Ben Carson says President Trump would be happy to work with Elijah Cummings to bring relief to Baltimore
Ben Carson says President Trump would be happy to work with Elijah Cummings to bring relief to Baltimore
HUD Secretary Ben Carson praises Trump administration efforts to rehabilitate America's distressed areas.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," July 29, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Well, good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Happy Monday. Over the weekend, the President got bored and decided to see if he could make Democrats defend the most dangerous corrupt place in the country, and of course, he could. It wasn't hard.
He just sent a flurry of tweets criticizing the city of Baltimore and the Congressman who represents it, Elijah Cummings. The President called Baltimore quote, "a disgusting rat and rodent infested hellhole, a corrupt mess that no human being would want to live in."
A lot of people who have never been to Baltimore claiming to be deeply offended by those remarks, but one person who seemed to agree with him was the former Mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh. She had said something remarkably similar just last year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About a year ago, city leaders identified some of the city's most blind light neighborhoods.
CATHERINE PUGH, FORMER MAYOR OF BALTIMORE: What the hell? We should just take all this [bleep] down.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The target --
PUGH: Whew, you can smell the rats.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Under Baltimore's violence reduction initiative.
PUGH: Whew, Jesus.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just last week, we went with Mayor Pugh as she toured an East Baltimore neighborhood.
PUGH: Oh my god. You can smell the dead animals.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Blocks of dilapidated buildings helped to hide the addiction that's crippled this community.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "What the hell?" said the Mayor, you can smell the rotting rats. The Mayor did not explain why she didn't clean up the rotting rats. That footage by the way got almost no attention when it ran on a local news station, neither did the story just 10 days ago about the Deputy Police Commissioner of Baltimore who was robbed at gunpoint by four thugs while out to dinner with his wife.
People were not talking about that story in Georgetown this weekend. In fact, if there is one thing that virtually everyone who lives in Washington aggressively doesn't care about, it's Baltimore. Baltimore is 40 miles away, but it's a different world. You could live here your entire life in D.C. and never visit or think about Baltimore. Most people in D.C. do just that -- or did.
Then came this weekend, when Orange Mussolini weighed in on the subject and suddenly, Baltimore became holy ground, a sacred city of light that only an infidel would disparage, an infidel or perhaps -- and this will not surprise you -- a racist, because honestly, only a hardened bigot would criticize a place as awesome as Baltimore. That was the media consensus over the weekend. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: This weekend, racist messages raging from the President's Twitter feed.
AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Donald Trump massively makes it a racist debate about Baltimore.
STELTER: Another racist attack on an African-American member of Congress and the city he represents.
REP. JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): Well, the President is as he usually is or often is disgusting and racist.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He uses a racist appeal. He uses a bait and switch.
AL SHARPTON, MSNBC HOST: In the most bigoted and racist way.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A racist President who attacks people because they are African-Americans.
APRIL RYAN, WH CORRESPONDENT, AMERICAN URBAN RADIO NETWORKS: He says he is not a racist, but the racist believe he is a racist.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: How to respond when a President says racist things.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A racist who makes ever more outrageous racist remarks.
DANA MILBANK, OP-ED COLUMNIST, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. I don't -- this isn't even subjective.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Donald Trump and his people think white people are so racist that the way to get them to vote is to be racist.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is just who Donald Trump is. He is just an old racist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Got that? It's race baiting says Al Sharpton, a noted authority on the subject. Pretty funny. Republicans are very easy to intimidate. They still get red in the face when CNN calls them "racist." But they shouldn't. It's not real. Nobody means it, least of all, Al Sharpton. If you paid him money, he would stop criticizing you. You should, probably. It is just easier.
The whole thing is a campaign tactic dreamed up at the DNC. Once the Russia conspiracy imploded, Democrats and their lackeys in the media moved on to the other message they have, which is, "Shut up, racist."
It didn't work in 2016 for Hillary, but they're hopeful it will work this time. They are trying hard. We will see.
Meanwhile, Baltimore, the actual City of Baltimore, not the metaphor of Baltimore could desperately use some attention, so it's good news that it is finally getting some. If anything, Trump's tweets underplay the crisis there.
Last year, the City of Baltimore recorded 309 homicides, that's a rate of more than 50 per 100,000 people. To put it in perspective, if Baltimore were a country, it would have the fourth highest murder rate in the world. Barely below Venezuela, or think of it this way. Last week, the left denounced President Trump for reaching a deal with Guatemala that declares the country a safe location for asylum seekers.
