The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker Carlson’s Vice Presidential Debate Response

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00:01:26.480 So it was only a week ago that the fabled predictions markets had Tim Walls at 81% likelihood to win tonight's debate.

00:01:41.640 These are the same markets that predicted smooth sailing for the Titanic, apparently.

00:01:45.900 It was not to be.

00:01:48.160 That was one of the most unbelievable hour and 45-minute television experiences I have seen in a long time.

00:01:56.880 Of course, we're required to watch the debate. It's usually hellish. You're fidgeting.

00:02:00.460 That was a pure joy to watch from beginning to end.

00:02:03.640 The very obvious top-line conclusions.

00:02:07.660 The future of the Republican Party is J.D. Vance.

00:02:10.540 That's what the future looks like. That's where the party is going.

00:02:13.340 That's where its voters are.

00:02:15.000 And he is the supremely articulate spokesman for that brand of Republican politics.

00:02:21.600 He is the future.

00:02:22.780 And the second is that it is never a good idea to choose anybody for any position on the basis of demographic qualifications.

00:02:31.720 Tim Walls was chosen by the Harris campaign because he's a white guy.

00:02:35.400 He is an affirmative action hire. 0.55

00:02:37.800 And they're regretting that tonight, as you usually do when you hire people on the basis of irrelevant criteria.

00:02:43.120 So we're going to spend the next little while talking about what we just saw.

00:02:46.300 And we'll be doing it with a politician, actually, a sitting politician, because really they're the best situated to understand a debate.

00:02:55.340 The problem is that most politicians are not worth talking to, particularly members of the United States Senate.

00:02:59.560 I first interned there in 1986, and I can tell you almost all senators get worse over time.

00:03:05.040 It is a rare, almost unique few who don't.

00:03:08.520 And the one who is joining us tonight is one of the very few who has instead of becoming rotten, dying soul death, has instead become wiser, more skeptical of government, and less controlled during his time in the United States Senate.

00:03:22.900 And so we are honored to be joined tonight by Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

00:03:27.160 Senator, thanks so much.

00:03:27.920 Thank you.

00:03:28.660 Thanks for having me.

00:03:29.340 So, what did you think of that?

00:03:32.140 Well, first of all, J.D. absolutely nailed that.

00:03:35.880 Yes.

00:03:36.280 He walked on, he owned the room.

00:03:38.940 He was the master of the mood of the entire discussion.

00:03:43.440 He made reason sound and be reasonable.

00:03:46.680 Yes.

00:03:47.000 And he was doing this against an unarmed opponent, somebody who seemed dangerously ill-equipped for the task.

00:03:53.380 And I can't say enough great things about J.D. Vance's performance and enough bad things about Tim Walsh's.

00:03:59.680 Now, this is a man who was competing.

00:04:01.500 This was a three-on-one debate, just as the debate hosted by ABC a few weeks ago was three-on-one against Donald Trump.

00:04:08.380 This was similarly aligned against J.D. Vance.

00:04:10.820 And yet, he completely dominated the entire evening.

00:04:14.420 It was – his emotional control is what struck me most.

00:04:17.860 He's very smart.

00:04:19.040 He's a friend of mine.

00:04:19.660 And I know he's very smart, legitimately high-IQ character.

00:04:23.460 But he kept his emotions in check in a way that I could never do.

00:04:27.360 He had these shrieking liberal narcissists as the moderators.

00:04:31.340 And he had this sort of sad but also very creepy guy he was debating.

00:04:36.300 And he never one time seemed annoyed.

00:04:39.000 Not one time.

00:04:39.760 Never once.

00:04:40.360 And this is something that I was hoping the rest of the country would get to see tonight.

00:04:45.100 This is the J.D. Vance I know as a friend and colleague in the Senate.

00:04:48.180 But, Tucker, I can't tell you how many times –

00:04:49.960 Is he like that in the Senate?

00:04:51.000 Exactly like that.

00:04:52.280 I can't tell you the number of times when I've seen him be accosted, questioned, challenged one way or another by colleagues.

00:05:00.700 Sometimes it's Democrats.

00:05:02.200 Sometimes it's fellow Republicans.

00:05:04.120 But every single time, even when he'd be well within its right to lose his temper a little bit or get frustrated or act annoyed, he doesn't.

00:05:12.200 He's cool as a cucumber.

00:05:13.620 And he responds with reason.

00:05:15.760 And he doesn't act the least bit annoyed.

00:05:19.360 And truthfully, I don't think he is annoyed.

00:05:21.860 He's just taking the opportunity to illuminate his thoughts on the topic.

00:05:27.180 And he's very rarely wrong.

00:05:28.500 I mean, how does he do that?

00:05:31.320 He acted the way my wife wants me to act.

00:05:34.200 Yeah.

00:05:34.700 But I can never pull it off.

00:05:36.280 Right.

00:05:37.280 You know, practice makes perfect, of course.

00:05:39.540 But this also comes from something deeper inside of J.D.

00:05:42.220 This is who he is as a person.

00:05:45.020 He was raised under circumstances that have caused him to realize how deep and how profound, how important these decisions are.

00:05:53.120 And he doesn't have time to mess around.

00:05:54.620 He doesn't have any interest in allowing himself to become so emotionally involved in something that he loses his ability to explain it coherently.

00:06:02.000 Oh, wow.

00:06:03.400 I mean, I would have lost it about 15 different times, particularly, and without focusing on it, but the moderators, I really hope this is the last time in American history that CBS, which I assume will be bankrupt by the next election anyway, but that any so-called news organization like this has any role in a debate.

00:06:23.140 I mean, it's a joke.

00:06:24.600 Right.

00:06:25.240 And I don't understand how they walk away from this with any sense of journalistic self-respect or perception of their own objectivity.

00:06:34.640 What you saw tonight was an indication that they are, for all practical purposes, the media communications wing of the Democratic Party.

00:06:44.360 They came off so badly.

00:06:46.760 Yeah.

00:06:47.140 They didn't even do a good job of it.

00:06:48.700 No, and there are charming Democrats.

00:06:50.640 Maybe you could find one, but I know both of them.

00:06:53.920 I've worked with both of them, actually.

00:06:56.320 I thought they, I mean, I can't imagine their bosses can't see that.

00:07:00.800 They weren't, that was not a good ad for CBS.

00:07:03.220 And then in the commercial break, they start playing some advertisement for a show that is itself an advertisement of a Ketanji Brown Jackson or whatever, however she's pronouncing her name on the Supreme Court, that was a tongue bath.

00:07:16.460 That's what they do.

00:07:18.720 They administer tongue baths to the left, and they do it very, very effectively, but in a way that I think is causing the American people to get wise to them.

00:07:27.240 And a lot of people, frankly, to become annoyed.

00:07:30.140 Even people who historically haven't considered themselves Republicans are looking at that saying, something's not right here.

00:07:35.600 Because in the past, they at least wore a mask while doing it.

00:07:38.160 These guys have taken off the mask.

00:07:40.320 Yeah, and they're not impressive.

00:07:42.180 So let's start with what I think is going to be the headline, checking my iPhone, it's already the headline, Tim Walls saying he's friends with school shooters.

00:07:52.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:53.480 Apparently, he's become great friends with school shooters.

00:07:55.960 I don't know what that means, but that was perhaps the greatest presidential or vice presidential debate flop in living memory.

00:08:03.400 I mean, that's right up there with some of my best friends' own NASCAR teams.

00:08:06.320 That just didn't come across as the speaker intended.

00:08:11.500 Well, I mean, saying that some of your best friends own NASCAR teams does reveal you're in the top 1% for income, for sure.

00:08:20.420 Right.

00:08:20.860 But befriending school shooters raises a lot of other questions.

00:08:24.600 There are a lot of good people who are friends with NASCAR team owners, but saying I'm good friends with mass shooters, that doesn't really have the same vibe.

00:08:31.400 But throughout the—and I don't want to be mean, but Tim Walls, I mean, I don't think I am being mean.

00:08:38.820 I'm just being sincere.

00:08:39.760 He came across as badly as anyone could at a debate like this.

00:08:43.040 He did.

00:08:43.820 Badly, yes.

00:08:44.820 Badly in the sense that he didn't answer question after question after question.

00:08:48.900 Now, fortunately for him, CBS allowed him to get away with it.

00:08:52.400 But in some ways, they foisted him upon his own petard by doing that.

00:08:55.580 Yes.

00:08:55.700 Because the viewers can see that, and the viewers can see when they themselves are being mocked.

00:09:00.480 Look, I don't know why this keeps coming to mind, but as I watched him over and over again, I just thought, this is weird. 0.71

00:09:05.900 This guy's goofy.

00:09:06.780 I agree. 0.96

00:09:07.060 He came across as that guy in the Gary Larson Farside cartoon who, while talking to a kangaroo, says, you may be a kangaroo, but I know a few things about marsupials myself.

00:09:16.900 He just—everything came across as wrong, just a little bit off.

00:09:20.560 I don't know whether he had back surgery recently or what, but this was off.

00:09:26.420 Well, I mean, it may be.

00:09:29.040 I always have thought, having worked in the television, the camera over time does reveal the truth about people.

00:09:34.620 Maybe not the whole truth.

00:09:36.780 Maybe not a precisely accurate truth, but some version of reality comes through on the camera, I think.

00:09:42.780 Right, right.

00:09:43.180 That's exactly right.

00:09:43.940 But look, he badly mischaracterized a number of things.

00:09:46.960 Perhaps most crucially, his own record on the Minnesota law that he signed into law, denying that it reversed protections for babies born alive after a botched abortion.

00:10:01.400 He just completely mischaracterized it.

00:10:03.340 So what is the truth?

00:10:04.580 So J.D. pressed him on that a couple times, and he just said, that's not what it says.

00:10:10.340 That's not what it says.

00:10:11.660 Explain it as you understand it.

00:10:13.560 Look, under Minnesota law, before Tim Walsh changed it with legislation he signed into law as governor, it provided protections, certain standards of medical care that had to be given to a baby born alive following a botched abortion.

00:10:30.840 And Tim Walsh signed another bill into law saying that's no longer the law, just removing those protections altogether.

00:10:38.640 And it replaced them with something.

00:10:41.040 What Walsh was relying on there was language providing some level of care.

00:10:46.940 I think they actually used the word care almost unmodified.

00:10:49.800 Some people have characterized that, I think, fairly by saying that means that in that circumstance they can provide the equivalent of hospice care for an unwanted baby.

00:11:00.800 That's really grim.

00:11:02.120 And that's not going to wear well, especially when people realize that he was mischaracterizing his own record.

00:11:06.880 He's either unaware of the content of a bill he signed into law or he's lying about it.

00:11:11.700 And neither one of those things.

00:11:12.860 Well, of course he's lying about it.

