This is a rush transcript from “Tucker Carlson Tonight," September 4, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
You probably didn't see it live, not many people did, but last month, a former Republican Member of Congress called Susan Molinari spoke at the Democratic National Convention. If you thought about it, it was an odd moment.
Susan Molinari is a very nice person actually. People who know her like her, but it wasn't really clear what she was doing speaking at the Democratic Convention. Most Democratic voters probably never have heard of Susan Molinari and her whole speech lasted just a moment.
So what was the point of it, exactly? Well, here's the point. Susan Molinari was a top lobbyist for Google. She was a senior executive at Google until 2018. She wasn't at the D.N.C. to speak to anyone watching from home on TV, she was speaking to the Democratic Party itself.
Her message to them was very clear. Silicon Valley is on your side. We'll help you win this thing.
By inviting Susan Molinari, Democrats also sent a message back to Silicon Valley. You have nothing to fear from us. Elect Joe Biden and you can keep your monopolies. You can extend your control over American life. This was a bargain a long time in the making.
Immediately after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, executives at Google held a company-wide meeting. Really, it was more of a group therapy session. The company's Chief Financial Officer, Ruth Porat broke down in tears as she spoke. She asked how Google could quote, "Use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values," end quote.
What are those values? They're not your values. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was also devastated by Trump's victory. He found the election quote, "deeply offensive."
Watch Brin go full in counter group in front of his employees.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SERGEY BRIN, COFOUNDER, GOOGLE: Most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad for -- because of the election.
As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive.
QUESTION: Is there anything positive you see from this election result?
(LAUGHTER)
BRIN: Boy, that's a really tough one right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Another oppressed billionaire. At the same meeting, Brin suggested that Google changed its algorithm, the very core of its search business to promote, quote, "better quality of governance and decision making." What does that mean? In other words, they want to subvert democracy and everyone in the room knew exactly what he was saying and they got to work doing it.
Two years later, a video of that company-wide meeting leaked. Any other company would have been ashamed of it.
The head of America's most powerful corporation caught on camera planning to manipulate voting in elections. But Google was not embarrassed. They didn't stop either. No one made them stop. So they continued.
Last year, a new video emerged. This video showed a woman called Jen Gennai, who works in the Artificial Intelligence Unit at Google confessing to trying to manipulate the 2020 election, the one underway now.
Gennai said, quote, "We all got screwed over in 2016. So we're rapidly been like, what happened there? And how do we prevent it from happening again?" Once again, she is speaking about the results of a free and fair democratic election that Google, the most powerful company in the world didn't like, so they're trying to make sure it never happens again.
It's brazen, but they're doing it. Why are they doing it? Well, imagine you're them. Imagine we're back in 2016 and you're a tech executive in Northern California. You're in your 30s. You're not particularly impressive, though you have all the right credentials. And yet, somehow you are now worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
And you look on as Donald Trump wins the White House. He is running on the most populous Republican platform since Teddy Roosevelt. On the other side, openly socialist candidates are elected to Congress.
People are tired of oligarchs like you. You have not improved America. You know this could be very bad for you. Someone might tax your stock options or seize your private island. So what do you do next?
Well, Silicon Valley had a few ideas. First, they boosted Democrats who were aligned with Wall Street and multibillion-dollar companies like theirs. As long as people were distracted by identity politics, as long as they were fighting about unresolvable issues like race and gender, you might be able to distract them long enough that you could pull this off.
You won't talk about the fact that you don't pay taxes, if you're busy attacking cops and other powerless members of the working class. So there's a reason Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are now the standard bearers of the Democratic Party. It is not because Democratic voters love them so much. They didn't. It's because they're compliant.
Joe Biden has trouble formulating sentences. Clearly, he is not posing a threat to tech monopolies. Of course not, after 50 years of shilling for corporations.
And no politician has demonstrated more clearly her ability to use race tension to divide this country more effectively than Kamala Harris has.
Kamala Harris has applauded the riots. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN COLBERT, TALK SHOW HOST: I want to make clear that I know that there are protests still happening in major cities across United States. I am just not seeing the reporting on it that I have for the first few weeks.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: That's right. That's right. But they're not going to stop. They're not going to stop and that's -- they're not -- this is a movement.
