Eric Metaxas on making it easier for Americans to have more kids

What if lawmakers made helping American families have children as much of a priority as protecting Central American families from being deported? Reaction from Eric Metaxas, radio host and bestselling author.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 23, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Well, good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Democrats say they despise Donald Trump, they seem to mean it, they tell us they will do anything to prevent him from continuing as President.

But if that is really true, why are they working so hard to sabotage their own chances of replacing him? Why are Democrats suddenly saying things that would guarantee Trump's reelection as President?

In just the past few months, Democrats have said things that are so out of the mainstream that it is very hard to imagine voters will back them.

Just last night on CNN, watch Bernie Sanders, the front runner, endorse voting for felons who are currently behind bars. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, I-VT, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If somebody commits a serious crime -- sexual assault, murder -- they are going to be punished. They may be in jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives. That is what happens when you commit a serious crime. But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Terrible people. So how terrible is Sanders talking about? Cannibals? Convicted spies? How about terrorists who kill children? Oh, yes, said Bernie Sanders, they get to vote, too. Unlike the First or Second Amendments, that is in the Constitution. Senator Kamala Harris seemed to agree with that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: For people who are convicted, in prison, like the Boston marathon bomber on death row, people who are convicted of sexual assault. They should be able to vote?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, D-CALIF., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think we should have that conversation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay. Let's have a conversation. Best to do it right now, actually because whenever the left tells you they want a conversation about something, you can be certain that any dissent on that subject will be banned a year from now, like 2020 questioning whether imprisoned terrorists should vote or earn you a trip to the HR Department and a lifetime ban from PayPal and Twitter.

So while we still can, consider the story of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev first came to the United States, you'll remember on a tourist visa with the rest of his family from Kyrgyzstan, all of them promptly claimed asylum here. They were given it. Over time, the Tsarnaev's collected more than $100,000.00 in taxpayer finance government benefits. In 2012, Tsarnaev received U.S. citizenship, and less than a year later, he murdered three people and maimed hundreds with a pressure cooker bomb at the Boston Marathon, now he is on death row.

So Democrats hear that story and they feel outraged, it's not that immigrants repaid our generosity with a terror attack -- that might bother you, but it doesn't bother them. The injustice they are enraged by is that a convicted terrorist might not be allowed to help pick our next President. That is outrageous, in their view.

It's just the kind of institutionalized bigotry that Kyrgyzstani refugees like the Tsarnaev's have faced historically in this country. Maybe they need reparations, too. They definitely need a voice, so do the convicts of West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Of the 15,000 people who live in that parish, fully one-third of them are inmates at the maximum-security Angola State Prison Farm. They are the single largest bloc of voters in the area.

According to Bernie Sanders, this is bad because they are being denied democracy. That is racist and once Bernie Sanders is President, they will be able to elect the City Council and the Sheriff, maybe the Warden, too. That is the kind of progress we are talking about here.

Piers Morgan is the editor-at-large at dailymail.com, and he joins us tonight. Piers, thanks a lot for coming on.

So without mocking this, I mean, let's just take it seriously for a second. The idea that people currently behind bars, who have not completed their sentences, but are serving them, should be allowed to choose our leaders, is this a good idea?

PIERS MORGAN, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, DAILYMAIL.COM: You know, Tucker, I was watching the CNN Town Hall when Bernie Sanders said what he said about the Boston Marathon bomber, and I literally spat my drink out, and it was a nice glass of red wine, so it was a senseless waste of good alcohol.

But I spat it out, because I couldn't really believe what I was hearing. This is a guy -- front runner and is said to be the potential nominee for the Democratic Party to beat Donald Trump, that's their plan, that's what they want to do.

And their main selling point right now on a CNN Town Hall is they want the Boston Marathon bomber to be able to vote while he is in prison? While he is on death row? And whilst you say don't mock it, how can we not mock it? This is the stuff of utter lunacy. And it is the kind of stuff that I think -- I've been watching the show for a long time, this kind of invasion of woke thought, which is now really sending people nuts, I think it is now being extended to areas like the Penal System.

And they are looking at this and saying, "Yes, that makes perfect sense." It makes perfect sense that rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, people guilty of treason, mass murderers, serial killers -- they should have the right to vote, that is the most important thing.

Here's what I would ask them, and there is an irony of me putting this question, Tucker, which you will immediately understand, but if you ask the very same Democratic candidates who support this, who want the right to vote to exist for felons --

CARLSON: I know what this is going to be.

MORGAN: Ask them how they would feel about the right to own or buy a gun?

CARLSON: Exactly. That's exactly right.

MORGAN: Now, I would love it if somebody who has a view that is completely different to you about gun control, I would love it if felons were all treated as they are, and are not allowed to have guns. They are not. It is very difficult for any felon in America to come out, if they have more than a one-year sentence and own or buy a gun.

