‘Tucker’ on Biden running again in 2024 depending on health
This is a rush transcript of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on December 22, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
I’m Jesse Watters in for Tucker.
Joe Biden just raised the possibility of not running for re-election it was a truly bizarre answer more on that in a moment, but first.
It didn’t take long for Democrats across the country to join Joe Biden’s crusade against unvaccinated Americans. Just days after the White House told unvaccinated Americans they were facing a winter of quote “severe illness and death” Democratic mayors across the country took steps to ban them from society.
In Washington, D.C, Mayor Muriel Bowser just announced a city-wide vaccine mandate for indoor spaces. Muriel Bowser didn’t explain how getting a Joe Biden approved vaccine would make D.C. residents safer or prevent them from getting COVID. Because Muriel Bowser like her fellow Democrats doesn’t have to explain.
They still think it is March 2020. They still pretend the vaccines present transmission and they can believe those things because they make the rules, you obey them. It also doesn’t matter that Washington, D.C. is a city that is nearly 70 percent fully vaccinated or that city officials have acknowledged hospitals and deaths are not increasing along with new cases.
Washington, D.C. residents will now have to be vaccinated if they want to live normally and participate in society, but the shot isn’t enough, they’ll have to wear masks, too.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D), WASHINGTON, D.C.: Will be dialing up our mask guidance from the mask advisory that has been in place to the mask mandate beginning tomorrow at 6:00 AM and I will issue a Mayor’s Order that leaves that mask mandate in place through the month of January.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot clarified how Democrats really feel about the unvaccinated, in case it wasn’t already obvious.
If you’re, unvaxxed, quote, “Your time is up.” Using her emergency powers that she has had for nearly two years, Lori Lightfoot announced vaccines will be mandatory in the windy city starting on January 3rd.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT (D), CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: The unvaccinated are affecting the health, well-being and livelihoods of all the rest of us. To put it simply, if you have been living without having a vaccination, it’s time for a change.
If you wish to live life as normally as possible with the ease to do the things that you love, you must be vaccinated in the City of Chicago starting January 3rd.
This Health Order may pose an inconvenience to the unvaccinated and in fact is, it is inconvenient by design.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Thankfully, Lori Lightfoot laid out the science. She didn’t explain how vaccine passports stopped the spread of COVID, but she did say that if you hold your breath while entering a coffee shop just to pick up your order, you don’t have to show proof of vaccination, even if you touch the door or come within six feet of another person.
However, if you try to take a bite out of your muffin, well, that’s not allowed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIGHTFOOT: If you’re going in that coffee shop to pick up and go, you don’t need to show proof. But if you’re going to linger, you’re going to eat that muffin, you’re going to sit down with your laptop, you’ve got to show proof of vaccination.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Lori Lightfoot borrowed that logic from outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio whom she is trying to challenge for bragging rights as the worst mayor in America. He helped create the playbook for bullying Americans into submission that many Democrats are now following.
They don’t care if your job and livelihoods stand in their way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: I believe with enough leadership, enough mandates, we’re going to get a hell of a lot more people vaccinated and we know these mandates work and we know people respond.
Look, human beings are pretty predictable. If you say, your paycheck depends on it or your ability to enjoy life and go do the things you want to do, people will make the practical decision overwhelmingly and they’ll go get vaccinated.
But we aren’t pushing hard enough. We’ve got to go farther.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Thousands of Americans are standing up to these immoral mandates including Americans who risk their lives every day to protect their communities.
In Boston, first responders recently gathered to protest that city’s new vaccine mandate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We want to work. We want to serve people. We want to be there for our communities as we have done throughout this entire pandemic.
We are asking for the support of our Mayor, and if our Mayor will not support us, we ask every resident of the City of Boston to rise up, bring their voices and tell Mayor Wu, no.
We will not allow our first responder community to be attacked and destroyed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: If most of America is already vaccinated and hospitalizations and deaths haven’t significantly increased, why is this happening? “The Washington Post” COVID tracker reports that hospitalizations are quote “flat.” A zero percent change over the last week, even though cases are up nearly 30 percent over the very exact same timeframe.
