Jason Whitlock: Elites using race as distraction to tear down America

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Jason Whitlock: Elites using race as distraction to tear down America

Journalist tells 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' how American freedoms are being obliterated under the guise of installing equality

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," January 18, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Our capital city, Washington is under military occupation tonight. By Inauguration Day, there are expected to be more than 26,000 armed Federal troops in Washington. 

No living American has seen a moment like the one we're watching now; 26,000 soldiers, that's more than five times the number of American military personnel currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. That is more than twice the number of troops that President Lyndon Johnson ordered to Washington in April of 1968. 

In April of 1968, Washington, D.C. was literally on fire. Race riots had broken out after the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose memory we celebrate today. More than a thousand people were injured in those riots and at least 13 of them died. Much of the capital was leveled, and it stayed that way. Blocks of charred rubble for decades. If you visited Washington in the 1990s, you'll remember what it looked like. 

But according to our current leaders, the so-called insurrection of January 6th was much worse than any of that. So far, here's the death toll from that day. A police officer was hit in the head by rioters then later had a stroke and died at a local hospital. An unarmed protester was shot to death by authorities as she tried to climb through a window, a woman may have been trampled to death by the crowd. 

As of tonight, those are the three casualties we can confirm from the riot at the Capitol Building on January 6th. In response to that, our leaders have assembled the largest military presence in Washington in all of American history during peacetime. 

In 1864, as the Civil War raged on the other side of the Potomac and Americans died every day in large numbers in battle, there were fewer Federal troops protecting Washington, D.C. than there are tonight. 

And it's truly a national force. The Guardsmen you see in Washington have come from every state in the Union, as well as from Puerto Rico. And the question is, why is that? There's no practical or operational justification for it. For decades, Washington, D.C. has the highest per capita law enforcement presence in the country and one of the highest in the world. So there was no need to fly in troops from Alaska to keep the city safe. 

But keeping the city safe was hardly the point of the exercise. The murder rate in the District of Columbia has risen with terrifying speed over the last six months: men, women and children shot to death in the streets. But no one in charge seems to care about that or even notice their deaths. 

So no matter what they are telling you, those 26,000 Federal troops are not there for your safety. Instead, unmistakably, the Democratic Party is using those troops to send the rest of us a message about power: "We're in charge now." We run this nation from Honolulu to our colony in the Caribbean, and everything in between very much, including where you and your family live. Do not question us. Men with guns enforce our decrees, we control the Pentagon. 

And indeed, they do control The Pentagon. Republicans have spent years ignoring the leftward drift of our officer corps, but we can't ignore it now. The mask is off. 

Our military leadership, the very same generals who howled at the idea of deploying American troops to stop an invasion of our southern border, those same generals sent tens of thousands of soldiers with rifles to Washington purely as a show of force on behalf of the political party they support. 

And once they did that, they then allowed Democratic politicians to degrade and politicize the military itself. Democrats in Congress demanded that the troops sent to Washington this week, submit to a political purity test, ideological vetting, as they put it, to make certain that every soldier professed loyalty to the new regime. Not loyalty to our country, not loyalty to our Constitution, but loyalty to the aims of a specific political party. 

Nothing like that has ever happened in America. And just a few months ago, it would have been unimaginable. Suddenly, it's compulsory. 

Here's Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis, explaining why it is. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): The Guard is 90 some odd percent, I believe, male. Only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. You've got to figure that in the Guard, which is predominately more conservative and I see that on my social media, we know it. There are probably not more than 25 percent of the people that are there protecting us who voted for Biden, the other 75 percent are in the class that would be the large class of folks who might want to do something. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: We should pause that tape and we should consider for a moment and think deeply about what Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee just told us on television. 

He said that every white man in this country is a potential murderer. Every white man in America should be under suspicion purely on the basis of being white and male of planning a presidential assassination. 

He told us the National Guard is overwhelmingly white and male. Therefore, Congressman Cohen says, white male National Guardsmen must undergo government background checks to prove they are not planning murder. Steve Cohen didn't couch any of that. He just said it, and the CNN anchor nodded as he did. 

