Tucker: What are we getting for $1.2 trillion?
Tucker Carlson investigates what Democrats consider as 'infrastructure.'
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 27, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening, and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
Think back. You may remember Joe Biden's Infrastructure Bill this fall. That bill emerged from Congress in November with a price tag of $1.2 trillion. That is so many zeros, it's hard to imagine.
How much is it? Well, it's more than the entire GDP of the nation of Mexico. One of the world's biggest oil producers, by the way, so that's a ton of money. So for a bill that size, you'd expect well, big results. You'd certainly want better roads than they've got in Mexico, so are we getting those? What are we getting exactly from that bill?
Well, today the Transportation Department, which is now run by Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, finally told us the answer. Effective immediately, we learned this country will undergo a quote, "paradigm shift" in the way we think about infrastructure.
Now hold on a minute. As you've probably noticed by this point, the moment paradigms start shifting, you can be certain a whole lot of people are about to get shafted. Nothing personal, it's just the nature of paradigms. They don't just shift, they tend to topple over and crush innocent bystanders.
And this paradigm, of course, is no different. According to the new paradigm we learned about today, infrastructure is no longer about roads and bridges and airports and train stations and things you might actually use in the course of your life. We could fix those things. But why bother?
Mayor Pete has better ideas. Here is Mr. Douglas Emhoff, the profoundly unemployed husband of Kamala Harris to explain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUGLAS EMHOFF, HUSBAND OF VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So when we talk about transportation, we're not just talking about buildings and roads and bridges, all that important stuff as well, but we are talking about the safety of our children, the safety of our families.
And this is, as you know, something that President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary Buttigieg, and this entire Department of Transportation, this administration, deeply understands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "Deeply understand." I mean, when they kind of grin and to go like that, you know, you're about to get screwed. We're not just talking about things you care about anymore, Mr. and Mrs. America, those stupid buildings and roads and bridges, things that you can touch, now, we're talking about bigger things now. We're talking about vast structural problems, problems so big that unemployed Doug Emhoff can't even really describe them, much less solve them.
Things like, quote, "The safety of our children and our families." It turns out big problems are a lot safer to talk about in speeches because you can't actually do anything about them, so there are no expectations.
Roads, and bridges, and buildings are very different from that, they need concrete and asphalt and rebar, stuff that's expensive and hard to do. And that may be why our buildings, roads and bridges are falling apart.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which keeps track of these things, there are more than 617,000 bridges in this country that as of tonight, more than 46,000 of those bridges are considered, quote "structurally deficient." That means they're in terrible shape, kind of a big deal for a bridge.
As for our roads, fully 43 percent of all public roadways in this country are quote, "in poor or mediocre condition." In other words, we actually are Mexico, though a lot richer.
So, what are we going to do about this? What is the $1.2 trillion plan going to do for our crumbling infrastructure? Well, Pete Buttigieg has a plan. Here it is.
More speed cameras. According to the Associated Press, Buttigieg would like to, quote, " ... promote greater use of speed cameras, which the Department says could provide more equitable enforcement than police traffic stops." Got that.
So because of equity, you're about to get a lot more speeding tickets from robots. See how that works? Shut up, racist, pay the fine. The government does need the money for infrastructure even after $1.2 trillion.
A recent "New York Times" piece put it this way, quote: "When California voters approved a bond in 2008 for a high speed rail system from LA to San Francisco, the project was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020. That job is now projected to finish in 2033 for $100 billion, though those estimates are dated and there is an $80 billion funding gap."
So infrastructure is expensive. Actually, no one really knows how much infrastructure costs because infrastructure never gets completed. There are still working trains in the State of California. Unfortunately, they're now getting robbed just like they were in the 1870s, return to the future.
Union Pacific is now contemplating abandoning the state after more than 150 years. Kind of a big deal. What does Mayor Pete think of this? He is the Transportation Secretary. He hasn't said a single word about it. Of course, it has nothing to do with equity, so it's beneath his radar.
By the way, it's not just trains that are in trouble in this country. We're also short 80,000 truck drivers, and that could be part of the reason that the shelves at your local grocery store are getting bare, and it's not just trucks either.
