This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 19, 2022. 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.

Joe Biden shuffled forth from seclusion this afternoon for a rare solo press conference. You may have seen it. It's about as communist Punxsutawney Phil emerging. In fact, according to statisticians who keep track of this sort of thing, it was only his second since taking office a full year ago. And by the end, you are wishing that Joe Biden spoke in public less often.

The whole thing was awful. It was totally weird and embarrassing, not just to him but to the country. At one point Biden treated us to a stream of consciousness thoughts about his son's former employer. That would be a small corrupt nation called Ukraine.

Apparently Ukraine's eastern border with Russia, unlike say, our southern border with Mexico is a sacred boundary created by God that must be protected at all costs up to and including American lives. Why is that? Joe Biden didn't say.

The whole thing was confusing enough that we are going to spend some time unpacking in at much greater length on tomorrow's show. But in the meantime, here is what you should know. You are currently funding a proxy battle in Ukraine against the nuclear armed Russian military and that could very well erupt into a hot war that includes you, the United States.

If nothing else, Biden made that very clear, so sleep well tonight. Then Biden bragged about himself as he tends to do whenever he is awake. Can you think of any other President who has done so much in a year -- he asked at one point. How do you respond to a question like that?

Biden didn't wait for the answer. Instead, he got mad at a reporter who dared ask him about COVID. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Did you over promise to the American public what you could achieve in your first year in office? And how do you plan to course correct going forward?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Why are you such an optimist? Look, I didn't over promise and -- but I have probably outperform what anybody thought would happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I outperformed." Well, it is true actually, outperformed, meaning more Americans have died from corona on my watch than under evil anti-science Cheeto-man, which isn't easy, you dog-faced pony soldier. Stick that in your hat and smoke it.

It got weirder from there. Biden talked about his so-called voting rights legislation, which only Nazis oppose. Without that legislation, the next election will almost certainly be fraudulent, rigged, illegitimate, stolen.

See how that works?

If you complain about an election after the fact, you're an insurrectionist. The Justice Department may indict you for sedition. But if you complain about an election ahead of time, preemptively, then you're a Civil Rights leader. There's a difference, Mr. Man, learn it, love it, live it.

Biden went on to boast that under his steady and wise leadership, peasants in this country have gotten quote "raises." Now, he didn't mention that inflation has already eaten those raises in a single bite and next year's raises, too, though no one in the Press Corps bothered to ask anyway.

Biden did allow that there are some Americans who are quote, "frustrated and fatigued," but that is not his fault. It is COVID's fault, the disease created by unvaccinated Trump voters and not -- we want to be clear about this -- not created by his family's longtime patrons in the government of China. They had nothing to do with it. You did it.

In any case, the solution Biden explained is more testing and more shots. That's why he plans to send a COVID test to every American household and force every last holdout to get the vax.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: When people -- the hospitalizations are overrunning hospitals and you have doctors and nurses out because of COVID, they have COVID, we put thousands of people back in those hospitals. Look at all of the military personnel we have there, first responders. Nobody has ever organized -- nobody has ever organized a strategic operation to get as many shots in arms by opening clinics and keeping them -- and being able to get so many people vaccinated.

What I'm doing now is not just getting significant amounts of vaccines to the rest of the world, but they now need the mechanical way as to how they get shots in arms. So we're providing them to know how to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: How many prepositions were slaughtered in those paragraphs you just heard? We lost count. But here is the headline and you've never heard a President brag about this.

We put soldiers in the hospitals, Biden said. That's a win. So, the next time you get a prostate exam, rest easy, men with guns are there. There is no reason to be afraid. But Biden is not stopping with that accomplishment. There's more to do.

Joe Biden's next goal is to vaccinate all eight billion people in the world by force if necessary and of course, we may need soldiers for that, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I would hope that what happens is, the rest of the world does what I'm doing and provide significant amounts of the vaccine to the rest of the world because it is not sufficient that we just have this country, not have the virus or be able to control the virus, but that can pull the wall high enough to keep a new variant out.