I'm telling you, they're not going to stop before Election Day in November and they're not going to stop after Election Day.
And that should be -- everyone should take note of that on both levels that this isn't -- they're not going to let up and they should not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The rioters aren't going to let up and they should not, says Kamala Harris. Right.
This is the same Kamala Harris who tweeted that Michael Brown was murdered by cops in Ferguson, Missouri. He wasn't murdered. That's not speculation, Barack Obama's own Justice Department concluded he wasn't murdered. That's a lie. But Harris repeated it anyway and her allies at Twitter allowed her to disseminate that lie nationwide. They didn't pull that tweet down.
So Silicon Valley is doing all it can to help the Biden-Harris ticket. And this is just the beginning.
This year, for example, LinkedIn founder, Reid Hoffman and other billionaires threw major financial support behind an organization called ACRONYM.
Reportedly, ACRONYM has set up bogus news sites in swing states to portray Democrats in a positive light. Oh, kind of like the propaganda they claimed Russia was propagating in the last election. Right.
This is the party that loves to complain about the death of local journalism, but they are funding a propaganda network to change people's opinions before an election.
And the goal of course isn't just to make Democrats look good, it is to make you terrified because scared populations are easier to control. That's why Facebook blocked a video featuring the President pointing out an obvious scientific truth and no scientist disagrees with this.
Children are mostly not at risk from the effects of the coronavirus. According to the scientific journal, "The Lancet," the virus is, quote, "Generally a mild disease in children including infants." Fatal outcomes are quote, "rare."
If you knew that, you might have real questions about the lockdowns Joe Biden and the teachers unions and so many other institutions in this country are pushing. So you can't know it. Facebook decided you should not be able to see those data from "The Lancet."
Twitter went a step further and had their 27-year-old Liberal Arts majors lock down the President's campaign account until the campaign deleted the video themselves. In other words, "kiss the ring" said Twitter. We won't just erase the video, we need you to bow publicly to our authority and do it yourself.
This has implications far beyond the election, far beyond who becomes President in January. This is about how much power the tech monopolies will have.
It's about how much power that professional class can continue to wield as the middle class dies. Technology executives in San Francisco are the product of those institutions, of leftwing universities. They've been trained to dislike the country that made their success possible, and they very much do.
So anything they do that can weaken social cohesion in this country or trust in our institutions is of course appealing, and that includes pushing mail-in voting, which everyone knows that's voter fraud. That's why Big Tech is pushing that. It's why they're backing radical politicians and DAs like Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. People like that degrade and destabilize our country.
But Silicon Valley is in favor of that and has been in favor of that since 2016, and they've been getting away with it.
Saagar Enjeti is an Opinion Host at "The Hill." He's the host of "The Realignment Podcast." We are always happy to have him on the show.
Saagar, thanks so much for coming on.
SAAGAR ENJETI, OPINION HOST "THE HILL": Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: So I'm looking around and I'm trying to find a power center in American life that is pushing back against the tech monopolies as they try to manipulate the outcome of this election and I can't find one.
ENJETI: Well, there isn't one that exists currently, Tucker, except for the Federal government, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Antitrust within the Department of Justice.
And what you pointed to, which is so important, is the fusion of what we see: the censorship regime within Silicon Valley and how it perfectly pairs with a Biden-Harris administration. How they would use the Federal government, which is the only force which is capable of reining in these organizations instead to make the censorship regime into Federal law.
Right now, we have seen that Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Ibram Kendi, who is the author of "How to be an Anti-Racist," who proposes radical solutions such as a constitutional amendment or Department of quote, "Anti-Racism." All of your viewers, all of us know, all people who want true egalitarianism in the United States know exactly who such a department would be coming for. Soon it will be enshrined in a Biden-Harris administration.
What you see in terms of Twitter's Terms of Service could be the law of the land under these people.
CARLSON: So I think you said something really important just a second ago when you said, all of us who want a more egalitarian country, not equality of outcomes by Federal law, but a broadly middle class country that doesn't have these massive peaks and deep valleys of income distribution. That's making our country really, really unstable.
