CNN insiders take to social media to attack new conservative employee
Former DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Flores was hired by CNN as a political editor; reaction from The Hill media reporter Joe Concha.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," February 20, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: This is a Fox News alert, Chicago Police just announced the dramatic development in the Jussie Smollett case. Smollett is no longer considered the victim of a crime, indeed just seconds ago, he was charged, felony charges, for filing a false police report. We're going to have all of the developments in this fast-breaking story in just moments. Amazing though the difference between tonight and just a week ago. Conventional wisdom turned on its head; that so often happens.
Good evening by the way, and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” First, we ask this question, have you ever noticed the weird compulsion in people, a lot of people, to pretend that they are the opposite of who they obviously are? Jussie Smollett would be one example, but it's everywhere and it is especially prevalent in politics. It's ubiquitous in the Democratic Party.
Just a few weeks ago, one Democratic politician who had worn blackface demanded the resignation of another Democratic politician for the crime of, yes, wearing blackface. That's more than hypocrisy, it's really an escape and evasion scheme. You escape scrutiny and evade punishment by accusing other people of doing exactly who you, yourself are doing, but on a much grander scale. The people calling you a thief are picking your pocket. The ones calling you an adulterer are hitting on your wife. The ones claiming you are immoral are themselves deeply worried about spending eternity in flames, and probably for good reason.
It's the Bill Clinton as feminist scam. We could give you a million examples, but the living embodiment of this syndrome, the all-time Grand Prix, triple gold medal winner in the category turns out to be running for President of the United States. It's Kirsten Gillibrand -- the junior Senator from New York.
Now Gillibrand is interesting not because there's a chance she will become the President, she won't. Gillibrand is fascinating because she so perfectly embodies the attitudes and the vanities of the modern Democratic Party and of a ruling class more broadly.
If you want to know what they're thinking in the faculty lounge at Wesleyan, or out in Silicon Valley or in Hollywood, watch Kirsten Gillibrand. She is who they all are. Like all of them, Gillibrand rarely utters a sentence anymore without some form of moral judgment. She appears to have retired from politics, actually. She's a preacher now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y.: This country was founded on some basic moral principles. That we have a moral compass as a nation, our morality as a country is literally on a knife's edge.
For me it's really a moral question.
For me it's very much a moral question.
I've been called to fight as hard as I possibly can to restore that moral integrity and that moral decency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "Moral integrity, moral decency." It would be interesting to know if Gillibrand gave that lecture to her old friend, Harvey Weinstein, or to her pal, disgraced New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman by the way now stands accused of beating women and calling his Sri Lankan girlfriend a quote, "brown slave." Did she mention that to him?
Did the question of moral principles ever come up during the time that Gillibrand spent with her mentor, Bill Clinton? Probably not. In fact, it's not exactly clear how Gillibrand or any of these people define the word "moral." A couple of months ago, Gillibrand gave us a hint, "Our future," she wrote in a tweet, is, quote, "Female. Intersectional. Powered by our belief in one another."
Do you have any idea what any of that means? Gillibrand likely doesn't, no one has asked her to explain. They're afraid to ask her anything. Why? Because Gillibrand is a victim now. Bet you didn't know that, she is. She is shielded from the scrutiny the rest of us receive.
She announced her new status as a victim just last week in a fundraising pitch. Quote, "I'm already facing questions about my likability and tone," Gillibrand wrote. "Sexism is bubbling into the narrative around our campaign, but I certainly won't stop fighting for a country that values and respects women. Will you add your name to reject sexism in our political system?" Get it?
Kirsten Gillibrand is now oppressed. You wouldn't know that by looking. In fact, she seems like one of the most powerful people in the world. She is a U.S. Senator and a presidential candidate. She went to a pricey all girls' boarding school and then an Ivy League college, and then law school,
And then she has political connections to get a prestigious legal clerkship and then she got her Senate seat without really running for it. That all seems like a pretty high level of privilege, but, no, despite a life of wealthy connections, Kirsten Gillibrand is now telling us, she is oppressed. Who are the oppressors? Well, they are you and me and anyone else who doesn't support her campaign for President. We're guilty of sexism. She's the victim of it.
You won't be surprised to learn that Kirsten Gillibrand was one of the very first politicians to side with Jussie Smollett. She can empathize with another pampered rich person fighting for victimhood status. When the next hate hoax comes along, Gillibrand will probably will tweet support of that, too. She can't resist a fad.
Whatever the political opportunities are, she is there, too, in lock step. Gillibrand once supported a balanced budget amendment, now, she backs the Green New Deal. She once bragged about keeping two guns under her bed, she had an A-rating from the NRA, now she wants to ban rifles. She says the NRA is not simply wrong, but evil.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GILLIBRAND: The NRA has a choke hold on Congress. The NRA is concerned only with gun sales. It is literally all about money. It is all about greed. It has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.
It is the power of money. It is the power of communications. It's the fear they instill in members and it's wrong. It's morally wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: There it is again, "it's morally wrong." The beauty of declaring something morally wrong, rather than just misguided or ineffective, is that you can't really argue with a moral absolute. You can only obey a moral absolute, and that's of course, the point of laying it down.
