Tucker: Democrats impeached Trump and helped him in the polls
Democratic presidential candidates announce divisive, extreme agendas.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," December 20, 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." The president is currently delivering remarks at a signing ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base Joint Base Andrews as they say here, he's going to sign the National Defense Authorization Act. We're going to keep an eye on that. We're going to tell you what's in it at some point. But for now, it adds to the perception, even among Democrats in Washington, that Donald Trump is on something of a roll. It wasn't always like this. Just six months ago, Trump's reelection seemed like a pretty tough bet for a lot of reasons, but let's boil it down. When both Google and the Chinese government consider you a mortal enemy, it's not so easy to win elections, and that may still be true.
But now he's got a massive advantage. The Democratic Party has started working in earnest for Donald Trump, which is -- and let's be honest about it -- essentially what they've been doing. First, Democrats pursued an impeachment strategy that was so thoroughly dumb and nonsensical that in the end it looked like a Republican plot. They'd literally impeached Donald Trump this week on Wednesday, and it helped him in the polls. [laughs] Bizarre. But if that wasn't weird enough, Democratic officeholders started saying things that seemed expressly designed to alienate and enrage American voters. And not close call stuff, not, you know, calling for tax increases that polls show people don't really want. We've seen that before. Mike Dukakis tried that 35 years ago. In the end, it didn't work, but you didn't get the feeling that Mike Dukakis was actively trying to lose the election.
But that's not the case with Mayor Pete Buttigieg. At the Democratic primary debate last night, Buttigieg blew right past Mike Dukakis-land and wound up and Leon Trotsky-ville. Buttigieg promised -- and it's hard to believe this actually happened. We have the tape. It did. Buttigieg promised to give reparations to illegal aliens, take taxpayer money, and send it to people who have no right to be here in the first place. He said that out loud. Watch this.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Female Speaker: You said last month that the U.S. owes compensation to children separated from their families at the southern border. Are you committing, as president, to financial compensation for those thousands of children?
Pete Buttigieg: Yes. And they should have a fast track to citizenship. We have a moral obligation to make right what was broken.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: Yes. And next, we're going to buy each one of them a new car. [laughs] I mean, like, what's the level of public support for what, Pete Buttigieg just said. Could you even poll a number that small? I mean, it's like the faculty lounge at Wesleyan and like two zip codes in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, and maybe a tiny census tract in northern California. That's it. People are not for that. They're not for it at all because it's demented. But keep in mind that Pete Buttigieg is built as a moderate in the race. The other moderate is leading the field, he's Joe Biden. And last night, Biden paid homage to the Green New Deal. He vowed to destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars in the name of climate theology, the theology of the private jet class. Watch.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Male Speaker: Three consecutive American presidents have enjoyed stints of explosive economic growth due to a boom in oil and natural gas production. As president, would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth, even knowing potentially that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest of transitioning to that greener economy?
Joe Biden: The answer is yes. The answer is yes, because the opportunity, the opportunity for those workers to transition to higher paying jobs, as Tom said, is real.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: They applaud. The second Biden said, "Am I going to screw blue collar workers? Are you kidding? I can't wait. Am I going to take their jobs away and punish them? Absolutely." [laughs] That's when applause broke out. So, Elizabeth Warren's watching this, and she's getting nervous. "Destroying jobs, reparations for illegals? Whoa, wait a second. They're getting to the left of me all of a sudden. Didn't think that was possible."
But Warren had a plan. First, she vowed to create an annual tradition -- again, we're not making this up -- of honoring murder victims. But not all murder victims, just some murder victims. How will she know which murder victims? Totally depends on their skin color and whether they identify as transgender or not, because in Elizabeth Warren's world, some murder victims are more worthy than other murder victims. Watch.
[start video clips]
Elizabeth Warren: Here's a promise I make. I will go to the Rose Garden once every year to read the names of transgender women, of people of color, who have been killed in the past year.
[end video clips]
Tucker Carlson: What about everybody else? All murders are bad. All murders are bad, whether they are people of color, transgender women, it doesn't matter all. They're all bad. But Elizabeth Warren brings identity politics even to commemorating the deaths of people who've been murdered. What a nutcase she is. And by the way, if that wasn't crazy enough, she also promised to let men transfer into women's prisons simply by asking to. For real. Watch.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Elizabeth Warren: I will change the rules now that put people in prison based on their birth sex identification rather than their current identification.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: It's a good thing the rest of the country is so completely terrified to tell the truth about anything, we're all so cowed, that we have to sort of sit in silence and be like, "Oh no. That sounds totally fine. Oh yeah, you're right." Because in a normal moment, in a normal country, people who say stuff like that would be laughed right off the stage. What? Are you kidding? How would that work? Of course, what she just said would make the entire concept of women's prisons irrelevant. Why would we do something like that and who would benefit? It's totally nuts. It's detached from reality. It would serve the whims of like nine people at the expense of every other person in the country. And by the way, it's also denying biology, which is not something we're in charge of. It's nature. This is crazy.
