This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 18, 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.

We want to begin by noting something obvious because this is the obvious show. If you live in the United States, you may have noticed that many of our public spaces have become permanent homeless encampments. You see trash-filled tents blotting out what were once green and tidy public parks.

You step over vagrants drooling unconscious on the steps of train stations on the way to work. You watch as junkie smoke meth without any embarrassment at all, and then yell at pedestrians on the sidewalk, maybe your children. Everywhere, at every intersection, there are beggars.

That is what we used to imagine India was like, but this is not Calcutta. This is New York and San Francisco and Austin, Texas. So the question is: What happened? And the short answer is, our leaders did this.

No matter what they tell you, homelessness is not an Act of God. It's not the result of economic collapse in this country, America did not run out of housing. Instead, a determined group of well-funded ideologues decided to make it easier to live on the streets in this country while doing drugs. Therefore, many more people now live on the streets while doing drugs. See, not complicated.

In 2005, an unemployed alcoholic called Basil Humphrey enrolled in a rehab program in Boise, Idaho. When Humphrey refused to stop drinking, the rescue mission kicked him out -- those were the rules -- and he spent months sleeping outside, as so many do.

Eventually, local authorities ticketed him for camping on public property. That was the law. The story would have ended there, except that a huge corporate law firm in New York City called Latham & Watkins took an interest in the case on the other side of the country.

Now typically, Latham and Watkins represents Wall Street banks and prominent Democratic office holders.

But the firm wanted to change vagrancy laws to increase homelessness. Why did they want that? We don't know. But the firm filed a lawsuit on Basil Humphrey's behalf against the City of Boise. That suit made it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2018, the Court declared that cities have no right to criminalize homelessness. In fact, the court ruled, cities have an obligation to provide free housing to the homeless at public expense.

The Supreme Court later upheld that ruling. The case was known as Martin versus Boise, and it had exactly the effect that Latham & Watkins intended.

City officials across the country no longer had an obligation to protect the public and public spaces from drug addicts who decided to live in them. At the same time, politicians suddenly had access to a massive new source of cash, taxpayer money, many billions in taxpayer money for something called homelessness prevention.

Now, what is homelessness prevention? Well, of course, it is the opposite of what they call it, as always. Here is Seattle's interpretation of homelessness prevention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A handful of Seattle's more than 12,000 homeless will soon be going from the street to a new apartment with stunning views of the Space Needle and Puget Sound.

Using part of a share of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. The city bought three brand new apartment buildings for $50 million for 165 homeless, a price of $300,000.00 per unit.

In Los Angeles, Skid Row is about to get a new neighbor, a 19-storey high rise for homeless costing taxpayers $160 million or $580,000.00 per unit.

They are part of an expensive push to get the homeless off of sidewalks and out of city parks and into government subsidized housing, even if it means buying new buildings at market rate from developers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, stunning views of the Space Needle and Puget Sound. Do you have one of those? Well, crackheads do.

More than half a million dollars per apartment to house drug addicts at public expense at market rates. So you can see why real estate developers would strongly support a program like that, and of course they strongly do.

But luxury apartments are just the beginning. Seattle's most recent municipal budget allocates more than $150 million to other so-called homelessness programs just this year.

Now keep in mind, Seattle has fewer than 750,000 people living there. So that's an awful lot of money per bum. It's certainly a lot more than anyone else is getting in Seattle.

At the same time it was giving overpriced condos to drug addicts with stunning views of Puget Sound, Seattle allocated just $10 million total for its Small Business Stabilization Fund designed to keep family businesses from going bankrupt during the COVID lockdowns.

So the city's priorities could not be clearer than that. You lavish money on the least productive, most antisocial parasites in our society and then you punish Americans who work for a living. Got it?

And it's hardly just Seattle. The latest city budget in San Francisco propose to spending $667 million on something called the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. And yet at the very same time, San Francisco's Department of Children, Youth, and Families, gets less than half that amount.

A city program designed to help low income families to pay college tuition gets just $16 million total. That's about two percent of what the homeless get.