As a member of Congress not so long, many years ago, Gillibrand said she believed in borders. She promised to crack down on sanctuary cities. She opposed awarding driver's licenses to illegal aliens. That was then. Now, she wants to abolish I.C.E.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GILLIBRAND: I don't think I.C.E. today, is working as intended.
CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN: Well, you think you should get rid of the agency?
GILLIBRAND: I believe that it has become a deportation force, and I think you should separate the criminal justice from the immigration issues, and I think you should reimagine I.C.E. and that's why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it, and build something that actually works.
CARLSON: You could see her trying to remember the talking points, "Don't get confused. Reimagine I.C.E." But she got a little over her skis. It turned out that when she said that, banning I.C.E. wasn't very popular even among Democratic voters. So Gillibrand lurched back and said she didn't really want to get rid of I.C.E., that as you saw, she proposed exactly that.
But now, just a few months later, she is lurching back again, abolishing I.C.E. That qualifies as centrism in the Democratic Party right now. So Gillibrand needs something more radical than that. She wants to be considered the progressive candidate, and this week, she found it.
Gillibrand proclaimed that border security is immoral because it impedes the movement of indigenous peoples into our country, which apparently is really their country. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On immigration, I mean, there is a crisis going on at the border right now.
GILLIBRAND: There is. It's inhumane. We need to have proper asylum and this President doesn't believe in asylum. He is afraid of immigrants. He is afraid of refugees.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I just want to note that a lot of these people are indigenous to this land and that border is cutting them off.
GILLIBRAND: I know. That's why the wall is so absurd and hurtful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Just who are these indigenous people? Who knows, as long as they're female and intersectional, Kirsten Gillibrand believes they are our future.
Jonathan Harris is a Democratic political analyst and he joins us tonight. Mr. Harris, thanks very much for coming on. So who are these indigenous people who we can't keep out? Are they citizens? Are they noncitizens? What does that mean?
JONATHAN HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL ANALYST: So, I think what she was referring to and it isn't even her that said it, it was the activist --
CARLSON: But she nodded and said that's why walls are so hurtful.
HARRIS: Yes, I mean, I think she was kind of nodding before, I'm not sure she was necessarily agreeing, but if she was, I think what she is referring is that, I think it was like in the mid-1800s for example in Texas, that was an independent nation that was shared by European settlers, as well as Mexican settlers.
So they were sharing land together and then the Europeans kind of forced the Mexicans out, and that was duplicated again in California and so on and so forth. So I think what she's talking about is the reality that lot of the people that are now outside of the country are actually descended from actual indigenous people.
CARLSON: But aren't the people who used to live there dead?
HARRIS: I said descended from, so descended from them.
CARLSON: So does that mean that if your ancestors lived in a place, you have a right to go there and use their social programs for free?
HARRIS: It just means that you're descended from people who are indigenous people.
CARLSON: Right, but the woman who Gillibrand was talking to said, "It's wrong to put a border wall up because it would keep people who are indigenous to the region out," and Gillibrand said, "That's absolutely right, that's why they are so hurtful."
And so what they are saying is that if your ancestors lived in a place that you have by definition, genetic citizenship or something there, is that true, do you think? Or is that insane.
HARRIS: Well, I mean -- I think, I don't think that's what Gillibrand was saying. I think that might have been what the activist was saying, but I don't think that's what she was agreeing with because what she said right after that is going back to her talking points, "We need asylum. We need to have -- the wall is immoral," and things like. So I don't know that she necessarily agrees with that. But that is a factual statement. I mean, for her to say --
CARLSON: What is a factual statement? That populations have moved around the globe for thousands of years.
HARRIS: Of course.
CARLSON: But as long as we're saying that if your ancestors, I guess, if we take a DNA test or something?
HARRIS: Well, I mean, that works, right? Because if I have a child or you have a child outside of the U.S., they are still considered American citizens based on --
CARLSON: That's because are you a citizen. Citizenship is not a genetic category because despite what people say, an inherently racist nation, as soon as you decide that genes are what give you claim to living here ...
HARRIS: No, and I don't --
CARLSON: ... then that's different thing.
HARRIS: I'll reiterate. I don't think that's what Gillibrand was agreeing to. I think she was just agreeing to the fact that many of those people had they not been pushed out or had they not been robbed of their land, the people that there now are descendants of those people. I think that was --
CARLSON: Well, I doubt that Gillibrand knows anything about the history of the region or really anything else, actually. She said recently that the 14th Amendment gave women the right to vote. So I mean, let's not overstate her knowledge.
HARRIS: I could go down a laundry list of things Trump has said that makes him --
CARLSON: Yes, sure, and I am not here to defend the ignorance of politicians.
HARRIS: Yes, I mean, they all do that sometimes.
CARLSON: I am merely saying, I doubt she knows much about the history of that region. But I just think it's important to establish a principle, if you're a citizen, you have right to be here, and if you're not, you don't.
HARRIS: Agree, of course.
