Tucker: The left uses partisan politics posing as science

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Tucker: The left uses partisan politics posing as science

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines how the left uses 'science' to push their agenda

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," May 28, 2021. 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.

At some point, though it's hard to imagine now, the current revolution will
end. Ultimately, all revolutions do end, they can't be sustained. And when
ours does, we'll wake up one morning in a country where we don't have to
lie about everything all the time, where Math is allowed, where we can
acknowledge the profound and inherent differences between men and women
without being fired for it. That day is coming.

The question is, when it does come, what will be left of our society? We
can't know the answer in detail. But here's what we're hoping for. We hope
that reason remains. Reason, logic, the ability to think clearly and
rationally. That's the one thing we can't lose. We're going to need it to
rebuild.

That's why of all the moral atrocities being committed at the moment in the
name of equity and inclusion, it is the relentless attacks on science that
should command our special attention.

So for the next hour, we're going to consider those attacks in some detail
and we are going to start with America's response to the COVID pandemic.

When the coronavirus first arrived in our country last winter, most
Americans uncritically accepted what the authorities said about it. They
thought they could trust the people in charge.

Few imagined that our leaders would leverage a public health emergency for
their own political gain. That seemed like the one line that even
politicians wouldn't cross, and yet almost immediately, they crossed it.

Around the country, Democratic governors used quarantine restrictions to
reward their allies and to punish their opponents. Abortion mills stayed
open, but the police kept churches closed. You could buy weed, but you
couldn't get your knee replaced.

Demonstrations against the lockdowns were banned. Riots against Donald
Trump were encouraged.

Watch the Governor of Michigan for example, shamelessly explained the
difference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): It is probably not going to be safe to
congregate in masses for quite a while, and it is heartbreaking it, but we
know that Michigan is not alone in this moment. That this is what is
happening all across the country that these big gatherings just can't
safely happen right now.

The death of George Floyd has once again shone a light on the systematic
cycle of injustice in our country. To the overwhelming majority who have
taken to the streets and protested peacefully, protesting historic
inequities, black Michiganders, and those across the country are facing, I
hear you. I see you. I respect you and I support your efforts to enact real
structural change in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, you are no longer allowed to exercise your constitutional
right of assembly unless it is to publicly support the Democratic Party,
and it wasn't just the Governor of Michigan, Gavin Newsom did the same
thing in California. Phil Murphy did it in New Jersey.

It was partisan politics posing as science. But this was the most amazing
part, in the end, it was endorsed by actual scientists and that's the part
that should worry you. Doctors like Jennifer Nuzzo at Johns Hopkins
University told us that structural racism was a bigger health threat than
the coronavirus, so go ahead and loot Macy's. It's an important part of
public health.

For those who still believe that American science was on the level, this
was a shocking moment. When did the people who are paid to be rational
become corrupt religious zealots? When did our scientists become
Ayatollahs?

Well, that happened years ago it turns out. The rest of us just weren't
noticing.

In February of 2019, a piece was published in the journal "Neurology,"
which in case you don't read it is one of the preeminent peer reviewed
publications in all of Medicine. The piece was called "Lucky and the Root
Doctor." It described a physician's experience with a man in the Deep South
called Reggie.

Reggie was suffering from a severe neuromuscular disorder, which had left
him blind. Modern science might have helped Reggie, this was the point of
the piece, but he didn't want the help. Reggie believed he was blind
because he had been cursed by a voodoo spell. That's what he told his
physician and then he refused treatment and left the doctor's office for
good.

Now the doctor who wrote this piece about Reggie was a man called William
Campbell. Campbell believed in Western science. He did not believe that
voodoo is the cause of blindness. And the piece he wrote was designed to
help other physicians communicate with patients like Reggie so those
patients could receive effective medical treatment.

Unfortunately, American medical journals are no longer allowed to criticize
witchcraft. Criticizing witchcraft is racist. So the editor of "Neurology,"
a man called Robert Gross began a purge of his own publication. He fired
the Humanities editor, then he suspended the entire Humanities section.

