Tucker: COVID-19 a 'global fraud' by China that cost American lives

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This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" December 2, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST:  We've got news from Staten Island, New York
at this hour. A large group of people gathering at this moment outside a
bar called Mac's Public House. 

Last night, authorities dragged one of the owners of that restaurant away
in handcuffs. They said he was defying the state's lockdown rules. We spoke
to him on Monday. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

KEITH MCALARNEY, CO-OWNER OF MAC'S PUBLIC HOUSE:  So it brought us to a
point that they're saying that they were shutting us down again, that they
weren't allowing inside dining, and I was put against the wall. 

It's either I took a stance and ended up opening my cantina to keep my
establishment open, open to people in that come in who spend money so I can
pay bills and end up providing for my family. I'm so behind on bills that
I've really felt I had no other choice. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  He spoke out in public, and then the police came and arrested
him, and in just a minute, we will take you live to the scene. That moment
is unfolding. 

We'll speak the restaurant owner about what happened and what he plans to
do next. 

But first, tonight, good evening. Welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
There's a lot going on in the news today, a lot about voter fraud in the
last election and we're going to bring you the very latest on that in just
a moment. 

But first, a larger deceit, a more profound one. News about a global fraud
that began long before Election Day here and has since ruined millions of
lives, killed hundreds of thousands, and by the way, without question
deeply affected the outcome of our presidential election here in the United
States: the coronavirus pandemic. And it's not what we thought it was.
We've been lied to. 

The latest evidence comes from samples collected during Red Cross blood
drives last year, and now analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control. In a
study published on Monday, researchers tested 39 blood samples from the
States of California, Washington and Oregon. That blood was collected
between December 13 and December 16, 2019. 

At the time, no one in the United States had heard of COVID-19. The Chinese
government didn't even acknowledge its existence until December 31st. And
yet every one of those samples just tested has come back positive for the
coronavirus antibodies -- all of them. 

Keep in mind that antibodies don't develop for at least a week after
exposure to the virus. That means the Wuhan coronavirus was being
transmitted throughout the American population far earlier, possibly months
earlier than we were told. 

What does that mean exactly? And how did it happen? 

We don't know yet how it happened, but we know for certain that it did. The
C.D.C. has found dozens more positive samples from blood test taken
beginning at the end of December, and they found them in many other parts
of the country, across the country: Michigan, Iowa, and Massachusetts. 

Analysis of tests in other countries has shown even earlier spread of the
virus. Scientists now know the virus, the coronavirus spread to Italy as
early as last September and to South America two months later in November. 

So clearly what we have been told for almost a year about the origins of
the coronavirus is not true. 

Why are we just learning this now a month after a presidential election?
We've had reliable antibody tests since the summer. So no one thought to
test Red Cross blood samples until now? Why weren't elected officials
demanding a coherent account of where this virus -- this virus that has
changed American history forever -- where this virus came from? How it got
to the United States and how it spread through our population? Why don't we
know that yet? Because nobody seemed to care. 

Our elected officials were too busy enjoying their newfound power. They
were shutting down small businesses, arresting people for kayaking without
masks. 

Back in January, 11 months ago, the Department of Homeland Security warned
that American airports could be ground zero for a new pandemic. But
Congress yawned. They were occupied that day. 

On January 24th, a day when these blood samples now prove the virus had
already spread across the continent, the Trump administration held a
classified briefing on the coronavirus for the entire U.S. Senate, but only
14 senators showed up for it. Why was that? 

Well, that briefing was held on the very same day as the deadline for
senators to submit their questions for impeachment. So the people in charge
of protecting the country were not worried about coronavirus. Instead, they
were standing in front of their mirrors rehearsing their star turns, the
moment when they could finally confront Alan Dershowitz about the dreaded
Zelensky phone call. 

Now they're claiming the pandemic caught them completely by surprise. How
did they get away with that? They get away with it because our public
health establishment gives them cover and has all year. 

Two days before that classified Senate briefing that only 14 senators
showed up for, Dr. Tony Fauci went on television to reassure Americans they
could relax. Calm down, America. You can trust the Chinese government. If
the Chinese are telling us that this virus jumped from a pangolin in a wet
market, and no one even knew it existed until New Year's Eve and we're
doing our very best to contain it, then that's what happened. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  China has been known to fiddle with their stats before.
Do you trust what they are telling us about this illness? 

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS
DISEASES:  From what I can see right now, they really are being much, much
more transparent than what happened with SARS where they really kept back
information for a while. It was embarrassing to them. 

They're really transparent now. They put the sequence of the virus up on
the public database right away. So in that respect, they've been
transparent. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  "They're really transparent now," said Dr. Anthony Fauci. Now, in
a well-functioning country, a line like that would make certain that you
never work in public policy again. Transparent? Transparently dishonest. We
know that for certain. 

