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Tucker: Pentagon isn't doing anything about these threats

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' hosts questions why military leadership is 'purging their ranks' instead of focusing on unknown space threats

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 17, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

The United States remains the most powerful country in the world. That's the good news. What's interesting is that this country has occupied that position for so long, that relatively few Americans have considered what would happen if we slipped from that perch. Would it matter if America became subordinate to other nations?

There's a debate about that. Let's see. At work, does matter to you who the boss is? It probably does matter. That's the person who can fire you and the world isn't so different from that. The top countries give the orders, the rest of the planet takes the orders whether they like it or not.

We've lost sight of that, because for more than a century, America effectively has been in charge of much of the world and that's exactly why we have stayed rich and free for that time.

Most Americans, on some level understand that this is an arrangement worth preserving, if only because the options to it are so much worse. How would you like to be forced to obey the Chinese Communist Party? Not so much. How would you feel about surrendering the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency and immediately going bankrupt? No, thanks.

Most of us would like to avoid outcomes like that and that's why we spend more than any country in the world on our military. There's a reason the Department of Defense is our largest government agency. It's not just because defense contractors are powerful, it is because we all agree it's really important.

In exchange for all that money and all that power and all the oversight we give it, we expect in return The Pentagon will stay up late thinking of ways to keep America strong. The question is, have they been doing that? Well, you can judge for yourself.

Most of the generals we see quoted in the press seem more committed to meeting some counterproductive diversity goal, hiring more pregnant Air Force pilots, assembling the world's first transgender SEAL team than on defending the United States.

The conflicts The Pentagon says it is preparing for often seem comically small and outdated, almost from colonial times, whether it's wrangling with illiterate tribesmen in Afghanistan-- that's very important -- or ramping up for some new war against a remote group of buildings in Syria, wherever the hell Syria is.

Can poor irrelevant countries really be our greatest enemies? We act like it, but they're not. And that's been confirmed tonight by the way. This nation's most formidable foe, the new Defense Secretary just told us is the weather itself.

Going forward, the U.S. military has declared a hot war on global warming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD JAMES AUSTIN III, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis.

We face all kinds of threats in our line of work, but few of them truly deserve to be called existential.

A climate crisis does deserve to be called existential.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "Existential." If you've got a cliche, he will read it on television. That was Lloyd Austin, of course. Lloyd Austin is a former Defense contractor. Not surprisingly. He is a full time ideologue as well.

Having Lloyd Austin at The Pentagon is like handing control of the entire U.S. military to the editorial page of the "New York Times." Here is Lloyd Austin explaining the single scariest risk our soldiers face is the possibility they might have to serve alongside Americans who didn't vote for Joe Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUSTIN: And if confirmed, I will fight hard to stamp out sexual assault and to rid our ranks of racist and extremists.

The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can't do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: He is a joke and mediocrity. And of course, he was confirmed by the Senate as if he was impressive, but he's not and the results are entirely predictable.

A new report in "Revolver News" puts a finer point on what exactly is happening at The Pentagon under Lloyd Austin. Austin has hired an activist type called Bishop Garrison as the head of the military's vast diversity and inclusion apparatus, a group of offices that has nothing to do with fighting and winning wars.

Just spend five minutes Googling Bishop Garrison, treat yourself. He is a lunatic.

A few years ago, he announced that anyone who supports Donald Trump -- that would be tens of millions of American citizens, many of whom have served in the military -- is a white supremacist. And by the way, he said there is no room for "nuance" -- quote -- on that question.

Garrison wrote a lot of things like that. You can Google it. Again, you should.

Now -- and this is the point -- he is one of the most powerful officials in the U.S. military. Democrats in Congress are thrilled as they watch this. Their party now has all the tanks and drones.

What's strange is that Republicans don't seem to have noticed that it happened. They are still giving the same vacuous speeches about the troops, and then of course signing off on ever expanding defense budgets with no oversight.

