♪ >> tucker: good evening, welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." there is an awful lot going on right now. the president fired one of his earliest supporters in washington, former senator, now attorney general, now former attorney general jeff sessions. we will focus on that in just a minute. but first, the big story, the smoke is clearing tonight from the most expensive midterm elections in american history. the outlines are just becoming visible. the result, it turns out, are confusing. it wasn't exactly a draw, but both sides can claim victory, and of course, they are. in the house, republicans did slightly worse than average in a midterm election. in the senate, they did a little better. some races played out as referendums on the president's

first two years in office, other races had nothing at all to do with trump. in some races, hard edged ideologues won, and others, moderates did. it was basically a patchwork, no obvious takeaways from what happened last night. but there are some useful lessons, and that is what we would like to spend some time talking about tonight. what exactly have we learned from 470 individual congressional elections? some big governors races, and the full year of political debate? the biggest news is that democrats just won back the house of representatives after eight years. they are thrilled with that, obviously. and yet they don't appear to have any idea how they did it. as of tonight, there really is no democratic program or platform or message, there is no democratic plan for making the economy stronger or the country safer. there is only donald trump, who they despise. the entire democratic message is trump. the president is often accused of narcissism and making everything about himself, but on that point, democrats agree with

him, they think everything is about to trump, too. watch this clip from last night. it became clear that democrats were about to reclaim the house, it was a big moment, the apex of the night, and at the apex, a senior democrat called the set on msnbc to announce his party's top priorities. here it is. >> i have spoken to a senior democratic source on the ways and means committee, breaking news, they do intend to request president trump's tax returns. getting your hands on those trump tax returns, everyone knows, would be a big deal for the committee. >> tucker: getting trump's tax returns, that is the priority for democrats, not infrastructure, not wages, not drug ods in this country, the shrinking middle class, not even health care. trump's tax returns. that is what democrats really want.. okay, maybe they will get them. maybe they will get those

returns. what then? what exactly will we learned from trump's tax returns? that a casino owner once employed a clever accountant? that he made less than he claimed he did? will anybody be shocked by any of that? will anyone care about any of that? or, as with the stormy daniels saga that went on forever, will voters find themselves titillated for a moment and then lose interest? what do trump's tax returns have to do with them, anyway? their premiums haven't gone down, it is all just noise. almost all of this is justhes noise. for the rest of us, a pretty simple lesson, you think democrats would have figured it out, but they have not figured it out. congressman jerry nadler will likely be the chairman of the o house judiciary committee. just today, he was on a train back to washington from new york and he was overheard by somebody laying out his legislative priorities. first on the list? not making this up, impeaching brett kavanaugh and removing him from the supreme court. apparently that is what

democrats really believe voters want, more than anything else, get that kavanaugh guy off the court. poised to take over the house intelligence committee, the reigning member for the last couple of years. he said, come january when he takes over, his main priority will be intensifying the russia probe, because it is not intense enough or long-standing enough. he thinks that he can prove that vladimir putin somehow stole thd 2016 election with a few dozen facebook ads that hardly anybody saw. can he really prove that? who knows? maybe. what we can know for certain is nobody outside washington will care at all if he does prove it. the entire russia conversation is irrelevant and dumb.a that has been proven already. it has nothing to do with anything, and everybody knows it. democrats are the only one who don't know it yet. as of right now, the entire democratic platform can be summed up in one sentence -- "donald trump is a bad person."

