Tucker: We are watching the death of democracy in real time

close

Video

Tucker: We are watching the death of democracy in real time

‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host examines the ‘danger’ of the left’s COVID restrictions on American society.

This is a rush transcript from, "Tucker Carlson Tonight", December 13, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

So imagine this happened to you. You're sitting on an airplane, you're taxiing down the runway on a trip out of the country. All of a sudden, the plane stops and is surrounded by military police.

Armed men storm the aircraft and drag a man from his seat, so of course you assume at first that terrorism has just been averted. The passenger must have been trying to blow up the plane with a shoe bomb or something.

But no, that's not what this is. The man is not a terrorist. He is something worse than that. He violated COVID restrictions. He is a corona criminal.

So okay, you think, you're trying to be reasonable here.

A man with COVID should not be on a commercial aircraft spreading the virus to everyone else and of course that's fair, but here is the thing. This man doesn't have COVID. He was tested right before he got on the airplane and no trace the virus was found. So why in the world is he being hauled off the flight by armed men?

Well here is why.

Because the government has determined that based on his travel history, which they have been tracking, he might someday get COVID. Therefore, in the name of public health, he is being forcibly detained, not for something he has done, but for something that he potentially might do inadvertently, and for that this man is headed to a COVID camp known euphemistically as a quarantine hotel.

But he is not going to be a guest in this hotel. He will be a prisoner.

Now all of this just happened. In North Korea, you ask? No. In The Netherlands, one of the most quote "liberal countries" in the world, home of The Hague, the International Court of Justice. This just happened at the Amsterdam Airport. You may have been there.

Think twice about going back, or for that matter think twice about going to Canada, another supposedly quote "liberal country." Canadian citizens are now banned from traveling by airplane, train, or ship unless they can prove they have been injected with the shot that Justin Trudeau demands they take.

This is a big change.

For centuries, Canadians have had the right to travel within their own country. In fact, they had that right before Canada was even a nation. But they don't have it anymore.

If they try it, they'll end up like the guy at the Amsterdam Airport, in a prison disguised as a public health facility.

Unfortunately, we're not making any of this up, it's all entirely real. You can look it up. And similar crackdowns are underway around the world. So what we're watching here in real time is the death of democracy.

Now, the pretext for all of this is something called omicron. That's the new variant of the coronavirus. Omicron is incredibly dangerous, we're told. Dangerous enough to justify a total suspension of our ancient civil liberties for the first time in hundreds of years.

But here is the amazing thing, omicron appears to be virtually harmless. In the entire world, there is one recorded death from omicron. In the United States, not a single person has died of omicron, not one.

Did you know that? Have they told you that? Probably not.

You likely assumed it, because why wouldn't you, that omicron had killed many, many people, but, no, it hasn't. So this is the definition of a manufactured threat. Yet on the basis of this manufactured threat, one person dead globally -- on the basis of that, authoritarians posing as physicians are demanding that certain classes of Americans must be prohibited from traveling within their own country.

Watch this tape carefully, because someday we're going to look back on moments like this in horror and disbelief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: And I think what the administration missed a big opportunity this week to tell the American people that we're going to mandate vaccination for air travel in the United States.

We are requiring vaccination for people traveling into the United States so why aren't we mandating vaccination for people traveling within the United States?

DR. IRWIN REDLENER, PEDIATRICIAN: I don't think anyone should be allowed on an airplane domestic or international or train without being able to prove they've been vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so for some perspective here. The last man you just saw is called Irwin Redlener. He is not a virologist, he is a pediatrician and more importantly, he is a political activist. Most recently, he has been working as an adviser to Bill de Blasio, so he knows nothing about COVID, and yet there he is on television demanding Soviet-style internal passports in the United States.

Politicians are even worse. Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, of course, knows even less about COVID. He can barely write a complete sentence. He is literally a moron.

Swalwell's specialty is having unusual sex with Chinese spies. Yet, he too is calling for internal COVID passports within our borders. His fellow Democrats have already introduced legislation to make this Federal law.

That's a change.

But none of it is enough for Tony Fauci. Tony Fauci is demanding proof of injection before people can enter your home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: People should, if they invite people over their home, essentially ask and maybe require that people show evidence that they are vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So stand back, but ask yourself what are we watching here? You've got 79-year-old Joe Biden, 81-year-old Nancy Pelosi, and then Tony Fauci who turns 81 next week, they are all running our country with the help of 79-year-old Mitch McConnell.

This is the oldest government in American history, it's also the most powerful. So you can respect the elderly, we certainly do, as we often say, we mean it, but you can also understand that this is not normal. In fact, this is a sign of civilizational decline.

These are not leaders who have personal contact with young people regularly. They don't have kids at home, so they're not thinking about raising up and nurturing and protecting above all the next generation of Americans. Instead, they are thinking about themselves.

COVID is a threat to them because they are old. It's not an attack, it's just true. COVID is not a threat to young people, that's also true, but they don't care.

Nancy Pelosi feels a chill so the whole country is required to wear a sweater. Chairman Mao did something similar, as he aged, he crushed the young. Maybe there's a syndrome here, it is strangely recognizable.

But we know for a fact that in this country, there has never been a more selfish and short-sighted leadership class. They've destroyed the future for millions of young people. How does a child raised in a mask turn out at the age of 35? Well, Joe Biden doesn't care because he is not going to be here to find out.

But so far, the early signs are pretty scary, very actually.

According to a study from Brown University, quote: "Children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic." That's our future and we should be very concerned about it.

Meanwhile, suicide attempts by young girls have risen by more than 50 percent and yet, even that horrifying as it is, it is just a small indicator of what is actually happening. For every teen who tries to kill herself, a hundred others are living in agony.

A new report from the Surgeon General finds attempted suicides anxiety depression all increased markedly in young people in this country, but it's the addiction numbers that are the worst.

This year, for the first time ever, the number of overdose deaths in the United States passed a hundred thousand. That's up 30 percent from just last year. It is up more than a hundred percent since 2015. At this point, more Americans are dying from drug ODs than are dying from car crashes and gun deaths combined.

And as with suicide, an overdose is just the end point of a very long saga. An overdose is the final chapter in the world's saddest story of many years of suffering and torment, and our lunatic COVID policies have caused so much more of this.

What people like Tony Fauci will never acknowledge is that addiction is far worse than the coronavirus. Addiction doesn't just kill you, although of course it does, addiction degrades you and destroys the people around you, the very people you love the most.

Addiction is the worst thing. Addiction is a fate worse than death, it steals your soul. Any sane person would rather die of COVID tonight than spend the next decade addicted to drugs and alcohol. Ask anyone who has been.

But Pelosi and Biden and Fauci and McConnell don't care. They are completely uninterested in what happens to the young and addiction is a problem of the young.

Speaking of the young, last month, "The New York Post" published photographs of masked school children, little kids forced to eat on the ground outside in freezing temperatures. You're seeing them on your screen right now. What do you make of that?

Well, here is what Joe Biden's spokesman made, she was fine with it. She approved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe and I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that. Obviously, we want to get to a point where we are turning to a version of normalcy for everybody, right? Where you're not sending your kid's backpack with seven extra masks, right? Where you're not adding two hats so that they are warm outside for a snack.

There is no question that's the case, but we also think the most important thing should be safety, the safety of kids, keeping kids in school which the President is very focused on and some of these steps, creative steps that schools have taken have enabled that to be possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The safety of kids -- these people are the danger to children, not COVID. But no one is asking the obvious question. What kinds of adults, what kinds of citizens are we creating with masks and social isolation? Ever heard a politician wonder about that? No.

Instead, its full speed ahead in the other direction, damn the destruction it causes.

The State of Oregon is now working to make indoor mask mandates permanent for everyone, including kids. Quote: "Oregon working to put indoor mask rule in place indefinitely," reads a recent headline from ABC in Oregon.

Dr. Paul Cieslak is the Medical Director at the Oregon Health Authority. He explained the new plan this way which is to say he didn't explain it at all, quote: "Permanent means indefinite. It doesn't necessarily mean permanent." Paging Dr. Orwell.

This is lunacy. It is destructive, it is vicious, and it is not just happening in Oregon. In New York, politicians are saying the very same thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I don't want to go back ever again to that place where people couldn't go to their job safely, couldn't congregate, kids couldn't go to schools. That isolation had a devastating effect on the human condition and we're still dealing with the fallout today.

So to avoid that situation, I, today am announcing that we are enacting a statewide indoor mask mandate unless a business has a vaccination mandate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So an unelected low IQ governor of a failing state explains to you that in order to reduce social isolation, citizens are required to cover their faces, and no one laughs at her or even says a word.

You've got to wonder what America is going to look like in 20 years. Consider the economy that COVID restrictions have created. There are a lot more 70-year-old billionaires than there have ever been, but there are far fewer 25-year-olds who have any hope of ever owning anything in America.

Why do you think young people love Bitcoin? Ever wondered? Well it's because they know they're excluded from the country's traditional systems of wealth creation. America's economy is closed to them. The latter has been pulled up and they know it.

Our elderly political class should care about this, they don't care at all. Here is 68-year-old Paul Krugman explaining on Twitter that growing inflation is not a big deal, quote: "Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?" End quote.

Well, yes, Paul there are in fact quite a few good reasons to think that, like look around, Dumbo. But he hasn't and he won't.

Keep in mind, this man once won the Nobel Prize for Economics. So we're mocking Paul Krugman, but imagine what he sounds like to young people. Imagine how this sounds to a 30-year-old, someone still living with roommates, someone who is too poor to get married, too poor to have kids, too poor to start an adult life. There are many young Americans in that position.

If you wanted to set the stage for a revolution, this is exactly the kind of way you would talk and it's exactly the kind of society you would create. It is deeply unwise.

It is also increasingly very cruel. Our reaction to COVID has brought the worst of so many, the best in some, but the worst in many and that is sad to see.

Here is 61-year-old David Frum of "The Atlantic" Magazine, a Canadian who helped plan the Iraq War calling for killing unvaccinated Americans, quote: "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last." Quietly triage? What does that mean? It means let them die. Murder them.

This is evil. David Frum is an evil man. He has long encouraged violence against the weak. That's the sum of his career.

But in this case, suddenly he is hardly alone. Many in Washington, New York, or Los Angeles are talking like this now. Now, these are educated people. They are perfectly aware of the science. The science is publicly available. It's on the internet.

At this point, it is firmly established scientifically that the so-called unvaccinated pose no threat whatsoever to the vaccinated or anyone else for that matter. Period.

In fact, the millions who have recovered from COVID have greater protection against the virus, getting it, spreading it than those who rely on chemically induced antibodies alone. That's the science.

But the science no longer matters, obviously. We've moved past the science to a new stage of this war and it's not about coronavirus. It's about our country, it's about our democracy, and above all, it's about our future.

Candace Owens is the host of "Candace," she joins us now.

Candace, I don't want to get personal, but you are a new mother. I think that is widely known and you look at this world that people in their eighties and I love old people, I mean no disrespect, but our leaders are the oldest they've ever been. They are creating a world that is actively hostile to children.

Does that how -- do you feel about that?

CANDACE OWENS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I want to be very clear here that these leaders that we're talking about, they aren't stupid, they know that these policies don't work and they know that they're putting in place these policies not because they want to beat a virus back, they're actually not stupid, they're evil.

They understand that they're trying to usher in a new era in America, which will give these individuals that are their elite political class unlimited power for a very long time. That's what we're seeing ushered in. Right now, an authoritarian regime in a country that was once free, this country is no longer free by any metric that you would use to describe freedom. This is not normal behavior.

Children having -- parents having to fight to have their children go to school and be allowed to breathe out in the open is not a normal conversation for you and I to be having. We shouldn't be talking about what you and I are talking about right now in any normal scenario, and what's worse about this, we're talking about masking children, you say why?

We know that they have a virtual zero percent chance of dying from coronavirus. That's a fact of COVID-19, a virtual zero percent chance and yet we're seeing them have to be masked why? Because masking someone is a form of dehumanization and we need talk about this more, right?

CARLSON: Yes.