The effect? The same fighting force that for generations we have been so proud of, the people who stormed Saipan and Guadalcanal have been captured without a shot by people who seem like rejects from the Google H.R. Department and its defenders, the defenders of the troops can't be bothered to say a word about it. Do they have television? Have they seen the Army's latest recruiting ad?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): This is the story of a soldier who operates your nation's patriot missile defense systems.

It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms.

Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin. I also marched for equality. I like to think I've been defending freedom from an early age.

A way to prove my inner strength and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I also marched for equality." Oh, shut up. Who cares? Please stop talking about yourself for once. It is boring and irrelevant and insulting. This is not just your country, it belongs to all of us. Your job is to defend it, please do so.

Yet, it is becoming clear they have no interest in defending it and here is the latest evidence of that. It comes from CBS last night. This is a clip from a "60 Minutes" report on of all things, UFOs and the U.S. military. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): A Navy air crew struggles to lock onto a fast moving object off the U.S. Atlantic Coast in 2015.

Recently released images may not convince UFO skeptics, but The Pentagon admits it doesn't know what in the world this is, or this, or this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh UFOs, they are spooky and kind of funny. Crazy people believe in them, up until you get to the line, The Pentagon admits it doesn't know what in the world this is. And that's where you pause because from a National Security perspective, that is a very big problem. How big a problem is it?

One Navy pilots said that the U.S. military has observed unidentified flying objects maneuvering in restricted airspace off the Coast of Virginia, quote, "every day for two years."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL WHITAKER, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The Pentagon confirms these are images of objects it can't identify. Lieutenant Graves told us pilots training off the Atlantic Coast, see things like that all the time.

LT. RYAN GRAVES, FORMER NAVY PILOT: Every day -- every day for at least a couple years.

WHITAKER: Wait a minute. Every day for a couple of years?

GRAVES: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Every day for years. Now flying in restricted airspace is not a small thing. Try that in your Cessna 172 off Virginia Beach sometime, you will get very wet very fast. You'll be killed actually.

Yet, The Pentagon after every day for two years of daily incursions didn't appear to do anything about it. Why didn't they? We're just guessing one possible explanation, they couldn't.

Our military was completely outmatched technologically by whatever these were and whatever they were, they were not weather balloons.

Here is Lue Elizondo, the former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHITAKER: You know how this sounds. It sounds nutty, wacky.

LUE ELIZONDO, FORMER DIRECTOR, ADVANCED AEROSPACE THREAT IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM: Look, Bill, I'm not telling you that it doesn't sound wacky. What I'm telling you it's real.

Imagine a technology that can do 600 to 700 G forces that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour. That it can evade radar and that can fly through air and water and possibly space.

And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces, and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Sound like a potential threat? You think?

So what is The Pentagon done about it? Well, we don't know the full story as of tonight, but we don't know that they've done anything about it other than ignore it, and then cover the fact they ignored it by declaring the whole subject classified for decades, and then spending the rest of the day thinking about how to bomb Syria again, and rid the Marine Corps of people who voted for Donald Trump.

The sad thing is we have a whole new branch of the military that might be perfectly designed to assess what these things are, and figure out if they're a threat or not or maybe respond. If there was ever a reason to have Space Force, this might be it.

But Space Force is otherwise occupied these days. They are busy conducting political purges of their own ranks, as all the branches of the military are.

Here's Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeyer. He commanded the Space Force unit until the White House decided that his politics were not acceptable.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

LT. COL. MATTHEW LOHMEYER, FORMER COMMANDER OF THE 11TH SPACE GUARD AT BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE IN COLORADO: Since taking command as a Commander about 10 months ago, I saw what I consider fundamentally incompatible and competing narratives of what America was, is and should be. That wasn't just prolific in social media or spreading throughout the country during this past year, but it was spreading throughout the United States military. And I had recognized those narratives as being Marxist in nature.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CARLSON: So every day for two years, unidentified flying objects behaving in ways that seemed to contradict what we know about Physics, and the U.S. military is spending its time as of right now purging its ranks.

