Principal suspended for criticizing Big Tech joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
Barton Thorne joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' with attorney to discuss being suspended for speaking out against Silicon Valley
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 5, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening. Welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. Happy Friday.
QAnon, the greatest threat we face not inflation, not China, QAnon, everyone is saying it. But you may be wondering just how dangerous is QAnon? Well, here's the answer.
The District of Columbia National Guard announced today that all troops who took part in the mission to protect our democracy from internet conspiracy theorists will now receive medals in recognition of their heroic sacrifice.
Now, the primary medal is called the Presidential Inauguration Support Ribbon. That's for people who were there for President Biden's inauguration. But that medal will be supplemented in cases in which our heroes have earned it by the Emergency Service Ribbon.
So if you're a D.C. Guardsmen who has been on duty in the city since late January, protecting America from Trump voters, you can add another medal to your chest, and more may be coming.
According to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carver -- and we're not making any of this up, by the way -- Carver made the announcements today and said this quote: "Other Federal decorations are also being considered."
Wow. That seems like a big deal. How big? Here's some context.
More than 60,000 American soldiers and Marines fought on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific during the Second World War. About 15,000 of them died or were wounded there. But not one of those men, not one, got an official Guadalcanal medal for the experience because the Pentagon didn't offer them.
Guadalcanal may have been horrible and bloody, but it just didn't justify its own ribbon. Guadalcanal wasn't North Capitol Street.
The Imperial Japanese weren't as fanatical as Trump voters and not half as dangerous. No medal.
So yesterday, they told us the war against QAnon was likely to escalate intensely. March 4th would be the Tet Offensive in the fight against right- wing insurrectionism. It was something called QAnon Inauguration Day.
Now we'd never heard of that before, but then we don't work at the F.B.I. The F.B.I. has been monitoring the enemy SigInt, that Signals Intelligence for the neophytes out there. That means tweets, Facebook posts, TikToks -- James Bond stuff.
According to what our guys were hearing in the field, QAnon was preparing an invasion of Washington, and that means thousands of bearded groovy shamans in Viking hats, marching across the Key Bridge to pillage Georgetown cupcakes and end our democracy. It's a gruesome sight.
Needless to say, Nancy Pelosi stopped work in the House of Representatives so that Members of Congress could flee the city for their lives, and many did.
Andy Kim, for example, he's a congressman from New Jersey. He wrote this, poignant, "This all seems absurd if it wasn't frightening." He prepared to flee the Capitol on March 3rd and wrote his, in effect, diary on Twitter, "The Diary of Andy Kim."
"Now our legislative plan tomorrow has been cancelled as we are rushing tonight to finish the work we plan to do. Thousands of National Guard and Capitol Police will be on edge tomorrow as they stand watch over the Capitol. They will worry about possible attacks by American citizens."
Andy Kim was panicked. He sounds like a man preparing for the worst. Quote, "Another wave of sadness comes from the fact that this is not getting better. The F.B.I. Director said this threat is metastasizing." And so Andy King became a refugee in his own country.
But not everyone ran from the sound of the approaching QAnon Shamans. A few hardened war correspondents ran toward that sound. That's what they do.
Chris Bedford of "The Federalist" is a man like that. While our elected representatives were clinging to the struts of the last chopper out of the city, Chris Bedford was at the Capitol itself, the center of the battle. Here was the scene there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS BEDFORD, "THE FEDERALIST": I was told that a lot of conservatives are insurrecting today and am I at the wrong place?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: No, Chris Bedford, you weren't in the wrong place. There was simply nobody there.
It took "The Washington Post" five crack reporters to determine this. They rushed to the scene. Their conclusion: on Capitol Hill, wrote the five Washington Post reporters quote, "The streets are quiet. People walk their dogs in the morning sun, masked students sat on steps drinking coffee. Construction crews continued with their projects." That was their dispatch.
Jeff Bezos spared no expense. One reporter assigned to monitor the construction crews. Another on the dog walking beat. No one there.
So why wasn't there anyone there? Where was the QAnon battle? What? Said MSNBC, what QAnon battle? Nobody really thought there was going to be a QAnon battle. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: Have we learned more about any specifics of this threat or are you starting to think this is under the umbrella of maybe we're being a little more precautious since we under reacted on January 6th?
