Tucker: Why is Mark Milley still in command of US military?

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Tucker: Why is Mark Milley still in command of US military?

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host claims the general was 'undermining' the Trump White House

This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on July 15, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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

Here's a story we'd completely forgotten about because there are so many.

Just before last November's presidential election, two former Army officers wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man called Mark Milley, who still has the job. The letter became public. It was published on a left-wing blog called Defense One, and within minutes was all over the internet.

The authors of the letter had a direct order for Mark Milley, who strictly speaking, did not report to them quote, "If Donald Trump refuses to leave office," the letter began, "The United States military must remove him by force and you must give that order." You must remove the President by force

-- that was a little shocking. What country is this?

Even the usual power-mad partisans in the news media began to wonder if that was really a good idea. Slate.com, of all places, reminded its readers that no matter how orange Donald Trump might be, military coups generally turn out to be unwise.

The Pentagon had to go on the record as opposing it, too. The rest of us could keep civilian control of our government and what a relief that was.

Within days, the story just kind of receded. Another weird footnote to a weird four years, but if you paused and thought about it for a second, you had to wonder: Where did that idea even come from? Did two former U.S. 

military officers really just suggest removing the President of the United States by force of arms? Since when do American military officers talk like that or think like that? And do a lot of them have views like that?

We pushed that consideration from our minds, but we shouldn't have.

Now, we know that Mark Milley himself is the sort of person who considers military coups entirely within the realm of possibility. A new book written by reporters at "The Washington Post" who cover Mark Milley reveals that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a legitimate extremist. He is the last person you would give power to if you could possibly help it.

In the book, Milley describes Donald Trump and the millions of people who supported him as the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler. As thousands of Trump supporters peacefully gathered in Washington for what they assumed was a constitutionally protected political rally, the kind we've had for hundreds of years, shortly after the election, Milley likened them to brown shirts. That is the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

Trump's complaints about voter fraud, Milley explained to his advisers out loud were actually calls for genocide. "This is a Reichstag moment," Milley said. "The gospel of the Fuhrer." Those are quotes. Think about that.

So, your grandfather joined the U.S. military to go overseas to risk his life to fight the Nazis. Now, the head of the U.S. military calls you a Nazi for having your grandfather's political views. What do you think of that? Keep in mind that Mark Milley is a man the media tells us is a deep intellectual, someone who reads books and stuff, not just Wikipedia.

And yet, this well-read man of history is comparing nearly half of our country to Adolf Hitler and that would include by the way the many Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley who voted for Trump because they agreed with him on immigration.

Mark Milley isn't just your average guy, with crackpot views, Mark Milley has control of nuclear weapons. Are we okay with this?

The people on TV are okay with it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, ANDERSON COOPER 360: You read what Milley was doing and which you know is obeying the Constitution. It is standing up to the oath that he and serving members have taken. I mean, that's what a patriot does.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: General Milley and his team in the military with the courage to stand up to realize that something was going horribly off the rails with the President of the United States.

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank goodness that General Milley was there; and other generals, I think all saw this guy's flaws.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: It is jaw-dropping. There is no other way around it. They may be the guys with the guns, but Milley was going to make darn sure that those guns were not used.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: You think of General Milley and you think of someone who chooses every word with intention, and is a student of history, and to use the words he used like "Nazi" and "Reichstag" says a lot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: He is a student of history. They are easy to impress over on CNN, make a reference to the Nazis and the Reichstag fire and you must be a high brow grad school guy. You hear someone compare his enemies to Nazis, you know he went to Princeton. Pretty funny.

So, we've established that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the same intellectual plane as the midday news readers on CNN. The problem is, he is a lot more powerful than they are.

According to "The Washington Post" account, Mark Milley is the reason that thousands of American soldiers occupied our capital this year ahead of Joe Biden's Inauguration, quote: "We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in." Milley said referring to American citizens, "a ring of steel" to repel the QAnon shaman and several hundred senior citizens from Orlando with signs.

This is the guy by the way who is paid to assess threats realistically. 

What countries pose a threat to the United States? Put them in order.

