This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on December 8, 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.

My Block, My Hood, My City is a non-profit organization in Chicago. It is designed to teach kids how to become responsible citizens. Now, we can't tell you if the program actually works, but we do know they seem to be aiming in the right direction.

Last Saturday afternoon, four members of this group went to Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood to hang Christmas lights, pretty nice thing to do. Bronzeville was once the center of Chicago's thriving black-owned business district, but at this point, it's just another dangerous neighborhood in a decaying city. How dangerous is it?

Well, as the kids hung their Christmas lights, four thugs got out of an SUV and robbed them, then a few hours later, someone set fire to a Christmas tree they had set up in a nearby park. Who sets fire to Christmas trees?

Well suddenly, a lot of people do.

Last December, the same group of volunteers in Chicago had another one of their Christmas trees burned to the ground, the year before that, someone ran over the Christmas tree in Chicago's Washington Park with a car.

So there seems to be quite a bit of Christmas tree destroying going on all of a sudden. What does it mean? Well, let's see.

This isn't just a matter of people setting fire to balsam furs, a Christmas tree is a symbol, it's a symbol of a specific culture, it's a symbol of a much-loved tradition that is hundreds of years old, but above all, it's a symbol of a religion, in this case, the world's largest religion. Torching Christmas trees is an attack on Christianity, obviously. It's an assault on religious observance.

By current standards, destroying someone's religious symbol would be called a hate crime. That's a category much beloved and meticulously chronicled by the Biden Justice Department. The D.O.J. can tell you precisely how many Qurans were burned last year in the United States, but they don't keep track of Christmas trees.

Why is that? Well, because they could care less.

Christopher Wray isn't dispatching a team of F.B.I. agents to get to the bottom of Christmas arson. Merrick Garland is not going to issue a press release about it, trust us. The media, for their part find the whole thing hilarious.

After a Christmas display was vandalized three years in a row in a park in Chicago, most recently this past weekend, CBS News produced this headline quote: "Search on for Grinch who burned down Christmas Tree," oh so it's a Grinch, not an arsonist, not a dangerous anti-Christian psychopath. No, it's a Grinch, an amusing dwarfishly cute cartoon character absolutely nobody can take seriously.

But this is serious, these are not isolated incidents and they are not being perpetrated by Grinches.

In Oakland, California, a few days ago, a still unidentified arsonist doused a 52-foot Christmas tree in Jack London Square with lighter fluid and then burned it down.

Just this morning, right after midnight, in the center of Midtown Manhattan, someone torched the Christmas tree right outside FOX News headquarters. It went up in smoke while Shannon Bream was live on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CHIEF LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, a bit of Breaking News for you tonight. You're looking at live images -- this is the FOX Square in New York, outside of FOX Headquarters.

It appears that our giant Christmas tree there, just a couple of minutes ago was completely engulfed in flames. It appears cruisers are there on the scene. You the smoke and the aftermath of this. They are trying to get that under control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, in this case, in the case of the tree right in front of FOX News in Manhattan, the police caught the man they say did it. They tell us his name is Craig Tamanaha. He had a lighter in his pocket. FOX Security saw him start the fire after he climbed the tree.

Why did Tamanaha do this? Well, we don't know.

But the more obvious question is, why was he on the street in the first place? According to New York's Police Commissioner, Tamanaha was wanted on several criminal offenses, quote: "He was issued earlier this year some appearance tickets and didn't come back to court which is something we see all too often."

So here we have yet another criminal set free by left-wing ideologues to terrorize everyone else.

This is the third arson attack on a Christmas tree at least in a major American city in the past week.

Time to connect some dots here? No.

Here is "The New York Times" headline quote, "FOX News Christmas Catches Fire in Manhattan." Right, so it turns out, the tree just caught fire. It self-immolated, the usual spontaneous combustion at work in Midtown, just like that red SUV that went rogue after the Rittenhouse verdict in Wisconsin and by itself murdered children and grandmothers in a parade because sometimes these things just happen.