that is what they plan to run on in the next presidential election, which incidentally, starts today, right now.y good luck with that. it is a virtual guarantee that trump will serve a full eight years if you make it about him. by the way, so as all of the race talk, that is not helping you. somewhere along the way, democrats became convinced they could win elections by announcing voters as racist. the andrew gillum campaign tried it in florida, remember he was asked about the fbi probe, "you are a racist for asking." stacey abrams in georgia, did io work? no. it rarely works. why would it work? here is a bit of hard-earned knowledge from almost 30 years of covering campaigns, when you call voters immoral, they don't like it.ov and yet the left continues to throw the "racist" slur, probably because they enjoy doing it and can feel good about themselves. here is abc's coverage of the gillum race last night. watch. >> i think progressives in places like florida and georgia,

they will be incredibly disappointed, and they will be giving their white neighbors the hairy eyeball tomorrow. >> tucker: in other words, abc is telling us, andrew gillumke lost because of his skin color, and he lost because of the behavior of people of a certain skin color. abc knows that. you hear things like this all the time. every day. and yet curiously, nobody ever bothers to prove any of it. or even try. why? because it is unprovable. and that is the appeal. racism is now anything you don't like, a racist as anyone who is in your way. hurling allegations of bigotry are, from the perspective of the left, the quickest way to get. what you want. that is why they do it. it happened again today. >> on the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. >> president trump: that is such a racist question.

>> some people say that the republican party is supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. what do you make of that? >> president trump: why do i have my highest poll numbers ever with african-americans? i love our country. i do. you have nationalist, you are a globalist. i also love the world. and i don't mind helping the world, but we have to straighten out our country first. >> tucker: it happened at the president's briefing, so you might not have seen it because you are living a life not glued to the internet, but if that happened a few years ago, it would have been everywhere. it would have been international news.fen an accredited white house reporter calling the president of the united states a white supremacist? holy smokes! but now it is just any other day on cablest news. nobody really believes that the reporter means it. it is posturing. and, therefore, it is boring. the claim "racist!" is losing its power from overuse. diminishing returns have been reached.

you have a problem with nationalists, it might be better to argueee against nationalism. that way we might all learn something. in the meantime, republicans should understand that democrats call them bigots not because they believe they are bigots, or even because they care if theyve are bigots. al sharpton and louis farrakhan are still allowed in the democratic party, after all, democrats obvious they aren't too concerned about bigotry, orr they would kick those guys out first step. democrats say it, they make the charge, because they hope it will bring them power, and power is what they want. it is all they want. republicans lost an entire chamber of commerce -- congress last night, nobody rioted this morning. nobody blocked intersections ore looted liquor stores. you didn't have republican consultants on television this morning questioning results or questioning them as illegitimatt institutions. it didn't occur to republicans to do that. it was just an election. you lose it sometimes. that is how republicans think. that is not how democrats think.

they mean it. they lost a few seats in the senate last night, already they are denouncing the senate itself as somehow undemocratic. the talking points have gone around, they are all reading them. watch joy behar today trying to read them -- ultimately sheou misread the talking points, but she gave it her best on "the view." >> democrats won the popular vote last night by 8 million votes. right? but they lose u.s. senate races in red areas. >> gerrymandering. >> that is the constitution. the districts are gerrymandered, but the states are part of the constitution. >> tucker: you can't gerrymander a senate election, of course, because it isis statewide. joy behar doesn't know that, she doesn't really know what the senate is, but she knows power, and like a lot of democrats you see on television, she will say whatever it takes to get power. republicans should understand that.s but it is not just democrats who

should have learned something last night, there were major lessons for republicans, too, ones they should pay attention to. here's one, voters care about campaign promises. if you don't fulfill your campaign promises, it turns out they notice, they remember. they don't care for it. in 2016, republicans in congress promised to, i don't know, build the wall, get rid of obamacare, defund planned parenthood, they got elected on those promises, they didn't do any of them once they got elected. maybe that is one reason they lost the house last night. here's another lesson.te immigration matters. not just on the level of individuals and families and caravans, the things that we debate every night, but on the level of entire populations. immigration changes who lives in a country and who votes. ultimately, that is why it matters.un you never know that from listening to the coverage of immigration stories. you would think the question of who comes into your country and under what circumstances was entirely a moral issue. really a question of personal decency.