If you think the QAnon shaman is the same as the SS, maybe you're not so good at that. Then Milley gave a speech straight out of a 1990s Bruce Willis flick, quote: "Everything is going to be okay. We're going to have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to land this plane safely. This is America. It's strong. The institutions are bending, but it won't break."

In the end, no Nazi attack ever came, much to Mark Milley's apparent disappointment. It wasn't Dunkirk. Now, you'd think that would be an embarrassment to Mark Milley. You give a speech like that and nothing happens, some guy dressed like Chewbacca shows up, but no, he was not embarrassed.

In fact, later, he gave a speech -- a testimony to Congress and said apparently not referring to himself that he understands white rage better than anyone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: I do think it's important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university and it is important that we train and we understand -- and I want to understand white rage and I'm white, and I want to understand it.

So, what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here and I do want to analyze it.

It's important that we understand that, because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians, they come from the American people. So, it is important that the leaders now and in the future do understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: White rage, just a casual racial slur. These people have no self- awareness. But, he tells us he spent many hours reading Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi learning about white rage, but that white rage never came. 

Mark Milley was not deterred by that.

Instead, soon after the election, "The Post" reports, quote: "Milley began informally planning with other military leaders, strategizing how they would block Trump's order to use the military in a way they deemed dangerous or illegal," end quote.

Now, wait a second, just pause here for a moment. Is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the guy who is empowered by our Constitution, our democracy, to make those decisions? No, he is not. We have civilian leadership. He can't make them independently. If he disagrees, he can resign, but he can't make them independently because that would be a junta.

But he kept going. In early January, Nancy Pelosi pressed for specifics to Mark Milley. She wanted to know what the generals had done to help her. 

They wanted to know -- she wanted to know that they were doing things that were illegal, taking control of the military from civilian elected leaders, and Mark Milley didn't blush. He confirmed they had done just that quote, "Ma'am," Milley told Nancy Pelosi, "I guarantee you that we have checks and balances in the system." End quote.

Yes, checks and -- yes, they're written into the Constitution, Mr. Milley. 

I mean, that's not on Wikipedia. According to "The Post," some of those checks and balances he referred to involved undermining the elected President's authority to choose the Director of the C.I.A. It's interesting by the way, a lot of focus on the C.I.A. It tells you what kind of power they have.

So, when the President reportedly considered firing Gina Haspel who runs the C.I.A. and replacing her with a man called Kash Patel in the closing days of his administration, we now know that Milley pressured the President's Chief of Staff not to do that, to keep Haspel. "What the hell is going on here?" Milley asked Trump's Chief of Staff. "What are you guys doing?"

This is lunacy. It's not how the government is supposed to work. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs should not be having that conversation and expressing those views. He should leave if he can't keep them to himself.

That quote there is alone grounds for Mark Milley's immediate firing from his job. No Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has say over C.I.A. appointees. No one in the military does. They can't. Talk about a threat to our system.

And yet "The Washington Post" thinks this is fine because the President at the time was talking about election fraud, and that was inciting an insurrection. Scary.

We already know that Milley had subverted civilian control of the military long before the election even took place. On February 29th of last year, the Trump administration reached a deal with the Taliban to end U.S. 

military involvement in that country after only 20 years. Immediately, The Pentagon led by Mark Milley conspired to kill the deal, which they are not allowed to do under our Constitution, but they did it anyway.

According to reporting by the "Grayzone," quote: "With startling swiftness and determination, Pentagon officials and military leadership exploited the open-ended terms of the ceasefire to derail the implementation of the agreement," end quote. No informed person denies that happened. It did.

The head of U.S. Central Command, Kenneth McKenzie testified before Congress the deal would be determined by quote, "conditions on the ground." 

Meaning the decision will be made not by civilian leaders, but by The Pentagon. Again, a threat to democracy anyone? There it is.

Acting unilaterally, The Pentagon launched more than 30 drone attacks and eight night raids led by special operators against the Taliban, and within weeks, the peace deal was dead. They killed it.

