Tucker Carlson's Final Exam: Dr. Marc Siegel vs. Jesse Watters
Which one of our experts paid more attention to the news this week?
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," July 11, 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.” All right, take a seat, pour a cocktail. We're about to blow your mind.
For more than 30 years, Nancy Pelosi, as you well know, has represented the single most liberal congressional district in America and she has always seemed perfectly suited for the job. Name the issue, no matter what it is: from abortion to climate change to affirmative action and Nancy Pelosi has the party approved doctrinaire left position on that issue.
She's a walking liberal stereotype, or so we thought. In fact, it was all a pose. It was a sham identity designed to cloak a darker reality beneath. You thought Nancy Pelosi was a guilty white liberal who regularly sends money to the annual NPR pledge drive, didn't you? No. In fact, Pelosi is a committed racist, a hardened bigot.
She would be running the ladies Klan auxiliary if they had one in San Francisco. Kind of shocking, actually. How do we know this? Simple. Watch the way Nancy Pelosi dismisses fellow Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LESLEY STAHL, AMERICAN JOURNALIST: She likes to minimize the conflicts within her caucus between the moderates and the progressives.
You have these wings, AOC and her group on one side.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: That's like five people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "It's like five people." Actually, it's four people. But of course a racist would get the number wrong. Pelosi was referring to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley or as Pelosi doubtless thinks of them, the four morons of the apocalypse. Pelosi does not like them. She has made that clear and Ocasio-Cortez having thought about it a lot, think she knows why.
In a recent interview with "The Washington Post," Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of quote, "singling out newly elected women of color." Get it? Yes. Pressed to explain yourself later, Ocasio-Cortez noted that Pelosi has attacked these women of color despite, quote, "knowing the amount of death threats that we get."
I think it's just worth asking why. Yes. Okay. That's a rhetorical question. Obviously, she knows why. Why else would you imperil someone's safety? Well, because you wish them harm. Because you're a crazed bigot.
According to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that's who is running the Democratic Party right now. Quick. Someone weren't Al Sharpton and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, we've got a racist third in line to the presidency.
Maybe we're being too literal about this. What are the odds in real life that Ocasio-Cortez actually believes that Nancy Pelosi is a racist, or that Joe Biden is a racist or for that matter that Donald Trump is a racist? What are the chances she really thinks that? Probably about zero.
The first thing to know about the cries of racism, you hear incessantly from the left, they are totally insincere. No one is saying it actually believes it. The point isn't to get rid of racism. The point is to seize power and it works.
Denouncing someone as racist is a kind of rhetorical stun grenade. For a moment, the accused just stands there, off balanced and looking bewildered. That's when you scoop up the loot and run.
Grievance politics is a kind of smash and grab operation, and it's highly effective. It's no surprise that the left now justifies its entire political program in the name of fighting bigotry.
America has been accused of racism, therefore we must, I don't know, picket. Give up our guns, empty our prisons, and legalize drugs. Give up the First Amendment. Pay for someone else's abortion. Tear down our borders.
By the way, we're not allowed to ask about citizenship on our census form. Because of racism. See how it works? Yes. The question is, how did Nancy Pelosi fall for this? She has been working this game so long herself. You'd think she would have seen it coming. But apparently she didn't.
Heather Mac Donald is the author of "The Diversity Delusion" and she joins us tonight. Heather, nice to see you tonight. Are you surprised having followed this whole line of argument for so many years and so closely? Are you surprised that Pelosi and Biden for that matter are both being denounced as racist right now?
HEATHER MAC DONALD, AUTHOR: No, it's hilarious, Tucker. I mean, let's take a moment to just savor this moment when the turns on itself.
CARLSON: Thank you.
MAC DONALD: Yes, the left turns on itself wielding the exact weapons that it wields against everybody else, and accuses itself of racism. It's preposterous. But it's also a serious matter. I disagree slightly with you to say that people don't believe this. I think what we're witnessing is the most dangerous import from the academy into the real world.
Students are taught from the moment they arrive on campus two things and two things only reliably, which is that the most important thing about themselves is their group identity, defined productively by gonads and melanin and that racism and sexism based on those characteristics are the defining features of American society.
It's hard to believe that when they face any kind of disagreement, they reflexively accuse their ideological opponent of bigotry and hate. And that works wonderfully on a college campus. You accuse the President of racism, he immediately crumbles and orders another million dollars in diversity and bureaucracy. You accuse a corporation of racism, and it folds as we saw with Nike and the preposterous claim that the Betsy Ross flag is racist.
CARLSON: Always.
MAC DONALD: It works with politicians, with Biden repudiating his justified support for the 94 Federal Crime Bill that saved thousands of minority lives. The question is, is it going to work on the rest of us? And if it does, Tucker, civil society is over, because this is a totalitarian power play. It is an attempt to shut down any kind of dialectical search for truth, and to occupy the sole allowable ideological ground. And that's a recipe for a society to halt dead in its tracks and go in reverse.
