Shapiro: Beto is toast, Buttigieg stole all of his momentum

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Shapiro: Beto is toast, Buttigieg stole all of his momentum

Is Beto O'Rourke's campaign already over? Reaction and analysis from Ben Shapiro on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 17, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke gave a speech to kids at the University of Virginia yesterday in Charlottesville, maybe you saw it. Beto had a microphone. He was speaking to a group of students seated in a small amphitheater, and for a moment, if closed one eye, it looked convincingly like a campaign event.

There were volunteers in matching t-shirts fussing over logistics. O'Rourke himself wore a slightly dopey UVA basketball cap as he spoke because wearing other people's hats is what you're supposed to do when you run for President.

And to be clear, running for President is what Beto O'Rourke says he is doing. It's all a little sad when you think about it. O'Rourke is not going to be the President, at least of this country. His campaign is dead, totally dead. They went toes up last week from a fatal overdose of Buttigieg. Not everyone has heard the news, the morning hasn't yet started but Beto for President is done, it's over. He is Jeb Bush now.

Future generations will remember Beto O'Rourke -- if they recall him at all -- really as a media story. Remember that guy with a weird nickname that all the dummies on cable news fell in love with in a single day? That was bizarre.

And it was bizarre.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw him for the first time just a month ago when he sat down with Oprah and me and the rest of the people in the audience thought, "Wow, this guy has this dynamic positive energy."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, he has that raw talent. He is very kind of Obama-esque indeed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The women voted for him in the suburbs of Houston who hadn't voted Democrat before because they had a kind of Beto crush going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, he's wholesome and he is earnest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has that gleam in his eye somebody -- Evan Smith in the "Texas Tribune" said seeing him is like it's like a Jesus Christ Superstar seeing this guy in front of people. He's got that celebrity aura about him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is the rock and roll loving, 46-year-old caught the nation's attention. His offbeat social media posts appealing to a younger generation even taking the skateboarding at What-A-Burger.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Keep in mind that just happened. The frenzy just occurred. It was just last month. College-educated adults in an advanced country with air travel and air conditioning talking like that in public. It's pretty embarrassing. My gosh.

But before we get too judge-y about, a confession -- we did it too. Beto's personal magic distorted our journalistic objectivity for a second there. It may have been the skateboarding or maybe it was the weird resemblance to a young Bobby Kennedy -- whatever it was, we lost control like everyone else.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Beto loves rock and roll, says "GMA." He's not like everyone else. He doesn't do stuffy speeches or policy programs. He is not going to bore you with entitlement projections or some scary stuff about the Korean Peninsula.

Beto has got a skateboard and wears Nirvana t-shirts. His vision for this country is 1995 -- that was a year he was living way uptown and this walk- up and working as a man and you knew this dude on West 112th Street was some of the stickiest bud in Manhattan. Indica -- a little heavy, but sweet. It was a good time. Beto wants to bring us back to that time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We got a little carried away. Sorry about that. It all seems so innocent then, back a few weeks ago, back in March of 2019. It was just Beto and us and a dream. It was a simpler time. We thought anything was possible then. We thought we could write our own story. We didn't know that even fairytales end and one day ours did end. The magic turned to dust. Bitter in our mouths like a peyote button or psilocybin tea.

One day the music died. Bye-bye Miss American Pie. Bye-bye weirdly youthful middle-aged white guy with fake Hispanic nickname. You've been replaced. There's a new heartthrob in cable news. He is everything that you were, but more. He is younger. He is shallower. He is even less experienced. He's got an even weirder name. Plus he is gay. He is the perfect candidate for voters who say they love diversity, but don't really want to vote for Stacey Abrams.

This candidate could have been created at a lab at CNN and might have been. There's no stopping a man like this -- at least until Election Day. On some level, Beto must know it's over. He is no genius, but he can smell it.

More than six months before the first votes are cast in Iowa, he is done. Sure, he may keep raising money, he probably will. It's his one real skill, but his political career is done. Cue the sad Nirvana playlist.

So what are the lessons of the sinking of the SS Beto? Well, here's one. Maybe he should have run on something. It's pretty hard to win on charisma alone as Hillary Clinton recently discovered. So why don't be the one person in the race with real ideas? They don't have to be big ideas -- how about any idea?

Beto could have tried that. It never seemed to occur to him. Instead, he just strung together cliches. It was like one of those word games. Remember, Mad Libs - the one you used to play with your brother on the road trips. You get these long seemingly coherent sentences that when you read them don't actually mean anything. Beto was big on those. Here's Beto doing that on the Green New Deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This country was willing to sacrifice, men and women, all over the United States to make sure that we defeated Germany and that we won that war, and for the following 75 years that we made this world safe for democracy.

The Green New Deal calls that sacrifice and service and scale -- scale of commitment to mind when it talks about the challenges that we face today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Those are the questions that Beto asked just yesterday at UVA. So the question for the rest of us is, are voters ready to suffer -- I don't know 400,000 U.S. combat deaths for the sake of the climate? What does that carbon dioxide Guadalcanal look like? A CO2 Saipan? Will we get to bomb Tokyo again with fire bombs? How would that affect the temperature?