CARLSON: Okay. Gillibrand doesn't remember that. So what do you make -- just more broadly of her new posture as a victim, someone who grew up - this privilege life is now telling us that she's a victim of sexism.
HARRIS: I don't think she -- see, I think --
CARLSON: Well, she said that.
HARRIS: Well, I think the right does that a lot. I think the right mounted this horse in the 80s of moral - of the moral majority, and everything was a moral issue. People couldn't get married. People couldn't do these things in their private lives.
CARLSON: Right. No, no.
HARRIS: No, the right did that. That was their philosophy.
CARLSON: Let me just be clear. I am an Episcopalian. I'm not here to lecture you about your moral failings at all.
HARRIS: Right, but the GOP --
CARLSON: I mean, whatever, but I am just saying right now ...
HARRIS: And there's many of them.
CARLSON: ... Gillibrand is saying, this one of those powerful people in the world just like Jussie Smollett, rich person --
HARRIS: But see, I don't - there's no correlation.
CARLSON: Sure. I mean, there is this --
HARRIS: There is no correlation.
CARLSON: There is this trend of powerful people claiming that they're victims.
HARRIS: I think there's a difference between --
CARLSON: And the people oppressing them are poorer and less popular than they are.
HARRIS: No, I think there's a difference between highlighting something you may be the victim of, right? Like Hillary Clinton had a very different road than Donald Trump and a lot of it tied into sexism. She's not calling yourself a victim.
CARLSON: Of course, she is.
HARRIS: No, she is not. She's just saying, "This is what I had to deal with."
CARLSON: Can you get successful --
HARRIS: Can you say that without being -- can you highlight your own struggle without calling yourself -- is that even possible?
CARLSON: Yes, I think you should actually be quiet about your own struggles.
HARRIS: You should.
CARLSON: If you're as powerful as Hillary Clinton is, I do think there are -- or if you're as powerful as I am, there are a lot of things I don't like. I try not to whine about it too much because I'm successful and I don't believe in whining.
HARRIS: But do you understand that what they're doing when Hillary Clinton does that, obviously, she said many times it doesn't -- it can't hurt me. But there are a lot of women who would go through that. There are a lot of people that that represents.
CARLSON: You know what's going on. This is powerful people pretending to be powerless because it shields them from criticism.
HARRIS: I don't see her calling yourself a victim. I think she's just saying, this is what I am going through.
CARLSON: Okay, well, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. Jonathan Harris, thank you very much.
HARRIS: Thank you.
CARLSON: Great to see you. Well, like most of the Democratic Party's 2020 candidates, Elizabeth Warren is running fast to position yourself at the left end of the Democratic spectrum. That's a position she comfortably held for years until the party itself went insane, and that left Warren looking dangerously moderate.
So yesterday, Warren unveiled a plan for a universal state run and taxpayer funded daycare scheme in the United States. Warren wants 12 million kids to participate in this daycare plan. That would be 60% of all children under five in America.
In a speech shortly before revealing her plan, Warren said universal daycare, quote, "Is about what each of our children is entitled to, not just the children of the wealthy, not just the children of the well- connected, but every one of our children is entitled to good child care."
Let's take this seriously. Warren has it exactly backwards. Children are not entitled to government daycare. What children are entitled to, is love from their own parents. Now, Warren herself used to know this very well. Fifteen years ago, she wrote an entire book making that case. The book was called "The Two-Income Trap." And honestly, it's excellent. I say that as a non-liberal. It's great.
In that book, Warren argues that American families have been decimated by the mass exodus of mothers into the workforce. As a result, children are less cared for. Mothers are far less happy, and thanks to wage stagnation and rising prices, families are not actually better off economically. She proves that point in that book, you should read it.
Many families are worse off, and that's one of the main reasons that Americans are having fewer children than they used to and they're having far fewer children than they say they want to have, but they have no choice. They can't afford it. The kids they produce are likely to be less successful and the rising rates of drug addiction and suicide and joblessness attest to that fact.
The American family has been crushed by the changing American economy and nobody wants to admit it. But 15 years ago, Elizabeth Warren did admit it and she was deeply troubled by it. Good for her. That was the old Elizabeth Warren. Now, Warren wants to be President, so she's gone corporate. That's where the money is.
The new Elizabeth Warren argues that the American Dream is not raising your own children. The American Dream is outsourcing their upbringing to government caretakers while their parents scurry back to work as good little servants of globalized market capitalism. The need for more government daycare specialists will no doubt be justified -- be used to justify more immigration. And so the cycle as you can see is complete. The Democratic Party started by outsourcing manufacturing. You remember that. Then they outsourced farm labor and yard work and now, they decided to outsource parenting. Raising your own kids, Elizabeth Warren is telling us is a job Americans just won't do.
Breaking news tonight in the Jussie Smollett case, seconds before the show began, Smollett was charged with a felony in Chicago. Matt Finn has the live update to what is happening in that story, after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Pretty amazing case of breaking news tonight in the Jussie Smollett story, the hate hoax that he apparently perpetrated. New surveillance footage prior to the attack has come out and just moments ago, police formally charged Smollett with a felony. A lot going on. Matt Finn is here from Chicago Police Headquarters to sort it out for us -- Matt.