OWENS: The psychology of dehumanization is what is happening. Now, why do you want to dehumanize a child and have them look around and not perceive themselves as different or as individuals? Because that is advantageous for a regime that wants authoritarian power.

You want them to view themselves like cattle. We all do the same thing. You're not an individual. You shouldn't have any aspirations. That's why they're doing this and this is why this is dangerous by the way and why I was so frustrated with people on the left -- I mean, people on the right that I respect so much and people on the left in lockstep being fearful and beginning to saying yes, it's okay for a little bit -- for the government to lock us down.

The reason why I'm so frustrated is because the government never gives you powers that you give it freely. It just doesn't work like that. We know this.

The Patriot Act -- have we not learned our lesson -- that temporary Patriot Act that we still have in place and what is also dangerous is, I want to say this as the last point, Tucker, is that people will lose the memory of freedom in this country.

It happened for my generation. It is unimaginable to me that there was once upon a time where my dad and mom got onto planes and didn't have to go through T.S.A., right?

CARLSON: That's right.

OWENS: That memory of that sort of freedom to travel, I don't remember it at all, right?

Now, you have children that are not going to remember what it's like to walk into a store and not have to present a vaccine ID. They're not going to remember what it was like to be able to walk without having to cover your face breathing.

America is now beginning to look exactly like China, and that's exactly what these people in power want.

CARLSON: Our parents could raise a family on one income and you could raise your own kids if you wanted. You didn't have to hire people who don't speak English to do it. It was good. We should we should get back there.

I appreciate your perspective as I always do. Candace, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

OWENS: Thank you.

CARLSON: FOX News Alert tonight. Illegal immigrants flooding across our Southern border at this hour. Typically the numbers go down sometime around Christmas. That is not the case tonight.

Bill Melugin is there on the border with an update. People arrested for crossing illegally, up 235 percent since October. Bill Melugin, great to see you tonight.

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, good to see you.

It was an incredibly tragic weekend down here at the border. A Texas mother and her daughter were just going about their day driving when they were slammed into by an accused human smuggler and tragically, that mom and daughter both lost their lives. We'll get right to the video with this horrible story.

Take a look at this. This was Saturday down in the Rio Grande Valley, Mission, Texas. Our drone was over the aftermath. Texas DPS telling us that a human smuggler with his car loaded up with illegal immigrants was fleeing from law enforcement when he went right through an intersection and slammed right into a vehicle with that local mother and daughter. Tragically, neither of them survived. They were both locals from Mission, Texas.

You can see some of the photos from the crash showing just how violent it was. One of the migrants was actually launched through the windshield of the smuggler's vehicle. That smuggler was arrested as were six other illegal immigrants.

The victims have not been identified yet, but sources tell me they are a 59-year-old mother and a 22-year-old daughter. The suspect has not been arraigned yet. He is still in the hospital with injuries from that crash.

Also from the Rio Grande Valley over the weekend, take a look at this remarkable video. Our drone team shot what you're looking at here is we saw a raft dropping off 11 illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas. These are the runners.

These are not asylum seekers. These are not people looking to give themselves up. These guys are dressed in all black or camo and they are actively trying to get away from law enforcement. You can see them running off into the brush.

It is unclear if they were ever caught and Border Patrol wasn't there when we were filming this. They did show up later and we actually saw a man on the Mexican side of the river using a rope to pull that raft right back into Mexico, undoubtedly planning to use it again for future smuggling.

One last thing we want to show you, where we are here in Del Rio sector, take a look at this video. This was late last night here in Kinney County. We embedded with an elite team of Texas DPS Troopers working the private ranches out here, it is about 10 miles inland from the Rio Grande and DPS are the only ones out here. There is no Border Patrol.

And what they are hunting for are illegal immigrant runners. Again, the people who do not want to turn themselves in and are trying to creep through in the middle of the night and are trying to get further into Texas.

Just while we were with this Texas DPS brush team, in just a matter of hours, they were catching dozens of people, mostly single adult men obviously who don't want to be caught and the thing Texas is doing is with those single men, they're not handing them over to Border Patrol. They are arresting them and taking them all to jail for criminal trespassing.

And back out here live, you mentioned the numbers, Del Rio sector where we are, extremely busy. Just last weekend alone, Border Patrol reporting they picked up more than 3,500 illegal immigrants from 39 different countries recently including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Tucker, they are coming in from all over the world. We'll send it back to you.

CARLSON: Tajikistan, yes, that's healthy. Not out of control or anything.

Bill Melugin, you really have done better reporting than anyone on this, I appreciate it. Thank you.

MELUGIN: Thanks.

CARLSON: So all over the country, you've seen District Attorneys, people's job it is to enforce the laws that legislatures pass make certain laws can't be enforced or the police not to enforce them, but there is one Sheriff in of all places, Los Angeles County, who has decided to stand a thwart this trend.

Maybe there's hope for Los Angeles. This Sheriff has a message for those DA's, he joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Under pressure, you really learn about people for good and bad, people you thought were smart like David Frum wind up on Twitter calling for killing people if they haven't been vaccinated, that's on the downside. On the upside, you learn that the Sheriff of Los Angeles County -- Los Angeles a place that people make fun of for being so crazy and out of touch -- winds up being one of the most reasonable people in the entire State.

Alex Villanueva is the Sheriff of LA County is in favor of enforcing the law, which is his job. That has profoundly upset the local Soros backed District Attorney, George Gascon. So Gascon recently attacked him for saying that criminals should be prosecuted. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE GASCON, LA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it, okay? And that's not a pig in terms of using the terms of law enforcement, it is to people that often act in ways that I believe that are not consistent with the decorum that certainly a public official should engage in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So instead of addressing the actual problems in Los Angeles, you see George Gascon attacking the Sheriff. What he doesn't want to talk about is what has happened to Los Angeles.

In his first year as District Attorney, LA has had a record number of car thefts, murders were up 12 percent. That seems notable. A lot of people died.

The man he was attacking by the way as we said is LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and he joins us tonight to respond.

Sheriff, thanks so much for coming on. So you're a pig says George Gascon. How do you respond to that?

SHERIFF ALEX VILLANUEVA, LA COUNTY: Well, you know what I'm not going to get into the personal attacks. I'm going to focus on performance.

If you can't do the job, you need to get out of office. Plain and simple.

Roughly 12,000 cases in his first year in office that he has not prosecuted that we made the arrest, did the investigation, established all the elements of the crime, presented it, and they decide, well our special order says we're just not going to prosecute it at all, so that's 12,000 times that the crook walked away scot-free.

What kind of message is that selling to the criminal community or sending to the criminal community right now? And actually, your 12 percent -- no, for LA County, our jurisdiction, homicides are up over 40 percent this year alone and that number is just astonishing. Grand theft auto is up over 25 percent.

So the numbers keep climbing and all he is doing again, like I said, he continues down a failed path.

CARLSON: So if you're -- I mean, those are amazing numbers, thank you for correcting that. If you're a Sheriff's Deputy, you're a police officer in the city and you know, you joined at not very high pay and some great risk in order to make the society better, enforce the law, how frustrating is it to have a prosecutor who won't let you do it?

VILLANUEVA: Well, I am constantly trying to keep the morale of my organization up and I tell all the Deputies, do not -- don't do your job because someone else refuses to do his or her job and that's what we have right now.

That meeting with Gascon, that presser, he had all of his woke DA's from around the nation there, but not a single DA from Los Angeles County, not a single victim of crime. Nobody here locally was going to tell him, hey, great job, boss. Thanks for what you're doing -- not a single one -- because it has been an absolute failure on all counts from the DA.

They are in disarray. They are leaving by the -- you know, by the droves from the organization and he is trying to replace the DA's with public defenders and the whole crowd is against law enforcement to begin with.

CARLSON: That's just one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time, but the fact that you are still Sheriff suggests maybe it will change. I hope it will.

Sheriff, thank you very much.

VILLANUEVA: You've got it.

CARLSON: So, if you're only listening with one ear, you may have come to the conclusion after hearing a lot of people yell about it that Julian Assange somehow hacked Pentagon computers and stole secret information from the U.S. government to hurt our country. That's actually not true.

Julian Assange is a journalist who printed information that he got just like "The New York Times" does, but it embarrassed people who made a lot of unforgivable mistakes and so, they threw him in a maximum security prison where he has been for more than two years. He has been effectively incarcerated for much longer than that.

There has been a big development in that case. His brother, Julian Assange's brother, joins us straight ahead.

Plus, our documentary called "The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse" is amazing. We just screened it. It comes out Thursday. You get free access to it at tuckercarlson.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So, here is a fact worth remembering. If you want to think clearly, if you want to make wise decisions, you have to use clear and precise language. Here is another fact. If by contrast you want to brainwash and control an entire population, then the first thing you do is ban clear language and substitute it with propaganda. That is nonsensical chunks of words glued together for political effect.

In two sentences, that's our entire current political landscape. The left understands it, the right does not.

Consider the term "people of color." Now, that's a phrase that would have seemed mildly offensive 20 years ago, kind of an ugly term and yet now, it is mandatory to every level of our society. The question is, what does it mean exactly? What is a person of color?

Well, it is anyone who isn't white, which is to say is the overwhelming majority of the world's population. So you have to ask yourself, how exactly is this a meaningful category? What does a Polynesian tuna fisherman have in common with a Bolivian cocoa farmer or a foundry worker in Central China for that matter with Kamala Harris?

Well, not really anything, except that they're not white. That's a pretty ominous way to define a huge group of people if you think about it. In fact, it's a racist way to define a huge group of people.

Everyone who is white is not the same, and only an entitled white liberal could believe otherwise. No normal person could ever think that.

So let's stop using the phrase, let's not participate. Don't use the term "people of color." This is the crudest kind of propaganda designed to divide the country by race, so don't say it. What do you replace it with?

If you're white, what do you call people who don't look like you? Well, if they are citizens of this country, maybe you call them Americans because that's what they actually are.

So you probably heard the name Julian Assange and you've probably gathered from all the shouting about Julian Assange from our political class that he is some sort of international spy who hacked our computers and stole our secrets, but that's not at all what Julian Assange is or has ever been. He didn't hack anybody's computers. He is a journalist.

He reprinted facts that were deeply embarrassing to our political class, the Democratic National Committee, and to above all, the foreign policy establishment, which has an awful lot to be embarrassed of. And for doing that -- "The New York Times" has done things like that for a hundred years, no problem -- Julian Assange does it, well he has been incarcerated for almost a decade since the summer of 2012.

He is now for the last two odd years been in maximum security prison in the U.K. He could be coming to this country.

So what exactly is going to happen next with Julian Assange? And why is no one defending him?

Gabriel Shipton is Julian Assange's brother. He joins us tonight.

Mr. Shipton, thanks so much for coming on and by the way, when I say no one is defending him, of course many people are defending Julian Assange, but I mean, no one at the higher reaches of American journalism, for example. They are silent on this. Why do you think that is?

GABRIEL SHIPTON, JULIAN ASSANGE'S BROTHER: Well, I think, Tucker they've been able to ignore this case for a while. You know, it had been at arm's length in the U.K., but just last Friday, the U.K. High Court ruled that Julian could be extradited. They approved the extradition to the U.S.A., so the case is now coming here.

You know, Julian has a chance to appeal, but it was the Chief Justice of the U.K. who is the highest Judge in England and Wales who ordered the extradition, so it is very unlikely that an appeal will go ahead.

So I think that people here can -- the media -- the government can no longer ignore that this case is coming, you know, this criminalization of - - it's basically the Biden administration -- the Biden administration has criminalized telling the truth with this indictment, and it is even worse than that actually.

They have criminalized knowing about classified information. And so now, it is coming to this country, the extradition has been ordered by the High Court. I don't think people here can any longer ignore it.

CARLSON: You've got to ask yourself though and I don't think you live in the United States, but we're in the middle of a crime wave in which many thousands of people have been killed over and above last year's numbers, in which many thousands more have died of drug overdoses from drugs that are coming in.

So we have a lot of crime problems in the United States right now, but the Biden administration is very focused on getting its hands on your brother. Why is getting your brother more important than bringing say murderers to justice?