00:11:13.740 I mean, you wouldn't take out the phrase life-saving without knowing that you're taking out the phrase life-saving.

00:11:18.500 That's not an accident.

00:11:19.720 That's on purpose.

00:11:20.740 And it was hugely controversial at the time.

00:11:23.120 Yes, yes.

00:11:24.000 And so he expected to be able to go on in this friendly environment of these co-opted CBS moderators and say something that just wasn't true and expect that nobody would catch him on it.

00:11:34.160 Nobody would call him on it.

00:11:35.420 Well, we've got a different world today.

00:11:37.780 Sure, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC used to control the entirety.

00:11:42.380 But today we've got the Tucker Carlson show, and we've got X, and we've got a few other channels through which people can communicate actual information.

00:11:51.180 He's not going to get away with it.

00:11:51.980 I mean, Margaret Brennan and Nora O'Donnell, of course, are abortion worshipers.

00:11:57.720 I mean, legal abortion is the most important issue to them.

00:12:01.120 That's obvious.

00:12:02.080 I think it's true as a fact, knowing them.

00:12:04.580 And so Walls could not have had a more sympathetic moderator for that section of the debate.

00:12:15.260 But even there, he seemed uncomfortable.

00:12:18.220 I mean, that's like the winning issue for them, he thinks.

00:12:20.540 Yes.

00:12:20.980 Even there, he seemed uncomfortable.

00:12:22.680 And even there, he was saying things that I would think would make the abortion rights advocates cringe.

00:12:28.940 He was making it sound there toward the end of his answer as if he's pro-life, as if he's not pro-abortion.

00:12:34.780 That seems to be rather the opposite of his message and that of his running mate.

00:12:38.340 Right.

00:12:38.540 And so that's why a lot of this is going to end with a thud.

00:12:42.360 Like I say, it's consistent with the overall vibe of his debate performance tonight, which is just a lot of weird stuff.

00:12:49.440 Weird stuff where he didn't answer the question and where the answer he provided had something terribly wrong with it.

00:12:56.060 I can't think of another reason that they would have picked him other than the Kamala Harris people are thinking, you know, they think in terms of race.

00:13:04.020 Like, that's how they think about everything.

00:13:05.680 I mean, that's why she was chosen.

00:13:08.180 That's why Jackson made the Supreme Court.

00:13:09.720 We know that because Biden said so out loud repeatedly.

00:13:13.780 And I got to think that they felt compelled to pick an older white guy because he was an older white guy.

00:13:20.220 I don't really see any – and he said that even.

00:13:22.420 Well, and at the time he was chosen, remember, it came down to a sort of a horse race between Governor Walz and Governor Shapiro.

00:13:31.680 Right.

00:13:31.980 And the well-worn understanding, the well-circulated rumor around Washington was they chose Walz because he's not Jewish.

00:13:41.740 Right.

00:13:42.140 But Josh Shapiro was too Jewish. 0.95

00:13:44.680 Now, I was relieved when they didn't choose Josh Shapiro.

00:13:47.140 Me too.

00:13:47.520 That would have made it much harder for Republicans to win. 0.80

00:13:49.600 Josh Shapiro was smart.

00:13:50.700 Yeah.

00:13:51.360 Yeah.

00:13:51.560 Very, very smart.

00:13:52.460 It would have made it a lot easier for Democrats to win Pennsylvania for the presidential race and for the Senate race there. 0.99

00:13:58.620 So, I was relieved when they didn't.

00:14:00.340 But it was also weird because it was pretty apparent, yeah, we chose the other guy because he's, you know, not Jewish.

00:14:06.040 Right.

00:14:06.440 I mean, they have a huge problem with a lot of their voters on the question of Israel.

00:14:11.840 Their, you know, their view of Israel is not that different from Trump's view of Israel, but a lot of their voters have a completely different view of Israel.

00:14:20.860 They're anti-Israel.

00:14:21.780 And the current administration, of which this would be the successor in interest, is itself dancing a very, very delicate dance with regard to Israel.

00:14:35.360 On the one hand, they want to be seen as pro-Israel.

00:14:38.960 On the other hand, they're constantly telling Israel, cease fire.

00:14:42.120 Somebody attacks them.

00:14:42.840 Oh, cease fire.

00:14:43.540 You got to stop defending yourself.

00:14:45.920 Right.

00:14:46.100 That's very, very strange.

00:14:48.880 And you're right.

00:14:50.160 They're doing this as a reaction to a radical element within their own base that is increasingly not only anti-Israel or Israel skeptical, but anti-Semitic.

00:15:00.540 Well, I'm glad they didn't choose Shapiro.

00:15:04.220 He's much more capable than Walls.

00:15:06.160 And I think he's probably a much worse person even than Walls.

00:15:09.300 That's my personal view.

00:15:10.600 But he's certainly a skillful politician.

00:15:14.120 Skillful politician.

00:15:15.020 And look, I don't know either one of them personally, so I can't speak to any of those things.

00:15:19.580 But what I do know is that the guy they had on the stage tonight surely would have been outperformed dramatically by Josh Shapiro.

00:15:28.240 This guy was not ready for primetime, and it showed.

00:15:30.300 I was really surprised that nobody brought up this, you know, the salient fact of Tim Walsh's career, which is that he presided over the destruction of a state in its biggest city, Minneapolis, on Memorial Day 2020.

00:15:44.140 Yes.

00:15:44.700 And that his wife enjoyed it.

00:15:46.260 She said she enjoyed it.

00:15:47.060 She opened the windows of their home so she could smell the burning rubber.

00:15:49.620 Opened the windows of her home so that they could marinate in the smell of burning rubber from overturned police cars and the lawlessness that was going on.

00:15:59.880 She apparently loved this.

00:16:01.000 Now, this is something you sometimes associate with leftists.

00:16:06.320 Marxists like the idea of people who consider themselves oppressed throwing off the established order of things and bringing about chaos and violence.

00:16:16.180 But rarely do they actually say it in those terms.

00:16:19.340 No, this is the quiet part out there.

00:16:20.400 No, no, this is like Winnie Mandela and necklacing.

00:16:24.300 You know, I love the smell of burning rubber as our opponents are murdered in the street.

00:16:30.540 That never—how could that not come up?

00:16:32.680 He's the governor of Minnesota.

00:16:35.660 Oh, how did that not come up tonight?

00:16:37.280 Yeah.

00:16:37.640 I mean, what?

00:16:38.080 Easy, Tucker.

00:16:38.580 I mean, come on.

00:16:39.060 That's elementary.

00:16:39.720 That's obvious.

00:16:40.260 It didn't come up because they were too busy holding J.D. Vance to account for why Republicans are to blame because, obviously, Republicans caused climate change and climate change caused hurricanes, including the hurricane that Americans have been dealing with for the last few days, especially in states like Florida and North Carolina.

00:16:58.360 And they didn't want to have to hold Democrats to account for their handling of those things.

00:17:03.220 So, naturally, they blame it on climate change and climate change on Republicans.

00:17:06.120 Climate change.

00:17:06.460 Climate is changing.

00:17:07.680 Climate has always changed.

00:17:08.720 We had the glaciers not that long ago, 10,000 years ago.

00:17:12.860 Climate is changing.

00:17:14.340 There's no proof that carbon emissions are changing climate.

00:17:18.000 Why does no one ever say that?

00:17:19.500 There is certainly no proof that what they are proposing, what they always want to do, which is tax carbon.

00:17:26.260 Yeah.

00:17:27.220 Generally shut down carbon-based sources of energy, phase them out over the next couple of decades or so.

00:17:35.040 There's no proof at all that if we do all of that, that that will change global temperatures by even a fraction of a degree.

00:17:43.660 At all.

00:17:44.160 They have no idea.

00:17:45.820 These are all based on projections.

00:17:47.460 And those projections are extremely costly.

00:17:49.900 We're talking about many, many tens of trillions of dollars that will have to be pumped into the economy, out of the economy, out of otherwise productive uses into nonproductive or less productive uses so that they can sort of remake the economy.

00:18:05.280 But I don't understand why Republicans more broadly don't challenge the so-called science since there is an actual science behind that.

00:18:12.900 I think you could say climate is changing.

00:18:14.960 Seems to be.

00:18:16.360 It has always changed.

00:18:17.700 It seems to be accelerating in the way that it is changing.

00:18:19.960 But the solutions and even the cause of it are, you know, there's no, quote, scientific consensus on that.

00:18:27.720 Why doesn't anyone say so?

00:18:29.400 Right.

00:18:29.740 And I saw a picture the other day.

00:18:32.400 It was a picture of some baths constructed during the height of the Roman Empire in a coastal city somewhere in Europe.

00:18:40.360 And it pointed out that these baths are exactly at sea level as they have been for 2,000 years.

00:18:47.520 And they have not changed.

00:18:48.820 Even as our carbon emissions have, of course, changed significantly, the sea level there and elsewhere has not changed.

00:18:56.920 So this is a tall order that they're asking us to carry.

00:19:00.980 They're asking us to impoverish ourselves, to rely on less efficient, less stable sources of electric power and means of powering our vehicles and things like that without any proof.

00:19:14.100 They're asking us, as it were, to accept an almost religious belief that they have.

00:19:20.100 Well, it's insane.

00:19:21.060 Where we're sitting right now was covered by a mile of ice at a time when this continent had hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people living on it.

00:19:30.100 I mean, this was a heavily populated continent during the last ice age.

00:19:33.980 And there were no, that we know of, there was no carbon emission, I mean, from people.

00:19:39.440 I mean, none of this makes any, and then it warms sufficiently that all that ice melted.

00:19:44.160 Right.

00:19:44.400 And what?

00:19:45.100 All without carbon.

00:19:46.100 But, you know, apparently the Koch brothers came along and secretly injected lots of carbon into the atmosphere.

00:19:52.600 Just wish someone would.

00:19:53.520 And, of course, they don't take into account changes in solar activity, sun spots, things like that, that have an obvious likelihood to impact global temperatures.

00:20:06.840 And so, when you view all of this as narrowly as they view it, it becomes a little bit like they're holding a hammer.

00:20:13.620 Everything starts to look like a nail.

00:20:15.080 Well, sure, and if you're telling me that bulldozing forests to build solar farms is good for the environment, cutting off the top of mountains to build windmills is green, you know, I guess there's nothing I won't believe if I accept that.

00:20:32.160 Right.

00:20:32.440 Leaving behind mountains and mountains worth of waste.

00:20:36.280 Of course.

00:20:36.780 Some of which is not all that pleasant.

00:20:38.160 But why not plant trees if you think that carbon is the problem, then why are you bulldozing forests, which they are doing, I mean, millions of acres, to why wouldn't you plant trees instead?

00:20:48.980 I don't really understand.

00:20:49.900 It's the ultimate virtue signal.