It wasn't that long ago you should know that "The New York Times" was a semi-legitimate newspaper that reported the news. It wasn't always a Stalinist propaganda outlet designed to confirm the bigotries of the smallest minded, unhappiest, most self-satisfied people in America. In other words, it wasn't always NPR, but now it is, and very few people are still listening.

Everyone who actually lives in this country knows exactly what's going on, look around. Our streets are dangerous, much more dangerous than they have been in a long time, in decades. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one reason is our cities are overrun with mentally unstable vagrants who are living on the sidewalks.

Now, for a long time, we've called these people homeless, but let's stop doing that. The homeless is a political term, which is intentionally devised to mislead you. In fact, this problem has very little to do with homes or available housing or whatever Orwellian phrase they are using at this point to pretend these people have no place to stay.

A lot of them could be staying indoors, they don't want to because they are addicted to drugs, it is that simple.

America has a massive drug crisis now in progress. The rest of us have been trained to ignore it or deny it, but it is absolutely real and if you live in a city, you cannot pretend it isn't.

Andrew Yang ran for Mayor of New York this spring and at one point made the mistake of saying what every single person in Manhattan knows to be true. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW YANG, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE: The fact is, mentally ill, homeless men are changing the character of our neighborhoods.

A woman, my wife, Ellen is friends with -- in her mom group in Hell's Kitchen was punched in the face by a mentally ill man, sent a picture of a bruised face around the mom group, spread like wildfire.

This is happening in New York City and we are not talking enough about it. Families are leaving as a result.

In East Harlem, the neighborhood has been changed. Upper West Side, the neighborhood has been changed.

We owe our people and our families better than this and I'm frustrated by the political nature of these responses.

I mean, we're not talking about housing affordability. We are talking about the hundreds of mentally ill people we all see around us every day on the streets and the subways, there will be no recovery until we resolve this.

I will fix this, New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So here you have an innocent mother punched in the face on the street. Now, you'd think the Violence against Women Caucus might have something to say about this, but no. Instead, they attacked Andrew Yang for noting it.

"Andrew Yang's comments about mental illness are deeply offensive," barked "Teen Vogue," which is an even stupider version of "The New York Times."

Democratic mayoral candidate, Maya Wiley denounced Yang's description of violent crime as quote, "deeply disturbing, deeply lacking in compassion." Unmentioned was the woman who got punched in the face by a lunatic. No compassion for her. Violence against women doesn't count when it's the homeless committing it.

In the end, Andrew Yang lost the mayor's race, but the mentally ill drug addicts who punch women in the face are still there. They are still roaming Midtown, they are a protected class.

According to "The Washington Post," these people must now be referred to as unhoused individuals or people experiencing homelessness. In other words, they have a right to live in tents across from your house, shooting heroin with their pants down as you walk your kids to school.

They really think that. When the City of Washington, D.C. moved an encampment of junkies recently, one city councilman described this as quote, "an eviction." In other words, your streets belong to them.

Now, these aren't just misguided attitudes, they are suicidal attitudes. Any society that gives drug addicts preference over homeowners will not last long.

In the meantime, people die. People die who don't deserve to die.

In Florida the other day, a vagrant murdered a 14-year-old boy who was out riding his bike. Police say the killer is called Semmie Lee Williams. He had felony arrests in Georgia and California, including charges for aggravated assault and battery. Why wasn't he in jail? Well, because authorities in Georgia and California let him go, so he went to Florida and murdered a child.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POLICE CHIEF CLINT SHANNON. PALM BEACH GARDENS: He appears to be a homeless drifter spending most of his time in the streets of Miami. The incident itself appears to be a completely random act. We do not have a motive in this case. It appears to be an absolute chance encounter between a child on a bicycle and an animal that probably should not be out on our streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It appears to be a random act, well, you do wonder about that. But he called him an animal that probably should not be out on our streets and that is absolutely true. Saying that out loud will not return this boy to his parents. He is dead, but saying it out loud is a start. You cannot solve problems until you resolve to stop lying about them, which we should do.

