@thestoryfnc, carlson is coming up on washington, d.c. and we will see the draft from the president. see you then. ♪ >> tucker: a good evening and welcome to the "tucker carlson tonight" ." the battle of the congress and border wall is still ongoing as you know now until its third week. large swathes of government remain shut down and trash remains on the ground. the president says he will not give in until he gets funding for the border wall. he plans to travel to the mexican border to make his case. the battle lines remain exactly in place as they were last week. they can't allow a wall to be dealt under any circumstances, but they say it could be because of the risk to the secure borde

border. malls have worked well for thousands of years, somehow they won't work now. >> if we are talking about border security, the overwhelming number of undocumented people in the united states overstayed visas. the solution to that is not a concrete wall, this is more >> t we don't think the wall is a good technology to do the objective. >> tucker: it's possible that the coordinated talking point, just guessing. but in case it doesn't work, here's another idea. >> the inference that you draw from the wall, if there's any way to do that, it's actually a morality. to build walls in people's minds about who should come here. it's a very sad thing. >> i think it's immoral and wasteful. >> harbored the country that puts a wall between ourselves

and an allied nation? the wall is in a moral symbol for our country. >> tucker: just in case you are keeping track and your morality chart at home, walls are more than moral, in fact laudable when they are built in jordan or israel or tunisia with american bank it like backing. when they are built here to protect our own population, they are immoral. that's argument number two. his argument number three, anybody who supports the wall is inbred. >> the idea of a physical wall, if donald trump love selling this to his base, and again, these are people who are not sophisticated. they are not bright. they don't understand the complexity -- >> yes, here we go again with condescending to us -- >> if the shoe fits, you have to wear it. >> tucker: its complexity, people who aren't rick wilson just wouldn't understand, who aren't intellectuals like rick wilson. that's what he's telling you on

cnn, those are the arguments. what are the actual arguments for and against a wall? we found someone who has the difficult job of overseeing the protection of the border. mark morgan led the order patrol under obama, he did not say, could stay for president trump. he joins us tonight. so the idea that walls don't work, that seems like the most real of the arguments that we just heard. do they work? >> they absolutely work. if you look in the past, you don't have to go too far back in history, the secure fence act in 2006 and 2012, bipartisan legislation passed where they built the wall or fence or physical barrier. whatever you want to call it, it's a wall. it works. >> tucker: so i want to be completely clear, i have no idea what your politics are. you worked for obama, you didn't work for trump.

is there a real argument against having a wall that you are aware of? >> no, i don't. if you look at the experts, both the president and the border patrol council, they were actually -- i was removed as a chief. >> tucker: you were removed by chief as home? >> the current administration. >> so you were taken out of your job by donald trump. >> the president is right, and the other day when they had the national press conference and they got up and said, the wall works, they are right, it's not based on political ideology. that's based on historical data and facts that can be proven. >> why do you think people oppose it? >> i think it's a political point they are trying to make. the fbi for 20 years, i cannot

think of a legitimate argument why anyone would not support the wall as part of the multilayered border security issue. >> right. so is it surprising to you that someone has done this for a living, it's a frustrating how little time we spent actually debating the question of the wall? instead we are debating trump this, trump that. where is a conversation about the actual border and ways to protect it? >> we are too wrapped up in the style and the approach, and if you look at the substantive issues, the strategy of the change. the gatekeeper strategy from years ago, it's about infrastructure, technology and personnel. and i don't understand what

changed. they literally put the word quotes around a crisis today. it's a bigot? do you what do you think of th? >> when he said he is a national security problem, is absolutely correct. that doesn't just come from me, that comes from professionals that have been doing this their entire adult lives serving the country. they are saying it works. why are we not listening to the experts and the people who are doing it every day? thank you very much, it's great to see you. we alluded to it a minute ago and you've heard it all a thousand times, it's like background noise now. we will give you one example, and this is from msnbc just this past weekend. >> this one is a monument to

