Ben Carson on housing for illegal immigrants

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Ben Carson on housing for illegal immigrants

New housing plan will strip housing assistance for illegal immigrants; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson weighs in.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 21, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” America's border control system is collapsing into dust. Lawmakers in Washington are doing nothing about it still. Now the crisis has gotten so bad that the Border Patrol is transporting illegal immigrants deep into the United States and then simply leaving them at bus stops. Trace Gallagher has more on this developing story tonight -- Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, in the past seven months ending in April, the Border Patrol in just the El Centro sector has apprehended 293,000 migrants, that's a 400 percent increase from a year earlier. And because housing facilities are overflowing and because of legal limits on how long migrant children can be held, Border agents are now loading migrants into vans and buses and driving them 150 miles away to a Greyhound bus station in San Bernardino.

We saw the drop offs firsthand in San Bernardino last week. The migrants are released pending court dates, but of course the vast majority never show up for court. Critics say the migrants shouldn't be dumped at the bus station with no resources. But migrants interviewed by Reuters say they feel safe in the U.S. and were treated well by Border agents.

Remember, El Centro is one of nine sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border and it's like this at all of them. Customs and Border Protection calls the situation both a humanitarian and operational crisis.

Meantime, about 30 miles from San Bernardino, an unknown number of migrants were flown to the Border Patrol facility in Murrieta, California. But some members of the community were quick to stand in front of the Border Patrol gates to let the migrants know they were not welcome to stay.

Murrieta residents say they heard the migrants would eventually be dropped off at strip malls and bus stations, but the Murrieta Police now say none of the migrants are being released, though it is very unclear where they will go next -- Tucker.

CARLSON: That is the question, Trace Gallagher on that story for us. Thanks a lot, Trace.

So take three steps back and assess what you've just heard. Federal agents are dumping thousands of illegal aliens at bus stations and then simply walking away. They don't want to do it. They have no choice. Congress won't help them. Our system is in total collapse. Nobody is even trying to protect you or our country.

Kirsten Gillibrand is a U.S. senator and a Democratic presidential candidate. She thinks what is happening is just fine. On Sunday, Gillibrand went on television to explain that we have no right to detain illegal immigrants. Instead, they should be released directly into our country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS HOST: But you oppose even what the Obama administration did in terms of keeping families together or keeping them together for a longer period of time in detention?

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I wouldn't -- as President of the United States, I wouldn't use the detention system at all.

BRENNAN: Homeland Security though saying hundreds of thousands of people are crossing the border, and they need to go somewhere before their asylum claims are actually heard. What would you do with them?

GILLIBRAND: They don't need to be incarcerated. They can, if they're given a lawyer and given a process, they will follow it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It goes without saying that functioning societies don't operate like this. Countries that care about their people enforce their own laws. Our leaders are decadent and narcissistic. They care only about themselves, they will never defend our nation. That's obvious and the rest of the world knows it.

The American pinata has been getting pummeled for decades, and now it has finally come apart. Our national wealth is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming.

Over just the past year, 1 percent of the entire population of the nation of Guatemala has moved to the United States. A "Wall Street Journal" piece in the last month described the plight of that country's villages, some of them are literally de-populating as people stream north to America's generous welfare state.

Meanwhile, a new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform - FAIR given exclusively to this show, shows the scale on which the United States is being plundered. Every year, FAIR found foreign born workers send about $150 billion in remittances to their friends and family overseas. That's more than the GDP of 18 American states.

Illegal aliens alone are emitting $28 billion a year. That's $28 billion leaving this country going abroad every year from people who don't even have the legal right to work here in the first place, but are and are benefiting of course from all the extras -- free healthcare, free education, subsidized housing, food stamps -- who knows what else.

The remittances are not taxed. In the case of illegal immigrants working under the table, their original earnings have never been taxed either. So this is a disaster, but it's not a natural disaster. We could have prevented it with a wall, a mandatory e-verify, remittance taxes and efficient deportation process. You could easily fix this crisis. It wouldn't take much.

It's not fixed because Congress doesn't want to fix it. Just today, HUD Secretary Ben Carson faced a hostile reception on Capitol Hill. Why? Because he dared to suggest that illegal aliens should be ineligible for public housing. Watch this exchange with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY, D-N.Y.: Mr. Secretary, the D in HUD does not stand for deportation. I'm afraid that a recent proposal of yours will bring nothing but despair to thousands of American families by throwing children out of their homes and what is your plan to take care of them?

