Tucker: Biden open border policy resulted in a fentanyl crisis

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Tucker: Biden open border policy resulted in a fentanyl crisis

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines why drugs are flowing through the southern border

This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on October 20, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

Sinaloa is a province in Northwest Mexico. It's directly across from the bottom of Baja, California. It's not that far from the United States and that's a bad thing because Sinaloa, Mexico may now be the single largest producer and distributor of the synthetic opioid, fentanyl.

Cartels are making fentanyl in mass quantities in Sinaloa now, but they're not making it for domestic consumption within Mexico. They are making it to export here, and you can see why.

In the capital of Sinaloa, 11 pounds of fentanyl typically sells for around $15,000.00. In the United States that same amount of fentanyl sells for more than a hundred thousand dollars, so you can see the incentive. How much fentanyl is that? Well, just two milligrams of the drug can be lethal to a human being. That means, 11 pounds contains nearly two and a half million fatal doses of fentanyl.

Again, there's a major financial incentive for the drug cartels which run huge parts of Mexico to produce this drug and ship it north, and they are.

If cocaine was the drug of the 1980s, we are now living in the fentanyl era and the numbers show it.

Not so long ago, between October 2012 and October 2013, Customs and Border Protection seized just two pounds of fentanyl total at our Southern border. Compare that to what we're seeing now. In the first eight months of this year -- first eight months -- the U.S. government seized more than 7,200 pounds of fentanyl it's the highest amount seized by far, and keep in mind that's likely just a small percentage of the fentanyl that came over the border since it is odorless and difficult to detect.

According to a recent report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, quote: "Since fiscal year 2015, the number of fentanyl offenders reported to the Commission more than doubled each fiscal year resulting in a 3,592 percent increase."

Meanwhile, Federal authorities recently announced that they have seized nearly 10 million counterfeit pills and many of them were laced with fentanyl. That was all in a single year. News reports from Chicago say -- as they do in so many cities -- fentanyl has become an epidemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): The pill on the left is Xanax, the one on the right is counterfeit. Not knowing the difference can be deadly.

The Drug Enforcement Administration warns of a dramatic increase in fake prescription pills flooding the market from criminal drug networks in Mexico. The drugs made to look like Oxy or Adderall are laced with fentanyl or meth often in deadly doses. The D.E.A. has seized more than 9.5 million counterfeit pills so far this year and the head of the Chicago Division says they've seized more than 600 pounds of fentanyl.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So why are we telling you all this about fentanyl? Because the rise in the consumption of fentanyl mirrors the rise in the availability of fentanyl, which is causing the massive rise in deaths by fentanyl OD, and all of that is a result of the Biden administration's immigration policy.

When you open the borders, it's not just people who comes in, it's massive amounts of fentanyl and other illegal drugs.

So the Biden administration tells you that their border policy is quote "humane," but it's just the opposite. That policy has resulted in this country becoming flooded with fentanyl and it has resulted in the deaths of many thousands, many thousands of Americans.

The latest data from the C.D.C. shows that drug overdose deaths in the United States hit a new high, almost a hundred thousand deaths of American citizens during the 12-month period that ended in March of this year. How much more is that from last year? Well, it is a 30 percent increase in one year.

So, there are a lot of reasons this is happening, but one of the main reasons is government policy which has made the population sedentary and depressed. Our government spent the last year, in case you haven't noticed, locking everyone inside their homes and the result of that is that drugs are everywhere and major American cities are now unrecognizable.

Take a look at this report from San Francisco's local news station. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): The rate of accidental drug overdoses hospitalizations and deaths is outpacing the city's expanding teams of crisis intervention specialists.

Fentanyl, a powerful and highly addictive synthetic opioid much cheaper than heroin entered the San Francisco drug market a few years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fentanyl has been the large driver for these increases in accidental overdose deaths.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): The powerful narcotic was responsible for more than 500 deaths last year and has become the drug of choice for many users in San Francisco. KTVU has been documenting the epidemic for months.