CARLSON: That's correct.

MORGAN: I'm pleased about that, right? But that is according to the Democrats and their position on this, logically speaking, that is an infringement on their constitutional rights. So why aren't they campaigning at the same time for felons to have the constitutional right to even buy a gun?

CARLSON: Well that's -- I mean, so what they're saying is we don't trust you to go deer hunting, but we want you to choose our leaders, our next President. So what they are really saying is, we don't care at all about anything, where nihilist, all we want is power, and if we see a reservoir of potential voters, we are going to tap that once more.

MORGAN: Right, and you touched on, I think, another issue, a very serious one, which is look at the voting intentions of some of what these felons would presumably be having. So say you are a convicted mass rapist, you've raped 20 women, how are you going to cast your vote if you are allowed to vote?

It is not going to be for anyone who is promoting the safety of women, is it? So there is a direct consequence, a direct electoral voting consequence, in allowing serious offenders to vote. I would extend it to - - I wouldn't allow any felons to vote at all, while they are in prison. They are not allowed to walk out free into the streets.

CARLSON: Exactly.

MORGAN: So just don't let anybody have a vote while there is, that is what punishment is supposed to be about it. You lose your rights to a normal life. But I would extend it to certainly for anything over the most tiny minuscule offenses. I would say, "Look, you can come out, and we are going to watch you five years, and we are going to see if you're genuinely rehabilitated." If you don't reoffend in five years, sadly many felons do, if you don't reoffend, then we will look at you and if we perceive you not to be a threat to society, not to be a potential reoffender, then we may consider restoring your right to vote in this country.

But I certainly wouldn't ever extend it to anyone guilty of any major, serious offense, whether they are in prison or whether they get let out later on, because to me, at some point, there has to be genuine punishment for serious offenses. If you blow up a marathon of young kids you don't get to vote.

CARLSON: But isn't the whole point that we want -- we want a country that is well-run. I mean, that really is the enfranchisement of everyone is a goal, but the real goal, the overarching goal is a peaceful, placid, non- corrupt, prosperous, well-run country, right? So why would you ever want - -

MORGAN: Right and there is an irony, Tucker, isn't there, that the same Democrats screaming every single second of every day about Trump and collusion. He is a criminal. He obstructed justice. We can't have a criminal running the country, and yet at the same time, they are campaigning for every criminal in the country to have the right to vote for President.

I mean, again, this is full of ludicrous irony, so when you say to me, Piers, I don't want you to mock this, I am finding that instruction very difficult, Mr. Carlson.

CARLSON: So I mean, you would have to think, if you are the Democrats and all you care about is taking power, seizing it back from the Trump administration, that you would have thought this through. There are some very smart people in the Democratic side, some pretty ruthless players, nothing they have been talking about for the past two months has broad or even majority appeal in this country. They are losing the election already. Why are they doing this? What is happening here?

MORGAN: I think they are on a political suicide mission, and I've said this for quite some time. I felt with the Mueller collusion obsession, which many of the mainstream media have had, which many Democrats have had, which all of the usual suspect Democrat supporting liberal celebrities have had that this collusion obsession, if it turned out, as it has, that Mueller find out there was no collusion, then that would actually act as one of the great voting bonuses for Donald Trump imaginable.

It was two years of the establishment, and the media, and celebrities trying to depose him as President on basically a fake news story that he colluded with the Russians. And so here we are, we are now 18 months from an election, and the Democrats, rather than just take their punishment on the Mueller report and say, "You know what, there wasn't collusion, Mueller, our knight in shining armor, has concluded that, so we need to move on and try to get behind the candidate who has a positive, brilliant idea and vision for the country, which they can offer up against Trump who they see as their nemesis.

Instead, you have all these candidates last night led by Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris who is a lawyer for goodness' sake, all basically now standing there saying, "Here's a great idea to win over middle America, that the heartland that Donald Trump got away from us in that last election. We're going to really campaign that the Boston Marathon bomber should be allowed to vote."

What part of that does not scream to the Democratic leadership "This is madness." This is a way to get Trump reelected. Maybe they're all sleeper cells, Tucker. Maybe they are all Republicans in disguise.

CARLSON: I'm starting to think that. Tsarnaev should be voting presumable for them?

MORGAN: This is ridiculous.

CARLSON: It's unbelievable. Piers Morgan, thank you for that incisive --

MORGAN: You know what, they'll be giving me the vote next, Tucker. I mean, when does this end?

CARLSON: I'd be happy if you do. Piers Morgan, great to see you. Thank you.

MORGAN: Good to see you.