BEN CARSON, SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT: If you read the rule carefully, you will see that it provides a six months deferral on requests if they have not found another place to live and that can be renewed two times for a total of 18 months, which is plenty of time for Congress to engage in comprehensive immigration reform so that this becomes a moot point as the DACA situation and a hundred other things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Secretary Ben Carson joins us tonight. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for coming on.

CARSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: So as you well know, Congressman Maloney called your proposal quote, "despicable." But it's my understanding that it's illegal for illegal aliens to be living in public housing in the first place, is it not?

CARSON: That's correct. Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 specifically states that the Secretary of HUD is prohibited from providing housing assistance to people who are in the country illegally.

And what people sometimes don't understand is that we have millions of legal Americans in line waiting for these very scarce resources. What the Congresswoman and many others also don't realize is that we have provided a mechanism whereby people who are affected -- illegals who are affected -- and can't find housing can have delayed action for six months, which can be renewed twice for a total of 18 months, which, of course, is plenty of time for Congress to do its job.

So you know, for them to suggest that I should break the law, what is the real implication? That we can just pick and choose the laws we want to enforce and embrace? Of course, we feel sympathy for people. Of course, we don't want anybody out on the streets.

But the real thing that is hurting people is our failure to address this immigration system, the rules that are drawing people here and keeping them here, and that are so unfair to American citizens who have been paying taxes and working here.

We take in 1.1 million people legally through our immigration system, which is far more than any other country and let that system work. But it can't work when we have all these perverse incentives, which are drawing people here.

CARLSON: So we have hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping outside every night, who are homeless, and they're everywhere.

CARSON: Absolutely.

CARLSON: And you're telling us that there are many thousands of illegal aliens living at public expense in public housing, and Congress has some concern about what's going on? I mean, why would that be a concern at all? Foreign citizens breaking our laws? Why wouldn't we spend all of our time and all of our money, all of our energy worrying about Americans who are living on the streets?

CARSON: Well, you would think we would do that, you know, whenever you get on an airplane, and the initial announcements, they say, if there's an emergency, your oxygen mask will drop down, put yours on first, and then assist your neighbor. Obviously, we need to take care of our people. It doesn't mean that we're not compassionate people, it means that we're logical people.

And let's take care of our people. I'm very happy -- I told the Congresswoman and others, if you can find a way that I can legally do what you want me to do, please tell me what it is. I'm all ears.

CARLSON: How did she respond?

CARSON: Changed the subject, of course. They don't seem to want to deal with the ideal that Congress is the one who makes the laws. Instead, they rather just say to you, why don't you break the law, so that we can feel good about ourselves? Why don't they do their jobs? That's what they were elected to do.

The American people have a real choice to make here. They need to decide what kind of people do they want representing us? And it can't just be somebody whose name you recognize, it needs to be people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the tough things that need to be done in order for our country to prosper.

And when our country is prosperous, I think we can then turn our attention to some of these other countries and see what we can do to help them, but we need to get ours in order first.

CARLSON: So Congresswoman Maloney is pressuring you to break the law. She's a lawmaker, she could try to change the law. She's not bothering -- isn't that prima facie evidence that she's not a serious person? I mean, that's buffoonish?

CARSON: Well, it is very sad. It would be nice if she were the only one. But there are many who feel that way. And I don't think they've really thought through what's going on. They just allow themselves to be caught up in the moment. And, you know, they want to be popular.

And they're not thinking long term about what the impact is, of what they're doing. They're not thinking about our children and our grandchildren, and what they will have to face. It's just what makes me look good today.

CARLSON: I've noticed. Secretary Ben Carson, thanks very much for that.

CARSON: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Bob Kowell is a resident of Murrieta, California, where an unknown number of illegal migrants recently were brought for processing. Where are they now? Well, that's open to question. Mr. Kowell joins us live tonight. Bob, thanks very much for coming on.

BOB KOWELL, MURRIETA, CALIFORNIA RESIDENT: We love you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Thanks. And we're glad to have someone from California running the front lines of all of this, giving us an account of what is happening. So people who are in the country illegally were brought to your town. Where are they? What happened to them? What do you know?

