The Tucker Carlson Show - The FISA Bill

00:00:00.000 A few years ago, we learned conclusively that, in fact, the FBI and the federal intel agencies,

00:00:16.940 the dozen or more federal intel agencies we have for some reason, had been working secretly

00:00:21.800 against Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump had whispered about this, then shouted

00:00:26.160 about it, was roundly denounced as a conspiracy nut, a lunatic. But in the end, he was vindicated. 0.93

00:00:32.060 It was true. These agencies spied on Trump and they leaked some of what they'd learned

00:00:36.060 to the media, which used it against Trump. Then these agencies concocted false stories

00:00:41.020 about Trump. They tried to crush Trump completely in 2016 and then for the entire course of his

00:00:46.580 presidency. Then they did the same thing in 2020 during the presidential election, and

00:00:51.320 they're doing it still. They're trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life.

00:00:54.640 So if you take three steps back, what you have here is what we're seeing now. For the

00:01:01.160 third time in three consecutive cycles, secretive federal agencies are trying to rig our presidential

00:01:07.660 election. This is what the Democrats refer to as democracy, and they're trying to defend

00:01:12.340 it. But of course, it's the opposite of democracy. It's in fact the end of democracy in any semblance

00:01:18.560 of a constitutional republic we ever had. If you have a secret police force threatening people,

00:01:23.800 spying on them and working secretly the levers of political power, then you don't have a

00:01:30.940 democracy. You have no control over really anything as a voter. So if there's one thing

00:01:36.380 the Republican Party, the opposition party should be doing in response to this right now, it's

00:01:41.600 fighting back against this dissent into totalitarianism. They should be working to return freedom and

00:01:46.740 democracy to the country. They should defend the constitution. They should rein in these agencies,

00:01:51.580 Washington secret police. But you will not be surprised to learn they've been busy doing just

00:01:56.860 the opposite. So if you're wondering why no one has gone to prison for any of this now that we know

00:02:02.500 it actually happened, well, the reason is in part a law called FISA, the Foreign Intelligence

00:02:06.660 Surveillance Act. It's been around a long time. Teddy Kennedy first proposed it, by the way, back in the

00:02:12.000 mid-1970s. And that law allows the federal government to spy without a warrant on foreigners outside the

00:02:17.940 borders of the country. And the idea is bad people are doing bad things against us. We need to know

00:02:22.160 what they are. And we can't bother to go to a court to get a warrant every time we want to know.

00:02:26.580 But it will never be used against American citizens. Well, of course, now that we know

00:02:30.000 it has been at scale. But that law, FISA, has made it possible. So that law is now up for

00:02:38.180 reauthorization in the House of Representatives. And amazingly, the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson

00:02:44.160 of Louisiana, has spent the last couple of weeks doing all he can to get that law reauthorized.

00:02:50.880 In other words, to allow the federal agencies to continue to spy upon and punish people who disagree

00:02:59.820 with him. In other words, Mike Johnson's own party, Republicans, Trump voters. Mike Johnson has

00:03:04.900 been working to do that. And that effort failed today because members of Congress heard from their

00:03:09.400 constituents or came to their senses, saw the truth in a dream. Whatever happened, they stopped Mike

00:03:14.540 Johnson from doing that for the moment. So that's a good thing. And you ought to be celebrating it,

00:03:20.480 even if you didn't know it was happening. And a lot of people didn't because it got very little media

00:03:24.140 coverage. But of course, this is a temporary victory. Like all bad things, like that chlamydia you 1.00

00:03:31.200 got in a hot tub in Cabo in college, it will come back. This attempt to spy on you, an American 1.00

00:03:38.140 citizen without a warrant because you've been politically disobedient. Why will it come back?

00:03:42.360 Because it's what they really care about. And so before it does come back, it's worth just a very

00:03:47.200 quick autopsy on what just happened. What do we just see so we can learn a couple of important lessons?