The rules on generalizations like this have changed quite a bit in a very short time. It wasn't that long ago, it was November 5, 2009, that an Army major called Nidal Hasan opened fire on innocent people at a military base in Texas. Nidal Hasan shot 45 people at Fort Hood, 13 of them died. 

When it emerged later that Hasan was an Islamic extremist, and then it emerged that the Army had failed to notice his extremism or in any way protect the public from his extremism. No one at The Pentagon was Court Martialed. 

Instead, the rest of us sat through months of lectures about how we had no right to come to broader conclusions about what had happened at Fort Hood. Yes, the shootings were bad, though not Barack Obama made clear at the time an act of terrorism. 

But far worse than mass murder, we were told would be the sin of drawing any connection between the Nidal Hasan's beliefs and the beliefs of anyone else in our country. Nidal Hasan was a single person, literally a lone gunman. He was not a stand in for all Muslims. So stop with your prejudice, rednecks. That's what they told us. 

And by the way, it is okay that they told us that. Most Americans are decent people, they don't blame entire groups for the crimes of a few. Bigotry is immoral, and so is collective punishment. There is nothing more un-American than that, but not anymore. 

Collective punishment is now the official policy of the Federal government and it is enforced by The Pentagon. You'd love at some point to ask Congressman Cohen about the implications of this. 

Since we've established this new standard, this new requirement of collective punishment, what other groups of Americans, Congressman Cohen should be denounced and hurt simply because of the way they look? Simply because of the DNA they were born with? Or does this new standard apply only to white men? 

And if it does apply exclusively to white men, which is definitely the impression we're getting from you, how does targeting white men contribute to your stated goal of reducing white male extremism? Because doesn't attacking people on the basis of qualities they can't control make them more extreme, not less extreme? 

Aren't you persecuting them into behaving in precisely the ways you claim you don't want them to behave? And since you're not a moron, wouldn't all of that be obvious to you? So why are you doing it? 

Why in the name of fighting extremism, are you Congressman Cohen creating extremism? By the way dead certain, no question about it. That's exactly what you're doing. 

What, Steve Cohen, is your motive for doing that? That's a sincere question by the way? Congressman Cohen is invited on this show anytime to give us his answer. In the meantime, you've got to wonder about what the Guardsmen themselves think of all of this -- this new policy? 

Serving in the National Guard is not easy work. Guardsmen aren't paid much. Some you've got to imagine are doing it for love of country. Now, they've been deployed to their country's own capital city, and they've been given orders to shoot their fellow Americans if necessary. That's a lot to ask. 

Now, suddenly, on top of all of that, they've been told that if they were born a certain way, if they are white and male, and therefore evil and dangerous, they themselves are under suspicion of being the enemy, they are potential killers, assassins, betrayers of a nation. 

We're not overstating this for effect. Here's a National Guard Commander in Puerto Rico describing to his troops the enemy they will face in Washington. They are white nationalists, he tells them, they are Proud Boys. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language.) 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: If you wanted to stoke in irreparable civil conflict, you would talk this way and you would keep talking that way. You tell armed men under your command that they might have to shoot people who voted for the wrong candidate in the last election. You can see where this could all go. It's really scary. 

So where's the pushback from our defenders? Well, we didn't get any calls today from Republican senators begging to come on this show to talk about any of this or to push back against it. The Democratic Party is using the military of the United States, which they do not own as a political weapon. But Republicans in Congress just can't be bothered to notice that. 

You think officers of The Pentagon would be outraged by this. It's such a total betrayal of everything our country and the military are supposed to stand for. Yet, as far as we know tonight, not a single officer has resigned in protest. Background checks on people because of their race and sex? Because of their political views? Why aren't they protesting? Why aren't they resigning? 