No one is saying that. No one is addressing that problem. Why do you think that is?
ENJETI: Because that would require actually looking at the billionaire class that you looked at. People like Sergey Brin, people like Larry Page, many others worth hundreds of billions of dollars in stock options and so much more, and asking why exactly right now has the upper 20 percent of American society actually become richer during one of the worst economic depressions in our lifetime.
And the bottom half of American workers have lost almost something like 20 percent of their wages, and we're already living a blown tire away from bankruptcy.
That is not what you alluded to. Equality of opportunity, which is what America is actually founded upon. What they want is equality of outcome based upon Federal law, so that they can use their oligarchical power and their manipulation and basically buying of the politicians, especially many of these Democrats who are in league with them and enforce the outcomes that they want to see.
It's exactly about power, and it's exactly about making sure that we don't have true equality of opportunity in this country.
CARLSON: So a financial crisis descends on the country. We can argue about why, probably the results are bad policy, but it happened. The top percentile of the country gets much richer, everyone else gets much poorer, and yet nobody talks about it. You never hear anybody say that.
Could it be that the racial conflict -- manufactured racial conflict we're watching was designed to keep people from talking about that?
ENJETI: Well, you see it right now in how Twitter enforces its so-called Terms of Service. They'll fact check the President of the United States and others and allow rampant racial disinformation to go viral on its platforms.'
In several cases, they've allowed disinformation to go viral, which led to more rioting and looting. Did a single person have their Twitter account locked there, Tucker? Not one person. It continues to go viral to this day.
CARLSON: I mean, if Black Lives Matter came out for say, a hundred percent tax on Jeff Bezos, his personal holdings, I might support them, but of course they never will.
Great. Saagar, great to see you. Thank you.
ENJETI: Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, we've covered tech censorship extensively on the show. Unfortunately, it has gotten worse.
Physicians not allowed to offer their opinions, their research about the coronavirus. Why is that?
Recently, we discussed the reasons on the show. We'll show it to you after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back to a special edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. If you ask the actual physicians, people who are practicing in hospitals, they'll tell you the science on drugs, a lot of drugs, including drugs like hydroxychloroquine isn't settled.
It depends on the case. It depends how you use it. It depends what other drugs you use it in conjunction with.
But those physicians aren't making our public health policy. Instead, it appears to be made by 25-year-old social media managers at Facebook or Twitter, and they will denounce you as a fascist for mentioning the word "hydroxychloroquine."
This is not how you manage a public health crisis.
We took a look at why this is all happening now recently. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: So much going on right now in the news. New developments from every direction, much of it seems unrelated. A lot of it's shocking. Here's the way to understand it.
In an election year, everything significant that happens is about the election. So all of these developments are in fact related, and here's the core question in every election. Who is up and who is down?
As of tonight, the President is down double digits in the polls and there's not much question about why that is. Americans are miserable. They're stuck at home. They are fearful. Millions of them don't have jobs.
The percentage of Americans who believe our country is headed in the right direction has dropped off a cliff since this spring. Not coincidentally, that's when a strange new virus from China began to spread among our population.
The rise of COVID-19 in the United States tracks almost precisely the decline of Donald Trump's approval numbers and the political lesson from this is clear. The more damage the Wuhan coronavirus does to America, the harder it is for the President to get reelected.
That's not speculation. It is the most certain fact in American politics. Every Democratic officeholder understands that. If the population remains terrified, Democrats will have more power in January.
So the Democratic Party has every incentive to keep Americans afraid and off balance. For the next 97 days, they plan to do that. That is their entire campaign strategy. It's the only thing they're running on.
Yesterday, the news site Breitbart posted a video of a group of physicians giving a press conference about medical advances in the fight against COVID-19. Some of the news that doctors delivered was hopeful because there is hopeful news to report.
Seventeen million people saw that video, the President retweeted it. This enraged Democrats.
Any scientific advancement that reduces the suffering of Americans in an election year is a threat to Joe Biden's campaign. So they decided to pull that video off the internet.
