Published April 10, 2019
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 10, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening, welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” What happens when you could no longer denounce your political opponents as Russian spies? This is a major problem in the Democratic Party right now, but they have a solution. You just call them white nationalists instead. It is every bit as stupid and slanderous and it is even more effective in shutting them up. But what does it do to the country when you whip up hatred and fear like that? We will tell you just ahead.
But first tonight, the Attorney General, William Barr has finally confirmed what has been obvious for months now, the Obama administration spied on Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Nothing like this has happened in modern American history. Barr dropped the news almost in passing during testimony before Congress this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It is a big deal.
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN, D-N.H.: So you're not -- you're not suggesting though that spying occurred?
BARR: I don't -- well, I guess you could -- think that there was -- spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur. I'm not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, there is no disputing the points that Barr made especially the first one. Spying on a presidential campaign is a big deal especially when it was authorized by a rival administration.
Just imagine if a year from now, the Trump administration allowed the FBI to surveil officials in the Kamala Harris for President Campaign. Imagine if when caught, Trump pointed to opposition research generated by the Republican National Committee as justification for that surveillance. How would the media react to that story?
Well, like it was a major jaw-dropping scandal, and this show would hardly agree with that. We would not defend that. Law enforcement should never be used as a partisan political tool, no matter who it benefits.
But the media don't feel that way about Obama spying. They refuse to admit it even was spying. Professional dumb person, Jennifer Rubin of "The Washington Post" attacked the Attorney General for daring to bring up the topic at all. She called Barr, "Trump's toady."
CNN meanwhile assured its viewers that there is little evidence that spying occurred, but that is a lie. There is plenty of evidence that spying occurred and we've had it for months. In 2016 and 2017, the FBI wiretapped Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman.
Former Trump aide, Carter Page was spied on extensively by the U.S. government even though it was obvious from the very first day that he was not a Russian spy. Please. Last year, we learned that the FBI used an informant to feed that information from inside the Trump campaign. This is all spying. There is no other word for it.
When Trump complained about being spied on, Democrats and their employees in the media called him a nutcase and a liar.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF.: There is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: These baseless claims of spies.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The so-called spy issue. First of all, there is absolutely no evidence that there was a spy. So it is really a fake issue.
DAVID CORN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, MOTHER JONES: This phony baloney story about a spy in the campaign.
To call them a conspiracy theory is to give them too much credit, just fake facts.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: All the other people who have seen the intelligence in your own party are saying there is just no there, there. I'm wondering what it will take for you Congressman Zeldin to say he is full of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: He lied. He is crazy. It's a conspiracy theory. A lot of Republicans said that too, by the way, and we should remember their names. And as it turns out, there was in fact a conspiracy afoot to hide the truth, but Trump was not leading that conspiracy, Jim Clapper was.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOY BEHAR, ABC HOST, THE VIEW: Was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign?
JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: No, they were not. They were spying on -- a term I don't particularly like -- but on what the Russians were doing, trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage and influence, which is what they do.
BEHAR: So why does he not like that? He should be happy they're doing it.
CLAPPER: Well, he should be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: He should be. Got that? The Obama administration was not spying, they were watching him without his knowledge on behalf of the opposing party in the closing months of a bitter presidential campaign. No big deal. Trump ought to be grateful for that.
The Obama people cared enough to surveil his staff. They are patriotic that way. They are bighearted people. Come on, there has got to be a limit to how much lying a country can take from its leaders before things start to fall apart and we've definitely reached our limit.
Russian collusion did not happen. Domestic spying during a presidential campaign did happen, and we have a right to know who participated in it, who authorized it and what their motives were. We have a right to know that immediately, right now without redactions.
This country does not belong to retired Obama staffers and Intel agency heads and mindless CNN contributors who nod gravely as they say something you do not understand. No. It is our country. This is a democracy and we ought to act like it is a democracy.
Mark Morgan is a former Assistant Director of the FBI and he joins us tonight. Mr. Morgan, thank you very much for coming on. So the Attorney General made two points: one, it happened; and two it is a big deal. Let's take the second one first.
You've been around a long time. You've worked in government your whole life. Is it a big deal that one administration would spy on the presidential campaign of another party?
MARK MORGAN, FORMER FBI AND BORDER PATROL OFFICIAL: That is an absolute understatement, it is beyond a big deal.
In fact, in the law enforcement community, specifically the FBI, we follow Attorney General guidelines and this would called a SIM as we call it -- a Sensitive Investigative Matter. You're talking about looking into the presidential campaign.
I can't think of something that has a more balanced interest that goes right to the heart of a SIM that you could thwart the will of the people by impacting an election, right, or trying to, in this case, overturn a President who was elected. So this is absolutely huge.
CARLSON: So if this came before you for you, and I want to play devil's advocate a little bit.
MORGAN: Sure.
