Coronavirus quarantine nurse on patients' treatment and recovery

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Coronavirus quarantine nurse on patients' treatment and recovery

Fox News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel reports from outside quarantine unit in Omaha, Nebraska.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," February 25, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: (AUDIO GAP) judge in the Roger Stone case has attacked this show by name in court today. I'll give you an update on exactly what she said and respond in just a moment.

But first, the City of San Francisco has just declared a state of emergency in response to coronavirus, and yet, you'll remember that for a month Western leaders told us that the virus was under control and was unlikely to cause serious problems for anyone in our hemisphere.

None of that was true, but saying it was less painful than rethinking the failed theology of globalism, so they went with it.

Meanwhile, in China, an aggressively nationalist country that if nothing else, definitely doesn't hate itself, authorities acted immediately and with force.

With military grade discipline, they shut down the City of Wuhan, home to 11 million people. The rest of the world watched this happen in real time, but yet assured themselves that everything was fine.

It wasn't fine. We know that now. At least 35 countries have confirmed cases of coronavirus as of tonight. Last Friday, Italy reported six, yet at midday today, they had 283 and then by tonight, that number had risen to 322. That is a steep trajectory.

So far 11 people have died in Italy and parts of the country are shutting down.

Iran has confirmed 15 deaths plus 95 cases, although the real number is believed to be higher than that. One of those infected is the country's own Deputy Health Minister, who was seen sweating profusely on Monday at a press conference downplaying the outbreak.

He later appeared on an Iranian news program to reassure the country that everything was under control, and then he coughed on the woman interviewing him.

In this country, there are more than 50 confirmed cases. Today, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed that a generalized outbreak is inevitable here, "It's not a question of if this will happen, but when." Officials warned Americans to be ready for severe disruptions to their lives.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

NANCY MESSONNIER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR IMMUNIZATION AND RESPIRATORY DISEASES, C.D.C.: ... include dividing students into smaller groups or in a severe pandemic, closing schools and using internet based tele-schooling to continue education.

For adults, businesses can replace in-person meetings with video or telephone conferences and increase teleworking options.

On a larger scale, communities and cities may need to modify, postpone or cancel mass gatherings.

Disruption to everyday life may be severe. But these are things that people need to start thinking about now.

People are concerned about the situation. I would say rightfully so. I'm concerned about the situation. C.D.C. is concerned about the situation.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CARLSON: So what exactly will a coronavirus pandemic mean for this country? Well, of course, you can't really say, it's impossible to predict with precision.

But here's one forecast that caught our eyes from The Atlantic. It is titled, "You're Likely to Get the Coronavirus." That piece quotes extensively a Harvard epidemiologist. The article describes him as a cautious professional, the kind of person who carefully considers every word and then backs it with data.

What the professor told the magazine is this, "I think the likely outcome is the coronavirus will ultimately not be containable." He went on to predict that in the next year 40 to 70 percent of the people on Earth will be infected with coronavirus.

No, not all of them will become ill. Many he says will be asymptomatic or feel no worse than they do with a cold. But nevertheless, 70 percent of the world's population -- that is a big number. In fact, it's 5.4 billion people.

Currently, the coronavirus appears to kill about two percent of the people who have it. So let's be generous for a moment and imagine that asymptomatic carriers are not detected and the real death rate is only say half a percent that would be one quarter of the current estimates.

Even under that scenario, there would still be 27 million deaths from coronavirus globally. In this country, more than a million would die.

And according to The Atlantic, many experts fear this may not be a one-off epidemic. Cold and flu season could become cold, flu and coronavirus season for the foreseeable future.

Will that happen? Well, obviously we're praying that it doesn't. But we know one thing. Right now, as of tonight, America is not ready for this or for any major epidemic. Thanks to the C.D.C.'s flood rollout of coronavirus testing, few locations in this country are even prepared to monitor coronavirus and the economy of course isn't prepared either.

The Dow Jones just fell close to 900 points today. That's on top of yesterday's thousand point drop. Overall, U.S. markets are down eight to nine percent compared to earlier this month. If that continues, it's not good.

As of tonight, a total of 14 Americans infected with coronavirus are under strict quarantine at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. A 15th patient is on the way at this moment.

We sent Dr. Marc Siegel there to learn more about what's happening. And he joins us tonight. Dr. Siegel, what is it like there?

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker. We have two across the street in the biocontainment unit and 12 behind me quarantined in this hospital over here. And they're being carefully watched and as you said one more is coming in and I have a great privilege tonight to be joined by Nurse Shelly Schwedhelm who is the Director of Bio Preparedness here at Nebraska Medicine and runs this quarantine.