And then to further atone, he hired what he described as a Deputy Editor
for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Then Robert Gross, as if this wasn't
enough, wrote a groveling apology letter for the piece, calling Campbell's
article racist and acknowledging it had caused, quote, "anguish."

Nowhere in that letter did Robert Gross explain any of this. Why exactly is
it racist to prefer Western Medicine to witchcraft? Isn't that the whole
point of our system? Gross never explained. He just declared it racist and
moved on.

So that's now the official policy of this country's top neurology journal:
that witchcraft is the same as Western Medicine. And how dare you say
otherwise?

Where does this leave you? If you were nervous about brain surgery before,
this is not comforting news. How long before your doctor sacrifices a
chicken in the operating room? That's a serious question.

We can no longer say that science is better than Voodoo. That's racist.

Something similar has happened in the world of economic research. One of
the top business journals in the world, "The Strategic Management Journal"
deleted a paper from the internet without any explanation. Now, the key
thing to know is all of the numbers in that paper were accurate. The data
were right. No one claimed otherwise.

The piece went through peer review. It was published.

The piece was published because it was called this, quote: "Examining
Investor Reactions to Appointments of Black Top Management Executives and
CEOs." Now, we don't know what those reactions were. It might be
interesting to know, but you can't know because the original version of the
piece has disappeared. It's gone. It's now in the remote cave where we hide
uncomfortable facts.

It's been replaced by a heavily revised version. So, what's the truth? We
can't know.

This is the definition of corruption, but it has spread through science.
Take a look at the jobs postings at "Nature" magazine. "Nature" was once
the foremost science publication on the planet.

What "Nature" is looking for now in its employees has nothing whatsoever to
do with science. In fact, it's anti-science. Here's one recent job posting
they posted on Twitter, quote, "As part of our commitment to foster
diversity and inclusion, we are looking for a black candidate with a
passion for science communication based in the U.K. for a full-time paid
news internship," end quote.

So, the thing that jumps out is that no whites or Asians or Hispanics are
allowed. Is that legal? Of course, it's not legal. But that's not really
the point.

The bigger problem and it is bigger than Civil Rights law is that the
people we trust to make the most important decisions in our society, the
essential decisions, what kind of medical research do we fund? Who gets
treatment and who doesn't? Who lives and who dies? The people who make
those decisions are no longer rational. They have lost the ability to think
empirically.

Equity is now their god. They no longer believe in science. That's a real
problem for the civilization.

Victor Davis Hanson has watched the rise and fall of civilizations through
the perspective of a historian. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution. We're happy to have him join us now.

Professor, thanks so much for coming on.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Thanks for having
me.

CARLSON: So what does it portend for the future that Science has been so
completely corrupted, that it is dictated by political demands rather than
by observable facts?

HANSON: Well, I think we're watching the legacy of the people who put
Galileo in jail. Remember, they said that the Earth was the center of the
universe and solar system and Galileo was a nut for saying that planets
revolved around the sun. So there's a pattern here that we have these by
calls to elites, with letters after their names, and they say, right here,
Science stops. There is no new development, no new inquiry, no new data,
and they use it for ideological, political, even financial gain.

So even -- look at -- it permeates all elements of our society, Tucker. The
Steele dossier was passed off as expertise by an expert in British
Intelligence. And we knew that was true because the head of the C.I.A. at
one time, the head of the F.B.I., James Clapper, are James Comey or John
Brennan, all of these people came in and they assured us and then guess
what? It just disappeared.

He was not a traitor, Trump. There was no reality to any of the charges. It
turned out that Christopher Steele was indirectly through firewalls working
for Hillary Clinton. John Brennan and James Clapper had lied under oath to
Congress.

Robert Mueller who based all of his investigation on that dossier couldn't
even remember that it existed. James Comey, 250 times under oath to
Congress said he couldn't remember much about it.

And so -- and then we moved on to -- you talked about the Wuhan virus, but
only an idiot Science told us would think there was a connection between a
Level 4 virology lab with associations with a Chinese military and
conducting gain-of-function research a mile or two away from the supposed
origins by a bat or maybe it's a pangolin of the virus and anybody who
suggested that didn't know anything about viral sequencing. And yet, that's
probably a much more likely scenario.