CARLSON: Because it's not really an argument. I mean, no one is making the case. And by the way, this eliminates the need to make the case, you don't actually have to convince anybody have anything.
If you're doing it to fight racism, it's a moral imperative, and everyone else can just shut up and obey.
MAC DONALD: You know, there's been political disagreements long before identity politics. People disagree. That is what America is about; that we have the right, we have the freedom to debate our opinions. The alternative to debate is violence.
It is an act of narcissism to think that everything is about yourself to immediately say, "Well, it must be because of my gender and race that I'm being disagreed with. And you must be a bigot to disagree with me." No, that is not the case. These are issues that deserve to be threshed out in the public forum. And again, if they are not, we are approaching a totalitarian state very quickly.
CARLSON: And so this is a much longer conversation, but in the short time, 30 seconds that we have, would you recommend -- what course of action for normal people? Ignore these slurs for the kind of cynical politics that they are? How should your average person fight back against this totalitarianism?
MAC DONALD: Well, the average person has to simply reject the racism charge. All of us have to start working on alternative explanations for our reality. Racism is no longer the predominant characteristic of America. If it ever was, it was a part of it, it was never the defining feature, but it certainly is not -- this still remains a land of opportunity.
The alternative explanation is that there are profound behavioral differences, choices that individuals make that determines social outcomes. We have to fight back against this narrative, Tucker, because if they win, we lose our civilization. We lose meritocracy, and we lose freedom.
CARLSON: Heather Mac Donald, wise. Thank you.
MAC DONALD: Thank you.
CARLSON: Well, the surest way to get applause in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary is to bash the country that the candidates say they want to rule. It's not simply the current President who is bad. America itself is bad, its people, its history, its institutions -- they are all racist. And the only way to redeem them, of course, is to elect a Democratic President. Here's their case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE BUTTIGIEG, D-IND., MAYOR, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There's a wall of mistrust, put up one racist act at a time not just from what's happened in the past, but from what's happening around the country, in the present.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There is a purposeful agenda to foment racism that keeps us apart.
JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have to start by restoring in dealing with the rooting out systematic racism built into our laws, our politics and our institutions.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, I-VT, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have a criminal justice system plagued by racism.
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As President, I will take on institutional racism directly. I will look into every issue that plagues this country.
BETO O'ROURKE, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have to go much deeper into a country whose very foundation is racism.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, D-MINN., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know that there is systemic racism in our criminal justice system.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And for communities of color that have stared down structural racism for generations, the disaster has hit even harder.
REP. SETH MOULTON, D-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: True justice means that we don't have a racist criminal justice system that kills and imprisons black Americans.
SEN. CORY BOOKER, D-N.J., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We can't be blind to the impact of generations of racism and white supremacy that were written into our laws over centuries.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Bob Woodson is the President and the founder of the Woodson Institute, and a frequent guest in the show. We are always honored to have him. Mr. Woodson, thanks very much for joining us tonight.
BOB WOODSON, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, WOODSON INSTITUTE: Pleased to be here, Tucker.
CARLSON: So you've been around politics a long time -- many, many decades, have you ever seen a moment where attacking the country was a centerpiece of anyone's political campaign for President?
WOODSON: I haven't, but let me say that I really think that I disagree a little bit with Heather Mac Donald. I don't think we need to fight their arguments with a counter argument, we must confront them with a counter experience.
And black America are among the strongest supporters of America. We fought in every war and not a single black was ever tried for treason.
CARLSON: Yes.
WOODSON: Also, we, as a people fought for the promise of America, against this problems of racism. So we need to go to those communities that all of those politicians are talking about, and work with and identify grassroots leaders who are black in there, who use the principles of our founders, as the principal means, who deliver themselves, redeem themselves from self- destructive behavior, from drugs and alcohol. And because they are the living witnesses that America is defined by its promise.
For example, we have with -- in the face of racism, we've built hospitals, we built insurance companies, hotels. These are the stories of how we achieved against the odds.
We had 20 blacks, who were born slaves, who died millionaires, some of them actually went back into those plantations and purchase them, where they were enslaved and even took in the families of the slave masters.
So if blacks were able to achieve these great feats in the presence of race -- raw racism, the jury racism, then right they can be used today. So these same principles are in our lives. But we must give voice to the people suffering the problem to speak for themselves, every one of those white and black candidates do not live in those communities suffering the problem, and therefore they cannot speak of it.
CARLSON: Good point.
WOODSON: But so we -- we've got to give them the voice to speak for themselves, and they will give a different message than what you're hearing. We love this country. We fought for this country. We fought for its promise. We achieved in a face of racism, not in the absence of it.