Many experts believe that social isolation from the coronavirus may be contributing to the death toll.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So what we refer to habitually as our homeless crisis, which is bigger than it's ever been in American history is not primarily about homes, it's not even primarily about mental illness, strictly speaking. It's mostly about drugs and drug addiction.

None of this should really surprise us. Our leaders have spent the last year dividing Americans from each other. The result is loneliness. They closed the churches. They closed the gyms.

They forced people to stay apart from their family, friends, and the people they are closest to.

At the very same moment, the Biden administration has opened the borders allowing a massive wave of this highly addictive deadly synthetic opioid to enter this country. So what do you think happened? Well, an awful lot of people died and this was a result of bad policy. But the Biden administration isn't simply ignoring the problem, they're not apologizing for it, of course. They're doing something even more destructive. They are making it worse.

They are making it less possible for the U.S. government to control what comes across our border. You'll remember, they blamed the Border Patrol for daring to patrol the border on horseback. Now, they've dominated a genuine radical, an extremist called Chris Magnus to lead Customs and Border Protection.

How extreme is Chris Magnus? Well, during his confirmation hearings in the Congress yesterday, Magnus was asked repeatedly whether what is happening at the border is a crisis and repeatedly, he refused to say that it was.

Tens of thousands of Americans are dying because of this border policy and yet, here is the man who the Biden administration would like to run the border responded. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TODD YOUNG (R-IN): Do you believe we have a crisis at the Southern border, yes or no?

CHRIS MAGNUS, NOMINEE FOR CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION DIRECTOR: Senator, I'm not sure. Does it really matter whether we call it a major challenge, a crisis, a big problem?

YOUNG: Do we have a crisis at the border, yes or no?

MAGNUS: Senator, let me assure you that no one believes there is greater urgency to this matter than I do.

YOUNG: Are you saying there's not a crisis at the border?

MAGNUS: Senator, no, I don't think there -- I don't think -- I don't speak to urgent as less serious at all. In fact --

YOUNG: Is there a crisis or is there not a crisis at the border?

MAGNUS: Senator, I would say that my highest priority is going --

YOUNG: I didn't ask your priority. I asked you to characterize the situation on the border. Is there a crisis at the border?

MAGNUS: What I'm certainly trying to convey is how serious I take what's happening at the border and the amount of work that I want to put into addressing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So here is a guy who is totally beholden to the radical nonprofits, the NGOs, many funded by George Soros that control our immigration policy. He is so beholden to them that he can't tell an obvious truth under oath for fear of offending them. They are his real constituency, not you or anyone else who lives in this country.

It's the radical NGOs that would like to open the border, knowing full well that doing so will result in the deaths of many thousands of Americans from the drugs that are also coming across the border. But our leadership class is so decadent that they don't even acknowledge that drug use is a problem or a crisis as Chris Magnus refused to say. They think it's fine.

So, Chris Magnus says he's going to take the border very seriously, which means as you well know that he is going to do his level best to allow as many foreign nationals to come here as possible and many will be bringing drugs.

So this is more than just irresponsible, it's more than just ideological, it is reckless, it is dangerous, it is criminal. The role of the Federal government is not to protect economic migrants from Haiti. It is not to improve the living standards in other countries. It is not to pack the electorate on behalf of a specific political party.

It has only one role and one role alone, it is to protect American citizens. It is to serve their interests, but they are not doing that, they're doing exactly the opposite.

John Daniel Davidson is an editor at "The Federalist." He has followed and written about the fentanyl epidemic in this country for many years. He is one of the few in the media who has taken it seriously and we're happy to have him join us tonight.

John, thanks so much for coming on. So, I have a bunch of questions, but let's hear the obvious ones. The scale of this -- we'll call it a crisis -- is really without precedent in American history. Am I overstating that?

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON, EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": I don't think so. You know, the statistics that you cited earlier I think tell the tale we have had more fentanyl seized at the Southwest border so far this fiscal year, which isn't over yet, but so far, this fiscal year than 2020, 2019 and 2018 combined and not by a little bit, by a lot.