Come on. This is just too stupid. None of this is real. The Green New Deal isn't a deal. It's fulfillment posing as legislation. But here's the thing. Beto kept a straight face throughout that talk like he really sincerely meant it. Who does that?

Well, mediocre people do that. Mediocre people tell implausible lies and then demand that you pretend to believe them. Is Beto a mediocre person? We'll let you decide.

In 2017, Beto O'Rourke gave a total of less than one percent of his income. One third of one percent to be precise to charity and keep in mind, he is rich -- very rich. Here is his explanation for why he did that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'ROURKE: I've served in public office since 2005. I do my best to contribute to the success of my community, of my state and now, of my country. There are ways that I do this that are measurable, and there are ways that I do this that are immeasurable. There are charities that we donate to that we recorded and itemized, others that we don't donate to that we have not.

But I'll tell you, I'm doing everything I can right now, spending this time with you, not with our kiddos, not back home in El Paso because I want to sacrifice everything to make sure that we meet this moment of truth with everything that we've got.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Okay, so save that tape. It's on the internet -- that's from UVA yesterday and you're going to want to download that and keep that for your grandchildren because Beto -- pedestrian as he is in so many ways -- just did something that has never been done or even attempted by any politician before. That is a unique contribution to American political life.

Beto has just made the case that his entire life -- Beto's entire life -- is a kind of charitable donation. All of us get the gift of Beto just because he is here. Every time Beto speaks, it's like endowing a library in Burma or curing shingles in Malawi or battling childhood obesity in Appalachia or sending mosquito nets to the Congo, by the millions.

Every time he talks, when he tweets it's an act of charity. It's something that makes this world wiser and kinder and more decent and better smelling. Beto is such a good person that he could write himself off his taxes if he wanted to. The IRS would have to let him. His goodness is so clearly deductible. No lawyer would contest that.

But Beto doesn't do that. He doesn't shirk his duty. He'll pay the extra tax because he cares that much. Whew. Now that you think about it, it's most said he'll never be President.

Ben Shapiro host one of America's top podcast, "The Ben Shapiro Show." He is the author of the book, "The Right Side of History," and we're happy to have him on set tonight in Los Angeles. Ben, it's great to see you. Thank you for being here.

BEN SHAPIRO, PODCAST HOST, THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW: And I kept a straight face for you there.

CARLSON: I did. There are so many levels here, but I do believe that this is the end of the Beto O'Rourke phenomenon.

SHAPIRO: Yes, I think he's toast.

CARLSON: What are the lessons that we should draw from what we just saw?

SHAPIRO: Well, I think that you can run in the moderate lane as the Bobby Kennedy candidate so long as there's not anything newer on the block. Buttigieg came along and drank his milkshake and he had some intersectional credibility.

The problem for Beto is that he happened to be straight and also white, just like Bobby Kennedy was. Buttigieg is gay, so therefore, he takes precedence. And also, he speaks more languages like Norwegian, which is a language that is very much in vogue with the media these days he doesn't just play a guitar, he also plays piano and he does it with Ben Folds Five and the whole deal.

So Buttigieg has basically stolen all of his momentum and I think you're right, I mean I think Beto is toast here.

CARLSON: Speaking Norwegian and playing the piano -- and I'm being sincere -- are actually impressive ...

SHAPIRO: No, they are cool, I mean ...

CARLSON: ... things to do, for sure and I'm impressed by them, but they're not really policy prescriptions. They're not ideas that are going to improve America and neither is who you sleep with relevant to running the country as far as I can tell or any of these criteria meaningful. So like where's the part we get to debate their ideas for the country?

SHAPIRO: Well, the problem is obviously that there is only one thought leader in the Democratic Party right now and that's Bernie Sanders and what you're seeing is a bunch of candidates who are attempting to steer into the Bernie Sanders lane and there's no room in that lane.

Bernie Sanders has occupied that entire lane and you talk about ideas and candidates. The one candidate who keeps shouting ideas from the rooftops is of course our Native American candidate, Elizabeth Warren who keeps spouting ideas every five minutes. There's a new policy prescription. Why isn't anyone paying attention to me? And the answer is because you are in Bernie Sanders' lane. He is the thought leader in this lane.

Well, in the moderate lane, there are no thought leaders. There are just a bunch of people with platitudes.

Biden is presumably the thought leader, but Joe Biden doesn't have enough thoughts to be a thought leader and so who exactly is going to come along and occupy that lane while still being able to win over "the woke" intersectional base of the Democratic Party? Whoever does that has a possibility at the nomination.

Right now, Buttigieg can do that only in so far as he can speak the platitudes that sound moderate, but when he's actually pegged down as you've noted, he's just as far left as Bernie Sanders.

