This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 24, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
For a month and a half, life in this country grew increasingly restrictive. Those restrictions were based on numbers produced months ago, but as the days have gone by, new numbers have come in and they have told a different story.
New studies indicate that coronavirus spreads far more widely than anyone imagined and at the same time is also much less deadly than we thought.
In response to this new science, one state has taken decisive steps to reopen normal life and taking some criticism for it.
Fox chief breaking news correspondent, Trace Gallagher has more on this and related stories. Hey, Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHIEF BREAKING NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. The number of total cases in the U.S. is moving closer to the million mark with 916,000 confirmed cases, more than 51,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.
Though the death toll today is down fairly significantly from yesterday.
Meantime, we have another antibody study this time from Miami Dade County in Florida, and it very much mirrors the studies in New York and California showing that about six percent of the population or 165,000 Miami Dade residents have already had coronavirus, that is 16 times the number of confirmed cases.
And like California and New York, it puts the fatality rate at about 0.1 percent drastically lower than previous estimates.
The State of Georgia is slowly reopening. The streets remain relatively quiet, but some nonessential businesses like nail salons and barbershops have reopened and if there was a question about customers coming back, listen to this barber.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOMMY THOMAS, ATLANTA BARBER SHOP OWNER: That's what I've been doing since six o'clock this morning. I walked in at six and I started cutting hair, and this is the first time I slowed down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: At one nail salon, women waited in line two hours. It's notable that businesses in less affluent areas are opening faster than affluent areas.
Meantime, a lot of people in Wisconsin would like to see their state reopen. Today, outside the capitol building in Wisconsin, hundreds protested the safer-at-home mandate saying that Governor Tony Evers is threatening their financial stability and civil rights, though others support the mandate calling for safety first -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Trace Gallagher for us. Thanks so much for that.
GALLAGHER: Sure.
CARLSON: Well, from early on in this crisis, we took the virus seriously, but we doubted that Chinese-style lockdowns were a wise response to the Chinese coronavirus.
Even if they worked as advertised and as you just heard, there's now overwhelming evidence that they don't work as advertised, despite what politicians continue to say, mass quarantines, under the best circumstance are really just a stopgap.
The only way to tame a virus like this is with science. A single effective treatment would make all the difference right away. You wouldn't have to cure every sick patient, but if you could cure a significant number of sick patients and lower the death rate, this would be a completely different country.
Hope would return. Fear would resign. We could begin to regard this as a manageable illness as we do so many other illnesses.
More than 600,000 Americans, for example, died this year from cancer. That's a tragic number, you doubtless know some, but we accept it, and we live our lives bravely in the face of it in part because cancer horrible as it is, isn't very mysterious anymore. There are treatments for it.
Those treatments sadly, don't always work, but they work often enough that we can manage to live without panic. So, it's been obvious from day one that the main goal here as we fight this pandemic has got to be finding effective treatments for the virus.
That's obvious and most people understand it intuitively. The President does. He regularly uses his daily press briefings to tout potential new medical advances.
One of the first off-label drugs that doctors around the world used to treat the coronavirus was a medicine called hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine is a cheap, decade's old medicine long recognized as a therapeutic for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases.
It was originally an antimalarial drug. If you've traveled to the third world, it's entirely possible you have already taken this drug.
Early evidence suggested that hydroxychloroquine might be promising. Physicians in the hardest hit countries, Spain and Italy, for example, reported that it was their preferred treatment for the coronavirus.
One day from the podium, the President touted the drug as a promising lead, and that was it for hydroxychloroquine. From that moment on, precisely that moment, in the minds the partisans in our media establishment, hydroxychloroquine was purely a political issue.
The drug was no longer a medicine, a therapy, it was the medical equivalent of Vladimir Putin. It was a cudgel they can swing in the air mindlessly to hit their ideological opponents in the hope of political gain.
They ignored evidence that hydroxychloroquine might be effective in some ways. They waited anxiously for evidence that it might not be, and the other day they got it.
