Pro-Hong Kong signs confiscated at NBA game

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Pro-Hong Kong signs confiscated at NBA game

Protester Jon Schweppe weighs in on having his pro-Hong Kong signs confiscated at an NBA game in Washington, D.C.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," October 10, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: This is a Fox News Alert. Any moment now, President Trump will begin addressing supporters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It's his first rally since the start of the Ukraine impeachment drama two weeks ago -- he will probably have a lot to say about that. We're going live to the President as he begins speaking.

But in the meantime, good evening, and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

The President is deep in enemy territory. He is going to be actually inside the boundaries of Ilhan Omar's congressional district.

The President has been in a war of words with the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey whom he accuses of trying to sabotage tonight's rally.

We will be going there as we said in just a minute. This, of all the rallies the President has had, we would say, in the last couple of years, this may be the one with the greatest potential to make news. So this was not a close call for us tonight. We are going to be taking this the moment it begins.

We want to preview what we're likely to see tonight though, with Fox's Matt Finn. He is there at the rally in Minneapolis and he joins us now. Hey, Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS: Hi, Tucker. Well, as we see coast to coast with President Trump rallies, thousands and thousands of people started lining up earlier today, and happening right now, there are also thousands and thousands of protesters. Many of them have very vulgar, obscene posters. We're going to try not to show them on air tonight and there have been people here cursing us out telling Fox News to leave.

Many of the people are also blowing whistles. You might be able to hear some of that piercing sound. There are some protesters that tell us this represents a sea of quote, "whistleblowers."

Now, Tucker, leading up into the days of this rally, the Mayor and President Trump feuding. The Trump campaign was billed $530,000.00 for security. "The Star Tribune" reports right now that this was the first political campaign that has ever been billed in the City of Minneapolis.

The Trump campaign says they refused to pay any more and tonight, he is declaring victory.

Now earlier in the week, President Trump tweeted quote, "Radical left Dem Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey is doing everything possible to stifle free speech despite a record sellout crowd at the Target Center. Presidents Clinton and Obama paid nothing, almost nothing."

The Mayor of Minneapolis responded, "Someone tell the President of the United States that he can afford to pay for the extra time our officers will be putting in while he is in town."

The Trump campaign says it is not paying any more and tonight, he says this rally is going on with the original contract. And Mayor Frey here in Minneapolis has issued a proclamation declaring today, Love Trump's Hate Day in the City of Minneapolis -- Tucker.

CARLSON: That's some enthusiastic fans behind you there. Matt Finn, live for us tonight from Minneapolis. Quite a scene. Thanks, Matt.

Well, one thing to watch for tonight is whether the President has anything to say about the NBA and other American corporations kowtowing to the fascist government of China.

On Wednesday night, "The Washington Wizards" here the capital of the nation, played the Guangzhou Loong Lions in a preseason game. Several people protested the Chinese government by wearing pro-Hong Kong t-shirts and carrying signs to the same effect. They were immediately confiscated by stadium personnel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But what was the reasoning? What is the reason? I'm sure, you're just doing your job, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Capital One Arena. We understand. We respect your freedom of speech. We are just personally not having -- we don't have any stance on it and so we're just asking no one needs any sign in here if you're watching tonight -- being in here tonight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: John Schweppe was one of the protesters there. That was his Twitter feed. He joins us here in the studio tonight. John, thanks so much for coming on.

JOHN SCHWEPPE, NBA PROTESTER: Thanks for having me on.

CARLSON: This isn't the nation's capital.

SCHWEPPE: Yes.

CARLSON: The capital of the United States.

SCHWEPPE: Yes.

CARLSON: And you can't protest Mainland China in the capital of the United States.

SCHWEPPE: No, it's incredible. You think about the NBA, this is a league that advertises itself as the most woke league in all of sports, right, when it comes down to you know, getting involved in politics, protesting President Trump, Black Lives Matter, getting involved in North Carolina a few years ago withdrawing the all-star game to protest the bathroom bill.

And then when it comes to China, you know, a country that is the serial human rights abuser, it has you know, a million plus Uyghurs in camps and concentration --

CARLSON: That murders political prisoners for their organs.

SCHWEPPE: Exactly. Right.

CARLSON: Okay. That has banned free expression. It is a fascist country.

SCHWEPPE: Right.

CARLSON: But we're not allowed to criticize them.