CARLSON: This is a guy telling us what a great Christian he is, who is for abortion up until birth and for sex selection. Spare me your Christian talk, please. It's absurd. I'm just struck though by Bernie could be the one guy -- I mean, I want to have a conversation about ideas because I think it's important and clearly, we need to make some changes to the way the country is going.

But Bernie doesn't really seem to be an ideas' candidate when you listen to him. He almost never says anything. Unlike Elizabeth Warren, he never says anything interesting. Why is that?

SHAPIRO: Well, I mean I think that his ideas are so radical, but they are consistent and so everybody has followed him out to the fringe. So you can shout Medicare-for-All and what you'll see is every Democrat then pay homage to Medicare-for-All. Footnote: we don't really want Medicare-for- All, we want sort of a gradualistic plan that may achieve Medicare-for-all sometime in the future. But everybody is trying to imitate Bernie.

Bernie is the guy who is really running this race. Bernie is almost in a position right now that Trump was in in 2016 where everybody in the Democratic Party who is running is afraid to take him off because they hope that eventually, he'll collapse and they'll get his support. But he is riding at 25 percent to 30 percent in virtually all of the polls that support is extraordinarily durable.

I don't think that it's going anywhere and so he can just steer that way and he could win Iowa, he could win New Hampshire. He could do well in California and New York. There's a reason that Democrats are running scared of Bernie and what is puzzling to me is that they are so interested in what the journalists on Twitter say, this kind of echo chamber in the media say that they won't just go to where the mainstream of their own party is, which is the moderate area, right?

Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He is actually leading in most of these polls because he is perceived as a moderate.

CARLSON: Totally true.

SHAPIRO: But that is true of Beto and Buttigieg by the way. The reason both of them were doing well for a moment there was because they are both perceived as moderate with all of the platitudes and then when you gets down to policy, it turns out that they want to be more like Bernie than like Biden. Nobody in the Democratic Party actually has the stones to run as a moderate inside the Democratic Party even though it's probably the best possible way for them to win the nomination.

CARLSON: And I think you're absolutely right and your diagnosis is that they are captive of social media and that's why --

SHAPIRO: I think they're captive of social media. I think that they're captive of the intersectional woke base. I think they're afraid that they are going to be held hostage to the dictates of the "New York Times" Editorial Board and people suggesting that they're not woke enough if they don't pay homage to the latest flavor -- slavery reparations or whatever it is today.

CARLSON: I think the person who gives the finger to that mob gets the support of millions.

SHAPIRO: I think that's right and then has a good shot in the general.

CARLSON: Right.

SHAPIRO: But I don't think any of them have the actual stones to do it.

CARLSON: He'll probably get my support. I mean, if someone were to stand up and say, "You know what, I'm not taking orders from you." How does that sound? I almost -- you don't even care what the person is for. I'd probably vote for him because I'm so desperate for that.

SHAPIRO: I mean that is why if a Democrat actually were able to do that, they would win sweeping support, but they can't do that. But we've been saying this for years, all you have to do is not be crazy and they can't stop themselves. They just can't.

CARLSON: So good. Ben Shapiro. Great to see you.

SHAPIRO: Good to see you, too.

CARLSON: Thank you for that. All they have to do is not be crazy and they can't do it. Put that on your fridge. All right, after the break, Bernie Sanders has become a rich man by attacking other people getting rich under our system of capitalism. Now, he denies that his success reflects that either capitalism or the American Dream actually work. What is he saying exactly? We'll find out after the break and then there are new developments in the ongoing corruption scandal which points to the deeper corruption, which is almost total in our higher education and we'll give you another set of details after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Andrew Yang is running for President of the United States. He is a Democrat. We disagree with him on plenty of issues, but he's a serious person. He is smart and he cares and he has a pretty deep understanding of the problems the country faces and so he may be the one person running this year who is pitching a series of reforms that might actually help the country, particularly the middle class.

One of his proposals is worth telling you about. It's about the salary of top government officials. So currently, the President of the United States makes four hundred grand a year. The position of course is far more lucrative than that for most Presidents. A former President can give speeches for hundreds of thousands per -- and they do -- they can serve on corporate boards, the can and in effect, really, spend the rest of their lives cashing in on the position they held as President -- and they have.

Bill Clinton has made more than a hundred million dollars from being a former President since he left office in 2000. Former Cabinet members and top regulators get rich the same way on a smaller scale, but still. And it's not hard to see what this does to the country.

Our leaders have a big incentive to defend the winners of our current system because they're paid by those winners. Bank regulators go to work at banks if they make bankers happy. Tech regulators join up with Google or Facebook. Their only incentive to promote the public good is the kindness of their hearts. Up against that is all the accrued wealth of global capitalism, so it's not really a fair fight.

I am not attacking anyone, it's just the way it works. The system itself is inherently corrupt and in abets corruption and it acts inherently against your interests. And Yang has a solution for this, and it's not stupid. It's this. Increase the pay of our top officials by a lot. Take the President's pay up to four million bucks a year. Pay top regulators a million dollars a year. Here's the catch.

