What President Trump should do at the second debate with Biden

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What President Trump should do at the second debate with Biden

Author Mark Steyn joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to discuss potential changes to debate format

This is a rush transcript from “Tucker Carlson Tonight" September 30, 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.  

Holy smokes. It was that intense.  

So what do we learn last night at the debate? Well, America deserves better. That's the first and most obvious thing we learned. All kinds of people said that today, and they were right. This is a great country. The most decent people in the world live here. We ought to be proud of the fact that we're Americans, proud of our culture, proud of our history.  

Most of us want it all to continue. We want thenation our grandchildren inherit to be as stable and as happy as the country we grew up in. But last night's debate gave us a little confidence that will happen.  

It was a painful, highly depressing 90 minutes. At times, things seemed out of control. We could go on about it, but you saw it, so you know what it was like. That's the overview.  

But as a political matter, the main thing we learned last night is that it was a mistake to spend so much time focusing on Joe Biden's mental decline.  

Yes, it's real. Yes, Joe Biden is fading. We've showed you dozens examples of it for months now. But on stage last night, Biden did not seem senile. 
If you tuned in expecting him to forget his own name, and honestly, we did expect that, you may have been surprised by how precise some of his answers were -- not all of them, but enough of them.  

Trump isn't going to win this race by calling Joe Biden senile, nor by the way is Joe Biden going towin this race by calling Donald Trump a racist as he repeatedly did last night. That slander didn't work four years ago, it will not work now because personal attacks rarely work. They rarely determine election outcomes.  

That's obvious if you look at the results, but it's easy to forget it and many did.  

What matters always -- to voters anyway -- is what you do, not what you say. Right now, many would like to see someone defend the country. America has never been under fiercer attack than it is now. Virtually all of the attackers come from the domestic left. They're Democrats. They are Biden voters.  

"I am the Democratic Party," Joe Biden reminded us last night. That's true. 
It should be enough to keep Trump in office.  

The Democratic Party has become more radical than any major party in the history of the country. Its leaders plan to dismantle our system, the system our founders created centuries ago. A system that countless other countries have envied so much they copied.  

Democrats want to do away with it. They want toabolish the Electoral College. They're trying to end traditional Election Day voting. They intend toinvalidate the filibuster and guarantee permanent control of the House and the Senate by admitting D.C. and Puerto Rico into the union.  

We will have 52 states and the Democrats will be in charge forever. That is their plan. We're not making it up. They've said it.  

Scariest of all, they are planning to hijack theSupreme Court by expanding the number of Justices, leading Democrats have openly endorsed this idea. 
It's not a small change. It would end our third branch of government.  

The Judiciary would cease dispensing justice. It would instead become an instrument of partisan power politics wielded exclusively on behalf of one party.  

How would you like to live in a country like that? It's horrifying.  

Joe Biden was asked about this last night. Here's how it went.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR:  Are you willing to tell the American people tonight whether or not you will support either ending thefilibuster or packing the court --  

JOE BIDEN (D), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE:  Whatever position I take in that, that'll become the issue. The issue is, the American people should speak. You should go out and vote.  

You're in voting now. Vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel.  

Vote now. Make sure you in fact, let people know -- to your senators.  

I'm not going to answer the question. Because thequestion is --  

TRUMP:  Why wouldn't you answer that question?  

BIDEN:  Because the question is --   

TRUMP:  There's a lot of --  

BIDEN:  The question is --  

TRUMP:   ... the radical left --  

BIDEN:  Will you shut up, man.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  So there are a couple of things to note about the exchange you just saw. Nobody forced Biden to answer the question, a key question. That was frustrating to watch. But it was also easy tointerpret what he meant.  

Of course, Joe Biden plans to pack the Supreme Court, otherwise he would have denied it. Court packing is not popular with the public. Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose it. That includes more than half of all registered Democrats. But theextremists who now run the Democratic Party are demanding it and Joe Biden will follow their lead.  

That's what radicalism looks like. Anything that stands between you and the power you seek, you destroy, even if it's the world's oldest Constitutional Court, which our Supreme Court is. We shouldn't be afraid of people who are willing to do things like that.  

But in Joe Biden's case, we don't seem to be afraid and that leads to something else that we learned last night at the debate. Tone is everything.  

Biden all but admitted on stage that he plans to tear down our system, but he did it in a calm, "This is your Captain" speaking voice. Biden seemed almost reassuring, even as he hinted at revolution.  