Dr. Fauci no need to go there, but he has told us mask are essential.
They're not essential. One mask is okay; no, two is better. And he said,
herd immunity is 60, 70, 80, 90 percent and every time he was caught, he
reverted to the platonic noble lie, "I just lie because it was for your own
good."

And then remember those weird 1,200 medical professionals who have said,
you know, given our expertise, we think the Science says if you're going to
protest for BLM, you don't have to shelter in place, you don't wear a mask.
You don't even have to social distance. Go out and protest, in a way
apparently that it was scientific to say no to a religious congregation or
a Trump rally.

And so, you know, we have this pattern and the funny thing is, Tucker,
there is a personal agenda, as there always is in history.

When somebody at Moderna says, we have to vaccinate people who have had
COVID and have antibodies or even children, we wonder, it couldn't be that
nine people made $20 billion off the vaccination. It's in their interest,
or that Dr. Fauci was engaged in funding indirectly, enhanced research at
Wuhan or when Bill Gates said, "Follow the research" that he has
considerable financial interest in China.

Or, you know, Christopher Steele was a good friend of Hillary Clinton, or
at least wanted to be and there was an effort to destroy a presidency.

And that's how Science is perverted. It always is for ideological and
financial reasons.

CARLSON: But without it, we can't -- can't really continue in an advanced
society without Science. I appreciate that overview.

HANSON: We can't, we can't.

CARLSON: Victor Davis Hanson, great to see you. Thank you.

Well, one of the many topics that scientists are no longer allowed to
discuss openly is why so many young children are trying to change their
biological sex. Abigail Shrier is one of the very few people who has not
gone along with the mandate and has done her best to study the data, looked
at it clearly.

Next, she tells us what she has found.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: We're living in a moment when almost nobody can tell the truth in
public, and yet occasionally, you see glimpses of true things. Probably the
last place we expected to see the truth was on "60 Minutes" from CBS News,
but recently, we did, to their great credit.

They did an honest look at how many physicians are treating gender
dysphoria. Here's part of what they found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLEY STAHL, CBS NEWS, "60 MINUTES" (voice over): Just four months after
she started testosterone, she says she was approved for a mastectomy,
what's called top surgery that she told us was traumatic.

GRACE LIDINSKY-SMITH, UNDERWENT GENDER TRANSITION IN HER EARLY 20s: I
started to have a really disturbing sense that like a part of my body was
missing. Almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there's something
that should be there. And the feeling really surprised me, but it was
really hard to deny.

STAHL (voice over): And so she de-transitioned by going off testosterone,
and then went back to the clinic. And she says complained to the doctor
that the process didn't follow the WPATH Guidelines.

LIDINSKY-SMITH: I can't believe that I transitioned and de-transitioned
including hormones and surgery in the course of like less than one year.
It's completely crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: How can that be allowed in a functioning medical system? Well, one
doctor explained why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STAHL: Do you have conversations with your colleagues about this whole area
of accepting what young people are saying too readily?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, everyone is very scared to speak up because we're
afraid of not being seen as being affirming or being supportive of these
young people are doing something to hurt the trans community. Even some of
the providers are trans themselves and share these concerns.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Nobody in American journalism has reported more deeply on this
subject or more bravely than Abigail Shrier. She is the author of
"Irreversible Damage" and we're happy to have her join us tonight.

Abigail, thanks so much for coming on.

So every time I read one of your pieces, your book, see the "60 Minutes"
piece last Sunday, I have the same thought which is where are the
responsible physicians -- I know they exist -- who are standing by silently
as this is going on? Do you have any idea?

ABIGAIL SHRIER, AUTHOR, "IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE": Yes, I mean, they are trying
to start to speak up. I mean, the Science Society for Evidence Based Gender
Medicine has formed recently. It's a consortium of doctors from across the
West who are very concerned and oppose affirmative care.

But the problem is, is that the problem is much worse than that doctor in
"60 Minutes" said. The reason is, it is because doctors in America are
afraid of losing their license. Nearly, every medical accrediting
organization has adopted affirmative care, which means that the doctor's
job is to have firms or rubber stamp the patient's self-diagnosis even of
minors when they decide that their problem is gender.