Shelly, welcome. How are these patients doing?

SHELLY SCHWEDHELM, DIRECTOR OF BIO PREPAREDNESS, NEBRASKA MEDICINE: They're all doing very well today, very stable and we're just doing our best to get them, you know, whatever they need to be comfortable and working through all the issues that they have, you know, with lost luggage and other things, but all of it is going really well.

SIEGEL: Are they going to get better?

SCHWEDHELM: They are.

SIEGEL: And tell me about, versus Ebola, which you also took care of here. How does this contagion look?

SCHWEDHELM: Ebola was highly infectious, but not as contagious. And this virus that we're talking about the COVID-19 is more like influenza in how it spread through respiratory droplets.

So I think that that's, you know, the potential to be a lot more contagious.

SIEGEL: Do you feel that here in the U.S., we're better off prepared.

SCHWEDHELM: I think the U.S. has done a nice job in working through preparedness in the last year, but long ways to go. There's -- I'll go ahead.

SIEGEL: She has to go now to the transport to bring the other patient in, Tucker. In the meantime, we're going to have more from the Medical Center tomorrow, but we also went to Dulles Airport last night and we looked at how the virus is slipping in to the United States. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEGEL: This is the main terminal at Dulles International Airport where 65,000 passengers come at every day from 125 locations.

KEN CUCCINELLI, ACTING DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECRETARY: Our borders are no guarantee that the virus won't find its way here.

SIEGEL: We met up with Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli at Customs. He's a key member of the President's Coronavirus Task Force.

CUCCINELLI: The President has made it very clear to us, whatever we need to do to stay ahead of this and keep America safe, he has told us to do.

SIEGEL: Despite several hundred cases of coronavirus, flights continue to come in from Tokyo. In fact, one is currently in Customs.

CUCCINELLI: We have some lines of folks who've come in internationally. This is all international here. Customs and Border Protection, they are looking at your travel history. They're asking you different questions than maybe they did a month or two ago.

And we're looking backwards through travel records that we have in addition to your passport to identify whether or not you've been to a risky area. Wuhan, China, Hubei Province in China. Really, we look at now all of Mainland China that way.

SIEGEL (voice over): Travelers who were recently in Wuhan face a mandatory two-week quarantine. A passenger who shows signs of illness gets health screenings administered by the C.D.C. But even with those measures, there are too many moving parts and the virus is too elusive to be stopped entirely.

CUCCINELLI: Really what we're trying to do is slow down the virus getting here and reduce the impact when it does get here.

SIEGEL (on camera): We still have very few coronavirus test kits around. So we don't know how much of the virus there is. We also still don't know exactly how contagious it is. And we don't know how deadly it is.

But one thing we do know, people are continuing to come to the United States, many of whom are traveling from countries where coronavirus is spreading.

With cases burgeoning in Japan and in South Korea, some in Iran, how are you going to change the process here?

CUCCINELLI: Well, there's a difference of course with Japan and Korea and Iran. Iran is an enemy state and it's hard to interact there.

Korea and Japan are friendly states and we have military forces in those countries. These are countries, they are first world countries. They have outstanding health care systems, and yet the speed of virus spread is very high.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEGEL: Tucker, back to you in New York.

CARLSON: Dr. Marc Siegel for us in Omaha tonight. Thanks so much for that.

Well, at a time like this, it would be nice to have an effective World Health Organization, one led by serious capable professionals. That might be invaluable for beating coronavirus or at least containing it. But we don't have that.

Instead, the WHO is a corrupt mess from top to bottom. The current Director General of the World Health Organization is a man called Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He was previously the Health Minister of Ethiopia.

Now politically, Tedros was a member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, that's a Marxist-Leninist Ethiopian political party. It is part of the coalition ruling Ethiopia as a repressive authoritarian state.

After taking control of the World Health Organization, Tedros promptly tried to appoint Robert Mugabe, the murderous dictator of Zimbabwe as an international goodwill ambassador for public health, if you can believe that.

Tedros delivered a speech praising Zimbabwe as, "A country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide healthcare to all." Now, that's lunatic. But bad politics aside, Tedros has endangered human lives, which is a weird resume point for a man running a World Health Organization.

As Health Minister in Ethiopia, on three separate occasions, Tedros covered up cholera outbreaks in the south of the country. To downplay the outbreaks and to protect the Ethiopian's reputation, Tedros each time insisted that they were simply rashes of "acute watery diarrhea."

