Tucker: This is the biggest tax increase of your life

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Tucker: This is the biggest tax increase of your life

Fox News host slams Biden over inflation on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 11, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

You wonder if looking backward many years from right now, historians will notice the remarkable coincidence in timing. Have you noticed? Here it is.

At exactly the moment when the emergency powers they awarded to themselves to fight COVID started to wane, our leaders began pushing for conflict with Russia, and then on the basis of that conflict, they assumed historic war powers.

Without even pausing, the Biden administration declared total economic war on a sovereign country. No American had been killed. The United States had not been invaded or attacked. And yet with no meaningful public debate or congressional authorization, the administration destroyed that country's currency, then removed it from the international banking system that impoverish its population.

Then the administration began seizing the property of people affiliated with that country, without a trial or due process of any kind, without even bothering to explain exactly what crime they had committed.

No American government had ever done anything like that before. If there was one thing the U.S. government long stood for, it was the rule of law. The integrity of the system was always the most important thing.

But not anymore. That turned out to be an era and that era is gone.

Because the target is Russia, very few Americans have noticed any of this. They support it. Virtually no one has paused to ask him or herself where this might be going. How long until our leaders do something similar to their domestic enemies here in the United States? How long before they accuse you of collusion or disloyalty or some other hard to define crime, declare you an enemy of the state and then confiscate your bank account?

Something very much like that just happened in Canada. We don't imagine it could happen here. Mostly, we just don't think about it.

What we think about is Ukraine, and that's the other thing that's changed. The tech monopolies now exert a level of control over American public opinion that has no precedent in all of history.

Eliminating Section 230 or whatever piddling reform Congress is talking about at the moment, it all seems like a joke at this point. It's too late.

The medieval church had less command over society's emotions than Facebook and Google and Twitter now do.

For the past two years, you have watched these companies above all define who you are, as an American must hate. Depending upon their directive of the day, our citizens dutifully change their social media avatars. From BLM signs to "mask up" slogans to now Ukrainian flags.

Each is a crisis and each new crisis is carefully staged, managed from Silicon Valley, at the direction of the White House. How does the human brain compete with this? How does it understand it? Well, it doesn't. Clarity and perspective become impossible.

In the hysteria, even the recent past just evaporates.

The morning that Russia invaded Ukraine, you may have been talking about a lot of different things -- COVID, or crime, or the southern border. Not anymore. Much to the relief of the White House, all of those topics have been forgotten, maybe forever.

No population has ever been more skillfully manipulated than our population is being manipulated right now.

But even with the tech monopolies on the case, full time, there are limits. Some topics cannot be hidden and inflation is one of them.

Google can delete all the search results it wants, but you still know what hamburger and gasoline costs because you go to the store. You know exactly how bad inflation is, and it's bad. In fact, inflation is so high right now that even affluent people are worried about it, and not worried in some abstract sense, like about the long term health of the country, though, that too.

People who make 250 grand a year are worried they will not be able to continue living as they do now. You may or may not feel sorry for them, but let's put it in perspective. Imagine if you made 50 grand a year or 30 grand a year, as many Americans do. You'd be terrified in the face of this inflation, and maybe you are.

So what's causing it? What is the root of the inflation?

If you want to know the answer to that question, the fastest way to get it is to check to see what politicians are denying. Whatever they claim is not the cause of inflation almost certainly is the cause of inflation. And with that in mind, here is Joe Biden telling you that government spending has nothing to do with it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're on track right now -- I'm on track to be the first President in history to lower the deficit by over $1 trillion in one year.

I'm sick of this stuff. We have to talk about it because the American people think the reason for inflation is government spending more money. Simply not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Now you can say, well that's just Joe Biden. Joe Biden never had a real job even before he became senile, he was reputed to be a dim bulb and he was, but don't kid yourself.

In the clip you just saw, Joe Biden knows perfectly well, he is lying. "It's simply not true," he squeaks. Really, Joe Biden, how was it simply not true?

Notice, he doesn't tell you how it is simply not true, because in fact, it is emphatically unequivocally true. Inflation is a function of money supply. The more money you have in circulation, the less that money is worth, even Joe Biden understands that.

The month after Biden became President, the supply of U.S. dollars in circulation increased more than it ever had before in a single month and then it kept going higher, month after month, after month, as the administration and the Congress kept the money taps open, and that is why we have historic inflation now because they printed too much money. It's not complicated.

But it is not the whole story. It did not start with Joe Biden to be fair. In the months after the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve assumed emergency powers to respond to the financial collapse. Now, if you're noticing a theme here, the people in charge giving themselves emergency powers in the face of a crisis they created, you may be onto something.

But in any case, after 2008, the Fed dropped interest rates to near zero and then begin printing money. This was supposed to save our economy. And maybe it would have saved the economy if it had ended at some point, but it did not end. It went on to the present day. That's nearly 14 years.