Several recent studies suggest that hydroxychloroquine is unlikely to help people who are already severely ill with the coronavirus. For most Americans, this was disappointing news. They wanted it to work.
But at CNN, it was cause for celebration. The network produced a video for its website tallying up every time the President had mentioned hydroxychloroquine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A drug called chloroquine -- hydroxychloroquine.
Chloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine.
Chloroquine. Chloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine.
The hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine.
That's a lot of good things are happening with it -- a lot of good tests.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Over at "The Washington Post" which so often seemed to work in tandem with CNN and shock troops for the Democratic Party, a person called Philip Bump produced a 3,000 word long timeline looking at, quote, "The rise and fall of Trump's obsession with hydroxychloroquine." It was yet another exercise in deep irony.
Bump himself obsessively chronicled every time the President as much as retweeted a mention of the drug. Bump blogged the precise number of times that hydroxychloroquine was mentioned on this and on Fox Business. Paging Dr. Freud.
It's possible that Mr. Bump may be exhibiting symptoms of obsession. Earlier this week, Bump wrote yet another article on the same topic, and he ended that piece this way with a suggestion of a sinister conspiracy at work, quote, "Why promote that drug and why so energetically?"
And he left the question hanging in the air.
Philip Bump doesn't believe in human optimism, he always assumes a secret agenda. But as usual, this was pure projection. What the creeps in big media accuse you of doing every single time, they are fervently doing themselves. They're the ones obsessed with hydroxychloroquine. Most people just want a drug that works.
They're the ones with a weird, unspoken agenda that's obvious, and yet hidden. Most people in this country just want a drug that works and in fact, in some circumstances, this drug may work.
Hydroxychloroquine is still being used to treat coronavirus patients. Dozens of studies of its effectiveness are now in progress, still at this hour.
Many doctors believe it can help if used early or in mild cases of the disease. The V.A. Secretary recently said as much.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: President Trump has touted this, but it is linked to higher rates of death in the V.A. coronavirus related. Can you elaborate what's going on with this drug?
ROBERT WILKIE, SECRETARY OF DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS: Sure. That's an observational study. It's not a clinical study. It was done on a small number of veterans. Sadly, those of whom were in the last stages of life, and the drug was given to them.
And I have to -- I have to also say that the drug -- we know the drug has been working on middle age and younger veterans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, so correlation is not causation. These are deep waters. Many people on television are not prepared. They're not wearing their swimsuits.
In real life, we are getting mixed results. We need to know more. This is how science actually works. It's why we still haven't cured cancer despite decades of working on it. But we have prolonged the lives of cancer patients significantly. That's a victory.
These are the kinds of victories you get in this business. Real science is complicated and difficult and almost always incremental.
The party of science no longer understands that because they left science a long time ago. Karen Whitsett is a Democratic lawmaker in the State of Michigan. She believes she was suffering from coronavirus and steadily getting worse until she received hydroxychloroquine from her physician.
Then she recovered. Whitsett came on this show to explain what happened, and as she explained it, she gave some credit to a President she didn't vote for.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAREN WHITSETT (D), MICHIGAN STATE REPRESENTATIVE: Dr. Arsiwala did save my life and I do credit, you know, the President to doing so and putting this out there because it wasn't accessible to me if it weren't for that fact.
CARLSON: Yes.
WHITSETT: I had very little time to be able to get to this and be able to make it because my breathing did become very labored.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, you just saw a woman who at bare minimum went through a harrowing experience and escaped with her life. We should celebrate, but not everybody is.
A Detroit branch of the Democratic Party says it plans to censure Whitsett and expel her from the Democratic Party for daring to meet with the President after she got well. They didn't congratulate her for surviving, they punished her for violating party orthodoxy.
Representative Whitsett joins us tonight, again, along with her physician, Mohammed Arsiwala. Welcome to you both, Representative, and Doctor.
