Covington high school students face trail by media after viral video
Journalists rush to delete tweets criticizing the students after new details about the interaction emerge; reaction and analysis from Reason.com staff editor Robby Suave.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 21, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." If you were on social media over the weekend, you probably saw this video. It was shot Friday afternoon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
It seemed to show a group of teenage boys taunting an elderly American Indian man who was holding a drum. The young man had come to Washington from a Catholic School in Kentucky to demonstrate in the March for Life. Some of them wore Make America Great Again hats. They seem menacing.
Within hours, the video is being re-played by virtually every news outlet in America. Here's what you may have seen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(NATHAN PHILLIPS BEATING DRUMS AND SINGING)
(COVINGTON STUDENTS SINGING) (END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well the American Indian man with the drum you just saw is called Nathan Phillips, and he described the young men he encountered, the ones in the hats, as aggressive and threatening, essentially shock troops for Donald Trump. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NATHAN PHILLIPS, OMAHA NATION ELDER AND ACTIVIST, NATIVE AMERICAN VIETNAM VETERAN: I heard them saying, "Build that wall! Build that wall!" You know, this is indigenous lands. You're no - not supposed to have walls here. We never did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well it's hard to remember the last time the Great American meme machine produced a clearer contrast between good and evil. It was essentially an entire morality play shrunk down to four minutes for Facebook.
On the one side, you had a noble tribal Elder weather-beaten, calm and wise, seems like a living icon, you could imagine a single tear sliding slowly down his cheek at the senselessness of it all.
And on the other side, you had a pack of heedless sneering young men from the South, drunk on racism and White privilege.
The irony was overwhelming. The indigenous man's land had been stolen by the ancestors of these boys in MAGA hats. And yet, they dared to lecture him about walls designed to keep people who look very much like him out of what they were calling, "Their country."
It was infuriating to a lot of people. At the same time, it was also strangely comforting to those who watched it from Brooklyn and L.A.
The people who run this country have long suspected that Middle America is a hive of nativist bigotry, and now they had proof of that. It was a cause for a celebration of outrage because there's nothing quite as satisfying as having your own biases confirmed.
But did the video really describe what happened? That should have been the first question that journalists asked. Checking facts and adding context is what journalists are paid to do. It's in the first line of the job description.
And yet, amazingly, almost nobody in the American media did that. And that's a shame because there was a lot to check. The full video of what happened on Friday in Washington is well over an hour long. The four minutes that made Twitter don't tell the story but instead distort the story.
A longer look shows that the boys from Covington Catholic in Kentucky were not a roving mob looking for a fight. They were in fact, and it shows it on the tape, standing in place waiting to be picked up by a bus.
As they waited there, members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, it's a Black supremacist organization, began taunting them with racial epithets. And then, Nathan Phillips, the now-famous American Indian Activist approached them, pounding on his drum.
Now the footage seems to suggest that the boys were unsure of whether Phillips was hostile or taking their side against the Black Hebrew Israelites. But in any case, there is no evidence at all that anybody said "Build a wall!"
Here's a selection of what didn't make social media.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This child molesting (BEEP) priest right here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. That's the--
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's "Make America Great Again." A bunch of child molesting (BEEP).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at all these dusty (BEEP) crackers with that racist garbage on. Look at these dirty (BEEP) crackers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A bunch of future school shooters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A bunch of in - incest babies! A bunch of babies made out of incest.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The biggest terrorist on the face of this earth is the pale face man, woman, and child.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Hmm! So, what really happened on Friday? Well you can watch for yourself and decide. There's plenty of video out there of it, and some of it is fascinating and revealing.
But what we know for certain at this point is that our cultural leaders are, in effect, bigots, and they understand the reality on the basis of stereotypes. When the facts don't conform to what they think they know, they ignore the facts.
They see this country not as a group of people or of citizens but as a collection of groups. And some of those groups, they are convinced, are morally inferior to other groups. And they know that's true. They say it out loud.
And that belief shapes almost all of their perceptions of the world. It's not surprising then that when a group of pro-life Catholic kids, who look like lacrosse players and live in Kentucky, are accused of wrongdoing.
The Media don't pause for a moment before casting judgment. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times suggested the boys needed to be expelled from school. Ana Navarro of CNN called the boys racists and asswipes, and then went after their teachers and their parents.
Others called for violence against them. CNN Legal Analyst Bakari Sellers suggested one of the boys should be "punched in the face." Former CNN Contributor, Reza Aslan agreed. Aslan asked on Twitter this. "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's?"
Longtime CNN Contributor, Kathy Griffin seemed to encourage a mob to rise up and hurt these boys. "Name these kids. I want names. Shame them. If you think these F-ers wouldn't dox you in a heartbeat, think again."
Then she repeated her demand again later. "Names please. And stories from people who can identify them and vouch for their identity. Thank you."
Hollywood film producer, Jack Morrissey tweeted that he wanted the boys killed. "#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper." And then he paired that with a graphic photo.
Actor Patton Oswalt linked to personal information about one of the boys in case anyone wanted to get started on that project.
Meanwhile Twitter, which claims to have a policy against encouraging violence, stood by silently as all of this happened. But in case you think the response was entirely from the Left, you should know that the abuse was bipartisan.
It wasn't just Left versus Right. It was the people in power attacking those below them as a group. Plenty of Republicans in Washington were happy to savage the Covington kids, probably to inoculate themselves from charges of improper thought.
Bill Kristol asked his Twitter followers to consider, "The contrast between the calm dignity and quiet strength of Mr. Phillips and the behavior of #MAGA brats who have absorbed the spirit of Trumpism."
And then, when the actual facts emerged, Kristol quietly deleted his tweet. He never apologized, of course. He hasn't apologized for the Iraq War either. There's no need. People keep giving him money.