Liberals told us that Guatemala has too much crime and too many gangs to be considered safe, making people stay in Guatemala is a human rights violation they told us, and yet, and here's the amazing part, Baltimore's murder rate is double that of Guatemala.
In almost any way that a city can be a disaster, Baltimore is. More than 22 percent of the city lives in poverty, almost 65 percent of all children in Baltimore grew up in single parent households.
The schools not surprisingly are a catastrophe. In 2017, one-third of Baltimore's high schools had zero students who were proficient in Math. Let that sink in. In 13 of Baltimore's 39 high schools, not a single student, not one student was deemed proficient at Math. You'd think that would be a national scandal. You'd think that Elijah Cummings would be in a hunger strike until that's fixed.
Bernie Sanders to his credit, by the way, visited Baltimore a few years ago and was shocked by it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you are in a wealthy nation. You would think that you were in a third world country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: A third world country? Whoa. Wait a second. Bernie Sanders, a white supremacist? No. Actually, he's just an old-fashioned liberal. That's how Democrats use to think if they saw misery and urban decay, they wanted to fix it. Not anymore. Modern progressives are different from that. Modern progressivism isn't about helping the people beneath you, it's about establishing moral superiority over them. It's a revolution aimed downward, a boot in the face of people beneath you. That's what it's about.
So Democrats support the status quo in Baltimore. It doesn't bother them and that's not surprising because they created it. The city hasn't had a Republican Mayor in more than 50 years. Things really began to fall apart after the 2015 riots there, and this didn't get a lot of attention because again, nothing that happens in Baltimore gets any attention until Trump tweets about it.
But it was a big deal, and the Obama administration, imposed a Consent Decree on the city's police department because they are racist, that in effect radically restricted the ability to protect citizens, and not surprisingly, crime exploded.
Elijah Cummings by the way, praised that Consent Decree. He is very much a part of the problem in Baltimore.
From her taxpayer payer funded vacation in Italy today, Nancy Pelosi defended Elijah Cummings and the City of Baltimore. And Pelosi would know, she grew up in Baltimore. Her father was a Mayor of Baltimore, her brother was the Mayor of Baltimore.
But like most rich progressives, Pelosi herself is long gone. She is in San Francisco now in Pacific Heights. She has got a winery in Napa. She is not interested in going back to Baltimore. It's easier just to give other people lectures about Baltimore. Most Democrats feel that way. They've given up on the poor.
Instead of trying to fix Baltimore's problem and rescue its people, they have decided to import a new population of people, many of them illegal aliens. Baltimore City Councilman Zeke Cohen once bragged about it on this show. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: My only concern is for the people who are already here. Does it make a school better when people move in who don't speak English? Is it good for the kids who are already in the school do you think? Does it improve the education? Is it fair to the taxpayers? Have you thought about that?
ZEKE COHEN, (D-MD), BALTIMORE CITY COUNCILMAN: I think the greatest asset in our city is our diversity and I was joined by an amazing group of immigrant youth yesterday in passing this resolution.
CARLSON: No, but that doesn't -- hold on -- slow down. That doesn't mean anything. I asked you a sincere question. Does it improve a school when a lot of people who move in, they don't speak English? Does a school get better?
COHEN: Absolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, schools get a lot better when you import a lot of people who don't speak English. Actually, it turns out that the schools haven't gotten better at all, but Zeke Cohen doesn't care. Nobody in the left cares because they don't care about Baltimore.
Illegal immigration has been devastating for Baltimore, and a lot of cities like Baltimore. The last thing any poor desperate community needs is even more poor and desperate people. It's not an attack on anybody, it's a fact. Go to Lewiston, Maine if you don't believe it.
Illegal immigration drives down wages for low-skilled workers nationwide. They suck up education and healthcare dollars. Democrats do not care about this. Why? Because illegal immigrants are reliable votes for them. They are a pathway to power. And for Democrats, that is worth sacrificing a city or two or 10 or a whole country.
Seth Barron is Associate Editor at "City Journal" and he joins us tonight. Another lecture on racism from people, Seth, who clearly care very deeply about Baltimore and what's happening there. Do you think any of the people lecturing us about Baltimore have been to Baltimore or know anything about Baltimore or would live in Baltimore in a million years?
SETH BARRON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, "CITY JOURNAL": Well, they've probably been through it on the Acela, Tucker, I mean, don't you think? It's the sort of place you travel through quickly.
CARLSON: Yes, very --
BARRON: But no, I don't think -- I don't think that the various worthies who have been telling Trump that he is a racist, and expressing all of these sympathy for Baltimore, particularly care about what's happening there.
