Jesse Watters: The Biden admin no longer cares about the rules
Fox News host slams Biden's COVID-19 address on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" September 9, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT, I'm Jesse Watters, obviously, in for Tucker.
Just hours ago, Joe Biden delivered a speech that marks a clear turning point in his administration. It's a declaration of war against nearly 80 million Americans, and it's a promise from Joe Biden that he'll ignore the Constitution and basic principles of federalism just to get what he wants.
This afternoon, Joe Biden announced that most businesses in this country are required to start forcing employees to either get the COVID vaccine or submit to regular COVID tests.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My job as President is to protect all Americans. So tonight, I'm announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Joe Biden added that if State Governors don't go along with this he'll, quote: "Use my power as President to get them out of the way." What power does the President have to override state governments on this issue, exactly? Joe Biden didn't say. Maybe it's the same authority that allowed the C.D.C. to suspend all evictions in the country.
This administration no longer cares about the rules. They'll do whatever they want. Keep in mind, less than a year ago, Joe Biden told us that vaccines would never be mandatory. He knew he didn't have the authority to do this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Do you think the COVID vaccine should be mandatory?
BIDEN: No, I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Now, Joe Biden is threatening the unvaccinated more than he is threatening the Taliban. It's the same exact story that we saw with the C.D.C.'s eviction moratorium. First, Joe Biden said he wouldn't do it, then he did it anyway. So there is no legal justification at all, but listen carefully to Joe Biden's scientific justification.
Tonight, Joe Biden appeared to admit that the COVID vaccines aren't very effective.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co- workers. We're going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Wait a minute, if the vaccines work, why do the vaccinated need protection from the unvaccinated? Again, Joe Biden didn't say.
He also didn't explain why vaccinated travelers still need to wear masks on airplanes, instead tonight, Joe Biden announced steeper fines for travelers who don't obey.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: The Transportation Safety Administration, the T.S.A. will double the fines on travelers that refuse to mask. If you break the rules, be prepared to pay.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: The irony is that today, while Joe Biden was announcing these mandates, Kamala Harris spoke out against quote, "government interference" in what she called personal well-being decisions.
Now Republicans are responding. Republican Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has just announced that the Republican National Committee will sue the Biden administration over this order, quote: "When this decree goes into effect, the R.N.C. will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties," unquote.
Matt Walsh is host of "The Matt Walsh Show." He joins us to respond.
Well Matt, this looked like a temper tantrum over Afghanistan. The President just taking out his anger on the country, on businesses. How do you see it?
MATT WALSH, HOST, "THE MATT WALSH SHOW": Yes, I think it's interesting that we were assured for four years that Donald Trump is a tyrant, that he is, you know Hitler incarnate, and meanwhile he was like the least tyrannical President we've had in in a very long time with his -- you know, with the way that he used his authority.
No, we had to elect this rotting bag of oatmeal to get a real tyrant. I mean, that's what -- Joe Biden as you point out, this is not the first time that he has explicitly said he doesn't have the authority to do something legally and then done it anyway.
So we can sit here until we're blue in the face and say he doesn't have the authority to do it, he doesn't have the authority to do. It doesn't matter, he admits he doesn't have the authority to do it, but he is going to do it anyway.
I think, all of us as Americans, we have to understand this that that is as far as they are concerned, the powers that be, the legal justification is that they want to do it and what are you going to do about it? That's really their justification, which is why maybe this, in the end is a good thing in the sense that it's a time for choosing for Americans and American business owners and American citizens. Are we going to comply and lie down to this? Or are we finally going to stand up and say, you know what, it's not going to happen.
You want to send -- you want to send the Army in and shut down millions of businesses and start arresting business owners? Because that's what you're going to have to do. I think we have to draw that line. If we don't draw it here as Americans, then we might as well forget about this country and forget about freedom entirely.