Chinese officials are now claiming the virus came to their country from
somewhere else, it arrived in frozen food; possibly as a bio weapon staged
by the U.S. military. They're not saying that in secret, they're saying it
on social media. 

But so far, Twitter hasn't bothered to fact check that claim. Like Tony
Fauci, Silicon Valley trusts China -- trust China far more than they trust
you. 

Ron Klain trusts China, too. Ron Klain is Joe Biden's pick for White House
Chief of Staff. 

On January 27th of this year, Klain told AXIOS that China has been quote,
"More transparent and more candid than it has been during past outbreaks."
Why did Ron Klain think that? Possibly because the World Health
Organization told him to think so. 

On January 8, the W.H.O. funded of course by the Chinese government
released a similar message. Here it is, quote, "Preliminary identification
of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and
demonstrates China's increased capacity to manage new outbreaks." It was
like a press release. 

In other words, the rest of us ought to be thanking the government of China
for the blessing of COVID-19. Much appreciated. 

A week later, the W.H.O. was back with more demonstrably untrue propaganda
straight from their overlords in Beijing. Quote, "Preliminary
investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear
evidence of human to human transmission of the novel coronavirus." That was
yet another dangerous lie that without question cost American lives. But
Twitter didn't fact check that either. 

Instead, the American media as a group dutifully amplified the message.
China did nothing wrong, they told us. Anyone who suggests otherwise, who
suggests this thoroughly Chinese virus came from China is by definition a
racist. Whose fault is it that Americans are dying from the virus? It's
America's fault. It's your fault. Stop asking questions. 

And by the way, they're still saying that. So thorough was the news
blackout on the origins of this virus, the Chinese origins that you had to
go to Australian television to find out what was actually happening. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  From the very beginning throughout December, it was
spreading. And we now know it was spreading human to human. But the
official line of the Chinese government was that this was all related to an
animal market, and once they closed the market, it would all go away. 

QUESTION:  Did they know differently at that time? 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Absolutely. Because they were seeing cases coming
into the hospitals that had nothing whatsoever to do with that animal
market. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  It had nothing whatsoever to do with that animal market. Viewers
of Australian television knew that. Viewers of American television had no
idea. American TV channels were pursuing little packages on the pangolin.
What's a pangolin? It had nothing to do with the pangolin or bats or the
wet market. 

You'll remember a few weeks ago, we interviewed a Chinese virologist, Dr.
Li-Meng Yan on the show, and she fled her country with a message for us.
This virus she said came from a government lab in China. She said she knew
that. 

In her own country, she would have been punished, possibly killed for
saying so. So she came here to the land of the free. What did she find? She
found her words censored by American tech companies working in tandem with
a tyrant she fled. 

Once again you had to go to "60 Minutes" Australia to learn what was
happening to people like Dr. Li-Meng Yan. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  As China now tries to rewrite history and claim it
was transparent all along, a final nail in the coffin of their lie. 

Just two weeks ago, the head of emergency at Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr. Ai
Fen also went public, saying authorities had stopped her and her colleagues
from warning the world. She has now disappeared. Whereabouts unknown. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  Internal documents now prove that Chinese officials knew they
were facing a coronavirus pandemic, something they'd never seen before, but
they hid that information from the world and they arrested those who tried
to report it. 

More critically, millions of people continued to travel through the City of
Wuhan in Central China, the epicenter of the pandemic. Then more than a
million Chinese citizens flew here to the United States, more than a
million. 

It wasn't until January 20th that the President of China, Xi Jinping
finally admitted the virus could be contagious, it could spread from person
to person. Now, what is that? At best, it's criminal negligence. At worst,
it's something like mass murder. 

But no said the World Health Organization, in fact, it was just more
evidence that the Chinese Communist Party was doing an extraordinary job
managing the pandemic and the American media hardly agreed. 

Watch this amazing clip from late March. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

DR. BRUCE AYLWARD, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE DIRECTOR GENERAL, WORLD HEALTH
ORGANIZATION:  Right now, there's very, very few countries that have
actually been able to reverse this epidemic and bring their case down to a
very low level. And in fact, the only country that has done that is China. 

It was the passion, the diligence, the sense of responsibility, the
seriousness of the average Chinese and I want to use that term very
carefully, because they weren't average. They're extraordinary people, but
they were driven by a sense of collective responsibility. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the passion and diligence and
sense of responsibility and seriousness of the Chinese, they're
extraordinary people. It's in the blood. They're driven and we want to
quote this verbatim because it's important for the rest of us to learn from
our mistakes. The Chinese are driven by, quote, "a sense of collective
responsibility." Contrast that with us, fat, lazy, Trump voting American,
so selfish and short sighted, we demand to go to church on Sundays or go
out to dinner with our families once in a while. And then deservedly we get
sick and die. 

