Former White House counsel files complaint to revoke Media Matters' tax exempt status
Former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush Boyden Gray says the liberal watchdog group has violated their tax exempt status by declaring war on Fox News.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 12, 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." Ever notice how certain people have started to disappear, not vagrants or runaways, the usual missing persons, but fairly prominent well-educated people with dissenting political opinions.
One day you are watching them or reading them online, the next time you check -- they're gone. You can't find their videos. They are not showing up in your Facebook Feed, suddenly you can't buy their books on Amazon. You google them to find out what happened and discover they have been banned. They are being called dangerous extremists, bigots, and Nazis. For the public good, they have been shut down -- disappeared.
You are a little surprised to hear this, they didn't seem evil to you or radical. They were just free thinkers saying something a little different from the party line on CNN. You don't complain about any of this though. You don't want anyone to know that you were watching forbidden videos. There is a penalty for that.
This is what an authoritarian society looks like. It's a place where the group in charge will tolerate no criticism at all. That's what we're becoming. It was only a matter of time before they came for Fox News.
Of the top dozen news networks in the United States, only Fox has an alternative view. The other channels speak with one voice. They are united on every issue every time. They are in almost perfect sync with the priorities of the Democratic Party. Fox News stands apart. The opinion shows on this channel have another perspective. You might consider that valuable diversity, something different in a sea of sameness. We're grateful that Fox supports that.
The left does not support that. They would like Fox News shut down tomorrow. The other news channels agree with that. They would like it, too. They are trying to do it now. It's worth explaining how the process of banning ideas work. The means by which so many voices have already been silenced in this modern era. The first step is defining political disagreement as a mortal threat to the country. Something that's dangerous. That is the job of a group called the Southern Poverty Law Center. It's an organization whose name intentionally masks its role as an enforcer for the Democratic establishment.
Groups or individuals who challenge the official story on virtually any subject find themselves designated a hate group by the SPLC. This is handy way to crush your political enemies. By definition, hate groups don't have legitimate ideas or positions. They only spew hate. So you don't have to listen to them or debate their claims, you could ignore everything they say. You your only duty is to suppress them and that's the beauty of the SPLC. Once they call the people you disagree with a hate group, you can move immediately to shut them up by force, and that's what they do.
That's where Media Matters comes. Media Matters is a George Soros-funded lobbying organization whose sole mission is to punish critics of the Democratic Party. Media Matters often uses propaganda from the Southern Poverty Law Center to bully corporations, news executives and tech companies into punishing people it doesn't like. Not surprisingly, the media love Media Matters.
One former employee described the group's relationship with MSNBC this way, quote, "We were pretty much writing their prime time." When Media Matters issued a press release, MSNBC picked it up, quote, "verbatim." Media Matters staffers once explained that the organization's close relationships with journalists in the National Press Corps were vast.
Here are some quotes. Quote, "Greg Sargent of "The Washington Post" will write anything you give him." "Ben Smith (now with BuzzFeed) will take stories and write what you want him to write." "The people at "Huffington Post" were always eager to cooperate." "Jim Rainey at the "L.A. Times" took a lot of our stuff." "Brian Stelter at the "New York Times" was helpful."
Well, Brian Stelter has since left the "New York Times." He is now the house eunuch at CNN announcing proclamations from his tiny king, Jeff Zucker. He takes his talking points though, still from Media Matters. Here is Zucker's puppet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN STELTER, CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT, CNN: A lot of what Fox does on prime time is resentment television, making you resent liberals and others who are trying to hurt you. That's the message from Fox. I think all of this matters, because it's about decency and standards. It's about the corrosive, ugly nasty behavior that sometimes happens on cable news or off cable news involving some of these hosts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "It's about decency," cries the eunuch. "We must have decency," by which the eunuch means less disobeying, more obedience. Stop criticizing the program or else. This is the face of state media.
Why does Fox even exist, they wonder? We have got 11 other perfectly good cable channels, all of them approved by management and obedient to the people in charge.
How could anybody watch something different? Fox can't be legitimate. They must be lying. Their viewers must be stupid. Listen to Don Lemon and the Governor's brother tell you why Fox News shouldn't even be allowed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, ANCHOR, CNN: As journalists, we have to give you the facts. What happens there is you don't talk about the substance of what you said or if there is -- if it's factual or not, you don't talk about that. What you do is you say, everybody is out to get me. Everyone is out to get conservatives.
You just say, "Oh, there is outrage on the left," and, "They have Trump derangement syndrome and they are always out to look without ever addressing the substance."
CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN: They are not about facts. They are about feelings.
LEMON: And then their audience just eats it up. "Yes, that's right. The left isn't ..." not even caring about the facts.
CUOMO: A lot of people don't feel those ...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Don Lemon is calling you dumb. Savor the moment. But there is an ominous undertone to all of this. Don Lemon doesn't have the power to have you arrested, Dana Nessel does. Nessel is the Attorney General of Michigan. She has created a special hate crime unit whose charter is to investigate any organization identified as a hate group by the SPLC.