So it requires one of the things that I want to do and we're contemplating and figuring out how to do that, we are contemplating how to get done, and that is how do we move in a direction where the world itself is vaccinated?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The whole world. Those damn Africans better start taking the shots because walls don't work. You build a bigger wall, they just build a bigger virus. That's what the President said.

If you take three steps back, it's kind of amusing in a sad way. Here you have daffy old Joe Biden still yammering on about vaccines. Gets your third shot or no hotdogs for you. That's an order.

But actually, he has been in seclusion in Delaware and the rest of the world has moved beyond orders. No one is listening to Joe Biden anymore. He is weak. He commands no respect. The world no longer cares what he says and as if to prove it, just hours before Biden spoke today, Starbucks, the left-wing coffee chain that under usual circumstances, worships Joe Biden and his party, Starbucks announced that its 200,000 employees no longer have to get the vax.

It was mandatory at Starbucks; it is not anymore. They are dropping that requirement. Well, that is kind of a big change. This is in direct contradiction to Joe Biden's personal orders.

Just a few weeks ago, Biden warned of quote, "a winter of severe illness and death" -- what an upbeat guy he is -- but only for the unvaccinated. And yet, at Starbucks, the unvaxxed baristas are still standing, still pouring those lattes, and now they're getting back to work.

What does this mean? Well, it means they've decided the senile mannequin in the White House knows less about COVID than they do, and they may be onto something.

Meanwhile, in Israel, which is probably the most vaccinated country in the world, scientists just contradicted everything the administration has been telling us for a full year about vaccine passports and natural immunity.

So a study in Israel, which no one has yet to announce as misinformation, found that four vaccine shots do not work as well against omicron as natural immunity does, and one of Israel's top vaccine experts admit that natural immunity in general is highly effective. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREDDIE SAYERS, HOST, "UNHERD": Are you now of the view that vaccine passports should be got rid of? Phased out? Because they're no longer relevant in the omicron era.

CYRILLE COHEN, HEAD OF IMMUNOLOGY, BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY: Yes, I tend to think so, even if the omicron actually is causing a lot of, you know, breakthrough -- not breakthrough infection, but reinfections, you know, people that were vaccinated and you know, secondary infections, et cetera et cetera, we have to take into account that still, the virus is better at immunizing than the vaccine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Better pull that man off Twitter. What does he know? That's Professor Cyrille Cohen, he is the head of immunology at Bar Ilan University. He is a member of the Advisory Committee for Vaccines for the Israeli government, and obviously a thought criminal.

What did he do? Well, he looked at the data and concluded that scientists have made a major mistake, quote, "The virus is better at immunizing than the vaccine." Oh, where have you heard that? Well, we've known that for more than a year. Our own C.D.C. found that natural immunity provided more protection against delta, that variant of COVID than vaccination did.

Professor Cohen went on to apologize for the biggest mistake of the pandemic, shutting down schools and forcing children to stay home which destroyed a generation.

It turns out, there was no scientific basis for doing that at all, it was all teachers unions wanting more time off. Omicron, the Professor said, will turn this pandemic into the endemic phase. It'll be like the flu, a widespread but mild illness. Everybody gets it, very few are badly hurt by it, and we should proceed accordingly.

It has been pretty obvious. You'd never know it from listening to Joe Biden today. He had no clue whatsoever. But Great Britain, which has been almost hysterical in the face of COVID has come to the same conclusion.

So today, as Joe Biden pushed everyone to take a third COVID shot, calling it the optimum protection you can have, except for natural immunity, which turns out to be much more effective, as he was saying that and being ignored, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain announced an end to all mandates and all lockdowns in Great Britain, including in schools. Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Our scientists believe it is likely that the omicron wave has now peaked nationally. From now on, the government is no longer asking people to work from home, and people should now speak to their employers about arrangements for returning to the office and having looked at the data carefully, the Cabinet concluded that once regulations lapse, the government will no longer mandate the wearing of facemasks anywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So the United States used to lead the world, particularly in the field of science. Modern science was essentially invented here. It was certainly perfected here.