Donald Trump, by contrast, defended our system, a system that most people in this country support. Nothing Trump said on stage was radical. Virtually nothing he ever says is radical, at least, if you compare it to public opinion polling on the issues.  

It's his tone that rattles people. Trump could make a wine list sound menacing.  

And so in the end, amazingly, tragically, many people watching last night may have concluded that Joe Biden is the stable, steady alternative. They concluded this, even as Joe Biden suggested that he plans to change their lives, their country permanently and forever in ways they won't like.  

It's quite a trick, the illusion of reasonableness. Barack Obama was the master of this. Biden learned well -- and so he continued last night.  

Watch Joe Biden explain that actually, he is theAmerica first candidate.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

BIDEN:  It would create an additional $1 trillion in economic growth because it would be about buying American that we have to -- we're going to make this Federal government spends $600 billion a year on everything from ships, to steel, to buildings and the like.  

And under my proposal, we're going to make sure that every penny of that has to be made by a company in America.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  "We've got to buy American, buyAmerican," says the man who welcomed China into the World Trade Organization and has been sucking up assiduously towards leaders ever since. "Fight thebillionaire" says the man whose campaign is funded by oligarchs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.  

Joe Biden stole Donald Trump's lines. It was remarkable. How is Biden able to do that?  

Well, the Trump campaign should ruminate on that question. Trump's advisers/in-laws are telling him tobrag about the number of people he is let out of prison. This, at a time, when our crime rate is exploding and people are dying as a result of it.  

Joe Biden's advisers plan to get many more people out of prison, but they're not bragging about it on stage. No, they're hiding it. Instead, they use thedebate to talk about the Buy America Program they will never implement.  

What we learn here is that Biden people are very serious about politics. 
They know what the public wants, even if they plan to ignore it, if they're elected.  

And of course, they're willing to say anything that helps. That's another thing we learned last night. We learned that quote, "white supremacy" is now thesingle greatest threat to our country. How can that be you ask? 
Well, it turns out that mobs of white supremacists just burned down Minneapolis and then Kenosha. They trashed Portland and Seattle. They shot cops in Louisville. They torched Wendy's. They clean up theNike store.  

They destroyed public monuments in Atlanta and San Francisco. They defaced war memorials in Washington. They looted Macy's in Midtown Chicago.  

Also in the City of Chicago, white supremacists murdered hundreds of African-Americans, and everywhere they went, these right-wing bigots spray painted racist graffiti on buildings and threatened sleeping citizens in their homes. The white supremacists did this.  

You saw it on TV. Damn those, Proud Boys.  

It was bewildering to listen to all of this. It wasn't just factually untrue. No, it was insane. It was crazier than any conspiracy that Google has ever banned.  

Yet, they are now demanding that you believe it, and if you don't believe it, they're going to punish you.  

So why are they doing that? That's a good question. It's also an ominous sign.  

If they can make you accept a lie that ridiculous, what do they plan to do next? Maybe someone will ask that question in the next debate.  

Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute and one of the rare figures in academia who is not only deeply knowledgeable, but wise, so we are grateful to have him on tonight to assess what we saw last night at the debate.  

Professor Hanson, thanks so much for coming out. What did you make of it?  

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION:  Thank you. Well, you know, I think there was two debates, there was the optics and theatmospherics, but watching that experience, and then if you read the transcript later and what was actually said, it's quite different. It reminded me of the 60s, Kennedy-Nixon.  

Everybody thought -- that Kennedy won -- who watched it because he was calm and poised. But what he actually said was trivial compared to Nixon, who looked sort of angry and tired.  

So Trump was abrasive. He was -- he interrupted -- and Biden who seemed although, he slurred; Trump was calmer, but when you actually look at what Biden said, he is a captive of the left, as you pointed out. He can't answer court packing and the New Green Deal or the violence in the streets because he has made this Devil's bargain with the left and that constrains him.  

Whereas Trump is free to be -- say whatever he wants because he is not trying to dilute anybody. What you see is what you get. So he -- tracking great. Force management, yes. Law and order, absolutely, in the past, in the present and the future. 

And I think that hurt him that he tried to interrupt because he had the better message and first five minutes was wonderful. He was calm, but I think he got the idea that he was going to rattle Biden and he interrupted Biden and he didn't understand that when Biden is free to speak that's when he goes off the train of thought, and he gets ridiculous and that's why when he does these canned interviews, all of these newspaper and visual people and media pundits, they interrupt him, they help him out because they have these old thought bits and they sort of stitch them together.  