This is what weaponized politics looks like. Criticize the people in charge and the SPLC will seek men with guns on you. It's terrifying. Even worse, you are subsidizing it without knowing it. Both the SPLC and Media Matters are amazingly tax exempt organizations.
In its original tax application to the IRS, Media Matters claimed that the American news media were dominated by a pro-Christian bias that needed them to balance it. Despite the obvious absurdity of that claim, the group received nonprofit status. It has been violating the terms of that status flagrantly ever since.
For example, during the Obama administration, Media Matters held weekly strategy discussions with the White House about how to hurt its political enemies. Media Matters kept an enemies list of Republicans to destroy, including Steve King of Iowa. This is a violation of Federal tax law.
Tax exempt nonprofits cannot function as an arm of a political party. Media Matters clearly does. According to a piece in the "New Republic," a liberal magazine, Media Matters changed its mission during the 2016 Democratic primaries to campaign for Hillary Clinton. We were, quote, "Running defense for Clinton," one Media Matters staff said, quote, "Defending Hillary from every blogger in their mother's basement."
In a leaked 2015 memo from inside Clinton's campaign, staff discussed cooperating, coordinating, and colluding with Media Matters to attack Republicans and accuse the press of biased coverage of Hillary.
In an e-mail from January 5th of 2016, Hillary staff discussed working with Media Matters to counter a "Vanity Fair" piece on Huma Abedin, quote, "We have Media Matters and core surrogates lined up which we can expand on tomorrow." This isn't just unethical, it is illegal.
Under IRS Regulations 501 (c) (3), nonprofits are totally prohibited from participating in campaigns of political candidates. Media Matters broke the law. The group has never been punished for this, though it is widely known. Media Matters retains its tax exempt status. That means that you and every other taxpayer is subsidizing attacks on our own First Amendment. Why is this? How can this be happening? Maybe someone should call the IRS tomorrow morning and find out.
Dave Rubin hosts "The Rubin Report." We don't agree on everything politically, but he is a sincere believer in free speech. We wanted to talk to him tonight. Dave, thanks very much for coming on. I am starting to think that a lot of us ...
DAVE RUBIN, HOST, THE RUBIN REPORT: Thanks, Tucker. Good to be with you.
CARLSON: ... overestimated the willingness of the Democratic establishment to coexist with people who disagree with them and under estimated the real threat, the actual existential threat to speech that we face now. Do you think that's right?
RUBIN: Well, I wish I could say that this whole situation is shocking, but this is exactly what I have been raising the alarm about on my show for the last five or six years. As you know, I come from the left. I was a progressive. I still consider myself a liberal in the best sense of liberalism - classical liberalism and I believe in the individual and all of that stuff that we have talked about several times.
But I want to address a couple of things here. First, on the way that you have responded to the attacks, by not apologizing. I think that was exactly the right thing to do. You know, all of us have joked, all of us have made mistakes, and all of us have a past. All of us have done things that we are not proud of and a series of other things.
If you have lived, you have done those things including, by the way, the very same Media Matters people who are going after you and all the media elite who are -- these are people who have pasts.
CARLSON: Let me just stop you there, I agree if I have wounded someone or wronged someone, I will always apologize to that person and ask for forgiveness. I do it every day.
RUBIN: Absolutely.
CARLSON: I'm not going to apologize to Media Matters or any other Soros- backed pressure group, I haven't wronged them, they've wronged me. I owe them nothing including an apology, and I will never bow to them, period.
Excuse me, I couldn't control myself.
RUBIN: I couldn't agree more and that's exactly --
CARLSON: Yes, I'm for apology, but not to them.
RUBIN: Well, I couldn't agree more and by the way, that's exactly the message that I think your audience and the average American needs to hear right now. We have watched years now of the mob coming for everybody.
And as you just laid out, a lot of this stuff is coordinated between nonprofits and media organizations and the rest of it and it is time that we stopped giving into it and not only do we have to stop giving into it, so that a guy like you isn't taken out and that a network like Fox isn't taken out or any network.
We are still free here in this country for a little while longer, I think and I will continue to fight for, but it's not just that. It's because what they are really trying to do is trying to make the average citizen, the average person who is an American fear that whatever they said 20 years ago that someone can dig up on Facebook or wherever it is or some old audio recording, that they will go after them.
You were joking around with "Bubba, the love sponge." Now, I am pretty sure that as a shock jock, you know who I would love to get involved in this fight? If Howard Stern happens to watch your show by any chance. You know, for 30 years, he was the number one shock jock in the country. And imagine the politicians, actors, comedians, and authors that walked through that studio and said completely bananas crazy things, sometimes joking, sometimes partly true. It doesn't even matter. The point is that if we are going to come for everyone's past, guess what? That means everyone and the same people who are coming for you they better watch out.
And that idea of mutually assured destruction is not in the -- it's not part of the America that I want to be part of. I want to be part of something that has a little bit of forgiveness, that understands we are all imperfect creatures, and that is little more respectful of our ability to agree to disagree because that's what this country was founded on.