National Review, meanwhile, ran a story entitled "The Covington Students might as well have spit on The Cross." That story has since been pulled too, but not before the author admitted he never even bothered to watch all of the videos. He knew what he knew and that was enough.
What's so interesting about the coverage of Friday's videos was how much of it mentioned something called privilege. Alex Cranz, who's an Editor at Gizmodo, for example, wrote this.
"From elementary school through college, I went to school with sheltered, upper-middle-class White boys, who could devastate with a smirk, a facial gesture that weaponized their privilege. Infuriatingly, you can't fight that F-ing smirk with a punch or words. We saw that as Trump smirked his way through the election and we'll see it as that boy from Kentucky's friends, family, and school protect him. I F-ing hate that smirk. It says, I'm richer, I'm White, and I'm a guy."
What's so fascinating about all of these attacks is how inverted they are. These are high school kids from Kentucky. Do they really have more privilege than Alex Cranz from Gizmodo? Probably not. In fact, probably much less.
They're far less privileged in fact than virtually everyone who was called for them to be destroyed on the basis they have too much privilege. Consider Kara Swisher, for example. She's an Opinion Columnist to The New York Times.
Swisher went to Princeton Day School and then Georgetown and then got a graduate degree at Columbia. She has become rich and famous in the meantime by toadying for billionaire tech CEOs. She's their handmaiden. Nobody considers her very talented and yet, she's somehow highly influential in our society.
Is she more privileged than the boys of Covington Catholic at Kentucky? Of course, she is. Maybe that's why she feels the needs to call them Nazis, which she did repeatedly.
So, what's actually going on here? Well it's not really about race. In fact, most of the stories about race aren't really about race. And this is no different. This story is about the people in power protecting their power and justifying their power by destroying and mocking those who are weaker than they are.
Why? Simple. Our leaders have not improved the lives of most people in America. They can't admit that because it would discredit them. So instead, they attack the very people they have failed.
The problem, they'll tell us, with Kentucky isn't that bad policies have hurt the people who live there. It's that the people who live there are immoral because they're bigots. They deserve their poverty and their opioid addiction. They deserve to die younger.
That's what our leaders tell themselves. And now, that's what they're telling us. Just remember, they're lying when they do.
Robby Soave is an Associate Editor at Reason. Unlike most reporters, he bothered to take a closer look at the Covington incident before passing judgment. He's also the Author of the forthcoming book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump. Robby Soave joins us tonight.
Robby, thanks for coming on.
ROBBY SOAVE, REASON.COM ASSOCIATE EDITOR, PANIC ATTACK AUTHOR: Thanks (ph).
CARLSON: So, what I thought was so interesting about your connection to this, and I should say, you're hardly a Trump partisan, and I think you're the opposite actually, so it's not like you were defending Trump.
But you were also one of the very first, maybe the first reporter, to note that the UVA story in Rolling Stone was clearly a hoax, which it was. And you were among the first to say that this story was more complicated than it seemed. What did you do that other reporters didn't do?
SOAVE: I didn't do anything other reporters couldn't have done. I just looked much more closely and much more elaborately at the facts.
What I think caused so many people to miss the real story in both of these cases was that when you're reporting something that confirms all of your biases that is, is like and - all of your - your worst kind of thoughts about some bad person, you're talking about (ph)--
CARLSON: We're talking about (ph), right.
SOAVE: --you have to be really sure. You have to consider evidence that conflicts with that. There's an - there's a special burden to go above and beyond to make sure you're just not seeing what you want to see.
In Rolling Stone, the author wanted to see the very, very worst in campus and have this outrageous story about sexual abuse, and it completely fell apart. And I think here, in this case, so many people were willing to believe, you know, this fits all my pre-conceived notion about--
CARLSON: Yes.
SOAVE: --young, White, MAGA-hat-wearing people who are here in D.C. for an explicitly Conservative or political cause. And they were perfectly willing to believe without considering much further that that these were the villains of this story. And, oh my God, look at what they're doing. It's so terrible.
CARLSON: I - I'll just confess. I'll just be completely honest. When the Harvey Weinstein story happened, I always - I don't share his politics. I always thought he was creepy. And I actually thought, "Boy, I better be sure."
I wanted to believe it was true in a sense because it--
SOAVE: Right.
CARLSON: --comported with what I thought of him ahead of time. And I think it was mostly true. But I do think honest people, when they see a story that confirms their biases, pause before jumping on board. Don't they? And shouldn't our journalists be more honest than they are?
SOAVE: Absolutely. And in this case, I mean it was all there. You just had to watch the - the almost two hours of footage revealing that, just like you explained, there was this crazy hate group yelling obscenities, horrible language at these kids for like an hour, it would - goading them to attack.
And - and the kids didn't attack. They did a - they did their sort of pep rally cheer thing. It wasn't - it wasn't offensive or mean-spirited even, and they'd been - they would have been within their rights to be meaner to this group.
They - they didn't fall for the bait at all. And it was at this moment that this guy, Nathan Phillips, injected himself into the moment. And he really misrepresented what happened when he talked to the media. And to - to some extent, this is a media bias story.
But it's also - if you have a source that is prepared to really like mislead you, possibly lie to you about what happened, I mean that's to some degree--
CARLSON: Can - can--
SOAVE: --just bad luck.
CARLSON: --you be more specific about, for our viewers who maybe haven't seen it about what he seemed to misrepresent.
SOAVE: He said that - he - he said these exact words to the media. He said the boys were beasts. And the - the Black Nationalist cult group were the prey. And he - he was - so he was - that's why he went up to the boys and not the - not the crazy people with the drums because he thought they were going to attack.