And as you say, it has gotten much worse over the recent years and the border communities are even worse. You know, the outgoing head of the D.E.A. in El Paso recently gave an interview on local news. He says that El Paso is awash in fentanyl in the schools, on social media, on the streets. They've had a six-fold increase in fentanyl deaths there and he said this, too.

He said that two out of every five fentanyl pills that are seized on the street in El Paso have a lethal dose of fentanyl in them. So this is a very serious and as you say, deadly problem that is getting worse by the week.

CARLSON: So, the U.S. government has a long history of overstating, I would argue, the negative effects of narcotics, of these fear campaigns that aren't credible, but fentanyl seems like one drug about, which it is absolutely impossible to overstate the danger. I mean, do you think that's right?

DAVIDSON: I think that's true and part of why it is true is that it is a cash product for transnational criminal organizations based in Mexico. We shouldn't think of the Sinaloa Cartel as like a drug gang. You know, you have to think of them as a multinational corporation that is engaged in black market drug sales.

They bring in precursor chemicals from China. They make the fentanyl pills themselves in pill factories in Northern Mexico, and they ship it en mass across the border, and they're making a lot of money doing it.

And so, you know, this is a cash flow issue for them and they are going to keep doing it and keep producing as much of this stuff as they possibly can as long as we let them -- as long as the border policies are what they are, they are not going to stop.

CARLSON: Well, that's exactly right. We need to update our assumptions about the world. It's not 1955. We're not letting in dozens of cheerful great pickers to go to the Central Valley and help our Ag sector.

Mexico is a narco state in the middle of a narco war and we're getting the effects of that in the form of tens of thousands of dead Americans.

John Daniel Davidson, thank you for reporting this so faithfully for so long.

DAVIDSON: Thanks.

CARLSON: Appreciate it.

So, our leaders aren't simply flooding the country with deadly opioids in the name of equity. Now to save the climate, they are destroying the environment and they're doing it in places where people are too poor to fight back.

Politicians using your tax dollars to finance gigantic 600-foot wind turbines that wreck the natural environment, kill endangered animals, destabilize the power grid and make life miserable for people who live around them but nobody cares because it's not happening in Nantucket or Aspen.

So, we spent almost a year looking at this for a brand new episode of our long form documentary series "Tucker Carlson Originals." It's a scam and we try to explain how. Here is part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are never going to see a 600-foot wind turbine or solar panel in Central Park or in the Hamptons. Where are going to see it? It is in poor, rural communities across New York State and across the country.

Because they don't really have a say.

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, U.S. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: It is a new day under the Biden administration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Think of us as David and the state and developers as Goliath.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE: Climate crisis, my friends, is the test of our times.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't build a monstrosity in my backyard. They'll do it here.

GRANHOLM: Our commitment to what I call clean energy patriotism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are you destroying the environment to save the environment?

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The people who are egging these policies, they don't have to worry about a wind farm coming to their neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It just drives you insane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The episode is called, "Blown Away: The People versus Wind Power." It's out tomorrow on foxnation.com. We highly recommend it.

So you may recall this situation from the show "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY DAVID AS HIMSELF IN "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM": Now, given the current climate, I would like to ask you a series of questions to determine how comfortable you are with physical contact as it progresses.

How would you feel about a little grazing of the lips?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I would feel very good about that.

DAVID: Well, then a grazing you shall have. I would like to graze again, but this time with some intertwining of the tongue.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We could do that.

DAVID: Excellent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, that's too awkward to be real. That's why it's a comedy. Oh, but in 2021, parody becomes reality almost every time. It's happening in Pennsylvania, thanks to the Governor there, and we have the details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Really from the moment COVID-19 left the lab in Wuhan wafted skyward, politicians in this country have been busy awarding themselves extraordinary new powers.

Now, we've chronicled the growing egomania of our political class pretty extensively on this show over the past year and a half. At various times, we've described these people as authoritarians, even fascists in our hotter moments.