CARLSON: Exactly. In the last 24 hours, I have received, I don't know, dozens of transcripts of prominent progressives saying awful things on this show or that show or attacks from them. We could do a whole show on this. "They said it, too." I'm not doing that because I think you ought to be able to say what you think. I think you ought to be able to make jokes and make mistakes and I'm not going to play their game, period. And I don't care if I benefit from them, I am never doing that.
And very quickly, tell us, you've thought about this so much, and I hope you will come back on to further explain it, but what can the average person who is essentially powerless in the face of this do to protect his right to his God-given rights?
RUBIN: Start speaking up now. You know, this comes up every college I speak at, every public event I speak at. This is what young people are asking about. "I am afraid to speak up. I want to get the grade. I want to get out of school." Or, "I don't want to get fired from my job." That freezing ability that is silencing good, decent people who usually lean a little bit right. They are usually libertarians or conservative, something like that. Imagine if everyone started speaking up and I don't believe that most people are racist. I don't believe that most people are bigots or want to do harm.
CARLSON: Of course not.
RUBIN: I think good people are now afraid to speak, and the only way we are going to break this thing and that's why they are coming after you because have you been the most vocal in the mainstream fighting this, and if more of us start doing it, they can't take us all down. And if we don't, then we will get what we deserve which is something far, far worse than this country that they seem to have so many problems with.
CARLSON: I hope your words wind up on people's refrigerators because you are absolutely right, absolutely right. David Rubin, thank you, it's great to see you.
RUBIN: Well, I will keep defending you, man, really. I think more people need to do it and you have a lot of support out there and I can tell you this, you have support in quarters of the left that you don't even know you do and they are just afraid to speak out and I will keep working on those guys, too.
CARLSON: I appreciate it. David Rubin, thank you. Boyden Gray is a former White House counsel to George H.W. Bush. He has filed a complaint with the IRS seeking to pull Media Matters tax exempt status and he joins us tonight. Boyden Gray, thanks very much for coming on.
C. BOYDEN GRAY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TO GEORGE H.W. BUSH: My pleasure.
CARLSON: Your complaint and the information in the public domain make it very clear that Media Matters has violated its tax exempt status. Why does it still possess that status?
GRAY: Well, because the IRS hasn't reconsidered what it did, and it's not entirely legal, but the government has not always been entirely fair and they have misused you, they have abused you, and they have abused me in a sense because I'm subsidizing attacks on your program, and I don't find that fair.
If anybody wants to spend his own nickel attacking anybody on television, or what they have said, that's fine. But I don't think it ought to be subsidized by the Federal government. That's completely wrong and the government ought to stay out of it.
CARLSON: So there is documentary evidence to show, conclusively from both sides of it, that Media Matters coordinated with the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign in 2016. That is a prima facie -- I mean, and you tell me, you are the lawyer who specializes in this. That would appear to be a violation, right?
GRAY: There is no question about it and remember that, you know, when the complaint was first filed by me and others, they had declared war on Fox News. They had declared war on Fox. Now, that's a violation right there.
They were -- they have been in violation for over a decade and it's really -- or since their founding. So it's really outrageous. And I don't know how it can be stopped, but I think maybe it's time for someone to speak up at the White House and say, "Look, the IRS is controlled. It's under the control of right-thinking people or better thinking people," and let's see if we could push the IRS to treat you fairly and to treat all people fairly who don't want to subsidize a speech they don't agree with.
CARLSON: I mean, there were entirely legitimate nonpartisan conservatives who did not receive tax exempt status under Lois Lerner at the IRS purely because she didn't like their politics. And now, you have the IRS protecting an openly partisan group in flagrant violation of the law. You have got to think, maybe there is something wrong with the IRS.
GRAY: There is something wrong with the IRS. That's not the only agency where there is something wrong with the Federal government, so keep up your good work because as your previous guest said, if people don't speak out, then we are all lost and that's the big omission is people not speaking out. There is nothing more harmful than to keep silent when you shouldn't be defending yourself and others who are exercising their own First Amendment rights.
CARLSON: Amen. I agree with that. Boyden Gray, thank you very much for coming on.
GRAY: My pleasure. Good luck to you.
CARLSON: Thank you. Democrats find themselves tonight split over the question of impeachment. Will Party leaders prevail? They are nervous about it, or the fire breathing freshman who would like to begin impeachment proceedings this evening. Who will win? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has this reputation as an iron fist kind of person, that's why she is Speaker again. But all of a sudden, she can't seem to keep other own Party under control at all.
For example, yesterday, probably anticipating that the Mueller report will come soon and there won't be collusion in it, Pelosi said that impeachment would be a bad idea and even Adam Schiff agreed.
But, many of the Party's new members, newly radicalized members will not be denied their impeachment trial. In open defiance of Pelosi, they insist that impeachment remains on their party's agenda. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. AL GREEN, D-TX: I do not believe that an unfit President should be allowed to stay in office. We have to honor Article 2 Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America which calls for the impeachment of an unfit President.