Not Xi Jinping and the obedient communist nation he leads, they found a
better way. 

That's the message from our media. It's the message from our health
establishment. It's the message from our elected officials, and it has been
for almost a year. 

But it's not the whole story. We know that now. We're still not even close
to knowing what really happened. We should find out. 

Alex Berenson has been one of the very few people in media to cover this
pandemic honestly, no matter where his reporting leads from day one. He is
the author of "Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns, Part 3"
which is about masks and worth reading. Alex Berenson joins us tonight. 

So Alex, this seems like significant information. And it seems like the
C.D.C. study prove that this virus was circulating among our population
long before we were told it was. What do you make of this? 

ALEX BERENSON, AUTHOR:  So let me correct you on just one point. 

CARLSON:  Yes. 

BERENSON:  You said it in your monologue, which is that the C.D.C. study
showed that they actually sampled about 1,900 blood samples in that time
period in the December time period -- December 2019 time period and they
found that two percent of those 1,900, or 39, people were positive. So it
wasn't at all 39 that were positive, it was 39 out of 1,900, which actually
makes more sense, because what it suggests is that this virus was possibly
circulating at a sort of relatively low level. 

And as we know, this virus is so not dangerous to sort of younger, healthy
people who are likely to be in that blood donor cohort, that it's quite
possible that none of them even knew they had it or they felt they had the
flu. But what you said more broadly is totally correct. 

There's evidence now from all over the world, from wastewater in Brazil,
from wastewater in Italy, from blood samples in Italy, and from this C.D.C.
survey, and also actually from wastewater in Spain, that this was
circulating in the fall of 2019. And we don't know exactly what that means,
Tucker. 

And you know, there are going to be virologists out there who are going to
say it's not proven yet, perhaps this is due to some kind of cross
reactivity with other kinds of coronaviruses that are out there. But it
certainly is very, very strong evidence that this was out there and the
world should be asking, because this resets the timeline, it raises the
question of how dangerous this is if it was circulating for months before
anyone knew. 

And your bigger point is even more important which is the tech companies
and the conventional media including places like "The Times" where I used
to work are just not asking the right questions. They are so focused even
now on punishing Trump and on telling Americans who want to spend time with
their families or you know, or go out and work that they are evil bad
people and that they're not asking real questions about whether lockdowns
work, about where this came from, about whether or not that it might have
escaped from a Chinese lab and about masks. 

I mean, I can't believe that Amazon censored me again about masks, okay? It
is shocking to me that we can't have a discussion about whether or not
masks work when everybody -- not everybody -- many scientists before March
of this year agreed that masks didn't work. 

So our media is -- I don't want to say it's dishonesty, but it's really not
being willing to ask questions that are ideologically difficult. And you're
-- you know, you and about three other people are about the only people
willing to do that right now. 

CARLSON:  That seems like a synonym for dishonesty. But I'm just wondering
why you think this is happening? Why have the people in charge decided
there's no deviation from the official storyline allowed? What is that
about? What are they protecting? What are they afraid of? 

BERENSON:  Well, I mean, clearly before the election, there was -- you
know, anything that might have taken blame away from Donald Trump was
something the media did not want to discuss. I mean, I think we can
actually -- you know, that's quite clear now. 

Now that, you know, Joe Biden is going to take office in January, I don't
know why it is that we're not allowed to challenge China and to be honest,
there are now some eminent biologists and researchers and people -- there's
a guy, Fred Hutch in Seattle, there's a guy named David Relman at Stanford,
I don't know why it's always Stanford, but there's -- you know, he's --
these are people who have labs named after them. Trevor Bedford is one.
David Relman is another who are saying, we need to investigate where this
came from. 

And the even with these people who are no way, you know, Republican Trump
supporters, anything like that, they are biologists, their voices cannot be
heard right now and I don't know why. And I don't know why we can't have a
conversation again about masks either, and at least talk to people about
whether or not they should be wearing them outside, whether or not they --
you know, whether or not children need to wear them. There's so much that's
off limits right now. 

CARLSON:  Yes. We've replaced religion with some weird kind of witchcraft
and it's worrisome. Thank you. Alex Berenson, as always. 

BERENSON:  Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON:  So on Monday, we talked to one of the co-owners of a bar called
Mac's Public House. It's in Staten Island, New York. He told us that his
restaurant was now an autonomous zone and that he would defy the Governor's
coronavirus lockdown. Those lockdowns didn't make any sense to him. You
could walk a block away from Mac's Public House and eat indoors. And he
said that out loud. That might have been a mistake. 