So there's a real problem and in the 20 states in America that have
conversion therapy laws, doctors are absolutely afraid that they could face
civil and criminal penalties if they say, wait a second, this may not be
gender dysphoria that's the problem. Let's explore other options.

CARLSON: Well, that is shocking. Is there any other procedure or series of
procedures to which that applies? If I walk in and say, I want
chemotherapy? And the physician says, I'm sorry, I don't detect cancer. I
want it any way. The physician could turn me down for that treatment,
right?

SHRIER: Absolutely. I mean, this is the only area of Medicine where we do
this and it has basically turned our doctors into life coaches. It is
profoundly unscientific. It tells them not to use their medical judgment,
and instead just rubber stamp the patient's wishes.

CARLSON: Where were the rest of us when this happened? Until you just said
it, I didn't know that, that medical associations can revoke the license of
physicians who don't play along with is essentially a political movement.

SHRIER: Well, I mean, you know, we've seen some of the really giants in the
field of gender dysphoria who have been deep platformed or canceled. Ken
Zucker, you know, most famously, who chaired the committee who wrote -- to
write the definition of gender dysphoria for the DSM V, that's the
Psychiatric Manual. He was fired in Canada, you know, because activists
called him a transphobe.

CARLSON: I wonder at what point do we look back on this, and a lot of other
things we've done in Medicine, I will say, giving heavy duty drugs to kids
who don't need them. But do we look back on this and recognize it for the
tragedy that it is? Like how long is it going to take, do you think?

SHRIER: You know, I don't know. I have a feeling the lawsuits will start
coming. But because you know, they can attack me, they can try to discredit
the scientists who have done good research into this and have shown
affirmative care does not show the mental health benefits that the
activists claim.

But the one thing they haven't been able to cover up is the de-
transitioners -- young women who are regretting that they were pushed
through these treatments. They are speaking up all the time, more and more
of them.

CARLSON: Man, your bravery is a case study of how one person refusing to
back down from what is true can make a huge difference, and I am just
grateful for what you've done. Thank you.

Abigail Shrier, good to see you.

SHRIER: Thank you so much.

CARLSON: We are going to take a quick break from Science for a moment and
turn to Religion because on some level, they are connected.

We had a really interesting conversation with a Catholic Bishop Chaput --
Archbishop Chaput on "Tucker Carlson Today." He says the core problem with
today's society, the reason so many are so unhappy is because people have
been told and they believe that they have the power to change nature, and
they can't. No one has that power. Here's part of the conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS OF PHILADELPHIA: You
know, Catholics talk about Original Sin, other Christian communities talk
about the sin of Adam and Eve, which was they wanted to be like God. They
didn't want to ever -- they didn't want God to tell them what to do. They
wanted to do it their way.

And that that's -- we consider that an act of idolatry, instead of giving
God his due, you give to someone else or something else what belongs to
God. That's called idolatry. It's a foundational sin, it is the most
dangerous sin and it has led us down this path of making ourselves the
center of creation.

CARLSON: Do you notice in a lot of the issues that dominate politics the
desire of people to pretend that they are God?

CHAPUT: Well, I think that the gender issues today are the prime example of
that where one isn't satisfied with the body that we're born with, that we
think we have the power to become something that we were not created as and
I can become a woman, or a woman can become a man. That's something God
does, not something we do.

But that in some ways, that's the final rebellion against God. You know,
the Sexual Revolution was a great rebellion against God, and it was
rebelling against the way God made our bodies and the way God created human
sexuality.

But now, it has come a point where we even think that we should have
control over the kind of human beings we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Really interesting and long conversation that you don't have to be
Catholic to enjoy. This is someone who spent 80 years thinking about life
and what comes after. Really interesting.