So in San Francisco, it makes sense. In fact, it pays to get high on the sidewalk. Don't bother to get an education, nobody cares. That's the message from the city. It couldn't be clearer.

In Austin, Texas, the city's budget for homelessness assistance was $68 million last year, at the very same time, the City of Austin spent just $3.5 million in new loans for struggling small businesses, and only $7 million for quote, "Mission critical infrastructure and deferred maintenance at city facilities," like the things that matter.

And at the same time as this was going on, the police department in the City of Austin, got an $11 million budget cut. So, what happened to the homelessness in Austin? The problem they were trying to, quote, "solve"? Well, to no one's surprise, it has grown by 10 percent in just two years. You get what you pay for.

When you pay for homelessness, you get a lot more of it. See how that works?

In Los Angeles, politicians have spent billions quote "fighting homelessness." This has been accompanied, of course, by a massive increase in the number of people who are homeless.

Four years ago, the city spent $440 million on what it called solutions to homelessness. That was supposed to fix the problem. Did it? Homelessness in Los Angeles jumped to 15 percent just last year. So this year, LA will spend more, close to a billion dollars on the homeless in 2022.

As for the small businesses crushed by the city's lunatic COVID restrictions, you ask? What will they get? Well, they get $62 million total. The city's gang reduction program gets about half that.

So politicians in Los Angeles are at the very least very clear about their priorities. What has this done to LA? We don't have to look far to see the answer to that.

Last week, a homeless man walked into a furniture store in the west side of Los Angeles and murdered a graduate student who was working alone there. He stabbed her to death for no apparent reason and then walked out. He is still at large. She was 24, now she is dead.

Today, her father told "FOX and Friends" that he holds city officials responsible for the killing. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD KUPFER, FATHER OF BRIANNA KUPFER: What's endemic in our society right now is everybody seems to be oriented on giving back rights and bestowing favor on people that rob others of their rights.

We should be celebrating the good in people and trying to recognize that that's -- the job they have is to try to elevate that, to make communities better and make people care more, to not tear down communities by exposing them to people that are falling out the bottom that really don't care about the other human beings and just think they can do whatever they like in our society, and they are doing it more and more in every community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Pretty composed for man who just lost his child, but he's absolutely right. Focusing our attention and our money on people who contribute nothing, who only detract from the project that is this country don't help their communities or anybody's community, who hurt other people, who live solely for themselves, who are a danger to the rest of us. That's insane. And so that girl died, and she wasn't the only one.

Last month in Los Angeles, a man called Kerry Bell murdered a 70-year-old emergency room nurse. She was on her way to work. One of the people we should be celebrating; now, she is dead. Who is the man who killed her? Well, Bell had a long criminal record. He had a prior arrest in LA. He had arrests in other states as well.

But authorities let him go and kept letting him go. Bell was homeless. He was a victim. He was part of a protected class, and then he killed somebody. Here's FOX LA's report on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Days after a brutal attack at a Union Station bus stop, a beloved nurse lost her life. Sandra Shells worked at LA County USC Medical Center for decades where she was highly respected and revered. Shells was allegedly assaulted Thursday morning by a homeless man now identified by police as 48-year-old, Kerry Bell.

They say he hit Shells for no apparent reason, the force knocking her to the ground and fracturing her skull. Police say they found him sleeping nearby about 90 minutes later and arrested him without incident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: She was an emergency room nurse walking alone to work, and now she is dead. Another woman murdered by the homeless. And don't lie to yourself, no one in LA is ever going to do anything about it. We are probably going to hear outrage noises for a few days, harrumph, harrumph, harrumph -- but politicians will quickly get back to sharing the unhoused community with other billion dollars.

What you're watching here is civilization collapsing in real time and it is not new.

Here is a video our producer shot in Los Angeles in the spring of 2019, almost three years ago. It shows homeless encampments downtown on three separate blocks. It starts at Fifth and San Pedro, and then it goes west, seemingly forever.