CARLSON: So you are the Obama administration and you receive a claim that the Russians have penetrated this campaign or are trying to undermine our democracy though this campaign, you'd be very nervous about being caught spying on another campaign, of course? Isn't the first thing you would do is go to the candidate and say, "We have credible information this might be happening. We're going to take a look at some people in campaign." Tell him, but they didn't.
MORGAN: Absolutely, so not only go into the campaign, but go into the DNC. There are several elements that I question as well and I want to know the answers why wasn't that done.
But the Attorney General said something else in his testimony that the American people really need to understand and that is the predication, right? This is a big deal that they did this, and so it is important to evaluate the predication. It should have been at such a high bar to take on an investigation against a political campaign like this. I want to know too, the validity of that predication.
CARLSON: But the only reason, unless there is maybe something that I cannot think of, the only reason you wouldn't tell Trump that you believe some unpaid volunteer, Carter Page, was being used by the Russians or working for the Russians. The only reason you wouldn't tell him that is because you sincerely believe he himself is a Russian agent, but there was no evidence of that, so they couldn't really have thought that, right?
MORGAN: I think so. And what I look at this as I start to unpack that, what I saw was a core group of senior leaders in the FBI, small core group that were really the victim of implicit bias against the President and that was driven and driving with the prism of which they looked at that. Instead of doing what you said, they went the other direction.
CARLSON: It seems so very reckless and crazy and destructive to me, I don't understand it. What I do understand is schilling for a political party even as you pretend to be a journalist, which is what is happening at CNN. You just saw it on the screen.
How could you say that spying is not spying? How could you say that if you are surveilling people? If you're listening to their phone calls or reading their electronic communications? If you're following them, in the case of Carter Page? How is that not spying?
MORGAN: That's exactly right and they keep saying before they even had the report, before they haven't even any information about the predication that was used, they are already laying down these gauntlets of what did or did not happen. I find that incredulous as well.
But we know the FISA. At the heart of a FISA, that is, "Hey, we may not like the term quote, "spy." But at the heart of FISA, that's what it is, Tucker, in layman's terms. That is absolutely what that is.
CARLSON: Is there some compelling national security reason that we have not seen the rationale laid out in the FISA?
MORGAN: Well, from a law enforcement perspective, I am always leery about giving that information.
CARLSON: Of course.
MORGAN: Because I am always protective about sources and methods.
CARLSON: Right.
MORGAN: But there are some times, the public's interest outweighs some of that to a degree. So I hope the President is going to take a hard look at that and release as much as he can. I think the American people needs to know this, because again, Attorney General Barr said this. This goes to the heart of one of his missions, right? It is to ensure that the highest levels of this government aren't abusing their power and authority, and I think you can make a legitimate case that that happened.
CARLSON: If we find out that the Trump campaign, and there is a Trump Reelect Campaign, even now, they have an office, I think that they are encouraging the FBI to spy on one of the Democratic presidential contenders and the Trump Justice Department authorizes that spying, I just want to be on the record -- I would never defend something like that. I think that would be appalling. Would anyone else defend it?
MORGAN: I may if the predicate -- if the predication was there, I mean, but that -- like you said, this has never been done in American history. The bar for that, Tucker, is so unbelievably high.
CARLSON: That's right. That's right. You better catch Cory Booker speaking Russian, you know what I mean? And take the microfilm in a public park in exchange for cash or something.
MORGAN: Exactly.
CARLSON: Mark Morgan, great to see you.
MORGAN: You bet.
CARLSON: I am not accusing Booker of that by the way. But who knows? Congressman Matt Gaetz represents the State of Florida in the United States Congress, and we are happy to have him tonight. Congressman, thanks very much for coming on.
So it is clear that in order to restore public faith in the most powerful institutions of government, we need to find out what happened here. Why don't we know?
REP. MATT GAETZ, R-FLA.: Well, one of the reasons is that we haven't had the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats actually lay out for us what was in the transcripts taken by the House Intelligence Committee, where they interviewed Clapper, where they interviewed Comey and McCabe and Brennan, and we ought to have that information. He has been sitting on it for four months, and we need to get it out.
CARLSON: Fascinating. Wait. I didn't know that and I am grateful to hear.
GAETZ: Over 50 the transcripts have been voted out of the House Intelligence Committee to be declassified so that we can get to the bottom of where the lies existed and how this terrible investigation started.
CARLSON: So why hasn't Coats made those public?
GAETZ: Four months, we're still waiting. But I think there's a bigger problem in the Congress. We have to be able to rely on the Intelligence Committee and the leadership of that Committee, because as the American people know, every Member of Congress does not see every piece of intelligence.
CARLSON: Right.
GAETZ: I have filed legislation today, sent to the House that Adam Schiff needs to be removed from the Intelligence Committee, because how are the rest of us supposed to be able to rely on a man who you just showed lied to the American people when he said that there wasn't spying or when he lied and said there was actual evidence of collusion or clear evidence of collusion.