SCHWEPPE: They don't want to talk about it. You know, they're afraid to upset their bottom line with China. And so this is what we have here when you know, back in the 90s, we granted China most favored nation status, and we were told that this would be about exporting our values to China.

But what we're seeing -- I mean, we have exported a lot of jobs to China -- but what we've seen is that they're exporting their values here, and our corporations are adopting a lot of their fascist tendencies.

CARLSON: In the capital city of our country.

SCHWEPPE: That's right.

CARLSON: What do you think would have happened if you would have unfurled an impeach Donald Trump sign?

SCHWEPPE: Ah. You know what? I mean, I don't think the reaction would have been the same. You know, well -- they were big on you know, you can't have a political sign. That's what they told us.

Apparently, Google Uyghurs is inherently political, which we were very confused by, but --

CARLSON: Google Uyghurs.

SCHWEPPE: That's right. That's what the second sign that we had. It was asking people, you know, Steve Kerr and Steph Curry, a lot of these guys have come out and said, we just don't have enough information.

CARLSON: Right.

SCHWEPPE: We can't make a judgment call on China.

CARLSON: We just can't stand up for political freedom and the freedom of speech.

SCHWEPPE: That's right. So we had that sign, Google Uyghurs, hoping that people would look it up and see, oh my goodness, China is actually really terrible.

CARLSON: So asking people to learn more about concentration camps ...

SCHWEPPE: That's correct.

CARLSON:

... is a political statement?

SCHWEPPE: That's -- that was what we were told. Yes. That was a political sign. Yes.

CARLSON: So who made this decision?

SCHWEPPE: To let us out?

CARLSON: No, no, to confiscate your signs.

SCHWEPPE: I think it was done by someone up top. So security guards were talking when we first unveiled it, and then they came towards us. With the second sign, they weren't sure what Uyghurs were, so I think they hadn't determined whether it was a political sign --

CARLSON: So the guy in the video, he's just been told what to do. He's an hourly rate employee.

SCHWEPPE: Right, right, right. Yes.

CARLSON: It was not his fault. He is following orders. But the orders came from presumably the owner or owners of the team, based here again, for the fifth time, in the nation's capital.

SCHWEPPE: I wouldn't be shocked --

CARLSON: Have they responded? Have they explain themselves?

SCHWEPPE: They've said that this is in accordance with their policies of not doing political, you know, any sort of political show at these events, which is hilarious coming from the NBA which is political all the time when it comes to domestic policy.

CARLSON: It's unbelievable. You've pointed that up as capably as anybody.

SCHWEPPE: Thank you.

CARLSON: We're grateful for that. John, thanks very much.

SCHWEPPE: Thanks for having me on.

CARLSON: J.D. Vance is the author of "Hillbilly Elegy," the bestselling book and also one of the sharpest observers of American politics, and we're grateful to have him on tonight. J.D. thanks so much for coming on. What does this story tell you about where we're going?

J.D. VANCE, AUTHOR: Well, you know, Tucker, I've grown up in the conservative movement since I really cared about politics when I was a teenager, and I do think that one of the things that's been an article of faith among postwar conservatives is that the free market is generally aligned with the interests of the United States of America.

CARLSON: Right.

VANCE: I think one of the things that we're learning is that the free market only really works for the United States of America's national interest, when the United States is the sole economic power in the world.

And when you have a country like China that's rapidly growing in part of course, because of our mistakes, what you have is an entire new customer base, where companies like the NBA, like Apple, like a lot of other folks are actually prioritizing their bottom line over the national interest of their own country.

And I do think, you know, it really should challenge conservatives to think about what this means for the next 30 to 40 years of American policy, when we're no longer the sole hyper power in world economic affairs.

CARLSON: Right. So they're basically using our libertarian economics against us, and our corporations are choosing China over the country that incubated them that made them possible -- our country -- and we're not saying anything about it.

VANCE: You know, that's exactly right, Tucker. And if you think about the response to this particular spat between, you know, the NBA, China and the broader country, one of the things that's pretty clear is that one side of the country sees this primarily as a free speech issue as an act of moral cowardice on behalf of the NBA, and that's obviously partially true.

CARLSON: Yes.

VANCE: But the NBA isn't making a PR mistake. They're not making any sort of business error by prioritizing the interests of the Chinese. China has 1.4 billion rapidly, upwardly economically mobile people. Those people are going to be customers. They already are the second largest market for the NBA.