WATTERS: Well, Biden is going to run out of Federal employees to enforce these mandates because if a half a million Federal employees aren't going to get vaxxed, they're going to get fired. So, he is just going to run out of little boots on the ground to visit these businesses and hand them slips and fine them.
My assessment is that no one's going to trust Joe Biden anymore after he declared independence from the pandemic in July, after he said there weren't going to be mask mandates, after he said no vax mandates. He took off his mask in this big show and now he throws down the gauntlet and we go back to this permanent pandemic.
The same thing with Afghanistan. Taliban wasn't going to take over, we got this under control. Next thing you know, Kabul is falling, and Americans are stranded. No one believes him anymore.
WALSH: No one believes him or trusts what he has to say, but for a lot of good reasons, you know number one, he doesn't even know what he is saying half the time and that's pretty clear, but I also think the other part of this is that, no one is going to trust the vaccines. There is already a problem of especially from the perspective of the Federal government and the people that are pushing the vaccines, there is a problem, people don't trust them.
Well, you're not going to convince people to trust the vaccines when you go about it this way and if you're worried about quote-unquote "conspiracy theories" and all this kind of stuff, well, having the Federal government tear the Constitution up to force these substances into your arms, that is not going to quell those conspiracy theories.
And as you pointed out, if the vaccines work, as many of us have pointed out, do the vaccines work or not? Because if they do, then it shouldn't matter to you if you're a vaccinated person whether or not your co-worker has the vaccine. That's the question they cannot answer.
The other question they can't answer by the way is, what about natural immunity? Does that not exist? We're just pretending that natural immunity doesn't exist.
In his order that he passed down today, natural immunity doesn't factor in. He is just -- we're just pretending that that's not a thing. Well, the science tells us that it is a thing and that it provides lasting protection, but we are throwing that on the burn pile, I guess.
WATTERS: Well, as you said, Matt, if you've been vaxxed, nothing to be afraid of for the unvaxxed. It doesn't make any sense. He is taking a sledgehammer to vaccine confidence.
Matt Walsh, thanks so much.
WALSH: Thank you.
WATTERS: Harmeet Dhillon is a Civil Rights attorney. She joins us to assess whether any of these mandates are actually legal, so Harmeet, it looks like he is pulling the Occupational Safety and Health Administration deal, OSHA, as it is called. Basically, the Federal government could make any rules for workplaces to reduce hazards.
So this is -- he is pulling out of that bag of tricks. OSHA to make this work. Is this going to fly?
HARMEET DHILLON, LAWYER, CENTER FOR AMERICAN LIBERTY: Well, I don't think it's going to fly and I'm certainly one of the constitutional lawyers who plans to file a legal challenge to this unconstitutional order as soon as the regulations are announced and we have multiple clients who are asking us to do this, and I think that we're going to be joined by many other challengers.
So OSHA is a very weird way to go about this, and OSHA has original set of regulations that were passed at the beginning of OSHA decades ago, then it has some additional regulations that were passed after you know, notice and comment.
What he is trying to do here is announce them under this very rarely used emergency provision and the emergency provision provides that there has to be some kind of immediate, shocking, unusual threat to the workplace that's dire and there isn't time to go through the normal process to do this.
That's obviously not the case here. We've been living with COVID for 18 months now. It's not even a pandemic anymore, it's an endemic. It's something that we're living with.
And Ron Klain, the Chief of Staff actually retweeted a comment from somebody on Twitter saying that this was actually a workaround, to get around his promise that he wouldn't do a Federal vaccine mandate, they're using OSHA wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
So the White House is acknowledging that this is really fake, okay, and so, I think that just on the --
WATTERS: And they are not even calling it a mandate, they're calling it a requirement.
DHILLON: Right.
WATTERS: Like we're not going to notice the lingo change.
DHILLON: A requirement. Right, so I think it's totally illegal on the private employer side. Now, on public employers, you didn't mention a major carve out. The Postal workers are not going to have to get vaccinated under the Federal part of this mandate. I mean talk about vectors of disease who go around to every household in the United States, why are they exempted, whereas a lot of workers in America today for companies of over a hundred people are working from home, why should they get vaccinated?
