Tucker: Democrats don't seem happy about impeachment
Democrats claim they find no joy in impeachment inquiry.
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," September 30, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Well, good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
For just about three years since the day Donald Trump was inaugurated, the left has worked tirelessly to end his administration by non-democratic means as necessary, very much including impeachment.
Well, tonight they are closer than ever to reaching that goal. And yet, in another reminder that the human nature is more complex than the human genome, they don't appear very happy about it. In fact, the closer impeachment gets, the more despondent they seem.
As the Buddha himself once noted, man longs to drink from the lotus blossom, only to discover its nectar is the most bitter of all. And so Washington Democrats are close to tears tonight over impeachment. They had such high hopes for President Trump, they want you to know that.
They saw his potential, sure, they could be mildly critical from time to time, but only in the most loving way as a parent corrects a child. It is an opportunity for self-improvement because underneath it all, they were rooting for Donald Trump from day one, because honestly, when you strip it all away, they're patriots, too. They just want what's best for this country.
But then tragically into the path of their good intentions, rolled Donald Trump's fateful phone call to the President of Ukraine. That changed everything.
Now Democrats have no choice but to impeach the President of the United States. Sometimes you've got to overturn a democracy in order to save a democracy.
Sad as hell. In fact, it's enough to make even a hardened political operative like Nancy Pelosi a little emotional. Watch her explain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): This is a very sad time for our country. I say this to you is great sorrow and prayerfully.
Well, first, let me say that this is no cause for any joy. This is a very sad time for a country.
It's really sad. We have to be very prayerful. I pray for the President all the time.
This is a very sad time for our country. There's just no joy in this.
It's sad. We must be somber. We must be prayerful, and we must pursue the facts further.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, it's just sad. There's no joy in this. We're somber.
We're prayerful. That's the official position of the Democratic Party on the question of impeachment. They rolled it out. They tested it this weekend, the talking point and the Sunday shows, and tellingly, not a single news anchor challenged them on it.
Strangely, though, no one seems to have informed Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, one of the party's most visible members. She is still selling t- shirts emblazoned with her most famous quote, "Impeach the mother-effer."
You can buy it tonight if you want.
Apparently, Nancy Pelosi hasn't had time to call the Congresswoman and recommend instead a weekend of contemplative prayer. She'll get on at some point and God knows what Tlaib will say when she does.
Say what you will about Tlaib and her other friends in the squad, but they are a lot more direct. In fact, let's just be clear, they are a lot more honest than schmaltzy windbags like Nancy Pelosi. They don't even bother to pretend to weep and pray. Weep and pray? They're thrilled.
They're a little closer like to seizing power. And from their perspective, that is always an unalloyed good. They could care less about the system.
They'd like to turn the system down. That's the point.
Mainstream Democrats meanwhile, though, ever worried about what normal people might think, are still churning out increasingly implausible lies.
We've seen the latest tonight. It's maybe the best.
They're telling you that the Ukraine saga is actually about national security concerns. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is classic abuse of power, which undermines our national security. This is as serious as it gets.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our President has put at risk our national security.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Our President sacrificed our national security.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): This is a very serious matter of national security.
PELOSI: At the expense of our national security.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The President of the United States is willing to compromise national security.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The TIPPING POINT is clear, it was national security.
Full stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Uh-huh. National security says Ocasio-Cortez who couldn't find Ukraine on a big tight map. How did the President jeopardize our national security? By delaying they say, military aid to Ukraine. That jeopardizes our national security. Uh-huh.
Yes. If anything jeopardizes our national security, it's sending -- mindlessly sending military aid to Ukraine in order to antagonize Russia.
What do we get out of that? Quick? What's the answer? Oh, there is no answer? Right. We don't get anything out of it -- at all.
But of course, no one in the press pauses for 30 seconds to question the core story at the bottom of this, which is we're sending close to half a billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine because, why? Because a couple of neocons think we should. Please.
But while we're at it, by the way, another thing that puts our national security at risk for real is when you make it impossible for the President, any President to have private conversations with his counterparts in other countries, with other foreign leaders.
Remember, the closest the world ever came to nuclear war was in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. How did that end? How did it deescalate?
Well, it ended, when our President reached a deal with the Soviet President, Nikita Khrushchev, secretly. They made concessions to one another secretly. They couldn't have done it in any other way.
If there were self-righteous leakers around in 1962, the world would have blown up. That's probably not an overstatement. So it's a huge problem if this President or any President can't proceed with the expectations that his phone calls, the core of his job will remain private.
And by the way, honestly, the Democratic Party really cares about national security? The party that won't enforce our border with Mexico? That refuses to import illegal aliens convicted of felonies? Yes, they are really worried about national security.