Bernie Kerik is the former Police Commissioner of the City of New York. He joins us tonight.

Bernie Kerik, thanks so much for coming on.

Now, hate crimes seem to be the primary category of crimes. I'm not clear what a hate crime is or why it is different from a normal crime. I think the whole category is scary and political, but since it is the dominant category of crime, why is burning Christmas trees not a hate crime according to the D.O.J.?

BERNARD KERIK, FORMER NEW YORK POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, it should be, not only to the D.O.J., it should be to the City of New York, to the State of New York.

You know, the problem I think we have, Tucker is aver the last several years, you have governors like Andrew Cuomo that instituted these laws like bail reform laws that for example, right now in New York City, 83 percent of the people arrested on gun charges are immediately released and sent back in to the community.

You have prosecutors who don't want to prosecute. They are more focused on targeting police than they are targeting the bad guys in the streets or dealing with things like this, and then you have mayors these radical left- wing mayors that basically allow this homeless issue and a lot of it is not homeless, it's mentally ill, it's people that don't belong in the streets. They should be in clinics, they should be in hospitals. They should not be allowed to stay out on the streets the way they are.

And you have a Federal government like the President and his administration that sits around in Washington, D.C. in a big circle jerk wanting to know why crime, why violent crime is going up and murders going up and not doing anything about it.

CARLSON: I've got to ask you, I mean, I keep hearing that I should not be allowed to protect my family with a firearm because gun crime and I can't be trusted with a gun. These same people who want to take my guns away are releasing gun criminals over 80 percent in New York? What's the thinking there?

KERIK: There is no thinking there. This is the radical left-wing party, the Democratic Party attacking the Second Amendment, doing everything in their power to take law-abiding citizens' weapons away from them and basically letting all these criminals out in the streets. You have increases in violent crime, increases in murder.

You know this stuff can be fixed, it is easy. We did it.

New York City did it. Giuliani did it. Sixty five percent reduction in violent crime, a 70 percent reduction in murder, an 80 percent reduction in murder in the black communities where the violent crime is the highest. Don't tell me it can't be done, I did it.

But the bottom line is, you need real leadership that is not going to be afraid to call it what it is and this, stuff you're talking about right now is exactly what the problem is. They are afraid to even call it what it is.

CARLSON: It seems like it's about one-tenth of one percent of the population of New York is in favor of having drug addicts living on the sidewalk, everyone else hates it, but that tiny percentage of people make all the decisions. How is that democracy?

KERIK: It's not democracy and I think we saw that in the last set of elections.

You know, the bottom line is, people have to get vocal, people have to stand up, stop sitting back and being cowered into a position where you're afraid to talk because if you sit back and you're afraid to talk and you're not calling it out, then nobody is going to do anything about it.

And I refer back to the '90s. Look, New York City had a crime wave. Nobody wanted to do anything about it until it was ready to implode and when it was ready to implode then everybody said, huh, now we have to fix it.

Well, I think this whole country is coming to that point right now.

CARLSON: I think that's right. We need a new Giuliani, I would say. Bernie Kerik, great to see you. Thank you.

KERIK: Thank you, sir.

CARLSON: So our friend, Jason Whitlock, honestly not to show favoritism, but one of our favorites, out with a brand new commercial promoting the wonders of diversity, equity, and inclusion -- DIE -- it's hilarious, but also pretty deep.

We'll show it to you in just a minute.