CARLSON: Right. It's a wise point, and the implication of what you just said is it's the people who live in the richest neighborhoods who are the most hostile to America, it's bewildering. Thank you.
WOODSON: They really are -- a lot of these black scholars are angrier than Frederick Douglass.
CARLSON: It's a deep point. Robert Woodson, thank you very much. Good to see you tonight. Thank you.
WOODSON: Thank you.
CARLSON: In order to fix the problem of racism, Democrats say they want to create a very real problem by opening the nation's prisons. That's after for the break. Plus, the left loves to tell you that illegal immigration is part of global warming. Is there any evidence that's actually true? Since we're all about science, we will tell you in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, and if you were in the country then, you'll remember, America suffered a crime wave unmatched in its entire history.
In 1990, for example, more than 2,200 people were murdered in New York City alone, that's six people every single day. Crime defined New York City. That's no longer true. The crime wave ended thankfully. New York and other major cities became livable again. Real estate prices went up. Everyone benefited. The poor and vulnerable, most of all.
But now, the more decadent elements of the left wants to turn back the clock. 2020 presidential candidates are promising that if elected, they will release more than a million convicted felons back into your neighborhood. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Do you commit to cutting incarceration by 50 percent, if elected?
BIDEN: We can do more than that. The answer is yes.
QUESTION: Thank you.
BIDEN: But I've got a better plan than you guys have.
BUTTIGIEG: We need an aggressive plan to cut incarceration by half in this country. And I'm convinced we can do it without an increase in crime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Jonathan Harris is a Democratic political commentator and he joins us tonight. Mr. Harris, thanks very much for coming on. So they're talking about releasing more than a million felons back on to the streets. Do you think most people are in favor of that?
JONATHAN HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think what they're referring to is not -- I mean, I think when you say felon, I think you're talking -- you're thinking of, you know, these boogymen that are -- you know, that should be locked away forever. I think they're talking about people who are --
CARLSON: No, no I am talking about people who are locked away, because that's what they're promising, to release half of all prison inmates. They are, by definition, felons.
HARRIS: Right, no, what I'm saying is, in other words, that we believe that -- they are locked away, but that we believe they should be locked away. But there are people that I think what they're talking about, moreover, is just people who maybe are not necessarily felons, but people are also proposing people who are nonviolent offenders, drug offenders, things like that, releasing them out into the society. We've incarcerated more people in this country --
CARLSON: Wait, hold on, I'm sorry. I'm not going to let you get a field of what they actually said. People running -- major candidates, Pete Buttigieg among others, we just played the tape are promising to let out half of all prison inmates in the United States. They are not non-violent offenders. Half of inmates are not nonviolent offenders. So that's a lot of violent felons.
HARRIS: Right.
CARLSON: They are going to get released -- a lot -- by definition. So is that a winning message? With make this country better?
HARRIS: What I'm saying is that as the United States is known for incarcerating more people than any other country in the world, I think what people believe is that there are some people who maybe don't need to be incarcerated. There are some people that we should maybe let back out into society that don't pose a threat to us and that is the core of their message. All 2020 Democrats don't have the same platform on the issue.
CARLSON: That's not what they are arguing, that's not -- hold on, that's not what they're arguing. And I think what you just said is, it's not a crazy idea. Of course, there are people who shouldn't be in prison and who pose no threat.
An 80-year-old convicted felon, let them out. I get it. But 50 percent of all prison inmates, that's not, you know, nonviolent offenders, that's a wholesale prison break. They would completely change this country forever. The crime rate would spike, there's no way around it. And that's why no one has ever proposed that before.
HARRIS: I think a prison break sort of implies that there's criminals running out of jail in some sort of breakout, what they're talking about is legally --
CARLSON: Well, letting half of them out. Okay.
HARRIS: Right. That wouldn't be illegal, it wouldn't prison break. I mean, they wouldn't be breaking out of prison, they would be being legally released from prison.
And the idea behind that, like I said, all 20-plus Democrats running for the presidency don't have the exact same policy on that. But most of them agree that there are low level offenders right up to depending on what their platform is, what you reference, but that, again, being the nation that incarcerates the most people in the world, we probably could survive letting some of those people out.
There is an entire industrial complex built on prison labor and incarcerating people who are predominantly marginalized people.
CARLSON: Look, I understand what the talking points are. The fact is, this was an incredibly dangerous and violent country when I was a kid, and it no longer is. And one of the main reasons for that is because we locked a lot of people up. Now, I'm sure we lock some people up, but didn't deserve to be locked up and kept them locked up for too long. And, you know, I'm sure there are ways we could improve the system.
HARRIS: But you know, that also people --
CARLSON: No doubt. But the bottom line is --
HARRIS: Did you know that there are also people who are locked up that disproportionately impacted people of color, so on so forth, while other people, maybe people of color who committed the same crime who did not get locked up.
