Is it time for Trump to declassify materials on campaign spying?

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Is it time for Trump to declassify materials on campaign spying?

Could Trump campaign spying be worse than we thought? Reaction from former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 14, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, ANCHOR: A loving human being -- Tim Conway was 85 years old.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Beto O'Rourke, we are set to tell you has changed. He is not the boyish carefree road tripper with the Primo weed hookup you might remember from just a few months ago, that Beto is gone maybe forever.

The new Beto is far more serious, even angry. What's the new Beto mad about? Well climate change obviously, and border walls and bigotry and uptight old people who don't understand that skateboarding is not a crime.

Also that buzz kill Pete Buttigieg or whatever his name who snuck up and stole his spot in the presidential rankings. That was annoying as hell.

But mostly what Beto is mad at is Beto. Beto has had some free time recently being unemployed. So he looked inside and came to the conclusion that actually, he's a pretty mediocre person, not a good guy at all, pretty much an awful human being.

Most people would keep that knowledge to themselves, not Beto. He went on "The View" today to tell everyone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEGHAN MCCAIN, COHOST, THE VIEW: You did a "Vanity Fair" cover to announce your campaign and you said you were, quote, "Born to be in it." You went across the country alone on a road trip after you lost your election and you said you quote, "Sometimes help raise your kids." These are things in my mind that a female candidate wouldn't be able to get away with. Do you think you can get away with more because you're a man and do you have any regrets about launching on the cover of "Vanity Fair?"

BETO O'ROURKE, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You're right. There are things that I have been privileged to do in my life that others cannot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: You're right said Beto, male privilege is real. I should know all those cool fun things I've done in my life, I only did them because I'm a man. And I feel bad about that. So bad that I've had a committee of diversity consultants drafting awkwardly written statement of moral culpability, which I will now read to you with feigned sincerity in the hope that it's sufficient atonement for my sense, here we go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'ROURKE: This systematic foundational discrimination that we have in this country in every aspect of life is something that I have not experienced in my lifetime. And I've had advantages that others could not enjoy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So I cleared that up in case you thought that Beto might be suffering from systematic foundational discrimination in every aspect of his life? Now you know the truth. He is not. And he is deeply ashamed of that, because it's morally superior to be discriminated against as the rich and pampered ladies of "The View," who are also somehow victims can and will tell you.

But whatever, Beto can't help it if people don't hate him for who he is, that's the downside of privilege, people like you too much.

All Beto can do is try harder to be despised as much as he despises himself, which he has pledged to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'ROURKE: I have my work cut out for me to be a better person and ensure that I'm more mindful to the experiences that others have had different than experiences that I've had.

JOY BEHAR, COHOST, THE VIEW: So what those things --

MCCAIN: We were at the "Vanity Fair" cover.

BEHAR: Are those mistakes? Would you say those are mistakes being on the cover of "Vanity Fair?"

O'ROURKE: Yes, so Meghan --

BEHAR: It looks to elitist -- what? What's the --

O'ROURKE: Yes, yes, I think it reinforces that perception of privilege and that headline that said, I was born to be in this and the article is attempting to say that that I felt that my calling was in public service.

No one is born to be President of the United States of America. Least of all me. So --

BEHAR: What about part-time dead thing?

O'ROURKE: Yes, so listen.

BEHAR: That's a flack of that one.

O'ROURKE: Absolutely, and I deserved it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: I deserved it. Just so we're clear on this, the lady who makes millions talking about herself on a TV show every day disapproves of Beto appearing on a magazine cover, because it's quote, "elitist," and Beto fervently agrees with her. Of course he does.

There is no criticism of Beto that Beto does not agree with. Back in March, he apologized profusely for saying that his wife had raised their three kids. Do you even know how patriarchal that sounds? Beto does, and he is really, truly, sincerely sorry he said it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'ROURKE: Not only will I not say that, I can't do it, but I'll be much more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage and also the way in which I acknowledge the truth of the criticism that I have enjoyed white privilege.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I have enjoyed white privilege." There you go. He acknowledged it. Thank you, Mr. O'Rourke for your candor. But the real question is, how much did you enjoy white privilege? We'll get to those details in our next round of questioning.

But in the meantime, we don't want to give you the impression that Beto is the only one groveling here, far from it. They all are.

For Democrats in 2019, to run is to grovel. Here is Mayor Pete of South Bend, remembering with sadness and horror the one time years ago, when he suggested that all human life had value. How could he have been so stupid and cruel?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2015, you said that all lives mattered when you spoke about two police controversies that were happening in South Bend. Was that a mistake?