This show does support Christmas trees. We don't burn them, we decorate them. We have a brand new 2021 Christmas ornament, "Don't Fauci my Christmas." Don't let them Fauci your Christmas by the way. You can get one at tuckercarlson.com right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Dr. Van Jone is the Director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity -- DIE -- at the so-called Alphabet Mafia. He is out with a new sales pitch describing everything diversity experts can offer this country. Here is his pitch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're a for-profit coalition of organizations funded by George Soros.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, and critical race theory -- all rolled into one. We burn and loot cities. We redefine marriage, and we're also in the process of redefining and expanding gender identities.

Do you have a violent criminal history? Maybe you've done time in prison for pedophilia. Great. Maybe even some domestic violence and you can't find the right job in Corporate America. No problem.

At DIE, you're a perfect candidate to loot, burn, and terrorize black communities.

You can be the next Joseph Rosenbaum, so don't miss your chance to kill America. Call us right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Just to be clear, that is a parody. It's getting very hard to tell at this point.

Jason Whitlock and his team at the Blaze put that video together. Jason Whitlock is the host of "Fearless," of course and our friend. He joins us now.

That was hilarious. Tell us what you hope to illustrate with that video.

JASON WHITLOCK, HOST, "FEARLESS WITH JASON WHITLOCK": Tucker, it segues perfectly with your opening monologue. Look, there is a coalition that has been built of criminals, the mentally unstable, and just bitter people who are being used and funded to short America, to sell out America.

The global elites are using these people to promote anarchy in this country and to destroy this country. They want our Constitution rewritten. They want to frame America as a massive failure and they are using race to cover, to smoke screen, their real agenda. They are saying, we are just here to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity; a more just society, when their real agenda by supporting these criminals, the mentally unstable.

And letting all this anarchy and chaos go on is to define America as a failure, we need a new Constitution, we need a new Bill of Rights, we must throw out everything that made America great and re-do it and we're smarter than the Founding Fathers and we're going to put something in place, Marxism, communism, socialism and it's going to be better than anything America has ever experienced before.

It is a brilliant plan, it's an evil plan, it is a satanic -- it's a very secular plan, and you know, I'm trying to use humor. We are trying to use humor to point it out and to let people know these people that are trying to kill America, they are crazy.

CARLSON: They seem to be particularly hostile to Christianity, not just in this country, but countries with big Christian populations, in Eastern Europe for example, are always their targets. What do you think that's about?

WHITLOCK: Well, you can't legalize and normalize every human desire without removing God. If you're a Christian, if you're a believer, you believe your flaw and that Jesus died for your sins and you believe that by embracing Christianity, you can start to tame your unhealthy desires, things that don't lead to success, things that don't promote good things for you and society as a whole.

You've got to remove the Christianity in order for people to just give in and normalize whatever desire you have. If you want to marry a cat, if you think you're -- you were born a biological man, but you're really a woman, if you think you're a dog. Whatever your desire, they want to normalize.

It is a do with thou will. It's a satanic philosophy. You have to remove Christianity to impose and install that. It's classic Marxism. I mean, Karl Marx is just sitting around applauding the work that's being done right here in this country.

CARLSON: The Great Jason Whitlock, one of the clearest thinkers there is. Great to see you tonight. Congrats on that video.

WHITLOCK: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So the U.S. government -- here's a plot twist -- is now saying it co-owns part of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine, a product it is also mandating. Huh. Our team has looked into this, so has Glenn Beck. He joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Horrifying reports tonight that a school in California has given students powerful essentially untested drugs without their parents' consent. The school apparently offered students an incentive to be quiet about it, to hide it from their parents.

FOX's Trace Gallagher has the story for us tonight. Hey, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker, imagine Maribel Duarte's surprise when her 13-year-old son came home from school saying he got vaccinated in exchange for a piece of pizza.

For the record, Mrs. Duarte isn't against vaccines, she is vaccinated, but her son has asthma and she doesn't feel the vaccine is right for him. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIBEL DUARTE: The lady that gave him the shot and signed the paper was the one that told my son, please, do not say anything. I don't want to get in trouble.