Representative, to you first. It's hard to believe this is true. Why would the Democratic Party expel you?
WHITSETT: Well, thank you for having me on again. I really appreciate it.
CARLSON: Well, of course, thank you for coming.
WHITSETT: Why they would expel me is -- well, why they would expel me is beyond words for me. This is something that I did not expect.
I started out with a simple thank you to the man that is the President of the United States. It's a thank you. I didn't know that thank you had a political line. I didn't know thank you belongs to one political party over another and that if you were in one party, you could not say thank you to another person. I had no idea.
CARLSON: Do you think the fact that you credited not simply the president but this medicine, hydroxychloroquine offended them more?
WHITSETT: I think it all correlated all together. I think it was just me as a State Representative that I was out of line, according to possibly our governor, taking myself and going to the White House to speak with the President of the United States.
I think it was a kind of how dare you because the person who is in charge of the 13th Congressional District actually works for our governor.
CARLSON: We followed your governor fairly closely recently, and I'm -- and I just want to apologize. Let me just ask, did the governor call you and say I'm so glad you didn't die. Welcome back to the living. Congratulations.
WHITSETT: Actually, it was not as pleasant as that and the text messages that we have had since then has not been as pleasant as well.
I'm not going to stand by and be quiet nor will I be silenced by anyone when it comes to the people in my community. I don't care who it is, you know, if you're not doing right by us, if you're not doing right by black people within our community, I'm going to stand up and I don't care who it is.
I'm going to stand up against you. I'm going to speak out. And right now I'm speaking for the people who can't speak for themselves. That is my job. That is my responsibility. That is my duty. That's what I'm going to do.
And I don't care who it is. I will go up against her any day. So, the fact that she cannot work with the President of the United States --
CARLSON: Well, I hope Gretchen Whitmer is listening tonight.
WHITSETT: Well, I hope she is, too, because, you know, the fact that she cannot work with the President of United States, you know, Donald Trump -- the President wants to work with us. He wants to give us the things that we need and I've had the conversations with him. So, I know firsthand.
I've had the conversations with Vice President Pence as well. So, I know firsthand, I've had the experience. So, I know. I know the shock and awe on their face when they heard that we were not getting the things that we needed and deserved in the City of Detroit.
So, only thing I can say is --
CARLSON: I'm sorry, go ahead.
WHITSETT: I just throw my hand -- the only thing I can do is to throw my hands up. You know, the fact that this would come down from the 13th congressional district, Jonathan Kinloch, you know, who runs the 13th Congressional would actually do this to me is unbelievable.
You know, for someone as myself, who is simply trying to stand up for the voiceless, it is unbelievable, but I would expect that if he does --
CARLSON: It is unbelievable. It is unbelievable. I just want to get your physician in here really quickly. Doctor, do you still credit hydroxychloroquine for helping to save your patient, Representative Whitsett?
DR. MOHAMMED ARSIWALA, PHYSICIAN: Yes, Tucker, it's good to be on your show again. You know, absolutely. Since I've treated Karen, I've also treated a few other patients. As I said, again, there are cardiac toxicity associated with that.
But right now, if you look at it, the sciences behind this medicine because right now in an inpatient setting, as long as you can monitor the heart, the people are using it.
The outpatient use, even the F.D.A. has recommended that you can use it only based on the physician and patient interaction. That means in my case, whenever I've used it, I've used it on 16 other patients and it has worked because we don't have any real medicine to treat the COVID virus infection.
Right now, there is a huge study going on in Michigan, even on healthy individuals, they are trying to do a study to see if you take hydroxychloroquine and can it prevent this disease?
So, let's not fight. Politics aside, I think the most important thing is we have to save our life. We have to bring science. We have to do everything in our toolbox to help each other out.
I think the most important thing that we have to do is we have to understand that this virus is new, it is taking lives. It has devastated our economy and we have to do something to come together to do the best care possible, Tucker. This is absolutely very important.
