, it has been stated that if the democratic party takes control, they will go out of their way to if we want any legislation to pass, i think we need congress to stand behind the president, someif it is pushing thought out ideas. >> i want to see the democrat controlled the congress and the senate. it is long overdue to remove trump. dementiato be getting and possibly worse. he seems erratic and dangerous for the country. that is why a want to see the democrats take over. >> part of c-span's 50 capitals to her. capitals tour.

>> this week on q&a, fox news host tucker carlson discusses his book "ship of fools: how a selfish ruling class is bringing america to the brink of revolution." >> tucker carlson, author of the book "ship of fools." who is mrs. raymond? tucker: mrs. raymond was my first grade teacher in california in the school year of 1975, 1976. she was the liberal archetype of the time. she was a willowy, blonde or who wore indian peasant skirts with long wind chime hearings and she was a kind of political teacher,first grade

and spent most of the year trying to make us like her, liberals. i thought a lot about this since. i deeply resented this. as a first grader i did not like having views forced down my throat. in retrospect, her politics have in some ways become my politics. the things that she cared about, the struggle of the poor versus the week the environment in the , most basic sense. is the air dirty? is the water clean? basic environmental concerns. she loved animals. she thought the american indians were cool. in the course of thinking through this book i was thinking of her and how few people like her still exist and how bewildering she might find the world now. for the people claim to have the views that she has had our alignment with enormous

corporations against the powerless. she was a metaphor for how inverted our politics are from the way they were when i was a kid. brian: i want to show you a close-up photograph of your cover, then go around as quickly as we can. it should be up there on that screen. you can see those folks. i just need a couple of lines from you on maxine waters. tucker: maxine waters is a congresswoman from los angeles whose district has gone from being overwhelmingly african-american, overwhelmingly hispanic, which is a window into the demographic change. more than anything, she is a person for whom race describes every problem and every answer to every problem. part of the argument i make in the book is that most racial debates in this country are economic debates. the race question -- while real, and there is a history of racial

sadness and a distraction of how the economy is portion. brian: mitch mcconnell. tucker: mitch mcconnell is the senate majority leader. i would never argue an evil person but in some ways, the embodiment of the political establishment in washington. maybe an impediment to the true change we need. brian: jeff bezos. tucker: the richest man in the world. amazon but also a progressive activist. the case i make which is his progressive activism is both a smokescreen behind which he hides and also what kind of indulgence he pays to that activists left to keep them from criticizing his employment practices. brian: lindsey graham. tucker: smart, capable person but also one of the leading advocates for a thoroughly discredited foreign policy. that is still unfortunately our

nations policy, and that would be conservatism. brian: hillary clinton. tucker: opponent of donald trump. i do not go into her views in the book as i do into the attitudes that she embodies. basically, the key political problem we face now is that nobody is learning the lesson of the last election. there were lessons i think we need to learn. she sort of lead the charge for ignoring those lessons in favor of ridiculous explanations, like russia. brian: mark zuckerberg. tucker: founder of facebook. someone whom i would argue in an earlier time who would have gotten scrutiny from liberals for the way he conducted his business practices. he would be under attack for what his company has done to privacy in the u.s., but he is not because he is a member of a pretty small social class that makes all of the decisions. brian: nancy pelosi.

tucker: nancy pelosi, obviously former house speaker, perhaps future house speaker. part of the democratic party that does not exist that will be swept away by the activists taking over the party currently. my former boss at the weekly standard. one of the people in washington who never liked trump. that was entirely legitimate, obviously. i would say he was driven crazy by trump and wound up taking positions he never would have held were it not for trump. someone who is deeply threatened by the existence of trump. it is a sad case study in how you can be destroyed by this stuff if you let it. brian: in your introduction you say our leaders are fools, unaware that they are captains of a sinking ship. this book is about them. fools?e they

tucker: they are fools for two reasons. they made a series of very large and catastrophic decisions. a lot of people make bad decisions, i have made bad decisions. that does not make you a fool, it makes you a human. when you refuse to acknowledge you made those decisions, and then further refuse to learn from those mistakes and correct your behavior and readjust your theories, then you are a fool and should not be in charge of anything. the big questions of economic policies, social policies, the only questions that matter, they have made it bad decisions that hurt the country. i supported a number of those decisions, but i am also not an idiot so i concede these decisions did not work out as advertised. why is that? they never did. they do not deserve to rule. brian: we think this may have been your first appearance here on c-span in 1995.