By next year, airlines are expected to be short more than 10,000 pilots. And that's why between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, airlines canceled more than 10,000 flights. That was this year. Good luck getting to Florida next year.
Now, there are other causes of the cancellations, none of which Mayor Pete is doing anything to fix. He's for vax mandates, of course. That was a huge cause of the shortage this year, and then there are others.
So the President of Emirates, probably the best airline in the world, a man called Tim Clark recently slammed Mayor Pete and the administration for the disastrous rollout of 5G technology in your airports. That led to a total suspension of Emirates flights.
Clark said it was quote, "one of the most delinquent utterly irresponsible decisions" he's ever seen in his long career.
FOX's Casey Stegall just covered the collapse of the transportation network in this nation. Here's an overview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY STEGALL, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): More chaos for folks trying to get home after the holidays.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've been here since last night. Yes, so they canceled and now I'm getting a flight with United hopefully leaving this afternoon.
STEGALL (voice over): Airlines canceling thousands of flights on Tuesday and delaying thousands more, leaving anxious passengers stranded and frustrated at airports around the country.
The widespread groundings and delays due to a combination of winter weather and COVID-19 staffing disruptions on flights and also around airports.
The winter weather not only affecting air travel, drivers also facing traffic snags due to snow and icy roads. Hundreds stranded overnight on a 50-mile stretch of I-95 near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: Well, things were bad in Virginia, but it is not just Virginia. Officials in Connecticut recently reported 285 car crashes because of quote, "icy weather." Oh, forgot to salt the roads.
Same in New York State, Westchester County, people killed, forgot to salt the roads. The Feds didn't salt the roads, people died. What does that have to do with equity? So here you have roads you can't drive on, airports that don't work, planes that don't take off and trains that are getting robbed. These are not small things.
When your transportation network falls apart in a continental country, things grinds to a halt. Everything depends upon moving objects and people from one place to another because it's a huge country.
So if you have problems like these, which are central to our economy and the way we live to the country itself, it might be a good idea to hire a competent Transportation Secretary, but that's not what the Biden administration did. They had a more progressive idea. Joe Biden hired a kid by contrast, who had never had a real job outside McKinsey, and no grounding of any kind in physical reality.
We know this because he was the Mayor of South Bend. So, what's the infrastructure life like in South Bend? Well, when Pete Buttigieg was mayor, the city had -- and we are quoting now "the worst pothole situation in the state," according to the local paper. Huge potholes, so big that Mayor Pete, not a tall man could have disappeared into one. You can picture his little legs up in the air.
Eight years as mayor, he was never able to fix it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: With just enough resources to replenish the paving of every lane mile a street in our city, only 100 years or so. I faced a constant battle with that natural enemy of all mayors, the pothole.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, here is a guy, who literally couldn't fix the potholes in South Bend, Indiana, is now the Transportation Secretary, but he breast feeds, so it's equity.
It's unbelievable. Pretty amusing.
This is a guy wouldn't know a car transmission from a bridge abutment. What are the chances he can run an espresso machine? The mindset is the problem here, and it's not just Mayor Pete. He is easy to mock because he is a ludicrous figure. But it's all the people like him who believe that our economy is based on social media apps and H.R. Departments.
People like that really believe that by social engineering, you can make the trains run on time, and you can create a robust economy because they're morons.
For example last week, Mayor Pete explained that the number one priority of the Transportation Department in the middle of a massive shortage of transportation workers, trains you're getting robbed, planes that won't take off -- is equity.
So you know what we need to do, we need to work extra hard to screen out anybody who might be working in our transportation industry, who happens to have the wrong skin color. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUTTIGIEG: You look at something like the investment in transit, you know, it's Americans of color, communities of color who are most likely to depend on that. You look at the jobs we're going to create. And yes, they have been traditionally white and male, but it doesn't have to stay that way.
We are working with a lot of focus at the direction of the President to make sure that everything from the contracting opportunities for small business, to the labor opportunities for workers, fixing the bridges, installing the electric vehicle charging stations are more likely to be workers of color, are more likely to be women.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So that's kind of the problem, and that has been the problem with our trains and planes and automobiles for a century now, too many white people in them. Got a lot of white airline pilots, that's the problem. Mayor Pete just said that. It doesn't have to be this way. That's equity.