white nationalism. anybody who agrees to give any money to this wall is foolish. >> they could have said exactly the same thing and have almost word for word. for the immediate questioning, and if you want a wall or any kind of secure border, you're some kind of white supremacist. what's interesting about this argument, and you hear it everywhere, is how orwellian it is. it's the opposite of the truth. ask yourself, who exactly supports unrestricted low-wage immigration? who benefits most? if you made a chart, uke would have to put rich white people at the very top of the list of supporters. our endless supply of new immigrants gives them, people in my neighborhood, access to much cheaper help. and it makes the products they

buy cheaper and makes them feel virtuous, achieve the american dream. if there is any group in america that supports having more than 20 million people here illegally, it's not the poor, it's the people in the richest neighborhoods. who gets hurt most by our new borderless country? it's a close call, african-americans. here is vernon briggs' quote. "because most illegal immigrants overwhelmingly seek work in the low skilled labor market and the black proportion is so disproportionately concentrated, there is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in the sector of the labor market. given the inordinately high unemployment rates for low skilled workers, it's obvious that the major loser in this competition are low skilled black workers." in other words, low-wage immigration is costing african-americans jobs and money. other studies have reached the

same conclusion. again, it's obviously true. because it's obviously true, that's exactly why the people benefiting from the current status quo don't want to have this conversation. that's why they scream bigotry until you shut up. let's talk to peter curse. thank you very much for coming on. so it just seems to me that this line, border walls are racist, secure borders are racist, you don't like people that look differently from you. this is the definition of propaganda given who is hurt by these policies. >> right. it may be an aspect of projection if you are going to give them the best opportunity to describe themselves. and not ascribe to racism or immorality which state would ascribe to anyone who wants to secure a wall. professor briggs -- the one

cohort, the one demographic in the united states that's most probably harmed by illegal immigration are black americans and politicians, open borders politicians know this. they know because of numerous hearings before congress on this. i testified in the number of these hearings. we presented all of this evidence and all of this data, that the pernicious effect of illegal immigration of open borders has had on black americans in terms of employment, nearly 1 million fewer blacks work today because of competition from illegal immigration than would otherwise be the case if we had a secure border. also it depresses wages rates by to the tune of $1800 per year. that's anywhere from 99 billion come up to $118 billion annually, cumulatively, but it has the most significant effect on the black community. then you have the downstream effects from the economic effect which is you have higher crime

rates, incarceration rates and lower marriage rates because no one gets married when they are poor and that has the worst effect on the black community because you have a 72% out of wedlock birth rate in the black community. if you take a look at crime rates in the black community, we know that in a number of places, the justice department brought indictments and convictions on the basis of the illegal immigrant crimes that specifically targeted black communities. these were prosecutions by the obama justice department based on racial targeting. compton used to be 90% black and it's now 30% black and a large part of that is because of the targeting of the communities that have suffered the same thing. so if you ask yourself what's racist, i would like to ask members of the congressional black caucus. it's their moniker, they have purportedly assigned this designation to themselves but they hide peculiar interest, but

instead they've capitulated to the open borders crowd for political reasons. because an influx of immigration or illegal immigrants they believe secures them with the electoral and vantage. they fell from blacks under the bus in the process. >> tucker: you mention what has happened in compton, california. it's an interesting story. i don't think i've ever read that in "the washington post" or "the new york times." why? >> because it's contrary to the overriding political narrative, the narrative that says the biggest malady afflicting america today in the era of trump is white supremacy. unfortunately this has saliency only in elevated academic circles. in a real world to come up that is not true. what you are seeing on the ground is economic competition, crime rates, a whole host of things that happened to poor,

black folks and americans are either consciously oblivious to it or unconsciously oblivious to it. but a lot of politicians know exactly what's going on. i know they know precisely what's going on because of the testimonies we've given and the data we have submitted and they ignore it. >> tucker: and if you talk about it, they call you names, unbelievable. congressman alexandria ocasio-cortez has been in office a very short time but is already making news for a push for the 70% tax rate. details on that, after the brea break.