Voters had no say in this. They operated completely independently like they run the country. A little scarier than the QAnon Shaman. Ironically, preserving a peace deal with the Taliban was the same justification that Mark Milley used later in late 2020 to overrule Donald Trump's order to pull out of Afghanistan. Milley told the President, it was only possible to remove half American forces there, not all.

Now, no one in the media seems concerned by any of this. In fact "The Washington Post" which supports authoritarianism is already publishing follow-up op-eds explaining that Mark Milley is a hero. There were Nazis among us. You. And therefore we need to get rid of the filibuster. Try to follow that logic.

They are also nodding with approval that Mark Milley smiled at Michelle Obama when Joe Biden was inaugurated. So, the question is, why is Mark Milley still in command of the U.S. military? This is not a small question if it is what "The Washington Post's" reporters are reporting -- it's a question we need to deal with right now.

Kash Patel served as Chief of Staff to the acting U.S. Secretary of Defense under the last administration. He joins us now. Kash Patel, thanks so much for coming on.

First question, do you believe this reporting is accurate?

KASH PATEL, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE ACTING U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE IN TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Great to be with you, Tucker, and based on the reporting and my experiences in the Defense Department with Chairman Milley, I believe the reporting to be very accurate and very unfortunate and tragic that the highest uniformed officer in the country would controvert his responsibility and break -- possibly break the law.

Because the Constitution and the Federal statutes only allow the Chairman to advise the President on military affairs. He has no command authority, whatsoever/

CARLSON: Because he was not elected by anyone. That's how our system works. 

Power vests with people the public chooses to represent them. That's what democracy is. It's not that complicated.

So, if he is trying to control who the next C.I.A. Director is, prevent you from getting the job, as it happens. That's so far outside what we call, I guess democratic norms. I just wonder why no one said anything about it.

PATEL: You're totally right and I'm glad you're covering it because so few people have. Look the statutes are clear. He is responsible for advising the President and the Secretary of Defense on military affairs.

If anyone else in that role controverted Federal statute passed by Congress, they would be, as you said removed promptly from that position or he should resign, but he wants to create and has created a joint staff operation that is a pseudo-defense department all on its own, which he has hijacked the authority of the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States, and to execute as he sees fit and that is in contravention of the law.

And he has become the very thing that he has lobbied against, which is one of the biggest political operatives in the United States Defense Department. He is now officially the kraken of the swamp.

CARLSON: I mean, I don't know where all the liberals are, there used to be other liberals in this country who believed in civilian control. I mean, this is an actual engraved threat to our system, a real one. I wonder too about his judgment.

The quotes, they are hard to believe. It's hard to believe that a guy who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would ever speak like that or have those thoughts. They are hysterical, they're childish. But they're also so disproportionate to the observed threat. Do you wonder, is he capable of making rational judgments?

PATEL: No, the quotes exemplify someone who panics under pressure and who is pandering for his job. These are the same people in the media, Tucker, if you remember when he walked across Lafayette Park with President Trump, excoriated him. "The Washington Post" and CNN trashed Mark Milley to no end.

Now, these are the same people that are propping him up as the savior of America and the Members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi are asking him to break the law and do things that are not within his power during January

6 just so they can continue the fake narrative about the insurrection and the overreach that the media has put on the political landscape now, and it's a shame that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the most highly politicized figure in the Department of Defense.

CARLSON: Yes. This is not just a partisan concern. I mean, he is threatening the principles, the core principles upon which our entire system is founded and so it's a real concern. And I appreciate you confirming that as someone who was there. Kash Patel, thank you.

PATEL: Thanks so much, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, we talked to a number of Republicans who are running for Congress in the next cycle and they promise to change the direction of the party. We're going to speak to another one in just a moment, a Republican candidate who is taking aim at the indoctrination, the race hate in our schools. She will tell us how she plans to stop it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So, there's an opening in the Ohio congressional delegation, 15th Congressional District, and a lot of people running the Republican Primary, 11. Primary is on August 3rd of this yea. The winner will then compete in a Special Election in November to replace former Congressman Steve Stivers. 