SHIPTON: Well, I think the people -- you know, the people who run our democracies now would like to rule them, you know with impunity. They don't want people to know what is being done in their name. They want to keep secrets. They want to -- they don't want the public to be informed basically. I think that's why.

And they're creating Julian -- they're making an example out of Julian. They are saying to people, if you tell the truth about our secrets, if you tell the truth about the security state or anything really, this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to be locked in a prison for the rest of your life. Your reputation will be destroyed. You'll be taken away from your family.

CARLSON: I have to ask you a final question, which is a depressing question, but I have to ask. If your brother is extradited to the United States, do you think he'll survive?

SHIPTON: Look, no, I don't. I mean, you know, we can look -- you know, look -- prisoners here can't be kept safe. Even the most high-profile prisoners like Jeffrey Epstein, he couldn't be kept safe in prison.

You know, so what hope will Julian have here? I think, you know if he gets extradited, he will most likely die.

CARLSON: You make this sound like Bolivia, which makes me ashamed, but you're probably not wrong.

Gabriel, thank you so much for coming on tonight. I appreciate it.

SHIPTON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So we've spent a lot of time covering the many District Attorneys, the prosecutors subverted by George Soros. One of them in Philadelphia has just absolutely refused to prosecute crimes and that's led to a record number of murders in what was a great city. Instead of acknowledging his responsibility for these murders, the DA just had a total emotional breakdown on camera we have the footage straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: I want to apologize for the depressing lineup tonight, looking through the roster, oh, it is a bit much.

We want to establish a record of what's going on in this country right now because we think it's worth knowing and remembering.

Here is something from Philadelphia, Larry Krasner is the DA in Philadelphia, that city has just set an all-time record for murders in a single year. That not surprising, that was the whole point. George Soros spent nearly $2 million to elect Larry Krasner and he did it because Krasner promised not to enforce the law in the city.

Recently, however, Krasner seemed to be embarrassed of all the murders he has caused and is claiming his city is safe. People noticed this was of course a lie, so Krasner melted down on camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KRASNER, PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: And the reality is that if you have lost someone in your family, or on your block or in your community, and you are aware of the terrible crisis of gun violence that we have in the City of Philadelphia, which is what I said, I did specifically say that we have a terrible crisis in gun violence in the City of Philadelphia, if you are aware of that and if you are feeling that, then it's hard.

And not acknowledging that pain and that suffering, a pain that disproportionately affects people of color and poor people, so for that, I am truly sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So he gets all these black people killed with these insane policies, but then when asked about it, he starts crying because it's really about him and his pain and his suffering because he is a narcissist like all of them.

Bill McSwain is not a narcissist. He's a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Pennsylvania. He enforced the law, up until recently. He joins us tonight. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. When you watch that, what's your reaction?

BILL MCSWAIN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT, PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Tucker, my first reaction is that Krasner's fake crocodile tears are not going to reduce the homicide rate. But really, this issue is so much bigger than Larry Krasner.

Krasner is just really a symbol of failed progressive policies and policies that, frankly, I think, are causing a breakdown of civil society. These are policies that celebrate lawlessness, they celebrate rioting and looting.

These are policies that replace personal responsibility with a culture of victimhood, and they are policies that replace hard work with government handouts.

And Tucker, that is not the America that I grew up in. Those are not the things that have made our country the envy of the world, and I think what we need is a return to traditional values, a return to our roots and that is going to start in the elections in 2022 and that's why I'm running for Pennsylvania Governor.

CARLSON: So I'm totally convinced there is going to be a massive and I hope constructive backlash against the moment that we're living in and I very much hope that you're part of it. It's interesting, I wish we had more time, but quickly you connected the decline in the value people place on work and the nobility of work to the violence. You sort of put it all together. You think they are connected then?

MCSWAIN: I think they absolutely are connected and it's a political ideology that the progressives are pushing. It's not based on logic. It's not based on facts. It's not based on looking at crime rates. It is an ideology that they are pushing.

And because of that, they don't react to facts. They don't react to the reality on the ground. It's all about pushing the ideology, and Krasner is just a symbol of it, of a larger disease and a disease that we need to get rid of in this country.

CARLSON: Yes, they're not building anything, only destroying it. Clearly, you've been in the middle of it, because you've learned the hard way what we've learned, which is they don't care. You can marshal all the facts you want. Here are the statistics. Okay.

It's just dogs barking to them. They don't care. Obviously.

Bill McSwain, great to see it tonight. Thank you.

MCSWAIN: Thank you, Tucker. Great to be with you.

CARLSON: So the Biden ministration is trying to push the country to war with Russia. Now, why? Will they want Ukraine to join NATO? Why is that a good idea exactly? And what is the point of NATO? Almost nobody is asking that question. But our guest next asked the question.

Apparently by the way, the elves are shipping out Christmas presents for all of us. Believe it or not, they're residing tonight in tuckercarlson.com. I know, it sounds unlikely, but that's the word. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So if we go to war with Russia, it'll be over NATO. The question of Ukraine joining NATO, which this administration and to be fair, previous administrations have pushed Ukraine to do. But what is NATO exactly? What's the point of NATO 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union? Almost nobody is asking that question.

But David Harsanyi is. He is a senior writer at "The National Review." He's just written a new book about Europe. He's one of the few people who thought about what NATO is, that organization our leaders tell us is vitally important. So, here is part of what he told us in a new interview for "Tucker Carlson Today."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID HARSANYI, SENIOR WRITER, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": I hate Europe also because my parents lived there and it was a terrible place. As a Jew, I hate Europe because it's always been a terrible place in most European countries at one point or another, and I hate them because they do things wrong and they've been a mess for hundreds of years, without us, right?

Until recently, and their peace is kept by us, it was instituted by us. And really, we still pay for it and we actually shouldn't be anymore, I think. But we still pay and they get to try to compete with us. The European Union is meant to compete with us economically, and yet we pay for their safety, right?

So I think that those are all problems.

CARLSON: Well, so I didn't even mean to go here, but since you brought it up, I can't resist. What -- we have this thing called NATO -- North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- it's another postwar institution whose purpose has kind of been lost to history. Why do we have NATO still?

HARSANYI: I don't know. It's a great question. I don't know why we have NATO. It really -- its purpose was to, you know, to stop the Soviets and to defend Western Europe from Soviets. But now, we have Germany giving up on nuclear energy and building pipelines to Russia. So why on earth would we pay for Germany's protection? It makes no sense to me.

You know, when Donald Trump brought it up, these cheapskates in Germany weren't paying their way and we got really upset about that, but even Barack Obama complained about that. It is a Cold War relic, I think NATO.

CARLSON: And it allows the European Union -- Western Europe -- an advantage over us economically, of course.

HARSANYI: Yes, we pay billions and they don't even defend themselves. I mean, they pay some, but I'm saying that they don't pay what they're supposed to, I think, three percent of GDP or whatever.

CARLSON: So the title of your book suggests it's the ideas that have come this way from Europe of the things that we should be worried about. What are those ideas?

HARSANYI: Moderna ideas.

CARLSON: Yes.

HARSANYI: Just giant bureaucracies overseeing everything we do. I just -- before we even talk about policy, I just want to say something about culture as well. I think that Americans are risk takers. In general, it's embedded in our culture from the very beginning, whereas Europeans are not.

So it's not as if we were like Europe, we'd be unfree completely or it would be like Nazi Germany or something, we just be would be an insipid place of docile people who just listen to the government all the time even though things seem to be changing a little bit in Europe as far as that goes with COVID.

But the policies that are problematic are the giant bureaucracies or the undermining of entrepreneurship, the death of faith, the way people treat life there, it just goes on and on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: David Harsanyi, that was a really interesting conversation. It is on "Tucker Carlson Today." It's on FOX Nation. You can watch it for free by the way if you go to tuckercarlson.com.

We're out of time tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night, 8:00 PM. We know what we are like, we won't repeat it.

Now, America's one and only, The Great Sean Hannity takes over the 9:00 PM.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: All right, and Tucker, thank you. You could say it. Sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

CARLSON: I'm going to let you say it, man.

HANNITY: You were running out of time. I got it in for you. That's what friends do.

CARLSON: Thank you.

HANNITY: All right, Tucker, thank you.

END

<Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.>
WILL CAIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: I have new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Check it out.

Good interviews, more takes, more hanging out with me.

But for now, I'll be back here tomorrow and you get to hang out with Tucker Carlson who starts right now.

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

So imagine this happened to you. You're sitting on an airplane, you're taxiing down the runway on a trip out of the country. All of a sudden, the plane stops and is surrounded by military police.

Armed men storm the aircraft and drag a man from his seat, so of course you assume at first that terrorism has just been averted. The passenger must have been trying to blow up the plane with a shoe bomb or something.

But no, that's not what this is. The man is not a terrorist. He is something worse than that. He violated COVID restrictions. He is a corona criminal.

So okay, you think, you're trying to be reasonable here.

A man with COVID should not be on a commercial aircraft spreading the virus to everyone else and of course that's fair, but here is the thing. This man doesn't have COVID. He was tested right before he got on the airplane and no trace the virus was found. So why in the world is he being hauled off the flight by armed men?

Well here is why.

Because the government has determined that based on his travel history, which they have been tracking, he might someday get COVID. Therefore, in the name of public health, he is being forcibly detained, not for something he has done, but for something that he potentially might do inadvertently, and for that this man is headed to a COVID camp known euphemistically as a quarantine hotel.

But he is not going to be a guest in this hotel. He will be a prisoner.

Now all of this just happened. In North Korea, you ask? No. In The Netherlands, one of the most quote "liberal countries" in the world, home of The Hague, the International Court of Justice. This just happened at the Amsterdam Airport. You may have been there.

Think twice about going back, or for that matter think twice about going to Canada, another supposedly quote "liberal country." Canadian citizens are now banned from traveling by airplane, train, or ship unless they can prove they have been injected with the shot that Justin Trudeau demands they take.

This is a big change.

For centuries, Canadians have had the right to travel within their own country. In fact, they had that right before Canada was even a nation. But they don't have it anymore.

If they try it, they'll end up like the guy at the Amsterdam Airport, in a prison disguised as a public health facility.

Unfortunately, we're not making any of this up, it's all entirely real. You can look it up. And similar crackdowns are underway around the world. So what we're watching here in real time is the death of democracy.

Now, the pretext for all of this is something called omicron. That's the new variant of the coronavirus. Omicron is incredibly dangerous, we're told. Dangerous enough to justify a total suspension of our ancient civil liberties for the first time in hundreds of years.

But here is the amazing thing, omicron appears to be virtually harmless. In the entire world, there is one recorded death from omicron. In the United States, not a single person has died of omicron, not one.

Did you know that? Have they told you that? Probably not.

You likely assumed it, because why wouldn't you, that omicron had killed many, many people, but, no, it hasn't. So this is the definition of a manufactured threat. Yet on the basis of this manufactured threat, one person dead globally -- on the basis of that, authoritarians posing as physicians are demanding that certain classes of Americans must be prohibited from traveling within their own country.

Watch this tape carefully, because someday we're going to look back on moments like this in horror and disbelief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: And I think what the administration missed a big opportunity this week to tell the American people that we're going to mandate vaccination for air travel in the United States.

We are requiring vaccination for people traveling into the United States so why aren't we mandating vaccination for people traveling within the United States?

DR. IRWIN REDLENER, PEDIATRICIAN: I don't think anyone should be allowed on an airplane domestic or international or train without being able to prove they've been vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so for some perspective here. The last man you just saw is called Irwin Redlener. He is not a virologist, he is a pediatrician and more importantly, he is a political activist. Most recently, he has been working as an adviser to Bill de Blasio, so he knows nothing about COVID, and yet there he is on television demanding Soviet-style internal passports in the United States.

Politicians are even worse. Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, of course, knows even less about COVID. He can barely write a complete sentence. He is literally a moron.

Swalwell's specialty is having unusual sex with Chinese spies. Yet, he too is calling for internal COVID passports within our borders. His fellow Democrats have already introduced legislation to make this Federal law.

That's a change.