And I think what we're seeing is that the NBA is not actually making a mistake. It's making a rational business judgment.

The other side of this, though, is that the United States also has to make rational judgments about what's in our national interest. And if the interests of multinational corporations align with the interests of China, then we have to accept that we have to fight back.

CARLSON: Right.

VANCE: And the way that I put this, Tucker is that you know, for the past 60 years, one of the things that's been true about American economic and political cultural life is that the big institutions of the economy, big companies, big businesses have tended to be on the conservative side of the spectrum and the cultural institutions, the Academy, the university and so forth, those have tended to be institutions of the left.

And then the left or the right have fought over who controls the politics, but what we're entering is an era where both the economic institutions and the cultural institutions are aligned with the left.

And the big question for us as conservatives is, what are we actually going to do about that New World, given how significantly different it is from the one we've been living in for the past 30 or 40 years?

CARLSON: Right. So we been asleep paying attention only to marginal tax rates and kind of missed the sea change, and we've been and we, meaning probably the majority of the country have been completely out flanked by people who hate us, hate our values and are more loyal to the Chinese than to America. So what do we do about it?

VANCE: Well, I think at a big general picture level, Tucker, we have to accept that there are more important things than the free market. The free market, as you said, on your own show is a tool. It's an important tool.

But it's not the only thing that matters in American public life.

I'm not sure if you saw this, but last year, a Marriott employee was fired in Nebraska, I believe, middle of the country for liking a tweet that was hostile to Communist China.

I think we're entering an era of American public life where we have to decide what matters more -- the free speech and expression rights of our own citizens, or the bottom line of corporations who care more about China than they do about us?

And in that world, what it means I think, is that the standard Bush- Republican approach of more free trade and more tax cuts for corporations, it's not just inadequate, it may be dangerous and stupid.

CARLSON: Yes, we need to -- people need to be forced to choose a side.

Right? Because there are two sides.

VANCE: Exactly.

CARLSON: One is American and one is --

VANCE: Yes.

CARLSON: Thank you. J.D. Vance, great to see you.

VANCE: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: As we said in the open, we're waiting for the President to begin speaking to supporters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We will go there as soon as he takes the stage.

We expect he will address his announcement this week to withdraw American troops from Northern Syria, and that's hardly the only American military commitment that has gone on a long time.

This week, incidentally, marks the 18th anniversary of American involvement in Afghanistan. The President has said repeatedly he wants out of that war. Most of Washington is united to keep it going indefinitely.

Erik Prince knows a lot about the subject. He founded the private military group, Blackwater. He is also Chairman of Frontier Resource Group. He joins us on set tonight. Erik, great to see you.

ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER, BLACKWATER: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: You've been in and out of Afghanistan since that war started 18 years ago. Looking backward, what's your assessment?

PRINCE: Failure. We won in the first six months that we were there fighting a very unconventional war. It was a few Special Forces guys and a few C.I.A. officers backed by air power.

Six months hammer, the Taliban and then the Pentagon and the conventional military rolled in, largely repeating the Soviet battle plan. And we've largely gone backwards ever since, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and no one has really been held accountable.

All of these generals, all of these people that were in command. They write books. They are lauded for their leadership, and its failure. What kind of CEO who could run an enterprise for 18 years with that kind of failure and still be lauded? They should have been fired.

CARLSON: You seem -- my assessment is you seem to be one of the only people involved in that effort who has learned anything from -- I know that there are others -- but you're certainly one of the few high profile people who is willing to say this is what we've learned.

So given what you've learned, how should we apply those lessons to Syria?

PRINCE: Look, the President's instincts are right -- look -- to not have American permanent presence in Eastern Syria. That's not a strategic requirement of the United States.

On the flip side, abandoning the Kurds, not the best idea. But there's other ways to do this that doesn't require U.S. forces.

A perfect analogy is the Flying Tigers. When you had Japan in the 1930s bombing the hell out of Chinese cities, America was not going to be involved. But FDR, a beloved Democrat, authorized a covert action finding allowing American Marines, Navy and Army pilots to go work for a private company, and they became the Flying Tigers and they defended Chinese cities from Japanese aggression before the United States entered the war.

So now, you could do the same thing. Look, the Syrian Kurds have oil.

They have 400,000 barrels a day that they could produce again, that they could sell and export that could pay for effectively a contracted peacekeeping force that would keep the ISIS guys at bay and that would deter the Iranians and the Turks from rolling in. It doesn't require U.S. forces. It doesn't require active duty forces.