00:03:53.560 And the first lesson we're going to learn is that a lot of powerful people in the Congress 0.56

00:03:57.680 are liars. They lie without shame, in fact, with pride. And they do so at the behest of,

00:04:06.860 or because of blackmail instituted by the intel agencies. And at the head of that list would be

00:04:13.880 the chairman of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. We're going to play you a clip

00:04:20.060 from Mike Turner of Ohio, seeing exactly the opposite of what is true. Here is Mike Turner

00:04:25.000 reassuring you that FISA would never, under the FISA law, the U.S. government would never be allowed to

00:04:31.000 spy on you without a warrant because that's unconstitutional. It's never happened. It never

00:04:33.780 will happen. And if you think otherwise, you're probably one of those UFO-believing nutjobs 0.76

00:04:37.680 who ought to stop doing ayahuasca. Here's House Intel Committee, pawn of the intel agencies,

00:04:44.580 Mike Turner of Ohio.

00:04:45.780 They are, we're not surveilling foreigners in the United States. We're not surveilling 1.00

00:04:50.300 Americans in the United States. Those individuals who say that this is a warrantless search of

00:04:54.580 Americans' data are just not telling the truth. These are foreigners abroad. They're a select 1.00

00:04:59.600 group of individuals who are a national security threat. If you're an American and you're

00:05:03.920 corresponding with ISIS, yes, if we're spying on ISIS, your communications are going to be captured.

00:05:10.800 You would want us to do that. All Americans would want us to try to make certain that we keep

00:05:15.060 ourselves safe from these terrorist, outside terrorist groups and organizations. We are not

00:05:19.360 spying on Americans. This is not a warrantless surveillance program. This is foreigners who are abroad 1.00

00:05:23.600 only. Every word of that, a lie. And we don't need to guess. And I, and I hate to use that pronoun,

00:05:30.720 but I specifically don't need to guess because that actually happened to me. The NSA broke into my text

00:05:35.700 messages, read them, passed them to news organizations in order to discredit me, and then admitted that

00:05:43.980 they did that, admitted that they spied on me. And they did it under FISA because I was daring to text

00:05:49.500 with a foreigner outside our borders. So Mike Turner knows that. He's the chairman of the intel

00:05:55.020 committee. He knows he's lying, but he's doing it anyway, because it's that important to preserve

00:06:00.560 that core power. If you have the power to spy on someone and then to leak the information that you

00:06:07.720 gather or manipulate it and then leak it in order to control that person, that's a major power. In fact,

00:06:12.320 that's a bigger power than any voter in this country has. And so he's acting on their behalf when he lies

00:06:16.880 to you. And so it shouldn't surprise you that they want to keep that power. And they want to keep it

00:06:23.460 so badly that over the last week, U.S. government officials did something that may not have precedent

00:06:28.720 in Washington. They lobbied members of Congress directly. They, in the words they used in Washington,

00:06:35.520 they whipped the bill. Officials from the Department of Justice called, among others, Chip Roy of Texas to

00:06:42.380 demand that he vote for FISA reauthorization. Imagine that. DOJ, Department of Justice,

00:06:48.560 the federal law enforcement agency called Chip Roy and said, you've got to do this.

00:06:55.720 Think about that. Is there any group in this country more powerful than the Department of Justice? They

00:07:00.000 can put you in jail and they've shown a willingness to do that. They could put kiddie porn on your computer.

00:07:05.400 They've probably done that too. And everybody who serves in Congress knows that. And everybody's

00:07:10.200 afraid of them, along with the CIA and NSA and a bunch of other three-letter agencies.

00:07:14.180 Members of Congress are afraid of them because they know the consequences of disobedience. And so for

00:07:19.700 them to call directly a member of Congress, they'd be like the FBI coming to your house on election day

00:07:24.620 and demanding that you vote for their designated candidate. And then having access to the record of

00:07:30.080 who you actually voted for, as they do in the Congress. Can you imagine? You'd be highly motivated to

00:07:35.580 vote for their candidate, wouldn't you? Yes, you would. So they're willing to do anything to get

00:07:42.940 this enshrined in law because it gives them legal cover to subvert democracy, which is their program, 0.71

00:07:47.960 of course. And everybody knows it. Mike Johnson knows it, but he's not telling his conference that,

00:07:53.560 his fellow Republicans. In a meeting today with his Republican conference on Capitol Hill,

