Tucker: Who is Brandon?

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Tucker: This is happening all over the country

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host explores why 'Lets go Brandon' chants are popping up around nation

This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on October 13, 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.

If you've been paying attention for the past few years and if you're watching this show, we hope you are, there has likely been a moment when you realize that reality is not quite what you thought it was. A lot of the things you assumed were true in fact are not true. They are instead a mirage, they're a web of purpose-built myths designed to deceive rather than inform you.

You can't really trust your senses anymore. Your eyes will lie to you. That's an unnerving thought especially when you realize that ultimately Vladimir Putin is behind it all.

Russian disinformation is everywhere in this country. It's lurking even within our own minds. It's worse even than Adam Schiff told us it was.

Just last weekend for example, thousands of Southwest Airlines flights failed to leave the ground. It seemed obvious that the mass cancellations were a direct reaction to Joe Biden's vaccine mandates. They were announced just days before, and then actual Southwest pilots appeared to confirm this.

But no, that's just what the Kremlin wants you to think. In fact, as the authorities assured us all along, it was only the weather. Nothing more than a few clouds. Calm down, America. That Southwest Airlines story is as fake as Hunter Biden's laptop. Don't let the Russians lie to you. People love the vaccine mandates, even the thousands who've been fired because of them.

They know perfectly well how naughty they've been, they need discipline, and they're grateful to get it. Thank you, Mr. President. May I have another?

There is a reason, in other words, that Joe Biden is the single most popular head of state in American history, and the reason is, he is awesome. How beloved is Joe Biden? Well, let's put it this way, at sporting events across the country, fans are breaking out in cheers for the White House and its wise and eloquent leader.

These are not coordinated political set pieces, Astro turf as we say in Washington, no. These are spontaneous eruptions of love. One minute you'll be watching a college football game from the stands, the next minute you'll be overcome with the desire, the pressing irresistible need to tell Joe Biden how great he.

Is it's like having him go to the bathroom real bad, except better and more progressive.

This is happening, ladies and gentlemen, and it's happening everywhere -- a cresting tsunami of support for Joe Biden. Here's a sample.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: (Chanting [bleep] Biden.)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's inspiring when you think about it. Joe Biden on his first day in office promised to bring this country together and now, he is actually doing it. It doesn't matter what team you've showed up to root for, in your heart you are a Joe Biden fan and that is national unity.

Now not everyone is for this, of course. To Vladimir Putin who hates us for our freedoms and also because he is Russian, this is a threat. Loving Biden is a thing of beauty, so by definition Vladimir Putin must destroy it. It's like a sunset, a rose garden, a baby's smile. It is something lovely that must be defiled if Russia is going to dominate the world.

So in order to corrupt what is good and beautiful, Putin has spread the lie that these expressions of pure devotion to Joe Biden are instead attacks on Joe Biden, vulgar attacks that include an epithet beginning with F -- and sadly a lot of people believe that.

Russian disinformation is effective, that's why they do it.

So thank heaven, NBC has been there to correct that misperception.

Over the past several years, NBC has done maybe more than any other news organization in this country to fight the Kremlin's propaganda machine. Thanks to NBC for example, your doubts about the fairness of the last election have not only been settled, they're now illegal. You're not allowed to express them, ever again.

So we can be thankful that there was a credentialed representative of NBC Sports on hand earlier this month when fans at a NASCAR event begin to celebrate, spontaneously celebrate Joe Biden.

If the NBC lady had not been there, you might very well have misheard what the crowd said. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my gosh, it's such an unbelievable moment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Brandon, you also told me, you can hear the chants from the crowd. Let's go Brandon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "F Joe Biden." Please, come on. Wake up, America. That's like looking at the thriving incredibly robust economy all around us and concluding there's inflation. Settle down, Vladimir Putin. That's ridiculous.

What they said and you could hear it very clearly if you just opened your ears to the truth is "Let's go Brandon." The NBC lady made that very clear. Not "F Joe Biden," "Let's go Brandon." But who is Brandon, you ask?

