Tucker: Joe Biden is running a zombie campaign
When people actually see Biden, they realize the former vice president isn't a distinguished elder statesman, he's a fading one.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," August 19, 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." One of the more poignant moments of Barack Obama's eight-year presidency came at the very end. It was January 2017, just days before Obama left the White House, and he awarded his Vice President, Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom, you may remember it.
Obama spoke at great length about their friendship, their personal friendship. He praised Biden's leadership. And in response, Biden said he knew that no matter what happened, Obama would always be there for him. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was eight and a half years ago that I chose Joe to be my Vice President. There has not been a single moment since that time that I have doubted the wisdom of that decision.
Joe's candid and honest counsel has made me a better President and a better Commander-in-Chief.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Mr. President, you know, as long as there is breath in me, I'll be there for you. My whole family will be and I know, I know it is reciprocal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, you didn't have to be an Obama partisan to appreciate that moment. There was something sweet about it. It was all fake, though it turns out.
In the end, Obama is not going to be there for Joe Biden. In fact, his eternal friendship has already ended. It didn't even make it through the next presidential term. Instead of helping his trusted friend run for the presidency, Obama has refused to endorse Joe Biden.
According to some reports, Obama repeatedly urged Biden not to run, "You don't have to do this," he warned Biden. Obama it turns out cares about one thing -- himself. He is obsessed with his political legacy.
Every day that Biden stays on the campaign trail, he is detracting from that legacy, why? Well, weeks ago, we told you, don't believe the polls. The polls say that Joe Biden is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. And in fact, as of today, he still is. The polls tell you he has got a very good chance of being the President.
But that's not real. Biden officially is still an elite. And yet, let's be completely honest, Biden's campaign is not a real campaign. It's a zombie effort. It lurches from one blunder to another until finally some catastrophe will put it out of its misery.
Even Biden's own allies want him to stop speaking in public so often. Why? Because when people actually see Joe Biden, they realize he's not a distinguished elder statesman. He is sadly a fading one. He thinks Cory Booker is the President of the United States. He believes that truth outweighs the facts. He thinks he was Vice President last year during the Parkland shooting. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I watched what happened when those kids from Parkland came up to see me now as Vice President -- and some of you covered it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So moments like that don't make Joe Biden a bad person, but they do make his campaign look like what it actually is -- a joke, not a serious play for the White House.
Still, if Biden were offering something real, a compelling message, he could get elected anyway. But he is not. He is in fact a Democratic fossil. He is running for leadership of a party that sees him as too male, too pale and stale.
Biden is old enough to have held public views prior to the year 2008, year zero in American politics and that makes his old policies totally unacceptable to the parties voters.
In 1995, Joe Biden supported all kinds of things current Joe Biden would never admit to supporting -- a secured border, traditional marriage, drugs off the street, criminals in prison even. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: And Madam President, we have predators on our streets that society has in fact, in part because of this neglect created.
Again, it does not mean because we created them that we somehow forgive them or do not take them out of society to protect my family and yours from them. They are beyond the pale many of those people -- beyond the pale.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "Beyond the pale," now it is Biden himself who is beyond the pale. The current Democratic Party believes in freeing criminals, protecting criminals, celebrating criminals.
In the new reality, Biden is suspect, in fact, worse. He is a relic of the past. All the energy is with the other candidates, insurgents, people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris. One of these three is going to rise above the rest and take the nomination. It will not be Joe Biden, almost everybody knows that now.
And that's all bad news if you're Barack Obama, and if what you really care about is your own cherished legacy because Joe Biden is explicitly running as a continuation of Barack Obama's agenda. The only problem, that agenda has been completely eclipsed by a far more radical political agenda.
Now Democrats are demanding single payer healthcare, which will be given for free to illegal immigrants, the ones streaming over our open border with Mexico. Candidates are advocating reparations based on skin color, the abolition, basically of America's history. They want to remake gender relations from the ground up.
Obama could be seen as the one who paved the way for all of that, thanks to his friend, Joe Biden, though he is becoming the Democratic president and kept it from happening even sooner.
Lisa Boothe is a senior fellow at Independent Women's Voice, and she joins us tonight. Lisa, thanks a lot for coming on.
LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Tucker, great to see you.
CARLSON: So when was the last time a President didn't want his vice president to be elected running on his own policies? I mean, it's all very strange. Why wouldn't Obama want Biden to run?