But in retrospect, language like that turns out to be inadequate. Those are political terms, so they don't really capture what is essentially a theological phenomenon.

Our leaders are doing things that previous civilizations permitted only their gods to do.

Now, the Aztecs may have committed cannibalism and human sacrifice on a mass scale, but in their defense, they did it in the name of an all- powerful deity, Xipe Totec. Our leaders don't even bother with the middle man. They have no gods. Our leaders issue edicts in their own name and then expect those edicts to be followed as commandments.

The most recent example of this comes from the State of Pennsylvania and its Democratic Governor, Tom Wolf. Now Wolf is a reedy balding man in his early 70s. If you look at him you might think he's a retired middle school Spanish teacher or a greeter at Whole Foods. Nothing about Governor Tom Wolf screams Aztec war god. But beneath the cardigan sweater, that is exactly how Wolf sees himself.

On Monday, the Governor announced that he is now so powerful that he has the right to determine what his subjects say to one another during sex -- the exact words. Tom Wolf has written dialogue for other people's sex lives, and if they fail to read that dialogue, precisely they are guilty of a felony.

It's a pretty amazing demand when you think about it. If you're over 30, you'll probably recall when liberals used to fret about politicians trying to get into our bedrooms. At the time, it seemed like kind of an overstatement, but not anymore.

Tom Wolf is already in your bedroom. He just barged right in. He is staying right there at the dresser, watching. He plans to supervise every detail.

On Twitter, Wolf explained that he intends to quote, "Enact affirmative consent standards for all sexual activity that might take place on college campuses in the State of Pennsylvania. What does that look like?" Wolf asked rhetorically, quote: "We must move from no means no to yes means yes. Without an affirmative yes, it is sexual assault."

In other words, read our script or we will charge you with rape.

In case there's any doubt about what Wolf's law requires, the bill specifically notes that silence does not confer the right to quote "engage in sexual activity." You're not allowed.

So going forward, more than 700, 000 people in the State of Pennsylvania will be legally required to talk during sex. "Yes" is the word Governor Wolf wants to hear, yes. But to be clear not yes uttered in some breathy way with your eyes rolled back. No. Governor Wolf demands to hear "yes" spoken in a forthright declarative manner, as in a deposition.

So how is the Governor ever going to make sure that this actually happens? That's really the question. Laws without enforcement are mere suggestions, but Aztec war gods don't make suggestions, they issue decrees.

So in order for Tom Wolf to verify that kids across Pennsylvania are using Tom Wolf-approved language as they roll around naked in their dorm rooms at three in the morning, Tom Wolf is going to need to go farther than any Governor ever has. He is going to need to see the tapes.

In the name of public safety, nubile young college girls from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia are going to have to e-mail their homemade naughty videos directly to Governor Wolf himself, most likely to his private proton mail address, just to be certain that this important new law is being followed rigorously.

Tom Wolf is a busy man. He is the Governor. When you're in charge of the intimate personal lives of an entire population, you don't have a lot of time left over, but in this case, Governor Wolf will make the time.

Governor Wolf will watch these videos, every one of them. That's his duty. And in the age of corona, it's also his right.

We should let you know that we invited Governor Wolf onto the show tonight. We wanted to know which other sexual techniques, positions, or safe words he will be mandating in the coming weeks. His staff informed us that the Governor was indisposed at the moment, he was locked in his private study watching something intently on his iPhone. Pretty creepy.

We'll let you know if we hear anything from Governor Wolf.

So, the State Department just put out a statement celebrating something called International Pronouns Day. What's that, you ask? Well, the State Department is here to tell you.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has promoted a biological man to the rank of a four-star admiral and then told us all this is a massive victory for women. So are people with a traditional science-based view of biological sex losing the war on whether biological sex actually exists?

The person we know who has thought most deeply about this question and risked the most to give her opinions about it in public is Abigail Shrier. She has a brand new column on this in "The Washington Examiner," and we are happy to have her on tonight.