So when he lost his train of thought or something, everybody thought, well, Trump interrupted him. But if he hadn't interrupted him, we would have been sure that he said nonsense.  

I would say if I could be a little bit more controversial that I don't like the format, this got-cha question. It's like, you know, getting on a horse and spurring them. And then say, you have two minutes to buck and then you're going to stop immediately.  

If you're going to incite a candidate, then you -- what do you expect? By that, I mean, when you ask this question, didn't you at Charlottesville say this, when he didn't say it, and then he gets angry. And you say, oh, two minutes stop. And you've got to be absolutely symmetrical.  

So if you're going to mention Charlottesville, a very controversial topic, and I think misrepresented, then you've got to go to Biden and say, what's the most recent controversial race -- oh, what did you mean by "you ain't black"? We didn't hear that.  

Or if you're going to say, you won't accept theelection, then what's going to be the counterpart? It was going to be something like, you guys, didn't your administration tried to disrupt the transition and really cause almost a coup and not accept the2016 election?  

And so there wasn't that symmetry, and I don't -- I think that that marred the debate and what was thestrategic analysis of it?  

I guess what happened is, you were right about that and a lot of people who got a reassuring message from Trump that he is the protector of prosperity and law and order, were turned off by theinterruption. And maybe he lost a swing vote. Maybe he on the other hand, he revved up his base.  

There are deplorables and irredeemables that have not come out to vote that might get revved up and he might have weakened some of Biden's base that said, wait a minute, you're flopping and flipping all over. And you made a bargain with us that you're supposed to get this radical agenda through. 
And so it's hard to tell, but it also depends on thepolls, Tucker.  

In 2016, the mainstream polls were wrong, and now, I mean, the "Wall Street Journal," NBC, you name it, and they had Trump losing by quite a lot. Now, they are saying the same thing and we don't know whether they're wrong again or suddenly they're going to be right.  

And the outlier polls were right in 2016, and now, they're considered wrong because Trump is within the margin of error in things like Rasmussen on thestate level, and Trafalgar and Emerson and Zogby. And so what that means is, Trump either had a draw and he is ready for debate number two where Presidents usually do better in the second debate or he was behind and he had to make this up.  

And we're going to find out very quickly, but I think there's going to be a sense on the Biden campaign that they're going to -- I don't think they can get out of it. But they're going to try to float balloons and say, you know what, this was just so much, it was so combative. Do we really want to go through this again? And thinking that they have their lead maintained.  I don't think they increased it. And they'll think, let's find a different venue.  

Because I don't know if that suggests that they don't want to go through this again, and therefore, they're afraid of it or they feel that they got
-- they squeaked by, and they don't want to risk their success.  

CARLSON:  I want to ask you in the minute we have left since you have studied political systems going back thousands of years to the classical era.  

HANSON:  Yes.  

CARLSON:  The idea of changing the Supreme Court, the Electoral College -- filibuster is a newer innovation -- but adding to the size of the Union in order to pack the House and Senate. I mean, put this into some context first, these are not moderate proposals. These seem like blows against the system itself.  

HANSON:  But they are expected. That's what theFrench Revolution was about. It wasn't about changing the government or making a Constitutional Republic out of a Monarchy. It was changing the year, even the dating system, and even the days of the week or months, or destroying thechurch because the left does not have a message that people will embrace.  

It is contrary to human nature to decide that we're all going to share and everybody is going to be equal by result. Nobody wants it.  

So the Democrats realized that that message is not going to go anywhere. 
We're not back to 40-hour workweek, disability, Social Security that people embrace. What they're saying is, we've got to change the demographic with open borders or after 150 years, we've just got toget -- we've got to get rid of the nine-person Supreme Court or after 233 years, we've got to get rid of the Electoral College, or we've got to get rid of 190-year filibuster, a 62-year tradition of 50 states because we can't win on our current agenda, and so we're going to change the rules.  

And that's typical throughout history of the left, and that doesn't require a majority. And I think you're right about that, that if it's done in a particular fashion and people don't speak out against it, whether it was in France or whether it was in Russia or it was almost during the 60s. 
Passivity is -- it fuels it. It empowers it. People have to say, you know what, we're not going to change the rules. You play within the parameters of this and within the field. You're not going to go outside thesidelines.  