BOOTHE: Well, probably 2016 because it wasn't just reported that in 2020 President Obama tried to not -- to get him to not run, but also in 2016 as well.
There were reports that President Obama thought that Hillary Clinton would be the more formidable candidate, will be the stronger candidate of the two, and you know, tried to convince Joe Biden or convinced him to not run.
And so the question to the Democratic primary voters is why put your faith in a candidate when the people closest to him seem to doubt his abilities. And it's not just President Obama, I also think following David Axelrod on this is really interesting as well, because if you follow him on Twitter, if you've listened to what he has said on TV as well, he has taken open shots at Joe Biden and has also undercut his candidacy and this is someone who ran the 2008 and 2012 races. So this is someone with intimate knowledge of Joe Biden's ability as a candidate who continues to take shots at him publicly.
CARLSON: It seems pretty clear that Biden isn't up for it and that he doesn't have the support, certainly of the professional class in the Democratic campaign world. I wonder if people in Biden's campaign know that.
BOOTHE: Well, I mean, we've seen reports that his allies want him to curtail his schedule, because I guess he has been making more gaffes later in the day. So I think there's at least an acknowledgement that there's trouble there.
I mean, if you don't have the confidence in your candidate to go out and you know, to be doing these campaign events, that's not a very strong statement of that candidate's candidacy. So that should be a concern to Democratic primary voters.
Also, if you go through Joe Biden's history, he has not proven himself as a candidate. The last tough race that he had was his first Senate race. He has two failed presidential bids under his belt, one that he left in shame for a plagiarism scandal in 1988. So this is not someone who has proven himself as a solid candidate.
CARLSON: Right. It's been 47 years since he has done any of that.
BOOTHE: He has had a lot of opportunity.
CARLSON: A tough one. No, it's been a long time.
BOOTHE: It's been a long time.
CARLSON: But I'm fascinated by Obama though. I mean, even by the standards of politics where, you know, relationships tend to be transactional, this seems like a profound betrayal.
I mean, Biden served him faithfully for eight years. Obama staffers were constantly attacking Biden. He put up with all of it. And then when it comes his turn to run, Obama doesn't endorse him.
BOOTHE: It's business.
CARLSON: It seems so disloyal.
BOOTHE: But it's business. I mean politics is a business. I mean, you've seen how -- Kentucky Governor, if I can find my words, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin ran against Mitch McConnell, he took shots at him in the primary. And then Mitch McConnell went on to go endorse him.
So politics is a business, and I think that President Obama as well as David Axelrod, if you look at some of the things he has been saying, I mean, obviously I can't speak for him. But if you follow these things, I don't think they trust Joe Biden's ability as a candidate.
I think they see him as one of the weaker candidates and not the strongest one to try to go on and defeat President Trump, which is obviously the objective of the Democrats.
I also think one other big issue for Joe Biden as well was his abandonment of the Hyde Amendment because it makes him look completely spineless. I mean, we're talking in the exact same week where you have campaign officials going on, telling media that you know, look, this is his deeply held conviction. He's had this conviction for decades now. He is not going to abandon it.
And then Joe Biden goes in and abandons it. It makes him look weak. It makes him look spineless, and he doesn't look like he is rooted in any core beliefs.
CARLSON: Well, at least we know how he defines deeply held conviction.
BOOTHE: Right? He doesn't have it.
CARLSON: Lisa Boothe, great to see you tonight.
BOOTHE: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thank you. So with Biden gone and Obama's legacy rejected, what is left in the Democratic Party? Well, the answer. The most extreme set of positions in history, a party that believes the best way to make America better is to give terrorists and murderers the right to vote -- literally.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If somebody commits a serious crime -- sexual assault, murder -- they're going to be punished. They may be in jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives. That's what happens when you commit a serious crime. But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It wasn't so long ago that no person running as a mainstream candidate for President of the United States would consider saying something like that. Now, it's the consensus on the left. A decade from now, disagreeing with it might make you a criminal at the pace at which things are moving as fast.
Rafael Mangual is a Fellow and Deputy Director of Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute. One of our favorite guests, he joins us tonight. So this does seem all of a sudden, an idea that your average person -- I've got to believe thinks is lunatic because it obviously is -- is part of the Democratic catechism, like you have to believe this in order to run for President. How did that happen so fast?
RAFAEL MANGUAL, FELLOW AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF LEGAL POLICY, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Oh, I mean, I think people just bought wholesale into the idea that the criminal justice system could be fairly characterized on the whole as overly oppressive and racially biased. This is what people have been told over and over and over again.