I mean he got - that's a complete, complete misreading of the situation. That's exactly backward. The boys weren't really doing anything wrong that I could tell from what I saw, and the other people were insane.
Now, he either just got that really wrong or he misrepresented it intentionally. He had an entourage there taking video. If you listen to some of the videos, it seemed like they were possibly trying to do a stunt there. One of them says something like "I got it," or "We got what we needed," something like that.
CARLSON: Right.
SOAVE: So, I - I don't know for sure.
CARLSON: It's just a little weird.
SOAVE: But he was wrong. He was very wrong.
CARLSON: So, this is a story about race, we're being told.
SOAVE: Yes, right.
CARLSON: We're always told every story's about race, it's absurd. But we're told that there are racists in this video. And here you have a group, literally screaming racial epithets--
SOAVE: Right. And anti-gay epithets and - and bigoted remarks, and I--
CARLSON: But somehow nobody notices that but it's the high school kids who don't really say anything who are the bigots like you're lying if you reach that conclusion. Aren't you?
SOAVE: Right. And - and everyone's saying they need to be sorry or we need to punish them. I mean if I'm trying to sort out who did the most wrong or who was most at fault in this situation, so obviously, it's the crazy people who were screaming vile, obscene things--
CARLSON: Right.
SOAVE: --for an hour right. And then I think it's this man who, the most charitable I will be, got it totally wrong, and less charitably lied to the media.
CARLSON: Wait. But Bill Kristol said he was calm and noble and we should learn a lesson. He - he's like Iron Eyes Cody. No? You don't think he was?
SOAVE: No. I told - I - no, I think this was and, you know - and they're - they're not - they're not engaging in targeted racial harassment of him. They're just not. They're confused. They're like, "Is this guy on my side?" And they're joining in with him.
And it's, you know, it's not perfect, I don't know. Maybe they should have done something about it differently. But it's not - it wasn't. It would - they wasn't malicious toward him until then they get confused about maybe he's not on their side, maybe he's with these crazy people.
CARLSON: Robby Soave, next time you write a piece saying, "Hey, I don't think that story sounds quite right," all of us should pay close attention to it.
SOAVE: Thank you very much.
CARLSON: I'm serious. You've got quite a track record. Great to see you. Thank you.
SOAVE: My pleasure.
CARLSON: Author and Columnist Mark Steyn has been watching all of this over the past two days, and he joins us tonight.
Mark, I'm just struck by the amount of hostility. I mean Robby just pointed out that the people commenting on this didn't really know any about it, and they got it wrong.
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR, COLUMNIST, STEYNONLINE.COM: Right.
CARLSON: But just because they got it wrong didn't prevent them from like threatening to kill the people involved. Where's all the rage coming from, do you think?
STEYN: Well to look at it, as you like to say sometimes, from 30,000 feet, Tucker, when I was a kid, I wasn't into science fiction. I - I was never really interested in the dystopian society with people living atomized, dehumanized lives, policed by commissars in tin foil suits.
What always interested me was how you got from, you know, the chaps in sports jackets motoring down suburban Maine (ph) streets to the dystopian society.
CARLSON: Right.
STEYN: How did you get there? And I think we're actually in the "How did you get there" phase right now because we - we've got two or three big social media companies, essentially controlling human knowledge across the planet.
And we have a system whereby cyber jackals are basically loosed fairly randomly to destroy people's lives in nothing flat like the Orwellian two- minute hate from 1984. But now, thanks to Twitter, it can be a two-second hate.
And in 20 years' time, this kid, Sandmann, will be applying for a job in, you know, in an accountancy firm in Presque Isle, Maine or somewhere, and they'll Google him and all the stuff about how he's a Klansman and a Nazi, and all the rest will still come up.
This is evil. And actually, if this is the cure for racism or sexism or transphobia or Islamophobia, the cure is worse than the - the disease. Powerful people like Bill Kristol and Kathy Griffin and Alyssa Milano being willing to destroy nobodies, simply through this social media frenzy is actually evil.
CARLSON: So - so, why wouldn't some public interest law firm fix this on behalf of the injured parties, the kids whose lives - if - if it can be proved, OK, that their lives were hurt by lies, why wouldn't they seek some remedy?
I mean why - why is this the only country in the world where people can crush you and you have no recourse? I don't understand.
STEYN: Well we - we have a - supposedly a very wide bounds of freedom of expression, thanks to the First Amendment.
CARLSON: Right.
STEYN: But, for example, if you look at some - if you look at just to take my country, if you look at the Canadian coverage on the CBC, I actually reckon these kids, if they - if they wanted to get together and sue the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, they would have a pretty good case under - under Canadian Defamation Law.
I mean at some point - what disturbed me about this, you mentioned Bill Kristol, you mentioned National Review. There's something actually - these - these kids wore the MAGA hats.
Do you think they'll ever want to read National Review after you look at the way National Review simply accepted all the Left's premises, so that basically the bastion of Conservatism turns out to be Kathy Griffin with a few more three syllable words.
What's the point of American Conservatism if they just accept all the Left's premises when it comes to this evil Twitter-feasting?
CARLSON: Why - why do you think that - and as - I believe you wrote for National Review for a long time. And I don't want to just single (ph)--
STEYN: Yes.
CARLSON: --it wasn't just National Review. But it's interesting because you used to work there. Why do you think--
STEYN: Yes.
CARLSON: --they and other Republicans in Washington were so quick to jump on this train?
STEYN: Well I think - I think they call it virtue-signaling. That's the expression. Except of course, it's not in the least bit virtuous. You're destroying lives of people you don't know on the evidence of 90 seconds of a - a video.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEYN: There's nothing Conservative about that.