this was your first year in town. let's watch. [video clip] tucker: i grew up in a town called la jolla, california. it is in san diego county. i left there to go to school back east and i went to school at connecticut in trinity and at connecticut in trinity college. i left there and moved to washington and got married and begun writing for a magazine at you the heritage foundation. spent a couple years there and then went to little rock, arkansas to write editorial newspapers they are for a man named paul greenberg. is i came back a year and a half ago to write a book on crime, which i am just finishing up. in august, i started working at the weekly standard in september of this year. brian: why did you get rid of that bowtie? know, but i am glad i quit smoking.

i hear the long in that and put smoking. it is like every other year, i gained too much weight. i gave up the bow ties -- i have worn them all my life. in high school we had a dress code, and then i wore them until 2006. i gave them up because people always mocked me. they wanted to fight me over them. it is a deeply provocative piece of neck wear. i really gave them up because somebody said to me, did your agent suggest for you to wear that? as if it was like something false an advertisement gimmick , or something. that almost hurt my feelings. i gave them up after that. brian: why did you write this book? tucker: because i really meant it. because i have been brooding about it. it is the only book on the market that is not about trump. it is indefatigably not about trump. it is about why we elected

trump. i could not get past the idea that the country voted for donald trump. it is not an attack on trump. i actually think he is right on a bunch of different things, but you would not elect trump unless you really, really wanted to send a message. happy countries don't elect donald trump, desperate ones do. people on both sides, all of whom hated him, they screwed up. this is a chance for them -- if your wife friends off with the mailman, you go through a series of grief stages. the first is anger, shock, what in unfaithful person. if you are a smart person then maybe you say i was not a best husband. it is hurtful, but why would she do that? maybe i made mistakes. maybe if i want to get married again i should stop making those mistakes. this is what normal people do when something unexpected happens.

nobody i personally know from living here spent two seconds thinking about this. it was, the russians did it. first year, but they made up these ludicrous explanations. these fantasies that were designed as palliatives for themselves. for them to avoid responsibility for what happened, feel better about themselves, and transfer the rage into aggression. i thought, if one of my kids got thrown out of school, i would understand if they spent the first week saying, i only got caught drinking once or whatever. but if my kids said, i did not take it seriously enough and played a role in this disaster, i would spank them. brian: how old are your kids? tucker: they are a little old for that. my oldest will be 24. my second was born when i first did your show. my second is 21.

my third is 19 and my fourth is 16. brian: what do they do? tucker one works at a television : network in new york. brian:? : which one? tucker: chatter. it is a streaming network. my second is a college senior. my third is a college freshman. they all went to the same schools. my fourth is a sophomore at the high school that the others went to. brian: do they go to a private school? tucker: they all went to boarding school as my wife and i did. they all went to college together. they are definitely close. brian: which college? tucker: a college not that far from here. i cannot say, but they all did well in school. better than i did. i did not get into any colleges. i got into college because my girlfriend was at the board of a college. not a great college.

my kids, thanks to my wife, do their work and are pretty on top of stuff. they all went to harvard. they went back to their own college, which is uva. they like it. that is my harvard joke. i was at harvard for an afternoon. brian: i want to show you video of harvard kagan. fred's wife kimberly, his father donald. lets see 42 seconds of robert kagan in this year 2018. >> we already see signs that democracy is not enjoying the kind of support that it once enjoyed around the world. we already see the return of geopolitics. in the united states, we seen the return of protectionist dependencies. if the united states is not in

the business of supporting that order, then all elements that we have enjoyed will gradually go away and the world will return to normal. we have the idea that what we have now is normal but that is not true. normal looks like the early part of the 20th century and the 19th century and all previous centuries. brian: i want to read from your book. kagan became a fixture. kagan always struck me as crystal, meaning bill kristol, and that both were products of academia. they had similar views. the main difference was that kagan was dumber and less charming. kristol came off as ordained. he seem like an aging linebacker with a history of concussions. rather than make his case, kagan increased his volume. he yelled and stormed off. i always thought he was an idiot.