Now, one candidate in the race came to our attention. Her name is Ruth Edmonds. She is the former President of the Columbus NAACP. She is also an ordained Minister.

One of the things she is running on is we need to stop racism in our schools, of all kinds. Here is how she put it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUTH EDMONDS (R), OHIO CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I'm a patriot. I love the United States. We're not perfect, never have been, but we are the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.

It's time to stop judging every white person as a villain and every brown person as a victim. We are one country, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

I'm Ruth Edmonds and I approve this message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Ruth Edmonds joins us tonight. Ruth Edmonds, thanks so much for coming on. That was a great ad. I don't think I've heard it put as clearly as you put it, why did you say that? Why did you make that ad?

EDMONDS: Well, thank you first of all for having me on tonight.

CARLSON: Of course.

EDMONDS: I said it because it's the truth. Caucasians are not villains and they're not oppressors and brown-skinned people are not victims and we're not oppressed.

CARLSON: But you can't say that. You can't say that. Whoa, whoa.

EDMONDS: Oh, yes I can say that. You know I'm from the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland raised by my grandmother who only had a fourth grade education and yet she taught me the principles and values and ethics of hard work and perseverance.

And you know, faith in God and taking advantage of opportunities when they come and not allowing barriers to be excuses, so yes, I can say that brown- skinned people are not victims because we're not.

CARLSON: Well, that's right, and it sounds to me like your religious faith informs your view of that.

EDMONDS: Absolutely. I make no excuses for having a biblical worldview and I absolutely believe that this country was founded on a biblical worldview, you know endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, absolutely.

And I think that it is terrible how you know, there's an evil attack by the left to tear up who our country -- what our country is and how we were founded. And we have to stand up and speak out against it at every opportunity that we can. We have to defend this great nation.

CARLSON: Man, if there were more people like you at the NAACP, I'd send them money. What did they think of you?

EDMONDS: Well you know, I don't know what they think of me and quite frankly, you know -- again, it's the truth. I will say this, when I joined the Columbus branch of the NAACP in the late 80s, it was under a Republican administration and it was there under that leadership that I realized that my values and my principles that I was raised with really aligned with the Republican platform.

And so you know, faith, family, freedom. You know, those are the values that my grandmother gave to me and so it was just a natural for me to align with that platform.

CARLSON: Your grandmother sounds like a great person. I appreciate your coming on, Ruth Edmonds. Thank you very much. It was good to talk to you.

EDMONDS: Thank you.

CARLSON: So, it's coming back, more indoor mask mandates in one of the biggest cities in the country. You should know what's happening here. FOX's Trace Gallagher does. He's got the story for us now. Hi, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. If you're looking for a case study in how to generate confusion, the LA County Health Department just gave us a step-by-step guide.

Here is the reasoning. Coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County are now above 1,000 for the seventh straight day, therefore, everyone including those fully vaccinated once again have to wear a mask indoors.

Now, Federal guidance is the exact opposite. C.D.C. Director Rochelle Walensky says vaccinated people are safe from the delta variant of the coronavirus and do not have to wear masks indoors. In fact, even when the LA County Health Department was issuing the mandate today, it was simultaneously making its case and undermining its case.

For example, the county says hospitalizations are now at 452. That's up from last week, but the county goes on to say, quoting here, "Today, we have not had a patient admitted to a hospital who has been fully vaccinated with either the J&J, Pfizer, or Moderna vaccine. Every single patient that we've admitted for COVID is not yet fully vaccinated." The question is if the fully vaccinated are not getting sick, why do they have to wear a mask?

The county says the answer is that businesses have no way of verifying who has and has not been vaccinated, so it's now one size fits all, and we should note finally the County Health Director is not ruling out the implementation of stricter mandates, including more shutdowns.

Stay tuned, Tucker. LA County appears to be on a roll.

CARLSON: You give power to politicians. Good luck getting it back.

Trace Gallagher, thank you.

GALLAGHER: Yes.

CARLSON: So, as mask mandates and shutdowns make a comeback, many colleges are forcing students, kids, to get the vaccine -- even kids who have recovered from COVID and there are millions of them, and have active antibodies. That's not science. The question is, is it legal?