This has nothing to do with national security. That's the most annoying of all the lies. It's about power. It's a power grab. And by the way, say what you will about Tlaib and AOC and the rest of those hyper aggressive freshmen, at least they are kind of honest about that.
And there's something sort of nice about someone who is honest about his aims, even if those aims are disgusting and contemptible and scary, which power grabbing is. But at least you don't have to wade through a bunch of self-righteous air to get there.
Bottom line, the Democratic Party wants to pretend the 2016 election never happened and to make sure it can never happen again. As Washington expresses its fake concerns about national security, they can't even pretend to be worried about corruption at the highest levels.
Nobody thinks Hunter Biden deserved hundreds of thousands of dollars for a no-show energy gig in Ukraine. But nobody seems upset that he got it anyway.
Last week, for example, Joe Biden told Fox's Peter Doocy that this was all above board because he never talked with his son about what he did abroad.
Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business. Let's start with -- here is what I know. I know Trump deserves to be investigated. He is violating every basic norm of a President. You should be asking him the question. Why is he on the phone with a foreign leader trying to intimidate a foreign leader?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: You should be asking him about what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine. Oh, wait. That's why they want to impeach him because he asked about it.
But the question is, as a factual matter? Let's just -- because this is a news channel, we will answer the question, the most basic one. Is Biden's claim true?
Well, a photograph obtained exclusively by this show -- not to brag -- but we did suggest that claim might not be true. The picture shows, it's on the screen. Biden on a 2014 golfing trip with his son as well as his son, Hunter's business partner, Devon Archer.
At the time, this picture was taken both of them on the Board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. Peter Schweizer, the author of "Secret Empire" said the American political class hides corruption and enriches family and friends. Boy, that couldn't be a more germane title. And he joins us tonight.
Peter, thanks so much for coming on. We also have sent you a couple of e- mails that the show obtained exclusively that appear to shed some light on Hunter Biden was doing for the Ukrainians. What does it add up to, do you think?
PETER SCHWEIZER, AMERICAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, NOVELIST, AUTHOR, AND POLITICAL CONSULTANT: Well, I think it adds up to is the Biden family cashing in through by corruption by proxy?
Hunter -- sorry, Joe Biden is Vice President, so his wife, Jill Biden can't take payments from foreign entities. That would have to be disclosed.
That would be easy to catch. But you set up your adult kids and in the case of the Biden's, Joe Biden was point person for the Obama administration towards two countries -- China and Ukraine -- and low and behold, the two countries that hunter Biden ends up doing the most businesses overseas are China and Ukraine.
And the amounts of money are astronomical and the deals that he got have absolutely nothing to do with his background. He had no expertise to sell.
He had no skill set to sell to either the Chinese or Ukrainians. He was being paid for something, Tucker. It certainly wasn't his skill set. I think we know what he was being paid for.
CARLSON: You know, I watched over the weekend. I don't watch a lot of TV typically in the weekends, but there's an impeachment afoot. It seemed like it was worth checking in.
And I saw a news anchor after news anchor on all the channels, back down suggestions that there was anything wrong with Hunter Biden's arrangement with Ukraine. Why would they -- why would they say that, do you think?
SCHWEIZER: Well, I think the rules are different for certain people.
Look, does anybody really believe that those news anchors, if we were talking about Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. going to Ukraine and Don, Jr. getting --
By the way, Hunter Biden was being paid $83,000.00 a month. We know that because we have the bank records, the Morgan Stanley account that it went into. His business partner ended up in a criminal trial and we got those banking records
But does anybody seriously think if the name was Trump instead of Biden, that the news anchors on Sunday morning would have the same attitude? It's ridiculous. Everybody knows the answer to that.
CARLSON: They are just partisan hacks.
SCHWEIZER: And I think Tucker, this is what frustrates people more than anything.
CARLSON: Yes.
SCHWEIZER: Yes. It frustrates people more than anything.
CARLSON: Yes, flesh that out.
SCHWEIZER: Well, you know, look, people -- I think a lot of people like Trump or don't like Trump; like the Democrats, don't like the Democrats.
But at the end of the day, they still want to believe firmly that we are a nation of laws, not of man.
But it depends what your last name is. It depends what your political affiliation is. You know, think about what did we hear in 2017 after the 2016 election? Everybody said, you can't investigate Hillary Clinton. She is not running for anything anymore. She is not going to be in office.
You can't investigate her.
What are they saying now? Joe Biden is running for office. So you can't investigate him either. The question becomes when do you get to investigate anybody at the highest level for criminal conduct? And the answer, apparently, at least from one side of the aisle is you never get to investigate our people ever.
CARLSON: Yes, well, let's just -- let's just make it really easy for the traveling press corps, let's put that picture back up on the screen.