CARLSON: Exactly.
MANGUAL: And you know, you say it long enough and eventually, you'll get enough people to believe it.
CARLSON: Well, that's exactly it. That the system itself is rotten.
MANGUAL: That's right.
CARLSON: They've sold us that line for long enough that they themselves start to believe it. I wonder though what happens to a society where the justice system is considered illegitimate and racist? I mean, crime spikes, things start to fall apart, no?
MANGUAL: That's exactly right. I mean, and we're already kind of seeing little examples of that all around the country. Right? I mean, if you look at Baltimore, where police have sort of really backed off radically in the last few years since the controversy over Freddie Gray's death, you've had I think, something like a 70 percent reduction in police initiated stops.
What has followed that -- what's followed that has been a serious crime increase that again, has primarily victimized precisely the populations that these candidates purport to represent. Right?
We saw the same thing in Chicago where in 2015, at the end of 2015 into 2016, police in Chicago started to back off of self-initiated stops, of stops and frisk, and what happened that year? Murders increased by 58 percent.
There was a study done of this by a criminologist named Paul Cassell and it was published in the University of Illinois Law Review, and what it found was that 239 of the additional murders in 2016, compared to 2015, could be attributed to the police back off, right? So we know, we have examples of what happens when --
CARLSON: Wait, so what you're saying is that guilty white liberals push these policies to ease their own race guilt, and then black people die as a result?
MANGUAL: They proclaim to be representing, you know, minority communities that are we're told, oppressed by the criminal justice system. But the reality is -- and they focus on these statistics, right?
One of the things that they like to focus on is the disparity in criminal justice enforcement trends, right? What they never talk about though are the disparities in the victimization trends.
And when you look at the victimization trends, you find that black men, for example, which constitute less than seven percent of the population makeup about half of all murder victims, right?
So when we think about who is going to pay the price of the policies that they want to enact, like, for example, cutting the prison population in half, it's going to be precisely those communities that they purport to represent.
CARLSON: Yes, it's not. It's not Pete Buttigieg or Cory Booker who is going to be victimized here, right?
MANGUAL: That's right.
CARLSON: It's people in these neighborhoods. Is there anybody running for President -- I know, you follow this for a living -- on the Democratic side who has stood apart and said, "No, this is crazy. We're going to get higher murder rates. Like let's slow down. Let's stop attacking the criminal justice system. The whole thing is racist." Is anybody disagreeing with the trend?
MANGUAL: No. And that's actually one of the most kind of concerning things. This has kind of emerged as one of the single most -- like must pass ideological litmus test for the Democratic nomination.
And so no one, you know, who has any prominence on that side of the aisle has the courage to come forward and say what is plainly true. Right? I mean, you know, they talk about -- when Bernie Sanders released the plan today that says that, you know, mass incarceration as he calls it didn't make us any safer. That's just false, right?
I mean, there are multiple studies that show that, you know, at the very least, the increase in incarceration is responsible for about 25 percent of the crime decline from the 1990s peak. That's a lot of lives saved, a lot of lives improved. And, you know, I think they reject these policies that we know clearly worked at the peril of everyone that they claim to represent.
CARLSON: That's right, because they're for chaos. Rafael, thanks so much for that.
MANGUAL: Thanks so much for having me.
CARLSON: Well, the President keeping rumors alive tonight, the United States could buy Greenland. After the start of this show, just a moment ago, the President tweeted this image. It shows a new Trump Tower on the shores of Greenland, along with that picture, the President tweeted this. "I promise not to do this to Greenland." We will continue to follow the Greenland drama in great detail on the show.
Well, Antifa once again, out of control, this time in Portland, Oregon. The left did little to discourage or rein them in. We will show you exactly what happened and the response from the 2020 Democratic candidates, after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Antifa and its enemies clash once again over the weekend in Portland, Oregon. Newly obtained video shows just how violent things got. Pretty remarkable.
Fox chief breaking news correspondent, Trace Gallagher has more on that for us tonight. Hey, Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHIEF BREAKING NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker even at the height of the rallies, the far right demonstrators were heavily outnumbered by the far left anti-fascist or Antifa protesters, and there were some on hand who didn't belong to either side, but still police tried to keep the ideologies apart because the Portland Mayor said the situation was, quote, "potentially dangerous and volatile," and he was right.