One top law enforcement official doesn't think it is legal. He has just taken a major step to end this practice in his state. He joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: In this country, and in any free country, politicians are not supposed to be allowed to decide what you can see, hear, or talk about. 

They can't control what you read. Period. That's really the First Amendment, but they are, and they're doing it in much more aggressive ways than they've ever done before.

We learned this year, it was a lifelong Democratic Party fixer called Andy Stone who announced Facebook's decision last October to censor "The New York Post's" very accurate reporting on Hunter Biden.

In August, it was Kamala Harris's former press secretary who announced Twitter's decision to censor a video clip of Donald Trump discussing the fact that actually COVID doesn't really spread among kids very much. So, those are people in the fringes of politics.

Then just weeks ago, Tony Fauci's e-mails revealed that the Biden administration directly, the White House had coordinated with Facebook to reduce the spread of quote, "misinformation" including by text message. 

This is ominous.

Today, we learned much more about it, about the crackdown on the most basic civil liberties we have, and it came straight from Joe Biden's top flak.

It turns out the White House is now directing Facebook to censor specific posts that Joe Biden's White House doesn't like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We are in regular touch with these social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic.

We've increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General's Office. We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, they are actually controlling -- the White House politicians are controlling what you're allowed to read about COVID-19 and who knows what else? If you can stop misinformation on vaccines, what can't you do? 

This is the line that they're not supposed to cross, they're not allowed to do this. It's clearly a violation of the First Amendment.

The White House isn't a private company. They are politicians. They are the government, and they are controlling what you can read about something that actually matters by the way. How is this allowed to happen? Why is no one doing anything about it?

We have no power to stop it, we only have the power to tell you about it and we hope it does stop -- soon.

So, many colleges are now forcing students to take the coronavirus vaccine even if they don't need it, and many don't because they've already had corona and they have active antibodies. That was happening in South Carolina, even though a state budget provision prohibits vaccine mandates. 

That's when the Attorney General of South Carolina, Alan Wilson, stepped in.

He recently sent a letter to one school that was requiring vaccines, the College of Charleston. Here's part of what he wrote, quote: "As state law makes clear, the decision to be vaccinated from COVID-19 is a personal decision." End quote. You can't do this, it's against the law, and when he pointed that out, the College of Charleston backed off, and kids had the right to determine what medicine they can take.

Thank God.

Alan Wilson is the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina he joins us tonight. Mr. Attorney General, thanks so much for coming on the show. 

First, thank you for doing this. Second, you know, why hasn't every Attorney General in every state done this?

Before you answer -- why did you do this?

ALAN WILSON, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA: Well, first off, Tucker, you start with what does the law say? And State and Federal law especially here in South Carolina, the law is very clear, any state publicly funded college or university cannot require proof of a COVID vaccination and there was a COVID protocol put up by one of our colleges and universities that was kind of unclear that basically required incoming students to the fall semester to fill out a form, a COVID vaccination form and if it was determined that you were unvaccinated or if you declined to fill out the form, you would be placed on a list, a mandatory COVID testing protocol list.

And that was very upsetting to many parents and a number of students who reached out to our office and we looked into it and that caused me to reach out to officials at the university and to basically say, you can't do indirectly what you were prohibited from doing directly.

CARLSON: Right.

WILSON: I was concerned that if a student refused to comply with the COVID testing protocol that there might be an adverse consequence to them, so we told them, we need you to clarify your COVID policy, which to their credit, they did within a day of us sending a letter.

The President of the university responded and they clarified that there would be no adverse consequences. We also wanted other colleges in the State of South Carolina to know that if you're pursuing COVID protocols, they need to be very clear that there will be no adverse consequences nor will there be mandates that students have to be vaccinated.

CARLSON: I mean, I can't imagine there's a state in the country that allows any institution to force medicine on people who don't want the medicine. 

It's not even about COVID. Why can't -- then why can't we force uppity people to take Thorazine? Like I don't like your attitude, you need some tranquilizers.