CARLSON: Doctor, thank you. Representative, thank you. You should know that on MSNBC right now, they're effectively scolding you for using this drug.
We have a bit of good news tonight. Sorry, cut you off there, Doctor. It turns out the coronavirus is not an STD, Fox medical contributor Marc Siegel, has more on that as well as New York's massive new antibody study. He joins us now. Hey, Doctor.
DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Tucker. There's a new study out in a journal called "Fertility and Sterility" looking at 34 Chinese men and discovering that one month after they had the coronavirus, COVID-19, there was none of it -- none of the virus to be found in sperm and semen.
But before anyone gets too excited about this, let's consider that with all the asymptomatic spread going around of this virus, what are the chances that you could actually follow social distancing under those circumstances?
Speaking of asymptomatic spread, the second thing I want to talk about tonight is all of these surveillance studies that are coming out. We talked about California yesterday, four percent of several counties in LA County, being positive for COVID-19 antibodies, New York City, 21 percent, and now in Miami, it's up to six percent.
To give you an idea what those numbers mean, for 10,000 diagnosed cases in Miami Dade County, there's about 180,000 people out there that probably have had asymptomatic spread and don't know it by these figures.
Third story tonight is taking place in Michigan where you were just talking to the last guest, Allaura Medical has issues because they've been giving high dose vitamin C to COVID-19 patients. Now, I want to tell you what I think about that. We're talking about treatments proven and unproven.
Well, Tucker vitamin C has been used a couple of years ago and studied for use in severe sepsis -- life threatening infections, pneumonias, it has never been studied for COVID-19. It had never been studied for this virus.
I am not endorsing it. I am not recommending it and I am not thinking that it's a very good idea to be giving it -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Thank you, Doctor. Let me say as a non-physician, the idea that the F.B.I. would stage a raid on a hospital and start arresting people because they don't like the treatment is insane.
We've been told for decades that medical decisions are between patients and their physicians and now, the F.B.I. is staging a raid on a hospital because they disagree with the therapy for coronavirus, as if they know better? It's outrageous.
Whether it's the right treatment or the wrong treatment, you don't want that happening in your country. We should be worried about that.
Well, up next, newly released evidence from decades ago is lending new support to Tara Reade's allegations against Joe Biden. We've got details on that from a reporter.
Plus, we'll talk to the man on a bike who says he saw an infected Chris Cuomo break quarantine and got yelled at. You've got to watch that. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation against her former boss, Joe Biden has not been proven. Likely, it never will be. It happened an awfully long time ago, she says.
But newly discovered evidence from almost 30 years ago offers surprising support for Reade's claim. This came almost out of nowhere.
A clip from "Larry King Live" the old 9:00 p.m. show on CNN features a call from a woman Reade tells reporters is her mother. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY KING, FORMER CNN HOST: San Luis, Obispo, California. Hello.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Hello. I'm wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington. My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.
KING: So, she had a story to tell, but out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn't tell him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That's fascinating. Rich McHugh is a longtime reporter who's been on this story and a lot of big stories. He joins us tonight. Rich, thanks so much for coming on tonight.
So, will you just lay out the facts as we know them and the allegations, if you would?
RICH MCHUGH, REPORTER: Sure. So, Tara Reade Worked for Joe Biden in 1992 and 1993 for about eight months. She says that at the time, she faced some sexual harassment from him, unwanted touching and she had complained about it, and it fell on deaf ears.
And so she said, she went and filed a complaint, you know, outside of his office in some senatorial office that would handle these things.
Around that same time, she says she was asked to deliver him a gym bag in one of the Senate buildings, and she brought it to him and she says, it was -- you know, it was a warm spring day, a hot spring day and she said that she -- that he attacked her in a corridor. It wasn't a private -- private office or anything, but attacked her and assaulted her -- sexually assaulted her.
And she came forward with an allegation last year -- last April. She told a local paper. She had been telling people about this. She told people at the time. She told her mother. She told a friend. She told her brother and she may have told some others and so now, she came out last year and told part of her story to a local paper in California.