Well just another happy American who is grateful for the wise leadership of his benevolent President. In fact, Brandon is a newly arrived American, part of what we call the Biden generation. He is an undocumented trans- Haitian migrant, now enrolled thanks to a Pell grant as a Film Studies Major at NYU, as well as a part-time non-binary rights activist and puppeteer.

Brandon is the embodiment of the new American Dream, where everything is free, but everyone is still angry. Just this month, thanks to Joe Biden, Brandon got his fourth COVID shot. That means, he is an incredibly good person, far better than you are, and the crowd is simply celebrating that, as grateful people spontaneously do. "Let's go Brandon." Let's get a fifth shot. "Let's go Brandon."

So once you strip away the Russian propaganda, it's all pretty obvious and natural. But it does make you wonder, if you pause for a moment, if the Russians are lying about Brandon, what else are they lying about? And we're glad you asked. They're lying about hospitals.

Vladimir Putin is making up stories about our hospitals here in the United States. Putin claims that our healthcare system is collapsing because of Joe Biden's vaccine mandates and that's preposterous and yet somehow, those crafty and relentless Kremlin propagandists have managed to get that story onto American television. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Hospital officials say they still plan to pause service in the maternity unit starting Saturday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know we've had 43 resignations, 70 percent of those are in clinical areas, and unfortunately, a number of the maternity nurses you know, the professionals who do labor, delivery, and postpartum care are part of that group.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So the maternity nurses all left. There will be no more delivering babies in that hospital. Now, the Russians blame Joe Biden for this. But the truth is very different.

The truth is that this is yet another heartfelt tribute to Joe Biden. Those nurses left, so they can devote more time to campaigning for Joe Biden's re-election in 2024. Once again, this is an act of love disguised by a foreign power as an act of contempt.

That's happening in a lot of places, ladies and gentlemen, not just New York.

Central Maine Medical Center is one of the biggest hospitals in the State of Maine, it just halted its pediatric and trauma admissions. You want to treat your child for a disease, or you've been hurt in a car accident, you can't go there. Why? Well, they cited staffing shortages because of the vaccine mandates.

According to a local news outlet, quote: "The hospital is preparing to potentially lose hundreds of workers. So far, 84 staff members have resigned." This is one hospital in a smallish town in one state and they're going to quote, "lose" hundreds of workers. Well, that's one way to look at it. That's the Russian way to look at it.

The patriotic way to look at it, the Joe Biden approved way to look at it is very different. Here it is. It means hundreds of new job openings for the foreign nationals currently streaming over our southern border. There will be no unemployment crisis for them, so in fact, this is a massive win.

Thanks to the vaccine mandate, these illegal Americans will have plenty to do, not just in Maine, but everywhere.

In Washington State, "The Spokesman Review" just reported that quote, "Long-term care facilities could face critical staffing shortages." Why? Vaccine mandates taking effect October 18th.

Oh, so if you just showed up from another country without permission to be here, you know what you can do for a living, take the place of someone who moved on -- legacy Americans.

In the State of Michigan, the head of the largest nursing homes association said the vaccine mandates will cause them to quote, "face an even greater crisis" or as a good American would put it, a greater opportunity.

Residents of Seattle by the way are about to have plenty of new opportunities, opportunities to practice their self-defense skills. It's a good excuse to brush up on that taekwondo from fifth grade, bet you forgot about those skills, time to get them back.

The people of Seattle are about to confront a massive shortage of law enforcement officers. Why? You guessed it. Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.

Here is how one local news station reported it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): Already short-staffed, the Seattle Police Department is preparing for a potential mass firing of officers. Starting October 13th, the agency will move into what's called a Stage Three Mobilization, what the department's manual says is reserved for scenarios that have the quote, "potential to cause significant harm, property destruction, or widespread public fear."

Three hundred fifty four sworn personnel had not submitted proof of vaccination as of Tuesday. That number dropped to 292 today, but still that's more than 25 percent of all deployable officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, we've just given you a snapshot of what's happening in the country, but it's happening all around the country, from coast to coast and all through the middle of the country and it is happening right now. And that means, in the coming months, at some point you're going to call 9-1-1 for an emergency, or you're going to show up at the hospital with an injury, or you're going to try to catch an airplane flight, and you will notice that you can't because the hospitals, the police departments, the fire departments, your airlines -- none of them work anymore.