PETE WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Definitely the latter, Chuck, no question about it. The Intelligence that was gathered by law enforcement, I'm told was of a specific group, talking about the idea of doing an attack on the Capitol today on March 4th, talking about an idea. In other words, aspirational.
I don't think anybody expected anything to happen today, but nonetheless, you know, abundance of caution seems to be the watch phrase here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Being precautious said, Chuck Todd, totally unfamiliar with his native language, precautious, of course, not being an actual word in English.
But the key line from that clip and the one that you need to remember is, "I don't think anybody expected anything to happen on March 4th at the Capitol." But wait a second, you sticklers for precision might be asking, didn't the F.B.I. issue a bulletin warning the country that a military force was planning to seize control of the Capitol building?
And didn't they put up razor wire around the whole place and sent in thousands of soldiers with rifles? And then didn't Congressman Kim and his friends run away in sadness and terror and then tweet about it? Yes, that all happened. But it wasn't a big deal, it was just a drill.
Just to drill. You can relax now. As you were.
Now that's one explanation for the empty Capitol yesterday, but by the time night fell in the city remained quiet, except of course in the poor neighborhoods where people were still shooting one another in ever growing numbers, no one noticing.
But by the time night fell, MSNBC had decided that in fact, they had saved the day. It turns out QAnon didn't invade Washington, because neoliberal cable news anchors successfully defended our country.
What Joshua Chamberlain was to Little Round Top, Chris Hayes was to QAnon Inauguration Day. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: This was the scene in Washington, D.C. today were two months after the attempted insurrection, the area around the Capitol still on lockdown because of worries over postings on QAnon forums about a plot for another violent attack today, March 4th.
Thankfully, nothing happened.
BRANDY ZADROZNY, NBC NEWS REPORTER: March 4th is a weird one. So hang on with me, but -- and I will say that media coverage of how silly this all is made it seemingly less palatable for QAnon people over the last week.
It's a lot, Chris. It always is with these people. Luckily, they stayed behind a computer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It totally makes sense. It turns out QAnon's battalions look to MSNBC for their news coverage. It's on in the QAnon break room.
And after watching Chris Hayes and Brandy Zadrozny flex their intellectual muscles, they realized they were totally outgunned. These MSNBC people are just too clever. So QAnon decided to stay home and fight another day.
"Newsweek," for one was not buying that explanation. A reporter at "Newsweek" came up with this explanation. "QAnon theorists switched the date to March 20th after no Trump Inauguration, they call the March 4th date a false flag."
Well, how did "Newsweek" know what QAnon was up to? Well, the story explained, because a man called Ken had quote, " ... told reporter Dave Weigel that Donald Trump will be inaugurated again on March 20." Oh, it's a Dave Weigel story. So, in other words, forget everything you heard about March 4th, Ken told Dave, the real invasion is going to be March 20th. So be afraid.
At some point, listening to these various explanations, the hysteria never ending, you've got to wonder how the Democratic Party and its minions in the news media are different from any other Doomsday cult.
They're always telling us the world is going to end, whether it's from global warming or a white nationalist insurrection, and when the world doesn't end, they don't even pause, and they don't seem ashamed. They just change the date of the world ending.
It's all pretty embarrassing, but they never seem embarrassed. Jeane Dixon used to do this. Remember her? She was a professional psychic. She had a column in hundreds of papers for decades.
Jeane Dixon once predicted the world would end on February 4, 1962. Did it end? No, actually it didn't. Spoiler alert. The world didn't end in 1962. And when it didn't, Jean Dixon very cleverly, just extended the timeline, and then predicted Armageddon in 2020.
Lucky for Jeane Dixon, she was long dead by 2020 and she didn't have to explain why the world still exists, not that anyone would have asked.
So, it looks like Nancy Pelosi is our Jeane Dixon, a batty old soothsayer who just happens to run the Congress. How long until that Ken guy who talked to Dave, the one with the "Newsweek" article winds up in an F.B.I. bulletin justifying another indefinite extension of the occupation at the Capitol, more razor wire. Really? I don't think these guns are powerful enough. Let's bring in howitzers.