But none of it is enough for Tony Fauci. Tony Fauci is demanding proof of injection before people can enter your home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: People should, if they invite people over their home, essentially ask and maybe require that people show evidence that they are vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So stand back, but ask yourself what are we watching here? You've got 79-year-old Joe Biden, 81-year-old Nancy Pelosi, and then Tony Fauci who turns 81 next week, they are all running our country with the help of 79-year-old Mitch McConnell.

This is the oldest government in American history, it's also the most powerful. So you can respect the elderly, we certainly do, as we often say, we mean it, but you can also understand that this is not normal. In fact, this is a sign of civilizational decline.

These are not leaders who have personal contact with young people regularly. They don't have kids at home, so they're not thinking about raising up and nurturing and protecting above all the next generation of Americans. Instead, they are thinking about themselves.

COVID is a threat to them because they are old. It's not an attack, it's just true. COVID is not a threat to young people, that's also true, but they don't care.

Nancy Pelosi feels a chill so the whole country is required to wear a sweater. Chairman Mao did something similar, as he aged, he crushed the young. Maybe there's a syndrome here, it is strangely recognizable.

But we know for a fact that in this country, there has never been a more selfish and short-sighted leadership class. They've destroyed the future for millions of young people. How does a child raised in a mask turn out at the age of 35? Well, Joe Biden doesn't care because he is not going to be here to find out.

But so far, the early signs are pretty scary, very actually.

According to a study from Brown University, quote: "Children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic." That's our future and we should be very concerned about it.

Meanwhile, suicide attempts by young girls have risen by more than 50 percent and yet, even that horrifying as it is, it is just a small indicator of what is actually happening. For every teen who tries to kill herself, a hundred others are living in agony.

A new report from the Surgeon General finds attempted suicides anxiety depression all increased markedly in young people in this country, but it's the addiction numbers that are the worst.

This year, for the first time ever, the number of overdose deaths in the United States passed a hundred thousand. That's up 30 percent from just last year. It is up more than a hundred percent since 2015. At this point, more Americans are dying from drug ODs than are dying from car crashes and gun deaths combined.

And as with suicide, an overdose is just the end point of a very long saga. An overdose is the final chapter in the world's saddest story of many years of suffering and torment, and our lunatic COVID policies have caused so much more of this.

What people like Tony Fauci will never acknowledge is that addiction is far worse than the coronavirus. Addiction doesn't just kill you, although of course it does, addiction degrades you and destroys the people around you, the very people you love the most.

Addiction is the worst thing. Addiction is a fate worse than death, it steals your soul. Any sane person would rather die of COVID tonight than spend the next decade addicted to drugs and alcohol. Ask anyone who has been.

But Pelosi and Biden and Fauci and McConnell don't care. They are completely uninterested in what happens to the young and addiction is a problem of the young.

Speaking of the young, last month, "The New York Post" published photographs of masked school children, little kids forced to eat on the ground outside in freezing temperatures. You're seeing them on your screen right now. What do you make of that?

Well, here is what Joe Biden's spokesman made, she was fine with it. She approved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe and I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that. Obviously, we want to get to a point where we are turning to a version of normalcy for everybody, right? Where you're not sending your kid's backpack with seven extra masks, right? Where you're not adding two hats so that they are warm outside for a snack.

There is no question that's the case, but we also think the most important thing should be safety, the safety of kids, keeping kids in school which the President is very focused on and some of these steps, creative steps that schools have taken have enabled that to be possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The safety of kids -- these people are the danger to children, not COVID. But no one is asking the obvious question. What kinds of adults, what kinds of citizens are we creating with masks and social isolation? Ever heard a politician wonder about that? No.

Instead, its full speed ahead in the other direction, damn the destruction it causes.

The State of Oregon is now working to make indoor mask mandates permanent for everyone, including kids. Quote: "Oregon working to put indoor mask rule in place indefinitely," reads a recent headline from ABC in Oregon.

Dr. Paul Cieslak is the Medical Director at the Oregon Health Authority. He explained the new plan this way which is to say he didn't explain it at all, quote: "Permanent means indefinite. It doesn't necessarily mean permanent." Paging Dr. Orwell.

This is lunacy. It is destructive, it is vicious, and it is not just happening in Oregon. In New York, politicians are saying the very same thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I don't want to go back ever again to that place where people couldn't go to their job safely, couldn't congregate, kids couldn't go to schools. That isolation had a devastating effect on the human condition and we're still dealing with the fallout today.

So to avoid that situation, I, today am announcing that we are enacting a statewide indoor mask mandate unless a business has a vaccination mandate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So an unelected low IQ governor of a failing state explains to you that in order to reduce social isolation, citizens are required to cover their faces, and no one laughs at her or even says a word.

You've got to wonder what America is going to look like in 20 years. Consider the economy that COVID restrictions have created. There are a lot more 70-year-old billionaires than there have ever been, but there are far fewer 25-year-olds who have any hope of ever owning anything in America.

Why do you think young people love Bitcoin? Ever wondered? Well it's because they know they're excluded from the country's traditional systems of wealth creation. America's economy is closed to them. The latter has been pulled up and they know it.

Our elderly political class should care about this, they don't care at all. Here is 68-year-old Paul Krugman explaining on Twitter that growing inflation is not a big deal, quote: "Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?" End quote.

Well, yes, Paul there are in fact quite a few good reasons to think that, like look around, Dumbo. But he hasn't and he won't.

Keep in mind, this man once won the Nobel Prize for Economics. So we're mocking Paul Krugman, but imagine what he sounds like to young people. Imagine how this sounds to a 30-year-old, someone still living with roommates, someone who is too poor to get married, too poor to have kids, too poor to start an adult life. There are many young Americans in that position.

If you wanted to set the stage for a revolution, this is exactly the kind of way you would talk and it's exactly the kind of society you would create. It is deeply unwise.

It is also increasingly very cruel. Our reaction to COVID has brought the worst of so many, the best in some, but the worst in many and that is sad to see.

Here is 61-year-old David Frum of "The Atlantic" Magazine, a Canadian who helped plan the Iraq War calling for killing unvaccinated Americans, quote: "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last." Quietly triage? What does that mean? It means let them die. Murder them.

This is evil. David Frum is an evil man. He has long encouraged violence against the weak. That's the sum of his career.

But in this case, suddenly he is hardly alone. Many in Washington, New York, or Los Angeles are talking like this now. Now, these are educated people. They are perfectly aware of the science. The science is publicly available. It's on the internet.

At this point, it is firmly established scientifically that the so-called unvaccinated pose no threat whatsoever to the vaccinated or anyone else for that matter. Period.

In fact, the millions who have recovered from COVID have greater protection against the virus, getting it, spreading it than those who rely on chemically induced antibodies alone. That's the science.

But the science no longer matters, obviously. We've moved past the science to a new stage of this war and it's not about coronavirus. It's about our country, it's about our democracy, and above all, it's about our future.

Candace Owens is the host of "Candace," she joins us now.

Candace, I don't want to get personal, but you are a new mother. I think that is widely known and you look at this world that people in their eighties and I love old people, I mean no disrespect, but our leaders are the oldest they've ever been. They are creating a world that is actively hostile to children.

Does that how -- do you feel about that?

CANDACE OWENS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I want to be very clear here that these leaders that we're talking about, they aren't stupid, they know that these policies don't work and they know that they're putting in place these policies not because they want to beat a virus back, they're actually not stupid, they're evil.

They understand that they're trying to usher in a new era in America, which will give these individuals that are their elite political class unlimited power for a very long time. That's what we're seeing ushered in. Right now, an authoritarian regime in a country that was once free, this country is no longer free by any metric that you would use to describe freedom. This is not normal behavior.

Children having -- parents having to fight to have their children go to school and be allowed to breathe out in the open is not a normal conversation for you and I to be having. We shouldn't be talking about what you and I are talking about right now in any normal scenario, and what's worse about this, we're talking about masking children, you say why?

We know that they have a virtual zero percent chance of dying from coronavirus. That's a fact of COVID-19, a virtual zero percent chance and yet we're seeing them have to be masked why? Because masking someone is a form of dehumanization and we need talk about this more, right?

CARLSON: Yes.

OWENS: The psychology of dehumanization is what is happening. Now, why do you want to dehumanize a child and have them look around and not perceive themselves as different or as individuals? Because that is advantageous for a regime that wants authoritarian power.

You want them to view themselves like cattle. We all do the same thing. You're not an individual. You shouldn't have any aspirations. That's why they're doing this and this is why this is dangerous by the way and why I was so frustrated with people on the left -- I mean, people on the right that I respect so much and people on the left in lockstep being fearful and beginning to saying yes, it's okay for a little bit -- for the government to lock us down.

The reason why I'm so frustrated is because the government never gives you powers that you give it freely. It just doesn't work like that. We know this.

The Patriot Act -- have we not learned our lesson -- that temporary Patriot Act that we still have in place and what is also dangerous is, I want to say this as the last point, Tucker, is that people will lose the memory of freedom in this country.

It happened for my generation. It is unimaginable to me that there was once upon a time where my dad and mom got onto planes and didn't have to go through T.S.A., right?

CARLSON: That's right.

OWENS: That memory of that sort of freedom to travel, I don't remember it at all, right?

Now, you have children that are not going to remember what it's like to walk into a store and not have to present a vaccine ID. They're not going to remember what it was like to be able to walk without having to cover your face breathing.

America is now beginning to look exactly like China, and that's exactly what these people in power want.

CARLSON: Our parents could raise a family on one income and you could raise your own kids if you wanted. You didn't have to hire people who don't speak English to do it. It was good. We should we should get back there.

I appreciate your perspective as I always do. Candace, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

OWENS: Thank you.

CARLSON: FOX News Alert tonight. Illegal immigrants flooding across our Southern border at this hour. Typically the numbers go down sometime around Christmas. That is not the case tonight.

Bill Melugin is there on the border with an update. People arrested for crossing illegally, up 235 percent since October. Bill Melugin, great to see you tonight.

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, good to see you.

It was an incredibly tragic weekend down here at the border. A Texas mother and her daughter were just going about their day driving when they were slammed into by an accused human smuggler and tragically, that mom and daughter both lost their lives. We'll get right to the video with this horrible story.

Take a look at this. This was Saturday down in the Rio Grande Valley, Mission, Texas. Our drone was over the aftermath. Texas DPS telling us that a human smuggler with his car loaded up with illegal immigrants was fleeing from law enforcement when he went right through an intersection and slammed right into a vehicle with that local mother and daughter. Tragically, neither of them survived. They were both locals from Mission, Texas.

You can see some of the photos from the crash showing just how violent it was. One of the migrants was actually launched through the windshield of the smuggler's vehicle. That smuggler was arrested as were six other illegal immigrants.

The victims have not been identified yet, but sources tell me they are a 59-year-old mother and a 22-year-old daughter. The suspect has not been arraigned yet. He is still in the hospital with injuries from that crash.

Also from the Rio Grande Valley over the weekend, take a look at this remarkable video. Our drone team shot what you're looking at here is we saw a raft dropping off 11 illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas. These are the runners.

These are not asylum seekers. These are not people looking to give themselves up. These guys are dressed in all black or camo and they are actively trying to get away from law enforcement. You can see them running off into the brush.

It is unclear if they were ever caught and Border Patrol wasn't there when we were filming this. They did show up later and we actually saw a man on the Mexican side of the river using a rope to pull that raft right back into Mexico, undoubtedly planning to use it again for future smuggling.

One last thing we want to show you, where we are here in Del Rio sector, take a look at this video. This was late last night here in Kinney County. We embedded with an elite team of Texas DPS Troopers working the private ranches out here, it is about 10 miles inland from the Rio Grande and DPS are the only ones out here. There is no Border Patrol.

And what they are hunting for are illegal immigrant runners. Again, the people who do not want to turn themselves in and are trying to creep through in the middle of the night and are trying to get further into Texas.

Just while we were with this Texas DPS brush team, in just a matter of hours, they were catching dozens of people, mostly single adult men obviously who don't want to be caught and the thing Texas is doing is with those single men, they're not handing them over to Border Patrol. They are arresting them and taking them all to jail for criminal trespassing.