Now, the United States follows the world, much smaller countries. Our two closest allies in fact, countries that took COVID, at least as seriously as we did have decided that what we've done for the last two years doesn't work and they are changing their policies. They're freeing their population from the yoke of this insanity.

All of that was happening at the very moment Biden was preparing for his big solo press conference. But apparently, nobody told him what was happening. Again, our two strongest allies were doing this and he didn't know.

At the same moment that Boris Johnson said that masks don't work, Joe Biden declared that he is going to send 400 million masks to American citizens so that every person in America can be safe for a day.

It is lunacy. It's depressing to watch. It has massive implications.

Again, this is not global leadership, it is the opposite. This is what it looks like when you're a global laughingstock. Even Biden's aides know it. Watch Biden's own COVID adviser admit that masks don't stop transmission.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out, either you're breathing out or you're breathing in. And in fact, if you're in the Upper Midwest right now, anybody who is wearing their face cloth covering can tell you they can smell all the smoke that we're still getting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so that was in August, almost half a year ago. A few months later, in December last month, CNN's resident doctor admitted this is true. Masks are useless. They've always been useless.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic. It was -- it is not appropriate for omicron, it was not appropriate for delta, alpha, or any of the previous variants either.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: And yet, Joe Biden is bragging that he is sending every American a mask, so every American can be safe for one day. This is pathetic. Why are they doing this? It's a question worth asking, especially since Joe Biden knows that masks don't work. That's why he takes his mask off when it irritates him.

Here he was just a few days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: What we've been able to do is am able to -- this is stupid -- I have been able to generate significant federal help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So Joe Biden knows masks don't work. CNN knows that masks don't work. Joe Biden's COVID advisers knows that masks don't work, the country of Great Britain has admitted that in public.

So with that in mind, here is what the Biden administration has been saying about masks for the last two months. Watch the lies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Masking, masking -- masking is an important tool to control the spread of COVID-19, and when you're indoors in public places, you should wear the mask.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: The C.D.C. continues to recommend that any mask is better than no mask, and we do encourage all Americans to wear a well-fitting mask to protect themselves.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We want to make sure people keep their masks on. I think the idea of taking masks off, in my mind is really not something we should even be considering.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: They act like there is no cost to covering your face. But the truth is human beings need to see one another's faces. It's not optional. We pretend that it is.

Any society that ignores natural imperatives, things as basic as seeing other people's faces will destroy itself and the people who live within it. Everyone knows that.

What you just saw is not science. It's mental illness. Joe Biden apparently doesn't know that, and that is why even Starbucks no longer listens to him.

Matt Walsh is host "The Matt Walsh Show." He joins us tonight.

Matt, thanks so much for coming on. Look, to criticize the President of the United States, even someone you don't like and didn't vote for who is clearly as nasty as Joe Biden is, is in some ways to diminish your own country. So I just want to preface this by saying, it is sad to watch this because you want your leader to be strong, even if you don't agree with him, and he is weak.

But how long -- my question to you is -- can this pretense continue, that this guy is running things, he knows what he's doing, you should follow his commands?

MATT WALSH, HOST, "THE MATT WALSH SHOW": I think the pretense was over the first day he took office. I mean, this is the consequence of electing or, you know, having a moldy cantaloupe as President of the United States, and it creates this kind of perfect storm that turns this into the most out of touch presidential administration in American history, because on one hand, you have a President with literal dementia, who lost his mind, and by the way, before he lost his mind, he still didn't really have one.

He had -- you know, he was he was a man of no will of his own, no value system, just always triangulating, and then he lost his mind.

And on top of that, then we've got his handlers, the administration itself, people calling the shots, who hates the American people, don't care about our problems and that is why they send this doddering old fool, you know, while most of us are worried about inflation and gas prices.

They sent him down to Georgia to rant about the fact that we all need voting rights when we already have them and to call most of us racist.