Now Joe Biden is going to take the blame for this, if the Russians have their way. Vladimir Putin will tell you, it's Joe Biden's fault. Oh no, no. It's a tribute to Brandon. "Let's go Brandon."

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joins us tonight.

Professor, thanks so much for coming on. So if you add this up and again, we just presented a bunch of different specific examples. If we had four hours, we could probably get more comprehensive, but you're seeing the core institutions of American life destroyed by this one mandate, which you know by itself is a challenge, an insult really to American liberty.

But in its effect, it is going to render inoperable our hospitals, our airlines, our police departments, our fire departments, our long-term care facilities. I mean, fill in the blanks. What else is there? That's our society, and none of it is going to work very soon.

What's the point of this, I wonder?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: I don't know. It's part of a lot of policies, Tucker, and it's not Tucker Carlson that's saying this alone. It's Barack Obama that says the border is unsustainable or Larry Summers says the economic agenda won't work. Our senators on the Democratic side said Afghanistan is a disaster.

So, it is everybody who is saying what's going on, we've never seen anything like it. We've read about the Buchanan presidency. I mean, some of us lived through the Carter's, so was it incompetence? Accidental? Is it non compos mentis problems with the President? Or was this by design an anarchy, a chaos, a nihilism that was sort of never let a crisis go to waste during this tragedy of 2020 to have an agenda that doesn't pull in any of its items 50 percent, but through the sheer fear of this chaotic, anarchistic we're going to have a new agenda that's socialist and nobody knows.

But they do know one thing, Tucker, that the academic world and the abstract world is not just parlor games. It matters. The critical race theory that we wrote off as you know, racism is necessary to fight racism. Nobody would believe that, we thought, or new monetary theory -- print money and you get prosperity, or critical legal theory that there's no connection between innate natural law and real law. We said nobody would believe that.

And then suddenly, they woke up and we see that District Attorneys are letting people go off scot-free after committing felonies, or we've got zero interest at a time we've got six percent annual inflation.

So, they are thinking, this is starting to affect us. There is no -- there is nothing in the shop at the shelves at Walmart or maybe Target is not going to have Christmas presents or I don't want to walk out in New York at night.

So, the academic world has filtered down to the concrete world under this agenda and they're really, really frightened and they're saying, we've never seen something like this before and when they look to these institutions you mentioned, they look at the military or professional sports or entertainment or Hollywood or Silicon Valley or social media or network news or Wall Street or the corporate board room, they say what happened? We don't recognize this anymore.

We've been asleep and they've been -- they've filtered into all of these institutions with this agenda that we don't want and it doesn't work, and so they're in a panic.

And I think, just to end, Tucker, there's going to be a reckoning, and I think people whether they're Mexican-American communities on the border or where I live or soccer moms that are mad about what's being taught in the schools, it's not a top-down woke revolution, it's a grassroots populist revolution.

We're going to see it in the next midterms, and I think a lot of these institutions are going to rue the positions that they've taken and the damage they've done.

CARLSON: Looking back, when hospitals told people that they couldn't hold the hands of their parents or spouses or children as they died because of COVID and no one pushed those people out of the way and said no, it's my parent, I'm going to hold her hand as she dies. When people put up with that, I wonder if you can come back, if you can assert, you know, your value as a human being once you've already allowed them to separate you from your parents as they die.

It seems like -- I don't know, can we come back from that?

HANSON: I hope so. I believe that is what great about America. We are built on a middle-class citizenry with a pragmatic practical sense, and they're saying, if our leaders say, no mask, one mask, two masks; herd immunity 60, 70, 80, 90 percent; no gain-of-function research at the virology lab in Wuhan, then they've lost credibility.

And when they say there is no such thing as really natural acquired immunity, you all have got to get vaccinated even if you've had COVID. I think that people are saying, I want to believe them, but I can't believe them anymore and I'm going to use commonsense, and it's starting to coalesce and it's really terrifying the left.