00:20:51.460 Nothing signals virtue quite like bulldozing trees in order to replace them with solar farms.

00:20:56.400 Not in my world.

00:21:00.220 Bulldozing trees, there's nothing virtuous about that at all.

00:21:02.420 One of our plans when we started TCN was to run great long-form content, documentaries on topics that other people were ignoring.

00:21:09.440 Well, we have the best so far.

00:21:12.220 It's called Wine in the Sand, and it's by James O'Keefe, one of the last brave and honest journalists in this country.

00:21:19.240 How brave?

00:21:19.860 James O'Keefe embedded with the cartels as they moved migrants engaging in human trafficking at the largest scale in modern times from Latin America to the United States.

00:21:30.480 He embedded with the cartels, with hidden cameras, and the result is this documentary, Wine in the Sand, which we are proud to run exclusively on TCN.

00:21:39.620 Wine in the Sand, October 10th.

00:21:41.240 Highly recommend.

00:21:41.860 Let me ask you specifically, one of the reasons I'm so grateful that you're here, J.D. Vance, of course, is a senator.

00:22:07.500 Tim Walls is running with a former senator.

00:22:09.140 A lot of the discussion tonight revolved around things that are happening in the body where you've served for a long time.

00:22:14.940 There was a moment when Tim Walls described the so-called border bill, the immigration bill that died in the Congress as the toughest ever.

00:22:25.900 You were there.

00:22:26.760 What was that bill?

00:22:27.660 Everything he said was wrong.

00:22:32.080 So here again, Tim Walls is either lying, meaning he knows the truth and he's not stating it, or he's been deceived by somebody else and didn't bother to do his own homework and check it up.

00:22:43.280 In the first place, the reason we have a crisis along the southern border has everything to do with the fact that the current administration refuses to enforce laws as they exist on the books already.

00:22:56.580 The Biden-Harris team has done a phenomenal job at selling a lie.

00:23:01.060 The lie is that we really wanted to fix the border crisis.

00:23:05.820 We just couldn't.

00:23:07.040 So we had to have changes in the law in order for us to enforce the border.

00:23:10.880 Republicans refused to go along with that.

00:23:13.740 So, sorry, we can't do anything.

00:23:15.360 All of that is a lie.

00:23:17.320 Existing law allows them to stop the problem.

00:23:19.540 They don't want to do it.

00:23:20.360 So they came up with this bill, and now this bill was negotiated by two or three people in the Senate, only one of whom is a Republican, my friend and colleague, James Lankford, a great senator from Oklahoma.

00:23:35.640 I really do like James Lankford a lot.

00:23:37.340 I disagree with him on this bill.

00:23:38.480 But Mitch McConnell assigned him to negotiate that bill with Democrats.

00:23:42.760 And at the time he did that, a lot of us told him, look, the best thing you could do with this bill is find a way to negotiate something that says we want to tie Joe Biden's hands.

00:23:56.120 The Democrats really wanted funding for Ukraine.

00:23:58.600 A lot of Republicans, like myself, didn't want to do that.

00:24:02.380 Republicans really wanted a secure border.

00:24:03.960 So the idea was maybe we can force them to secure the border by tying Joe Biden's hands so he can't just continue to have the open borders immigration policy.

00:24:12.760 A couple months go by, Lankford puts a lot of time into it, but what he negotiates doesn't tie Biden's hands.

00:24:18.900 And if anything, it would make it a lot worse.

00:24:21.900 Now, there are some good provisions in there, but there are a lot of provisions that, especially in the hands of a Biden-Harris administration, would have made things a lot worse.

00:24:30.060 Like the fact that they would have to, under Section 244B of the bill, there's some indication they'd have to let in about 1,400 people every single day.

00:24:42.520 Remember, Jay Johnson, who served in the Obama administration in the Department of Homeland Security, had said that we reach crisis levels at 400 migrants per day.

00:24:51.740 This would have systematized it as high as 1,400 per day.

00:24:57.480 So this is one of the many examples within this bill.

00:25:01.160 1,400 a day?

00:25:02.480 Yes, of what they would have to process.

00:25:05.740 And then we've also got this Section 3402 within the bill that would have provided billions of dollars.

00:25:14.120 What was it?

00:25:14.520 $2.3 billion to this global initiative to facilitate migration, including to the United States.

00:25:21.380 To facilitate migration?

00:25:22.620 To facilitate that.

00:25:24.180 And also to provide legal services.

00:25:27.440 I kid you not.

00:25:28.740 Legal services.

00:25:29.860 Lawyers, paid lawyers for illegal immigrants to have them represented in their immigration proceedings. 0.83

00:25:35.740 How about if you're not invited, you have to leave immediately?

00:25:39.580 What a thought, Tucker.

00:25:40.500 Just drop you in Tijuana and the Mexican government, which hates us, has to deal with that.

00:25:45.200 It's what literally every other civilized country on planet Earth and most of the non-civilized countries on planet Earth do.

00:25:51.700 Especially the non-civilized countries. 0.66

00:25:53.020 Especially the non-civilized countries. 0.66

00:25:54.940 But all of the countries that we are aware of have some kinds of restrictions like these.

00:26:00.040 Why would the United States abandon those?

00:26:02.180 And the truth is our law doesn't do that.

00:26:04.400 It's just President Biden has been manipulating our system of law to find ways to refuse to enforce it.

00:26:09.860 So that was the biggest flaw in this border security bill.

00:26:13.060 Number one, it presupposed that we needed a bill, which we didn't have to have one.

00:26:16.920 It would have been nice to have one that forces hands. 0.97

00:26:18.520 But number two, it didn't do what we as Republicans were demanding.

00:26:22.420 Now, I don't know why that didn't happen.

00:26:25.260 Whether Mitch McConnell didn't specify that to James Lankford as the minimum negotiating standard.

00:26:30.220 I wasn't in the room when they had all those conversations.

00:26:33.260 But I do think this is a problem.

00:26:34.840 I think somehow the message got through to Senator Lankford from Mitch McConnell.

00:26:39.540 Don't worry about forcing Joe Biden's hands.

00:26:41.760 Because that's what we got out of this bill.

00:26:43.700 Something that would not have done a darn thing.

00:26:45.660 Why would the head Republican in the Senate want a bill that facilitated illegal immigration,

00:26:52.640 that gave lawyers paid for by taxpayers in an increasingly poor country to illegal aliens?

00:26:59.480 Why would Mitch McConnell be for that?

00:27:01.040 Look, obviously I can't speak for him.

00:27:03.360 I can't get into his head.

00:27:04.340 I don't know what he was thinking.

00:27:05.740 Knowing Mitch McConnell, I doubt he would have thought, yeah, go and do all those things.

00:27:11.040 Maybe he didn't realize the extent to which it would have this effect.

00:27:14.540 I read Mitch McConnell's position in this circumstance as being focused much more on,

00:27:18.980 let's just do whatever we got to do to fund Ukraine, to send more money to Ukraine.

00:27:23.560 He wanted to get that done.

00:27:24.980 And so if he could find some kind of a gesture.

00:27:27.780 Who cares about our country?

00:27:28.900 We've got a Ukraine lawyer.

00:27:29.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:30.360 I mean, let the other people worry about that.

00:27:32.820 Let Lankford go ahead and negotiate something.

00:27:34.420 As long as he can come up with something, then we'll get our funding for Ukraine.

00:27:37.540 We can dance, kish, schmooze, move, carry on.

00:27:39.540 We'll all go home happy.

00:27:41.520 Look, I don't serve in the Senate.

00:27:42.960 I just watch.

00:27:43.940 But that sounds exactly right to me, just from watching, from the outside.

00:27:49.600 What do you think that is?

00:27:52.120 The focus on Ukraine, it's like a religion.

00:27:55.040 Yes, it is.

00:27:56.320 It is almost like a religion.

00:27:58.400 Some of my colleagues will actually get a little teary-eyed when speaking of Ukraine,

00:28:01.560 as if they were talking about their beloved, aged sibling who's going through something awful.

00:28:09.820 Now, look, I understand that Ukraine's gone through some horrible things.

00:28:14.820 And I'm deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Ukrainian people.

00:28:18.360 Nonetheless, I think what's motivating this is something much more sinister.

00:28:22.740 Whether people realize it or not, those who have gotten enmeshed in this have become part

00:28:27.260 of the military-industrial complex.

00:28:29.520 And guaranteeing that no matter what, we can pump a whole lot of money into that.

00:28:34.940 Let me explain what I mean there.

00:28:36.560 You can sometimes tell what people are thinking by what they say when they're defending something.

00:28:43.920 A lot of my colleagues, especially on the Republican side, when defending their votes to send,

00:28:49.200 what is it now, close to $200 billion to Ukraine for a war that is not ours, will say things like this.

00:28:56.740 A lot of this money, you see, is actually going to go into the U.S. job market.

00:29:00.540 It's going to fund the arms companies, the people who are building the arms being purchased by Ukraine

00:29:08.780 to create American jobs here.

00:29:11.160 That is really unsettling.

00:29:13.420 I find that unsatisfactory.

00:29:15.180 I find it morally repugnant that we would justify prolonging both the duration

00:29:21.420 and magnifying the severity of somebody else's war half a world away with a nuclear armed power, no less.

00:29:30.820 For the simple reason that, oh, don't worry, it'll make some people here in the United States rich.

00:29:35.140 It's good for Raytheon.

00:29:36.200 That is what I would call immoral. 1.00

00:29:38.560 And there's sick bastards who think that way. 1.00

00:29:40.920 Well, I would too. 1.00

00:29:41.980 And also, I mean, everyone laments the decline of American manufacturing,

00:29:46.000 but you don't want to live in a country whose only manufacturing center is weapons.

00:29:50.560 No, that's right, Tucker.

00:29:52.100 But I would put it more strongly than that.

00:29:56.040 Obviously, we're not at or anywhere near the point where our only manufacturing sector is weapons.

00:30:01.260 I don't want to go anywhere near the point where we're funding somebody else's war,

00:30:05.620 making it longer, making it more severe against a nuclear armed power, no less,

00:30:09.840 the one that hates us, just on the basis that, well, it'll create some American jobs. 0.95

00:30:15.920 That's wrong.

00:30:16.920 That's not who we are.

00:30:17.900 I wonder how people like Mitch McConnell or your colleagues or anybody in the media,

00:30:23.660 the whole media is this way, get away with pretending to be the defenders of the Ukrainian 0.99

00:30:29.360 people when they have abetted the slaughter of the Ukrainian people, an entire generation, 0.97

00:30:35.140 hundreds of thousands of people.

00:30:37.180 And then, you know, Zelensky, their guy has just changed the law in Ukraine so foreign entities

00:30:43.220 can buy Ukrainian farmland.

00:30:44.720 So they're going to lose their population and their land.

