Buzzfeed still believes in its 'bombshell' report about Micheal Cohen

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Buzzfeed still believes in its 'bombshell' report about Micheal Cohen

Tucker Carlson takes on Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith over the website's 'bombshell' report.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 4, 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."

We have seen an awful lot of change during the two years Trump has been President. American politics has been completely reordered, but also the American media has changed forever.

News organizations that seemed like a big deal just five years ago are now extinct, some of them are totally forgotten. Those that remain have either degraded themselves beyond recognition like "The New Yorker" or they have been purchased by Jeff Bezos to conduct unregistered lobbying for amazon.com like the "Washington Post."

It's hard to remember that not so long ago, America had prestige media outlets. Harvard graduates went to work for "Newsweek," rather than private equity. Not anymore. "Teen Vogue" now has a news division and so does a New York based cat blog called BuzzFeed.

If you are an affluent single person in that gentrifying part of Brooklyn who likes cats, of course that's redundant because they all like cats, then you know and you love BuzzFeed. When a BuzzFeed headline commands you to quote, "Stop everything and watch this cat who loves the ocean," you do.  You stop everything and you watch that cat.

When BuzzFeed offers one of its trademark cat quizzes, you dutifully take the quiz. What kind of purs-anality does your cat actually have? Or "How cat are you? Take this quiz." Meow. You think you know a lot about cats.  BuzzFeed knows more.

On all questions feline, BuzzFeed is the final authority. But what happens when BuzzFeed tries to do real news? Well, in early 2017 we found out the site released the now famous Trump dossier. It was a catalogue of salacious and unverified gossip financed by the DNC originally about President-elect Trump.

Many other news outlets, nearly all of them anti-Trump, had seen the dossier, but passed on it. It was just too irresponsible to run. But not BuzzFeed. They thought it was purr-fect, meow, so they ran it.

Two years ago later, the BuzzFeed dossier has come to define the entire Trump Russian collusion conspiracy tale. The problem is, a lot of dossier is pretty clearly untrue.

For example, one of the key claims in the dossier that BuzzFeed ran is that the Trump attorney, Michael Cohen held secret meetings with Russian agents in Prague. They never offered any evidence that that happened, there never was any evidence, and then finally last week, Michael Cohen himself confirmed it never happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RALPH NORMAN, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, SOUTH CAROLINA, REPUBLICAN: Have you ever been to Prague?

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER PERSONAL ATTORNEY TO DONALD TRUMP: I have never been to Prague.

NORMAN: Never have?

COHEN: I've never been to Czech Republic.

NORMAN: I yield the balance of my time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Well so that seems like a pretty big development. Two years ago, BuzzFeed told us, you remember, we did a show on it that Michael Cohen held a secret meeting with Russian spies in Prague. We have been hearing that about ever since in Congress and on cable news.

We have in fact halted the normal workings of government in part because of that meeting. Now it turns out, it never took place. So it's not a small thing to learn from Michael Cohen. How did BuzzFeed cover this latest stunning development? Well, they didn't cover it. They ignored it completely.

As of tonight, BuzzFeed was floating instead a story entitled, "21 Completely Life Changing Things You Can Make In A Waffle Maker." There was nothing about the non-existent Michael Cohen-Russian spy meeting in Prague.  If you only read BuzzFeed, you would never know that that story was false.

Well, apparently, a lot of people in the media only read BuzzFeed and not simply for its lavish cat coverage. This January, BuzzFeed published a story with this sentence, quote, "President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow," end quote. BuzzFeed presented no evidence to show that that was actually true, just unnamed sources, but it didn't matter. The cat lovers on cable news went crazy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER, CNN: This would be certainly a bombshell information.

JIM SCIUTTO, ANCHOR, CNN: BuzzFeed's latest bombshell report.

WOLF BLITZER, ANCHOR, CNN: The White House is slamming a bombshell report by BuzzFeed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in a bombshell report from BuzzFeed.

CHUCK TODD, ANCHOR, MSNBC: If the BuzzFeed bombshell is true --

ERIN BURNETT, ANCHOR, CNN: It's a bombshell report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It was really a bombshell and actually, in some sense, it was.  The claim was anyway directing someone to lie under oath is a felony and it ought to be. Had this been true, the Trump presidency likely would have ended and for good reason, a legitimate reason. But it was not true.  Instead, it was a lot like the claim that, I don't know, cat sucks the breath from babies or that a black cat brings bad luck. It was a wives tale posing as fact.

The Mueller investigation itself batted down BuzzFeed's story almost immediately after it came out, and yet, BuzzFeed never retracted the piece.  Once again, in its feline way, the site pretended that nothing had happened.