Abigail Shrier, thanks so much for coming on.

ABIGAIL SHRIER, AUTHOR "IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE": Thanks so much, Tucker.

CARLSON: So you think that some people who believe in the science of biological sex are losing? Why?

SHRIER: Well, I do. I mean, we've seen in the years since the Gavin Grimm case. This was the case brought, you know planted essentially by the ACLU in which a biological girl who had begun medical transition wanted to use the boys' bathroom and this consumed conservatives for years.

There were a flurry of bathroom bills that all failed, and the case was eventually decided in Gavin Grimm's favor. It was a massive loss and a massive distraction because, of course biological girls posed no threats to boys in the bathroom.

But in that time, America lost a series of battles on the gender war, which put activists in the driver's seat.

CARLSON: The reality of biological sex is at the center of human civilization. It is at the center of the joy in most people's lives, I would argue, certainly, mine. So if we allow this to be erased, I mean, everything changes forever. You wonder why there hasn't been more organized, sincere, vigorous opposition to these changes.

SHRIER: Well, I believe we're going to see that very soon. I've been in touch since March when I testified against the Equality Act with Senator Tom Cotton's office, and I believe he will sponsor legislation very soon to stop schools from going behind parents' backs and giving their kids new gender identities and new names and then conspiring to keep this from parents.

CARLSON: It's beyond belief that that's happening. So you think it's reversible -- at some point, you think that enough people of all sides and maybe even sexual orientations, people who believe in biology can win or are we too far gone?

SHRIER: Well, we need to focus on the right battles to fight and I believe there are essentially four. We have to fight gender ideology in the schools. We've got to get all this mumbo jumbo out of the schools. We have to fight for girls' sports and women's protective spaces. We have to stop schools from undermining parents and giving kids gender identities that the parents don't know about and we have to reform pediatric gender medicine. No more teenage girls with mental health problems walking into Planned Parenthood and walking out that day with a course of testosterone. No more lying to the public about the harms of puberty blockers.

CARLSON: Man, I hope you're leading this effort. We already are, and doing such a great job. Abigail Shrier, always happy to have you on. Thank you.

SHRIER: Thank you.

CARLSON: So in really one of the great tragedies of our time, thousands of otherwise law-abiding decent Americans across this country have lost their jobs because of Joe Biden's vaccine mandates. That includes thousands of law enforcement officers in cities that are already on the brink. What's the effect of that? We've got a report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: You can walk into pretty much any government in this country whether it's the Federal government, state government, big city government, and lose half the people who work there and probably not even notice because they're useless. But if you start to lose the people who actually keep the society functioning, then you're in trouble and that of course would be firemen, cops, ambulance drivers, paramedics.

If you make them leave, things really fall apart and that's exactly what the Biden administration has just done. In Seattle, one firefighter just cleared out his locker ending a 16-year career in the department. He speaks for many. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm very angry, but I'm trying to hold it together for my family and I'm -- the bittersweet part is it's ending here where it started. It's like something is being ripped away that shouldn't be and it doesn't seem right. I don't have the best words to explain it, but everything in my soul tells me this is wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: What did that guy do wrong? The vaccinated spread COVID just like the unvaccinated. There's no difference actually. Look at the science. The guy did nothing wrong. He hurt nobody and they are crushing him, and they're crushing a lot of people just like that all around the country, and particularly in Seattle.

About 10 percent of the police department's officers have now been pulled off the street in a city that's already on the brink, so what does that mean if you live there?

Well radio host Jason Rantz does. He joins us tonight to tell us what that does mean. Jason, thanks so much for coming on.

JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RADIO SHOW HOST: Absolutely. You know, we're in a point where I think Seattle is officially in uncharted territory and they're spinning from the actual truth.