So this is where your $1.2 trillion is going. So, it is, I mean, not to get technical, an illegal campaign to hire workers on the basis of their skin color. So Mayor Pete, you may have noticed is the wrong skin color, and as long as you want to diversify and "equify" transportation, why is he running the department?
Because he is too important to give up his job to an unqualified Haitian migrant. That's because Mayor Pete can see the big picture. He understands every transportation decision is in fact, something so much bigger.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUTTIGIEG: Let me take 50 seconds to walk through our top priorities, and then let's just jump in the conversation.
So our focus is on safety, of course, that's why our department exists. It is on economic development and the ways of good infrastructure to create jobs. It is on equity, in the knowledge that we can either do harm or do enormous good in terms of who gets the opportunities we create and where they go.
It is about climate, recognizing that every transportation decision is a climate decision whether we acknowledge that or not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: And we couldn't understand everything he said, because for some reason, he had a freakin' mask on his face, maybe he was robbing a train, not clear. We've got a reporter getting to the bottom of that.
But we think we heard him say that his job is to work on climate. It's funny. When the country applauded $1.2 trillion going to fixing the roads, bridges and buildings, a lot of us were dumb enough to think that's what might actually happen.
Brian Kilmeade is co-host of "FOX and Friends." We're always grateful to have him on our show. Brian Kilmeade, great to see you.
So we're not going to fix any of the things that need to be fixed. The George Washington Bridge which you probably use in New York seems to be kind of teetering, I noticed, not going to fix it. What is this?
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, it's kind of interesting. I thought we got away from the black roads and white roads, and white water fountains and black water fountains, and black bathrooms and white bathrooms, but now, we are down to that again.
We are going to fix the roads for minorities. We're going to make sure the roads are equal. Unbelievable the way this administration sees race and green climate in just about everything, it is almost comical if we weren't forced to live in it.
CARLSON: Yes.
KILMEADE: And a couple of things. He should not be Secretary of Transportation. One of my affiliates on the radio show is from South Bend, and they said this guy wasn't handling everything. He was having traffic going the wrong direction. One time he had a Town Hall, he got yelled at, they had to shut it down.
On top of that, today, he promised next week to announce a plan to get down to zero traffic deaths. I'm an optimist, but I don't believe there is any human being they can get us down to zero traffic deaths.
If so, I could take out my seatbelts and empty my dashboard of the airbag. I'm going to have to look into that. But if you think about the whole administration, Tucker, what is more valuable right now that have an expert in energy when it comes to Energy Secretary? Does anybody think that Secretary Granholm has any experience? Did you look at her resume?
What does John Kerry know about climate? Number one, we don't need the position, but he's tall and has a yacht. That qualifies him. I don't know if you heard, but we're in a pandemic. You saw the Secretary of Transportation really smartly wearing that mask alone on a stage, which I really recommend for everyone giving a speech. It's really great to communicate.
Do you know the H.H.S. Secretary, Health and Human Services, according to reports, we're in a pandemic. It will be nice to see Mr. Becerra once in a while, but he has no experience and no interest in doing the job like the Vice President who was asked to take care of voting reform and the border and said, I'm a little busy. I really don't want to do that and didn't.
CARLSON: It is unbelievable. Just in one sentence, a man who can't fix the potholes in South Bend should be automatically disqualified from overseeing the nation's infrastructure or am I crazy?
KILMEADE: Well, I do think you're a little crazy, but that's for another time. But I would add this, I consider myself -- I read a lot, I'm relatively smart, but you don't want me giving you directions at a Home Depot. You also don't want me fixing your car. You also don't want me doing your taxes.
We have to stay in our lane. I don't understand what's happening, because we're in control of a bunch of people who are at the wheel who don't know where they're going. Case in point, Mr. Zero traffic deaths, for one more week.
CARLSON: I mean, they will get to zero traffic deaths by eliminating cars. So, I think he actually might make good on that.
KILMEADE: Might.