And a few weeks ago, I believe it was, she came out with her full allegation, articled by Ryan Grim and podcast by Katie Halper, and since then, you know, everybody has been examining the veracity of her claims.
CARLSON: Let me just clarify something. All of this is kind of a mishmash when you talk about sexual assault and sexual harassment. You're not -- she is not suggesting that he said something vulgar to her. She's saying that he grabbed her genitals. Is that -- is that right?
MCHUGH: That's correct. That's correct.
CARLSON: Okay, so that puts it in a different category from a lot of the stories like this that we hear. Really quickly, tell us about this call to Larry King. Where does that clip will come from?
MCHUGH: So, she had told me about this. I said, you know, in the process of reporting this, she came and said, I was trying to -- you're always trying to figure out how to -- if you're investigating how to kill a story.
You know, if you can kill it, then you don't do it. And I was always trying to track down this clip. And without working at CNN, I couldn't go in there.
Today, an enterprising PhD student, a woman sent a note to myself and to Ryan Grim, saying, hey, I think I found it. And I think Ryan was -- he probably responded to her quicker than I did, and so we got to this moment this afternoon, where we both realized that there was this video. It was found.
And you know, he published it. We actually talked, but he published the story, and the rest is history.
CARLSON: That's amazing. It was a decade before YouTube, so it's not so easy to find cable news clips from 1993. Rich McHugh, thank you for that update. I appreciate it. Good to see you tonight.
MCHUGH: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
CARLSON: Mollie Hemingway is the Senior Editor at "The Federalist." She's author of the book, "Justice On Trial" about the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle. She has been following this story -- Tara Reade and Joe Biden since the beginning. She joins us now to assess.
What do you make of this clip? What do you make of this story?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR OVER AT "THE FEDERALIST": Well, what I find so interesting about this is when we went through something somewhat similar a couple of years ago with allegations made against Brett Kavanaugh, who was going through his confirmation hearing, there was no evidence in support of the allegations and yet it became a media firestorm.
The primary allegation from Christine Blasey Ford, she named four witnesses. None of them backed her up. Some of them strongly disputed it. She had not told anybody at the time by her own admission. She waited many, many decades to begin telling a story that over time became the allegation that was put forth.
You know, she had no recall of memory. She had no evidence that she had ever met Brett Kavanaugh. And you compare that with a story like we have here.
Nobody is disputing that Tara Reade worked for Joe Biden, and we already had evidence that she had -- she claimed she had told three people, two of whom who are still living and said that she did tell them at the time of the allegation.
And you couldn't really have better evidence that the third person, which is her mother, was also told of the allegation, then her going and calling Larry King to complain about this situation.
So, you know, again, Joe Biden deserves every presumption of innocence that any other man should have.
CARLSON: Yes.
HEMINGWAY: But when you look at it from a media angle, there is no excuse for the media doing what they did to Brett Kavanaugh, and then working so hard to bury this story, with the exception of a few reporters like the one you just talked to, Ryan Grim and a few others.
CARLSON: That's right. And who was on the left? I mean, Ryan Grim is not a conservative, to put it mildly, but an honest person, I think. There have been a few on the kind of Bernie Sanders side of the party who are trying to keep this story in the news, I would say principled people on the left. Do you think this will get answers from the former Vice President?
HEMINGWAY: Well, he should have been asked about this quite a few times already as should have his supporters, again, if our media were wanting to be handling this in any way remotely consistent.
They did so much with Brett Kavanaugh to attack anyone who supported him, to attack him, to destroy his life. I don't think Joe Biden has been asked anything personally. He has issued a statement through a spokesperson. That is nothing -- nothing near what they did to Brett Kavanaugh.
And if they have suddenly decided that presumption of innocence is important, and that these allegations are too old, or that they don't think Tara Reade can prove them in any case, they need to say something about why they had such a different posture toward Brett Kavanaugh.