PETE BUTTIGIEG, D-IND., MAYOR, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I did not understand at that time was that that phrase just early into mid especially 2015 was coming to be viewed as a sort of counter slogan to Black Lives Matter.

And so this statement that seems very anodyne, and something that kind of nobody could be against actually wound up being used to devalue what the Black Lives Matter movement was telling us.

Since learning about how that phrase was being used to push back on that activism, I stopped using that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes, I've stopped. How could I have been so stupid? And here's center Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, calling in artillery on her own position, after an NBC researcher discovered that she had once supported national borders, seriously.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: You essentially said that you were embarrassed about your previous position on immigration. Tell me about that.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I don't think it was driven from my heart. I was callous to the suffering of families who want to be with their loved ones, people who want to be reunited with their families and I recognize as we all do, that immigration and diversity is our strength as a country.

I really regretted that I didn't look beyond my district and talk about why this is an important part of the United States' story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I was callous. I was heartless. Don't hate me. I hate myself enough." Well, thank you for sharing, Kirsten. Good luck with your self- esteem issues. Joe Biden is a good quarter century older than Senator Gillibrand who herself is older than a lot of the Democratic candidates. So you'd think Biden would be old enough he would have earned the right not to say he is sorry.

But think again. Age is now itself something to apologize for and Biden did. Biden grew up at a time before human warmth was reclassified as a criminal act, and he's very, very sorry for that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Social norms have begun to change, they have shifted and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been resent and I get it. I get it. I hear what they are saying.

I will be more mindful and respectful of people's personal space.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We could go on with the orgy of apology. Kamala Harris apologizing for putting criminals in jail. Bernie Sanders apologizing for how women were treated on his last campaign, even as he denied they were mistreated.

Amy Klobuchar apologizing for once wanting pizza in school lunches, et cetera. Tomorrow, all of them will be apologizing for something new.

In a world of that forgiveness, this is a cycle that continues forever. No self-abasement is ever enough. The left has become a kind of rolling inquisition with the bottomless appetite for ritual punishment and humiliation.

Tell us you've been naughty. Thank you, sir may have another? This is sick. These people have no dignity. They have no self-respect, there is nothing they won't say, nothing they won't admit to whether it's true or not. They despise themselves. Be careful of people like that. They're likely to feel the same way about you.

Tammy Bruce is a radio host and President of the Independent Women's Forum and she joins us tonight for an analysis of what exactly is going on here.

So I don't remember this from four or eight or 12 or 16 years ago, Democratic candidates making a ritual apology every time they get to the stump or do an interview, what has changed?

TAMMY BRUCE, CONTRIBUTOR: You know, it's fascinating because it's one thing to apologize if you've hurt someone's feelings, but we have now been watching these individuals debase themselves, for being themselves.

They're begging for forgiveness for existing and I think that this is a side effect, if you will, of the entire Democratic foundation and policy ideas, which are based in this notion that humanity itself is a problem and you can go back to climate change, that the climate is being destroyed because of our activity and you can you can just look at the nature of the Obama terms of bowing, apologizing for America around the world that we were the source of all the problems, and that we were effectively that the main issue and the main problem.

So you've got this history for the last decade or so and we saw hints of it like with political correctness. The inference there is that even what we think, or what we might naturally want to say, is automatically racist, sexist and homophobic.

So the general premise for the Democrats in almost everything they're doing, Democratic leadership and what they tell the American people is that Americans in particular are a problem, humanity is awful, that we are the cause of everything that's wrong on earth and in our personal lives, how could it not then move into what we've seen the left do before? The Cultural Revolution in China, where people experienced that same kind of attack. The nature of having to condemn yourself.

I can't wait for the Democratic debates, Tucker, to where maybe they'll all be in stock hates, and then they'll have to be talking with their head in that that clapper thing, I mean, I can't wait.

CARLSON: Well, that's it. I mean, it's a kind of weird sadomasochism.

BRUCE: It is.

CARLSON: I mean, if we're being blunt about it, it is. It's creepy as hell.

BRUCE: Yes.

CARLSON: I wonder, do voters want this from a leader? Do you want a leader who hates himself, who abases himself? Who has no dignity or self- respect, who wants that?

BRUCE: That's what I was thinking when I was watching this clip of Mr. O'Rourke on "The View." Leadership takes confidence. We see that in Donald Trump all the time, which is why I think he is so off-putting to so many people. You need confidence. You've got to exude confidence.

When world leaders and tyrants see a man who is bowing to them, or a person who arrives saying "Please, mommy don't hurt me," they're going to think they've got the upper hand, and they probably do.

So the American people look at this and have the same reaction we do, which is what's wrong with that individual? Why is this happening that is repulsive? And it's certainly is not leadership.