What does this remind you of? Maybe the Soviet Army in 1938: a clear and present threat appears on the horizon, but the people in charge are so obsessed with political purity and loyalty to the party that they can't respond because they're absorbed in attacking their own organization.

When they say that all revolutions are the same, they're right.

UFOs it turns out are real and whatever else they are, they are a prima facie challenge to the U.S. military. They are doing things the U.S. military does not allow and they're doing it with impunity, and they appear to be focused on the U.S. military.

UFOs for decades appear to have clustered around our military installations or ships and our aircraft, with no real response except more secrecy.

At one point, unidentified flying objects apparently shut down a nuclear weapons facility at an Air Force Base in the State of Montana, 10 ICBMs -- ballistic missiles -- Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were temporary knocked offline. At the same time, base security noticed a glowing red object floating in the sky. It sounds like out of a movie, but it happened.

That was decades ago, many more UFOs had been sighted near our nuclear weapons facilities since around the country.

According to journalist, George Knapp, quote: "All of the nuclear facilities -- Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, Savannah River -- all had dramatic incidents with these unknown aircraft appearing over the facilities and no one knew where they were from or what they were doing there."

Again, for decades, this has happened. Apparently, no one knows why. No one seems too especially alarmed.

In the 1950s, some people were worried about this. In a declassified F.B.I. document from 70 years ago describes unknown flying objects measuring 50 feet in diameter in the vicinity of Los Alamos.

More recently, The Pentagon is declassified footage from a UFO incident in 2004 and two UFO incidents from 2015, you're seeing that footage. It was recorded by Navy pilots during training flights.

We have no explanation for what these objects are.

Just days ago, The Pentagon confirmed that an 18-second video of three UFOs harassing a U.S. warship called the USS Russell is in fact real. That footage was shot in July of 2019 and collected by The Pentagon's UFO Task Force then wound up in the hands of Jeremy Corbell, the journalist to put it online.

So the question is: what are these things? Why are they buzzing our skies? Why do they seem attracted to the United States military and why above all, isn't The Pentagon more focused on this? It seems like a threat if there ever was one.

Commander David Fravor found himself in the middle of these questions unwittingly in 2004. He ran into the now famous "Tic Tac UFO" while flying for the U.S. military. We are happy to have him on tonight.

David, thanks so much for coming on. So when you hear a Navy pilot say that every day for two years, we saw these objects in the sky, what's your response to that?

DAVID FRAVOR, RETIRED NAVY PILOT: It's troubling at times, because if anything, there's a potential for midair accident while they are out there training. Number two is, I think it shows a weakness in our reporting structure into the Intel community to get this word out that there are objects out there that we can't explain and we don't know what they're doing.

We knew they were tracked at high speeds, and nothing was being done about it. And there's a level of frustration.

CARLSON: If we had surveillance video that showed human beings of some kind were sneaking into military bases into the most classified parts of those bases and had been for 50 years and we didn't know their identities, we couldn't catch them. How much concern would there be about that?

Would we just say, you know, we just don't know. It's just one of those mysteries, or would we say, holy smokes, we've got to figure this out.

FRAVOR: No, we would do the holy smokes, we've got to figure this out. And we would -- we would increase our security posture in order to stop the intrusion.

CARLSON: Why do you think -- and you always want to assume the best motives and I always do with the military. But why do you think that we haven't done that over 70 years?

FRAVOR: Well, I think you know, when you go back to, you know, the '50s or '60s with Project Bluebook, I think the focus was to either disprove or discredit because we didn't want to alarm the population is what they say.

As you get into modern days like our incident, I just think there was a lack of knowledge on how to report it or if anything would be done with it, so it was one of those, we'll ignore it, and maybe it will go away and it stayed that way until 2017, when "The New York Times" posted the article that said, hey, this is real, there is a task force, and it is being funded by the government, thanks to Harry Reid.

CARLSON: And thanks, Harry Reid, that's right and good for him.