And that's very important. That's one reason Joe Biden would never answer that question, and it was frustrating for Trump. I just wish that he had had focused on that more, but I can see why he was frustrated and I don't think the moderator really helped Biden to account to answer those questions, and that's what the debate was about.  

And we'll see what happens in the second debate. But I have a feeling that it didn't change for now, whatever the polls had recorded before, and you can argue about what they recorded, but I think we're going to go into the second debate with a sense of desperation on both candidates. They've got to change the polls, depending on what their attitude about what they really say are.  

CARLSON:  I strongly agree with you that at this moment, bravery is the vital virtue. Clear thinking people telling the truth. We won't survive without it. 

Professor, thank you.  

HANSON:  Yes. Thank you.  

CARLSON:  So you heard mention of Critical Race Theory during the debate last night. Joe Biden didn't seem to understand what that is, or maybe he doesn't want to admit he knows. We will tell you what it is and what he got wrong, after the break.  

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)  

CARLSON:  Police say they found the man who ambushed two LA County Sheriff's Deputies in Compton, California on September 12th of this year. 
They've charged a convicted felon by the name of Deonte Lee Murray, charged with attempted murder for shooting the cops multiple times as they sat in their squad car near a rail station.  

Authorities already had Murray in custody for an unrelated shooting and a carjacking before they realized he also might be connected to that ambush on the police. The attack on the Deputies, by theway was totally unprovoked, but it was not unforeseen.  

One Police Captain said Deonte Lee Murray's motive was that he quote, "obviously hates policemen and wants them dead." Where do you think you got that idea?  

Well, it's not just the usual poison from BLM. It is in fact the official message of the Democratic Party platform that police should be hated. Have you read the platform? If you do, you will learn that police make it almost impossible for African-Americans togo outside because they could be murdered by thepolice. That's not true, but that's the Democratic Party is saying.  

As of today, Joe Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris has not apologized, still for promoting theMinnesota Freedom Fund. That's the group that bailed out a man accused of trying to kill a police officer. She has not even been asked about it. And at last night's debate, Joe Biden was never asked about his own staffers contributing to that bail fund.  

If the media continue to give Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a pass, can they really act surprised the next time the next Deonte Lee Murray decides to shoot a police officer after being told that they are oppressors.  

By the way, there's a lot about Kamala Harris that we're going to be taking a close look at on the show for the rest of the week and into next week. 
Don't miss that.  

Well, during last night's debate, Joe Biden, when prompted describe Critical Race Theory as totally innocuous, not a big deal. It's about, quote, "racial sensitivity," he said, and obviously who is against that? 
Not us. Not anyone. Here is what he said.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

BIDEN:  The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like, what insults them, what is the meaning tothem. It's important that people know. They don't want to -- many people don't want to hurt other people's feelings. But it makes a big difference.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  This is the most polite country on theface of the Earth. If you've traveled internationally, you know that, maybe Japan. It certainly is the most polite western country in the world. No Americanwants to hurt anyone's feelings on purpose.  

So Critical Race Theory is not designed to solve hurt feelings, it is not about racial sensitivity. No. It's a kind of racial supremacy. It teaches that some people are morally tainted because of the color of their skin, the way they were born.  

That's the definition of racism. It is poison. We should fight against it with everything we have. It's wrong. It's immoral. It's contrary to the Christian message.  

But it has infiltrated our government. At Sandia National Laboratories, for example, which develops our nuclear weapons. Taxpayer funded trainers told white male employees to write letters of apology towomen and people of color. Which women and people of color? All women and people of color. 
Presumably, they sinned against all of them by who they are. Grotesque.  

Some agencies are teaching employees that punctuality and diligence are associated with whiteness, and that meritocracy is morally wrong. What kind of damage is this doing to our country long term to our kids? It's grotesque.  

So the White House Executive Order this month ended these trainings in the Federal government. It was long overdue, it probably won't be enough. But it is worth considering what's really going on.  

Peter Kirsanow is a Commissioner on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He joins us tonight. Peter Kirsanow, thanks so much for coming on tonight.  

So when I heard the former Vice President say Critical Race Theory is just a form of racial sensitivity. I thought, boy, that may be the most misleading thing I've heard in a long time.  

