AOC links Republicans to White supremacists, QAnon believers
Author and commentator Mark Steyn weighs in on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 27, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Happy Wednesday.
Well, it looks like this is the part of the revolution where they start throwing their political opponents in jail. Wow, that was fast.
It was just a week ago they were telling us about unity. Remember that? What we didn't know at the time is they meant that everyone with power should unite against the rest of the country. Unity meant oligarchy.
Oh, Doug Mackey learned that the hard way this morning. Mackey is a 31- year-old conservative journalist from Florida. At 7:00 a.m. F.B.I. showed up at Mackey's house, they threw him in handcuffs and dragged him to his cell. He now faces 10 years in prison. His crime: he made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.
As the Federal criminal complaint puts it, quote: "Mackey made coordinated use of social media to spread disinformation relevant to the impending 2016 presidential election." This disinformation in the Biden administration solemnly explained, quote: " ... often took the form of memes."
Yes, memes: online mockery. Mockery online is now illegal when it's aimed at the wrong people. Doug Mackey hurt their feelings, so they put him in jail.
According to Joe Biden's Justice Department, Doug Mackey violated 18 U.S. Code Section 241. He did this by tricking people like the dastardly trickster that he is into not voting in the presidential election.
What's interesting is that prosecutors showed no evidence whatsoever that Doug Mackey actually tricked anyone into anything voting or not, not a single person. But that doesn't matter shrieked CNN, Doug Mackey is a bad person with bad views. And by the way, we have no idea what Doug Mackey's views are. We don't care.
What CNN is telling us is that those views are a crime. He is a criminal. Lock him up. Give him a longer sentence than we give to rapists -- which they're trying to do.
As of tonight, that is the official position of the lynch mob channel. But hold on a minute, as a legal matter, have you ever read 18 U.S. Code Section 241? Probably not. But you should. Look it up.
When you read it, you will learn that Joe Biden's Justice Department is lying in a very obvious way and that should make you very nervous. It turns out that Federal law does not ban memes or for that matter, misinformation, whatever that is. The law that Biden's prosecutors are citing instead prohibits, quote: "Conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate anyone from exercising the right to vote." According to the law that would include kidnapping voters, invading their homes, sexually abusing them.
Doug Mackey didn't do any of that -- not even close to any of that. Doug Mackey made memes, therefore, he's a domestic terrorist. Speech is violence, dissent is a felony.
What you may be wondering does a case like this mean for the First Amendment? Well, it means that it's effectively suspended. You can now be arrested for saying the wrong things and at 7:00 a.m. this morning, one journalist actually was arrested for that.
Almost no one tonight seems to be defending him. He had bad thoughts. He deserves it. They think it's okay, and that shouldn't surprise you because we're clearly living under some form of Martial Law at the moment.
How do we know that? Well, here's one indication. There are nearly 10,000 Federal troops in our capital city tonight. Oh, that's a hint. Why are they there? How long will they be staying? Nobody is being very specific about any of that, so you're left to draw your own conclusions, which people naturally are.
And by the way, it's not making anyone more moderate. If you're really worried about extremism, you probably wouldn't put 10,000 Federal troops in your capital city, making everyone more radical and crazy. But they don't care about that.
The point of this whole highly militarized exercise is to remind you of what Chairman Mao once famously said: political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Unfortunately, that is true in every country at all times.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is no genius, but he does understand that. As he explained today, as long as his political opponents exist, those soldiers will stay.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): The threat to the country is not over. Right? We still have 5,000 National Guard members surrounding the Capitol Complex. Why? Because there are still existing threats, present threats to the security of the Capitol.
And so, so long as Donald Trump is empowered by Senate Republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the Capitol. The threat is still very real to American democracy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Okay, so as long as there are people in this country who persist in disagreeing with Chris Murphy, explains Chris Murphy, we're going to need to keep thousands of heavily armed soldiers on the scene. Why specifically? Because -- and we're quoting now, "The threat is still very real to American democracy."
But wait, democracy requires soldiers? We thought it was voluntary. If you're starting to think that maybe someone at some point secretly redefined the term democracy, changing its meaning to roughly 180 degrees from what it was just last year, you may be onto something.
What we're looking at now is not democracy in the classical Athenian sense, where everyone gets to vote and the voice of everyone matters equally. No, what we are looking at now is instead democracy in the 1970s Eastern Bloc People's Democratic Republic sense. This new version of democracy is a democracy where everyone fervently agrees with the people in power, or else they go immediately to jail.