So in January of 2020, "The LA Times" reported that, quote: "California's railroad tracks are now lined with men and women sleeping in tents or under cardboard boxes," in America, by the way. Well, in response to this, Governor Gavin Newsom announced another $12 billion in state funding to quote, "fight homelessness."

How did that work? Well, here are the results.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: From Sky FOX, the images are startling. Thousands of empty or damaged packages lining the tracks along the Union Pacific LA railway. Amazon packages, UPS boxes, all meant for delivery to customers along the West Coast. They are opened by cargo thieves who take advantage of the trains stopping or slowing down to break into the containers.

Union Pacific officials saying they've had 160 percent increase in cargo thefts in the LA County area with over 90 containers broken into every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, I guess they didn't clean up the railroad tracks, $12 billion, and the disorder got worse. But of course, allowing people to live outside and defecate outside in public places and use drugs outside in front of our children is both the cause and a symptom of growing disorder and chaos. It is the degradation of what holds us together as a civilization.

So our producers are back in LA right now shooting a documentary for Season 2 of our "Tucker Carlson Original" series on FOX Nation. It's going to be out soon. You're seeing some of the footage on your screen right now.

What you're seeing now was shot this morning on Skid Row. Skid Row in LA is a 50-block neighborhood east of downtown, and it is hard to overstate just how dystopian it is. You should go for yourself some time and drive through, roll them up, but watch.

You will not believe this is America, the country you grew up in. This is what California got for $12 billion, not fewer homeless, just better funded homeless and thousands more of them.

So like COVID and OxyContin and virtually everything else that's wrecking the country our ancestors built, this is a manufactured crisis. It didn't happen by accident. People paid for it.

In New York, officials have given drug addicts priority over virtually everyone else in the city. Lot of working poor in New York, we ought to be celebrating them. The city isn't, it is ignoring them.

In 2015, the annual budget of the New York City Department of Homeless Services was $950 million. This year, it is double that. It's about $2 billion. Now, how much is that? Well, what they are spending on the homeless in New York City is more than the city's entire public university system more, than they get to educate far more people.

So the homeless are getting more per student to live outside and smoke meth. Is that creating fewer homeless? Probably not. In fact, New York's homeless population is now at its highest level since the Great Depression.

So where is all this money going specifically? Now, we could do five hours on this. But here's just one example. That money is going to an overdose prevention center, preventing overdoses which in fact means helping the homeless get high.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Officially called an overdose prevention center, it is a place where users can snort, smoke, swallow, or inject illegal drugs in a controlled environment. Two centers in East Harlem and Washington Heights are the first in the nation to allow supervised drug use. The head of an East Harlem community organization says the facility and a nearby methadone clinic have led to an unwanted influx of addicts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They all come here from different areas of the city. We never had this around here. No matter how bad it was through the 60s and all of that, we never had this around here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's pretty funny watching people look confused as they see this, "What's going on here? I don't remember this." But it is not complicated at all. It couldn't be simpler.

Politicians are making it much easier to be a homeless drug addict in the United States, and much harder to be a law-abiding member of the middle class. What's the effect? Well, let's see. The middle class is dying and we now have record numbers of drug addicted vagrants.

What does that tell you? It tells you that incentives work. If you destroy the nuclear family, which they have; if you decriminalized drugs, which they have; if you hand out tents and needles to addicts, what do you think is going to happen? You're going to get more addicts living in tents.

Again, it's not complicated. This is not a vexing public policy question that requires the Brookings Institution to investigate. It is not like fixing Social Security.

And the solution is as simple as the problem. Here's the solution. Stop putting up with it. Say no. No, you can't smoke meth in the park. You're not allowed to crap on the sidewalk. Pull up your pants and get the hell out of here.

Go somewhere with lower standards. Head for a place where politicians don't care about their people, because we do care. And that's why we're hauling your tent to a landfill and cutting off your checks today.

You are a drug addict. Get a job or leave. This is our city. You are not allowed to wreck it. You didn't build it.