00:30:47.740 There will be no recognizable Ukraine in 10 years thanks to these people. 1.00

00:30:51.120 How do they get to be the defenders?

00:30:53.140 No, that's exactly right.

00:30:54.280 And they have good reason to resent the American people, particularly those who have facilitated.

00:30:59.940 Who, the Ukrainians? 1.00

00:31:00.740 Yes.

00:31:01.180 Yes, they do.

00:31:01.800 For that very reason. 0.97

00:31:03.120 Oh, we screwed them. 0.97

00:31:04.280 We came on the scene. 0.76

00:31:06.020 And the minute we started spending money to the tune of now close to $200 billion in just a

00:31:11.780 couple of years, we took peace off the table for them.

00:31:16.200 There really were peaceful off-ramps for this thing in the earlier months of the war,

00:31:21.380 particularly during the first year of this particular war in 2022.

00:31:26.140 Those were taken off the table as we started dumping all this money on them.

00:31:30.560 And so, yeah, if I were from Ukraine, I would deeply resent the U.S. government for what we have

00:31:37.120 done there.

00:31:37.700 It has prolonged the war.

00:31:38.660 It's made it more severe, and it's taken peace off the table.

00:31:41.500 And yet, they get to parade around like they're driven by compassion and love for Ukrainians.

00:31:47.760 Yes.

00:31:49.020 And meanwhile, a number of government leaders in Ukraine and those who are close enough

00:31:55.020 to centers of power that they can profit off of it.

00:31:57.500 I'm willing to bet, Tucker, that there are a lot of very wealthy people in Ukraine.

00:32:01.560 Well, I've been in that area.

00:32:03.220 I mean, go to Romania, you know, or any of the countries that border Ukraine, and they'll

00:32:07.560 tell you, you know, that all the luxury car dealerships have sold out.

00:32:12.780 I mean, there are a lot of rich people who fled Ukraine.

00:32:15.420 And by the way, I'm not even judging that.

00:32:18.800 I'm just saying that's a fact, whereas people who couldn't afford to run away and go buy a

00:32:24.000 Bentley in Dubai have been killed in the war that we created.

00:32:28.140 That's why there's this old phrase, a lot of foreign aid is about poor people in rich

00:32:35.580 countries being forced to give money to rich people in poor countries.

00:32:39.100 That's certainly happening here.

00:32:40.400 And that's something that I appreciate, by the way, about J.D. Vance.

00:32:43.560 Yes.

00:32:44.160 J.D. Vance, you know, it's somewhat uncommon for a new senator to come in and display as

00:32:52.180 much confidence, respect for colleagues, respect for the system and the process, and complete

00:33:00.220 fearlessness as he had from J.D. Vance.

00:33:02.740 But he did it all in a way that was unassuming, that was unoffensive, that was always respectful

00:33:08.480 to members.

00:33:10.680 But talking about Ukraine makes me remember this aspect of J.D. Vance.

00:33:14.500 He came into the Senate at the beginning of 2023, brand new senator, and he already was

00:33:23.040 one of the few people who was willing to be bold in asking questions that needed to be

00:33:27.360 asked about Ukraine.

00:33:28.580 He's shown that consistently through the entire thing.

00:33:32.140 And as recently as just a few months ago, he and I and a small handful of others stayed

00:33:37.700 up all night on the Senate floor, pushing back on the Ukraine supplemental.

00:33:41.200 We had a lot of people, including members of our own party and the other party, who swore

00:33:47.140 at us and were unhappy with us for that.

00:33:50.080 But J.D. Vance then, as you saw tonight, was respectful back to them, didn't allow it to

00:33:56.540 affect his mode, and just kept right on going.

00:33:58.800 That's the kind of vice president we're going to have.

00:34:00.860 How is he viewed in the Senate?

00:34:03.020 He's viewed as somebody who is freakishly smart, who brings receipts.

00:34:07.480 And so if you argue with him, you've got to be prepared.

00:34:11.560 He's always going to be nice and respectful about how he does it.

00:34:15.240 But you will, in part because he's so nice and respectful about it, you'll look like a 0.98

00:34:19.700 fool if you show up and you haven't done your homework. 0.99

00:34:22.880 That's why I was a little shocked when Lindsey Graham went out of his way to savagely attack 1.00

00:34:28.320 J.D. Vance to Trump back in July, you know, the day before Trump was making this decision.

00:34:35.100 People were very cruel about Vance, you know, off the record, of course, no one in public,

00:34:40.720 but I know for a fact that they did it.

00:34:42.940 What was that about?

00:34:44.140 It can't, was it personally?

00:34:46.100 You know, I don't know.

00:34:47.200 I don't know.

00:34:48.500 To my knowledge, he has never said that publicly.

00:34:50.800 I haven't heard him speak that way of J.D. in private.

00:34:53.180 But let's assume that he or others were, in fact, saying those things about him.

00:34:59.500 There are those who feel so passionately about the Ukraine issue that some of them might take

00:35:04.880 such great offense to someone like J.D. coming along and asking questions, saying,

00:35:09.240 should we really be doing this?

00:35:11.300 And J.D. comes at this from the vantage point of somebody who speaks with a fair amount of

00:35:17.040 experience, you know, enlisted in the Marines.

00:35:20.320 He went to school on the GI Bill, and he's got a really good head on his shoulders.

00:35:25.680 And so a lot of people probably resent him from that.

00:35:27.980 And if some of my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle were saying things like that,

00:35:31.900 I suspect Ukraine had a lot to do with it.

00:35:33.980 But it's not, but it sounds like he gets along with people in general.

00:35:37.900 I mean, there are ideological differences that are stark, but from what you're saying,

00:35:43.820 he doesn't have a lot of personal enemies?

00:35:45.900 Right.

00:35:46.220 Well, he has people who mistreat him.

00:35:48.820 But what I love about J.D. is that even after someone publicly mistreats him,

00:35:54.780 and I've seen some of our colleagues, including some of our Republican colleagues, do that,

00:35:59.180 the next day, J.D. Vance will be sitting next to them at lunch, smiling, laughing,

00:36:03.600 not necessarily pretending that the whole thing didn't happen,

00:36:07.520 so much as showing that they're not going to get under his skin.

00:36:11.160 He's not going to let them influence his own behavior.

00:36:14.240 Man, I wish I had that quality.

00:36:16.240 Don't we all, don't we all.

00:36:17.300 Don't. So there was a moment, I think we have the tape,

00:36:21.460 where he did not allow the contemptible behavior of the moderators to infuriate him.

00:36:28.940 He just kept going.

00:36:29.980 I thought this was one of the coolest moments I've ever seen in a debate.

00:36:32.360 Here it is.

00:36:33.560 I don't talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25, 40 talks about,

00:36:38.520 to the least amongst us, you do unto me.

00:36:40.260 I think that's true of most Americans.

00:36:42.360 They simply want order to it.

00:36:44.900 This bill does it.

00:36:46.040 It's funded.

00:36:47.020 It's supported by the people who do it.

00:36:48.720 And it lets us keep our dignity about how we treat other people.

00:36:52.960 Thank you, Governor.

00:36:53.920 And just to clarify for our viewers,

00:36:56.320 Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants

00:37:00.120 who have legal status, temporary protected status.

00:37:04.180 Well, Margaret, but... 0.87

00:37:05.400 Thank you.

00:37:05.680 Senator, we have so much to get to.

00:37:07.300 Margaret, I think it's important because...

00:37:08.360 We're going to turn out of the economy, thank you.

00:37:10.200 Margaret, the rules were that you guys were going to fact-check.

00:37:13.220 And since you're fact-checking me,

00:37:14.720 I think it's important to say what's actually going on.

00:37:17.460 So there's an application called the CBP One App,

00:37:20.260 where you can go on as an illegal migrant,

00:37:22.660 apply for asylum or apply for parole,

00:37:25.400 and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.

00:37:31.560 That is not a person coming in,

00:37:33.560 applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years.

00:37:35.900 Thank you, Senator.

00:37:36.680 It's an invitation of a legal immigration, Margaret, 0.97

00:37:39.100 by our own leadership.

00:37:39.620 Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process.

00:37:42.400 We have so much to get to, Senator.

00:37:45.280 Those laws have been on the books since 1990.

00:37:47.800 Thank you, gentlemen.

00:37:48.880 The CBP One App has not been on the books since 1990.

00:37:52.720 It's something that Kamala Harris created, Margaret. 0.86

00:37:54.980 Gentlemen, the audience can't hear you because your mics are cut.

00:37:58.940 We have so much we want to get to.

00:38:00.620 Thank you for explaining the legal process.

00:38:02.300 It's really kind of hard to describe how awful Margaret Brennan and Norah O'Donnell are.

00:38:07.900 I think America just saw it.

00:38:09.800 But that was masterful, I thought.

00:38:14.000 There's so much to unpack there.

00:38:15.860 And you're absolutely right.

00:38:16.880 It was masterful by J.D.

00:38:18.500 First of all, kudos to CBS for allowing Governor Walz to quote Matthew 2540 without interrupting him and saying,

00:38:29.620 I'm sorry, that's an attempt at bringing in foreign disinformation campaigns.

00:38:35.500 We can't accept that.

00:38:37.100 May those words burn on your tongue. 0.87

00:38:39.520 Right.

00:38:39.780 That's what I thought.

00:38:40.400 I mean, I do think there ought to be a general rule.

00:38:42.940 If you're going to quote the New Testament, maybe you should acknowledge that some of your policies aren't exactly compatible with that.

00:38:50.800 But setting that aside for a minute.

00:38:52.280 Yes.

00:38:52.860 I love J.D.'s invocation of this problem with the CBP One app.

00:38:58.620 I've got a bill to fix this problem.

00:39:01.240 And I've been calling this out for a long time.

00:39:03.200 J.D. encapsulated that much better, more concisely than I've ever been able to.

00:39:07.780 But they have developed this application that people can use on a smartphone, which all these migrants seem to have. 1.00

00:39:14.620 They can go on and just fill in their own biographical information.

00:39:18.420 That then serves as their de facto passport when they get here.

00:39:21.860 They can do whatever they want.

00:39:23.660 They're admitted into the country using that app.

00:39:26.900 And it's one of many examples of how this administration has actively nurtured, fostered, cultured this environment in which migrants come up by the millions.

00:39:36.600 We're talking at least 10 million people who have entered this country illegally since January of 2021.

00:39:43.600 In the meantime, what we've done is we've enriched international drug cartels to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.

00:39:52.600 We've also brought in enough fentanyl potentially to kill many tens of millions of Americans.

00:40:00.380 And it's been trafficked in on the backs of women and children, many of whom are being sex trafficked. 0.97

00:40:07.360 So this is what we have to thank the Biden-Harris administration for.

00:40:12.560 And this is really how it's happening.

00:40:14.000 But hats off to J.D. for pointing out what this happened.