And in the process, what was designed to save our economy destroyed our economy. Several times over the years, wiser heads at the Fed talked about dropping the emergency measures and reintroducing reality into the American economy, reintroducing market forces, remember those? But each time they contemplated this, Wall Street revolted in very public ways.

Wage growth in the productive economy had stalled, but the market for private jets was booming. So asset inflation became the basis of wealth for many people at the top end. Buy things, then sell them for more, make nothing.

Now no society can continue like that for very long because it's not inherently productive. It's a shell game. But ours did for more than 14 years. And in the process, this country became more lopsided economically than it's ever been. Fewer people owning more of everything.

The Fed was fully aware of this, they're not stupid. They knew they were causing these trends and that most of these trends were dangerous and bad for America. But the truth is, nobody could stop it.

Fed Governors understood that markets would tank if they tried to pull back. So, it was really a classic Ponzi. It was criminal mismanagement of our economy, but nobody could stop doing it for fear the whole thing would collapse.

And now we're at the end stage, the Fed is out of tricks.

The problem with inflation -- and some economists want limited inflation at certain periods, some people in Davos have been calling for it for years -- but the problem with inflation levels like this, is there is no simple way to pull them back. The Fed cannot painlessly massage its way out of $7.00 a gallon gas prices.

So when you reach a state as we are now, you really have only two options, you can pretend it's not happening, or you can blame someone else for it and the White House is trying both. Here is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen trying the first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANET YELLEN, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: We really protected most Americans from severe financial consequences of the pandemic so that they are, by and large, in good financial shape, poised to spend enough to continue propelling solid growth in the U.S. economy and we're seeing that in the labor market.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Now, you wonder, as you stare into camera and say something like that, if you imagine, if you can convince yourself, there is a single human being who believes you, things are great, you should be grateful for our wise stewardship of your economy.

Keep in mind, the woman you just heard, Janet Yellen, was the Chair of the Federal Reserve for four years. So not to be technical about it, but if anyone is culpable for the disaster we're living through now, it would be Janet Yellen. So she knows she is lying and she has not even lying very effectively, because once again, Americans understand the state of the economy because they live within it, they pay for things.

So if you're going to lie about its cause, you're going to have to do better than just pretending it's not going on. You're going to have to blame somebody else.

And so the White House enlisted Joe Biden's publicist to make a video about Vladimir Putin. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: You may have noticed this week that your gas prices have gone up, I want to talk to you a little bit about why. A lot of it has to do with Vladimir Putin and there are opportunities to produce more from here.

But part of this is on the oil companies. Right now, there are 9,000 approved unused permits that oil and gas companies could tap into now to ramp up production. That's why the President has been so focused on investing in clean energy technologies so that we can rely on that and not President Putin to set the price of gas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: "I want to talk a little bit about why that's happening." What? You work at NPR now? You don't know anything. You are a publicist. Please, stay in your lane.

But she is telling us that actually, oil companies which we assumed were very greedy and that was the problem with them, in fact, don't want to make money. That's the real secret and that is why they're not drilling for oil anymore because they just don't want the oil, because they are oil companies and they're altruistic or something.

She must have learned that in Gender Studies class at Oberlin. Now, she is telling the rest of us. But really Jen Psaki said, it's about Vladimir Putin. It is Vladimir Putin's fault that you're paying more for gas.

Now the truth is, Vladimir Putin did invade Ukraine. That's true. That's bad. But that's not why you can't afford to fill your tank.

It was the White House, and we should say, the Congress's reaction to the invasion that is roiling our economy. That's true.

So among many other things, the White House just banned Russian oil imports, for example. Oil prices immediately rose. That's what happens when you shake up the market like that. Americans immediately suffered.

We were told, many people told us, it is worth it because this is a moral victory against Putin and some people took solace in this. But you have to wonder, how exactly is this a moral victory against Putin? Think about it for a minute.

Russia is a major oil producer. Jen Psaki said that in her interminable video a moment ago. That would mean that higher oil prices help Putin. They make Putin and the Saudis and the Venezuelans and Iran much, much richer. Why? Because Russia can still sell its oil in global markets, because the world has not joined our boycott.

What does this tell you? It tells you that the loser in this policy is not Vladimir Putin, he is the winner. It's the United States, and it is not just oil. Thanks to the Biden administration's mismanagement, commodities across the board are up dramatically -- potash fertilizers, wheat, huge. Nickel went up 250 percent in two days. Who's going to pay for all this? You are.

This is the biggest tax increase of your life. And by the way, it could very easily get worse. Why? Because oil is traded in U.S. dollars. Ever hear the term petro dollars? Why would the rest of the world continue to trade oil in U.S. dollars, a fact that greatly benefits us when there is uncertainty imposed by political forces on oil markets? There would be a huge incentive to trade oil in another currency, maybe the Chinese currency, maybe the euro, maybe crypto, who knows.