Presidents would be banned from joining corporate boards or giving speeches for money. Regulators would be banned from cashing in on the private side of the fields they regulated. They'll make a lot more money while they do their job, but their only incentive will be promoting the good of the country, not enriching themselves afterward.

If Yang's idea has a flaw, it's only that it does not go far enough. Why wouldn't we apply these same rules to Members of Congress? Hike their pay, but bar them from cashing in as lobbyists are joining corporate boards the moment they leave. We should do that immediately because public service should be service. It's not a way to enrich yourself for life. If we did that, the rest of us could stop being as cynical as we justifiably are about their behavior on Capitol Hill.

Well, speaking of being cynical about people's motives, Bernie Sanders is the most high-profile socialist in the world, but he doesn't live like one. He has become very rich by the way, ironically, promoting a book about socialism and how great it is.

Sanders is a capitalist success story. We may in fact say that he embodies the American Dream, but on this channel two nights ago, he insisted that's not the case at all. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS HOST: You know when you wrote the book and you made the money, isn't that the definition of capitalism and the American Dream?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No. I mean, you know, what we want is a country where everybody has opportunity. You know, I have a college degree, okay, I'm a United States Senator. But a lot of people don't have a college degree. A lot of people are not United States senators.

So what we are fighting for, Bret, is a society not where just a few people can make a whole lot of money, but a society where everybody in this country has the opportunity to live in security and dignity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Nomiki Konst is a former Bernie Sanders surrogate and she joins tonight. Nomiki, thanks a lot for coming on.

NOMIKI KONST, FORMER BERNIE SANDERS SURROGATE: Hi, Tucker, how are you?

CARLSON: So I'm not begrudging Sanders writing a book, good for him and it doesn't bother me that he got paid for it either. But I have two concerns. One is, why not just say that that is in fact the American Dream and you did something that people found impressive and you got rewarded, why not just say that?

KONST: I think the American Dream is a much bigger idea. What he was arguing is that we have a select few 0.1 percent who have effectively lobbied to get away with not paying taxes or not paying their fair share of taxes, so when we talk about Bernie Sanders making $580,000.00 or so last year on the sales of his books, that's not about the American Dream. Everybody should have the opportunity to be able to pay their bills, to be able to pay for their rent, to not live in debt. That is unfortunately the American Dream, just survival at this point.

So when he taught -- you know, the American Dream is not what we had considered in the 50s and 60s when millionaires and billionaires paid 70 percent in taxes. You know, the working people --

CARLSON: But why isn't Bernie -- but then, okay, I get it. I get it and some of what you're saying I agree with and it's true and we need to have a country where ordinary people with an IQ of a hundred and no special access can raise a family. I completely agree with that.

But why is Bernie pocketing the money? So why wouldn't Bernie be paying 70 percent tax on those book royalties voluntarily? I mean he wrote the book as a sideline project while serving as a Federal official, okay, so why is he taking all that money and spending on a second home? I'm serious.

KONST: Well, his second home was actually inherited by a family member who passed away, so that's not what he spent it on.

CARLSON: One of his second homes. One of his second homes.

KONST: This is a conspiracy theory that has been perpetuated on like conspiracy theory blogs. But furthermore, you know, who voluntarily --

CARLSON: Okay, I am not a conspiracy blogger. I just -- well, why wouldn't he?

KONST: Who voluntarily pays 70 percent in taxes? We need a tax policy for all, so we have a more equitable society. Right now, the 0.1 percent are not paying their share.

CARLSON: Well, wait a second. Didn't you just -- okay, but he's in in the one percent.

KONST: Yes.

CARLSON: And so am I. I'm not attacking rich people. Again I am one. I'm just also not Bernie Sanders, so Bernie Sanders is out there like "Oh people who make this amount of money (the same amount he makes) should pay their fair share." I asked you well why isn't he paying his fair share, 70 percent, the tax rate that you cited and you said, "Who would do that voluntarily?"

KONST: Because that's not the law.

CARLSON: Well, I don't know. If you're Bernie Sanders --

KONST: You don't have to do that.

CARLSON: Why would you do it voluntarily?

KONST: Oh, come on, Tucker. Like, this is a joke.

CARLSON: No, I'm serious.

KONST: The point is you have --

CARLSON: But what's the answer? Why is it a joke?

KONST: You have 0.1 percent -- 0.1 percent lobbying Congress so that they don't have to pay taxes, which is why our roads are a mess, our infrastructure is a mess. Schools aren't functioning.

CARLSON: Couldn't agree more.

KONST: Which is why we are not funding NASA and science and fighting climate change. CARLSON: I agree with every word you're saying.

KONST: We need -- he makes it about --

CARLSON: Now, you've lost me on the climate nonsense, okay, but --

KONST: He needs to make it -- he makes it about the most elite not exploiting workers so they don't have to pay taxes, but so that all of us have a chance.

CARLSON: Okay, I'm just going to give you one last chance super quick, super quick -- why doesn't anybody who ever espouses these tax rates ever voluntarily pay them? It's a sincere question.