So why are Democrats insistent on punishing people who won’t get the jab?
Well according to his holiness, Anthony Fauci, it is because of the quote “raging omicron variant.” But thankfully, we have data from South Africa where omicron was first discovered, so we don’t have to listen to Anthony Fauci.
According to a brand new study from that country, omicron has an 80 percent lower risk of hospitalization than past COVID variants. South Africa’s hospitalization rate even fell by 91 percent during the omicron wave and less than two percent of all COVID positive South Africans were hospitalized. That is compared to 19 percent of COVID positive South Africans who were hospitalized in the third delta variant wave.
Health officials in South Africa also added that the low hospitalization number is also inflated because even mild COVID cases are now being admitted to hospitals since they have the capacity that they didn’t have before.
Here is one doctor explaining how mild the omicron variant is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANGELIQUE COETZEE, CHAIR, SOUTH AFRICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: We’re over the curve, it is sort of coming down.
You know in Gauteng, which was the epicenter, the numbers are much lower. It is however still spreading to the Eastern and Western Cape and KwaZulu- Natal because of the Holidays, but you know, all over — in total, if you look at our numbers, it’s going down.
We don’t see a high death rate with omicron.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: And that is in a country where just about a quarter of the population is fully vaxxed. So even the unvaccinated are surviving omicron. Meanwhile, in this country amid the omicron surge, Democrats and the media keep trying to scare us about. The White House is claiming 73 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, 30 percent of those have also received a third booster.
New York City, one of the most vaccinated cities in America and yet cases are surging.
Just moments ago, Joe Biden summed up his administration perfectly and admitted his COVID plan isn’t working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID MUIR, ABC NEWS: We’re nearly two years into this pandemic, you’re a year into the presidency. Empty shelves and no test kits in some places, three days before Christmas when it’s so important. Is that good enough?
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, nothing has been good enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: So if it is becoming more obvious that two or three shots won’t stop people from getting COVID, what will? Six shots? Maybe eight?
Boosters forever, at least according to this doc on MSNBC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC ANCHOR: Are you saying at three months from our booster, we probably need another booster?
DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: I think so and again, it’s to prevent infection and long COVID particularly among our healthcare workers. I’ll leave it to the Federal agencies who may offer an opinion about the general population, but at least let’s protect that population because that’s absolutely critical.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: It won’t be long before Democrats start taking cues from abroad like Spain where masks are now mandated outdoors, or Ottawa, Canada which has just told residents to just assume they have omicron if they can’t get tested.
The people in charge refuse to recognize that COVID is here to stay, so instead, they double down, more masks, more vaccines. It is highly effective, you need to take it every three months for all of eternity.
Fail to comply and they’ll crush you.
Matt Walsh is the host of “The Matt Walsh Show” and he joins us now.
A muffin mandate, Matt in the windy city. What’s going to happen next?
MATT WALSH, HOST, “THE MATT WALSH SHOW”: Yes, well, that is what the science says that if you’re eating a pastry, there is a greater probability of spreading COVID. I guess that is just science.
I mean, you touched on it and this is just — this is what it comes down to, I think, is that we know now that the vaccine does not stop the spread of COVID and even the people who were selling it one way are now basically admitting that.
So, if it doesn’t stop the spread of COVID, then these vaccine mandates make no rational sense at all, even leaving aside the constitutional and moral problems, if you can leave that aside which obviously the powers that be have, well it doesn’t make any rational sense, because no matter if you’re vaccinated or not, we are all a bunch of unclean super spreaders it turns out.
So you know, they told us early in the pandemic they kept saying and they say now even that we’re all in this together and we know that it is bogus in the way that they mean it, but it turns out that in a certain sense, it’s true, we are all in this together and that we can all spread COVID and that’s why, it just doesn’t make any sense to be segregating people like this. The risk is basically the same for everyone it turns out.
WATTERS: But why would we use reason now when we haven’t used it since the very beginning? Matt, I don’t know. I look at the numbers in New York, I look at them in Chicago, I look them at them in D.C. These are these are cities with a combined population of over 10 million people, and I can count on my hand maybe sometimes, some days I need to use my toes the number of COVID deaths combined in these cities. It’s minuscule.