I don't think I've seen them ever more terrified.

CARLSON: I think that's -- and people should insist on commonsense. Don't let them separate you from your loved ones in their final moment. Period.

HANSON: Each according to a state -- each person -- absolutely -- each according to a station has to speak out.

CARLSON: I think that's right. Victor Davis Hanson, I appreciate it. Great to see you tonight.

HANSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So we've got a live report from the border just ahead that shows exactly what is happening and how many foreign nationals have been released against our laws and without your permission into this country this year, shocking numbers.

Stephen Miller responds, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: We've watched in horror for the last nine months, many Americans have, as the buy demonstration simply opened our southern border and has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to come into this country illegally, and then stay here. But the question we've asked from the beginning is, how many exactly? Where are they going? Who are these people?

We haven't had clear answers until tonight. FOX's Bill Melugin is at the border with that story for us now. Hey, Bill.

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. Good evening to you.

So a Federal source was able to leak us some pretty eye-opening documents and what they show is that the Biden administration has released more than 70,000 illegal immigrants into the country just in the last two months alone, so let's show you some of what we're talking about.

If we can pull up this first graphic, one thing that jumped out to us, just since August 6th, the administration has released about 32,000 people into the country by granting them parole. That gives them temporary legal status and also allows them to apply for work permits, but under Federal law, it is very strict guidelines. It is supposed to only be on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.

Just to put it in perspective for you, former Border Patrol Chief, Rodney Scott, who served under Trump and Biden said he only granted five to 10 paroles per year as a Sector Chief. According to these documents, the Biden administration just did 32,000 in two months.

If we can pull up the second graphic, another release. Since August 6th, they have released 39,630 illegal immigrants in the country on their own recognizance. Those are known as OR Releases.

If we can pull up this third graphic, just since March 20th of this year, the administration has released more than 94, 000 immigrants into the country with what's known as an NTR, that is a Notice To Report. That is a request for the immigrants to please show up to an immigration office within the next 60 days in a city of their choosing.

One final graphic, if we can get to it, on one single day, in Del Rio Sector last month, September 28th, the administration released 128 single adults into the country without any means of tracking them, ATD - Alternatives to Detention.

I reached out to the Feds about all of this, they didn't deny any of the numbers. They say -- they admitted it, but that they have mechanisms in place to try to get people to show up to court. Startling numbers there.

We'll send it back to you.

CARLSON: Bill Melugin, thank you for your reporting once again, one of the only people who is doing it.

So why are all these people coming? And why are they coming now? Those are questions we could answer very obviously. They are here because the Biden administration has allowed them to come and promised -- openly promised -- to give them free healthcare, education, housing vouchers -- the fruits of the richest country or what was the richest country in the world.

Jorge Ventura from "The Daily Caller" just spoke to Colombian migrants in Yuma, Arizona and they conceded -- because they have nothing to be ashamed of -- that they never would have tried to enter this country illegally during the last administration. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION (text): Do you all have a message for the new President of the United States, Biden?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): Yes.

QUESTION (text): What's the message you want to give?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): The message I have is that I am obviously happy that he changed -- changed the immigration policies a lot because he gives the chance for new people to grow, study, be something, be somebody in life because that's what's were looking for.

QUESTION (text): And you all didn't want to come when President Trump was here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): No. I didn't even want to try.

QUESTION (text): No?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): Not even think about it.

QUESTION (text): Why is that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): Due to the strictness in the immigration policy here. The police. Everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Keep in mind, this is all illegal. This is all a violation of Federal laws passed by the Congress. The administration is abetting the violation of Federal law. They're acting in an illegal manner.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered I.C.E. to stop raiding workplaces that employ illegal immigrants. What does this all add up to? We think you know, but no one puts it more clearly or with deeper knowledge than Stephen Miller. He is a former senior adviser to the last President, the founder of American First Legal, and one of the most knowledgeable people on immigration in the country.

Stephen Miller, thanks so much for coming on tonight.

STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: So no more mass raids on employers undercutting American labor with illegal migrant workers. Tell us if you expected this to happen. Has this ever happened before? What does this mean?