CARLSON: Finally. Brian Kilmeade --
KILMEADE: I just have one confession.
CARLSON: What?
KILMEADE: A little confession, I took a train and I'm white. So I don't know if he wants to change his speech, I take a train every day.
CARLSON: So we're going to put an end to that, Brian Kilmeade. No longer allowed.
By the way, congratulations, our friend Brian Kilmeade now the host of a new show on FOX Saturdays, 8:00 PM. It's called "One Nation" with Brian Kilmeade, which is a great name and idea and let's get back to that. Thank you.
Congratulations, man.
KILMEADE: All right, thank you, Tucker. Appreciate it.
CARLSON: So Joe Biden confirmed today what we already knew, our next Supreme Court Justice will not be chosen on the basis of legal acumen, intelligence, wise judgment or fealty to the Constitution of the United States. Biden believes those are outdated, Eurocentric criteria.
In this country equity trumps competence. What matters Joe Biden explained is sex and skin color. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've made no decision except one. The person I will nominate will be someone with the extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity, and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Okay, so he said it's going to be a black woman, but that's a pretty big category in this country that is over 20 million people, it spans from Oprah to Candace Owens. But thankfully, the media are working hard to narrow the field for Joe Biden.
CNN and MSNBC tell us that a woman called Sherrilyn Ifill would be a fantastic choice for the Supreme Court. Apparently, the White House is considering her right now.
Ifill is not a judge. She's a political activist who spends a lot of time on social media. You may be wondering, what are her views on the Constitution? Well, here is her carefully reasoned legal analysis of voter ID laws.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHERRILYN IFILL, PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR-COUNSEL OF THE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Congress has to deal with and State Legislatures have to deal with the reality of white supremacy in their own policies.
White supremacy is individual's denying the civil rights of others.
Texas and North Carolina, that those Federal Courts said deliberately created voter ID laws for the purpose of discriminating against African- American and Latino voters.
When we see that, when we see state legislatures convening to pass voter suppression laws, that is white supremacy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It is white supremacy. If nothing else, Sherrilyn Ifill is succinct, voter ID is white supremacy, it kind of rhymes, which is probably the appeal of it. You can imagine those words on a bumper sticker on a sign in a rally, and that is the kind of legal scholarship that Sherrilyn Ifill is famous for.
She has got a whole lot more of it on her Twitter feed, which you want to check out. Let's say for example, you're wondering why white people lie so much as they so clearly do. Sherrilyn Ifill has an answer for you, quote: "Whites view truth telling as an act of violence," she wrote. That makes sense.
And we're not going to make fun of Sherrilyn Ifill, we're afraid to do that. When she gets to the Supreme Court she might pull this show off the air. Last August, Ifill wrote that quote: "FOX News should not be part of the basic cable at this point." Ifill added that she thinks the F.C.C. should regulate FOX and wrote another tweet that she was upset. This show was allowed quote, "On the public airwaves that belong to us and that are licensed by our government."
We're not on the public airwaves, but -- now some might say that anyone who writes a sentence that ignorant probably has a pretty low IQ, but we are not going to say that about Sherrilyn Ifill. We're going to assume she is just highly self-confident.
She has no idea the F.C.C. doesn't actually license cable news networks like FOX News. On the other hand, she doesn't care.
To a scholar like Sherrilyn Ifill, what agency does what thing according to what law? Those are just minor details. They're just background noise, and Sherrilyn Ifill is not going to let any of it stand in her way. She's got glass ceilings to shatter.
We very much look forward to her confirmation hearings.
There is more chaos at the border tonight. The Biden administration continues to allow massive numbers of foreign nationals whose identities we don't know to enter our country permanently. One person released in this country was on a Terror Watch List, a brand new story broken by Charlie LeDuff who joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: A FOX News Alert for you. The border is out of control, it has been for a full year and getting more dangerous by the day. Bill Melugin, one of the only reporters tracking this is following several developments for us tonight, live from the border. He joins us now. Hey, Bill.
BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey Tucker, good evening to you.
So a bodycam video that you first aired on your show last night has now gone completely viral and is raising some serious questions about the lack of transparency from the Federal government when it comes to the moving of illegal immigrants around the country.