I mean, more people are dying from heart disease and car accidents, yet they’ve turned all of our lives completely upside down to stop something that is honestly right now unstoppable.
WALSH: Yes, and this is good news like there are people who don’t want the good news with COVID and I should probably tell you something, it’s good news that this omicron variant is according to all the data is very, very mild. It is a cold is what it is, okay.
Omicron is a cold. For all intents and purposes, it’s a cold that the primary symptoms are like runny nose, night sweats, that sort of thing. It is unpleasant to have, we’ve all had colds, that’s what it is, and that’s – –
If this is now the dominant strain in our country and it’s going to become the dominant strain across the world, that’s a good thing. I mean, sign me up, considering we’re going to have COVID forever. COVID is always going to be with us as you point out.
If this becomes a dominant strain, I’m like, sign me up for that one. If I have to get COVID. If I have to get some kind of COVID, which we all will get it if we haven’t yet, then that’s a good thing. This should be considered sort of like the endgame of the pandemic when it becomes just an endemic basically, you know a head cold.
But the powers that be, of course, they don’t want that because for them, this is all about control and they can’t use it to control us anymore if it becomes this sort of mild situation.
WATTERS: Yes, well, you and the scientists and everybody seems to be following the science, except the politicians. It shouldn’t surprise anybody.
Matt Walsh, thanks for coming on.
WALSH: Thank you.
WATTERS: When the public health officials and the media talk about omicron, they only talk about surging case numbers, but is that all we should be focusing on?
Dr. Hooman Noorchashm is a physician and retired surgeon. He says, we should be screening for immunity, not infection and he joins us now.
So, doctor, explain what you mean by screening for immunity and why that is so important?
DR. HOOMAN NOORCHASHM, PHYSICIAN AND RETIRED SURGEON: Hey, Jesse. Thanks for having me here.
Look, I think that the deviation that we are witnessing from science by the Biden administration, by the F.D.A. and by the C.D.C. from the science is frankly on par with the Intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor, and I’ll tell you why.
Look, what’s going on with this vaccine and with the virus is that we need immunity on an individual basis to fight it. Now, the pathway to that immunity could be vaccination. I mean, you know look, the vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed is extremely effective at mounting IgG responses in prime T cells and in fact, it could be used as the dominant pathway by un-immune people.
There’s also natural immunity, which the Biden administration has completely ignored, but really, you know what they’ve ignored and this is frankly from a scientific perspective deplorable. They’ve ignored immunity and frankly, it’s the gold standard for every other viral infection that we deal with to check for antibodies.
We’ve known about this. You know, look, I’ve communicated directly with Dr. Woodcock and multiple different folks at the level of the companies and Pfizer, Dr. Bill Gruber, Dr. Albert Bourla, Dr. Woodcock herself. She has acknowledged this.
You know, I think that it’s absolutely — it’s a catastrophic failure in intelligence, the scientific intelligence for us not to have focused sufficiently on assessing immunity. These are quite simple tests.
Right now, we have the Defense Production Act plugged into these screening tests, which I think are important obviously. You want to know if you’re positive, but really the key is if the President of the United States wants to bring peace of mind to everyday Americans, we should have been and we should be focusing on checking immunity levels.
This is not something that is out of this world. Again, I’ve repeated this with, Tucker, and I’ll repeat it with you is that we put a Rover on Mars. We are a technologically sophisticated country, we are able to do quite sophisticated things and the fact that we’re failing to actually provide everyday Americans with an understanding of how immune they are is again, it’s a catastrophic intelligence failure that’s being led at the present by the President of the United States.
Really, what should be happening is that the Defense Production Act should be getting plugged into corporations like LabCorp and Quest. We have some very high level medical device companies that within the span of a week or several months could come up with these home tests for antibodies and we could really let people know what their level of susceptibility is.