CARLSON: Almost two dozen Democrats vying for their party's nomination and most have just one strategy -- prove they're the farthest out person running for President. You have a crazy idea, they have a crazier one. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The Democratic presidential field as of right now is one of the largest -- probably the largest actually in U.S. political history. Everyone in it struggling to stand out. If you're Amy Klobuchar, for example, how do you demonstrate that you're very different from Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren? Not that easy.

If you're Beto O'Rourke, how do you get your mojo back from Pete Buttigieg. There's only one way, prove that you're the most left-wing person ever to run for Federal office in the United States of America and that's what they're doing.

Lisa Boothe has been watching carefully, she's a senior fellow at Independent Women's Voice and she joins us tonight.

LISA BOOTHE, CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Tucker.

CARLSON: Lisa, good to see you.

BOOTHE: I mean, that pretty much sums it out, just you know, be as crazy as you can possibly be. Well one thing that I think is really interesting, Tucker, is this normalization of socialism that's happening on the left.

Bernie Sanders is no longer an outsider candidate. He is a mainstream candidate. His policies like Medicare-for-All that used to be outside of the mainstream are now mainstream policies and the irony of it is, Bernie Sanders rails against the government but what his policies would do is empower the government and embolden the ruling class, but he does a good job of selling it and downplaying it.

I want to I want you to listen to this clip from last night when he was asked by a Harvard student at the CNN Town Hall whose family fled Soviet Russia, who aptly pointed out that socialism never works listen to this. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: What democratic socialism means to me is we expand Medicare, we provide educational opportunity to all Americans, we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. In other words, government serves the needs of all people rather than just wealthy campaign contributors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOOTHE: And it's not just Bernie Sanders that is essentially advocating for upending major industries, you also have people like Senator Amy Klobuchar who is supposed to be a moderate in this race, advocating for the Green New Deal. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, D-MINN., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I think what's important as you look at the goals in the Green New Deal and no one thinks we're going to dot every I and cross every T in a short period of time, but we need those goals. We need as a nation to come behind goals. We need the energy of young people and people that really want to move on climate change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOOTHE: And Tucker, mind you, that some groups estimate the Green New Deal would cost each household $600,000.00 over a 10-year period of time, not to mention the fact that fossil fuels make up 80 percent of our total energy consumption, but yes, let's just move right off that into renewables.

CARLSON: May I ask a question?

BOOTHE: Yes.

CARLSON: Since you watched it last night, so they're all for Medicare-for- All and actually there's some support in this country for that, but all Americans or everyone in Central America, too, everyone who wants to come here today, anybody point out how hard it is to have entitlements with open borders. Did anybody mention that?

BOOTHE: They didn't and that's a great point. And I actually believe that President Obama in the past has made that point in one of his books that he authored and that is a problem, but no, nobody mentioned that nor -- and Kamala Harris also tried to downplay the impact it would have on private insurers.

But she also made this comment as well because guns are also at risk with the Second Amendment. Here is Kamala Harris talking about gun control efforts that she would want to take up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, D-CALIF., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOOTHE: Yes, so Tucker, basically --

CARLSON: Good luck with that.

BOOTHE: So basically what we've seen is this huge movement to the left and considering the fact that there are so many candidates, what that ultimately is going to do is just keep bringing these candidates even further to the left, so it's going to be quite the show.

CARLSON: Yes, outside of Brooklyn, not a lot of support for these ladies. Lisa, thanks so much.

BOOTHE: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Good to see you.

BOOTHE: Good to see you, too.

CARLSON: Julian Epstein is a longtime Democrat, former Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, have been in DC a long time, joins us tonight. Julian, thanks a lot for coming on.

So they say they want to beat Trump, but I mean in the -- oh, I've been keeping track. In the last two months, here's some of the ideas that presidential candidates have floated. Tearing down barriers on the Mexican border, abolishing I.C.E., scrapping the Electoral College, eliminating all private health insurance, pack in the Supreme Court, lowering the voting age to 16. At least eight Democrats have endorsed an energy plan that calls for banning cars and airplanes, four have supported financial reparations for slavery on the basis of race. Cory Booker endorsed reparations for drug dealers. I could go on. Bernie is now endorsing voting from prison. There's not a majority support for any of those things.

JULIAN EPSTEIN, FORMER CHIEF COUNSEL FOR THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I agree.

CARLSON: So why are they -- it would be easy to beat Trump. You would just run on the issues that Trump ran on. Why aren't they doing that? This is not -- they're going to lose if they run on this stuff.

EPSTEIN: I don't think there are a lot of -- there's a lot of support for a lot of issues that Trump ran on, the tax cut, for example.

CARLSON: I agree.

EPSTEIN: Corporate tax cut, not a lot of support for it. I think it's a reflection of the age that we live in, Tucker. I think that when you have a combination of middle-class frustration, the middle class has been frustrated for five decades in this country.

CARLSON: Right.