We're not even joking. Remember, the F.B.I. isn't concerned with what's actually going to happen. They're concerned with what one or two random people write online or put on TikTok. And as long as what those people put on TikTok justifies more power for the people in charge, the F.B.I., their slave servants, will put it all in a terror alert and scare the crap out of the country to justify even more power for their bosses.
How do we know they do this? Because they've done it a lot. They did it in January, and then our media repeated it without any hesitation whatsoever.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: There's a breaking news tonight. The F.B.I. warning Americans armed protests are being planned for Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitals in the days leading up to Joe Biden's Inauguration next week.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Capitals all across America, all 50 state capitals under threat of armed protests in the run up to Inauguration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The worry now is that the targets could expand along with the planning from the U.S. Capitol to all 50 state capitols to so- called soft targets, mirroring those attacked by jihadi terrorists.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: An internal F.B.I. bulletin obtained by CNN now says the Bureau has received information indicating planning is now underway for armed --repeat -- armed protests at all 50 state capitals and the U.S. Capitol leading up to President-Elect Biden's Inauguration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Armed -- repeat -- armed.
The dummies were terrified. They have a news alert for you. QAnon was coming to quote "all 50 state capitals and the U.S. Capitol." That's 51. Okay.
According to the F.B.I., QAnon was about to go national, if not international. The sleeper cells were going to activate. And it wasn't simply CNN that obtained the memo. Don Lemon had it, but he wasn't the only one who had it. NBC had it, too. And NBC assured us that our state capitols were under imminent threat tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A new F.B.I. memo warning about the possibility of armed protests across all 50 state capitals ahead of Inauguration Day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Starting perhaps on around the 17th of January, there's going to be the potential for armed protests in state capitals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh man, armed -- armed -- all 50 state capitals and the U.S. Capitol. According to the F.B.I. bulletin. Whatever happened to those 51 armed protests? Well, they came down actually to just one guy, a dude called Mark Leggiero. You'll see him here peacefully waving a flag at the state capitol in Albany, New York. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK LEGGIERO, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I've come out wanting to be part of the Patriot Party, join the supporters of Trump, you know, and I find myself kind of by myself out here, but I've come out here with nothing but peaceful intentions and to be peaceful. I wanted you know everything to be peaceful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: You ever noticed how all like the scary internet conspiracy theorists, radical QAnon people and you actually see them on camera or in jail cells as a lot of them now are, maybe they're kind of confused. Maybe they've got the wrong ideas, but they're all kind of gentle people and they are all kind of waving American flags. They like the country.
They're not torching Wendy's. They are not looting retail stores. They're not shooting cops. No, that's not them. It is the other people doing that.
That guy with the beard, good thing he wasn't shot to death by the police like Ashli Babbitt. He might be, if he tried that today.
What's amazing is that even as they lie to us again and again and again, about the threat of QAnon and the insurrection, the white supremacist militia hiding in the closet, hyping it all beyond recognition, doing it for their own psychological reasons, obviously, but also for political reasons.
Even as they do all of that, they downplay and they ignore actual violence in this country, violence that is rapidly accelerating in every city in the nation and killing a lot of people.
It's been going on for months. Watch an AP reporter called Jon Lemire deny this week that there were violent BLM riots this summer. This clip is real.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN LEMIRE, ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER: In June, these were non-violent protesters, racially mixed a lot of young people in the field by the Black Lives Matter movement, those outraged by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed under the knee of a white police officer in Minnesota.
There was no violence there.
And the Biden White House has made it clear that they think that the threat posed by domestic terrorism is equal to that posed by international terror groups like ISIS, which is such a sobering thought that fellow Americans could be perceived as such a dangerous threat to their country men and women.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: There was no violence in Minneapolis. Have you been there, Dumbo? We were there two weeks ago. Go to where George Floyd died, outside the market where he died on the sidewalk. It's trashed. The whole area is trashed.
The police station down the road is still boarded up because the lunatics burned it.
Well, there was no violence. No, it was more like a Pepsi commercial. It was multiracial. They were holding arms.