KOWELL: They were flown in from El Paso Sunday evening, Sunday afternoon and brought up bus from Brownsville Airport in San Diego near the border to Murrieta, which is about 60 miles north. That's my town. And they're for processing there. And the processing takes 24, 48, 72 hours. We don't know exactly, but they're there with one toilet basically.

They have, I understand, from the sources that I have that there's tuberculosis, there is scabies and other things that are right now in our community. These people go through processing. I'm sure they're great, some of them are great people. But then they get, I understand, a bus voucher and they go down to there -- I was told that they are taken to the local Temecula Mall, which is a neighboring town and they can take a bus anywhere.

We suggest that they go to a sanctuary city like Los Angeles, like Shoshone, or San Francisco or Portland and not Murrieta and Temecula. We are a sanctuary city for the rest of America --

CARLSON: So I am sorry, Bob, can I stop you there?

KOWELL: Yes, sir.

CARLSON: Just for our viewers who are now Googling your town in Temecula, who aren't from California, they're discovering that you're nowhere near the border. You're nowhere near Mexico.

KOWELL: No, we're not.

CARLSON: Why are people being flown and bussed to your town? Who thought of that? And what's the point of it? Do you know?

KOWELL: Yes, well, there is a Border Patrol station in Murrieta. And so there is Border Patrol agents there. And we thank them for that. We love our station there. That station takes care of the I-15 corridor. We do -- they do a lot of drug bust on that highway and a lot of these -- they catch a lot of the illegal aliens on the highway. So they're there for another purpose.

They were actually about 10 miles north of that. They had a Border checkpoint, exactly about 60 miles or 50 miles north of the border. By law, I think they could have that. We do have those in the United States. So that Border station is legally there.

CARLSON: But it's just interesting. They're being flown from Texas to your town. Have you or anyone else in the town being consulted on this? Has anyone asked your opinion?

KOWELL: No, actually, we found out this by inside sources that I can't divulge. But it's been confirmed by the Police Chief of Murrieta, they are there. And that was confirmed by a Border Patrol agent, a senior one today that I talked to that yes, they are there.

So we know that they're there. And actually, I've been told that there's 105 of them and that this is not new, that they've actually been coming in since 2014 when we had thousands of demonstrators out on the street in the town. So I don't know if you know about that.

CARLSON: I do and I suspect there may be more news from your town and I hope that you'll keep us posted on what happens. Bob Kowell, thanks very much for that update. Appreciate it.

KOWELL: Sure. Thank you.

CARLSON: Thank you. A rising percentage of Americans, including a majority of young people say that socialism would be good for this country. Why would they think that? We will investigate the latest numbers with Victor Davis Hanson after the break?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: All right, we're going to play a woke word association game. We're going to read some phrases to you, prepare yourself. Here they are. Objectivity, individualism, the written word, being results oriented. Are you cringing yet? You're not? Those sound like good things to you. We've got bad news, pal. You're a racist, a white supremacist. That's the lesson being taught in New York City's Public School System right now.

The Chancellor of that school system, Richard Carranza says his monolithically progressive school system is in fact, a hotbed of secret racism. Carranza is spending some unknown, but doubtless enormous amount of money forcing his administrators to attend workshops, where they're warned about the hallmarks of quote, "white supremacy culture."

Those are the words we just read to you. Those are white supremacist ideas. This culture includes all the things we just named, but much more. According to Carranza, white supremacy is everywhere and every white person participates in it and if you disagree with him at all, you're fragile, you're of course, a racist -- just part of the problem.

Right now, by the way, four women are suing the school district in New York. They say they were demoted entirely because of their skin color. So it turns out Carranza is right in a way, New York City School System really is racist. And he is the reason why.

We'll have more on his reign of terror later this week. It's a fascinating story that hasn't been covered much, it should be, and of course, as we said, we will.

With his rallies across the country, the President declares very frequently that America and socialism are completely incompatible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: We are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "America will never be a socialist country," says the President. It's hard to imagine this a socialist country. But if you're having trouble imagining it, maybe because you're old.