I remember when your story first came out, and I remember reading that you had been mocked or discouraged when you were in the military from talking about this publicly, I remember that you were definitely mocked when you came out with it.

Now that we learned that a lot of people have seen this, I'm sure you knew that already. How does that make you feel? Why don't you think you were encouraged to explain more fully what you saw?

FRAVOR: Oh, I think it would have been good to you know, when the incident happened to investigate because the data was there. And you know, now the data is gone. The radar tapes are gone. The tapes that we had are gone, which was the radar out of the F-18. So it's one of those you know, hindsight being 2020 "woulda, coulda, shoulda," and we didn't do that.

I'd like to believe that nowadays that the reporting is going up, the sightings are coming out the videos are -- you're seeing those that Jeremy put out that the military is taking this more and more serious through the Intelligence Channels. And I think with Senator Rubio putting that clause in the bill, the COVID bill that said, hey, you have six months to release this. Now, they're forcing the government to show their cards or at least the cards that they can show.

CARLSON: Yes. You took a lot of crap for this. I appreciate your coming on, Retired Commander David Fravor. Thank you.

FRAVOR: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So we reported last week that Tony Fauci signed off on funding for research that apparently created the coronavirus in a lab in China. He was confronted with that, he denied it.

He has certainly not apologized, instead, he just delivered a speech at Emory University, identifying the real culprit behind the pandemic. Of course, it's you. We'll tell you how you caused this pandemic with Candace Owens, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: We learned last week in a remarkable and very tightly reported piece by Nicholas Wade, who for 30 years was the top science correspondent at "The New York Times" that Tony Fauci himself signed off on funding U.S. tax dollars for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to do the research that caused the corona pandemic, that created COVID-19, which escaped from that lab. That clearly happened and he definitely signed off on the funding for that research, but he hasn't apologized for that. He hasn't taken any responsibility for it.

According to Tony Fauci, the real culprit behind this pandemic is systemic racism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: COVID-19 has shone a bright light on our own society's failings.

When people of color get infected with SARS-CoV-2, they more likely will develop a severe consequence of the infection.

Almost related to the social determinants of health, dating back to disadvantageous conditions that some people of color find themselves in from birth, regarding the availability of inadequate diet, access to healthcare, and the undeniable effects of racism in our society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes. Thanks, Dr. Fauci. Yes, it's not my fault. Yes, I signed off on the funding that created COVID-19, but really the lesson is, we've seen a spotlight shined on our society's failings. In other words, it's your fault. Right?

Many believe this of course, because it exculpates them. At today's White House press briefing for example, someone from government television, PBS, explained that getting rid of mask mandates actually is racist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YAMICHE ALCINDOR, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: The largest national nurses union, they are saying that the C.D.C. guidelines on masks is putting frontline workers and especially people of color at risk. And they're calling for the C.D.C. to reverse that.

What's the White House's stance on that union in particular, saying that their members and people of color are at risk?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes. Candace Owens is the host of "Candace" and a frequent guest on the show, we are proud to say, and she joins us tonight.

Candace Owens, thanks so much for coming on. So Dr. Fauci, a man who deals in science, in the things we know, has diverted blame from himself where it ought to reside, clearly, to the rest of us by saying it is systemic racism that has caused the suffering of COVID. Assess this claim, if you would.

CANDACE OWENS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, you know, I love this. It's just so brilliant. The left is always looking for a victim and narrative.

And let me tell you, if there's ever been a victim that is deserving of airtime, it is science. Science has been killed by the left. Science is -- it used to be this thing that we all love. I'd like to eulogize science.

CARLSON: That's true.

OWENS: Because it made so much sense, and now, it's suddenly over. And I like to say that Dr. Fauci to me is like, you know, when you're a kid and you play that game, "Simon says." Simon says, touch your head, Simon says, touch your toes. You've always wondered who is Simon? And why are we doing what he says?

Simon is Dr. Fauci. He is making this up as you go along. Wear your mask, Simon says wear your mask. Simon says, don't wear your mask. Simon says now that COVID is racist, and it affects black people more poorly.