PETER KIRSANOW, COMMISSIONER, U.S. CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION:  It's galactically divorced from reality. It's clear that with all due respect to theformer Vice President, he has absolutely no idea what's going on in our schools, also in our public agencies, in our corporations, academia and everywhere.  

Critical Race Theory has been infiltrating these institutions for the last three decades and it's reached kind of a crescendo and that's why thePresident acted and he needed to act because it gotto a point where it was out of control.  

You just described what's going on. I've seen Critical Race Theory training. I've seen in many corporations, in many public agencies, the types of trainings that you just described, where whites are harangued for being white and are told that they're inherently racist.  

They are explicitly told that. It's astonishing.  

It's a violation of Title 6 and Title 7 in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it is going on, on a regular basis throughout the country, also in our academic institutions.  

It is toxic, as you've described. It is un-American, but what it does is, and along with its edge on the 1619 Project, is it undermines the Foundation of America. It attacks the justification for American institutions. It presumes every system, institution and organization was formulated and constructed topreserve white hegemony.  

In fact, in some of these trainings, it requests or it commands the employees for swear or abandon all of the traits you've mentioned, with respect todiscipline, punctuality, accuracy, linear thinking. Theadverse of that, of course, is that, blacks in people of color aren't that. It's one of the most amazingly racist things imaginable.  

CARLSON:  Well, exactly.  

KIRSANOW:  It is so condescending. It's extraordinary to me that employees sitting there white, black, whatever, would sit there, and I mean, they've got to because their employees, right? They don't want to lose their jobs, but they take this toxic poison that is inherently racist and absurd on its face.  

So the Executive Order that the President signed is frankly, fairly anodyne, but it needed to be done, and it prohibits public agencies, Federal agencies, Federal contractors, and Federal grantees from having these types of toxic trainings.  

It's pretty clear, it is simply a restatement of Title 6 and Title 7, and it requires these people to have that in their Federal contracts.  

It's long overdue, and what we are seeing in thestreets over the last four months is the natural result of this kind of toxic training that began K through 12, and more probably watered down since. But it's continued throughout not only upper academia, but in the workplace.  

It's a natural -- and by the way, Tucker, there are at least two studies that show that these kinds of trainings actually have the reverse effect of what they have intended to do.  

CARLSON:  Exactly.  

KIRSANOW:  In other words, it increases racial division.  

CARLSON:  Of course it does. And we're doing that at high volume right now, and it is very sad towatch. Peter Kirsanow, we are living in a world of that. Appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.  

KIRSANOW:  Thanks, Tucker.  

CARLSON:  Well, we didn't hear much about Russia during last night's debate. That's odd, since thePresident obviously works for Vladimir Putin.  

Whatever happened to the Russia collusion story? Well, actually, we had news yesterday about Hillary Clinton and how she came up with that story. 
We'll take what we've learned today, the next chapter, up next.  

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)  

CARLSON:  Well for three years, dummies like Bill Kristol and many others told you that Russian agent, that's Donald Trump. He is working for Putin. 
He is sabotaging Ukraine to help Russia.  

But none of that came up at last night's debate, weirdly. Joe Biden didn't seem to want to talk about impeachment or the Mueller report. Strange. 
Those were history changing moments, remember? In fact, the only person on stage who talked about Russia really was Donald Trump. Watch.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

TRUMP:  If you look at Crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me, spying on my campaign.  

They started from the day I won, and even before I won. From the day, I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught them. We've caught them all.  

We've got it all on tape. We've caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that because we caught you in a sense and President Obama was sitting in the office. He knew about it, too.  

So don't tell me about a free transition.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  Well, I don't know if you could tell from the clip we just played you, but just hours before last night's debate, we learned from declassified documents that Russian Intelligence determined during the last cycle, 2016, that it was Hillary Clinton who came up with and was pushing the narrative about Trump and Russia to distract from her e-mail scandal.  

This was so worrisome to American Intelligence officials that they forwarded an investigative referral about Clinton's plan to the F.B.I. But today, Jim Comey who ran the F.B.I. testified he doesn't even remember that referral.  

How does that make sense? And why did Jim Comey then rely on the Steele dossier, which was based on claims from a sub source linked to Russian Intelligence to investigate the Trump campaign?  

If your head is throbbing, there is a reason for that. Sean Davis has gone through all the details for years now. He is the co-founder, 'The Federalist." We're happy to have him on tonight to sort them out. Hey, Sean.  