good people are for open borders, bad people are against them. that is always a message, including today. >> as you know, mr. president, the caravan was not an invasion, it is a group of migrants moving up from central america toward the border with the u.s. why did you characterize it as such? >> president trump: because i can say invasion, you and i have a difference of opinion. >> do you think you demonized immigrants in this election? >> president trump: i want them to come into the country, but they have to come in legally. s they have to come through a process. >> can i ask one other question? >> president trump: that's enough, that's enough. that's enough.tr >> pardon me, ma'am. >> president trump: that's enough. >> if i may ask, on the russianp investigation, are you concerned -- >> president trump: i am not concerned about anything with the russia investigation because it is a hoax. that is enough, put down the mic. >> mr. president, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation? >> mr. president.

>> president trump: i tell you what, cnn should be ashamed of themselves having you work for them. you are a rude, terrible person, you shouldn't be working for cnn. >> tucker: i hate to see this become a news story, acosta is such a buffoon, but he is such t buffoon that the white house felt they had no choice but to respond. press secretary sarah huckabee sanders put up this statement, "president trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough question of him in this administration. we will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a white house internd this conduct is absolutely unacceptable, also completely disrespectful to the reporter's colleagues, not to allow them an opportunity to ask a question." it went on to say, "as a result of what happened, the white house is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice." whatever else the exchange you whatever else the exchange you just saw was, what it really was was a diversion from the

political reality of immigration. here is the political reality. d california was once a solidly republican state for generations. it is now among the most a democratic. why? immigration. different people live there. not surprisingly, they vote very differently.gr something very similar is happening right now in nevada, arizona, north carolina, many other states. that is reflected in last night's vote totals. check the numbers. democrats obviously know this, that is why they oppose borders, because it helped them win elections. republicans, by profound contrast, have been very slow to pick up on this. they are very literal. they still think immigration policy is about virtue.on republicans also seem to think their economic message is working, they are very proud of the tax bill they passed in congress, the congress that they will control not much longer. paul ryan is always talking about his tax bill -- by the l way, there is nothing wrong with

tax cuts. but republican strategists seem to forget that huge percentage of americans don't pay federal taxes. by definition, they don't care very much about tax cuts. cuts to taxes they don't pay. for them and for many others, the economy is not measured in stock prices and gdp numbers, their concerned are tangible concerns. what does gas cost? can i afford to live in a safe neighborhood?bl will i go bankrupt if i get sick? these are real questions for tens of millions of people. the party that effectively addresses these questions, generally wins elections. republicans, for whatever reason, tend to ignore these questions. that is a big reason why they just lost the house. i but there is a larger question that we ought to meditate on, the republican party is a conservative party. republicans are supposed to care about families, not just a little bit, but above all.va and yet increasingly, the american family is vanishing. young people can't afford to get married or to have children.

take a look at the numbers some time, they are publicly available, they are shocking. and they foretell an ominous future forla all of us. a country without strong families is a weak country. it is a volatile place, a chaotic place, it is a place susceptible to politicalis demagoguery. it is what america is becoming. if you want to stop that slide, support families. it is that simple. put another way, if your supposedly conservative economic program doesn't make it easier for young people to get and stay married and have kids, how is ir really conservative? if couples are too poor to have children and you are not helping, why should i, as a conservative, vote for you?lp i should not vote for you. i will not vote for you. i will work against you, that is my pledge. supporting marriage and children is the best -- maybe the only way for republicans or any of us to save the country. it will also win them elections, they should start right away. we will be discussing the effect of yesterday's midterm

throughout the hour tonight. up next, we will ask a democrat what the party's messages coming out of the midterms and what, if anything, democrats stand for. dana perino also joins us, as well as who the democrats will choose for house speaker, that is on the lineup for tonight. we will, of course, also weigh in on the president's firing of the attorney general. still ahead. stay tuned. ♪e to when you retire will you or will you just be you, without the constraints of a full time job? you can grow your retirement savings with pacific life and create the future that's most meaningful to you. which means you can retire, without retiring from life. having the flexibility to retire on your terms. that's the power of pacific.