not that it slowed him down in washington as a foreign-policy expert. i have to say, this is the most apprising couple paragraphs. tucker: because i have always have a debate i show i think that we all benefit . from, and i have always enjoyed hashing things out. what happens if we do that and what about this? whereas, bill kristol would entertain debate. there are always things that people don't want to debate but he would. kagan would always take the view. i was not on the opposing side. i was hardly a critic of neoconservatism in 1998, but i was interested because i did not fully understand. why are we so worried about russia still? not that i am on russia's side.

he would say -- i am not -- why are you carrying water for yeltsin? i am not carrying water, it is a question. are there other things we should focus on? you don't understand, shut up. i always thought he is far from the only person who behaves like that. if you find yourself going immediately to motive with someone you disagree with, maybe you're not examining your own assumptions very thoroughly and maybe that is a way of avoiding hard questions that you are not influencing the way someone else is living. it was really noticeable. really noticeable. then i just watched over the years. that clip is a perfect example. he makes a number of invalid and important points. the way we have lived for our entire lives is not a representative of how people have lived.

it is an anomalous existence we are living in. that is all true. it aligns over other questions that are even more fundamental, which is, why are we doing the things we are doing? if you are here that is the first question i would ask him. if you were here, one of the first questions i would ask him is, what is the point of nato. i am not against disbanding nato. i am against wasting anything that took a lot to build. i am not for destroying things without thinking through what -- how they may be repurposed. i am not calling for that. need ato continue, you clear sense of why something exists. what was the point of nato? it was designed to keep the soviets from invading western europe. if you ask the question of what's its purpose, people tend to be very threatened. rather than answering it, whose team are you on? that is always a tell. if you attack the person

answering the question rather than answering the question, what are you saying? brian: how long did you think about calling him an idiot? tucker: not long at all. i should have thought of it. there were definitely things in the book where i had -- because i lived here my whole adult life -- catty things to say that i took them out. i did not take that out. maybe i should have. i don't know that it helps make eye case anymore strongly, but i did feel that way. brian: fox news at 8:00 at night. the show used to belong to bill o'reilly. here you are on fox network on -- in 2003. tucker: there is a deep phoniness at the center of his shtick. it is built on this perception that he is the character he portrays. he is not right wing, he is a populist.

he's an irish catholic populist fighting for you against the powers that be. that is great as a shtick, but the moment it is revealed not to be true, it is over. the moment he gets caught slapping a flight attendant for not bringing his champagne fast enough, or barking at the attended to get the brown m&ms out of his bowl, it is over. the second that makes page six, it is over. brian: 15 years ago. tucker: 15 years ago. brian: are you surprised you are in his slot right now? tucker: like most people i assume tomorrow will be a pure extrapolation of today. brian: what happened to him? tucker: he hated me for that . he did not attack me, i attacked him out of no more. i try not to do that anymore. i just did it with bob kagan, but i try not to pick fights when it is not necessary with

people who are much more powerful than i am. i do think that i was never friends with o'reilly, he never liked me because of that, i think. i definitely respect what he did in a way that i did not. i tried to do it myself. a very hard job. not super hard, but you can go crazy in the job. a lot of people do. o'reilly was a tough person in a good way and a very skilled broadcaster. naturally, probably in a way i am not. i apologize to him for that. after he got fired i always felt , bad about it. it is like if we take the lights switches in our homes for granted. but if you had to wire a house manual, you would never

look at an electrician in the same way. there skills that i don't. i have a whole trail of things i have said that i now disagree with or regret and wish i had not said. that is the nature of talking a lot. brian: when you get home after a show what does your wife say to you? tucker: she is really nice to me when i get home, which is probably why i have not gone crazy yet. we never talk politics, ever, ever. i have been with her since i was 15. she is not that interested. that is a huge blessing for me. brian: does she want you at night? tucker: she does. and she has never watched because the kids are at home. now our youngest is gone. she does watch and she texts me throughout the show, which i am grateful for because it is hilarious.