CARLSON: But nobody argues -- nobody argues -- but it's such a crock. Hold on.
HARRIS: It's a crock? It's statistically supported by data.
CARLSON: Nobody is arguing that we haul people off the street and put them into prison because of their skin color. That's just -- there's no evidence of that.
HARRIS: You're suggesting that America did not put people in jail because of their skin color? I mean, because we know that of in African- American --
CARLSON: Yes, I am saying that out loud. That's a lie.
HARRIS: And you shouldn't. Because if an African-American committed the exact same crime, we know this with drug statistics for sure that for the same drug offenses, African-Americans are four times as likely to get locked up. It's a fact. It's not my opinion.
CARLSON: So we're racist. So we need to let half of all prison inmates out of prison. All right.
HARRIS: I just gave you data and you disagreed with it.
CARLSON: You didn't give me data of any kind. What you gave me was information which is false.
HARRIS: I just gave you the data on drug offenses for African-Americans being right put away four times as much as their white counterparts for the same crime.
CARLSON: That's untrue.
HARRIS: I didn't make it up.
CARLSON: Actually -- and I wish we had --
HARRIS: It's not untrue.
CARLSON: You did make -- it isn't true. It is untrue. It's not for the same crime, actually.
HARRIS: Okay, you can you can look it up --
CARLSON: But we are out of time, unfortunately.
HARRIS: Okay.
CARLSON: Oh, I have. I wrote a book on it actually. Funny, you mentioned that.
HARRIS: Okay.
CARLSON: Thanks very much.
HARRIS: Thank you.
CARLSON: Every month, tens of thousands of people from dozens of countries are coming into this country illegally -- into the U.S. It's not complicated why they're coming. Our country is rich, other countries are poor. Why wouldn't they want to come? Our leadership class has made it obvious they won't be deported. So of course they aren't. It's not their fault. It's our fault.
But the Democratic candidates say there is an explanation for this that makes it even more our fault. They say migrants are fleeing here because of global warming that we created. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: More drought, more floods, more acidification of the ocean, more rising sea levels, more mass migrations of people.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, D-CALIF., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We would still be in a moment in time where we are seeing shifting populations around the globe, in large part because of climate change.
O'ROURKE: We've got to remember that they are fleeing the deadliest countries on the face of the planet today, compounded by drought that was caused not by God, not by Mother Nature, but by us. Manmade climate change, our emissions, our excesses, our inaction in the face of the facts and the science, when it is that deadly and when you're unable to grow your own food to feed yourself, you have no choice but to come here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: They didn't say stuff like this for years. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, you'll member falsely blamed the Syrian migrant crisis on global warming, too, not on their mismanagement of the world.
The message is obvious. It's America's fault. We're being invaded, because we deserve it and it's immoral to resist. Robert Patillo is an attorney. He joins us tonight to assess this line of argument. Mr. Patillo, thanks very much for coming on.
So I'm a little bit confused by this argument. So we're told -- on the basis of no evidence, by the way -- I should say at the outset, there's no actual scientific data to show that this is real. It's just something that Beto O'Rourke thought up in the car.
But if it is true, and people are fleeing global warming, why are they moving to the hottest states in the country? Why aren't they coming to Maine or Minnesota? Seriously?
ROBERT PATILLO, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Well, Tucker, that part, we share contiguous land border through the southwest United States, which is the hottest part of the country, and they had the option of coming directly to Maine or Vermont, then of course, that's where they will be coming directly. However, you can walk --
CARLSON: Of course, they have the option. They're all over -- wait, hold on. They are over the country. Iowa is filled with illegal aliens, but the bulk, totally overwhelming majority are in our hottest states. They can move internally, we don't have internal passports. I am serious.
PATILLO: Well, what we need -- what we have to do is have a border solution where people feel comfortable moving throughout the country where we have an asylum system that works for regular individuals, where we reform -- where instead of having 40 years of talk on immigration, you find a solution.
Remember, when we talk about global warming, this isn't about the U.S. being immoral, this is a global issue. If you look at the migrant crisis in Africa, people aren't dying by the hundreds crossing the Mediterranean to get to Europe, because they're trying to get to America.
What they're doing is fleeing climate change in the equator. If you look at Myanmar, if you look at Thailand, if you look at Southeast Asia, they have the exact same issue. It's a global problem looking for global solutions.
CARLSON: But let me -- then let me ask you a question then. When was the last time you heard a Democratic politician note the truth, which is that China is by far the world's greater -- greatest emitter of carbon? So if you believe that global climate change is being driven by carbon emissions, you should be mad at China. When was the last time you heard any Democrat running for any office mention that? Ever?
PATILLO: That was part of the Paris Climate Accord. So of course, China and India both in the developing world has to be held accountable and held to Western standards. They have to stop emitting those --
CARLSON: When was the last time you heard the Democrats say that? Say, "Hey, China, why don't you stop building coal plants."