If Adam Schiff is able to review covert operations and intelligence, and if we have to be able to rely on his representations, our whole system is broken. I mean, it would be like putting Lori Loughlin in charge of the College Board. It would be like ...
CARLSON: No, that's right.
GAETZ: ... putting Jussie Smollett in charge of the hate crime division of the FBI. We have got to remove Adam Schiff from the Intelligence Committee.
CARLSON: In 35 years of watching Congress, I've never seen a Member of Congress with lower personal integrity than Adam Schiff, and it's shocking to me that he chairs that Committee. Is there any hope of unseating him from that?
GAETZ: I think that Nancy Pelosi and just your rank-and-file Democrats have to feel the pressure from this. Their constituents have to ask them how are you going to be able to make decisions in the best interest of our country and our district if it's Adam Schiff that you're listening to get characterizations and representations on the quality of the intelligence and whether or not it should justify Congressional action.
CARLSON: I wanted to just explain to our viewers we have on the screen, the name of this act, the PENCIL Act - Preventing Extreme Negligence with Classified Information Licenses.
GAETZ: For our favorite pencil, Tucker.
CARLSON: That's exactly -- is there any -- I mean, you stride the Halls of Congress, is there any Democrat who behind the scenes off the record, you don't need to reveal names, agrees with you that a Committee this sensitive should not be chaired by someone like Adam Schiff?
GAETZ: There are Democrats in Congress who feel betrayed, because like the rest of the country, they were told that there was actual evidence of collusion and that this was going to happen. And a lot of those very Democrats went out on a limb in the campaign ...
CARLSON: That's right.
GAETZ: ... and promised their voters that this evidence would be turned up. Now, we know the whole deal was fake. It was a lie. And really, I think a lot of the narrative has been a cover up for the fact that under the Obama administration, our intelligence community got so politicized at the upper levels that they allowed political opposition research to justify something that should never happen in this country.
And you're right, it should never happen from either side. But the only way we're going to be able to get to that solution set is if we actually reform this process that allows secret courts to be able to abridge our rights.
CARLSON: And that's something that we sort of signed up for without thinking through it after 9/11, correct?
GAETZ: Yes, but I think we're going to be rethinking it.
CARLSON: I hope so, too.
GAETZ: I think the American people want to know how we got here, and they want to make sure we're never here again.
CARLSON: How could you have a secret court in a democracy?
GAETZ: And you don't even know what the judges believe they go through, no public confirmation process, and the opinions are never made public. So even 20 years later, you're unable to ascertain what was the doctrine that was guiding the most powerful tools in our government to be turned against our citizens in the absence of the transparency that democracy requires.
CARLSON: That as such a smart and true and good point, and I hope you will keep making it. Thank you very much.
GAETZ: Thank you.
CARLSON: Grotesque. Well, the press and the Democratic Party have a new label for anybody they disagree with -- white nationalist. What does that mean exactly? And what's the agenda behind saying it and most importantly, what's the effect on the country when they repeat that again and again, and again? Does it make this a better place? Or does it make us hate each other? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The word "racist" has long been the most damning slur in American life, and for good reason. It's hard to think of anything crueler or more unfair than discriminating against someone because of the color of his skin. You don't control the color of your skin. Nobody likes racists. Nobody wants to be called a racist. The left knows that, so they use the word as a cudgel to beat their political opponents into submission and have their way.
They've done this so often and for so many years that over time, the word racist has lost a lot of its power. It's dulled from overuse. The left needs a new attack line, a new way to make you shut up and obey. Now they found one.
Watch former Georgia politician, Stacey Abrams deploy it against White House adviser, Stephen Miller.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: What about the man who is also really leading this for the White House, Stephen Miller. He is spearheading the immigration agenda and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar actually referred to him as a white nationalist. Do you agree with her?
STACEY ABRAMS, D-GA, FORMER GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I believe that what we have seen from Stephen Miller is vestiges of white nationalism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: White nationalism. Let's be literal for a minute. What is that exactly? Abrams didn't say, she didn't have to say. The phrase hits you in the gut, not the head. It evokes images from a nightmare -- detention camps, deportation trains, mass killing -- it's terrifying. You'd rather be called a cannibal than a white nationalist. And of course, that is exactly the point. That's why they say it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARA GAY, MEMBER, NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD: We have a white nationalist President who is a threat to American democracy.
JOHN HEILEMANN, NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST, NBC: It's the language of white nationalist European splinter, hard-right, crazy town parties, and we haven't heard in our politics in a long time.