MILLER: No, it's never happened before. And yes, I did expect it to happen.

Let's be very clear about what we're looking at. This is an inside attack on our democracy. It is something that our founders never anticipated could happen, something never -- no one ever dreamed would happen, which is that the -- a President of the United States, the person sitting in the Oval Office is working systematically -- or his Deputies are in this case -- to allow people to invade into our country against our laws, to consume public benefits, to take American jobs, and to threaten public safety all aided, abetted, facilitated, planned by our own government.

On the worksite piece, during the last administration, President Trump directed an agency within I.C.E. known as Homeland Security Investigations or HSI to conduct nationwide worksite enforcement. In fact, we have the largest worksite raid in American history under President Trump that I was very proud to have taken place. All of that is now shut down.

If you work illegally in this country, you will be able to take an American job using a fake identity, stealing a Social Security number, and collecting public benefits the whole entire way through.

I want to talk also about the parole issue that Bill Melugin just mentioned. Parole is like DACA or Deferred Action for people who are outside the country who want to come in illegally, so in other words DACA or Deferred Action, if you're here illegally says you can stay here, you have protection from deportation, you can apply for a work permit. That's what they're doing now for illegal aliens outside the country --newly arriving.

Parole is supposed to be for a very rare humanitarian emergency. The classic example used is for someone for example who needs to donate an organ. They are match and they have to get into the country to donate a kidney. That's what it's for. It is being used to bring in illegal aliens en mass to take American jobs.

And one other point I want to make about this. Everything that the administration is saying, they need to raise taxes on you to fix our terrible public school test scores, our overcrowded emergency rooms are dilapidated infrastructure, all of those problems that they want you to believe you caused are caused by third world migration.

CARLSON: Yes, Stephen Miller, thank you for that. I appreciate it.

MILLER: Thank you.

CARLSON: Here is how to think about it, by the way, the President of the United States is the head of the country, he is like a head of household in a family. If your kids are having problems -- and American citizens are having massive problems -- if your kids are having problems and one day you decided to just adopt six more kids, what would your kids think of that?

They would know very clearly that you didn't care about them. In fact you hated them. You had no interest in their well-being. You didn't care to help them get better, and that's exactly the message our government is sending to us.

Up next, it looks more and more like the school board in one of the largest school districts in the country may have covered up the sexual assault of a female student. All evidence is pointing in that direction. We'll bring you the very latest in that story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: This is one of those stories that sounds grotesque the first time you read it and then the more you know about it, the worse it gets. It is from Loudoun County, Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C.

A 9th grade girl, 14, reportedly sexually assaulted in a bathroom by a self-described transgender student wearing a skirt. Now, the girl's father is called Scott Smith and he says the school district covered up the incident.

On June 22nd, he went to a school board meeting to protest what he called a cover-up, but he was not allowed to protest. He was arrested and beaten by the police.

Now over on MSNBC, the race lady applauded this. She said it was all deserved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: The fight to vilify critical race theory occurring mostly within the confines of Twitter and FOX News is now taking over school board meetings. In some cases, turning into a literal fight, like what you see here in Loudoun County, Virginia, where a public meeting over lessons on race and a proposed policy on equity for transgender students devolved into mayhem with audience members displaying aggressive behavior.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So that guy showed up because he believes his 14-year-old daughter was raped in a bathroom. He tries to talk about it and they arrest him and beat him and that ghoul on MSNBC essentially says they didn't beat him hard enough. That's where we are.

So the Loudoun County School District, those the people overseeing this disaster, they just issued a statement saying it followed all legal protocols in this incident and it was quote, "properly reported to authorities." Right.

Judge Jean Pirro is the host of "Justice with Judge Jeanine." There was no justice here, she joins us to administer that. Judge, thanks so much for coming on.

What -- is this story as awful as it sounds?

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, JUSTICE WITH JUDGE JEANINE: You know what, Tucker, it's worse because this story encapsulates virtually every issue that you've been talking about for the last couple of years.

Look, this is a microcosm of America, Loudoun County, where you've got ground zero now with the school boards. We've got a criminal justice case, a young girl who was sexually assaulted. Let's not play tiddlywinks here, Tucker. She was forcibly raped and forcibly sodomized in a school bathroom.