But this is the kind of thing Democrats have been saying for the last year as they jockey to become the Democratic nominee. Does anyone support this? Do people support putting men and women's prisons? Do they really support reparations for legal aliens? Shutting down America's single most robust economic sector, energy? No, do they really support free health care for illegal aliens? Letting convicted murderers vote from prison? How about identity politics? It doesn't matter what your color is, by the way, there's a lot of polling on this. Most people of all colors think identity politics is insane because it is. It's an incitement to tribalism and worse, people aren't for that. By the way, people don't support wasting a year trying to impeach and remove a democratically elected president because he wanted to investigate Hunter Biden's corrupt deal. Whatever. All of this is crazy.
So, it doesn't matter who seems the most moderate or who's best looking or what color they are, like it doesn't even matter. What matters is the things they're saying are crazy and people aren't for them and will never be for them. Why are they doing this? Because the Democratic Party has been taken over by extremists. Instead of seeing ordinary Americans as their constituents, they see them as evil doers who must be punished.
For more reaction to last night's debate, we're joined by daily briefing host our friend Dana Perino. Hey, Dana.
Dana Perino: Hi. How are you?
Tucker Carlson: So, you watched every second of this event.
Dana Perino: It's a pretty good debate.
Tucker Carlson: What were the takeaways?
Dana Perino: It was a pretty good debate. I think if you missed it, you missed something that was a little bit more substantive than before. I think there's a couple of reasons for that. There were fewer people on the stage --
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Dana Perino: -- and I think that that mattered. And also, I think that the questions were very good. Tim Alberta of Politico in particular, I thought, asked some pretty good questions. I would say there were three main winners. Number one is Donald Trump. The president largely stayed out of the crosshairs. He just wasn't brought up all that much. They didn't harp on impeachment for that long in the debate. So, I think anytime that he can stay out of the debate, that's good. Also, former Vice President Joe Biden, he had probably his best debate. Now, some people might say that's a low bar, but he was more steady, more confident, kind of had some jokes, and he seemed a little bit more in command. But also, Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, she definitely was able to shine. She was also able to raise over half a million dollars overnight. And that is -- that means she's in a much better position than she was, you know, 24 hours ago.
Tucker Carlson: So, we're getting -- I mean, I know I say this every time we talk -- but we're getting pretty darn close. I mean --
Dana Perino: Very close.
Tucker Carlson: -- next week's Christmas, and then, essentially, we're right into the primaries.
Dana Perino: [affirmative]
Tucker Carlson: There's not a real -- I mean, is Biden is still a front runner?
Dana Perino: Yes.
Tucker Carlson: Is the nominee? I mean, you know, we don't have that much longer.
Dana Perino: He's the front runner nationally.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Dana Perino: His polls hold. But in the early states, in Iowa and New Hampshire, that's in question. Now, Mayor Pete Buttigieg who had been doing very well in the polls as especially as compared to Elizabeth Warren. I think Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders really were the losers in last night's debate. And partly that's because they're Medicare for All stance, especially Elizabeth Warren, like, she just can't stop losing on that issue. And then Bernie Sanders proved that he is a true 20 percenter. He's got 20 percent support, but it doesn't grow at all.
Now, Mayor Pete Buttigieg who does very well in Iowa -- that's the first state will have voting on February 3rd -- he was able to take a punch last night. He's one of the only people that can actually push back without a canned line. So, I think those early states, Mayor Pete, he could maybe pull it out. Then you got to go to New Hampshire and then you have South Carolina. Plus, there's all these proportional things. It's not going to be easy for any of these people to win but they're closer than they were, you know, two weeks ago.
Tucker Carlson: I'm just struck again by the distance between where these people are on questions of policy, you know, the actual substance, and where the public is. So, Buttigieg last night, as noted, came out for paying money to in effect reparations to illegal immigrants he says we have mistreated by not letting them into the country promptly enough.
Dana Perino: Right, so –
Tucker Carlson: What percentage of the public is for that would you say? Like anybody?