But I also think it gets to a kind of crisis in - in what we might loosely call Conservative ink (ph) that the great suspicion of - of - of much of the base is that these guys don't really believe in it.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEYN: And the fact that they're so eager to - to just because these kids are wearing Donald Trump hats, and the guy they're up against is a so- called Tribal Elder, I mean he's not that old actually. He's - I think he's born in 1955, so he's like early 60s.
So, he's like kind of tribal late-middle age rather than Tribal Elder. But the fact that they can only accept the same identity politics cliches that the Left has imposed on us--
CARLSON: Yes.
STEYN: --actually gets to the heart of the problem here that the--
CARLSON: Now, that's exactly right.
STEYN: --the - the Right fights on the Left's terms.
CARLSON: They've - they've absorbed all of the lies. I know. It's - it's amazing (ph). Mark Steyn, so wise as always. Thank you.
STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well the Covington story wasn't the only story the press got wrong this week. Last Friday, they told you about a BuzzFeed story that the Special Counsel then declared false. But they're still telling you about that story. What is going on? We'll have details after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well the coverage of the Covington High School boys and whether or not they should be killed, which you've seen unfold for the last few days, was pretty bad.
But it may not be the worst thing, the most embarrassing thing the press has done in the last five days, which tells you a lot, last Friday, news outlets really humiliated themselves by their endless coverage of a BuzzFeed report, BuzzFeed being a cat website, a story that claimed that the President had ordered his Attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress.
Now, if you were a normal Editor or a Reporter, you might pause before repeating this because BuzzFeed is a joke. This is the outlet that gives us stories like "19 husbands who sent the most hilariously random texts ever," and "10 signs your cat is a wizard."
So, you might have thought, well how could BuzzFeed have gotten the one story that nobody else can replicate but that everybody else has been searching for? You might have asked yourself that question before repeating the key assertions in the story mindlessly, and as if they were true.
But nope. Nobody did. Everybody assumed BuzzFeed had landed an exclusive scoop that would bring down the President and that was so thrilling, they couldn't hold back.
If you were playing a drinking game last Friday, and you took a shot every time you heard the word, "Bombshell," you would have wounded up dead. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER, CNN: This would be certainly a bombshell information.
JIM SCIUTTO, CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, CNN: BuzzFeed's latest bombshell report.
WOLF ISAAC BLITZER, JOURNALIST, TELEVISION NEWS ANCHOR, AUTHOR, CNN REPORTER, WOLF AND THE SITUATION ROOM HOST: The White House is slamming a bombshell report by BuzzFeed News.
STEPHANIE LEIGH RUHLE, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT, ANCHOR, MSNBC LIVE: And with the bombshell report from BuzzFeed.
CHARLES DAVID TODD, AMERICAN TELEVISION JOURNALIST, NBC'S MEET THE PRESS MODERATOR, HOST OF MTP DAILY ON MSNBC, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: If the BuzzFeed bombshell is true.
ERIN ISABELLE BURNETT, ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT ANCHOR, CNN: The bombshell report that President Trump told his fixer to lie under oath.
BuzzFeed reporting the bombshell details.
And the White House response to the bombshell report was deeply disturbing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Bombshell! Dumb people of small vocabularies.
There was a problem though with BuzzFeed's reporting. None of it had been confirmed at all. Even the authors suggested they hadn't seen the documents in question. Actually, there were two authors. It was co-bylined.
One said he'd seen the documents. And the other said he hadn't. That was never really resolved. But it didn't matter because the dumb people on TV so badly wanted it to be true that they repeated it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATHARINE BEAR TUR, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT, MSNBC LIVE ANCHOR, AUTHOR: A story that if true could lead to his impeachment.
If true, it could be a really big deal.
PROKUPECZ: If true, obviously, we ourselves have not corroborated any of this.
DAVID RICHMOND GERGEN, AMERICAN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: But if it is true, and it's a big if, this would be a smoking gun.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN NEWSROOM HOST, CNN: If true, important caveat, if true.
FRANK BRUNI, THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST: If this is true, if this BuzzFeed story is true, this is absolutely impeachable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If true, the two most important words in Washington today.
RUHLE: If this report is true, it appears to be the clearest evidence yet of obstruction of justice.
NICOLLE WALLACE, DEADLINE: WHITE HOUSE ANCHOR, CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST FOR MSNBC AND NBC NEWS: If true, could very well put in motion Donald Trump's impeachment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: If true! If true! It's actually a pretty tricky rhetorical stunt. If you think about it, you could preface any statement with "If true," and then go ahead to accuse anybody of anything without any evidence at all.
Of course, you'd just be speculating but wild speculation is exactly what the press did all day last Friday. Between them, CNN and MSNBC mentioned the word impeachment nearly 200 times in one day. In the end, if true turned out to be not true at all.
We know this because late Friday, the Mueller investigation itself issued a rare statement calling BuzzFeed's reporting inaccurate. Talk about a bombshell, you might say.
The Mueller team almost always refuses to comment publicly about things that it's doing. It was a humbling moment for the press. They were not humbled though.
How do we know? Because on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd, the host, said the problem wasn't that the press was foolish and reckless and bad at their job of reporting, and the story wound up being untrue.
That wasn't the real problem. No. The real problem was that having an untrue story exposed might help Conservatives.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE VICE-PRESIDENT FOR FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL BOARD MEMBER, FORMER FOREIGN POLICY AIDE TO SENATOR JESSE HELMS: The problem is the fake news problem.
Anytime, anytime that somebody gets something so spectacularly wrong, and everybody piles on, it furthers the narrative that this is yet another American institution that the people of our country can't trust. That's the problem with the BuzzFeed story.
TODD: No, it is. And as we've got to remind people, though there are people that want to exploit this. They want to see us be put this way. And they're just doing it for exploitation purposes. So let's not give them the ammunition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That's unbelievable.