That's on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__foxnation.com&d=DwICAg&c=cnx1hdOQtepEQkpermZGwQ&r=tgDLkJy54PfJyWJwul3dKe54qGxqO7b7d5vjo7RcZds&m=fnqSoLrbKdQyAouNmMMMskIZ-KqOoPoqBD6vuYydzh0&s=Pr4mG5sJN5o3Zj7r8hm6jzzKienCvttAhHliAU31tiU&e= .

So a question relevant to -- I don't know, maybe a hundred million
Americans is -- is it safe to take the corona vaccine if you've already
recovered from COVID? One of those basic questions, but until now, no one
has bothered to answer it.

The few who've asked it have been shouted down.

Tonight, we have data and it is a little different from what you've been
told. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEVIN CORKE, FOX NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to FOX News Live."
I'm Kevin Corke.

Senate Republicans blocking the creation of a bipartisan panel to
investigate the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. The Senate falling
short of the 60 votes needed to consider that measure. The bill would have
formed a 10-member commission, evenly split between the parties.

The gunman who killed nine coworkers at a San Jose rail yard had a
stockpile of guns at his home. According to the Santa Clara County
Sheriff's Office, he had 12 guns and 22,000 rounds of ammunition at his
home that he also set fire to.

They also found suspected Molotov cocktails.

And actor Bill Cosby denied parole after refusing to take part in a sex
offender program. The 83-year-old Cosby who refuses to acknowledge any
wrongdoing was sentenced to prison back in 2018 for sexual assault against
a woman at Temple University.

I'm Kevin Corke in Washington. Now back to more TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

CARLSON: Researchers confirmed this week what's been very obvious for more
than a year, people who have been infected and then recovered from the
coronavirus will likely almost certainly develop antibodies, and those
antibodies will likely last the rest of their lives. In other words, they
are immune, therefore, they do not need the vaccine.

Earlier this year, we spoke to one physician Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, who
realized this a long time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. HOOMAN NOORCHASHM, SURGEON AND PUBLIC HEALTH ACTIVIST: The most
unprecedented thing that we're doing in this vaccine campaign is that we're
deploying it indiscriminately into folks who have been recently or
previously infected. And I think that we shouldn't underestimate what the
effect of a vaccine driven immune response is on the tissues in individuals
who have been previously infected, literally the antigenic footprint of the
virus persists in the tissues of the previously infected.

So it's not far stretch to imagine that those tissues such as the inner
lining of the blood vessel would be targeted by the vaccine immune
response.

And I have not yet seen any evidence, frankly, of the F.D.A. or C.D.C.
taking this seriously. You know, I think it's a major mistake to assume
that you can put this vaccine into people who have been recently are
currently infected, and expect that you know, no complications will result.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So people who don't need the vaccine are being compelled to get
the vaccine. That's not an argument against vaccines. It's an argument
against the misuse of medicine, any medicine, including vaccine.

Rand Paul is a physician. He is also a U.S. senator from the State of
Kentucky. He has been infected with COVID, obviously, he recovered. He has
just written an op-ed on why so many are denying the science of natural
immunity to COVID. We're happy to have him join us tonight.

Senator, thanks so much for coming on.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So will you just clarify, as a physician, in a sentence or two,
how people who have recovered from COVID that many tens of millions who
have should feel about their chances of getting re-infected?

PAUL: Well, people need to understand that vaccines -- the science of
vaccines is based on the science of natural infection. What they're trying
to do with a vaccine is to simulate and get the same response that you get
or better with a natural infection.

Some diseases like measles, when you get them, you actually have long --
lifelong immunity. If you get vaccinated after a couple of decades, you
need a booster. So actually, natural infection is actually better than the
vaccine in some ways for measles.

Now, this isn't an argument against being vaccinated, it just happens to be
if you've got the measles, you've got lifelong immunity. Small pox was the
same way. But it's not an argument for getting small pox.

With COVID, we don't know yet. But they say all the time is you don't know
how long you'll be immune. Well, I can look right back at you and say I
don't know how long the vaccine will work. They're already talking about a
booster.

When Dr. Fauci came before the committee and we asked him, how many of
those were vaccinated already have the disease? He has no earthly idea.
They're not even counting them.