♪ >> tucker: newly elected congressman alexandria ocasio-cortez has been in d.c. for a couple weeks and she's already a prominent fixture fixture. on an interview with 60 minutes she called for changing taxes up to 70% for the wealthy. >> once you get to that to be top on your ten millions of dollars, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70% which doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate. but it means as you climb up the ladder, you should be contributing more. >> tucker: republican congressman steve schooley's of louisiana criticize that proposal on twitter and got the kind of abuse he would imagine, like, kick his cane.

he responded to that. >> a lot of her followers made some inappropriate references and comments and i said, i'm not going to have this debate here. >> everybody knows you were shot and almost killed, and all of a sudden these followers are saying they are going to snipe you. so you got threats. did she call you or contact you in any way? >> no, i haven't heard from her yet. >> she is an independent women's voice, senior fellow. so was there a back story there? have the two of them tangled before? steve scalise and alexandria ocasio-cortez? >> i don't think so but you have to remember this interview she did and the calls for increasing the tax rate have gotten a lot of national attention. now, she's had also publications asking if this is something she should do.

now we have all these national outlets, basically having this conversation. i really think republicans need to take her seriously and realize the impact that she has. she has 2 million something followers on twitter, and she now started this national conversation. >> this is exactly what we are going to get it we don't get this moment under control. i couldn't agree with you more. our other democrats starting to mimic what she is saying? >> i think she will. i think it's also important to remember, she represents new york's 14th congressional district. she's here to stay, unless she gets primary from the left, she won't be beaten by the right. she's probably going to be around for a while but i also think what's important for republicans is to take a step back and she's essentially

asking for this tax increase to solve a problem that's been solved. she wants this green deal and an effort to fight climate change and reduce carbon emissions, we are doing that on our own. we are doing that via natural gas, by market forces and private sector, and she's asking you to solve a problem that the united states is solving on its own to innovation in the private sector. >> tucker: somebody better start making that case in the public. but i sort of see what this is going. >> she's also bemoaning corporations but she wants to take this money, likely from taxpayers, and what they will ultimately do, which is the same thing that president obama did. so she will continue to see that corporate welfare and corporate greed yet she bemoans corporate nations and corporate greed. >> i wonder where she is on google. lisa, great to see you.

the alexandria ocasio-cortez interview was lengthy and interesting, she think the president is a racist and also accused him of inventing a fake crisis at our southern border. >> do you believe president trump is a racist? >> no question. >> how can you say that? >> when you look at the words that he uses which are historic dog whistles. white supremacy. when you look at how he reacted to the charlottesville incident where neo-nazi is murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises, like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders. it's night and day. >> tucker: oh because a court has also defended making occasional flubs on factual matters. she accused her critics of having the wrong priorities there. >> criticism of you is that your math is fuzzy. >> i think that there is a lot of people more concerned about

being precisely actually and semantically correct and about being morally right. >> but being factually correct is important? >> it is absolutely important. and whenever i make a mistake, i say this was clumsy and i restate what the point was. >> tucker: speaking of morally correct, column columnist and r mark steyn joins us tonight. >> i actually felt that last point gets to the heart of democrat or identity politics. the idea that we are morally right and being factually right. and we characterize it as the to be tops, that's actually probably a cute way to sell taxation to large numbers of

people. the whole point about being a democrat or progressive or a socialist was, it doesn't matter if they devastate the black family or they admit ms-13 gang gangs. they are essentially advertising their niceness. if you look at chuck schumer for example, you can -- it's almost like stereotypical shark, you can see him polishing his fans as he is talking to you. and the danger for republicans is that alexandria court zero cortez alexandria ocasio-cortez presents them in a very meaningful way. >> tucker: i agree with you completely. i think it's easy to make fun of her and obviously i enjoy it,

but, this could be the future. we would be unwise to write it off as a fluke, wouldn't we? >> she made a very interesting point. as a foreigner i always find those 60 minute interviews horribly overrated so they are approximate to no known rhythms of human speech. >> tucker: [laughs] >> they are. this thing has been on for 50 years and i have no idea why they do it like that. but the point where she talked about education and health care, america spends more than other countries and gets worse result results. that's a conversation, that's starting point that a lot of people on the right are willing to share with us. she wants to go in different directions. her personal story, her father got cancer and he died. it's not that you just get one lousy cancer and you lose your dad. she also lost her nice home in

the suburbs and her mother had to become a school bus driver. those are things that ordinary people can relate to. republicans have to be careful. this is not chuck schumer, this is not hillary clinton. and we should thank god that you have to be older than 29 and a half to run for president because otherwise democrats would have a completely different scale of threat. >> tucker: i agree with everything you say come always. great to see you. >> now now, tucker. [laughs] >> tucker: we open this year by calling for conservatives to focus on families, above all. we will talk to a critic of our proposal after the break. ♪ re psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla.