And this is why the American people must see this unfolding, because it's not just these individuals, it's what the Democratic Party has delivered and now it's a monster they thought they were just going to give to the people. The monster has arrived home and is unloading on the monster creators at this point.

CARLSON: It's totally right. They are all Mike Dukakis now.

BRUCE: Yes.

CARLSON: Tammy Bruce, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

BRUCE: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

CARLSON: Well, if you're doing well in the Democratic presidential race, you need to apologize for your privilege. Obviously, if you're doing badly, you still must apologize. But you also make excuses for how you are the victim here.

Nobody has played this role more precisely than Senator Kirsten Gillibrand when she launched her campaign. Her victim card was that she was a quote, "young mom." Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GILLIBRAND: I'm going to run for President of the United States because as a young mom, I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I would fight for my own.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Didn't work. Gillibrand is now pulling lower than pretty much anybody running for any office in America. So naturally, she just winds to CNN that voters are bigoted against, quote, "young women."

Now not to be mean, but Gillibrand is older than I am. She is 52 years old. Barack Obama was younger than she was the night he beat Mitt Romney, it doesn't matter though. The quest for victimhood trumps everything, including fact.

Mollie Hemingway knows that well. She's a senior editor at "The Federalist," and she joins us tonight. Mollie, thanks a lot for coming on. Is there any market on the Democratic side for someone who says no, "I am who I am, and if you don't like it, there's nothing I can do about it," and who just sort of straightforwardly presents a program without whining, without apologizing, without being a victim.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, CONTRIBUTOR: Can I just first say yes, what you just showed was amazing and I think it shows what the problem is that the media are so much in alliance with the Democratic Party that sometimes people aren't told when they say things that make them seem ridiculous.

I think someone needs to sit Gam-Gam down and let her know she lost the 2016 election fair and square to Donald Trump. Someone needs to explain to Stacey Abrams that she is not the Governor of Georgia, and someone needs to explain to Kirsten Gillibrand, there's nothing wrong with being 52 at all.

I hope I have a good time when I'm 52. That is not young. It doesn't make you a young mother. And I think someone just needs to say that.

CARLSON: Well, I mean as someone who is turning 50 in two days, I can tell you, it's not even middle age. I mean, it's post-middle age, unless you plan to live to 104.

HEMINGWAY: There might technological advances that enable people to live longer, but that is just not young.

CARLSON: But I mean, you sort of wonder and again, I'm not being mean, I respect to old people. There's nothing -- she doesn't seem old to me. But you wonder, was there a meeting where she said, "Okay, I'm going to go with the young mom thing," and nobody said, "Hi, it doesn't really apply to you, Senator."

HEMINGWAY: But I do think it gets to this issue. You're either going to run on identity politics or you're not. And it sounds like Joe Biden is taking that lane that's not based on identity politics, and if you are doing the identity politics lane, she has got a difficult one.

She's not the only woman. She's not the only white woman. She's not the youngest person. I mean, Pete Buttigieg is doing much better, 15 years younger than she is. So if you're going to do identity politics, she needs to come up with a better gimmick than being young and a woman.

CARLSON: But why would you do -- I mean, identity politics is obviously the first choice for dumb people who don't have anything to sell other than their innate qualities. But it doesn't work that well.

HEMINGWAY: I think it actually does work pretty well in the Democratic primary. It's just that when there are so many candidates, it's not sufficient. And so she needs to build a coalition and she needs to not blame other people.

The idea that being a woman is a problem in the Democratic Party is unfair to the Democratic Party. They just nominated a woman a few years ago to be President. So it's not like that's a legitimate excuse.

And I think maybe people are more upset with her, for instance for how she got Al Franken to leave the Senate or other things that make people feel like she is not a good team player or a Democratic Party member.

CARLSON: Well, she's also -- she's like a transparent phony. She is a ridiculous figure. I mean --

HEMINGWAY: She changes her mind a lot.

CARLSON: Yes, she does. You'd think -- look, you're not going to be President. Why debase yourself? Why degrade yourself the way she has? But you know, whatever. I'm not her adviser. Mollie, it's great to see you.

HEMINGWAY: Great to see you.

CARLSON: Thank you. Well, the Attorney General has appointed a prosecutor to investigate how the FBI used Russia to justify spying on a presidential campaign, which they did. What should we know about that prosecutor? Someone who knows him joins us after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, for two years the Russia hoax completely dominated Washington. Virtually everything in American politics and American government were subservient to it.

Now we may finally find out how that hoax began and how it so easily escalated to spying on the FBI's political enemies.