The Syrian Kurds could pay for their own defense, but nobody in the Pentagon, nobody in this clique of the Beltway wants to think outside of the box and give the President different options.

The same thing they've been doing in Afghanistan for 18 years, is all they've ever given them -- more money and more troops or nothing. And here in Syria, more money and more troops or nothing.

There's a lot of high hybrid ways to do this. But no one is willing to think outside of the box.

CARLSON: It's interesting because I think most Americans and certainly in this group give the benefit of every doubt to our military leadership. We respect them. I think most of them are worthy of respect.

But because we respect them so much, we don't, I think, feel comfortable often second guessing their strategy. And so you almost, almost never hear anybody say, wait a second, you know, you made a series of dumb decisions, why should I listen to you again?

PRINCE: Sadly, it's a direct result of an all-volunteer force. We have a great all-volunteer force, but the fact is, one half of one percent of the U.S. population that serves in the military.

CARLSON: Right.

PRINCE: Maybe another three to five percent know that one half percent, leaving 95 percent of America with no real contact with the military, literally no skin in the game. And so no one feels empowered to call BS on the generals on this national security clique.

CARLSON: That is a good point.

PRINCE: And so they -- you know, everyone says, we support our troops, we thank you for your service. If they really want to support their troops, demand better, demand that their sacrifice not be wasted - we not just muddle along as some of the generals have called for.

CARLSON: So you served in the Navy as a young man.

PRINCE: Yes.

CARLSON: You're a SEAL.

PRINCE: Yes.

CARLSON: Are you struck as you watch uniformed military officer -- flag officers -- essentially ignore the Commander-in-Chief?

PRINCE: Look, we have the finest staff officers NCO's in the world. But it seems like once they become very, very senior generals, it' becomes a self-licking ice cream cone of who gets promoted and then who gets approved to join that club? And anybody that thinks outside the box -- we have no George Patton's anymore? We have no Ulysses S. Grant's. We have no -- none of the swashbuckling generals that actually made things happen.

I mean, we haven't -- we don't have a fantastic record of finishing wars since World War II.

CARLSON: That self-licking ice cream cone - that that image is going to follow me to bed tonight, unfortunately. My last question, do you think the President has around him trustworthy and wise advisers on foreign policy questions? Any?

PRINCE: Well, so far, all they've been telling the President is kind of keep doing what they're doing.

CARLSON: Yes.

PRINCE: the decision on Afghanistan in the summer of 2017 to go with more money and more troops. That was two years ago. Secretary Mattis and all the generals got exactly what they want in rules of engagement to be aggressive.

CARLSON: Yes.

PRINCE: And we're still at the same thing, and then the Taliban controls more land now than they have since 9/11/2001.

So who could objectively look and say, this clique of -- this paradigm -- that's been pursued by the smart national security apparatus of the United States for the last 18 years is working.

CARLSON: That is such a good point, and so rarely expressed, and you have the authority to do it. Erik Prince, great to see you tonight.

PRINCE: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you. China is not the only country that major American companies were willing to prostrate themselves before and censor themselves on behalf of -- here in the U.S., nobody was more outraged by the withdrawal from Northern Syria than CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Trump was betraying our allies, the Kurds who have bled and died to defeat ISIS.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think there's a real sense of confusion and betrayal.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It seems as if the U.S. is hanging them out to dry.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yet again, the Kurds are being betrayed by those who helped them.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: I just wonder, where is U.S. credibility in the region with both its friends and its adversaries after abandoning the Kurds again?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: At this point in time, the Kurds are feeling quite betrayed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Betrayal. How can he do that? But it turns out, there's more than one CNN. In America, CNN tells you what people in Washington want to hear, the permanent city.

But the network has an affiliate in Turkey, too. It's called CNN Turk.

We've told you about it. In fact, it's kind of an organ of the government there. CNN Turk knows its audience. So they've taken an entirely different line.

They describe Turkey's military operation and serious quote, "A peace spraying operation." They consistently describe the Kurds as terrorists.

Just like the NBA, money is the bottom line over at CNN.

Author and columnist, Mark Steyn is a connoisseur of CNN Turk and he joins us tonight. So are you surprised that in the middle -- and we've called out CNN Turk a number of times because it's an atrocity that they have CNN Turk.