The fact of the city does, as you pointed out have by far the highest murder rate in the country and well, there are suffering places all over the United States.
I really think that a very high murder rate such as what Baltimore has, shows really a level of depravity and to degradation that surpasses anything we could find anywhere else in the country.
CARLSON: What's just so interesting to me is that Baltimore is not is not Youngstown. It's right in the middle of -- you just said it -- the Acela corridor: Washington and New York. Baltimore is in between them, Philadelphia. And yet, it's completely ignored. Completely ignored. Why is that?
BARRON: Well, it's very interesting. I mean, Baltimore, if you look at it objectively, there's no reason why Baltimore shouldn't be a super thriving city. It's practically a part of the Washington -- I mean, it is part of the Washington Metropolitan area which is -- you know, Washington is one of the richest regions in the entire country.
There is so much money in Montgomery County, Fairfax County, even Howard County, which Elijah Cummings partially represents. You've got Johns Hopkins, you've got the Federal government. There's really no reason why Baltimore should it be a thriving metropolitan area, except that it is run by corrupt and corrosive Democratic machine that doesn't seem to care what it does except extract money and favors.
The last two out of the three Mayors of Baltimore have had to resign in disgrace. It's really a horrible situation.
CARLSON: Speaking of money, so if you're a Republican, particularly a Republican Member of Congress, it's very easy to intimidate you. Everyone also to do that, calling you a bigot and you will wilt, you will fold immediately.
Al Sharpton is often the person leveling that at Church. If you are running the RNC, why not set aside a million bucks and just send it to Al Sharpton? Wouldn't it just be easier to pay him off than to have to respond to his criticism? Why has it not occurred to any of the geniuses at the Republican National Committee?
BARRON: You know, it may have. I mean, it's certainly corporate America has done that. I mean, Al Sharpton --
CARLSON: Yes, exactly.
BARRON: If you noticed Al Sharpton sold his life's story to his organization for $900,000.00 in order -- to the National Action Network in order to give them a future source of income, he said, you know, making movies about him. So he is well-equipped for this type of thing.
CARLSON: He certainly is. I wish the Republicans were more clever. Just find a donor to set aside a million bucks, just send it to Al Sharpton and like, you know, once a week, he'll tweet something nice about you. It's just easier that way. That would be my recommendation.
BARRON: Well, MSNBC likes it, sure.
CARLSON: You have a good point. Seth Barron, good to see you tonight. Thank you so much.
BARRON: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Dr. Ben Carson is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, obviously, but before that, he lived in Baltimore. In fact, he spent almost 30 years performing Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, the most famous hospital in America, which is in Baltimore.
There's a lot about the city and we're happy to have him join us tonight. Secretary Carson, thank you very much for coming on.
BEN CARSON, SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT: A pleasure.
CARLSON: So, you've spent a good chunk of your life in Baltimore, it's a sad city. I think it's a city with a lot of promise, what does it need do you think?
CARSON: Well, fist of all, you know, as a Pediatric Neurosurgeon, I spent many hours sometimes operating all night long trying to get children of Baltimore and other places around the world a second chance at life, and usually we were successful, but a few days later, I was in a horrible dilemma, because some of those kids had to go back into homes in East Baltimore that were infested with rats and roaches and tics and mold and lead and violence and I didn't want to send them back.
Sometimes, I would even consider extra tests so they could stay in the hospital an extra day or two. But now, fortunately, God has given me an opportunity to do something about it and that's one of the reasons I'm delighted to be a part of this administration.
You know, while I was there, I worked on a lot of issues with many politicians including Elijah Cummings. You know, particularly in terms of childhood education and improving the life of the people.
I don't think Elijah Cummings is a bad person, I think he is actually working hard to try to help people. And I certainly don't think President Trump is a bad person. He is working very hard -- in fact, I asked him the other day, "Would you be willing to work with Elijah Cummings to bring some relief to the people of Baltimore?" He said, he would be happy to.
But in the meantime, he is going to continue with the programs. You know, like the opportunity zones, which get people to take money and invest it into the areas that are distressed, 149 of them in Maryland. And you know, Governor Hogan is doing a good job of helping to capitalize upon that.
But also, you know, unemployment is at a very low level. Manufacturing is coming back. Wages are going up, you know, prison reform. All of these things are happening. These are not things that a person who is a racist would do.
And we allow ourselves to be distracted by these things. And I think what President Trump was trying to say is that rather than spending your time talking about, you know, our brave Border agents, and investigating endlessly things that you can't find anything on, why not spend some time working more for these people, you know, who are suffering, and that he is willing to work with him. I think that's what we should be asking for.