So yesterday, the Chief of Police said that they fired six officers. I'm told that in the next day or so that Mayor Jenny Durkan is going to claim that the city only lost one cop. That's disingenuous at best. As you said, about 10 percent of the deployable officers were pulled from the streets. They were placed on what the SPD internally calls the H.R. unavailable list. They're essentially on extended leave and they're using their accrued time off as the city basically is going to pressure them into getting vaccinated or turning in their paperwork.

They're not technically fired, at least not yet, but these are people who are no longer policing. And if you take even one officer off the street, it's one too many in a city that's already short about 500 officers. We're in the middle of a violent crime surge, but now they're trying to downplay the public safety crisis one frankly that the city caused and Mayor Durkan and some others are getting creative with the numbers to claim that they're lower than reality.

So here's an example. I'm told that an officer who was initially fired then decided to retire in lieu of the termination, so they're just not going to count that as an actual firing. And then you've got the officers who went on extended leave on their own as a result of this mandate and they're also not being counted.

But at the end of the day, we've taken over a hundred officers off of the street at the worst possible time.

CARLSON: They should take them all out of the Mayor's security detail and the security details of every politician in the City of Seattle, but of course they're the last ones who are going to be dismissed.

Jason Rantz, I'm sorry for you that you live there, but I hope it gets better. Thanks a lot for that report.

RANTZ: Appreciate it, Tucker.

CARLSON: James Craig knows a lot about running police departments. He has run several. He is most recently the Police Chief of the City of Detroit. He is now running for Governor of Michigan. He joins us with a reaction to these mandates and the effect they're having on public safety.

Chief, thanks so much for coming on, so what effect do you think these are going to have on the public? On people who want to go to the grocery store without being shot, for example?

JAMES CRAIG, FORMER POLICE CHIEF OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN: You know, Tucker, first let me start by saying how much I appreciate you having me on your show, but this is just utterly ridiculous.

We're talking about a mayor who wanted to defund the police so her wish is coming true in Chicago. This is in effect defunding the police. It is reckless and she does not speak for people who live in vulnerable communities, whether it's there, Seattle and let's talk about Seattle, the summer of love.

That mayor, she wanted to defund the police. They are getting their wish and they don't have any concept of how to reduce violence in their city. It is reckless, it is irresponsible and folks who are on the left who are complicit, who say nothing, they are as involved.

I am just going to say it, it's wrong.

CARLSON: Well I think that you're exactly right. If you take all the police away and the murder rate spikes, maybe you stop taking police away. I have to ask you. I mean, you ran the police department. You've dealt with unions. Where are the unions here? I thought that unions were supposed to be strong. I noticed they shake down taxpayers, why aren't they protecting their own members? Honestly.

CRAIG: Well, it depends on where you're talking. I've got to give the Chicago Union President a lot of credit. He stepped up. His mayor referred to him as a racist. The mayor and a judge referred to him as being an insurrectionist and that's wrong. There is something called, you know collective bargaining -- collective bargaining.

Why don't you bring the union and the city to the table and let's see what we can do to work this out. You know these men and women want to do the job, but when you do what Lori Lightfoot did, that's not leadership. That's not leadership at all, Tucker, and I've got to tell you, this is all by design. It's not by accident, so -- and then she pulls out the race card and says, what he is doing is racist.

How is this racist? I mean, really, what's racist is the people who live in vulnerable communities who are impacted by these bad decisions about these reckless mayors who needs to just step down and resign. I'm sorry.

You know, and I've got to tell you, Tucker, that's why I'm running for governor. Because I'm not going to sit back and watch this, that's why your viewers can go to chiefjamescraig.com and say we want change. This is about leadership, leading from the front.

CARLSON: Man, you need change in that state, the Great State of Michigan.

CRAIG: Oh absolutely.

CARLSON: Chief --

CRAIG: I can go on all night.

CARLSON: Yes. Chief, great to see you tonight. Thank you very much.