But now CNN Turk finds itself at the very center of one of the big news stories of the day and CNN U.S. kind of ignores it, how does that work?

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Yes, because on CNN U.S., it's Kurd, Kurd, Kurd all the time.

On CNN Turk, oddly enough, whenever the Kurds are in the news, CNN Turk cuts away to something else. So you've had situations where the Kurds are in the street protesting in Turkey, and CNN Turk cuts away and shows a cookery show. They protest again, and CNN Turk cuts away to a documentary on beekeeping.

They apparently have an endless stock and personally, I'd rather they ran some of that stuff over here. I'd far rather watch a long documentary on beekeeping than Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper or any of them. Bring on the beekeeping documentaries.

But what's odd about this, Tucker, when you say it's like the NBA, the NBA in the end is just like guys bouncing a ball around. This is supposed to be a journalistic operation. And the idea that what they do, CNN overseas franchises its brands to dictators, as if it's like Kentucky Fried Chicken, and oh, yes, the guy in Ankara wants to open up a KFC franchise. Okay, we'll give him CNN.

This is a very odd thing to do --

CARLSON: It is.

STEYN: To treat journalism like this is bizarre, and if you recall, CNN has been here before, because immediately after the fall of Saddam, the head of CNN, what was he called? Eason?

CARLSON: Eason Jordan.

STEYN: Eason Jordan who you probably know from the old days, but Eason Jordan wrote a piece in the "The New York Times" saying the stories we kept to ourselves, relating things that he knew in advance. He was told by Saddam's son that he was going to have -- two of his brothers-in-law whacked.

So in other words, he gets a heads up notice on two assassinations.

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: And CNN doesn't report it because in the end, being the KFC of news and having outlets, having drive-through phony franchises in Baghdad and Ankara is more important to them.

CARLSON: If we opened a Fox News North Korean affiliate --

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: Fox Pyongyang.

STEYN: Yes, yes.

CARLSON: I would be embarrassed. I would absolutely be embarrassed, but they're not. All their little ethicists are not embarrassed. Mark Steyn, I hope you'll stay right there.

There are new developments tonight involving NBC and its cover up on behalf of Harvey Weinstein.

People who run that network have a lot to explain, but they're not explaining. Mark Steyn will join us after the break.

Also, we're monitoring Minneapolis for the start of the President's speech.

We'll go there as soon as it begins. Stay tuned. It's a big night.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Eric Trump is on stage in Minneapolis at the moment. We're hearing his father ought to be speaking at any moment. Of course, we're monitoring that. It ought to be a news night -- a big news night in Minneapolis.

Until then, let me go back to Mark Steyn on this story. Excerpts have come out from Ronan Farrow's new book, it's called "Catch and Kill." It's mostly about the Harvey Weinstein case.

The excerpts show how NBC News working at times with Hillary Clinton worked to protect Harvey Weinstein from being exposed as a serial and longtime abuser of women, something that they knew and hid.

Well today, NBC News President, Noah Oppenheim was apparently grilled by employees, his own employees during an internal phone call.

One staffer called Oppenheim's behavior, quote, "an absolute disgrace," which of course, it demonstrably is though he still has his job.

Mark Steyn is back with us tonight. So, Mark, I'm familiar with television PR operations, and I see this one in action over at NBC and they basically are trying to make the story all about Matt Lauer. Did Matt Lauer do this or that? And you know, he clearly did some things, he probably didn't do other things -- but whatever. It's not really the story.

STEYN: No.

CARLSON: The story is that Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim and others at NBC News protected Harvey Weinstein for whatever reason. I mean, really -- and killed the story about Harvey Weinstein. That seems to be getting lost.

STEYN: Yes. And actually, the details of it, the chumminess, the acceptance of gifts, the fawning on him --

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: The flattery -- they're flattered that they've caught Harvey Weinstein's eye. These excerpts from Ronan Farrow's book are amazing and actually reading it, I've come to -- look, I don't know Ronan Farrow at all. I don't know much about him.

But I think it's actually only because of his particular situation that he was actually dogged enough to sit with this story, because what it is, and you can see this when Hillary's guys are trying to give Ronan Farrow the brush off.

Ronan Farrow is a kind of semi-celebrity journalist.

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: He is the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen and Woody Allen and Mia, both say that, in fact, he may be Frank Sinatra's son, and Woody Allen complains that he has had to pay child support for Frank Sinatra's son.