KONST: Because that's not how our government functions. Where do send that form? To the IRS?

CARLSON: But why wouldn't you lead by example?

KONST: Hi, IRS, here's a check for 70 percent. That's not how it works.

CARLSON: To the general fund, yes, U.S. Treasury, people do that.

KONST: Systemically, I mean, who does that?

CARLSON: I mean, why not make that work that way?

KONST: I would love to see one guest on your show that has actually given their entire paycheck.

CARLSON: Hey, if it's such a good idea for other people, I was wondering, it's like --

KONST: It is a good idea for the law to be passed.

CARLSON: It's like gun control. It's like, you should disarm. You should disarm, but not me. I'm not disarming. You go first. The water is fine. Jump in.

KONST: We are saying that. We need a broad reform of tax policy so working people have an opportunity and so that our government infrastructure and schools are funded.

CARLSON: Well, let's Bernie go first. I've got it. I've got it. I am with you. Nomiki, good to see you. Thank you.

KONST: Tucker, you're so silly.

CARLSON: I know. The Varsity Blues college bribery scandal could be expanding to involve criminal charges against the kids who benefited. What? Plus, Adam Carolla is here in Los Angeles to respond to that growing scandal. After the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Lori Loughlin and her husband have pleaded not guilty to charges that they used fraudulent means to get their daughters into the University of Southern California. Now prosecutors have widened the probe. They are investigating whether one of those daughters knew what her parents were doing. Trace Gallagher has been on the story from day one and he joins us now.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, this is bad news for students involved in the scandal because legal experts say it indicates that some of them could soon face their own charges. "The Daily Mail" is reporting that Lori Loughlin's daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli got a letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston saying she was also a subject of the investigation.

It's unclear if Loughlin's oldest daughter, Isabella, also got a letter but experts say prosecutors are making it clear they believe the kids knew about the cheating scandal and were willing participants and it's hard to imagine the daughters didn't think something was up when they got recruited to be on the University of Southern California crew team knowing that neither one of them had ever rowed.

They also sent pictures on their applications of them in rowing attire on rowing machines. That's tough to explain away. IT'S unclear if Olivia Jade has her own lawyer. This is also an indication that the cheating probe isn't wrapping up, instead it's expanding.

Meantime, Lorie Loughlin is reportedly concerned that if she and her husband, the fashion designer Massimo Guinnulli go to trial that her daughters will have to testify. Many the analysts say that Loughlin and Giannulli are in desperate need of a plea deal and a source now tells "People Magazine" the couple resents how the case is playing out in public quoting here, "This is putting unspeakable stress on her and her family. They're having to play this out all publicly and they're fair game for jokes and memes, but also outraged by people who are saying that they are cheaters."

Of course if they accept a plea deal or get convicted, they are cheaters, Tucker.

CARLSON: Don't call me a cheater, Trace. I'm a rower -- a varsity rower.

GALLAGHER: We'd love the picture of you --

CARLSON: There's a distinction. Great to see you. Thank you.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.

CARLSON: You may have noticed, the show is in Los Angeles this week. While here, we headed across town to the studios in race car garage of podcast host, our friend Adam Carolla. He loves to race. We've covered a lot of ground. Tonight, he shares his thoughts on the college bribery scandal. It's interesting. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: Famous actors have everything they want in the world, all their needs catered to, why would they of all people bribe their kids into college? Why would they care where their kids went to college?

ADAM CAROLLA, HOST AND COMEDIAN: You know famous actors are famously narcissistic and your kid in their mind -- in the mind of a narcissist, your kid is an extension of you, so you put on a very expensive Rolex and you're not the Rolex, but the Rolex is an extension of you, you know. Or you drive a Rolls Royce. That's an extension.

What's the difference between your kid and a Rolls Royce? Your kid and a mansion? Your kid and fancy jewelry? I mean, if you really think about it, if you said would you drive a Rolls Royce? Would you wear an expensive watch? And if the answer is yes, well then your kid is closer to you than that is and a greater expression of you than the watch and so the better your kid is, the bigger the Rolex, the bigger the diamonds, the bigger the Rolls Royce.

CARLSON: So I mean you're really a narcissist if you're seeing your children that way, not as human beings, but as accessories.

CAROLLA: Well, I mean we all hate the moms, the pageant mom who take the five-year-old and spray-tan them and put all the makeup on them and lash extenders and then they go, "Oh that's what she wants to do." Which I always like.

Like, all right, we hate that mom. What's the difference? I mean if you really think about it, like one is we think of what one is healthy, your child is going to Stanford. The activity is healthy, but what motivates the activity in a way comes from the same place, right? So either mom is in the audience at the Miss --

CARLSON: Totally right.

CAROLLA: Little Miss Sunshine, doing this.

CARLSON: The Junior Jacksonville.

CAROLLA: Right or the mom is at Stanford doing this, it's kind of an extension of the same mom. One is a kind of educated and wealthy and evolved mom and the other one is a little more trailer-trash, but either way, all roads lead to narcissism.