Her father hears about it, they call him to school, they don't say anything to any of the other parents. They take him out of school, six police cars come. This is before they actually have the school board meeting.

And they send a note to parents saying there was some disruption at school today, nothing to see here, folks. That's the end of that.

Within a month, we know the young boy, the 15-year-old is being prosecuted in juvenile court. We know this from another attorney, but the records are sealed. This individual is moved to another school where he ends up sexually assaulting another female. I'll get to that in a minute.

But what you've got here is a father who became a poster boy for the left, one like just before me that that you had on from MSNBC saying he should have been beaten worse, but he became a poster boy for the National School Board Association. He was referred to as a domestic terrorist.

That was a letter that they sent to Merrick Garland that caused him to refer to parents as domestic terrorists and then sicced the F.B.I. after these parents at school board meetings.

But the worst part of all of this is that they covered it up. They covered it up because when they had a meeting to determine whether or not they would support this transgender policy, as well as CRT, vaccines, masks, the superintendent gets up in front of those parents and he says, there are no records of sexual assaults that I know of in this school.

Meanwhile, there was one within a month before. And then he turns to a red herring and he says, "Time" Magazine says this is all ridiculous anyway.

The father at that point is like ballistic. His daughter has been forcibly raped and sodomized and he then starts to disagree and the police come after him.

Here is the bottom line, you've got the right to assemble, the right to redress grievances, First Amendment. None of that is working in Loudoun County or anywhere in the United States now.

CARLSON: I've noticed. They're putting too much pressure on this country. Something bad is going to happen if they don't pull back a little bit.

PIRRO: Really bad.

CARLSON: Really bad. I agree with that. Judge Jeanine, I appreciate your analysis tonight. It's great to see you.

PIRRO: Thank you.

CARLSON: So John Gruden was an NFL coach, he was just forced out as the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The company, Electronic Arts has announced he is going to be deleted from the Madden NFL video games immediately. He will be replaced with a quote "generic likeness" because that's not Soviet or anything.

All of this happened after Gruden's private e-mails, many of them from years ago were leaked to the media. In those e-mails, Gruden reportedly criticized the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. So was he involved in this? It looks like he was. And what should we make of it more broadly?

Clay Travis has covered sports for many, many years. He is the founder of Outkick among many other things and we're always happy to have him on the show.

So, Clay, for people who aren't following this, I know there's been a lot of coverage of it, sum up what happened and what it means, if you would.

CLAY TRAVIS, HOST OF "THE CLAY TRAVIS AND BUCK SEXTON SHOW": Well, first of all, Tucker, I'm reading "Harry Potter" with my kids right now and I feel like John Gruden is the new Voldemort. You're not even allowed to mention his name. I feel like I'm going to get struck down in terms of this cancel culture. They are wiping him out everywhere.

So what's going on, Tucker, is there's 650,000 e-mails that have been examined as a part of discovery into what used to be The Washington Redskins, now the Washington football team and the culture that existed there.

The NFL has been reviewing all of these e-mails, and on Friday, they started to leak out John Gruden inappropriate e-mails, making comments about race, about gender, sexuality, all these different things pulled and culled from inside of that 650,000 e-mails, including criticism of Roger Goodell himself.

Now, if you look at what's going on here, it is highly suspect what is being released and what isn't. It feels like somebody in the NFL office decided they were going to put out a hit on John Gruden and maybe that is Roger Goodell, maybe it's about putting pressure on Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington football team and trying to force him into selling the team.

But every morning, we're getting the drip, drip, drip of somebody new who said something inappropriate.

Look, in the case of John Gruden, Tucker, they have stripped him off the ring of honor with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He won a Super Bowl there. They still have Warren Sapp by the way on that ring of honor. Warren Sapp who has been charged in the past with multiple felonies, pled down to other charges.

Right now, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers put out a statement saying they can't in any way be connected with John Gruden, but they have two different players that are currently or have recently been involved in assault allegations.

