Rudy Giuliani breaks his silence after FBI raid: 'Lucky I don't get frightened easily'

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Rudy Giuliani breaks his silence after FBI raid: 'Lucky I don't get frightened easily'

Former Trump personal attorney speaks out in an exclusive interview on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 29, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening, and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. Happy Thursday.

Joe Biden spoke to a Joint Session of the Congress last night. If you saw it, and relatively few people did judge by the numbers, then you know that the confusing part started even before the speech began.

It was the masks again. Everyone was wearing a mask, very much including the two stern ladies sitting right behind Joe Biden. That would be the Speaker of the House and the real President. They were masked up, all of them were, like outlaws.

But here's the weird part: all of them have been vaccinated. They've told us that.

So, there was literally no reason for any of them to be wearing masks, but they wore them anyway. It was like everyone in the room had Munchausen syndrome, or some other fantasy related psychological disorder. Bizarre.

We never did get to the bottom of that because Joe Biden started talking.

Language is designed to communicate ideas, but not when Joe Biden uses it. Last night's speech was a cluster bomb of cliches meant to knock you senseless and make you surrender. "Americans choose hope over fear," Biden droned, "Truth over lies, light over darkness." We lost track after that. Our brains shut down.

Mission accomplished.

The news media didn't care. They didn't even notice. They weren't listening to him. They have no interest in what Joe Biden says. They got him elected. He's their guy and that's that.

Technically, Joe Biden is now the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. So maybe someone somewhere could keep track of what he is doing. But no, reporters covered Joe Biden like he's an actor on press tour for the hot new summer blockbuster, he and his dazzling co-star, Kamala.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC: His use of voice modulation was rather extraordinary given the television era, and it served as cover at times for unspooling and ambition in this speech that was Rooseveltian in size and scope.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's really beautiful, I mean, it's beautiful. He is developing a kind of positive populism.

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: He also talked about the soul of America and that was so passionate when he talked about the injustice -- the knee of injustice is on the neck of Black America.

NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC ANCHOR: His connections to the people in this room - - I'm not even sure if all of them are deserving of them, but he does not care. He gives to them the benefit of the doubt.

JONES: And his voice, that kind of grandfatherly whispery voice and the fact that it actually wasn't a big raucous crowd, let that intimacy really land.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: Every single sentence had a very clear point to it and every line had that Biden humility in it.

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: He is really trying to bring the country together. It was a Make America Feel Good night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Wait a second. Was that the President of the United States talking? No, that's what you thought. In fact, it was Jesus in aviator glasses. What Joe Biden said last night was beautiful. Beautiful. It was intimate. Grandfatherly. Indeed, Rooseveltian.

Joe Biden spoke to the soul of America. He connected with people who didn't even deserve to be connected with. Hopeless sinners, redeemed by his voice alone -- a voice that is not, and we want to be clear about this, the fading monotone of a 78-year-old man who is losing his grip. No, it's not.

Joe Biden's voice modulates. It has the capacity to change pitch in a way that is -- and we're quoting now -- "rather extraordinary."

And so on, we could keep going with this, if we wanted -- cable news is a rich vein -- but we'll stop now and return to reality.

A powerful politician gave a speech about how he plans to change your life. So, we feel obligated to tell you what he said and not simply commit a series of symbolic sex acts upon him.

So what did Biden actually say? Well, he said that people who disagree with him are terrorists, they are more dangerous than the jihadists who destroyed the World Trade Center. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: A hundred days since I took the oath of office and lifted my hand off our family Bible and inherited a nation -- we all did -- that was in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Really? The worst attack on our democracy in 160 years? How about the Immigration Act of 1965? That law completely changed the composition of America's voter rolls, purely to benefit the Democratic Party. That seems like kind of an assault on democracy, a permanent one.

But no. That was a good thing, because, in the end, it helped Joe Biden.