Fifteen years ago, that would have been absurd. You couldn't have done it. This was America. You weren't allowed to ban a news story just because it might hurt your candidate's poll numbers.
In any case, it was impossible. There were too many news outlets. No one could control them all. That has changed.
While the rest of us were sleeping, or in the case of so many of our senators, taking payoffs from Google, a tiny number of left-wing corporations took virtually complete control of all news and information in this country.
Now, if Democrats want to erase a politically inconvenient news story fewer than a hundred days before an election, they can do that, and they did do it. Big Tech censored science.
They pulled the video of doctors in lab coats talking about coronavirus research, and they hid that video from the public. It's exactly what the Chinese government so often does, except when Silicon Valley erases your freedoms, they lecture you as they do it.
They've got all the ruthlessness of Chinese authoritarians, but with double the self-righteousness. It's the American version.
Thankfully, none of this applies to us at Fox News. We happen to work for one of the very few mass media companies left in America that is not controlled by Google or Facebook. We can report the news honestly. Big Tech can't censor us, at least not right now.
You're not allowed to watch these physicians on YouTube tonight, but we can show them to you here, and we're going to. Here's Dr. Bob Hamilton.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. BOB HAMILTON: I think that is important that all of us who are here today realize that our kids are not really the ones who are driving the infection, it is being driven by older individuals.
And yes, we can send the kids back to school, I think without fear. We need to not act out of fear. We need to act out of science. We need to do it. We need to get it done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: What you just heard is not a crackpot theory. It is at the center of mainstream science. Increasingly, what you just heard represents the consensus among physicians and researchers around the world.
Children are not meaningful vectors for the coronavirus. Worldwide, there is not a single recorded case of a student infecting a teacher with the virus, not one case, and that's why so many nations around the world are reopening their schools this fall, but we're not.
We've got a presidential election in November. Children must suffer so that Joe Biden can win that election. That is the imperative, the political imperative driving our so-called health policy, but you're not allowed to know that. So they pulled the video telling you that.
Here's another physician from the same press conference called Dr. Stella Immanuel.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. STELLA IMMANUEL, PHYSICIAN: There is a cure for COVID. There is a cure for COVID. It's called hydroxychloroquine. It's called zinc. It's called Zithromax, and it is time for the grassroots to wake up.
I say, no, we're not going to take this any longer. We're not going to die.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Dr. Immanuel's claim is harder for us to endorse. Is hydroxychloroquine part of a cure for the coronavirus? We don't know the answer.
We do know that many frontline physicians around the world have prescribed hydroxychloroquine and continue to prescribe it. We've interviewed some of them on the show. The drug appears to show promise in treating some early- stage patients. That's good news.
The science on hydroxychloroquine is not settled either way. Science rarely is settled. That's why it's science and not, for example, radical feminist theory.
Science is constantly evolving as we test and retest our assumptions against observed reality. That's the whole point of science.
Unfortunately, reality is not the point of politics. Winning is the point of politics, so they scrubbed that video. Here's more of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IMMANUEL: My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is, when was the last time you put a stethoscope on a patient? That when you start seeing patients like we see on a daily basis, you will understand the frustration that we feel. You need to start feeling for American people like we, the frontline doctors feel.
You need to start realizing that. They are listening to you and if they are going to listen to you, you've got to give them a message of hope.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, that clip enraged them. Because above all, you must never mock the sainted Anthony Fauci. Under no circumstances can you note that Dr. Fauci is, in fact, very often a hypocritical buffoon who refuses to admit what he clearly doesn't know.
If you say that out loud, they will cancel you. Fauci is too useful to the Biden campaign. So until November, Fauci's word must be law, even when it doesn't make sense. Criticize Fauci and you will disappear from the internet.
And so Dr. Immanuel disappeared from the internet. And then Google's countless toadies online did the cleanup work, the ugly stuff.
"The Daily Beast" attacked Dr. Immanuel for the crime of getting her medical degree in Africa and then suggested she believed in witchcraft because you know, Africans do that, right?
So political correctness is fine with "The Daily Beast" most of the year, but this is election season, so Dr. Immanuel must be destroyed. "The Daily Beast" was happy to help achieve that.