EPSTEIN: And you put that in an environment which is just Twitter saturation, noise constantly, it is very, very difficult to break through and I think that the tendency that's occurring in both parties is for the extremists to be able to break through the noise and I think extremism and taking the far-left or the far-right position in either case is sometimes confused with being a taking a stronger position.

And what people want I think, when they're frustrated is they want somebody to come up and offer strong bold solutions. But I don't think Medicare- for-All is -- I think, it's pie-in-the-sky. I understand the reasoning for it, but I think it's pie-in-the-sky. I think a public option is a better place for Democrats to introduce themselves.

CARLSON: Sure. There's no doubt.

EPSTEIN: I mean, Democrats should absolutely make themselves clear on immigration. I think they have got to be very clear that they are a party that is for legal immigration, but they have zero tolerance for illegal immigration.

CARLSON: That's so far from where they are now and I don't think I'm overstating this, I'm not making a partisan point, I am making a sincere point. No Democrat running for President could say anything like what you just said. I've always thought of you as a kind of liberal Democrat, but what you just said would get you booed off a stage right now at CNN.

EPSTEIN: Maybe, but you know, "The New York Times" did a very good and I know you're not crazy about the publication, but they did a very, very good chart a couple of weeks ago that basically argued that the elites and the Twitter crowd and the Democratic Party are not where the voters are.

CARLSON: Yes.

EPSTEIN: Voters are much more moderate.

CARLSON: Tom Edsall piece, I saw it.

EPSTEIN: Yes, exactly. Voters are really pretty much non-ideological. If you're looking for practical solutions, most voters want a solution on immigration, most voters want premiums to come down on healthcare, most voters want to see sensible reform on education so students aren't bankrupted for the rest of their life. Most voters want both parties to govern.

And I think that's why Joe Biden is going to be who is getting in the race on Thursday, is I think the front-runner in the Democratic Party and I think, will continue to be the front-runner. I think it's going to be a Biden-Sanders race the way it looks like right now and I think Biden has the ability to appeal to a lot of the working-class people that --

CARLSON: I'm not even disagreeing. I am just -- I just wonder if that's really the Democratic Party of 2019? I mean if it turns out that it's Biden versus Sanders, I mean that's like a white privilege fiesta from the point of view of -- I'm serious -- of the identity politics lunatics who are very -- I think they're kind of in charge of the party.

Like how can the Democratic Party run two white guys over 70? I mean, let's be real. They can't.

EPSTEIN: Because I don't think identity politics is getting the country anywhere and I don't think it's where most voters are.

CARLSON: You know, I --

EPSTEIN: And I don't think it's where voters are and I think that you're making the mistake that a lot of Democrats are making the mistake and it goes back to the Edsall piece which is that most voters are non- ideological. They want practical solutions, but they do want a strong candidate. I mean, I think the reason that Donald Trump won was his strength.

CARLSON: I get it. But they're not interested in the identity stuff. I think you are right --

EPSTEIN: Well, I think people are confusing -- I think people are confusing, let me go as far left as I can on healthcare and do single-payer Medicare-for-All, confusing that as being the strong position.

CARLSON: I agree. It's --

EPSTEIN: And something less than that is being a weak position. I think what voters want is strong, but not necessarily far-left.

CARLSON: If you -- it would take a lot of bravery to make that point in the Democratic field right now and if somebody does and gets the nomination, I will feel better about the country. I hope you're right. No, I mean it. I really do.

EPSTEIN: I feel better, too.

CARLSON: For America's sake. Julian, thank you.

EPSTEIN: Okay.

CARLSON: Jussie Smollett hired two brothers to attack him in a fake hate crime, now they're suing Smollett's attorneys for defamation -- another twist in that story. We'll bring it to you after the break.

CARLSON:’

CARLSON: Jussie Smollett hired two bodybuilder brothers to pour bleach on him, wrap a noose around his neck in a calculated attempt to defame his political enemies and boost his own career. After being caught doing that, Smollett and his lawyers tried to keep all the blame on the brothers, but now the brothers are filing a lawsuit. Trace Gallagher has been on the story since day one and has developments for us tonight -- Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker. The lawyer for the Osundairo brothers, Gloria Schmidt says it's time the City of Chicago, its Police Department and her clients have their reputations restored and the reason the brothers are suing Jussue Smollett's attorneys -- Mark Geragos and Tina Gladien is because they continue to say the brothers quote, " ... led a criminally homophobic racist and violent attack against Mr. Smollett," even though they know it's not true. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLORIA SCHMIDT, ATTORNEY TO OSUNDAIRO BROTHERS: The Chicagoan brothers told the truth. They could have remained silent, but instead they told the truth to the police and with their right hand in the air, they told the truth to the grand jury.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: The brothers say because their reputations have taken a hit, so have their livelihoods and they can barely make ends meet. Remember, the brothers testified that Smollett hired them to help him stage a hate crime hoax and then orchestrated the whole thing, including giving them money to buy a rope, gasoline, ski masks and a red cap resembling President Trump's "Make America Great Again" hats and there is surveillance video of them buying the items.