And you know, to the point where we're ignoring the science. I mean, I think a lot of what we're seeing here with the illiteracy about science is simply a product of our very lacking educational system in this country.
This is scientifically baseless and you know, like Matt said, people are not going to trust public health officials going forward. What about a real threat to our health? People are not going to believe public health officials. That's a huge problem for our country.
So this is a shambles. This is a disgrace, and I think we're going to see the courts clogged with litigation challenging this and other aspects of the Biden agenda that are really decreasing our confidence both in science and in the government, and also you know, frankly, coming at the worst possible time for a struggling American economy.
WATTERS: Harmeet, you can't upset the Postal workers because they're the ones who have to hand out the ballots. You know, you've got to get those mail ballots out, unsolicited, Harmeet. You don't want to upset those people.
DHILLON: I know.
WATTERS: And I think if you can listen closely, you can hear every H.R. Department in the country go hit the liquor cabinet after this, because it's going to be -- it's going to get rowdy.
DHILLON: It's that bad, and I'm an employer.
WATTERS: It's going to get weird in the workplace. Yes.
DHILLON: It is going to be impossible to administer this and who are the police going to be policing it? And who is going to pay the cost of it? It is effectively a tax on the American employer, and I think it's not going to fly frankly.
WATTERS: I would agree. Harmeet Dhillon, thank you so much.
DHILLON: Thanks for having me.
WATTERS: In the race to which country who can have the most tyrannical coronavirus restrictions, Australia is telling the rest of the world to hold its beer, literally.
According to multiple news reports, the New South Wales Health Department in Australia is now limiting the amount of alcohol that residents can get delivered to their homes. Residents who are locked down are allowed just six beers -- six -- or a bottle of wine per day. That's it.
Residents of one apartment complex said the Health Department is searching all bags and packages that come into the building. Any alcohol above the limit immediately confiscated. They'd probably drink it.
This isn't about health, it's about the new world order they're trying to create, and that's not a conspiracy theory. It is what they're admitting out loud. Here's a health officer in New South Wales today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. KERRY CHANT, NEW SOUTH WALES' CHIEF HEALTH OFFICER: We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the new world order, and yes, it will be pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Australia is looking more and more like the prison colony they once were. We hope the rest of the western world is taking notice.
Larry Elder was just attacked in brought daylight in L.A. He'll tell us about that, next.
Plus his response to Joe Biden's divisive coronavirus speech.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: We just heard that Joe Biden is mandating vaccines for 80 million private sector workers. Larry Elders, running for Governor in California. The recall election there is on September 14th. He joins us with his reaction.
Larry, I don't care what you think of vaccines. You're for them, you're against them. America got a little less free today and there's nothing we're going to be able to do to change that.
LARRY ELDER (R), CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, you're right and I'm not anti-vaccine, I've been vaccinated. I think vaccines do work. I'm in a high-risk category, but a lot of people have made a very different decision, and you're quite right, freedom ought to stand for something.
This is on a collision course to the United States Supreme Court and I believe that what Joe Biden just now did will be ruled to be unconstitutional, it will take a while for it to get there, but I think maybe five-four maybe even six-three, it's going to be determined to be unconstitutional, Jesse.
WATTERS: The problem is, people in California, Larry, they love it. They don't care if it's legal, they just want to jam this stuff down people's throats, into their arms. They don't care about whether it is right or wrong. They just go along with whatever the government tells them.
ELDER: Well, I'm not sure how much longer that's going to last. A whole lot of people are ticked off, that's why two million people signed their petition, Jesse. A good third of them were the very people Independents and Democrats who voted for him just two years earlier. A whole lot of people are upset about this.
My opponent, Gavin Newsom has mandated that if you're a state worker and you've not been vaccinated, you're going to be tested once a week and you're going to be required to wear a facemask at work. A lot of people are hopping mad about that.