SEAN DAVIS, CO-FOUNDER, "THE FEDERALIST""  Thank you for having me.  

CARLSON:  So what did we learn from Comey today?  

DAVIS:  Well, it was actually a very big week as far as Russiagate news. 
Yesterday, we learned that it wasn't the Trump campaign who had colluded with Russian spies tointerfere in the 2016 election. We learned that it was actually Hillary Clinton's campaign.  

The Russians knew what she was doing. The F.B.I. knew that they knew. James Comey was even told through that investigative referral what was going on, that a Russian spy had infiltrated Christopher Steele's network and seeded his dossier with false information.  

And Comey today claimed that he didn't know a thing about it, which sure is curious given that theguy was running this thing from the beginning for the F.B.I.  

CARLSON:  So I mean, it's just further evidence as if we needed it that whatever they are accusing you of doing is precisely to the letter what they are doing themselves. I mean, irony doesn't describe it.  

DAVIS:  You're exactly right. And it's even bigger than that. This isn't just a scandal about Democrat projection. This is a scandal about what was a coup planned against the incoming administration at thehighest levels, and I can report here tonight thatthese de-classifications that have come out, those weren't easy to get out, and there's in fact far more waiting to get out.  

Unfortunately, those releases and de-classifications, according to multiple sources I've talked to are being blocked by C.I.A. Director Gina Haspel, who herself was the main link between Washington and London as the London Station Chief for John Brennan's C.I.A. during the 2016 election. Recall, it was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work.  

And I'm told that it is Gina Haspel personally, who is blocking continued declassification of these documents that will show the American people thetruth of what actually happened.  

CARLSON:  Why are we putting up with this? I mean, they are still holding documents from the Kennedy assassination, the Warren Commission documents. 
We still don't know everything there. Why is that 55 years later? Seven years later?  

They are blocking the release of so many documents. Why doesn't somebody, anyone in power could do this, stand up and say, no, these are going public now?  

DAVIS:  That's a great question. I think one reason is that so many of the people blocking these documents are likely implicated by them. You have these career bureaucrats whose careers may be destroyed by the facts that are within them.  

And I think at this point, we need the President, Donald Trump to step in and say no more obstruction, no more blocking. We need transparency and the American people need to hear the truth, and that means declassifying everything, letting everyone see everything about what happened so we can decide for ourselves before we vote in this election, who we actually want in charge of these agencies.  

CARLSON:  Right. I mean, you can literally shoot a cop and get charged with assault, but if you're Julian Assange, and you effectively declassify lots of documents, put them into public view. They want tokill you. It just tells you a lot about their priorities, doesn't it?  

Sean, great to see you. Thank you.  

DAVIS:  Thank you.  

CARLSON:  Well, after nearly 100,000 voters in theCity of New York received mismarked absentee ballot packages, the New York City Board of Elections announced Tuesday that they plan to print and mail new absentee ballots, but remember, you're a lunatic if you question any of this because repeat after us, mail-in balloting is totally secure. Got it.  

Justin Haskins may or may not believe that. He is a Research Fellow at the Heartland Institute. He was on the show the other day, but for mysterious reasons, his signal went down. Just kidding. It went down. We're happy to have him back.  

Justin, thanks for joining us.  

JUSTIN HASKINS, RESEARCH FELLOW, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE:  Thanks for having me.  

CARLSON:  A hundred thousand mismarked ballots, but we shouldn't worry at all. Everything is totally cool. Shut up, conspiracy monger.  

HASKINS:  Yes, I mean, this is just the tip of theiceberg, too. I mean,
100,000 ballots. We are just supposed to ignore that there were 100,000 faulty ballots sent out and theworst part of this was that there were widespread reports in Brooklyn, in the borough of Brooklyn that people were receiving ballots with the return envelope that had the wrong name printed on it.  

And under New York law, if you have the wrong name printed on the -- if the name on the absentee ballots, the signature doesn't line up with the name on the return envelope, then they can throw theballot out.  

So it is entirely possible that there are people who have already voted incorrectly and that their ballots could potentially be thrown out. And we're being told no, no, no, don't worry about it. Absentee balloting is totally fine.  

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is going to get so much worse as we start to expand this out across the country and it's going to undermine Americans' faith in this election and that is literally the last thing we need at this point in time with all the chaos that we've already had this year.  