You can yell at a cat, but you can't make a cat pay attention it turns out.  To be clear, here are the key quotes from the January BuzzFeed story, quote, "Trump directed his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress," end quote. And again, quote, "The President personally instructed him to lie," end quote. And once again, quote, "It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia." Explicitly telling a subordinate to lie, that's the claim, okay.

Democratic members of Congress asked Michael Cohen last week about that specific claim. Cohen was under oath at the time. A declared enemy of Donald Trump, not someone who had any reason to lie about this. Here is how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to congress. That's not how he operates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, let's try to make sure we've got this totally clear. Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie. He personally instructed him to lie. He quote, "explicitly told him to lie." Those are the claims from BuzzFeed.  Did Michael Cohen really do that? Here's his account again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GERRY CONNOLLY, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, VIRGINIA, DEMOCRAT: Did the President in any way from your point of view coach you in terms of how to respond to questions or the contents of your testimony before a House Committee?

COHEN: Again, it's difficult to answer because he doesn't tell you what he wants. What he does, again, "Michael, there is no Russia. There is no collusion. There is no involvement. There is no interference." I know what he means because I have been around him for so long. So if you are asking me whether or not that's the message, that's staying on point, that's the party line that he created that so many others are now touting, yes, that's the message he wanted to reinforce.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That's the message. So Michael Cohen says, you just heard him say that Trump claimed there was no Russian collusion and no interference in the 2016 presidential election. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's exactly what Trump has been telling the world for two years, every day in a loud voice to anyone who will listen.

BuzzFeed claims that this is somehow proof that its original story was entirely accurate. Nineteen adorable Siamese kittens that are actually talented investigative reporters. We're waiting for that story next. Ben Smith is an editor-in-chief, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. He was game enough to join us tonight, and obviously, we are grateful for that.  It's not his first time on the show, but I am thankful that you came.

So Ben, let me just ask you first about the dossier. This really is a sincere question. So you published the dossier you and I have debated whether that was a wise move and ethical move, but you did. Then we learned in the testimony, and I don't think anyone would doubt it that Cohen did not in fact go to Prague.

Now, we only believed that didn't go to Prague because you ran the story.  But you never ran a follow-up story informing your readers of that. Why?

BEN SMITH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BUZZFEED: You know, that's just totally false, Tucker. Within I think weeks of publishing the dossier, obviously, we were reaching out to Cohen and Cohen graciously allowed us to photocopy the inside of his passport, and we published --

CARLSON: Oh, I remember the story.

SMITH: And we published a very detailed account of his denial that he had gone to Prague and --

CARLSON: Right.

SMITH: And showing every bit of evidence we could get from him.

CARLSON: I know, I just read the story -- hold on.

SMITH: So I think --

CARLSON: I just read the story about 20 minutes ago, so it's very fresh.

SMITH: I don't totally understand why you're saying that we haven't published the story saying Cohen said he didn't go to Prague.

CARLSON: Because - let me explain.

SMITH: You've been saying consistently that he didn't go to Prague.

CARLSON: No, I just read the story that you published. It does not say because you didn't have evidence of the fact conclusively that he didn't go to Prague. Last week we have him under oath with no motive for lying saying conclusively that he didn't go to Prague. That's one of the headlines out of those hearings, how could it not be? And yet you ignored it.

Since you're the one who published the dossier in the first place, don't you have an obligation to kind of tie a bow on the story and tell us what happened in the end?

SMITH: You know, I mean, I guess we don't see tying bows are our primary obligation. We did cover the hell out of that and particularly that aspect from sending reporters to Prague to writing Michael Cohen's repeated denials of this.

CARLSON: But now, we know for a fact that it didn't -- so in other words, if I write a story and say the people --

SMITH: I guess I am surprised that you think Cohen's latest statement makes it more of a fact than his previous statements.

CARLSON: Well, I added in --

SMITH: It was certainly, it wasn't a new development that he denied and there's a lot of things in that hearing.

CARLSON: To what we know -- we finally get to ask Michael Cohen in public and he has every reason to tell us that yes, he went to Prague and that yes, everything you think about Trump is true because we all hate Trump in media world. He hates Trump, too. Now he can tell us the truth, and instead, he tells us the opposite, that no, he didn't go.

But that's not all. The dossier also claimed that poor Carter Page's life has been destroyed because of the salacious nonsense in that dossier. That he received $11 billion from a Russian energy company in a deal. Now, he didn't. But I don't think BuzzFeed has ever told us that. Why not?

SMITH: So we published the dossier at the time, as we talked about then, not because we had been able to stand up or knock down every allegation in fact we said, unverified document and an extremely important document - public document at the heart of an FBI investigation.

I actually -- you know, when we talked about this last time, I got the sense you basically agreed with that and certainly, the idea that Devin Nunes would have been able to press his case against the Russia investigation while saying there is this secret document. It really makes my case, but you are not allowed to see it. That you would have been able to make the arguments you've made about Christopher Steele about these documents and the people on the other side who would have all -- all the while saying that this document will scald your eyes out if you look at it.  So only, we, the elect, we, journalists can look at it.