What's bad is when anyone other than Joe Biden has power. That's an attack on democracy, and the people who commit that attack deserve to be in solitary confinement in the D.C. jail, even if they only, technically speaking, committed misdemeanor trespassing.

So abandon those silly racist assumptions about how you have "rights" derived from some ancient piece of parchment decorated with a quill pen. The Bill of Rights? Come on.

As Joe Biden reminded us last night, no constitutional amendment is absolute. All of them are subject to his approval.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't tell me it can't be done.

I'll tell you that there are too many people today who are able to buy a gun, but shouldn't be able to buy a gun.

And no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Don't tell me it can't be done. "No amendment to the Constitution is absolute." Wow. Glad to know that. Stupidly, we assumed the document was real. Now, we've learned that the 19th Amendment isn't absolute, so it'll be interesting to discover under what circumstances women can be prohibited from voting in elections.

Nancy Pelosi will be interested, too. Good thing the suffragettes are gone. They'd be upset to hear that.

And how about the 13th Amendment? That's a big one. Now, that Joe Biden has declared that that amendment and all of them are up for negotiation, maybe he will tell us when it's legal to enslave people.

It turns out that abolition wasn't really "absolute." The only thing that is absolute at this point is the power of the Democratic Party, and don't you dare resist it.

"You can't yell fire in a crowded theater," Biden pointedly told us last night. But of course, that depends entirely on the condition of the theater. If it actually is on fire, you should say so, loudly. If you think the presidential election was stolen, by God, speak up, and that is the right that's at stake here -- the right to speak your conscience, to say the obvious, to tell the truth.

That was very much the right at stake in the summer of 1917, when an earlier Democratic administration arrested a man called Charles Schenck. Schenck was a socialist who opposed America's entry into the First World War, the Iraq War of its day.

Schenck had 15,000 pamphlets printed. They didn't advocate violence, they argued against the military draft, which Schenck believed was unconstitutional. In fact, the headline of the essay was, "Long live the Constitution of the United States."

Woodrow Wilson, the President, promptly had him arrested. Federal agents raided Schenck's office, they seized his pamphlets, they carted him off to jail. He was charged and then convicted under the Espionage Act. You hear the word "espionage" a lot. He was convicted of that, and he was sent to Federal prison, and not just him.

The Woodrow Wilson administration prosecuted thousands of other Americans for daring to oppose its policies. The phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comes from the Supreme Court case, Schenck vs. United States that resulted from those arrests.

According to a reading of the case the Wilson administration preferred at the time, Charles Schenck was not exercising his First Amendment rights by disagreeing with the White House. He was "shouting fire in a crowded theater," he was endangering the public. He was a criminal who deserved jail.

Joe Biden knows all this, of course. He was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That's one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history. Biden is squarely on Woodrow Wilson's side of the argument, the side that crushes civil liberties in order to achieve political imperatives.

Just recently, Biden once again obliquely referred to the Schenck case while speaking at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. You can't yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, you can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater even if the theater is burning. You must read the script. That's the message. You thought you could say what you wanted in a free country. That was your birthright. But it's not anymore. Your opinion is not legitimate if it deviates from Joe Biden's opinion. You yourself are not legitimate.

In fact, if you disagree with Joe Biden or the afternoon panel on MSNBC that represents him, you are a white supremacist. So by definition, you have lost your rights. The national security state has determined that you're a terrorist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: And we won't ignore what our Intelligence Agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today. White supremacy is terrorism. We're not going to ignore that either.

My fellow Americans, look, we have to come together to heal the soul of this nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We have to come together to heal the soul of the nation by attacking our fellow Americans using a phrase no one will define.

What does coming together mean? Well, it means that because of a concept called "white supremacy," again, a phrase the left endlessly invokes, but never defines, your civil liberties have now been suspended.

By the way, the whole point of the Derek Chauvin murder trial was to inform you of that.

Traditionally in this country, we force ourselves to assume criminal defendants are innocent until proven otherwise, even if we have video. That's our system; innocent until proven guilty. Not anymore.