PATILLO: Obama said it continuously --
CARLSON: I've never heard a single person say that ever.
PATILLO: Obama said it continuously through is administration. That was part of the negotiations on the Paris Climate Accord. It is a global solution which is needed.
CARLSON: Oh, they let them continue to build coal plants.
PATILLO: So we have to walk through.
CARLSON: Okay.
PATILLO: No, we need --
CARLSON: Right, the Paris Climate Accord has allowed China to continue --
PATILLO: Look, Tucker what you have to understand --
CARLSON: Increasing their carbon emissions.
PATILLO: China has invested more in planting forest than America has in the last hundred years. China has invested more in solar panels than the U.S. has in the last 50 years. So if China is already making --
CARLSON: It's such a lie. They are still -- they are building coal plants now.
PATILLO: China is making progress.
CARLSON: All right.
PATILLO: Look, China is transitioning to the global renewable economy. America is lagging behind. That is going to be the party of the future.
CARLSON: China is the good guy, we are the bad guy. Got it.
PATILLO: No, I never said China was a good guy. I said, this is a global problem that we have to address with global solutions.
CARLSON: They are doing it better than we are.
PATILLO: Myanmar, Bangladesh, Africa, and Central America all have the same issue.
CARLSON: All right, we are out of time, Mr. Patillo. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Well, for years powerful people cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein, even though it was an open secret that he preyed upon little girls. What does that tell you about the people in charge of our country? It does tell you something. Will be much more specific after the break.
Also, the President was attacked for calling Puerto Rican politicians corrupt? Maybe he was right. Maybe there's evidence. Maybe there are indictments to prove it. All of that after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The Jeffrey Epstein scandal is so salacious and filthy and weird that sometimes it's hard to believe it isn't being copied from a novel. Epstein is supposedly a billionaire, yet nobody seems sure how exactly he made his money. What does he do for a living? Nobody knows.
His home is full of bizarre features like artificial eyeballs or a chessboard with pieces model on his staff supposedly, but the most disconcerting part of the saga is just how many people are tied to it. Basically everyone you've ever heard of, dozens of famous, rich, influential people turned out to be friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
His predatory behavior toward teenage girls was apparently an open secret everyone knew, and yet he remained a free man for decades. Michael Warren Davis is a contributor to "The American Conservative." He just wrote a very smart piece warning that the Epstein scandal is quote, "how revolutions begin." He joins us tonight.
Mr. Davis, thanks very much for coming on. What did you mean this is how revolutions begin?
MICHAEL WARREN DAVIS, CONTRIBUTOR, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE: Well, like I said in the piece, stories like this break, and you can really see why the French decided to march their aristocracy into the sweet embrace of Madame La Guillotine.
Tucker, people used to believe in this thing called the Hellfire Club. The rich and powerful would meet in secret for these weird, opulent orgies. And they protected each other. And that's the crucial thing because they all had blackmail on each other.
Coming to find the Hellfire Club is 100 percent real. You know this cabal of depraved decadent elites, it really exists. And Jeffrey Epstein, a Clinton donor, a close personal friend of President Clinton, he is at the center of it.
CARLSON: So this is the kind of story where people looking on decide actually the system is every bit as rotten as I suspected it was, maybe more rotten, and it makes them radical.
DAVIS: That's right, I think -- I think Jeffrey Epstein will do to the D.C. establishment what ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick did to the Church, sadly. Everyone in the Catholic hierarchy knew about Cardinal McCarrick. Everyone knew that he was preying on altar boys and seminarians, even people who we consider good bishops, otherwise good bishops knew about McCarrick, and by and large, they did nothing.
And it's the same thing with the admissions scandal. You know, everyone knew that these celebrities were paying for their children to go to the Ivy League. That was an open secret. But when the story broke, everyone pretended to be surprised.
It's the same -- it is the same thing and people look at the system and they say it's rigged. And you know what? It is. It is rigged.
CARLSON: It is. And you're absolutely right, the Hellfire Club. That is -- thank you for joining us and for explaining that. Excellent piece this morning. Appreciate it.
DAVIS: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Early this year, the President lamented on Twitter that while the people of Puerto Rico are great, he said the islands governing class is corrupt and has ruined but could otherwise be a wealthy place. For saying that, he was of course called, you guessed it, a racist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: This morning after attacking Puerto Rican leaders for how they've spent their hurricane recovery money, President Trump tweeted that quote, "The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This man is the one who was capable of failing casinos. And he's failed, you know, 3.1 million Americans in Puerto Rico.
MATTHEWS: Do you think it's a question of politics that he doesn't see those people out there and the island as his constituents because they can't vote in presidential elections? Or is it just a disdain for minority people? Or what? Why does he talk disdainfully of Puerto Rico?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's vintage racist Trump.