Just take a look at that video one more time. This is out of Westchester County, New York. This is in August and what you're looking at is police bodycam video of a chartered government flight landing in the middle of the night at the airport there with that flight full of illegal immigrants who get off and go on buses.
Well, that police officer who is supposed to be security there, and he starts talking to these Federal contractors asking essentially what the heck is going on here, and those contractors tell them, they're basically trying to sweep this under the rug and keep it out of the spotlight. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't want to be somewhere where the spotlight is there. You want to try and be as down low as possible.
A lot of this is just down low stuff that we don't tell people because what we don't want to do is attract attention. We don't want the media.
Like we don't even know where we're going when they tell us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELUGIN: And speaking of releases of illegal immigrants, take a look at this video we shot at San Antonio Airport this morning where we got a tip that I.C.E. was going to be dropping off a busload of single adult male illegal immigrants. That's exactly what we saw.
You can see dozens of those men being released by I.C.E. there. No families, no little children, no women, all men. There was an NGO there waiting to greet them. That NGO then took them into the airport in a single file line, and they are now free to travel across the country, wherever they want to go.
An I.C.E. source tells me these discrete mass releases have been happening since last year and that source also told me that I.C.E. is releasing illegal immigrants who have criminal records for misdemeanor, some of those misdemeanors include assault, drunk driving, illegal reentry, and drug possession.
I reached out to I.C.E. this morning to ask if that's true, they did not deny it. They only told me they released these migrants on a case by case basis. That source went on to tell me they feel the agency has been turned into a travel booking agency, rather than an immigration enforcement agency.
We'll send it back to you.
CARLSON: Bill Melugin on the border. Amazing story. Thank you.
If you think about it, what are the two great crises of the last 20 years? The two things the U.S. government has spent more time and money on than anything else, and those of course would be terrorism and COVID. So if you want to fight terrorism and COVID, you probably should keep track of who is coming into your country and just not let millions of random people whose identities you can't confirm come and stay.
Who are these people? We don't know. Here is one thing we know.
One of the people who has been let into this country by the Biden administration, according to a brand new blockbuster story in "Deadline Detroit" is on the terror watch list.
His name is Issam Bazzi. He is from Venezuela. Again, he is reportedly on the F.B.I. terror watch list for affiliation with some unspecified terror group. He is now awaiting an asylum hearing in Detroit.
For further details of this, we want to go to the man who broke the story. Charlie LeDuff won a Pulitzer Prize at "The New York Times." He is host of "The No BS News Hour." And he broke this, he joins us tonight. Charlie, thanks so much for coming on.
Who is this guy? How to get here? What do we know about him?
CHARLIE LEDUFF, HOST OF THE "NO BS NEWS HOUR WITH CHARLIE LEDUFF": The guy is a Lebanese born Venezuelan national who gets word that the Biden administration is giving asylum to Venezuelans. He, his daughter, and his wife fly to Monterrey, Mexico, hire a smuggler, get rafted over into Brownsville, Texas, wants asylum. They pick him up, run him.
He is not only on the terror watch list, they hit comes back. High derogatory information affiliated with an unspecified group, classified information. The important thing here, Tucker, is we're all wondering who got in, did terrorists get in?
We now know the government has a known terrorist that they let go. Why? Because he's a high COVID risk. Why? Because he's overweight.
So now in my community, we get this guy. Nobody I know in the Federal government, probably nobody you know has ever heard of letting somebody high up on the terror watch list into the interior of this country. It's ridiculous.
CARLSON: So how did -- so he is in the State of Michigan, which is an awful long way from --
LEDUFF: Presumably.
CARLSON: Right, presumably, at last word, he was in your state, which is a very long way from Brownsville, Texas. How did he get from there to where you are?
LEDUFF: Hello, I.C.E. Thank you for the ticket. Now, it's important to say the F.B.I. interrogated this guy, right? They did not want him released.
Local I.C.E. said he's a flight risk, but you know, in the great wisdom of Washington, this is the new normal.
CARLSON: It's just an unbelievable story. And we're grateful that you --
LEDUFF: Get him out.