Along with exchanging heated words and goading each other, there were skirmishes throughout the day. Some of them were posted by conservative writer, Andy Ngo who was beaten up by Antifa protesters back in June.
Ngo didn't take any of the video and in the first one, there's only 50 seconds, so not long enough to get the full context, but it shows what appear to be two Antifa members using batons to go after and pummel a man in shorts. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(INCOMPREHENSIBLE CONVERSATION)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No [bleep]. No [bleep].
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No violence. No violence.
(INCOMPREHENSIBLE CONVERSATION)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: Yes, the second video is even more disturbing. Andy Ngo and others on hand at the rally claim a man was Mace'd and knocked unconscious by an Antifa mob, and his partner or spouse who tried to protect him reportedly backs up that claim, but we didn't see the actual violence, just the aftermath. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get the [bleep].
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll [bleep] you up, you crazy [bleep].
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You guys have got to move.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [Bleep].
(INCOMPREHENSIBLE CONVERSATION)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: The final video doesn't need context because it speaks for itself. Antifa members launching a verbal assault on police. That includes imploring them to die. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You all know your job is morally and ethically bankrupt. You know you're a parasite. So shoot yourselves. Suicide is the only way out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: In all, police made 13 arrest and seized metal poles, bear spray and other weapons -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Trace Gallagher for us. Thanks, Trace. Well, at this point, Antifa has been explicitly linked to quite a few riots and at least one full blown terror attack. They are a domestic terror threat.
Despite that fact, Members of Congress continue to praise Antifa or to simply lie about what they do.
On CNN yesterday, for example, Democratic Debra Haaland said that assaulting people with hammers and bike locks is just another form of, quote, "peaceful protest."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DEBRA HAALAND (D-NM): This is on par with what the President does. He sides with the white supremacist. He sides with the white nationalist. It's not surprising that Trump would side away from the folks who are the peaceful protesters, working to safeguard their city from domestic terrorism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, we'll be charitable to Congresswoman Haaland, and imagine that was just moronic and not evil. We'll just assume she hadn't seen any of the footage from this weekend. But you don't have to have seen the footage from this weekend to know what Antifa is capable of or what they've been doing pretty regularly for the past few years.
Andy Ngo, for example, assaulted in Portland, brain damaged, just two months ago. She has to learn about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [Bleep]. [Bleep]
(INCOMPREHENSIBLE CONVERSATION)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [Bleep]. [Bleep]. [Bleep].
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You [bleep].
(INCOMPREHENSIBLE CONVERSATION)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [Bleep].
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So the man you just saw being attacked by the mob, he is one of those the Congresswoman describes as a terrorist. The people attacking him, they are what she calls peaceful protesters.
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and he joins us tonight. Professor, thanks very much for coming on.
So what do you make of the left's response and not just the left's response, but the Democratic Party's response -- Democratic candidates for President to Antifa violence over the past couple of years?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE HOOVER INSTITUTION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: Yes, I think -- I think everybody in history when you look through history, anytime you see people dressed in black Halloween buffoonish costumes with masks and clubs, you know, they're terrorists and are thugs. The Democratic Party knows that.
But I think they feel that they're useful trench warriors in a larger progressive struggle against the Prince of Darkness, Donald Trump and his supporters and you can really see that these protesters are not detoured.
They have an implicit message that what they're doing is with a wink and a nod approved by Representative Haaland or Keith Ellison, or Chris Cuomo, or other luminaries in the media and progressive movement.
And so they won't stop and you can see Representative Haaland looks at, for example, the squad, and otherwise, an obscure newcomer group of four House of Representative members, suddenly they are international celebrities for their anti-Semitism and extremism and she thinks -- and she is going to set this precedent -- they've set a precedent for others to be as shrill and as hard left as they can to get celebrity and attention that otherwise a first-term Representative would not earn.
One thing, Tucker, these Antifa protesters are mostly middle class white kids and upper middle class kids.
CARLSON: Yes.
HANSON: And they locate in woke cities of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York, and you get the impression that they're part of this collective $1.5 trillion in student debt. They seem to be college educated -- a lot of them -- and they're angry and frustrated, because in return for all that money wasted, they've got these social science or environmental studies or worthless degrees, and they're not earning very much money.
And yet they want to live in these hipster cities and satisfy their hipster appetites, and they're not exposed to the traditional criteria that create adulthood. And that's buying a house, getting married, having children, living in the small town, a suburb, or a rural area.