As such, we've had "New York Times" and "Washington Post" people come out and admit that they have completely opposite takes on this than they did with the previous situation, but not in any convincing way.
And this is -- it's really something they think people are going to forget what they did to Kavanaugh and so long as they don't behave even remotely near the same way with Biden that they did with Kavanaugh, people will not be forgetting this.
CARLSON: Yes, well, they're just partisan lemmings. But I think the #MeToo Movement heard an awful lot of people, and, you know, I think it went too far with no evidence.
But that doesn't mean things like this don't happen. Of course, they do happen and they should be punished and we should learn all we can about them. So, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Mollie Hemingway, thank you.
HEMINGWAY: Thank you.
CARLSON: Well, most of the country was stuck indoors by government order. One CNN anchor broke quarantine to pick a fight with a bicycle rider whom he called a quote, "jackass."
The other night, we asked that rider to contact us, if he cared to come on our show. He did. He joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Well, after he tested positive for the coronavirus, which was a scary moment and we sent our sympathy at the time, CNN's Chris Cuomo started broadcasting his show from his basement, and from his basement, he delivered firm orders to all Americans stay home no matter what.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so while most Americans are staying inside or should be, right, if they're not out protesting like fools -- they're not happy about being told to stay home.
Staying home saves lives.
And the rest of us should be staying at home for our mothers, for the people that we love and to keep us farther apart, will ultimately bring us closer together in this cause.
No matter where the virus goes, the way to stop it will always be the same. Our collective conscientious actions. Staying home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Hey, proles scamper back to your hovels. Go inside. Do you hear me? At that exact moment while Chris Cuomo was demanding that America go inside and get back to their own homes, he wasn't taking the same advice.
It turns out that at that moment, he was breaking quarantine himself despite as we said being positive for the coronavirus.
One day, Cuomo was spotted by a passing bicyclist who got into a tiff with him. Cuomo attacked the man later. Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CUOMO: I don't want some jack [bleep], loser fat-tire biker to be able to pull over and get in my face and in my space and talk [bleep] to me. I don't want to hear it.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: David Whalen is the jackass loser fat-tired biker in question. The cyclist Chris Cuomo tangled with and he joins us tonight with his side of the story.
I don't think we've ever had a jackass loser fat-tire biker on the show, but we're happy to start tonight. Thanks so much for coming on. So, tell us about your exchange with Mr. Cuomo.
DAVID WHALEN, LONG ISLAND RESIDENT: Well, you know first I'd like to say, I probably could beat him in a bike race even though he's a lot older than me, I mean, younger than me.
But besides that, the important thing was, it was Easter Sunday evening. It was chilly and cold. I ride -- I grew up about a thousand feet from where he is building his new house, which is nothing but a steel frame.
And I did a ride and I go by down a trail that runs past where his new structure is being built, and there's a bunch of people there.
I have been riding for seven, eight miles. I take a little break, just looking. And a woman says, may I help you? And I said, no, I'm just looking.
And she starts walking out, a little closer and then and they're pretty far away. I have very good eyes, and Chris Cuomo turns around, and I'm like, holy smokes, it is Chris Cuomo.
I'm fairly outspoken and I just said, don't you have the coronavirus? Shouldn't you be quarantined? And my biggest next words were, what the hell do you know about this? What do you know about the rules?
He continued to come closer and closer and he's -- I like to say he was like a boiling pot. You could see his head just getting more and more angry. And I said, so you're going to lose your temper like you did on the guy at Shelter Island on me?
And so, you know, basically I just said you have coronavirus. What are you doing out here? You're supposed to be home.
And I have not heard what you just played about, you know his quotes about how he was telling people to act. I see his show occasionally. And then at one point I said, yes, I'm moving on. You know, I said you're not supposed to be out here. Nobody had gloves on. Nobody had masks on. There was three children -- you know, young -- young adolescents, and I believe there was - -
I'm pretty sure, it's his wife because I've seen pictures now. And, and then there was a third adult. So, you know, they're out there. They probably have cabin fever. You know, like, everybody that, you know, has this or is in the situation has, you know.