00:40:17.380 We've had this app, the smartphone app, since 1990.

00:40:21.480 Okay, the fact that they've had an app.

00:40:23.520 Before smartphones.

00:40:25.600 Right.

00:40:26.620 That's kind of curious.

00:40:27.960 What?

00:40:28.740 How did people use a smartphone app in that era before this happened?

00:40:32.840 34 years ago.

00:40:33.900 Secondly—

00:40:34.440 We've had this app for 34 years.

00:40:36.220 Okay.

00:40:36.720 You know, there have been computers, of course, that long.

00:40:40.420 But these were not computers that were in the hands of millions of people entering the country unlawfully.

00:40:47.480 And it's been during this administration that they have used this particular—

00:40:51.340 Well, there was no meaningful internet for most people in 1990.

00:40:55.980 No.

00:40:56.260 I was here.

00:40:56.960 I remember.

00:40:57.540 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:59.760 Yeah.

00:41:00.360 And the other, of course, effect is that it's completely, you know, upended American society.

00:41:05.580 So we have this—there's a pretty amazing clip from 2022, two years ago, from Tim Walls, bragging about how many refugees Minnesota has.

00:41:15.340 And I just want to play it.

00:41:16.200 It's really short, and I think it just says a lot about the attitude that's inspired what we're seeing now.

00:41:22.280 Here's Tim Walls.

00:41:23.580 We have more refugees per capita than any other state.

00:41:26.860 That's not just morally a good thing.

00:41:29.200 It's our economic and cultural future.

00:41:31.980 This beautiful diversity we see out in Worthington when I'm there, you see 50 languages spoken in the school.

00:41:39.180 So everything about that is a lie.

00:41:40.940 Actually, the state's become poorer under walls and much more chaotic and more violent.

00:41:48.260 But what struck me was we see 50 languages spoken in schools.

00:41:54.300 That's beautiful diversity.

00:41:56.060 It's the opposite of beautiful, and it's not diversity.

00:41:59.180 It's chaos.

00:41:59.960 It means people can't understand each other.

00:42:02.100 There's nothing that unites people.

00:42:03.860 It means a fractured society.

00:42:06.640 And if you think chaos is beautiful, then, I mean, I'm sorry, you know, you're on Satan's team at that point.

00:42:12.920 Chaos is not good.

00:42:13.820 Not being able to understand other people is not good.

00:42:16.460 How is that good?

00:42:17.200 But remember, Tucker, this is a man who lives in a home where they think it's beautiful to open the windows so that they can smell the burning rubber.

00:42:24.580 That's right.

00:42:24.960 And so they do think this is beautiful.

00:42:26.260 Now, I've never been to Worthington, Minnesota, but when I hear him say there are 50 languages spoken in the public schools, I think chaos.

00:42:35.920 Right.

00:42:36.360 I think Tower of Babel. 0.90

00:42:38.060 Now, the Tower of Babel resulted the way it did, not as a blessing to those involved in it, but as a curse, as a punishment. 0.99

00:42:45.440 Because when everybody speaks different languages, they can't understand each other. 1.00

00:42:48.620 It's chaos, and people suffer as a result.

00:42:51.000 And how do the kids get educated?

00:42:52.480 I guess he doesn't care.

00:42:53.340 They don't.

00:42:53.580 I thought he was an educator.

00:42:54.720 They don't.

00:42:55.280 And through this process of social promotion and the teachers' unions facilitating the social promotion, they paper over it and they make it look like everything's okay when we know it's not.

00:43:05.760 This is before we even get to the more dire human cause of the people who have been raped, who have been murdered, who have suffered through home invasion robberies, been assaulted and battered as a result of people coming into this country who didn't belong here to begin with. 1.00

00:43:20.380 Given that there's zero support that I can detect in polls for these immigration policies, which are permanent, change the country forever.

00:43:29.700 However, how is democracy functioning if something this central to a nation's identity, who lives in the country, is taking place without any input at all from the citizens who already live here?

00:43:43.800 Taking place not only without their meaningful input, but also setting things up so that non-citizens can and will vote in elections. 0.88

00:43:54.700 That's why I've spent months, the last few months, trying to push the SAVE Act, trying to attach it to the spending bill.

00:44:00.340 The SAVE Act would make it so that you can't vote in a federal election without showing some type of proof that you are a U.S. citizen and therefore eligible to vote.

00:44:09.800 Who would be against that?

00:44:10.800 All Democrats. All Democrats are against it.

00:44:14.000 Now, it passed the House, actually, with bipartisan votes.

00:44:17.080 All the Republicans plus a handful of Democrats voted for it over there.

00:44:21.060 All the Republicans in the Senate supported it, but Senate Democrats blocked it.

00:44:25.640 Now, they blocked it by saying, first and foremost, well, non-citizens don't vote.

00:44:29.900 They can't vote.

00:44:30.780 And anybody who says otherwise, it's a misinformation campaign, which is what they say about anything they don't like.

00:44:38.200 Well, then what's wrong with banning it?

00:44:39.700 Well, that was my question to them.

00:44:42.100 If it doesn't happen, then we're banning something that doesn't happen, but it's already illegal.

00:44:46.360 Yeah, it's already illegal, but there are all sorts of things that are already illegal that are too easy to carry out.

00:44:52.480 And that's why you need to have some penalties attached to it, which is what the SAVE Act does.

00:44:57.220 It would require the states to ask for some type of proof of immigration status and require the states to cull through their voter registration files to remove non-citizens periodically.

00:45:07.740 And then it imposes a criminal penalty for anyone who knowingly gives a ballot or a voter registration to a non-citizen.

00:45:13.920 So here again, what we've got are laws that have been easy to circumvent.

00:45:20.800 This would have fixed it.

00:45:21.820 And they said it's not necessary because they don't vote because they can't vote.

00:45:24.660 Only every day, Tucker, it becomes more and more apparent that people are getting onto the voter registration files being non-citizens because of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act, where they said the states cannot ask for proof of citizenship.

00:45:40.480 And where in all 50 states now, you can apply for and get a driver's license as a non-citizen.

00:45:46.960 And when you do that, if you fill out the NVRA part of the form, you check a box and sign your name, then you are a registered voter, even though you're a non-citizen.

00:45:57.400 And so this is troubling.

00:45:59.000 Meanwhile, you've got the American people who are being ignored.

00:46:01.580 Wait, and all 50 states issue licenses to illegals?

00:46:04.320 To non-citizens. 0.99

00:46:05.600 All 50 states do.

00:46:06.860 In roughly half of the states, a little more than half of the states, I believe, they will also issue them even to illegal aliens.

00:46:16.000 But in all states, as a non-citizen, you can apply for a driver's license.

00:46:20.620 Now, the purpose of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act—

00:46:25.080 Motor Voter.

00:46:25.740 Motor Voter—was to make it easy to fill out a driver's license application and simultaneously register to vote.

00:46:33.180 The problem is it makes it way too easier.

00:46:35.380 We've now got 30 million-plus non-citizens in this country, and it's so easy to apply for a driver's license today.

00:46:43.760 You add to that the Supreme Court's bad ruling, a bad interpretation of the NVRA, saying the states can't ask for voter ID, and you've got a problem.

00:46:52.260 You add all of that to this major overhaul of immigration policy undertaken without the consent of the American people, contrary to their will, where the administration is basically just effectively rewriting immigration law by refusing to enforce vast swaths of it.

00:47:09.800 And that's the mess we're in today.

00:47:11.240 I mean, you know, how could a Republican ever get elected if you've got a brand-new electorate brought in by the Democratic Party, given all kinds of free things that American citizens don't get, made dependent on that party for its life?

00:47:28.140 Like, how could—I mean, how could you not become a one-party state?

00:47:32.180 Well, that's the whole idea, Tucker.

00:47:34.240 Remember, the country immediately to ourself, Mexico, was ruled by one party.

00:47:39.320 The PRI.

00:47:39.820 The PRI for most of the 20th century, almost the entirety of it.

00:47:45.660 It was ironically called the Revolutionary Institutional Party.

00:47:50.680 My favorite name of any party ever.

00:47:52.500 It can't be both revolutionary and institutional, but they managed to do it.

00:47:55.240 But I think the Democrats, whether they realize the PRI angle or not by name, I think that's what they're trying to do here.

00:48:04.280 Think about what they do.

00:48:06.040 So they brought in 10 million-plus non-citizens.

00:48:09.680 They've then shipped them strategically to different parts of the country.

00:48:13.960 Many of those will end up being able to vote since the SAVE Act, much to my dismay, wasn't attached to this spending bill.

00:48:21.700 If that happens, they may well seize control of things they wouldn't have otherwise controlled.

00:48:26.760 I hope it won't happen, but it could.

00:48:29.700 Once they're in, if Democrats have a clean sweep, meaning they get the White House, they keep the Senate, they take back the House of Representatives,

00:48:40.900 Kamala Harris has made known her agenda to nuke the filibuster in the Senate. 1.00

00:48:45.460 And with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin out of the picture, it'll be easier for them to do that if they've got the majority.

00:48:51.860 Once that happens, they will pack the Supreme Court.

00:48:54.600 They will pass voter registration and voter reform bills that will take a lot of the discretion to draw legislative districts away from state legislatures.

00:49:04.840 They'll add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states and make a couple of other changes, including to our campaign finance laws,

00:49:10.960 that together will make an indefinite, perpetual Democratic majority in the United States Congress our new reality.

00:49:20.120 They'll be the pre-party, but for the United States.

00:49:23.620 You really think they would add Puerto Rico in the district?

00:49:26.240 Yes.

00:49:26.440 And by so doing, they'll get four additional Democratic senator seats.

00:49:33.200 For the foreseeable future, all four of those would be predictably, reliably Democrats.

00:49:38.120 And I think that's part of what they've got in mind.

00:49:41.000 But what they want is to not have a meaningful opposition party.

00:49:46.180 You can already tell that they want this by the way they speak to it.

00:49:49.640 But I thought they were defending democracy.

00:49:51.060 That would end democracy.

00:49:52.720 No.

00:49:52.780 Look, their conception of democracy is not actually about citizen input.

00:50:00.220 It's about something else.

00:50:02.380 It's about achieving the size, scope, reach, and power of government in general and the federal government in particular.

00:50:08.800 It's about enhancing their ability to carry out their radical, progressive Marxist objectives.

00:50:16.900 And that's what they want to do.

00:50:19.140 They see the rest of us as illegitimate and as obstacles to that task.

00:50:24.120 And therefore, people who are deserving of being canceled, of having our votes diluted and not counted.

00:50:30.500 Putting the wrong items in recycling can be a big problem and costs millions of dollars every year.

00:50:45.360 Learn how to recycle right at toronto.ca slash recycle.

00:50:51.060 Do you think that'll happen?