Look, these screening tests that we’re wasting taxpayer dollars on right now with the Defense Production Act are frankly null and void in two seconds. Literally you can get your test done at the super-spreader testing center and then go next door and get a cup of coffee and catch the virus.
WATTERS: The super spreader testing center. Again, you should see Manhattan. You’ve got them lined up around the block.
All right, so we don’t have the situational awareness you’re saying with regards to herd immunity and you can have that in combination with vaccines and that is something that’s not talked about, or I don’t even think it’s been allowed to be talked about. You can’t even say herd immunity or else you’re banished from social media.
NOORCHASHM: I mean look, herd immunity was a nice concept to talk about but in reality what matters is whether Jesse Watters or Dr. Hooman Noorchashm have antibodies in their blood at a high enough level to fight this infection. You either know that or you don’t.
And if the President of the United States really wants to bring peace and comfort to Americans instead of you know, shoving these draconian mandates down everyone’s throats and you know cutting people out of society, what we should be doing on an individual level — and we can do this, this is not out of this world, Jesse — we should be checking for immunity.
WATTERS: Yes.
NOORCHASHM: These lab tests are quite widely available and we should be doing them.
WATTERS: All right, Doctor, thank you so much for coming on TUCKER CARLSON.
NOORCHASHM: My pleasure. Merry Christmas.
WATTERS: You, too.
We just told you that Joe Biden made a big announcement about his re- election plans. FOX’s Kevin Corke has the details — Kevin.
KEVIN CORKE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Jesse.
Will he or won’t he run again in 2024?
Well, tonight, Joe Biden said, “Sure, why not.”
In an interview with ABC’s David Muir, which of course is what you’re supposed to say when you’re the President, but in what could best be described as a flash of reflection, Biden also admitted that a lot could happen between now and then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUIR: You said you would absolutely serve eight years if elected. Do you plan to run for re-election?
BIDEN: Yes. But look, I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now, if I’m in good health, then in fact I would run again.
MUIR: And if that means a rematch against Donald Trump?
BIDEN: You’re trying to tempt me now. Sure, why would I not run against Donald Trump if he is the nominee? That increased the prospect of running.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORKE: Now listen carefully to what he said there. He talked about his health. Now, those comments as you know, Jesse, come as the country watched him cough his way through remarks about the White House’s coronavirus response, raising frankly uncomfortable questions about a man who were he to run and even win in 2024, would be 86 before the end of his second term — Jesse.
WATTERS: Kevin Corke, thank you.
CORKE: You bet.
WATTERS: A medical responds to that, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: We just told you about Joe Biden’s major re-election announcement. He said, he will run for re-election if he is healthy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUIR: You said you would absolutely serve eight years if elected. Do you plan to run for re-election?
BIDEN: Yes. But look, I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now, if I’m in good health, then in fact I would run again.
MUIR: And if that means a rematch against Donald Trump?
BIDEN: You’re trying to tempt me now. Sure, why would I not run against Donald Trump if he is the nominee? That increased the prospect of running.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Dr. Marc Siegel is a FOX News medical contributor and he joins us now with reactions. So, Dr. Siegel, the President has swung the door wide open to the possibility that he will not seek re-election because of a possible health reason. What does that tell you?
DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you know, Jesse, good evening. Listen, I’ve been following presidential health for some time as you know and also President Biden’s health and I’ve never heard a candidate ever say this, it may be, if.
You always hear the President or a candidate say of course, I’m in good health. Of course, I’m going to run. Now I’m not his physician, I’ve never examined him, but that is certainly eyebrow raising for a physician.
Now we have seen a recent report from his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, which was for the most part flying colors except for one thing. It showed a stiff gait that he didn’t have a year ago and that is eyebrow raising and that led to a neurological evaluation, except for one thing, we never saw the MRI and we never saw the nerve conduction studies, and we never saw the cognitive testing. We never saw any of that.
We know he has atrial fibrillation, which can lead to problems. We know that he had aneurysms clipped years — surgically repaired years ago which can lead to problems. We know that he loses his train of thought. We know that he snaps at people, we’ve seen that occur. All of that has us nervous and I have to tell you, we don’t need nervousness right now, right? We need strong leadership and courage in a time that we’re going through right now, decisiveness.