I mean that is a line I don't think any state would allow, any institution to cross, or am I wrong?

WILSON: Well, first off, in the State of South Carolina, that is not the case. We don't allow it here. I would hope that other states would follow the rule of law. You know, obviously there are a lot of people that are concerned about the Emergency Use Authorization that this is not a fully vetted drug. It is vetted, but I mean there are people who are concerned of choosing to make the personal decision not to get vaccinated, I personally have been vaccinated. I encourage people to get vaccinated.

But if people don't want to get vaccinated, they should be allowed to live their lives freely, and so that is what we're defending -- people's personal liberty, and the right to choose not to be vaccinated.

CARLSON: Well, of course. Yes, and if you're worried about getting COVID, you can get vaccinated, so we're trying to solve the problem that.

The Attorney General of South Carolina, Alan Wilson, thank you so much.

WILSON: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So you see Kamala Harris or Kamala Harris or whatever pronunciation we're going with on television and you ask yourself, what would it be like to work for her? Should I apply for a job? Should I send her my resume?

Put a hold on that because sources from inside her office have just shared what it's like to work for her. It's a little bit like going to war, but without the valor or the medals.

And then it's someone's birthday, someone's birthday is today and we're going to celebrate it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So MSNBC, the TV network, not the Schedule 3 pharmaceutical has a birthday today. That is 25 years old. It is hard to believe, especially for those of us who remember the day it was born.

And yet even at this advanced age, there are a lot of misconceptions about MSNBC. The first is that all of its anchors have been accused by a sitting President of murdering a young woman in the congressional office. That's not true. It's a myth and we would like to dispel it once and for all right now.

The second misperception about MSNBC is that it has always been some sort of left-wing revolutionary -- Leon Trotsky TV -- and that's not true either.

From its first hours, MSNBC was a purely corporate project. The MS stands for Microsoft, the NBC for what was then a division of General Electric, so the began as a merger of business titans and fundamentally, it's still just one big H.R. Department.

After the 2004 presidential elections, the geniuses in the programming office decided to pivot and make MSNBC more populist or something, they weren't sure exactly what they wanted, but they hired a new primetime anchor anyway.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Do you wish now looking back three years that the press had been a little more vigilant in asking questions about the invasion of Iraq during the run-up to it? Like are we certain there are these WMD stockpiles that we're using to justify the war? How do you know that they are there? What exactly are you talking about, Mr. Powell in your speech to the United Nations?

Don't you wish the press had been a little tougher in the administration?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Now honestly that's pretty compelling television, but in the end it was not enough. The guy you just saw was fired for low ratings. He was replaced by an emotionally stunted agoraphobic baseball card collector who wore mom jeans to the office and wrote florid scripts with too many adjectives, Mr. Keith Olbermann, ladies and gentlemen, and keep in mind, the "L" is silent.

But it was too volatile an arrangement to last, and before long the network's top star took his mom jeans and went back to his Honus Wagner cards in his sad midtown apartment.

But MSNBC itself remained and its evolution continued. Like puppies, all TV networks are cute when they're little. The problem is you never know what they're going to grow up to become. So what is at MSNBC now?

Well effectively, it's the Hutu radio network ginning up race fear to mobilize the militias. Here is the's new lead anchor, screaming once again about those diabolical white people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOY REID, MSNBC ANCHOR: And so here we are again, with conservatism, at least among a certain cohort of white guys now rooting itself in the idea that even during a pandemic, these screaming men and women have the God- given right to get their roots done and order a steak at the restaurant and hit the golf course and the bar, and that those rights, which they claim were conferred upon them by God require a disproportionately black and brown labor force to return to work, get back on the wheel, and risk death in order to serve them and return them to their comfortable lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Broadcasting that crap 24 hours a day, "Shades of Kigali" in '94. 

We regret to inform you that tomorrow, we'll be killed with our families. 

It's pretty ugly, but we're going to rise above it tonight and wish the woman you just saw, the race lady, along with Jeb Bush's former flak, the Rachel Maddow impersonator, and most sincerely, Rachel Maddow herself, a very happy birthday.