Here's Joe Biden and his son and his son's business partner. Two of the four guys in that picture were working for the Ukrainians. Did they talk about it on the golf course? I mean, there it is right there. Someone ought to ask Joe Biden.
SCHWEIZER: Yes.
CARLSON: It's not complicated.
SCHWEIZER: Yes, look, we know that Joe Biden lied when he said that, and we know that because first of all, his own son, Hunter Biden told "The New Yorker" that he did talk to his father about the Burisma deal. We also know that Devon Archer in that picture, had a meeting in the White House, one-on-one meeting with Joe Biden about a week before they joined the Burisma Board.
And finally, we know as it relates to the China deal, that the Chinese officials, the Chinese business partners of Hunter Biden admitted that when they took that trip to Beijing, China, Hunter introduced them to his father while his father was on that official trip.
So he is just lying when he said they didn't discuss business. There's too much evidence otherwise.
CARLSON: Yes, and that's the offensive part. Ukraine is not a threat to us. China is a threat to us. Peter Schweizer, thanks so much for that -- for those details. Good to see the night.
SCHWEIZER: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Congressman Adam Schiff of Burbank is very certain that taking political dirt from abroad is an impeachable offense. He didn't always feel that way though.
As recently as two years ago, he had a different view. Chief Breaking News Correspondent, Trace Gallagher joins us tonight with details. Hey Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHIEF BREAKING NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Tucker.
And it was because of a prank call that lasted eight minutes.
Florida GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz tweeted just a portion of the call enough to show what he called Democratic hypocrisy when it comes to asking foreign countries for political dirt.
On the call, two Russian shock jocks known as Vovan and Lexus are posing as the former Speaker of the Ukraine Parliament, telling Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, they have nude pictures of President Trump from when Trump came to Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, and the DJs claim they had a Russian model and singer and a Russian journalist talking about the photos.
Congressman Schiff appeared to bite. Watch.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SCHIFF: So you have recordings of both, Sobchak and Buzova where they're discussing the compromising material on Mr. Trump?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.
SCHIFF: Well, obviously, we would welcome a chance to get copies of those recordings.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: It certainly appeared Adam Schiff was eager to get the recordings and a member of his staff reportedly continued communicating with the pranksters trying to get the damaging material.
But as Congressman Gaetz points out, it appears, Schiff now has a different view of foreign help. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHIFF: It is illegal, improper violation of oath, a violation of his duty to defend our elections, our Constitution for the President to merely ask for foreign interference.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: That's from Matt Gaetz -- I apologize. Adam Schiff's office now says at the time they thought the prank phone call was likely bogus, and yet they followed up -- Tucker.
CARLSON: That's what they always say. That's so good. When Sacha Baron Cohen shows up, I always do. I always do. Trace Gallagher, thank you for that. It was great.
Jenna Ellis is a constitutional law attorney. She is on the Advisory Board of the Trump 2020 Campaign, and she joins tonight. Jenna, thanks so much for coming on.
JENNA ELLIS, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW ATTORNEY: Thanks so much.
CARLSON: So you're an attorney. You're an expert therefore in standards, it seems a little confusing for Adam Schiff to say it is illegal and immoral to solicit dirt from a foreign citizen, and then to look at that tape where he does exactly that and feel no embarrassment --
ELLIS: Yes, well, Tucker, if the Democrats didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all really. So I mean, for Adam Schiff to be saying one thing and then turning it around, it just proves that the Democratic Party is not actually interested in the rule of law. They are interested merely in making up their laws and rules as they go.
And so even with impeachment, and if you look at even the testimony that was given at the congressional hearing last week, I mean, Adam Schiff, tried to manipulate all of those terms into just have their own standards, and tried to say -- and Maguire did such a great job at just cutting through all of that, and saying, no, this is the legal standard, not the manipulated definition that you want to provide.
So for example, he tried to say that, quote, unquote, "credible allegation" somehow means that the whistleblower had some sort of fact or truth that Maguire was trying to set aside.
CARLSON: Right.
ELLIS: It would be like me saying, Tucker, right now, I know that you're wearing tennis shoes. And I know for a fact that you're not wearing dress shoes. Now, that's a credible allegation. Why? Because I'm in the position right now to actually observe that.
CARLSON: That's right.
ELLIS: But it does that mean that there's any sort of truth or that the American people should simply believe that. Well, they might, because you're probably known for wearing tennis shoes. But that doesn't mean that an allegation is any more or less credible, just because I'm in the position to observe it, where an average viewer wouldn't be in the position to make that type of quote-unquote "credible allegation."
CARLSON: For sure, and in this case, you've almost convinced me that I'm wearing tennis shoes. The fact I'm wearing wingtips just kind of the point that you're making.