We can't say. We know some clearly agree with all of this and they'd like to see it accelerate, quote, "I was chief prosecutor of Guantanamo for over two years," a former Air Force Colonel called Moe Davis announced on Twitter today, " ... and there's far more evidence of Congressman Madison Cawthorn's guilt than the guilt of more than 95 percent of the detainees. It is time we start a domestic war on sedition by American terrorists." That's a verbatim quote. 

And we'll repeat that sentence in case you thought you heard it incorrectly or we're making it up, we are not. A career American military officer has now called for, quote, "A domestic war on sedition by American terrorists," a war. 

Among those terrorists, the ones he says are literally more dangerous than al Qaeda and therefore must be imprisoned and killed is a 25-year-old wheelchair bound Madison Cawthorn, who was just elected by American voters to the United States Congress. 

But according to Colonel Moe Davis, Congressman Cawthorn and the millions of Americans who agree with him, the ones who voted Republican in November must be subdued by force. They are the enemy our military exists to fight. 

Now keep in mind that Colonel Davis -- Colonel Moe Davis, spent his life under arms, so you can be certain he isn't using the term enemy in some metaphorical sense as in Oreos are the enemy of an effective diet. No. He means enemy in the way Osama bin Laden and his coconspirators at Gitmo were our enemies, and you remember what we did to Osama bin Laden. 

Has Twitter seen Moe Davis's tweet? Has the Secret Service? Do they care? Does anyone? Well, you know the answer. Will a single one of Colonel Moe Davis's many allies in the Democratic Party denounce what he said, or even tell him to cool it a little bit? 

And what about the news media? Reporters are perpetually on the hunt for what they describe as dangerous extremism. Have they noticed Colonel Moe Davis on Twitter? Probably they have, but of course they agree with them. 

Just today, "The Daily Beast," the homepage of our highly credentialed, but not super bright ruling class ran a piece with this title: "Can U.S. Spy Agency Stop White Terror?" 

"Other countries," the story pointed out, " ... have domestic spy agencies to fight extremists at home." So of course we need one right away. 

What the piece does not mention that those other countries would include China, North Korea and Kazakhstan. Domestic spy agency is a not very subtle euphemism for secret police. That is what they're calling for. 

Now you'd think talk like that would constitute a big red line for the many professional freedom defenders in Washington, the ones you send money to, the think tank libertarians for example. They're everywhere. But not tonight. Where are they tonight? 

A former U.S. military officer declares war on American citizens. Members of the media call for a secret police agency. This is the stuff of libertarian nightmares. It's what they claim to hate. So where are they now? 

Why isn't billionaire libertarian man of principle Charles Koch spending billions of dollars to stop this -- these abridgement of liberty, these unprecedented attacks on liberty? He is definitely not spending billions to stop it. He doesn't seem doing anything. No one is. And so it continues unabated. 

Democrats in Congress support a new secret police agency, but why wouldn't they support it? What better way to protect your own power than funding a quote, "domestic spy agency" to fight extremists at home? Those extremists needless to say, will be their political opponents, so you don't have to worry about them anymore because they'll be in jail. 

Just last year, Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois sponsored legislation to begin the process of creating just such an agency, empowering current agencies to spy on Americans based on their political beliefs. And guess what? Schneider's bill sailed out of the House Judiciary Committee, all but two Republicans voted for it. 

Nor did Republicans say a word when Congresswoman Grace Meng of New York sponsored a bill to criminalize the quote, "purchase, ownership or possession of body armor." Body Armor? Not the ownership of guns or bombs or even knives. That's where you thought we were. 

Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas just introduced legislation to require a license from the government in order to own ammunition. Well, that seems nonsensical and extreme, especially from a party that released thousands of violent criminals from prison in just the last year. 

But no, it's much crazier than that, it's banning body armor. Devices that cannot under any circumstances be used to hurt another person. Body armor is purely defensive. Body armor exists only to protect the person who is wearing the body armor. It is already a crime to use body armor in most places while committing a violent felony. This is different. This would make it a crime to possess body armor at all. 