REP. BRAD SHERMAN, D-CALIF.: I support impeaching President Trump and I think it's important that we talk about impeaching President Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Important that we talk about impeachment. Well, Maxine Waters has been talking about impeachment for many years now. She says the Democrats already have the evidence they need.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MAXINE WATER, D-CALIF.: This deplorable despicable human being that occupies the White House should not be there. They say, "Maxine, please don't say impeachment anymore." And when they say that, I say, "Impeachment, impeachment, impeachment."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That's just too amusing. Jonathan Harris is a Democratic political commentator. We are happy to have him tonight. Jonathan, thanks a lot for coming on.
JONATHAN HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Nice to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: So I guess the obvious technical legal constitutional question is being a, quote, "despicable human being" grounds for impeachment, what would you say?
HARRIS: It should be, but it is not. No, it is not. It is high crimes and misdemeanors, definitely and I think that's --
CARLSON: Oh, no it's not. Okay, just checking.
HARRIS: No. It should be. No, it is high crimes and misdemeanors and I think that's what Nancy Pelosi and a lot of the top Democrats have been saying is, we have to wait for the Mueller report. We have to wait and find out what is in it and if we find out that any of those things took place, then impeachment is something we should look at. But right now, she is saying no it is not worth it because it's divisive.
CARLSON: Wait, wait, wait, but what she just said contradicts itself. So you're saying that Democratic leaders are saying, "Let's wait for the report and find out what's in it and then we'll decide whether that constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor."
HARRIS: Right.
CARLSON: But you also said correctly that they are saying even before we've seen the report that, no, we shouldn't impeach. Why are they preemptively judging the Mueller report? The whole lie they have been telling us for two years is "Wait and see." Why are they not sticking with that lie?
HARRIS: No, no. What I was saying was that -- and maybe I didn't say it - - I will say it again. What they're saying is right now, there is no reason for an impeachment because we don't have the Mueller report. Once we get the Mueller report, if we see that there are high crimes and misdemeanors, then that's something that we should discuss.
But right now, we don't have the information. Multiple Democratic reps have said the same thing. We don't have enough to know right now if there are grounds for impeachment. We have to wait for the Mueller report.
CARLSON: So, if we don't have -- I mean, obviously, colluding with a foreign power to subvert an election would be a high crime and misdemeanor by anyone's definition.
HARRIS: Right, definitely.
CARLSON: Framers included and they have been alleging that Trump is guilty of that for two and a half years. Now, they are conceding he is not guilty of that, shouldn't they apologize for their reckless --
HARRIS: They are not conceding.
CARLSON: Well, there are -- yes, they are.
HARRIS: There is no concession.
CARLSON: Yes, they are. They are conceding. We don't have --
HARRIS: No.
CARLSON: Yes, there is, because yes -- let me just finish the sentence, because they are conceding they don't have the evidence that their initial claims were true. So they got way out over what they knew to be true, made these reckless claims, scared the hell out of America, and now two and a half years later, they can't prove it. So shouldn't they just apologize, ashes and sack cloth, we were wrong. We are were completely irresponsible and we're sorry, America. I am serious.
HARRIS: That's absolutely not what they are -- that's not what they have done at all. What they said, they are not backing off. They are not conceding. They said, right now, it's not worth it. We don't have evidence to support that yet. We are waiting for the conclusion of the Mueller report. When we get the Mueller report, then we will know for sure. That's not a concession, that's not saying that he didn't conspire with a foreign power.
CARLSON: But actually, so what I am going to do when the Mueller report comes out, and I'm sure it will allege all kinds of things, I doubt it will allege collusion because I don't think there is any evidence it happened, but when that comes out ...
HARRIS: We don't know.
CARLSON: ... we are going to play, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes of tape, not just of fringe characters like Maxine Waters, but of Democratic leaders like the Speaker of the House and the Head of the Intel Committee saying there was collusion. There was a betrayal of the United States of America. There was a subversion of our democracy. They made those claims. They haven't been able to prove them. Shouldn't they say, "I'm sorry. We overstated what we knew."
HARRIS: I think the claims have been that it is their feeling based on the intelligence reports, based on the intelligence agencies, many - multiple of them that say that this is what Putin wanted, this is what was going on, that that was their feeling based on the information that they had.
Nobody pretended to be a psychic and knew what the Mueller report would be. We have to wait, but based on the evidence that they have. I mean, Trump did ask Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's server at a campaign rally in front of the entire country. So I mean, it's not like it's back fired --
CARLSON: Kind of -- it was secret communique with the Russians at a campaign rally.
HARRIS: It's not that farfetched.
CARLSON: Very quick though, so what you are arguing, what they are arguing is, he committed treason, but we can't impeach him.
HARRIS: Absolutely not.
CARLSON: He committed treason, but we can't impeach him.
HARRIS: That's not what they are saying at all. They said, wait for the report --
CARLSON: You just said, he was sending secret messages to the Russians.
HARRIS: You said that I did not say that. You said that.
CARLSON: Okay, I thought --
HARRIS: I did not say that.