Even as good scientists would say -- we would -- we should look and see
whether those who've already been vaccinated are somehow responding
differently. I did see one study that showed that if you've already had the
disease, you get a vaccine, you get a thousand times greater response.

Now, maybe that means a thousand times better, or maybe that means you're
more likely to get symptoms and side effects. So I don't think it's been
studied thoroughly.

I do know that in Israel, there was a study recently, and it showed that
those who were vaccinated and those who were infected naturally had about
the same possibility of being re-infected -- pretty small.

CARLSON: I'm a little confused by this. I mean, if your job is to promote
and then disseminate the vaccine and compel people to take it, which is
what we are doing. College students can't go back to school without it, so
you're forcing this on people.

Isn't it your moral obligation to find out what the potential harms are?
What population should get it? Which shouldn't get it? Why are they
treating everyone the same and refusing to ask obvious questions?

PAUL: Well, this a huge public policy or public health question. In India,
they don't have enough vaccines. So if Dr. Fauci is advising the world,
which he seems to want to do, what should he tell them there? Should they
give the vaccine to people who already had it? Or should they save the
vaccine for those who haven't had it?

So this is a profoundly important question for a country that has a billion
people and might have 200 million vaccines. Should they waste the vaccine
and people have already gotten it? The Science says no, but Dr. Fauci says,
no, we're all lemmings. Submit. It's more about uniformity of submission
and less about science.

CARLSON: These people are scary. And I appreciate your asking obvious
questions and thank heaven, you're a physician. You still have a right to
do that, I suppose.

Senator Rand Paul --

PAUL: For now.

CARLSON: For Now. Good to see you. Thank you.

PAUL: Thank you.

CARLSON: What's so interesting is that a lot of people in public health
seem in private to agree with what Senator Paul just said. Earlier this
month, the heads of the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. as well as Tony Fauci
admitted that about half of their employees have decided not to get
vaccinated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD BURR (R-NC): What percentage of the employees in your
institute, your center or your agency of your employees has been
vaccinated?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS
DISEASES: You know, I'm not a hundred percent sure, Senator, but I think
it's probably a little bit more than half probably around 60 percent.

BURR: Dr. Marks?

DR. PETER MARKS, DIRECTOR OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION'S CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICS EVALUATION: I can't tell you the exact number, but it's probably
in the same range. Some people vaccinated at our facility and others at
outside of the facility.

BURR: Dr. Walensky?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We are encouraging our
employees to get vaccinated. We've been doing town halls and education
seminars. We have -- our staff have the option to report their vaccination
status, but as you understand, the Federal government is not requiring it,
so we do not know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Really one of the most remarkable tapes of the past year, so as
people who work full time in public health at the C.D.C., at the N.I.H.,
approximately half of them have refused to take the vaccine at that exact
moment, and by the way, why? That would be a good follow-up question, no
one asked it. Why?

But at that same moment, we are forcing kids to get vaccine -- college kids
-- many can't return. They are telling you to give the vaccine to your
small children, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): With the vaccine a hundred percent
effective for children in the clinical trial, the vaccinations are the best
shot say experts for a safe return to school, to summer camp and for sleep
overs.

MICHAEL ALMAGUER, NBC NEWS NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Trials are still
underway for children as young as six months old. But by the end of this
year, Dr. Fauci believes there will be a vaccine available for nearly all
children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: A vaccine in the works for children as young as six months old,
what should we think of this?

Dr. Harvey Risch is with the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Risch joins
us now.

Doctor, Thanks so much for coming on. What do you think of that?

DR. HARVEY RISCH, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: My pleasure.

CARLSON: Children getting the vaccine?

RISCH: Well, the first thing -- problem we have is we've dumbed down the
discussion of everything. So we're at the level now, vaccine good; COVID
bad. And, you know, other facts relating to that are just kind of
inopportune.

The problem is that children get the illness perfectly well, almost
entirely, and for children who -- for children who have obesity, diabetes,
chronic illnesses that put them at high risk of bad outcomes from COVID,
they are the ones who might consider being vaccinated. But for almost
everybody, all children, otherwise, it doesn't make sense because their
risks are negligible.