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>> tucker: after eight years, democrats once again control the house of representatives, that will be official in january, but onlyea by a slim margin. now, a new battle begins, and that is a battle over the democratic party's message, what do they stand for? open borders and socialism,

wages in the middle class? who knows what it is, or will it just remain "trump is evil, republicans are racist"? is that enough? former cia officer it is a sincere question. turned estimate. in my view, there are two --y there is identity politics and the economic politics. what is the message? >> who is going to win, that iss the big question. we saw the divide between the heartland democrats and the coastal democrats. the heartland democrats, a lot michigan ands from pennsylvania, even places like kansas and oklahoma, who are saying, let's focus on the basics, right? good wages, decent jobs, affordable health care, that is the message that i think most americans want to hear. what we are hearing, however, from the coastal folks, is something very, very different. this is the alexandria ocasio-cortez, democratic socialism, which is lots of big government, lots of programs that we can't really pay for, we want to abolish i.c.e., open

borders, that is the wing of the party. which one will win? this is why the ocasio-cortez folks will win. we have dnc chair, tom perez, who says that she is the head of the democratic party, she is the future of the democratic party. we also have obama, who actually endorsed her, as well. >> tucker: can i say -- is that because she is impressive or because of the way -- right, i'm not being mean, but she is young and she seems like she doesn't know very much, at all, so i'm beginning to think it is only because of race and gender, which is not a good way to make these decisions. because it's irrelevant. >> of course, but this gets bacs to the philosophical, ideological struggle that is happening with the party right now, and that is this.hi are we going to be a party that tells people you have to vote for a democrat because you are a woman, because you are gay, because the color of your skin is dark, that is one wing of the party. you hear it from people inda texas.

criticizing white people who didn't vote for beto. but they will say thank you to folks who were of color -- >> tucker: beto o'rourke is this white guy with the fake hispanic name running against a hispanic guy named ted, i'm too literal for this world, i think. >> you and me, both. as a democrat, it is incredibly frustrating to watch the party cannibalize itself, because at the end of the day, if you look at this from the health of a democracy, we need multiple parties. we need i.c.e. -- democrats can't be part of that conversation when we are also far into left field that we are talking about open borders and people have to vote a certain way because of their gender.r. that is really the cost, the consequence, and frankly why republicans should be upset about this, as well, we should t all be concerned when a major party in this country is so unhinged that they are not giving the people a choice. >> tucker: i think that is a really wise point, and for that

reason, i am rooting for the democrats to get sane. it doesn't help anybody. if great to see you. one party falls apart. the president tweeted this today, and i'm quoting "in all fairness, nancy pelosi deserves to be speaker of the house by the democrats. if they give her a hard time, maybe we will add republican votes. she has earned this great honor!" not sure if that is entirely sincere. willho democrats go for pelosi,r will new leadership take over? it's not a small question. dana perino is who we turn to to answer questions like this. i mean, it is not simply about who gets the gavel, it is aboutr what is the party's message? >> all sorts of things. i think president trump has thought this through, he is elevating pelosi for a very good reason, one, he is right, she deserves it. the democrats made her the villain of every ad across the country and was still able to win and do what she was able to do.

on the merits, look at her as a worthy competitor, okay? however, what also does this do? this makes all of these new democrats that she was willing to let them say that they wouldd never vote for her, they promised in their districts, "i will never vote for nancy pelosi for speaker." guess what is about to happen? the very first vote that these new members of congress are going to be asked to take is whether nancy pelosi should be speaker of the house. and they might end up breaking a promise -- their very first promise on their very first vote in order to make her speaker. >> tucker: why would they doir that? i'm not attacking -- i'm actually agree with you, nancy pelosi has hung around. why wouldn't it be nancy pelosi? but why do people go against their claims? >> if nancy pelosi had been able to get 65 -- this wouldn't havei been a question, she would say, i don't care, 24, 30 of you who don't want to vote for me, i have a margin large enough that