JASON JOHNSON, POLITICS EDITOR, THE ROOT: It's going to be Stephen Miller and his sort of white nationalist tendencies are really obvious. You can't even dress that up.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I don't think it's a stretch for a lot of Americans out there to wonder whether or not the President is secretly considering himself a white nationalist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Again, you'll notice that none of these dumb people pause even for a second to explain to you what a white nationalist is, you probably still don't know, and honestly, neither do we, and that's because there are so very few of them in this country. They're probably about as many legitimate white nationalists in America as there are Russian spies. You could live your entire life here without running into a white nationalist.
No matter what they tell you, this is a remarkably kind and decent country. What's telling is that according to the left, only certain people qualify for the title "white nationalist." You just heard Stephen Miller denounced as one for his support of the temporary family separation at the U.S. border.
But it turns out the Obama administration did essentially the very same thing to immigrant families, split them up. Are they white nationalists, too? Well, watch CNN's Samantha Vinograd, explain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: When President Obama separated children from their families, Wolf -- from adults, Wolf, it was for their protection. It was if there was a risk of trafficking or other kind of harm that might have been incurred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So just to recap, those of you keeping track at home, when Obama did it, "It was for their protection, Wolf," when Trump does it, it's white nationalism. How does this work exactly?
Well, Candace Owens unraveled the mystery yesterday in testimony before Congress, watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CANDACE OWENS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, TURNING POINT USA: There isn't a single adult today that in good conscience would make the argument that America is a more racist or a more white nationalist society than it was when my grandfather was growing up, and yet we're hearing these terms sent around today because what they want to say is that brown people need to be scared, which seems to be the narrative that we hear every four years right ahead of a presidential election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Aha, that's the answer. It's election season. The left has nothing to sell, nothing that will make your life better. So instead, they whip up race, hatred and fear. Scared people vote, just telling the other side wants to put them in camps or murder them and they'll show up at the polls and vote for you; however, reluctantly.
The left has known this for a long time. They've been doing it for generations. They are more explicit about it now than they ever have been. But what's the cost of campaigning like this?
Democracy succeed when they're built on the belief that we're all in this together. When they become tests if strength between two groups that hate each other, they fall apart. Attacking people for their race is exactly how you destroy a country. That's what Democrats are doing. They know they're doing it. It's obvious. They just don't care.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he joins us tonight. Professor Hanson, thanks very much for coming on.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Thank you.
CARLSON: So I can't help but wonder over time, what the effect on the population of the country, of all people, of all colors, and let me just state sincerely, almost all of whom are good people -- it's America -- but what's the effect on them when they hear this every day? How does it make them feel about their neighbors? About the country itself? How does it make them feel about our future as a country?
HANSON: I think they've almost tuned it out now, Tucker. We've jumped the proverbial shark because in the last 10 days, African-American Director of the Heritage Foundation, Kay James; African-American activist, Candace Owens; Jewish American Stephen Miller, have all been called either white supremacist or a white nationalist.
And when everybody is a white nationalist, nobody is and why is this happening? Well, that's what's so you know befuddling? I think the reason is that it's part of -- in part, it's the demonization of Trump supporters because after the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause and Mueller investigation, Stormy and Michael Cohen. There's always some magic bullet that's going to take Trump out. And this is now the white nationalist conspiracy, and it doesn't exist.
And I think there's also fear, Tucker, because Trump's economic agenda has really achieved record low Hispanic and African-American unemployment and when he weighs in about the anti-Catholic bias of a Kamala Harris, or the plague of abortion on minority communities, or an open borders' effects on driving down wages that appeals to minority voters, maybe 20 percent of black voters or 45 percent of Hispanic voters, and under the current Democratic calculus, they have so alienated the white working Class with slurs like we just heard, but also the deplorable, the clingers, irredeemable or what Joe Biden called the dregs of society. They can't afford to lose any of that minority bloc voting or they're in real trouble.
And finally, it's very sad because the engines that are driving this new Democratic socialist identity politics party -- the Omar's, the Ocasio- Cortez's, the Tlaib's, the Al Sharpton's, the Linda Sarsour's -- they don't have any realm of reference outside of identity politics. It's all day long, 24/7 -- race, religion, gender -- and when they venture out of that prison, if they talk about the internal combustion engine or the history of 9/11 or the geography of the Middle East, they know nothing.
CARLSON: Yes, they have nothing but --
HANSON: And so we want some intervention and we looked to Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, but they're terrified that these pied pipers represent 50 percent of their own party and we look for a senior statesman, Bob Kerrey was heroic in warning about this extremism, but look at Barack Obama. I mean, he was edgy in 2008, I guess, and now he would be considered passe and when he weighed in, it was very timid about a circular firing squad or something.
But it's almost, he has become a tragic comic figure because he's really into a, "I did build that and now is the-time-to-profit-moment," as he seeks you know his own personal wealth and more power to him.
But there's no leadership anywhere there that can say, "You guys have to stop this because you're destroying and once noble party."
