY: Yes. And it's funny because half the town thought I was a hero and half the town thought I was something else. But the folks that really thought that I was doing the right thing said to me, look, Shawn, I support you a hundred percent, but I can't see anything because I don't want to lose my job. I've got a business in town. We're a third generation Cumberland residents. And it's essentially, the cancel culture in that town is so venomous that everybody kind of got canceled out.
And frankly, I was just -- I just kept counterpunching. They would punch and I would punch back and I'd push back harder. And we just kind of work through it.
CARLSON: Amazing.
MCBREAIRTY: So the sign process. So this was one of the signs here recently and just a little secret. Leftists lose their mind over signs. They are triggered by signs. And frankly, this had a lot of play. And it was interesting.
CARLSON: Amazing, Shawn, thank you. I just think it's inspiring that someone wasn't going to let their kids be destroyed.
MCBREAIRTY: Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
CARLSON: Some of the biggest stories of the past year have not come from journalists. They've come from privately funded spies who work for political campaigns and corporations. Barry Meier, one of the only people reporting on this. He joins us next to tell us what he found. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The Russia collusion story we spent three years living through and covering turned out to be a hoax. In fact, it was perhaps the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in American politics. How did it start?
Well, in part, it something called the Steele dossier. That turned out to be opposition research put together by a British spy called Christopher Steele. Who was Christopher Steele? Well, no one ever heard of Christopher Steele, and yet everyone believed him immediately.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The allegations in this Christopher Steele dossier -- and you went through the timeline very well a few moments ago, are stunning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're actually substantial portions of what was in the steel dossier, which was a raw Intelligence document that have indeed checked out.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Based on our own reporting and word from numerous official sources, the dossier in fact is far from bogus.
RICK WILSON, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: I think we're going to actually have to stop calling it the infamous dossier. Increasingly, it's the accurate dossier.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Based on our reporting -- liars. Now, they've been exposed as liars, the whole story has been memory holed. You don't hear a word about the Steele dossier.
Barry Meier has written a new book though that examines that dossier and the broader relationships between journalists and the Intelligence Community. The book is called "Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies." He joins us now.
Barry, thanks so much for coming on. It dawned to me, this is an hour-long conversation that we really should be having. But in the next short period of time, tell us the connection between the Intelligence Committee globally and American journalists? How broad is it? How big is this?
BARRY MEIER, AUTHOR, "SPOOKED": Well, it's very big, Tucker. And thanks very much for having me on to start with.
So journalists get information from all kinds of places. They get it from traditional Intelligence Agencies like the C.I.A. They get it from law enforcement agencies like the F.B.I., but what I really focus on in the book, is this booming growing role of private Intelligence firms or private spies, as I call them, and you know, this industry has exploded in the past decade and their connections with journalists have exploded along with it.
CARLSON: I mean, if you're reporting out a story, what if one of your concerns is being used by the people feeding you the information for some purpose you're not aware of? It seems like this arrangement is particularly vulnerable to that.
MEIER: It should be your first and foremost concern as a journalist. You know, at "The Times" where I spent most of my career, I did health and safety reporting. I was a reporter that first broke the story about OxyContin and its illegal marketing. And when drug companies were making claims, you as a reporter would scrutinize them.
Unfortunately, in the case of the dossier and other situations, we have reporters who aren't giving these claims the same level of scrutiny. And as a result, this thing kind of metastasized on its own.
CARLSON: Yes, BuzzFeed just printed it, flat out without vetting any of it.
Why do you think that is? What has changed that Intel Services, private or government, can just feed information and then see it in print?
MEIER: You know, I think it's the result of several factors. You know, there's been a tremendous growth within the media. There's been a fracturing of it. There are, you know, extremes on either end politically of the media arc.
And so, you know, there's a great appetite for scoops. You know, everyone wants to claim that something is new, we have some intelligence, we have something fresh that no one else has, and as a result, this becomes, you know, a petri dish for these private Intelligence firms to kind of feed in information.
CARLSON: You know, the reporting that you're doing on this, you know, we should have been reading about for the past year. This seems really important, and I hope that we talk again.
Barry Meier, I appreciate it. Congratulations on the book.
MEIER: I greatly appreciate it, Tucker. Thanks.
CARLSON: Thank you.
So a whistleblower from within Facebook just exposed internal documents that show how the company censors comments about the coronavirus vaccine.
He's been suspended from Facebook. He joins us next.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Without the user's knowledge, they assign a score to these comments. Let's call it the VH score. The "Vaccine Hesitancy Score."