There's a whole complicated thing there.

But he says, plugged in, never mind all of that. He is also dating one of Obama's former speech writers and this -- and what this whole story really is, is that at a certain level, it's understood that people have pathologies, people have fetishes, people can be psychopathic.

But the fact is that, at a certain level of celebrity, you're all meant to agree not to tittle tattle on the other guy's tails.

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: And the fact that -- so Harvey Weinstein is saying to NBC, if you come after me, I'll leak some dirt on Matt Lauer. And NBC is saying, well, we stick with Harvey and that's what it is.

They feel that that Ronan Farrow is guilty of some kind of class betrayal.

And in fact, it's -- I think it's only because of who he is and his particular background that he was big enough actually. If he had just been a regular working Joe, just a regular guy with some worthless journalism degree ...

CARLSON: That's right.

STEYN:

... from some lousy college, he would never have actually been able to break this story. He broke the code that it's this agreed group at a certain level of celebrity, whether it is political, television, show business, whether you're Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton or these NBC executives who behaved appallingly, like Oppenheim, it's understood that you all protect each other.

You protect Harvey Weinstein, so Harvey Weinstein will protect you.

Absolutely horrible.

CARLSON: And they bullied him. I mean, the sleaze balls who run that channel. He is a kid, by the way. I mean, he is in his 20s.

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: And they say to him, look, you know, this is journalism, son.

You know, we're journalists here, and you don't really have the story.

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: Of course, he had it cold. He had people on camera say it. He had absolutely -- I mean, he won the Pulitzer Prize in the end of the story.

STEYN: Well --

CARLSON: Imagine the toughness it takes to say no, actually, I am in my 20s, you know, Mr. Oppenheim, but I'm doing it anyway. And it's pretty impressive.

STEYN: And it actually -- and what they mean by, you don't have the story, is what they told the reporter almost 20 years ago now, after the impeachment trial about Juanita Broaddrick.

They said, the problem isn't that you're credible. The problem is, you're too credible. It wasn't that he didn't have the story. It's that he had the goods on a major figure and they didn't want to go there. It's absolutely --

CARLSON: Can I ask you this though? In the middle of all of this, we learned that Hillary Clinton was one of the people who tried to bully Ronan Farrow -- who is no right winger --

STEYN: Right.

CARLSON: I don't think he is making this up. Hillary Clinton actually tried to protect Harvey Weinstein by bullying Ronan Farrow, and I don't know, maybe I missed it, but I don't think that's a headline in "The New York Times" today. Everyone is sort of ignoring that. Why?

STEYN: No. And you've got to believe, by the way that the only reason she knew then and her staff knew that, is because actually, Harvey isn't just some hands-off guy who does a bit of bundling, as they call it for her; a bit of fundraising, big time fundraising for her when she's out on the West Coast. They're actually closer than that.

And at some point, the inference of Ronan Farrow's book is that at some point, Harvey Weinstein actually called on Hillary Clinton to assist her in this matter.

You played that devastating clip of Seth MacFarlane at the Oscars talking about the Oscar nominated actresses and saying, the good news is that none of you now have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.

And nobody -- the Oscars goes out around the globe. They always boast that there are three billion people watching or whatever. None of those three - - of those three billion people, maybe 200 know who Harvey Weinstein is.

CARLSON: Exactly.

STEYN: It is an insider joke, and the whole point of Ronan Farrow's story is that he is an insider, whether Mia, Frank, Woody, and the Obama guy, he is as insider as they get, and it's a kind of class betrayal to do what he did.

CARLSON: You know what? I never thought I'd say this, but I'm for class betrayal. Good for him.

STEYN: Yes, we need more of it.

CARLSON: Mark Steyn. You're the best. We do. Thanks, Mark.

Keeping our eyes in Minneapolis. The President begins speaking any moment.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The Vice President of the United States is speaking at this hour in Minneapolis. He will introduce the President moments from now and of course, we will go there when he does.

In the meantime, more than 20 percent of this country's homeless are in the State of California.

In California, no city has more homeless than Los Angeles and in Los Angeles, the epicenter of that crisis appears to be in a place called Venice Beach, one of the richest pockets in LA and along a small strip of once pristine beach, has many as a thousand homeless people now live.