CARLSON: And a wonderful country, too, and making people hate each other.
HANSON: A wonderful country.
CARLSON: You whip up race hatred, that's what you do, and that's what they're doing. They're whipping up race hatred, and it's terrifying, I think. Professor, thank you very much. It's great to see you tonight.
HANSON: Thank you for having me, Tucker.
CARLSON: So virtually every Democrat running for President has come out for reparations for slavery, but Cory Booker -- and leave it to Cory Booker, the innovator -- he's going one step further. Cory Booker wants reparations for drug dealers. That's next.
We also have new details about possible prison sentences for the actors involved in the college cheating scandal. I'll bring those to you after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, American television viewers are finally safe from the creepy porn lawyer, thanks to a pair of indictments in New York and California for extortion and tax fraud and probably a lot of other things. But until today, America's skies remain vulnerable to CPL.
This morning, though Federal authorities seized the creepy porn plane. That is a $5 million jet that the creepy porn lawyer actually owned. He used it to travel during the rare moments he was not on CNN. With that, only two parts of America are still in peril -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- both of which exposed to a creepy porn presidential run. Let's hope he has called off those plans.
Almost 20 Democratic candidates are running for President at the moment. All of them are competing to be the wokest of all, but almost every Democrat backs race racial reparations now. How do you stand out?
Well, Cory Booker has an idea -- reparations for drug dealers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER, D-N.J., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Do not talk to me about legalizing marijuana unless in the same breath, you talk to me about the expunging the records of the millions of people that are suffering with not being able to find a job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Booker doesn't just want drug convictions expunged, he wants monetary reparations, too, in the form of job training and community reinvestment for those impacted by the war on drugs, which means Federal dollars to his political supporters.
Nathan Rubin is the founder of Millennial Politics, the author of "Boomers to Millennials: Moving America Forward," and he joins us tonight. Nathan, I'm glad you're here to explain this idea.
NATHAN RUBIN, FOUNDER, MILLENNIAL POLITICS: Thanks for having me.
CARLSON: So just for a little bit of context, we're currently right in the middle of the worst drug epidemic in the history of the United States, maybe of the West. More people die of drug OD's every year than dying in car crashes than died during the entire Vietnam War. And it's in the middle of that that Cory Booker wants to send tax dollars to drug dealers. So tell me why this makes sense.
RUBIN: Well, I don't think Cory Booker is actually talking about sending money to drug dealers, but what he is talking about is for nonviolent drug possession charges, whether it's --
CARLSON: No, he didn't say that. He didn't say that. He said people with marijuana charges, very few, I mean, there are some, but --
RUBIN: For possession.
CARLSON: Okay, no, very few people with personal possession charges went to prison for marijuana in the last 20 years. Some did, but very few did. Almost all were people who were accused and then convicted of dealing drugs, intent to distribute. So these are drug dealers.
RUBIN: Well, over the over the last year, over 600,000 people have been arrested and charged with marijuana possession. So those people are certainly feeling the effects of being arrested for marijuana possession and when you look at the rates of usage of marijuana, blacks and whites use equally, but a black man is almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.
So the law -- the enforcement of these policies is structurally discriminatory, and what Cory Booker is saying is that we need to do a better job of reinvesting in these communities if we do decide to legalize marijuana. There's no denying that some of these communities have been negatively affected as a result of the war on drugs.
CARLSON: Have they been negatively affected by using drugs at all? Or is it only the fault of law enforcement?
RUBIN: Well, what we do know from the war on drugs is that --
CARLSON: But we can't admit that now? No, hold on a minute, no. Look, the war on drugs -- I'm not defending the war on drugs. It's just that everyone is always blaming the system, structural racism, the police, but does taking drugs itself have a negative effect on your community? Are we not allowed to admit that anymore? Do we have to say, "Oh, no. No problem at all."
RUBIN: I think we should separate the use of ...
CARLSON: I am just asking.
RUBIN: ... something like marijuana from the other Schedule 1 drugs like methamphetamine or heroin or something like that.
CARLSON: Do you think smoking weed every day makes me more successful --
RUBIN: Over 33 --
CARLSON: Well, hold on, let's be -- can we just be real for a second.
RUBIN: May I finish?
CARLSON: No talking points. No, because you're going to be giving the same talking points. I want you to -- I want you to finish answering my question which is, does using drugs hold your community back? Does it hold you back at all?
RUBIN: What does hold these communities down, Tucker --
CARLSON: No, does it or not?
RUBIN: Tucker, let me answer your question, please. What holds these communities back is children without parents who are arrested for possession of marijuana. I can tell you those families are better served by having two parents at home, not being arrested for possession of marijuana.
CARLSON: You know that I agree with that completely, and one of the reasons I was so infuriated by the hysteria over family separation is we do separate millions of families over time, American families with our punitive legal system, so I agree with you on that.