MATT FINN, CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, Smollett formally charged with filing a false police report which carries up to a three-year sentence here in Illinois. Chicago police say their detectives today presented their evidence to a grand jury in the courthouse behind me and also the Osundairo brothers' attorney says that the brothers testified before this grand jury for 2.5 hours today. The Osundairo brothers' attorney says the brothers do not have a plea deal or immunity. That's not why they're cooperating according to the attorney.
The attorney says, quote, "You don't need a plea deal when you have the truth." The brothers' attorney also says she does not know how Jussie Smollett is sleeping at night and she is urging Jussie Smollett to cooperate with authorities.
Also the brothers' attorney says her clients don't feel pressured or manipulated by this Hollywood actor, but would not expand on why they got involved in this alleged hoax. The brothers' attorney also says she does not expect charges against her clients. She also says that the brothers will reveal their truth eventually.
We also obtained a new video showing the brothers apparently purchasing the black masks and Red Hats at a hardware store. The surveillance video shows them doing that. The ball tonight is now in Jussie Smollett's court. It will depend on what type of strategy his legal team he's advising him. We do know that Chicago police requested last Saturday that Jussie Smollett answer a couple more of their questions after the Osundairo brothers gave some type of testimony that dramatically altered this case, but as of this moment, it appears that Smollett has not cooperated with police and Smollett is also facing Federal charges because the FBI is investigating that the alleged death threat letter that he received one week prior to this hoax and if he lies to Federal authorities or if he had any part in that letter, he could be in trouble with the FBI as well -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Matt Finn in Chicago. We're going to wait for him to be arrested in a pre-dawn raid by dozens of armed agents -- oh, wait he's not Roger Stone. Thanks, Matt.
Libby Locke is an attorney who has been involved in a number of high profile cases like this and she joins us tonight for some perspective. Libby, thanks very much for coming on. So first, if you would give us some sense of what the charge is against Jussie Smollett and the penalty for it, potentially.
LIBBY LOCKE, ATTORNEY: Sure. So, Tucker it sounds like Mr. Smollett has been charged with giving a false report to the police. As your reporter just noted that there is a possible three-year sentence that Mr. Smollett could face for jail time, and this is a very serious charge and in my perspective, these kinds of hoaxes, if Mr. Smollett did in fact makeup this allegation and did in fact engage in this reporting to the police and wasted police resources, he should in fact go to jail and spend time in jail. Too many of these hoaxes are not prosecuted and we need some deterrence here.
CARLSON: So that really kind of is the point. I mean -- there's a long list of people who've been hurt by these hoaxes, but there's seems a pretty short list of the people who've been held accountable for perpetrating them have. Can you think of another example where someone is going to prison for something like this?
LOCKE: I can't. You know, we dealt with this in the "Rolling Stone" case that we prosecuted. The UVA - the fake gang rape that a woman on campus told to a reporter at "Rolling Stone." Now, she did not make a false report to the police. She never reported that rape to the police and therefore, the police didn't have a basis to bring charges against that woman.
Here, that's very different than Mr. Smollett if he in fact made up this attack and reported it to police. That is a basis for not only state charges, but also Federal charges. If any of the conduct that he engaged in impacted interstate commerce or was in interstate commerce, then there's a Federal angle to that, too.
CARLSON: It's so interesting though that it's not simply a question of how the police responded, law enforcement response, but also the people covering it. The press - there is this instinct to protect the false accuser, the person spreading hatred and fear and distrust in our society.
The case that you were involved in at UVA in Charlottesville, Virginia, the woman who made the false claims was protected in effect by the "Washington Post" and other media outlets for a long time. I never understood why.
LOCKE: Yes, and her anonymity was protected throughout that process because she purported to be a victim of rape even though every story of rape that she told, there are multiple stories. It turned out to be, you know, debunked. And here, you know, this is an example of media confirmation bias at its best.
From the very get go, the media rushed in and said - and politicians, too, Tucker, rushed in and said, "This attack was horrible." They immediately hashtag "Believed Jussie." And there was no stopping and thinking about, "Does this smell right? What are the facts here?" And look, now it sounds like the prosecutors believe that there was a false report. They have brought charges and you know, I would like to see what the evidence is. His phone records --
CARLSON: I mean, I don't know what the evidence is either, but I know a BS story when I see one when I thought it from day one, but why the media which is paid to be skeptical and paid to chase down facts are the ones demanding that we believe -- I mean, Robin Roberts on ABC colluded with this guy to perpetuate this hoax. The other channels, that dishonest ones we compete against are not even covering this development apparently. Why wouldn't -- why would reporters fall for this before everyone else?
LOCKE: That's a great question, Tucker, you know, it's exactly why Justice Thomas was correct in raising yesterday in the Supreme Court why we need to rethink that "New York Times" versus Sullivan standard which is the actual malice standard that was applied in the Warren Court back in the 1960s, which has insulated the media from liability in these cases and this confirmation bias is a real problem.