No, it was QAnon who did it. It was QAnon who burned hundreds of buildings, killed more than 20 people, shot more than a dozen cops during the George Floyd riots.
Yes, it must have been QAnon, everyone knows that because QAnon, repeat after us now, 15,000 times, QAnon is the real threat.
Who better to speak to about this threat than Chris Bedford of "The Federalist." He was the first correspondent on the scene of yesterday's QAnon insurrection. And he joins us tonight fighting his way through the PTSD to tell us what he saw.
Chris Bedford, you're a brave man. Tell us what you saw there.
BEDFORD: I am very brave. And thank you for acknowledging that. It was -- it was risky down there.
I saw -- I saw joggers. I heard birds. That was pretty interesting. It was mild weather and I am lighter skin, so I did have to wear sunscreen down there. And I saw a whole lot of reporters.
There were camera crews set up, and there were also some National Guardsmen there behind the razor wire that goes across the street that I live in. And I'll tell you what, they looked a little bit more bored.
I think that they were less on edge than the congressmen and congresswomen who are scurrying beneath tunnels as opposed to walking through hallways, a hundred meters from any American could actually get within range of them.
Then I do have to wonder though, here in Washington, D.C., it does kind of feel like the world did end in 2020, and it also -- I'm starting to wonder if that reporter did sober up when he found out that half the country are domestic terrorists. It doesn't sound like he quite did.
But here in D.C., where it's absolutely occupied, and because of a police force, the Capitol Police Force, which largely has been trained to check tickets and to check badges, was unable to hold back a mob and they were unprepared by their leadership. A mob that by the way, as opposed to a normal army, had like three people die of heart failure in his group.
It wasn't a big healthy army coming at them. They're unable to hold that back. And now their acting Chief, Pittman is trying to blame the American people, trying to politicize this for Nancy Pelosi, her boss, and trying to say this city should remain occupied for the next two months at least.
CARLSON: So I think we're going to blow this up into a much bigger segment next week. But I'm hearing tonight from sources at the MPD, the police department, the Metropolitan Police in Washington, that the Capitol Hill Police, the new Chief is requesting a budget multiples that of the city's police force just to protect Members of Congress, 535 people, whereas the rest of the city's police force is abandoning the city, hundreds of cops have already quit.
The Police Academy apparently is virtually empty, and the city is getting way more violent. You live there. Is that what it feels like to you?
BEDFORD: It does feel like that and our neighbors talk about it. I'll tell you what, I don't live in a very conservative neighborhood here in Washington, D.C., and our neighbors are concerned. They are looking out their windows and they want to make sure that this rising crime -- mothers with their children getting carjacked not too far from here.
The kind of crime that we hadn't seen in D.C. in a number of years wasn't happening.
The Capitol Police is not a traditional police force, despite their kind of elite name. A lot of those officers aren't given by their leaders the training that you would need, for example, to even transfer to a local police department or to MPD. They won't accept that training because it's not up to their standards. Same thing with the physical fitness.
Now the Capitol Police officers know this. They don't like their leaders, they had a vote of no confidence in their leaders, including the current Acting Chief just last month, and if you talk to them when you're walking in and out of there, the few Americans who can, they'll shake their head and say, yes, our leaders are not watching out for us. They're just using us as pawns to help out the Democrats.
CARLSON: We've seen this before and their leaders are going along with it, avidly and so is Chris Wray at the F.B.I. who should be ashamed of himself.
Chris Bedford, I appreciate your bravery for being physically on the scene with those five "Washington Post" reporters during QAnon Inauguration Day. Hope we see you soon.
BEDFORD: See you soon.
CARLSON: So McKinsey & Company is a global company. It has a huge effect in how business is done around the world.
And if you ask them what they do, they'll tell you they've got a lot of core competencies. What are they? Well, one of them is of course covering up for mass murder by the Communist Party of China.
Now we're learning according to new report that McKinsey may have helped Andrew Cuomo try to avoid responsibility for killing thousands of nursing home patients. That's straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: McKinsey & Company is one of the biggest consulting firms in the world. But more than that, it's an employment agency for the children of our ruling class.