Dana Perino: Oh, well, maybe he figures that that's the way to help win Iowa. I mean, it is pretty -- it's a very confusing democratic primary right now. I would say, though, --
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Dana Perino: --- I had this thought right before you came to me, I think that Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar considered kind of the moderates in this, or at least moderate tempered in this debate.
Tucker Carlson: Exactly.
Dana Perino: Did a little bit better because it's the first debate after the U.K. elections and they feel emboldened to push back against the far left. So, you might actually see a little bit of improvement with them because the main question for Democrats is who can beat President Trump.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Dana Perino: And so far, they -- nationally they think that is Joe Biden, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amy Klobuchar nips at Buttigieg's heels, even though she's only at like 4 percent right now.
Tucker Carlson: Right. No, I think that's exactly right. This is her moment. Can she get it? I don't know. Thank you, Dana, for that. Great to see you tonight.
Dana Perino: Thank you. Have a good weekend.
Tucker Carlson: You, too. Time is running out for democratic candidates to win over voters or damage their rivals. Last night some of the sharpest blows were exchanged between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Elizabeth Warren: So, the mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle wine.
[applause]
Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.
[applause]
Pete Buttigieg: This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass. Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine. We need the support from everybody who is committed to helping us defeat Donald Trump.
[applause]
Elizabeth Warren: I do not sell access to my time. I don't do call time with millionaires and billionaires.
Pete Buttigieg: Hold on a second. Sorry, as of when, senator?
Elizabeth Warren: I don't meet behind closed doors with big dollar donors. Pete Buttigieg:
So, senator, your presidential campaign right now as we speak is funded in part by money you transferred having raised it at those exact same big-ticket fundraisers you now denounce.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: Really, two of the falsest people who've ever lived. For more on what happened last night, all of which we're going to savor, we're joined by Independent Women's Voice senior fellow Lisa Boothe. Hey, Lisa.
Lisa Boothe: Hi, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: It's hard to pick and I'm going to get out of this and just let you assess but I have to say when he said, "You're worth 100 times what I am," it was gratifying. Anyway, so, tell us, how nasty did it get?
Lisa Boothe: It got pretty nasty and the -- it's probably going to continue to get nasty because here's the thing. As you noted, time is running out before the February 3rd Iowa caucuses and then New Hampshire the following week. So, all of these candidates are trying to have those breakout moments. They're trying to build up their name ID. They're trying to fundraise so that they can go the distance.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Lisa Boothe: In what is still a crowded primary field and what I found interesting is you look at the knives pointed at Pete Buttigieg and the reason why they're pointed at him is if you look at the latest polls out of Iowa and New Hampshire, he's the frontrunner right now. So, that's why Senator Elizabeth Warren was going after Pete Buttigieg and what's interesting is he's so right about don't set purity tests that you yourself cannot pass because not only is Elizabeth Warren worth $12 million, but she took -- she transferred that money from her senate campaign to her 2020 bid taking the very -- the money from the very donors that she now denounces but look, she's not the only one to go after Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar also did. Watch this.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Amy Klobuchar: When we were in the last debate, mayor, you basically mocked the hundred years of experience on the stage. So, while you can dismiss committee hearings, I think this experience works and I have not denigrated your experience as a local official. I have been one.
Pete Buttigieg: You know -- I'm sorry.
Amy Klobuchar: I just think you should respect our experience when you look at how you evaluate –
[applause]
--- someone who can get things done.
Pete Buttigieg: You actually did denigrate my experience, senator, and it was before the break and I was going to let it go because we got bigger fish to fry here, but you implied –
Amy Klobuchar: Oh, I don't think we have bigger fish to fry than picking a president of the United States.
[applause]
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Lisa Boothe: Right. So, Klobuchar clearly trying to create that breakout moment. She's pulling at, you know, 3 or 4 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire. There's also this really weird moment last night from Senator Bernie Sanders.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
The Press: He also said, "If you look at the world and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men not getting out of the way."
[cheering]
Senator Sanders, you are the oldest candidate on stage this evening.
Bernie Sanders: And I'm white as well.
The Press: How do you respond to what the former president had to say?
Bernie Sanders: Well, I got a lot of respect for Barack Obama. I think I disagree with him on this one.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Lisa Boothe: So, Tucker, I don't know about you, but I am just glad that he clarified that because I didn't know. It wasn't obvious.