So by the way, with the think tank libertarians, including some still posing as conservatives, people you read, people who work for places you probably have sent money to. You saw them on Twitter today, hopefully reminding you that this variety of censorship isn't really censorship because the government isn't doing it.
Oh. They didn't explain exactly why that distinction matters to anyone. In fact, censorship is always bad, whether it's imposed by Congress or whether it's imposed by monopolies that only exist because they receive special carve outs granted to them by Congress. It doesn't matter.
Censorship is always wrong. Censorship does not improve public health. In fact, it threatens public health.
The authorities responsible for containing this pandemic clearly have failed. We know that. Some of them are decent people. They're trying their best. But despite their efforts, they've frequently been wrong. We know that because it's on tape.
So what we desperately need now, as we always do in crisis, and especially in a crisis that can be solved by science is more voices in the conversation, not fewer.
Want proof? Here's the Surgeon General, remember when he told us this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: What the World Health Organization and the C.D.C. have reaffirmed in the last few days is that they do not recommend the general public wear mask.
Wearing a mask improperly can actually increase your risk of getting disease.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, so masks are dangerous, right? That wasn't very long ago. Now masks are mandatory, and the cops will nab you if you're not wearing one. What does this tell us? It tells us what we already knew, if we were honest, which is that scientific consensus changes. That's the point.
As we learn more, our conclusions change. Legitimate scientists understand that. That's called the scientific method. Big Tech companies don't care one way or the other because their goal is not the truth. Their goal is to control the outcome of an election. It's not to protect public health.
This isn't about public health, and it's not about science. It never was. It's about power. And no one in the history of the world has ever had more power than Google and Facebook have right now.
So we should have seen this coming. People with power abuse that power and people who have absolute power abuse it absolutely, as we learned.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: Google deliberately made it more difficult for users to get to a number of websites whose politics they don't like. That's not speculation. The evidence is clear.
Earlier this year, we talked to one of the editors who runs a website destroyed by Google. We will tell you what he said, next.
RICK LEVENTHAL, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Rick Leventhal.
President Trump urging Americans to be vigilant over the Labor Day holiday about the coronavirus hoping to avoid another spike since COVID-19 cases increased after Memorial Day and July 4th. The President encouraged urging everyone to be careful and apply commonsense in their interactions with others, also saying he thinks there will be a vaccine ready by the end of October.
In Virginia, legislators giving final approval today to a bill aimed at making absentee voting easier in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The governor immediately signing the bill into law, which allocates $2 million for prepaid postage, a measure opposed by some Virginia Republicans.
It also sets up a process for voters to correct paperwork issues on improperly submitted ballots.
I'm Rick Leventhal. Now we go back to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
CARLSON: Welcome back to a special edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. The website Breitbart keeps track of its traffic. Of course, all websites do.
Its traffic from Google searches in the first half of 2020 measured by unique visitors is down 63 percent from the first half of 2016.
Breitbart search results for key terms have been buried by Google. Even if you literally type in the full headline of a Breitbart News article into Google, it won't necessarily show up.
Someone at Google apparently is doing this on purpose. On May 1st, for example, Google searches for Joe Biden generated roughly 30,000 views for Breitbart. After May 5th, views from Joe Biden searches went to zero.
So the site was targeted, clearly. Breitbart is conservative. They published videos that were embarrassing to Google. We showed you one of those videos at the beginning of the show.
Early this summer, we spoke to Alex Marlow. He is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News about what Google is doing. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: So you were just censored by the Big Tech companies -- Google, Facebook and Twitter. But you've done research into the specifics.
So I think anyone paying attention realizes there is censorship going on, but it's done in a very stealthy way. Google has been limiting your reach without telling you this honestly. Give us an example of what you've learned they are doing to your site.
ALEX MARLOW, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART NEWS: Thanks, Tucker. Thanks for having me, always a treat to be with you. And I will start with some breaking news that I can share on the show, which is at Breitbart, we've done deep dive research into our Google traffic comparing it to the 2016 election and we picked that because we unearthed video a couple of years ago with our own Allum Bokhari, who reported on the Global Vice President of Google, Kent Walker, who said that he is going to endeavor to make populism and nationalism a blip or a hiccup.