Nurses are mad about it, cops are mad about it, firefighters are mad about it. There's going to be a lawsuit, and as I said, this is going to be on a collision course up to the United States Supreme Court and ultimately, the people who want freedom are going to be vindicated.
WATTERS: And that Governor there has failed to manage that state, whether it's the water, whether it's the energy, whether it's the forests, whether it's the pandemic, he has failed to manage that state and that's really what this entire election is about or should be about.
But Larry, they don't want it to be about that. They want it to be about personal attacks. You were attacked, broad daylight yesterday in L.A. Here's that clip. Watch.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
WATTERS: So you see the white lady in the gorilla mask, throwing eggs. What exactly happened there, Larry?
ELDER: Well you know, she might be one of the 20,000 people that were released early from our prisons, felons many of whom were violent offenders under this Governor. I don't know. We have too soft on crime DA's. I consider this to be one of the many intersections in California, the intersection between lawlessness and homelessness.
I was at a homeless encampment in Venice, and a lot of people are angry. Homeowners are angry. Families are angry. Children have to go and pass these people to and from school.
And the homeless population is in danger and it's also a health hazard and nothing is being done about it, that's one of the many failures of this Governor. So, it was a very angry and ugly scene.
You know, if I were a Democrat, obviously, this would be called systemic racism. They'd be calling it a hate crime. I don't like to play that game. During all this, there was a big article about me, a negative in "The New York Times" and never once mentioned that I'm black, never once mentioned that I would be the first black Governor of California.
I never made a big deal about that, I don't want people to vote for me or against me because I'm black, but on the very same page of "The New York Times" there was a big article about the quote "first female Governor of New York," close quote. Even though she didn't get elected, she was basically appointed because the other Governor resigned, so they cared about the first when it was a female Democrat, but couldn't give a rip about the first, when it was a black Republican.
WATTERS: I'll say, it looks like a hate crime to me -- gorilla mask, first potential black Governor, the largest state in the country. We reached out to Newsom's office, to Maxine Waters' office, to Kamala Harris asking them to condemn. No response. How does that make you feel?
ELDER: Crickets.
WATTERS: Yes.
ELDER: Crickets and when Gavin Newsom's children were criticized because Gavin Newsom mandated that you wear facemasks outdoors, and his kids were at summer camp not wearing facemasks, we put out a statement saying "Leave Gavin Newsom's children out of this." But the Governor has not put out a statement about this white woman -- apparently a white woman wearing a gorilla mask, threw an egg at me.
I don't expect that because, look, all these people have come in. Joe Biden has made a statement. Bernie Sanders has made a statement. Barack Obama has cut a commercial, and nobody has uttered the following words, Jesse, "Gavin Newsom has done a good job for the people of California." You won't hear that because he hasn't. Not on crime, not on homelessness, not on the decline in the quality of public education.
A former State Senator, leader of the State Senate at the time, her name is Gloria Romero. She is still a Democrat has crossed party lines and has endorsed my candidacy largely because of school choice, a cause that I'm going to champion.
So, this is across the board. It's not just Democrats, not just Independents. People are fed up, which is why people are leaving California for the first time in our state's 170-year history.
WATTERS: Another thing you won't hear about is this story in the mainstream media. Can't find it on CNN, "Washington Post" won't cover it. Just imagine if it had been the other way.
Stacey Abrams, Maxine something like that -- forget about it. But this is how they rig elections, Larry. You get the Big Media colludes with the Big Donors to suppress negative stories that come out of their precincts and then they hurl negative smears at you.
ELDER: Right.
WATTERS: And that's how they rig elections and that takes away the power of the people to vote freely and fairly.
You just mentioned Obama releasing this video message about you. Let's listen to that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hello, Californians. You've got a big choice to make by September 14th. Governor Newsom has spent the past year and a half protecting California communities. Now Republicans are trying to recall him from office and overturn commonsense COVID safety measures for healthcare workers and school staff.