CARLSON: I get it. No, no --

SMITH: I mean, that's why we published it. You understand why we published it. I don't understand why you're saying this.

CARLSON: No, actually, I thought, and I said it at the time, I think that's not a crazy argument to make that you di. I am instinctively in favor of --

SMITH: I agree with you, it's not a crazy argument.

CARLSON: In favor of openness, but you are a journalist, not simply a guy who runs a platform. You are not running medium here at Google. You are running a news site. And so you inject these claims into the public sphere and then you don't follow-up. So if I run a piece by one of your neighbors, you know, "Ben shot somebody," don't I kind of have an obligation when you get acquitted to the crime to write a story on that, I think I do, and you did, but you didn't. Why didn't you?

SMITH: There are a lot of claims there. We've spent a lot of energy in running the ones down that we could. Some of them are very, very hard to confirm or knock down. Discussions between Vladimir Putin and his aides.  Cohen's was pretty straightforward, and we put a lot and I think that's a great example.

CARLSON: Well, is so is Carter Page's -- but hold on, Carter Page's life was destroyed by this. He can't get a job. He is considered a Russian spy. He has never been charged with anything, and your dossier that you ran has added, I think, a lot to the perception that he is a disloyal American. We now know he didn't take $11 billion in a Russian energy company, that's untrue and you've spent all of this time trying to talk about whatever -- the Trump Tower -- like who cares in Moscow and this guy lives with this claim against his name and you have not corrected it. I don't see the reason why.

SMITH: We've reported extensively on Carter Page, on his contact with Russian intelligence back in the day --

CARLSON: Oh, I know.

SMITH: On his denials. We've talked to him repeatedly. He was at my office several months ago at a reception. I mean -- don't know how Carter Page feels. He has been treated by us, but certainly, we have carried his side of this.

CARLSON: I am just --

SMITH: I find that you were dismissive before of something that -- because it's interesting, like a lot of what I think you have exercised about with your audience, and it comes understandably as you exercise about is the collusion story and sometimes, wild allegations about collusion. The Tower story, the story that you mentioned, the story that Michael Cohen is going to jail about lying, about the story that you feel Cohen -- and I think  you and I probably disagree on exactly what Cohen said about it. It is not a collusion story. It's a real estate story. It is a great real estate story that Donald Trump --

CARLSON: I am aware of that, no --

SMITH: And I mean, can I just tell the story to your audience here that we're talking about, this is the story at the heart of this whole thing.

CARLSON: No, because we don't have enough time. I want to get --

SMITH: You spent a lot of time talking about cats, can I just talk for two minutes about the Trump Tower in Moscow?

CARLSON: No, then I want to get to the specific claim that I made in the open, which I know you're going to want to respond to, that here you have Cohen and the Mueller investigation both debunking the so-called bombshell that you ran in January and you refusing to admit it has been debunked. I just played two pieces of tape of Michael Cohen saying essentially what BuzzFeed said is not true but you are claiming it is still true, on what grounds?

SMITH: I mean, if this was my show, I would have extended both of those clips a little longer. The first to show Michael Cohen saying, "In his way, he was telling me to lie," in which I just don't think there is a lot of dispute now that Cohen is saying that he claims, you could say he was lying, you don't have to believe Michael Cohen, he claims, he believes Trump was telling him to lie. Now, when this first went out, you guys were calling it a hoax. You were saying the simple thesis was wrong.

CARLSON: But that's not you said, that's not what your piece said. Your piece said he --

SMITH: The piece said he was directed to lie. Cohen, clearly believes --

CARLSON: He personally instructed him, he explicitly told him to lie --

SMITH: Personally instructed him. Cohen described in meeting in person ...

CARLSON: But you said, he explicitly told him to lie.

SMITH:  ... between the people. Let's take them one at a time. Cohen described a personal meeting with Jay Sekulow and Trump, in which in discussing his testimony and this is something where everyone is chasing to get more detail of this, and it's a little hard for us to argue about it in the absence of like a transcript of the meeting. This isn't Nixon. We don't have audio. The things that Trump said, you said before were, "No Russia, no deal." I mean, if that is in the context of his testimony, that sound, that is certainly personal. They are talking to each other about his testimony. Is it that explicit? I think that's a reasonable argument reasonable people can have, but the idea that this has been debunked, this is a hoax --

I mean, the hoax story has moved to a place where we're having a much narrower dispute here, Tucker. By the way, that story that is not about collusion, but that story is about lying about an amazing real estate deal in Moscow.

CARLSON: But hold on, the details -- we may be having a dispute. Look, I want to say just once again, to be totally clear. I genuinely respect your coming on to defend your reporting. Most people won't, you will, and I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. but it's the details that matter in life as in news stories.