It hurt to know that he got a shot without my permission, without me even knowing or signing any papers for him to get this shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: The LA School District which is already fighting two vaccine mandate lawsuits won't comment on the case, but it did offer up a word salad that has nothing to do with the question quoting here: "The District introduced the safe schools to Safe Steps Incentive Program throughout LA Unified Schools. This program offers incentives to families who upload proof of their vaccine, have an approved medical exemption or have conditional admissions." The statement says nothing about pizza for shots.

And maybe as legal experts say, that is that's because kids can't legally accept that trade and schools can't legally offer it. It is worth noting this happened at Barack Obama Academy in South Los Angeles, a public school with 100 percent minority enrolment and according to U.S. news and world report, among the worst performing schools in California, only five percent of students are proficient in Math.

A school administrator reportedly told KNBC in Los Angeles, he thinks the 13-year-old is not telling the truth except that 13-year-old now has a card proving he got vaccinated -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Unbelievable. Trace Gallagher, thanks so much.

GALLAGHER: Yes.

CARLSON: They always target the weakest, however, you feel with the corona vaccine, imagine your children being given powerful drugs without your knowledge by unionized teachers. What's the appropriate response?

Glenn Beck, our old friend is the host of "The Glenn Beck Radio Program," of course, he joins us tonight on the story. Glenn, thanks so much for coming on.

So you're a parent, how do you -- how would you respond to something like this?

GLENN BECK, HOST, "THE GLENN BECK RADIO PROGRAM": I'd file a lawsuit with the teachers union myself. I can't believe what is going on, Tucker. It is completely out of control and you have to ask yourself, why? Why are they pushing this like this? What do they have to gain? Because it's not our health. I really don't believe that.

CARLSON: Well, certainly not in the case of children where there is a demonstrated and actual risk, it is not -- you know, not to every child, but there is very little risk from coronavirus, so this is like crazy.

So you've done some reporting on this on some of the incentives we may not be aware of behind these drugs. If you'll tell us what you found.

BECK: So okay, so this is a two-hour chalkboard that is condensed into about four minutes, so if you want to see the whole thing it's at faucilied.com, but I'll try not to sound crazy and tie this together.

Gain-of-function which Fauci says never happened, happened in November of 2015. It happened with Dr. Baric, it was a published paper, November 2015. The USAID and Fauci with EcoHealth, they were funding it, it was happening with the Wuhan people. So we know that.

But what you may not know is in November, the same month that published paper comes out, the United States begins a partnership with Moderna and they are searching for mRNA corona virus vaccines, kind of a weird coincidence, but wait it gets worse.

In this time, we skip to 2018, DARPA receives a proposal from Dr. Baric, a U.S. guy, Dr. Shi from Wuhan and Peter Daszak from EcoHealth and DARPA sees this and says this is far too dangerous, we are rejecting your proposal.

We don't know what happened from there, but we do know just about 12 months later in Wuhan where Peter Daszak, Dr. Shi, the bat lady, and Dr. Baric were all doing research on coronaviruses. About a year later, there is an outbreak and the outbreak actually begins according to documents that we have that have been smuggled out of China that there were 10 hospitals involved by October with patients that were now, we now know are corona- like virus symptoms. They didn't know what was going on.

Now that was in October. Remember, we didn't know anything about this in December. We were starting to get rumblings. China said there was some sort of an outbreak on December 31st, but Peter -- I'm sorry not Peter Daszak -- Dr. Baric signs a government deal with Moderna -- I want to read it exactly to you, this deal was made. It is confidential. It is a hundred -- and I don't know 58 pages long.

It is -- if I skip to Page 104, they are entering a specific private confidential agreement, the N.I.H. appears to be transferring technology to Dr. Baric, but that what they're making clear is quote, " ... mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly owned by N.I.A.I.D. and Moderna."