Your vote could be the difference between protecting our kids and putting them at risk.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Bringing in the big guns, Larry. Barack, Joe Biden, Kamala, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings throwing his wallet around. Man, they're all in because if you win that just shows the liberal mechanism that they have, super majority fail in that state.
ELDER: Well that's right and Obama called this the Republicans -- 63 percent of Hispanics voted for Gavin Newsom two years earlier. Now, the polls show a majority of Hispanics want him out. I just now mentioned former Democrat Senate Leader Gloria Romero has crossed party lines to support me, a majority of Independents now want him gone and they voted for Gavin Newsom two years ago.
So, it's a nice try. I noticed Obama did not say Governor Gavin Newsom has done a good job for the people of California.
WATTERS: Exactly.
ELDER: Because you can't defend this man's record. It is indefensible.
WATTERS: Exactly right. All right, fresh off the birthday party in the vineyard, Barack Obama weighing in on Larry. Larry, good luck out there. Thank you.
ELDER: Throw a little something in the tip jar make this a fair fight. My opponent has raised $75 million already. We're going to be outspent. So, let's make it a bit of a fair fight.
WATTERS: September 14th, that is the day. Thank you.
ELDER: You've got it. Thank you.
WATTERS: We told you back in April about the anti-gun extremist the Biden administration nominated to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. His name, David Chipman.
Tucker recently ran down the list of some of his unhinged beliefs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST, TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT: We do know that what he said publicly tells us all we need to know about how we got this job.
In October 2018, for example, David Chipman told "The Hill" that AR-15s should be treated quote, "just like machine guns." Well, machine guns are banned in this country. He believes AR-15s, the single most popular rifle in America should be banned.
Chipman made that remark in this capacity as a policy adviser for an anti- gun group, one of the many funded by Michael Bloomberg.
In 2012, he suggested MSNBC that the Secret Service shouldn't carry firearms, and last year, David Chipman openly mocked the millions of Americans who were buying firearms to protect their families from the crime wave that David Chipman's party has unleashed on the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: That guy, David Chipman's beliefs were so extreme that even some Democrats refused to support his confirmation, that's why today, the White House withdrew his nomination, but that doesn't mean the Biden administration is going to stop trying to undermine the Second Amendment. We'll be watching very closely to see who Joe Biden nominates in David Chipman's place. And of course, we'll keep you informed.
After the debacle in Afghanistan, China has realized that Joe Biden is weak. Now, China is testing Joe Biden with a major military operation. That's straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: The White House is now asking Congress to provide green cards to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees so that they can stay in the country indefinitely. Joe Biden is also demanding that lawmakers provide more than $6 billion to help resettle Afghan refugees on U.S. military bases.
According to "The Wall Street Journal," the money would also provide quote, "resettlement benefits" to Afghans.
Stephen Miller is a former senior White House adviser. He joins us to assess.
Stephen, I remember back in the day when Afghan veterans died waiting in line for healthcare at Obama-Biden's VA Hospitals and then Obama-Biden bureaucrats paid them bonuses to cover up these wait lists. Now, they're bringing in Afghans, giving them green cards, healthcare, probably free college tuition, food stamps -- that doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: Well, President Trump used to say that under President Obama, illegal aliens were treated better than our veterans, which of course is true today under President Biden. We can now add to that that under President Biden, unvetted, unverified, unauthorized Afghan nationals are also treated better than our veterans.
Let me briefly break down for your audience what is in the proposal. Now, the Biden administration is relying on the fact that many in the media either won't understand or won't care to explain in their newspapers or their other outlets what is actually in the proposal and you have summarized it exactly and correctly.
It provides free lifetime welfare to all Afghan nationals that Biden has flown into the United States to date or that he may choose to fly here at any point over the next 13 months, and we can assume that if that were to be included in the upcoming government funding bill, it would just be continually extended every year thereafter.