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>> tucker: in our opening show of the year, we talked about the central problem of american politics which is our leaders have lost sight of the point of being in charge. their goal should be simple, strong, american families. anything that makes it harder to form strong families, they ought to be against. judging by the response we got, a lot of you agree with that. that piece resonated more than anything we've done in the last two years. in washington though it wasn't very popular. one write a review suggested we were peddling something called

victimhood of populism. that's not the point. populism is never the goal. for so long, voters feel like they have to punish the people in charge to get their attention. populism is a smoke alarm, ignore it and the place burns down. on the left meanwhile, the response was just as predictable. they screamed bigotry. in this case, they accused us of sexism. we dared to talk about the role of falling male wages in the destruction of the american family, that's not allowed to. but let the record reflect that we are not the first ones to notice this phenomenon. there's at least one well-known politician who thought deeply about this more than a decade ago and wrote an entire book on the subject. see if you can guess who that was. all right, time's up. it was elizabeth warren. she was a harvard professor who published a book with her daughter entitled, the two income trap.

why middle-class mothers and fathers are going broke. the central thesis of the book was at the massive entry of mothers into the workforce has been a disaster for families, most of all, for women. mothers who work have to spend far more time away from their kids which for many isn't liberating so much as it is deeply sad. companies love it of course because more workers mean cheaper labor. middle-class families don't seem happier or more secure than they were a generation ago. if anything, much less. as warren points out, you would think families would be much richer with two parents working, but that hasn't happened. while the income games have been consumed in an arms race to maintain the status quo. most things in american life were cheaper than they were 50 years ago except for the things that middle-class families need most in those are much more expensive. health care, day care, college tuition, housing and places with good public schools. buying those things requires two incomes rather than one, which puts a strain on families in which both parents work.

warren puts it this way. "a generation ago a single breadwinner who worked diligently and spent carefully could assure his family a comfortable position in the middle class but the frenzied bidding wars fueled by families with two incomes change the game for single income families as well pushing them down the economic ladder. to keep mom at home, the average single income family must forfeit decent schools and college degrees, leaving themselves and their children with a tenuous hold on middle-class dreams. such pressures have taken these women out of the home and away from children and simultaneously made family life less, not more, financially secure. today's middle-class mother is trapped. she can't afford to work and she can't afford not to. just to restate, this is not a press release from the mennonites or a position paper from some christian rights think tank. this was written fairly recently

by senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts, the same one, the hero to the left. later in the book, warren lays out the long-term consequences of an economic system that requires both parents to work. more families go broke. it increases the risk of domestic abuse, divorce and broken homes. some just decide not to have children at all. and warren's response to that is striking. another quote from elizabeth warren. "many of you. parenthood as nothing more than another lifestyle choice, not different from joining a commune or a passion for windsurfing. but what happens to a nation that rewards childless and penalizes the parents? if middle-class men and women stop making that parental lifestyle choice, who will care for them in their old age? who will pay taxes, build infrastructure and keep the economy afloat? and most importantly, who will populate the great middle-class of america's future?

and again, we can't say this enough. elizabeth warren wrote that. not in 1936 but a modern era. elizabeth warren said that aloud and nobody seemed to mind. no one would say that today. we would love to talk to warren about her book any time. obviously she won't come on, she can't talk about the things she believed ten years ago. no but modern democrat can. they can't say that protecting two-parent families should be the goal. but we can talk about it and we will. we will celebrate elizabeth warren and anyone else who will join us in that conversation. it's not a partisan issue, it's all that matters. amy was critical of our segment last week about rocket fundamentalism and asked to come on and debate, and we are happy to have her. >> thanks for having me back,

tucker. >> so every tax and every regulation either encourages or discourages human behavior. since we know that strong middle-class independent families are the basis of democracy and the market economy, why wouldn't we do what we can within reasonable limits to support strong middle-class families? >> what you are talking about there is market intervention. when i watched your monologue it last week, and kudos to you starting up the year with a bang, tucker. when i watch that, what i saw was that while you and i have a lot of overlap in terms of what are the components of a good life, what can constitute happiness, we have a different idea of values. and in particular, what i saw in your monologue is that your conception of value is lacking one particular aspect, that the free market provides for which is choice.