CARLSON: I really wish the Stanford mom could know how much she has in common with the pageant mom.

CAROLLA: Well, the thing that's funny is the Stanford mom would never stop making fun of the pageant mom.

CARLSON: Of course, of course.

CAROLLA: She'd be looking down her nose, "Oh honey boo-boo have fun with your young child who'll be serving my child when they stop at the Del Taco 14 years from now." But the place is the same. I mean it emanates from the same place, it's just a different version of it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: That conversation went on for quite some time. We'll be hitting it again and again. We've got a lot with Adam Carolla. Fantastic.

Well Chicago State's Attorney Kim Foxx claimed that she'd recused herself from the Jussie Smollett case, it turns out that was not quite true or maybe true at all. Newly released text messages revealed that Foxx was pressured or she pressured rather an underling to go easy on Smollett. Our own Matt Finn is in Chicago with this story tonight still unfolding -- Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, these new text messages indicate that Kim Foxx continued to discuss the Smollett case with some of her staff even after she publicly claims she recused herself and we now know that she did not legally recuse herself from this case.

On March 8th, the day that Smollett's 16 felony counts became public, Foxx texted her first assistant State's Attorney, Joseph Magats in part quote, "So I'm recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases, 16 counts on a Class 4 felony, it becomes Exhibit A." Foxx continued, "Pedophile with four victims, 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. Just because we can charge something doesn't mean we have to."

It appears there, Foxx was referring to singer R. Kelly as the pedophile and Jussie Smollett as a washed-up celeb who lied to cops. The text also reveals Chicago's top cop, Eddie Johnson called the morning the charges were suddenly dropped.

Foxx texted in part quote, "He was told we were just dropping the case. He seemed satisfied with the explanation." Johnson was apparently not satisfied hours after that text. He said justice was not served. Foxx has responded to some of these texts she sent to her first Assistant State's Attorney Joe Magats, writing in part, quote, "After the indictment became public, I reached out to Joe to discuss reviewing office policies to assure consistencies in our charging and our use of appropriate charging authority."

Cook County Inspector General is reviewing Kim Foxx's decision. The National District Attorneys Association and the Illinois Prosecutors Bar both rebuked Kim Foxx for not recusing her entire office from this case -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Matt Finn, thanks for that report live from Chicago for us tonight. Up ahead, Breitbart and a number of other news outlets on the right are being suppressed by powerful tech companies because they aren't reliable. Interesting. Waiting for that same standard to be applied to the perpetrators of the Russia hoax, going to be waiting a while. I'll speak to the editor of Breitbart after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So the people who run big journalism are always telling you we need to get a handle on fake news. Fake news -- in the interest of the public, we need to get fake news off our screens. You know what that really means and now it's clear what it really means. Enforcing an official narrative and stamping out all dissent.

CNN and MSNBC for example spent two full years perpetuating the Russia hoax. "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" did the same and won a Pulitzer Prize for it. The whole story was a complete sham, but they were not held to account. They're still considered reliable news by the big tech companies.

Meanwhile, "The Federalist," a pretty small website got the Russia story right from day one and yet "USA Today" recently blacklisted "The Federalist" as an unreliable source because they don't like "The Federalist" politics, their views on abortion for example.

Last year, meanwhile, Wikipedia's editors banned the use of Breitbart as a source because it was deemed quote "not reliable," meaning they hadn't helped stoke baseless fears about Vladimir Putin, apparently.

Alex Marlow is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart and we're happy to have him on our set tonight. Alex, thanks a lot for coming on.

ALEX MARLOW, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART: Tucker, thanks for the time. I appreciate it.

CARLSON: So what does this mean in practical terms that Wikipedia users can no longer use Breitbart as a citation?

MARLOW: Yes, I think in practical terms what it means is that people who would access Wikipedia as a source are only going to get establishment media outlets to source their claims and we know those claims, they treat full-on hoaxes as fact. They've missed these seminal stories of our time starting with I think the immigration crisis which really we started reporting on in conservative media particularly Breitbart 2014-2015, they missed the Brexit narrative. They missed the narrative that the establishment in our media and political classes and our coastal elite losing touch with the working men and women in flyover country. They missed that. They missed of course the election of Donald Trump, and now - -

CARLSON: No, not a big thing.

MARLOW: That's a minor thing, a minor thing that they totally air-balled and now we're a year and a half maybe two and a half years arguably into the Russia hoax. This is their Jonestown, the media. This is their mass suicide effort but will it be treated like that? No, because they're a bubble of elite and they treat themselves as if they'll always be correct.

CARLSON: What's so interesting is not simply that they're evading all responsibility for what they did, for the lies they told and the distortions that really kind of wrecked our foreign policy among other things, but that they're trying to suppress other news outlets which told the truth. How Orwellian is that?

MARLOW: You nailed it here. They're not suppressing us and they're targeting you. They target us and they'll target just about all of us right-of-center and who service a right-of-center audience not because we're getting things wrong, they're targeting us because we're getting things right. That we got these key stories right and we'll probably get the next key stories right and they're doing it in a methodical way that started with Google kind of toying with their searches which you've been very good at reporting on with Dr. Robert Epstein.