ELLIS: Exactly. But do we know that for sure? See. So now we need to have an investigation American people on whether or not you're wearing tennis shoes.
CARLSON: It just seems like Adam Schiff --
ELLIS: Impeach him.
CARLSON: Of all the people you could pick in the Democratic Party, he might be the least credible. He called me a Russian agent. So do they really want to him as the point man for this?
ELLIS: They shouldn't. But this is just the ridiculous hypocrisy of the Democratic left, because they have forgotten that, you know, the Mueller investigation didn't go anywhere. All of their attempts at the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page, all of that stuff didn't go anywhere.
They've been beating a dead horse for so long that now, they're just forgetting about that. And all that they are trying to do with this is bring the attention off of President Trump's accomplishments and to get you and me and every other voter to be very concerned that if we're voting for President Trump in 2020, maybe we're voting for some kind of treasonous guy.
CARLSON: Yes.
ELLIS: We don't want to put our name behind it.
CARLSON: Because we need to send hundreds of millions to Ukraine, because that's the only patriotic course. I think you'll agree with that.
ELLIS: Yes, of course.
CARLSON: Great to see the night. Thank you so much.
ELLIS: Great to see you, too, Tucker. Thanks.
CARLSON: Well, the C.I.A. exists to serve the sitting President, to bring him information so he can make wise and informed decisions. But in some cases, its agents and officials have played a key role not simply in the Ukraine scandal, but in the Russia story before it and a lot of it seems pretty political.
John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. officer with a long and storied history at that agency and he joins us tonight. So John, it does seem like C.I.A. -- obviously not most of them.
JOHN KIRIAKOU, FORMER C.I.A. OFFICER: Sure.
CARLSON: But in a bunch of cases, C.I.A. employees are acting as kind of political operatives. That that's my read on it.
KIRIAKOU: Oh, and it's getting worse and worse as time goes on. Just look at the whistleblower complaint. And I use the word whistleblower in quotation marks here. You know, I made a whistleblower complaint in 1996 about an illegal campaign contribution.
I wrote a memo. I sent it to the I.G., he sent it to the Federal Election Commission. It was done.
In this case, this went through layers of editing and coordinating and lawyers were involved and managers were involved. It looks like a legal document. It doesn't look like a whistleblower complaint. And that leads me to believe that this whistleblower that we keep talking about is just the face of an entire group that's at the C.I.A. that's pushing this thing forward.
CARLSON: Wow. I mean, you're not saying that as someone --
KIRIAKOU: No, no --
CARLSON: On the outside, I mean, you were there for a long time.
KIRIAKOU: That's right. Now, can you imagine if Gina Haspel, the Director of the C.I.A. learned of this whistleblower complaint from "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times"? Of course she didn't.
She learned from it through the chain of command because it went all the way up to the top before it went to the office of the D.N.I., and one other thing to remember, these people who run the C.I.A., almost all of them are holdovers from the Obama administration.
They became senior intelligence services -- I'm sorry, senior intelligence officials S.I.S. Senior Intelligence Service Officers during the Obama presidency and they are holdovers.
Now, they're there for 20, 30, 35 years, and they know that they can outwait this President.
CARLSON: So what advice would you give to this President as he deals with the C.I.A.?
KIRIAKOU: If I could give the President advice, I would say to turn to the Senate, turned to the Senate Majority Leader and ask for an investigation of the C.I.A. We need hearings on the C.I.A. and reform in the C.I.A., because this is not the way this whistleblower system is supposed to work.
CARLSON: Would you be afraid of them if you were Trump?
KIRIAKOU: Oh, yes. Oh, I think that they should be afraid of him.
CARLSON: But they're not?
KIRIAKOU: No, they're very arrogant.
CARLSON: Yes, I've noticed. John, thank you for that.
KIRIAKOU: Thanks for having me.
CARLSON: Kind of chilling if you think about it.
KIRIAKOU: It frightens me as American.
CARLSON: Yes. It's scary. Hillary Clinton is back, this time to push impeachment by the lowlights of her latest interview. You know something, Hillary Clinton sort of showed up on the screen right before impeachment began. Hmmm. Clintons? We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, it's been almost three years since the 2016 election.
Collectively, the Democratic Party still hasn't moved on or gotten over it.
But nobody is trapped in emotional amber
Collectively the Democratic Party still hasn't moved on or gotten over it.
But nobody is trapped in emotional ember like Hillary Clinton. Every day for her is November 8, 2016. She has already spent years counting the different excuses for why she lost, but yesterday she went even farther than that.
On "CBS Sunday Morning," it was a great show, she just polluted it, honestly -- claimed the election was stolen from her. It was stolen. She didn't say who the thief was. So we asked Lisa Boothe, a Senior Fellow at Independent Women's Voice to come on and identify who stole that election from Hillary Clinton.
LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I guess she is out of the woods now.
But yes, so Tucker, I want to play the clip from the show yesterday for your viewers at home. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe he knows he is an illegitimate President. He knows. He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did.
It was like applying for a job and getting 66 million letters of recommendation and losing to a corrupt human tornado.
There were many funny things that happened in my election that will not happen again. And I'm hoping that both the public and the press understand the way that Trump plays this game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOOTHE: Well, and Tucker she didn't just say that, she also called for President Trump's impeachment. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Given this latest revelation, which is such a blatant effort to use his presidential position to advance his personal and political interests, there should be an Impeachment Inquiry opened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOOTHE: Well, and so what I want to do is pull up a tweet from Hillary Clinton from October of 2016. Here she says, "Donald Trump refused to say that he'd respect the results of this election. By doing that, he's threatening or democracy."
And what I find infuriating about what she said there, Democrats are the ones who are threatening our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of President Trump. They are the ones who are undermining our faith in institutions, particularly the electoral process.
And remember, it was Democrats and Nancy Pelosi's daughter who was leading the charge in 2016, encouraging faithless electors. It has been Democrats who boycotted President Trump's inauguration saying that he was not a legitimate President, saying that he was a Russian stooge. We've been lied to about the Russia collusion narrative.
And now Democrats want to move forward with an impeachment process, upending the 2016 election and 63 million American votes. So they are the ones that are threatening our democracy.
CARLSON: What's so weird is Hillary Clinton had the election stolen from her. That's the official position of the Democratic Party. And yet they're not anxious to restore her rightful title as President by making her the front runner this time. It's a little bit straight. You know, right? So she had it stolen from her, but we don't want her to run again.
How? What's the reasoning there? Do you have any idea?
BOOTHE: Well, I guess they've learned their lesson that she is a terrible candidate, and obviously think it's a job done in 2016.
CARLSON: Oh, they really believe it. Okay.
BOOTHE: But there's another serious aspect to this Tucker. We've heard Democrats in this talk about how President Trump was trying to solicit the Ukrainians help with 2020. But they are the ones who are doing the very thing that they accuse President Trump of.
There's been documented evidence of Democrats in 2016 soliciting the help of Ukrainians with Paul Manafort. Also, Hillary Clinton is the one who paid Christopher Steele for the opposition research, which included sources that were connected to the Kremlin and Kremlin officials. So they are completely full of it.
CARLSON: If our viewers knew what those of us who live in the District of Columbia know, which is a huge percentage of our foreign policy decisions are influenced by foreign governments -- I mean, it's actually disgusting - - and for these people to be lecturing us, oh, you know, foreign interference. Yes. It's like --
Okay. Which -- it's too disingenuous for me, I have to say that.
BOOTHE: Where there should absolutely be reform on the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It would be -- so many people in D.C. would be in so much trouble.
CARLSON: Okay. Let's send some people to prison. I'm totally for that.
That's exactly right. Lisa Boothe, great to see you. Thank you.
BOOTHE: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Hillary Clinton is happy to accuse the President of making corrupt deals. But over the last 20 years in Washington, maybe the most corrupt arrangement of all -- and trust me, it's a contest for the most corrupt -- but certainly in the running is the Clinton Foundation.
The Clinton Foundation received, you'll remember massive donations when the world expected Hillary Clinton to win. When she didn't win, what happened to the money? Good question.
Buck Sexton has been keeping track. He is a former C.I.A. analyst. Host of "The Buck Sexton Show," and he joins us tonight. So Buck, obviously, the people who care deeply about the country, that they cared so much about childhood obesity in 2015, probably cared every bit as much in 2017. I'm guessing, right? Or No?
BUCK SEXTON, HOST, THE BUCK SEXTON SHOW: Well, the good news is we have the results of the experiment now. I mean, I remember I was actually over at CNN, Tucker during the 2016 election and I would say things to people like, we all understand that the Clinton Foundation and specifically the Clinton Global Initiative, there's a lot of shady stuff going on there.
And they would all feign abject stupidity. No, of course not. It's just a charity. Just like what they doing now, by the way, with Hunter Biden.
You know, I saw some of this on Sunday. $50,000.00? Is that illegal?
Well, it looks disgusting. And by the way, it could be illegal, maybe we should investigate. But looking specifically at the Clinton Foundation, they had a drop after she lost the election of 50 percent. Tens of millions of dollars. I guess all of a sudden climate change, women's empowerment and childhood obesity didn't matter quite as much to folks.
The Clinton Global Initiative was shut down. Dozens of people were fired.
They had to actually go through that New York State notification process for a mass layoff. What happened all of a sudden?