SMITH: That's correct.

CARLSON: And your story said, and I am again quoting it, "He explicitly told Cohen to lie." Cohen was asked twice by two separate Democratic members of Congress if that was true and he had every reason to say it was true, but he said, it was untrue. So why not just say, "Maybe parts of our story were right, but we got went over our skis, we went too far, we made a claim we can't back up and the subject of the allegation now denies and we admit it?" Why not just say that?

SMITH: See, I guess, I think as Jason said recently, that the bar now seems to be did he say, "Michael, I now instruct you to lie," that anything short of that doesn't count as an instruction.

CARLSON: But that's what your piece says. Your piece claims that. It says that he specifically -- he explicitly asked him to lie.

SMITH: Cohen says that what Trump told him was in the context of his testimony, no Russia, no deal. Again, the details of that exchange matter a lot. Exactly where he said it. Exactly how he said that. It matters a lot, but I think the question of whether Trump is directing and ordering people and how he is talking about it something everybody is kind of wrestling with right now. You saw the "New York Times" report that he had ordered Kelly to do something, but that they didn't know the exact words, and I do think that at some point, Michael Cohen who has trusted retainer, he has worked for him for a long time. It is not to me totally crazy that he should be expected to be able to interpret his boss's words.

CARLSON: Okay, all right, well -- in any case, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.

SMITH: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: And the door is always open to you and anyone else. Appreciate it. Ben Smith. Michael Cohen's testimony last week seemed to put a dent in the Russian collusion narrative, so has the story changed at all? Take a guess. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So if you took the politics out of it and tried to see things clearly and paid close attention over the last week, you would have to say you have more doubt about the Russia conspiracy than you had before.

Michael Cohen, the President's personal lawyer for 10 years turned on his boss. He had all of his communication seized by the Justice Department and said he would reveal everything. He says he hates Donald Trump and in the end, he revealed what? He said there were no secret meetings and no hidden payoffs, no pee tape, and no collusion. It doesn't matter.

The people who believe in the Russia conspiracy believe just as much as they did before Michael Cohen testified. On a podcast last week, Hillary Clinton said, "It's the job of her party to keep digging, if necessary, all the way through the Earth until they reach the Kremlin."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: There is enough grounds in what has already been made public for the government, for Congress in particular to be doing more with it. And I am pleased that under Speaker Pelosi, the Democrats are beginning to hold hearings and try to connect some of these dots.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CARLSON: Michael Tracey is an independent journalist and he joins us tonight. Michael Tracey, thanks very much for coming on. Have we reached the point where maybe it's not possible metaphysically impossible to prove that the Russia conspiracy is not real?

MICHAEL TRACEY, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST: Well, I think it is most instructive to look at what leading Democrats who have been leading the charge on this collusion narrative from the outside are now saying. They are totally changing their tune.

Jerrold Nadler for example, who would lead impeachment proceedings against President Trump were it to come to that has now been saying that he reserves the right to disagree with Robert Mueller's final report. Adam Schiff has been on the Sunday shows more than maybe any human in history, has been saying that there is already ample evidence in the public record to establish that collusion occurred, so he is also saying that we now have basis to simply disregard and wipe from the record the entire Mueller investigation because it's not necessary to prove collusion.

These are the same people who have been screaming from the rooftops for two years that the entire edifice of American democracy rests on the sanctity of this investigation and the need to preserve it, and now they are saying that, you know, it just doesn't particularly matter. It's almost a remarkable about-face. But because the media is so blinkered by their Trump fixation, they are not totally cognizant of it, and I think your exchange with Ben Smith was actually illustrative of that as well.

I was watching that with my jaw on the floor. You referred to BuzzFeed as a cat blog run by depressed Brooklynites, which is funny and true in a lot of ways, but they actually do occasionally produce what could be described as legitimate journalistic work every now and then.

CARLSON: Sure they do. They do. I agree with that, yes.

TRACEY: But what Ben Smith is doing and I have actually respect for Ben Smith ...

CARLSON: I do, too.

TRACEY:  ... I think he actually demonstrates some integrity by appearing on your show.

CARLSON: Yes, I agree with that as well.

TRACEY: But what he and his functionaries are doing at this point, by jumping through hoop after ludicrous hoop to rationalize why that story which has now been so obviously undermined it is actually legitimate, they are taking away from the good works that some people within the BuzzFeed orbit are doing because they are automatically being associated and tarnished by association with this BuzzFeed story.

I will just give you another example of why none of this adds up. Jason Leopold who is one of the co-authors of the initial story appeared on MSNBC within hours of the story first breaking. Remember, when the story broke, it caused this completely historical meltdown with every TV anchor screaming "Boom, bombshell" like toddlers.

CARLSON: Oh, yes.