And so this is a situation that we're facing, and I think it raises a question when it comes to COVID, and the policies around COVID. Basically, there are two ways of looking at this, either these are failed policies, and they are sticking with them because they don't want to be embarrassed, and they can't admit they were wrong, or the policies have not failed at all. And, in fact, this is the effect they were supposed to have.

This is all about them gaining power. It's about reordering society. It's about destabilizing institutions. And so, either way you look at it, it's certainly not good.

CARLSON: I mean, democracies are voluntary arrangements by their definition. You consent to be governed. You can't govern without the consent of the people you govern. Period. And if people decide that they don't consent anymore, they're not going along with it. Like, you know, you could get some real destabilization. Do they not get that?

WALSH: Well, I think that they just don't care. The problem is again that they don't -- when you have people leading a country or a city or any institution, and they hate the people that they're leading, I think this is what you end up with.

Look at all this the cities that are falling apart across the country, led by people who do not like the people that they're leading and this is the logical consequence of that, I think in part.

CARLSON: Amazing. Matt Walsh, thanks so much. Great to see you tonight.

WALSH: Appreciate it, thank you.

CARLSON: By the way, Joe Biden went on interminably for nearly two hours. I don't mean to mock him, as you get older, you talk too much. We're very familiar with that. But that's still a long time.

We'll tell you more about what he said in just a minute. But first, the Virginia Association of Pediatrics says children should keep wearing masks forever, in defiance of the new Governor's executive order. Why is that? They didn't explain, they just should. Believe your doctor. Shut up.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is about to deploy 400 million masks to the public, as we told you and the Treasury Department is threatening to withhold COVID relief money from the State of Arizona because it is not fully on board with the mask policies.

Joseph Ladapo is the Surgeon General of the State of Florida. He's been one of the clearest voices on COVID policy in the last several months. We're happy to have him join us now. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on.

It doesn't seem based on what happened in Great Britain today that all the science that it has accumulated that any of these orders are rooted in data.

JOSEPH LADAPO, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA: Thank you have for having me on, Tucker.

I totally agree, you know, we've entered this -- it is just a very bizarre period that we're in where people are just willfully denying data.

I mean, I don't know how anyone at this point in the pandemic, having seen country after country, including this country, and state after state, essentially have similar surges throughout this pandemic, regardless of whether they have mask mandates, whether they force the kids to mask in school, whether they adopt the vaccine passports, there is really no substantial difference.

So, you know, I feel that so many leaders right now are essentially data deniers, I mean, it is right there in front of you.

CARLSON: We have quite a bit of research spanning decades that children develop very heavily based on the facial cues of the adults in their world and on the facial cues of their peers. So if you don't let five-year-olds see other people's faces for two years, what do you do to their brains?

LADAPO: You know, Tucker, you're totally sharing, you know, one of the saddest parts of this pandemic in terms of health policy at the national level, including with people like Dr. Fauci.

They have basically dehumanized the U.S. population, the people that live in this country, and instead of being individuals, children, you know, doing the things that make children wonderful, right, playing, you know, being worry-free, expressing themselves.

They've sort of put them in this box, where they're spreaders of viruses, and they have to have their faces covered, despite how unnatural that is, without really any high quality data showing any benefit and lots of data and parental intuition suggesting harm and tremendous harm. You know, it's completely unnatural.

CARLSON: Yes. I think the word "dehumanized" is the perfect word to use, and I'm really glad you used it, and I'm going to -- I'm going to use it henceforth.

So, Doctor, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

LADAPO: All right, thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Surgeon General of Florida.

Well, there is a lot more from Joe Biden's two-hour long press conference. It wasn't just him rambling about corona, we will tell you what else he said. Our friend Will Cain joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Joe Biden doesn't appear in public very often, too scary, doesn't want to get the 'rona, but when he does and once he starts talking, whoa, it is hard to slow that man down, can't stop him.

His press conference went on for two hours, and of course it wasn't all about COVID. It wasn't about anything that actually mattered. No questions on crime or immigration. Murder rate is up dramatically. The southern border is open, millions of foreign nationals whose names we don't know are streaming in.

But don't ask, and nobody did.