Yesterday, the Attorney General William Barr appointed Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead the investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.

Howie Carr is a radio show host. He knows Durham and he joins us tonight for some perspective on him. Howie, thanks a lot for coming on. So how would you assess his temperament and his skills? Is he good man for this job?

HOWIE CARR, RADIO SHOW HOST: I talked to some of the people worked with him today and Tucker, everybody is very happy with this assignment.

He was brought into Boston about 20 years ago to handle two generations of endemic corruption in the Boston FBI office and there was a particularly terrible case where the FBI in the '60s had framed four guys for a murder they didn't commit. Everybody knew they were innocent.

And the two U.S. Attorney's at the time that didn't do anything to get these guys out of prison, even though everyone knew they were not guilty were Robert Mueller and William Weld who is now running for President.

You know, he actually sent a letter to the state saying these guys should be kept in prison, even though again, it was well known they were innocent.

Well, Durham comes to town and the case starts unraveling and he is the one who after 30-plus years, these guys had -- innocent men had been imprisoned, a couple of them on death row. He is the one who brought it to the judge and set in motion the exoneration of them and it led to a $102 million civil lawsuit victory for them against the Feds.

He did a great job and you know -- he understands the corruption in the FBI and he has also -- he's worked for two Democrat Attorneys General on special cases like this and two Republican Attorneys General.

And one case was this case in Boston with the FBI corruption and two of the other cases involved the CIA and I think it's pretty clear to most people that this this hoax as you put it had its genesis and the FBI and most likely the CIA.

So I think he is a really good guy for the job, but he understands what he's up against. When he came to Boston, he saw how corrupt and sordid the entire situation was. So he moved his entire base of operations to Worcester, you know, 30 to 40 miles away, just to keep a hands off attitude towards the city. He is a very smart guy.

CARLSON: So he sounds like the guy -- I mean, if you were a corrupt FBI official, he is the last guy you'd want looking into you it sounds like.

CARR: If I were a corrupt FBI or CIA official, I think I might be pricing apartments at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London right about now.

CARLSON: Wouldn't that be nice to see. Oh my god. Howie Carr, thank you for that. That's interesting as hell. Thank you.

CARR: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, we have some exclusive details for you tonight related to the Russia probe. In a letter obtained by this show, an attorney who represents longtime Trump adviser, Roger Stone has asked the White House to declassify any materials that would reveal whether Stone was spied upon by the FBI. There is some evidence that he was and if he indeed was, he would, of course join Carter Page and Paul Manafort as individuals connected to the Trump campaign, who were spied on without their knowledge.

So far, the White House has not commented on that letter. Michael Caputo is a former Trump campaign adviser, and he joins us tonight.

Michael, thanks a lot for coming on. So this is a pretty straightforward request. It's an interesting request. Is there any reason that the White House wouldn't help the rest of us know whether Stone was spied on?

MICHAEL CAPUTO, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Well, first, I want to make sure it's understood that I I'm not in contact with Roger Stone. He is best friend, but the court won't allow me to speak to him. I haven't spoken to him or contacted him in any way since the day he was arrested.

CARLSON: And then let me just say, since I think we have a First Amendment still in this country, I don't know if ...

CAPUTO: We do.

CARLSON: ... the judge acknowledge that.

CAPUTO: I don't. I don't.

CARLSON: Why in the world could a judge tell you who you can talk to as an adult taxpayer in this country?

CAPUTO: Right, and I know of course, I've never -- they didn't ever send me to the grand jury, the Mueller team. I'm not on any witness list, but for some reason, I think it's in vindictive, we're not allowed to speak to each other.

Roger and I have known each other for 30-plus years. Sometimes we talked six or seven times a day. He talked me off the ceiling, I talk to him off the ceiling in stressful times. But I haven't spoken to him since the day that he was arrested. I'm still kind of shocked about that.

But I can tell you, I really believe that what the attorney for Roger Stone requested should be granted. In my opinion, it's not just Roger Stone, it is Carter Page whose surveillance documents need to be revealed.

I mean, Roger may not -- you know, by the time this investigation of the Department of Justice is over, which is when we might see this material at the earliest, Roger Stone's trial may already be over. In fact, it probably will be. So, you know un-redacting them and releasing them at that point, doesn't help Roger Stone at all, it doesn't reveal all of the chicanery and probably law-breaking that went into surveilling Roger Stone, but it's the same with Carter Page.

And by the way, General Flynn in some way, shape, or form as well. There are a lot -- there was a lot of surveillance going on, and we need to know what it is and we need to know now.