According to media reports, Ethiopian officials pressured aid agencies to cover up the truth about what was happening and hide the number of people affected.

As soon as the disease spread to neighboring countries, it was obvious that it was cholera and identified as such. If Tedros had told the truth at the time which he did not, lives could have been saved.

This is the man running the World Health Organization at the beginnings of a global epidemic.

When coronavirus first broke out in China, China refused to admit international health experts into their country to assess it. To this day, it seems likely that China is lying about the number of infections and the number of deaths. Yet despite this, Tedros has publicly praised the Communist Chinese party for "transparency."

The whole thing is Orwellian. And by the way your tax dollars are paying for it. The U.S. gives hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the WHO. It amounts to a huge percentage of their budget. So how do they spend the money?

Well, every year about $200 million of the World Health Organization budget goes to travel for its bureaucrats and staff. They often fly business class, sometimes using fraudulent pretext to do so when it's otherwise forbidden.

Other aid agencies, respectable ones like Doctors Without Borders, or our own C.D.C. banned officials from doing that because it's wasteful.

This is the organization the world is looking to for guidance as it battles a pandemic that could kill millions of people.

Jeff Stier is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. He's covered corruption at the WHO for years. He joins us tonight. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on.

JEFF STIER, SENIOR FELLOW, CONSUMER CHOICE CENTER: Good to be here.

CARLSON: So how did this man who seems not just unqualified but seems to have the kind of background that would make him exactly the wrong person to run the World Health Organization? How did he get this job?

STIER: Well, that's right, even though U.S. taxpayers cover about almost half the bill for the WHO, a $2 billion a year WHO budget, we have very little say over what they do, and they have elections. Different countries have voted to support Mugabe. There's been a corruption at the WHO before Mugabe.

But people like myself who were sounding the alarm bells to have a Marxist -- this guy was the number three official in a Marxist regime of Ethiopia.

And as you pointed out, he went on to appoint Robert Mugabe of all people to be a goodwill ambassador. This says a culture of corruption at the WHO that goes beyond Tedros. It goes beyond the prior Director General. It's part of the culture.

This was not -- you pointed out the $200 million a year they spend on first class air travel and hotels, that's more than they spend on AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases combined, and there's no oversight.

There was a criticism of that five years ago. The Associated Press get a report just in 2017 and found that it was happening again, and Dr. Tedros, his primary goal, socialized healthcare all over the world. That's his goal.

We need to have faith in our public health institutions. But right now, the World Health Organization needs oversight. It has shown us time and again, it's not going to reform itself. And we, U.S. taxpayers who are funding this corruption need to do a better job of putting in some oversight.

CARLSON: I mean, that's a shocking story, but it goes from annoying kind of head shaking to really a peril to our country in the middle of a rising epidemic.

So, a guy who denied the existence, who tried to cover up the existence of an epidemic is coordinating the world's response to this epidemic, a threatening one. Does this have implications?

STIER: It does. It does. Well, as he pointed out, he has been praising China -- Dr. Tedros has been praising China for transparency.

That's like Lance Armstrong crediting the Houston Astros for having good sportsmanship. It's totally absurd.

Now, I have called for the U.S. to cut back funding for the WHO and the President has put that in his budget.

And now people like the Mailman School of Public Health Professor, Chelsea Clinton are saying that this potential outbreak is Trump's fault, right?

We need oversight of the WHO. We need to reform it, but we need to do so, we need to give it money with strings attached because it is times like this that we need to have an institution that the public can trust and the WHO doesn't deserve it and they haven't earned it and we shouldn't be funding it at the same levels.

CARLSON: So we're almost out of time, Jeff. But did you just say Chelsea Clinton is a public health professor?

STIER: At the Mailman School of Public Health there at Columbia University. She had a piece on cnn.com just yesterday, blaming this administration for not being prepared.

The problem is --

CARLSON: I thought she worked at a hedge fund or was a documentary filmmaker. I didn't know she even had a job. How did she wind up as a public health -- I mean, how low are the standards?

STIER: Well, it is the Columbia School of Public Health here in Manhattan. So it's pretty troubling and, you know, she got her piece placed on cnn.com, so at least, she has an outlet.

But the WHO doesn't want to hear from its critics.

CARLSON: No, obviously not. Our higher education in this country is a joke, and unfortunately, that can have really bad consequences. I hope we're not going to see them now.

Jeff, great to. Thank you.

STIER: Good to see you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, a California City is in uproar tonight over plans to transfer coronavirus patients there. Chief breaking news correspondent, Trace Gallagher has the very latest on that story. Hey, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CHIEF BREAKING NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker, the Mayor of Costa Mesa says she was blindsided when the State of California informed her that dozens of coronavirus patients would soon be housed there.