MATTHEWS: He suggests their money is going down the hole and nobody is got anything done with it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: "A disdain for minority people." Well, it turns out, he was right. The President was. This one week, apparently he was right, six Puerto Rican leaders, including the Commonwealth's former Education Secretary were arrested for allegedly steering Federal funds to politically connected, but unqualified contractors. In other words, stealing reconstruction money.
Danny Coulson is a former Deputy Assistant Director of the F.B.I. He once worked in Puerto Rico, and he joins us tonight for some perspective. So when you saw Danny, the President tweet that people of Puerto Rico are great, but their leadership is corrupt, and you saw him attacked for that, what was your reaction?
DANNY COULSON, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE F.B.I.: No, I agreed with him. I worked there for many years as an agent, as a commander. Puerto Rico is absolutely lovely, it's a great place to visit. It has a lot of potential, but there's a lot of corruption there.
And Tucker, I really blame the Federal government for that corruption, frankly. You don't throw that much money at a situation with no strings attached to it. There has to be a master, somebody that decides how this money is spent. If you don't, they are going to steal it.
And whether it's Puerto Rico, or Houston or New Orleans, any place else in the world, or in the United States where we have these disasters, we can't just throw money, we have to control the money. And the losers here very frankly, are the people of Puerto Rico. They lost dramatically, and they're still suffering because of it.
CARLSON: So I mean, it's not compassionate to just send a bunch of money to corrupt politicians and let them squander it. You're not helping anybody, are you?
COULSON: No, not at all. And, you know, if you're going to take the money, there has to be control. Somebody is in charge of how you let contracts, how you bid them, how you allocate the money so that it goes to the people. That's primarily, Tucker, the problem of their whole foreign aid program.
We send millions and billions of dollars overseas, and very little of it gets to the people who need it. And we need to rethink how we do that. There needs to be somebody from our government that's in charge that has experience to be sure it gets to the right places, or we're just throwing money down the drain.
CARLSON: You think we would have that already, but apparently we don't. Danny Coulson, great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.
COULSON: Thank you. It's always good to talk to you. Thanks.
CARLSON: Finally, a respite from the craziest, "Final Exam," the question is, can you do better than our experts at remembering the weird things that happened over the past seven days. Great contestants tonight. Spine tingling competition. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, it's time now for "Final Exam" where the news professionals compete to see who is the master of everything that happened in the last week. This week's first contestant is Fox's eminent medical contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel. He knows a lot about medicine and science. How good is he on the rest of news? He will be challenging our five-time defending champion, "The Five" cohost, graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, whatever that says about him, Jesse Watters.
MARC SIEGEL, MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: I haven't been this nervous since medical school.
CARLSON: You have the Trinity man versus the physician. You know, I don't know who is going to win.
JESSE WATTERS, HOST: Me neither.
SIEGEL: Three times in a row winner.
CARLSON: Good luck to you, both. Yes, he is good. Okay, so you know the rules. I'm going to repeat them for our audience. Hands on buzzers. I ask the questions. First one to buzz in gets to answer the question. You have to wait until I finish asking before you answer. You can answer once I acknowledge you by saying your name.
Every correct answer is worth a single point. If you get one wrong, we subtract the point. Best of five wins. Are you ready?
WATTERS: I am ready.
SIEGEL: Nervous, very nervous.
CARLSON: Doctor, I know you're going to do great. All right. Question one. This is a multiple choice. Wait for all the options. For the fourth year in a row, the famed competitive eater Joey Chestnut has won the Fourth of July Nathan's Hotdog Eating Contest. How many hot dogs did he scarf down in 10 minutes? Was it A. 71? B. 73? Or was it C. 75?
SIEGEL: It was 73, B.
CARLSON: B. Our judges say this is your first time on the show, so we're going to we're going to ignore the rule violation of you going early. We're going to let you answer B. 73 says Dr. Siegel. Is it 73. Here's the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And Joey "Jaws" Chestnut is still top dog winning his 12th Nathan's Hotdog Eating Contest yesterday. The 35-year-old dominated in the annual Coney Island competition. He devoured 71 francs in 10 minutes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Ouch. Ouch. I mean, it was in the 70s. But unfortunately, precision matters in heart surgery and "Final Exam." So we're going to subtract a point tragically, doctor. But you've got a number of more questions to redeem yourself, Question two. Here it is. A statue in the likeness of the First Lady Melania Trump has just been unveiled in her hometown, back in Slovenia. Some people say it looks like her, others say it looks nothing like her. Which material was used to make the statue? Jesse Watters.
WATTERS: I believe it was carved with a chainsaw.
CARLSON: Out of what? What material?
WATTERS: Wood.