Doug Mackey's problem, it turns out, is that he didn't properly understand what democracy is. Thankfully, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio does understand it and he explained it to us today.
"We're not letting those soldiers go home," Tim Ryan said, until they do what our special operations forces did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TIM RYAN (D-OH): Who in our government, in our military have had experience around crowd control, maybe even Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Like, how can we learn everything we need to learn to reset the posture on Capitol Hill? And we're not going to let the National Guard go home or we're not going to create an unsafe environment for the country's business until we have that figured out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, they are specialists in controlling unruly populations. We get it. Rather than answer our questions or improve our lives, you're bringing in people with guns to remind us that you're in charge and dissent is illegal. That's a big change.
You may have thought you were a decent American in good standing. Ten years ago, nobody in this country would have called your views extreme. They weren't extreme then. You don't think they're extreme now? You've always considered myself a pretty moderate person: live your life and get along with others. Oh, that's not possible now, because the rules have changed.
You are now a dangerous insurgent. You are no different from a bloodthirsty Pashtun in Helmand Province or an ISIS terrorist in Erbil. You're part of a guerrilla insurgency. Maybe it's a gorilla insurgency. That's possible, too. Have you seen the pictures from January 6th? Some of those terror leaders seems suspiciously furry.
Here's the mastermind behind that terrible insurrection. The jihadi known by his nom de guerre Chewbacca guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey. [Bleep] man. Glad to see you guys. You guys are patriots. Look at this guy, he has got -- he is covered in blood. God bless you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You good, sir? You need medical attention.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm good. Thank you. I got shot in the face. I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any chance I could you get you guys to leave the Senate wing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will. I've been making sure they ain't disrespecting the place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, I just want to let you guys know this is like the sacredest place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Sad news tonight. Chewbacca guy is no longer available for your kid's seventh birthday party. He is in prison tonight. We will tell you when they move them to Gitmo or some undisclosed black site. And when they do, Sandy Cortez will breathe easier.
Back during the Great Terrorist Siege of January 6th, Sandy Cortez found herself in the same city as Chewbacca, literally in the same city, trapped and abandoned. Just like those lonely valiant troops in Corregidor so many years ago. She really thought she was going to die.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I had a pretty traumatizing event happen to me. I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So thankfully, they've arrested Chewbacca guy and the rest of his marauding band of terrorists, many of them well over 65 years old. So there is still a little justice in this country.
But hairy stoners in Viking hats are not the only threat that Sandy Cortez faces tonight. No, far from it. There are the other Members of Congress to worry about, some of them are Republicans, and you know what that means. At any moment, these people are likely to open fire indiscriminately on the House floor purely out of racism. And of course, she's worried about that. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CORTEZ: We still don't yet feel safe around other Members of Congress.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: How many --
CORTEZ: I think a very considerable amount. The moment you bring a gun onto the House floor in violation of rules, you put everyone around you in danger.
I don't care if you accidentally set it off. I don't care if you intentionally set it off. I don't care if you set it off at all. You are putting -- you are endangering the lives of Members of Congress. And it is absolutely outrageous that we even have to have this conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It's outrageous. Absolutely outrageous, said the leader of America's narcissism party, the fastest growing party in the country. Even on the House floor surrounded by other elected Members of Congress, democratically elected -- Sandy Cortez did not feel safe.
And that, my friends is why we need tens of thousands of armed Federal troops right outside her office tonight, so that Sandy Cortez can finally for once take a breath and get back to the vital business of making perky Instagram videos about herself. The business of the people. It must go on.
Well, of course it must. We all support that.
Now that we're talking about the people, you've got to wonder what they think of all of this, the actual people. No one in power cares what they think, obviously. None of this is about the people who are actually suffering in our country, the millions of them. No, we're watching one of those rare revolutions, rare in world history that's being waged, not on behalf of the general population, but waged against it.
All of this is being done expressly for the oligarchs. None of it is being done for you. Of course, if you live in Washington, D.C., you already know that very well. Federal troops are not protecting your home tonight.