But that's only just part of it, it keeps going.
They redefine an Afghan national to mean anybody who has ever lived for a length of time in Afghanistan, even if they're not living there now and haven't lived there in many, many years. So in other words, it allows Joe Biden to go to say for example, Pakistan, fill planes up with Afghan nationals who've been living in Pakistan for decades, fly them in the United States and give them lifetime welfare.
It also gives them, as you correctly mentioned, green cards. What's a green card? Permanent residency and a path to voting citizenship. You know what else comes with that? Chain migration.
So if you bring in say a hundred thousand people, they can then bring in 500, 000 people, and that's not all. They also include a catch-all waiver - - get ready for this -- a catch-all waiver that allows Mayorkas to waive the statutory, in other words the legal entry bars on people who are guilty of trafficking, who are guilty of human and sex trafficking, who are guilty of drug crimes, who are guilty of a wide variety of criminal offenses or who present a public health threat.
So in other words, on the same day that you are being ordered to surrender to all of these government mandates, all health mandates are waivable for - - you guessed it -- Afghan nationals. That is a summary of the proposal.
WATTERS: Let me get this straight, so if you're an opium trafficker or you're a dude that has a child bride in tow that got on the plane --
MILLER: Child brides, yes.
WATTERS: Because remember, only seven percent of these people we brought over were actually helping us.
MILLER: Correct.
WATTERS: The rest of these people were not, they just got to the plane fast enough or the Taliban let them through and then said, you take them, probably not sending their best.
MILLER: Right, the Taliban was the gate keeper.
WATTERS: Exactly.
MILLER: Joe Biden's immigration policy was literally outsourced to the Taliban. You think that would have happened under Donald Trump? I don't think so. The Taliban is choosing now who gets to be an American citizen.
This project, Jesse, will not end well.
WATTERS: Well, I don't trust Biden to vet these people, he couldn't even vet his VP. Look what happened to her.
MILLER: That's exactly right.
WATTERS: Stephen Miller, thank you.
MILLER: Or his A.T.F. nominee or anyone else for that matter.
WATTERS: Or anybody, right? Thanks so much.
MILLER: Stop the bill. Thank you.
WATTERS: China's government knows Joe Biden and our military leaders are totally inept. Our disastrous exit from Afghanistan made that very clear. Now, China is testing Joe Biden.
Chinese warplanes have just entered Taiwan's Air Defense Zone. What happens next?
Gordon Chang is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He joins us.
So, Gordon, do we have a treaty with Taiwan? If China physically assaults Taiwan, does the United States have to respond militarily to protect Taiwan?
GORDON CHANG, SENIOR FELLOW, GATESTONE INSTITUTE: No, we don't have a mutual defense treaty. We have the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires the United States to sell weapons to Taiwan and a few other things, but most of our obligations are those that have been passed down from administration to administration, for things like the six assurances and a number of other items that have been really State Department generated.
WATTERS: Okay, good. So that gives me a sense of relief that Biden is not going to have to go in there and go crazy, but the problem is Joe Biden could go crazy at any time. You don't know what he's capable of. You don't know who is making his decisions for him, if he is even making his own decisions.
So China is rattling at saber in Taiwan, in the straits. They've seen how we've dealt with our allies, our enemies throughout the world, so far. We burned NATO, just to get out on Biden's timeline and so, they're testing us.
What are the implications?
CHANG: Well, the implications are that China will actually try to start a conflict with Taiwan, or it will do something that accidentally will devolve into conflict, but it's not just Taiwan because I think Russia, Iran, their terrorist allies are going to take advantage of it. So we could have conflict on both ends of the Eurasian land mass and basically, what we're talking about is the next world war.
WATTERS: So, the Iranians, I'm sure not going to jump back into the nuke deal that Joe Biden is begging him to re-enter, right? So you have that. You have the Russians probably going to hack again, remember Biden gave them that little list of things they weren't allowed to smoke, okay.