Bill Clinton's daughter worked at McKinsey. Our new Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg worked at McKinsey after he came back from his Rhodes Scholarship because he's brilliant. Have you ever listened to him?
So McKinsey has made a ton of money and they've done it on a single principle: a very simple one, make as much dough as possible from your clients by telling them whatever they want to hear.
In April of last year, we saw this on stark display. We talked to a McKinsey, a longtime McKinsey executive called Peter Walker, a big deal of the company.
Walker had no problem defending, explicitly defending the Communist Party of China in its response, totalitarian response to the coronavirus.
Peter Walker repeated China's propaganda word for word.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER WALKER, RETIRED SENIOR PARTNER OF MCKINSEY & COMPANY: If you just look at the results, okay, so I know there's always going to be questions about exactly what the numbers are. But I think the harsh action that they took, given the scale of China and the number of big cities and it was exactly what they needed to do to be able to prevent the outbreak from going any further.
And the reality is, the outbreak hasn't gone much beyond Wuhan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes. That was in April, by the way. The outbreak hasn't gotten much beyond Wuhan, right? It's not transmissible person to person.
So now we're learning that McKinsey may have -- and this will not shock you -- also helped cover up deaths in nursing homes in New York.
According to a report from foxnews.com's Bradford Betz, McKinsey played a key role in the July 6th report from the New York State Department of Health that deliberately lied about nursing home deaths in the state.
We are not supposed to know any of that or focus on it because it doesn't really matter. Instead, you should focus on the fact that Andrew Cuomo may have said naughty things to women. That's a much bigger deal than killing a lot of elderly people with the help of McKinsey.
Yesterday, one of those women spoke to CBS News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Do you believe that he was propositioning you?
CHARLOTTE BENNETT, FORMER ANDREW CUOMO AIDE: Yes.
QUESTION: For what?
BENNETT: Sex. The pandemic was obviously stressful for all of us. And he was on TV nearly every day talking about it.
QUESTION: So you think all this national attention may have emboldened him?
BENNETT: Absolutely. I think he felt like he was untouchable in a lot of ways.
QUESTION: Did you watch Governor Cuomo's apology?
BENNETT: I did. It's not an apology. It's not an issue of my feelings. It's an issue of his actions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Do you believe he was soliciting you for sex? Who cares? Compared to killing thousands of elderly people in nursing homes and wrecking the state? Do you believe -- the fake solemnity. It's repulsive?
Ned Ryun is the founder and CEO of American Majority. He joins us tonight. Talk about missing the story every single time.
Tell us, do you understand what's going on with Andrew Cuomo? I think there are all kinds of very good reasons to think Andrew Cuomo is one of the worst governors along with Gretchen Whitmer in the United States.
But they get him on the fact that he propositioned -- he is unmarried. I'm not saying he should do it. I'm against that. I've never done anything like that at work. I mean, come on now.
However, is that really bigger than killing people in nursing homes? Like what is this?
NED RYUN, FOUNDER AND CEO, AMERICAN MAJORITY: Well, it's meant as a distraction, but I have to say really quick, Tucker, fascinating the McKinsey has cropped up yet again, the super spreader of vulture capitalism and globalism that decimated the middle class in America.
And oh, by the way, it is now settling for almost $600 million, their role in the opioid crisis. But no, this is all a distraction, Tucker.
Let's hold this shiny little object of #MeToo over here to distract from this absolute embarrassment of Cuomo and his policies decimating and killing over 15,000 elderly in the State of New York.
And it's embarrassing for the media and the left because this is a guy they were lauding. They were holding him up. They gave him an Emmy.
And now, all of a sudden as the scandal starts to unfold, he has become an embarrassment to them. But they don't want to admit it because if they actually address the rest of them, then it becomes embarrassing to them. What do they do? Let's #MeToo him to death because then we can take him out and at the same time distract from our lack of coverage on this scandal that we knew about was unfolding back in May of last year.
The other thing they get out of this, Tucker is this. You get this embarrassment out of the way and take him out of the running for the presidential run in 2024, and help clear the deck for Kamala because we all know Biden is a one-termer, if that --
CARLSON: If that, but they don't want to talk about McKinsey because their kids work there. You're absolutely one hundred percent right, and they are a super spreader. Ned Ryun, appreciate your coming on tonight.