CARLSON: I totally agree.
LOCKE: An informed American electorate is important and the media is responsible for helping the American electorate be properly informed.
CARLSON: That's right and we're falling down on the job, I would say. Us being the media. Libby Locke, thank you very much.
LOCKE: Thanks for having me.
CARLSON: One of the few people with direct experience in these stories.
We put immense trust in the FBI. They have immense power. So what do we do when it's top officials expose themselves as nuts, Russia conspiracy theorists? It's an important question and we'll address it after the break.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: It's time right now to get your free trial on Fox Nation, our new streaming service. It is the perfect complement right here to the Fox News Channel and foxnation.com features exclusive shows even for me and your favorite Fox News personalities, people you know, and people you're just meeting.
Here is a preview of Season Two of "What Made America Great."
BRIAN KILMEADE, HOST: I'm going to bring it to Lincoln Memorial. But I'm going to bring you to a place that you've not seen before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the most visited monument, the iconic place to be in Washington and across the world.
KILMEADE: You promised me a visit. Can we go?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.
KILMEADE: All right. We're really going in?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're really going in and we're going to go down the stairs below the Lincoln Memorial. It's so grand, the public should see it, too. What we're going to do is going to go into the Grand Chamber and I'm going to show you some fascinating art that is really a time capsule back.
KILMEADE: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To 1914 to 1922.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: I think Andrew McCabe has made a fool out of himself over the last couple of days and he really looks to me like sort of a poor man's J. Edgar Hoover. He is a -- I think he is a disaster.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That was the President weighing in on Andrew McCabe's recent book tour. Americans put a lot of trust in the FBI. They have no choice. It's our top law enforcement agency. FBI officials are supposed to be adults, they're supposed to be immune to hysteria and fads and above all, immune to political pressure.
But the last couple of years have shaken the public's faith that any of that is true. Jim Comey grandstanded for attention. Sometimes, he helped Hillary Clinton and other times, he hurt Hillary Clinton, but it was always all about him.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page we know swapped hysterical texts that were also dumb and when it comes to Russia, Andy McCabe sounds worse than any CNN anchor. Here's one selection,.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FBI: I don't know that we have ever seen in all of history an example of the volume and the significance of the contacts between people in and around the President and his campaign with our most serious, our existential international enemy, the government of Russia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Quick. Define existential. I bet you can't. Of course you can't. McCabe also recently said that he wouldn't be surprised if the President were taking orders from Russia.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, ANCHOR, CNN: Do you still believe the President could be a Russian asset?
MCCABE: I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation and I'm really anxious to see where director Mueller concludes that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, there is no evidence of that, but you don't need it. He has a feeling and hopefully we'll get some facts. New report today indicate the release of Robert Mueller's final report could be imminent. Who knows? Eli Lake has been covering this stuff for a long time. He is a Bloomberg opinion columnist now and he joins us tonight.
So Eli, to me, speaking as a citizen, it's not really about Trump or the Democratic Congress, it's about whether you can trust your most powerful institution domestically, which is the FBI and if the deputy - former Deputy Director is saying the straight face, "No, he could be a Russian agent," on the basis of really no evidence that seems so reckless and scary to me.
ELI LAKE, OPINION COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: It's harder to justify that, especially two years into the administrator. President Trump has appointed Russia hawks at the highest levels of the government. He has, in a lot of cases, not every single one, countered Russian interest directly. The most recent example being Venezuela selling lethal arms to Ukraine.
So there's been no quo to the quid and the quid has yet to be established after more than two years of an investigation from the FBI, which is to say the initial theory was that there was a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to distribute, steal the e-mails from the DNC and John Podesta and that there was coordination in some ways with the Trump campaign to help Russia influence the election.
Well, you know, I think most people believe that the Russians certainly tried to influence the election, and -- but the other part of that, which is that coordination, not only hasn't it been proven, according to the indictment of Roger Stone, they didn't know what were in the e-mails that Roger Stone was trying to figure it out from WikiLeaks.
And the Trump campaign had asked Roger Stone to find out what was in the e- mails. So if they were coordinating, don't you think that why would they have to go to Julian Assange?
CARLSON: So if you really wanted to help Russia, you'd want to spike natural gas prices, because that's the Russian economy. And the fastest way to do that would be to take the richest natural gas fields in the world offline with the Green New Deal. So I don't really understand -- since the very people were saying that the United States should stop the production of fossil fuels are claiming that Trump who promotes the production of fossil fuels is somehow on Russia's side, like it seems insane to me.
LAKE: Well, I mean, in fairness, Trump gets into trouble sometimes. I mean, I think in 2016, when he said, "Russia, if you're listening, you should leak the Hillary e-mails," and things like that.
CARLSON: Of course.
LAKE: And there are moments where the Helsinki Summit from like last summer is another example where he will say things that I think most people including myself would sort of scratch their head like, "Where is this coming from? Why is he being so deferential to Putin?" But what we haven't seen is any kind of follow through in terms of the policy nor --
CARLSON: It's like the bedrock interests.