The number of Americans who think we should bring some socialism into our system is growing and they are mostly young people. Millennials are entering adulthood with more debt, worse career prospects and far less hope that they'll be able to own their own homes or start their families, get married, even, and thanks to that, many of them are giving up on America's economic system entirely.

A new Gallup poll finds that 43 percent of all American adults think that quote, "some form of socialism would be a good thing for this country." Among those aged 18 to 34, fifty seven percent support socialism. A shocking number.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he joins us tonight. Professor, thanks very much for coming on. You hear those numbers. And this is not the only poll to reach this conclusion. And what's your reaction?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: A couple of things. I think that there's a lot of ignorance of socialism, I think our public school system and the universities or popular culture, they sort of glorify it as a fuzzy-wuzzy Robinhood like taking from people who really didn't build that and giving it to more deserving victims. They never tell you that socialism was more than just Denmark or Sweden that ultimately ends up like Venezuela and Cuba.

And because it's contrary to human nature, it requires a degree of coercion. That's pretty scary. The great murderers of the 20th Century are Stalin and Mao all had the word socialist in their descriptions of their government. Also, Tucker, I think we had 10 years from 2007 to 2017, as you alluded to a flat economic growth, and this new generation piled up a trillion and a half dollars in student debt, and they prolonged their adolescence. It was a life of Julia or pajama boy culture.

And they did not have children. They did not marry. They did not buy homes. Those are all the traditional stimuli that make somebody take the attention off themselves and on to nobody else. They are conservative stimuli.

CARLSON: Right.

HANSON: And finally, I'll be frank with your viewers, I think the Republican Party did a very poor job -- and they are the traditional stewards of market capitalism with explaining why market capitalism creates wealth and makes all of our lives better because they embraced a couple of positions, open borders, as your first segment showed drove down the wages of working Americans and overtaxed social services. It impoverished us.

And then they redefined free trade as unfair trade. So when the entire Midwest was hollowed out, it was almost a callous message of, "Go learn coding" or "Go to the fracking fields" or "China is getting us cheap stuff that we can afford, even if we don't have good wages," or "It will make us leaner and meaner and more competitive," or "It's unsustainable for China," but there was never any empathy.

There was never any compassion to say, "Look, free market capitalism is the only system that works, but we have to have protections in place to protect the working classes and young people." And we didn't do that as Republicans and conservatives, so we're at fault, too.

CARLSON: So when you get poll numbers like these, 57 percent of young people say they want something, doesn't that suggests that over time, in a democracy, you're going to get the thing that people want. Are you worried about that?

HANSON: What we see? Well, Tucker, five years ago, Bernie Sanders was a joke. And now he's a serious contender for the presidency. So that proves your point. And that's what's happened. We are discussing a wealth tax right now, at least the Democrats are. That has been rejected throughout Europe as something that destroys wealth and initiative, and yet, why would we even consider it?

The whole premise of the Green New Deal is socialism, and yet we have mainstream candidates that embrace it, not because they believe in it, but because as you say, they think there's poll data that suggests support, especially among young people.

But it's sad because history suggests every time we go down this trajectory, and you think you're going to get something for free or you're going to be humanitarian, you're going to virtue signal, somebody decides that they have to use coercion and authoritarianism to stop people like you and I from suggesting it doesn't work and we don't want to be a part of it. And that's in our futures if we're so stupid to go down that pathway.

CARLSON: Well, we're seem to have given up on the idea of unlimited free speech, that's a bad sign. Professor, thanks very much. Good to see you tonight.

HANSON: Thank you for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, we live in an age where feminism appears to be everywhere. And it's interesting in light of that that a new survey finds the happiest women in America are married, religious, conservative and traditional. How did that happen? We will tell you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, a "New York Times" piece over the weekend reported a very unwelcome piece of news in our woke political age. It turns out that across the country, research shows the happiest women aren't the most progressive and liberated ones. Instead they are married, religious, conservative women. This is the group that reports consistently the highest quality marriages, the happiest lives in America. That's what researchers found.

"New York Times" readers were enraged to hear about this. They unleashed a torrent of bitterness mostly on Twitter. In so doing, they bolster the report's findings, of course. They're not aware of that. They live in an irony free world. Tammy Bruce is radio host and President of Independent Women's Voice. She joins us tonight.

TAMMY BRUCE, CONTRIBUTOR: Hey, Tucker.