CRAIG: Thank you so much. I appreciate you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you. So of all the awful things that have been happening in college campuses recently and we could -- we could do it all day long every day, but this story really stuck out. It's at the university of Chicago, supposedly serious place, one of their top hard science professors, a PhD in Applied Math called Dorian Abbot, they tried to crush the guy. Wait until you find out why. Wait until you find out what he's doing in response. He joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Dorian Abbot is one of the leading earth scientists in the world. He has got a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. He has tenured position at the University of Chicago.

So recently, he was chosen to deliver an eminent scientific lecture at M.I.T., the Carlson lecturer, we're proud to say, but at the last minute, administrators at M.I.T. canceled him not because his science was bad, it's at the very top in the world, but because he had expressed support for free speech, so they cancelled him.

Tomorrow, Abbot will be delivering the same lecture at Princeton. He was invited to speak there virtually, so we decided to sit down with Dorian Abbot for a brand new episode of "tucker Carlson Today" and we're glad we did, one of the most impressive people we've ever interviewed, really smart. Here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Your profession, what you do for a living does not intersect with American politics or cultural trends, really.

DORIAN ABBOT, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, GEOPHYSICAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Nothing. Nothing, and in fact to me, this sort of science is supposed to be a secret garden where you can retreat from all those type of activities.

CARLSON: Yes.

ABBOT: But over the last five to 10 years, everything has been introduced into the science and so there's been a politicization of science.

CARLSON: And this is -- these are -- I mean, this is the hardest of the hard sciences. This is not sociology.

ABBOT: Yes.

CARLSON: Not to be mean to sociology, but I mean this is different from that.

ABBOT: So when I was an undergraduate, around the turn of the century, there were in the dining hall, we would hear some of this you know -- my physics buddies -- we would hear what some of these other people were saying, it was sort of like --

CARLSON: Do all the physics guys eat together?

ABBOT: Yes, it's a nerd club, and so we would hear what was you know, I guess, you know, sociology, anthropology -- a lot of these fields were infected first.

CARLSON: Yes.

ABBOT: We would hear what they were saying, it was just funny and silly. It was like oh, I'm glad I'm studying physics, but we never thought that it would come for us. And now, here we are, 20 years later and it has come for us.

CARLSON: I've got to be honest. I mean, I cover the stuff for a living, I spent my whole life looking at this stuff. I never imagined that it would get to your department or departments like yours because it just doesn't have any connection at all to what you do, right?

ABBOT: No, nothing.

CARLSON: Again, one more digression, you're not the only professor in this department or who has got this world view, science oriented world view. What do the other professors think?

ABBOT: Well, so what you have to understand is that you become a tenured faculty member at a place like the University of Chicago by putting your head down and not caring about anything else except for your science.

CARLSON: Yes.

ABBOT: And so, that's the mode that most of the faculty in my department and in other departments that are similar around the country are in, in the sciences. And so, they just want to ignore this stuff and move on and you know, get their grants and get the science done that they're really excited about.

You know, build the next cool laser. They don't care about this stuff, but the problem is that, there is a small group that's extremely committed, you could call them the woke activist or the social justice activist and they're willing to spend all their time on this stuff and they sort of steamroll everybody else.

And so it's a way that a group that commands maybe 10 percent of the support on campus can end up defining what direction science departments go.

CARLSON: Yes. This is like the Bolshevik Revolution. You know, no one really supported it, but they took over the country. So that work -- you know, a committed minority can control an apathetic majority pretty easily.

ABBOT: It's true and that can make you feel pessimistic, but it can also be a cause for hope because it means that if only a few of us start standing up and asserting principles of academic freedom, then maybe we can turn the tide.

CARLSON: Yes, well that's the premise of the show, of my worldview. I really hope that that's true. I think, it is. I think it is true. So what are the ways that this ideology started to intrude on your department and your science?

ABBOT: Well, so in my particular field of science, it's mostly coming through this diversity, equity and inclusion, these offices and these administrators. So the schools have all hired large numbers of administrators and Deans of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion et cetera et cetera and it acts as a sort of a Trojan horse for the woke ideology to get into the hard sciences.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So here is a guy who never thought about politics at all, who intended to spend his entire life literally thinking about other planets and doing the important research that is really the best thing that our higher education system produces, and out of nowhere, he gets forced to think through what his principles are and then defend them.