So we naturally took him at his word, because if you understand the left, you understand that they don't tend to lie about such things. And we started looking at our traffic. And gradually since the 2016 election, Google has been diminishing our search results.
And then all of a sudden, in May of this year, we've virtually lost all Google traffic, all search traffic, all together. Let me give you some specific pieces of data.
Google tracks something called a visibility index. This is sort of like their Nielsen score. That's when your content shows up on one of their pages. Breitbart is down 99.7 percent. Overall, our Google traffic is down nearly two thirds.
If you want to search for Joe Biden or Biden, the chances of you getting a Breitbart article are virtually zero, Tucker, virtually no opportunity for you to get it. Unless, of course, you add the word Breitbart, which explains what's left of our Google traffic.
Now naturally, we looked at other outlets to see if there is a pattern, of course, we have more access to our own data, but we compared the top 50 or so top publishers, and we found that eight out of the bottom 10 when it comes to Google search are right of center outlets, that includes Fox News, and even "The Daily Caller" as one of the two outlets that actually somehow performs worse than Breitbart.
CARLSON: This is not a small thing. Google has a monopoly. It's allowed by Congress, by the shills who allow this, Senator Lee among others who really should be ashamed of themselves. And they are therefore the gateway to all human information in English.
So if you don't exist on Google, you don't exist. Did they tell you that they were going to shut you down in order to get Joe Biden elected, or did they just do it?
MARLOW: They won't tell us specifically why. They only provide vague talking points about things that are way out of our control and are non- specified, they are totally subjective, and I think your thesis, Tucker, is right on the money here.
This is 100 percent about the 2020 election in controlling the narrative and controlling what people read. If outlets like Breitbart cannot reach new voters via Google, then that is going to be all the more people who are getting their news a hundred percent from CNN, "The New York Times" and the people who would do anything in their power to get Joe Biden into the White House.
CARLSON: So maybe the Congress should have done something about this before allowing a company that is not an American company. It's not in any sense an American company to have total control over all of our news and information. Maybe someone should have noticed. Why didn't anybody do anything?
MARLOW: That is the mystery that I am boggled. It boggles the mind because I don't feel like the Republican Party feels the existential threat that you and I have been trying to convey to them.
This is it. Freedom of speech in the United States right now is controlled by Google. It is controlled by Facebook and it is controlled by Twitter.
And remember, Google controls YouTube, Tucker. This is exactly why we saw these videos memory hold from the internet yesterday, and guess what explanation we got from Breitbart when they took down our videos? Vague, pablum, nothing specific. They wouldn't cite a specific piece of misinformation.
And now all of a sudden, Google, Mark Zuckerberg, et cetera, they apparently know more about hydroxychloroquine and the coronavirus than board certified doctors.
CARLSON: Exactly. And that we should say, we would rather talk to them than talk about them, so we asked representatives from all three of those companies to come on tonight. But of course they ducked the invitation.
Alex Marlow, thanks so much.
MARLOW: Thank you, Tucker.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: So the tech monopolies are interfering in our presidential election far more than Russia ever dreamed of doing it. Is there anything the U.S. government, the Feds can do about this -- beyond launching investigations that inevitably go nowhere?
We'll speak to someone who knows the answer to that question, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Just a few years ago would have been unimaginable for media companies to censor political candidates in election years, but now it is commonplace.
Just this year, Twitter has censored several tweets from the sitting President of the United States. In one instant, Twitter, the company accused the President of quote, "glorifying violence." Glorifying violence. His crime, he promised to use force to restore the rule of law on the streets of Washington, D.C.
Twitter has also routinely used bogus fact checks to prevent users from learning that mail-in balloting is a massive fraud risk, which it is.
This is yet another example of election interference far more profound than anything Russia ever did by American tech companies. So what is the Federal government doing about it?
Federal officials will tell you a lot about Russia and the threat they pose to our democracy, but no one ever seems to mention this.