Now, the C.D.C. has addressed this with its data. So it's seen that in
approximately 470,000 Americans who have died from COVID that includes
approximately 400 children who have died either with or from COVID.

That's not zero, but it's a very small number and comparable to children
who have died from influenza in past flu seasons.

So there's no real reason why children need to be vaccinated because they
get immune from just their own interactions, and they don't transmit the
illness to adults. And they hardly even transmit it to other children.
Mostly children, get it from adults, from their parents, and so on.

CARLSON: So the whole reason we have science is to make the fine
distinctions such as the ones that you just explained. Why aren't the heads
of our public health institutions saying exactly what you just said?

RISCH: It's difficult for me to speak about why they think what they think.
I think we're in a vaccine mania or a vaccine fanaticism stage and, you
know, I think that the goals are to show -- proclaim your goodness by
vaccinating everybody, then you're looking to jab everybody.

If your goals are to solve a public health issue as best you can, then it's
a tradeoff and you balance the risks and benefits as best you can.

CARLSON: I don't know how you've kept your head in the middle of this
mania, as you just described, but I'm so grateful that you have.

Dr. Risch joining us tonight. Thanks so much.

RISCH: Pleasure.

CARLSON: Well, no one is covering this story. There are too many stories
honestly to cover and too few outlets willing to cover them, but the Biden
administration is appointing completely unqualified people to important
scientific and engineering posts. What effect is that going to have on the
country? You can imagine, not good.

Heather Mac Donald has studied the details of this issue, and we're happy
to have her join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: In the name of equity, Joe Biden has appointed a lot of completely
unqualified people to key science and engineering posts. What effect will
it have on the country's competitiveness?

Heather Mac Donald has investigated the implications of this for a new
piece in "City Journal.' We're happy to have her tonight. She is, of
course, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Heather, thanks so much for coming on. Give us -- there is so much going on
right now that it's just nice to talk to someone who has got a handle on
the details as you do. Give us some examples of what's happening while the
rest of us go about our lives.

HEATHER MAC DONALD, FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Well, let's look at
Biden's nominee to run the Office of Science in the Department of Energy.
This is the largest funder of basic scientific research in the country.
It's a $7 billion agency.

It oversees x-ray synchrotrons, funds fundamental particle research,
physics research, clean energy, nuclear fusion. Who is the nominee for this
program for this Office of Science? A soil geologist with no background in
physics, who has never run a large bureaucratic organization, much less a
large scientific bureaucratic organization.

What are her qualifications? She's black and female.

She's known for her promotion of diversity in her lab. She writes articles
like "A Critical Feminist Perspective on Transforming Workplace Climate."

Here's a translation key, Tucker. Diversity is code for race and sex
preferences. Given the vast academic skills gap, you can have diversity or
you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.

China in the Sciences is opting for meritocracy. We're opting for
diversity. This is suicide for our culture and for our scientific
knowledge.

CARLSON: At the same time, maybe we stopped talking about it, but up until
the other day, we were talking about STEM and the idea that we need to
educate our kids more rigorously in the Sciences if we hope to be
competitive in the 21st Century, fill in the cliches as you will, but
there's some truth in that. We need to be competent in this stuff. Have we
given up on that completely?

MAC DONALD: Well, we've given up on cultivating our top talent with all the
resources we have. We are now trying to engineer -- socially engineer -- a
diverse graduate class of scientists based on sex and race, which are
totally irrelevancies to Science.

We should be finding the best possible minds regardless of what their
gonads and melanin are, giving them all the training we can. That is not
what's going on. Every single Science department in this country in
academia is obsessed with race and gender.

They don't care about scientific qualifications. They're screening people
out based on the quality of their diversity, equity and inclusion
statements which are just again, mere fig leafs for being diverse and
equitable in one's self.

This is not how we have advanced beyond the Stone Age. We did so by valuing
knowledge and brilliance and we are turning our backs on those capacities
now.

CARLSON: Yes, well, that's national suicide, what you just described. Hope
it ends soon.

Heather Mac Donald, it is great to see you tonight. Thank you.

Depressing, but important.