Edward Ring is a senior fellow at the Center for American Greatness and co- founder of the California Policy Center. He's got a new piece on the Venice Beach homeless epidemic, which is fascinating. We spoke with him recently. Here's how it went.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: So for those not familiar with the geography of Los Angeles, Venice Beach, of course, is on the western edge. It's on the beach, and it's one of the most expensive places in the city and county of Los Angeles. How did the homeless wind up there?

EDWARD RING, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN GREATNESS: Well, the entire county and the entire state is welcoming, relatively speaking, to homeless not just because of the weather, but because of some so-called reforms to California's laws which make it very difficult to incarcerate people who are mentally ill.

And also even worse, it's very hard now to do anything about petty theft or to do anything about public intoxication and drug possession.

So what you have is kind of a magnet with the weather and this permissive environment.

CARLSON: California officials -- I mean, we've interviewed a number of people from the state who are involved in responding to the homelessness epidemic crisis, whatever we're calling it, and they always tell us how much money is being spent. How much is being spent? And why isn't it obvious?

RING: Well, billions are being spent, and absolutely nothing has happened except the problem has gotten worse.

And what we see in Venice, for example, is a situation where they have some publicly owned land, and in particular, they have three acres, right now it's a parking lot.

Now, land in Venice Beach, California goes for -- it starts at $30 million per acre. So this is a piece of property that's worth about $100 million.

And they're going to build at an additional cost -- the construction cost estimated at $105 million, an apartment building that's going to hold 140 people.

So if you do the math on that, you're looking at well over a million dollars per person that you're going to put a roof over their heads and this is an absolute impossible situation to solve when you're spending that much money.

CARLSON: But what about -- I mean, people are leaving the state in droves.

I mean -- and that's not overstatement. A majority of California residents surveyed this month said they have thought about leaving. And one of the main complaints is it costs too much to live there.

So if working people, middle class people can't afford to live there, what do they think of this -- of their politicians spending a million dollars per vagrant?

RING: Well, it's a situation where you have to -- you have to assume that if you're really feeling compassion towards the homeless and if you're really feeling compassion towards the citizens who are working very hard to be able to live there, then you have to solve this problem in a more cost effective way.

There's opportunities to put together so-called permanent supportive housing elsewhere in Los Angeles County.

I mean, in North Los Angeles County, you can buy land for $1,000.00 an acre instead of $30 million an acre.

CARLSON: Right. That's exactly right.

RING: And we have a lot of experience, putting together shelter for people. We do it all over the world. So, why is permanent supportive housing defined this way? It seems like the first principle would be, don't create housing that's better than the housing elsewhere in Los Angeles where people are paying for that housing.

CARLSON: Because it's so essentially unfair. The left is not good at running things. I think we're learning that.

I would recommend to our viewers your piece, Edward Ring on homelessness in Venice. It really is a fascinating piece. These thank you for writing that and for coming on tonight.

RING: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: As we said, the President is walking up to the microphone any moment at the rally in Minneapolis. You'll hear from him. Mark Steyn joins us again right before that happens.

Mark, so if you were the President in the middle of one of the busiest news weeks that any of us can remember, what would you say tonight?

STEYN: Well, I think he needs to actually connect the Biden business up with the wider problem, what he ran on, in fact.

The Biden family are the swamp. Burisma in Ukraine and the Chinese Politburo. They put Hunter Biden on the Board because you can't put the President on the Board. You can't put the Vice President on the Board.

But you can put the Vice President's son on the Board.

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: And so that is swampiness at its most swampy. And Joe Biden is a political opponent. You know, he has got the media on this side. He has got the Democrats, he has got impeachment on the side, but Biden himself isn't nimble enough to deflect those kind of attacks

And they will be -- and so the Democrats would then be in the situation that they were with Hillary, trying to drag an obviously ineffectual candidate across the finish line.

But he has to actually say, this is what I ran on. Hunter Biden getting 50 grand a month in a country where people earn $200.00 a month. It's not a question of whether it's illegal. It's not a question of whether it's unethical.

If you can't smell that, you're in the swamp. You're part of the swamp, because to everybody else, it stinks to heaven.

CARLSON: Totally true. The complete sleaziness of the Obama administration, something that no one ever mentions, but all of these people sort of leveraging American Empire to get rich, including Obama and his wife, you know, what are they doing right now? You know, they're living like plutocrats on the basis of what? On the basis of connections with foreigners. I mean, that's what it is.