But there will be new and competing markets in which oil is traded in something other than U.S. dollars and that is a massive loss for us.

Here is the bigger truth. Our global financial systems benefit us. That may not be fair, but it's true and they are the basis of our wealth. So, if you destroy them in an effort to get Putin, who are you really destroying? You're destroying the United States and that's exactly what they've done.

When you attack and destabilize the global financial systems to restate, you're attacking and destabilizing the United States, not Putin.

You can't see this right now because there's so much hysteria being ginned up by the media, particularly on social media. But when that hysteria lifts, when the cloud finally evaporates, it will be obvious that the Biden administration's response to the invasion of Ukraine is the single most damaging thing any American President has ever done to this country and the world. Not to Putin, to us, and to a lot of small countries that didn't deserve it.

It's hard to see that now. All you're seeing Ukrainian flag emojis on Twitter. But someday we will assess this moment with clear heads, and when we do, we will be horrified.

In the meantime, we're happy to talk to Peter Schiff. He is Chief Economist at Euro-Pacific Capital. He joins us now with his reaction to inflation.

Peter Schiff, you hate to feel vindicated over something as horrible as inflation, which really is one of the worst things that can happen to a country, but you've been warning of this for, I mean, the years we've been talking to you.

PETER SCHIFF, CHIEF ECONOMIST, EURO-PACIFIC CAPITAL: Oh, sure, Tucker, and it didn't just happen overnight. Inflation has been a problem for a while, we just didn't care about it when it made stocks go up or real estate go up. But now that it's making food prices go up and energy prices go up and rents go up, it is a bigger problem.

But you know, inflation is not created by COVID. It is not created by Putin. It's not created by greedy corporations gouging their customers. There is one source of inflation. The actual definition of inflation is an expansion of the money supply and it is the Federal Reserve that's been expanding the money supply. They've called it quantitative easing, but they keep creating dollars and it's the U.S. government that spends those dollars into circulation, and as it does that, the value of each dollar goes down and so the price of everything that you buy with dollars goes up.

CARLSON: So, if you're looking -- I mean, you grew up in this country. You grew up in what was a middle class country. Measurably, it was a majority middle class. It no longer is. It hasn't been for quite some time and it is becoming completely lopsided. That seems like -- and that's a recipe for volatility, okay, so that seems like one of the main effects of this Fed policy.

SCHIFF: Well, the middle class is going to feel the inflation tax the hardest. Their wages are not going to go up nearly as much as the cost of living. There are other people who are retired who are on fixed incomes and those incomes aren't going to go up at all. But the cost of living is and we got these inflation numbers yesterday, and they're saying 7.9 percent, which is the worst inflation since 1982.

What they don't tell you is that we had a different CPI in 1982, and if we use the same CPI today that we used then we would be over 15 percent inflation, which means 2021 or 2022 right now, this is the worst inflation in our lifetimes. We're experiencing higher inflation now than anything during the 1970s, and this decade is just getting started. Inflation has got only one way to go and that is up.

CARLSON: I mean, look at the price of assets from real estate to minerals. I mean, it reflects the falling value of the dollar, obviously. We appreciate you coming on, Peter Schiff. Thank you so much.

SCHIFF: My pleasure.

CARLSON: So inflation is making everything you buy more expensive. Obviously, manufacturers don't want you to know that because why would they? So they make many products smaller. So you pay the same or more, but you get less in return. This phenomenon is called shrinkflation.

A lot of customers missed this at the grocery store. So here are some examples.

The amount of Cheerios in family size box from General Mills has just dropped by more than an ounce. You're also not getting as many towels in a big pack of Bounty Triples, specifically, you're getting 18 fewer sheets in a pack. A bag of Doritos just got a lot smaller, which may be good or bad news, depending on your diet status, but you're looking at five fewer chips in every single bag.

Now the government is supposed to track shrinkflation as part of the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, but has not been doing it consistently. Ooh, that's kind of weird. I wonder why. Maybe so won't know the scale of what is happening. Maybe they're manipulating you. We just thought we'd tell you.

FOX News Alert: There are new reports in the last few minutes that shelling in the capital city of Ukraine is very loud, maybe the loudest in recent days. Russian forces are said to be 10 miles outside the capital.

FOX's Trey Yingst is on the ground there for us tonight. Hey, Trey. What do you see?

TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Tucker, good evening. This is the heaviest shelling we've heard from downtown Kyiv since the war started.

Off in the distance, it is consistent and it is quite loud taking place here around the Ukrainian capital from the north and from the east. Remember that convoy, nearly 40 miles long was staging just northwest of the city. New satellite images show us that this convoy actually dispersed and then redeployed to some of the neighboring towns just outside of Kyiv. We were in one of those towns of Irpin' earlier today. We heard the shelling even closer then and there were Russian forces in the town while we were actually inside the city limits.