But Biden did have the chance and certainly had the time to make a lot of strange claims about his first year in office. Some of it was just very, very strange. Here's a selection.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: In fact, my plan cuts the deficit and boosts the economy by getting more people into the workforce.

And so I don't think I've over promised at all and I'm going to stay on this track.

Very few schools are closing, over 95 percent are still open.

No matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you're going to see them willing to stand in line and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote.

Let me get something straight here. How long are you guys ready to go? You want to go for another hour or two?

Putin has a -- you know, has a stark choice. Either de-escalation or diplomacy, a confrontation with the consequences.

I'm not so sure he has a certain -- what he is going to do. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.

I think report cards can look pretty good. That's where we are at.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Made it kind of a quick back of the envelope list here. My plan cuts the deficit by spending trillions more, that'll work.

Very few schools are closed, it just happens to be your kid's schools, and your sister's kid's schools and the schools of everyone you know, but most schools are not closed, very few in fact.

No matter how hard they try to make it for minorities to vote, and that's the one that sticks out being completely false, but also utterly divisive. Some percentage of people are going to believe that, they think that your government is making it harder for you to exercise your franchise because of your skin color.

If you wanted to increase hatred and division, that's exactly what you'd say, and that's what he said.

Will Cain is the co-host of "FOX and Friends" Weekend. We should say though he is embarrassed, but he's a lawyer, a smart person, and we're always glad to have him. Will Cain, great to see you.

So, what do you make of this?

WILL CAIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL COHOST, "FOX & FRIENDS" WEEKEND: You know, I think that selection of clips you played, you couldn't find, if you tried your hardest one single truth. Every bit of it from start to finish, a lie.

The midterm report will not be good, he knows that. I believe that he knows that. I think that he knows that, not single -- not one single minority voter and I think I know the rhetorical trick here. Not one, not one -- not one single minority voter will be disenfranchised by any type of pushback on the Voting Rights Bill.

And Joe Biden, I believe knows that these are lies. You know, cooler people, younger people than me, Tucker call it gaslighting, navel gazers like me call it a pseudo reality, whatever it may be. It's lie from start to finish and lies have served him very well, I think, Tucker.

Of course, as you laid out well in your first segment, we've been pumped full of fear and lies over COVID for well over a year at this point, but not limited to COVID.

When it comes to race, I find it difficult to be lectured to by a guy who eulogized a KKK member, that if I take voter ID as an important element to voting, then somehow that makes me a racist. I have trouble believing that every time someone goes to race and pretends that he sees racists everywhere around him that he is operating in goodwill.

And what's happening to these lies, Tucker, is reality is rudely interrupting his nap, whether it is on inflation or Russia or the midterm elections, reality is rudely interrupting his pseudo reality, his gaslighting, his lies.

CARLSON: I think that's very nicely put. I just have to ask and this is a rhetorical question, but it's just so striking. If it is racist to ask people to show a driver's license in order to vote, why is it not racist to ask for vax card to prove their medical history before going to dinner or staying in a hotel?

CAIN: Right.

CARLSON: I don't understand.

CAIN: I don't either, and I don't know that in a two-hour press conference, he would have been able to feel that scripted question. He had a ready-made answer for that question.

Hey, Tucker, I will say this, you know, I made this point today. I made it on "The Will Cain Podcast," and I don't -- look, this can sound so partisan. It can sound so hyperbolic. But I do believe it's true.

I think that Joe Biden is the worst President of my lifetime, and I think he is possibly after his first year in office, in the running for worst President in American history and it is not because of the incompetence. It's not because of the mistakes and there's plenty of all of that.

It's because his knee jerk, his instinct reaction to whenever he finds or encounters any type of pushback is to divide us on race, is to create an attempt to create an underclass of people to blame for our problems called the unvaccinated and it is to openly call for the silencing of people who disagree with him.

He has openly asked for censorship. That is what makes him uniquely the worst President of my lifetime.

CARLSON: I completely agree. He stole the crown from Barack Obama who did warn us that the guy was a wrecker, if you want to wreck something hire Joe Biden. I think that's a paraphrase of what Obama said, he was absolutely right.