WATTERS: Yes, not only do we need that as the American people, I think our enemies need to know the guy is okay, our allies need to know that absolutely.
You said they ran a bunch of head tests on him, obviously they have not been released. Would those results of the head test be given to the President or would they kind of massage those?
SIEGEL: Oh, I think he knows and I am kind of wondering — I don’t want to connect too many dots here, but I kind of wonder even more now what they found out. Now, I don’t know that he had an MRI of the brain or the spine, but he probably should have, and I don’t know what the neurological test showed, but there are several conditions that he might have that could lead to that stiff gait.
I want to know as a physician. I would be certain that they would have to fully disclose it to the patient, to the President, but we don’t want to know — what we don’t want to know is if or maybe because he’s going to be in his 80s as Kevin was saying. You know, he is already 79 years old.
We’ve already had health scares going on right now with his coughing every time we see him coughing. I mean, granted, he tested negative for COVID-19 today, but sometimes he coughs with that mask off and he is standing there at the microphone thinking that he can talk into the microphone with the mask off then the mask goes on then it goes off again.
I mean, you’ve been talking to me about that, Jesse. I think that we need a sense of good health.
Now some of the good health was definitely seen in that physical exam he had, but not entirely and I don’t want to say there was a smoke screen there, but I am curious about some of the tests I didn’t see, not even a mental status examination, not a cognitive test in sight.
WATTERS: Yes, this is just very early, first year, not even finished with the first year to drop a bomb like this. It’s unprecedented.
All right, Dr. Siegel, thank you so much for your medical expertise.
SIEGEL: Always, Jesse. Thank you.
WATTERS: Elon Musk just slammed cancel culture and went after humorless liberals in a new interview. That’s straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Tesla CEO, Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world. He is also one of the few who is unafraid to speak his mind.
Just days after calling Elizabeth Warren Senator Karen on Twitter, he slammed wokeness as one of the biggest threats to civilization in an interview with the “Babylon Bee.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA: It is a prevalent mind virus and arguably one of the biggest threats to monetization.
So do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation and hate basically? At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful.
It basically gives mean people a reason — it gives them a shield to be to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Musk then explained how comedy is turning into propaganda. Comedy is no longer about pointing out essential truths, it’s about pushing an agenda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSK: And then you realize, it’s like, wait a second is comedy — is the comedy getting at an essential truth or trying to — or is there a propaganda element — or is it trying to push you in a particular direction or getting to an essential truth that is humorous?
And when it stops trying to get to an essential truth that is humorous then you know, it’s just not that funny.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Elon also cracked some of his own jokes and took a swipe at CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: You can be on CNN right now.
MUSK: Yes.
MAN: You know.
MAN: Don Lemon — in a real news organization. I’m just throwing it out there.
MUSK: Unfortunately, I just, you know haven’t — you know, I guess, you know what was it you said, the requirement for being a CNN — do you know what CNN is?
MAN: Are you a pervert?
MUSK: I am not perverted enough, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Seth Dillon is the CEO of “The Babylon Bee.” You just saw him interview Elon Musk there and he joins us now.
All right, Seth, so what does it tell you that one of the richest, most powerful man in the world could have done an interview with anybody, any news anchor, chose “The Babylon Bee,” a satire outfit.
SETH DILLON, CEO, “THE BABYLON BEE”: Well, we were trying to be a little self-deprecating there and asking him like, what is happening here? Why are we talking to you? We don’t even understand why we’re having this conversation?
You could be with a real news outlet like CNN. I loved his response. I thought that was hysterical that he took an opportunity to take a jab at them was really funny and the fact that he sat down with us.
I mean, look, he has been a fan of ours for a while, which we love. You know, he engages with our content from time to time, so we were kind of dancing around like communicating with each other and finally just threw it out there. We were like, hey, can we interview you and he said, fly to me and we’ll do it.
So, we made it happen.