Costa Mesa is in Orange County and is home to about 100,000 people. It's also home to the Fairview Developmental Center, a state-owned facility, that one housed about 3,000 adults with developmental disabilities.

Today, the center is almost empty and state authorities thought it would be the perfect place to send people who test positive for coronavirus. That is until the mayor, city council and local residents said uh-uh. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATRINA FOLEY, COSTA MESA MAYOR: I can't think of one situation that would lead us to believe that this is an appropriate location. Why? Why Costa Mesa? Why now?

I think there must be politics at all levels involved in this because none of it makes sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: Politics in California, who would think? So the city filed a restraining order against everyone from the State of California to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to block the transfer of the patients.

A Federal judge has now ordered city and state officials to convene on Friday to sort this whole thing out.

The State of California says the potential for transmission of the virus is "negligible," but residents are vowing to fight on and the mayor wonders why the Fairview Center is suddenly appropriate to house coronavirus patients when just last week, the state said it was not adequate to house the homeless -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Trace Gallagher. Amazing story. We will get more on the coronavirus later this hour and how the Trump administration is planning to respond.

Tomorrow, we're going to try and follow up with the idea that Chelsea Clinton is a Public Health Professor weighing in on the coronavirus. That ought to worry you.

Plus, the South Carolina primary is just days away. One of the top two candidates can't remember what office he is running for and the other defends dictators. That's next.

And then the judge in the Roger Stone case attacked the show today. We will respond to her claims, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, assuming civilization endures until then, the South Carolina Democratic primary will be held this Saturday. Mark your calendars.

Former presidential favorite Joe Biden still hasn't won anything in the race so far, but he is counting on South Carolina to be his firewall.

That's a cliche the Democratic and Republican political animals use all the time, a firewall that will give him momentum going into Super Tuesday to make or break contest. At least that was the plan. At this point, it's not even clear Biden knows what office he is running for.

On Monday, he seemed to think he was running for something else.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Where I come from, you don't get far unless you ask. My name is Joe Biden, I am a Democratic candidate in the United States Senate. Look me over, if you like what you see, help out; if not, vote for the other guy. But give me a look though, okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Poor guy. We feel guilty even running that sound. But it gets even worse. Last week, Biden told you that he was arrested in South Africa for trying to see Nelson Mandela under apartheid.

Now, he is saying he crafted a major treaty with a world leader who has been dead almost a quarter century.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: One of things I proud of stuff is getting past, getting moved, getting control of the Paris Climate Accord. I'm the guy that came back after meeting with Deng Xiaoping and making the case that I believe China would go in if we put pressure on them. We got almost 200 nations to join.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Deng Xiaoping died in 1997. No wonder Biden is so proud of negotiating the treaty with him, it's not easy to negotiate with a dead man.

You just watched the candidate who thinks he's going to win South Carolina, but he does have a rival on Saturday, Bernie Sanders. He is surging in South Carolina after his wins in Nevada and New Hampshire.

Last night at a Town Hall at CNN, Sanders defended his many past comments praising Fidel Castro.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, I-VT., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He initiated a major literacy program. There was a lot of -- a lot of folks in Cuba at that point, who are illiterate.

You know what? I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: But there are Democrats who say you don't say good things about Fidel Castro. He destroyed freedoms in that country. He played -- picked winners and losers and killed them and put them in prison forever. You don't give them a pat on the back for anything.

SANDERS: You don't get -- it's not a quiet -- truth is truth. All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Can you get elected President repeating the single dumbest talking point of the 1970s? We'll find out. Richard Goodstein is a lawyer and a former adviser to the Clintons. He joins us tonight. So how's your primary season going, Richard?

RICHARD GOOSTEIN, FORMER ADVISER TO BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON: Can I just say one thing? I want to pat you on the back about your coverage of coronavirus and make a political point, which is not to be needlessly critical of Donald Trump, which is if you have an administration that treats science as a joke about climate change, when you take a Sharpie to a map, the whole public when your issue is science, it doesn't really have faith in you.

So I just wanted to again, commend you.

CARLSON: I get it. From the party that doesn't believe in sonograms, you're going to lecture me about science, that thinks that people can change their gender by saying so.

GOODSTEIN: I am not lecturing, I am just saying --

CARLSON: That's science. That's hilarious.

GOODSTEIN: If the public doesn't have confidence in Donald Trump around these issues, there's a reason for it. So here's my answer on how South Carolina is going.