Worse than Obama, that's quite a title.

Will Cain, thank you for that. It's great to see you.

CAIN: Thank you. Good to see you.

CARLSON: So one of the reasons it is interesting to go to other countries is you can see not everyone does things exactly the way we do it. In most cases, we do things better, because we're America and we're the best.

But there are also countries from which we can learn, and Hungary is one of them. It is one of the only places in the world that defends its borders and protects its citizens.

So we went to Hungary recently to see what they were doing. We can show you part of what we found there. We made a new documentary on it.

By the way, these pictures are live from Capitol Hill. The Senate is currently debating a so-called voting rights bill, something we've long had. Really, it's a bill to allow people to commit voter fraud.

Anyway, the vote could occur later this evening. If it moves forward, we'll be monitoring it. Will tell you what we hear.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Next week, we'll return to the topic of Hungary, a small country in Central Europe that has a lot of lessons for us. You can run your country for the benefit of the people who live there. It doesn't mean you have to hate other countries, strike some kind of bellicose posture, pick fights attack anybody. No.

But your job, if you run a country is to run it for the benefit of your citizens. That's what democracy is.

So we have made a documentary on Hungary. It's the final episode of Season 1 in "Tucker Carlson Originals." It is called "Hungary versus Soros: The Fight for Civilization" because it's nothing less than that. You can sign up to stream it on tuckercarlson.com. Here is a first look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Hungary is not the richest country in the world, it is not even the richest country in Central Europe, and somehow they managed to build a border wall in about 20 minutes.

Well, they're serious about the border. It's not a high tech border wall, it is a double fence with the road in the middle. But the difference is they're willing to protect it, they are not kidding, because it is their border, they control it because they are a country.

BALAZS ORBAN, HUNGARIAN DEPUTY MINISTER: From January, 15,000 people have tried to make it reach the territory of the European Union, but all of them were stopped by the fence and the horses.

CARLSON: How many -- of all of them -- you don't think any made it?

ORBAN: No. Not at all.

CARLSON: Pretty great.

ORBAN: One hundred percent secure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's out next week, Peter Szijjarto is the Foreign Minister of Hungary. He joins us tonight. Mr. Szijjarto, thanks so much for coming on.

So I know that you're a diplomat, you speak diplomatically as you should. But I have to ask, Hungary's example in the way that it controls its borders at very low cost, very straightforward policies that are effective. Why do you suppose other countries haven't learned that very simple lesson?

PETER SZIJJARTO, HUNGARIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Look, first of all, I have to reject the introduction, I've never been a diplomat. I happen to be their boss, but I've always been a politician. So it's very easy to me to speak honestly and directly and not diplomatically.

CARLSON: Good ahead.

SZIJJARTO: So thank you very much for the invitation.

CARLSON: Of course.

SZIJJARTO: By the way, first of all, I have to express my appreciation to you to show the reality about Hungary. That's very, very rare. We are usually faced by the by the lies and the fake news produced by the international liberal mainstream.

And your interview, your report about Hungary is something that brings fresh air to us.

Regarding your question, I can tell you that whenever we have meetings of the Foreign Ministers in the European Union, and whenever we discuss Border Protection, migration, security related issues, then the Foreign Ministers usually send text messages to me during the debate that I'm doing good and keep on doing that and say those things.

And then I asked them at the end of the debate, so my dear friends, why didn't you contribute also? Then they say look, you know, back at home, there are NGOs, liberal media, coalition government, pressure, and so on and so forth. So actually, the reason why I think others cannot implement the honest policy on migration is that they feel themselves under pressure by international liberal mainstream media, NGOs, and political elites.

But in Hungary, we have a political stability, two-thirds majority in the Parliament. So, we have the luxury to say what we think and act accordingly.

CARLSON: What's interesting is that that behavior is such a threat to our foreign policy establishment, hysterical morons with lifelong history of failure, Anne Appelbaum or David Frum are people who really supported foreign adventures that hurt our country, hate Hungary and refer to it reflexively as a dictatorship, which obviously it is not, it is a democracy.