And they, yes, maybe, they can say, hey, we have masks on. We just drove out here. You know, they don't live there. Okay. It's a steel structure. And, if I probably would have just said -- I kind of understand, I would have just moved on.
But he told me he was going to meet -- he was going to meet me. And he goes, you're going to meet me over this. You will meet me again over this.
And at that point, he is now getting about 40 feet away.
CARLSON: He was in full 'roid rage at this point. I mean, he sounds almost dangerous. Have you -- I have to ask you, have you been tested because you came into contact with an infected person who was within six feet of you?
WHELAN: You know, us normal human beings, we don't get to get tested. You know, which is --
You know, one of the craziest things about this whole thing; you know, if you're wealthy, you have a lot of clout and this and that, you can go and get tested.
But for most normal people, you can't get tested. I do practice -- I made my own mask weeks ago. I hit it with alcohol every day. I have -- I have one part time employee. I don't let him within 10 feet of me. And, you know, my daughter is a doctor at Johns Hopkins, I get lectured by her, you know, forever.
And you know, and I yell at people when I see them, you know, breaking the social distancing.
CARLSON: Well, I can see why. I mean, the last thing you need is to get infected by a CNN anchor who calls you a jackass loser, which by the way, I don't think you are after this conversation. I think you have a really good point.
And David, I appreciate your coming on tonight. And I hope you're not sick. Thank you.
WHELAN: I backed away when they got -- they didn't get six feet from me. But they started getting closer and I just said, you know something -- and I wasn't trying to antagonize the guy, you know, and it was real simple. What the hell are you doing out here? You know, you know you're on TV every night --
CARLSON: I think you were wise. I'd back away, too. David, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it.
WHELAN: Yes, thank you.
CARLSON: Good to see you.
WHELAN: You're welcome.
CARLSON: Well, Chris Cuomo's brother runs the State of New York and has ordered nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients. How exactly has that worked out?
Our next guest has followed that carefully, and he says that order from Chris Cuomo's brother has had lethal consequences for the elderly in the State of New York. He's got the numbers. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The main reason the death toll from the coronavirus is so high is because it is extremely dangerous to elderly people with preexisting health conditions who catch it.
So, protecting this population from infection is likely the single most important way to keep the death toll down. It's also a moral imperative, we should be doing it.
In New York though, Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration says that nursing homes are legally required to readmit residents who have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Cuomo's team simply promises that quote, "Necessary precautions ..." whatever those are, " ... will be taken to stop the virus's spread." It's not clear what they mean by that.
Michael Goodwin is a "New York Post" columnist. He says that policy has had fatal consequences. He joins us tonight. Michael, thanks for coming on.
MICHAEL GOODWIN, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR: My pleasure.
CARLSON: So, how has this worked -- this policy? What's the effect been?
GOODWIN: Well, I just say we've known all along that the elderly, especially those with other health issues were the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, and many of these nursing homes were testing their staff taking temperatures every day. Don't forget, they banned visitors, so family couldn't come.
Now, all of a sudden, on March 25th, without warning, without any consultation with any of the nursing or rehabilitation homes in the state, the governor's Health Department issues an order that they cannot deny admittance or re-admittance to any coronavirus patient. They can't even ask if they've been tested.
So, what that means is overnight, they have to begin accepting these patients without any preparation, without proper equipment, without any training, no way in many of these places to segregate coronavirus patients from other residents or people there in rehabilitation stints.
So, this whole thing is just thrust on them out of the blue and now, in New York, roughly 35 -- more than 3,500 people have died in nursing and rehabilitation homes, which is about 25 percent of the total and everyone agrees, this is an undercount that not all of it has been tallied.
And the state's answer to this was, when Cuomo was first asked about it, he said, I don't know anything about it. Now, he is defending it forcefully. And he says he will investigate the nursing homes to see why so many people have died. He has talked about removing their licenses.