That's, by the way, not neutral-thinking, and it's not clear thinking. It's not the way that journalists think. It's the way that political operatives think. Their first concern is always, how will the other side benefit from this? How can we win the next campaign? And that's how they think because that's exactly what they're doing.
Joe Concha covers Media for The Hill, and he joins us tonight. So Joe, do you think that the real problem with BuzzFeed is that it has given rise to segments like this where mean Right-wingers on Fox News criticized NBC. Is that - is that really the core problem of the story, would you say?
JOE CONCHA, THE HILL MEDIA REPORTER: Well, Tucker, let me address Chuck Todd there because people don't realize this. But he's not only the Moderator of Meet the Press, but he is also the Political Director of NBC News.
So, here's the thing. Everybody, all those anchors and pundits you just show had ample warning that there was a serious problem with this story because on Friday morning--
CARLSON: Right.
CONCHA: --before all the impeach and if trues came out, as you mentioned, you had Anthony Cormier, who was one of the authors in this piece, on CNN saying he hadn't seen the evidence that was used as a foundation for the story. And then, minutes later, on MSNBC, Jason Leopold, the other author on here said he had seen the evidence.
That is your red flag right there where Chuck Todd, as a Political Director, then needs to get the troops together and say, "Guys, look, our own news organization, NBC News, could not verify this report independently, and therefore, we should go about this with extreme caution."
Instead, you mentioned the number, nearly 200 times, on MSNBC alone, the word impeach or impeachment was said 97 times. That falls at Chuck Todd's feet as a Political Director when in the morning meeting, met in (ph) morning Editorial meeting he should have made sure that didn't happen.
And on CNN, same thing. They couldn't verify the report independently, and it was said on there, 82 times. And now, look, where are we at now? Jason Leopold, the other reporter in the story who said--
CARLSON: Yes.
CONCHA: --he saw the evidence is like Edward Snowden. You can't find him. He hasn't tweeted for three days. He hasn't written any tweets anyway. And he isn't doing any interviews. You see Ben Smith--
CARLSON: Wait. Wait, can - may - may I just (ph)--
CONCHA: --oh CNN yesterday. But you don't see him.
CARLSON: --clarify so - so--
CONCHA: Yes.
CARLSON: --Cormier has always struck me as a real reporter, you know, actually--
CONCHA: Yes.
CARLSON: --to - to be honest about it. But this Leopold kid--
CONCHA: I bet.
CARLSON: --has like a long history of - of really reckless behavior. I mean he's the one who publicly reported, and it turned out to be false, that Karl Rove had been indicted. I think he was fired for plagiarism another time. Guy's a political activist. Why would you ever put someone like that on a story of this magnitude?
CONCHA: Precisely. And it's - it's funny because with Leopold and - and so many in the media, the mistakes only seem to go one way, towards--
CARLSON: Right.
CONCHA: --Republicans or Conservatives or Trump, in this case. I mean ask yourself this question. When was the last time you saw a major media outlet make a mistake or a major error in a story about a Democratic lawmaker? I - I'm - I'm - I'm, you know, racking my brain and--
CARLSON: That's such a good point.
CONCHA: --I think a couple years ago--
CARLSON: Never.
CONCHA: --yes.
CARLSON: Yes. I've only been watching for 30 years--
CONCHA: So, that's (ph) exactly.
CARLSON: --I've never seen that happen ever. Not one time.
CONCHA: Yes.
CARLSON: By the way, will you keep a list? I mean I want to be - I want to be honest about it. You know, if you see Nancy Pelosi unfairly impugned by Chuck Todd, will you let me know? And we'll do a segment on it, just to correct the record.
CONCHA: I'll - I'll - I'll be over - I'll be all over it. And, by the way, Glenn Greenwald has a great piece today in The Intercept. He lists 10 major stories that the media's gotten wrong on Russia. So, this isn't a one-off like it's being portrayed by some that are saying, "Oh, this just an excuse to attack the media."
We've seen this over--
CARLSON: Yes, it's unbelievable.
CONCHA: --and over and over again and, as I mentioned, going in the same direction.
CARLSON: There's - I don't think there's anyone braver than Glenn Greenwald. Joe, thank you very much.
CONCHA: He's great.
CARLSON: Good to see you.
CONCHA: Thank you.
CARLSON: We've got more on that BuzzFeed report ahead. They're still saying it's true. They're not proving it. That's weird. Some Democrats want to investigate it though, even after it's pretty conclusively shown to be false. How does that work? We'll tell you after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well Democrats control the House again for the first time in eight years. And with their return, they have the right to launch new investigations, which they are very anxious to do.
Question is about what. House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, says even though the Mueller investigation itself has disputed the absurd report by the absurd cat website, BuzzFeed that ran on Friday, he still wants his own investigation of that discredited story. Hmm! Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS' MODERATOR OF FACE THE NATION & SENIOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, FORMER CBS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Are you still going to investigate the claims?
ADAM BENNETT SCHIFF, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FOR CALIFORNIA'S 28TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, DEMOCRATIC PARTY MEMBER, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Absolutely, absolutely. Congress has a - has a fundamental interest in two things. First, in getting to the bottom of why a witness came before us and lied. And who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Meanwhile, over in the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Joe Neguse says he wants to investigate Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, for perjury, despite the lack of any actual known lies in Kavanaugh's testimony. Well it'll be interesting.
Richard Goodstein is an attorney, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he joins us tonight. Look, let me just say, you know, they won the House, and they have subpoena power, and they can go crazy if they want.
I'm just wondering of all the things you can investigate, why would you investigate a BuzzFeed story that the Independent Counsel himself says is untrue unless, and here's the twist, because I am a conspiracy nut now, maybe Mueller is secretly working for Trump? No?