CARLSON: I wonder if a city in which 65 percent of all kids are growing up in a single parent household, I wonder if you can get anywhere without addressing that.
CARSON: You need to address that. You need to address the family issues. You know, there was a poverty study by the Brookings Institute, and it concluded after a massive study that there were three things a person could do to reduce the likelihood of poverty to two percent or less. Number one, finish high school. Number two, get married. Number three, wait until you're married to have children.
But a lot of our policies over these decades have not reflected that, in fact, have moved us in the opposite direction. We should actually utilize the data, it would make a huge difference.
CARLSON: I am so glad to hear you say that. It's an obvious point and you can't say it enough and it's rarely said unfortunately. Secretary Carson, thanks very much. Good to see you.
CARSON: Always a pleasure, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, the left tars its enemies as racist as a matter of course. What's interesting though, is that Al Sharpton is often the person they choose to articulate the message. "Race baiting is wrong," says Al Sharpton. Hilarious -- once you know the details of Al Sharpton's career and if you don't know those details, you just stay tuned because we have them for you after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Like most advanced countries, Hungary struggles with a declining birth rate. In America for perspective, the average woman has 1.7 children. That's the lowest figure we've ever had in our history.
In Hungary, the number is even lower than that. Fewer than 1.5 children per family. Hungary has lost more than half a million people in the past 30 years. At this rate unless something changes dramatically, they will be no more Hungarians.
The neoliberals who run the European Union and every think tank in Washington strongly agree on what Hungary should do to fix the problem, give up. Instead of helping the native population to have more children. The Hungarian government they say should import a replacement population from the third world. That's the George Soros solution.
But Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has a different idea. Instead of abandoning Hungary's young people to the hard edged libertarianism of Soros and the Clinton Foundation, Orban has decided to affirmatively help Hungarian families grow. Orban's government is giving young women $35,000.00 low interest loans when they get married for the first time.
If these women have three children with their husbands, the loans are forgiven completely. If they have a fourth child, they're exempt from income taxes for the rest of their lives.
Hungary doesn't just have parental leave, grandparents can take time off to help after the birth of a grandchild. Everything about these policies is a good idea. They don't just help people have the children they want to have, they encourage the creation of healthy families.
The Hungarian government wants to help people get married, stay married to the same person and remain close to their extended families. It gives the biggest rewards to middle class families, the very group struggling most to balance career, finances and children in the modern age.
In other words, Hungary's leaders actually care about making sure their own people thrive. Instead of promising the nation's wealth to every illegal immigrant from the third world, they're using tax dollars to uplift their own people. Imagine that.
Here's the least surprising part of it all. People absolutely love it. And why wouldn't they? Viktor Orban's government just won its third landslide election victory in a row. The lessons are so obvious that you have to wonder, why isn't anyone trying that here?
Anytime America has a debate on just about any issue, you can count on one thing, Al Sharpton is going to show up. What's he going to say? He is going to call his opponents, racist. President Trump's tweets about Baltimore were needless to say, no exception to that rule.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHARPTON: He has particular venom for blacks and people of color. He doesn't refer to any of his other opponents or critics as infested. He is playing a race divisive card.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "He is playing a racial division card." Well, when Al Sharpton tells you that, you know you're living in a cartoon world. Nobody sows racial division more than Al Sharpton has. He has done it for 40 years. It's gotten people killed actually. They don't tell you that on NBC's website. And that's why we are happy to have say David Webb, he is the host of "Reality Check" on Fox Nation. He knows a lot about Al Sharpton's history. We're happy to see him.
DAVID WEBB, FOX NATION HOST: Great to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: David, thanks for coming on. So, when you hear Al Sharpton accuse someone else of race baiting, what's your response?
WEBB: Well, there are several responses, many I will never repeat on this channel or I won't have a job. But this is beyond ridiculous. This is dangerous. And this is the thing about Al Sharpton that we should understand, you mentioned his history.
This is someone who started out with Tawana Brawley. This is someone who went to Crown Heights and stoked the fires of anti-Semitism; someone who went to Ferguson in 2014, did a press conference and left, never went back. Someone who had a Freddie Gray Summit in 2015. When has he been back to Baltimore? I would bet he has come back today. That's it.
But I want to use a quote that really sums him up and now, Tucker, you know, I like history, and I want to get this one right. I want people to pay attention. Booker T. Washington said, there is a certain class of race problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well because as long as the disease holds out, they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public. That is Al Sharpton.