Sandy Cortez doesn't care if you get robbed or carjacked, as more and more people are as crime skyrockets. Sandy Cortez and her friends want to abolish your police, not their police. Here's a scene from the rest of the City of Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Carmelo Duncan was 15 months old when he was fatally shot Wednesday night in the Southeast. His father was driving the vehicle and the toddler was strapped into his car seat when he was struck with bullets. A preliminary investigation pointed out at least two people opened fire on the car as he drove by Southern Ave., hitting the car at least 10 times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The toddler was struck with bullets in his car seat right next to his father. This happened in Washington, D.C. within walking distance of the Capitol, but no one inside that domed building, the ones who are so afraid of Chewbacca man noticed or cared.
So whatever else you conclude from this, this tale of two cities -- to dip into the cliche bin for a moment -- here's one thing you can be certain of. It's not actually violence that Sandy Cortez and her fellow Democrats are worried about. No, it's something else.
So why are all those Federal troops at the Capitol? Mark Steyn joins us in just a minute to assess that. But first, Congressman Thomas Massie, a Member of Congress, joins us with his guess.
Congressman, I really appreciate your coming on tonight. So clearly, it's not about violence. You go to Washington, you work in Washington, the city is consumed by violence. The crime rate has gone up ever since the George Floyd riots started and nobody cares, the police are nowhere to be found.
What are these troops really about do you think?
REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): That's a good question, and before I touch that, I want to remind people that what I'm about to say is not meant to be critical of the troops, or of the Capitol Hill Police.
But what -- you know, what people might be mistaking -- mistakenly thinking is going on here is that Congress is doing the two things that they do well, which is to do nothing, and then to overreact.
CARLSON: Right.
MASSIE: To basically not provide for protection, and then to show up with 26,000 troops. But that is not what's going on here. It's much more insidious than that.
They are using the soldiers as a pretext for three things in Washington, D.C. right now. Number one, they've promised that the soldiers will be there during the impeachment trial. You see, the impeachment trial in the Senate is unconstitutional. But unless they give you the impression that Donald Trump created something that's still going on, then there's no reason to have an impeachment trial, so they want the soldiers there for that.
The other thing that's going on, some of my Democratic colleagues want to expel Republican members in the House and the Senate for merely objecting to things on the House floor. They're saying they are seditionists.
And so by projecting this image of the Capitol under siege by, quote, "domestic terrorists," they're keeping that agenda alive.
But the most insidious thing -- the reason that they have these soldiers here, Tucker, is that they want to pass new laws that will invade your privacy, confiscate your guns in the name of domestic terrorism. They're trying to project this image.
And my colleagues aren't stupid. They know that images are more powerful than any words they could say on the Senate floor or the House floor. They're trying to project an image that we are under siege, that the country is under siege from an ever present danger of domestic terrorism.
But here's what's ridiculous. Their definition of domestic terrorism is so broad now that it includes the actual Guardsmen who are there to protect them. My colleagues whip themselves into a state of fear and paranoia.
CARLSON: Very quickly. I know a lot of your colleagues in the Republican Conference are for the troops, but they want to send them, to you know, invade Iran or whatever. Why has nobody stood up and made the obvious point? This is about political power. The troops in our country's capital, please make them leave immediately. Why aren't Republicans saying that?
MASSIE: Well, this may be the next forever war. Look, the 9/11 was used as the pretext to grab civil liberties and to deploy troops around the globe. They're still not back and they do need to come back. But now we've got more troops deployed in our nation's capital than we do those two countries.
CARLSON: Yes, this is grotesque. And I appreciate you. Finding a Member of Congress to say this as clearly as you did was not easy, and so I'm grateful that you came to say what you said.
Congressman Massie, thank you. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
MASSIE: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Mark Steyn is a bestselling author, one of the smartest men we know, joining us now with a reaction to this.
So Mark, you've spent your entire life as a journalist mocking people, people you disagree with politically. Here you have Doug Mackey, who I'd never heard of before today, is a journalist, he mocks people. He is going to jail for it. How do you feel about that?
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Well, disgusted. I mean, it's extraordinary to me that the F.B.I., which are the guys who interfered in the 2016 election, now, terrorizing some guy who posted a picture of Taylor Swift wearing a MAGA hat that he had PhotoShopped onto her head.
So in other words, all the dirty rotten, stinking corrupt officials of the Department of Justice and at the F.B.I., both of which I think are actually irredeemable now and should probably be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.