CARLSON: Thank you for bringing that to us. The great Charlie LeDuff. Appreciate it.
Well, an enormous historically large convoy of truckers is driving across Canada to protest lunatic corona restrictions in that country. We'll talk to someone.
Plus, also we have a major announcement involving legendary rock musician, Kid Rock. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Viktor Orban is the Prime Minister of Hungary. He's a nationalist.
Simply stated, he believes his job is to take care of the people who live in his country. There are about 10 million of them. Every decision he makes, he says is designed for their benefit. He thinks in terms of just Hungary.
So George Soros is the polar opposite of that. Soros is a billionaire. He's also like Viktor Orban, an ideologue. He's got sincere beliefs. But again, they are the opposite of Viktor Orban's beliefs.
So the two of them have been at loggerheads for years now. It's quite a conflict. Orban versus Soros. Orban maybe the only world leader who stood up to Soros directly, and so we thought that was interesting enough, it was enough of a metaphor for the struggle that's going on globally between nationalists and people who oppose them, we thought it was worthy of our season finale documentary for our series, "Tucker Carlson Originals."
You can stream it for free on tuckercarlson.com. Here's part of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Orban's Party, Fidesz, has used its parliamentary supermajority to crack down on Soros backed NGOs. In 2018, they passed something called the Stop Soros Law that made it a felony to aid or abet illegal immigration. That law infuriated the international media.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: There is this growing phenomenon of illiberal democracy.
CARLSON: These measures convinced the Open Society Foundation to close its office in Budapest. Globalist organizations around the world describe the law as vicious and a quote "calculated assault on civil society."
The battle between George Soros and Viktor Orban is a contest of ideology, and it is far from over.
VIKTOR ORBAN, HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER: The western liberals cannot accept that inside of Western civilization, there is a conservative national alternative, which is more successful at everyday life at the level of them, the liberal ones. That's the reason why they criticize us.
CARLSON: So, your success is a challenge to their world view.
In the spring of 2022, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections. Despite what you hear in American news outlets, Orban is not an autocrat. In fact, he stands a decent chance of losing.
ORBAN: So what we have done here in this country with the family policy, the national pride, and all that kind of things, it must be enough to convince the people that that is a reasonable decision to support us and not to give the country to George Soros.
CARLSON: The Hungarian elections will be the defining battle in the war between George Soros and Viktor Orban in the battle between globalism and nationalism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: George Soros isn't just flexing his muscles in Hungary, Soros is one of the most powerful political figures in the United States. Soros has more influence over the way Americans live their lives than all the voters in your average congressional district combined.
So, why is Soros so powerful? It's not because his ideas have popular support, they don't. Soros is powerful because he's a billionaire. Soros buys his power, and that is not the way a democracy is supposed to work.
What's interesting is how little you hear about what George Soros is doing right now in American politics. You may have noticed that, and there is a reason for it. News organizations that attempt to report honestly and George Soros find themselves bombarded by Soros's lawyers and allies threatening legal action and smear campaigns. Ask around.
Now, most of these organizations are intimidated by this and you can see why they are. Anyone who dares to criticize George Soros is denounced as a bigot. They claim that disagreeing with an atheist billionaire is an act of prejudice, it's hate.
George Soros may be one of the richest and most influential men in the world, but he would like you to know that he is also an oppressed victim of your unauthorized opinions.
Just like if you're not for going to war in Ukraine, you're a tool of Putin. Please. We see this routine a lot. In fact, every day. Soros's allies are doing it to us right now at maximum volume in response to our documentary on Haiti. We expected that and we don't care.
You have a right to know exactly what George Soros is doing to this country and to other countries around the world and we think we've got an obligation to tell you, so we're going to continue to.
Canada has just imposed a vaccine mandate for truckers. This, in addition to so many other lunatic corona restrictions. Well, finally, they've had enough. Thousands of truckers assembled in Vancouver this weekend to protest. They formed a Freedom Convoy. Their destination? The Canadian capital of Ottawa.
The convoy is more than 40 miles long. They've raised one to $6 million in donations. The government is cracking down trying to stop this.