Why do you think it's so threatening to them? This nation of 10 million people in Central Europe?

SZIJJARTO: Look, I think why they hate us is that we are conducting a patriotic, Christian-based policy, the target of ours is to reach the -- to fulfill the national interest. We are conservative, and in the meantime, we are successful.

So basically, our existence is a danger for them because what they say is that the only way to have a progressive, successful political system is that you have to be extremely liberal, and our existence makes it very clear that no, this is not the only way to be progressive, to be successful, to fulfill the interests of your nation, but our way, the conservative, patriotic, Christian democratic way, where you know, we are respecting our history and religious heritage, respecting our values, like family, this brings success also.

So the reason why they want us to be beaten on the next election is that basically, one of the last successful conservative government would be kicked out from power, and then they could speak about the fact that oh, look, liberal mainstream is the only successful ideology in the world.

CARLSON: They see you as a much bigger threat than China, which just tells you everything. They're going to try to interfere in your election. As you well know, good luck.

Peter Szijjarto, the Foreign Minister of the nation of Hungary. Thanks.

SZIJJARTO: Thank you so much.

CARLSON: So we complain a lot about the Cable News Network, CNN. We too rarely take time to be deeply amused by their total lack of self-awareness. They are too dumb to be threatening.

Don Lemon would like to remind you of that, and to remind you, you need to act for the greater good. That's what Don Lemon says. We've got the tape straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: CNN announced this week, they are hiring a team of reporters to cover the misinformation beat. Now, that sounds kind of ominous and before you get upset and just dismiss it as a new way to lie, which is of course what it is, consider the hilarious irony here.

The Russia collusion network is now in search of misinformation, and that points out really the deepest truth about CNN. This is a television channel that has no sense of self-awareness whatsoever. That makes it kind of hilarious.

On Tuesday, for example, CNN interviewed the former head of Planned Parenthood who declared that we have failed the children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WEN: We have failed our children. Throughout this entire pandemic, we have not prioritized our kids and now, we're seeing the effect. We're seeing the mental health impact, as you mentioned, but we're also seeing the impact on nutrition and physical activity.

These studies are also showing that school lockdowns have an impact on increasing childhood obesity, which also has implications for diabetes and heart disease for these kids growing up later on in life as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So this is the lady whose job it was to make sure kids weren't born lecturing us about the children. We have failed the children. No, our children are fine.

People who took your advice are not doing well.

And then there's Don Lemon, and we don't mean to single out Mr. Lemon. We actually find Mr. Lemon hilarious. Mr. Lemon is invited to our show. Christmas party this year, this is a sincere invitation, we hope you'll come, you'll love it.

But let's be honest, this is a man who has spent more than 50 years living entirely for himself, and that's fine. We're not judging. But now, he is telling the rest of us that we should consider the common good.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: We have to start doing things for the greater good of society and not for idiots who think that they can do their own research or that they are above the law and they can break the rules.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Mr. Don Lemon, the face of altruism. The Dag Hammarskjold of cable news. It's too great.

We just told you about a really cool conversation we had with a really cool man, Travis Tritt, the country music star. It is on "Tucker Carlson Today." We asked him about one of the greatest people ever, Johnny Cash, whom he knew. Listen to the advice Johnny Cash gave a young Travis Tritt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRAVIS TRITT, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Mark Stewart called me and said, hey, Johnny Cash is over on my bus. He wants to meet you.

CARLSON: No way.

TRITT: And that's what I said, no way. And I go over and I'm --

CARLSON: You were working on an HVAC store like just a few years before.

TRITT: Just a few years before that.

CARLSON: That's incredible.

TRITT: And I'm sitting there with him, and he was just so nice and so courteous. And so, we are talking and out of the blue. I don't know what gave me the courage to say it, But I looked at John and he said, don't call me John, call me JR. All my friends call me JR.