I don't think Booker T. Washington could even have imagined the depths of degradation to which Al Sharpton will go to. The candidates for years, Democrats who have kissed the ring of Al Sharpton in the window at Sylvia's in Harlem, and I would ask the black people in this country or anyone who follows Al Sharpton, what is he producing as form of solutions after those decades of photo ops?
Al Sharpton as a chief race baiter, race pimp, hate pimping this country. There's not a doubt in anyone's mind if you're logical about it.
CARLSON: So, why are Republicans so easily intimidated? What would your message be to them? You're not going to change Al Sharpton. He has got a great gig off camera, as you know. He is a cheerful and amusing guy. He gets the joke.
But on camera, he has this amazing ability to intimidate the hell out of Republicans, what would you say to them?
WEBB: I would say to the Republicans, what I've said for years, stop being so risk averse and afraid to get into a combat situation with Al Sharpton. Unless you take on the race pimps, unless you take on the haters, and you produce results for those communities, go into those communities, work with the black community. They've failed for many years, they've gotten better, certainly under President Trump, who said, "Hey, what the hell do you have to lose," and went into those communities?
And I would say to the President, "Continue to go there." Look at Dr. Carson, you just had him on. He has done great things from Liberty Square to Detroit, to many of the opportunity zones, the Envision Centers, produce results and to the politicians, Tucker, you and I have seen this for too many years. Risk averse politicians who sit around and come up with carefully couched statements to try and walk it off to go the next things.
We need fighters for the American people, fighters for American values and the promise in our Declaration of Independence, and we back that up in our Constitution. If that's not your strongest fighting point as a politician, get out of Washington.
CARLSON: That's exactly right. If Al Sharpton intimidates you, get another gig. Go hang vinyl siding or do something. You suck at politics. David Webb. Great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.
WEBB: Thank you.
CARLSON: We've got a Fox News Alert for you tonight. Capital One just announced a massive data breach. It affects a huge percentage of the American population, believe it or not -- about a third.
Capital One says 100 million Americans and six million Canadians were exposed to security vulnerability. Capital One says the person who exploited this vulnerability has been arrested by the F.B.I. The company believes they were unable to disseminate the data they stole or use it for fraud. That's their position as of tonight.
They also say no credit card numbers were stolen. But the matter remains under investigation. We want to warn you, we don't know the full parameters of this story at this hour.
This announcement comes just days after Equifax reached a massive settlement for a prior data breach that affected more than 100 million Americans. You very likely could be eligible for payment from Equifax. You can find out on our Facebook page. We will continue to follow the story of course.
Well, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib calls herself a socialist. She says she wants to dramatically increase the minimum wage. That's a fair question. How much is she paying her own employees? Stay tuned for the answer.
Plus, Beto O'Rourke says he wants to spend $500 billion to fix education. How is that going to work? We will tell you, just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: No matter how dumb or repugnant the thing she says, we are told that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is above all criticism. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, vox.com, and other key moral arbiters have informed us repeatedly that criticizing Ilhan Omar is immoral. In fact, it's tantamount to violence. That's what they say. It's absurd, of course. It's not a threat to disagree with someone.
But what's interesting is that Omar herself seems to have no problem with political violence, at least when it's aimed at people she doesn't like.
Over the weekend, Omar retweeted actor Tom Arnold after Arnold ridiculed Senator Rand Paul for nearly being killed by an angry neighbor quote, "Imagine being Rand Paul's next door neighbor and having to deal with Rand Paul lying cowardly circular whining bullcrap about lawn clippings. No wonder he ripped his toupee off."
Now to be clear, Rand Paul doesn't wear a toupee. His neighbor didn't touch his head. He attacked Rand Paul without warning and broke six of his ribs. Paul was hospitalized, needed surgery and was out of commission for a long time. It was a violent attack by someone who was animated by political hatred.
But Ilhan Omar apparently found it funny, as she might describe it, "Somebody did something." So it was no big deal.
Well, Senator Bernie Sanders is running for President on a platform that would demand everyone in America makes at least $15.00 an hour. That would be the minimum, minimum wage.
Well, it turns out Sanders doesn't even pay his own campaign staff 15 bucks an hour. But Sanders isn't the only ersatz socialist around, there are a lot of phonies in Washington.