Still at the same time, civilians are trying to get out of the way, not just around the capital of Kyiv, but across this country. You can see in this video coming up here, a massive Russian airstrike taking place in the town of the Dnipro. That's southeast of where we're at right now. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language.).

[EXPLOSION]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YINGST: Now, Tucker, we've heard air raid sirens across the capital tonight, and this is significant. It is civilians here they need to get underground. There could be a Russian strike or a missile coming in.

In recent days, those missiles have hit cities across this country, but officials here do believe in the coming days, the attacks toward Kyiv will get heavier and heavier and it is part of the reason this city is bracing.

We were in the streets today, and we saw nearly every block has a checkpoint with soldiers. They're dug in on the sides of the road. They're preparing for the Russian advance toward this city, but that artillery again in the distance tonight indicating the Russians are not just hitting the city from the northwest, but also from the north and from the east -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Trey Yingst for us in Ukraine tonight. Thanks so much for that.

So you often heard people say in Washington, many Republicans, by the way that Joe Biden is weak on Putin. Of course, that's ridiculous. It is total propaganda designed to push the administration toward war.

Joe Biden is stupid on Putin. He is weak on everything else, and that is the real problem.

Putin is not the only threatening figure running a country in this world right now.

So as Kamala Harris bumbles around Eastern Europe making things worse, actual dictators all over the world seem more emboldened.

Kim Jong-un of North Korea, for example, is preparing a new missile system and firing ICBMs. He is also not taking calls from the Biden administration along with the Saudis. Here's a report from ABC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some pretty disturbing developments out of North Korea this morning, a senior U.S. official says that the country has been developing a new missile technology. One, it's already tests launched at least twice this year.

Now, that U.S. official deciding to remain anonymous calling this a quote, "serious escalation" by the Hermit Nation, going on to say the United States strongly condemns these tests, and even suggesting that the U.S. will not sit idly by.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Harry Kazianis is Senior Director at the Center for the National Interest and one of the most grounded and wise voices in American foreign policy. We're happy to have him join us tonight.

Harry, thanks so much for coming on.

And let me just say, really quickly, often, people who urge wise responses to complicated situations are called isolationist, you are hardly an isolationist. I just think you have America's interests at heart.

So tell us how we should feel about what's happening in North Korea. And why is it happening, do you think?

HARRY KAZIANIS, SENIOR DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE NATIONAL INTEREST: Well, Tucker, I mean, look, we should be concerned, but not terrified. I mean, the North Koreans have been marching towards a capability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons for probably about 20 to 25 years now. This is not new.

In fact, to be honest with you, we need to think about nuclear weapons and ICBMs in the long run. Nuclear weapons were first developed in the 1940s. Intercontinental ballistic missiles to hit the United States are 1950s technology.

So we shouldn't be shocked that even impoverished North Korea has these types of weapons, but we need to ask ourselves, why do they want these weapons? It's simple. They look at U.S. history and they understand that the United States does not attack and try to regime change countries that have nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction.

So it kind of makes sense why Kim Jong-un is starving his own people to get these weapons. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out.

CARLSON: Right. I mean, so it is possible once again our policies are counterproductive to the interests of the country.

Let me ask you. The world does feel more chaotic, and it seems like it's breaking into various blocs that are new and are not good news for the United States. Is that your sense?

KAZIANIS: You're absolutely right. In fact, actually, my mentor, Tucker, William Martel, rest his soul at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, actually has had a very authoritative study in what he declared was that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, even Cuba would eventually form what he called an authoritarian access.

In other words, a whole bloc of countries that had very different interests than the United States would band together to help each other, at first, loosely, but in more concrete ways. As we can see today, that is already happening. If you look at Russia's war in Ukraine, Russia now is going to essentially be the new North Korea for China. China is going to have to prop them up. China is going to have to prop up North Korea. Russia and China are probably going to collaborate when it comes to weapons technology.

In fact, one of the great dangers of this war between Russia and Ukraine is that the Chinese will be able to go into Russia and buy all of that advanced hypersonic technology and aircraft carrier technology and submarine technology, because the Russians aren't going to have any buyers for their technology.

So when you talk about global chaos, look at this authoritarian axis because this is actually the scariest part when we look at global affairs right now.

CARLSON: I wish there was a single person in the U.S. government, in the State Department and DoD, White House was thinking about America's interest in this because I think they would sound much more like you than they do now.

Harry, great to see you. Thank you.

KAZIANIS: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: We're continuing to follow the situation in the capital city of Ukraine this hour. Russian forces seem right outside the city.

It's not just inflation numbers, we should tell you that are up from last year. Apprehensions on the southern border of people coming in illegally have gone up to historic levels. We've got new reporting on that.

Plus, cocaine laced with fentanyl killing Americans. Where is it coming from? The fentanyl is coming from China. It is being processed in Mexico and coming over our open border.