Jussie Smollett still maintains the brothers attacked him without cause and his attorneys call the lawsuit against them comical quoting, "While we know this ridiculous lawsuit will soon be dismissed because it lacks any legal footing, we look forward to exposing the fraud the Osundairo brothers and their attorneys have committed on the public." Prosecutors dropped the charges against Smollett, but also said that does not mean he didn't do it -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Amazing. Trace Gallagher, thanks for that update tonight. Tammy Bruce is a radio host, of course, President of Independent Women's Voice, a frequent guest on the show and joining us tonight.

So Tammy, Mark Geragos, who I think up until about 20 minutes ago was a CNN legal analyst, is sticking out a pretty aggressive position here which is, "It's all lies. My client is innocent." Is that a tenable position for him to take?

TAMMY BRUCE, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S VOICE: Well, I don't think so. There are very few situations in life that are so clearly obvious in our world, and this one is one of them.

Mr. Geragos of course has his own problems with his association with Michael Avenatti and --

CARLSON: Correct.

BRUCE: He's had a bad month in this kind of situation, but now his clients are really himself and the woman he is working with in this case and their problem is -- you know, lawyers can say what they want to in the courtroom, but they are not protected when it comes to what they say outside of the courtroom and this is what the problem is for them.

And all of us who are looking quite perplexed I think once those charges were dropped, which in and of itself was bizarre, but they didn't just go away and you know, be happy that they got away with something and that, you know counting their blessings.

But Mr. Smollett continued on arguing that this really did happen to me. That all of this, I've never lied. This is all really true, which means two young African-American men that have worked with him, that were his trainers, that have acted sometimes as fill-ins on the "Empire" show somehow for some reason wanted to beat him up. And for some reason wanted to look like Trump supporters, and for some reason in all of this, one of the arguments that Mr. Smollett's lawyers -- I should say, the brothers' lawyer is making is that they would have had to put on white face to confuse him.

And none of this, Tucker is Mr. Smollett explaining why those two particular young men would have done this to him. The bottom line is and this is the good news. Tucker, is that either this case or the case of Chicago suing Smollett for the money he owes them will go to court. If it does, that means we might find out more information about why this happened in the first place -- this dropping of the charges -- in addition to an Inspector General for the county there, I think it's Lake County, is also investigating the prosecutor and why these charges were dropped in the first place.

CARLSON: I wonder about -- I've always been less interested in Jussie Smollett who seems like a very troubled character than in some of his promoters and hangers-on, so Kamala Harris or that phony senator from New Jersey, whose name I can never remember who is also running for President, Cory Booker -- both of them described this as a lynching. Have they revised their view? Have they apologized? Are they following this case carefully, do you know?

BRUCE: Well you know, Kamala Harris was asked about the strangeness of the charges being dropped in a television interview, I recall early on and she almost in kind of a coy smug way said, "I have no idea what happened there. I have no idea why this would have happened." But there was no real normal reactions to any of these events and maybe in Chicago, it's normal, but they have a new mayor coming out in Chicago, a woman named Lightfoot, and she has also said -- she takes office on May 20th -- that she too doesn't like how this turned out and that she's very curious to find out what transpired.

So she ran as a reformer. She very well could be. It'll be very interesting to see if she delivers and in the meantime, look, it'll be interesting to see if people in certain positions in government in fact, new things were threatened perhaps and there's other things they didn't want perhaps discussed in a trial and that maybe would explain why these kinds of charges were dropped, but it could be anything.

And the number of investigations going on and maybe this lawsuit will help us come to a conclusion about what really happened here.

CARLSON: I hope so and hopefully, there are some real apologies.

BRUCE: We deserve it and so do the people in Chicago.

CARLSON: They there deserved, I agree completely.

BRUCE: Yes.

CARLSON: Tammy, great to see you tonight.

BRUCE: Thank you, dear.

CARLSON: Nineteen American troops died trying to protect Somalis from starvation back in 1992, but to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, possibly the least grateful person in this country, they were villains. We speak to one of the U.S. soldiers who is there in Mogadishu in 1992, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, this show is committed to exposing pollution that is taking over our nation's metropolitan areas. The people who should be in charge of watching pollution are now so besotted with climate theology that they don't care at all, but we do care. And so we are going to be hitting the road to show you some of the fastest crumbling American cities in the next couple of weeks in the hopes that they will get their act together and become what they should be, which is beautiful and clean and orderly.