CARLSON: Science. I mean, I could ask you -- I actually -- I am interested in science and watching it be trampled. What do you think of the whole gender thing?

I mean, let's have this conversation later. Let me ask you, you're a more moderate Democrat. You're worried about Bernie Sanders. You are for Klobuchar or Michael Bennet, but you're probably now, Biden is one of your last hopes. How do you think Joe Biden is doing and what is he running for tonight, do you know?

GOODSTEIN: So I think, you know, you could show a lot of gaffes about Joe Biden. You could have done the same thing if you covered him decades ago. This is him.

The good news for Joe Biden is he says is, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And he'd be running against somebody who thinks that Frederick Douglass has a great future, who thinks that an American invented the wheel, who cannot pronounce the word anonymous or origin.

So that's the virtue of where a Biden presidential candidacy will be relative to Donald Trump. Is he doing well? No.

CARLSON: So do you think he is capable -- but sincerely, do you think he is capable of governing the country, an honest question right now, Joe Biden.

GOODSTEIN: Yes, I think if you listen --

CARLSON: It doesn't seem like he is.

GOODSTEIN: Yes. I think that's a fair question. Look, he obviously knows what he is running for. When Donald Trump couldn't say Namibia, but he said Nambia, did I think he kind of knew that there was a Namibia? Yes.

But I'm just saying, of course, I think if you listen to Joe Biden, over hundreds of hours during this campaign answer questions about all the issues that he had to deal with in the White House, yes, I absolutely think he is quite capable.

CARLSON: So what's your plan for the Bernie ascendancy? Are you going to stay in the country?

GOODSTEIN: Yes.

CARLSON: Switzerland? Like, have you gamed this out yet?

GOODSTEIN: For the first time, Bernie is being vetted. Hillary gave him a pass. Huge mistake, I think in retrospect, and frankly, all the other Democrats so far have given him a pass.

Finally, he's an unreconstructed socialist. He's talked about nationalizing telecommunications and banks and everything, and he means it.

Again, just like he said, good things about Castro. Trump has said good things about, you know, the head of North Korea and Turkey and you know, other authoritarians.

I am not quite prepared to throw in the towel.

CARLSON: It might happen. Washington is lobbying for Turkey. If that's disqualifying, you've got nowhere to have lunch with as you know.

GOODSTEIN: I am saying, I'm not prepared to believe that Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee.

CARLSON: Okay.

GOODSTEIN: I think people will throw a fit if he gets a plurality, but doesn't get the nomination. And I'd say go. Go whoever you're going to go with. We need somebody who is going to be a good Democrat, not what you are.

CARLSON: Okay. I will visit you as you're being re-educated. That's my pledge to you.

GOODSTEIN: Please do.

CARLSON: Richard Goodstein. Good luck. Well, Comrade Sanders and Old Man Joe were not the only Democrats running for President and not the only ones embarrassing themselves.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend is still in the race. He's trying to execute his plan to become the first lab created American President. Just how artificial is he? Can you see the wires beneath the latex exterior?

Consider this we're going to show you an Obama speech, the former President from 2012. Then we're going to show you a Buttigieg speech from last Saturday and we're going to let you decide if there are any similarities between the two. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: One voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change the city.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And we can light up a neighborhood and we can light up a city.

OBAMA: And if we can change the city, it can change the state.

BUTTIGIEG: If we can light up a city, we can light up this whole country.

OBAMA: And if it can change a state, it can change the nation.

BUTTIGIEG: And if we light up this country, then everyone can make sure this country will now shine as a beacon around the world once more.

OBAMA: And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Tammy Bruce hosts "Get Tammy Bruce" on Fox Nation. She joins us tonight. Tammy, great to see you. So that clip made me feel old because I know Pete Buttigieg in his teens or whatever, but that Obama clip was from 2012 which wasn't that long ago. Apparently, Pete Buttigieg thinks no one is going to remember that.

TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NATION HOST: Yes, it's a little insulting, isn't it? But more insulting might be when he changes -- the only unique thing about Pete at this point is his last name. But if he changes that to Obama, then he will have everything wrapped up perfectly.

Look, this is a guy -- I mean, what else can you do now? But it's not just that. It's tweets that were similar with that speech. He was tweeting the same out, but it's also the cadence. It's not even just plagiarizing the words. It was the rhythm of the delivery, and even some of the gestures, the way that he held his face.

This is a guy who wants to be President, who doesn't even have the confidence to be himself. This is a man where there's apparently has no confidence in his own ideas or his own rhetoric or his own ability to inspire people.