And back out here live, you mentioned the numbers, Del Rio sector where we are, extremely busy. Just last weekend alone, Border Patrol reporting they picked up more than 3,500 illegal immigrants from 39 different countries recently including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Tucker, they are coming in from all over the world. We'll send it back to you.

CARLSON: Tajikistan, yes, that's healthy. Not out of control or anything.

Bill Melugin, you really have done better reporting than anyone on this, I appreciate it. Thank you.

MELUGIN: Thanks.

CARLSON: So all over the country, you've seen District Attorneys, people's job it is to enforce the laws that legislatures pass make certain laws can't be enforced or the police not to enforce them, but there is one Sheriff in of all places, Los Angeles County, who has decided to stand a thwart this trend.

Maybe there's hope for Los Angeles. This Sheriff has a message for those DA's, he joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Under pressure, you really learn about people for good and bad, people you thought were smart like David Frum wind up on Twitter calling for killing people if they haven't been vaccinated, that's on the downside. On the upside, you learn that the Sheriff of Los Angeles County -- Los Angeles a place that people make fun of for being so crazy and out of touch -- winds up being one of the most reasonable people in the entire State.

Alex Villanueva is the Sheriff of LA County is in favor of enforcing the law, which is his job. That has profoundly upset the local Soros backed District Attorney, George Gascon. So Gascon recently attacked him for saying that criminals should be prosecuted. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE GASCON, LA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it, okay? And that's not a pig in terms of using the terms of law enforcement, it is to people that often act in ways that I believe that are not consistent with the decorum that certainly a public official should engage in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So instead of addressing the actual problems in Los Angeles, you see George Gascon attacking the Sheriff. What he doesn't want to talk about is what has happened to Los Angeles.

In his first year as District Attorney, LA has had a record number of car thefts, murders were up 12 percent. That seems notable. A lot of people died.

The man he was attacking by the way as we said is LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and he joins us tonight to respond.

Sheriff, thanks so much for coming on. So you're a pig says George Gascon. How do you respond to that?

SHERIFF ALEX VILLANUEVA, LA COUNTY: Well, you know what I'm not going to get into the personal attacks. I'm going to focus on performance.

If you can't do the job, you need to get out of office. Plain and simple.

Roughly 12,000 cases in his first year in office that he has not prosecuted that we made the arrest, did the investigation, established all the elements of the crime, presented it, and they decide, well our special order says we're just not going to prosecute it at all, so that's 12,000 times that the crook walked away scot-free.

What kind of message is that selling to the criminal community or sending to the criminal community right now? And actually, your 12 percent -- no, for LA County, our jurisdiction, homicides are up over 40 percent this year alone and that number is just astonishing. Grand theft auto is up over 25 percent.

So the numbers keep climbing and all he is doing again, like I said, he continues down a failed path.

CARLSON: So if you're -- I mean, those are amazing numbers, thank you for correcting that. If you're a Sheriff's Deputy, you're a police officer in the city and you know, you joined at not very high pay and some great risk in order to make the society better, enforce the law, how frustrating is it to have a prosecutor who won't let you do it?

VILLANUEVA: Well, I am constantly trying to keep the morale of my organization up and I tell all the Deputies, do not -- don't do your job because someone else refuses to do his or her job and that's what we have right now.

That meeting with Gascon, that presser, he had all of his woke DA's from around the nation there, but not a single DA from Los Angeles County, not a single victim of crime. Nobody here locally was going to tell him, hey, great job, boss. Thanks for what you're doing -- not a single one -- because it has been an absolute failure on all counts from the DA.

They are in disarray. They are leaving by the -- you know, by the droves from the organization and he is trying to replace the DA's with public defenders and the whole crowd is against law enforcement to begin with.

CARLSON: That's just one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time, but the fact that you are still Sheriff suggests maybe it will change. I hope it will.

Sheriff, thank you very much.

VILLANUEVA: You've got it.

CARLSON: So, if you're only listening with one ear, you may have come to the conclusion after hearing a lot of people yell about it that Julian Assange somehow hacked Pentagon computers and stole secret information from the U.S. government to hurt our country. That's actually not true.

Julian Assange is a journalist who printed information that he got just like "The New York Times" does, but it embarrassed people who made a lot of unforgivable mistakes and so, they threw him in a maximum security prison where he has been for more than two years. He has been effectively incarcerated for much longer than that.

There has been a big development in that case. His brother, Julian Assange's brother, joins us straight ahead.

Plus, our documentary called "The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse" is amazing. We just screened it. It comes out Thursday. You get free access to it at tuckercarlson.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So, here is a fact worth remembering. If you want to think clearly, if you want to make wise decisions, you have to use clear and precise language. Here is another fact. If by contrast you want to brainwash and control an entire population, then the first thing you do is ban clear language and substitute it with propaganda. That is nonsensical chunks of words glued together for political effect.

In two sentences, that's our entire current political landscape. The left understands it, the right does not.

Consider the term "people of color." Now, that's a phrase that would have seemed mildly offensive 20 years ago, kind of an ugly term and yet now, it is mandatory to every level of our society. The question is, what does it mean exactly? What is a person of color?

Well, it is anyone who isn't white, which is to say is the overwhelming majority of the world's population. So you have to ask yourself, how exactly is this a meaningful category? What does a Polynesian tuna fisherman have in common with a Bolivian cocoa farmer or a foundry worker in Central China for that matter with Kamala Harris?

Well, not really anything, except that they're not white. That's a pretty ominous way to define a huge group of people if you think about it. In fact, it's a racist way to define a huge group of people.

Everyone who is white is not the same, and only an entitled white liberal could believe otherwise. No normal person could ever think that.

So let's stop using the phrase, let's not participate. Don't use the term "people of color." This is the crudest kind of propaganda designed to divide the country by race, so don't say it. What do you replace it with?

If you're white, what do you call people who don't look like you? Well, if they are citizens of this country, maybe you call them Americans because that's what they actually are.

So you probably heard the name Julian Assange and you've probably gathered from all the shouting about Julian Assange from our political class that he is some sort of international spy who hacked our computers and stole our secrets, but that's not at all what Julian Assange is or has ever been. He didn't hack anybody's computers. He is a journalist.

He reprinted facts that were deeply embarrassing to our political class, the Democratic National Committee, and to above all, the foreign policy establishment, which has an awful lot to be embarrassed of. And for doing that -- "The New York Times" has done things like that for a hundred years, no problem -- Julian Assange does it, well he has been incarcerated for almost a decade since the summer of 2012.

He is now for the last two odd years been in maximum security prison in the U.K. He could be coming to this country.

So what exactly is going to happen next with Julian Assange? And why is no one defending him?

Gabriel Shipton is Julian Assange's brother. He joins us tonight.

Mr. Shipton, thanks so much for coming on and by the way, when I say no one is defending him, of course many people are defending Julian Assange, but I mean, no one at the higher reaches of American journalism, for example. They are silent on this. Why do you think that is?

GABRIEL SHIPTON, JULIAN ASSANGE'S BROTHER: Well, I think, Tucker they've been able to ignore this case for a while. You know, it had been at arm's length in the U.K., but just last Friday, the U.K. High Court ruled that Julian could be extradited. They approved the extradition to the U.S.A., so the case is now coming here.

You know, Julian has a chance to appeal, but it was the Chief Justice of the U.K. who is the highest Judge in England and Wales who ordered the extradition, so it is very unlikely that an appeal will go ahead.

So I think that people here can -- the media -- the government can no longer ignore that this case is coming, you know, this criminalization of - - it's basically the Biden administration -- the Biden administration has criminalized telling the truth with this indictment, and it is even worse than that actually.

They have criminalized knowing about classified information. And so now, it is coming to this country, the extradition has been ordered by the High Court. I don't think people here can any longer ignore it.

CARLSON: You've got to ask yourself though and I don't think you live in the United States, but we're in the middle of a crime wave in which many thousands of people have been killed over and above last year's numbers, in which many thousands more have died of drug overdoses from drugs that are coming in.

So we have a lot of crime problems in the United States right now, but the Biden administration is very focused on getting its hands on your brother. Why is getting your brother more important than bringing say murderers to justice?

SHIPTON: Well, I think the people -- you know, the people who run our democracies now would like to rule them, you know with impunity. They don't want people to know what is being done in their name. They want to keep secrets. They want to -- they don't want the public to be informed basically. I think that's why.

And they're creating Julian -- they're making an example out of Julian. They are saying to people, if you tell the truth about our secrets, if you tell the truth about the security state or anything really, this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to be locked in a prison for the rest of your life. Your reputation will be destroyed. You'll be taken away from your family.

CARLSON: I have to ask you a final question, which is a depressing question, but I have to ask. If your brother is extradited to the United States, do you think he'll survive?

SHIPTON: Look, no, I don't. I mean, you know, we can look -- you know, look -- prisoners here can't be kept safe. Even the most high-profile prisoners like Jeffrey Epstein, he couldn't be kept safe in prison.

You know, so what hope will Julian have here? I think, you know if he gets extradited, he will most likely die.

CARLSON: You make this sound like Bolivia, which makes me ashamed, but you're probably not wrong.

Gabriel, thank you so much for coming on tonight. I appreciate it.

SHIPTON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So we've spent a lot of time covering the many District Attorneys, the prosecutors subverted by George Soros. One of them in Philadelphia has just absolutely refused to prosecute crimes and that's led to a record number of murders in what was a great city. Instead of acknowledging his responsibility for these murders, the DA just had a total emotional breakdown on camera we have the footage straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: I want to apologize for the depressing lineup tonight, looking through the roster, oh, it is a bit much.

We want to establish a record of what's going on in this country right now because we think it's worth knowing and remembering.

Here is something from Philadelphia, Larry Krasner is the DA in Philadelphia, that city has just set an all-time record for murders in a single year. That not surprising, that was the whole point. George Soros spent nearly $2 million to elect Larry Krasner and he did it because Krasner promised not to enforce the law in the city.

Recently, however, Krasner seemed to be embarrassed of all the murders he has caused and is claiming his city is safe. People noticed this was of course a lie, so Krasner melted down on camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KRASNER, PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: And the reality is that if you have lost someone in your family, or on your block or in your community, and you are aware of the terrible crisis of gun violence that we have in the City of Philadelphia, which is what I said, I did specifically say that we have a terrible crisis in gun violence in the City of Philadelphia, if you are aware of that and if you are feeling that, then it's hard.

And not acknowledging that pain and that suffering, a pain that disproportionately affects people of color and poor people, so for that, I am truly sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So he gets all these black people killed with these insane policies, but then when asked about it, he starts crying because it's really about him and his pain and his suffering because he is a narcissist like all of them.

Bill McSwain is not a narcissist. He's a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Pennsylvania. He enforced the law, up until recently. He joins us tonight. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. When you watch that, what's your reaction?

BILL MCSWAIN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT, PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Tucker, my first reaction is that Krasner's fake crocodile tears are not going to reduce the homicide rate. But really, this issue is so much bigger than Larry Krasner.

Krasner is just really a symbol of failed progressive policies and policies that, frankly, I think, are causing a breakdown of civil society. These are policies that celebrate lawlessness, they celebrate rioting and looting.

These are policies that replace personal responsibility with a culture of victimhood, and they are policies that replace hard work with government handouts.

And Tucker, that is not the America that I grew up in. Those are not the things that have made our country the envy of the world, and I think what we need is a return to traditional values, a return to our roots and that is going to start in the elections in 2022 and that's why I'm running for Pennsylvania Governor.

CARLSON: So I'm totally convinced there is going to be a massive and I hope constructive backlash against the moment that we're living in and I very much hope that you're part of it. It's interesting, I wish we had more time, but quickly you connected the decline in the value people place on work and the nobility of work to the violence. You sort of put it all together. You think they are connected then?

MCSWAIN: I think they absolutely are connected and it's a political ideology that the progressives are pushing. It's not based on logic. It's not based on facts. It's not based on looking at crime rates. It is an ideology that they are pushing.

And because of that, they don't react to facts. They don't react to the reality on the ground. It's all about pushing the ideology, and Krasner is just a symbol of it, of a larger disease and a disease that we need to get rid of in this country.