Tucker Carlson: Well, I think he knows that his party hates people like him, which is -- it's confusing. I mean, they're kind of open about it. Not kind of, they're -- it's the center of their party. And yet he and Biden are at the front. I mean, the whole thing is -- it's so confusing to me.
Lisa Boothe: Well, it certainly contradicts the things that they say they, you know, care about the most.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, no. I mean, it's very bizarre. They hate billionaires, but they've got a couple of them. It's all –
Lisa Boothe: But to add that in was also quite weird. So, I don't, yeah.
Tucker Carlson: It really -- I agree and I'm glad you're here to help us with this long process. Lisa Boothe, good to see you.
Lisa Boothe: Thanks, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: Well, the president was impeached the other day. Or was he actually impeached? [unintelligible] parliamentary quirk that is preventing impeachment from going to the next stage in the Senate. Is it really impeachment? That's next.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Donald Trump: By the way, by the way, it doesn't really feel like we're being impeached.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: That was the other night, that was live during the show, actually. Was the president impeached? It's kind of an interesting -- I mean, yes, of course, we've been telling you all the last three days he's been impeached. But technically there's an argument that he hasn't been impeached because Democrats so far have not sent impeachment articles onto the Senate. Why? Because they think the Senate tried to make them look stupid, which, of course, they have been. It may be that they never send the articles to the Senate, but if they don't send them, then as a factual matter, the president probably hasn't been impeached.
Just a few weeks ago, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman was a star witness on Capitol Hill for the left. And you remember he told us why it was critical to impeach President Trump. Now, Feldman may be wondering what he unleashed. In a piece for Bloomberg, the news site, not the presidential campaign, Feldman explained that, quote, "If the House votes to impeach but doesn't send the articles to the Senate, the House should be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution's description of impeachment. A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate." End quote. And by the way, you'd think Democrats would be for that, because for months they've been howling about the Constitution and protecting it and honoring the memory of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and all those other people whose statues they'd like to tear down because "They're racist." But it's all phony. Even on impeachment itself, they don't care about following the Constitution. They don't care about anything, actually, that stands in the way of their power.
Well, for years after the 2016 election, former Obama CIA Chief John Brennan was unambiguous. Interview after interview, he told us the Steele dossier played no role in the CIA's intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Brennan, by the way, told Congress this under oath. Now, the IG report indicates he was lying, lying. Brennan's statements have attracted the interest of U.S. Attorney John Durham. John Kiriakou is interested in what he said because he's a former CIA officer and a whistleblower who went to jail for doing less than John Brennan apparently has done. And what about that point? John, thanks so much for joining us.
John Kiriakou: Thanks for having me.
Tucker Carlson: But you, as someone whose life was turned completely upside down, was kind of destroyed for a while, see a guy like Brennan just committing perjury in public and nobody cares. How does it make you feel?
John Kiriakou: That seems to be what we're seeing now. If The New York Times is to be believed, John Brennan was saying one thing on Capitol Hill and on MSNBC, where he's now a paid talking head, and saying another thing internally to his own people and Jim Comey, who is FBI director at the time. So we know that John Durham, the U.S. attorney in -- for the state of Connecticut who's doing this investigation -- has now asked for and will receive call logs from John Brennan, emails from John Brennan during the time that he was the CIA director, as well as contemporaneous notes that Brennan took when he was meeting with these other leaders.
So, what are we looking at here? Are we looking at one of these or many of these process crimes making a false statement, perjury, conspiracy? That seems to be what John Durham is thinking of. And just a couple of weeks ago, Tucker, John Durham said that his investigation is not an inquiry. It's an investigation, and it's a criminal one.
Tucker Carlson: Brennan would have had to have known this, correct? I mean, he was at the very center of this. For him to say confidently the Steele dossier played no role in the FISA warrants, like, just common sense tells you he would likely have known that to be untrue when he said it.
John Kiriakou: Absolutely, just like he would have known that the Steele dossier began as opposition research. But he wasn't honest about that and neither was Jim Comey. We know that they lied to the FISA court. We know that they lied multiple times to the FISA court in order to renew the warrant against Carter Page. You know, I think that at that level, with everything being classified and with their arrogance at the same time, I think that they think they can just get away with it, that the truth isn't going to come out at the end. And now it looks like it will come out.
Tucker Carlson: It's -- you know, I want to because I love the country. And I spent my life here. I want to believe in our justice system. But, you know, you see Roger Stone facing, in effect, life in prison --
John Kiriakou: That's right.
Tucker Carlson: -- over lying about much less. You see the whistleblower venerated as a Christ figure, you're a, like, a legitimate whistleblower, and you went to jail.