The guys who actually interfered in the 2016 election, and got their buddies in MI-6 and ASIO in Australia to assist them setting up Papadopoulos and the rest of the crowd, they now found some little fella to make an example of and they're going to stick him in jail for 10 years.
And the F.B.I. agent, our pal, Sean Hannity has always gone on about all the good people in the F.B.I., I'm sorry, Sean, but the F.B.I. agent who investigated this guy, for a non-crime should be ashamed of herself, and actually shouldn't have taken that gig.
CARLSON: I totally agree. Now, they're telling us about this threat of domestic extremism, and I'm trying to be as honest and as clear thinking as I can be. I'm starting to agree with them.
I think a crackdown like this will create extremism. I think they know that, and if they don't know it, they are deeply unwise. But arresting people for memes, banning whole social media sites, a crackdown like this cannot help but create domestic extremism. Do they not see that?
STEYN: Well, they think they can handle that. If you recall, George Orwell in 1984. They invented a forever war going on, on the far fringes of the map. In this case, they are actually being more ambitious, they invent -- I've lived in countries with domestic terrorism movements. That's not what's going on here.
Here, we've got a theater. I don't know why you need real troops to do what these guys are doing in Washington. Everyone on Broadway is currently unemployed at the moment. So you can easily get you know, the chorus from "Hello, Dolly" to dress up as soldiers and do what they're doing here. They're inventing a domestic insurgency that does not exist.
CARLSON: So I've got my producers who are watching other channels as our show happens, because there's just so much going on now. Apparently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- Sandy Cortez is on another channel right now saying and I think I'm quoting, "There are white nationalists, white supremacist -- sympathizers at the heart of the G.O.P. caucus in Washington among elected officials," and that Kevin McCarthy takes his marching orders from QAnon -- whatever that is.
STEYN: Right.
CARLSON: Where is this going? I mean, this is a sitting Member of Congress accusing other Members of Congress of being terrorists. What? What's the plan here?
STEYN: Yes. Basically, they are reverse engineering the Republican Party to make the guy in the Viking hat, the guy controlling it all. You know, he could be an Afghan goat herd, Pashtun goat herd, could be a Taliban guy who has secretly taken over the Republican Party. We are in a blizzard of lies, the audacity and absurdity of which is unprecedented.
CARLSON: This is starting to worry me. Mark Steyn, great to see you. Thank you.
STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, you remember the first time you heard the phrase "defund the police." You thought that's so far out. So obviously, unwise and destructive that will so clearly lead to the deaths of Americans. It could never become mainstream.
Thanks to promotion on social media of people like Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, it did become mainstream. How did that happen so fast? We will tell you straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: All of a sudden, some of the richest people in the country have come out in support of positions that will destroy the country, obviously. Things like defunding the police or opening the borders, things you would never do if you cared about the country, or the people who live here.
We know for a fact these policies will have no effect on those who support them. They're walled off from their effects. Instead, they will hurt the people they're supposedly intended to help. This happened so many times.
So why are the greatest beneficiaries of our system, still pushing policies that will destroy the system? Our next guest has thought a lot about this. He calls his positions "luxury beliefs." Author and former Air Force veteran Rob Henderson joins us. Hey, Rob, thanks so much for coming on.
ROB HENDERSON, AUTHOR: Thank you, Tucker. Good to be here.
CARLSON: So define for us, if you would. There's something going on here. I think most people feel it. I think you put a finer point on it that I've seen before, what's a luxury belief?
HENDERSON: Right. So luxury beliefs are a new way of understanding the American status system. So in the past, upper class people would display their social positions with expensive clothes or jewelry or material displays. But today, they do it through luxury beliefs, which are defined as ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the lower classes.
CARLSON: Right. That's an inversion of what we saw during the last Gilded Age a hundred odd years ago, where the affluent made a great show of helping the poor, and in some cases actually did help them. You know, your rich guy's wife starts the orphan's home. Now the rich guy's wife tries to destroy the country. What is that about?
HENDERSON: Well, one thing that's driving this is desire for social status. So there's some interesting research, for example, showing that the people who occupy the highest positions in society with the most wealth and the most education, they tend to care the most about social status, which is perhaps a little counterintuitive.
You might think that people without much in the way of means would care a lot about sort of wealth and status and those kinds of things, but it's actually the people at the top who have status, who wants even more of it. And today, luxury beliefs are the way to do that, expressing these sort of unusual or unconventional beliefs that sort of raise their positions among their peers in society.