CARLSON: Why wouldn't the White House help us know? That's what I don't understand. And General Flynn, you're exactly right. I mean, the Trump campaign was spied upon by the Obama administration. We know this. So why don't we have the right to know the details of it?

CAPUTO: Well, a lot of this I don't understand because if you remember about three or four months ago, the President said he was all set to declassify FISA documents and demanded e-mail or text messages between all the different FBI agents who were plotting this whole hoax. And we never saw that stuff.

A lot of this stuff, I don't understand, but I'm sure the President has a plan. You know, I've just visited the President in the Oval Office recently, and without -- you know, we didn't talk about Roger Stone. We were both careful not to. The President knows he is my best friend and I know -- I met the President through Roger Stone in 1988. I know he is close with Roger. We were careful not even to mention his name.

But I think the President is paying very close attention to this. And the letter from the lawyer, I think he might heat it. I mean -- let me tell you something. He and the First Lady knew chapter and verse of what my family went through, and I know the President is paying attention to far more people than just us.

CARLSON: Yes, it would be nice to see some pardons, a pardon of Roger Stone to begin. Michael, great to see you tonight.

CAPUTO: I'm real worried about Don, Jr. with this Senate Committee. I really do.

CARLSON: I agree. The whole thing is insane. It rolls on.

CAPUTO: It is.

CARLSON: This is a zombie investigation. Great to see it. Thank you.

CAPUTO: Thanks, Tucker. So Bill de Blasio jumps up and down no matter how much he loves the environment, but the city he presides over is suffocating under a mountain of garbage he cares nothing about, so where's his concern for the environment? Please, spare us. Details and that. Plus, part two of our "Homeless in America" series. We will explore how the epidemic is devastating one of California's poorest cities after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has big plans for himself. He already runs the country's largest city, but he wants more, he wants to be President of the country and to get there he is pushing his own version of the Green New Deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DE BLASIO, D-N.Y., MAYOR: The New York City Green New Deal is here to stay. It is bold. It is audacious. It is necessary. And we're making it happen here in the biggest city in the country.

CROWD: (Chanting "Our planet, not your profit.")

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: De Blasio cares deeply about the planet and the environment. That's what he says. But the reality if you've been to New York, you know is that his own city is drowning in garbage. It's filthy. It stinks.

A new video shows the disgusting state of the city subways, once clean. Mayor de Blasio's enlightened management, this is what they look like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is how the trains would be looking in the morning. This is how the trains would be looking in the morning, and this is [bleep] crazy. [Bleep] stupid and they want us to pay more money. Look at this. This is crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It is crazy. How did that happen? De Blasio says he loves the environment, and he really cares; he doesn't. Like everyone in his position, he cares about the environment to the extent it gives him more power when it's about fighting global warming or some other excuse to have more control over your life.

But when it comes to keeping parks clean or protecting people from having to live in filth or picking up garbage off the sidewalks, he doesn't care. It doesn't give him power, so he doesn't do it.

California has more homeless than any other state, but 130,000 people are homeless every night in California. That's about a quarter of the national total. You'd think the leaders of the state of California would be obsessed with fixing this horrifying problem. But they aren't, they don't seem to care.

The state doesn't come close to having enough homeless shelters so more than two thirds of the state's homeless have nowhere to go on a given night. One reason is the state's strict building codes and environmental regulations. They block the construction of new shelters.

Without enough shelters, other problems like trash-filled homeless encampments and piles of needles are almost impossible to stop.

A recent Ninth Circuit Court ruling blocks cops from prosecuting homeless people unless adequate shelter space is available. So you can see there's a kind of gridlock going on.

And it's not just a problem in the City of San Francisco. Most of the states' homeless live outside of San Francisco or LA.

In tonight's installment of homeless in America, we take a look at how bad the crisis has become in California's forgotten cities.

This neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California is so close to Facebook's global headquarters that Mark Zuckerberg could ride his bike to it. Tech billionaires like Sergey Brin and Tim Cook live within 10 miles.

But the people who live on Bay Road in East Palo Alto aren't quite as fortunate as their Silicon Valley neighbors. There's no place in America that better illustrates the massive inequality caused by our booming tech sector.

On any given night, more than a hundred thousand people are homeless in the state of California. Nearly eight of ten of them live on the streets.

One common explanation for rising homelessness is housing prices. As rents go up, people are forced onto the streets. But there's homelessness in poor areas, too.

Consider Stockton, that's a city in California's Central Valley. The housing downturn hit Stockton so hard that the city filed for municipal bankruptcy in 2012. Current rent prices in some neighborhoods are as low as $680.00 a month, and yet our investigation found homeless people all over Stockton under overpasses next to highways along rivers and canals near downtown on the outskirts of town.