WATTERS: How refreshing is it to see a guy that rich, I mean usually you see these — you know, these industrialists, the scions, you know the heirs and things like that or these tech nerds traditionally, but you’ve never seen kind of a young billionaire — irreverent, unafraid to take on the political class. I think it’s — I think it’s breathtakingly fresh and it looks like he has the political class running scared.
DILLON: Well, he is in a unique position. I think he is one of those people who you could consider un-cancelable. You know, he is able to speak his mind really freely and it’s crazy, too, because he has so much power. His words carry so much weight.
You know, he can impact the stock market you know with everything that he says, so he has to choose his words very carefully. But even in choosing his words carefully and deliberately, he is not afraid to speak the truth. He is speaking the truth very boldly and you know, I wanted to like stand up and clap and say “Amen” over and over again in that interview because he was really the one speaking truth to power here.
I mean, here he is. He is sitting there. He is a billionaire, but he’s talking back to you know this this woke ideology, this progressive stuff that’s coming from the top down and you know, he really is speaking truth to power even though he is a billionaire.
WATTERS: And not only what he said about comedy and you can see the ratings just fall off a cliff on late night because they do push propaganda. What he said about woke culture, it just gives jerks an excuse to be jerks, and then when you call them out for being jerks, they say, oh no I’m virtuous. I’m so virtuous.
DILLON: Well, that’s how they score their virtue points, right, is by enforcing woke ideology on everybody else trying to make you think like them. It’s really a form of oppression and tyranny and it is wrapped in virtue. It’s like they’re trying to be — they are trying to stick up for the little guy, the marginalized, the oppressor.
But in the process, they are oppressing people who disagree with them and trying to bully them into silence and submission and the fact that somebody as influential as Elon Musk is speaking out about that and giving us the platform to help him carry that voice out into culture, it’s just an awesome opportunity for us.
WATTERS: All right, well I hope you asked him if he could send you into outer space because that’s — that would have been my first question.
DILLON: Satire in space, yes, we need that.
WATTERS: Absolutely. Seth Dillon, thank you so much. We love your stuff.
DILLON: Thanks, Jesse.
WATTERS: What happens to society when man forgets God? Eric Metaxas is a best-selling author who has pondered that question. In a brand new episode of “Tucker Carlson Today,” he told Tucker how our world is divided between those who are willing to sell their souls for power and those who believe in God and here’s part of that conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC METAXAS, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR: When things are this crazy, you know and I know that anybody with a modicum of sanity and commonsense also sees that things are crazy, and they’re all asking the same question and you’re asking it implicitly and I talk about it, what is happening? What is happening?
And the reason you say what is happening is because you’re saying, I’ve seen crazy stuff, but I’ve never seen anything on this level. It doesn’t seem — I can’t account for it.
This isn’t your incompetence, right? If we had a President or a fake President who is just a total idiot, he wouldn’t be able to push forward this level of chaos and insanity, so it can’t just be incompetence.
What is it? Are there — is there a handful of billionaire, you know, cabalists who are leading this? What is happening?
But most people know, clearly, this is unprecedented. Anybody who has been alive in America, I mean 1968 and the madness of that, that doesn’t quite compare to this. So people are saying what is going on and at the bottom of it and this is what I was saying when I wrote the book, I wasn’t thinking about this, but at the bottom of it ultimately, the book starts with a quote from Solzhenitsyn’s famous quote.
He said, when the horrors were unleashed by the Bolsheviks, old Russian people said that all these things that are happening now, how did they happen? They’ve happened because man has forgotten God.
You realize that at the end of the day, there are two world views. If you’re an American you get this better than anybody. One is that there is a God who loves us, who wants us to be free, who wants us to govern ourselves, to have the most limited government, the most freedom and you need God and you need virtue.
You can’t force virtue, so there’s the conundrum at the heart of American self-government, but that’s the best system for quote-unquote “human flourishing.”
And at the other end of the spectrum, the most government power, whether it’s — you know Marxism of any kind, whether it’s the CCP today or whether it’s the Nazis or whatever, or whether it’s North Korea, the only thing that threatens their power and their ability to crush people and treat them as slaves is people who believe in something beyond the state.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT: Exactly. A belief in a human power.