it doesn't matter, but it is only 30 or so plus. i think what might end up happening, you just had thison conversation with the previous guest, there is no message. what are they doing, who are they? who is going to be the leader? the differenceho in choosing the minority leader, who is going to lob bombs all day long, this one is important about the future of the country, and the future direction of the party, and so i think that is why it makes a little bit more of a differenced if you remember, the republican said they were going to repeal and replace obamacare. they ended this election cycle with obamacare more popular than it wasoing to repeal and replace obamacare. they ended this election cycle with obamacare more popular than it was before. they didn't keep their promise on that vote, and that tends ton enrage the base. i think what might happen, though, is that nancy pelosi will become caretaker speaker. she will be there for a while with a promise that she is going to work on a transition to somebody else, maybewi the next generation, something like that,

but they will probably end up having to cast their first vote for her. >> tucker: i honestly can't wait for that. there is always an upside, and you are always the person who points it out. >> the good news is.er >> tucker: exactly, great to see you. the president fired his attorney general today, jeff sessions. we will bring you details on what exactly happened and why and what it means after the break. ♪ i can do more to lower my a1c. because my body can still make its own insulin. i take trulicity once a week to activate my body to release its own insulin, like it's supposed to. trulicity is not insulin. it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen.

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>> tucker: there are always aftershocks in campaigns, the first after the 2018 midterms arrived quickly this afternoon,s the president fired his attorney general, jeff sessions. for more than a year, he has publicly criticized andrn ridiculed jeff sessions, so it is not surprising. replacing sessions with a new appointment, republicans held the senate, clearly saw no reason to keep him around. in theory, going forward, jeff sessions could challenge doug jones in 2020 to reclaim the alabama senate see that he gave up to serve the president as ag. if he did that, he would almosta certainly win, one of the most popular people in the state. we asked a source close to sessions, said that would probably not happen and he would retire into private life. if he does not, of course, we will wish him the best, but it will be, and we should say this, a loss for the country. donald trump's long shot presidential campaign succeeded because he promised what so many voters wanted, and yet what so few politicians were willing to campaign on, because they are

cowards. among his many promises, theng most important was his pledge ts reverse decades of deliberate neglect and treat our national borders like they are real, like our country matters. nobody understood that messageer better than jeff sessions. he understood it immediately. he was one of the president's first and most unwavering supporters, i think the first in the senate, and it was because of immigration. uth when the president took office, he gave up an essentially lifetime post representing alabama to help fulfill trump's mission. sadly, the country was going another way. within about 5 minutes of the 2016 election, the democrats decided it was not about immigration or an abandoned middle-class, but rather about "russia!" and the conspiracy between vladimir putin and trump. now, republicans said they didn't believe that story, and yet for some reason, many of them allow democrats to reframe the entire political debate in the country and make russia the single biggest issue in american

politics. but jeff sessions did not fall for that, he never let himself get distracted from the mission at hand, everyone else obsessed over dossiers and fisa warrants, sessions worried about the mission he was hired to do. he introduced a zero-tolerance he introduced a zero-tolerance approach to immigration prosecution, treated illegal entry into the united states as a crime, because it is a crime. his doj issued new opinions and to restrict the exploitation of asylum laws in this country. he fought to strip federal funding of sanctuary cities. courts ruled against him, but he did everything he could to get those things done. his department accelerated the hiring of immigration judges, didn't get a lot of attention, but a big deal. more cases can be heard and deportations can take place more quickly. a service to america and for the people being held. on daca, his refusal to defend that program, which is unconstitutional, really induced the president to end the program. sessions wasn't just a fact event immigration, though, he