And we're going to do it with maximum cultural imperialism. As the Irish say on occasions like this, may your life be full of gladness and health and your pocket full of gold as the least of your wealth. May the dreams you hold dear be the ones that come true. May all the kindness you spread keep coming back to you.

Happy Birthday, MSNBC.

So, some say Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris whatever we're going with is kind of phony because she can't even pronounce her own first name. It changes.

But she'd like you to know that despite appearances, she does have some pretty deep principles.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But we are united by the fundamental belief that every human being is of infinite worth, deserving of compassion, dignity, and respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: But there is a caveat. Unstated at the time that everyone deserves dignity and respect, except the people who work for Kamala Harris. They don't get it, and now they're going on the record to explain.

One staffer in her office, quote, "Had a sense of paranoia that you never knew when she was going to snap at you." Surprised to learn that? Another said employees were quote, "So stressed out that they were making themselves sick."

So, Kamala Harris, champion of women, actually was marinating in a toxic stew of toxic masculinity.

Jesse Kelly is sophisticated enough to understand what this is about. He is the host of "The Jesse Kelly Show." He joins us tonight. Jesse, thanks for coming on. Are you surprised to learn that Kamala Harris, if that's what she is going by is like the worst boss in Washington and nasty to the people who work for her?

JESSE KELLY, HOST, "THE JESSE KELLY SHOW": It is the most predictable thing in the world, Tucker. Everybody watching you right now has worked for or worked with somebody who just has ambition just dripping off of their pores and that's Kamala Harris.

CARLSON: That's right.

KELLY: Those types of people will do anything to get ahead. They treat their bosses like crap. They treat their employees like crap. That's why she knifed Joe Biden in the debate with all that race nonsense. There was no need to do that.

It's the same reason she cackles like a dead hyena every time she is asked an uncomfortable question. It is the same reason she started out her political career as Willie Brown's bratwurst bun. Kamala Harris will do anything to get ahead.

CARLSON: I've got to say when I look at her, you can just -- you can feel the fear and false people are always afraid because they are terrified you'll find out who they really are. People who don't actually know how to pronounce their own first names or who grew up in Canada and pretend they didn't.

She always seems like she is terrified of being exposed.

KELLY: Well she doesn't believe in anything and like you said, people without any grounding, they are really worried about getting called out on it.

Kamala Harris is always painted as this far left winger. Now, if Kamala Harris thought her political ambitions would do better on the right, Kamala Harris would be to the right of Barry Goldwater tomorrow. She believes in absolutely nothing except for Kamala Harris. That's all she's ever been.

And so any staffer, she doesn't look at them like people, like a secretary or an assistant, they're all just stepping stones she can stomp on, on the way to the top job. But she'll be miserable there too as soon as they throw Poor Joe out the back door and Kamala sits in the Oval Office, she'll hate that, too. She'll move on to something else.

CARLSON: It would be funny -- that's such a good point about going there. 

It would be funny to like bribe her pollster to convince her that actually the one issue she could ride to national prominence is like an attack on circumcision or something bizarre and obscure like that and watch her give the impassioned speech.

KELLY: She was throwing people in prison all day long in California as this absolute ball-busting cop, throwing people in jail for anything she could possibly think of. And now, she goes to the Senate. She is the most left- wing senator. This woman doesn't believe in anything except for achieving the next thing.

And like I said, everybody watching is already thinking of somebody, they know someone in their life like that. They are always terrible people, universally.

CARLSON: No, that's -- you're absolutely right. We shouldn't pretend that she is especially unusual. You know her.

Jesse Kelly, great to see you tonight. Thank you for doing that.

KELLY: You, too, Tucker.

CARLSON: So, we're just beginning to get a sense of the outlines of the cost of the coronavirus lockdowns that dominated this country for a year and a half, and it's really sad. Sadder even than we thought.

A brand new data from the C.D.C. spells out just how many people died and not from COVID, we'll tell you how, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So what was the toll of the coronavirus lockdowns? The coronavirus lockdowns were not just about coronavirus, about COVID-19, they changed the way all Americans live and that had costs. It turns out much greater cost than we ever imagined.