Last weekend, in an event in Detroit, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said that $15.00 isn't enough. She wants a $20.00 minimum wage. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): We can't allow people to be living off of tips and relying on tipped wages. It should be $20.00 an hour -- $18.0 to $20.00 at this point. Everything -- all the costs. They say all of this is going to raise the costs, but I can tell you, milk has gone up. Eggs has gone up. Everything has gone up. The cost of food has gone up. The cost of a lot of things that we need has gone up already.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Okay, so $18.00 an hour is the minimum or you'll be living at a poverty level. We hear you, Congresswoman. But if you want to get a job that keeps you out of poverty, take this advice and don't go work for Congresswoman Tlaib.
Last week or office posted a job listing. If you're lucky enough to get hired, you'll be paid a wage of -- brace yourself -- 15 bucks an hour. Maybe we were too tough on Bernie Sanders. It turns out that low balling your own employees, it's pretty common for a socialist.
Well, America spends more on education than virtually any country on Earth that would include from preschool all the way through university, but the system is dominated by ideologues and mediocre people on the left.
America's test scores in some cases are incredibly low. Beto O'Rourke knows what the problem is, though. Not enough money and of course, racism -- racism.
O'Rourke unveiled a new education plan he says will fix education and perhaps save his doomed presidential campaign -- $500 billion dollars. That's the price tag for the plan. Beto's plan would also ban corporal punishment in schools. It would also pressure schools to replace ordinary discipline with quote, "restorative justice programs" because education isn't political enough already and it would require teacher prep programs to include even more political propaganda to quote, "address racial bias and cultural competency."
Beto O'Rourke is on his way out as a presidential candidate, and it really can't happen too fast. Never been a more annoying person to run for President, probably ever in American history.
Justin Haskins is Editorial Director and Research Fellow at the Heartland Institute and very good at Math. He is the man we call to assess some of these programs. He joins us again tonight to do so with this one. So, you've read over Beto's education reform plan. What do you make of it?
JUSTIN HASKINS, EDITOR DIRECTOR AND RESEARCH FELLOW, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE: I think it's astounding. I mean -- and really quite frustrating. Here you have another Democrat coming out and saying, "Hey, we know public education is bad. But we can fix the problem by just throwing more money at it."
Because that's, of course, the only policy prescription Democrats ever seem to have these days, just throw more money at it -- $500 billion. But here's the truth, you're not going to fix racism by locking up teachers in a room and telling them about their white privilege and how you're going to be able to solve all the problems in the world, if you just stop being a racist, that's not going to fix the problem and Beto knows it.
This isn't about fixing education. If this was about fixing education, and they would just -- the Democrats would just embrace school choice. We know that that fixes education. This isn't about that. This is about one thing and one thing only, buying off teachers unions. That's what this whole thing is about.
And you know that that's what this is about because in Beto's plan, one of the biggest parts of the plan is something that you actually didn't mention, it's that they would have -- it would be a student loan forgiveness after just five years for any teacher who works in a government school.
So, if you've worked in a government school for just five years, you get all your student loans forgiven. Just wrap your head around this for a minute. Here you have some rich kid goes to Sarah Lawrence University and then maybe goes to NYU, runs up $200,000.00 in student loan debt learning about I don't know -- early childhood education -- that may end up as a gym teacher, in Baltimore, making $45,000.00 a year teaching pudgy little eight year olds how to play dodgeball while being racially sensitive, because that's what teachers do now.
And after all of that, we're supposed to get together -- the taxpayers -- and we're supposed to pay off this person's student loan debt, and somehow that's going to magically make all the problems for the kids in inner city Baltimore go away, because now they don't have to worry about drugs and violence and gangs or any of those things, apparently, because their Math teacher and their Gym teacher doesn't have any more student loan debt.
I mean, this is totally ridiculous. But this is what the Democratic Party -- this is what they do over and over and over again. If they really cared, if they really cared about helping minority students, they would embrace school choice which by the way, a majority of minority parents and a majority of even Democrats say they support.
CARLSON: Yes, you could go to an all-boys boarding school like Beto and then Columbia. Can I ask you though, it was -- a couple of years ago, "Waiting for Superman" came out, the documentary about teachers unions, and a lot of smart liberals I know anyway, said you know, actually teachers unions are indefensible. We're not going to defend this crap anymore.
They hurt mostly poor black kids and like we're not for teachers unions, whatever happened to that? Now Democrats seem to have forgotten all of that and therefore teachers unions again.
HASKINS: Well, polling shows that 70 percent of Democrats actually support school choice. So, it's not regular Democrats. I meet regular liberals that are opposed to school choice. It's the people like Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and people like that, because they need those people. They need teachers unions in order to win the election. That's what this is all about. It's about winning elections. It doesn't matter what happens to these kids.