Once you've been identified as a White supremacist, you don't get a fair trial because you're not entitled to a fair trial. A sitting Member of Congress can threaten to burn down a city if you're not convicted, and the people in charge will applaud her as she does, and they did.

And even if a jury does somehow acquit you, you will still be found guilty. That was the plan. In Derek Chauvin's case, the Justice Department made plans to arrest Derek Chauvin in court if the jury found him innocent. So if he was acquitted, he was going to be arrested anyway. He had to be guilty. Period.

Now, there was a time, like twenty minutes ago, where charging someone twice for the same crime was called double jeopardy. It's unconstitutional, it always has been. But not anymore. Now that white supremacists roam the land, no right is absolute.

That was the message of last night's speech: beautiful. The only remaining principle in this country is that you can't oppose the people in charge.

Now, Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani learned that the hard way yesterday when Federal agents raided his home and took his files.

By our count, Giuliani is at least the third attorney to have his personal communications with former President Donald Trump seized by the Justice Department. Sense a theme here?

Rudy Giuliani joins us to tell us what happened.

Mr. Mayor, thanks so much for coming on. Now, if you'd been reading the Twitter feed of The Lincoln Project, the Democratic hacks who got Joe Biden elected, you would have known that Federal agents were about to raid your home. They knew before you did, but apparently you weren't. Tell us what happened yesterday.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP'S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Well, about six o'clock in the morning, there was a big bang, bang, bang on the door. And outside were seven -- seven F.B.I. agents with a warrant for electronics.

And I looked at the warrant, and I said, you know, this is extraordinary, because I've offered to give these to the government and talk it over with them for two years. I don't know why they have to do this.

The agents seemed somewhat apologetic, I might say. They were very, very professional and very gentlemanly.

The only time they got perturbed is at the end of the search, when they had taken about, I'd say seven or eight electronic items of mine, which is what they took, and two of someone else's, I -- they weren't taking the three hard drives, which of course are electronic devices. They just mimic the computer.

I said, "Well, don't you want these?" And they said, "What are they?" I said, "Those are Hunter Biden's hard drives." And they said "No, no, no, no."

I said, "Are you sure you don't want them?" I mean, the warrant required them to take it? And they said "Nah." And one last time I said, "Don't you think you should take it?" And they said no.

Now, Hunter Biden's hard drives fall within the scope of the subpoena. The subpoena required them to take all electronics, but they decided to leave that behind and they also were completely content to rely on my word that these were Hunter Biden's hard drives. I mean, they could have been Donald Trump's, they could have been Vladimir Putin's. They could have been anybody's.

But they relied on me, the man who had to be raided in the morning because I'm going to destroy the evidence, I've known about this for two years, Tucker. I could have destroyed the evidence -- I didn't destroy the evidence because evidence is exculpatory. It proves that the President and I and all of us are innocent. They are the ones who are committing -- it's like -- it's like projection. They're committing the crimes.

CARLSON: Well, may I just interject to say, it is, I think literally projection. So from what we have read in the press, the Department of Justice wants to know whether you violated FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act in representing foreign nationals, Ukrainians for pay. You didn't register. They're saying that may have been a crime.

We know for a fact that Hunter Biden didn't that. He didn't register under FARA. He represented Ukrainians. He probably made a lot more than you did. He also represented Chinese nationals, lobbying his dad and he has not been charged with a FARA violation. Am I missing something here?

GIULIANI: Yes, you're missing, you know equal administration of justice, which is what we don't have anymore. The reality is, the hard drives contain somewhere between a dozen or more violations of FARA that are spelled out completely failure to register. The fact is, it also spells out as we now know, a clear violation of the Gun Act, the application is a straight out fraud. He says, I'm not an addict. We have a picture of him five days before smoking crack pipe behind the wheel of a car, and then saying under oath that he is not an addict.

And it's the left that gets all perturbed about people who are mentally unstable, having done so -- well, he was unstable, that he's been -- unfortunately, and tragically, I feel sorry for that part of Hunter Biden. I think his father exploited him.