Now, this is weird because it is two weeks later that we know there is a problem. They signed that deal two weeks before and they sign it with the doctor who happened to be a partner with the bat lady in Wuhan.

Here is where it gets really dark. These are the same group of people that in the end of January begin to have meetings and they shut down and begin to smear anyone who is looking into the lab leak theory.

They establish that is not true, don't even look there. It appears to be collusion. You know, we've passed this on to several people in Congress and the Senate. We know Rand Paul is on this and Dr. Fauci has some answers to give.

CARLSON: Well, I just want to affirm what you're saying. You're the reporting -- the amazing reporting you've done on this, here is a clip of the recently departed N.I.H. Director Francis Collins admitting on camera that the U.S. government has a stake in the vax. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Who is going to own that vaccine? Does the Federal government own it?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: One of the vaccines, the one that's furthest along was started actually at the Federal government and our own vaccine research center at N.I.H. and then worked with a biotechnology company called Moderna to get to where we are now with very impressive Phase 1 results and getting ready to go into a large-scale trial as early as July.

That one of course we do have some particular stake in the intellectual property.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: This just -- I mean you are not making this up. What you're saying is true. Really quickly, why is this not a front-page story everywhere?

BECK: All of the documents -- we spent about a year on this with people like Charles Rixey from Drastic, with Judicial Watch. They were all FOIA'ed. These are documents that prove beyond, I think any kind of reasonable doubt something very wrong is happening here.

Moderna had been turned down for any kind of vaccine research by everyone publicly, over and over again, and now this test is being done on our children. This is the only time that anybody will admit they were doing any kind of testing on coronavirus research for a vaccine with Moderna.

CARLSON: That's just -- it's just beyond belief and I'm glad finally that someone is saying this out loud.

Glenn Beck, I appreciate your reporting on this. Thank you. It is great to see you tonight.

BECK: Thank you. Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So, it's inconceivable we would fight a war with Russia over Ukraine where we have no core American interests whatsoever, it seems demented, a fever dream. And yet, we are marching toward it. This is coming unless someone stops it.

Tulsi Gabbard is watching very carefully. She joins us next to react.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The jury is now deliberating in the Jussie Smollett fake hate crime case. There are no cameras allowed in the courtroom, but our Matt Finn has been there for the entire trial, joins us tonight with an update.

Hey, Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker. The jury has now been sent home for the evening. They are expected to resume deliberations tomorrow morning.

In closing arguments today, special prosecutor, Dan Webb told the jury that Jussie Smollett withheld critical evidence like cell phone data because he didn't want the alleged hoax to be solved. Webb also telling the jury that Smollett misled police about his attacker's ID and lied about tampering with the noose.

Webb also saying a Northwestern doctor's testimony under oath corroborates the Osundairo brothers account that they held back their punches. That doctor testified on the stand that Smollett had no known injuries.

Smollett's defense saying Jussie had an anti-motive here -- an upcoming historic black gay marriage on network TV and a pending music video shoot. He did not want his face damaged.

Smollett's defense attorney also telling the jury that they didn't have to feel pressured to convict anyone just because Chicago Police spent thousands of man hours on this case -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matt Finn there from the beginning, appreciate it.

It's almost impossible to believe, but we actually are moving closer to a hot war with Russia. Now, the people driving this are incompetent, they have a decades-long record of incompetence. They have no fine motor skills whatsoever, so once this begins to happen, they will not have control over the outcome. You could wake up one morning and it's 1914.

That is where we're moving. CNN is reporting that The Pentagon is planning for evacuations of U.S. diplomatic personnel and other American nationals in Eastern Ukraine. Republicans are doing nothing to stop this, in fact they are egging the weak and incompetent President on to do more.

Oh Biden is weak. He is not standing up against Vladimir Putin. You're hearing that constantly including on this channel from Republicans. And the rhetoric is getting hotter and crazier and more disconnected from reality.

Here is one example.

Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker said we may need to use nuclear weapons in the war for Eastern Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): I would not rule out American troops on the ground. We don't -- you know, we don't rule out first use nuclear action. We don't think it'll happen, but there's certain things in negotiations if you're going to be tough that you don't take off the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: First use nuclear weapons, troops on the ground over Eastern Ukraine. Is the fate of Eastern Ukraine tied to some heretofore unknown core American interest that somehow we're just not aware of? Is that in the Constitution?

Tulsi Gabbard has thought a lot about this, of course, a former Congresswoman from Hawaii, currently Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves. She joins us tonight.

Congresswoman, thanks so much for coming on. Does what is happening in Eastern Ukraine, whatever you think of it, constitute a core American interest, do you believe?

TULSI GABBARD, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: No, look at what Senator Wicker is saying. I want to go back to that for a second here because anyone who would propose or even consider what he is saying as an option must be insane, a sociopath, or a sadist, because let us just understand here, so he is saying let's go and launch a nuclear attack that would start a war that would destroy the American people, our country and the world. And oh, also the Ukrainians, so that we can save Ukraine's democracy.

I mean, it literally is insane and the crazy thing, Tucker is, Senator Wicker is not an outlier. He is the number two Republican on the Armed Services Committee and you're hearing the same kind of rhetoric coming from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, in the administration, and in the media who have no problem with this because they actually agree with it.

They are pushing this same narrative themselves and this is why it is such a dangerous situation that we are facing as we are being pushed closer and closer very quickly as you said to a hot war, a nuclear war that would destroy the world as we know it.

CARLSON: Over Eastern Ukraine, I mean, the sad thing is in Washington, you served in the Congress, people like Roger Wick are considered highly informed intellectuals. You know, America deserves better than Roger Wicker, I think it's fair to say. But they live in an airless world where they repeat back to one another, both parties, the same stupid talking points. Do they know how disconnected from reality this is?

GABBARD: Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be the case and this just points to their ineptness, their lack of a capability to really clearly see what the consequences are of their rhetoric, of the actions, and this isn't just you know empty words.

There are consequences to leaders in our country, influential people in our country to throwing things out like a first use nuclear attack is on the table. This directly undermines our national security. It directly puts the American people and our country and the world at risk, Tucker, and what are we trying to accomplish here? Because that will be the result.

CARLSON: Well, that is -- so that -- this is a much longer conversation, but in a minute why Eastern Ukraine? I mean, you can think of lots of parts of the world that are critical to our national interest. The shipping lanes in the South China Sea for example or lots of things you could argue we have to defend this.

But Ukraine? We've been talking about Ukraine for years. What is this?

GABBARD: The thing that I see here Tucker that is the same neocons and neo-libs in Washington who dragged our country into regime change wars in places like Iraq and Libya and Syria. The same ones who are pushing us very quickly into this war with Russia and never stating once, hey, what's our objective? What are we trying to accomplish here? And how does it serve our country's National Security interest?

CARLSON: Exactly.

GABBARD: Not a single one of them are pointing that out.

CARLSON: This is not some Stone Age land in South Asia. This is a real country with nuclear weapons and an actual army. Like these --

GABBARD: Exactly.

CARLSON: Too crazy.

GABBARD: And by the way, they have more nuclear weapons than we do, so thinking you're just going to launch a nuclear attack and not see a consequence that will lead to a nuclear war that destroys the world is again insane, inept and I don't know how many more words we can use to describe it. It is ridiculous and these people should not be in positions of power to make these decisions.

CARLSON: I couldn't agree more. I also have run out of adjectives, but I agree with the ones you used.

Tulsi Gabbard, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

GABBARD: Thank you.

CARLSON: So before there was Trump, there was Nigel Farage who awakened the U.K. to the fact you don't actually have to serve the European Union, you could have democracy and he did it. He pulled it off. He got the U.K. out of the E.U.