our views are aligned on pretty much everything. i have a lot of trouble being criticized by my wife because she is one of the few people whose criticism i take seriously. some of it is deserved and some is not, but if you let it bother you you will go crazy. brian: what did she say to you? tucker: i say to her, you are people's whosee opinion i care about. she would say i understand why you got mad. but i don't think getting mad on television is the best response. i don't think it looks that great. brian: there was a caller who called into you. tucker stormy daniels' lawyer.

: brian: what did you call him? did he know that was coming? tucker: i have always called him that. he was mad i called him that. it is interesting. you really get a sense of people. the experience that happens to me most is that i in leading about someone all day long. you really have a site picture of the person. often it matches the experience of being with the person. sometimes it really does not. once a week i will have someone and i will think i know exactly who this person is and at the end of the first sentence, i know i was wrong. i get a strong feeling from people. all the time -- i just had one who i thought, this person, this is ridiculous. this woman comes on, a lawmaker and i instantly liked her. i really got the sense, and i always trust my gut instinct on people, that she was trying to do the right thing and reaching a very different conclusion from mine. she was totally sincere, and i really liked her. i was nice to her.

the opposite happens when you think you like someone or agree with the person and you get a sinister, dishonest vibe. brian: here is a famous moment in your life from the actual 2004, date i don't have. you will remember this. it is 17 seconds. tucker: 35. brian you wear a bow tie. :>> i do think you are more fun on your show. you're a bigger stick -- your a did on your show as you are in any show. brian: what was that particular moment like and what was it like when the show went off? tucker: in my defense i have never described that description because it is true. i try not to be. i work in cable news so of course i am.

whatever. it was completely surprising. i did not see it coming, i was not prepared at all. i was not expecting that. that is not the segment i thought we were doing. it was 100% my fault, but i did not understand his criticism. if the criticism was you are a jerk, yeah, that is true. but his criticism was that i suck up to politicians. of all my many sins that has never been one of them. i don't think debate hurts america. screaming at people and being unfair hurts america, but i don't think asking people to account for what they are saying and explain what it means has anything wrong with it. brian: there was a guest on the your show in 2017, his name was max and you talk about him in your book. let's watch. tucker: i him merely thing. -- i am merely saying you have been consistently wrong.

many people have been wrong. you sort of wonder maybe you should choose another profession. something you are good at. >> is there no sanction? >> i would be happy to hold up my record of foreign policy against yours. by the way, to underline the fact, you supported the iran war and then when it went back you opposed it. brian: was he right? tucker: that i supported the a while? brian: why did you flip? -- tucker: that i supported the iraq war? you flip? did tucker: because i went to iraq. the editor of the new yorker and then of the atlanta washington post columnist was killed. -- atlantic washington post columnist was killed. i wanted to go see that and i had other things to do. i was really surprised by it and came to all kinds of realizations that basically

contorted with my previous instincts, which i ignored because i got sucked into the partisan nonsense around that war. i would say there was a point at which i lacked moral courage. that is true. it was when i allowed myself to be manipulated because i lacked moral courage into supporting what i sensed was a bad idea. before the war went south, i gave an interview to the new york times and said i cannot believe i supported that. just to be completely clear, the number of things i have been wrong about -- i could've written a book on that. i was like a fervent death penalty supporter. i cannot even imagine that now. i was pro-choice. i have had so many dumb ideas that i talked myself into over the years that i find totally repugnant.