Fifty miles north in Sacramento, the state capital, things are just as bad, maybe worse. Every public place we visited it in Sacramento had homeless people. A bike path along the American River downtown lined with tents.

In one neighborhood just north of the city center, homeless Californians camp out near soup kitchens. Encampments on North Bee Street go on for a mile.

What's striking about the homelessness in Sacramento is how prominent it is. It would be impossible to visit the city and not see it. There were people living at the Cesar Chavez Plaza right in the heart of downtown.

This photo shows a multi-tent encampment literally at City Hall. The Public Library essentially functions as a day shelter. It's filled with homeless people charging their phones using computers, bathing in the bathroom. People were even living on the grounds of the State Capitol building when we visited.

One issue is that the city doesn't have enough shelter space. Local officials are doing a terrible job of finding places to put people. The last city-run homeless shelter in Sacramento closed in April. Now, the shelter is going to be used as a marijuana cultivation and distribution center, of course. California tent cities should humiliate the state leaders. They don't seem humiliated.

California Governor Gavin Newsom seems completely uninterested in his states' tent city boom. As his own constituents slept on the grounds of the State Capitol, Newsom went on a three-day fact finding trip. The purpose? Newsom wanted to figure out what he could do to alleviate poverty in El Salvador.

There's something we learned after filming that package. In Sacramento, homeless encampments have gotten so out of hand, they are threatening the structural integrity of the city's anti-flood levees. But America's homeless crisis goes far beyond California, sadly. Tomorrow night, we'll begin exploring the rest of the West Coast as our "Homeless in America" series continues.

Well, the polls and all the cool kids on TV say Joe Biden is the Democratic favorite. Don't believe them. He can't win. We will tell you why, after the break.

Plus, Washington appears to be gearing up for a war against Iran. How would that help America? We will try to find answers in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: If you can remember back to May, four years ago right around this time, pretty much everyone in Washington assumed Jeb Bush was going to be the Republican nominee. He was the most experienced candidate in the race. He was up in the polls, he had the highest name ID, he'd raised the most money, blah, blah, blah.

Looking back, it all sounds absurd, but at the time people really believed it. And then one day, the mirage evaporated and it became really obvious, impossible to deny that Jeb was doomed. He was not going to be President. The conventional wisdom turned out to be not simply wrong, but really stupid.

Well, something very much like that just happened with Joe Biden. As of today, pretty much everyone paid to prognosticate on television still considers Biden the prohibitive front runner in the race, he checks every box; therefore he must get the nomination. That's how they think because they're dumb.

What they're leaving out of the equation is Biden himself. Watch this video and ask yourself if Joe Biden is really going to be the Democratic nominee, much less President of the United States.

It was shot yesterday in New Hampshire. Keep in mind, we have not altered it in any way. This is entirely real. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vice President Biden, do you have a comment on the Chinese tariffs?

BIDEN: I'll answer this question. The answer is, yes, I do. The President has done nothing but increase the tariffs, the debt and the trade deficit. The way you have to proceed is we have to have our allies with us. It's not just us, we have to keep the rest of the world together.

Secondly, we should -- labor should be at the table as well as our allies, because that's the only thing and the fourth thing we should do is be focusing on the things that in fact, I've been talking about for a long time. China's greatest violation is the way in which they steal our intellectual property. We should make it quid pro quo as I've told when I was dealing with Xi Jinping. It should be simple.

Here's the deal, you say that if in fact, anything has to be owned, 50 percent by Chinese to invest in China, guess what? In America is the same thing. This idea of dealing with all -- the only people who are paying the price are farmers and working people right now. He's going about it all the wrong way. A lot of bravado, no action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: But wait a second, you're saying to yourself, that didn't make any sense. Not a single phrase in a full minute of talking conveyed an intelligible idea, not one. That wasn't even word salad. It was a verbal Jackson Pollock painting -- nouns verbs, adjectives -- spilled like cans of paint, bleeding into each other in a sticky, postmodern mess.

At one point, Biden actually jumped from point to directly to point four. Just to let you know that your old-fashioned linear assumptions about numerical sequencing are no good here, man. That's yesterday's mathematics.

It was in a word bizarre, but here's the real headline. Ignore what they are telling you on television. Joe Biden is not going to be president. He probably won't be the Democratic nominee. He is not capable of it.

There's no reason to be cruel and get more specific than that. But just watch Biden and ask yourself. Really? Anyone who says that a guy -- that guy -- is going to win a presidential election at the age of nearly 78 is either lying or deluded, sorry.

More than anything in the world, National Security adviser, John Bolton would love to have a war with Iran. It would be like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and his birthday wrapped into one.