Not a small story considering many thousands of American college kids are headed down there for spring break right now and some are dying. We'll tell you about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So Congress has allocated another $14 billion in U.S. tax money to secure the border of Ukraine. So it seemed like a good moment to check in on our Southern border. FOX's Bill Melugin has done better reporting on this question than anyone in the media. He joins us tonight.

How's it going down there, Bill?

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Not good, Tucker. Fiscal year 2021, we all know set the all-time record at our southern border with 1.7 million encounters with illegal immigrants, but so far this year, fiscal year 2022 it is already blowing those last year numbers completely out of the water.

Take a look at this video given to me by a source in the Rio Grande Valley this week. What you're looking at is a group of illegal immigrant runners evading after they crossed illegally in Mission Texas. Unclear if they were ever caught.

Then what you're going to see here is a photo compilation of different incidents on different Border Patrol sectors all over our Southern border, different parts -- Del Rio sector, Big Ben sector, Tucson, Arizona sector - - large groups of illegal immigrants being apprehended and arrested by Border Patrol. Single adults, families, and runners dressed in camouflage actively trying to get away.

Then we talk about the criminal elements. Take a look at this mug shot right here. Del Rio sector Border agents reporting yesterday, they arrested this convicted murderer from El Salvador. His victim was an eight-month-old baby. He was arrested near Brackettville, Texas

Then circling back to the huge numbers I want to talk about, a D.H.S. source telling me that just since October 1st, just in the Rio Grande Valley sector alone, Border Patrol has already encountered nearly 212,000 illegal immigrants, that is a 92 percent increase over the same time last year. They've encountered almost 31,000 unaccompanied minors, that's up 185 percent. And they've encountered almost 67,000 families units, that is a 206% increase. And again, we're only talking about one of the nine Border Patrol sectors at our southern border.

Then, let's take a look at the bigger picture nationwide. This year, as I mentioned crushing last year's numbers. In fiscal year 2021 between October and January, there were just under 297,000 illegal immigrants encountered at our Southern border. This fiscal year between October and January, there have already been nearly 673,000 encounters with illegal immigrants. That's more than double last year at the same time. It's a 126 percent increase and we've not even gotten to the busy springtime months yet.

And Tucker, perhaps most concerning about all of this, a very high level D.H.S. source tells me that just since October 1st, there have already been more than 220,000 known gotaways at our border. Those are people that Border Patrol, maybe see on cameras or sensors, but they just don't have the manpower to get to. So we're talking nearly a quarter million people who have snuck past our border in just over four months.

Send it back to you.

CARLSON: Fourteen billion for Ukraine's borders, nothing to secure ours. Bill Melugin, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.

MELUGIN: Thanks.

CARLSON: So the problem with open borders is you don't know exactly who is coming and millions have come in, we know that, but who are they?

Well, some are decent people just looking for a better life to work hard, et cetera. You often hear that. Some of them aren't decent people and a lot of them, even if they are decent, they are being moved into our country by drug cartels who control much of Mexico. There is a drug war underway there, didn't you know that?

So along with people, drugs come in in vast quantities into the United States, particularly fentanyl. It is very easy to smuggle, and it's easy to smuggle, because just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill you.

One of the worst stories we've seen in a long time or developments is the fact that drug dealers are now mixing fentanyl into cocaine without letting anybody know of course, because the trade is illegal.

Now, cocaine may be bad, but it is commonly used by young people. That's just true. So people using cocaine, think they are using cocaine, people who are not drug addicts or fentanyl addicts wind up dying.

Six young men just overdosed on cocaine laced with fentanyl in Florida. Here's a local news report about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Paramedics and police racing to a home where they say at least six men overdosed. One in such bad shape, he is currently in ICU.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue telling us this all went down Thursday at a rental property on Northwest 29th Court and Ninth Avenue in Wilton Manors that is seen here list is an Airbnb.

Investigators say the home was full of people who were here on spring break when at some point, some began doing drugs and OD'd.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are being told that four of those individuals had taken a substance that was believed to be cocaine laced with fentanyl. When they went down into cardiac arrest --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's when first responders say two friends to the four victims began doing CPR, which exposed them to the dangerous drug as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So scary. There are reports that the men you just saw in the report are cadets at West Point. This is happening to a lot of people and many of them are dying, a hundred thousand last year. Maybe you know some.

Derek Maltz is the former head of D.E.A. Special Operations Division. He joins us tonight. Miss Maltz, thanks so much for coming on.

This seems like -- you always read these drug stories and it's hard to know whether they're real, whether it really is a trend. This does seem real. Is it?

DEREK MALTZ, FORMER HEAD OF D.E.A. SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION: Tucker, absolutely.

I mean, this is nothing new. Last November, we had six kids dead in Southold, Long Island, Suffolk County. Cocaine with fentanyl.