METAXAS: Right, so if you believe in God, you are a horrifying threat to anybody with that kind of Marxist big state view who simply wants power, and in our lifetimes, we’ve never seen the battle lines drawn this way.
There has always been kind of this you know, people kind of playing patty cake with big statism or whatever. It’s never been so dramatic as it is right now.
But right now, you have an absolutely, astonishing, unprecedented division between people who are willing to sell their souls for power on the one hand and then the people over here who are saying this isn’t right, this doesn’t seem like it’s going in the right direction, what is causing it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: You can watch Tucker’s full conversation with Eric Metaxas right now on FOX Nation, just go to tuckercarlson.com.
The Chinese Communist Party was just caught infiltrating the Ivy League. That’s next.
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WATTERS: Every year, the Chinese Communist Party steals billions of dollars in intellectual property from the United States. One of the ways they do this is by infiltrating American colleges and universities, and then paying professors who work at them.
Just yesterday, a Harvard Professor named Charles Lieber was just found guilty on all counts for hiding his ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Gordon Chang is a Gatestone Institute senior fellow and he joins us now. So, how did this all go down?
GORDON CHANG, SENIOR FELLOW, GATESTONE INSTITUTE: Well, the important thing is that the Justice Department knew that Charles Lieber was taking money, but they couldn’t go after what they really wanted, which is espionage, or even treason.
So they got him on pretty minor accounts, six of them, basically, income tax evasion, failing to report. Now, that’s a good thing. But the problem is, he’s not going to get very much time in Federal Prison, if anytime at all.
So what we really need to do is have Congress increase the penalties for crimes that relate to China, because every time someone commits a crime for China, that’s a stab on the heart of America.
WATTERS: So how do they flip these guys? You know, these guys have access, this Professor to some of the most innovative technological stuff that the U.S. traffics in. Did they target him because he is Chinese-American?
CHANG: Well, Lieber wasn’t, but they do target a lot of Chinese-Americans and they do that because they can pressure relatives back in China or they can appeal to patriotism. They’ve done that often.
But you know, with someone like Charles Lieber, it could be sex, it could be money, and once they get the first time Charles Lieber takes money, then they’ve got him because then Lieber knows that he is vulnerable to being disclosed.
So there’s all sorts of things. You know, you look at, for instance, Fang Fang, the Ministry of State Security agent at the heart of the Swalwell matter. That is a very simple way to turn an American.
WATTERS: Sex, obviously, is probably the biggest booby trap that they use, but also straight cash. Were they giving this Professor cash at Harvard? How is it passed along?
CHANG: They — yes, they were giving him something like $50,000.00 a month.
WATTERS: That’s Hunter Biden money.
CHANG: So the money is quite large.
WATTERS: That’s no small change.
CHANG: Maybe not as much as Hunter Biden, but it’s a lot of money. But the point is, it doesn’t really have to be a lot of money. It just has to be a little bit of money because then what happens is, they know they’ve committed a crime. They know they’re vulnerable to blackmail and extortion, and therefore, we start to see more and more information being leaked out.
So it doesn’t take very much, Jesse, to deter an American like this. And remember, Xiaodong Zhang (ph) that Harvard academic that Tucker talked about? That guy said, look, every American can be bought and Beijing is doing its best to prove that proposition.
WATTERS: Bought or flipped in the bedroom like Swalwell as we see there on the screen and then apparently when the U.S. government officials really zero in on these Chinese tactics, the Chinese use this line, oh, you know, they’re after me because they’re discriminating against us. They’re bigoted towards China and we can’t have bigotry and things — and the media falls for it. So, we’re like the victim of our own woke culture, isn’t that right?
CHANG: That’s certainly right. And we’ve got to remember that China’s National Intelligence law of 2017 requires every Chinese national to commit espionage if the authorities demand it.
Also in the Communist Party’s top down system, nobody can resist the demand from the party. So I think we have a legitimate interest in looking at Chinese nationals, because China has actually profiled them for us. It’s not we’re doing the profiling. It’s Beijing doing it.