LAKE: Right, nor have we seen the evidence that there was in all of these, you know, meetings that have come out and things that he's talking about and all of these contacts, well, we have yet to see anything coming close to that initial claim that --
CARLSON: So it just seems like, look, if you're Ralph Peters or some kind of, you know, hysterical person on TV making hysterical claims, you know, that's fine. But if you're the Deputy Director of the FBI or just have been the Director of the FBI and you commanded a massive domestic army that's heavily armed that can crush and kill people, then you have an obligation not to be reckless in the things you say in cable news, right?
LAKE: Right. This was the first few months into the administration. I think, the FBI really was freaking out. What's less understandable to me and I think is completely baffling is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because according to McCabe, Rosenstein was frantically meeting with him and other senior leaders of the FBI proposing maybe the invocation of the 25th Amendment, wearing a wire, doing all of these and ultimately leading to the appointment of Robert Mueller as the Special Counsel.
But it was Rod Rosenstein who originally helped basically come up with a memo justifying the firing of Comey. So how is he on both sides about this issue?
CARLSON: No.
LAKE: And it's like, it is the -- I mean, the argument that I get from reading between the lines and I've read a bit of the book now from McCabe is that there would be no investigation. They wouldn't have launched this investigation. We wouldn't have gotten Mueller if only Trump had stuck to the initial cover story that he doesn't get - that obscured his real reasons for firing Comey.
CARLSON: I -- you and me --
LAKE: But he said, it was all about Hillary Clinton, then we wouldn't have -- according to McCabe and that doesn't make any sense.
CARLSON: It doesn't make any sense and I am even more confused.
LAKE: Right.
CARLSON: But grateful that you tried to explain the reasoning. Eli Lake, thank you.
LAKE: Thank you so much for having me.
CARLSON: Well, they joined a jihad against the West, now several ISIS brides want to come home and their supporters say it's racist to prevent them. Nigel Farage on that, after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: It's been almost 16 years since the United States invaded Iraq in order to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, spring of 2003, you'll remember. In the end, more than 4,000 American troops died in that war, tens of thousands more were maimed and of course more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians died as well.
The whole thing cost this country more than a trillion dollars and the ripple effects are still obvious. In fact, it's really hardly a stretch to say that without the Iraq invasion, there would be no Syrian Civil War, no ISIS, no European migrant crisis. And for that matter, there might be no President Trump who ran against that war.
The Iraq War turned out to be our most momentous and costliest U.S. foreign policy action since Vietnam and it might have been worth it if we got something out of it in the end. But did we? We didn't make the region safer. The weapons of mass destruction that justified the invasion never existed. And that's a fact worth remembering the next time the government and the "New York Times" align to assure you that something is absolutely true for real. It may not be true. That often isn't true.
But for a broader answer to whether it was worth it or not, there is a new two-volume 1,300 page study of the war and its consequences. It was produced by the Army War College and it was released last month to very little notice. The conclusions of the study are grim.
Years of warfare in Iraq failed to create a thriving democracy there or even really a stable government. A much wanted coalition of allies didn't work very well since most allies sent only token forces, too few to be useful. A handful of countries did all the real work.
Keep that in mind when they tell you how critical NATO is, but the most damning part of the report is its conclusion that the Iraq War really only had one winner. The winner was not America. It wasn't Iraq. According to the report's authors, quote, "And emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor of the Iraq War."
Many of these lessons get noticed in Washington. Well, almost nobody has paid any price at all from embroiling this country in the Iraq disaster. The biggest advocates of the war are still around, and amazingly many are still influential -- Bill Kristol, Max Boote, John Bolton. Many of these people want to repeat the Iraq War on a larger scale if they can in Syria or Libya or Yemen or Venezuela, or Iran itself. They've learned nothing and they may get their chance to do it again. But before they do, they ought to write a book report on the Army War College report.
ISIS has been all the destroyed in Syria and now followers who gleefully abandoned the West and went over there to help are trying to slink back home. Hoda Muthanais one of them. She fled the U.S. to join the Caliphate and marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she says she deserves to return without any serious punishment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HODA MUTHANA, U.S. ISIS BRIDE: I don't know, I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God and when I came here and I saw everything with my own eyes, I realized that I made a big mistake and I know I ruined my future and my son's future and I deeply, deeply regret it.
JOHN LONGMAN, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, ABC NEWS: Do you think you deserve punishment for what you did?
MUTHANA: Maybe therapy lessons, maybe a process that will ensure us that we will never do this again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Therapy so she'll never join ISIS again. Okay. As in the case of many issues, the U.K. is dealing with the same problem, but it's even worse over there. Their former ISIS bride is not even sorry, many are not sorry at all for what they did, but still want to come back and no doubt, live off taxpayers they waged jihad against. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHAMIMA BEGUM, U.K. ISIS BRIDE: The thing a lot of people should have like sympathy towards me for everything I've been through. They don't really have proof that I did anything that is dangerous.