Just look, this week, we had two kids dead in Portland, high school teenagers, the community is in disarray. You had like in Colorado last week, you had three dead in a hotel room. You had five dead three weeks ago in an apartment in Colorado.

You had in the nation's capital, by Washington Nationals Park, you had 10 drop, two or three died. In San Francisco, we could go on all night, Tucker.

Remember, this is a big thing. This is one gram of Sweet'N Low, 500 grams. If that was fentanyl, I'm sorry -- one gram of this Sweet'N Low can kill 500 people if it was fentanyl, so it doesn't take a lot to kill. And unfortunately the Mexican cartels are working with the Chinese transnational criminals bringing in massive amounts of fentanyl making fake pills.

The D.E.A. administrator reported in December, Tucker, that there was enough fentanyl seized by the D.E.A. alone to kill everyone in America. So the pills are rampant in the cities all throughout America. The cartels are making billions. The border is wide open and then the President said that the drug crisis is an unusual and extraordinary threat to American National Security. But the Vice President, the President, they're not even talking about it.

No Public Service Announcements, no education to the kids. The parents that I work with throughout America, they are devastated. They didn't even know what fentanyl was.

So thank you, Tucker, for caring about these kids and these families and talking about it on primetime TV.

CARLSON: Well, I think most Americans know someone who has died from this and these are -- all deaths are tragic, but kids who are not drug addicts who are just like college kids doing something stupid and then they die.

I mean, so China is causing the deaths of 100,000 Americans a year. Why is nobody saying anything about this?

MALTZ: Tucker, 285 day are dying. Nobody is saying anything about it because it's politicized. This is not a red or a blue issue. It's a red, white, and blue issue. All Americans, all families, all races, all economic backgrounds are impacted.

Unfortunately, the White House has their old, antiquated talking points on the old opioid crisis when the Big Pharma corporate cartels were bombing the country with 100 billion opioids in an eight-year or nine-year period. No one was really talking about it back then, but now, our whole population is addicted.

But here is the scary part, Tucker. The young kids as young as 12 to 13 years old, going on social media, buying the fake pills, and the parents are finding them dead. This has never happened in the history of the country. This isn't the same old drug crisis. These are fentanyl murders, fentanyl poisonings, and the cartels are building up capabilities.

One example, Tucker, back in October, they seized the lab in Sinaloa, Mexico. The AP reported the lab was producing 70 million blue fake pills.

CARLSON: I mean, without the United States, Mexico has no economy, so we probably have some leverage to stop this. Maybe we should.

Derek Maltz, great to see tonight. Thank you.

MALTZ: Thank you.

CARLSON: So wars bring war powers, of course, that's why people are for them. The war in Ukraine is being used as Big Tech has an excuse to crack down on Russian disinformation. But it's not just Russia. It is anyone who holds the wrong opinion is censored. We've got examples straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So Ukraine is in the news. In fact, it is the sum total of the news, and most Americans correctly feel very bad for Ukraine and impressed by the bravery of many of its citizens. How would you like your country to be invaded? Not very much.

So good for them for fighting back and shame on Russia for invading them. But there is a larger story here that we also should be allowed to talk about, and that's our current government's relationship with Ukraine.

Is Ukraine really a sovereign country? It's not an attack on Ukraine, it's an attack on the Democratic Party, or it is a corrupt client state of the ruling class here. That's a totally fair question. But you're not allowed to bring it up, and if you want evidence, here's a clip from CNN on Wednesday.

Watch what happens when a Professor called Gregory Simons explains that back in 2016, Joe Biden had Ukraine's top prosecutor fired because the prosecutor dared to investigate a company that was sending his son, Hunter, a million dollars a year.

Now, none of this is secret. Biden bragged about it in public at the time. As if Joe Biden should have the right to fire a prosecutor in Ukraine. That tells you right there we are not dealing with a sovereign country.

But on CNN, you're not allowed to talk about any of this. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY SIMONS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INSTITUTE FOR RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES, UPPSALA UNIVERSITY: And if we go a little bit later, of course, then we can look at the role of Joe Biden who sought to withhold aid to Ukraine and asked for the Ukrainian Prosecutor General to be fired because he was starting to investigate his son, Hunter Biden.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Okay. I don't know if it has anything to do with exactly what we're talking about, connecting, pulling funding from Ukraine but connected to Hunter Biden. I did not know that was the direction you're going to go in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, I'm going to have to interrupt you because it's irrelevant, as if irrelevant things aren't uttered full time all day on CNN, they are.

That man was not interrupted because what are you saying was irrelevant, he was interrupted precisely because it's very relevant. The relationship between the Democratic Party and the government of Ukraine, not the population, the long suffering population of Ukraine, but the government of Ukraine is at the very center of this story.

And the fact they become hysterical when you point it out verifies that. So keep asking questions. It's your right as an American.

So we have seen repeatedly crises used to crack down on civil liberties in this country. Maybe that's the whole point of a crisis, it is to crack down on our freedoms here.