Last night, we showed you exclusive footage from Los Angeles where sprawling homeless encampments have taken over huge parts of downtown, but LA is not the only once great California city that is crumbling. San Francisco may have fallen even further.

The nonprofit organization, Open the Books has created a simple map. The map shows every instance -- it's on the screen now -- in the past eight years where human waste has been reported on the sidewalks of San Francisco. At least we assume, this is San Francisco, there's so much brown, you can't even see the map.

It's easy to laugh about this and we do sometimes, but imagine what would be like if you were from San Francisco? Imagine if you could remember when San Francisco was still a great city -- livable -- a place where ordinary people live, not just tech plutocrats. Imagine if you watched your own home sink beneath piles of garbage and used needles and human waste and then imagine that instead of fixing those problems, your governor flew to El Salvador to talk about fixing poverty there.

Imagine if he lectured you about your privilege and how your community needs to accept more illegal foreign workers and if you're not for that, you're a bigot. Then it probably wouldn't be that funny, actually. It would be a tragedy. That's exactly what it is.

Well speaking of tragedies, in the early 1990s the East African country of Somalia was rocked by Civil War and subsequent famine. The U.S. sent troops there not to conquer land or steal resources, but purely to save lives and we did that. We saved about a hundred thousand Somalis, that by the way was 1993 not 1992. I misremembered it. It seems like just yesterday.

But Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is not grateful for what the U.S. did on behalf of the country she was born in, no, she thinks American troops were the bad guys in that conflict.

A couple of years ago, she responded on Twitter to a user who was remembering the 19 American troops killed during the Battle of Mogadishu. She wrote this, quote, "In his selective memory, he forgets to also mention the thousands of Somalis killed by American forces that day (exclamation point) #NotTodaySatan."

Sergeant Major Kyle Lamb fought that day in the Battle of Mogadishu. He is the author of the book, "Leadership in the Shadows," and were happy to have him tonight. Thanks very much for coming on tonight, Major Lamb.

SERGEANT MAJOR KYLE LAMB, RET., UNITED STATES ARMY: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: When you read Ilhan Omar's remarks about the battle that you fought in, what's your response?

LAMB: Well, normally it's humorous, but at this point, it's kind of disturbing because I mean, first of all she wasn't there. She'd already left the country. We were there and I've never heard numbers quite that inflated.

I mean, we wished we could have done that much damage, but that didn't happen as far as I know.

CARLSON: Well, I guess what's so striking is and the U.S. has done things I disagree with around the world, but in this case it seemed like the mission was purely altruistic. We were only there to help. We didn't take Somalia. I mean did you steal gold or natural resources when you were there?

LAMB: No we didn't do that. We were trying to take out Aidid because he was a clan leader that had -- the Habr Gidr clan had kind of taken over the town, they were taking the food, any of the aid that we were giving to Somalia, also weapons and they're running drugs. Khat is a big drug over there.

CARLSON: Yes.

LAMB: And he needed to be eliminated so that we could get peace back in that town. So we were actually there to help some of the lesser tribes or the lesser clans such as her clan which you know obviously, they were already gone. But yes, we were there to try to do the right thing.

And you know, the other thing is, we didn't say, "Hey, let's pick out Somalia as a great place to go hang out." The President at a time, President Clinton said, "This is where we're going. This is what the mission is." And our commander said, "Roger that. We can do it." And we all had signed on the line. That's why we served. And you can make a difference when you go to those countries.

CARLSON: Does it strike you as odd that -- and I don't want to pick on Ilhan Omar, but she's a Member of Congress and so her statements get a lot of attention. Here is someone who was brought to the United States at public expense simply because we're a kind country that accepts a lot of refugees, and rather than being grateful for that, she spent the rest of her life attacking this country. Why?

KYLE: Well, as they would say down here in Tennessee, "Bless her heart." I mean, we want her to understand that she's living -- she's living large now because of her family being able to escape the atrocities of Mogadishu and yes, it's very disturbing.

We watched our friends get drugged through the streets by the people that she says are her people and we got to watch that on TV, once we'd ex-filled from the crash site that I was at and we got back to our hangar, that's what we got to watch.

So yes, we take it -- we take it personal when you attack us like that. Once again, it's not surprising to hear that. There's been kind of a long list of things she said that I don't know if she meant them or not, but she continues to say them. So, yes, I feel bad for her.

CARLSON: Yes, I do, too. What about the families of the Americans who were killed there? I mean this -- what do you think they think of this?

KYLE: I haven't talked to you the families, but they -- that doesn't take her saying something to remind them of what they deal with every day.

CARLSON: Right.