rolled back the obama administration's soft on crime policies across the board. he pursued tougher penalties for drug dealers, not just for liberals, but wealthy libertarians, who decided the war on drugs was a total disaster. this at a time when more people are dying every year of drug ods than died in all of vietnam. but the decadent decided it is immoral to prosecute drug dealers. of course, sessions almost ended the obama administration's harassment of local law enforcement, that helped drive a surge in violent crime in major cities. if you live in one, you know what we are talking about. sessions did all of this, even as the president who appointed him attacked him in public, the attacks started more than a year ago after one of the residents public date rebukes, we traveled with him to el salvador where he was pushing a fight against ms-13. sessions made it clear he was there to get results and would serve as long as the president would have him. >> he has said again and again in many different forms out this

barrage that you should not have recused yourself from oversight in the russia investigation. do you agree with that? >> i understand his feelings about it.e because this has been a big distraction for him. but tucker, i thought the experts in the department of justice, the people who trained in that, i'm confident i made the right decision. >> you said the criticism was hurtful and the president has made it really clear that he doesn't seem to want you to run the department of justice. will you continue to run it? >> he can make that clear at any time, i serve at the pleasure of the president. if he wants to make a change, he can certainly do so, and i would be glad to yield in that circumstance, no doubt about it. >> tucker: sessions wasn't perfect, obviously, he sometimes got rolled by his staff. the russian investigations have showed that the fbi and doj are deeply politicized. sessions never seemed to fully get a handle on the permanent

bureaucracy beneath them. but if you take three steps back, here is what you see. in an administration beset with constant leaks and infighting and people looking out for themselves and only themselves, sessions was maybe one of the very few people who never forgot why he was there, to make america a better country. we can only hope that his replacement will do the same. several pretty extreme democrats got beaten in the polls last night, but some of them won and are set to be fixtures on the national political scene on the other cable channels for years to come. tonight, we begin tracking these people. lisa boothe, senior fellow, she's here with the details. hey, lisa. >> hey, tucker. how are you? >> tucker: i'm great. 470 different races from house and senate, and it is hard to keep track of a lot of them, so tell us what we should be paying attention to? t >> one voice that we will hear from a lot is alexandria ocasio-cortez, she won her

congressional district in a landslide, but i think she's going to be a little disappointed when she gets to capitol hill, listen to this to findoi out why. >> i would love to get inaugurated january 3rd, 4th, take on health care, take partld in our society. >> as you know, members of congress don't sign bills into laws, they write them. also, she was not inaugurated last night, she was elected last night, that is what happens to members of congress. i think she will also be disappointed when she finds out that all of these free things she wants, wee cannot afford, like free health care and college tuition. and tucker, with maxine waters, also won her california congressional district in a landslide. just one thing on her mind, take a listen to this. >> they say, "maxine, please don't say impeachment." and i say, "impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment." m >> she is going to be the

incoming house financial services chairman, and clearly she has impeachment on her mind, so this is what president trump is up against next congress. >> tucker: i'm sorry to laugh, it is a self-centered laugh since i work in cable news. they are guaranteeing another two years of great tape. lisa, thank you, we will be following this stuff. >> i'm looking forward to it, thank you. >> tucker: the stock market is up, unemployment low, but the republican party still lost the house. how did that happen? is their economic program still appealing to middle america? that is something we should talk about, and we will after the break. ♪ ♪

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>> tucker: by the measures that washington uses, the american economy looks great. the stock market, of course, is up and has been for a long time, unemployment is historically low, gdp is fine. but look beneath the surface, and there are ominous signs. young people cannot afford homes

or cars or to have children. the most common living arrangement of young people is with their parents. student loans and other debt are strangling the country's middle-class. with that in mind, does either party have an economic message to remedy the concerns of the average american family? austan goolsbee, economic professor of the university of chicago, thanks for coming on. i noticed last night in the return, something interesting, everyone we know is completely committed to free trade as aet matter of religious faith, as you know. i saw a number of races, and i notice this for the past couple of years, voters are very distrustful of our trade policies, saw that last night with sherrod brown winning in ohio. >> i would say that is fair. >> tucker: it is both parties, it is actually both -- the consensus on economics is bipartisan, pretty much, p increasingly. so should we not reassess atno all? if the majority is not served,