CARLSON: I'm losing track, but I hope you will come back when the report comes out and we can talk it through.
HARRIS: I'd be glad to say it again.
CARLSON: I can't wait.
HARRIS: I would be glad to say it again. Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thanks, Jonathan. Good to see you.
HARRIS: Bye, good to see you, too.
CARLSON: Pretty amazing story tonight that confirms every suspicion you have ever had about the scam that is higher education in this country. A college cheating scandal. The latest proof that the people in charge live by very different standards from the rest of us. Their kids go to Harvard, your kids don't. We will tell you exactly how it works after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: In a story that confirms every single thing you've long known but that they assured you it wasn't true at all, dozens of people including CEOs and two prominent actresses have been caught up in a massive cheating and bribery scandal involving admissions to the nation's top colleges. There is a very narrow road to affluence and prominence in this country. They control the gates to it. They are excluding you and letting themselves in. Trace Gallagher has more on this amazing story.
TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, the Feds say operation Varsity Blues began in 2011 and ended last month where 33 parents so far paid anywhere from $200,000.00 to $6.5 million to get their kids in to an elite college.
Court records say the parents paid the money to a college and career adviser named, William Singer, and Singer, who has already pled guilty, would, in turn, funnel the money to coaches and college administrators to make kids look like star athletes.
Singer also bribed testing centers to alter SAT and ACT scores or hired proctors to sit with students while they took the tests.
Here is a prosecutor. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW LELLING, U.S. ATTORNEY: There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy and I will add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: Along with prominent law and business professionals, actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman have also been charged. The FBI says Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli $500,000.00 to have their two daughters recruited to the University of Southern California's crew team even though the girls had never rowed.
And actress Felicity Huffman allegedly paid $15,000.00 to boost her daughter's SAT score and, indeed, it went up 400 points. A judge has now released Huffman on $250,000.00 bond; her husband, the actor William H. Macy has not been charged.
Many of the suspects are now cooperating including the former Yale women's soccer coach who was paid $400,000.00 for recruiting a girl who never played competitive soccer. When she got in to Yale, her parents paid William Singer an additional $1.5 million. Tucker?
CARLSON: My mind is blown. Trace Gallagher, thank you. Patrick Deneen is exactly the person we wanted to talk to tonight. He is a political science professor at Notre Dame and he joins us tonight. Professor, thanks very much for coming on.
PATRICK DENEEN, PROFESSOR, NOTRE DAME: Thank you.
CARLSON: It sounds like it's not really a meritocracy.
DENEEN: Well, it's a meritocracy that is now taking on all of the features of the old aristocracy. In other words, it's able to perpetuate itself from one generation to the next which is, at least in theory, what the meritocracy came in to being to get rid of, and so what we have now is a new version of the old aristocracy.
CARLSON: What I'm confused by is why it took a police sting to unearth this information. Colleges are supported, heavily supported, wouldn't exist in many cases without Federal subsidies either directly or through Federally-backed student loans. So why isn't the admissions process transparent?
DENEEN: Well, the admissions process has always had features to it that invite gaming, I think we could call it, and I think what we saw today is really just the logical extension of longstanding gaming, most of which, in fact, probably the lion's share, which is entirely legal, but involves assisting your children in taking the standardized tests and enrolling them in enrichment camps and all kinds of service opportunities that end up padding resumes.
And for some parents, moving into school districts where your public school education is going to get you certain advantages. So we have had a system that has invited this kind of gaming and I think what we saw today is really just the logical extension of this into illegality but, let's face it, this is simply a manifestation of what's already been the case -- the wealthy and powerful are able to game the system and ensure that their children have advantages that most America's children do not have.
CARLSON: They are also the same ones who are very apt to lecture everyone else about diversity and the need for diversity in higher education. That was not a diverse group from what I can tell. I sense there is a connection there.
DENEEN: I think there is a deep connection. In fact, as it's become more and more difficult for most families to have students admitted to these, let's say increasingly this narrow path to success and achievement in American society, at the very same time, we have seen these institutions become these centers of claims of egalitarianism and of "wokeness" to use the term of art.
When I taught at Princeton a number of years ago, I had an article from the "New York Times" on my door. It was an interview of the Dean of Students about the selectivity of eating clubs on campus, kind of their version of fraternities and the Dean of Students stated without self-consciousness, she stated there is no place for selectivity and elitism on the Princeton campus.
This is the kind of viewpoint one encounters at these kinds of institutions where everyone believes they are the very portrait of egalitarianism and are completely unaware in some ways of how profoundly elite and selective they in fact are.
CARLSON: Do you think they really believe that or are they just projecting. They sort of know how rotten and corrupt the system is and that spurs them to attack everyone else as rotten and corrupt.
DENEEN: I think there is - it's probably a bit of a mix. There is certainly awareness of how difficult it is to get into these kinds of institutions. But I think there is also a kind of deep almost self- deception that takes place as soon as you are a part of this ruling class.
Since in a democracy, it's unacceptable to be a kind of aristocrat, these institutions cry and decry and denounce any form of inequality except the very one that perpetuates this elite class that occupies these institutions.