You know, this is -- the only good thing here is, is that after Obama campaigned with platitudes like that, he actually got into the White House and failed. At this point, we can have the guy fail before he gets real power.

So we could have this do over and that's fine with me. It can also be like when you're dating someone and maybe, you're thinking about marrying them, and then you see on "America's Most Wanted" that he is really an escaped prisoner from a year ago and you find that out before you get married.

That's one of the other benefits. It's sad perhaps for the Pete supporters, but this is what I think also is insulting. He has got about I think 10 percent now black support in South Carolina. It is that he may believe here, that if he copies an African-American who is well regarded by the black communities here in America, that he can somehow trick them into voting for him.

And I think that Americans, regardless of our skin color deserve a little bit more respect for that, a little bit more regard that everyone, regardless of our complexion, wants to hear real solutions about real issues on policy and this is where he is really dropping the ball to say the least.

CARLSON: Well, it is kind of the end of the road for identity politics. I mean, he is running on who he is rather than what he would do or what he believes in, but he's really going to have to for this to work, convince people that he is a biracial community organizer. I don't think he can pull that off.

BRUCE: Well, that's it. I don't think he can, too. He wants to run as being who he is as a gay man, but then he also wants to run as being someone else. And that's really breaking the barrier when it comes to identity politics, isn't it?

CARLSON: I agree. I'm glad you're insulted as I was. Tammy Bruce, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

BRUCE: Thank you, sir.

CARLSON: Well, the judge in the Roger Stone case, an open partisan lashed out at this program today by name. We will tell you what she said and we'll respond to it after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Last week on the show, we covered the sentencing of Roger Stone who is perhaps the most undeserving of all the casualties of the Russia collusion hysteria.

Stone received more than three years in prison. He'll be over 70 when he gets out. Officially his crime was lying about e-mails, e-mails that were themselves entirely harmless.

From the first day, Stone's prosecution was a transparent political hit job. Washington wanted him in prison because for 40 years, he was Donald Trump's closest political adviser.

Amy Berman Jackson is the Federal judge who oversaw the case. She was appointed by Barack Obama. She is an openly partisan Democrat. She has made no attempt to hide that.

Jackson allowed the foreman of the jury to lie about her political background which in a normal court of law would have disqualified her immediately. But Jackson let her stay and then defended her.

Then Jackson herself lied about the case. She claimed that Stone had been prosecuted because he "covered up for the President," when in fact the charges against Roger Stone had nothing to do with that.

Amy Berman Jackson is a disgrace to the judiciary. It's frightening that in a country like ours, she has power and she does.

We said that on this show last week. Today, during a hearing, Jackson attacked us. And once again she lied as she did it.

Jackson accuses the show of "invading the privacy of the foreman of the jury," when in fact the jury her herself has spoken publicly and revealed her own identity.

Many media outlets published her name, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, all of which, of course, Jackson approves up because they're on her side.

Then Jackson accused the show of "harassing the jurors, even encouraging violence against them." That is insane. Of course, we did no such thing.

Finally, Jackson called our criticism of her, "antithetical to our system of justice." Which proves that not only is Amy Berman Jackson corrupt, dishonest and authoritarian, and she is definitely all of those things, she also has no sense of self-awareness whatsoever.

Jeanine Pirro hosts "Justice with Judge Jeanine" and she joins us tonight. Judge, thanks so much for coming on. Can you imagine a Federal judge in the middle of a very serious proceeding and the question in hand was does Roger Stone deserves a new trial because of the partisanship of the foreman of the jury.

In the middle of that, lashing out with political attacks against a TV show. She went after the President by name. What does that say about her?

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Well, you know, Tucker, I sat as a Judge in criminal felony cases, as well. This is Federal.

But I am stunned at her behavior. Number one, any judge who concerns herself with the media or the press needs to get a thick skin or at least wear a few robes to make it look like she has thick skin. All right.

She should not be worried about you or anyone else. She's got a job and she needs to stay in her lane. But everything that you said about her is accurate and right on point.

She is a judge who should be outraged that a foreperson on a jury that convicted a man on seven counts may have lied to her, may have exhibited such jury bias that it would demand a new trial. But no, she is mad at you. She is mad at the President. She wants to have a hearing on whether or not there was jury bias in private because she doesn't want anyone intimidating the jury.

Well, here's the bottom line, the juror foreperson herself outed herself. We know that she is an anti-Trump person. She has posted many things about Donald Trump, about Russia, about Roger Stone at least once and she is a partisan. She ran for Congress.