Because last night authorities hauled the co-owner of Mac's Public House, a
man called Danny Presti, away in handcuffs. Tonight right now, a large
group of supporters is gathered outside that restaurant. Co-owner Danny
Presti joins us tonight with his attorney, Lou Gelormino. 

Danny and Lou, thanks so much for coming on. First, tell us Danny, you were
arrested because your business partner said publicly -- this is my
understanding -- that he was defying the orders. What happened? 

DANNY PRESTI, CO-OWNER, MAC'S PUBLIC HOUSE:  We had a little meeting inside
yesterday. I did have some guests in there. The Sheriffs came in. It seemed
like a whole lot of them. 

We were really good with them, really cordial. And after a while, they just
wanted to take me out, it seems, a whole big ordeal. 

CARLSON:  So Lou, Danny was arrested in a city where people push human
beings in front of subway trains and get away with it. What do you think
your client was singled out from all the criminals in New York right now?
For jail? 

LOU GELORMINO, ATTORNEY FOR DANNY PRESTI:  Tucker, thanks for having us. I
have to tell you, my mother-in-law is battling cancer and she is your
absolute biggest fan. But as far as my client goes, they came in, 15
Sheriffs came in yesterday. 

We were peaceful, quiet, respectful and cordial the whole entire time. I
told my clients to be that way. Everybody acted that way. And at the end of
the day, after giving out over $50,000.00 in fines and fining me and giving
me four summonses for just representing my client in a polite, respectful
manner, they gave us $50,000.00 in fines throughout the building and wind
up arresting Danny and putting him in handcuffs and charging him with
disorderly conduct when he never raised his voice and he was in his own
building that he is the lease holder on. 

CARLSON:  It's shocking. Now this is, I should tell our audience, I'm not
sure what we're looking at. This is happening live. What is going on around
you right now? Who are the people outside your bar and what are they
saying? 

GELORMINO:  Tucker, we have 1,500 -- over 1,500 Staten Islanders protesting
tonight. There's probably a thousand left and we are peacefully protesting.
No rioting, no looting. We have about 25 Sheriffs' Deputies out in front of
the place that we're kind of aggressive at times. But we have 1,500 Staten
Islanders in a peaceful protest, protesting and supporting business owners,
local business owners and Danny and Keith and the actions they took to
stand up for themselves and Staten Islanders and business owners
everywhere. 

CARLSON:  So I don't think we've seen a protest like this so far. I expect
we're going to see more in the coming days. But you're saying these are
people protesting the governor and the mayor's corona lockdowns. 

GELORMINO:  Tucker, you've been on it from the beginning. They are
protesting the fact that the governor in all his wisdom splits that now in
half, and considers the South Shore Staten Island an orange zone and the
North Shore State Island a yellow zone, just a block and a half away from
Mac's tavern. Literally a block and a half. 

You can go sit down have a burger and a beer, but at Mac's tavern, you
can't do it. And coincidentally, Tucker, the South Shore Staten Island did
not vote for Governor Cuomo or Mayor de Blasio. 

CARLSON:  The side of the borough that is shut down under corona law now.
Is there a scientific basis for this that you know of? 

GELORMINO:  I don't know, Tucker. I mean, we are using some commonsense.
We'll all use some commonsense and we're going to assume -- I'm not a
scientist, I'm an attorney -- that the COVID virus doesn't stop. It doesn't
stop at the railroad tracks where you can go eat, a block away. 

I'm assuming the COVID virus doesn't stop there, but in Governor Cuomo's
wisdom, I have no idea what science they've used. 

CARLSON:  What are the police doing right now? You said there are Sheriffs'
Deputies on the scene? 

PRESTI:  Yes, the Sheriff is on the scene. They've created a blockade in
front. They won't let anybody in. They said they're not going to leave
anytime soon. We do want to make clear though that they are not the NYPD.
These are the New York City Sheriffs. 

So NYPD has worked with us. Really good guys. We support them fully. This
is the New York City Sheriff Department and they have created a blockade
and will not let anybody in the place except for myself, Keith and Lou. 

DOBBS:  Danny, is your bar open now? 

PRESTI:  He won't -- even if we wanted to try to get in there, they have
literally created a blockade of about 25 Sheriffs standing in front with
barriers. So there's no way anybody can get in right now. 

GELORMINO:  There's a blockade, Tucker, a literal blockade on a small
business. 

CARLSON:  I've got to you this question on the way out, how many confirmed
cases of transmission of the coronavirus have come from Mac's Pub that you
know of? 

PRESTI:  Zero. 

GELORMINO:  Absolutely zero, Tucker. And I think it is zero a block and a
half away where you can eat also. 

CARLSON:  Yes, I just want to establish right dealing with Typhoid Mary
here. 