CARLSON: So Tammy, two questions. One, were you surprised by this? And two, why would this make people angry?

BRUCE: Well, you know, happiness is a subjective thing, right? We all have a different perspective, different life experience. And I don't like organized religion, but I'm a woman of faith. And that gives me -- it helps me get a perspective separate and beyond myself, which inevitably, when we go beyond ourselves, we end up being a little bit happier in life.

So it makes sense to me. And that's a wonderful thing. But I'm not surprised because really, even when I was on the left, and what we see now is liberalism is a religion. Liberalism is a religion that of course, relies on people being unhappy and bitter and miserable and jealous. And it makes you unhappy and envious of other people who may be just -- or don't believe the way you do.

But then of course, you're a blasphemer. And this is what the left has problem with. If you do not agree with their line or their narrative of what's important, you will be shunned, you will be punished. And those are the things that they complain of other people, right? And they don't see it, they don't realize that their own misery and anger at people being happy, whether it's because of their faith or not, who knows? Maybe it's just that they're comfortable enough with themselves to feel comfortable with, with God and an entity beyond themselves. They don't know.

But the rage that we saw confirms the fact that the left itself is a religion that really has no tolerance for anyone else.

CARLSON: But a religion that feeds on rage, and that makes people unhappy, what's the appeal of that religion? It sounds like the dumbest religion ever invented?

BRUCE: Well, look, and this is the problem with who the left is attracted, and I come from the left and, and I know why I was attracted to it. I grew up in a difficult scenario, I grew up somewhat poor. My mother was not exactly necessarily meant for motherhood to some degree. And it was a difficult childhood, and you grow up with an expectation that things are not good, and that you must fight for yourself and that there's victimhood.

And then that becomes, of course -- you can elevated based on your victimhood, and that becomes the thing to strive for in a way. And then they are saviors, and other people are going to save you. So it appeals to some degree, the damaged, and then what we should do in life. And for me it was therapy, is be able to move -- recognize that damage, and move beyond it, be able to transcend that with the help of the community and your extended family with whatever the dynamic is.

But the left now and leftist leadership preys on people who've been injured, and they rely on that damage to move people forward. Cults do that as well. And so you're looking at kind of a cultic behavior. And so yes, it's disappointing, and it's sad. But of course, it's, I think, quite telling with the state of certainly leftist politics today and the Democratic Party in particular.

CARLSON: Why do they care how other people live? I mean, I'm always struck with this. I don't think if you were to pull people in the most right-wing counter Alabama, on Brooklyn, they don't care what people in Brooklyn are doing. People in Brooklyn deeply care that somewhere in Alabama, somebody disagrees with them. Why do they feel the need to control other people like that?

BRUCE: Well, if you've got people as an example, who are happy, it's a reminder that there are other ways to live, that it's a reminder to other people that you can make different choices, that you can actually look at other ways of living your life, that there are more ways to live and more ways to be, and that's a threat.

You can't have people thinking, "Well, wait a minute, there are other options for me to live. There's other ways for me to find a way out of what my situation is," or a way to find happiness or to remind people that happiness is possible. And that something beyond ourselves can actually enhance and illuminate your life and remind you of the glory of life and to be grateful for it.

And the difference between, let's say, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age, the fact that happiness is a choice, and that we can choose to look at things in a certain way. And that of course, is a threat to a side of politics that relies on fear and suspicion because it's easier to organize you when you're afraid.

CARLSON: Right. That's a really good point. Tammy, great to see you.

BRUCE: Thank you, Tucker. I appreciate it.

CARLSON: Thank you. Well, in the middle of an abortion rally today, Laura McQuade who runs Planned Parenthood made a remarkable claim. Restrictions on abortion, she said are quote, "Not just to attack on women, but an attack on anyone who can or might get pregnant, including transgender men, and gender non-conforming people."

Got that? Laura McQuade who runs Planned Parenthood says that men can get pregnant. How does that work? NBC, a former news organization ran a piece over the weekend making exactly the same claim. They claim, a man delivered a baby. Keep in mind that no man in human history has ever done that.

It seems like a big story. It seems like all of a sudden, it's happening everywhere. Men delivering babies. What has happened? Has biology been reordered? No. In fact, it's still true. It will always be true that only women can bear children. What has changed is that the left has decided to impose its fantasy life on the rest of the country.