RYUN: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Now you might have thought "Open Sesame" was an innocuous phrase. Kids say it all the time. You probably said it growing up. But Nancy Pelosi has an idea for a better phrase for our kids to use, one that involves Joe Biden. We've got video of that.
Plus, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy is here to tell us why in an amazing story that corporate weed interest, big marijuana is trying to shut him down. That's straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The President and the Speaker: Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi appeared at something today called the Democratic Caucus Virtual Issues Conference. It was a mostly unremarkable event, but there was one moment that stuck out.
Toward the beginning of it, Nancy Pelosi declared unprompted that our grandchildren no longer use the phrase, "Open Sesame."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We do not say Open Sesame, we say Open Biden. That's our magic word, Open Biden. I love it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: We don't say Open Sesame, we say Open Biden. What does that mean? We have no idea. Waiting for a response from the Speaker's Office. We'll bring it to you when we get it.
Well, Patrick Kennedy is a former Member of Congress, like so many people you know, he struggled for years with substance abuse. But unlike a lot of people you know, he beat it. And he turned his life around completely and he has devoted the rest of his life to helping other people who struggle with drugs and alcohol.
If there's one thing this country needs, it is more people like that. It's not about politics. It's about saving people from their demons.
So, Patrick Kennedy might be a perfect person to serve as drug czar in this administration, but Bloomberg News is reporting that corporate marijuana interest, Big Weed, is doing everything it can to keep him from getting that job and we thought we'd ask him what this is about.
Patrick Kennedy joins us tonight. Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
So is this true?
PATRICK KENNEDY, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Thanks for having me, Tucker.
CARLSON: B. What is it that corporate interests don't want you to say about marijuana?
KENNEDY: Well as we know, we love our addictions in America and yes, I think that it's a big profitable business and of course, the real profit comes when people do not drink responsibly. I don't think alcohol makes its money off of people who drink responsibly. They make their money off of people like me, who drink more than they should.
And we know that they also make money off of, you know, kids, and we've seen in the past both Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol really market to children. You see hard lemonades and hard liquor that's now advertised, of course on cable television.
And we all remember Joe Camel, and we know the flavored tobacco and now we have the Juul and we have all of the kind of vaping that's going on. And it's not surprising that Altria, which is the owner of Marlboro, and all of those cigarette brands invested in Juul recently, which is of course the largest vaping company at the same time they invested heavily into the cannabis industry.
And of course, they are making a strategic bet that we are going to legalize and commercialize marijuana in this country.
And interesting, we see lots of pictures of people smoking it, but that's not how most people ingest marijuana today. They eat it through something called edibles where it is THC-infused foods, and they drink it through something called elixirs. Those are your Fanta Grape, but infused with THC.
Tucker, I've got five kids and I know that they're all going to be very primed to suffer from addiction. Part of addiction runs in your genes. But the other part is when it happens, because young people's brains aren't fully formed.
And of course, kids today are panicked, they're anxious, they're depressed, of course, why wouldn't they be given the unsettled economy and the COVID and impact of it? So it's natural for people to want to self-medicate.
In fact, in America now, we're seeing a much higher consumption of alcohol, much higher prescription of benzodiazepines and antidepressants. And the thought is, is that we almost have a perfect storm for people wanting to consume marijuana.
I mean, let's be honest, it's a very anxious time. But as a nation, we ought to be thinking about the long term impact of this. And you know, your previous speaker was talking about McKinsey kind of pumping up Purdue Pharma. We all remember that Purdue Pharma was marketing so much more OxyContin than was really necessary for people with cancer.
And the reason they did that is because the profits were real. The greed paid off for Purdue, and until the settlements came.
And now, many people scratch their heads and said, how could we ever let Purdue Pharma and the other big pharma manufacturers just flood the marketplace? And all I would say to them is, well, if you think that's awful, why are you about to let it happen all again?