And I said, okay, JR. I said, let me ask you something. I said, I saw you do something last night that was absolutely amazing, and I told him the story of what I had seen about how all of these people had just known he was in the room.

I said, how do you do that? And John was the kind of person if you embarrassed him or if he got -- he'd get real humble on you, you know.

CARLSON: Yes.

TRITT: Head down, you know, if there was a rock on the ground, he would kick it, you know, that kind of thing. And I said, No, JR. I'm serious.

And when I said that, his eyes came up and met mine. And he said, there is a little thing in our industry that has been forgotten. It's called mystique. He said, don't ever wear out your welcome. Don't ever forget where you came from, and always be humble. Always be kind to people, but always keep a little something back that you don't show everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That interview went very long because it was great and fun, so, we split it into two parts. Part 2 is now out on FOX nation, get it free from tuckercarlson.com.

So the Biden administration woke up this morning, looked around and said no, we don't have enough empty grocery store shelves. We have too much stuff for sale. We need to really get serious about making the supply chain crisis worse. So they've decided to crush the trucking industry.

We'll tell you next what's going to happen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So it turns out that the bite administration's vaccine mandates have caused massive trucker shortages. What's a trucker? Well, that's the guy who brings you your food every day.

Truckers do something useful for a living and that way they're very different from say diversity consultants or private equity executives. So, the trucking shortage has hit a historic high.

We are short more than 80,000 truckers, trucking instructors are having trouble finding students.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For 18-year-old Cecilia Contreras, she dreamed of taking the big step in getting behind the wheel of a semi-truck, which came true after Donna North High School offered a unique educational program geared towards truck driving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the truck drivers are leaving and the younger class is not looking to be a truck driver if they are not introduced.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So if you have a whole economy based on ordering stuff from far away warehouses over the internet and hoping it gets to you, you kind of need truckers.

So if your administration is discouraging people from being truckers, you're going to have a massive crisis, which is what we're facing.

Ed Durr knows a lot about it. He's in New Jersey State Senator, newly elected and a longtime truck driver, Senator Durr, it is great to see you tonight. Thanks very much for coming on.

So you know a lot about this topic. A lot of people don't know enough about this topic. How concerned are you by this trucker shortage?

ED DURR, NEW JERSEY STATE SENATOR: Well, same as everybody. I go shopping just like you do, and not finding things in the store is a problem. You know, that is also a problem that is not just affecting the truckers.

CARLSON: Well, it's certainly not, it is up and down the chain. Of course, there are a lot of different problems. But this is certainly one of them. It's an easy one to understand. And so, if you're the White House, why would you want to make it worse?

DURR: Well, I can't explain why they want to make it worse, but I find it to be ill-thought policy. It is causing the crisis that we have. When you're telling people that they must get a vaccination and don't allow them to make that choice, you're going to force people to make a choice.

CARLSON: Right. Sitting alone in their trucks, a danger to the public.

So in Canada, and this also happened in France, when you mess with truckers, they tend to, you know, park their trucks in the middle of the highway. You think that we'll see any protest like that here?

DURR: Oh, I would hope so, to be honest with you, because I think protests are going to help.

CARLSON: Yes.

DURR: Yes. It's going to make people stand -- you know, take notice if they put their foot down and say, you know, we're not going to take this.

CARLSON: Yes, they have a lot more power maybe than Biden does. Senator, thanks for joining us tonight. Appreciate it.

It is quick FOX News alert. The Senate vote in progress. Kevin Corke here to explain it.

KEVIN CORKE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Tucker. The Democrats don't have the votes as you know to end the filibuster as it currently stands at 60 votes. However, they are going to move ahead tonight and try to push an ultimate vote on that.

So there had been a debate just about -- over the past couple of hours, a lot of discussion about whether or not they can end the debate itself about moving forward with a vote on the filibuster, yes, and we also know that it's not going to pass ultimately -- Tucker.

CARLSON: No, it's not. Kyrsten Sinema, a hero suddenly in the minds of many.

The Great Kevin Corke, thanks for that. Good to see you tonight.

Sean Hannity takes over now.

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