CARLSON: Exactly. Professor Deneen, one of the few professors I really respect. Thanks a lot for coming on tonight. I appreciate it.
DENEEN: Thanks for having me, Tucker.
CARLSON: The new Harris poll shows that young people in this country are losing faith in free enterprise at a very rapid clip. About half of millennials responded and say they would prefer to live in a socialist country.
Katie Pavlich is an editor at "Town Hall," and she joins us tonight to explain what exactly is going on. Hey, Katie, if this poll had been taken 20 years ago, I think people would have assumed that there was something wrong with the way it was weighted. No one would have believed this. What has changed?
KATIE PAVLICH, EDITOR, TOWNHALL.COM: Well, today people do believe it because when we talk to young people on college campuses, like I do on a regular basis, they do think that they believe in socialism. Now, this is a culmination of decades of the left having a monopoly on education and through their indoctrination, not starting at college, but at kindergarten through -- K through 12.
They are talking about socialist policies, Marxist policies and even communism as better ways of economies than capitalism and they are doing it in a resentful way, turning Americans against Americans, telling young kids in elementary school that the reason why they are worse off is because somebody else is rich, and you and I know that's not the case.
They have been very successful at breeding this resentment. The class warfare is coming to fruition. And let's not forget, this did start really coming to a head under Barack Obama when he was accused of advocating for socialist policies when he talked about spreading the wealth around, but you are a racist if you decided to talk about that type of ideology about socialism, right?
So we didn't talk about it and then people like Bernie Sanders, now, AOC have taken advantage of that smear and have promoted it as a society that we should be embracing while not just Venezuela falls apart, but states like New York and California fall apart as a result of these kinds of policies.
CARLSON: So why didn't the generations of pro-market education sponsored by the affirmative conservative establishment have any effect?
PAVLICH: I think it's had somewhat of an effect, but the truth is that conservatives just aren't in the education system, the public education system like we wish they could be. I mean, if you look at the percentage of college professors who are conservative, it's just like the White House Press Corps, it's something like 7% of college professors identify as Republicans.
And of course, professor and administrators all over the country are doing everything they can to squash any kind of dissent to talk about this conservative ideology. And students on campus are punished for having a different ideology than, I don't know, the Marxist poster that's on the wall of one of their professors in one of their classes such as mine when I was in college.
And so there is a damaging effect in terms of conservative students not being able to speak up for what they want and then conservative professors being nonexistent in a way that teaches young people something they haven't heard before.
You can't blame people for not knowing something they haven't been told, and the only thing that they have heard from preschool to college is about how socialism is fine, it's a better system. It's more fair. They play to the emotions her, but I will say there is plenty of organizations like Prager U, for example, does do educational videos that are educating young people on these issues and hopefully, can turn the tide when it comes to socialism, because it's not good for young people.
Everybody thinks that it allows you for more freedom and more liberty, but the fact is, it makes every single person the same and limits your ability to be yourself and individual. And I don't know any 18 to 30-year-old who wants to be controlled by anybody else, right?
And so when you tell them that there are rules attached and that you don't get to make decisions on your own, that everything is a one-size-fits-all policy mandated by the government and you don't have a choice, they tend to change their mind.
CARLSON: Young people believe their professors. I have never understood that. It never occurred to me to believe a -- they strike me as some of the least impressive people in the world. I don't know why you would believe them, but they do. Katie Pavlich. Great to see you.
PAVLICH: Thanks, Tucker. See you.
CARLSON: They are calling it a birth strike. Some young people in Great Britain are refusing to have children, they say it is for the sake of the planet. Is it a sign of something deeper that's amiss in western civilization? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The left claims that it opposes racism. By now, you know the left is always projecting. What they say you are doing they are doing is what they are doing, and they are constantly fomenting racial hatred. They do it constantly whether it is by publicizing fake hate crimes or instating racial quota systems or bringing back segregation, sometimes, just in a mindless coverage of news stories.
This headlines, the real headline, it rand today in the "The Washington Post" and we are quoting now, "Whites are mainly to blame for air pollution, but blacks and Hispanics bear the burden says a new study." It's too funny.
Let's just be clear though. I mean, take three steps back. This article was designed to attack an entire group based solely on their skin color. The headline, the leading paragraphs are all meant to attack this enemy racial group in our midst and of course, imply that they are racist, by doing what? It doesn't say. It doesn't matter. They are hurting other people.
This article doesn't seek to help the environment. If it was, they could talk about overall air pollution levels, which by the way, and "The Post" has even reported this, have declined dramatically in the last few decades for everybody because the factories closed.
"The Post" could have focused on the extra air pollution caused by immigration driven population growth or people wealthy people jetting across the country to attend, I don't know, climate conferences. But they didn't. Jeff Bezos wouldn't like that, he is one of those people and "The Post" knows that because it's his newspaper.