We don't know why he is saying it. It makes entirely no sense. But apparently a lot of people are following his orders, and this is his new push to blame this somehow on systemic racism.

By the way, if he is concerned about systemic racism, and he is talking about how COVID might affect black people, I think what he's hitting at is obesity. Right?

We are -- we represent like a higher percentage of people that are obese, black Americans, and obesity is the number one killer in America. He might be onto something there. But it doesn't have to do with race. Race is not determining whether or not you're fat or whether or not you're skinny and these are good discussions that we should be having, of course.

What the left is obsessed with right now is politicizing science and right now, the policy is if you want to accomplish anything in life, just call the other thing racist. To say not to have what I want would be racist. That's exactly what they do over and over and over again.

CARLSON: To eulogize science, there's something very poignant about that because what you're saying is true. I mean, I guess there's a meme going around online that I just -- I can't resist repeating, because it's so perfectly 2021. Why shouldn't -- given the current state of air quotes "science" people identify as vaccinated? Why do you need an actual vaccine when you can just say, I'm vaccinated? I mean, if you can change your sex, why can't you change your vaccine status? Honestly.

OWENS: I saw that and I think it's brilliant. You know, they're saying that there is no such thing as an objective reality. Right? Tucker, there's no such thing as objective reality. There's no such thing as being a girl or a boy anymore. And if you disagree with that, you're a bigot. I'm a bigot.

Science is not real -- science is whatever we make it. I can walk into a room and I can be a mermaid if I want to be one. So you know what, I personally self-identify as somebody who is vaccinated. Not that it matters. I love that I went to the grocery store yesterday, I walk in, the day before, people were wearing masks. Today, nobody is wearing masks. There's nobody asking you to present any cards. Right?

So shouldn't people be asking the question? If science was so real, why is this allowed suddenly? Why did you get to wave a magic wand? Again, Dr. Simon says, get to wave a magic wand and suddenly it's totally fine for people to walk in.

Is he now saying he trusts people to make health decisions by themselves? That certainly can't be the case. This has always been about power from the very beginning. And personally, Tucker, I think your program is responsible for a lot of these changes, because you started investigating Dr. Fauci. You started asking the right questions about Dr. Fauci that everybody should be asking.

And suddenly he is going, oh, look, society is returning to normal. Don't look at me. Don't look at me. Wrong. Let's keep looking at Dr. Fauci because that man is corrupt.

CARLSON: I think you're totally -- I think the Simon says analogy is absolutely perfect. If Fauci came out tomorrow and said, wear are your underwear inside out and put on a Viking hat with horns, the entire upper west side of Manhattan would do it because he said so. And it just tells you a lot.

I never realized what an obedient little country it was. Candace Owens, I appreciate your wisdom. Thank you.

OWENS: Thank you.

CARLSON: So just days after Bill Gates told us on Twitter that he was getting a divorce, there's new information about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

You know, those conspiracy theorists say a small group of really powerful people control the world that have an interest in little kids, just a conspiracy theory, but we will tell you what we do know, and that's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: If you've ever suspected that all the creepy people know each other, it may be true.

We're learning more tonight about Bill Gates's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. FOX's Trace Gallagher joins us with more on that story. Hey, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. The timeline here is key because "The Daily Beast" is reporting that Bill Gates started hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011.

Now remember, in 2008, Epstein was convicted in Florida of having sex with a 14-year-old girl, so three years after Epstein's child sex conviction, Bill Gates reportedly starts meeting with Epstein to get advice on how to end his, quote, "toxic marriage to Melinda Gates."

And it wasn't just a few meetings, but reportedly, a series of meetings over several years at Epstein $77 million New York townhouse. And the fact that Gates and Epstein were close is apparently something that Melinda Gates found disturbing.

Now, a representative of Bill Gates says the reporting on how many times Bill Gates met with Jeffrey Epstein and the reason for those meetings is not accurate. Another Gates Foundation employee says Bill Gates was only socializing with the sex offender to gain access to Epstein's professional connections though one would assume the fourth group richest man in the world would have his own connections.