Lawmakers recently held antitrust hearings. The President signed an Executive Order that could revoke the special immunity that some tech websites receive from lawsuits. But none of that's happened yet. Will anything happen?
Matt Whitaker is the former acting U.S. Attorney General. He's the author of the book, "Above the Law." He joins us tonight. Matt Whitaker, thanks so much for coming on.
So you can imagine and I'm sure you share the frustration. It's infuriating to watch large monopolies change the course of American history by subverting our elections, and no one is doing anything about it. Will anyone in power do anything to stop this before Election Day, do you believe?
MATT WHITAKER, FORMER ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Glad to be with you, Tucker. And yes, I actually do believe that we are going to get to the bottom of this insidious, really censorship of mostly conservative voices on social media.
And I think the Department of Justice has been looking at this issue, and I also believe that because of the way the algorithms that Facebook and Twitter and the like use to provide your newsfeed, I think that could be viewed and maybe viewed by this Department of Justice as a campaign contribution, an elite campaign contribution, that ultimately, I think they will step in and take action.
CARLSON: I mean, we've got two months left, and it's really not even a question of trying to get Trump reelected or helping Joe Biden. I mean, I think the implications are far more profound and long lasting than that.
Google single handedly could erode any public confidence in democracy, and I just wonder if people in the Department of Justice see this problem in those terms?
WHITAKER: I think they do. And I think what is also happening among these companies, Facebook in particular, they have so much data on their individual users that they can essentially manipulate what you see, how you see it, and therefore, based on the feedback loop that is provided, they can then try to influence you to whether it's to use a product or vote for a candidate.
It's really -- again, it's insidious, and I think the Department of Justice has to act because our democracy can probably not stand this for another election cycle.
CARLSON: I wonder -- I mean, since you're very familiar with how the Federal government actually works since you ran the most important agency, do you think it's fair to say that there are Federal officials who are afraid to take on Google?
WHITAKER: I don't think so. I think Bill Barr, the Attorney General, is not afraid, really afraid of anything. And ultimately, it's what laws and what tools do we have? In the Executive Branch, we execute the law.
And so, you know, the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides a safe harbor for these companies that I think, you know, Congress needs to act and to provide some relief, so that there can be more enforcement on that front.
CARLSON: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, that is a legislative matter. They gave these companies that special carve out. We didn't get it and they haven't taken it back.
Matt Whitaker, thank you for that. Great to see you. Congrats on the book.
WHITAKER: Thank you, Tucker. Good to see you.
CARLSON: Well, physicians, researchers, scientists got a very clear message from the tech monopolies this spring. Don't question the coronavirus guidelines with your science talk.
This has been going on for months. We'll show you how, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back to a Special Edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT when Facebook and Twitter banned physicians from giving their evidence-based views about the coronavirus lockdowns, it wasn't a one-off abuse of power.
They've been doing things like this all year long, subverting our knowledge of science, keeping scientists from presenting their data. None of this has gotten much media coverage, if any.
As soon as the lockdowns began, YouTube preemptively declared that no one could use the platform to challenge the health guidelines of local health officials.
In other words, if you don't think you need a mask, or if you think you can attend an indoor gathering or if you have any information or view that doesn't comport with local authorities, YouTube was going to ban you. Google was going to keep you from speaking.
Back in April we spoke to Dave Rubin. He saw what was going on. He explained how authoritarians use public health crises to advance their own agendas, to consolidate their own power.
He also discussed whether tech censors would come for this show. He said they would. And of course he was right.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: Do you notice that the "norms and standards" -- to quote "The Atlantic" -- of American life seems to have changed overnight, and all of a sudden, we're being told we must accept things that would have been completely unimaginable two months ago.
DAVE RUBIN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND AUTHOR: Well, Tucker, there's so much to talk about here. First off, I didn't realize I was going to be on a sci- fi show tonight, but we are entering a dystopian future.
CARLSON: Exactly.
RUBIN: We are entering an authoritarian future because as I've said to you before, authoritarians love authoritarianism, so they're taking this opportunity when we're all confused, we're all locked at home. The only way we can communicate with each other is through their pipes. It is through YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, and everything else and they're actually finally saying to us, this is who we are.