america has changed a lot since i was a kid and so have my views. max is a perfect example. the wrongest he is person in washington, but that he keeps being referred to as a foreign-policy expert when it is actually ludicrous. i include in the book a list of -- i don't want to be mean to max -- brian: his own problems? tucker: if you are calling for the invasion of 19 different countries, what is going on with you? he keeps getting hired. if i am a builder and the last three houses i built collapsed on the occupants and they died, it does not mean i could not be a great hospital administrator or opera singer.

it does mean i need to get out of the construction business. that is what i am saying. brian: why are you so tough on chelsea clinton? tucker: i am not tough on chelsea clinton, i am tough on the class of people that produced her and that she symbolizes. one of the realizations i have had -- i am not the son of coal miners, i am not the voice of the working class. i am a fairly close observer of the class from which chelsea clinton comes because i have lived around it my whole life. i am not a radical populist. my instincts are probably elitist. i just think our elites are not impressive. that is the point i am making. it is one of the things i have realized watching america for the past, almost 50 years, a lot of the pretense is false. there are some elements to the game that are absolutely rigged, especially the schools. if you believe that harvard is taking the most impressive kids

in america every year, i want to believe that, but the evidence his overwhelming it is not true. not the entire system, but parts of it are rigged. what bothers me is this self what bothers me is this self righteousness that one encounters from the product of the system who act as if everything they have is a product of their brilliance and hard work and wise choices. as i get older i realize how much of my own life had nothing to do with me. i started making good money pretty young. one of the mistakes i made was thinking i was really talented. i was not that talented. i was lazy and a lot of ways. it took a couple of firings for me to realize. i got fired from msnbc that left me with no money and i had four

kids in school and i had to think about how i got here. one of the things i realize was, my success itself was not deserved, it was right place, right time. i began to rethink my assumptions about cause and effect. if we believe that we are the product of our choices, what about the girl in our fifth grade class who died of leukemia? was that the product of her choices? no. there are a lot of big things that happened that we have no control. i was fired from msnbc because the format changed. i was part of their strategic attempt to become a pepsi to the coke. i was lead anchor on the channel and it did not do that well. it was not a huge success. they decided that when they went

left they got huge numbers and they decided to become a liberal channel. brian: there is a 2006 clip of you and somebody will recognize. tucker: i am in no way comparing -- i am not. >> i am not comparing this. tucker: it is incredible. i literally expected him to say hillary at the end. every single line is like i have heard it all before. how did she get the new york times is my question? >> osama bin laden, the guy who attacked us and killed thousands of americans threatens america on msnbc with chris matthews and tucker carlson, that is an occasion to pile on ted kennedy. tucker: i like her so much. she is fun to debate. she is fast and genuinely smart and nimble.

there are people who have a script. you can pick a name out of the phone book and throw it at her and she is cat like. she is a great pleasure to do shows with. i don't agree with her conclusions, obviously, but i have always liked rachael maddow. she got my spot when i left and has done amazing things with it. good for her. i never begrudge her success. you start to realize that it is a combination of good decisions, but also good luck. or bad decisions and bad but, were a combination of the two. but the people who have it more deserve it than anybody else is insane. early generations of rich people, of our ruling class

understood that. it was tempered by christianity, or whatever their faith was. it was tempered by the understanding that they are not fully responsible so they have a debt to the less fortunate. nobody believes less fortunate. people in charge believe they are more successful because they are better. if you really believe that, you have all kinds of pretty unattractive attitudes about the rest of your country. this is very common in a lot of places throughout history. the ruling classes felt that way. it does not work in a democracy. the new ingredient in this recipe is democracy.