Twitter with the shadow banning which we broke at Breitbart, it was called a hoax at the time. It turned out it wasn't. Facebook had to change their algorithm because places like Breitbart were dominating and it goes on. Wikipedia kicking us out. Our Wikipedia, it shows up every time you use Google and Facebook, they rely on Wikipedia. This is methodical and they'll continue to expand this.

Microsoft is now in the blacklisting game. They teamed with this group called News Guard which is of course, they sanction all the places that got the Russia hoax wrong and they treat places like Breitbart and even the Drudge Report as fake news.

It's ridiculous and they'll continue. Next is going to be de-banking. They're going to decapitalize people, not just with right-of-center world views. They're doing this with people who even want to have a pipeline, who want to work in the energy sector and our woke fascists who want the Green New Deal. It's insane.

CARLSON: Since free speech is dying and what's killing it is not government, but big monopolies sanctioned by government, do you know anyone in government who might be able to save free speech for the Republic? Why is nobody doing anything about this?

MARLOW: I don't know and that's exactly the question I was hoping you would ask, because I do hope that this is the most powerful audience in all of news and I think that it would be great if the people and the powerful folks who are watching it understand that this is the battle. They are trying to win the 2020 election by shutting down and censor the outlets that might give voices to the voiceless, the people disenfranchised.

CARLSON: You really think you're going to get reelected President if nobody can hear your message?

MARLOW: Absolutely, they see this crystal clear and that's why they're trying to shut down you and me.

CARLSON: That's exactly right. Alex Marlow, come back anytime. Great to see you.

MARLOW: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Thank you very much. Well not too many things genuinely unite the Democratic Party, one that does though is abortion. The party loves it. It wants more of it up until birth maybe a little bit after if possible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Generations from now, our children and grandchildren will wonder, what did we do? What did we do when they were trying to take away a woman's right to control her own body?

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Whether we are going to arresting women for making decisions about their bodies.

O'ROURKE: That that should be a decision that the woman makes about her own body. I trust her.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What's at stake is whether or not we will continue to recognize or not a woman's right to choose.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Women's access to safe, legal abortions on the line.

SANDERS: The decision over abortion belongs to a woman and her physician, not the Federal government, not the state government and not the local government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So what's the motive behind all of this? The autonomy of women? That's a little abstract. It's not quite it. It's not really what's going on. Well God bless former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams for telling the unadorned truth about it. This is about business. It's about making sure that women can be obedient workers rather than harried mothers.

Hurting business by restricting abortion she says is evil, said it right out loud. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STACEY ABRAMS, FORMER GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: We have to be a state that is not only friendly to business, we've got to be friendly to the women who work in these businesses. You should not have to worry about your ability to control your bodily autonomy because the governor has pushed such an abominable and evil bill that is so restrictive. It's not only bad for morality and our humanity, it's bad for business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: There's something creepy about this. There are a lot of things about this topic that nobody ever says out loud, but here's one of them because it's true. You can look it up on the CDC website.

African-American women are five times as likely as white women to get abortions in this country. In New York City, more black children are aborted than born. Now, the Democratic Party will tell you forever that it loves African-Americans, but why is it pushing abortion on them? And by the way why is it continuing to import low-wage labor to dilute the political power of people whose families have been in this country for 400 years? No one ever ask those questions. Somebody should.

David Webb hosts "Reality Check" with David Webb on Fox Nation and he joins us tonight. David, thanks a lot for coming on.

DAVID WEBB, FOX NATION HOST, REALITY CHECK WITH DAVID WEBB: Great to see you, Tucker.

CARLSON: I mean, that's the question that always pops up in my mind and I guess you're not allowed to say it, but then I thought I'm almost 50, why do I care? I really -- it's a sincere question. If somebody says, "I really care about you. I really love you. You really should consider abortion." Does the person really love me, actually? I don't think so.

WEBB: Tucker, this goes to a level of dangerous action by the Democratic Party that has pushed something that has changed the culture in the black community where young black women are not being taught responsibility for their bodies, but they're actually being taught that if you are irresponsible and sometimes accidents do happen, let's be fair, young people do this and it happens.

CARLSON: Sure, yes, of course.

WEBB: But if you're irresponsible, then it's easy to get rid of it and abortion is your answer because they never want to solve the actual problem, Tucker. Think about it. You're a free-market guy. We've talked about this over the years. If you reduce the rate of pregnancies, what do you do? You reduce the rate of abortions.

If you educate young black women, if you educate them on what getting pregnant does to your body and by the way educate young black men they play a role in this and what it does to your education, to your earnings capability to getting ahead in life -- and by the way, it keeps you in poverty.

That rate of abortions in young black women correlates to single-parent birth and by the way, not just young black women, but single-parent birth and poverty in this country in medical terms that's an epidemic.