TRACEY: So to capitalize on that elation, Jason Leopold went on MSNBC and said that he had seen documents that corroborated the central contention of the story, which is that Michael Cohen was directed by Trump to lie to Congress, which as you mentioned would be a felony. That's why people were flipping out.

CARLSON: Yes.

TRACEY: Members of Congress were calling for impeachment proceedings to being right away. In claiming that he had seen primary documentation, Leopold gave the story extra potency because, okay, it's not just based on some second hand --

CARLSON: Where are those -- we're almost out of time, but just tell me, I am actually on the edge of my seat, where are those documents? Do we know?

TRACEY: It's a huge mystery. I don't know. Maybe they fell down the rabbit hole with the rest of the proof of the collusion that was supposed to be provided at this point.

Anyway, President Trump when he calls the media fake news, he is often over-wrought and he often exaggerates, but he is giving ammunition -- BuzzFeed and others are giving President Trump ammunition to make those claims when they so stubbornly and obstinately stick by a story which by any plain reading has been flatly contradicted, and it's such a sad --

CARLSON: Just admit it. Exactly. Exactly. I completely forgot about that Leopold document point. Thank you for reminding us. Michael Tracey, as always, great to see you. Thank you.

And by the way, Michael -- Schiff is -- Congressman Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intel Committee, always welcome on this show. Again, as we've said before.

Young pioneer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would like to totally take over the American economy in the name of the environment. Is she ready though to make the big sacrifices that all of us must make herself? That's the acid test always, we'll took a look after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has told us a lot about how vital the fight against global warming is to her. It's very, very important. In fact, it's existential, a word she might use, but not fully understand.

How important is global warming and fighting it? So important we may have to stop having children. In fact, it's at least as important as the Second World War.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEJUS, HOST, SHOWTIME: My Twitter mentions, I am getting a lot of references about cow farts, and I think that's a reference to your Green New Deal. Can you explain that for us?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, NEW YORK, DEMOCRAT: Yes, we've have to address factory farming. Maybe we should not be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, and your biggest issue is -- your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it? And like, this is the war. This our World War II.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: All right, so fighting global warming is as important as liberating the world from the Nazis. AOC says that. Does she really believe it? We always know what people believed by the way they live, not by what they say, but by how they act. "The New York Post" found out a lot about how AOC has acted. They analyzed her campaign expenses from 2018, and they found that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent almost 30 grand on car services, that includes more than 500 Uber trips, even though -- and this will make you if you are legitimately green in your heart, a little annoyed -- her office was just one minute from the New York subway. But she didn't take it. She took Ubers instead.

Her campaign logged 66 separate airline transactions and took Amtrak just 18 times. Ocasio-Cortez did not dispute any of these findings, but said instead, she was quote, "Living in the world as it is," end quote.

Well, the cofounder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore was not impressed by this, he tweeted this, quote, "The world as it is has the option of taking the subway rather than a taxi. It has the option of Amtrak rather than a plane, option of opening the windows rather than AC. You're just a garden- variety hypocrite like the others."

He went on to call Ocasio-Cortez correctly we might add, quote, "a pompous little twit," and then he said her Green New Deal would cause quote, "mass death." She didn't respond. She doesn't care.

Well it's been 845 days and the Hillary Clinton Global Blame Tour is still rolling along. Hillary Clinton has delivered a speech in Selma, Alabama declaring the United States to be in a quote "crisis."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

H. CLINTON: This is a time, my friends, when fundamental rights, civic virtue, freedom of the press, the rule of law, truth, facts and reason are under assault and make no mistake, we are living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: What's so interesting about that is that Hillary Clinton spoke those words while standing in Selma, Alabama. "There's a crisis," she said, well there is a crisis and it was right in front of her. The crisis is in Selma itself. Selma, the place not the metaphor. Every year, Democrats fly down to Selma, Alabama to posture about racism the Civil Rights and every year, they ignore the fact that the actual city of Selma is collapsing.

Selma was once a major industrial center in the south. Most of the factories have since closed. The population has fallen by more than a third since 1960. More than 40% of the people who live in Selma right now live in poverty, the kids.

By household income, it is the ninth poorest small city in the entire United States. A 2018 report found it to be one of the most dangerous places in the country and the most dangerous in the state of Alabama. In other words, Alabama -- Selma, rather is the city full of problems, real problems, the kind that Democrats used to genuinely care about. Now, they've moved on.

If the city's unemployment rate is high, it's just more proof that they deserve replacement by foreign workers of some kind. When Hillary Clinton visits, she isn't coming with solutions, instead, she's telling them her own problems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

H. CLINTON: I was the first person who ran for President without the protection of the Voting Rights Act and I will tell you, it makes a really big difference and it doesn't just make a difference in Alabama and Georgia, it made a difference in Wisconsin where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Richard Goodstein seen as an attorney. He advised Bill and Hillary Clinton and he joins us tonight. Richard, thanks a lot for coming on. I think Hillary grew up, by her accent, grew up right nearby, I think Selma.