every person is equal in their political power. brian: what do you say that the people who suggest on your new showed that it is a made up formula that they figure out what that audience out there wants and you play to that. and that the producers say, if we keep talking about this issue, if you find something about this they are not nearly as good as a debater as you are, bring them in and chew them up. tucker: there are a million criticisms i think you can level at me and all of them i agree with. there is never any input from management. rupert murdoch is a newspaper guy. with publisher not with the editorial product. he wants you to do your thing. i have never had any input from the channel on content. brian: how many people work with you every day? tucker: i don't even understand. brian: i am talking about

content not substance. tucker: 15, maybe. brian: who decides who will be on? tucker: every morning at 10:30 i get a distillation of a lot of news put together by the producers. i have read a lot of stories. some of them are long-term projects of china put -- trying to book this person or that person. i send it in by 11:15-11:30, then the bookers get on and put those people. i try to stay home and work and then i usually get in around 4:30. we have a writer. i tried to write. often, like last night and the

night before i did not send it to my producers until a little after 7:00 for an 8:00 p.m. live read. they are very nimble. our formula, there is no formula and that is what i am interested in. one, we have really tried to not have a formula and to do things that are not conventional fox stories. fox has a long history of supporting american military action no matter where it is, under any circumstances. we have taken the opposite position, pretty aggressively. max has done fox for 20 years calling for the invasion, ira jekyll that completely. i thought our viewers would be offended -- invasion, i have rejected that completely. i thought our viewers would be offended but they are not. we have a big platform, it is a highly rated show, it is emotional.

don't beat up on people who are weaker. i think of this every single day. as you pick opponents on television, pick the big ones. like google or the government of china. you can crush people. i have done it on tv. look at this person, you show a picture. is it really worth it? brian: have you had anybody walk off the set? this show? tucker: you know who did that, he was a nice man. richard simmons. the exercise guru. he could not be a nicer guy, smart and interesting guy. another one of those people who you have no idea what they are like until you meet him. he is not a buffoon, he is

really interesting and strange and nice. anyway, he had slapped some guy in the face in an airport for making fun of him. i asked him about it and he stopped and went like this and stared at me, a tear rolled down his cheek. he slowly took off his microphone, stood up and walked off stage. he completely took control of the show. i don't know what happened. my cameraman, a big biker guy with sleeve tattoos. why were you mean to richard? i said, i did not mean to be mean to him. it was really a moment. that is the only person. brian: i have heard people say, did you see tucker's show last night?

why did that person go on there? he chewed them up and spit them out. does anybody ever say they will never do that show again? tucker: look, i have done it for so long that it is possible -- it is certain i am less sensitive than some people for sure. what is rough to someone does not seem rough to me. i cannot think of anybody. we have a lot of people who come back. the booker will call me and say we are trying to put this person. it always is live. will you call him and reassure him? i always do the same thing and it works 100% of the time. you tell them what the questions are.

then, when you come on the air you ask those questions. there is no trickery, i am on five nights a week. i can leave things in the air, i can do what ever i want. i do want to crush people. when i get mad i can bh are jerk -- i can be a jerk. i try not to get mad. the only times i have gotten mad is when i don't expect it. when someone comes at me and that is when my wife says, you should not do that. brian: when do you see the audience? tucker: 4:30. i don't want to be a -- to be obsessed with them. our audio guy, tony white gets the numbers and sends them to

me. you cannot make all your decisions. fox has been around for a long time and my views are basically consistent with the views of our audience. there are some things that i just don't agree with. brian: would you call yourself a journalist? tucker: i don't really want to anymore. brian: why? tucker: it doesn't seem like a very honorable business. a lot of people call themselves journalists. i will say this, my instincts are what i grew up with. my instincts are always to watch and assess and not participate. i have no desire to make policy for anybody or be in charge of anything. i just want to understand how things work. i want to say what i think, that is important to me. i want to be able to voice my opinion, it is a catharsis for

me. i want to talk to people because i like people. i want to know why things are happening without participating in them. i could work in government. the bar for policymaking is pretty low. i could probably get a job as a policy maker, but i don't want that. if i wanted it i could do it. my nature is journalistic in that i just want to watch. brian: you talk about him in the book. let's watch. >> if you own a business that keep black people from renting from you. someone cannot judge your case because they are mexican. if your response to the first black president was not born in this country despite proof.