You know, that's not hard. That works. We know it works because that's how societies function for about 2,000 years. If you're an unmarried man with no job, you are not allowed to destroy things. It wasn't your right.

And by the way, this is how successful families still operate to this day in the privacy of their own homes when the NGOs aren't watching. Parents reward good behavior, and they do not tolerate bad behavior. Why? Because if you let your kids smoke weed at the breakfast table, they will. So, you don't let them.

So why not apply the same standard to the drug addicts at Penn Station? Because what we're doing now isn't compassionate. It's an attack on civilization.

Candace Owens is the host of "Candace" and we're delighted to have her join us tonight. Candace, thanks so much for coming.

Once you -- once you take a bigger look, and we could have gone on at greater length there, but at how this is funded by NGOs and by taxpayer dollars. The amount of money that is going to people to do drugs on the sidewalk destroying our cities, which they didn't build and they don't own, you really realize, this is a manufactured crisis.

CANDACE OWENS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Got-cha. Tucker, there is so much that I want to say here, I know that I'm not going to have enough time. You're talking about NGOs and I can't say to the American people enough.

If you really want to look into what's going on, please, understand yes, it was manufactured. Yes, this was a plot. It is to not allow people to look at you and issue pejoratives like you're a conspiracy theorist. You can look this up yourself -- conspiracy theorist -- you can look this up yourself.

Take a look at the World Economic Forum. You know, the person that heads it up is a man named Klaus Schwab. He released a book in 2020 talking about how the COVID pandemic represent an opportunity for them to transform the world, for them to abolish private property.

Look at everything they're doing and you understand this is what -- this is exactly what they're after. Right? Eviction moratoriums, basically saying, you have to allow people that are effectively homeless to live in your home. You're making entirely no money.

How is he going to be able to pay back their mortgages? They are not going to be able to. They are going to default. People are going to be scooping up their properties that were once owned by people, hardworking American, middle class citizens, you know, that were maintaining their lifestyles before the government forced shut this down.

Look at these inner cities and you go, "Why do they want this problem? Why are they funding these problems? Why do they want drug addicts?" Who on earth would ever fund a center to allow people to do drugs?

CARLSON: Exactly.

OWEN: Well, you're looking at a government that wants a system of dependence, to me, I look at the situation and I say what we're seeing is a modernized system of slavery. This is slavery in 2022 and they are proliferating this under the guise of COVID-19.

CARLSON: You know, I agree with you. I agree with every word of that. I wish I didn't, but I sincerely do. I wonder why there isn't at least one city in America that says, I don't care what the court -- I don't care what anybody says, You can't crap on my sidewalk. Get the hell out of here, buddy. Move on.

Like that is, I think, the way that all civilizations have always reacted to threats like this, like drug addiction and vagrancy. Why does nobody do that now?

OWENS: Nobody does that now because there has been such a Federal overreach and I will say in America, the one guard that we have against this state rights. Thank God for governors that are standing up and saying absolutely not, no matter how hard the Biden administration tries to overreach and say, we are absolutely going to have to have this. We need to fund more money and more money.

The government is creating problems because they want you to turn to the government for answers. And I always say black America was the experiment with this. They issued trillions of dollars in welfare and black Americans are factually speaking poorer today than they were before the welfare system began coming after them and tearing apart their families.

They are now making that system for everybody. They want every single American dependent on the government, for food, for family, for drugs, whatever it is, they want a system of slavery and I cannot say this enough. People look it up. You have to look up. They want a global technocracy.

You are not a conspiracy theorist. Do not allow them to gaslight you. Something very sinister is going on not just in America, Tucker, all across the world.

CARLSON: That is totally true. Candace Owens, always great to see you. Thank you.

OWENS: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: So there is so much going on that it is really easy to lose the thread, and unfortunately, sometimes we do, but you don't want to lose sight of the big stories, the ones that will define the future, and here is one that might.