But I'm just trying to ask an adult question because all of the blame goes to the system and the cops. If you do drugs, including marijuana all the time, does that hold you back? Simple question.
RUBIN: And I would reply that a conservative principle is to have the freedom to do what you want in the comfort of your home.
CARLSON: But I'm not upholding -- I don't even know what conservative principles are.
RUBIN: We do that with alcohol, we do that with cigarettes.
CARLSON: I am not interested in principles, I am interested in reality.
RUBIN: Why not with marijuana?
CARLSON: No, I want -- look, I just want an acknowledgement of reality, real life. Politics aside, conservative liberal aside. If you're high all the time, does that hold you back?
RUBIN: I guess so.
CARLSON: Yes, it does. It does big time. And we should say that in addition to all the other things we say. Being high all the time, being wasted all the time is a disaster. And no one has the stones to say that.
RUBIN: I don't think these people are doing that.
CARLSON: No, they're not saying that.
RUBIN: No, hold on, hold on a second, Tucker. I think what this conversation is failing to take into account is that marijuana has medicinal qualities. Over 33 states have some form of medicinal marijuana, 10 have fully legalized it. By keeping it illegal on a Federal level ...
CARLSON: I don't know so, cocaine has medicinal qualities, too.
RUBIN: ... we are preventing these people ...
CARLSON: And so does alcohol.
RUBIN: ... we are preventing small business owners from investing in their communities and we're losing out on valuable tax revenue.
CARLSON: So degrade the population to make the government richer, okay.
RUBIN: What but what's happening at the end of the day is that ...
CARLSON: It's the most cynical thing I can imagine.
RUBIN: ... marijuana sales are just funding drug cartels in the black market. Colorado, for example where marijuana sales over the last year, over $1.2 billion, that's $270 million of tax revenue.
CARLSON: Okay, there is still a thriving black market. Now, we're wading in this stuff I know all about, but we're out of time, unfortunately.
RUBIN: Of course.
CARLSON: I hope you'll come back.
RUBIN: Okay.
CARLSON: No, not of course. I gave you five chances to answer a simple question, and you did finally and I'm grateful for that. Nathan, thank you. Prosecutors say they want jail time for Felicity Huffman and others caught in the college admissions scandal. What kind of life can convicted parents expect while in prison? That's next.
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CARLSON: Prosecutors are saying they want jail time for actress Lori Loughlin and other parents accused of committing bribery and other forms of fraud to help their kids get into college. What sort of life could Loughlin and others expect if prosecutors have their way? Trace Gallagher has the answer to that question. He joins us tonight -- Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tucker when Martha Stewart was convicted in 2004 of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction, it was fitting the queen of domestic bliss was sentenced to a place nicknamed Camp Cupcake, a fenceless Federal prison where she spent her days picking flowers and nights doing yoga. After her release, Stewart also spent five months confined to her $15 million Bedford New York mansion. She described the home arrest as quote "hideous."
In 2007, after reckless driving on a suspended license, Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail. She served three days which led to accusations of special treatment, and sure enough, a judge sent her back to serve an additional 20 days, not with the 2,200 other prisoners, mind you, but in a 12-beds Special Needs Unit. We later learned her billionaire grandfather donated to then Sheriff Lee Baca's campaign.
In 2004, when Glen Campbell was sentenced in Arizona to 10 days for extreme DUI and leaving the scene of an accident, he didn't serve it at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's infamous Tent City, he stayed in the air conditioned jail where he could leave for 12 hours a day.
So as for the college admissions scandal, it's unclear where Lori Loughlin might serve if she serves, but because she's a non-violent offender, experts say she's likely looking at a Martha Stewart situation, though there are no Camp Cupcakes in California, so for flower picking and yoga, she would have to serve out-of-state, though there is a low-level security prison with fences in the San Francisco Bay area where the likes of Patty Hearst and Heidi Fleiss served their time -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Flower picking and yoga. Trace Gallagher, thank you. Well, if you've been stuck in an airport involuntarily recently, you know that CNN routinely deflects criticism of its own inaccurate propaganda-laden programming by calling its critics state TV. That's projection. Jeff Zucker thinks it's a good line.
The irony is that CNN itself is responsible for state TV in an actual dictatorship. For years, during broadcast, its Turkish affiliate called CNN Turk has openly flacked for the anti-American authoritarian government there.
Well, CNN has now been forced to respond to this and we're going to read you their statement in just a minute. It was elicited from a question by Ilhan Tanir. He is a Turkish journalist who asked them and they said this to the criticism that they are, in fact working for the Erdogan government they said, "We're aware of criticism from some Turkish media surrounding CNN Turk's election coverage. CNN Turk is an independent channel which licenses the CNN brand, but as part of this agreement, must also adhere to CNN standards. We are in contact with CNN Turk and they have provided assurances and evidence that they are making every effort to provide balanced coverage of the Turkish elections."