But the reality is, he is still a danger to the public if he is driving an automobile or holding a gun, but they don't care about that.

They come instead to my apartment, when I'm willing to talk to them, civilly myself and second, I can tell you, I never ever represented a foreign national, In fact, I have in my contracts, a refusal to do it, because from the time I got out of being Mayor, I didn't want to lobby. Never did. Never did it to Bush, never did it to Obama, never did it with Trump and I can prove it. Just give me an opportunity.

But instead, they had a break down -- well, I wouldn't say break down, but smash on my doors in a frightening way. Lucky, I don't get frightened very easily. I handled them very professionally and they handled me very professionally. I want to make that point.

Also, I am a lawyer who has prosecuted a lot more serious cases that have been prosecuted in the U.S. Attorney's office since I left, and the reality is, that that warrant is completely illegal.

The only way you can get a search warrant is if you can show that there's some evidence that the person is going to destroy the evidence, or is going to run away with the evidence.

Well, I've had it for two years, and I haven't destroyed it. And they also got it from the iCloud. So there was no justification for that warrant, it is an illegal, unconstitutional warrant, one of many that this Department of injustice tragically has done. And it breaks my heart because I belong to the Justice Department, and I think I had a record that's a hell of a lot better than theirs.

CARLSON: Joe Biden said he didn't know, The Lincoln Project knew, the guys who covered up child molestation, but Joe Biden says he didn't know that this raid was coming. Do you take that at face value?

GIULIANI: Maybe he doesn't remember. I'm not sure if he can retain anything for more than about, you know, the time it takes to read it. But in any event, who cares if he knew or not. And the reality is how -- The Lincoln Project knowing means that they have a serious leak in a very important investigation.

We have been warning them of that for two years. My lawyer Bob Castello has written to them four times to plug up the leaks. They've done nothing to do that. And just --

CARLSON: So just to frame this -- may I interrupt you? I just -- I should have done this at the outset. I just want to be easily certain that we understand, our viewers understand what it is the Justice Department says they are investigating.

We've read it's a FARA violation. Is there something else? What have they said to you about what they're looking into?

GIULIANI: They haven't said anything. They won't explain to me what they are looking into for two years. We've called them five, six occasions, said, tell us what you're investigating, we'll come in and address it. No, just come in and talk to us, tell us about your whole life. Of course, that's ridiculous. And so I have to go, I have to go as a lawyer on the search warrant.

The search warrant is purportedly based on one single failure to file for representing a Ukrainian national or official that I've never represented. I've never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government. I've declined it several times. I've had contracts in countries like Ukraine. In the contract is a clause that says "I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation."

I don't do it, because I felt it would be too compromising. Here I am in the middle of representing the President of the United States on a charge that I believe he was innocent of. I had great passion about that. If you're a lawyer, and you're representing an innocent man, there's no greater burden you can have.

And my sole concentration, and I am so offended by the things they said about me -- my sole concentration from the beginning here, Tucker, was to find evidence that would prove what I knew that he was innocent of Russian collusion and that he was innocent of doing anything improper.

He did exactly what a President should do with the President of Ukraine. He asked him to investigate a Vice President who violated our laws over and over again, 30 years of the Biden crime family violating our laws. That is what is on the hard drive that they have censored and that's why they want to put me in jail.

CARLSON: One of the great ironies is, the Democratic Party is hysterical on the subject of Russia, in part because they have take in so much money from Ukraine, which of course fears Russia, and has for an awful long time. They are being paid to hate Russia.

But let me just ask you this. So now, they have taken your phone. They've taken -- they've got all your text, they've got all your digital communications. So unless you've been in mass 12 hours a day for the last five years, like is there anybody who could who -- no, it is a sincere question. I'm not -- I mean, is there anybody the Justice Department was out for you, and they've got every text you've ever sent and every e-mail that they couldn't find something to charge you with?