I'm not so sure Putin is going to pay much attention to that anymore and the Chinese will probably cause problems for us and North Korea and basically see where we're soft. Do you think Biden and the Generals have a strategy to contain that type of action or not?
CHANG: Not right now because they are preoccupied with Afghanistan and I think that essentially they're just trying to get out of that without more political turmoil. So really right now, we've got a number of hot spots and it's not just Taiwan.
It's also in India, in Ladakh in the Himalayas, and also Japan in the East China Sea. There are a number of places that China is pushing right now. And remember, Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, he is the most ambitious person in history and he really needs to take Taiwan to preserve his legitimacy because that's what he talks about all the time.
He has got so many domestic problems at home, Jesse, he needs a war. And by the way, as you point out, he looks at Biden and thinks he is incapacitated or incapable. So, what could go wrong?
WATTERS: And he also looks at Biden and knows his son still owns a major stake in a Chinese concern worth millions that he hasn't liquidated, so he is compromised. We know it. I think they gave him a bunch of diamonds, too, if I recall correctly.
Gordon Chang, thank you so much.
CHANG: Thanks, Jesse.
WATTERS: We know whatever decision Biden makes will be the wrong one. History tells us that.
A professor at a major university has just decided he's had enough of the indoctrination that occurs on college campuses. He has just left his job in dramatic fashion. He joins us to explain what he did, that's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Just days after choosing to arm the Taliban with billions of dollars' worth of state-of-the-art military equipment in Afghanistan, Democrats are once again reminding us who the real threat is, the American people.
According to reports, Capitol Police are set to reinstall a fence around the U.S. Capitol because of an upcoming Justice for January 6 Rally that'll be held next week. These politicians are only concerned with their own safety, meanwhile they open our borders and arm terrorists. It shows you where their priorities really are.
Peter Boghossian taught Philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. He just wrote a public letter to the university's provost announcing he is quitting. You can read the whole thing on "Substack," and you should.
Here is a part of it, quote: "This university has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory whose only inputs for race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division."
Peter Boghossian is the author of "How to Have Impossible Conversations," it's a great, great title of a book, almost as good as "How I Saved the World," and he joins us here.
All right, Professor, explain how this old --
PETER BOGHOSSIAN, AUTHOR, "HOW TO HAVE IMPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS": Ex- professor.
WATTERS: Ex-Professor as of a couple hours ago, how did this all go down?
BOGHOSSIAN: Well, the university basically created conditions that didn't allow me to teach what I was hired to do, which was critical thinking and ethics. And so, I could not retain my current position as is.
WATTERS: So, you're saying that you were doing what you've always done, teach critical thinking, assign reading materials of famous philosophers and encouraging robust debate and conversation and that was impossible because of what precisely?
BOGHOSSIAN: Well, the university told me I wasn't allowed to render my opinion about protected classes or teach in any way that my opinion about protected classes could be known. The university really made it difficult in terms of students were telling me that other professors had told them not to take my class.
There were flyers around campus with a Pinocchio nose, but this isn't really about necessarily the things that happened to me, that's just a piece of the larger picture of the social justice ecosystem that's taken over our university system.
WATTERS: Well, describe that ecosystem. Describe for people who didn't experience that in college. I did not experience that at all. I was actually a Philosophy Major for two years until I read Kant, and I couldn't stand the guy. I'm sure you agree, and switched to History.
But what kind of things are professors like yourself experiencing where they're unable to do their jobs?
BOGHOSSIAN: They are experiencing -- anyone who speaks out against the dominant moral orthodoxy, particularly with regard to race, gender, or sexual orientation, trans-issues for example -- let me just give you a quick example. In ethics, one of the issues that we're facing today as a society are trans-issues, trans-bathrooms would be an example of that or trans-women in sports, trans-men in sports and what that means.
The trans is a protected class, and so I wasn't allowed to speak about protected classes among other things, so there was a censoriousness about the university and there was always, always the threat of investigation.