Why don't you do that? Why don't you make it a crime to possess something designed to save your life? That'd be like banning seatbelts or banning helmets. And actually now that we mentioned it, Grace Meng's bill would ban helmets, any helmet that might protect you from gunfire -- for real. 

And honestly, you should pause when you hear that. What could possibly be the motive for it? We can't think of a non-sinister explanation for banning body armor. It should make you nervous to hear it's even being considered. 

But again Republicans never said a word about this. They were too busy agreeing with Democrats that what happened at the Capitol was a white supremacist insurrection. Senator Jim Lankford of Oklahoma who tells his voters he is conservative just apologized to African-American voters for ever mentioning the possibility of voter fraud, since somehow that is now racist. How is that racist exactly? 

We'll tell you exactly the truth. What happened on January 6 was awful. We don't like mobs. We don't like vandalism. We don't like violence. We said it at the time. We'll say it again now, we'll never stop saying it. 

But what happened on January 6 was not an insurrection and there was nothing racial about it. That is a total lie. It is told and repeated purely for political advantage. 

Here is what it actually looked like inside the Capitol when the first demonstrators burst in. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey. Hey, man. Glad to see you guys. You guys are [bleep] patriots. Look at this guy. He has got -- he is covered in blood. God bless you. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You good, sir? Do you need medical attention? 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm good. Thank you. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. I got shot in the face. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are they? 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any chance I could get you guys to leave the Senate wing? 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will. I've been making sure they ain't disrespecting the place. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, I just want to let you guys know this is like the sacredest place. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: Just chatting with the cop on the House floor. The guy in the Viking hat, Chewbacca man, you've seen him before is a real life person. His name is Jacob Chansley. Chansley is sitting in jail tonight. He's being held without bail. Bail was denied on Friday. 

The judge who ordered him to rot in jail presented no evidence that Chansley was violent or a threat to anyone. Nevertheless, the judge concluded quote, "This is an insurrection" and Jacob Chansley was, quote, "a symbol of what occurred." He now faces 25 years or more in prison if convicted. You just saw the crime. The real crime though, was being a symbol of insurrection. 

No matter what happens, Jacob Chansley will almost certainly do more time in prison than countless murderers, rapists and armed robbers. Actual criminals aren't a problem for the Democratic Party. In fact, they're an important constituency and it shows. 

Since Memorial Day, about 90 percent of the people arrested for gun crime in New York City, for example, have been released back onto the streets free to do it again. Gun crime? Really? From the party that is against gun crime, right? 

Gun crime, gun violence. Yes, 90 percent released. Because unlike Jacob Chansley, they are not symbols of insurrection. Anyone else who is not a symbol of insurrection? These people. 

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS] 

CARLSON: That was your country for months and months on end. Now, they are pretending none of that ever happened, but it did happen. Mobs of politicized thugs, virtually every one of whom supported the violent overthrow of the elected President and said so loudly at every opportunity and spray painted on buildings, went on to torch and loot and vandalized major American cities. 

In the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota alone, BLM and Antifa rioters burned or destroyed more than 700 buildings. How many innocent people did they kill? We've counted more than two dozen nationwide, not including the many hundreds murdered by criminals who are sprung from lockup in the name of George Floyd. 

We don't know the full death toll. We probably will never know. Nobody is keeping track. There's no political advantage in tallying the people that your side kills. But it's not a problem, they tell us, because none of that was an insurrection, not even symbolically. 

So how long will this cycle go on? If you're hoping America will revert to normal on Wednesday afternoon after Joe Biden is sworn in as President, you are an optimist. You probably assume the quarantines and mandatory face coverings were temporary, too. Probably not. 

Something awful has been unleashed on our country; unchecked, it will inevitably lead to more awful things. Every action provokes a reaction -- that is Physics, it is also human nature. 

Abraham Lincoln understood this well. In January of 1838, Lincoln spoke to an audience in Springfield, Illinois about what happens when a society refuses to punish thugs and vandals. It's not a small thing. 