Do you think this is going to remain a FARA investigation? Or could it get much bigger, quickly?

GIULIANI: Well, I think it should get much bigger. I think they should be investigated for blatantly violating my constitutional rights, the President's constitutional rights. In the middle of the impeachment, defense, they invaded, without telling me my iCloud. They took documents that are privileged, and then they unilaterally decided what they could read and not read.

So the prosecutors, the Justice Department, spied on me. And that is, if that is not taken seriously, if that doesn't result in them being sanctioned, the case being dismissed, and it's stopping, this is no longer -- we might as well be in, you know, East Berlin before the wall fell.

This is -- this is tactics only known in a dictatorship, where you seize a lawyer's records, right in the middle of his representation of his client. I mean, you should be prosecuted and disbarred for that. You shouldn't be prosecuting somebody else.

CARLSON: I agree. I agree with that.

GIULIANI: They're a disgrace to a great department. They're a disgrace to a great department that I served honorably and well.

CARLSON: It's shocking. I hope you'll come back. I have a feeling we're going to be hearing a lot about this story.

GIULIANI: I will.

CARLSON: Former Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Thank you.

So Hunter Biden lobbies the Vice President of the United States on behalf of Ukraine, does not register, gets rich doing it and he gets a job teaching at Tulane University. Someone criticizes that and the F.B.I. shows up at his house.

What does that mean for the rule of law in this country? Francey Hakes, a former Federal prosecutor joins us to react to what it means.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So we just spoke to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani one day after his home was raided by F.B.I. agents and his personal electronic devices were seized.

Minutes ago, President Trump's former attorney spoke about what happened to him and compared it to how the Biden family has been treated. The allegation lobbying on behalf of Ukraine, the U.S. government without registering it. We know for a fact that Hunter Biden did that.

Here's how they treated Rudy Giuliani. Here's a quick excerpt of that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: My sole concentration from the beginning here, Tucker, was to find evidence that would prove what I knew that he was innocent of Russian collusion, and that he was innocent of doing anything improper. He did exactly what a President should do with the President of Ukraine. He asked him to investigate a Vice President who violated our laws over and over again, 30 years of the Biden crime family violating our laws. That is what is on the hard drive that they have censored and that's why they want to put me in jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Francey Hakes is a former Federal prosecutor. She joins us to assess all of this. Francey, thanks so much for coming.

There's a lot of the detail about Ukraine that I don't understand, I'm not that interested in. But the big picture is really, really clear.

We know for a fact that hunter Biden was paid a ton of money to lobby on behalf of interest in Ukraine, foreign interest, the U.S. government, including his father, then the Vice President. No FARA violation there.

Giuliani is being accused of a lesser crime and the F.B.I. shows up. The contrast couldn't be clearer. What do you make of that?

FRANCEY HAKES, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, you know, Tucker, it is really disturbing. I have typed up hundreds of Federal search warrants myself and stood next to a Federal agent that raised her hand and swore that the information inside the affidavit was true and correct to the best of their knowledge upon penalty of perjury and given the Judge who signed the warrant, probable cause, to believe that the crime that I typed as being the possible offense had been committed and that the evidence of it would be found in the place that we named.

It doesn't make sense to me, it really doesn't compute to me that you've got Giuliani, the subject of a Federal search warrant, which is very serious considering he is a lawyer. It had to go all the way up to the Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco who I used to work with in the Deputy Attorney General's Office and she had to approve it.

And at the same time, as you say, you've got Hunter Biden, who apparently committed or it seems as though he may have committed FARA violations himself or even public corruption. Where are the search warrants for his devices?

I also found it mystifying that Mayor Giuliani said that he had the hard drives of Hunter Biden with all this evidence in it, and he offered it to the Bureau and they left without it. That is passing strange. That makes no sense.

And in fact, if the warrant said what Mayor Giuliani said it did, and it required them to seize all of his electronic devices, why wouldn't they take those?

CARLSON: You're right.