Well, mercifully, John Bolton doesn't command the military. President Trump does. The question is how influential is Bolton in the White House?

Just last week, Bolton announced a Carrier Strike Force was being sent to the Persian Gulf to check Iran. Now the "New York Times" reports that the President has been presented with a plan to deploy 120,000 American troops to the Middle East. The President says that report is untrue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you planning to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East in response to Iran?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: I think it's fake news, okay. Now would I do that? Absolutely. But we not planned for that. Hopefully, we're not going to have to plan for that, and if we did that, we would send a hell of a lot more troops than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so obviously, this is fluid, but the larger question remains unanswered. How is a war with Iran in America's interest in any way?

It's time to start asking answering that question. Douglas MacGregor is a retired Army Colonel, author of the tremendous book, "A Margin of Victory," and a frequent guest in the show. He joins us today. Colonel, thanks very much for coming on.

COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR, RET.,U.S. ARMY: Sure.

CARLSON: So what does it mean to have a Carrier Group in the Persian Gulf?

MACGREGOR: Well, Tucker, we've got a manufactured crisis. There's nothing new in this intelligence. We've been operating in this area for several years now, the Iranians and we, we were both interested in destroying the same target, ISIS.

CARLSON: Yes.

MACGREGOR: And we always knew there was friction and hostility there. We've managed to avoid any problems. The Iranians have avoided any problems. So it's hard to buy the notion that we now have to have a Carrier Battle Group in the Persian Gulf, along with hundreds of aircraft flying in from all over the world in order to deter Iran from attacking us.

There's no evidence that Iran wants to attack us. Quite the contrary, I think they'd like very much to avoid any conflict with us under any and all circumstances.

CARLSON: So why would we -- why are we doing this? And what are the potential consequences of doing it?

MACGREGOR: Well, I think the people that were behind this that persuaded the President to take these actions are hoping, frankly, that if you put large numbers of forces from the United States in close proximity to Iran in a small area like the Persian Gulf -- the Gulf is only 220 miles wide -- that something will happen, that something will go wrong.

It sort of looks like a Gulf of Tonkin incident with missiles in the making. Now, do we benefit? It's hard to see how. I mean, the first question you should always ask before any action is taken, measure what you might gain by what you might lose. What do we gain? Is this supposed to persuade the Iranians that they should not keep some additional enriched uranium? Is this designed to make them capitulate to the series of demands that Mr. Pompeo put in front of them?

If so, I think that's ludicrous. I don't see any evidence of that happening. Is this designed to drive a wedge between Russia and China? On the opposite, I think you're going to forced cohesion on all of the great continental powers against us. They're going to look at any action we might take against Iran as a precursor to future action we may take against them.

So I don't see the President gaining from this, but I see that he loses. I don't see how he gets reelected. I don't see how he achieves anything in the Gulf that is positive whatsoever for the United States and the American people.

CARLSON: But they are in our foreign policy establishment, it is a fairly large group, relatively speaking, a large group of people who are intent on a war with Iran.

MACGREGOR: Yes, well, unfortunately, in the case of General McKenzie, who spoke not long ago in front of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, he described himself as a man with a bias for action. I'd much rather have a four-star with a bias for thinking. And right now, he should be very concerned about the secondary effects of anything we do in the Gulf.

The Russians are not idle. They are watching this very carefully. If we take action, and we get into a killing spree with the Iranians, they will come in, and we will find ourselves without a backdoor to get out easily.

The Chinese will also ship what they can, and by the way, the Turks who have no love for the Iranians may view this as something positive that they should participate in. This is not a good thing for the United States.

CARLSON: And the people agitating for it right now -- MSNBC, CNN, Max Boot, Bill Kristol -- the usual suspects, none of whom have the country's interests at heart, I would argue. I mean, it's chilling. Colonel, thank you very much.

MACGREGOR: Thank you.

CARLSON: Great to see you. Well, the left used to care about the poor, now thanks to toxic rhetoric on privilege, they only care about the poor if they have the right skin color. Their science to prove that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: From the first Roosevelt administration during the Depression and for a half a century afterward, Democrats were the party of the poor the working class. Now of course, that's completely changed. Instead of caring about class, the chief concern of the left is skin color. Some colors are good, some are bad, but don't take our word for it.

A new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology finds that after being taught about white privilege, fascinatingly, liberals feel less sympathy for poor white people. Instead, they're more likely to blame the poor for their problems, and view their poverty as a just outcome, probably not an accident. And of course you already know what the result of this kind of thinking has been -- a huge chunk of Middle America dying.