You would think that a politician who was no longer going to be in power would have more time for charitable work. You'd think that the focus could be really on all the good that they were doing. I think the journalists should look into this one, Tucker, because something else may have been going on.
CARLSON: Because it almost sounds like -- and I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, Buck because I'm a journalist, as you know, so I'm an empiricists by temperament -- it almost sounds though, like an influence peddling scheme and not a charity.
SEXTON: Yes. And also, if you're going to be running a charity, you should probably work hard to separate out your asking people for large sums of money, which they used to do, while also soliciting enormous sums of money for speaking gigs, for consulting for Teneo, which was a consulting firm, but essentially run inside of the Clinton Foundation.
You know, you shouldn't bundle all these things together, and also this isn't a former politician we are talking about. This is somebody who was the expected to be President, not somebody who could be.
The expectation for governments around the world and for the Democratic Party, and I just think it's funny that now, we see something where there's once again the possibility of impropriety with Hunter Biden and we're told how could you even think such a thing? Hunter was worth every penny of that $50,000.00 a month?
Well, he might have been but not because he was so good at estimating Ukrainian gas output.
CARLSON: I mean Hunter Biden is a very likable guy. I know Hunter Biden is a very likable guy.
SEXTON: I am sure he might be good.
CARLSON: Kind of a nerduell, and so that's sort of the point is that Hunter Biden of all the people who are scamming the system was the worst at it, I think by far.
But like the guys who ran Teneo, who I also knew were like high-level varsity level sleaze balls. Like those are the guys who got rich in the end, right?
SEXTON: I mean, in a sense, it's like Hillary Clinton lecturing the Trump administration and the American people on how his selling foreign policy is the ultimate insult to intelligent people. But she does have a lot of expertise in this. She actually knows what she is talking about.
CARLSON: She certainly does. Buck Sexton, great to see you.
SEXTON: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Thank you. New York already ignores immigration law and now, they are threatening you for speaking your mind on immigration. First Amendment no longer applies in New York. We will tell you why.
Plus Robert De Niro just had another episode. Mark Steyn responds so that tiny actor. Just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: New York City is a sanctuary city and that means Federal immigration law is ignored there, so the officials do their best to protect illegal aliens, even the criminals from deportation.
New York has created its own category of immigration laws that target not people who are here illegally, but people who are born here like you.
For example, a new decree from the New York Human Rights Commission says that ordinary people can be fined up to a quarter of a million dollars if they use language that illegal immigrants don't like.
Some of the banned words include asking employees to speak English, threatening to call I.C.E. on illegal building tenants or even using the phrase illegal alien which is an official U.S. government phrase, by the way, in a quote, "derogatory way."
Seth Barron is Associate Editor at "City Journal." He joins us tonight.
Seth, the First Amendment, I think it's right in there in the Bill of Rights. But it's not -- it is not operative in the biggest city in the country now.
SETH BARRON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, "CITY JOURNAL": Well, it's still there.
But you know, they're working on it, Tucker. They are working on it.
As you know, the left, they want to control language, because if you can control language, you can control thought, you can control behavior. Now, technically speaking, the new guidance that the Human Rights Commission put out really pertains mostly to, you know, housing, employment and public accommodations. But that's not how they've put it out there.
They have put it out, as you said that using the word illegal alien, in a very broad context, could -- you know, is illegal and could get you fined.
CARLSON: But I don't understand. I mean, how can -- I mean, the First Amendment has been interpreted repeatedly by the Supreme Court and definitively in 1967 to protect all speech, except imminent calls to violence. So how in the world does New York around that?
BARRON: Well, they would say that this is implicit discrimination. So if you're an employer, and you want to, you know, make sure that your employees or applicants are truly citizens, or truly have work authorization that that would be a kind of a disparate impact.
It's a wide ranging assault, I will agree with you there.
CARLSON: It's fascism. So what if I take the train up to New York tomorrow and just stand in Times Square with a bullhorn using the phrase illegal aliens?
BARRON: That would probably actually get you in trouble because part of the law does cover -- I can't remember exactly what the term, it is like threatening intent or something, basically, discriminatory intent. So yes, if you're posing any kind -- if someone could interpret that as a threat to their safety or a threat of violence, then you could get in trouble.
CARLSON: Right. So this is how it begins. The left conflating speech with violence. I don't agree with what you're saying, therefore, I feel threatened therefore, you're not allowed to exercise your First Amendment right. I mean, that's authoritarian.
BARRON: More or less. You've heard the Drop the I Word campaign. I mean, this has been going on for a while and they have been pushing it. They want the word illegal alien stricken from vocabulary, even though as you pointed out, it's part of the Federal Code.
CARLSON: We should fight this and I don't care if every HR department in every big company in America signs onto this, which of course they will, we should fight back. Because what's at stake here is the most basic of all freedoms, which is the freedom to think what you want.