HAKES: It almost seems --

CARLSON: Please, go ahead.

HAKES: I was just going to say, it almost seems as though they didn't want to know what was on those hard drives and that really tells us, if that's true, it tells us that this is a classic phishing expedition. It isn't really a FARA investigation, because I'm not sure there's probable cause to believe that Mayor Giuliani committed a FARA violation.

But what this seems like is a classic throw the line in for the small violation, seize all the electronics, and that's when you find larger violations that you can prosecute.

CARLSON: Exactly. Exactly right. No one was charged under FARA for 50 years. It's too hard to prove. But as long as you're charging people under FARA, we can think of a lot of people who need some Federal scrutiny.

This is -- this is unequal application of law, obviously. I appreciate you coming on, Francey Hakes, with your experience in this.

HAKES: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: We've got news about our new documentary series, "Tucker Carlson Originals." The second episode is out there now, two of them available on foxnation.com. The second is called "Green Energy Scams," and it's a poignant story, the decimation of the last great American forest in the Eastern United States, the Great North Woods of Maine, and the justification is green energy. Here's a preview of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What they are going to do is they're going to cut a right of way over 300 feet wide, a football field, the size of the New Jersey Turnpike, the size of the Mass Turnpike, it's huge.

CARLSON (voice over): The proposed corridor is such a vast scar on the land that it will be visible from miles away from places like Bustles Hunting Camp.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to be able to see the scar cut right straight across that mountain right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're now going to have blinking lights on these hundred-foot powers that are out there, 124 towers that are out there that are going to be 48 inches in diameter. They're going to be huge. People are going to see this from miles away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That's the modern environmental movement. You've got to destroy the Earth in order to save it.

That's the second installment of "Tucker Carlson Originals," our documentary series on FOX Nation right now.

Episode one, as we told you "Chicago in Crisis," is already up. You know where to get them.

Well, the Governor of Michigan wants you to know that traveling to Florida is dangerous, don't go there, and she knows for a fact because she secretly went there but she won't tell you what she did there because that's the national security secret. We will speak to the last reporter in the State of Michigan after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The first thing you should know about Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer -- there's a lot of things you should know -- but the very first is she takes the coronavirus very seriously. That's why she banned people in Michigan from buying paint last year. That's why she is now forcing all two-year-olds in the state to wear masks.

It's also why she went on television recently to warn the people of Michigan that they should not travel to Florida because Florida is dangerous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): Well, at the end of the day, this is going to come down to whether or not everyone does their part. That's the most important thing.

This variant, the b.1.1.7 variant is what is growing so quickly here in Michigan with the second most of it than I think right after Florida, at least, that was the last data that I saw.

Michigan and Florida are not next to each other. But this is the time of the year that snowbirds come home from Florida, where people are going on spring break and all of these things can contribute to spread --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's dangerous to go to Florida, everyone has to do their part. Don't go to Florida.

Well, not long after that, we learned that Gretchen Whitmer had gone to Florida earlier this year. Now, we don't know how long she was in Florida. We don't know where in Florida she went. No one can find out because her office is citing, quote, "security concerns."

Charlie LeDuff worked at "The New York Times" for a long time. He won a Pulitzer Prize there. Then he left, went back to Michigan and started doing even better journalism. He is now the last real journalist in the state pretty much I would say.

Charlie LeDuff, thanks so much for coming on tonight.

CHARLIE LEDUFF, JOURNALIST: Thanks, brother.

CARLSON: So it's a pretty simple question: why don't you, as a Michigander have a right to know what exactly your Governor was doing in Florida?

LEDUFF: Beats me. I'll tell you what, here's some breaking news. I was talking to the Florida State Police and they don't have a record of her calling up and asking for some executive security, which is normally the course of action, so she didn't want anybody to know.

So Madam Governor, tell us all when you went, how long you went and when exactly you returned? That would be nice.

CARLSON: Well, yes because --

LEDUFF: And whose jet did you take?