00:50:55.300 I sure hope not.

00:50:56.340 I pray daily that it won't.

00:50:57.900 But it is our duty as citizens of this great republic to sound the voice of alarm when we see a risk of that happening.

00:51:05.620 And I certainly see that risk here.

00:51:09.200 Look, these really are perilous times.

00:51:12.540 And we can't afford any longer to sugarcoat what it is that they're doing.

00:51:18.780 And what they're doing is really, really dangerous.

00:51:21.120 We've just got to be strong enough to stop them.

00:51:23.000 So you've seen all kinds of indicators pop up in media outlets that exist really for the people who run the Democratic Party.

00:51:35.000 The Atlantic and The New Yorker specifically and others have run pieces recently saying the Constitution is an impediment to progress.

00:51:44.340 You heard John Kerry say it the other day, the First Amendment is the problem.

00:51:50.720 That's not accidental, is it?

00:51:52.160 No, no, it's not accidental, nor is it insincere.

00:51:54.920 These guys mean it.

00:51:56.000 They genuinely mean it.

00:51:57.820 Because, look, first and foremost, if you view the ultimate objective as being democracy, which I don't think they do, but let's just go with me on this.

00:52:08.560 If they view the ultimate objective as just democracy, pure democracy, as pure as we can get it, then the Constitution is itself an impediment to that.

00:52:18.080 The Constitution is designed to be counter-democratic in its operation.

00:52:22.720 It's designed to be an intermediating filter of sorts between pure democracy and the rights of the people.

00:52:30.460 In fact, that's the only reason you have a Constitution, is to limit the power of government so that it doesn't become abusive of the rights of the minority.

00:52:39.720 That's the Constitution and its purpose in a nutshell.

00:52:42.560 So, if the Democrats love this idea of pure unrestrained democracy so much, I don't believe that's really accurately explaining what they want, but if that were what they want, then it would make sense for them to try to trample on it.

00:52:57.820 But, of course, what they want is something much more sinister than that.

00:53:01.280 They want consolidation of the power of government, whereas the Constitution requires distribution of power.

00:53:08.660 It requires it to be diffused so that no one person or group of people gets too powerful.

00:53:16.220 And so, as a result of all of that, you see them being doubly contemptuous of the Constitution.

00:53:22.600 The Constitution protects the rights of the minority, including heretics like you and me who dare to challenge the assumptions of the governing woke elite.

00:53:33.460 And the Constitution is also a threat to their ability to carry out their Marxist-inspired, far-left, radical, progressive ideas.

00:53:41.000 But if you're attacking—I mean, the word treason's been thrown around quite a bit over the last eight years.

00:53:45.500 But if you're attacking the Constitution, I mean, is that treason?

00:53:50.320 Yes, I believe it is.

00:53:51.880 Look, we've all sworn an oath.

00:53:54.740 Those of us who hold public office in the United States are required under Article VI of the Constitution to take an oath to them.

00:53:59.880 And I think if you violate that oath, I do think that is treasonous.

00:54:04.960 So, those who are taking this position, I think, are taking an indefensible position, one that I think could fairly be described as treasonous.

00:54:12.520 How widespread do you think in Washington is the view that the Constitution is the problem?

00:54:19.840 Well, I'm seeing some alarming trends in this regard.

00:54:25.560 Democrats are much more forceful about it, much more upfront.

00:54:29.100 Sometimes you can feel from some Republicans feeling frustrated about particular provisions.

00:54:35.900 But Republicans will at least always pay lip service to it, and I think with some degrees of sincerity.

00:54:41.840 What I'm seeing now for the first time—you know, I've been in the Senate now for 13 and a half years.

00:54:47.580 When I first got to the Senate, nobody in elected office would dare to be caught dead saying something that could be interpreted as contemptuous toward the Constitution.

00:54:58.520 And yet now you routinely hear members of Congress, Democrats, referring to features of the Constitution as incredibly problematic, like, for example, the Electoral College.

00:55:14.320 They hate the Electoral College.

00:55:16.520 They absolutely despise it.

00:55:18.340 And they will refer derisively to the Senate as a non-representative, as a sort of disenfranchising form of inequality.

00:55:28.720 Because the whole point of the Senate is that the Senate has to involve equal representation among the states.

00:55:36.500 Even if you amend it to say that each state will have a different number than two senators, Article 5 of the Constitution, which governs the amendment process, says that there's one type of amendment that is presumptively, preemptively unconstitutional.

00:55:51.140 You can't change the principle of equal representation.

00:55:54.420 They hate that.

00:55:55.460 Why?

00:55:56.420 Well, because a lot of their voters are focused in a smaller handful of states, heavily populated urban centers, and they think it's profoundly unfair that a smaller state like Utah or Maine will get two votes, while a heavily populated state like California or New York will have only two votes in the Senate.

00:56:18.900 Is there anything they can do about that?

00:56:21.640 In my opinion, no.

00:56:23.380 I mean, they could amend the Constitution, but like I say, Article 5 makes that the one type of constitutional amendment that is unconstitutional.

00:56:33.560 I had this conversation with Justice Scalia once, who posited to me that maybe they could change it, but it would require two successive amendments to the Constitution.

00:56:42.640 First, you'd have to amend out the part that says that you can't change this, and then you'd have to actually change it.

00:56:47.420 Regardless, amending the Constitution to undo the Electoral College or to change equal representation in the Senate is something that is nowhere near having the kind of support you would need right now to change it.

00:57:02.260 But I do worry, now that you've got one major political party that is openly contemptuous of at least those two provisions of the Constitution and becoming more contemptuous every day of the First Amendment, including not only the freedom of speech protections, but also the freedom of religion protections.

00:57:18.980 I worry that a chill wind blows in America when you've got a major political party that is still being taken seriously when it hates the Constitution, especially provisions as fundamental as those.

00:57:31.160 So, I mean, packing the Supreme Court would solve the problem.

00:57:34.700 You don't have to amend the Constitution.

00:57:36.600 You just change its meaning.

00:57:37.860 Right.

00:57:38.300 The old-fashioned way. 0.56

00:57:40.100 And what FDR figured out was that FDR could threaten to pack the court and so threaten the court that some justices would change their votes.

00:57:51.240 I write about this in a book I wrote a couple years ago called Saving Nine.

00:57:54.660 He threatened to pack the court.

00:57:56.260 It didn't work, but one of the reasons it didn't work is that it worked in a different way.

00:57:59.780 It threatened the court into adopting lock, stock, and barrel, FDR's loose interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and we've never been the same since.

00:58:07.580 That's what they want to do.

00:58:09.480 They want to either force the issue to the point where they can change the law.

00:58:12.960 Now, in the case of court packing, it doesn't actually require a constitutional amendment.

00:58:16.520 It's simple legislation.

00:58:17.960 But it's the type of legislation that, while not unconstitutional technically, could undo the whole constitutional structure.

00:58:24.420 And that scares me to death.

00:58:25.780 And you think it's possible?

00:58:27.180 Yes.

00:58:27.420 Not only possible, Tucker, but if they get the majority in the House and keep the majority in the Senate and they get the White House, they will do it.

00:58:36.760 And they will do it within the first hundred days they're in office.

00:58:39.420 That should scare every American.

00:58:41.320 If there's anyone within the sound of my voice who is thinking about voting for Harrison Walsh, they should take that.

00:58:47.380 Increase the number of seats on the court.

00:58:49.500 Without question.

00:58:50.840 Absolutely.

00:58:51.840 On what grounds?

00:58:53.380 Well, Tucker, democracy, of course.

00:58:56.440 I mean, they'll come up with something.

00:58:57.720 They'll say democracy because they think that answers everything.

00:59:00.800 They'll say climate change or they'll say-

00:59:03.600 Racism.

00:59:04.120 Racism.

00:59:04.800 Or a lot of them will say things like, well, we've got more circuit courts of appeals now, so we've got to increase it to reflect that.

00:59:11.520 That's nonsense.

00:59:12.340 Look, there's not a lack of human resources among the nine justices on the court.

00:59:18.040 That's not an issue.

00:59:20.040 They just want to increase the number of justices for one simple reason, because they don't like the fact that there is a court now controlled by a majority that's content with reading the Constitution based on what it says, rather than on the basis of what progressive Democrats wish it said.

00:59:37.000 In the first hundred days, you'll think they'll do?

00:59:39.120 I mean, that's the most radical thing I can imagine.

00:59:41.360 Yes, but they are radicals and they're unapologetic about it.

00:59:44.420 If they have the opportunity, meaning if they run the clean sweep where they control all three levers within the two political branches, they will do it.

00:59:55.080 Well, they're not too far from that, really.

00:59:58.480 Yes.

00:59:59.200 Well, it wouldn't be all that hard for them to do it.

01:00:02.040 And that's one of the reasons why I've been so worried about this election and making sure that it's actual U.S. citizens who are voting is because this election really is consequential.

01:00:10.620 Just given how different the two competing visions of these two political parties happens to be.

01:00:17.160 We saw that on display tonight in this debate in great detail.

01:00:21.840 I mean, I would ask you the same question.

01:00:25.740 Do you think that we saw a contrasting vision from the two parties?

01:00:29.320 Because in my view, tonight we saw a greater contrast between these two candidates than we've seen in a long time.

01:00:35.700 Ever.

01:00:36.160 Ever.

01:00:36.640 Ever.

01:00:36.920 Certainly in our lifetimes.

01:00:38.180 And just the level of thinking, I mean, really, as you know, it's a cliche, but it's true. 0.54

01:00:44.000 It really was three against one and the one outshone the three with ease.

01:00:50.440 Just on something as small as that, well, it's not small, but as specifically as the housing crisis, the increase in the cost of housing in the United States.

01:00:59.260 And J.D. Vance makes this very obvious point that, you know, more people means higher costs.

01:01:05.300 Because there's this thing called supply and demand.

01:01:08.780 If more people want something, it's price rises, right?

01:01:11.020 If you've limited supply and growing demand, I mean, it's just like the most, it's first grade math.

01:01:17.000 And Tim, Tim Walsh goes, well, you know, can you find a study that shows that?

01:01:21.500 And then J.D. says, well, actually, I think the Fed just did a study the other day that shows that in great detail.

01:01:28.720 But you don't need to point to a study.

01:01:30.720 The Federal Reserve Bank, we'll send that to you.

01:01:32.260 Yeah, but then the moderator's like, yeah, do you have a study?

01:01:35.760 I don't know.

01:01:36.640 I mean, you've got to set, you know, it takes a year to build a house.

01:01:39.520 You've got 25 million new people.

01:01:41.320 Like, of course, look what's true in every country in the world.

01:01:44.320 It's true in Canada right now.

01:01:45.320 It's true in Australia.