America appears to be moving closer to war with Russia over Eastern Ukraine. What's that really about? We're going to get a very straightforward explanation for that question after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So while the rest of us have been distracted by omicron, a word that is going to be the punchline of incredibly bitter jokes five years from now, "omicron." While that has been taking up all of our disk space, the country has inexorably been moving closer to what could be an incredibly destructive war with Russia.

Our media is encouraging that war. On MSNBC, the lunatics are demanding Joe Biden isn't doing more to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: We've got to be aggressive in our defense of our allies and Ukraine despite what you hear from Putin propagandists across the world and yes of our allies and Ukraine, despite what you hear from Putin propagandists across the world, and yes, even here in America, despite what you hear, we have to defend our democratic allies.

And it's time for the Biden White House to start speaking more clearly and more aggressively and telling us how they're going to stop this invasion from happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: People that stupid should not have TV shows, and they certainly shouldn't be weighing in on adult topics like war and peace, but they are. So you have to ask yourself, why is this happening? Why are the Russians so upset? Why are we moving towards some kind of conflict?

Well, there's one reason over a number of different administrations, the United States government has pushed Ukraine to join NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct military control of China, we would see that as a threat. Of course, there'd be no reason for that. Well, that's how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine, and why wouldn't they? We don't get anything out of pushing Ukraine into NATO. So why are we doing this?

Clint Ehrlich is a Russia policy researcher. He understands this issue quite well and we're happy to have him join us this evening. Clint, thanks so much for coming on.

So is it too simplistic to say the core dispute here is over Ukraine joining NATO?

CLINT EHRLICH, RUSSIA POLICY RESEARCHER: I would say that that's Russia's perspective, but here we have people who are arguing that even if the Russians don't invade Ukraine that we need to invade and kick the Russians out of Crimea. That was an op-ed from a senior Obama administration official this week.

And so I would say that it's even simpler than that. We're dealing with our warmongers, unserious people whose policy prescriptions could have deadly serious consequences.

CARLSON: Well, they are deeply unserious people. They are also people with a long and publicly available track record of failure of conflicts that have diminished the United States materially over the last 20 years. So why do they get a say in this? They are failures.

EHRLICH: They like to portray themselves as cold warriors, but the architect of America's strategy during the Cold War, George Kennan warned that NATO expansion could lead us towards war with Russia and he has been vindicated.

We're now on the precipice of that kind of conflict. And so, it is a great question, why is it that we should listen to these people?

CARLSON: Well, I couldn't agree more. I mean, if Max Boot is still making your foreign policy, it's kind of your fault, I would say. And this is a sincere question, is there something I am missing? Is there some compelling American interest that would be served by having Ukraine in NATO?

EHRLICH: No, the deeper irony is that NATO doesn't even want Ukraine. It's a corrupt country. It is more of a liability than it would be a military asset, and the people who are pushing this simply argue that it needs to happen, because Russia shouldn't have a veto over who is in NATO.

In other words, even when it's in our mutual interest to not have a stake in NATO, we have to insist that they will be added just to spite the Russians.

CARLSON: Look, I want to take people seriously, all people, even people I disagree with, maybe especially people I disagree with, but this seems nuts. Is that your assessment?

EHRLICH: Tucker, it's not just nuts, it is dangerous. I mean, we're sleepwalking towards conflict with a country that has more than 4,000 nuclear weapons, the Russians are talking about potentially deploying strategic forces to Cuba and Venezuela in a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And so it's just shocking that people are not more upset about this, because the lives of Americans are being threatened over a situation where we have no vital strategic national interest.

CARLSON: So since 1945, we really only fought wars against poor disorganized third world countries -- North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Do you think that that's convinced a lot of our policymakers that it's like, easy to fight wars?

EHRLICH: I think that it's convinced them of that. And also, we haven't had war inside our country, the Russians have. They understand the reality of war and what it's like to lose millions of people in a conflict. And somehow our policymakers just imagine that war can never reach us. And the reality is that you and I are in danger from this conflict, Tucker. The people that we love are in danger and it is just incredibly disturbing that this is happening.

CARLSON: It really is. Clint Ehrlich, I really appreciate your perspective tonight and your clarity. Thank you very much.