Now the Prime Minister so-called, of Canada, Justin Trudeau says he has had a COVID exposure, needs to isolate for five days. That means he cannot meet with a convoy with actual voters when it arrives in the capital city. Trudeau also told his country the truckers are just a fringe group.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing do not represent the views of Canadians.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, so they're not really Canadians, probably racist, too. I am sure we'll hear that.
Benjamin Dichter is a spokesman for the Freedom Convoy. He's going to join it tomorrow, but he joins us now. Mr. Dichter, thanks so much for coming on tonight.
Tell us why you're doing this. What's the point of this convoy?
BENJAMIN DICHTER, SPOKESMAN FOR THE FREEDOM CONVOY 2022: Well, it's simple. I mean, we've seen Canada go from a country of Justin Trudeau's promises of sunny ways into dark, authoritarian oppression and control.
CARLSON: Yes.
DICHTER: We want to do -- we want two things. We want to get rid of the vaccine mandates and the passports and the passports is -- that's really the concerning one. Yesterday, it was my first time ever crossing the border in my truck with my digital passport, and I held my phone up to the Border agent to give them the QR code. You know what he said to me? "Oh, it's okay. I don't need it."
So what do you mean you don't need it? He says, "Oh, your phone already popped up on my screen and is correlated with your passport?" Can you think of that? Can you believe that? So they know everybody who is coming up to the border before they're there and they are tracking them.
Now, maybe it is outlandish, but what's to prevent the government from introducing that across Canada, and not limiting it to just borders and you guys are getting it as well and you can thank us for it because apparently according to our sources, within the media, and within government, we have some close ties. Apparently the Trudeau government -- the Biden administration have no interest in it, but the Trudeau Government lobbied and requested the Biden administration to introduce this.
We don't know why. We don't know the terms of the deal. Are they going to be trading Intelligence back and forth between Canada and the U.S. tracking cell phones? Of course, we have no idea. But this is where we're going if this does not stop. That's why this is the line. This is where it ends/
CARLSON: Well, I mean, two things. One, you know, you drive a truck for a living. Your country and ours, you know, thousands of multiple credentialed intellectuals who are paid to think about this stuff. Why has it fallen to you to connect the obvious dots? God bless you for that.
And second, do you think that you can stop this with your trucks?
DICHTER: Why does it follow us? Because we're the ones who actually suffer the repercussions. You know, we often see and we talk about Alberta being Canada's energy sector, I was in Alberta and Saskatchewan just before COVID. And Tucker, I spent a lot of time traveling through Latin America, I couldn't believe it. It looks like a third world country. It scared me, and that was before COVID.
So now these people who've had their industries crushed, their lives crushed, COVID comes along, and now they're treated like insects by the bureaucracy.
CARLSON: Exactly, by insects. Wow. Benjamin Dichter, I hope you will come back. I found that really inspiring, your bravery, and the way that you explained it as clearly as you did. Thank you very much.
DICHTER: You're a hero to all of us. And don't thank me, thank all of those guys who are on the road right now fighting for our freedom.
CARLSON: Amen. Thank you.
DICHTER: Thanks, brother.
CARLSON: Well, all of a sudden you keep hearing that Joe Rogan is a really scary guy. People at failing news organizations across the spectrum are calling for Joe Rogan to be fired from his job, because he is saying things that people like that are true.
More on that plus, we've got more good news. Our announcement on Kid Rock follows this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: We've got some good news for you. One thing we never see in the entertainment business is anybody thinking for himself. They're all clustered together, a terrified little herd, hoping not to get picked out and devoured by Twitter.
So when one of them stands alone, we applaud and that's why multi-platinum artist Kid Rock, an al-around good guy is our focus tonight. He's used to catching walleye from the dock, watching the waves roll off the rocks. Now, we know what else the Devil Without A Cause has been doing in his free time.
In November, he dropped a single called "Don't Tell Me How to Live" and had a lot of great lyrics in it including, quote, "These minions and their agendas, every opinion has a millennial offended." My gosh is that true?
This week, he released more songs including a four-minute screed against the most deserving of all targets the media, as well as COVID hysteria, the tune is called, "We, the People," and it's a hit.
Here it is.