RICHARD GOODSTEIN, FORMER ADVISER TO BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON: You bet.

CARLSON: Or suburban Chicago, whatever, but what's so interesting is you could go to the poorest city in the state, the most dangerous city in the state, a city where 42% of the kids are in poverty and talk about your own problems. Why wouldn't you spend -- why don't any of these people spend a single second trying to make Selma better?

GOODSTEIN: So yesterday was all about Voting Rights. That's what actually people went to Selma to talk about was the voter suppression and Voting Rights.

CARLSON: Right.

GOODSTEIN: And I think her view, you could, you know take issue with it is that if there were voting rights that were universal, actually there would be an address to these problems in Selma and elsewhere and incidentally it's not unique to Selma. I mean, Pittsburgh had a lot of jobs associated with hard industry that have gone away, too.

CARLSON: And so does a lot of places. And Pittsburgh is actually doing fairly well. Selma though as far as I know, is governed by African- American Democrats, so it's not like racism is holding Selma back at least in voting, okay, and it's complicated. There are lots of reasons for all this stuff, but no one even asked the question why is Selma the actual place, such a disaster? People rotated in and out of there on these posturing tours but, nobody notices that it's a disaster, why?

GOODSTEIN: I don't know that anybody doesn't notice. I think the point of gathering people, she got this International Unity Award, she was inducted into the National Voting Rights Hall of Fame that's why she was there.

I mean Hillary could go any number of places in the country and talk about problems that are unique to that place. That happened not to be why she was invited to Selma.

CARLSON: But can you imagine going to a place where 40% of the kids are in poverty and you haven't flown commercial in 25 years, I mean, you're legitimately rich. You're one of the most famous people in the world and you complain about your problems in a city like that? Does that seem a little weird?

GOODSTEIN: Well, again, I don't know that she hasn't flown commercial. I don't think you know either. The fact of the matter is, again she's talking about problems like the problems that hit Selma all the time. She did during the campaign, it didn't work for her.

CARLSON: But why doesn't anyone make it better? I mean, it's a Democratic city. It's a place where every candidate goes, but the problems never get better. Why is that?

GOODSTEIN: So you're suggesting, I mean, sorry, Tucker, you're suggesting that because there's what? It's a black area or because there's a black mayor?

CARLSON: I am not suggesting that at all. I'm just saying that -- I'm just saying that the city -- it doesn't matter what color it is, it's in a lot of trouble and it doesn't get better and the people who stand before its population and make promises haven't improved it in 50 years.  Shouldn't we call them to account at some point?

GOODSTEIN: Look, obviously that's true for any community that should be better than what we find, right, but if the suggestion -- look, Donald Trump said, "What do you have to lose?" Right? I mean, to communities just like Selma, the answer was healthcare, you know, basically some concern. We know that not every Trump voter was a racist. We know that, but every racist was a Trump voter.

CARLSON: That's not true.

GOODSTEIN: We know that, too. Well, what evidence -- do you really think that that is not true?

CARLSON: Well, you have an entire political party saying that you should give people jobs and college admissions and contracts based on their skin color, that's the definition of racism. Those are Democrats.

GOODSTEIN: No, I don't think that's what they're saying at all.

CARLSON: That's the definition of racism actually?

GOODSTEIN: But they're not saying that people should get jobs, they are saying --

CARLSON: Yes, they are.

GOODSTEIN: They're saying there should be some --

CARLSON: They're attacking people on the basis of their race, that's what racism is, right?

GOODSTEIN: Yes.

CARLSON: It happens every day. You don't notice this?

GOODSTEIN: Of course, but that's not what the Democrats are saying. The Democrats are saying that people of every race should get a fair shot not that they should be sort of --

CARLSON: No, that's not what they're saying. They're saying that certain jobs should go to people based on their skin color. That's the same thing a segregationist has said. Yes, they are saying that.

GOODSTEIN: But what's the job that they say that someone should get because of their skin color? For example?

CARLSON: Well, they're saying that a certain percentage of jobs in this or that field should go to people because of their skin color. That's the argument that the segregationist made. It's exactly the same argument and I'm just saying, whatever.

I'm not even arguing that, I'm just saying, someone should care about Selma being - or lots of these cities as you rightly point out.

GOODSTEIN: Yes, I don't think people disagree that Selma is a place that needs attention and I would think Hillary would say that she's doing what she can to make sure it gets it gets the attention.

CARLSON: I hope she does, or some someone does.

GOODSTEIN: Yes.

CARLSON: Hopefully, yes. Richard, thank you very much.

GOODSTEIN: Of course, thanks.