CARLSON:  This is not the first epidemic we've had in this country. It's not the deadliest either. What do we do in other plague years? Did we just not vote? I mean, it's obviously way too dangerous to vote in-person, right. So how did we handle that in 1918, for example?  

HASKINS:  Yes, it's -- look, America has a long tradition of people going and voting in person no matter what, but even -- no matter what. But even if -- even if you were really, really concerned about it, there are ways to do in person balloting and have social distancing and have people wearing masks, and why can't we have drive-thru voting? Why can't we have that where people stay in their cars and they drive through and they vote and they stay in their car? They would be perfectly safe.  

Because it really isn't about that, Tucker, and you know that. This is all about one thing and one thing only, getting as much chaos as possible, as much doubt as possible, into this election because that's what the left is doing. That's what they've been doing all year long. Why should it change now? Just because there's an election.  

CARLSON:  So just to be clear, they are not fighting voter suppression?  

HASKINS:  No, I don't think that's what's going on.  

CARLSON:  Trying to laugh, it's all so depressing. I mean, no matter what happens in the election, thefaith, the reflexive faith that most of us grew up with in our system has already been shaken, and there's a huge cost to that.  

It's very sad, I would say. Justin Haskins Thanks so much.  

HASKINS:  Thanks, Tucker.  

CARLSON:  So we heard a lot last night from Joe Biden about the administration and Donald Trump specifically being responsible for the Wuhan coronavirus. This time, Biden didn't explicitly claim that Donald Trump personally killed 200 million people, but he still made some pretty big claims. We'll explain what they were and we will assess them, next.  

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)  

CARLSON:  Last night, if you saw the debate, you may have noticed that Joe Biden blamed the sitting President for the effects of the Wuhan coronavirus on the United States. He didn't explain what he would have done differently as President, he just declared that it's a scientific certainty that Mr. 
Donald J. Trump caused the damage. Watch.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

BIDEN:  Two hundred thousand dead. As you said over seven million infected in the United States. We in fact have five percent, or four percent of theworld's population, 20 percent of the deaths. Forty thousand people a day are contracting COVID. In addition to that, about between 750 and a thousand people a day are dying.  

When he was presented with that number, he said, "It is what it is." Well, it is what it is because you are who you are.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  It is what it is because you are who you are. In other words, the virus killed people because Donald Trump is mean. This from the nominee of the party of science.  

So as a matter of data, which is what we deal with here in cable news, is there any scientific truth to theclaim that Donald Trump could have stopped thecoronavirus by being a nicer person?  

Dr. Marc Siegel is a FOX News medical contributor, of course, always on this show, always happy to have him. Doctor, good to see you.  

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR:  Tucker, this virus has humbled all of us and we don't need political posturing, we need toacknowledge that we've been learning as it goes along.  

C.D.C. Director Redfield told me recently that it's themost transmissible, most dangerous virus he has seen in his lifetime. But at the very beginning, C.D.C. was probably underestimating it, saying that it could be contained to the State of Washington.  

Well, the President is as good as the information he gets, and I want to point out something here, Tucker. The President is a businessman, and the President has geared up big time in terms of the public-private partnership.  

In terms of testing, we heard Admiral Giroir say it again today, 150 million new tests of the type that will give us rapid answers on COVID-19, and thevaccine. It's a disgrace how politicized that's become when in fact, it's the Data Safety Monitoring Board that's looking at that.  

And if we get a vaccine before the end of the year, it will be a miracle. 
That's never occurred before, but there's never anything but criticism here.  

CARLSON:  I mean, the former Vice President didn't explain what he would have done differently. Under the circumstances, you have any idea maybe what he was suggesting.
I think we know what he would have done differently under the circumstances. Do you have any idea maybe what he was suggesting?  

SIEGEL:  I think we know what he would have done differently. During the
2009 swine flu pandemic and the President brought this up, and I wrote a book about this, the former Vice President was fearmongering at the very beginning. He got the media a stir with that.  

And then his own Chief of Staff said that they weren't necessary -- that this could have been a big disaster and they were lucky to avoid it.  

So we know that he has a background in fear mongering and that he also will lock down theentire country potentially, and that will cost us dearly in terms of economic, mental and physical suffering -- Tucker.  

CARLSON:  Yes. Talk to any college student right now. Someone currently enrolled in college or a parent of a college student and you'll see what they're doing to those kids. It's totally criminal. It's completely wrong.  

Dr. Siegel, great to see you.  

SIEGEL:  We need the country open. Thank you, Tucker.  