To do that it must get the rest of us to lie about science. Amazingly, most of our leaders appear happy to do that to go along with it. We're not going to go along with that. Not because we begrudge other people their fantasies, but because reality is worth defending.

Well, around the world millions of Christians live in fear of genocide. Many of them are killed by governments allied with the United States. How did that happen? We will investigate what is happening to Christians in the Middle East after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The American invasion of Iraq was sold to America as a chance to bring democracy, freedom and pluralism to the Middle East. Instead, for Iraq's ancient Christian community which was large and thriving, it brought death and persecution.

Today, Iraq's Christian community is a tiny fraction of what it was in 2003. Nobody ever says it, but it's true. What happened in Iraq is now happening in countries across the region and around the world.

A new report warns that in many places treatment of Christians is approaching the level of genocide. Juliana Taimoorazy is the President of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and a senior fellow of the Philos Project. She joins us tonight. Thank you very much for coming on tonight.

So give us a sense, because it's one of those subjects that nobody in this country covers as you know, of how the Christian community in Iraq is doing 16 years after the invasion.

JULIANA TAIMOORAZY, PRESIDENT, IRAQI CHRISTIAN RELIEF COUNCIL: During 2003, we were one and a half million. Today, the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs have been reduced to barely 200,000 people. Many of them are suffering from trauma, many have lost everything in terms of businesses, their homes, and their churches have been destroyed.

And many of them are losing hope, because really their own community is unable to protect themselves. They are at the mercy of either the Kurdish regional government or the Iraqi government. And we know and you know, Tucker, Iranian influence now is skyrocketing throughout an end of a plane, which is extremely worrisome.

CARLSON: Yes. So the many figures in the United States who push that war haven't said anything that I've seen about the basically the death of the entire Christian community in Iraq, and American Churches have also remarkably said virtually nothing about it. Why is that, do you think?

TAIMOORAZY: We're trying to be politically correct. We're now being bold to stand in the face of this. And frankly, what we have been going through since you've seen since 2003 and 2004 is nothing new.

Our community in the Middle East, we, Christians have faced this for over 1,400 to 1,500 years and I believe, Tucker what has pushed this more at least a little bit more that the world is talking about this is because of the savagery of ISIS was put on display through social media.

So social media is really -- has become a dangerous medium for radicals who want to use it.

CARLSON: Yes, it would be nice though, if Bill Kristol or Max Boot, or John Bolton, for that matter would apologize, I think. So you were recently in Iraq and you brought back photographs that illustrate the condition of Christians. We are going to put some on the screen. What are we looking at now?

TAIMOORAZY: Well, we are looking at the Church that was blown up in Mosul, St. George. We are looking at a series of the businesses that have been destroyed, homes that have been completely destroyed. Schools are destroyed, Tucker. So there are -- the community has been really -- the fiber of the community is destroyed.

Out of one and a half million, there are barely 200,000 left today. It is -- genocide really is not just about spilling blood, it is really destroying our community, our history. Our history is thousands of years old before Christianity. And today we are really left to fend for ourselves. Very little help is starting to come from the U.S. and the world is, frankly, has turned a blind eye, the Church as well as other governments, which is really sad to see.

CARLSON: It's shocking. Finally, I have to ask you about Syria, the Assad family, whatever you think of the Assad family, presided over a country in which Christians had space to worship and were not killed. What's the situation now for Christians in that country?

TAIMOORAZY: Just a few years ago, out of 1.7 million, we are down -- the Christians of Syria are down to 450,000. There are -- really the Syrian community has split, some are pro-Assad, some are against Assad.

Basically, the Christians in the Middle East are looking to see how they can rebuild their lives, how they can live in peace. Because what happens? Persecution really looks different in different parts of the world. Some places, social media is used to provoke radical Islamists. In other places, the country is exporting terrorism like Iran.

So I think our government really needs to step up, be bold and take the right measures. And we as American people should not put someone who is anti-Semitic with anti-Semitic rhetoric in Congress, because remember, Tucker, its first Saturday people, then it's Sunday people.

CARLSON: Yes. Christians in the Middle East should be a concern. Those are our allies, the Middle East, and they should be a concern for us, I think.