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CARLSON: Earlier this week, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas did this country yet another public service. They obtained internal documents from whistleblower at Facebook. The whistleblower explained that Facebook automatically flags comments that express any concern about the coronavirus vaccine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Facebook uses classifiers or algorithms to determine certain contents to be what they call vaccine hesitant or they call it "vaccine hesitancy" and without the user's knowledge, they assign a score to these comments. That's called a VH score, the "Vaccine Hesitancy Score"
and based on that score, will demote or leave the comment alone, depending on the content within the comment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: According to those documents, here's one example of what Facebook considers a tier one vaccine hesitancy comment, quote, "If the vaccines are so useful, then why do we still need to wear a mask or social distance afterward?" Fair question, but not allowed.
Morgan Kahmann is the whistleblower who exposed all of this. He has been suspended from his job at Facebook. He joins us now.
Morgan, thanks so much for coming on and for your bravery. It sounds like any real questions at all about the vaccines are not allowed by Facebook.
MORGAN KAHMANN, PUNISHED BY FACEBOOK: Yes, Tucker. That's true. Basically, with the way that they set this up is that anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good, and you're not going to have very many bad side effects. Anything outside of that realm is basically considered under vaccine hesitancy by Facebook's algorithms.
CARLSON: Is there any motive that you can understand? Like, why would they want to ban people from asking honest questions or reporting real side effects?
KAHMANN: Well, honestly, Tucker, I think that they're afraid of what people might conclude, if they see that other people are having negative side effects and they think that this is going to drive up vaccine hesitancy among the population, then they see that as something that they have to combat.
But honestly, I think that that is not something that -- basically, my moral compass says that that is not the right thing to do because basically, the users at Facebook are not aware that this is going on. And if you're using Facebook for a social platform, and they're censoring the content of your comments, unbeknownst to you, I think that's highly immoral.
CARLSON: It is highly immoral. I mean, you were willing to lose your job and it sounds like you have or will, for coming forward. Is that why you came forward?
KAHMANN: Yes, I believe that any consequences that are bestowed onto me by Facebook, as a result of this leak, and these documents that I've leaked to Project Veritas, I think any of those consequences don't really -- don't really weigh much when it comes to having to live with myself and ask myself the rest of my life, you know, I saw these documents, and I had the opportunity to, you know, show the public this and what's going on behind the scenes, and I didn't do it. And so I wouldn't be able to live with myself after that.
CARLSON: I consider that heroic. This country used to consider whistleblowing heroic. Have you been treated as a hero?
KAHMANN: Among the close company I have now, yes. As for Facebook, they decided to suddenly tell me to stop my work one day while I was at work, call me into a meeting with my supervisor and a security guard. They removed all my company equipment from me, my company laptop, company cell phone and my badge, my access badge. They walked me out to my car and basically informed me that they would be having an investigatory meeting with me at a later date, which they actually ended up canceling at the last minute.
So not a very good reaction for Facebook. No.
CARLSON: I don't know where you go from here, but I hope you thrive. I really do. I hope you're rewarded for what you did. Thank you. Morgan, it is good to see you tonight.
KAHMANN: Yes. You, too, Tucker. And if you want to support, you can go to giftsandgo.com and you can do any kind of donation there for me and my family.
CARLSON: Amen. And I hope many will. I appreciate it.
Well, sad news. Our friend, Foster Friess died today at the age of 81 in Arizona. His obituary describe him as a conservative philanthropist or a mega donor. But those descriptions do not capture the man. You can tell a lot about somebody by where he gives his money.
An awful lot of rich people become philanthropists in order to honor themselves. They build a new wing on an art gallery or they endow a business school and then put their name on it.
Foster Friess by contrast, gave almost exclusively to individuals, to people he liked or believed in, and above all, to people who needed it.
He was far more likely to write a check to the busboy than to Harvard. He got no recognition for that, you never do. Waiters don't issue press releases when you leave a 1,000 percent tip after dinner, but Foster Friess didn't care. He loved giving because he loved people, which is pretty much the best thing that you can say about anyone.
Foster Friess, rest in peace.
Well, that is about it for us tonight. Tomorrow, at this hour, we will be here to investigate the war on science that is in full flower tonight to our detriment.
That's tomorrow, 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on FOX News and of course, tune in every night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn and sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.
I hope you have the best night with the ones you love. The happiness is right next to you, you just need to recognize it.
See you tomorrow.
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