00:07:58.160 Mike Johnson said, you must vote for this and you must vote for it because America hangs in the

00:08:02.280 balance. And if you had the intelligence that I've seen in my classified briefings, which you cannot

00:08:07.600 see, you would know that it's your moral responsibility to vote for this. And by the way,

00:08:12.500 if you don't vote for it, Americans will die. Johnson didn't mention that the FISA law warrantless

00:08:19.360 spying did not prevent 9-11 or the coal bombing or any major act of terror in the last 50 years,

00:08:26.800 almost 50 years that we've had it. No, I mean, it's ridiculous on its face, but why is Mike Johnson

00:08:31.040 saying this? Well, there are only two possible explanations. One is that he's just stupid and 0.78

00:08:36.780 doesn't know and believes his intel briefers. Every person who has spent any time in DC knows 1.00

00:08:42.300 the intel briefing, the classified intel briefing in the SCIF is merely a leash. It's a collar around

00:08:47.560 your neck connected to a chain. And the other hand is your handler from some federal agency with a black 1.00

00:08:54.240 budget whose total you can't know. Of course, it's a way to control you, giving you information that

00:08:59.320 you can't repeat to anyone else that you have no way of verifying and telling you that if you don't

00:09:03.220 go along with the program, Americans will die. Right. So he either doesn't know that that's the

00:09:08.680 way things actually work in DC. Oh, of course, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. You want 0.92

00:09:13.920 to get America vaporized in a nuclear attack? Invade, et cetera, et cetera. Many precedents for this. 0.64

00:09:19.920 I mean, it's the oldest story there is. Either he doesn't know that or there's another agenda

00:09:25.020 we can't know for certain. But consider this. Mike Johnson has been speaking of their house

00:09:32.820 for not very long, just several months now. He got the job accidentally. And in the time that he's

00:09:37.640 had it, what have his priorities been? Well, there've been two big ones, two issues on which he's willing

00:09:42.020 to call his fellow Republicans into the room and say, you have to do this. The first one is Ukraine 0.94

00:09:47.620 funding. And he's done that again and again. Either we send another $60 billion to Ukraine or he implies

00:09:55.420 American soldiers will have to fight in Ukraine because we're going to prevent Putin from rolling

00:10:00.040 into San Antonio or whatever. Of course, all untrue. In fact, ridiculous. But that's what he said.

00:10:07.160 In effect, Ukraine funding has been his top priority. And his second this week was more warrantless

00:10:14.040 spying on Americans. Well, what's interesting is that those are also Joe Biden's top priorities.

00:10:21.180 Those are not the top priorities of Republican voters. They're not the top priorities of American

00:10:25.340 voters. Look at the public opinion polling. It's available on Google. No, those are Joe Biden's

00:10:30.400 priorities because both expand his power. So what's interesting is that the Republican Speaker of the

00:10:37.300 House shares those priorities, not closing the border. He didn't call his conference in to say,

00:10:41.940 shut down the border tomorrow because 70% of Americans are demanding that. And 100% of our

00:10:48.500 own voters are demanding that. And that will save this country from certain destruction. He didn't

00:10:53.040 say that. He said the number one thing we need to do is continue to have the legal right to spy

00:10:58.920 unconstitutionally on American citizens without bothering to get a warrant. And again, is it an accident

00:11:05.460 that's Joe Biden's top priority too after Ukraine, which he's still pushing? We'll let you decide.

00:11:12.300 But the bottom line is over time, people who don't live in Washington don't know the complexities

00:11:17.140 of the process who aren't impressed by Johnson's claim. I've only got a one seat majority. I have to

00:11:22.440 do this. People are looking at this cold with just the big facts available. We'll start to notice that

00:11:27.800 the priorities of one party mirror the priorities of the other party. And they may ask themselves two

00:11:33.020 questions. First, who's got my priorities top of mind? And second, why even bother with the Republican

00:11:43.260 party if all they're going to do is ratify what Joe Biden wants? And they may ask that question really

00:11:47.740 soon. Let's hope they do.

00:12:03.020 And then unutical.

00:12:03.940 Let's see if you can.

00:12:04.140 Let's check.

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 11, 2024

The FISA Bill

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