According to new data from the C.D.C., a total of 93,000 Americans died of drug ODs last year when the country was shut down. How many people is that? 

Well, in 2019, seventy two thousand people died of drug overdoses. It's a massive increase, fentanyl involved by the way in 60 percent of those ODs.

To assess these numbers, Dr. Marc Siegel joins us. He is a FOX News medical contributor and we're happy to have him. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on. What's your reaction to this? That's an enormous number.

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: I am absolutely astounded except that we expected this, Tucker, didn't we? Now, if you take this back to Wuhan, China in January of 2020 where the city was locked down, where labs were locked down, but you know what other labs were locked down? 

Fentanyl labs were locked down, illicit fentanyl labs were locked down according to Associated Press, a report just out.

And then as the City of Wuhan opened up, guess what happened? The fentanyl started to flow. The liquid fentanyl, 50 to a hundred times more powerful than heroin, than morphine that caused drug overdose deaths. And you know where that fentanyl goes?

Well, Dr. Nora Volkow, she is a psychiatrist and she is the head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and she said yesterday that this was -- that the overdose deaths 93,000 like you said, the most in this century by the way were caused by what she is calling isolation, but our word for isolation is lockdowns where people don't have access to their loved ones, where people don't have access to any structure or they don't have any happiness where they're locked down.

They don't have any treatment, they can't get any treatment. They can't even get Narcan, which is the emergency drug that you use for opioids if you're about to stop breathing. Well, where does all this fentanyl come from, right? Why all this?

Well first of all, Dr. Volkow is right that it is mixed in with methamphetamine. It is with cocaine. You don't even know that you're getting fentanyl. It leaks in through the southern border under the Biden administration, in El Paso, Texas there's 40 pounds of fentanyl over the past year compared to, Tucker, one pound the year before, 40 times more fentanyl in that city alone leaking in through the porous border under the Biden administration.

But it doesn't start there, does it? It doesn't start in the southern border. How did it get to the southern border? Well it got there almost always from China, from a little city in China primarily known as Wuhan, Tucker, Wuhan.

CARLSON: That's incredible. I mean we've done so many segments of this. I had no idea that the precursors for fentanyl were made in Wuhan, the city in Central China that has had a big effect on the history of the world.

So what about -- I just always have wondered when the governors made these decisions to shut down public gatherings, why were no exceptions made for AA or support groups for people who are struggling with addiction and there are millions who are.

SIEGEL: That's an extremely important question and that's because no public health decisions were made from a global view. It was always the virus, the virus, and of course you can't have an AA meeting on Zoom, of course you have to go to your counselor and you have to be counseled and you have to get the treatment, buprenorphine, by the way which you just can't get on Zoom.

So, all of this caused tremendous damage and should have been considered. 

Collateral damage from the pandemic way worse, I believe than from the virus itself.

CARLSON: It is starting to seem that way. Gosh, I mean not to be preachy, but I have to, say there's an awful lot of addiction in this country and I have -- I found sobriety really is the key to happiness. I think that's true.

So we should make it easier and not harder for people to achieve it.

Dr. Siegel, thank you. I appreciate your coming on tonight.

SIEGEL: Alcohol and drug abuse. Thank you, Tucker. Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: Well, we're basically out of time. All this week, we've been showing you horrifying images out of South Africa, one of the prettiest countries in the world, a lot of really nice people. It has descended into anarchy and chaos.

A lot of reasons for this, but the very heart are bad policies -- really bad policies -- that in some cases, were encouraged by our politicians here in the United States. So, we brought someone all the way from South Africa to our studios here to describe what is happening and more importantly, why, and what we can learn from it.

Amazing conversation. We are going to put that up on FOX Nation tomorrow. 

It's a "Tucker Carlson Today" interview. It will be up at 4:00 p.m. and we'll share a portion of it right here on the show tomorrow night.

I hope you have the best night. We'll be back.

In the meantime, Sean Hannity takes over from New York. Hi, Sean.

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