CARLSON: Right. I think you've just summed it up right there. It's always about power. Justin, thank you very much for that. Appreciate it.
HASKINS: Thanks, Tucker. Well, there was an awful shooting in Gilroy, California over weekend at the Garlic Festival. The Democratic presidential field immediately responded of course before the facts rolled in by demanding that you give up your constitutional rights. We'll tell you what they said after the break.
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CARLSON: There will be a lot of Democratic primary debates over the next couple of months. None of them will be on this channel since according to the DNC, not a single person of Fox News can be counted on to ask fair questions.
When the DNC announced that ban against us, CNN was there to cheer them on. While Fox is locked out, CNN is in the clear. This week, they'll be hosting two nights of a Democratic debates. But will those debates be fair?
CNN President, Jeff Zucker has unofficially supported Democratic political candidates for years, but he has only officially endorsed one California Senator, Kamala Harris. In 2009, Zucker personally campaign on her behalf when she was running for California Attorney General.
He said of Harris and we're quoting, "Not just important for the State of California, but for the entire country." It sounds like that would create at a minimum, a concern of bias at CNN. Is Jeff Zucker recusing himself from the organization's debates this week and all subsequent ones hosted by CNN? So far, he has not, don't expect him to do that. Fairness is something that CNN demands of other people, but is willing to dodge in its own case. Imagine the head of a news channel endorsing a candidate. CNN says it's not an endorsement, but it was.
Well, mass shooter Santino William Legan killed three people and wounded 15 others in a mass shooting last night at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in the State of California. Immediately after the shooting, several top Democratic presidential candidates plus Cory Booker demanded immediate restrictions on the right to bear arms, you must give up your guns because some lunatic 19-year-old in California committed murder with his.
Joe Biden said America quote, "must take action starting with real reform." Biden speaking vaguely on purpose, but what he wants is not a secret at all. His solution to gun violence is to make everyone in America less free. Again, you give up your rights because some lunatic can't control himself.
Katie Pavlich is an editor at townhall.com and she joins us tonight. So, let's be honest, Katie about what they're saying. In years past, Democrats would say, "Well, I'm not for banning guns. I'm not for gun confiscation." They're not even saying that anymore, are they? They're pretty open about what they want.
KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: They're open halfway. So, we've heard a lot on the campaign trail from Democrats about they want to reinstate the so-called Assault Weapons Ban, which is really just a ban on semi-automatic rifles. But when you dig deeper into the numbers, according to the F.B.I., only about -- I shouldn't ever say only about, right? But we're looking at statistics because we have to talk about this in sober managed ways, because Democrats want to just broadly paint everybody with the same brush.
If you look at the numbers, there are more people killed every single year with hammers, fists and feet than there are with so-called quote, "assault rifles," which again, are semi-automatic rifles.
And so when you look at the numbers and what they're proposing, especially after California, we've already done this before and the data from the Clinton Justice Department actually shows that there was not an effect on crime due to the Clinton era Assault Weapons Ban.
If you look at the number of crimes that are committed per year -- murders, homicides with firearms -- the vast majority of them, 80 percent or more are committed with handguns.
So, if they really want to solve the problem, they're going to have to get honest about the fact that they want to ban on all handguns and all rifles, not just what they call the Assault Weapons Ban. And one more thing, you know, you look at California and the situation, Kamala Harris, in particular should know better what they're proposing California already has all of it.
They have an Assault Weapons Ban. They have a 10-round limit on magazines. It is illegal to bring a firearm that is illegal in California from a State where it might be legal. You can't do any of those things. And yet you have these statements that they keep making a broader public scale of taking away the constitutional rights from the rest of Americans, while not actually solving any kind of problem when it comes to crime.
CARLSON: I wasn't paying enough attention today. And I may have missed it, did any Democratic candidate ask the obvious question, why would a 19- year-old do this? He said he was really angry. Why are people doing this?
PAVLICH: Well, Tucker, I think --
CARLSON: Is anybody asking root causes questions?
PAVLICH: You're asking that question. I think that's part of the reason why they continue to give these typical predictable solutions to these issues when they tend to happen and come up. They don't want to address the bigger problems of why is it that we've seen more teenage or middle, lower 20s aged males who are in isolation or angry commit more of these acts?
CARLSON: Exactly.
PAVLICH: Why is it that we're not talking about the culture that has led to more of this happening? Why is it that we're not talking about the real numbers?