Cracking down on Russian disinformation has been used by all kinds of people, particularly Big Tech to censor speech. Now, even the search engine DuckDuckGo, which you may use because they promised you that they would not use algorithms to suppress your speech or track your searches online, has joined the herd.

DuckDuckGo's CEO is promising that the search engine will down rank sites that are quote "associated with Russian disinformation" - associated with. Okay. In other words, saying things the Biden administration doesn't like.

YouTube has just removed an episode of the "Full Send" podcast featuring Donald Trump, it got five million views in 24 hours, but they couldn't handle it, so they hid it.

Blake Masters is the CEO of Teal Capital. He's running for Senate in the State of Arizona. We're happy to have him join us now. Blake Masters, thanks so much for coming on.

So in the name of protecting freedom, we seem to be eliminating it here. Have you noticed this?

BLAKE MASTERS (R), SENATORIAL CANDIDATE IN THE STATE OF ARIZONA: I've noticed Tucker. A lot of people here in Arizona have noticed and it's just so absurd. I mean, DuckDuckGo is supposed to be a free speech search engine. Right?

CARLSON: Right.

MASTERS: It is its entire point. But now, they've decided to censor. Whatever they say is disinformation. And sorry, but that makes them no better than Google, just another ideological tech company that wants to censor and manipulate. I mean, what a joke.

CARLSON: Well, it's especially distressing because a lot of us use DuckDuckGo, which is, of course, inferior to Google. Google has a great product. That's why it's so big. And so they've misused that power for evil. So is there an option? I mean, you're a tech guy. Is there some search engine you can go to that doesn't have its finger secretly on the facts, feeding you propaganda?

MASTERS: Well, we're running out of options. I mean, I do recommend the Brave browser and the Brave search engine now. But here's the thing. I think we can acknowledge that, yes, propaganda exists, misinformation exists, lies exist, and those are bad.

And remember, Tucker, the vast majority of Democrats in this country believe that Russians hacked voting machines in 2016 to elect Trump. I mean, that's just delusional, of course, but what a propaganda coup. That is the biggest Russian disinformation story of our time. And here's the thing, you don't fight that by becoming more like Russia, right? You don't stop that by having sensors tell us what we're allowed to think.

CARLSON: Well, of course. And by the way, maybe I missed it. But I haven't seen really any Russian disinformation or Russian news source, anything from Russia or its agents in this country in a very long time. All the misinformation propaganda I see comes from the White House. Have you noticed?

MASTERS: There's an awful lot coming from the White House. And of course, Big Tech has got its hook into the White House, right? It's hard to know where the White House stops and where Big Tech starts. And that's why we can't trust Big Tech to police itself, right? You can't rely on Big Tech to check Big Tech.

And you can't just say well, build your own alternative, right? Because these companies, when they get big and successful, they all succumb to the same pressures.

And you mentioned that YouTube just yesterday, they ripped off President Trump's interview with the Nelk Boys. Like what is that? This is a highly successful interview with the former President of the United States, like my gosh, and they just decided to censor it.

And Google, Tucker, I will say Google is the worst offender. Google, of course owns YouTube. But Google has the power to swing a presidential election, and for all we know, that's exactly what they did in 2020.

CARLSON: I don't think there is any question about that and to topple governments around the world.

Blake Masters from Arizona, running for Senate. I appreciate it. Thank you.

MASTERS: Thank you.

CARLSON: So obviously, since there is a war in Ukraine, we need to control cryptocurrency in this country and get rid of cash. Of course, that's clearly the plan. Joe Biden has just signed an executive order directing the government to quote, "study the impact of cryptocurrency on financial stability." That order also asked the Fed to explore creating a new digital currency.

To be clear, once they control the money, they control you completely. You have no freedom whatsoever if they can take your money away with a keystroke.

Nic Carter is the cofounder of Coin Metric. It's a blockchain data aggregator he joins us to assess this. Nic, I don't want to be paranoid, but the U.S. government has no right to take away my cash. And if they want to, then maybe I should be worried about that. Does that seem fair?

NIC CARTER, COFOUNDER, COIN METRIC: Yes, certainly. The digitization of cash is something we should absolutely be concerned about. The politicization of finance and financial rails is well underway in this country, Tucker.

And the CBDC, the enthusiasm for CBDCs at the executive is something we should be deeply worried about.

CARLSON: So it just bottom line it for us. I know they would very much like to regulate cryptocurrency to control it, to make certain that you can't make any transaction outside of their control. Are they capable of that? Can they do it?

CARTER: It really depends, honestly. I mean, we've seen some troubling legislative developments in the last year that have been aimed at making it more challenging and effectively just legally harassing cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and cryptocurrency users. And so they are tightening the noose to a certain extent.