TAIMOORAZY: Indeed.

CARLSON: Thank you very much for the work you're doing on this.

TAIMOORAZY: Thank you. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

CARLSON: Vastly more powerful 5G networks are now being built across the country. They will make your phone faster, but is it safe? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Across America, tech companies are rapidly building the infrastructure for 5G. That's the next generation of mobile phone technology. 5G networks will be far faster and far more powerful than our current setup.

So far, most of the debate over 5G is centered on China, whether its state- run companies have too much influence in the strategically important field. But there's another even more basic question that has yet to be answered. Are 5G networks safe? Physically? Medically safe? There's some debate about that.

Dr. Marc Siegel is a Fox News medical contributor and he joins us tonight for an answer. Doctor, are 5G network safe? Do we know the answer to that?

DR. MARC SIEGEL, MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Tucker, as far as we know, yes, but we don't know the long-term risks. It's coming to a streetlamp near you, right? Three hundred thousand of them are going to sprout up in the United States. And preliminary studies from National Toxicology Program looking at 2G and 3G look like it can possibly cause heart tumors and brain tumors in rats, not people mind you, rats, but change cells in the brain and cause ringing in the ears.

So we don't know the long-term health risk, and I'm not willing to take that off the table, especially since 5G is closer to you because it doesn't -- it's faster and it's higher definition. But it doesn't travel as far. So I need to see longer term studies on this.

CARLSON: But before those studies are available, we're building the infrastructure and doing it anyway.

SIEGEL: Typically, yes. But I also want to point out, you know, as you said, at the beginning, there's a trade war going on here between the Russians and the Chinese and us, the Russian TV is trying to scare us. So I don't want to come out and say I think there are definite health risks.

And not only that, I want to tell you medically, this is a huge home run because 5G has very high definition, which means we're probably going to be able to operate robotically -- that's right, robotically -- from other places in the world finally, remotely, robotically, telemedicine.

So there's a lot of big advances in higher definition. We've got to study -- Tucker, we should have been studying it already and the latest studies in rats make me want to see more and more in humans at the same time. So I don't want to lose this trade war, but I want more medical studies.

CARLSON: So the concern would be the radiation coming from the antennas on street poles? Or would it be from our phone? Or where would the risk be if there is such -- if there is a risk?

SIEGEL: So that's a great question. And I think in this case, we're going to be talking more about the transmitters. Because remember the phones, we already have that problem. I don't think the increased radiation from 5G, in the phone itself is what bothers me because actually five 5G, it doesn't penetrate as much as 3G and 2G, you know, but the towers are going to be much closer to you and they're going to be transmitting all day and night.

So I want them studied. That hasn't been studying and there's going to be a lot of them sprouting up. That's what the risk is. And I'm not talking about cancer necessarily, I'm talking about preliminary changes to cells in the brain.

You know, not to mention what we've talked about previously on this show, which is more and more technology means more and more teens not talking to each other, which means more and more depression and anxiety. We've got that problem, too. So we need to study this and we need to study it fast.

CARLSON: We certainly do. Dr. Marc Siegel, thank you for that.

SIEGEL: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, as technology gets more sophisticated every year and it dominates our lives, increasingly, at the same time, though technology seems to be eroding our society and our happiness. Would it be possible to adjust technology so that it improves our lives and our society, rather than degrades it? That's the question that Tristan Harris studies. He is Director and cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology and joins us tonight. Tristan Harris, thanks very much for coming on.

TRISTAN HARRIS, DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER, CENTER FOR HUMANE TECHNOLOGY: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: So what would it mean to take control of technology to make it improve our lives rather than destroy our lives?

HARRIS: And not downgrade it? Ruin our society? So the problem that, you know, we're trying to name is that we don't have a name for this connected system of effects. So shortening of attention spans, addiction, polarization, outrage-fication of politics, call-out culture, teen isolation, mental health -- these are all connected issues, because there's only so much human attention out there, right?

It takes nine months to grow new human attention, and so it's this finite race for a finite resource and the companies sort of have to get more and more aggressive to get that attention out. So that means short, simple phrases work better than long, complicated, nuanced things. It means that short words of moral outrage. For every word of moral outrage you add to a tweet, it increases your retweet rates by 17 percent.