John Kiriakou: [affirmative]
Tucker Carlson: And you've got to sort of wonder, like, actually, is this on the level? I'm sorry to say it.
John Kiriakou: Well, I was talking about this with my children the other day, and they asked essentially the same question. And I said, you know, when I was growing up, I just always assumed that adults were smarter than kids and that adults were fair because they were adults. And we've all come to realize that that's just simply not true. People have political axes to grind. Sometimes karma is a real thing, and sometimes there is justice in the end. Perhaps this will be one of those times.
Tucker Carlson: I think -- and I have no inside information, unlike John Brennan.
John Kiriakou: [laughs]
Tucker Carlson: I don't have a top secret security clearance, but I think karma's coming for him.
John Kiriakou: It's coming. I think that's right.
Tucker Carlson: John, great to see you tonight.
John Kiriakou: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Tucker Carlson: MS-13 has defenders in Congress and in journalism. We've had them on the show. But America's deadliest gang also has thousands of victims across this country, and thankfully, a bunch of those gang members are now in prison thanks to a major bust by cops in New York. We've got details on what happened next.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Tucker Carlson: Nancy Pelosi has praised the deadly MS-13 gang as God's own children. That small comfort to the gang's many, many victims. Just this week, Long Island police made a massive bust of MS-13 members securing huge troves of drugs and weapons they used to devastate neighborhoods.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Male Speaker: In connection with this investigation we've also recovered a large amount of evidence against the gang and its associates, including more than 10 kilograms of cocaine, approximately 1,000 pressed pills of Fentanyl, distribution quantities of heroine and marijuana, drug ledgers, nine handguns, two long guns, over 500 rounds of ammunition, and recovered in this operation were numerous machetes. This depicts how brutal and savage this gang is.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Derek Maltz is a former head of the DEA special operations division and he joins us tonight. Mr. Maltz, thanks so much for coming on. So, we sent drones, you know, to the other side of the globe to kill people who threatened us far less than MS-13 does. How seriously do you think as a country we're taking this threat?
Derek Maltz: Well, first of all, Tucker, thank you for having me. President Trump went to Long Island and visited the families, you know, in 2017. There were 26 murders over a period of a year and a half, and the Long Island police law enforcement community came together with the federal, state, and local partners and DOJ named MS-13 as one of the top five threats to America. So, the law enforcement agencies came together and crushed them. These are savages that were destroying families and actually using those machetes to cut people up, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: So, why have you seen politician after politician and political consultants, including on this show, defend MS-13? Like, how could you defend this?
Derek Maltz: I don't know, Tucker. Look at New York state. They're giving driver's licenses now to illegal aliens. They have all these bail packages now. They want to let these savages out into the communities and they're cutting up high school kids with machetes. You can't make this stuff up. I mean, I don't understand it. I mean, the community on Long Island right now should be very proud of law enforcement.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah.
Derek Maltz: I could tell you as a native of Long Island it's an amazing work, dedication for two years. It was one of the largest operations in America against gangs. It was the largest in New York state history to dismantle and destroy these monsters. So, I applaud the law enforcement community and district attorney Tim Sini did a tremendous job and tremendous leadership by all.
Tucker Carlson: Well, good for them. The pictures on our screen I think were shot by our cameramen when we went to Salvador to interview MS-13 gang members and one of the things that resonate with me was how far away El Salvador is from Long Island. So, how exactly did they become a presence in Suffolk and Nassau counties? I'm confused.
Derek Maltz: Well, Tucker, they had a very strong base of operations in California for years. They tried to establish a very good east coast operation, command and control, but unfortunately they ran up against some of the best and brightest law enforcement in the country and they were put out -- you know, they're going to be put out of business. It's just a matter of time. They hit nine leaders of the cliques. And these are the cliques, Tucker, by the way. If you want to be promoted in one of these cliques, you have to kill four people. This is how they get promoted. So, I don't understand how anybody in America wouldn't want these people immediately deported. As the matter of fact, I applaud President Trump, Attorney General Sessions and Bar, and the entire Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, because they took this threat serious. They worked together. They used the capabilities of the U.S. government and they really put a hurting on this violent, nasty gang. And it's going to continue because now they're going to get more cooperators. They made multiple arrests in El Salvador, in Europe, all over America, not just New York. So, this is going to continue, Tucker, and these guys are pretty good. They're going to exploit the communications. They're going to exploit the intelligence that they've developed and they're going to put a hurting on this nasty gang.