"Citizens," Lincoln said, " ... see their property destroyed, their families insulted and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, they become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection." 

At that point, Lincoln noted, they become radical. They do things they never would have considered if the authorities had bothered to enforce the laws they made in the first place. In other words, they become liable to show up at the Capitol Building in Viking hats and face paint. 

You could have scripted what was going to happen on January 6. What we can't know is what happens next. And let's pray that the people planning a war on American citizens find their reason and their decency and stop talking like that immediately, much less planning to act on it. 

Let's hope the Biden Campaign didn't really mean it when they promised to make, quote, "The same commitment to root out domestic terrorism as we have to stopping international terrorism." Think about that. How would that project end? You know. 

The truth is, we don't deserve that. Very few Americans deserve to be treated like Osama bin Laden, because they're not terrorists. They shouldn't be treated like ISIS. Most Americans are good people, even if you hate how they voted. 

We don't need a war within our borders. Stop calling for one, people in charge. Only the worst people will win that war. 

Huey Long understood this. Huey Long was maybe the only true economic populist ever elected to the United States Senate. He was a Democrat back at a time when you could be an economic populist and still a Democrat. 

And for that, he was more hated than Donald Trump ever imagined he could be hated by everyone, not just Republicans, but by the sitting Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. 

Huey Long was a very flawed guy, they always are but he wasn't stupid. In fact, he had flashes of wisdom. In 1935, Huey Long had a flash of wisdom. Here's what he said: "If the United States ever winds up with a fascist government, quote, "We will have it under the guise of antifascism." That's right. 

Jason Whitlock is standing by to react to everything that's happening in the world and we're glad he is. 

Also, why teachers at your kids' school may need to undergo antiracist therapy. Joe Biden has just taken a major step toward making that happen. It's on the way, next. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: As we told you a moment ago, Washington, D.C. is tonight, and it's not an exaggeration under military occupation, 26,000 troops expected by Wednesday morning. That's more Federal troops that protected Washington in 1864 during the Civil War. 

And to put even a finer point on what's actually happening, the Secret Service has established what is calling a green zone. Remember that term? We rolled in to Baghdad in March of 2003. We expelled Saddam and we took his palace, his White House, if you will, and made it green zone out of it. What exactly is going on here? 

Jason Whitlock is a longtime journalist and a wise person and we've asked him to assess what he thinks is happening. Jason, thanks a lot for coming on. What do you think this is? 

JASON WHITLOCK: Tucker, I have to start here. Your opening monologue is the most powerful, profound, poignant thing I've seen on television in 20 years. I hope that every American citizen, conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, black, white, gay, straight, they need to hear that. It needs to be debated and talked about. 

What's going on in America, we are in a scary time. American freedoms are being obliterated under the name of politics, under the name -- under the guise of installing equality, and they're stripping us of our American freedoms. 

I'm so moved by what you said. I'm so thankful I was here to witness it. I hope that I can amplify that message in some way because we have a problem here in America. The elites are running over the working class. 

We are demonizing a class of people, 75 million Americans, if not more, we are destroying them. I'm looking at the media, the voiceless are being trampled upon. Nancy Pelosi and all these politicians, Republican or Democrat, are acting as if they just went through Pearl Harbor and they did not. 

It was on tape. We've seen what happened. Was it the right thing? No. But it was not Pearl Harbor, and we have kids in America, living with gun violence, helicopters overhead, gang violence, gang culture, who are being traumatized every day, and I'm supposed to feel sorry for Nancy Pelosi because people walked into the Capitol? 

I didn't -- I'm so glad you've taken this on and what you said was so powerful and I just hope people will hear you on it and discuss it, debate it, disagree with, but just hear it. 

CARLSON: And people are saying some very, very radical things and what worries me is that once people start saying these things, other people respond with radical things, and I really feel like the people with the most power are pushing us toward a place where something awful is absolutely inevitable. 

I don't understand how we get out of this before something terrible happens, and probably, a lot of people to blame for that. But the people with the most power, officeholders in the Congress right now, Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee comes to mind immediately are implicated in that. 