RICHARD GOODSTEIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, POLITICAL CONSULTANT, FORMER CLINTON ADVISER: So, I think what Schiff is saying is not, "I'm going to investigate the BuzzFeed story." He's saying, "I want to investigate whether Michael Cohen lied and who knew about it."
Now, that's not an easy thing to get to the bottom of because you've got presumably a - a client and his lawyer, that's hard thing to pierce, you know, there - the suggestion of BuzzFeed was that there's documentary evidence to support it.
We'll see. And - and that's where Schiff can come in handy because he's has the ability to show to the public what's real and what's - and it's the whole thing about the Russia investigation.
We will see public testimony from people who are in the Trump Tower meeting, people who dealt with Russians. Manafort, maybe, for sure, Don Jr., if he doesn't take the Fifth, Jared, same thing, Roger Stone, same thing, who dealt we know were dealing with Russians.
CARLSON: Right, OK. But I just wonder if--
GOODSTEIN: And we haven't seen them yet publicly.
CARLSON: --should we - we - oh man, it's been so many years now, but shouldn't we pause and acknowledge reality once in a while (ph), even in D.C. So there was this amazing--
GOODSTEIN: Oh, yes (ph).
CARLSON: --exchange between Martha Raddatz and Kirsten Gillibrand, who I guess is a U.S. Senator, hard to believe, person of her abilities, but she is. And she was asked, "What do you make of this discredited BuzzFeed story? The Independent Counsel shot it down."
And she looks right into the camera and says, "I think we need to investigate it" like she just got the talking point on tape, and she can't adjust to new facts. Does - does that give you pause?
GOODSTEIN: Yes. For this reason, I always thought the BuzzFeed story was overblown because two things, we will have Cohen's public testimony, and we'll - some of your guests, I would think, like Jim Jordan will rake him over the coals--
CARLSON: Yes.
GOODSTEIN: --as a liar and so forth. And we'll kind of, you know, sort of suss out whether there's any reason to believe him. And then, we'll have Mueller's, you know, product to basically saying, again further, is there any evidence to back it up or not, right?
So - so whether what BuzzFeed wrote up is frankly irrelevant. And I don't know why a U.S. Senator would--
CARLSON: But - but - but it also would so - I mean I agree with you complete - I mean (ph) the whole website's a joke, right, obviously? But the fact that it's taken seriously by people and the kind of glee that people showed at the prospect of getting Trump--
GOODSTEIN: Yes.
CARLSON: --I don't know. That's not really the animating spirit you want in people. You want people to make the country better, to get to the truth. But like crushing the guy, getting him out of Office on any pretext, that's just something (ph) kind of ugly right?
GOODSTEIN: Right. And it's why Democrats downplayed impeachment, played up things like Affordable Care during the course of winning 40 seats in the House elections. And I think it is - it's - it's--
CARLSON: But now they're talking about impeach--
GOODSTEIN: No.
CARLSON: --now that we were dumb enough to vote for them, they're like pulling the mask off like, "No, actually, we're going to impeach him--
GOODSTEIN: No, actually, everybody--
CARLSON: --the MF-er."
GOODSTEIN: --from Pelosi on down Nadler, it's actually downplaying it to the, you know, kind of discomfort of the - the real Left group, who is actually trying to--
CARLSON: Right. So the six old (ph)--
GOODSTEIN: --discredit him (ph).
CARLSON: --people who still run the party but like their hold on power is tenuous.
GOODSTEIN: Yes.
CARLSON: How can they hold the crazies back who just want blood? I mean they say that. "We're going to impeach the MF-er." Really, I mean.
GOODSTEIN: Well, again, you've got some people and we - look at what Stephen King said. We're not kind of imputing that to the Republican Party, right?
CARLSON: These are people who were just elected the other day.
GOODSTEIN: Right.
CARLSON: And their first order of business, and the press joins them in this, I mean what I'm saying is, shouldn't the Democrats stand back and say, "We want the best for the country."
GOODSTEIN: Absolutely.
CARLSON: But I don't think I've ever heard any of them say that.
GOODSTEIN: What - what they think is the country's at risk if there's a President who might be in position to be compromised because of the Saudis or the Russians. And we have some basis to believe that there may have been sort of negotiations - dealings that he had--
CARLSON: Saudis, really?
GOODSTEIN: Absolutely. And - and - and even the fact that there's some indication that if it was not outright money-laundering, he was taking money--
CARLSON: Saudis, really? How much do you - who's taken more from the Saudis, would you say? Trump or Hillary Clinton?
GOODSTEIN: I would say that the notion that Hillary Clinton was compromised by the Saudis--
CARLSON: No, no, just a--
GOODSTEIN: --is laughable.
CARLSON: --just a simple question.
GOODSTEIN: Nobody's laughing at the notion--
CARLSON: Just a simple - just a simple question. Who took millions from the Saudis? Was it - was it Donald Trump? No, I actually think it was Hillary Clinton. Look, I mean now that that's like a standard--
GOODSTEIN: Yes. To deal with Malaria and climate change--
CARLSON: --for patience (ph)--
GOODSTEIN: --God, it was horrible, she did that (ph)--
CARLSON: Oh, she's a good person.
GOODSTEIN: Yes.
CARLSON: Oh, she's a good person.
GOODSTEIN: Exactly.
CARLSON: OK, combating childhood obesity. Did that work, by the way?
GOODSTEIN: Well--
CARLSON: Did kids get thinner after the Saudis gave--
GOODSTEIN: You think it's a joke. It--
CARLSON: No, I don't think it's a joke. I just don't think - did she help?