Tucker Carlson: I hope they do. And by the way, one in three Salvadorans on the planet lives in the United States and MS-13 primarily preys upon them. So, I mean, --
Derek Maltz: Hey, Tucker –
Tucker Carlson: --- you'd think they'd be grateful, and I think they are grateful, right? I mean, they're the victims of this.
Derek Maltz: Tucker, what about the case in July of the summer, the case in California, 19 out of 22 were illegal. They cut the heart out of a person. They chopped up a homeless guy because he was in their area. This is unbelievable. This is the worst violence you're going to see, and they work with the Mexican cartels, so we have a very bad national security crisis.
Tucker Carlson: I think, Derek, what you're saying is they're God's children, to quote the speaker of the House. Great to see you tonight.
Derek Maltz: Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah.
Derek Maltz: Thank you very much, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: Thank you. The president recently complained that federal light bulbs regulations made him look orange. Well, now his administration is announcing changes to those regulations right here on this program. That's next. Plus, big tech companies, the ones that hate you, are working through the night to silence you and make elections irrelevant, but at the same time conservatives in Washington are working with them. How does that work? We'll explain how it works right after the break.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Donald Trump: They got rid of the light bulb that people got used to, the new bulb is many times more expensive, and I hate to say it, it doesn't make you look as good. Of course, being a vain person that's very important to me.
[laughter]
It's like it gives you an orange look. I don't want an orange look.
[laughter]
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: Doesn't get credit for being the funniest president ever, which he is. Doesn't like high-efficiency light bulbs, though, by the way, most people who use them don't like them. But you don't have a choice because since 2007, during the Bush administration, federal regulators have forced you to have those in the name of climate change. But that could be changing. Dan Brouillette is the secretary of energy. He recently sat down with us on the question of light bulbs. Watch.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
Tucker Carlson: So how is your administration, the Trump administration, going to change regulations on light bulbs?
Dan Brouillette: We're just going to stop the insanity, Tucker. And it's what it is. It's absolute insanity. So previous administrations imposed regulations on light bulbs that would have required higher standards. And to the president's point, those standards make the existing incandescent light bulbs much more expensive.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah.
Dan Brouillette: Three hundred percent in our analysis. So, an average light bulb, 2 dollars for an incandescent light bulb would go to 8 dollars. And, you know, that's going to just push that industry completely out. You know, folks will be able to buy those products, and the industry won't make those products because people aren't buying them. So, we're simply stopping the insanity in this Trump administration. So, we're going to issue a new rule. You're going to see that in the next couple days. And it's just simply going to say we're not going to impose these standards. We're going to leave things as they are.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Dan Brouillette: We're going to allow consumers to buy the light bulbs they would like to buy rather than the ones Washington would like you to buy.
Tucker Carlson: So they've been on this light bulb thing for quite some time, the liberals in the Bush administration were pushing this, you know, 20 years ago.
Dan Brouillette: Sure.
Tucker Carlson: So, it's been a while, long enough to have results. Has forcing people to buy light bulbs they hate made the world cleaner?
Dan Brouillette: [laughs] Well, look, I think, you know, if you look at the light bulb market writ large, things have happened without government involvement at all. So today we have LED light bulbs that are very, very efficient, very cheap, very, very nice looking light bulbs, and they're very inexpensive now. They used to be very expensive 20 years ago, perhaps even 10 years ago, but now they're very cheap and people can afford to buy them. You know, has that made the world cleaner? You know, maybe it's had some impact on climate. But you know what? I think the real issue here is what China is doing and what India is doing. So we're not going to have the impact on climate, with simply by changing a light bulb rule. All we're going to do is make it tougher for consumers to have the choices that they deserve.
Tucker Carlson: So, the left is jumping up and down about this.
Dan Brouillette: [affirmative]
Tucker Carlson: But if Congress feels so strongly about it, why don't Democrats in the House sponsor legislation to ban the light bulbs they hate? Why don't they do that?
Dan Brouillette: Well, I guess they could. That would be an option for them, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: [laughs] That'd be called democracy. Why don't they practice it?
Dan Brouillette: I assume they could. If they had that, you know, prerogative. They do have that prerogative.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah.
Dan Brouillette: They'll have to take that choice. They could do it. But, you know, I think in Washington, as you well know, Tucker, because you've been here for quite some time, sometimes Congress punts. Sometimes Congress will take an end around. And in our view, I think that's what they attempted to do here many years ago. They passed it off to the Department of Energy to make the tough decisions about what these regulations and what these standards should be. And today, we're taking that step to make that decision. But our decision is going to be to leave the standards the way they are. We're not going to increase them. We're not going to make it even tougher on the American consumer. We're going to preserve the freedom that consumers want.