CARLSON:  Yes. So the one thing that was missing from last night's debate, sorely missing was analysis from the Great Mark Steyn. We're going to provide that after the break.  

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)  

CARLSON:  Well, if you didn't catch last night's debate or don't have access to the internet, we have some good news for you, we hired actors and staged a reenactment of what happened condensing into just a few seconds. 
Here's what we come up with.  

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  You're crazy.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are. But what am I?  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  You're a nerd.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  You're an idiot?  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I know you are, but what am I.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)  

CARLSON:  That was a debate. What we're not going to do is reenact any of the post-debate analysis on the networks because the thought of that is just too horrible.  

The only analysis you really need is from Mark Stein, who was not on TV last night. We had to wait until tonight but it was worth it. We promised. 
Here he is, Mark Steyn, great to see you. What did you think?  

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST:  Well, like many people, I found it terrible. But I'm actually more concerned that the Presidential Debate Commission is so horrified by it that they now want to change the rules to make it more like thetraditional boringly, stultifyingly respectable debate.  

I don't -- I don't believe in the Debate Commission. I don't see why in a Republic of 300 million people, Jane Harman, Olympia Snowe and a couple of other people you vaguely remember from the day before yesterday should have a monopoly on presidential debate.  

So if they do change the rules, I hope the President manages to smash through them the way he did through the over formatted format last night.  

CARLSON:  Now, they're not obviously interested in ratings, and I think -- I'm not quite sure what they are interested in. Why do you think the Presidential Debate Commission was -- I mean, I know why I didn't like last night's debate, but why are they trying to set up a microphone killing mechanism or whatever they're doing to tamp it down next time?  

STEYN:  Well, because they always want to over format it. So traditionally, these debates -- last night was fairly simple, but usually they go -- they will have 90 seconds opening statements, after which the other party will have 45 seconds for a rebuttal tothe opening statement, followed by a 30- second pre-rebuttal to whatever the next question is, and the whole thing is locked down in boredom. What more people tune in for is actually what happened last night, the two guys going at it directly.  

Now, I don't think it particularly worked for either party. I mean, I look at it in showbiz terms. So whenever you come out and do an Act One, you've got to do something different in Act Two. Trump is actually -- Trump is brilliant at pithy responses. That's what people remember.  

"You'd be in jail." "Only Rosie O'Donnell."  

So after Chris Wallace started whining that Trump was talking too much, Trump should just have given some of those 15-second answers, and then said, you know, like the climate change thing. Nobody is voting on climate change. It's 37th on people's list of priorities.  

It wasn't on the list of original topics for debate, which has to be issued three weeks in advance for some reason, and he should have just said, look, there's a pandemic. There's a lockdown. There's looting and burning on the streets of Americancities. Nobody cares about climate change. So I yield the balance of my time to Joe Biden, and he can talk about Federal subsidies for environmentally friendly window treatments, which actually happened under Obama, and let Joe exhaust himself.  

Because Joe can actually fill up the time, so give him more time and let him exhaust himself.  

CARLSON:  That is brilliant. Angry -- I mean, your first point is especially smart, angry doesn't work. It's not effective. I remind myself or try every night when I write my open, I don't always follow my own advice.  

But funny works better than mad.  

STEYN:  Sometimes righteous anger works. For example, I don't believe being told that you're a -- you've got to condemn white supremacy is a good faith question because it implies you've somehow have been cozying up to it. It's like when did you stop beating your wife?  

So if you've asked it, you should actually say, that's a fair question, Chris, if you also put it to the guy across the stage, who actually boasted about how he was able to work with segregationist Democrat senators who actually said he would do well in South Carolina because Delaware is a slave state.  

You've got to be -- you've got to have some righteous anger, but you've got to use it sparingly.  

CARLSON:  That's very good advice. Not surprisingly. Mark Steyn, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.  

STEYN:  Hey, thanks a lot, Tucker.  

CARLSON:  Well, quick note. Kamala Harris, of course, is running as Joe Biden's running mate. She could very well become our next President. She could certainly be in charge.  

We don't actually know that much about Kamala Harris, so starting tomorrow, we're continuing each day until the VP debate next week, we are going totake a closer look at her record, talk to people who know her and who she really is, and tell you what we found. It could be interesting.  

We'll be back tomorrow, 8:00 p.m., the show with it is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.  

Sean Hannity right now.  

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