They're trying to impress those around them, more so than trying to help the Americans who need it the most.
CARLSON: So the richest people care the most about their status, and the sort of silly markers for status, like your fashionable opinions. That's so interesting and unexpected, I never would have thought that.
I appreciate your coming on tonight, Rob. That's smart as hell and clear. Thank you.
HENDERSON: Thank you.
CARLSON: Anyone who really cares about silly status symbols like that is an idiot and should have no power, obviously.
So if you've thought all the science and vaccine developments meant that your kids could go back to school and not remain ignorant or be destroyed by the isolation they've been enduring for the last year, no, the teachers unions are in charge and they're showing you that through interpretive dance. That's straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Not many of our leaders have remained consistent during the scope of this coronavirus pandemic, but there is one exception to that: teachers unions.
No matter what else may change in the science, their position remains unchanging. We don't want to work -- at all. Keep paying us, we're not working.
The President of Fairfax County Teachers Union, that's one of the largest teachers' unions in the world is so committed to not working that she has called for teachers to stay home even after they've been vaccinated for the coronavirus, which, by the way -- the children they teach.
Tonight in Loudoun County, Virginia, one parent said what every other parent in this country has thought -- this is insane, it is killing our children.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a bunch of cowards, hiding behind our children as an excuse for keeping schools closed. You think you're some sort of martyrs because of the decisions you're making when the statistics do not lie that the vast majority of the population is not at risk from this virus.
The garbage workers who pick up my freaking trash risk their lives every day, more than anyone in this school system. Figure it out or get off the podium, because you know what? There are people like me and a lot of other people out there who will gladly take your seat and figure it out.
It's not a high bar, raise the frickin' bar.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Ah, you can feel the emotion and you know where it comes from? That man and so many other parents have been home with their own kids for the better part of a year. Watching their kids learn nothing, become even more addicted to screens, become totally isolated from other kids. Watching them degrade and suffer. Why? So their teachers can avoid a virus that has virtually no effect on children. They're not going to get from the kids they teach. It's criminal. It's totally wrong.
In Clark County, Nevada, for example, a warning system that monitors students mental health episodes has issued over 3,000 alerts to district officials about students' suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm, or cries for care.
That is clinical language for kids who are being crushed by this. A total of 18 students just in Clark County have killed themselves since the lockdowns began. But we're told the teachers unions need to stay home. It's just too dangerous for them. What cowards they are.
What's more important, their health or the health of the children they teach? Our children. Our country's children.
By the way, everyone else is going to work: delivery men, grocery store workers, the people who bring you your sushi from Uber Eats. How many these teachers are going to grocery stores by the way? How many of them are going on vacation? All of them.
We know that one executive of the teachers union in Chicago, a woman called Sarah Chambers, remember that name -- was vacationing in the Caribbean last month and bragging about it on social media. How many teachers are doing that? That seems like a good question.
But instead of answering that question, the Chicago's Teachers Union has decided to produce an interpretive dance video. This is totally real. It seems like right-wing propaganda, but it's totally real. This is the same union that voted to stay home in defiance of the city's reopening plan. Here's their message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make it make sense. Safety is essential. Keep our students and our teachers safe. It's our livelihood.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Joe Biden could fix this with a phone call. He could save kids in this country. Who goes to Chicago Public Schools? Rich kids? No, they go to Francis Parker. It's poor kids, and Joe Biden could save them and we would praise him for doing that because we're not partisan, actually.
But no. They're doing the opposite. The Biden demonstration is praising the Chicago Teachers Union. Those teachers are the future of this country, Joe Biden tells us. They're not scientists, of course, and neither are they good dancers. But they are huge donors to the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is not going to criticize them.
In the last election cycle, teachers unions donated more than $4 million to the Democratic Party candidates in Congress. They gave fewer than 50 grand to Republicans. Of course, this isn't about money, it is about science. But science, unlike the teachers unions, has changed quite a bit during this pandemic. Now science is telling us we need to wear two masks instead of just one.
In fact, experts on other networks says yes, we might need to wear three masks just to be safe. Think of it like triple bagging your face, it's the only way to be safe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: So if you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective. And that's the reason why you see people either double masking or doing a version of an N95.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So double masking is now just commonsense, it is just commonsense. How long are people going to put up with this? Follow the logic. Would it just be safer at this point for people just to stop breathing entirely? You wouldn't get COVID. You get the impression that's kind of where Tony Fauci may be a few months from now.