(VIDEO CLIP FROM "WE, THE PEOPLE.")
CARLSON: So that man has agreed to let our documentary producers track him, embed with him on his next tour for a new "Tucker Carlson Originals." Tickets for that tour go on sale tomorrow, long hair waving, middle finger in the wind, we will be there. It's going to be great. He's great.
So Joe Rogan has been committing a lot of sins recently. First, he made fun of CNN, then he didn't seem quite sold on vax mandates. So obviously, we need to kill Joe Rogan and that would include the Surgeon General of the United States who is calling for Big Tech to censor him. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. VIVEK MURTHY, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: This is not just about entertainment, it's not just about garnering clicks. This is about people's lives and we have seen time and time again that misinformation costs people their lives.
So you know, we all have -- this is not just about what government can do. This is about companies and individuals recognizing that the only way we get past misinformation is if we are careful about what we see and we use the power that we have to limit the spread of that misinformation. That's going to be a critical part of how we get through this pandemic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So the fake doctor in the undertaker suit says, if you don't censor this person, people will die, and what other time in American history would a government official say something like that and be allowed to say something like that and then be parroted by everybody else in the media?
On some show called "The View," which has very limited vision, one host called on Spotify to just pull Rogan off the podcast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUNNY HOSTIN, COHOST, "THE VIEW": I do think as the podcast platform, you have to have some sort of guidelines. How about a disclaimer on his podcast that says, you know, this is misinformation? How about removing some of the podcasts that that disseminate the misinformation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have. They have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Those people are complaining about misinformation. One quick word about misinformation, all the misinformation in our society comes from the people in power. That's what gets us into wars under false pretenses. That's what gives us medicine that doesn't work.
Everything that hurts huge numbers of Americans that is, misinformation, it comes from the people in charge not from a podcast on Spotify.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joins us to assess what we're watching now.
Professor, thanks so much for coming on. What is this? Joe Rogan, all of a sudden needs to be destroyed says the Surgeon General.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Yes, I think three adjectives describes him. He is uncontrollable, he is unpredictable, and he is powerful, and as long as he was sort of flirting with the candidacy of Bernie Sanders or he had a smaller audience, they thought he would be useful in some way and now, he is a complete Maverick. He didn't go through the traditional avenues to achieve fame and fortune and influence and they can't control him.
And it is so asymmetrical because I remember -- remember that petition where a thousand healthcare workers swore to us that for the mental health of people, they could violate the quarantine they forced everybody else to follow right after the George Floyd death when they greenlighted going out in the street, and the phalanx yelling and screaming against the quarantine? That was okay.
Or Anthony Fauci telling us that masks had no efficacy at first and then one mask and why not try two? So it's asymmetrical, and you know, this idea that he is doing something wrong or he is creating bad ripples throughout society, I remember the Shakespeare in the Park. You remember that summer play they put on two years ago of "Julius Caesar" where they originally stabbed the President of the United States every night on their presentation? Or "Game of Thrones" had a decapitated head of George Bush and they thought that was funny.
And I remember the Kendrick Lamar "To Pimp a Butterfly" album, and they had a dead white judge who looked on the White House grounds, who looked like Ronald Reagan, with a lot of African-American youth toasting him with cash and champagne, and that earned him an invitation to the White House were Barack Obama said he was his favorite rapper.
So it's not symmetrical and they are angry because they can't control him. He says, I said he is unpredictable and he has a special demographic. These 18 to 40-year-old men, especially of all different races and ethnicities, and I think that's a rising rubric.
And when you look around at all the traditional outlets, you know, on the conservative or libertarian movement, people have tuned out "The Drudge Report," the sad demise of Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern is sort of descending, and he's the up and coming.
The problem with the left has is not that he has 11 million listeners or 200 million downloads per month, but it's the beginning. It's getting bigger and bigger and he is becoming a pop cult figure that they don't know what he's going to say in any given moment.
CARLSON: And they're dying. CBS News won't exist in 10 years, of course. Thank God.
Victor Davis Hanson, thank you. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: We are out of time, but it is a mixed blessing because Sean Hannity has a full hour plus five seconds starting now.
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