KYLE: Whenever they go to a baseball game and they hear the National Anthem and they look at the flag, that dad is not there with his kids. That's a story that is not just from Somalia, but all the other conflicts that I've been in and that I haven't been in, that's the story of the soldiers. So that's what we deal with on a daily basis, and really you know, we just want people to help us out when we get back, which is we need a mission. We need guys to get help if they have drug or alcohol issues, which sometimes can be prevalent the military if guys are suffering with injuries that they try to continue to fight with. So we try to get them the help that we can. That's what we want to do. And yes, it's the soldier story from the last 10,000 years.

CARLSON: Kind of the last thing you need is a lecture from people like her. Sergeant Major Kyle, thank you very much for coming on tonight. I appreciate it.

KYLE: Thank you again. God bless America.

CARLSON: God bless. Democrats say the country needs open borders because our population is shrinking, otherwise. Here's an idea, why not make it easier for Americans to have the children they say they want to have, instead? No one has thought of that for some reason. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, yet he has supported socialist governments in very non-democratic countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua, but Sanders says he doesn't like the really bad socialists.

Last night in CNN's Town Hall, he was asked if he supported the Soviet Union. "I don't and never have," he replied. Well, Sanders' defense sounded authentic. The only problem would be if there was like a video of him going on a honeymoon in the Soviet Union, taking his shirt off and singing "This Land is Your Land" with a group of Soviet comrades.

Oh, wait it turns out, there is footage exactly like that. In fact, you're looking at it. Right there, the Burlington Soviet trip. Look at those rippling pecs. A symbol of the man who once was Bernie Sanders, but his now reborn as the new socialist man. The man who wants to be President and maybe. Save that tape. There he is. Red Square. Oh, it was a different world.

Well, Democrats are united that America needs more people. There's only one way to get new people, no, not the obvious way. You're not going to help Americans have more kids, even though they're currently having fewer than they want to have. No. As Julian Castro explained on MSNBC this morning, we need to increase the population right now by opening the borders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIAN CASTRO, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have an aging population, our birth rate is declining. We see countries around the world like Japan that are grappling with aging issues. We need a young vibrant workforce. That means we need a lot of these immigrants who are coming to this country.

If we don't get this right, 20 or 30 years from now, we're going to be begging the immigrants to come to this country. All of these issues are tied in, so it is about raising revenue and you know, we're going to show how we would do that, but it's also about being smart about our economy and about the population growth of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Smart. That's one thing these people are not. They always cite Japan, its aging population. Has Japan opened its borders to immigration? Any immigration of any kind? Oh no, I wonder why. It doesn't matter.

Mayor Buttigieg of South Bend agrees with Mr. Castro. He doesn't care how few skills immigrants have or whether they know English or not. If there's one thing South Bend, Indiana needs more of, its illegal immigrants. In fact, they're better than legal immigrants as Buttigieg.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, D-IND., MAYOR, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've got plenty of room for more residents and taxpayers who want to help fund the snow plowing and the firefighters that I've got to have for 130,000 people's worth of city with only a 100,000 people to pay for it and let us not forget that in many respects, from property taxes to sales taxes, undocumented immigrants are taxpayers and the truth is, in many respects because they are not eligible for a lot of benefits, they are subsidizing the rest of us.

CARLSON: Yes, so says Mr. Corporate McKinsey guy, definitely believe them, that's a good idea. But the other candidates do believe that. This is Democratic consensus now. We need more people, but only the rest of the world can supply them. America cannot produce its own children. We need to take in those of other countries.

But here's a novel alternative. What if instead of giving up on America we helped Americans have the children they would like to have? Right now, Elizabeth Warren is campaigning on a promise to give a $50,000.00 student loan amnesty to every borrower in the country. It's an expensive proposal and Warren wants taxpayers to pay for the whole thing instead of asking the colleges that got rich off all those loans to pitch in.

We have a counterproposal. What if we gave a complete student loan amnesty to any American who gets married and has two or more children? What if we drastically cut the taxes of middle-class families who have three or four or more children? What if helping American families have children was as much of a priority as protecting Central American families from being deported?

I know it sounds crazy. Maybe if you acted on behalf of your own people they would be grateful once in a while.

Eric Metaxas is a radio host and best-selling author of biographies of Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce. The Bonhoeffer one is unbelievable. I've read it. And we're happy to have him tonight join us now. Eric, great to see you.

ERIC METAXAS, RADIO HOST AND AUTHOR: Always great to be with you. Thank you. I'm still trying to get over the topless Bernie Sanders video. You should not have shown that.

CARLSON: I know. That was a lot and we should have put up some kind of parental warning, but it slipped our minds. Socialism. Anyway, leaving aside like the debate over the details of student loan forgiveness or whatever, why isn't the conversation about how to help Americans have the number of children they say they want you have, but can't because they can't afford it? Why does no one ever bring that up?