CARLSON: Yes, they're not building anything, only destroying it. Clearly, you've been in the middle of it, because you've learned the hard way what we've learned, which is they don't care. You can marshal all the facts you want. Here are the statistics. Okay.

It's just dogs barking to them. They don't care. Obviously.

Bill McSwain, great to see it tonight. Thank you.

MCSWAIN: Thank you, Tucker. Great to be with you.

CARLSON: So the Biden ministration is trying to push the country to war with Russia. Now, why? Will they want Ukraine to join NATO? Why is that a good idea exactly? And what is the point of NATO? Almost nobody is asking that question. But our guest next asked the question.

Apparently by the way, the elves are shipping out Christmas presents for all of us. Believe it or not, they're residing tonight in tuckercarlson.com. I know, it sounds unlikely, but that's the word. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So if we go to war with Russia, it'll be over NATO. The question of Ukraine joining NATO, which this administration and to be fair, previous administrations have pushed Ukraine to do. But what is NATO exactly? What's the point of NATO 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union? Almost nobody is asking that question.

But David Harsanyi is. He is a senior writer at "The National Review." He's just written a new book about Europe. He's one of the few people who thought about what NATO is, that organization our leaders tell us is vitally important. So, here is part of what he told us in a new interview for "Tucker Carlson Today."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID HARSANYI, SENIOR WRITER, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": I hate Europe also because my parents lived there and it was a terrible place. As a Jew, I hate Europe because it's always been a terrible place in most European countries at one point or another, and I hate them because they do things wrong and they've been a mess for hundreds of years, without us, right?

Until recently, and their peace is kept by us, it was instituted by us. And really, we still pay for it and we actually shouldn't be anymore, I think. But we still pay and they get to try to compete with us. The European Union is meant to compete with us economically, and yet we pay for their safety, right?

So I think that those are all problems.

CARLSON: Well, so I didn't even mean to go here, but since you brought it up, I can't resist. What -- we have this thing called NATO -- North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- it's another postwar institution whose purpose has kind of been lost to history. Why do we have NATO still?

HARSANYI: I don't know. It's a great question. I don't know why we have NATO. It really -- its purpose was to, you know, to stop the Soviets and to defend Western Europe from Soviets. But now, we have Germany giving up on nuclear energy and building pipelines to Russia. So why on earth would we pay for Germany's protection? It makes no sense to me.

You know, when Donald Trump brought it up, these cheapskates in Germany weren't paying their way and we got really upset about that, but even Barack Obama complained about that. It is a Cold War relic, I think NATO.

CARLSON: And it allows the European Union -- Western Europe -- an advantage over us economically, of course.

HARSANYI: Yes, we pay billions and they don't even defend themselves. I mean, they pay some, but I'm saying that they don't pay what they're supposed to, I think, three percent of GDP or whatever.

CARLSON: So the title of your book suggests it's the ideas that have come this way from Europe of the things that we should be worried about. What are those ideas?

HARSANYI: Moderna ideas.

CARLSON: Yes.

HARSANYI: Just giant bureaucracies overseeing everything we do. I just -- before we even talk about policy, I just want to say something about culture as well. I think that Americans are risk takers. In general, it's embedded in our culture from the very beginning, whereas Europeans are not.

So it's not as if we were like Europe, we'd be unfree completely or it would be like Nazi Germany or something, we just be would be an insipid place of docile people who just listen to the government all the time even though things seem to be changing a little bit in Europe as far as that goes with COVID.

But the policies that are problematic are the giant bureaucracies or the undermining of entrepreneurship, the death of faith, the way people treat life there, it just goes on and on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: David Harsanyi, that was a really interesting conversation. It is on "Tucker Carlson Today." It's on FOX Nation. You can watch it for free by the way if you go to tuckercarlson.com.

We're out of time tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night, 8:00 PM. We know what we are like, we won't repeat it.

Now, America's one and only, The Great Sean Hannity takes over the 9:00 PM.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: All right, and Tucker, thank you. You could say it. Sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

CARLSON: I'm going to let you say it, man.

HANNITY: You were running out of time. I got it in for you. That's what friends do.

CARLSON: Thank you.

HANNITY: All right, Tucker, thank you.

END

<Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.>
WILL CAIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: I have new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Check it out.

Good interviews, more takes, more hanging out with me.

But for now, I'll be back here tomorrow and you get to hang out with Tucker Carlson who starts right now.

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

So imagine this happened to you. You're sitting on an airplane, you're taxiing down the runway on a trip out of the country. All of a sudden, the plane stops and is surrounded by military police.

Armed men storm the aircraft and drag a man from his seat, so of course you assume at first that terrorism has just been averted. The passenger must have been trying to blow up the plane with a shoe bomb or something.

But no, that's not what this is. The man is not a terrorist. He is something worse than that. He violated COVID restrictions. He is a corona criminal.

So okay, you think, you're trying to be reasonable here.

A man with COVID should not be on a commercial aircraft spreading the virus to everyone else and of course that's fair, but here is the thing. This man doesn't have COVID. He was tested right before he got on the airplane and no trace the virus was found. So why in the world is he being hauled off the flight by armed men?

Well here is why.

Because the government has determined that based on his travel history, which they have been tracking, he might someday get COVID. Therefore, in the name of public health, he is being forcibly detained, not for something he has done, but for something that he potentially might do inadvertently, and for that this man is headed to a COVID camp known euphemistically as a quarantine hotel.

But he is not going to be a guest in this hotel. He will be a prisoner.

Now all of this just happened. In North Korea, you ask? No. In The Netherlands, one of the most quote "liberal countries" in the world, home of The Hague, the International Court of Justice. This just happened at the Amsterdam Airport. You may have been there.

Think twice about going back, or for that matter think twice about going to Canada, another supposedly quote "liberal country." Canadian citizens are now banned from traveling by airplane, train, or ship unless they can prove they have been injected with the shot that Justin Trudeau demands they take.

This is a big change.

For centuries, Canadians have had the right to travel within their own country. In fact, they had that right before Canada was even a nation. But they don't have it anymore.

If they try it, they'll end up like the guy at the Amsterdam Airport, in a prison disguised as a public health facility.

Unfortunately, we're not making any of this up, it's all entirely real. You can look it up. And similar crackdowns are underway around the world. So what we're watching here in real time is the death of democracy.

Now, the pretext for all of this is something called omicron. That's the new variant of the coronavirus. Omicron is incredibly dangerous, we're told. Dangerous enough to justify a total suspension of our ancient civil liberties for the first time in hundreds of years.

But here is the amazing thing, omicron appears to be virtually harmless. In the entire world, there is one recorded death from omicron. In the United States, not a single person has died of omicron, not one.

Did you know that? Have they told you that? Probably not.

You likely assumed it, because why wouldn't you, that omicron had killed many, many people, but, no, it hasn't. So this is the definition of a manufactured threat. Yet on the basis of this manufactured threat, one person dead globally -- on the basis of that, authoritarians posing as physicians are demanding that certain classes of Americans must be prohibited from traveling within their own country.

Watch this tape carefully, because someday we're going to look back on moments like this in horror and disbelief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: And I think what the administration missed a big opportunity this week to tell the American people that we're going to mandate vaccination for air travel in the United States.

We are requiring vaccination for people traveling into the United States so why aren't we mandating vaccination for people traveling within the United States?

DR. IRWIN REDLENER, PEDIATRICIAN: I don't think anyone should be allowed on an airplane domestic or international or train without being able to prove they've been vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so for some perspective here. The last man you just saw is called Irwin Redlener. He is not a virologist, he is a pediatrician and more importantly, he is a political activist. Most recently, he has been working as an adviser to Bill de Blasio, so he knows nothing about COVID, and yet there he is on television demanding Soviet-style internal passports in the United States.

Politicians are even worse. Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, of course, knows even less about COVID. He can barely write a complete sentence. He is literally a moron.

Swalwell's specialty is having unusual sex with Chinese spies. Yet, he too is calling for internal COVID passports within our borders. His fellow Democrats have already introduced legislation to make this Federal law.

That's a change.

But none of it is enough for Tony Fauci. Tony Fauci is demanding proof of injection before people can enter your home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: People should, if they invite people over their home, essentially ask and maybe require that people show evidence that they are vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So stand back, but ask yourself what are we watching here? You've got 79-year-old Joe Biden, 81-year-old Nancy Pelosi, and then Tony Fauci who turns 81 next week, they are all running our country with the help of 79-year-old Mitch McConnell.

This is the oldest government in American history, it's also the most powerful. So you can respect the elderly, we certainly do, as we often say, we mean it, but you can also understand that this is not normal. In fact, this is a sign of civilizational decline.

These are not leaders who have personal contact with young people regularly. They don't have kids at home, so they're not thinking about raising up and nurturing and protecting above all the next generation of Americans. Instead, they are thinking about themselves.

COVID is a threat to them because they are old. It's not an attack, it's just true. COVID is not a threat to young people, that's also true, but they don't care.

Nancy Pelosi feels a chill so the whole country is required to wear a sweater. Chairman Mao did something similar, as he aged, he crushed the young. Maybe there's a syndrome here, it is strangely recognizable.

But we know for a fact that in this country, there has never been a more selfish and short-sighted leadership class. They've destroyed the future for millions of young people. How does a child raised in a mask turn out at the age of 35? Well, Joe Biden doesn't care because he is not going to be here to find out.

But so far, the early signs are pretty scary, very actually.

According to a study from Brown University, quote: "Children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic." That's our future and we should be very concerned about it.

Meanwhile, suicide attempts by young girls have risen by more than 50 percent and yet, even that horrifying as it is, it is just a small indicator of what is actually happening. For every teen who tries to kill herself, a hundred others are living in agony.

A new report from the Surgeon General finds attempted suicides anxiety depression all increased markedly in young people in this country, but it's the addiction numbers that are the worst.

This year, for the first time ever, the number of overdose deaths in the United States passed a hundred thousand. That's up 30 percent from just last year. It is up more than a hundred percent since 2015. At this point, more Americans are dying from drug ODs than are dying from car crashes and gun deaths combined.

And as with suicide, an overdose is just the end point of a very long saga. An overdose is the final chapter in the world's saddest story of many years of suffering and torment, and our lunatic COVID policies have caused so much more of this.

What people like Tony Fauci will never acknowledge is that addiction is far worse than the coronavirus. Addiction doesn't just kill you, although of course it does, addiction degrades you and destroys the people around you, the very people you love the most.

Addiction is the worst thing. Addiction is a fate worse than death, it steals your soul. Any sane person would rather die of COVID tonight than spend the next decade addicted to drugs and alcohol. Ask anyone who has been.

But Pelosi and Biden and Fauci and McConnell don't care. They are completely uninterested in what happens to the young and addiction is a problem of the young.

Speaking of the young, last month, "The New York Post" published photographs of masked school children, little kids forced to eat on the ground outside in freezing temperatures. You're seeing them on your screen right now. What do you make of that?

Well, here is what Joe Biden's spokesman made, she was fine with it. She approved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe and I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that. Obviously, we want to get to a point where we are turning to a version of normalcy for everybody, right? Where you're not sending your kid's backpack with seven extra masks, right? Where you're not adding two hats so that they are warm outside for a snack.

There is no question that's the case, but we also think the most important thing should be safety, the safety of kids, keeping kids in school which the President is very focused on and some of these steps, creative steps that schools have taken have enabled that to be possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The safety of kids -- these people are the danger to children, not COVID. But no one is asking the obvious question. What kinds of adults, what kinds of citizens are we creating with masks and social isolation? Ever heard a politician wonder about that? No.

Instead, its full speed ahead in the other direction, damn the destruction it causes.

The State of Oregon is now working to make indoor mask mandates permanent for everyone, including kids. Quote: "Oregon working to put indoor mask rule in place indefinitely," reads a recent headline from ABC in Oregon.

Dr. Paul Cieslak is the Medical Director at the Oregon Health Authority. He explained the new plan this way which is to say he didn't explain it at all, quote: "Permanent means indefinite. It doesn't necessarily mean permanent." Paging Dr. Orwell.