Back in March before he was allowed to appear on MSNBC primetime shows, Tony Fauci wasn't just opposed to double masking. He was opposed to any masking. To masks, remember?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're sure of it, because people are listening really closely to this.
FAUCI: Right now, people should not be worried. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: This guy is a malignant buffoon. He is. And the teachers unions are actively hurting children. They are. Why are we listening to any of these people?
Miranda Devine is a columnist with "The New York Post." She joins us tonight. Why are we listening to these people? How much authority do they have left, would you say, Miranda?
MIRANDA DEVINE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I'm sorry, but with Tony Fauci, I am not going to listen to a man who admitted that he lied to us about the efficacy of masks the early time of the pandemic, when it might have made a difference, might have saved some lives.
I'm not listening to someone who told us blithely to go off and catch a cruise in March during the pandemic or in fact who argued vociferously with the President then Trump about stopping flights from Wuhan, China on January 31st.
So he doesn't have any authority, moral or scientific as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to listen to him about double or triple masking. What he should be doing is he should be saying loud and clear to Joe Biden and the teacher unions that the number one psychological risk we have at the moment is to a generation of children, millions of children who are in misery at the moment. They, as you said, are committing suicide. They are in all sorts of trouble.
And Tony Fauci should be telling us what the science is because we know what the science is. It is that children do not pass on the virus to their teachers. In fact, they get less infected than their parents, they are not a risk. And these teachers are the only -- it is the only line of work where you can sit at home and not go to work and still get paid. It is pathological.
That video you showed up, those people prancing around, that is sociopathic to be doing that when children are committing suicide because they can't go to school. They're trapped. And we are just betraying their futures, throwing them away, and Joe Biden has this unique ability to connect with the teacher unions because he is the teacher, Union guy. He's the union guy.
And he has the political capital at the moment because he is not Donald Trump to -- he just won an election. He could actually go to those unions, who will listen to him because he does have that moral authority from his union background and tell them that they should stop scaremongering, listen to the science that he tells us is so important, understand that they are not going to get sick from their students, and that they need to go back to work.
And, frankly, you know, to be pretending that you're not going to go back to work until all the children are vaccinated, as well as all the teachers is just a fraud because we know that the vaccine is not approved yet for children, and children are not at risk.
So go back to school now and look after the children that you are entrusted to look after, or otherwise, just quit and let somebody else get in and do those jobs. I'm sure, you know, you could get any person on the street could walk in and teach those kids better.
CARLSON: I honestly think if Trump had run on this, he would have won, just my view -- because people care about their kids and the kids are being really hurt. That's real.
Miranda, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.
DEVINE: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, there's a war going on between hedge funds and the most powerful institutions in the world and a group of anonymous people on Twitter, rather on the internet, and for now, those anonymous people on the internet seem to be winning. It's a huge story with massive implications for our economy.
Charles Payne joins us after the break to explain what's going on and what it means.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Hedge funds do a lot of things to make money, but one of those things is trading in the options market, shorting companies, in other words making money when the stock price of other companies -- some of these American companies -- go down. They lose money, hedge funds make money. That's part of the business model, shorting stocks. So borrowing shares and selling them on the expectation that those shares will decline in value.
Well, for the past several months, hedge funds have shorted the stock of a retailer called GameStop. People online watched this. This kind of stuff happens all the time. And by the way, sometimes hedge fund managers go on television, we've talked about this before on the show, and attack specific companies or whole sectors of the economy hoping the value will go down and they can profit from it. That's pretty ugly -- very ugly. It's very wrong. It's apparently legal though.
So people have watched all this and ultimately they decided to act. A group of people on Reddit decided to buy up GameStop options and that triggered a chain reaction that drove GameStop share price higher and higher and higher. As of today, shares of GameStop are up 1,700 percent since the beginning of the month. That means people on Reddit profited, people in hedge funds were betting that share price would down lost money, and that's a crime. Only people who work for hedge funds are allowed to manipulate the market often with the help of CNBC. Normal people are not allowed to do that.
Already, the people in charge of our system are outraged that anyone without an official position at a hedge fund would dare manipulate the market to their benefit. The communications platform Discord has taken action against this. They have shut down the day traders claiming that they're committing hate speech.