And so I expect that this is one of the reasons where everybody is worried about socialism as a particular profile of angry people that are blaming their own self-created angst on other people and larger cosmic causes.
And I think it's going to get worse, especially as the narratives of trying to stop Trump going back to 2017 with the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, the failed 22-month Mueller investigation, then we went to supremacy and racism. Now, it's recession. They're all not working. And yet, the answer to that and instead of getting a viable agenda to Trump is, let's double down on what's failed and then let's get even angrier that it keeps failing. And that's what we see with these street theatrics and the people who appease them and empower them.
CARLSON: Yes, the stuff can get out of control, though, as you know, and that's the fear. Professor, great to see you tonight. Thank you.
HANSON: Thank you.
CARLSON: Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out signed a new will just a couple of days before his death. That and other new developments in the mystery. Both Dr. Siegel and Judge Jeanine Pirro, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. He controls our most important national newspaper, "The Washington Post." His company, Amazon is everywhere and knows more about you than you may know about yourself.
Amazon has microphones listening in on millions of American homes. It has 300,000 employees, many of them are warehouse laborers working in horrifying conditions for low pay. In short, Amazon is one of America's most dangerous companies. There's a lot to worry about with Amazon.
And yet despite that obvious fact, Congress does not seem terribly interested in reining them in or even regulating them. We can only speculate as to why. But here's one possible reason.
Starting in late May, five of Amazon senior executives made personal contributions to a single Member of Congress, Congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island. It turns out, Congressman Cicilline is the Democrat leading House antitrust investigations against major tech companies.
The donations came just two months before Amazon attended a major congressional hearing on antitrust issues. That sounds like corruption to us, probably because it is.
Congressman Cicilline insist those donations won't influence his approach to the investigation. Of course, he is always welcome on this show to explain the propriety of taking that money. "The Washington Post," by the way, also insist that Jeff Bezos doesn't influence their coverage. But Bezos didn't become the world's richest man by wasting his money, obviously, obviously.
Congressman Cicilline, you're always welcome.
Well, it's been more than a week since Jeffrey Epstein died, but the mystery around his demise continues to grow. New York City authorities ruled the death a suicide last week even though several aspects of his autopsy clash with that interpretation.
Dr. Marc Siegel is a Fox medical contributor, a frequent guest on the show. We're happy to have him tonight. Doctor, what do you make of this ruling by New York medical authorities?
MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Tucker, good evening. I don't have any reason to directly contest the ruling from the Medical Examiner's Office. But I will say this, there are several irregularities attached to this.
To start with, the pathologist who did the autopsy did not rule it a suicide a week before. She hadn't decided yet. She was waiting for more information to come in. Her boss ruled it a suicide a week later, despite the fact that there were three fractures in the neck. My inside sources have told me that was hemorrhaging in the neck. I've also heard that there were some bruising.
So I'm wondering at the speed with which this was changed. A week is not that long a time to suddenly go from undecided to suicide. So what information did they have?
I have to tell you, I'm waiting for the autopsy report to be released, which the public should know, we still don't have. I want to be able to look at it myself. I want Joe Public out there to be able to look at it and make their own decisions.
Just the cause of death alone is not enough. I want to know what the contributory evidence is. I want to understand how come two guards supposedly fell asleep and then fabricated documents. This is a really strange case. And the Attorney General is right to say that there were irregularities here, not to mention, the way the psychiatric part of this was handled, which is an utter disgrace.
CARLSON: So very quickly, Dr. Siegel, is there a good reason why we still don't have that information?
SIEGEL: No, there isn't a good reason. We should have it now. I mean, the cause of death is a final stamp. But we need to have this now. It should be released. They were supposedly waiting on the toxicology report. But then, you know, don't give a final cause of death. We need this information released now. It needs to be looked at by everybody, so we can draw our own conclusions on this.
Again, this type of situation and I'm sure the Judge is going to say more about this, this is more consistent with a strangling. I'm willing to accept it as a hanging, but I want to know more of the evidence.
CARLSON: Yes, more consistent with a strangling.
SIEGEL: Much more consistent.
CARLSON: Doctor, thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Absolutely. Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Much more consistent. Remarkable. Another revelation in the Epstein case earlier today, just two days before his death, whatever its cause, Epstein signed his name to a new will.
Judge Jeanine Pirro host, of course, "Justice with Judge Jeanine" every Saturday night right here on Fox. She is the author of the brand new book, "Radicals, Resistance and Revenge." And we are proud to have her on our show tonight. Judge, thanks a lot for coming on.