QUENTIN SOMMERVILLE; MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT, BBC: They had beheaded people. There were executions.
BEGUM: Yes, I knew about those things and I was - I was okay with it. I did have a good time there. It's just at the end, things got harder. Please don't give up on trying to get me back, I really don't want to stay here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "Yes, I was okay with the beheadings, but you should feel sorry for me." Now, so far these people have been kept from returning to the U.K., but at least one columnist has already called that racist. Nigel Farage once led the U.K. Independence Party, of course, and he joins us tonight. Nigel Farage, thanks very much.
NIGEL FARAGE, FORMER HEAD OF U.K. INDEPENDENCE PARTY: Thank you.
CARLSON: So how much would you have to hate your own country to publicly argue it is quote, "racist not to allow someone who approved the beheadings while living with an ISIS fighter back into your country"?
FARAGE: Yes, I'm against with that whole international law, so if we were to say as a country, to Shamima Begum she can't come back to our country, we're taking your passport away. We will be making her stateless and that is what our political class are scared of doing. But the fact is, she chose to leave us. She worked with a direct enemy of our country, of our values, as far as I'm concerned, she's not stateless, she's Islamic State. And I don't want her to back in my country under any circumstances.
And for those that say, "Look, she was only a 15-year-old kid, she made a mistake." Well, Christian forgiveness is based on people first repenting of their sins and as you said, you know, her casual attitude towards heads -- beheads -- you know, fighters who have been beheaded and she found them in the bin, and she was okay with it. No, you know, it's possible always possible to forgive people for sins, but they've got to recognize what they've done wrong first.
I don't want her back, but I fear our country is much weaker than yours when it comes to defending our values, and I think she is coming back.
CARLSON: I mean, it seems since you do live in a democracy, that there would be a market for some politician to stand up and say, you know, I'm not hating anybody else, but my first job is to protect our citizens. Why don't you have a national politician who will say that?
FARAGE: Well, occasionally one does say that and then they get abused, as you say, called racist, called extreme -- all the things I've been called over these years. There is a consensus amongst British politicians that you don't tackle these issues. It's too awkward.
And of course, remember, we have a growing Muslim minority within the United Kingdom and the fear is, if we say these things, we will alienate that community and they won't vote for us in the future and cynically, Tucker, that I think is at the top of the list.
CARLSON: I mean, it's hard. I mean, maybe the majority of British Muslims support ISIS, I would doubt it.
FARAGE: No doubt.
CARLSON: I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of reasonable people who you know, see this kind of behavior as discrediting to them and wrong. I mean, I would certainly hope so. But also sort of like, who cares? Shouldn't somebody be brave enough to tell the truth that this is just wrong behavior.
FARAGE: Yes, absolutely. And this is a very important point, the vast majority of British Muslims, you know are integrating into our way of life. They're appalled by what ISIS has done, but what this young woman has done because it makes their lives in their communities more difficult and tougher for their kids to integrate.
And the key here is, we, in the West must not launch a crusade against an entire religion. We must launch it against the extremes of that religion and get moderate Islam on our side in this great battle. But you don't do that by being weak. You do it by being strong.
CARLSON: That's exactly right. Nigel Farage, thank you very much for that.
FARAGE: Thank you.
CARLSON: Well, CNN is under fire from outside and from within for hiring a former Trump administration staffer. Is this the first political person hired by a news network? We will investigate after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: This is a Fox News alert, Jussie Smollett's legal team has released a statement in response to the felony charges filed by Chicago police, quote, "Like any other citizen, Mr. Smollett enjoys the presumption of innocence particularly when there has been an investigation like this one where information both true and false has been repeatedly leaked. Given these circumstances, we intend to conduct a thorough investigation and mount an aggressive defense," end quote.
Smollett does of course enjoy the presumption of innocence, but many of the things he said have already proven to be untrue. The "New York Post" headline for tomorrow says it all. No cheeky joke this time. Just one word, "liar."
Well, the press known of course, especially the national press, particularly CNN for its scrupulous political neutrality, so it goes without saying that the hiring of a single middle of the road former Republican staffer has people hysterical, but bias. Former DOJ spokeswoman, Sarah Isgar-Flores was just hired by CNN as Deputy Political Editor.
According to that creepy kid who covers media for CNN, the staff over there were furious. One unnamed reporter called it a quote, "disaster" and said there were ethical implications to working for someone who publicly supported Trump.
Of course, there are quite a few former Obama staffers on the scene and payroll, no problem. Here to tell us more about all of this media reporter, Joe Concha covers the press for "The Hill." Good to see you, Joe.
JOE CONCHA, MEDIA REPORTER, THE HILL: Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: So just for the record, Sarah Isgar-Flores, I know well and I think a lot of her, but my impression is never that she was some fluid right winger? I mean, I don't know but I certainly don't have that impression of her, is she? And why the hysteria over this?