I mean, "The Atlantic" is ridiculous. I don't know anyone that reads it anymore. But the bigger issue here is the YouTube, Twitter, Facebook component of it because we are now saying to them, or they are saying to us, we're going to tell you what's true, and if you dare go against what we say is true, not necessarily what is true, but what we say is true, then we're going to boo you.
So, of course, the other part of this is that, it will always only be one side that gets booted here. I mean, is Facebook running around and is Twitter and YouTube running around? Are they taking away all the Russian collusion videos that were up over the past couple years?
I'm pretty sure MSNBC has a YouTube that still has videos on it. I mean, that was pushing lies and misinformation and propaganda. So, we need to debate these things.
If I was to interview these two doctors that you showed the video of, would my be deleted? Am I not allowed to talk about that? Is that not what science and open inquiry really is about? That you test theories and then you find out what actually is true.
And as you pointed out, and this may be the most important part, it's not as if the W.H.O. is infallible. They were literally just a few weeks ago, telling us not to wear masks. Now, by law, I tried to go to CVS yesterday, and I wasn't going to wear a mask, I was just going to run in and out and it said in the front of the store, it said by law, you have to wear a mask.
So, it's not as if these people have some, you know, some total stranglehold on truth that the rest of us have to bow to, unless they force us to and unfortunately, Big Tech has got us now more than ever, because we're all trapped at home and it's the only way we can communicate.
CARLSON: So, no one in science has a monopoly on the truth. Science in fact is a rejection of the idea that there is a monopoly on truth. It's the endless search for what we can prove. That's what science is. This has nothing to do with it.
You introduced as a hypothetical, the notion that you could be deleted your for hosting this video. I'm not sure that is hypothetical anymore. And my question is very simple. How long before they come for you?
You just wrote a book called "Don't Burn This Book" -- how long before they come for the show? Sincere questions?
RUBIN: Yes, well, at some level, I don't want to think about it. But you know, Tucker, you've written a couple of books and you know that the publishing process takes quite some time.
So, I finished this book back in July. But I'm very proud that the ideas that I present in "Don't Burn This Book" are more relevant now than they even were then because I talk about Big Tech. I talk about fake news -- all of the things that we're constantly talking about and am I worried? Yes, I'm worried.
I mean, look, everyone should be worried. Everyone should be worried. This is why I started https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__locals.com&d=DwICAg&c=cnx1hdOQtepEQkpermZGwQ&r=tgDLkJy54PfJyWJwul3dKe54qGxqO7b7d5vjo7RcZds&m=QpRQtVlO3lRrqUS5YbuS60CtqMlJaLGwALmzlowS-d8&s=OtvFRRsYn8hs8vWnkYHl6mOiK_lUQBuwJiTO1alsD8s&e= , my tech company, because I think we need digital homes.
Anyone that's online and you think that YouTube or Facebook or Twitter is there to protect you, you're the product. I mean, these things are free except free, meaning they just took your soul in exchange for it.
We should own our data. You should own your own content. We need to start rethinking everything.
CARLSON: Of course.
RUBIN: I mean, I think this is why I'm actually quite enthused about the world right now as depressing and upsetting as some of the news is, you know, there's a new world coming on the horizon. And I think a lot of people are rethinking the way they look at the world, the way -- do you want to commute? Do you want to live in a big city? Do you want to be so reliant on the institutions and systems that we've always been reliant on?
So, I think we have to rethink things. And you know what, Tucker? This is still America for a little while, and I believe an old-fashioned hard work, competition and ingenuity and I think that's what will fix this.
But yes, we've got a big battle to fight in front of us.
CARLSON: Yes, and maybe some -- I mean, these companies exists because Congress gave them a carve out in Federal legislation, and you sort of wonder where is Senator Mike Lee on this question? Sucking up to Google?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: That's it for our special edition of TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
We'll be back every week night, 8:00 p.m. The show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.
It's Labor Day weekend. The last of the summer. Spend time with the ones you love if you can. It's all that matters.
See you Monday.
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