Danny and Lou, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Good luck. 

GELORMINO:  Thank you, Tucker. Thanks for having us. 

PRESTI:  Thanks for having us. 

GELORMINO:  And thanks for all the work you do. We really appreciate it. 

CARLSON:  Thank you. So night after night, we've brought you scenes like
that from around the country, many in the northeast and in California, of
the state cracking down on everyone without any pretext whatsoever of
scientific basis. There's no study that shows this works. They do it
anyway. 

But one state stands apart from all of this and probably not surprising.
It's the state to which thousands of people from the northeast are moving
every week. It's Florida. 

The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis says that more lockdowns are not
needed in his state, and he joins us now to explain why. Governor, thanks a
lot for coming on. So you took a lot of heat earlier in the year for going
a little lighter on the restrictions in Florida than other states did. Are
you happy with that decision? And what's your posture right now? 

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL):  Well, in Florida, Tucker, as you mentioned all
businesses are open. We've had things like theme parks, beaches open for
months and months. We have schools open all K through 12 school districts,
private schools, charter schools. We have sporting events. 

And I think that for me, I think as you alluded to, a lot of these
lockdowns have been very ineffective. They have huge negative consequences.
And my view is that everybody is essential. Whose government to say that
your job is not essential? I think it is essential. I think some of the
stuff in March and April didn't work. 

I think you have to let people earn a living. And it's really not even
government's role to say who could pick and choose. So we want everyone to
have gainful employment. We want businesses to be able to operate. 

And I think that that's a better approach in terms of understanding that
the virus is a problem. We need to deal with it, but you also have to deal
with all of society. So we've done things like focus on our long term care
facilities, on our elderly population. We're working really hard to deliver
the vaccine to a lot of vulnerable people this month in December. 

But we also are keeping people working, keeping kids in school, and I think
that people are happier here. And I think that's part of the reason why you
have so many people come in here. 

CARLSON:  So I mean, just because government doesn't require people to take
certain precautions doesn't mean they don't. I mean, presumably, some
adults in Florida have decided that they don't want to leave their homes or
they are at risk. I mean, they can still make those choices themselves, can
they not? 

DESANTIS:  Absolutely. And that's from the very beginning. So for example,
we have The Villages retirement community. You know it. Most of your
viewers, a lot of are probably watching, very early on, they made certain
adjustments, they stopped having large indoor events. They dialed back some
other functions, but they were out playing golf every day, they were doing
things that were low risk. 

They were taking adequate precautions and they've been able to tackle this
far better than everybody was predicting. And so I think empowering people
with the information about the risks, and then trusting them to make good
decisions, and also some of the industries that you've been having, these
restaurants that are being targeted. 

Man, you look at some of the restaurants in Florida, they're working hard
to have a great environment for their customers. They want to have that
more than anybody. And I think they've done a great job in the State of
Florida. 

CARLSON:  I have to ask you, because I can't resist. I'm sure you've
noticed this. Throughout the past six months, you've seen flare ups of the
virus in your state, as you've seen in a lot of different places. But when
they happen in Florida, there's a kind of gleeful reporting by the media.
See, Florida is suffering for its sins. Why do you think that members of
the American media would feel joy when fellow Americans get the
coronavirus? 

DESANTIS:  It's all political. Obviously, they have an agenda very
partisan. I think it was an election year. And I think the fact that
Florida was considered a key swing state had a lot to do with it. But you
know, at the end of the day, even when we have had, you know, the Sunbelt
surge, you know, our hospitals worked. We worked with what we had to do.
They would try to say that the hospitals were overcrowded. It just wasn't
factually true. And so we focused a lot on making sure we have that type of
capacity. 

So a lot of it is agenda driven. You look at some of these states that have
way more per capita cases, hospitalizations, mortality, and you would never
know it if all you followed was the Corporate American media. 

CARLSON:  Yes. Well look at where people are moving. That's one statistic
that doesn't lie. You wonder what people really think? Watch what they do.
Congratulations on the success of your state. Governor, thanks a lot for
coming up. 

DESANTIS:  Thank you. 

CARLSON:  So there are still, it looks like over a thousand people outside
that bar on Staten Island. We haven't seen anything like that, so we're
going to continue to monitor that and bring you back if news emerges, and
it may. 

Also developing tonight, some information, new information on some of the
voter fraud that occurred in last month's election. 

In Nevada, for example, photo evidence now appears to show the cash was
exchanged for mail-in votes. Victor Davis Hanson joins us after the break
to assess all of it in detail. We will be right back. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON:  So, you're hearing a lot about voter fraud, hard to keep track of
all the different threads. Some of this is entirely real and we want to
bring it to you. 