This is the kind of stuff that we seek to find out in a voir dire. This judge should be outraged not at anyone other than that juror. And the fact that she decided that she wouldn't recuse herself when she has already prejudged the issue by saying, this jury acted with integrity and intelligence. How do you know, judge? Have you spoken to that juror? Do you know what was posted? Do you know how she answered the question?

What do you know about her background? Did she want to get on that jury? And everything in my gut tells me she wanted to get on that jury and denied doing anything that was partisan. Shame on the judge.

CARLSON: Shame on the judge. She should be impeached. She's corrupt. She's out of control and she has also muzzled Roger Stone, taken away his First Amendment rights.

He's not allowed on this show. She's threatened to send him to prison if he defends himself. Meanwhile, he's being attacked daily by CNN. How can that happen in this country? I don't understand.

PIRRO: We've never heard of anything like this. We've never heard of a defendant who has been convicted and sentenced and be then told he can't talk. His lawyers can't talk. We'll put them in jail. She is a partisan. She is the one who put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement when everybody I know in the legal community was -- why is he in solitary confinement?

She is a partisan. Everything that she has done including her refusal to recuse herself, not even having a hearing about that, criticizing you, when she should be worried about the fact that she has a juror foreperson who is out there saying, I am upset that the Attorney General decided that the sentence should be less.

This sentence, Miss Hart has nothing to do with you. You decide the facts. And this judge is on the wrong side of justice in this case. She has aligned herself with someone who may have disrupted justice in a courtroom. And she has prejudged it and taken the side of that person. It's wrong. It's wrong. And her whole history --

CARLSON: It is terrifying that someone like that sits on a Federal bench. Roger Stone needs a pardon. And let's get past this. That's my view.

Judge Jeanine, great to see you tonight. Thanks so much.

PIRRO: Good to see you. Bye.

CARLSON: Well, with brutal housing costs and a severe epidemic of homelessness, Seattle has become San Francisco with worse weather. So what's the priority of lawmakers there?

Well, of course, encouraging the intentional spread of the HIV virus. We're not joking by the way. We've got details after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Washington State isn't quite as screwed up as the State of California. It's beautiful in a lot of parts, a lot of nice people there.

But lawmakers in Washington are trying their best to keep up with their southern neighbor. The statehouse there just approved a bill that, if passed, would downgrade the intentional transmission of HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Jason Rantz is a Seattle area radio show host. He joins us tonight. Jason, thanks so much for coming on. So the word here is intentional. I think that that's the essential word. So they're saying that if you do -- if you infect someone with the disease for which there is no cure on purpose, that's a misdemeanor.

JASON RANTZ, RADIO SHOW HOST: It will be when this bill passes and this bill is going to pass. All of the Democrats in the House said yes.

Last night, there was a committee hearing in the Senate where all the Democrats again said yes. It's likely going to be passed in the coming days. So intentionality is the key here.

They're not talking about someone who has HIV, doesn't know about it and gives it to a sexual partner. They're talking about knowing your status and you're either choosing to lie about your status to the person you're engaging in sexual intercourse with, or just not telling them.

Of course, the reason why you wouldn't tell someone is the fear that they're not going to give you any consent. So the state that talks about affirmative consent when it comes to HIV infection, all of a sudden they're saying, oh, you know, it's not that important.

The reason that they give behind this is what's most troubling to me. So they argue that by treating HIV as a negative by "criminalizing HIV," that you're stigmatizing people who are living with HIV. That's a ludicrous argument.

We're stigmatizing people who choose to infect someone else with HIV. And they say, well, you know, Science and Medicine is so much different now that you can take a one a day pill, and you're basically going to be okay. So it's not that big of a deal to have HIV. That's their argument, which of course, there's certainly truth to the point of Medicine and how it's no longer the death sentence it once was.

But tell that to someone whose life has been completely impacted having take that pill a day, assuming they can afford the medication over their lifetime. Because when you look at the studies that suggests and depending on when you get it and how long you live, you're doing $500,000.00 to a million dollars over your lifetime, just on HIV medication.

So it's not like --

CARLSON: But that's not it -- I mean, even at the level of principle, it's like completely insane that that one illness has been politicized. So it's hard to see clearly, but intentionally transmitting any illness to another person on purpose.

RANTZ: Yes.

CARLSON: Wouldn't that be a crime? I mean, can they hear themselves talk when they say this kind of thing?

RANTZ: They try actually not to make it so that we can hear them talk. That's the problem. So this bill was kind of snuck in there. Not a lot of people were paying attention to it until we just caught wind of it and we talked about it on the show.