01:01:46.180 It's true everywhere. 1.00

01:01:46.980 So, like, anyone who demands a study to prove something that obvious is like an idiot. 1.00

01:01:53.420 Absolutely. 0.99

01:01:54.360 And especially when they ask for it, and it's already been provided by the Federal Reserve Bank, which Democrats generally love, by the way.

01:02:01.880 I love that entire exchange.

01:02:04.200 I loved how J.D. handled it.

01:02:05.780 It was a great example of what we've been describing, of J.D. being the master of the mood of the debate,

01:02:11.820 the master of reason, and of dispassionate but persuasive reasoning.

01:02:17.240 I thought it was fantastic.

01:02:18.540 I also love the fact that he began his answer there by plugging a proposal that I've introduced called the Houses Act.

01:02:24.880 And the Houses Act would require, under certain circumstances, for the federal government to sell surplus federal land for the purpose of building single-family affordable housing.

01:02:37.320 Now, Tim Walsh immediately pushed back on that.

01:02:39.580 So, single-family.

01:02:40.160 Single-family housing.

01:02:40.840 They don't want single-family housing.

01:02:41.960 They don't want single-family housing.

01:02:43.160 They want all of us to live in a big high-rise or something like that.

01:02:46.100 In your pod, yeah.

01:02:47.000 And they've been pushing this for 10 years on this horrible program called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Program,

01:02:53.520 where they're trying to make the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this sort of master planner, master zoning commission for the entire country.

01:03:01.340 And giving benefits to local government entities that embrace their zoning, their high-density zoning plans, and punishing those who won't.

01:03:09.760 I mean, you could actually solve these problems in a day if you just drew up a list of, and I can give you the zip codes if you want, but let's just say Martha's Vineyard, Aspen, Bethesda, Maryland, Newton, Massachusetts.

01:03:22.360 It's, you know, the—

01:03:25.080 High-density.

01:03:25.700 I think those are good places for high-density housing.

01:03:28.140 I want to see that.

01:03:28.620 And all the MS-13 baby mamas get free apartments in those new places. 1.00

01:03:32.700 So, like—

01:03:33.160 Don't they deserve as much, Tucker?

01:03:34.540 It's super easy to do.

01:03:36.520 We can't do any high-density housing unless Martha's Vineyard, Aspen, Bethesda, and Newton get it first. 1.00

01:03:44.220 That's great.

01:03:44.500 Like, that would end it immediately.

01:03:45.900 McLean should probably—

01:03:46.660 McLean, 100%.

01:03:48.140 Yeah, exactly.

01:03:50.460 Look, so those guys hate it because they hate single-family housing.

01:03:54.180 They don't like that.

01:03:56.440 Tim Walls also interjected by saying—

01:03:57.940 Wait, why do you think they hate single-family housing?

01:03:59.600 Well, I don't know exactly, but I think it has something to do with the fact that they don't really like families that much.

01:04:08.380 And human autonomy.

01:04:09.700 Yeah.

01:04:10.220 Their family policy is something rather the opposite of a pro-family policy, you might say.

01:04:16.680 Tim Walls then interjects by saying, well, but in some places there's not all that much federal land.

01:04:21.260 Okay, fair enough.

01:04:23.080 But in a lot of states, there is a lot of federal land.

01:04:26.300 In fact, some of the greatest housing crisis that you might find in the United States can be found in the western United States, where the federal government owns most of the land.

01:04:36.220 The federal government owns almost 70% of the land in my state.

01:04:40.000 And if you took just a tiny fraction of that—we're talking like half of 1% of the federal land in my state—and used it for the Houses Act housing plan, you could, in a fairly short period of time, roughly double the supply of single-family affordable homes just by adopting that legislation.

01:05:02.360 So they really don't like it.

01:05:03.520 And they'll have you believe that all federal land—oh, and then he also threw in this quip about, oh, are you going to be building houses in the same place on the national parks where you're drilling for oil?

01:05:11.840 Yeah, put me, exactly.

01:05:12.820 Putting condos in Yellowstone.

01:05:14.840 He's never been to the western United States.

01:05:16.980 These guys think that everything is delicate arch.

01:05:19.120 I can tell you, there is a whole bunch of land that is neither beautiful nor the home to some natural wonder.

01:05:29.940 It's just owned by the U.S. government, so we can't tax it.

01:05:32.420 We can't have access to it.

01:05:33.500 What are they doing with 75% of your land?

01:05:36.780 They use it to bully us.

01:05:38.940 They use it to compel us to an undue obedience to the federal sovereign.

01:05:44.880 But what are they doing with it?

01:05:46.360 I mean, is it one big biolab, or what is it?

01:05:48.900 Most of it sits fallow.

01:05:50.420 Most of it sits without being used for anything.

01:05:52.900 Now, there's not a property owner on planet Earth who can afford to own that much land, especially in a developed country like ours, and let it sit fallow.

01:06:02.120 But they get away with it because they don't have to pay taxes on it.

01:06:05.460 And that further impoverishes states in the west, like mine, where the federal government owns most of the land because they don't pay property taxes.

01:06:13.140 And this is not—these are not national parks.

01:06:16.820 No.

01:06:17.120 No, we don't fight the stuff on the parks.

01:06:20.100 We like our parks.

01:06:21.400 Of course.

01:06:21.860 The parks are also a tiny, tiny fragment, a tiny segment of a vast empire.

01:06:28.640 You know, the federal government owns close to 30% of the total land mass of the United States.

01:06:33.900 People east of Colorado are hardly aware of that because the federal government in most cases owns a percentage of land that can be reckoned at the low single digits in those states.

01:06:44.900 But in the west, this is a big, big deal.

01:06:48.400 And it's costly, but the folks—

01:06:49.960 Are they good stewards of it?

01:06:51.160 They're terrible.

01:06:52.220 It actually—they do it all in the name of environmental conservation.

01:06:56.120 They claim that if they didn't own all this land, it would be an environmental post-apocalyptic hellscape of sorts.

01:07:03.160 I thought they're terrible at managing it.

01:07:05.340 Well, the federal government has poisoned the air and water more than anybody.

01:07:09.360 Yes.

01:07:09.640 Look at Camp Lejeune.

01:07:11.180 Any military base is filled with PCBs and—

01:07:14.400 No, that's right, but you don't even have to go to the PCBs, which you'll see something like that on a military installation, before seeing that the federal government's a poor steward.

01:07:23.780 Just look at what they do to unpopulated, unused federal land.

01:07:28.740 They mismanage it to the point that they allow fuel buildup, meaning trees—

01:07:34.060 Oh, I know.

01:07:34.600 —brush to become overgrown.

01:07:36.140 They refuse to allow any kind of timber harvesting for you to cut sort of a firewall swath in the middle of it.

01:07:45.460 They refuse to allow the locals to treat for bark beetle infestation, for example.

01:07:50.740 Then forest fires happen.

01:07:52.120 The forest fire destroys the air quality.

01:07:54.900 It destroys the watershed, and it destroys the interest of adjacent landowners.

01:08:00.320 It's also a massive carbon emission.

01:08:01.980 Huge.

01:08:02.720 Massive.

01:08:03.660 More than your suburban.

01:08:05.140 Exactly.

01:08:06.600 So, look, if these guys cared about the environment, they would not want the federal government owning 30% of the land of the United States.

01:08:13.920 Sure as heck wouldn't want them owning 70% of Utah.

01:08:16.800 So maybe it's about power, not conservation.

01:08:19.260 It is 100% about power.

01:08:21.600 They love the idea of something as fundamental as land being managed by distant bureaucrats, not elected by the people, utterly unaccountable to the people,

01:08:31.860 2,000 miles away from the people who then become more and more dependent on the federal government for that reason.

01:08:38.760 This stuff has been talked about.

01:08:40.320 It's been warned of since the time of the Constitutional Convention.

01:08:43.060 In fact, on September 3rd, 1787, it was raised at the Constitutional Convention.

01:08:47.880 In exchange between Elbridge Gerry and Gubernur Morris, they talked about this risk of this power.

01:08:53.600 What if we give the federal government all this power over these federal lands?

01:08:57.320 They could use it to manipulate the states into an undue obedience to the general government.

01:09:02.140 We've been ignoring those risks for a long time.

01:09:04.420 It's one of the reasons why we need reforms like the Houses Act. 1.00

01:09:07.300 So you heard Walls make reference to something I'm embarrassed to say I was not aware of.

01:09:11.900 Kamala Harris' plan to build 3 million housing units? 0.89

01:09:16.200 Yeah.

01:09:16.740 I think this is either just before or after the unicorns arrive.

01:09:21.280 And the unicorns, you know, being possessed as they are with these magical qualities.

01:09:24.920 They can print money without causing inflation.

01:09:27.220 They can.

01:09:28.180 I look forward to the unicorn plan.

01:09:30.160 I don't know anything about it, but I am dead certain this is a payoff to their developer donors.

01:09:37.900 Right.

01:09:38.380 It always is.

01:09:39.220 It's high-density housing in your neighborhood because they hate you and your neighborhood.

01:09:43.520 And their friends are getting rich from it.

01:09:46.000 I just know that that's true.

01:09:47.220 And rest assured, Tucker, that because Kamala is going to be handing out $25,000 checks for anyone who gains access to any of that housing, 0.82

01:09:57.020 that the cost of housing will end up going up by exactly $25,000.

01:10:01.360 Aren't we at a trillion dollars annual debt service at this point?

01:10:04.860 Right.

01:10:05.440 A trillion dollars a year just to pay the interest on our debt.

01:10:08.580 Yeah.

01:10:08.880 So where do we get the money for all this stuff?

01:10:13.400 They have not answered that question.

01:10:15.260 When does the merry-go-round stop spinning?

01:10:17.560 Well, look, in order to have more money, because we're the world's reserve currency, it's been fairly easy for them to effectively print money.

01:10:26.360 Now, there's a little more complicated than that.

01:10:28.260 They have to go through a treasury auction process.

01:10:30.420 People buy the bonds.

01:10:32.020 Then we print more money.

01:10:33.020 But the problem is, as we get more and more in debt, and as we have to pay, you know, just a few years ago, we were paying $300,000, $350 billion a year in interest.

01:10:44.820 It's mushroomed in the last couple of years as we've been spending so much more money.

01:10:49.720 Sooner or later, you get to the point where you can't issue enough bonds to keep up with that, not without paying much, much higher yield rates on your bonds.

01:10:59.740 And that's where the money really is going to run out.

01:11:02.760 And that's where we could, in very short order, see the U.S. dollar's status as the world's reserve currency dropping into the Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen again in our lifetimes.

01:11:14.380 And then what happens?

01:11:14.940 That's truly scary.

01:11:15.960 Well, then we, as a people, endure one of the single greatest upheavals that our country has ever known.

01:11:26.880 And one of the greatest economic upheavals that any group of people could go through.