If Donald Trump is responsible for urging people toward the Capitol, and I think it's fair to say he does bear some responsibility for that, then how culpable will Steve Cohen and the rest be for the next awful, maybe really awful thing that happens? After they spent every day on television attacking people for their skin color? What country is this? 

You can't control what your skin color is. You can't control your sex is. What the hell? 

Since when on Martin Luther King day, did people get to go on television and be like, you need a background check because of your skin color. Really? That is grotesque. 

But not just is it immoral, it will absolutely without question cause a response and that response will be horrible. And we just want to be on tape right now saying those people added to it. They really did. 

When you attack people, you don't make them less extreme, you make them more extreme. And they know that and they're doing it anyway, which ought to really make you pause. 

We've lost Jason Whitlock's signal, unfortunately. He is going to come back and join us in just a minute. We'll be happy when he does. 

We're going to go to break now. We've got new information by the way on the Wuhan virus and where it came from that is really interesting. We will bring you this hour. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: In just a minute, we're going to have more information about where the coronavirus originally came from, a topic most people don't seem that interested in for some reason, we are. There's new evidence pointing the finger at exactly where we thought it should be pointed and we'll tell you where that is in just a second. 

But first, we lost Jason Whitlock in our last segment and he is back with us to finish the thought which we like our guests to be able to do. Jason, I'm sorry about that. So you are right in the middle of saying why you think that this is a bad idea, this crackdown. Tell us why. 

WHITLOCK: Absolutely. Tucker, I just want to repeat again for people to listen to what you said in your monologue and I want to speak specifically to black people and Hispanic people. 

We have to move beyond race. We have to deal with the facts and not get caught up in the game that's being played on us that we hear everything in racial terms. There is a cultural war going on and it is between those of us who are believers in the American Dream, those of us who are believers in a higher power, those of us who are believers in Dr. King's dream of us being judged by the content of our character and the people who don't believe in those things; the people that want to up turn all the great progress we've made here in America and take us in a direction that is not healthy for any of us. 

They are using race as a distraction and we're not looking at the corruption we have in this country because of the Chinese influence, the money, how they've overtaken our politicians and Big Tech, and they're trying to destabilize and tear down a great country, a country that is flawed, but it is better than any country on the globe, and has been better for us, those of us that are black than any country on the planet. 

And yes, it was flawed. But if you go -- if you understand our founding principles, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Dr. King's speech in "I Have a Dream" to me, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, the three most important men to me in American history, it is all there. 

CARLSON: Amen. 

WHITLOCK: They are trying to upturn all of that. Get out of the racial discussion and look at what's really going on in this country. 

CARLSON: I think that's so true. And the race stuff just short circuits everyone's brain, you get right down to the brainstem, you can't think clearly and that's what they want. And I think you're absolutely right to frame it in those terms. 

Jason Whitlock, an important voice at this moment. I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you. 

Well, you'll notice one thing about the coronavirus pandemic, it began, scared the heck out of everyone for good reason. We knew it was going to kill a lot of people and it did, but from the very first day, no one was allowed to ask any questions about where it came from. That would be racist and offend the Communist Party of China. 

We had our suspicions. A lot of much better informed people had their suspicions. We put some of them on this show about where this pandemic originated. Every day brings more evidence that those suspicions were pointing in the right direction. 

Newly surfaced footage from Chinese state media in 2017, for example, shows researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology being bitten by bats. In a potentially related note, the State Department has determined that workers at the Wuhan lab fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019. That was weeks before the authorities warned the public about the virus. 

Dr. Marc Siegel has been following this strain of the story since January. He joins us tonight with an update on what we know. Doctor, good to see you. 

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: A strain of the story, Tucker, very good. Listen, Tucker, you know, the W.H.O. sent 10 scientists from 10 different countries around the world and you know what they are reporting tonight? They think public health measures should have been done earlier. 