METAXAS: It's rather simple. The secular left has decided that to be pro- family, to be pro-child is somehow a patriarchal bourgeois idea whose time has come and gone. Oh of course, Hitler talked about German women having a lot of kids. We don't want to do that anymore.

Fundamentally, when you have a secular worldview and a leftist worldview, you're talking about a zero-sum game. It's a fundamentally hopeless idea that says we can't grow. We'll never grow. We have to import people from someplace else. We don't do growth anymore, and by the way, the European West is not reproducing itself as secular values encroach and Biblical views, "Be fruitful and multiply. Children are a blessing from the Lord." As those ideas go away, you have a staggering situation.

It is much more hip to have an abortion than it is to bring a child to term and to say, "I'm going to raise this child because children are a blessing." All of these ideas have got us to where we are now. It is very strange. It's very hopeless, Tucker.

CARLSON: But I am confused, and I agree with your analysis, but like -- then what's the point of life? Going on more trips? Buying more crap?

METAXAS: Of course, that's the point.

CARLSON: Clothes? I'm serious like --

METAXAS: But you're right.

CARLSON: What is the point?

METAXAS: That's exactly right. Nobody really says this because it's too ugly to say it, but if you actually believe that we evolved out of the primordial soup and through happenstance got here by accident, then our lives literally have no meaning and we don't want to talk about that because it's too horrific. Nobody can really live with it.

But what we do is, we buy into that idea and we say, "Well then, what can I do?" "Well, since there's no God, I guess now I can have guilt-free pleasure and so I'm going to spend the few decades I have trying to take care of number one -- trying to get as much fun as I can." By the way having kids requires self-sacrifice. "I don't have time for that. I won't be able to have as much fun."

CARLSON: But what a lie. What a lie.

METAXAS: It's a lie.

CARLSON: As you lie there, life ebbing away and you think, "Man, I'm glad I made it to Prague." Like actually people don't think that as they die, but all that really matters is your family.

METAXAS: Well, you know that, I know that. Most Americans know that, but the secular left, most of whom are the media pundits don't know that. Most of the people who are the cultural elites don't know that and they live in a world where to talk about being pro-family or have a lot of kids is unthinkable, it's distasteful. We need to keep talking.

CARLSON: And you're right that it is really a change in religious orientation. Nobody ever says that, but it's true and it's also measurable. So this country's religious landscape has changed a lot.

According to the general social survey which the University of Chicago has been doing, I think since '72, great survey, for the first time ever, the largest single religious group in this country is people with no religious affiliation at all. Almost one in four Americans don't belong to any religious group.

So we think of this as a religious country. Suddenly, it's not. Maybe that's the reason things are falling apart, not to simplify too much, but seriously.

METAXAS: That's part of it. Listen, conservative Orthodox Jews, conservative Muslims, conservative Christians have tons of kids. Again, it's the secular liberal elites who live close to where you live and who live where I live, they don't have children and they live in expensive apartments. They can't afford children. It's a cultural divide and I think it is an issue.

But when you talk about atheism or people who don't say they have no affiliation with a religion, which is quite different from atheism, that that number is growing, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think what we need are Christians who are serious Christians. I think we had a cultural Christianity in America that sometimes when people talk about the good old days, part of it was good, but to have people who go to church, but don't really know why or don't really believe those things, we've got a lot of those -- I call them mainline Protestants. There are a few people like yourself who may attend mainline Protestant Churches, who actually believe the Nicene Creed.

CARLSON: That's a good point.

METAXAS: But most people who go to mainline Protestant Churches, why have they ceased going? Because at some point, it became culturally acceptable to stay home on Sunday because nobody believes that stuff anyway. But I think that if you're serious about your faith, you're inclined to have a hopeful view and to say, "I want to have children even though the world is difficult, it's worth the trouble. It's the most wonderful thing I can do," and frankly it is happening in the heartland and I'm glad that it is.

CARLSON: Well, it's really -- and as you age, you realize it's all that matters. I mean, I just can't -- I think I'm going to start asking people when they come on the show, if children aren't the most important thing, what is? Quick. What's the answer?

METAXAS: Yes, well I think again, if you really believe what the Bible says. The Bible says children are a blessing from the Lord. It doesn't say, sometimes you don't want to kill them, right? But the point is that the things that are difficult in life are the most -- well, let's put it this way, we know that the things that are the most difficult typically are the most rewarding and at the end of your life, you say, "I am so glad that we stayed married. I love her more than ever. I'm so glad that I raised my children. Where would I be without them?"

You know we need to talk about that more and I'm grateful to you for bringing it up.

CARLSON: No, well, again it's all that matters. Eric, it is great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.

METAXAS: Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: We are out of time, sadly. We'll be back tomorrow, 8:00 p.m. The show that is the sworn enemy and sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.

Good night from Washington.

A very talented singer joining us from a surprise appearance from New York City right now.

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