01:11:31.480 Because when you've been used to the blessings, the benefits associated with having the world's reserve currency be your country's currency, all kinds of things happen.

01:11:42.140 And it becomes harder and harder for people to gain access to money they need to start a business or start a family or do whatever they need to do.

01:11:48.980 Do you think this is why gold is at $2,600 an ounce?

01:11:51.700 Absolutely.

01:11:52.600 And I suspect we're nowhere near seeing the end of that trend.

01:11:58.420 Because people will be sending their money not just into gold but into any other asset.

01:12:04.800 Because the U.S. dollar is losing its value like crazy, much as they're trying to hide it.

01:12:10.780 They can't hide from the fact that housing and groceries and gasoline, they've all gone up by somewhere between 20% and 31%, 32%.

01:12:21.260 That's even according to their own numbers, which are probably understating the problem.

01:12:26.940 Is there any way to avert this disaster?

01:12:29.640 Sure.

01:12:29.980 We could avert it by electing government officials who are willing to say, you know, we don't draw from an unlimited well of money.

01:12:41.620 It just isn't there.

01:12:43.000 So we've got to stop pretending like we can.

01:12:45.480 That was one of the great frustrations I had with Tim Wallace throughout this entire debate.

01:12:49.480 He kept on approaching everything.

01:12:51.840 Everything as if it were a problem for government to solve.

01:12:54.280 Every government problem as if it were something that the federal government in particular could solve.

01:12:58.880 They know no limits on that.

01:13:01.020 And the problem with assuming that, it's like the principle that, you know, you heard the expression, if everyone's family, no one is.

01:13:07.300 If everything's urgent and a matter for the federal government, then there is no urgency.

01:13:12.460 There is no importance.

01:13:13.820 It's just one big mess.

01:13:15.460 And we're not able to do anything effectively.

01:13:17.740 That's where we are today.

01:13:21.200 Wow.

01:13:23.080 Let me just ask you to sum up what you think this night means for the race.

01:13:28.880 We're about a month out.

01:13:31.100 I believe tonight was a big night for the Trump-Vance campaign.

01:13:36.240 I think J.D. Vance came in in a very big way for Donald Trump.

01:13:40.480 And I think J.D. Vance brought about one of the best debate performances I've ever seen from any Republican in any race ever.

01:13:48.820 That was stacked against him.

01:13:51.300 And yet he dominated every second of that debate.

01:13:55.480 So if there are any J.D. Vance naysayers out there, I point to tonight as the moment that you need to change it to.

01:14:01.960 Well, this seems like total vindication.

01:14:03.800 I mean, obviously, I'm personally invested in this because I love J.D. personally.

01:14:08.020 But it does seem like a total vindication.

01:14:12.360 100%.

01:14:12.760 100%.

01:14:13.960 And not only that, Tucker, it's not just a vindication for those within the Republican Party who are doubters.

01:14:18.900 But I think there are a lot of people who are going to be pulled onto the Trump-Vance ticket who are going to vote for President Trump because they saw the debate tonight.

01:14:29.240 I think it was that powerful.

01:14:30.740 I think he has the ability to move people.

01:14:32.560 Look, remember his background and what he's been through.

01:14:35.660 He's lived through circumstances made worse by federal policies, made by people in Washington, D.C.

01:14:42.300 who convinced themselves and their constituents that they were making the world a better place by making a small handful of people in Washington, D.C. more powerful.

01:14:50.140 He's experienced the pain that that can cause, and he's a living example of somebody who has overcome those things but has overcome them without forgetting from once he came, without forgetting what it is that helped him overcome some difficult circumstances in his life.

01:15:10.280 It's those people who he has in mind.

01:15:12.880 It's those people who animated him in the first instance to run for the United States Senate and then to fight like crazy once he got there for what he sincerely and correctly believes would benefit them.

01:15:25.940 And that's a government that's more accountable to its people and more accountable based on core principles embedded in our Constitution.

01:15:34.860 So I said that was going to be my last question, but I do have one last question, which is of deep interest to me as a lifelong resident of Washington.

01:15:40.780 And you're one of the very few members of the Senate who seems less sympathetic to Washington, more skeptical after more than a dozen years there.

01:15:52.680 Why is that?

01:15:54.280 Look, in Washington, D.C., you see a lot of things that have gone wrong.

01:16:01.220 The closer you get to that, the less attractive it is.

01:16:04.920 You see everything, warts and all.

01:16:06.620 I became, as a young man, as a teenager, I was a Republican.

01:16:14.380 I went on a, served a two-year mission from my church along the U.S.-Mexico border.

01:16:20.840 And it was during that time period, even though politics aren't relevant to missionary service,

01:16:26.440 I saw and experienced things there that turned me from a Republican into a conservative.

01:16:31.160 And it's a lot of the same things that J.D. Vance has experienced and that have caused him to come out a deep skeptic of the federal government.

01:16:40.240 Because I saw federal policies that were locking families into poverty for generations.

01:16:45.500 Federal policies that were causing people to make rational decisions that were harmful to their families in order to continue in that cycle of poverty, perpetuated by that.

01:16:57.800 The longer I've served in the Senate, the more that I've seen Washington, D.C. is perpetuating the very problems that the Constitution was designed to protect us against.

01:17:08.400 They all involve the dangerous accumulation of power in the hands of the few.

01:17:11.940 We've seen that power taken away from the people in two steps.

01:17:15.540 From the people at the state and local level, moved to Washington.

01:17:18.340 Within Washington, from the people's elected lawmakers to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, who now make most of our laws.

01:17:26.380 100,000 pages a year.

01:17:27.960 And we can't vote those people out.

01:17:30.300 J.D. Vance sees in them, sees in that corrupt system, what I see in it and what has caused me to be more skeptical of Washington, D.C. by the day.

01:17:39.960 Which is that the American people are great, they are strong, and they are different than their government.

01:17:45.960 And their government is different from the government that our Constitution established.

01:17:50.040 But you haven't really answered the question.

01:17:51.280 I mean, you mean it.

01:17:53.960 Why do you mean it when so few others mean it after 13 years in the Senate?

01:17:59.180 Okay.

01:17:59.580 So if the question is, why do so few others see it the way I see it?

01:18:04.680 Well, they might say something similar to what you just said.

01:18:07.680 I mean, you're like a legit constitutional scholar.

01:18:12.000 Okay.

01:18:12.140 So you make reference to the Constitution from a position of deep knowledge.

01:18:15.240 And so you're more fluent in the details than I would say most in the Senate.

01:18:19.100 I mean, you are more fluent.

01:18:21.040 But there are others who are fluent in everything that you are.

01:18:23.900 I mean, there are other constitutional experts in the Senate.

01:18:26.640 But they don't seem to mean it quite as much as you mean it.

01:18:29.760 That's my real question.

01:18:31.540 They mean it more on warm days than on cold ones.

01:18:33.840 That's what I'm saying.

01:18:34.520 And then they don't really mean it.

01:18:35.540 I wish there were more warm days.

01:18:37.300 Yeah, it's an interesting question.

01:18:38.520 I can't speak for anyone else because I can't get into their head.

01:18:43.160 But I will say this, Tucker.

01:18:45.160 I understand how a lot of people get drawn into the impetuous vortex of big government

01:18:51.000 and of consolidated power.

01:18:53.680 Because we've all been raised, every American, any American who's alive today

01:19:00.020 has been raised entirely in an environment in which the primary and secondary education establishment,

01:19:08.440 the higher education establishment, increasingly most of corporate America,

01:19:13.660 the news media establishment, and the entertainment media establishment have all bought into the progressive vision.

01:19:25.680 And the progressive vision is itself fundamentally at odds with the Constitution.

01:19:30.200 The progressive vision is all about concentration of power, giving it to so-called experts,

01:19:35.440 even at the expense of democratic input from the people.

01:19:39.720 But the more they catch the vision of what's gone wrong,

01:19:45.740 and the fact that what's gone wrong is inexorably tied to our deviation from that founding document,

01:19:52.120 a document that I tend to believe was written by wise men raised up by God to that very purpose,

01:19:56.660 even the U.S. Constitution.

01:19:57.760 I think more people are seeing that every day.

01:20:01.180 And whether they know it as a constitutional doctrine or not,

01:20:03.740 they know something is dangerously wrong in Washington,

01:20:06.240 because by their fruits, you shall know them.

01:20:08.780 And the fruits of Washington, D.C. are such that the American people are poorer.

01:20:14.660 They are less free than they have ever been,

01:20:18.220 because they're living under the oppressive yoke of a government

01:20:20.880 that makes laws with impunity in a way that would make King George III blush.

01:20:26.660 That's true.

01:20:27.760 This time, we don't have to have a revolutionary war to change that,

01:20:31.880 because our law already protects us with the things that we need.

01:20:36.400 We just need to know what those things are, what the protections are,

01:20:39.800 and that the whole point of the Constitution is to make the federal government less powerful

01:20:44.940 and therefore less easily abused.

01:20:48.020 But they're waking up to that every single day.

01:20:50.960 Donald Trump doesn't necessarily speak in the same terms that I do.

01:20:53.460 He doesn't necessarily put it in terms of federalism, separation of powers,

01:20:56.380 and this structural dispersion of power.

01:21:01.560 But he gets it.

01:21:02.840 He gets it because he cares deeply about the American people

01:21:06.320 and sees that they too are suffering under that oppressive yoke of government.

01:21:10.240 That's why we've got a real singular opportunity with this election.

01:21:12.900 And I hope and pray and have every expectation that the American people

01:21:16.660 will do what they have to do to restore the Constitution,

01:21:19.880 and that's by voting for Trump and Vance.

01:21:24.040 Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

01:21:26.300 By the way, not words I thought you would have said eight years ago.

01:21:29.480 It's just, it's been amazing to watch you with great admiration.

01:21:32.680 So thank you.

01:21:33.300 Thank you very much.

01:21:34.020 I appreciate that.

01:21:35.880 By the way, we have a documentary series that starts right now tonight.

01:21:38.960 There are going to be six episodes total.

01:21:40.800 The first one is now available.

01:21:42.300 It's on TCN.

01:21:43.900 It's called Art of the Surge.

01:21:45.180 We've had someone embedded with the Trump campaign,

01:21:47.820 a bunch of people embedded with the Trump campaign,

01:21:49.260 and they've got a ton of amazing footage that you will see nowhere else.

01:21:53.420 True.

01:21:54.180 So that's on TCN.

01:21:56.420 Thanks for joining us tonight.

01:21:57.620 We'll be back tomorrow.

01:22:01.640 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.

01:22:03.520 If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com

01:22:06.000 to see everything that we have made,

01:22:08.180 the complete library, tuckercarlson.com.

The Tucker Carlson Show - October 02, 2024

Tucker Carlson’s Vice Presidential Debate Response

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