So if you say it's abominable, it's a disgrace, you get more and more attention, but it's filling up more and more of the channel. So our whole society feels like it is going crazy all at once.

And this is happening with Facebook, with YouTube, with teen mental health. It's not enough to just get people's attention, we have to get -- the tech industry has to get people addicted to getting attention from other people, so this is what has created influencer culture. So now you have teenage girls who have to have more followers and likes and you have to have the beautification filters.

Fifty five percent of plastic surgeons said last year in a survey that they saw at least one patient who was a teen girl who wanted to look like their Snapchat beautification filter, to get plastic surgery.

So this is actually a connected system of harms that we think of almost like the climate change of culture. Frank Luntz actually calls it that. We call it human downgrading, which is that while we're extracting attention from people, we are crawling down the brainstem to get the attention. To upgrade the machines, it's downgrade people, downgrading attention spans, downgrading civility, downgrading decency, and there's a better way to do it.

And that's why, you know, we are trying to catalyze this transition. We're a group of former technology insiders, who used to be the people who know how these products are working and are designed and we know we need to change the incentives.

CARLSON: Why are you one of such a small group of people even imagining a world where we could have control of technology, not the other way around? Why are the rest of us, so passive, in the face of what we all recognize is happening?

HARRIS: Well, I think -- I think a lot of people -- everyone recognizes this is happening, Tucker. I mean, I think everyone feels it, right? Like it's harder and harder to read a book. It's harder to have a civil conversation. It's harder to feel good about, you know, where we're spending our time and how much we're looking at our phones.

But I think what we need is language. We need to have language for what's happening. And I think when you have phrases like, you know, the race to the bottom of the brainstem to get attention out of people, it helps people see that there's a problem.

And what we've seen is that, by giving language to something, we've actually gotten advocates inside the companies to change their behavior. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg adopted "Time Well Spent," which is our phrase for the mission of the company. Apple and Google launched the Screen Time Management features. But these are tiny little baby steps in what really needs to happen.

And I want to say that, you know, Apple actually is the company that's almost like the government of the attention economy. If they wanted to, their business model is not maximizing how much you're hooked to your phone, they just have to get you to buy it every two years. And they could change the design to be more like a GPS, that's just taking you out the world to the next life experience.

If you think about it, like the point of a GPS isn't to addict you to the GPS, you sit there fiddling with it and getting sucked into it for as long as possible, or taking you somewhere you don't want to go.

CARLSON: Right, exactly. It's a tool.

HARRIS: It's a tool. And the thing is that where do we get -- we got off the wrong road on this one. I mean, technology should be about that. It can actually be a GPS for our lives, it can help us have, you know, when we're isolated, it could help us, you know, make the easiest choice on life's menu be to text, those closest friends of ours and make that easy to set that up, as opposed to the easiest choice to make is to keep scrolling infinitely mindlessly.

And so they just have to flip the menu around and that's kind of what we're hoping to catalyze by raising awareness, how can we change this around?

CARLSON: Interesting. Very quick. Is Apple open to this? I mean, that seems like one of the fastest ways to make a huge difference.

HARRIS: Yes, I mean, so I think that if people put more pressure on Apple, they could really change this in a way that you know, you can't ask Facebook or YouTube whose business model is to maximize the watch time to stop doing that.

CARLSON: Right.

HARRIS: Their stock price is directly hooked to that. But honestly, I think even with the case of YouTube, we might have to ask them to completely turn off recommendations when you understand what it's doing.

You know, you wonder how you get a Christchurch or the sort of radicalization, it's like -- it's tilting the whole playing field in these radicalizing directions. That's another conversation, but Apple it really --

CARLSON: Of course, I agree with that.

HARRIS: Yes, and Apple though, again, is the one company whose business model could be just about helping people protect their sovereignty, protect their minds, protect our free will.

CARLSON: Tristan, that's the most hopeful thing I've heard in a long time from the tech world. Thanks a lot for joining us tonight, Tristan Harris.

HARRIS: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: Good to see you.

HARRIS: Yes, good to see you, too.

CARLSON: We're out of time. We'll be back tomorrow, 8 p.m. The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. A lot of bad things going on in the world. The good news is it's a pretty interesting moment. Sean Hannity from New York right now.

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