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: Good to see you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Now, you've been involved personally, in cases where there's a dispute over whether it was a murder or a suicide. Given your background, what do you make of this?
PIRRO: Well, first of all, I think what the Medical Examiner should have done was she should have listed the manner of death. Understand, there are two differences, what actually caused the death, some kind of asphyxiation, but the manner of death can be a homicide, a suicide, or pending, determined.
So she -- there are four investigations going on right now. Her rush to judgment as to decide that this was a suicide makes no sense. We don't know why the cameras weren't working, why everybody was asleep, why they lied. The F.B.I., the D.O.J., the Inspector General, Bureau of Prisons -- everybody is doing an investigation and where it's capable of being one of two ways, you've got to give me the additional dots that cause me to believe it's one way versus another.
And by the way, Tucker, I have tried cases that were listed as suicides, and I've gotten a homicide conviction. So they weren't suicides. They were intentional murders.
And secondly, the breaking of a hyoid bone, and I've asked -- I've done -- I tried strangulation cases, that's classic in a strangulation, not in a hanging.
So there is a rush here. I don't know if it's to shut it down. But it makes no sense to me as a prosecutor.
CARLSON: Have you seen, finally, cases in your life where the Medical Examiner was influenced by political concerns or pressure?
PIRRO: Absolutely. Look, everybody is human. Everybody is -- can be influenced. All right, there are very few people. Look at Washington, look at our government, we're finding out things we don't want to know, Tucker.
So the same thing happens in the Criminal Justice System. But here's the saving grace. When we get all the facts, we can decide what happened. People say, "Oh, he tried to kill himself. He definitely committed suicide." That's not true. Because he said that Nicholas Tartaglione, the cop in the cell, originally, when they say, he tried to kill himself, beat the hell out of him.
I know that probably is true, because I knew Nicholas Tartaglione. He was a cop when I was a DA in Westchester. Would it be like him to slap this guy around? Without a doubt. That's number one.
And number two, the fact that he was very upbeat with his attorneys, said, "I'll see you Sunday." All these facts need to be looked into to decide whether or not it is a homicide versus a suicide. And to just one, two, three before the toxicology is even back on the microscopic tissues, it makes no sense to me as a litigator who has tried homicide cases.
CARLSON: Very quickly, why are there so many people who are insistent that you be quiet and just accept the official version of things? Stop asking questions, stop being a conspiracy nut and just believe. Why are people insisting on that?
PIRRO: Because they haven't done what I've done -- if it's me, personally, I don't really care what people say. I did this for 30 years. I was a judge and I ran an office with 40,000 cases a year for 12 years. You figure it out. I went to every homicide. I oversaw every one of them. And I have seen Medical Examiners say it's a suicide. I look at the autopsy picture, the woman has tweezed her eyebrows, her manicure is perfect. She is wrapping presents. It's not a suicide. She wasn't depressed, her husband killer her and I proved it.
CARLSON: The best. Judge Jeanine. Great to see you tonight.
PIRRO: Thank you.
CARLSON: California's homelessness is so out of control that functioning businesses are being forced to leave the state. I'll speak to someone in that boat. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, in recent months, dozens of Republicans and a handful of Democrats have been pushing for the passage of something called the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act. The bill would make it explicit that babies who survive botched abortions are entitled to medical care to keep them alive.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate, though, have stopped those bills from becoming law or even receiving a vote. Democrat Tina Smith said the bill was unacceptable because it would provide quote, "inappropriate medical treatment and interfere with important medical decisions." More prudent Democrats suggested simply a waste of time.
But here's some data that might change your mind. It turns out there have been quite a few babies born alive and allowed to die after abortions. Data from 50 states say at least 40 have been born alive following botched abortions just in the last year. This figure is not sensationalistic, it's not made up. It's not from activists. It is straight from state health data.
In Minnesota for example, since 2011, eleven babies, excuse me, have been born alive during induced abortions. In Arizona, at least 10 have been born alive. And in Florida, there have been 19 cases of babies born alive in abortions.
Now, in most instances, the born alive child died within 24 hours. That's just three states. Most U.S. states don't even require the collection of data on botched abortions. So it's almost certain that there are dozens or even hundreds of other cases happening in the rest of the country. We don't know that. But it seems obvious.