GOODSTEIN: Well I - you know, the fact is that Foundation has helped with countless issues across the world (ph).
CARLSON: Everyone--
GOODSTEIN: We can have that in for another segment perhaps.
CARLSON: --everyone always says that. I've never seen in the evidence. Kids seem pretty heavy to me, but whatever. Richard, it's great to see you.
GOODSTEIN: Thank you for having me.
CARLSON: Thank you.
So, America's worst drug epidemic, it's in progress now. People rarely talk about it. It's killing many thousands. How did it happen? Well, not by accident.
Turns out, it was engineered by a small group to get rich. They did. Then they tried to cover their tracks. New evidence tonight on what they knew as they did that. That's after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
TEXT: DRUGGED.
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CARLSON: The current opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in this country's history. And every year, the number of deaths rises. In 2017, 72,000 Americans died from ODs, and the vast majority of those were caused by some sort of opioid drug.
There are a lot of causes of this epidemic. Declining job prospects of the working class, the collapse of marriage and families, the suffocating loneliness generated by modern life.
But good old-fashioned greed and moral turpitude from big business played a role too. One of the key drugs behind the opioid tragedy is called OxyContin. OxyContin is a powerful and effective prescription painkiller. It's been a miracle for many cancer patients.
But it's also very addictive. Thousands of Americans have received prescriptions for OxyContin after surgery or for chronic pain, and have wound up addicted to it. Since OxyContin's release in 1996, 200,000 Americans have died of overdoses linked to prescription painkillers.
That, for perspective, is almost twice this country's death toll in World War I. OxyContin is produced by a company called Purdue Pharmaceutical. That company is owned by the Sackler family.
OxyContin has made the Sacklers one of this country's richest families, are collectively worth about $13 billion. Now, new filings in a lawsuit in Massachusetts against members of the Sackler family showed just how far they were willing to go to get rich. Prior to the release of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma argued that the drug was less addictive than other opioids because it was released gradually because of its packaging. They had no proof this was true. And, of course, it turned out not to be true at all.
OxyContin was and is, again, remarkably addictive. But it didn't matter. Purdue Sales Reps were told to claim the drug had an addiction risk of less than 1 percent. At the drug's launch, Richard Sackler boasted about how successful the drug would be.
"The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white."
Well he was right. That blizzard came and people began to die. The Sacklers didn't appear to care.
In 1997, Richard Sackler deduced that doctors were prescribing OxyContin more often because they had the mistaken belief that it was weaker than morphine. In fact, OxyContin is stronger than morphine. Purdue personnel were told to suppress this fact to keep the prescriptions flowing.
In 2001, a Federal Prosecutor noted that 59 overdose deaths had occurred in his state alone. Sackler's response in an internal company memo, "This is not too bad. It could have been far worse."
The company refused to take responsibility for the people it was killing, so they went after the addicts themselves. In 2001, Richard Sackler said this in an internal memo.
"We have to hammer on abusers in every possible way. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals."
As the crisis worsened, Purdue continued to deny the addictiveness of their pills, saying the epidemic was simply a matter of immorality on the part of individual users.
Meanwhile, year after year, the Sacklers kept pushing their company to sell more and more painkillers. Sales personnel were pressured to market OxyContin to doctors for all kinds of ailments, and at higher and more addictive doses.
If prescriptions didn't rise fast enough, sales reps were threatened with termination. And, of course, they got the message. OxyContin salesmen held sometimes daily meetings with physicians urging them to prescribe more and more OxyContin.
Several doctors the company lobbied eventually lost their licenses for malpractice, for following this advice.
When some of the more ethical doctors expressed concerns about addiction, the company placated them by saying their patients actually suffered from "pseudo-addiction." That was in - a condition, they claim, could be treated with, you guessed it, more OxyContin.
Meanwhile, Raymond Sackler meddled with the company's advertisements. He was angry they didn't portray OxyContin positively enough. Purdue only discontinued direct sales efforts for OxyContin in February 2018, less than a year ago.
How many lives might have been saved if they'd stopped earlier or if they never lied at all? Those are pointless questions now. They didn't care. They were getting rich.
Another Caravan coming for the U.S.-Mexico border. That Border remains unsecured by a government with a broken immigration system. A lot of things happening there that people in Washington are denying.
We'll talk to someone who was just there who's got the latest and the truth about our Southern border, after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well the President made a new offer to Democrats over the weekend, an effort to seek an end to the government shutdown. Meanwhile, another Central American Caravan headed for our Southern border.
Trace Gallagher has more on both those unfolding stories. Trace?
TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Hi, Tucker.
Now that Democrats have dismissed President Trump's compromise plan, the President is labeling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a radical, saying that she is irrational.
So, on day 31, the partial government shutdown is no closer to ending. And the President's attempt at gaining support on the Left may have caused a bit of anxiety on the Right.
Mr. Trump offered to temporarily extend protections for DACA recipients, those who were brought to the country illegally as children. But now, Conservatives are accusing the President of embracing amnesty.
The President shot back that his offer was temporary, not permanent, quoting here, "No. Amnesty is not part of my offer. Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else."
And now, some GOP Senators want to get the President's proposal on the Senate floor, not that it has the 60 votes necessary to pass, but as a way to get debate rolling.
Meantime, as thousands of Central American migrants continue their trek toward Tijuana with hopes of getting into the U.S., thousands of other migrants are taking Mexico up on its offer of asylum. Mexico says almost 3,700 people have now registered for temporary status.
And following a series of cartel attacks on Mexican police, the U.S. government has now issued a security alert for Juarez, Mexico that is just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. U.S. government personnel are now being told to avoid all police and law enforcement agencies in and around the City of Juarez.
Tucker.
CARLSON: Amazing! Trace Gallagher, thank you very much for that.