So a month after Election Day, dozens of ballots mysteriously turned up in
New York House race that still hasn't been decided. This is one of the most
shocking examples. Lisa Boothe is on it. She is a FOX News contributor, a
senior fellow at the Independent Women's Voice and she has got the story
for us tonight. Hey, Lisa. 

LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR:  Hi, Tucker. Yes, at Chenango
County, they found 55,000 votes, 44,000 of which are valid, 11,000 are not.
This is also the same county that faced a cyberattack right before the
election which they think the origins trace to Hong Kong, but it's not just
at Chenango County in this New York 22nd congressional district that has
raised questions. 

There's also Oneida County as well. They handed over boxes of ballots to
the Oswego Supreme Court. However, among those ballots were objective
ballots, and there are supposed to be sticky notes indicating if those
ballots have been counted or not. However, the sticky notes weren't there.
So no one knows if those ballots were included in the count or not. 

And then also, last weekend, there were two counties that had errors --
admitted errors, tabulation errors as well, and I think part of the
challenge for this congressional district is in the state of New York, they
made last minute changes to the election, including extending the deadline
for absentee ballots, including allowing for registering to vote up until
the election closer than you could in previous elections. 

Also, they are used to getting just a few thousand absentee votes in a
normal election, they got 60,000 absentee votes this election. So I really
think it's a microcosm for what is going on in the rest of the country
where you have election officials that just aren't prepared for this influx
of absentee ballots. And obviously, we're seeing with Chenango County, some
of these other counties I indicated, of just not being able to handle the
sheer volume of absentee ballots that they have seen. 

CARLSON:  In this specific congressional district, it sounds like it will
change the outcome potentially, of the election. 

BOOTHE:  Well, certainly, I mean, right now, Claudia Tenney, who is the
Republican in the race, who is challenging the incumbent Democrat, Anthony
Brindisi, the difference is 12 votes right now. So obviously, you know, any
-- especially those 55 votes, but any votes could count. And right now, the
Oswego Supreme Court, they're looking at, you know, I think a couple of
thousand of absentee and affidavit ballots right now that they're trying to
figure out if they should count or not. You've got both sides that are
contesting certain ballots. 

So I mean, this is really coming down to the wire. And throughout the
timeline, I mean, Claudia Tenney was up by around, you know, over 28,000
votes on Election Day, including early voting. Obviously, that dwindle down
as absentee ballots were included, as well as these affidavit ballots as
well. But it just raises questions right now, as we're looking back on this
election. 

We have a lot of conservatives with questions simply based off the chaos
and things like this where you find, you know, 55 ballots that were, you
know, suddenly discovered a month after the election. I mean, of course,
people have questions right now. And I honestly think it is crazy to not be
asking questions, when we essentially did a science experiment of election.
And these election people or election officials in New York's 22nd
congressional district, and surely the rest of the country were prepared
for it. 

CARLSON:  Yes. Or maybe they were prepared. Republicans spend all their
time thinking about why people vote, Democrats spend a lot of time thinking
about how they vote, and that seems to have paid off, 55 uncounted ballots
at the last minute. 

BOOTHE:  Good point. 

CARLSON:  Lisa Boothe, great to see you. Well, that is the kind of story
you'd expect to hear out of a developing country. But as of today, nearly a
month after the election, thousands of votes remain uncounted, a month
later. 

In Suffolk County, New York, for example, only about 80 percent of votes
have been tabulated as of tonight. In Westchester County, just outside of
New York, the number is even lower than that, 56 percent. Today, the
President pointed out the obvious. Democracy can't function like this. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  We used to have what was
called Election Day. Now we have election days, weeks and months. And lots
of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time, especially
when you have to prove almost nothing to exercise our greatest privilege,
the right to vote. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  So the Justice Department said yesterday -- and this got a lot of
attention -- that they haven't yet collected enough evidence of fraud to
change the outcome of last month's election. It doesn't mean there wasn't
fraud. It doesn't mean they won't. 

In response, the Trump Campaign says the D.O.J. has not yet seen all the
evidence and that more is coming. So where are we as of tonight? Well, in
Arizona where the Trump campaign and the Arizona Republican Party held
hearings on election integrity, there is evidence that the state sent mail-
in ballots to voters who did not request them. 

Voters said on tape that they had no idea why they received a ballot, and
that's an obvious risk of fraud. How exactly did that happen? I think we
know. But how widespread was it? And what effect did it have? We don't yet
have answers to those questions, though we can surmise. 

Meanwhile, in the State of Nevada we've learned that some Native American
voter advocacy groups handed out gift cards and electronics to people who
handed in absentee ballots. That's illegal as far as we know. On Facebook,
one of those groups openly bragged about the arrangement even included
pictures of voters dropping off ballots in exchange for money. 