If that's true, that would make botched abortions more common than deaths from mass shootings. Think about that for a minute. In a sane society, this would be a national scandal. America is allowing late-term abortion, but some of the victims are inconveniently surviving. You think we would at least want to know how often this happens, and do our best to ensure that the survivors are kept alive.
But no, currently, that is not the case at all. For the Democratic Party, medical care for the most vulnerable is quote, "inappropriate and unacceptable." Worth knowing.
Well, homelessness is becoming a blight for the entire State of California. It used to be confined to just a couple of cities. San Francisco, most notably. Now, it has spread across the entire state.
In the City of Los Angeles, for example, thousands of people fill tent cities that cover entire neighborhoods, even secondary cities like Sacramento are not being spared. And now ordinary citizens are paying the price.
In an appearance on Fox News on Monday, a business owner called Elizabeth Novak described how she had to move her business, because the homeless presence nearby became so pervasive, she couldn't stay there. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELIZABETH NOVAK, BUSINESS OWNER: I just want to tell you what happens when I get to work. I have to clean up the poop and the pee off of my doorstep. I have to clean up the syringes. I have to fight off people that push their way into my shop that are homeless and on drugs because you won't arrest them for drug offenses. I have to apologize to my clients.
So I want to know what you're going to do for us, the ones that are unhappy. You want to make this state a sanctuary state. You want to make it comfortable for everybody except for the people that work hard, and have tried their hardest to get along in life. And now, we have to change that because of your lies.
So while you sit in your million dollar home, you don't have to look at what we have to look at. There's hardworking people out there that have to deal with this on a daily basis.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So homelessness is out of control. Lawmakers are doing nothing and it's destroying the lives of ordinary Californians. That's what you just heard. But it's not the first time we've heard it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAREN HIX, LIFELONG LOS ANGELES RESIDENT: These are pictures of what is going on right around our neighborhood.
CARLSON: So we're seeing -- I mean, some of these pictures are almost too disgusting to put on the screen. But we have a number of them of RV's.
HIX: Yes.
CARLSON: People are living in those full time?
HIX: Yes, people are living in them full time. You will notice there is raw sewage that is coming out. It's more than an environmental crisis. It is a health crisis down in this area.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Alexandra Datig is leading a recall effort against the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti over the homelessness crisis there, which is bad and getting worse, and she joins us again tonight. Thanks a lot for coming back on the show, so --
ALEXANDRA DATIG, FRONT PAGE INDEX: Good to be with you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Has it -- since you began the effort to recall the Mayor and to get this issue the attention that it deserves. Have things gotten any better?
DATIG: Well, thanks to you and to the media, we've been able to scare $130 million out of the state government and the local government. And we've also been able to free up a thousand units for the disabled homeless people, which is, you know, a lot more than what's happening before.
But it's really the blind leading the blind in our local government where they think they can just warehouse homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles and in other cities in California. This is completely unacceptable. And the optics of it are not even -- are not even half of the story.
We're talking about diseases in our streets because of biosolids of human waste, deep water human waste turning into particulate dust, making all of our citizens ill. This is more than a public health crisis. This is a state of emergency and the Governor of State of California needs to get off his rocking chair and declare a state of emergency in the State of California over this crisis.
This is a serious crisis. We need Federal intervention. We need FEMA to come in and do a damage assessment now. This cannot continue. Think the tents away, Tucker, just think the tents away. You've got bodies laying all over the street. What are the optics then? Think the tents away. Just think about that for a second.
CARLSON: So Mayor Garcetti --
DATIG: I mean, what are we supposed to do with these politicians? They've just -- they keep going on this merry go round with money. We've got Measure HHH which was a complete bait and switch. They've run out of money to even build transitional housing for the homeless and supportive housing. They promised wraparound services.
The bomb measure was a bait and switch. It was language that said one thing and did another and by law, they couldn't do the wraparound services. They knew it. Mayor Garcetti ran on it and he got reelected on it. Shame on you, Eric Garcetti. Shame on you.
CARLSON: Has he responded to you? Garcetti?
DATIG: He actually responded to his official recall notice one day late. We, today, right now, do not have an original signed response from the Mayor and the City Clerk's office is trying to compel the committee to recall Mayor Eric Garcetti to add his response which accuses us of fraud and of being misleading to -- they're trying to compel us to add that at the bottom of our petition, or else we won't get circulated. This is outrageous.
CARLSON: He says you have fraud.
DATIG: This is complete corruption.
CARLSON: Yes, it is outrageous.
DATIG: Complete corruption.