This is lunacy. It is destructive, it is vicious, and it is not just happening in Oregon. In New York, politicians are saying the very same thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I don't want to go back ever again to that place where people couldn't go to their job safely, couldn't congregate, kids couldn't go to schools. That isolation had a devastating effect on the human condition and we're still dealing with the fallout today.

So to avoid that situation, I, today am announcing that we are enacting a statewide indoor mask mandate unless a business has a vaccination mandate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So an unelected low IQ governor of a failing state explains to you that in order to reduce social isolation, citizens are required to cover their faces, and no one laughs at her or even says a word.

You've got to wonder what America is going to look like in 20 years. Consider the economy that COVID restrictions have created. There are a lot more 70-year-old billionaires than there have ever been, but there are far fewer 25-year-olds who have any hope of ever owning anything in America.

Why do you think young people love Bitcoin? Ever wondered? Well it's because they know they're excluded from the country's traditional systems of wealth creation. America's economy is closed to them. The latter has been pulled up and they know it.

Our elderly political class should care about this, they don't care at all. Here is 68-year-old Paul Krugman explaining on Twitter that growing inflation is not a big deal, quote: "Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?" End quote.

Well, yes, Paul there are in fact quite a few good reasons to think that, like look around, Dumbo. But he hasn't and he won't.

Keep in mind, this man once won the Nobel Prize for Economics. So we're mocking Paul Krugman, but imagine what he sounds like to young people. Imagine how this sounds to a 30-year-old, someone still living with roommates, someone who is too poor to get married, too poor to have kids, too poor to start an adult life. There are many young Americans in that position.

If you wanted to set the stage for a revolution, this is exactly the kind of way you would talk and it's exactly the kind of society you would create. It is deeply unwise.

It is also increasingly very cruel. Our reaction to COVID has brought the worst of so many, the best in some, but the worst in many and that is sad to see.

Here is 61-year-old David Frum of "The Atlantic" Magazine, a Canadian who helped plan the Iraq War calling for killing unvaccinated Americans, quote: "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last." Quietly triage? What does that mean? It means let them die. Murder them.

This is evil. David Frum is an evil man. He has long encouraged violence against the weak. That's the sum of his career.

But in this case, suddenly he is hardly alone. Many in Washington, New York, or Los Angeles are talking like this now. Now, these are educated people. They are perfectly aware of the science. The science is publicly available. It's on the internet.

At this point, it is firmly established scientifically that the so-called unvaccinated pose no threat whatsoever to the vaccinated or anyone else for that matter. Period.

In fact, the millions who have recovered from COVID have greater protection against the virus, getting it, spreading it than those who rely on chemically induced antibodies alone. That's the science.

But the science no longer matters, obviously. We've moved past the science to a new stage of this war and it's not about coronavirus. It's about our country, it's about our democracy, and above all, it's about our future.

Candace Owens is the host of "Candace," she joins us now.

Candace, I don't want to get personal, but you are a new mother. I think that is widely known and you look at this world that people in their eighties and I love old people, I mean no disrespect, but our leaders are the oldest they've ever been. They are creating a world that is actively hostile to children.

Does that how -- do you feel about that?

CANDACE OWENS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I want to be very clear here that these leaders that we're talking about, they aren't stupid, they know that these policies don't work and they know that they're putting in place these policies not because they want to beat a virus back, they're actually not stupid, they're evil.

They understand that they're trying to usher in a new era in America, which will give these individuals that are their elite political class unlimited power for a very long time. That's what we're seeing ushered in. Right now, an authoritarian regime in a country that was once free, this country is no longer free by any metric that you would use to describe freedom. This is not normal behavior.

Children having -- parents having to fight to have their children go to school and be allowed to breathe out in the open is not a normal conversation for you and I to be having. We shouldn't be talking about what you and I are talking about right now in any normal scenario, and what's worse about this, we're talking about masking children, you say why?

We know that they have a virtual zero percent chance of dying from coronavirus. That's a fact of COVID-19, a virtual zero percent chance and yet we're seeing them have to be masked why? Because masking someone is a form of dehumanization and we need talk about this more, right?

CARLSON: Yes.

OWENS: The psychology of dehumanization is what is happening. Now, why do you want to dehumanize a child and have them look around and not perceive themselves as different or as individuals? Because that is advantageous for a regime that wants authoritarian power.

You want them to view themselves like cattle. We all do the same thing. You're not an individual. You shouldn't have any aspirations. That's why they're doing this and this is why this is dangerous by the way and why I was so frustrated with people on the left -- I mean, people on the right that I respect so much and people on the left in lockstep being fearful and beginning to saying yes, it's okay for a little bit -- for the government to lock us down.

The reason why I'm so frustrated is because the government never gives you powers that you give it freely. It just doesn't work like that. We know this.

The Patriot Act -- have we not learned our lesson -- that temporary Patriot Act that we still have in place and what is also dangerous is, I want to say this as the last point, Tucker, is that people will lose the memory of freedom in this country.

It happened for my generation. It is unimaginable to me that there was once upon a time where my dad and mom got onto planes and didn't have to go through T.S.A., right?

CARLSON: That's right.

OWENS: That memory of that sort of freedom to travel, I don't remember it at all, right?

Now, you have children that are not going to remember what it's like to walk into a store and not have to present a vaccine ID. They're not going to remember what it was like to be able to walk without having to cover your face breathing.

America is now beginning to look exactly like China, and that's exactly what these people in power want.

CARLSON: Our parents could raise a family on one income and you could raise your own kids if you wanted. You didn't have to hire people who don't speak English to do it. It was good. We should we should get back there.

I appreciate your perspective as I always do. Candace, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

OWENS: Thank you.

CARLSON: FOX News Alert tonight. Illegal immigrants flooding across our Southern border at this hour. Typically the numbers go down sometime around Christmas. That is not the case tonight.

Bill Melugin is there on the border with an update. People arrested for crossing illegally, up 235 percent since October. Bill Melugin, great to see you tonight.

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, good to see you.

It was an incredibly tragic weekend down here at the border. A Texas mother and her daughter were just going about their day driving when they were slammed into by an accused human smuggler and tragically, that mom and daughter both lost their lives. We'll get right to the video with this horrible story.

Take a look at this. This was Saturday down in the Rio Grande Valley, Mission, Texas. Our drone was over the aftermath. Texas DPS telling us that a human smuggler with his car loaded up with illegal immigrants was fleeing from law enforcement when he went right through an intersection and slammed right into a vehicle with that local mother and daughter. Tragically, neither of them survived. They were both locals from Mission, Texas.

You can see some of the photos from the crash showing just how violent it was. One of the migrants was actually launched through the windshield of the smuggler's vehicle. That smuggler was arrested as were six other illegal immigrants.

The victims have not been identified yet, but sources tell me they are a 59-year-old mother and a 22-year-old daughter. The suspect has not been arraigned yet. He is still in the hospital with injuries from that crash.

Also from the Rio Grande Valley over the weekend, take a look at this remarkable video. Our drone team shot what you're looking at here is we saw a raft dropping off 11 illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas. These are the runners.

These are not asylum seekers. These are not people looking to give themselves up. These guys are dressed in all black or camo and they are actively trying to get away from law enforcement. You can see them running off into the brush.

It is unclear if they were ever caught and Border Patrol wasn't there when we were filming this. They did show up later and we actually saw a man on the Mexican side of the river using a rope to pull that raft right back into Mexico, undoubtedly planning to use it again for future smuggling.

One last thing we want to show you, where we are here in Del Rio sector, take a look at this video. This was late last night here in Kinney County. We embedded with an elite team of Texas DPS Troopers working the private ranches out here, it is about 10 miles inland from the Rio Grande and DPS are the only ones out here. There is no Border Patrol.

And what they are hunting for are illegal immigrant runners. Again, the people who do not want to turn themselves in and are trying to creep through in the middle of the night and are trying to get further into Texas.

Just while we were with this Texas DPS brush team, in just a matter of hours, they were catching dozens of people, mostly single adult men obviously who don't want to be caught and the thing Texas is doing is with those single men, they're not handing them over to Border Patrol. They are arresting them and taking them all to jail for criminal trespassing.

And back out here live, you mentioned the numbers, Del Rio sector where we are, extremely busy. Just last weekend alone, Border Patrol reporting they picked up more than 3,500 illegal immigrants from 39 different countries recently including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Tucker, they are coming in from all over the world. We'll send it back to you.

CARLSON: Tajikistan, yes, that's healthy. Not out of control or anything.

Bill Melugin, you really have done better reporting than anyone on this, I appreciate it. Thank you.

MELUGIN: Thanks.

CARLSON: So all over the country, you've seen District Attorneys, people's job it is to enforce the laws that legislatures pass make certain laws can't be enforced or the police not to enforce them, but there is one Sheriff in of all places, Los Angeles County, who has decided to stand a thwart this trend.

Maybe there's hope for Los Angeles. This Sheriff has a message for those DA's, he joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Under pressure, you really learn about people for good and bad, people you thought were smart like David Frum wind up on Twitter calling for killing people if they haven't been vaccinated, that's on the downside. On the upside, you learn that the Sheriff of Los Angeles County -- Los Angeles a place that people make fun of for being so crazy and out of touch -- winds up being one of the most reasonable people in the entire State.

Alex Villanueva is the Sheriff of LA County is in favor of enforcing the law, which is his job. That has profoundly upset the local Soros backed District Attorney, George Gascon. So Gascon recently attacked him for saying that criminals should be prosecuted. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE GASCON, LA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it, okay? And that's not a pig in terms of using the terms of law enforcement, it is to people that often act in ways that I believe that are not consistent with the decorum that certainly a public official should engage in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So instead of addressing the actual problems in Los Angeles, you see George Gascon attacking the Sheriff. What he doesn't want to talk about is what has happened to Los Angeles.

In his first year as District Attorney, LA has had a record number of car thefts, murders were up 12 percent. That seems notable. A lot of people died.

The man he was attacking by the way as we said is LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and he joins us tonight to respond.

Sheriff, thanks so much for coming on. So you're a pig says George Gascon. How do you respond to that?

SHERIFF ALEX VILLANUEVA, LA COUNTY: Well, you know what I'm not going to get into the personal attacks. I'm going to focus on performance.

If you can't do the job, you need to get out of office. Plain and simple.

Roughly 12,000 cases in his first year in office that he has not prosecuted that we made the arrest, did the investigation, established all the elements of the crime, presented it, and they decide, well our special order says we're just not going to prosecute it at all, so that's 12,000 times that the crook walked away scot-free.

What kind of message is that selling to the criminal community or sending to the criminal community right now? And actually, your 12 percent -- no, for LA County, our jurisdiction, homicides are up over 40 percent this year alone and that number is just astonishing. Grand theft auto is up over 25 percent.

So the numbers keep climbing and all he is doing again, like I said, he continues down a failed path.

CARLSON: So if you're -- I mean, those are amazing numbers, thank you for correcting that. If you're a Sheriff's Deputy, you're a police officer in the city and you know, you joined at not very high pay and some great risk in order to make the society better, enforce the law, how frustrating is it to have a prosecutor who won't let you do it?

VILLANUEVA: Well, I am constantly trying to keep the morale of my organization up and I tell all the Deputies, do not -- don't do your job because someone else refuses to do his or her job and that's what we have right now.

That meeting with Gascon, that presser, he had all of his woke DA's from around the nation there, but not a single DA from Los Angeles County, not a single victim of crime. Nobody here locally was going to tell him, hey, great job, boss. Thanks for what you're doing -- not a single one -- because it has been an absolute failure on all counts from the DA.

They are in disarray. They are leaving by the -- you know, by the droves from the organization and he is trying to replace the DA's with public defenders and the whole crowd is against law enforcement to begin with.

CARLSON: That's just one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time, but the fact that you are still Sheriff suggests maybe it will change. I hope it will.

Sheriff, thank you very much.

VILLANUEVA: You've got it.

CARLSON: So, if you're only listening with one ear, you may have come to the conclusion after hearing a lot of people yell about it that Julian Assange somehow hacked Pentagon computers and stole secret information from the U.S. government to hurt our country. That's actually not true.