STEYN: Right. Right. And as the Clintons did, they were -- you know, they've simply eliminated -- in the old days under the Clinton Foundation, a Ukrainian oligarch would give $4 million to the Clinton Foundation for a speech by Chelsea on diarrhea in Africa that everybody slept through.

And now they've simply eliminated the middleman and they've made Hunter Biden the Ukrainian oligarch.

So in a sense, they've streamlined the system, but he said just -- he should swamp it up on them. He should hand that swamp around Joe Biden's neck.

CARLSON: Because otherwise -- I mean, I think the risk that they face and I hope they see this coming, is that a candidate could emerge out of this field who uses their rhetoric against them who tries to outflank them on populism and against -- right? I mean, if that happens, you're in trouble, I would say.

STEYN: No, and I think actually Liz Warren is kind of sort of doing that.

I mean, because as I said on your show a few weeks ago, because she can't talk about her so-called personal story, because her so-called personal story has been a lie for the last 40 years.

Because of that, she used to just talk about policy and oddly enough, she has just moved ahead of Biden in the polls.

CARLSON: Right.

STEYN: And that's -- I think that's what he needs to do. He needs to get back to where he was in 2015. Take this swamp, and basically dump Joe Biden in it like one of those little things they have at county fairs where you have to try and soak the village pastor or whatever. He needs to swamp Biden.

CARLSON: So the President tonight is in Minneapolis, a town full of left wingers named Carlson, by the way.

STEYN: Right, right.

CARLSON: Full of angry Scandinavians.

STEYN: Well, that was the old Minneapolis. Now, it is full of left- wingers named Ahmed. But there may be --

CARLSON: Good point.

STEYN: There may be an Ahmed Carlson now. They are not ruling it out, Tucker.

CARLSON: At this one, I'm sure -- and by the way, I'm for it. But I guess my point is, it's hard to imagine, outside maybe Cambridge, Mass a place less hospitable to the President, and yet he is there. Why?

STEYN: Well, again, I think the first time I saw him live last time round was in Burlington, Vermont, where in other words, he decided to go to the capital of Bernie's fan.

So he's not Karl Rove. He's not saying oh I am fighting on this narrow, narrow, bitter turf - that will just put me over the edge in the Electoral College.

And I think he does this sort of thing very well. When he goes to the heart of left wing liberal America. In this case, it's not Bernie's stand, it's Ilhan Omar's rid-out. And he's taken it to her.

And I think he's -- I think that's actually what an American President should be doing. He should be campaigning in all 50 states.

People keep talking about how Minnesota is turning purple. And I hope they can actually make that happen and turn it red. But you've got to be there on the ground doing it.

So God bless President Trump for actually being there, and sticking it to the heart of left wing liberal Minnesota.

CARLSON: Well, it's -- you know, most people, even most politicians, even most Presidents still want to deal with it. You want to go where you're loved.

STEYN: Yes, yes.

CARLSON: Which is why most Republican Presidents just kind of do a lot of events in Naples, Florida, and then go home.

STEYN: Yes, and you're right. And he actually loves the way this like twerpy mayor has threatened to send him a half million dollar bill for security as if he is just some aging rocker doing his farewell tour.

I think -- I think that actually -- he loves that. He thrives on that.

But what he has to do here is he has to just have all that Ukrainian murk hanging off Joe Biden 24 hours a day.

CARLSON: You think he'll get into the specifics of the impeachment effort against him tonight?

STEYN: Well, I think he'll generally reference that it's a disgrace, which it is, and that there's no due process, which there isn't. And they're in fact trying to remove a President from office in the same stealthy underhand way in which Comey and Peter Strzok and co ran their original so- called counterintelligence operation four years ago.

But I think he has actually got to go beyond just saying it's a disgrace and explain why it is and that it's not him who is being robbed. It's actually the millions of people who voted for him who are in effect, having that election nullified one way or the other by the Democrats.

CARLSON: We've got an election a year from now. It seems like that would be enough.

STEYN: Yes. Yes.

CARLSON: Mark Steyn, thank you for the preview. That was great. It was great to see you tonight.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, tucker. Go get them, Mr. President.

CARLSON: Lee Greenwood still playing in the background and we're going to hand it over now to the President of the United States. We've been previewing this for 48 minutes, and he is about to take the microphone.

This and we've taken a lot of Trump rallies live over the last three years.

But I think this one promises anyway, to be among the most newsworthy, certainly the timing couldn't be more in the center of things.

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