They can pick an incandescent lightbulb, or they can choose to buy an LED lightbulb.
Tucker Carlson: So that people who fly to Nantucket in private planes are lecturing the rest of us about our freaking lightbulb. Thank you for fighting back in a small but important way against the insanity. Mr. Secretary, thank you.
Dan Brouillette: Thank you, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: Good to see you.
Dan Brouillette: Good to see you.
Tucker Carlson: We've told you a lot on this show over the past few years about how Google, Facebook, and Twitter work in secret to impose a left wing political agenda on this country. In 2016, for example, Google employees worked behind the scenes to boost Hillary Clinton's voter turnout. They seemed despondent when they couldn't stop Donald Trump from winning. Google, as you well know, regularly suppresses conservative videos on YouTube. At one point, the company even contemplated rigging its search results to undermine Trump's immigration policy. Twitter, meanwhile, and you know this well, often bans users entirely for the crime of disagreeing with the left. At this point, it is very clear that big tech hates conservatives and works assiduously to harm them. Republican voters are starting to figure this out. A Harris poll from last year found that 83 percent of Republicans understand that tech is biased against conservatives. Another poll this summer found that 42 percent of all voters, not just conservatives, believe the Trump administration should take action to push back against the tech monopolies' political bias.
And yet, so far, that's not happening. No one in Washington is doing anything to rein in these companies in, but it doesn't have to be that way. There are a lot of things you could do if you wanted to. For example, tech companies have thrived under a special immunity they received from Congress that protects them from lawsuits over what people say on their platform. It's an exemption that Fox News, for example, does not have. So why does Google have it? Senator Josh Hawley would like to know the answer. Hawley has proposed stripping that immunity from tech companies and treating them like everyone else unless they can maintain neutral platforms for all views. Which, of course, was the original deal they struck. That's a great idea, but it hasn't happened.
Another idea is breaking up major tech companies so that a handful of monopolies don't have effective veto power over the First Amendment, which is where we are today. It's another great idea, but again, it hasn't happened. Why all the inaction on these questions? Well, a big part of the problem is that conservative nonprofits here in Washington, the ones they're supposed to be looking out for you, aren't actually looking out for you. They're looking out for big tech. A new report from the Campaign for Accountability obtained by this show highlights how conservative organizations in D.C. have colluded with big tech to shield leftwing monopolies from any oversight at all.
It's an amazing story, and it's happening now. This October, for example, Americans for Prosperity, that's a purportedly conservative group controlled by the billionaire Koch families, launched an ad supporting Facebook and Google. Again, not attacking, supporting Facebook and Google. The ads they ran targeted state attorneys general, Republican and Democrat, who are leading antitrust investigations into those two companies. In March., Americans for Prosperity ran digital ads urging members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to, quote, "oppose any effort to use antitrust laws to break up America's innovative tech companies." End quote. [laughs] In all, the Koch network quietly spent at least 10 million dollars defending Silicon Valley companies that work to silence conservatives. The richest companies in the world being defended by a conservative nonprofit as they attack conservatives.
Why are they doing this? Well, as one former Koch employee recently told this show off the record, quote, "I know for a fact they take money from social media companies to do their bidding." End quote. And it turns out he was right. Google has given money to at least 22 right-leaning institutions that are also funded by the Koch Network. Those institutions include the American Conservative Union, the American Enterprise Institute, the National Review Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Mercatus Center. We could go on. Google, for example, was the single largest donor to that competitive Enterprise Institute's annual dinner a few years back. So, what does all this money buy exactly? You know the answer.
In September of 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and three other groups that have been funded by Google and the Koch's sent a joint letter to the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, expressing grave concerns over DOJ's plan to look into whether search engines and social media were hurting competition and stifling speech. Here's how it works. Big tech companies silence conservatives, conservatives' nonprofits try to prevent the government from doing anything about it. Makes sense. And then there's the Heritage Foundation, maybe the biggest and best-funded think tank in Washington. Half the conservatives in this city seem to have worked there at one time or another. Almost 30 years ago, I did, for example. To this day, there are a lot of nice and very well-meaning people at Heritage. But as an organization, Heritage no longer represents the interests of conservatives, at least on the question of tack.