CARLSON: I hope you're right because that's such a great answer. Was it carved with a chainsaw out of wood? To the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And a wood carved statue of First Lady Melania Trump is unveiled in her hometown in Slovenia. It shows the First Lady waving in the blue outfit she wore to President Trump's Inauguration in 2017.
The work was commissioned by an American artist and carved into a tree with a chainsaw.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: All right.
CARLSON: Nice. We need more wooden statues. They don't last forever, but they're beautiful.
WATTERS: They are. Just like the First Lady.
SIEGEL: They warp in the rain.
CARLSON: They warp in the rain. We're going to stop that metaphor right there. All right, question three. There was a parade in New York City this week for the U.S. women's soccer team. It was interrupted by a presidential candidate who tried to steal the spotlight for himself, greedily. He even led the crowd in an awkward chant. Which presidential candidate did this at the parade?
SIEGEL: Hey, my buzzer.
WATTERS: It's got to be --
CARLSON: Jesse Watterse.
WATTERS: Mayor Bill de Blasio.
CARLSON: I always forget he is a presidential candidate.
WATTERS: Yes, so does everybody else.
CARLSON: In addition to being of course, your mayor. Was it Bill de Blasio, the nation's worst Mayor?
SIEGEL: Yes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DE BLASIO: I want to hear one more deafening roar because of what they stand for. Let me hear you say it, "USA, equal pay. USA equal pay."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: All right.
CARLSON: Bill de Blasio, you were on it. All right. Question four is a two point question. Dr. Siegel, this is where you move back into full position.
SIEGEL: I hope so.
CARLSON: This is a multiple -- this is multiple choice. So keep in mind, you need to wait for every option to be explained before answering. Here it is. PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- wants to change the name of a rural road in the State of Idaho because that road is named after a meat dish. What is the name of the road? Is it A -- there are three options here? Is it A. Buffalo Wing Way? Is it B. Drumstick Drive? Or is it C. Chicken Dinner Road? Dr. Siegel.
SIEGEL: Chicken Dinner Road.
CARLSON: Is it Chicken -- this is for two points now. Is it Chicken Dinner Road?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED HENRY, CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Let's talk about Chicken Dinner Road, which I understand that is in Caldwell, Idaho and apparently, PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are upset. They sent this letter out to the Mayor of Caldwell, Idaho, "Chickens are intelligent, sensitive animals who feel pain and empathy and form strong bonds with one another and they shouldn't be considered dinner."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, I don't know how you would know that, Dr. Siegel, but I'm very impressed that you did. All right, so going into the final question again a two pointer.
WATTERS: Okay.
CARLSON: We are one with Dr. Siegel, two Jesse waters. This is a multiple choice. Keep in mind another multiple choice. Here it is. There's a new social media challenge a lot of people apparently are doing online. It has people attempting to unscrew a bottle cap with their foot while doing a martial arts roundhouse kick. Doubtless, both of you have done this. What is the name of the challenge? Is it A. The bottle cap challenge? B. The water bottle flip challenge? Or C. The high kick water cap challenge?
WATTERS: The answer is A. The bottle cap challenge.
SIEGEL: Yes, that's what I think, too.
CARLSON: You sound very Jesse Watters, you sound very certain of that. I have no idea if you're right. Are you? Let's go to the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a new song media challenge. It's all the rage online. Smitty has tried it and his entire family has it, too. Yes, he is. The bottle cap challenge. Oh, that's pretty good. That takes some skill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, it's not like it's all the way up the bottle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: I've done the challenge.
CARLSON: Jesse Watters, ladies and gentlemen, for yet another win. Have you -- have you done it?
WATTERS: I did. But I didn't successfully kick it off. I tried.
CARLSON: Don't do that.
SIEGEL: Tucker, I have to work on my buzzer reflexes here. I have buzzer delay.
CARLSON: I think -- you know what? It's such a practice and we will have you back.
SIEGEL: Good.
CARLSON: Doctor, you are one of our favorite guest, as always.
SIEGEL: I knew he was going to get the last one.
CARLSON: Congratulations, Jesse Watters. Now, we have a new -- we have a new prize that we're going to send you because we sent you the golf balls and I think we sent you the mugs. This is the mouth breather tote bag. It's got a picture of a man --
WATTERS: Oh, I am bringing that to the beach.
CARLSON: You can get it at tuckercarlson.com, if you're not playing the show. Great to see you, guys. Thank you both very much.
SIEGEL: Thanks, Tucker.
WATTERS: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Thank you.
CARLSON: That's it for this week's "Final Exam." Pay close attention to the news particularly the weird news all week. Tune in Thursdays to see if you can beat our professionals. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: For three months, Facebook's community standards explained to users that they were not allowed to advocate violence unless it was toward Alex Jones or someone else Facebook didn't like.