doesn't that mean the policy is problematic? >> i'm an economic professor, so nobody is going to out free trade me, i think -- >> tucker: shouldn't we rethink that, maybe? >> we should, we should alwaysdn re-examine. in this case, i think that in many of the circumstances where people are the most upset, it wasn't actually trade that led to the problem, but i might be wrong, we should re-examine. >> tucker: i'm hardly an economist, so it is probably in my favor most of the time, but i can't prove that, either. here's what i know for certain, the measurements that we use, and certainly economic professors use to judge the health of an economy, don't begin to describe the experience of tens of millions of americans. so, like, if young people can't afford to get married or have kids, why does gdp -- why is that a meaningful measure of anything? >> look, you are preaching to the choir on that one. m

the measure of gdp, and certainly just the average gdp for the whole country, is not the only measure, it is probably not even the most important measure. we should be looking at median incomes, that is how much the middle class is actually bringing home in their pocket. most of those measures of wages and income have not grown as fast as these broader measures of how corporations are doing and stuff like that. >> tucker: do you think there is any more important measure of a country's long-term prospects than how many young people get married and have kids? what would be a more important measure than that? >> i agree with you that that is an important one, though there are a lot of things going on, that has been a trend for a long time, that people are getting married later and startingng families later. >> tucker: but if you look at the surveys on it -- it is complex, as all human behavior is, but the main driver is economic, we can't afford it.

>> the only thing i would >> the only thing i would highlight -- i'm not meaning to minimize that, it is important. it is also important,ni in moden society, that people get as much education and skill as they can, because that is going to raise their wages. and when people go to school for longer, that tends to put off when they are getting married, when they are starting their families. >> tucker: which do you think -- as a philosophical question, which is moreyo important for a society? being successful at an investment bank, or having children? >> i would definitely vote fort the kids, over the investment bank, but at the same time, we want people to get education and raise their skill level, that will allow them to provide for their families, that will allow the economy to grow, that will allow it to be spread more than just in a very concentrated wayl >> tucker: but the opposite has happened. you are a professional academic, so maybe don't want to admit it,

but the opposite has happened. as universal college has become a reality -- it basically is a reality now, the country has become more stratified. the opposite has happened from what you just said. why? >> only about a third of people have a college degree, it hasn't become universal at all. >> tucker: compare that to 30 years ago or 50 years ago, everybody who wants a college degree. >> educational attainment has stalled out in the country, and i think that is a component why inequality has continued to rise. >> tucker: are you being serious? c because the country is more equal -- wait a second. okay. i'm sorry, they are telling me i have to wrap. >> in the 1970s, we saw a dramatic expansion ofe educational attainment, and we had inequality over that time, the middle class is doing a lot better. starting around 1970 to 1975, you see educational attainment stall out, and you see

inequality start to rise. >> tucker: i don't believe that is true, but now they are telling me we really do have to wrap up.y i hope you come back, so we can talk that through. >> always fun to see you, tucker. >> tucker: thank you. the left argues consistently that a vote against them was a vote for racism, they have argued that in the last two elections, almost universally. it didn't work, but they areth still arguing it. why is that? we will be right back. ♪ douglas! we're running dangerously low on beans. people love your beans, doug. they love 'em. doooooooooug! you want to go sell some tacos? progressive knows small business makes big demands. doug, where do we get a replacement chili pepper bulb? so we'll design the insurance solution that fits your business. it's a very niche bulb. it's a specialty bulb.

>> tucker: democrats have maintained a pretty consistent story line for the past couple of years, really, democrats have to win, and if they don't win, there is only one explanation for it, racism.. the press, of course, their handmaidens, have eagerly helped them push that story line.