A man who wrote a book on the Gates-Epstein relationship says the divorce proceedings may shed some light. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL HALPER, AUTHOR: The fact that this will likely go to court or that there will be court proceedings that there will be a perhaps an uglier battle means that maybe as far as the Epstein relationship with Bill Gates, maybe we'll get more and more details.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: And don't you know that Jeffrey Epstein's victims are already asking for more details about that relationship -- Tucker.

CARLSON: I bet they are. Maybe we can get some actual details. That would be great. And I know that you'll have them first, Trace Gallagher, thanks so much for that.

GALLAGHER: Yes.

CARLSON: So all over the country, beginning early last June, school curricula have changed completely and become explicitly political and openly racist and most parents have just sat there on their hands and watched it happen and watched their kids hurt by it.

But one group of parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, right outside Washington is fighting back against all of this, against a curriculum that teaches their kids to hate their country and to judge their classmates based on how they look on their skin color.

Several parents had the courage to say this publicly a few days ago at a School Board meeting. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAWNTEL COOPER, CONCERNED PARENT: CRT is not an honest dialogue. It is a tactic that was used by Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan on slavery very many years ago to dumb down my ancestors so we could not think for ourselves.

CRT is racist. It is abusive. It discriminates against one's color.

Let me educate you. An honest dialogue does not oppress. An honest dialogue does not implement hatred or injustice. It is to communicate without deceiving people.

Today, we don't need your agreement. We want action and a backbone for what we ask for today -- to ban CRT.

I had to come down here today to tell you to your face that we are coming together and we are strong. This will not be the last greet and meet, respectfully.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wow. The first time we saw that video, our instant response was: that woman, her name is Shawntel Cooper deserves an award. She's mother. She's a member of the group Parents Against Critical Theory. We're very pleased to have her on the show tonight.

Shawntel Cooper, thank you very much for coming on.

COOPER: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: What made you do that? And so many parents have not done this. You stood up there and did this on camera. Why?

COOPER: Well, it contradicts everything that Martin Luther King fought for. It is hatred, Marxist ideology, and it places the child in a loophole of oppression, making them feel as a victim. I can't stand for that.

CARLSON: Amazing. Amazing. So describe the kinds of things that you're fighting against. So the school is teaching children to judge one another on the basis of appearance of skin color. Is that right?

COOPER: Yes. Well, it's our job as parents to raise our children, not the School Board. One example I can give you was the school was replacing the morning announcement with news. The second children reached out to find out how they could help and join a club to see if they could, you know relate with one another, undivided and they were denied by the color of their skin for the Equity Ambassador Club.

CARLSON: So certain could kids couldn't get in. I don't even know what colors you're talking about. But the fact remains kids could not get into a club because they were the wrong color.

COOPER: Correct.

CARLSON: How is that different from darker periods? Periods we consider evil in American history. That sounds very similar.

COOPER: Well, play an example. You cannot further brotherhood of a man by encouraging class hatred. Our Constitution is what unites us, not the color of our skin.

CARLSON: Yes.

COOPER: So America, it's just time for us to stand up for one another. You know this -- this is the last free country.

CARLSON: What was the response -- I love to hear you say that and I agree with that a hundred percent. What was the response when you did this? When you spoke so publicly about what your school is teaching?

COOPER: Well, it's been positive. I never knew that there was so many parents that felt the way I did. I love people. So for anyone to go against, you know, good, but be okay with evil, you can't fix a bad reaction with another bad action. It just doesn't make sense.

CARLSON: That's right. That's exactly right. Shawntel Cooper, I'm so glad that you came on the show tonight and what a voice you are. I hope people will emulate you. Thank you very much.

COOPER: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: Oh, absolutely. It was our honor.

So everything has changed in the past five years, but certainly in the past five months, all of a sudden, one side seems to have all the power at every level of American society. This has all kinds of effects. But one of them is, people who aren't in power are deeply rethinking what it is they believe in, and what their party should be doing for them.