In an age of concern about climate change, some people have become opposed to the very idea of having children. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez is warning that it could be immoral to have kids.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.: Our planet is going to have a disaster if we don't turn this ship around and so it's basically like there is scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult and it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, should -- is it okay to still have children?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Some people decided that, no, it is not okay to have children. Blythe Pepino is a co-founder of Birth Strike, it's a group of people who are refusing to have children in order to resist climate change, and she joins us tonight. Blythe, thanks very much for coming on.
BLYTHE PEPINO, CO-FOUNDER, BIRTH STRIKE: Thank you for having me.
CARLSON: This story makes me sad. I'm not here to attack you, I want to take what you are saying seriously. But I'm not sure I understand why you are choosing not to have children. So I would be grateful if you would tell us.
PEPINO: Sure. Yes, thank you for asking because a lot of people are getting a little bit confused about what we are trying to do here. Birth Strike isn't about trying to stop other people from having children. We feel too afraid to have kids because we feel that we are heading towards civilization breakdown as a result of the environmental crisis and this sort of mismanagement or political inertia over dealing with it, does that make sense?
CARLSON: It does make sense. It's a sadder answer even than I imagined. Because, there are a lot of people who argue nobody should have kids. That's one argument. You are basically saying, the species is over, it is hopeless. We should in effect, as a group end it, commit suicide.
PEPINO: Well, I think where we are now is incredibly frightening and what I discovered when I made the decision and started talking about it to other young women around me, was that we felt like we had lost faith in the system and the authorities because they weren't really dealing with the situation. They weren't managing the threats properly that we have been told about.
So, yes, it is quite sad, but at the same time, Birth Strike itself is a hopeful act. What we are trying to say is, "Come on, we have got two options." We either unite collectively behind action on this immediately because we are already heading towards the collapse, or we consign ourselves to, I mean it sounds crazy but it's true, extinction.
CARLSON: What makes me so sad is this is a metaphor for the broader west loss of the will to live, which is so obvious everywhere you turn. I wonder though, did it occur to you and I'm not disagreeing with your forecast that there are bumpy times ahead, that's obvious. But wouldn't it be a mark of defiance, maybe part of the solution to have a bunch of smart, decent children who might solve these problems?
PEPINO: Yes, I totally understand that point of view and there has been people in my life who are very aware of the severity of what we are heading to who have made that decision and they have said, "You know, it's the kind of most hopeful act that you could take is to have a child in these times," and I do respect that. I do respect that.
CARLSON: If you were to fly to Africa tonight, and just do a tour, a lot of -- dozens of course, scores of countries in Africa. But if you were to just pick five and meet 10 people each on the street and explain what you are doing, what do you think their reaction would be?
PEPINO: I have no idea.
CARLSON: Do you think people outside the west can understand this? Do you think there is any other civilization that has decided things are so hopeless we must all die?
PEPINO: I really don't know. I wouldn't be able to say.
CARLSON: I mean, is this something you have thought for a long time or tell us, how you were convinced that things were so bad that you shouldn't reproduce?
PEPINO: Well, yes, I think that -- I mean, I have been concerned about the environment for a long time, but you know, I got distracted by my career and just being a young person and living the life that I saw other people on television living and that seemed to be the right thing to do, and then the last few years, I just kept reading more and more things and last year with the IPPC report came out and then the Met report and things that have been corroborated by pretty much 99% of the scientific community if not all, sane scientists. It's pretty incontrovertible now, I would say.
CARLSON: So what -- I don't mean this as criticism, I mean it sincerely. What you are describing sounds very much a religious conversion and the life you are living seems almost a monastic life. Does that occur to you?
PEPINO: A monastic life? I don't think, no, you should come and hang out with for a bit, Tucker.
CARLSON: You are giving up family for the cause. Okay, just a thought.
PEPINO: I have got layers of children around me and I'm fighting for them, really. This is my way of saying, "Come on humanity, we have got two options. we are either going to commit some kind of species suicide by ignoring the issue because we're too afraid of the change or something or we are going to unite together and at least try and manage some of the collapse that's predicted in a sensible and rational way." But I'm not living a monastic life.
CARLSON: We just met. It's a little early for me to be giving you advice, but I just want to end with this, I think you should have children. I think they solve a lot of problems and put things in perspective. You seem like a nice person, I bet you'd love it.
PEPINO: We don't have time.
CARLSON: Yes, we do. There is always time. Blythe, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
PEPINO: Thank you for having me.
CARLSON: Well, there isn't simply a war on children and war on men and war on reason. Lot of wars going on, but there is also, beneath the waves, a war on meat. They can take your steaks away. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Not so long ago, we interviewed a former Amazon employee called Shannon Allen. Allen told us how she became homeless after she was injured working at an Amazon warehouse and then had her Workers' Comp denied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: And just to be clear, you were injured on the job you say and then you wound up living in your car?
SHANNON ALLEN, FORMER AMAZON EMPLOYEE: Yes. I started living in my car several months ago because of nonpayment from the Workers' Comp and from Amazon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So Amazon reached out to us and said that Allen's case was very unusual. That never happens. Amazon has a lot of happy, satisfied workers.