But in the meantime, he learned a lot. He says that civil liberties are attacked all over the West and the United States may be the world's last hope for freedom.

Nigel Farage joins us next.

And our new documentary called "The Trial of Kyle" out next week, stream it all -- all the Originals, free for a month at tuckercarlson.com.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Nigel Farage is the first successful populist leader in the West, in our lifetimes, for sure. He spent decades trying to get the United Kingdom out of the E.U., restore democracy to Great Britain, and he did. It worked.

He is the guy who actually did what he said he is going to do. And in the process of doing that, he learned a lot. He learned what tyranny looks like.

He is very interested in United States, knows a lot about it, close to former President Trump.

We sat down for a long and fascinating conversation with Nigel Farage for a brand new episode of our streaming show "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIGEL FARAGE, FORMER MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: I think -- I think, you know, we'll look back in years to come, I will see the Biden administration. Actually, the Biden administration is the aberration, not Trump winning.

CARLSON: I think that's very, very true. This is not the beginning of some new era. This is the end of something.

FARAGE: That's what I think, yes.

CARLSON: And I -- and there hysteria betrays that because --

FARAGE: Because they know it.

CARLSON: They know it.

FARAGE: They know it. They know the game is up. Now, you know, what they have to do, the other side, what the other side has to do is to make the silent majority, just ordinary folk who go about their jobs and bring out their families and pay their taxes and obey the law and live their lives. What the other side has to do, they have to demotivate the silent majority of the thinking there is nothing they can really do to make things change.

And what we have to do, because we've got other battles than fighting globalist structure. I mean, we are actually engaged now, I think, in a battle for Western civilization because everything is under attack. Our Judeo-Christian culture, which frankly underpins almost everything that our countries have ever stood for over these long centuries, our rights of free speech, our rights of freedom of association, our hope that our children are taught critical thinking. They are taught, there are two sides to an argument and each of them have their own merits. And you as an individual, make your own mind up what you think.

All of that is very much under assault. You know, you can call it the rise of woke, call it the rise of cancel culture. What it is, it is the virus of Marxism. It is the virus of Marxism --

CARLSON: It is an attack on our civilization for sure.

FARAGE: A complete attack on our civilization. And so that's the -- that is the great battle that we're fighting now. You can call it culture wars, you can call it what you will. But -- and this is the big lesson from Brexit and something that America, I want to take to its heart because, frankly, if America falls, the whole of Western civilization goes.

CARLSON: Yes.

FARAGE: This is where the battleground is now for all of the values that I've just articulated. And you don't need to study the polling to realize that half of Democrat voters, in fact, more than half of Democrat voters don't want their kids to be taught critical race theory, don't want their kids to be taught America is evil, America is awful.

Actually, well over half of Democrat voters are proud of American history, proud of what their granddaddy did in World War II or whatever else it may be.

And so, what we have to do is we have to mobilize that silent majority and say to them, just agreeing with us isn't enough. You've actually got to get up off your backside and make some kind of contribution.

And whether that is standing for a School Board, which you've never thought in your life of doing, but you'd allow the activist left-wing parents to do because very often, the more conservative-minded parents, they are busy working long hours, they've got big mortgages to pay, whether it's getting involved with politics at precinct level, whether it's volunteering to put leaflets through doors, make phone calls, whatever it is.

If we can mobilize the silent majority, we can make them believe that we could win the battle against all of this, then we will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: You can watch Part 1 of our conversation with Nigel Farage on "Tucker Carlson Today," by going to FOX Nation and tuckercarlson.com. Part 2, out Friday and well worth it.

We are out of time tonight, sadly.

A quick programming note, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just sued Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, and all the rest of the buffoons, the totalitarians on the January 6 Committee.

He is on Laura's show tonight to explain why he did it. 10:00 PM Eastern. We're going to be watching.

We hope you'll watch, 8:00 PM every week night, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

The Great Sean Hannity takes over now.

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