CARLSON: Well, that -- oh, that's the other question --how did she get there? I mean, you could be in a position where your Governor is a super spreader and you wouldn't know, so you've obviously asked these questions. I hope others have asked. Tell us what kind of answer you've received from the Governor's Office.

LEDUFF: Here's the thing. I find out not only did I find out that she went, I found out that her Health Director went down to Margaritaville in the middle of the pandemic, not fully vaccinated nor was the Governor.

I asked the questions, I do the gentlemanly journalistic thing, and I wait. And while I'm waiting, they leak it to a friendly outlet that puts icing on the cake and a couple of rosettes, you know, the candy cane. So it all comes out sweet. I want the answers.

She said, her people said, you can't get that answer because of ongoing threats. Well, if there was ongoing threats, why didn't you call the State Troopers in Florida? Answer that.

CARLSON: That's a great question. And by the way, this is a trip that's already happened. So how would it be a threat to the Governor's security to tell us something that she has already done?

LEDUFF: Hello, man, this is the state I'm living in, Tucker. And again, look, okay, you say your dad's sick. That's fine. But a servant leader eats last, leaves the burning building last and leads by example.

You don't go see your dad, just like I couldn't see my dying brother three weeks ago, draw his last breath, because that's what we do. I thought that's what we do. But some of us do and some of us don't.

CARLSON: Well, that's an awful story.

LEDUFF: Well, it's a true story.

CARLSON: Well, there's your story. So first of all, I'm sorry, I didn't know that. And second, the State of Michigan, its regulations prevented you from seeing your brother as he died. But your Governor jets down to Florida, probably on a private plane, because she wants to see her dad.

LEDUFF: Yes. And you know, when she says we, she said a couple of weeks earlier, or about 10 days before she got caught out that she hasn't left in 14 months. Her last trip was to Israel. That should have been a red flag because everybody knows she went to the Inauguration. You went to see your dad.

We were locked down by her last April. We couldn't go to our, you know, our fishing shack. You couldn't go between. This is what we're living with.

Just be honest. Be straight. And when people aren't told it straight and clear, they start to rebel. So here's what you got. It's over. Nobody is listening. This thing is going to spread. It's not killing children. It's still attacking the old and the obese, and she has lost control of the state. That's the fact.

CARLSON: Exactly, because she doesn't deserve control of the state. Charlie LeDuff, thank you for asking those questions and for your persistence.

LEDUFF: Oh, yes, by the way, bro, I'm going to get an answer on my lawsuit about those nursing homes soon and when I do, I'll call you.

CARLSON: I hope you'll come back. Okay. Charlie LeDuff of Michigan. Thank you.

Well, for years, the nanny state has tried to ban menthol cigarettes and for years, people like Al Sharpton said that's an attack on African- Americans. But Joe Biden has decided that he is going to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored blunts. What's that about?

We'll tell you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Joe Biden is trying to spend about $200 billion for universal taxpayer funded daycare for all three and four-year-olds in the United States. If enacted, it would affect more than five million children. Now, this has been mostly ignored as a not significant story.

But the question of who raises your children may be the most significant question of all. It affects, not simply your kids, but the future of the country.

Is this a good idea? And what is the emphasis on this say about our priorities?

J.D. Vance has thought a lot about this. He is of course the author for "Hillbilly Elegy," and he joins us tonight.

J.D. Vance, thanks so much for coming on. I don't know why the story is kind of brushed past by most people in favor of stories that are maybe less significant, but is -- what does this tell you about what we care about as a country or the Biden demonstration cares about?

J.D. VANCE, AUTHOR, "HILLBILLY ELEGY": Well, I think tells you that they care much more about the preferences of our ruling class elites than they do about the preferences of middle class Americans.

If you look at poll after poll, it shows that the ruling class family model is just different from what middle class Americans want. The ruling class is obsessed with their jobs. Even though they hate a lot of their jobs, they are obsessed with their credentials, and they want strangers to raise their kids.