Wow. Such brilliant scientific discovery they have a year later. I wonder if we could have said that, too. But meanwhile, the same night, as you say, reports out of England that researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were in bat caves got bitten through their gloves by bats while they were collecting samples and the same lab, a State Department memo, as you just mentioned, reported that people got sick last fall with COVID-like symptoms. 

Also, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the State Department, has had plans going with Chinese military since 2016. Well, I'm wondering what do the Chinese military have to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology? 

And then it turns out that some of the coronaviruses in this lab, Tucker, are 96 percent similar in structure to SARS-CoV2. So, I'm wondering tonight about why -- I don't wonder why Chinese scientists would suppress information. I don't wonder about that. But I do wonder why in the United States, we wouldn't be looking at this a little more closely. I think I smell a rat here, or is it a bat, Tucker? 

CARLSON: I don't think we want to know. But we do, I know you do, too, and I appreciate that. Dr. Siegel, great to see you tonight. Thank you. 

SIEGEL: Thanks, Tucker. 

CARLSON: So the President of the United States has a about a full workday left in his term and during that time, he is considering pardons in his final hours in office. We will tell you who is on the list and who may be left off. 

Really the last truly significant act as President happens tomorrow. Pamela Anderson joins us to weigh in on what she thinks should happen. We'll be right back. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: Well, it doesn't happen that much when everyone in Washington agrees with one another on something, but when it does -- oh. When Democrats, Republicans and the media all sound alike, all sing the same song from the same hymnal, when Nancy Pelosi talks about Venezuela and coups like the neocon she actually is, you ought to be nervous about that. 

Institutional Washington is by far at its most dangerous when there's consensus, when it stops reflecting the will of the voters and starts defending its own interests without any opposition whatsoever. 

There may be no issue that unites the establishment wings of both political parties, other than fighting pointless wars, more than this issue, and here it is. Leaking classified information that hurts the permanent political class is a grave threat to national security and must be stamped out, but leaking classified information that helps the permanent political class is an act of good faith, son, you're getting a Pulitzer for that. 

So there was no problem when the F.B.I. told "The Washington Post" that that diabolical Vladimir Putin was secretly running our government. That was a lie, but not a problem. When the C.I.A. Director gave classified information to the producers of "Zero Dark Thirty" because that's Hollywood, and they are our friends. 

But when those leaks implicate the people in charge, oh, it's a national crisis and someone needs to go to jail, and often, people do go to jail. Julian Assange, for example. He is rotting away in a prison in London right now. Why? He published information that the U.S. government wanted to keep secret not to protect us, but to protect themselves. 

Footage of an American helicopter gunning down 18 people in Iraq, including, by the way two journalist from Reuters. He also publicized e- mails exposing corruption at the very highest levels of the D.N.C. Bernie Sanders voters may have been grateful for that, they got completely shafted and wouldn't have known it, now, they do. And that infuriated the people who ran Washington. 

Just to be clear, Julian Assange did not hack servers at the U.S. Army, The Pentagon, or the D.N.C. know. He reported on those servers. That's called journalism, which, by the way, real journalism, not much left, it is all under attack, trust us. So for doing that, for humiliating both our elected leaders and the media class, Julian Assange's life has been destroyed. He's been locked away for almost a decade. 

This case is not about espionage. He didn't commit espionage. He's not a traitor. He's not American. 

This case is about criminalizing freedom of speech. The mother of Julian Assange's children came on this show last year and made that point very succinctly. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

STELLA MORRIS, JULIAN ASSANGE'S FIANCEE: Julian's is the foremost perhaps the foremost free speech campaigner alive in the West and he is imprisoned, and does the President want that to be his legacy or does he want to, you know, ensure that the First Amendment survives this trial and survives by pardoning him and not having this trial. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CARLSON: No one who works on this show ever imagined we'd be where we are now, which is in effect defending Julian Assange. But the truth is, we're not defending Julian Assange, we're defending something that is actually under attack that is actually precious to every American and that is going away faster than we ever thought it could and that's the freedom of speech. 