I mean, you know, some people might say marijuana isn't as addictive as OxyContin or isn't as addictive as alcohol. But it's all about degrees. The fact of the matter is, we know if a young adolescent who is suffering from stress and anxiety uses marijuana, it's going to make them feel better. And if they're anything like me, and if there's just a percentage of them that are prone to be addicted, have the disease of addiction, then we're going to see that many more people ultimately suffer the disease of addiction in their lives.
And I know it is a plague. I know addiction is a plague. I've seen it up close in my family. I've suffered in my own life. I've seen it with my friends. And I don't think our country is really up for this trade off, in order to have a commercialized product that's so addictive and being able to pay the price for that down the road with all the people that are going to suffer from this disease.
I just don't think people care. I'm really concerned that we're not as sensitive about the disease of addiction.
CARLSON: You're absolutely right. Nobody is saying what you're saying. The social pressure not to say what you're saying is intense. We have no debate about this in public right now. And that's why I'm so grateful that you came on tonight, and I hope your voice remains in public, challenging people to answer the questions you just raised because no one is being forced to.
Patrick Kennedy, thank you for coming on tonight.
KENNEDY: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: So does Google have more power than the U.S. Constitution? I don't know. How about this story? One high school principal was suspended earlier this year for criticizing Silicon Valley and defending the principle of freedom of speech.
That principal fought a battle to get his job back. He joins us tell us exactly what happened, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Barton Thorne is a high school principal at Cordova High School in Tennessee. After the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, Barton Thorne noticed that some of the country's most powerful companies had begun a campaign of mass censorship. Twitter and YouTube deleted accounts they didn't like including the President's accounts.
Amazon, Google and Apple forced Parler off the internet entirely. That's when Barton Thorne decided to deliver this video message to his students.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARTON THORNE, PRINCIPAL, CORDOVA HIGH SCHOOL: Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple are so powerful and they have unilaterally made a decision of what you can and cannot see on their platforms. That's a major issue.
And I want you to understand that. I want you to understand the problem that's going to face you and your generation if there is no longer a marketplace of free exchange of ideas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Every word of that is true. No one can credibly claim otherwise. It's factually correct. But for the crime of criticizing Silicon Valley, the publicly traded monopolies that control our intellectual life, for doing that, Barton Thorne was suspended by Shelby County School District.
He then filed a lawsuit and was immediately reinstated. Barton Thorne is a brave man. He joins us now with his attorney, Daniel Suhr.
Thank you both for coming on. Mr. Thorne, first to you. What was the justification for suspending -- I mean, I thought we were allowed to criticize whatever we want, but criticizing billion dollar monopolies that control speech that is now a crime in Shelby County. What did they say to you?
THORNE: Well, thank you, Tucker, for having me. And first, I want to say I'm here just a private concerned citizen, not in the official capacity as a principal.
CARLSON: Yes.
THORNE: But you know, when we -- when all of this came out, you know, I give a Monday message to all of my students, I try to encourage them, motivate them, challenge them to think and this just seemed to be an appropriate topic.
And so yes, there were a few people that made some anonymous complaints. And when I was asked about it, I specifically asked what -- what was it that I said? What's the issue? Let's talk about it. And what was told to me was it really wasn't what I said, it was when I said it and the timing of it. So I never really got that answer.
But we were just, you know, we were just really concerned about where this is going and where it's heading, that just a regular old person like me can just espouse American values and what's been core to our country for hundreds of years, and somehow now, that's taboo and off limits.
So we're just really concerned about that and not really willing to lay down about this one.
CARLSON: So, I want to ask your attorney a legal question, Mr. Suhr, is criticizing Google a fireable offense now in the United States?
DANIEL SUHR, ATTORNEY: Of course not, Tucker. This is one of the most blatant examples of cancel culture that we have seen in our country to date, and the irony here is that Principal Thorne was telling his students about the dangers of cancel culture, about the speech police that come after regular everyday people and he is the one who ends up getting canceled.
CARLSON: I hope you sue these people into oblivion. I really -- you don't have to comment on that. But that is my fervent hope.
I'm grateful that you came on tonight. It's one of the most shocking stories that I think we've ever put on the show. Thank you both.
SUHR: Thanks for having us. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.
CARLSON: Amen. Godspeed. You should fight back.