This cancel culture absurdity doesn't apply consistent rules and right now, John Gruden has become persona non-grata and he is the target in the NFL.

CARLSON: Well, thought crimes are much more serious than crimes of violence, of course.

TRAVIS: No doubt.

CARLSON: There's violence all around us, and nobody cares, but if you have unapproved thoughts, then we destroy you. Interesting.

Clay Travis, great to see you. Thank you.

TRAVIS: Thank you, Tucker. Words are worse than actions. That's the world we live in.

CARLSON: Exactly. Speaking of crimes of violence, a lunatic homeless man tried to abduct a three-year-old girl in broad daylight in New York City. The whole thing was caught on tape which you can see on your screen now.

Plus one of America's leading psychiatrists says that addiction is a modern plague. It defines this country and it is emanating from your smartphone. A very, very smart shrink joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: At the heart of so many tragedies, a huge proportion of tragedies in this country is addiction to one thing or another, and it is growing. So clearly, look around, how many people do you know who have been struggling with addiction? Maybe you, yourself.

But what do we do about it? What is addiction, exactly?

The problem is, there are an awful lot of flaky people in the so-called addiction community, very few people whose words you can trust. We found someone whose word you can trust. One of the most impressive physicians we have talked to in a very long time, a doctor called Anna Lembke. She is a psychiatrist at Stanford University. She runs her addiction clinics, and we sat down with her for an hour to talk about it. Here's part of the conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So give us the overview. You study addiction, how big a part does addiction play in American society right now, would you say?

DR. ANNA LEMBKE, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE: I really do think that addiction is the modern plague. I think, it is the quintessential problem of modernity and one that we're going to be contending with for the next -- I don't know, however, many hundreds of years.

CARLSON: Yes.

LEMBKE: And it's something that we really need to pay attention to because even those who are previously not vulnerable to the problem of addiction have become vulnerable because of the incredible abundance in our world, and also because of the ways in which so much has become druggified.

So behaviors that were previously not considered drugs have now essentially become drugs they've been engineered to be drugs. So for example, just using myself as an example, I really have never been vulnerable to things like alcohol, which does nothing for me or caffeine which doesn't wake me up even though I really wish it did.

But what happened to me in midlife is I basically got hooked on romance novels and it was really the Kindle, the technology of the Kindle that then had me reading later and later into the night, essentially chain reading until I developed tolerance to kind of "The Twilight Saga" which was my entry into this world, and I developed tolerance and started needing more and more graphic forms of the romance novel and ultimately progressed to reading the kinds of you know, erotica, that's not actually consistent with my values.

So over the course of a number of years, I really became addicted to a kind of a book and of course, my problem pales in comparison to people who develop very serious addictions to whatever it is.

CARLSON: But it's the same pattern.

LEMBKE: Exactly. And that's why I talk about it in my book and that's why I highlight it because the same mental machinery that, you know, gets us addicted to heroin or to cannabis or to nicotine is a kind of mental machinery that potentially makes us all vulnerable.

CARLSON: What's interesting -- so you've already challenged the conventional view of this just in your description of how people get addicted by suggesting that an abundance of substances or behavior to which people can become addicted increases addiction.

LEMBKE: Right.

CARLSON: So, the conventional view is that it's the person's fault for getting addicted. It doesn't matter how many drugs or social media apps or romance novels you have out there, it's up to the person not to get addicted to them.

LEMBKE: Yes. Yes, I mean this is the key point. So, there are many risk factors for addiction, you know biology is a risk factor.

CARLSON: Yes.

LEMBKE: If you have a biological parent or grandparent with addiction, you're more likely to get addicted even if you're not raised in that substance using home. If you are -- if you experience trauma in early life, if you have a co-occurring mental illness, all of those are risk factors for addiction.

But one of the biggest risk factors for addiction that people often ignore is simple access, right?

CARLSON: Right.

LEMBKE: I mean --

CARLSON: No, I just love to hear you say that because it's so obvious and nobody says it.

LEMBKE: Right, it's so obvious and it's kind of the state of our world now. I mean, we're just surrounded with these high potency, high novelty, really ubiquitous, and infinite drugs in so many different forms making us really all vulnerable to the problem of addiction.