CARLSON: Well, yes, I wouldn't even say on a gut level I'm struck by it. I mean, if you love somebody, I mean you love your own children and so you want your kids to have as many kids as they want to have because you love them and you want to see them reproduce, okay?

So again, if I'm saying to you, you probably shouldn't reproduce and let me make it really easy for you not to, what am I really saying to you? That's not a message of love actually. I don't care what anybody says. You know what I'm saying that's not a message of love. It's something very different from that actually. It's something really dark.

WEBB: It's onerous and something very dangerous because you are destroying the culture and the future of young women in young men for that matter again let's not forget that half of the equation because you're tearing the family unit apart. You're tearing the community apart and you're not teaching them to grow up to be responsible people.

It's just something that is so dangerous that we have to look at it for what it is -- cultural destruction by a bunch of liars in power.

CARLSON: Yes, well that's clearly that's clearly true. David Webb, thanks very much. Great to see you.

WEBB: Good to see you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, last year, and we're glad this happened, plastic straws were purged from restaurants. Man, those were dangerous, but the people who did it are still unhappy so they have a new target, something else to be angry about and take away from you for your own good. We will tell you what it is after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The government thought long and hard about how to completely humiliate Patriots owner, Robert Kraft. He wasn't simply charged with soliciting a prostitute, prosecutors also suggested he was somehow involved with human trafficking. He is in his mid-70s. That's a far more serious offense, but having damaged Kraft's reputation, prosecutors now admit that it wasn't true. They have no evidence he did anything to do with human trafficking, but they're still intent on humiliating him, so they're trying to release a recording of Kraft allegedly meeting with women to receive sexual services.

So if the video really does show that, it's by definition pornography, why would we want to see that? How does it advance the cause of justice? It doesn't. It doesn't help the public in any way. It only hurts Robert Kraft. This is about the state and the press colluding as they so often do to humiliate people they don't like and keep in mind, if they can do it to Bob Kraft, they can do it to you -- for real.

Well, in a blitzkrieg campaign last year, liberals across America got plastic straws banned in many cities and restricted it in entire states. Life got a little bit worse for normal people, but not bad enough. So now liberals in California have a new target. No, it's not actually something there's too much of like heroin or human feces on the sidewalk. Those are everywhere, but that's totally cool, human expression. Instead they're going after hotel shampoo bottles, a problem you didn't know existed.

A group of lawmakers in this state want to ban those completely. Anyone who breaks the law could be fined 500 bucks for every offense.

Tammy Bruce is -- we're not sure if she is an offender of this would-be law, but she has a radio show host and president of the Independent Women's Voice, and she joins us tonight. Do you feel safe for now?

TAMMY BRUCE, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S VOICE: I feel weirdly safer that you're the one in California and I'm out here in New York, so I'm going to leave that to you.

CARLSON: It's just weird.

BRUCE: Look, this is where look this is a proposed bill. It's stupid. You've got people of course, they're saying it because of the plastic in the ocean, but here's the truth of the matter. A headline in "Forbes" last year, five Asian countries dumped more plastic into oceans than everybody else combined -- China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The United States is not the problem. Californians strangely enough are not the problem and yet they banned the straws, they're banning the plastic bags and now, it's the little tiny shampoo bottles that you can't have them in hotels or in any kind of rental or in the resorts because we're going to save the oceans.

The problem with this of course is that people think they're doing something to help the problem and they're not, but as you've mentioned, in California, you can relieve yourself on the street. You can smoke marijuana to your heart's content, but God help you, should you have one of those Lilliputian bottles of Listerine that now is the problem.

So take a good whiff of California air, Tucker because with the poo on the street and with nobody being able to shampoo, it's going to start smelling pretty bad in the Golden State.

CARLSON: This isn't a -- there's a reason they call it the Golden State, sadly, but this is an assault on cleanliness, you're totally right and I of course didn't connect the dots because I'm in California and a little high to be honest, but that's what it is, it's an assault on cleanliness.

BRUCE: Well, look the tiny bottles suggest also, look there's droughts all the time. When you get into that shower in the hotel, the tiny bottle says to you, "Make it quick." You've got enough for maybe like a quarters' worth of shampoo and don't linger. Don't linger in there. This is a brief visit.

They're saying you should put in dispensers like in a spa. Well then you're going to spend an hour in the shower using all the water and then of course that will be a crime. So I'm waiting for the guy --

CARLSON: The law of unintended consequence.

BRUCE: That's it. Everything they touch ends up being making things worse and in this case, that will be the issue as well. Trust me and I'm going go buy a hundred of the little bottles when I leave here and that's all I'm going to use in my own bathroom.

CARLSON: I agree, along with some incandescent light bulbs.

BRUCE: That's right.

CARLSON: Put that in my shower. Tammy Bruce, great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.

BRUCE: Thank you, dear. See you later.

CARLSON: We're out of time, amazingly. Things go fast. Life goes fast. Enjoy every second of it. We have. We'll be back tomorrow night 8:00 p.m. The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. Good night from Los Angeles.

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