WATTERS: Yes, well, we don’t know how much leverage they have over the Biden family because of what Bobulinski disclosed, but we’ll never know.
Gordon Chang, thank you so much.
CHANG: Merry Christmas, Jesse, and thank you,
WATTERS: Merry Christmas.
The European Union is suggesting eating insects during food shortages. For the record, this show has experimented with that and we have some thoughts for it ahead.
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WATTERS: The European Union just approved bugs as human food. Crickets, mealworms, and grasshoppers will now hit superstores on the continent in frozen, dried, and powdered forms. Apparently, it’s their solution to food shortages. They want you to eat bugs and live in pots.
How long before Joe Biden suggests the same?
Forrest Galante is an outdoor adventurer and bug-eating expert and he joins us now. It’s coming to America, just like Beatlemania came from Europe. This is the real deal. I know it is coming.
So as a novice bug eater, what would be a scrumptious bug that I can sink my teeth into?
FORREST GALANTE, OUTDOOR ADVENTURER: Well, Jesse, scrumptious is a bit of a stretch. I don’t think it matters who you are. But I will tell you this, they’re not all gross. They’re not all squeamish and they’re not all bad.
You know, the same analogy could be made with a chicken breast right? If you eat a raw chicken breast, it doesn’t really taste like anything. Well, when you eat just a plain cricket, well, it has a bit of an almond flavor, it really isn’t very good. It’s up to certain chefs to make those things taste good, and they really do taste good.
What you see me doing here does not taste good at all, by the way when you’re eating them live right out of the tree.
WATTERS: All right, so you’re saying the chef has to dress it up with some cayenne powder, some garlic powder, anything to make it not taste like a bug.
GALANTE: Look, 2.1 billion people around the world eat insects, right. Entomophagy as it’s known, is potentially a six-legged solution to world hunger. Right? So eating these creepy crawlies is really good.
You’ve got high protein, high calcium, high iron — there’s good things for it. It’s this weird stigma of eating them and even myself as a wildlife biologist and explorer, I have a hard time shoving bugs in my mouth, believe it or not, but once you do get used to it, it’s really a great way to get protein and it is good for the planet.
WATTERS: Well, I’m pro-stigma for a lot of reasons. So you’re saying that global warming supply chain problem, you know, everything is going to make this a possibility potentially here in the United States. Besides a cricket, are we talking beetles? Are we talking worms? We’re not talking mosquitoes or wasps, are we?
GALANTE: I sure — I sure hope not. And I’m not really an expert, but I’ll tell you this, scorpions tastes just like crab. They’re quite delicious. And so you know and that is a true story.
It’s crickets, it’s mealworms. They’re not bad, like they’re really not. I’m — I don’t think it is the cure all and end all to world hunger or cure all to all our problems. But I do think eating a couple bugs here and there is an interesting bridge to sort of some sustainable protein.
WATTERS: And Tucker looks like he is getting all the protein he can handle there with a cicada cookie. A cicada cookie? What do we got going on here, Galante?
GALANTE: YOU tell me, Jesse. Would you eat a cicada cookie? I mean, it’s not the thing that I really want on my Christmas morning platter of cookies. But that being said, you know, it’s a high protein cookie. Yes, I’d probably rather have that than a steak cookie.
WATTERS: And it’s organic, right? The bugs have to be organic.
GALANTE: Probably. Beats me, by I imagine so, I don’t know how you make bugs that aren’t organic.
WATTERS: All right thank you so much. Forrest is his name. No pun intended. Thank you.
That’s about it for us tonight. Don’t forget, a brand new episode of “Tucker Carlson Today” featuring Eric Metaxas is out now and you can stream it on FOX Nation on tuckercarlson.com.
And we’ve got Chaffetz in for Sean, who I don’t think has ever eaten a bug, but I don’t know.
JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, yes. Fried grasshoppers. We’ve got to bring you to a State Fair. We’ve got to get you out there, slab a little butter on it, tastes good.
WATTERS: All right, I am in. I am in.
CHAFFETZ: Always learn something when you watch Jesse Watters, so thanks for sharing that.
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