CONCHA: Well, she's worked with some pretty moderate Republicans, whether you're talking about Mitt Romney or Carly Fiorina, obviously she was Jeff Sessions spokesperson, and you're right. The headlines are incredible here. "CNN hires GOP operative with no journalism experience to coordinate its 2020 coverage." That was Vox. "Esquire," "CNN just set the new standard for corporate media's chicken stuff, catering to Republicans." Again, "CNN catering to Republicans." Every analysis and study I've seen has been overwhelmingly negative towards the President and the administration.
But let's put it this way. Let's say CNN hired Valerie Jarrett's daughter, okay, and she was assigned to cover the Trump DOJ despite having no journalism experience whatsoever. Do you think that "Esquire," Vox and all of these other publications would be going nuts right now over a hiring like that if somebody who has no journalism experience, but obviously has a bias? And the answer is, we already know the answer because that actually happened in 2017 and you could go down the list I mean --
CARLSON: Really?
CONCHA: Look at George Stephanopoulos. Wow. Yes. Well, of course you didn't know. It was barely reported, and I wrote about it, I think two years ago, but there wasn't a lot of coverage on that. And again, we see what happened with Hugh Hewitt at MSNBC. Everybody was in an uproar because Andy Lack was trying to bring MSNBC too far to the right by giving Hugh Hewitt an 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning show for a half hour. He didn't even get the full hour. I was actually on the show. It was it was quite fun.
And it was like, "What are you doing? You're turning into Fox News." So that's what happens. You hire anybody from the right in left leaning news organizations and they go nuts because it's not conforming to the way things have always gone. Like with George Stephanopoulos or like what David Shipley, who worked for the Clinton administration went on to be in "New York Times" op ed editor, and then the list goes on, Tucker,
CARLSON: I'm starting to think they're not really in favor of diversity.
CONCHA: Well, it depends on what kind of diversity we're talking about, right? I mean, if we're talking about ideological diversity --
CARLSON: Actual diversity -- where people are different.
CONCHA: Yes.
CARLSON: Right, they're not into it.
CONCHA: And look, it was overblown. They're trying to say that that Sarah Flores is going to oversee all of the 2020 coverage. No, she reports up the people and there are several people that have the same title that she does. So it's just one person to try to balance things out a little bit. I mean, give CNN a little bit credit in that regard, but then again, I would say that I agree with the left's or really left-leaning publications when they say, "You could have hired 100 other political editors here that can't be kind of compromised in any way," because we saw what happened at CNN obviously with Donna Brazil when she got her hands not once, but twice on town hall to debate questions and pass them on to the Clinton campaign and said, "That was my priority over my priority with CNN."
CARLSON: Unbelievable. Oh, Joe Concha, great to see you. Thank you.
CONCHA: Good to see you.
CARLSON: Well as you know, if you've been paying any attention, there's literally nothing cooler than marijuana. Cool people smoke weed and that's why total legalization nationwide seems inevitable.
But as marijuana use rises, a mysterious illness called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is affecting some heavy users. Not a lot is known about this, but symptoms include what they're calling "scromiting," an uncontrollable wave of screaming and vomiting. It might be worth learning more considering the ubiquity of marijuana, so we are joined by Fox contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel, our in-house doctor. We're grateful to have you.
Dr. Siegel, what is this?
MARC SIEGEL, CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Tucker, you know, we use marijuana to decrease nausea and pain medicinally, medically, but as anything in medicine, when you start using a lot of it, you get the reverse effect than you actually want, so this is for chronic pot smokers out there, places where it's recreational. We see a ton of this in Colorado, by the way, flooding, emergency rooms, probably over three million people in the United States are affected because what happens is, the pot, when you start using a lot of it, turns off the receptors in the nerves that are supposed to suppress nausea and pain.
So you're nauseous, you're in pain and the only thing that works for this, Tucker, is hot showers. It floods the receptors, it turns them back on. You go back to normal, but you've got to be in the shower for six hours. Guess what the cure is? Stop smoking pot. Kamala Harris out there, stop smoking pot. That's the cure.
CARLSON: Six hours, so I mean it seems --
SIEGEL: Six hours.
CARLSON: It seems to me, I've never heard of this. I grew up in California. It seems like there's still a lot we don't know about the medical effects of heavy marijuana use. And that's the take home message here. I talk a lot about long term effects in terms of behavioral changes, judgment, how you do on exams, effects on the lungs, this is a big one.
And I'll tell you the biggest take home here. People misdiagnose this all the time. Tucker, people have had their gallbladders taken out by mistake because they come to an emergency room, vomiting uncontrollably, and even doctors are not used to this, but over three million people. And as we zoom up to more than 10 million who are chronically smoking pot nationwide, we're going to see more and more of this.
This is a terrible side effect -- pain and vomiting -- and it's a warning for people out there. There is there is no free lunch here.
CARLSON: Our politicians are really reckless, I think. Dr. Siegel, great to see you.
SIEGEL: Absolutely. Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thank you very much. That's it for us tonight. Unfortunately, we'll be back tomorrow 8:00 p.m., the shows that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. DVR it if you dare. But above all, and we say this every night, but we mean it completely, stay tuned for the surprise we have for you next, live from New York City.
Oh, wait, there he is, Sean Hannity.
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