EHRLICH: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So major airlines are canceling flights to the U.S. not over COVID for once, but over 5G cell signals. They say that new service could cause chaos and ground thousands of flights and imperil the safety of commercial air travel. Pilots say that. People know what they're talking about say that.

What is going on here? We will tell you straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: A number of major international airlines, not small carriers. We are talking about Air India, Emirates, Japan Airlines have cancelled flights into the U.S. They say they're concerned about 5G cell phone technology, which they believe could interfere with systems onboard aircraft.

And now airlines based here in the United States warn that this is risking the safety potentially of passengers. The F.A.A. has warned that 5G antennas near airports could disrupt altitudes sensors onboard flights.

Lance Ulanoff is the U.S. editor-in-chief of "Tech Radar." He joins us to assess.

Lance, thanks so much for coming on. This is one of those topics that's hard for non-experts to figure out. Do you think there's a 5G threat to commercial aviation?

LANCE ULANOFF, U.S. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "TECH RADAR": I honestly don't know, but it's certainly been a concern since almost the moment that AT&T and Verizon signed the dotted line and basically spent about $70 billion for the 5G C-band.

So the first thing that consumers ought to know is that it's not their 5G phones. You know, a lot of us have 5G phones right now. That's not the problem. It's the antenna.

So if you're on a plane, if you turn it to airplane mode, that's not going to make a difference. The towers are there. They are providing the 5G C- band signal, and this is what the airlines, the FAA have been concerned about and have been talking to AT&T and Verizon for months about.

And AT&T and Verizon have said, we've given you all the time, you need to upgrade your equipment. We've delayed multiple times, we want to go. So back in November during this whole thing, they actually agreed to lower the power of the antennas near airports, so that if there was any potential of them interfering with altimeters, they wouldn't do it.

That apparently wasn't enough, and they were asked again in the beginning of January this month to please delay. At first, they said no, both of them, AT&T and Verizon said no. And then they said, okay, and they delayed for another two weeks. And basically, tomorrow was the big day, the day they were going to light it up. And that today, the airlines, the big boys, Delta and American Airlines, and some of the supply chain people, FedEx and U.S. Airways, all sent a letter saying this is going to cause chaos. Don't turn it on, don't do it.

We didn't hear anything from AT&T and Verizon for a little while. Until today. They basically said, okay, what we'll do is we will delay powering up the antennas around the airports and you guys can get your stuff together and make it all work.

CARLSON: I mean, for you know, for commercial carriers for freight carriers for international carriers, like Emirates, I mean, they make a lot of money between JFK and Dubai, Dulles and Dubai. That's a huge part of their business. For them to cancel flights, I mean, they have to really feel that there's a risk, wouldn't you think?

ULANOFF: Well, certainly, look, I feel like this is in the dark arts area, because what's happening right now is AT&T and Verizon have been testing this and working on 5G C-band for a long time. They actually have it working in Europe. They say there are no problems there. We have no reported issues, direct reported issues of this actually happening, but it is a concern.

And it seems to have to do with some of the bigger airplanes like some that you're talking about, that maybe don't have the latest equipment, that maybe don't have the latest altimeter. It should also be noted that the reason that the concern, especially this week that it rose so high is, you know, we had those storms that rolled through the northeast. We are about to have more storms rolling through.

Well, apparently, altimeters become super important when you can't see the ground below because of snow, bad weather. And so they were really worried about them turning it on this week.

CARLSON: Just altimeter, no big deal. Lance Ulanoff, I appreciate your perspective on that, your knowledge on that. Thank you.

ULANOFF: It's my pleasure.

CARLSON: So, we really try to bring the stories you're not going to see anywhere else. That's easy, because there are a lot of stories you're not going to see anywhere else. Everything has been blacked out and censored. Here's a big one.

In just the past two weeks, massive protests against vaccine mandates are broken up all over the world, in a lot of different places, huge demonstrations, here's a sampling.