BARRON: Agreed.
CARLSON: Yes. Agreed. Seth, great to see you tonight. Thank you.
BARRON: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Actor Robert De Niro, great actor, obviously. Bit of a hothead though. You could see it on display as he was leaving Divorce Court earlier this year. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT DE NIRO, AMERICAN ACTOR: Where are you? Where the [bleep] are you, man. You're supposed to be right in front where you dropped us. I don't care if they chased you away. You (inaudible) [bleep]. What's the matter with you? Where are you?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That's just the greatest piece of tape ever. Because here you have this incredibly rich guy who really is the embodiment of privilege in New York City, screaming at probably some doubtless, some foreign born driver, while his assistant covers his face, so we can't see him berate his servants. Just the greatest. Of course, he is a liberal, because he cares about the little guy.
So he was on CNN over the weekend, talking to that squeaky little spokesman that the Chairman of CNN employees, and the spokesman said, hey, Robert De Niro, famous actor, what do you think of Donald Trump and Fox News?
Kind of teed it up for him. Here's what happened next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DE NIRO: This guy is -- should not be President period.
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: And when you say that folks on Fox come after you. I remember the Tony's when you got up there and cursed. A lot of [bleep]. But you know, this is cable.
DE NIRO: [Bleep].
STELTER: So it's not an FCC violation, but it is still a Sunday morning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Luckily, nobody is watching, so that's the good news. Author economist, Mark Steyn was not watching, but we did send him the tape.
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Nope.
CARLSON: So what do you make of this, Mark?
STEYN: Well, you're right, there was a bigger audience on the sidewalk outside that New York Courthouse -- but essentially, essentially, CNN and this is fantastic, their booker negotiated for months to get Robert de Niro on the show and give us his insights into the Trump administration.
And in the end, he basically just treats them the way he treats his minimum-waged domestic servants, and yells at Brian Stelter exactly the way he did at that poor chauffeur.
But what's interesting here is to go back to what you were saying at the top of the show, when you were saying about Rashida Tlaib and preferring her straightforwardness to I think, did you call Madam Speaker a schmaltzy windbag? I think that was the phrase you used.
And this is basically the same. Every story on tonight's shows have been the same story that it results from the left not accepting the results of the presidential election.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEYN: He said this guy should not be President. Period. But it doesn't work like that. You can't just stick a period on the end of it. You actually have got to --
CARLSON: Wait, wait, wait. Even if you're a famous actor, you can't?
STEYN: No. And actually that is, as you said, it is rich white privilege, basically to say that just because you and your friends think this guy shouldn't be President, you can't come up with --
De Niro used to be a great actor. When he played Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull," he put on 60 pounds for that role. So to go on Brian Stelter's show and assert that this guy should not be President, you need to put on 60 intellectual pounds to bring yourself up to the level of Hillary Clinton who, you know at least says he shouldn't be President because he has colluded with the Macedonian content farmer down on their Macedonian content farm in old Macedonia.
You have to at least put on enough intellectual pounds to be like the schmaltzy windbag Nancy Pelosi and do that oh, this is a sorrowful moment for our country. We should all be prayerful because our illegitimate President has colluded with the Macedonian cult. This isn't a bipartisan moment. This is one where we should all be prayerful that he will be delivered from the Macedonian content farming.
And the fact that de Niro just says, I'm the greatest actor in the world and all I could do is rain down expletives, as if you, Brian Stelter, are my deputy under footman.
CARLSON: So that's it, and quickly. That was interesting your thought on this. I watched the tape and the first thing I thought was, I think he's a little bit over 70. I'm 50. I don't know how old you are, probably around my age, but we're getting older. Okay. How would you like to be as successful and rich as Robert de Niro, we obviously acknowledge he is a great actor. I'll certainly acknowledge it and be that unhappy. How did that happen?
STEYN: Well, I think he's actually become the kind of potty-mouth grandpa he plays in those witless comedies he has been doing in recent years. And I think has actually addled him.
The fact though is that if this is your -- it's not going to do anything.
If your object is to remove Trump from office, then actually having de Niro on television just losing a blizzard of F-words at half the population isn't going to do it.
I don't know whether the, oh, we should all be sorrowful and prayerful about our poor President who is colluding with all these people. I don't know whether that will do it either. But it's actually a more subtle and nuanced approach than just going the de Niro route.
CARLSON: The left really is a coalition of the world's most unhappy. I would say. You're not in it, Mark. Mark Steyn, great to see you tonight.
Thank you for that.
STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, the scandal around Ukraine turns on the question of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to that country. We're told that aid is sacrosanct. And if we don't send the aid that our national security is in jeopardy. Huh? Is that true? It's actually nuts.