if you demand to see their grades from harvard law school. if that is the absence of your -- essence of your political ability you are a white supremacist. i can make arguments for george bush's policies and how they affect black people in a negative way, that i would not argue that he is a white supremacist. donald trump is a specific thing and there is quite a bit of evidence to back it up. tucker: i was not offended by that. brian: in your book you say his most enthusiastic fans are effluent white professionals who live in coastal cities. tucker: the problem that i have with him is not what he said. i don't think it was crazy what he said. that is his point of view. if you read his autobiography, there are -- not sprinkled throughout but on virtually

every page -- flat out attacks on people on the basis of their skin color. that is the definition of racism. i have read five reviews of this book, because i read a lot of magazines and i remember going, what? you're allowed to call white people a cancer on the world? i don't know if you can make that case. you cannot argue that a group of people by virtue of their genetic makeup is more really -- is morally inferior to any other group. that is the definition of racism. brian: you write, you begin to wonder if there is something psychologically wrong with coates. tucker: you know what the real problem is, polynesians, every one of them -- you would be like, what, i don't know.

of course there are bad polynesians and good ones. a person's character is not defined by whether he is polynesian or not. that assumption is poison. the most important thing about you is your race. that is why i began to conclude that i am a liberal. i grew up around liberals who made that case consistently. you are not the sum total of your genes. once we start thinking people are terrible things can happen. here you have a guy at the very center of american literary life -- this is a book on the new york times bestsellers list. it was reviewed by a bunch of people i know. it is unbelievable. what does that say about our elites? i don't know why you would ever encourage or tolerate -- coates

was making the case on television. the one i do agree with him on is that trump saying he should not be tried by a judge because of his hispanic heritage. you cannot say that, that is terrible. you are saying the most important thing about the judge is his race. i completely reject that. but if you say i completely reject that, you are a racist. it really is love is hate, war is peace. i am not moving from that position. i have always felt that way. i am sure i have fallen short. i don't want to say i'm some superior moral being. brian: you had a segment on samantha bee. tucker: she is a comedy central alum who has a weekly show on

television, like a comedy show but now a political show that is kind of everything i dislike about the modern moment in that it is, basically a sermon posing as crypto political comedy. i am an episcopalian. we are light on the moralizing. i have a very low tolerance for that. i don't mind people getting red in the face mad, but what i don't like is political debates that begin with the assumption that i him saved and you are damned. brian: one reason that rich children would rather not have their kids go to school with minorities. what is that about tucker: i am constantly hearing this.

the person being dismissed as a racist or white supremacist. diversity is our only strength. what ever that means. the point that they are making is i am a good person, you are not, shut up and obey. it is the wrong way to conduct politics. this diversity that you are for, are you living it? i know as someone who lives in the district of columbia that has demographically been unchanged since the 1960's, you wonder if you are so for this then why aren't you living it? one thing i have learned from my kids is that they do not pay any attention to what you say. they are not listening, they are like your dogs. all they do is watch what you do. if you say don't smoke cigarettes, they are terrible for you, your kids will smoke.

if you want to know what people feel about diversity, check out their zip codes. brian: do your kids watch you? tucker: i don't talk about politics with my kids. we never talk about politics. brian: what do you talk about? tucker: life. what they are doing. people. my children don't like politics. i think a couple of them have strong political views, i am not exactly sure what they are. one of them agrees with me sort of. i have never talked with my kids about politics and they see it as a dirty and unhappy thing. they grew up in a neighborhood where most people disagreed with me but we were all friends.

brian: back to samantha bee. this is a paragraph on page 171. how did they respond to the proposed increase in diversity with rage and defiance, "we were sad to learn that there are not a lot of african-americans live on the upper west side. but we chose to move to this place because we put the quality of the education at a higher level." in other words, we live here because it is not very diverse. explain that part of the book. tucker: i am trying to pierce the veil that surrounds these people. let me just state very clearly. i think you ought to do what is best for your kids, period. that is every parent's top priority.