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

CARLSON: As big as any BLM protest, but no coverage, whatsoever. Why is that?

Eva Vlaardingerbroek is a Dutch legal philosopher. She joins us tonight from overseas. Eva, thanks so much for coming on.

So you're getting the sense in the United States that everyone's in favor of vaccine mandates and then you see coverage like that and you realize there's a global movement against it. Is that fair to say?

EVA VLAARDINGERBROEK, DUTCH LEGAL PHILOSOPHER: Absolutely. There is a massive movement going on in Europe right now of tons of people, hundreds of thousands, millions of people actually who are very much aware of what's at stake here. These people are aware of the fact that our constitutional rights are being set aside without an end date and we're heading towards a new system, a tyrannical regime of mass surveillance and control.

And this is not just a hunch, this is all part of a bigger plan. This is something people who are watching right now can actually go and look up. What's very important for the American audience to know is that we've had this digital COVID Pass in place in Europe, which is basically like a QR code on your phone that grants you access to everyday life like to bars, restaurants, et cetera. It's completely bind to your vax status.

And this is all part of a European project issued by the European Commission that is basically surrounded around this idea of a European digital identity. So this will not stay, just link to your vaccination status, this will encompass taxes, this will encompass your medical records, apart from your vaccination status, your bank information.

So basically, we already have a system in place right now that is very close, or at least reminds us of the beginning phases of a social credit system. We are literally turning into China.

CARLSON: If this were linked to digital currency and presumably paper currency is on the way out, then the average person will be utterly controlled by the government. I mean, the government could just turn off your ability to buy anything, your ability to go anywhere.

I mean, at that point, you really are a slave to a supposedly democratic government, are you not?

VLAARDINGERBROEK: That's exactly right. That's exactly what they're planning to do, and this agenda is supposed to be laid out by 2030. So that's what we're heading towards. So you see all these people going out in the streets, it's because they know that this is what's going on. And I think that it's all going to be dependent on whether they'll be able to roll this agenda out whether Austria is going to enforce compulsory mandatory vaccinations on a nationwide level.

So the Parliament in Austria, another country in Europe is debating about this or voting on this, I should say on Thursday, which will mean that in Austria from February onwards, vaccination for COVID will be mandatory for every citizen over the age of 18.

If you don't get vaccinated, you will be having to pay massive fines up to 15,000 euros a year, which, you know, basically your existence as an unvaccinated person will become illegal. So everybody will have this digital COVID Pass.

And I've got to say, Tucker, it would not be the first time in European history that tyranny is born in Austria. So what will happen on Thursday in Austria is going to be a landmark case that will determine basically whether Europe is going to be part of the free West for much longer.

And well, it looks like this law will pass. So it looks like we're basically headed towards an end stage and that literally is tyranny. And it's absolutely crucial that we fight this now, that we put pressure on our governments, and that we walk together for this fight of our freedom, of our future because I have to say, you in America, you might be next.

CARLSON: I don't think there's any question. And unfortunately, our main weakness is our ignorance of the rest of the world. And I speak for myself as well. Most Americans have no idea what's happening in the rest of the world and we should know because it's our future.

And I appreciate you bringing that to us tonight. Eva Vlaardingerbroek, thank you so much.

VLAARDINGERBROEK: Thank you.

CARLSON: So an elected official in the country of Panama says the caravans in the United States are increasing fivefold. One thing you never hear about is how those caravans hurt communities through which they move in Central America.

We spoke to the mayor for some perspective. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Francisco Agapi is the mayor of Cemaco, Panama. It is on the border with Colombia. His town is the first place that is reached by migrants who are heading by caravan up from Central America.

So one of our producers spoke to the mayor last month. The mayor said that migrants entering his town are coming from all over the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR FRANCISCO AGAPI, CEMACO, PANAMA (through translator): They are of several nationalities, like Haiti, Ghana, African populations. We are surprised by the immigrants from Somalia, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, you're a mayor of this little town in Panama, just trying to keep the peace and run your town, and all of a sudden Somalis start showing up. Maybe things are out of control. Maybe the Biden administration is destabilizing not just our country but the entire hemisphere. Yes, I think so.