Julian Assange is a journalist who printed information that he got just like "The New York Times" does, but it embarrassed people who made a lot of unforgivable mistakes and so, they threw him in a maximum security prison where he has been for more than two years. He has been effectively incarcerated for much longer than that.

There has been a big development in that case. His brother, Julian Assange's brother, joins us straight ahead.

Plus, our documentary called "The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse" is amazing. We just screened it. It comes out Thursday. You get free access to it at tuckercarlson.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So, here is a fact worth remembering. If you want to think clearly, if you want to make wise decisions, you have to use clear and precise language. Here is another fact. If by contrast you want to brainwash and control an entire population, then the first thing you do is ban clear language and substitute it with propaganda. That is nonsensical chunks of words glued together for political effect.

In two sentences, that's our entire current political landscape. The left understands it, the right does not.

Consider the term "people of color." Now, that's a phrase that would have seemed mildly offensive 20 years ago, kind of an ugly term and yet now, it is mandatory to every level of our society. The question is, what does it mean exactly? What is a person of color?

Well, it is anyone who isn't white, which is to say is the overwhelming majority of the world's population. So you have to ask yourself, how exactly is this a meaningful category? What does a Polynesian tuna fisherman have in common with a Bolivian cocoa farmer or a foundry worker in Central China for that matter with Kamala Harris?

Well, not really anything, except that they're not white. That's a pretty ominous way to define a huge group of people if you think about it. In fact, it's a racist way to define a huge group of people.

Everyone who is white is not the same, and only an entitled white liberal could believe otherwise. No normal person could ever think that.

So let's stop using the phrase, let's not participate. Don't use the term "people of color." This is the crudest kind of propaganda designed to divide the country by race, so don't say it. What do you replace it with?

If you're white, what do you call people who don't look like you? Well, if they are citizens of this country, maybe you call them Americans because that's what they actually are.

So you probably heard the name Julian Assange and you've probably gathered from all the shouting about Julian Assange from our political class that he is some sort of international spy who hacked our computers and stole our secrets, but that's not at all what Julian Assange is or has ever been. He didn't hack anybody's computers. He is a journalist.

He reprinted facts that were deeply embarrassing to our political class, the Democratic National Committee, and to above all, the foreign policy establishment, which has an awful lot to be embarrassed of. And for doing that -- "The New York Times" has done things like that for a hundred years, no problem -- Julian Assange does it, well he has been incarcerated for almost a decade since the summer of 2012.

He is now for the last two odd years been in maximum security prison in the U.K. He could be coming to this country.

So what exactly is going to happen next with Julian Assange? And why is no one defending him?

Gabriel Shipton is Julian Assange's brother. He joins us tonight.

Mr. Shipton, thanks so much for coming on and by the way, when I say no one is defending him, of course many people are defending Julian Assange, but I mean, no one at the higher reaches of American journalism, for example. They are silent on this. Why do you think that is?

GABRIEL SHIPTON, JULIAN ASSANGE'S BROTHER: Well, I think, Tucker they've been able to ignore this case for a while. You know, it had been at arm's length in the U.K., but just last Friday, the U.K. High Court ruled that Julian could be extradited. They approved the extradition to the U.S.A., so the case is now coming here.

You know, Julian has a chance to appeal, but it was the Chief Justice of the U.K. who is the highest Judge in England and Wales who ordered the extradition, so it is very unlikely that an appeal will go ahead.

So I think that people here can -- the media -- the government can no longer ignore that this case is coming, you know, this criminalization of - - it's basically the Biden administration -- the Biden administration has criminalized telling the truth with this indictment, and it is even worse than that actually.

They have criminalized knowing about classified information. And so now, it is coming to this country, the extradition has been ordered by the High Court. I don't think people here can any longer ignore it.

CARLSON: You've got to ask yourself though and I don't think you live in the United States, but we're in the middle of a crime wave in which many thousands of people have been killed over and above last year's numbers, in which many thousands more have died of drug overdoses from drugs that are coming in.

So we have a lot of crime problems in the United States right now, but the Biden administration is very focused on getting its hands on your brother. Why is getting your brother more important than bringing say murderers to justice?

SHIPTON: Well, I think the people -- you know, the people who run our democracies now would like to rule them, you know with impunity. They don't want people to know what is being done in their name. They want to keep secrets. They want to -- they don't want the public to be informed basically. I think that's why.

And they're creating Julian -- they're making an example out of Julian. They are saying to people, if you tell the truth about our secrets, if you tell the truth about the security state or anything really, this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to be locked in a prison for the rest of your life. Your reputation will be destroyed. You'll be taken away from your family.

CARLSON: I have to ask you a final question, which is a depressing question, but I have to ask. If your brother is extradited to the United States, do you think he'll survive?

SHIPTON: Look, no, I don't. I mean, you know, we can look -- you know, look -- prisoners here can't be kept safe. Even the most high-profile prisoners like Jeffrey Epstein, he couldn't be kept safe in prison.

You know, so what hope will Julian have here? I think, you know if he gets extradited, he will most likely die.

CARLSON: You make this sound like Bolivia, which makes me ashamed, but you're probably not wrong.

Gabriel, thank you so much for coming on tonight. I appreciate it.

SHIPTON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So we've spent a lot of time covering the many District Attorneys, the prosecutors subverted by George Soros. One of them in Philadelphia has just absolutely refused to prosecute crimes and that's led to a record number of murders in what was a great city. Instead of acknowledging his responsibility for these murders, the DA just had a total emotional breakdown on camera we have the footage straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: I want to apologize for the depressing lineup tonight, looking through the roster, oh, it is a bit much.

We want to establish a record of what's going on in this country right now because we think it's worth knowing and remembering.

Here is something from Philadelphia, Larry Krasner is the DA in Philadelphia, that city has just set an all-time record for murders in a single year. That not surprising, that was the whole point. George Soros spent nearly $2 million to elect Larry Krasner and he did it because Krasner promised not to enforce the law in the city.

Recently, however, Krasner seemed to be embarrassed of all the murders he has caused and is claiming his city is safe. People noticed this was of course a lie, so Krasner melted down on camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KRASNER, PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: And the reality is that if you have lost someone in your family, or on your block or in your community, and you are aware of the terrible crisis of gun violence that we have in the City of Philadelphia, which is what I said, I did specifically say that we have a terrible crisis in gun violence in the City of Philadelphia, if you are aware of that and if you are feeling that, then it's hard.

And not acknowledging that pain and that suffering, a pain that disproportionately affects people of color and poor people, so for that, I am truly sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So he gets all these black people killed with these insane policies, but then when asked about it, he starts crying because it's really about him and his pain and his suffering because he is a narcissist like all of them.

Bill McSwain is not a narcissist. He's a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Pennsylvania. He enforced the law, up until recently. He joins us tonight. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. When you watch that, what's your reaction?

BILL MCSWAIN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT, PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Tucker, my first reaction is that Krasner's fake crocodile tears are not going to reduce the homicide rate. But really, this issue is so much bigger than Larry Krasner.

Krasner is just really a symbol of failed progressive policies and policies that, frankly, I think, are causing a breakdown of civil society. These are policies that celebrate lawlessness, they celebrate rioting and looting.

These are policies that replace personal responsibility with a culture of victimhood, and they are policies that replace hard work with government handouts.

And Tucker, that is not the America that I grew up in. Those are not the things that have made our country the envy of the world, and I think what we need is a return to traditional values, a return to our roots and that is going to start in the elections in 2022 and that's why I'm running for Pennsylvania Governor.

CARLSON: So I'm totally convinced there is going to be a massive and I hope constructive backlash against the moment that we're living in and I very much hope that you're part of it. It's interesting, I wish we had more time, but quickly you connected the decline in the value people place on work and the nobility of work to the violence. You sort of put it all together. You think they are connected then?

MCSWAIN: I think they absolutely are connected and it's a political ideology that the progressives are pushing. It's not based on logic. It's not based on facts. It's not based on looking at crime rates. It is an ideology that they are pushing.

And because of that, they don't react to facts. They don't react to the reality on the ground. It's all about pushing the ideology, and Krasner is just a symbol of it, of a larger disease and a disease that we need to get rid of in this country.

CARLSON: Yes, they're not building anything, only destroying it. Clearly, you've been in the middle of it, because you've learned the hard way what we've learned, which is they don't care. You can marshal all the facts you want. Here are the statistics. Okay.

It's just dogs barking to them. They don't care. Obviously.

Bill McSwain, great to see it tonight. Thank you.

MCSWAIN: Thank you, Tucker. Great to be with you.

CARLSON: So the Biden ministration is trying to push the country to war with Russia. Now, why? Will they want Ukraine to join NATO? Why is that a good idea exactly? And what is the point of NATO? Almost nobody is asking that question. But our guest next asked the question.

Apparently by the way, the elves are shipping out Christmas presents for all of us. Believe it or not, they're residing tonight in tuckercarlson.com. I know, it sounds unlikely, but that's the word. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So if we go to war with Russia, it'll be over NATO. The question of Ukraine joining NATO, which this administration and to be fair, previous administrations have pushed Ukraine to do. But what is NATO exactly? What's the point of NATO 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union? Almost nobody is asking that question.

But David Harsanyi is. He is a senior writer at "The National Review." He's just written a new book about Europe. He's one of the few people who thought about what NATO is, that organization our leaders tell us is vitally important. So, here is part of what he told us in a new interview for "Tucker Carlson Today."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID HARSANYI, SENIOR WRITER, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": I hate Europe also because my parents lived there and it was a terrible place. As a Jew, I hate Europe because it's always been a terrible place in most European countries at one point or another, and I hate them because they do things wrong and they've been a mess for hundreds of years, without us, right?

Until recently, and their peace is kept by us, it was instituted by us. And really, we still pay for it and we actually shouldn't be anymore, I think. But we still pay and they get to try to compete with us. The European Union is meant to compete with us economically, and yet we pay for their safety, right?

So I think that those are all problems.

CARLSON: Well, so I didn't even mean to go here, but since you brought it up, I can't resist. What -- we have this thing called NATO -- North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- it's another postwar institution whose purpose has kind of been lost to history. Why do we have NATO still?

HARSANYI: I don't know. It's a great question. I don't know why we have NATO. It really -- its purpose was to, you know, to stop the Soviets and to defend Western Europe from Soviets. But now, we have Germany giving up on nuclear energy and building pipelines to Russia. So why on earth would we pay for Germany's protection? It makes no sense to me.

You know, when Donald Trump brought it up, these cheapskates in Germany weren't paying their way and we got really upset about that, but even Barack Obama complained about that. It is a Cold War relic, I think NATO.

CARLSON: And it allows the European Union -- Western Europe -- an advantage over us economically, of course.

HARSANYI: Yes, we pay billions and they don't even defend themselves. I mean, they pay some, but I'm saying that they don't pay what they're supposed to, I think, three percent of GDP or whatever.

CARLSON: So the title of your book suggests it's the ideas that have come this way from Europe of the things that we should be worried about. What are those ideas?

HARSANYI: Moderna ideas.

CARLSON: Yes.

HARSANYI: Just giant bureaucracies overseeing everything we do. I just -- before we even talk about policy, I just want to say something about culture as well. I think that Americans are risk takers. In general, it's embedded in our culture from the very beginning, whereas Europeans are not.

So it's not as if we were like Europe, we'd be unfree completely or it would be like Nazi Germany or something, we just be would be an insipid place of docile people who just listen to the government all the time even though things seem to be changing a little bit in Europe as far as that goes with COVID.

But the policies that are problematic are the giant bureaucracies or the undermining of entrepreneurship, the death of faith, the way people treat life there, it just goes on and on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: David Harsanyi, that was a really interesting conversation. It is on "Tucker Carlson Today." It's on FOX Nation. You can watch it for free by the way if you go to tuckercarlson.com.

We're out of time tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night, 8:00 PM. We know what we are like, we won't repeat it.

Now, America's one and only, The Great Sean Hannity takes over the 9:00 PM.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: All right, and Tucker, thank you. You could say it. Sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.

CARLSON: I'm going to let you say it, man.

HANNITY: You were running out of time. I got it in for you. That's what friends do.

CARLSON: Thank you.

HANNITY: All right, Tucker, thank you.

Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.