I like to say, if you haven't become addicted yet, it's coming soon to a website near you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: If you have any interest in that topic, the topic of addiction, if it touched you in any way and it likely has, that conversation, that woman, Anna Lembke is worth listening to. That is on foxnation.com right now.

So I want to bring you up to date on a story we brought you the other day, so Joe Biden last week gave a speech at a construction company outside Chicago explaining that he is fully in control of your body and he can do whatever he wants and he can force you to take medicine you don't want, because he's got it and you're his subject.

In the course of that speech as he attacked people who hadn't gotten the vaccine, whether they need it or want it or not, he made reference to this company. He whispered to the microphone, "Even FOX News has vaccine mandates," but that's a lie. That's not true. We know because we work here.

So we said that out loud. Look, you're trying to force people to do things they don't want. You're firing Navy SEALs and airline pilots and doctors and nurses and firemen and cops. We can't stop you from doing that, but don't lie about us. You don't work here, we do. Stop lying.

So we had said that on the show, then we put that video on Instagram. And when we put that video on Instagram, the following message appears, and we're quoting, "Make sure the information is reliable before sharing." Exclamation point, and then it attempts to redirect you to a site "Get Vaccine Info" some approved site, I guess, info about policies at a company they don't work at.

So, if you're not allowed to explain information that you have firsthand credible knowledge of, like, your own employer's own policies, then what rights do you have exactly?

We thought you'd be interested in how that turned out.

Well, this country is -- not to relentlessly bombard you with sad news, but there has been a massive increase in violent crime, in fact, the biggest increase in our lifetimes. In New York City, a three-year-old was nearly abducted in broad daylight, a woman who was mugged and knocked to the ground in Times Square has now died. A lot of that stuff is going on, the question is why? When will it stop? And what's causing this?

That's all straight ahead. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Violent crime is spiking across the country. We're not guessing, we have video. In Washington, D.C., a suburb there, a CNN executive dodged a drive-by shooting --

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

CARLSON: That's not a suburb by the way, our mistake, that's the middle of the city. Wish we had an hour for this segment.

Rafael Mangual is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is, I think writing a book on this subject. He is certainly an expert on it. Rafael, thanks so much for coming on.

So tell us, why is -- this this is real. We're not imagining this, correct?

RAFAEL MANGUAL, SENIOR FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: No, you are not. I mean, in 2020, the United States saw the single largest increase year-over- year in homicides that the country has ever seen, so what we're seeing is real, what we're feeling is real.

CARLSON: I mean, this stuff is complicated, but if you could assign a single cause to it, what would it be?

MANGUAL: Yes, I mean you hinted at it. It is very complicated. There is no single cause, but I do think it has quite a lot to do with the fact that over the last decade, our imprisonment rate has declined by about 20 percent. Our arrests have declined across the country by about 25 percent. Police have become the enemy in our public discourse.

All of that I think makes for a real problematic situation when it comes to crime in American cities, which has been on the uptick for far too long and it's going to continue on that path if we don't change course.

CARLSON: Yes, it's cause and effect. You get what you put up with. That's true in every scenario in your home and in your society. Is there any place in the country that's bucking this trend and remaining safe?

MANGUAL: I mean, there are very few. You know, there are very few that didn't already have crime problems to begin with. Crime is, you know especially violent crime like homicides and shootings are largely concentrated in small parts of American cities. That remains the case today.

You know one of the things that we're seeing with some of these aberrations in, you know, nicer parts of town that have traditionally been safe like Times Square, is that it's bringing the crime problem to the doorstep of more Americans, and I think that's important because more Americans are going to have to wake up to the trend of decarceration and deep policing that I think is driving this insignificant part.

CARLSON: Yes, paid for by George Soros. One foreign foreign-born billionaire gets to wreck our country. That's democracy.

Rafael, thanks a lot for coming on. I look forward to your book and I hope you'll come back.

MANGUAL: Thank you.

CARLSON: We're out of time. We'll be back every night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

Have the best night with the ones you love and buckle up because Sean Hannity takes over right now.

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