Starting in April, up until this week, Facebook community standards stated that users could not advocate extreme violence or post death threats, quote, "Unless the target is an organization or individual covered in the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations Policy." It was that, while Facebook's Dangerous Individuals and Organizations list is simply a list of people and groups Facebook doesn't like.
Alex Jones, InfoWars are on that list. So is Louis Farrakhan, so is Milo Yiannopoulos, and others whose only crime is the views they hold that Facebook doesn't like. Want them murdered? Well, Facebook said that was fine. We contacted Facebook about this policy yesterday.
They replied by telling us they had changed their policy and provided this statement to us. Quote, "We don't allow credible threats of violence against anyone. Our intent was to cover things like calls for the death penalty or support for military action against violent actors. We've updated our community standards to be more clear about that." Thank you, Facebook. We're happy about that. Happy that Facebook is no longer tolerating violent threats against political dissidents. Of course, they're still silencing them.
Well, one group they aren't silencing though was Antifa. Al-Qaeda and ISIS may get more headlines, but in America, Antifa has become the terror group that poses a much greater threat to your rights than maybe any other in the country.
Journalist, Andy Ngo learned that the hard way last month when they nearly killed him, as he attempted to cover an Antifa protest in Portland. Watch.
(VIDEO CLIP OF ANTIFA PROTEST PLAYS)
CARLSON: So these days, it usually isn't the government that blocks your ability to speak or to assemble freely, instead Antifa gangs harass you in public while big tech silences you online.
Now, a new legal fund aims to combat both of these threats to your liberties. Harmeet Dhillon is an actual Civil Rights attorney and the founder of publiuslex.com. She joins us tonight. Harmeet, great to see you.
HARMEET DHILLON, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Hey, Tucker.
CARLSON: Tell us the purpose, the aim of the group that you just started?
DHILLON: Well, Tucker, I've been a Civil Rights attorney for most of my career, over 25 years and I saw a real gap in the Civil Rights establishment, which is that when it comes to increasingly First Amendment rights in general, but particularly the rights of anybody who is anywhere on the right, or anybody who is marginalized and not part of the popular woke movement, there's no place for them in the Civil Rights community.
And so I started this nonprofit last year. It was approved by the IRS for nonprofit status earlier this year. And we aim to fill the gaps that the Civil Rights community doesn't fill, like the ACLU no longer cares about First Amendment issues, certainly not for people on my side of the spectrum.
But this is not a partisan organization. It's simply there to help people who are ignored. So Andy Ngo is the first client of PublisuLex. We are also hoping to help people who are being marginalized by Big Tech and oppressed by the government.
And so, you know, I've sued the City of San Jose, I've sued Google. We're looking at legal action in Portland, and so all of these things are things that are dear to my heart, and hopefully, there will be many attorneys joining me to help take these cases.
CARLSON: I assume you expect to be censored by Big Tech in your efforts to protect consumers against Big Tech?
DHILLON: Oh, I'm sure I already am, you know, tweets that should have thousands of likes, have hundreds et cetera. I think this is a common issue. It's something that we talked about at the White House today actually.
CARLSON: How did that meeting go?
DHILLON: It was very interesting. There were a lot of people from across the sort of Twitter verse, different walks of life and so forth. But what they had in common was a passion for free speech and making sure that their voices are heard. And so we had some great conversations privately, and also with the bigger group about what was happening and some great Members of Congress. We talked about potential legislative analyses.
Ultimately, I'm very skeptical of anything that doesn't really impact what they're doing with respect to the immunity that they have from lawsuits under Communications Decency Act, Section 230.
And so I think that to me, as an attorney, I think the first thing that needs to get done is to rein in those definitions and make sure that only the speech that was meant to be protected when the statute was passed, is what is protected. Now, it's really gotten out of control, Tucker, the courthouse doors are virtually barred to anybody who wants to sue for their rights, even with breach of contract, antitrust issues, anything like that.
You know, Big Tech has got its finger on the scale, and they own a lot of politicians and a lot of think tanks in D.C., and so it's an epic struggle.
CARLSON: Even the antitrust think tank takes money. It takes money for the big tech trusts, which really tells you everything about the depth of the corruption. Harmeet Dhillon, you're one of the very few people standing in opposition to the totalitarian impulses of Big Tech and we're grateful for that. Good luck with this.
DHILLON: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Harmeet Dhillon, one of the very rare people to see early on that the greatest threat to your liberty probably at this stage in American history, not coming from the U.S. government, but coming from companies with more power than any private organization has ever wielded. Google at the very top of that list.
Well that's it for us tonight. We'll be back tomorrow, 8:00 p.m. The show that is the sworn and totally sincere enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. DVR it if you can figure out how to operate that and if you can, send us a note, we will be absolutely impressed.
Next, 9:00 p.m. hosting that show live from New York City, we have a special surprise for you, ladies and gentlemen.
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