A recent paper by Heritage entitled "Free Enterprise is the Best Remedy for Online Bias. Concerns" defends the special bias concerns defends the special privileges that Congress has given to left-wing Silicon Valley monopolies. And if conservatives don't like it, Heritage says, well, they can just start their own Google. The paper could've been written by tech lobbyists. In fact, it may have been written by tech lobbyists. A trade association represents Silicon Valley called The Liability Exemption, that Google enjoys, "The most important law in tech." Well, Heritage's paper repeats that line verbatim, word for word, along with many other lines that the lobbyists wrote. It's embarrassing. But Heritage isn't embarrassed. None of the so-called conservative nonprofits in Washington are embarrassed. They make deals with people who hate you. They secretly sell out your interests. Then they beg you to tithe like it's the medieval church, like you owe them your money. That's the system that we've had for decades and maybe that's why no matter how much money you send nothing gets more conservative, just the opposite. You wonder how much longer the system can continue. Well, Fox's chief meteorologist, our friend Rick Reichmuth is here with a significant announcement for us. That's next.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Tucker Carlson: Time now for the friend zone. We welcome an old friend onto the program, someone from Fox. Tonight, Rick Reichmuth, one of our favorites. Rick has spent 15 years covering the weather here, but when he's not monitoring the latest hurricane or heat wave, he is passionate about American soldiers, especially those who have fallen in battle, their families. He's raised money to help them by selling a new kind of umbrella. Rick Reichmuth joins us now to talk about what he's doing. Hey, Rick. What are you doing?
Rick Reichmuth: Hey. 15 years?
Tucker Carlson: I know that's -- you don't look old enough. If people knew, I was at your 65 birthday party a couple of years ago, and people were stunned.
Rick Reichmuth: Back when I was 50. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's been two years now since we launched the Weatherman umbrella. It's a little side project. Fox has been so good about supporting me as I just have a little side gig working on this. Kind of just wanted to see if I can make a really great umbrella. We did it, and we were starting to have some really good success with it and I thought there's gonna be ways to give something back with this. And so we partnered with Folds of Honor and for the last two years each year we've made a patriotic umbrella, something that kind of honors our stars and stripes in our country. And we've given five dollars per umbrella back to two folds of honor each time. So last year, in 2018, our design, we were able to donate 75,000 to them. And this year, 80,000. So, it's from so many of our viewers who have purchased these umbrellas and people really kind of taking in and enjoying the umbrellas themselves because their really quality, which was the whole goal. So, this year, 80,000.
Tucker Carlson: So, I'm trying to do -- I'm not good at math.
I'll concede that. But you sold a lot of umbrellas.
Rick Reichmuth: We have. Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: That's amazing My wife has one, I should say, and never, and loves you personally, but that aside, never stops talking about the umbrella. She loves it.
Rick Reichmuth: Your wife is awesome. That picture you're seeing right there,we were the official umbrella of the President's Cup this last week. We made the umbrellas for both the U.S. team and the international team. And so really, really great to be able to see our umbrella. Something you work after for a really long time, worked really hard, and to see them displayed like that, it was really an honor, but it's coming from having a great team. We've got a great team working on this, and then all the support around here as well. Want to tell you, we so we launched last year, and we had our first umbrella. We've, everybody's been asking, “make us a smaller version of this so we can keep it in our backpacks or in our purses.” So, we launched that about two weeks ago, and we're calling it the travel. And we've only had anything on sale one day since we launched. And that is until right now. Tucker, so for your audience, if they go into weatherman umbrella dot com, we've got these on sale. We're giving -- we have free shipping if you don't need to before Christmas, if we need it for Christmas, a little bit a big discount to your shipping as well. So that's for your audience members. Go on to weatherman umbrella dot com and our travel umbrella, which we're really excited. Now, we've got the full array from the smallest all the way to the golf umbrella. And it's kind of a dream to get to this point.
Tucker Carlson: You know, look, I just, I just go with what my wife says. But again, she's like she's a fanatical fan, and she knows umbrellas. So, anyway, that's the highest person that I'm aware of. Rick Reichmuth, it's great to see you. Merry Christmas. Thank you for that.
Rick Reichmuth: Same to you. Good to see you.
Tucker Carlson: We're out of time. Amazing how fast that went. Here's the good news. We'll be back Monday and every weeknight in the foreseeable future to bring you the show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. Good night from Washington. Man, we're close to Christmas. Jason Chaffetz is filling in for Sean tonight. We're going to pass to him in just a minute. See you Monday, goodnight.
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