And as you can imagine, the owners of these places are just beside themselves. I mean, they're mourning the loss of many of their longtime residents. Some lost 30 to 40 people, although many of the coronavirus patients who came were already improving, but they still were contagious.
And so, it was the residents who were already there who suffered by the most part, including some staff members.
So, we don't know how many of these people died specifically because of this order. But we certainly know it's more than zero. And for the governor to say we're going to investigate you, we may have to take away your license, it is unconscionable.
CARLSON: They won't allow the facilities to ask if people have been tested. This is what happens when ideologues make policy and it's scary and bless you for bringing this to public attention, which you did.
I appreciate that. Michael Goodwin, good to see you.
GOODWIN: Thank you.
CARLSON: Well, it turns out one of the best things you can do to protect yourself from coronavirus is get into nature, fresh air, sunlight, less dense. Parks may be closed, tragically, they are in many places but the Bureau of Land Management is keeping America's wilderness open for you.
The man who directs it will tell you where you can go this weekend. That's after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Millions of Americans have been afraid to even go outside for the past month. Many are under orders not to, but sunlight and physical exercise, it turns out are crucial to staying healthy.
The Bureau of Land Management manages hundreds of millions of acres of public land, and while you might be surprised to hear it, a lot of that land is still open. William Perry Pendley runs the Bureau of Land Management. He is Acting Director and he joins us tonight.
Mr. Pendley, thanks so much for coming on. So, tell us since we've got a pretty spring weekend approaching. People out west are familiar with BLM, I think, but for everyone else, tell us where they can go on BLM land.
WILLIAM PERRY PENDLEY, ACTING DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT: Well, Tucker, thanks a lot. They can go practically anywhere. The Bureau of Land Management runs 245 million acres of land primarily in the 11 western states and Alaska, and it's all accessible.
We may have closed our Visitor Centers, but once you get past the parking lot, once you get past the restrooms, once you get past the trailhead, you're in the middle of wide open spaces.
We have beautiful vistas. We have beautiful hiking trails. We have 135,000 miles of rivers and streams that you, Tucker, could fish on with your fly fishing.
CARLSON: Oh, yes.
CARLSON: We've got remarkable trails. Near our headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, we have the McGinnis Canyon National Conservation Area and this side of Utah, they have some of the best arches in the world, just beautiful, magnificent country, and you can get out in and enjoy it.
Enjoy the sunlight, all the vitamins that come from being out there, getting some exercise, as one of our visitors wrote to us, you can decompress. You can revitalize. You can get away from things and breathe fresh air, and it's all accessible to the American people.
You know, Tucker, the public lands belongs to the American people. And President Trump has made it clear and Secretary Bernhardt have made it clear, it's open to the American people for their enjoyment, and we hope they'll come out.
CARLSON: Amen. And pick up a fly ride while you're at it. It's medicine. So, for people who want to do that, where can viewers find out where the nearest BLM tract is to them? Is there a place they can look?
PENDLEY: Absolutely. Just key in on your internet search. Key in BLM. We've got it broken down by states. Every one of our states is broken down. You can break it down on conservation areas, wilderness areas, monuments. We have working landscapes, Tucker. I don't want to pass up on that.
We have employment opportunities there for grazing, for oil and gas, for solar power. We preserve monuments and wild and scenic rivers and wilderness areas, but also we have vast recreational opportunities.
Our people -- most of our people are teleworking -- big surprise. The President has asked us to telework. Most of us are doing that. But we have a number of people out there getting ready with mission critical activities.
Our firefighters are out there getting ready. They're doing prescribed burns. We're ready for the coming fire season. We're going to cross state lines. We're going to be there when the people need us.
We have our law enforcement officers out there. We have 200 Rangers and 70 Special Agents. They're out there protecting the land and protecting the public visitor.
CARLSON: Boy. It is great to hear that. Mr. Pendley, thank you. It's blm.gov.
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