They captured one picture this way, quote, "McDermitt and Owyhee voters
dropping off their ballots and picking up their gas cards." All right, just
to be clear. If that's real, it's a crime. It seems like there were some
crimes in this election. 

Victor Davis Hanson has been following it closely. He's a Senior Fellow at
the Hoover Institute. He joins us tonight. 

Professor, thanks so much for coming on. How do you assess the integrity of
this election? 

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION:  Well, I look at
what the American people think, Tucker, and according to Nate Silver at
FiveThirtyEight, six out of 10 thinks something went wrong with the
election. That wasn't because Donald Trump complained. That's because of
the things you've listed and more. 

We should also remember that if we were talking four years ago on this day,
Jill Stein was in the process of suing Wisconsin and Michigan and
Pennsylvania and claims that were proven -- were not proven that there was
a wrong vote. 

And if we go back 20 years, we still have another 11 days of Al Gore
demanding recounts and acceptance, until he was stopped by the Supreme
Court, but it's a very intricate thing because there's a judicial problem,
a legal problem. 

And as Trump has shown, a lot of these state legislatures laws were
overturned unconstitutionally by officials that didn't have a right to do
that injustice. That has to be pursued so every vote counts. 

There's troves, there's glitches, but the key question is, in the next 11
days, or excuse me, 12 days before the electors meet on the 14th, is there
a preponderance of evidence, not that things were wrong, we all know what
went wrong, but it changed the outcome of the state's election count that
would change the Electoral College? And we don't know the answer yet. So he
is perfectly legitimate to continue to do this. 

But on the other hand, he's got other people that said, you won by 70
percent. You have 400 electoral votes. It's a greatest scandal in American
history. If that were true, we need a greater preponderance of evidence we
haven't seen. Then there's a time issue, very quickly. 

Once you get past the states that are mandated to reflect their certified
votes and pick their electors accordingly. Then you're saying you want to
go back to an 1876 or an 1888 scandal, basically, where you go in and
challenge the electors, and you fight over who has the right to choose
them, and on what basis and then you're really into unproven, pretty scary
territory. 

And then finally, there's a political question. And that is, Trump's base
will not stick with him if they think he rolled over in the fetal position
and didn't protect the sanctity of their votes. The independent and swing
voters won't stick with him, if they think there was not an evidence that
would change the vote and yet he keeps pressing it. 

So he's got to thread that needle because there's a lot at stake in
Georgia. He needs both of those constituents to come out, save the Senate,
save the nine-person Supreme Court, save the filibuster, save the Electoral
College, and then he can go on as an aggrieved Andrew Jackson if he wishes
in 2022, and win the House back and on to greater things in 2024. 

But time is of the essence, because after December 14th, even these
legitimate complaints that are probably valid in many cases, if they're not
adjudicated, they're not proven injustice and public opinion is not on your
side, the courts, then we're going to get into a situation where we've been
about two or three times in 1824, '76, and we saw a little bit in 1888, and
that's not where we want to be. 

CARLSON:  Yes, time is of the essence. That is absolutely right, it always
has been. 

Victor Davis Hanson, thank you for that overview. 

HANSON:  Thank you. 

CARLSON:  One of the people we can trust. So this is what we've been warned
about for a long time. Democrats in Congress have identified a new and
extremely dangerous far right extremist, a member of the alt right, if you
will. That right winger was last seen developing a Comedy Series for the
streaming service Netflix. Can you guess his name? Mark Steyn has it. He
joins us after the break. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON:  A FOX News alert. A huge demonstration outside a bar in Staten
Island, New York and it continues tonight. The owner of that bar was
arrested for publicly defying the lockdowns put in place by the governor of
that state. The bar owner spoke to us just a few minutes ago, nearly 2,000
people showed up outside his bar to protest his arrest. And as we said,
many are still gathered there at this hour. 

We'll continue to keep an eye on this. We haven't seen anything like it
before. 

Well, it's no secret, and of course, we're told everyday by "The New York
Times" that dangerous far right militants have been emboldened since
Election Day. Businesses in right-wing strongholds like Washington, D.C.
and Portland, Oregon have been boarded up, terrorized at what might come. 

On Wednesday, our worst fears came to pass. A former President of the
United States and indeed a member of the Democratic Party came out as a
proud member of the alt right and he did it on the internet, on a political
show without any hesitation at all. Watch this. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  I guess you can use a
snappy slogan like "defund the police." But you know, you've lost a big
audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that
you're actually going to get the changes you want done. 

The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done? Or do you
want to feel good among the people you already agree with? 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  Yes, you'd like to defund the police, but just don't tell
anybody. Just don't say it out loud. That's Barack Obama's advice. 