We're going to unpack it after the break because nobody else will. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: So as usual, almost nobody in Washington traces the story back to its roots. But it's always worth doing that. And in this case, the impeachment saga can be traced back to military aid to Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine. Now, why are we sending this?
Well, the explicit purpose is to help Ukraine battle Russia. Okay. You can see why Ukraine would be in favor of that. But why should you be in favor of that? Does it help America? Does it make you safer?
Christian Whiton is a former State Department senior adviser. He joins us tonight. Christian, thanks so much for coming on.
CHRISTIAN WHITON, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT SENIOR ADVISER: Great to be here, Tucker.
CARLSON: Again, really simple. If I were Ukrainian, I'd be completely in favor of this. Why should I, as an American be in favor of this?
WHITON: Well, you probably shouldn't, you know, actually, the crisis is over. The immediate crisis that was posed when Vladimir Putin sent some and you know, took a small part of Ukraine and then took Crimea, which incidentally, is mostly ethnically Russian.
Right now, you just have a lot of aid going to Ukraine that's going -- you know, up to nearly $1.5 billion, if you go back to 2014 when they had this political transformation. And the problem is the place is crooked, it's corrupt.
In a lot of places where we poured foreign aid over the years that are corrupted, you get more corruption when you do that. Transparency International says there are about 120 in the world out of 180 in corruptions. That means they're the most corrupt country and all of Europe except for Russia.
CARLSON: So I'm just a little bit confused by the posture I often hear in Washington, where if I'm not really upset about Russia messing around in Ukraine, or Estonia, Crimea or whatever, then I'm a traitor to America.
Why do we care so much? I'm confused.
WHITON: Why do we care? There's a reason to care. We don't want Russia willy-nilly invading other countries, although they're not threatening to do that now. But we should be concerned. The real question is, why doesn't Europe care? They're right there. They're the ones -- look at Germany alone.
Germany's economy is two and a half times the size of Russia. And if you look at the whole E.U., 13 times the size of Russia's economy. Going to be a little smaller at the end of the month when Britain pulls out, but they have the resources to handle this themselves.
CARLSON: It's just funny that my country actually is being invaded by other countries from the south, look at the population movement in the United States without our permission. And nobody cares and caring is itself seen as immoral. But we have to be outraged, morally outraged that Russia is making belligerent noises at Ukraine. Do you think that's weird?
WHITON: I think it's weird. I think you have this Europe mafia in our Foreign Service and foreign policy establishment, too that just sort of thinks it's always 1942 or '40 or '91 and they love being the kingmaker over there and giving all this money. But what are we getting in return?
And also, are we willing to take this really bad relationship with Russia?
Really pushing Russia into China's arms? Do really want to take on two great powers at the same time? We should think about that. We should have a debate before we just sort of happen into that policy.
CARLSON: Why wouldn't we be friends in Russia? No one has ever explained that to me. Speak slowly so I can understand. I've never understood that.
China is the threat. It's really clear, and yet Washington, loaded with dumb people is forcing us to be at war with Russia. I just think it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
But then I'm a traitor. Christian, great to see you tonight. Thank you.
WHITON: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, Congress is obsessed with impeachment. Obviously, nothing is getting done. Oh, wait a second. Let me revise that. Nothing is getting done except one thing.
The other day Congress did pass one important piece of legislation, which shows what they really care about. We will tell you what it was. You'll be surprised.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: America has an awful lot of problems that Congress could and should be working on beginning with the fading middle class that's the central problem, and then crumbling infrastructure, a crisis on the Mexican border -- that really is a crisis -- an exhausted military, still fighting America's longest war in Afghanistan, et cetera et cetera.
Congress should be working on these things. They are not. They're distracted by the phony Ukraine drama, and so divided they couldn't agree on what to do about these problems anyway.
On most issues, they are divided, but we should correct and say on one issue they are in virtual total agreement.
Last Wednesday, that was the same day the House was convulsed with the impeachment debate. Two hundred and twenty nine Democrats and 91 Republicans came together in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement to pass the so-called Safe Banking Act. Safe for whom? Weed dealers.
Even though marijuana is still illegal, federally, the bill would allow banks and credit unions to provide banking services to people who deal marijuana.
So in the middle of the deadliest drug epidemic in our history, the only thing Congress can agree on is that it ought to be easier to sell drugs to Americans.
Oh, okay. Why are they so in favor of this? There are two reasons. One, a small number are getting very rich doing it. A former Republican speaker is now a weed lobbyist, and for another, when you mismanage the country this badly, you want the people to be so out of it, they don't respond.
That is really true. They want you to be dumb.
Choose sobriety so you can be awake enough to critique them and the crappy job they're doing. That's our advice.
That's it for us tonight. Tune in every night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.
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