One of the emerging thinkers on this subject, one of the intellectuals you should pay attention to in the years going forward is called Pedro Gonzalez. He joins us after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: For the latest episode of "Tucker Carlson Today," we sat down for a very long conversation with Pedro Gonzalez who writes for "Chronicles." He is a senior writer for American Greatness as well and he is one of the people thinking about how conservatives or anybody who is not on board with whatever the hell is going on in the rest of the country should respond to the dramatic changes. And more than anything, what should Republican voters ask of their party.

He is a very clear thinker on that. Here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEDRO GONZALEZ, SENIOR WRITER, "AMERICAN GREATNESS": People on both sides to try to disillusion them of the things that like I used to do, I used to just repeat unthinkingly, right. Like I'm a conservative, so I have to think this. I'm a liberal, I have to think this. I'm a Republican and so on.

I'm just trying to show them like, it doesn't have to be this way. And actually, a lot of the views that either side clings to so fervently are just contradictory or harmful to your own interests. And I think that's especially true for Republican voters like the --

It seems to me that the purpose of the Republican Party and conservative and libertarian think tanks is to gaslight, to convince voters to vote against their interests. And it's been effective.

Like, we have really convinced people that like everything the G.O.P. doesn't like is socialism, and therefore bad. And so for me, I'm just trying to help people look beyond that.

And for liberals, I hope that my writing on immigration specifically is showing that like, what you think is compassion is not actually compassion. It's actually brutalizing, and in the point about culture, and like Latinx, it's like you say you love diversity, but can't you see that every generation -- the following generation of immigrants is actually more and more homogenous, like they're just assimilating into the affluent white liberal, over class culture.

Like, can you see that you're actually stripping these people the things that you claim to love, like culture? So that's the --

CARLSON: What concerns me is that the humiliation levels have risen to just really unprecedented place, you know, so people who have thoughts that diverge from those of Tim Cook or Susan Rice really are under attack for real, fired, whatever.

And people seem to put up with it and that makes me wonder about people's dignity. I mean, if you have dignity -- if you are a man, why would you allow yourself to be treated like that?

GONZALEZ: There is a real kind of spiritual rot in the country, and it's not relegated to left. I think it's also on the right. You have people like David French, Frank Luntz, people that just have no sense of dignity. And I've characterized it as a kind of psychosexual, ethno masochism, where it's like, it's not just that you don't have any dignity. It seems to me you actually kind of enjoy the shame. It makes you feel good to flog yourself.

And I think you saw this really come out during the rioting last year where you had not just liberals, but also Republican politicians and conservative pundits just kowtowing to Black Lives Matter. America is bad. Sorry, like America was born in original sin. We need to make it better.

Marco Rubio talking about systemic inequality and Tim Scott referring to America's history as original sin.

I think her name is Linda Thomas Greenfield, the Ambassador to the U.N.

CARLSON: Yes.

GONZALEZ: She said the same thing. Americans history as original sin. What is the fundamental difference between the way conservative men and like liberals or I should say pundits and Republican lawmakers. What is the fundamental difference between them? Between conservatives and liberals? I don't see it.

But to the point about men, it really does seem to be the case that they enjoy it. They enjoy the self-flagellation.

CARLSON: Psychosexual, ethno masochism. Like if there's any phrase I would like to credit you for introducing into the common lexicon is that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Pedro Gonzalez, remember the name. Smart. The conversation went on in all kinds of interesting directions. You can stream it at foxnation.com.

And then on Wednesday on "Tucker Carlson Today," we'll have Kirstie Alley on for the hour as Larry King would say.

Well, one journalist has just spent a year looking in reporting on the state of the American media and its ties to the Communist Party of China. His investigation revealed the years of meetings between a prominent New York billionaire, a media tycoon and a Chinese propagandist in Beijing.