But middle class Americans, whatever their station in life, they want more time with their children, even if they are working, they want the opportunity to spend more time with their kids and not be forced to send them to daycare.

And so what this policy really represents is an effort to subsidize the preference of our ruling class over the preference of our middle and working classes. And what's so troubling about this is, it doesn't have to be like that.

Tucker, you know that I'm a big fan of providing support to parents, because I want there to be more children, I want American families to prosper. We could just do that, and then the parents could choose to send their kids to daycare if they wanted, but they can also choose to spend more time at home with their children, as most normal Americans actually want.

CARLSON: I love how they call it preschool, like it's an education initiative. It is daycare, let's just -- let's just say that out loud, hire other people.

So how do those numbers break down? I mean, the numbers that I have seen suggests that a lot of poor people, a lot of African-Americans, a ton of Hispanic voters would prefer to have the option to raise their own kids when they're little. Why not make the pitch to them? Why aren't Republicans seizing this?

VANCE: Well, I unfortunately think that too many Republicans are worried about the process of this, the natural establishment G.O.P. response to this policy as well, this spends too much money, but the Democrats are always focused about spending money to accomplish their vision of society.

And what Republicans should be saying to the working class, Hispanic, black and white Americans all across the board is, "We want you to have the flexibility to raise your children as you see fit, and we are willing to spend the resources to make that happen." The other thing that's really missed about this story, Tucker, which is completely bonkers, given the last year is that this gives more authority to the teachers unions.

If you want your children to be raised from the age of two to 18 by the people who have shut down the schools for the last year, then you should be supporting this universal benefit. If you actually want to give parents more power. There is another way to do this. We just have to have the power. And frankly, the courage as Republicans and conservatives to actually advocate for it.

CARLSON: It's such a great point, but they are afraid because it's a culture war issue. No, it's like the only issue that matters.

I hope you give them strength by your bravery in bringing up this topic and by being clear thinking about it. The Great J.D. Vance, thank you.

VANCE: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So we're getting a lot less judgey about drugs, we can debate whether that's a good idea. We're getting even more judgey about tobacco. It's interesting.

So the White House is saying that you can light up a joint whenever you want, but you can't smoke a menthol cigarette because that's bad. Someone should do a study on which of those raises testosterone levels and which of them lowers it. We don't know.

We'll tell you the details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: We have identified America's greatest problem. It turns out, it is menthol cigarettes and flavored blunts. The White House is going to ban them now.

FOX's Trace Gallagher is on this aromatic story -- Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker, the proposed F.D.A. ban on menthol cigarettes is a huge win for anti-smoking activists who say that menthol takes away the harshness of smoking, making it more approachable to young people and black people. And the F.D.A. says 85 percent of black smokers choose menthol.

Critics like the NAACP also accused tobacco companies of predatory marketing by aggressively targeting black communities. But cigarette makers say that getting rid of menthol will lead to unintended consequences like crime and the ACLU echoed that sentiment tweeting quote: "A menthol cigarette ban would disproportionately affect communities of color, resulting in criminalization and more incarceration, we can avoid this approach."

Experts also point out this proposal could take years to implement and will undoubtedly lead to lawsuits and lengthy court battles. In fact, anti- smoking groups have been trying to ban menthol cigarettes for decades.

We should note this ban would also involve fruit flavored tobacco products mostly used in small cigars which are also popular in black communities, and studies also show those who strongly oppose the menthol cigarette ban are those with the highest prevalence of menthol use leading many to wonder if it is discrimination to ban cigarettes primarily because of the race of the people who buy them -- Tucker.

CARLSON: It's all so crazy. Trace Gallagher, great to see you tonight. Thank you for that report.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.

CARLSON: Poor people don't have too many pleasures left in this country. Why don't we leave them alone for once? That would be great.

The second episode in our documentary series is out on Fox Nation. It is pretty good, we'd say. I hope you like it.

We'll be back tomorrow. We are out of time. Sean Hannity takes over for the evening.

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