values depend on choice and they depend on them not just because you have to exercise reason and free well to produce human values -- that's kind of a separate exercise. but if you take purpose for example, which you talked about as a component of happiness. purpose is something that, if it's going to make you happy for you to pursue a purpose in life, that's something that you choose yourself. imagine if the government gives you a list of approved purpose it is. every market intervention, the ones that you are talking about in the intro, the regulations and tax code and everything else are little bits of forest that the government exerts to keep people from making free choices. i value requires that you choose it. that's really -- >> tucker: what you are saying is true, all law, all regulation and all taxes as i said in the intro to

my question to you encourage or discourage human behavior. as long as you have a government and you are raising money to run it through the tax code, why wouldn't you self-consciously -- >> i'm not an anarchist, but i don't think the existence of the government in the long term wants to -- once a whole lot of people agree with my ideas, once that happens, you don't have to have involuntary taxation. what we could do is have a pay for service sort of government and there are proposals about how to do this. but it's so far down the road -- but it doesn't depend on -- >> i know the nature of the fantasy but i'm wondering -- let me ask you this. you dislike socialism and i don't think it works, either. we are about to get it -- that's very clear.

alexandria, or because io cortez is famous for a reason and we are acting like the romanovs, everything is fine, and that's the reason we are getting the system that we hate. and, what you are saying is compromised by adding more government controls, controls that you think are going to steer people towards making choices that are probably better for them in terms of raising good families and things like that. is that what you had in mind? >> tucker: i'm saying any country, any government, as long as we are accepting the reality of government, that produces a system in which healthy families are very hard to maintain as a failing system. so why wouldn't we just be real about that? >> government should not be initiating force. all it should be doing is

protecting people's ability to act on their own judgment and exercise their choices about how they best pursue their own happiness, living the good life. that's what it is about. government cannot make people happy, no market system can make people happy. the iphone cannot make someone happy. >> tucker: could make someone unhappy and that's what i think our current system is doing. i think both of us will be lamenting the rise of some socialism very soon. >> weight don't have a free market right now and that was the other point i was going to make. not only do you and i disagree about value and a choice but we don't have a free market right now. the rules that you named are caused by government intervention. >> tucker: amy peacock, thank you. the people in charge are suddenly for we do. is it because they are super cool or is there some other reason they might want a passive

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>> more restrictions fall away every election cycle. at the federal government barely cares about fighting any of this, and you hear less and less about the health risks of marijuana's. does that mean there are no risks? alex behrens is an former "new york times" reporter, great novelist and the author of an unexpected new book called "tell your children the truth about marijuana, mental illness and violence. thank you very much for coming on. i say unexpected because your bio gives no hint of the kind of

person who would write this book, but you have. why did you write it and what did you find? >> you can blame my wife because she's a forensic psychiatrist which means she deals with the criminally mentally ill. a couple years ago she said to me, practically every case i see, people are using cannabis at the time they committed these terrible crimes. and i said to her, that sounds like nonsense. and she said maybe you should look at the studies instead of mansplaining me. and i did. there is a risk if you smoke too

much in your teens, you are more than likely to develop schizophrenia which is a devastating illness for many people. not just the people that suffered but families, it destroys families. furthermore there is a downstream link between psychosis and violence. so refer madness is essentially real. >> let me just pause and don't how uncool you sound by saying that. >> you know, i don't care. i don't want my kids to get psychosis or schizophrenia. the reason i wrote this book is so that parents who have kids that might be using can read this and understand the science. there is the evidence that if you tell kids about the truth of drug addiction and the harms, they respond. hopefully this book can help with that. >> tucker: policymakers don't seem to have any idea about this or, maybe they don't care. >> my sense is they don't have any idea. the community has been aggressive about yelling refer madness at anyone who brings this up. it took 30 years to prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer and along the way people said,