And then all of a sudden, people started to complain about it and I spoke to a senator who told me that he had already pledged his support of this particular bill, but didn't actually read it or know what was inside of it.

So now, people know what's in this bill and it's on them. It's a morally reprehensible position to take that you're okay with lessening a crime of a monster who chooses to give someone HIV and to conflate that --

CARLSON: So isn't -- or any disease -- so isn't intentionally infecting some of the disease, why is it different from bio warfare? A sincere question, why is that different?

RANTZ: Yes, from their perspective, they see a victim class that this is being pushed by social justice Democrats, who see people living with HIV as victims that are in need of protection.

And I generally agree that we obviously have to have compassion for people who are living with HIV, but we should not extend that compassion or understanding to criminals to go from a felony to a misdemeanor. And keep this in mind, in Washington State, particularly Western Washington, they don't prosecute misdemeanors.

So there's someone who's going to do this intentionally, and they're not going to be punished at all, all because Democrats want to protect her a larger group. It's absolutely ludicrous.

CARLSON: Well, I'm for protecting people, too, particularly with HIV. I'm protecting everybody from crazy people who would intentionally if in fact the disease -- lunacy, hard to believe it's real. Apparently it is. Jason, thanks so much. Good to see you.

RANTZ: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: A major coronavirus outbreak in this country is now inevitable. That's the finding of the C.D.C. today. So how do we respond? How is the Trump administration working to fight this? A member -- a key member of administration joins us to answer that question after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Coronavirus is coming to this country on a large scale. We're not certain when, but the consensus among scientists is it is coming.

San Francisco has no cases yet reported. But the Mayor has already declared a state of emergency there. Coronavirus is a major test for our government. What is the response to the virus? Could the virus drive this country into a recession? And what exactly is administration doing to respond to all of this?

Peter Navarro is one of the point men in the administration on coronavirus. He's the White House trade adviser, and he joins us now for answers. Peter, thanks so much for coming on.

So if you could sum up -- I assume you agree that this is a grave concern. The C.D.C., I think confirmed that today. What's the response to it?

PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE DIRECTOR: So Tucker, there's a four part strategy that we're pursuing in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible. You start with the personal protective equipment. This is the masks, and the gloves, the Tyvek suits, things like that that our public healthcare workers need. We're making sure that we can secure those supplies tomorrow. H.H.S. is going out with an RFP to secure a half a billion face masks alone.

Second thing is the treatment options. We've got three balls in the air on that. There's a drug called remdesivir which is administered intravenously, going through clinical trials. We're trying to secure the dosage for that. We're trying to develop oral antivirals in a very rapid time.

And there's something called monoclonal antibodies which help build up the immune system. H.H.S. is working with a company called Regeneron on that.

So then the next thing, which is the magic bullet, that's the vaccine development. We've already set out a plan to develop a vaccine in less than half the time it usually takes with the combination of private sector efficiencies, and regulatory streamline and then finally, and importantly, there's point of care, diagnostics.

The problem, Tucker that we have now is if somebody has symptoms, they have to go to a hospital, take a sample, send it to a lab and wait 48 hours for that. What we're trying to do is adapt existing handheld devices to the coronavirus so that workers out in the field can get instant results.

And Tucker, the President has been working on this from the day that he pulled down the planes from China on, I think, it was January 29th. We're focused like a laser beam on this to keep the public secure. We're hoping for the best, preparing for the worst and we're doing it all on Trump time.

CARLSON: Interesting. Are you confident that the administration has a sense of how many people might be infected in the United States?

NAVARRO: Yes, I am. The problem is what's going on in the rest of the world and how these vectors are going to impact us. But the issue here is to be ready, be prepared.

The important thing, Tucker, in contrasting this with the China situation is, if it comes here, what you want to do is stretch out the amount of time where people get contagious and infected, that will give our healthcare system the ability to process that.

What's going on in China now is horrific. There's triage so that if you have anything but the coronavirus, heart attack, broken leg, whatever, you don't get care and you die. We don't want that to happen here obviously.

CARLSON: It seems that -- no, we don't. Peter Navarro, thanks so much.

NAVARRO: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Good to see you. As we go tonight, we have a fixture on the screen. It is the birthday of our executive producer Justin Wells. We can't tell you how old he is because we don't know, but we do know he is the single best producer in all of television.

He's put on the show since the very first day and we are grateful to have him. He's the one on the other side. Happy birthday.

That's it for us tonight. Tune every night, eight o'clock, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. A lot going on tonight. Sean Hannity takes over from here.

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