I was investigated so many times for so many things and the total results of the investigation were nada, zilch. They found nothing.
But they weaponized Offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and even the threat of going to be called in for a theft of your time and if nothing else, the investigators are incredibly thorough.
So, they have these mechanisms in place in the university to enforce certain speech codes against professors, against dissident professors, against anyone who questions or challenges what's morally fashionable.
WATTERS: So they actually employ little social justice warriors within departments to keep tabs on professors that are deemed controversial. They weren't controversial, maybe 10 years ago, but now because everything has gone nuts are controversial. They threaten investigations or they do -- do they investigate microaggressions? Is that something that they're looking into? You can't even define many of these by the way.
BOGHOSSIAN: So, it's a small slight usually against race or gender or some kind of perceived status like ability status. One of the things -- they don't have an office for investigating microaggressions, but among the things that I was brought up on charges someone asked me if race was a social construct or a biological category, and I said I don't know. I'm a philosopher, I'm not a biologist.
And among other things, I was brought on charge of that, I've been accused of a microaggression when I asked for the evidence for microaggressions. I've been accused of microaggressions when I asked by colleagues and by students -- when I asked for evidence of the policies that were engulfing like trigger warnings, why should there be a trigger warning on a syllabus? What is the evidence that safe spaces are helpful to students?
So even asking for evidence was a microaggression, so you've created a kind of a culture in which even asking questions about things is viewed as a violation. It's become a dogma factory.
WATTERS: That's astounding. Humility is now a chargeable offense. Saying I don't know, that's not my area of expertise, they can bring you up on charges of microaggression.
BOGHOSSIAN: Correct.
WATTERS: Well, I'm sorry to hear that and it looks like it's destroying rational discourse in our universities, which is the point of universities -- to explore, to ask questions, to understand opposing opinions, you can't do that anymore. You can't ask questions. You just have to go along with the dogma and if you don't, you're in trouble.
BOGHOSSIAN: Right, and having conversations is impossible, having robust debates about certain topics is impossible. And so think about the injustice we're doing to our students when we're creating these large ecosystems that don't allow that. They don't allow questioning. They don't allow challenging.
And so students are particularly brittle when they hear the other side of a debate. I believe, very strongly, as John Stuart Mill did, that we have to be taught by people who actually believe things.
I believe there should be a Marxist in an Economics Department. I believe that there should be a Friedman in an Economics Department. I believe that there should be intellectual diversity and we give students the tools to figure out these issues and ask difficult questions, and we're not doing that.
WATTERS: All right, Peter, just don't ask about the vaccine. That's way, way, way too dangerous.
BOGHOSSIAN: Thank you, Jesse. I appreciate having me on.
WATTERS: All right, officials in Virginia have just announced they're putting a new time capsule inside the base of that Robert E. Lee statue. You're not going to believe what's going to go inside that little time capsule, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Back in 1887, Virginians put a time capsule inside the base of that Robert E. Lee monument that was just taken down in Richmond, Virginia. The Governor of that state, Ralph Northam, better known as Governor Klan Robes Blackface, has ordered that time capsule to be replaced with one that better reflects the current climate.
He doesn't care about the 19th Century, instead he wants the new time capsule to tell the story of last year's BLM riots and pandemic, so the new and improved woke time capsule will include the following: An LGBTQ pride pin, an expired vial of a COVID vaccine, and an African Kente cloth, worn at the 400th commemoration of the year, 1619.
We're not sure they're taking recommendations, but we think a photo of Governor Klan Robes Blackface should make it into the time capsule, just to remind people that racist Democrats still existed in 2021.
That's about it for us tonight. You can watch Tucker's incredible interview with Curtis Yarvin right now, and of course, tune in each night at 8:00 to the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.
Don't forget, President Trump tonight with Greg Gutfeld -- that guy -- for a very exclusive interview.
Have a great evening, everybody.
Sean Hannity takes over now.
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