People were very offended though. People in Obama's base, Ayanna Pressley,
a Member of Congress was shocked. She responded on Twitter this way, quote,
"Lives are at stake daily, so I'm out of patience with the critiques of the
language of activists." Ilhan Omar, resident genius in the House of
Representatives wrote this, quote, "Defund the police is not a slogan but a
policy demand." They're sitting in Congress like actual members. This is
unbelievable. 

But as usual, no one was more shocked than the cast of "The View." They
trashed all of their Barack Obama memorabilia, the memoirs, many memoirs,
the newspaper clippings even the, "Yes, we can" coloring books, and then
consumed by fury, they went on the air. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

SUNNY HOSTIN, HOST, "THE VIEW":  You know, I'm always loathed to criticize
President Obama because I'm such a fan. But I do think he's wrong here. I
mean, when you think about defund the police, that's not a term that was
crowd sourced or tested in focus groups. You know, that's a term that was
born, a rallying cry that was born out of this over policing of black and
brown communities. 

I think, you know, President Obama was a community organizer, and I really
think that he -- you know, knows better. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON:  Yes, the rich ladies are mad. Rich ladies are always mad,
especially the ones on TV. But in this case, they make a fair point, a
community organizer should have known better. Have our standards for
community organizers fallen too far? 

Mark Steyn is a resident expert on community organizers, particularly ones
who become the far right Netflix producer. It's a small group, but he knows
them all and he joins us tonight to assess. What do you make of this Mark
Steyn? 

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST:  Well, first, I don't want to live in any
community organized by community organizers, so include me out on that
front. But to be honest, I think this is part of a kind of good cop defund
the bad cop defunder routine. 

CARLSON:  Yes. 

STEYN:  Obama stands there and he does this rather bloodless professorial
thing, and the radical ladies get all mad at him. And this is rather what
he was doing 10 years ago, when he was officially opposed, as you may
recall, to same sex marriage, and everybody in his own party pretended to
believe him, instead of understanding it for what it was, a political
thing. 

And we're going to see a lot more of this. I don't buy this whole idea that
the, oh, you know, the Democratic Party, Joe Biden has to juggle these --
the moderate wing of his party and then all these radicals like Ilhan Omar.
They're all -- they are laughing at us with this good cop defund bad cop
defunder routine. 

That is that is strictly for public consumption. They're serious about
power, and whether or not they agree on any particular policy position,
they agree on all the elements of power, which is why they're still busy.
As in what was that county Lisa was talking about? Shenanigan County in New
York. I never even heard of that. Why they're still seriously driving boxes
of uncounted ballots around. 

This sort of fake tension between elements of the party is actually the
opposite of what's going on. They're fairly united. Joe Manchin and Ilhan
Omar are both serious about power and that's what binds them. 

CARLSON:  So smart. It does make you miss Bill Clinton, who was obviously a
habitual liar, but when he lied, it was transparent. You knew he was lying,
and he knew it. You could tell he felt a little bad. 

There's something terrifying about the coldness with which Obama tells
lies. It's harder to perceive. It is therefore more effective. I find it
scary. 

STEYN:  Yes. Yes, it's that whole detached, bloodless, I'm Mr. Spock. I've
just landed from Planet Zongo routine. And I can understand why that's not
the kind of guy the ladies on "The View" warm up to, but they don't have to
worry about anything. They're all in lockstep on this stuff. 

CARLSON:  It's interesting. And this is a whole separate topic, and we
really should do a whole show on it. But why are the most privileged in our
society the angriest? Have you ever wondered that? 

STEYN:  Well, I think it is actually a revolt against the masses. I think,
actually, it's a problem, if you like with meritocracy, because it's not
like you're simply the son of the duke, so you're born to rule. These
people think they should be ruling because they're the best. And I think
that gives them an arrogance about how they think of the people who aren't
the best. 

CARLSON:  Yes, it's very hard to have a democracy with people like that in
charge because they just don't believe in it. I think that's pretty clear. 

Mark Steyn, thank you for your insightful analysis. 

STEYN:  Thanks a lot, Tucker. 

CARLSON:  We're monitoring the protest still underway outside that bar in
Staten Island, protests against the governor and the mayor's new corona
laws. Plenty of police standing outside in that picture. Lots of news
tonight, we've got more straight ahead. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON:  As we go out tonight, live pictures from outside Mac's Public
House in Staten Island shut down by the State of New York. A demonstration
underway. Authorities dispatched law enforcement to keep people from
defying their lockdown orders. 

We should note, the police were told to stand down when BLM rioters broke
into Macy's for a five-finger discounting on Jimmy Choos. But when someone
goes on FOX to complain about the lockdowns, they show up in force tells.
It tells you everything. 

Have the best tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. 

In the meantime, from New York, Sean Hannity right now. 


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