Well, Jeff Bezos is the world's richest man. That does not mean he treats the people who work for him humanely, he does not. A new piece today highlights the condition inside Amazon's many warehouses that dot the United States.
Dozens of times over the past five years, 911 dispatchers have received frantic phone calls from Amazon warehouses warning that employees, Jeff Bezos' employees were on the brink of suicide.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, this is the Amazon.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Amazon.com.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay, what's going on there?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a male 34, suicide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have a female associate they believe is overdosing at the moment with possible emotional disorders.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He attempted to cut himself three or four times tonight.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay, what did he attempt to cut himself with?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of our safety box cutters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And she has very specific plans. She made a threat that she said she has enough pain pills in her car to -- to basically end it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And has he said how he would kill himself?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has he said how he would kill himself?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blow his brains out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: If those were your employees, if those were your people, you'd be very upset. Jeff Bezos is not very upset. He doesn't need to be. He knows the way out. Just donate to a few liberal lifestyle causes, campaign against global warming or push for gay rights in Russia. Have his own personal vanity newspaper, the "Washington Post," run a few more pieces attacking people for the color of their skin, and the left will be placated.
Republicans in Washington, they'll never even notice. Frustratingly.
Well, Democrats don't want you driving cars, flying on planes or having children, all for the sake of the environment, which is an utterly abstract concept to them. But they're now coming after your dinner.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced meatless Mondays for entire New York City public school system, the largest on this continent.
The purpose, needless to say is to stop global warming somehow.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, D-NEW YORK CITY: We're thinking about our kids individually, we want them to be as healthy as they can be and we want them to learn as well as they can learn and Meatless Mondays will help. It will create more balance in their lives. We're talking about our climate, the existential threat of global warming. This is something we do to that is another contribution to addressing global warming, striking more of the balance in our whole society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Dumbest politician in America? That's unfair. There is actually one dumber. She is 29. She is in Congress now. And she's also joined the anti-meat cause. She says the new Green New Deal requires people not to eat so many burgers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DESUS, HOST, SHOWTIME: My Twitter mentions -- I'm getting a lot of references about cow farts. I think that's in reference to your Green New Deal.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes.
DESUS: Can you explain that for us?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: We've got to address factory farming. Maybe we shouldn't be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Mark Steyn stein is an author and columnist. He joins us tonight. Mark, do you feel that your diet is threatened by the newly emerging left?
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Yes, as I understand it, every time I have a cheeseburger, a polar bear dies, and I don't want to -- as your previous guest was saying, that nice young lady, we shouldn't be having kids. We should go extinct.
But if you do make the mistake of having kids, the least you could do is not have your kids eat meat so that cows will go extinct and therefore there won't be the devastation wreaked by bovine flatulence. We're actually approaching the point at which liberal myths are terrorizing millions of hitherto sane people.
CARLSON: Yes, that's right. So you have the reaction with that interview with the woman from the U.K. that I did. I felt sorry for her. I wasn't mad at her, but she has been told by the religious leaders in her global warming cult that having children is wrong and so she's basically joined a monastery and given up her life in service of their weird religion. I mean, she's the victim.
STEYN: Yes, well, actually, modern day climate cultism is rather like the Shakers. The Shakers, you'll recall, in parts of northern New England, they -- they eschewed breeding so their tribe would not multiply and they could only win over people, create more Shakers by conversion.
That's actually modern day liberalism whether by your previous guest or Mayor de Blasio, hence these -- hence these Meatless Mondays. Which, again, for de Blasio's point of view, it's just boutique attitude striking narcissistic solipsistic naval gazing nonsense liberalism, but at the sharp end, the people like that young lady you talked to, who are terrified because they made the mistake of believing these lunatics.
CARLSON: That's exactly right. I mean, Jim Jones was hilarious until your niece joined him and moved to Guyana. At which point, it became really, really tragic.
STEYN: Exactly, yes.
CARLSON: Can I just point out though that the Shakers did useful things. I mean, they had a beautiful aesthetic sense. They were tremendous carpenters. They built great furniture and boxes, and they are famous for t heir joinery. What do progressives create?
STEYN: Oh, well, that's Shakerism without the attractive furniture. This other big meat story, I mean, I think one of the reasons they don't like meat, by the way, is because it's a primal thing. Even if you get it in a polystyrene Wendy's drive-thru container, the idea is that that's why the expression "red meat" is used for particularly raw, bloody rhetoric. You know --
CARLSON: Well, exactly. Exactly.
STEYN: Hitler had at Nuremberg rally, and he tossed some red meat to the crowd. So actually, the war on red meat is part of the sort of anesthetizing of society in that sense. That's masculinity.
CARLSON: That's true. Though I would point out that the genocidal leader you just mentioned was a vegetarian. Just in all fairness.
STEYN: Yes, yes. That's true.
CARLSON: Mark Steyn -- militantly -- great to see you. Thank you very much for that.
STEYN: Always a pleasure to be with you, Tucker.
CARLSON: We're out of time. It is for me. We will be back tomorrow, 8:00 p.m.
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