The mayor told us that the number of migrants entering his town has increased dramatically.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AGAPI (through translator): Twenty thousand in 2019, last year 30,000. This year has been worst. Many people are migrating. We are talking around 80,000 to 100,000, you can say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: A hundred thousand people from all across the world. Imagine being that guy. Imagine being a mayor of any town or any person who lives in a town along the caravan route. Imagine being an American.

Congresswoman Yvette Herrell of New Mexico has been on this topic, gotten very little publicity for it. She recently met with the mayor. She joins us tonight.

Congresswoman, thanks so much for coming on. I'm amazed and impressed that you took the time to meet with this mayor. What did -- thank you -- what you learn?

REP. YVETTE HERRELL (R-NM): Well, thank you for having me. What I learned was what he was just saying, migrants are coming from all over the world and they are actually taking over neighborhoods.

They are actually kicking people out of their houses so that these illegals, these migrants can then live in these homes until they move through. And because they have the controlled flow in Panama, they are unable to keep people from moving north into America and other countries and it is killing their economy. It is really hurtful.

And we talk about the drug overdoses, the drug usage. It is doing the same thing that is doing to America only on a much different scale, because remember, they only have about four million people. They cannot absorb these exorbitant amount of migrants coming through and it is killing their economy, their country, their way of life, just as it's doing to the American people.

CARLSON: I mean, so much damage and human suffering and turmoil is being caused by these policies. I don't see who is for them other than George Soros, the coyotes, and Susan Rice. I mean, where's the constituency for this kind of lunacy?

HERRELL: And that's just it. We have been beating the drum on, if this is really a health safety order, this whole COVID thing, then shut the border down because we know that we've seen upticks of up to 700 percent coming across the border, COVID cases in July alone, but they're not doing that. They turn a blind eye, and this goes right back to what you said in your opening monologue, we are rewarding bad behavior.

And who is paying the price? The future of America, the farmers, the ranchers, the business owners, the communities that want to see this stopped, and it could all be avoided if the President would put back into place Title 42 and remain-in-Mexico policies.

CARLSON: It's funny. We constantly beat up on the Republican Congress for good reason. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. But you know, when someone does care, and is doing something about it as you are, we're just so grateful to see that.

So thank you, Congresswoman Herrell from New Mexico. Thank you. Nice to see you.

HERRELL: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So you always think we've got to have reached corona peak insanity. We haven't. One country is now slaughtering thousands of pet hamsters, because apparently one of them may have transmitted the virus, omicron.

We're putting all this on tape just so future generations can see it. If you want to see it. Stick around. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: If we still kept paper files, we have a bulging one that read "Peak COVID Insanity." We'd add to it day after day expecting each day to be the last day, but unfortunately learning that no, the next day is crazier than the last. Here is the very latest.

Hong Kong now controlled by the Chinese government has announced it is going to kill thousands of hamsters because they suspect that one unnamed hamster may have given COVID to a 25-year-old worker at a pet shop.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is quite a large amount of animals, the hamsters are tested with positive results. And with the shopkeepers, which has a more frequent exposure to the hamster in the environment, we cannot exclude the possibility that the shopkeepers was in fact, was actually infected from the hamsters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So to be clear, as a scientific matter, there is no evidence that hamsters transmit COVID to human beings. Nevertheless, to be on the side of safety, the Chinese controlled government of Hong Kong has announced that all the hamsters must die. And that anyone who visited this particular hamster store this month must be quarantined.

But you know what is true is that COVID does reside in animals. All coronaviruses do. That means it cannot be eliminated ever. That means we can never get to COVID zero no matter how many vax shots you take.

They're lying to you.

At some point, we're going to have to live with it, but not tonight. Tonight, we are out of time. Tomorrow, we will be back, 8:00 PM, the show that is the sworn and sincere enemy of pomposity, lying, smugness, and all the rest.

Here is Sean Hannity.

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