Now, could the U.S. ban direct ownership of cryptocurrencies? That would be an extremely significant move. I don't know if that would really work in a country with property rights, like ours, that would be something akin to banning the private ownership of gold. Obviously, that did happen historically in the U.S., but I think there's a significant enough crypto user base in this country that that'd be very difficult for the government to kind of push through.

CARLSON: Well, there was a significant base of people who used gold too when they banned it. So I'm certainly rooting for the crypto people.

Nic, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

CARTER: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: So the backdrop of all of this is the schools if you want to fix the country and make it better and stronger, you obviously have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to raise up children and you do that through schools.

Now, schools get more money from tuition tax dollars than ever and yet, literacy rates are dropping. Why is that? Luke Rosiak is one of the very few reporters in America who's look seriously into that questions. He just wrote a book on it. It is fascinating. We talked to Luke Rosiak for a brand new episode of "Tucker Carlson Today." Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUKE ROSIAK, AUTHOR: What we're seeing now with coronavirus and transgender stuff, and CRT, it's just a symptom of what they've been doing for decades. They have just been lying, and they lie about student achievement. That's the main thing.

One of the most striking things I saw was this chart that juxtaposes grades, and then test scores, and there is no correlation. Grades are a fraud. The teachers have just been making them up the whole time so that parents think their kids are learning when they are not.

And then they want you to believe with standardized tests, we've got to get rid of them, because it's high stakes testing and it is making kids -- teachers teach to the test. They lie about everything except standardized tests. That's the only thing they can't control.

And so they've been lying to parents in a variety of ways for two decades. First, it was the grades, and then they've got all kinds of other schemes, and CRT is really just the latest one because it says, there is no such thing as objectivity.

Showing up on time or wanting the right answer. That's a function of white culture. Well, that's pretty convenient when you've got -- you're trying to explain how you got $17,000.00 per year per student, and you've got a 36 percent literacy rate.

The teachers have been failing at their only mission which is to educate kids in these core subjects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: While the rest of us are mesmerized by national and international news, a lot of the most important things that are going on are happening at the local level. Luke Rosiak is one of the only people who is covering it. That interview is fascinating. It is on FOX Nation. You can head over to tuckercarlson.com to see it.

New reports coming in from Ukraine tonight. The situation there seems dynamic. we will be back in just one minute, literally.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: A FOX News Alert for you.

Shelling underway right now in the capital city of Ukraine. Our team in the ground reported it was the loudest they have heard earlier this hour. We're told it has not let up. FOX's Trey Yingst trading is on the ground for us there. It is just before 4:00 AM.

Trey, what are you hearing?

TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Tucker. This is the loudest shelling we've heard since the war in Ukraine started in the capital of Kyiv. We understand the Russians are trying to hit this city from multiple different directions from the east, from the northwest, and from the north.

Most of the shelling we've heard tonight has been from the north and from the east. Now this is significant, because remember that convoy we've talked about a number of times over the past week, nearly 40 miles long, that is situated in the northwest. So we're looking at this from a holistic approach.

And the only way out now really, for people in this capital city is to the south. That's a main supply line for the Ukrainians and it is significant as this shelling gets closer and closer to the city center.

Now, we were in one of these border towns today where these shells are likely hitting a town called Irpin'. It is just to the northwest of here, and it was getting hit very hard. It's almost like a ghost town, though. You don't see many people and those who are left are trying to flee and get to safety.

That convoy, though, we're learning more about it from satellite images from Maxar Technologies, indicating that over the past several days, the convoy actually split up and then redeployed into many of these towns that border the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Those satellite images also show tonight that the artillery is pointed toward the downtown area, and that it was actually firing earlier today. Now, we know that artillery from the north end from the east is firing tonight. We've heard the explosions in the distance. Oftentimes, it's consistent not letting up.

In the morning, it will give us more information about what exactly was being hit tonight. But again, this is significant as analysts that are looking at this situation do believe Russia intends to at least partially surround this capital city, start to hit it from the ground and from the air and then ultimately try to move their forces in -- Tucker.

CARLSON: So it seems like it is intensifying. I mean, I'm trying to assess the bigger picture here. Is that your impression?

YINGST: Yes, absolutely. Over the past 48 hours, we've seen a lot more activity in the capital of Kyiv. Yesterday, we saw a number of air defense batteries active here. The Ukrainians trying to shoot down Russian fighter jets that were over the city.

Now these jets have fired missiles hitting apartment buildings. We've seen it with our cameras, civilians being killed inside the city limits, but this intensity and the amount of shelling that we've heard tonight is different from the rest of the war, and there are concerns by officials, including the President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the capital of Kyiv that the capital could see a lot of the destruction that we've seen in other cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv -- Tucker.

CARLSON: What a tragedy that would be. For real.

Trey, thanks so much. Be careful. Appreciate it.

We are at time for tonight. It is Friday.

We'll be back Monday. In the meantime, we hope you have the best weekend with the ones you love.

We will see you soon.

END

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