So CNN says CNN Turk adhering to CNN standards. That is not reassuring. We reached out to CNN and could not get a response, but we are glad to be joined tonight by Ilhan Tanir of Turkey who joins us tonight. Thank you, Mr. Tanir for joining us.
You're a Turkish national, who has been banned from Turkey. You've been indicted for your tweets by the Government of Turkey. So that's the context for the story. When you watch CNN Turk, what do you see?
ILHAN TANIR, TURKISH JOURNALIST: Well, then I was just listening that statement you just read, it's just funny. CNN Turk now just addressing this latest election coverage which just finished March 31st, but it is just only one problem.
This problem with CNN Turk the way they are reflecting Turkish politics, which is basically mouthpiece of Turkish Government. It has been going on for years. I have been trying to reach out to these people, I mean, the spokespeople of CNN for about 18 months now. They've been stonewalling, and now, recently about a year ago, there is another new family got CNN Turk with some other outlets, that family is the Demiroren Group is basically known killing journalism. Their business is purchasing newspapers such as Vatan V-A-T-A-N and Milliyet and they're bringing this - - there are foreign journalists and they became those newspapers as state propaganda. Now they're doing the same thing with CNN Turk.
Over a year ago, they got the CNN Turk, and they fired hundreds of journalists, many of them very respected journalists.
CARLSON: Well, I don't understand. Wait, so I'm confused. So CNN Turk you say is a mouthpiece for the anti-American authoritarian government of Turkey, which indicts journalists including you, but CNN lends its brand to this channel? Why would CNN do that?
TANIR: Probably they are making a lot of money; other than that I don't know how any journalists affiliated with CNN can see CNN Turk and just, you know forget about it. It is just killing journalism in Turkey so they make money.
CARLSON: So what we make message be? So if you could speak to Jeff Zucker, who is the head of CNN in the United States, what would you say to him?
TANIR: Look, it is killing journalism. Your Turkish sister is killing journalism. They are covering wall-to-wall the Turkish government propaganda which is since 2016, shut down about 200 media organizations. Mr. Erdogan is still the country -- Turkey is still the country that jails the most journalists in the world for the last three to four years, and your outlet in Turkey is basically propagating for this government. So how can you just let this go forever?
CARLSON: So in one sentence, does it surprise you to learn that Jeff Zucker, the man you were just addressing, won a Freedom of the Press Award recently in the United States?
TANIR: Well, you know, I didn't see that. But I think what's happening in Turkey, he should take a look into that.
CARLSON: Yes.
TANIR: And he should apologize, first of all, what has been going on for the last several years and he should -- as soon as he, you know, gets his hands and start investigating. He has to do something about it because CNN International, President, Rani Raad was just at the Turkish President's palace a year ago.
CARLSON: It's disgusting.
TANIR: Just giving some tweets from there.
CARLSON: And we reported that at the time and I hope that Jeff Zucker will listen to your message as a journalist who has been indicted and change his ways. Mr. Tanir, thank you very much.
TANIR: Thank you.
CARLSON: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says if you don't support the global warming agenda, you're a murderer. That's next.
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CARLSON: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the government must be given more power immediately in order to fight global warming and if you disagree with that, or even hesitate in agreeing with her immediately, then you are unfortunately complicit in murder.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.: So I think what we have laid out here is a very clear moral problem and in terms of leadership, if we fail to act or even if we delay enacting, we will have blood on our hands.
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CARLSON: Well, with children, everything is a clear moral problem, as you know. In a recent tweet, meanwhile Ocasio-Cortez said that global warming, not our open borders drives our illegal immigration crisis.
Melissa Francis has been following all of all this. She is a co-host, of course on "Outnumbered," and one of our favorite guests. She joins us tonight. So global warming is driving illegal immigration.
MELISSA FRANCIS, HOST: Well, I mean, Tucker, you have to think about it because it's perfect. Finally, the environmental crisis is causing wars. It is causing bloodshed. This all started during the last administration. It started with Secretary of State John Kerry, the Obama administration in Syria and this was their theory.
So a whole bunch of scientists piled on top of it because they thought this would be fantastic. It was sent around and around. Finally, a group of scientists, we have their names from places like the School of Critical Social Inquiry, The Center for Earth System Research -- they dug deep, and they found that it was based on a six-year drought in Syria. Let's go out and measure the rain. They found above average rainfall. I kid you not. They went out and they found a whole bunch of rain.
Now listen to the conclusions they came up with, "Unless new evidence emerges, the Syrian case does not prove the multiplier effect. To the contrary, we conclude policymakers and commentators need to use far greater caution when drawing such linkages." I abbreviated.
This is the best quote, Tucker, "I fear getting the Syrian case 'right' or at least correcting the flawed dominant narrative will negatively affect discussions of environmental impacts on the conflict in the policy sphere." No kidding. In other words, we've got this right and we're super sad, because now you can't say that it's the environment that is causing these wars.