J.D. Vance is the author of the bestselling book, "Hillbilly Elegy" and one of the smartest voices in what is becoming a new movement within conservatism. We're always happy to have him here. J.D. Vance, thanks a lot for coming on.

J.D. VANCE, AUTHOR: Thank you.

CARLSON: So you've said -- I've heard you say before that maybe the saddest change in the Democratic Party was this abandonment of class politics, to put it bluntly, in favor of identity politics?

VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. And if you get the study that you just cited, one of the craziest parts about it is that it doesn't -- talking about white privilege doesn't increase sympathy for poor black people. It just decreases sympathy for poor white.

CARLSON: I know, exactly.

VANCE: It has this incredibly divisive effect on our politics. It frankly destroys some of the solidarity, the national solidarity that you need to actually solve some of these bigger problems and it doesn't even help the people that it purports to help.

This rhetoric is like pure division, no solution, and everybody loses.

CARLSON: I would argue that not everybody loses. It actually exculpates, it lets off the hook on ruling class. So they've failed a huge chunk of their fellow Americans. They're in charge and the middle class is dying, but they don't have feel guilty about it because the middle class deserves it.

VANCE: Yes, yes. So I find it's helpful to actually think about the real problems and who benefits from those problems and who might benefit from a solution.

So very real problem in America right now is that if you're a black business owner to focus on problems of black Americans, it's really hard to get access to capital to grow your business. Right? So whose fault is that? Is it the fault of the poor white person? Or is it the fault of our financial elites?

So notice the distraction, this white privilege discourse infects in our politics, it takes the focus away from the people who might actually solve the problem. It puts the focus on people who are also suffering from a very similar problem, and at the end of the day, nobody benefits.

You're right, I guess the people who benefit are the people who are at the top of the system, but if you actually want to help the broad middle of the country, you don't talk like that you actually try to solve the problems of everyone.

CARLSON: Right. And it also hides all kinds of bad effects that their policies have brought to our middle and working classes. So if you're, you know, a working class black person, immigration doesn't help you in any sense, it helps rich people. But a ruling class makes the conversation about race, so all of a sudden, you feel like you've got to be in favor of this because there's some sort of solidarity, which is false.

VANCE: Yes. One of the pretty consistent findings is that the biggest problem with low-wage, low-skilled immigration is that it has a competitive effect for black Americans on the lower end of the income scale.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: That's the group of people that low-wage and low-skilled immigration is worse for. Again, it's good for people who are employing the low-skilled workers. And so if you again distract from the people who are benefiting from the problem, and you put the onus on a group of people who are also suffering from low-wage, low-skill competition, then you manage to build up the elites. And of course, you don't actually solve any of the real problems.

CARLSON: But you insulate the people telling the lies from the blame, which is why they're so wedded to their stupid identity politics because it shields them from any kind of real scrutiny. Do you see anybody on the Democratic side who is breaking free of this insane orthodoxy?

VANCE: Unfortunately, I don't. I mean, I think that Joe Biden seems to not be preoccupied with identity politics in the way that somebody like Kamala Harris, or you know, Elizabeth Warren might be, so no, unfortunately, I don't.

I mean, the person who is probably least interested in identity politics is Biden. Maybe it's Bernie Sanders. But at the end of the day, I think there is this weird way in which the left wing commentary on Twitter that is obsessed with identity politics, has forced the Democratic political elite to divorce itself from who its actual voters are.

I mean, if you're a middle class, a black Democrat from Charleston, South Carolina, you simply do not care about shouting white privilege at everybody and the polls consistently show that.

Polls consistently show that middle class black voters are less radical on racial issues than the elites of the Democratic Party.

CARLSON: They are less radical on every issue.

VANCE: On every issue.

CARLSON: The most conservative sector in the Democratic coalition is black voters. Period.

VANCE: Yes, and the most important sector of the entire Democratic vote, and yet the Democratic elites have allowed themselves to get divorced from that base, in the same way, frankly, that Republican elites have allowed them to get divorced from their own base.

And so really, as we often talk about, the question is, can you build a coalition of the broad middle? And my own view on this is that to make that work, Tucker, you need what I call class traitors.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: You need some people, either from the Democratic elite or from the Republican elite who say, "Enough of this. We're not going to talk about these issues in the way the elites want us to. We're going to talk about them in the way that the middle of the country actually wants to."

CARLSON: Those people who you just described are always welcome on this show. Always. You're first on that list. J.D. Vance, great to see you tonight.

VANCE: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: We will be back tomorrow. We're out of time, amazingly. But you can count on it, 8:00 p.m. Wednesday night, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. We will be back then. Have a fantastic night. Good night from Washington.

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