Well, no one is talking about it because we ignore the big things. But we have been in Afghanistan for more than 20 years now. Now why are we there? Is it because national security?
No, it's not actually. We found out why we're there. Doug Macgregor joins us to fill in the details.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The American invasion of Afghanistan began way back in October of 2001. In response, of course, to /911.
Afghans were sheltering Saudis who committed the terror attacks. They were trained there. The question is, why do we still have troops there almost 20 years later? And the answer is not for national security reasons, but because our leaders see Afghanistan as a handy place to conduct a kind of social science experiment, the kind that George Soros might fund.
Our leaders believe Afghanistan must be bonded in submission so that its culture changes, maybe we should bomb them until they accept gender neutral pronouns. That may be one of the objectives over at the Pentagon.
The latest evidence comes from vox.com. At a recent meeting, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hopelessly over his head and extremely liberal, Mark Milley got emotional during a meeting about withdrawing from Afghanistan.
"We can't do this," Milley said, "If we leave Afghanistan, women's rights will," quote, "Go back to the Stone Age." So even at the Biden White House, people asked, well, what does that have to do with our national security objectives?
One White House official called Milley's little speech, quote, "A lot more emotion than substance," and said, it wasn't, quote, "super-logical." But there is a logic to it and the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the State Department, both of which have been hopelessly captured by the left, but we weren't paying attention. They've been implementing these plans around the world and particularly in Afghanistan.
A report last month from the Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction outlines our government's efforts to achieve quote, "gender equality" in Afghanistan. I bet you didn't think that was part of the mission, did you? You thought it was defeating terror? No. It was changing the traditional Afghan family structure. That was the real goal. Why is that our business? Why is that our job? Isn't that cultural imperialism? Shut up. We're doing it anyway.
The report notes that the U.S. government has disbursed, quote, "More than $787.4 million" for activities to quote, "support Afghan women and girls." Now that doesn't sound bad. Everyone is for women and girls.
Has it improved their lives? Has bringing third wave feminism to Afghanistan been good for the people of Afghanistan? There was no evidence that it has, it's causing a lot of disruption.
The Inspector General's report notes, among other things, that there is no word for gender or gender equality in any of the languages used in Afghanistan. It's just not their culture. We don't care.
The Inspector General also found that our quota system for female politicians in Afghanistan, bet you didn't think we have one of those, but we do. It hasn't worked. In fact, it's backfired.
Many of these politicians have never even visited the provinces they quote "represent," what the hell are we doing? And why are we using the military to do it?
Colonel Doug Macgregor is a combat veteran, a former senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense. He's been around this world his entire life. He joins us now to explain. Doug, thanks so much for coming on tonight. Why are we using the military to change the Afghan family structure?
COL. DOUG MACGREGOR (RET), U.S. ARMY: Well, I know the justifications sound lofty and moral, but in reality, they fall flat.
Afghanistan over the last 20 years has become the leading supplier of illegal heroin in the world. The heroin production industry in Afghanistan employs at least 400,000 Afghans, more people that are in the Afghan military and security police. So it's hard to take that seriously.
I think the real point is as follows. We have a globalist ruling elite in Washington, D.C. It now includes the senior leadership in the Pentagon, as well as the State Department, the Intelligence Community, people on the Hill, and they have decided that wherever we can, we should always intervene.
We've institutionalized intervention, interventionism. And these interventions can never end that once you intervene, you have to stay because privately, I think everyone knows that the moment that you withdraw or disengage a couple of things happen.
Number one, everything you claim to have achieved falls apart instantly. And then secondly, it puts the force structure whether it's in the Marines, or the Army, or Special Operations Command or anything else at risk. So you have incentives in a perverse sort of way to do the wrong thing in perpetuity.
CARLSON: But, I mean, it's our military. We can't allow this and I know that you have fought against this kind of thing for decades, and I really appreciate it. And I'm glad to see you back on this show.
Douglas Macgregor. Thank you very much.
MACGREGOR: Sure. Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: We'll be back. It's the weekend starting tomorrow. We hope you spend it with the ones you love. That's the most important thing of all.
The show will be back Monday night and every weeknight, 8:00 p.m., the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink, all growing.
Have the best weekend.
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