this is exactly the group that lectures the rest of the country about how they are putting their kids well-being above abstract ideals like diversity, whatever that is. these are people calling you racist but they are very annoyed by the idea of diversity at their own kids school because they perceive that detracts from academic excellence. whatever, if you are saying i have a lot of problems with our immigration system, not because i am opposed to immigration, a i think you ought to think about it. if you say that it is all of the a sudden shut up racist. there are racial questions we should talk about. not everything is race. some things are non-racial and economic. they will say you just like diversity.

let's talk about where you live and where your kids go to school. what are you talking about? it is part of the theme where the people who most self righteously demand you do x, y or z do the very opposite. if you are attacking me as a bad person for not being a vegetarian while eating a steak, i think i should be allowed to ask what it is about. brian: there was a foster freeze money? has it worked? tucker: for the last two years i have had no contact with it. brian: if they put something on there everyday from the night before? tucker: yes. it is spelled out in my contract that i cannot have any role in running it.

i don't think i have time. my college roommate and best friend runs it and i think he is more capable than i am. i think it has thrived under him. i don't think he wanted that job. he is not a journalist, he is a policy guy any business person who is very successful. i managed that he had to manage the newsroom. brian: does it make money? tucker: yes. we are a full profit business. we don't have donors keeping it afloat. brian: what do you think the biggest impact of the daily caller website is today? tucker: it is funny, so much is not being covered. i would hope that the daily caller is filling the holes. not just helping people engage in battles, but filling the

holes where other coverage is. trump has taken up all the attention, which is fine with him and find with the people at most news organizations. many stories are variations of the same story which is, can you believe how bad trump is? a lot is changing, knowledge is changing. it will completely remake our economy. that would be the subject of a lot of reporting. i think the daily caller is on some of that. adding to the sum total of information to the world. i am proud of that and i love the people who work there. a lot of our employees have gone on to work at other news organizations. most of them are pretty liberal but do good work. pay was bad, we let people sleep in the office. we always had free beer and pop tarts. there were some side benefits.

it was a great experience and i am in touch with everyone who has ever worked there. hundreds of people work there and i still talk to a lot of them. brian: this is one of those questions that you answer anyway you want to. what do you think will happen in the 2020 election? just based on a broad overview. what do you think the change will be based on the four years of donald trump? tucker: worst-case scenario, none of the questions that his election race will be answered and the middle class will continue to shrink and divide between the people who are benefiting and everyone else will grow. and it will continue to ignore actual threats to our security, like china.

tech companies will have greater control over information and our ability to communicate with each other. that is not a good path. brian: will he get reelected? i know it is really early. tucker: the only way he gets reelected as if the left keeps on this course. if they keep screaming at people they disagree with in restaurants. people are not for that. i have a million liberal friends, they are appalled by that. the democratic party could easily win. trump has never been above 50, why wouldn't they win? they need to articulate a clear economic program for the country. they have 80 years of practice doing that.

i do not agree with their and pennetta -- agree with their economic views, but it was a party about economic values for generations. be that again and get some of the crazies under control. like the angry rich kids who are yelling at people and restaurants. tell them to settle down. brian: the book cover looks like this. tucker carlson, "ship of fools: how a selfish ruling class is bringing america to the brink of revolution." thank you for joining us. tucker: thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. they are also available at c-span podcasts.

>> next week on q&a, professor of law at the university of california hastings law school in san francisco discusses his biography of chief justice john marshall. that is q&a sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific time on c-span. calls and comments on ""washington journal." then, live discussion on the opioid epidemic in america. later, we will be live as dhhs secretary starts about the cost of rising drugs. this morning, the conversation about recent stock market losses and trump's blaming it on the federal reserve.

then, a conversation on state health policies. we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. ""washington journal" is next. ♪ host: welcome to "washington journal." the president and first lady head to florida and georgia. they will meet with those affected by hurricane michael. close to 20 reported dead. dozens more are said to be missing. on capitol hill, it is quiet. congress is out until after the election. they will be back november 13. they continue campaigning for the midterms. 22 days left until election day.