CARLSON: Free speech is under attack on college campuses. Apparently, there's a new executive order that will protect it. How will that work and will it actually solve the problem? That is next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want Federal research --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That was the President over the weekend at CPAC. American colleges once had the freest speech in the world and that was directly related to the fact they were the best in the world. Now American higher education is increasingly dominated by fascists who tolerate but a single set of ideas. The President's executive order presumably will seek to change that. It's unclear exactly what it will say. Well, obviously we'll follow it.

In the meantime, Victor Davis Hanson is a college professor himself. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the new book, "The Case for Trump," which is out tomorrow he joins us tonight.  Professor, thanks very much for coming on. Congrats on the book.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Thank you very much, Tucker.

CARLSON: So what do you think this executive order is likely to say? What should it say?

DAVIS HANSON: Well it's trying to restore some balance on campuses and it functions, I think at two levels. Politically it sort of forces the parents for free speech and that's what the Democratic Party says they are going back to the Berkeley free speech era and the ACLU.

It says you have to be for free speech, but if you're going to follow Trump's executive order, that you have to be for Trump. They can't be for Trump, but anything Trump says, he's for and they're against. But to be against Trump is against free speech, so how do they square that circle?

I think the way they do it is through Orwellian language, so what they mean is free speech is hate speech because you could be cruel to some group and censorship is called trigger warnings, segregation as safe spaces and having some skepticism that man-made global warming is sort of creationism or denialism.

So in their way of and I'm saying they're going to make these efforts, Tucker, because there's $26 billion dollars at stake in Federal support for higher education, so they're going to be for free speech. It's just not what you and I and most Americans call free speech.

CARLSON: So, I am a little bit confused. So obviously, higher education is destroying the country. It's feeding this poison into the bloodstream making young people hate themselves, hate the country, not educating people and leaving everyone in debt, so it's a disaster. Why wouldn't the President unilaterally to the extent he could you just shut down Federal funding for it until they do this and a lot of other things to make it a serious sector once more?

DAVIS HANSON: They will and I think he will try to do that and I'm thinking, I'm hoping he's successful like you are, but I think what they're going to say is, "Oh we believe in free speech," but people who want to engage in free speech say mean things, so we can't let them hurt people and we believe -- we don't believe in censorship, but Mark Twain can be insensitive, so we're going to trigger warning or not read certain passages or we believe in integration of course in the Civil Rights Movement, but we feel that it's too hurtful for people so they have separate racially segregated dorms and that's how they operate.

They change the language and they think that by changing the language, they change reality, so then they come back to Trump and they think, we solved the problem. We can beat for free speech and we can be against Donald Trump because that isn't really free speech. It's trigger warnings and micro aggressions and safe spaces and denialism. That's what they do and I don't think they're going to be able to pull it off, but they're in a very bad predicament, Tucker.

This is the party of the left that is going to have to oppose a motion to ensure free speech.

CARLSON: Well, no that's a very good - it's bewildering to those of us over 40, I hope they push this really hard. Professor, thank you for joining us tonight and again, congrats on your book.

DAVIS HANSON: Thank you. I appreciate that.

CARLSON: The Democratic Party has every intention of taking over healthcare and energy, but they're not stopping there. They like to nationalize parenting, too. Both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have endorsed plans for socialized childcare in the United States. The rest of the party won't be far behind because why have parents raise their own kids when the state can do it?

Joy Pullmann is executive editor at "The Federalist," a mother of five, all of them eight or younger and she joins us tonight.

Joy, I'm glad you were able to get a break to come on. I love your stuff on "The Federalist." Thank you for joining us.

JOY PULLMANN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: Thanks.

CARLSON: So tell us why we should be skeptical of socializing daycare?

PULLMANN: Well, I think there's two chief reasons and the first one is that is not what mothers want for their families and the second one is that that is not in the best long-term interest of children, so the best research that we have on child care shows that the more that little children are away from their mothers and the longer that they spent -- the earlier that they do that and the longer that they spend away from their mothers, the more emotional, psychological and behavior problems that they have long-term.

So also mothers themselves just really want to be with their kids because they love them and they want to spend time with them, so it's really not good for the overall health of our society to be breaking the mother-baby bond. Really, what we should be doing is doing everything we can to protect it.

CARLSON: Let me just make the counter-argument that the left and many conservatives make which is that business demands a higher labor force participation rate for women. It's good for GDP for moms to leave their small children, outsource child-rearing to people from foreign countries and get back to work to serve global capitalism. What do you make of that argument?

PULLMANN: Well, the economy -- well, the whole point of the economy is to support families, right? We don't have families in order to support the economy, we have an economy in order to support families. So what we should be doing is not putting the short-term interests of today's businesses first. What we should be doing is bringing the long-term health of our society first. It is not good for a society if more children are committing crimes, you know when they grow up as it has happened in Quebec when they implemented a full government daycare program there.