We keep hearing this statement that there is a gun violence epidemic in the country. But when you look at the data and the facts, it's actually just not true. And again, you never want to narrow people down and victims of this, of course, into statistics, but because people like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and Beto O'Rourke are blatantly generalizing gun owners as part of being the problem when they statistically are not, you'd have to follow the facts where they lead and the facts don't show that A, an assault weapons ban would work to reduce crime. And B, they don't show that mass shootings are actually on the rise, especially in schools.
In fact, criminologists at Northeastern University, at the University of California have stated in their research that they are not on the rise. It just seems like they are because we've had this narrative now from Democrats who don't want to look at the core issues of why things are happening.
CARLSON: Yes. No, they definitely don't. Katie Pavlich. Great to see tonight. Thank you for that.
PAVLICH: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, Google is not really a partisan issue. It's not just a threat to conservatives, it's a threat to anyone who values the free exchange of ideas, and that would include Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. She just sued Google for silencing her. She joins us to talk about that suit, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: We've done a lot of work on this program to expose the bias and corruption at Google, which is the world's most powerful company by far. But Google and its employees don't just have it out for conservatives, we want to make that clear. Google is hostile to anyone who challenges the status quo, since Google is the chief beneficiary of the status quo.
Congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard learned that the hard way. Just after the first presidential debate, where Gabbard was the single most searched Democratic candidate, Google blocked her from being able to buy new ads. Now, she has become the first presidential candidate to sue Google. She has accused them of censoring her message. We are happy to have Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard join us tonight.
Congresswoman, thanks very much for coming on.
REP. TULSI GABBARD, (D-HI), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Tell us the point of this suit.
GABBARD: Here is the bottom line. This is really about the unchecked power that these big tech monopolies have over our public discourse, and how this is a real threat to our freedom of speech and to our fair elections.
So, this really isn't about me, it's about taking action on behalf of the American people. Because we've got to understand here that if Google can do this to me as a sitting Member of Congress running for the highest office in the land, then that means they can do this to any candidate running for any office anywhere in this country, and frankly, to any person in this country.
And that's why it's so important that whether you're a progressive or conservative, whether you consider yourself on the left or the right, we all have to stand united to protect our freedom of speech. Because, look, today, it's me; tomorrow, it could be you or someone else.
CARLSON: Yes, that's exactly right. God bless you, by the way. Why are you the only candidate who is saying this?
GABBARD: I can't explain that, Tucker. But I do know how important it is that we protect our freedoms in this country. It's something I think that people take for granted, unless they're the ones under attack.
These freedoms are enshrined in our Constitution. I love our country. I love our people. This is why I'm standing up and fighting for these freedoms, even when these freedoms allow those who say things I may disagree with to have that freedom to do so.
You know, as a soldier, these are the principles that I stand up for that even though you and I may disagree on things, I'm willing to give my life for your freedom to do so.
CARLSON: So, you filed this lawsuit, and God bless you for doing that. What should lawmakers in the Congress do to rein in this dangerous tech monopoly called Google?
GABBARD: Washington needs to act, there's no question about it, because we're talking about Google, Facebook, Twitter. These are big tech monopolies that have this unchecked power to influence our public discourse, to influence what kind of information people are seeing.
Google is in control of 88 percent of all internet searches in the United States. And I believe it's 92 percent of all internet searches in the world. So, Google is controlling when you type into that Google search box, what pops up, the information that you see.
So, it's important that Congress takes action, because right now this is unchecked. They've got their secret algorithms. They can control the information that we see. They can control what pops up in our Facebook feeds, and they can censor voices that they disagree with.
Google has spoken openly about how they have shut out those who have not broken any of their terms of use. So, this is really what's at stake here and it's important that Congress takes action to provide this oversight and accountability and ultimately to break up these big tech monopolies.
CARLSON: So, in the 30 seconds that we have remaining, are you going to bring this up in the debates this week?
GABBARD: I look forward to doing so. This is such an important issue that is integral to every single one of our freedoms that we cherish, and that we all must stand up and protect.
CARLSON: It's so important. I spoke to a right winger today who I think disagrees with you on virtually everything, and on the basis of this alone sent you money today because it is -- it is that important. Congresswoman, thank you.
GABBARD: This is America and this is what we're talking about here. This freedom. Thank you so much, Tucker.
CARLSON: That's right. Amen. Good to see you. We are out of time. Amazingly and unfortunately, that's how fast it goes. And what's true for the show is true for life. So enjoy every moment.
We will be back tomorrow at 8:00. The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. But we have good news for you, ladies and gentlemen, this show may be ending, but a new show is beginning, the 9:00 p.m. hour, hosted by the man who's been there many years, Sean Hannity.
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