MAC DONALD: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, few areas of Science are as dishonest and open to
manipulation as the study of climate change. Some of it is, of course,
unknowable despite what they lie to you.

Now some people have devoted their life to environmentalism, saving the
actual Earth, the air and the water and they think Science has taken a
wrong turn.

They're speaking out. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Way back in 1989, thirty two years ago, a senior official at the
U.N. claimed that quote, "Entire nations could be wiped off the Earth by
rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year
2000." Twenty one years ago.

Then in 2004, "The Guardian" newspaper in Great Britain warned us that,
quote: "Britain will be Siberia in less than 20 years," thanks to climate
change.

Now Sandy Cortez of Queens says we have only 10 to 12 years to live. How
much of this is true? And if the basis of Science is admitting what you
don't know, why are so many people pretending to know what they don't?

Recently, we spoke to Steve Koonin. He is a former Obama administration
energy official who spent his life working on climate change, studying it.
Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN KOONIN, THEORETICAL PHYSICIST: Even though the globe has warmed by
about two degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, the incidence of heat
waves across the 48 states is no greater now than it was in 1900, and the
highest temperatures haven't gone up in 60 years. We have been able to find
no detectable influence on hurricanes from humans.

And the models that we use to predict future climates have become more
uncertain, even as they've become more sophisticated.

So all of these things suggests that people who say that we've broken the
climate and face certain doom unless we take drastic action are just
misinformed about what the official reports actually say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Michael Shellenberger is the author of "Apocalypse Never: Why
Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All." He joins us tonight.

Michael, thanks so much for coming on. The question that always occurs to
me is considering we have and we know for a fact had throughout the last
several million years, massive climate cycles, ice ages, warming periods, I
mean, they shaped the landscape around us. Why does no one in the climate
community ever mention that this could potentially be one of those?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, AUTHOR, "APOCALYPSE NEVER": Good to be with you
again, Tucker. I mean, I think it's important to get some -- to separate
some basic facts, some basic science from what's become really speculative
science fiction.

I mean, we know climate change is real, we know that we're contributing to
it. Carbon dioxide is a heat trapping molecule. But the claims that are
being made are just really getting out of control. The more desperate the
Democrats' climate energy agenda in Washington gets, the more exaggerated
the claims get made.

So we've seen a huge decline in deaths from natural disasters. We've become
much better at dealing with heat waves, much better at dealing with floods.
We've seen no increase in droughts. We've seen no increase in hurricanes.

And in fact, the best available science suggests that hurricanes will
actually become less frequent, 25 percent less frequent, even as they may
get five percent more intense, but mostly, the news is great news when it
comes to climate change in the environment.

CARLSON: So why doesn't anyone say that? or why doesn't anyone more
precisely say, you know, there are some things we can't really know,
climate is very hard to measure globally, anyway, as everyone knows, so why
doesn't anybody ever acknowledged the limits of human understanding on this
one topic?

SHELLENBERGER: Yes, well, part of the reason is that when you do and you
write books like mine, or you or Steve Koonin's book, you end up getting
character assassinated. I mean, it's quite incredible the way they go after
you. So there's a lot of reasons why people don't explain that.

You know, I mean, what you find is that when you actually read the
scientific reports, you read the summaries of the reports by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they often do a pretty good job
of describing the uncertainties.

I mean, we know that a doubling of CO2 could lead to temperatures rising
between two and 4.5 degrees Centigrade. But there's a huge amount of
uncertainty and other questions. We just don't know what the impacts of
greater warming will be in a lot of cases. And in some cases, it could be
the opposite of what's been predicted.

I mean, we saw with the Amazon, the early predictions would be more rain.
Now, we're predicting less rain. And a part of that is just the function of
good science. The problem is that when it gets translated by alarmist
politicians, alarmist journalists and alarmist scientists.

CARLSON: What you just said sounds like science to me, and I wish we had
more of it. Michael Shellenberger, great to see you tonight. Thank you.

SHELLENBERGER: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: That's it for us tonight.

The latest episode of "Tucker Carlson Today" out on FOX Nation.

We are back Monday. Have a great weekend with the ones you love.

We will see you soon.

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