CARLSON: Did you expect --
DATIG: This is government corruption at its height.
CARLSON: Do you expect the White House, the Trump administration to get involved in this?
DATIG: I'm praying -- I pray every single day that the President of the United States gets involved in this. He should use his powers under the supremacy clause, and he should. Please, Mr. President, we are asking you, please, federally intervene. They are trying to use the people who are living and dying in agony on the streets of Los Angeles as a political football.
We do not appreciate that in the City of Los Angeles. Our citizens are a priority in our city and you got elected to take care of our citizens. You do not have a city without citizens. So we demand that you put them first or we call on the Federal government to intervene and correct the situation before we have rains, before we have raw sewage going into our storm source, affecting the ocean life in the wintertime.
This cannot continue. The Mayor says he doesn't want to do anything for the next 30 days, the next 60 days. They want to sell $13 billion more in bond money. So they're trying to peddle The End Homelessness Act. It is just a complete and total corruption and we don't want this anymore.
CARLSON: That's obvious. Alexandra, thank you.
DATIG: We want all hands on deck and we want to correct it. Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: On your side. Good to see you. Elizabeth Warren is rising in the polls, you may have noticed. She still has to bury the hatchet with one community though -- American Indians. She stole their identity for years in order to gain the affirmative action system at Harvard University. Mark Steyn watched all of that happen. He is here tonight with his assessment. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Pocahontas would like to apologize. For years, Elizabeth Warren used phony American Indian heritage to advance her academic career, scamming the affirmative action system which itself is a scam.
She was so committed to the lie that she released a DNA test showing a tiny sliver of DNA she claimed made her a native. She thought the rest of us would buy it, now she is finally accepting what was obvious from day one. She is roughly about as American Indian as the Prince of Wales, maybe slightly less, actually.
Recently in Sioux City, while attending a forum on American Indian issues, she apologized for her past behavior. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to say this, like anyone who is being honest with themselves, I know that I have made mistakes. I am sorry for harm I have caused.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Mark Steyn is an author and columnist. Of course, if you're watching the show last week, you saw him doing an amazing job for four days, hosting it. We're so glad to have him back. Mark Steyn, thanks for doing that, by the way as I was --
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: No, no. Tucker, I am about as convincing a host for you as Elizabeth Warren is a Cherokee. So I've about 1,024th.
CARLSON: I don't think that's true actually. One of my producer says, you know, typically you get a co-host that is not as good as you. That's what TV people do. But you are one who is like, actually every bit as good. So thank you for doing that.
So what did you think of Elizabeth Warren's apology? What is she saying in that apology exactly?
STEYN: Well, you described it as burying the hatchet and I think in actual fact, the Indian community are in a certain sense leveraging the hatchet. You know, she is at risk here because this is actually quite a widespread crime.
A month or so back, "The LA Times" ran a story on how hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts supposedly reserved for minorities have been handed out to 100 percent white people pretending to be Cherokee, which is exactly what Elizabeth Warren did.
Harvard Law School represented her as their first woman of color, which is ridiculous. But nobody laughed, as always say, you know, she is the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of White Out. You can't get whiter
So she is someone who has committed --
CARLSON: She is Cory Booker level. Yes, no I agree.
STEYN: Yes, no. Exactly, exactly. But here's the thing. I think Trump did her a great service by making her a laughingstock on this issue, because he has eliminated any possibility of her running on her personal story. Her personal story is a lie. She can't run on that.
She can't run on identity politics, the way even Kirsten Gillibrand is doing with her white woman of privilege thing because the identity politics has run out. She can't run on denouncing the President as a white supremacist, because it doesn't get more supremely white than to pass yourself off as Harvard Law School's first woman of color when you're not.
And that's left actually with just boring wonky politics. She is the -- as wrong as the policies are, she is actually the only person out there just saying, "Well, you know, I can't run on who I am. I can't run on what I am. I can't run on what racist the President is. So instead, I've got this policy platform," and it seems to be working for her.
CARLSON: That's a fascinating analysis. And I agree with you a hundred percent. If she sticks to that, she'll probably do pretty well. I'm not sure America will, but she will.
STEYN: Yes.
CARLSON: Mark Steyn, great to see you tonight, and thanks again, for coming last week.
STEYN: Hey, great to have you back, Tucker. Thanks a lot.
CARLSON: Thanks, Mark. Well, that's it for us tonight. An hour gone by. Tune in tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m. We will be here. The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. Have a great evening.
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