The details on what he found in his new book after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Alex Marlow runs Breitbart News. He's the editor-in-chief. He's just finished a long investigation of the connections between big American media and the Communist Party of China and there are connections.

You'll remember that back in 2014, Michael Bloomberg conceded that in fact, he does let China, the government censor Bloomberg News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Over the past year, there's been questions about the journalism going on in China and whether the company and its effort to grow has muzzled.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, FOUNDER AND CEO, BLOOMBERG NEWS: In China, they have rules about what you can publish. We follow those rules. If you don't follow the rules. You're not in the country.

We write the stories that we think are interesting and we distribute them where they are allowed to be distributed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We follow the rules. Well, it turns out the rest of us should have followed up on that. Alex Marlow did. He found that Bloomberg executives regularly flew to China to meet with senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party. Those would include that country's deputy propaganda minister, you can read the details of all of this in his new book called "Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishing Media's Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption."

Alex Marlow, we're happy to say joins us tonight. Alex, thanks so much for coming on.

This is one of those stories that I think all of us remember at the back of our heads, whatever happened to that? You found out.

This is book length, but in the next three minutes, just outline what you found about these connections.

ALEX MARLOW, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART NEWS: Sure, Tucker and I'm thrilled to share some of the details of my bombshell investigation into corporate media. And this isn't just a book about simple liberal bias.

If you're watching a show like this or reading Breitbart, you know, it goes so much deeper than that. This is about weaponized corporate media against the individual and how deep ties are to some of the worst entities in the world, including the Chinese propagandists.

Now, there's this group called the SCIO, the Southern Central Information Office. I'm sorry, the China's information -- State Council Information Office, I apologize for that, and they control the licensure into whether or not Bloomberg has access to the gigantic market of China for their Bloomberg LP business.

But it's also known as the state's propaganda office. And so what they've done is they've sent deputies, including a guy named Kevin Sheekey. Kevin Sheekey went on to become the campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg and he went multiple times. Bloomberg himself went in 2015 and they would have these meetings with these Chinese propagandists.

And the design, I believe, is to extend the licensure, which is up for renewal every 24 months. So what we saw with the conversations, according to the SCIO propagandists, they all involve a couple of themes and these themes are developing Chinese media relationships with United States media companies, and presenting China and Chinese stories to the world.

I don't know if this is still going on, but Sheekey comes in. He is the Vice President of Bloomberg. He goes into Bloomberg's campaign. Now, he's back at Bloomberg. But he is not alone.

This goes throughout the company and it continues as far as we know and it is not limited to Bloomberg.

CARLSON: What's so distressing about this is most of our audience, I would imagine, doesn't watch Bloomberg. But if you work on Wall Street, you definitely do. You've got Bloomberg software on your desk. I mean, people are using Bloomberg News to understand world financial markets. And so propaganda that's filtered through Bloomberg has a massive effect on our country.

MARLOW: That's correct. And it's also representative of what I believe is a media establishment in the United States of America that is willing to compromise on basic American values.

Bloomberg ran for President of the United States. He's currently the U.S. envoy to the U.N. on climate. He has excused Chinese abuse of the environment and pollution. He has also excused the fact that Xi Jinping who is a dictator, he said he's not a dictator. He's willing to do a lot of work with a regime that does not have a First Amendment, yet he wanted to be President.

He's a huge Democratic mega-donor, Tucker, but perhaps most importantly, he is one of the biggest employers of journalists on the planet as we know it. And this type of guy is willing to work with Chinese propagandists who do not believe in free speech.

CARLSON: So loathsome. So loathsome, but a billionaire so he gets a pass.

Alex Marlow, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Congratulations on the book. And thank you for your reporting.

MARLOW: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Quick reminder, "Tucker Carlson Today" is out now on foxnation.com, featuring an interview with Pedro Gonzalez.

We'll be back every week night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink and boy haven't those multiplied in recent years, like bacteria or a virus.

Have a great evening with the ones you love. Here is our special surprise for you on this Monday night, Sean Hannity is going to take over at 9:00 p.m.

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