One of the most honest, sincere, weirdly, charming, coolest people we've ever talked, really worth watching that. It gives you hope that there are decent people who will not be pushed around. Period. He is definitely one of those. And the whole thing is on foxnation.com.

Well one of the most underreported stories over the last year is that there's been a dramatic spike in deaths that have nothing to do with the coronavirus, not just in the U.S., but in Europe, too, so dramatic that it begs the question, why is this happening? No one seems to be asking except Alex Berenson. He has followed this closely. He joins us next.

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CARLSON: Well, here is a kind of a shocking story. This received almost no attention and is pretty ominous. Government data from around the world show that so-called all-cause deaths are running well above normal. This is happening in Western Europe for example.

What explains this? What could explain it?

These are not deaths from COVID, these are deaths directly -- these are deaths from some other things. What are they? Well, Alex Berenson has looked deeply into this. He is an author and a journalist, of course. He writes on "Substack," which you should read. He joins us tonight.

Alex, thanks so much for coming on. So, can you just describe the outline of this because it's a pretty amazing story?

ALEX BERENSON, AUTHOR: So, yes, I mean this is complicated, Tucker and there's several cross currents here and I know we don't have a lot of time.

CARLSON: Right.

BERENSON: I really am exploring this and have explored this a couple of times on the stack -- on the "Substack" and I'm going to go back into that again. But let me quickly tell you what we know, which is in the big countries in Western Europe, in several of the big countries in Western Europe, notably the U.K. and Germany which are the two, you know two of the largest by population, deaths are suddenly running higher than normal and that's been true in the U.K. for several months.

Remember, the U.K. vaccinated a lot of people early this year. They've had deaths running higher than normal for a couple of months. Germany, the vaccinations happened closer to the spring and they've had deaths higher than normal in September. We don't know why.

In the U.K., where there's more data, it looks like there's a lot of cardiovascular deaths that are driving this. We don't know what that means.

In the U.S., there has been an excess in mortality in people under 50 that has gone on for two years now and we have a terrible number of deaths happening in people that age. Some of those deaths are COVID, some of those deaths appear to be locked down related or i.e. drug overdoses, which we know are running really high.

But in the last few months, even as COVID deaths fell in the spring, deaths in that age group remained very high in the U.S. This is -- and again, there's a couple of possibilities. One possibility is that some COVID deaths are being miscounted although we count COVID deaths very aggressively. Another possibility is that is that it's these lockdowns/drug overdose deaths, although Europe doesn't have nearly the problem that we do with that.

Another possibility, and I hesitate even to say this out loud, Tucker, because I know what the response will be is that this is cardiac related and it has something to do with the mass vaccination campaigns, but you know, we don't have evidence, we don't have enough evidence to separate what the possibilities are. All we know is that people are dying at unprecedented rates in the U.S. in the 30 to 50 age group, the 20 to 50 age group, and now we're seeing excess mortality in some European countries and we really should find out why.

CARLSON: Well, that's kind of the point right there. We don't know. You said it five times. You're a responsible person. Really, in 20 seconds, is there a highly aggressive organized effort to figure out why these people are dying?

BERENSON: I would say there's a highly aggressive organized effort to prevent anybody from talking about this data. You know, I was kicked off Twitter. I was forced onto "Substack." Nobody talks about it except you and I don't know why that is either.

CARLSON: Well, I think it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I mean, we don't know what's causing it, but if people are dying, we should know why and I think that's your premise as well. And I'm grateful.

BERENSON: It's pretty important. Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Yes. When people die, yes. It's important.

Alex Berenson, thank you very much.

So, as we told you, a brand new episode of "Tucker Carlson Originals" drops tomorrow. "Blown Away: The People versus Wind Power." It's good. You can start streaming it on foxnation.com.

We will be back tomorrow, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

And now, The Great Sean Hannity takes over.


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