In other words, if you do what hedge funds do, but you don't work at a hedge fund, you're a racist. Obviously. It's just the beginning.
Today, the CEO of NASDAQ jumped to the hedge funds rescue and suggested that day trading would need to be halted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADENA FRIEDMAN, CEO, NASDAQ: I think we see a significant rise in the chatter on social media channels, and then we also match that up against unusual trading activity, we will potentially halt that stock to allow ourselves to investigate the situation to be able to engage with the company and to give investors a chance to recalibrate their positions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So this seems like a really big and significant story. This is not a financial show that we're not fluent really in this stuff, Charles Payne is. He is host of "Making Money" with Charles Payne at FOX Business and so we're grateful to have him on tonight to explain what is going on and what it means. Charles, thanks for coming on.
CHARLES PAYNE, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK HOST, "MAKING MONEY": Tucker, you hit a whole lot of it. But let me just fill it in a little bit more, because not only are these folks -- these hedge funds selling the stock, they don't own the stock. So they borrow it.
Imagine you borrow a stock that's trading at $10.00 and then you drive the share price down and then you buy it back for a dollar. You make the difference -- nine bucks. And to your point, they're allowed to short so much stock, you know, the amount of stock that was out there on GameStop. Let's just say 100 percent of the shares that are out.
Well, they shorted 140 percent of that stock. So they borrowed the same stock over and over and over, the same shares, and sold it into the market. Their job, their mission was to drive GameStop to zero -- zero. No one said a word on any financial network, particularly CNBC, which always lets the shorts come on, and a sale go to war with companies, almost voiceless companies.
So what happens? Some people get wind of this, these folks that you said or these individual investors, they decide to buy the stock up. They start to pressure the shorts. It's called a short squeeze and it's working and Wall Street is losing its mind. And Wall Street now wants to change the rules of the game, because a bunch of people with accounts ranging from $500.00 to $2,500.00 are taking down the billionaires.
CARLSON: Amazing. So, the options, I mean, it's a much longer conversation about how the options market actually helps the real American economy in any way. But unless I'm missing what you're saying, when individual investors tried to do what hedge funds do every day, but to the benefit of GameStop, they are now racist for doing that, and they need to be purged from the internet.
PAYNE: Well, you know, in any war, the first thing you want to do is cut off the line of communication. So hence, they are going to be cutting off this Discord, right? They're not going to allow the communication so once you do that, then you start to change other rules of the game.
CARLSON: Clearly. Charles Payne, I really appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.
PAYNE: You've got it, Tucker. Okay.
CARLSON: Speaking of cutting off communications, Twitter has now censored another White House official from the last administration. We'll talk to him right here on the one bastion of free speech left in American media, FOX News. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: We want to keep track of all of this crackdown on civil liberties in the country, and for that reason, we want to tell you that Twitter has just suspended the account of former White House adviser, Peter Navarro, who joins us now to explain. Peter, why did they do this, do you think?
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: They made history today, Tucker, a bad history. I mean, there wasn't anything I said, it's because of who I am and what I might say. And basically the Great Firewall of Silicon Valley grew another few feet today and this is totally unacceptable.
If Jack Dorsey came up to me in the public square, ripped out a sign from my hand in a peaceful protest, stomped on it and then muzzled me, he would get arrested. But he can do that now in the Digital Public Square, and I think he does violence to the First Amendment, he did violence today to me, and he does violence to the 74 million people who voted for Donald J. Trump who he is trying to muzzle This
This is unacceptable. It's a bridge too far.
CARLSON: Did you even get -- in the 15 seconds we have, I wish we had more time -- an explanation for why they did this.
NAVARRO: It's something about unusual traffic, but I hadn't tweeted since January 14th. The point here is it's because of who I am and what I might say not because of anything I did and this -- it is Pichai at Google and Dorsey at Twitter, Zuckerberg and Facebook and Bezos and Amazon, they somehow believe that it's their responsibility to shut up half of America.
They are doing violence to the First Amendment. They are doing violence to this country. And this will not stand, Tucker. This cannot stand.
CARLSON: Protecting the oligarchy, that's their job. Peter Navarro, appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.
NAVARRO: Thanks for the time, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thanks for watching us tonight. The Free Speech Channel, we are proud to be.
Sean Hannity takes over now from New York.
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