It's not good for society when children have more emotional disturbances and they're more aggressive. They're having more special needs placements and so forth, and so I mean all of that -- I mean, what's really, again, what we really need to do is think about what's most sustainable for society and of course business plays a role in that, but it's not the most important thing.

CARLSON: So really quick, every survey shows that most parents would like to raise their own kids when they're little anyway, if I was running a political party that's the first promise I would make to make an economy that could support a family on one income, so if you want to, no one is forcing anybody. But if you want to, you can raise your own kids. It seems very simple, why is no party doing that?

PULLMANN: Well, I think it's because most of the parties are listening more to pollsters and to the people who create push research rather than to the people who are closest to the families and to the children.

If you particularly talked to low-income and middle class mothers, what they can say - they consider it a mark of luxury and a mark of having finally made it and feeling stable as a family for them to be able to devote more of their time to their family and less of it to paid work outside the home.

So that's definitely something that mothers are looking for. I mean I'm, a mother that's what I'm looking forward to, it's to be more with my family because we know that when we are investing with our children, we are investing in the long-term health of society and so, what moms like me have to say ought to be listened to because we're voters and we're also the people who are shaping the next generation, and if we're not there, those kids are going to grow up and really have a greater dependence and need that didn't have to be there if moms were just allowed to do what we are created to do what we want to do.

CARLSON: It's totally right, instead all we hear is corporate propaganda from Elizabeth Warren and the rest of them, "Serve GDP, it's your obligation." Joy, thank you for pushing back against that insanity. I appreciate it.

PULLMANN: Thanks for having me on.

CARLSON: First it was the Confederate statues, then it was the founding fathers, now the campaign to destroy the past has come after Dr. Seuss, a liberal in good standing. They are calling him a bigot now. Mark Steyn with us next.

CARLSON: You could have seen this coming, Dr. Seuss is one of the most beloved children's authors. He is an American, but his books were written before 2008, so it was inevitable that somebody in academia was going to call them racist and that of course is exactly what happened.

A new academic study argues that quote, "Racism spans across the entire Seuss collection." The oov. The study says it's a myth that books like "Horton Hears a Who," and "The Sneetches," which are actually against racism for more tolerance. The chief argument is that Seuss' characters are too male and have the wrong skin colors, whatever those are. Author and columnist, Mark Steyn joins us tonight. What? They have the wrong skin colors? What were the skin colors in Dr. Seuss?

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: That's right, they have done a survey and concluded that only 2% of the characters in Dr. Seuss are persons of color and they find this problematic. I actually find the world "problematic" problematic, because it's a way for social justice warriors to label anything they don't like without actually engaging in it, in any coherent way.

And so it maybe -- there may be all kinds of reasons why only 2% of characters in Dr. Seuss are persons of color. There is not a lot of same- sex marriage in Jane Austen. There are very few Muslims in PG Wodehouse.  Authors generally are entitled to write about the characters they want to write about.

If you talk with living novelists, for example, the bestselling American novelist, Lionel Shriver told me last year because she writes about characters who are not middle aged white women like herself, she gets accused of cultural appropriations. If a white woman writes in the voice of a black man, she is culturally appropriating. If a thin person writes in the voice of the obese, they are culturally appropriating.

So you can't win either way, and what these culture vandals are doing now are basically trying to make us live in a permanent year zero as they called it in Cambodia, where we have no cultural inheritance. And we're just bobbing around in the flotsam and the jetsam of a hyper present tense, which is no way to live.

CARLSON: No art is being created right now. It's crack literally because it can't be.

STEYN: No.

CARLSON: Okay, I've got to ask you about this story. I thought of you when I read this this morning. So the world's best bridge player apparently just got busted for doping. His name was Greg Helgemo. He was suspended by the World Bridge Federation after a test found elevated testosterone levels. Bridge of course, not typically associated with homerun records. Are you surprised though that there is doping in bridge?

STEYN: No, absolutely not. Bridge is renowned for the use of performance enhancing drugs. All of these guys -- everybody's grandma is on steroids and testosterone in these Bridge Fours down at the Elks Lodge. It's terrible. I had a problem with it, too. I was playing solitaire with myself when I realized I had taken performance enhancing drugs. You can't get through -- all of these, you go to any senior center in Florida and traces of urine are being found and there are drug samples all the time.  This is the just the world we live in now -- performance enhancing drugs for Bridge Fours. We've come to a -- that's why it's pouring across the border. It's because we have to --

CARLSON: Anabolic steroids and shuffle boards. That's next. I am totally convinced. Mark Steyn, the best. Always great to see you, thank you.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: We could go on forever, obviously, but they allot only one hour to the show. Happily, we'll be back tomorrow 8:00 p.m. The show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and group think. All of which are so ubiquitous you don't even notice them. But they are there and they are distorting things, so fight back if you can.  Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow, but we have great news for you.

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