He reported things they don't like, they threw him in jail. If it happened to him, why couldn't it happen to you again? Speak slowly so we can understand. And if that doesn't convince you, consider the case of another person we have also had on the show quite a bit, a very decent man, by the way, called John Kiriakou. 

He's a 15-year veteran of the C.I.A. He led some of the military's most important raids in Pakistan during his career. He risked his life for the country. But then in 2007, he did something that destroyed his life, he confirmed something on the record that no one else in government was willing to admit at the time that the U.S. Army was in fact waterboarding and torturing prisoners. 

Now, you may support that or you may not, but if you're an American citizen who pays for all this stuff, why don't you have a right to know that? Now, the D.O.J. at the time did not think John Kiriakou committed a crime, what he said was true. He was treated as a whistleblower, which he was, agree with him or not. 

But five years later, the C.I.A., which was still furious about it, told the Obama administration which is in the habit of obeying the C.I.A. to reopen that case and punish John Kiriakou, so they did. And of course, they found a crime. It is not hard for prosecutors to find a crime when they are bent on retribution meant to encourage the others. So John Kiriakou went to prison for two years. 

He can no longer to this day, a man who served his country for 15 years, defend his family with a firearm because he is a convicted felon. They gave him his voting rights back, but not the right to defend his family. 

So here's why we're telling you this. The President, on his last day in office is expected to announce a series of pardons before he leaves on Wednesday. Some news reports tell us that he will pardon the rapper Lil Wayne, on a firearms charge. We don't know if that's true or not. We don't even have an opinion on that. 

What we do know, if he wants a lasting historical effect on this country in the closing days of his administration, he can achieve a major victory for the principles that this country was founded on and that make it a good place to live, and the first one of those is freedom of the press, freedom of speech. 

No one else in the media feels like arguing for it, it doesn't matter. It's still true and we should still defend it and he should pardon Julian Assange and he should pardon John Kiriakou. 

Pamela Anderson is an actress. She's also pretty well versed and very well versed on the subject. She's been in close contact with Julian Assange and we thought we'd like to hear from her tonight. Pamela Anderson, thank you for coming on. Why should the President pardon Julian Assange? 

PAMELA ANDERSON, ACTRESS: Thank you. Well, like he said, it is this freedom of the press, freedom of speech, if we don't have that, we don't have a democracy. And I really thank you for what you're saying. And I think like you said, this is a defining moment for the President. 

This is, the entire world wants him to pardon or most of the world wants him to pardon Julian Assange. This would mean -- this is why he is President. This is, I think, the defining moment, this is his time to shine to really make an impression on the world that this was freedom of speech. 

Because if this goes to trial, that's the end of the First Amendment, and I just think that this is so serious, and so important that he needs to -- that pardon is sitting on his desk and I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes where people are maybe bullying him a little bit, because, you know, there's impeachment and there are a couple of probably cranky Republican senators that are negotiating with us, and he needs to do the right thing. 

This is one of those moments in history and his lifetime, too that he needs to make the right decision. And so it's all up to, you know, President Trump, but he would really gain a huge following and a huge sigh of relief and gratefulness for so many people on the planet. 

And I just think that this is so important, and this is something he needs to do. He absolutely needs to do this, and I'm just saying, just do it, you know -- it is so important to free speech. He's a free speech hero. 

CARLSON: I think -- I think the principle is worth defending and I appreciate your coming on tonight. Pamela Anderson, thank you. 

ANDERSON: Thank you. 

CARLSON: Pardon Lil Wayne? Some Medicare fraud criminal from Florida? Don't degrade yourself on the way out. Don't degrade your voters. Make a statement in our defense. Defend the Bill of Rights. 

Joe Biden's inauguration is less than 48 hours from now. We'll have more coverage on that, next. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CARLSON: And like that, an hour is gone. We're out of time. The one thing you can't get back, sadly. But we'll be back tomorrow, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. 

Have the best night with the ones you love. Sean Hannity from New York takes over now. 

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