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CARLSON: Well the Administration has warned that dangerous elements from across the world could be sneaking across the Mexican border into the U.S. The geniuses in the Press Corps, of course, scoff at that idea. It's insane.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN TONIGHT HOST, CNN: He seized on a Conservative newspaper report, itself with very vague sourcing, that prayer rugs have been found at the border, a racist innuendo that Muslims are sneaking across the border. That's literally a plot point from an action movie. When he says that Muslims are sneaking (ph), what is that saying? Oh, terrorists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, let the record reflect Don Lemon does not believe it. Don Lemon also tells us that Islam is a race. Rush to your dictionary after this segment. But what's the truth more pressingly?
Buck Sexton would know. He's a former CIA Analyst, currently with The Hill newspaper. He was just at our Southern border and he joins us tonight.
Buck, Don Lemon doesn't buy this at all. Is it true though, despite his skepticism that dangerous people could be coming across?
BUCK SEXTON, THE BUCK SEXTON SHOW HOST, FORMER CIA ANALYST: When I was right at the Tijuana U.S. - Tijuana-San Diego border, I saw a roomful of Bangladeshis who had just been taken into custody in the last 24 hours.
So, I would want to explain to them that apparently there are no Muslim sneaking (ph)--
CARLSON: Did you feel guilty--
SEXTON: --sneaking across (ph)--
CARLSON: --when you saw that?
SEXTON: No, I--
CARLSON: Did you feel like I'm a bad person for seeing this? Maybe let's take Don Lemon's advice and forget I ever saw.
SEXTON: Well it - it's fascinating because it shows you just how widespread, how far-reaching the problem really is now of exploiting loopholes in the system. By the way, they all showed up, Tucker, claiming asylum.
CARLSON: Of course.
SEXTON: So, they show up at our Southern border, they turn themselves in at the border, but they know that they're now entering this process where they'll say, they have a credible fear. Bangladeshis have a credible fear. Indians have a credible fear. Pakistanis, among many other people, by the way.
They have Chinese nationals who are showing up doing this same thing, spending tens of thousands of dollars because they know that once they get processed and let - let free, they'll be in the interior of the United States, and they're going to have to wait two to five years, probably, for the backlog of cases, and no Judge at that point is going to let them go.
And there are other scams and schemes that if you go to the Border, you see that just aren't being reported on.
CARLSON: So, it sounds like if you just saw this standing there in San Ysidro and the Mexican border, it's not hidden information. So, if you're a producer for like a 10:00 P.M. cable show on CNN, you could probably could have got that information yourself as well, right?
SEXTON: Yes. It's more fun to just call Trump and everybody who wants Border security a racist. One other really--
CARLSON: Wait. Is - just really quick, is Islam a race?
SEXTON: No, no, it's not. The Left the--
CARLSON: I think it was a religion.
SEXTON: --but the Left likes to conflate the two.
CARLSON: Oh, yes.
SEXTON: They think that Islam is a non-White religious tradition. That's how they usually - even though there are - there are people who are Muslim faith or is White as others (ph).
CARLSON: Right. Lords of (ph) Arabia never exists.
SEXTON: Yes, I mean that - there's a whole--
CARLSON: Right, yes.
SEXTON: --there's a whole bunch of ways we can go on this.
But also note that when you're at the Border, there's no question, and I saw the border fence in action, working, and when you speak to Border Patrol, including people who like Trump and people who don't like Trump on Border Patrol, they'll tell you there's the - the numbers speak for themselves.
You're talking about a night - and, by the way, I took this photo the day we were there, the first day. This was four, actually, Mexican illegals crossing the fence. It was a double-layer fence. We caught them - I - I didn't catch them. I was just observing the journalists.
But Border Patrol caught them as they were - they finally making - making landfall here on the U.S. side. But people are saying, "Well see this shows you that the fence doesn't work." And I said, "No. They were caught within 30 seconds of crossing because of the sensors and the barriers and the fence."
But it just goes to show you how widespread the problem is still at the Border. When you can be there for a few hours, you are very likely to see illegal crossings happen. By the way, they had previous criminal records, which is the only reason that they didn't just turn themselves in, and say, "I want asylum."
We had other people show up with a kid that, by the way, they may have either rented or recycled, which is now a tactic they use as well, where they pass children to people who don't actually, they're not family members.
But they - people will rent their children into this process to make money, and say, "This is my child," because then they know they get a special - they get special treatment when they claim asylum.
So, there's a lot of ways that people are gaming the system. But if you have a previous criminal record, the asylum thing's not going to work. So that's why they try to sneak over illegally.
CARLSON: So if Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, promises you free healthcare like why wouldn't you do that? I would do that.
SEXTON: Well until the incentives change. And I would also note the State of California is openly hostile to Border enforcement.
In the State of California - and you speak to Border Patrol about this, and they're just saying (ph) these are guys in California, you think they're doing a job that people would be supportive of, California made it so that you couldn't have any California contractors involved in the upgrades of the very effective Border fence, by the way.
You had to get a Texas contractor, which costs just more money because they had to re-locate because California doesn't want anyone to have a hand in--
CARLSON: So sad.
SEXTON: --securing the Border. It's just nuts.
CARLSON: It's so sad.
SEXTON: And people should know--
CARLSON: Right. Yes.
SEXTON: --what the loopholes and the exploitations are.
CARLSON: Buck Sexton, so interesting. Thank you for that. It was great.
SEXTON: Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: We're out of time, sadly. We could do another hour. But we can. Tomorrow night we'll be back, 8:00 P.M., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.
Good news though. Sean Hannity awaits live from New York City--
SEAN HANNITY- HOST: Yes, sir.
CARLSON: --to grab the baton. There he is. Thanks Sean.
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