>> there is still a silent majority who responds to these racially coded -- probably the most generous way. >> he won, and he won, unfortunately, with a message that was racially motivated,. that was false, about this invasion of migrants. >> tucker: the dumbest people all work on tv now. it turns out that voters didn't care for this, they don't like being called evil. that is not the way to win their votes, it is also untrue. stacey abrams, andrew gillum both lost last night, so did john james in michigan, for some reason, not calling them racist for reelecting debbie stabenow, that is kind of funny. thank you very much for coming on.. i wonder if we have reached the peakist area on this country, mn preferred outcome, and we can agree it is not really the issue, mostly about economics, we can debate those.

or are they going to continue doing this? >> they will continue doing this, they are like a dog on a leash or a hamster on wheel. this is what they know. they want to talk about people being racist, but as you said, they don't want to talk about michigan. i have a friend of mine, ran for the second congressional district in maryland, lost by 157,000 votes. to the people of maryland, are you racist? you didn't vote for a black, female republican. how come those 157,000 people didn't vote for her? are they sexist?me this is what happens, if we are going to play this game, then let's play this game. let's be consistent with it. they don't want to play the game because it doesn't work, doesn't pass the smell test. >> tucker: so why shouldan republicans or conservatives play the game? when they are accused, unfairly, as transparently false and silly, of bigotry or being immoral, why don't they just laugh? >> that is the beauty of

president donald trump, right? he's nowhere near racist. i saw something recently that said he is post-racial, and i think that is probably the most accurate depiction of him, he is post-racial. he knows this is all bunk, he laughs it off.te every congressional republican, every republican around the nation, should learn that lesson. don't take the dog whistle, they're going to call you -- i said that on the show before --n every republican has been called a racist. why do you keep calling for it? >> tucker: i think for people who are in the public t eye, the is a real threat, one thing you lose your job over, people lose their jobs -- screaming lunatics show up at your house and scare your children. there are real costs, but maybe we de-escalate by laughing in the face of absurdity. >> definitely. that is what i do all the time, i laugh at people, especially when somebody tries to push on me -- i let them know that i don't feel 1 ounce of inferiority to anyone. ultimately, that is what they are saying to people of color, black people, hispanics, theyai are saying that we see you asay inferior, and so we are the great white hope who is going to come out there and protect you,

but i don't need you to protect me. i can protect myself. i don't need any special privileges. i have the constitution.ro how about we just stand up to the constitution? that is all we are really asking for. >> tucker: doesn't that -- this is a long conversation. >> absolutely, and my wife has to hear me rant about things on occasion, god bless her for putting up with me on that. it drives me crazy.hi >> tucker: it drives me crazy, too. as always, great to see you. much ahead in our coverage of the midterm results, we will be right back. ♪ fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.

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>> tucker: here is one lesson from yesterday, nobody cares what celebrities think. you could have guessed that two years ago when dozens of stars made a "fight club" song which somehow failed to deliver pennsylvania for hillary clinton. saw it again last night, oprah campaigned for abrams in georgia, taylorig swift campaigd in tennessee for the democrat. if hollywood had its way, beto o'rourke wouldn't just be senator, he would be king.

instead, all of them lost, that is a good sign for america. everyone in l.a. still seems to think beto o'rourke will be president, that is an almost a certain sign he won't be. congratulations to america. that is itsi for us tonight, we will be back, the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. i'm taking two days off, i will be back on monday. in the meantime, sean hannity from g new york. >> sean: all right, tucker, great show as always. welcome to "hannity" ." the so-called blue wave, turned out to be a farce. media pundits, democrats, all wrong yet again. present trump's aggressive,e, tough campaign strategy, his economic success, foreign policy successat led to political success. last night, democrats did win control of the house, but they lost seats in the u.s. senate,n and they also lost several high-profile, enormously well-funded races in-p states like texas, florida, georgia, and republicans, they still hold the majority of governorships all across the country.