Here's the punch line, I found because early -- I know, you thought you heard all the punch lines. Earlier today, someone said to me, "Oh, this was just one thing you found on the internet." In fact, it's been corrected everywhere. Even at Harvard, they are teaching what is called Climate Change in the Syrian Civil War Revisited, with a little tear down your face as you're revisiting it.
So this is what AOC is using as her basis for her argument. But surprisingly, she has not read up and found out that this theory that was just used a little while ago by John Kerry and President Obama has been totally debunked.
CARLSON: They really should apologize. I've said things that are wrong, I feel bad about it, but I apologized. I thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad. There weren't, sorry. You know what I mean? Like you should apologize if you're wrong, but they never will.
FRANCIS: Well, but see, in that case, people wanted to see the evidence. You thought you had the evidence here, there was like a two-page brief at the heart of it and if you looked at it, they hadn't done any science or looked at like water or stuff.
CARLSON: So good. Melissa Francis, you're the best.
FRANCIS: I don't know. Apparently. I know, so fun. Love seeing you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thank you. Great to see you. Well, you probably don't think of PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Trump administration as natural allies, but the group recently had praise for the new 2020 budget coming out of the White House, because it would cut funding for the National Institutes of Health. Now, why would PETA want that?
Well according to PETA, the NIH waste billions of taxpayer dollars every year on testing that maims or kills animals, while and this is the key, producing no benefits for human beings in return.
Kathy Guillermo is the Vice President at PETA and we're happy to have her on tonight to explain what she means. Kathy, thanks a lot for coming on.
KATHY GUILLERMO, VICE PRESIDENT, PETA: I am so happy to be here.
CARLSON: So I just want to want to say that I think most people are in faith -- I think the tradeoff is worth it if it is between an animal being hurt or a child dying, but what you're saying is that there's a lot of research that produces no benefit at all. It's just cruelty. And why does this continue?
GUILLERMO: Yes, the choice really is our money is wasted or our money isn't. Our money is put toward good science or our money isn't? What we know now is that 90 percent of studies on animals failed to lead to any treatments for human beings. That is a 90 percent failure rate, 95 percent of new medicines that test safe and effective in animals fail when they go into human clinical trials. And yet our government, the National Institute of Health is spending 50 percent of its budget doling out $15 billion to universities across the country to do experiments on animals that aren't helping human beings at all.
CARLSON: So, well, that's grotesque. I mean, the idea of animals being hurt for no good reason is really upsetting, I think, to most normal people. Why would we be doing that? Why would it continue?
GUILLERMO: Well, it's a great boondoggle. I mean, I think it's a scam of the highest order in the United States, unfortunately, and universities love it because they do these experiments on animals. Animals are cheap. They're plentiful. It's easy to write papers about what happens to animals. They get hundreds of millions of dollars each and they like to keep it all really secret. They don't want us to know. They kick us off their Facebook pages. They deny us ads in their student papers. They make us sue to get records through the open records laws of the states, and it's a great way to make money. It's a lot easier than doing really good science that might actually help people.
CARLSON: That's -- but you would think that researchers and a normal person would look at what he's doing and say, "I can't keep doing this. It's just -- it's so awful." But they don't?
GUILLERMO: You would think that. I mean, I think a normal person would, but let me give you an example. I'll never forget the $750,000.00 experiment at Oregon Health Sciences University in which baby monkeys were taken from their mothers when they were born and they tried to scare them with things like Mr. Potato Head dolls and this supposedly had something to do with the diet of their mothers. How about child abuse experiments on mice where they electroshock mice, drop them in water -- nothing has come out of it.
How about the sex and power in advertising experiment at Duke University, where monkeys were kept deprived of fluid so that they would work in exchange for a few drops of juice and the idea was did the monkeys prefer to look at logos like Domino's Pizza next to a dominant monkey or a female monkey? That experimenters had $18 million in public funding.
CARLSON: No. Well, now you've made me --
GUILLERMO: That's absolutely true.
CARLSON: Now, you've made me actually mad and Duke should be ashamed of that. And I --
GUILLERMO: Yes.
CARLSON: I hope you can -- colleges are now in a place where they're apologizing for things that they've done that are wrong in the past. Fine with me. They should apologize for that. And I hope that you can wring an apology out of them. That's appalling. Kathy, thank you very much for coming on.
GUILLERMO: Thank you.
CARLSON: Good to see you tonight. Not a group we always agree with, but when we agree we're going to say so because why wouldn't we?
That's it for us tonight. We're out of time. 8:00 p.m., we will be back tomorrow night. The show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. As we always encourage you to do, DVR it, if you haven't already. It's always in the script. I always read it dutifully. Good night from Washington.
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