correlation does not equal causation. now there are people saying the same thing right now. you don't have the evidence. there's a huge amount of evidence in the national academy of medicine basically made this point in 2017, and it was ignored. the elite media does not want to deal with the harms caused by cannabis. >> tucker: you've got a lot of guts to write something like that. it's a very unfashionable position for someone in your world and my world to have so i'm impressed that you wrote this. thank you very much. the left across the country is pushing to decriminalize marijuana and, not just that but decriminalize many different kinds of crimes. loitering, shoplifting and theft, and tamp down enforcement on those who remain. let's explain why that's happening. richard, i don't want to be cynical, but you have to think, if you are running a country that kind of shafts young people and makes it very hard for them

to get married and have kids or even buy a car, you may be want them to be spaced out and passive, even more if we are going to get schizophrenia. am i being too cynical assuming that? >> are you including states like utah? >> are you talking about medical marijuana and -- >> tucker: i'm sure their health benefits from medical marijuana, but we know that heavy recreational use which becomes more common when you legalize it, there's no question of that, is really bad for people. so why are we pushing that? >> i don't think we are pushing it, especially for children. we don't want our kids to become psychotic. but the fact of the matter is, the amount that people will be using will be used whether it's legal or not, and better it should be regulated. it should be taxed. we should basically control what it is that they are ingesting

and frankly figure out some way to let the free market takeover. >> so how are you on organ sales? since you are a free market now? >> not just now, i've been re-market all along. >> so how are you on people selling their kidneys? >> obviously i'm down with that. but anything that alex just said it could be said about alcohol. and we absolutely should, and yet somehow or other we've given up on that one. don't get me wrong -- >> tucker: just because one is bad doesn't mean the other is good or bad or -- so rahm emanuel, he didn't do anything to fix the city at all and his final solution for chicago is, we need more casino gambling and more weed to raise money for the bottomless pit that is our local

government. that really sends a pretty good message. >> again, other politicians have encouraged gambling. republicans and democrats. that's not a partisan issue. >> tucker: i said that at the outset. i said it was disgusting and totally wrong. >> i think gambling is -- as far as weed is concerned, the fact of the matter is, what he's trying to do is routinize it. the fact is -- let's talk about the wall for just a second. if marijuana were legal, we would have less crime, and we know that because the bad guys in mexico would have less incentives. >> tucker: let me ask you a question since i have the data and it sounds like you don't. hasn't legalize marijuana eliminated the market for black-market marijuana? the answer is it hasn't. >> we know that seizures are down and where it's up,

marijuana is moving through the actual border, the entry sites. >> tucker: no, americans grow better marijuana than was ever grown in mexico. it's one of the great success stories of american agriculture, it's just really bad for you. and politicians don't care. >> can we agree that research and data could actually contribute to this? why not have it here? we have it elsewhere, and i think that would be good. >> tucker: i'm always for science, always. unlike the left, i believe in science. the president announced the other day that u.s. troops would be coming home from syria but it doesn't seem like they are. that withdrawal has been paused. and now the national security advisor john bolton says that actually, they are not coming home. americans will only come home from syria when kurdish forces are safe from attack by turkey.

now, turkey is a nato ally which means they are loving that democrats against our ally in nato. and that's why we are grateful to talk to a former senior advisor in the bush and trump administration. i'm not here to attack the kurds, but i'm all of a sudden hearing that the well-being of kurdish forces is more important than getting our troops home. when did this become a critical national security imperatives? >> that's a great question and i think bolton may have been misquoted. he says, the turkey ought to consult with us before they do something in the area where the kurds are. but there's definitely a large unseen force here in washington that wants to go from the actual mission which is killing isis, something we were all on board with, to protecting the kurds. essentially creating another de facto state in serial like we

did in iraq. >> tucker: you've been here and worked in a bunch of government so you know what's happening. which is a longtime neoconservative dream to have a no-fly zone in syria. that's a long-term commitment, think about the one we have over iraq. the president actually criticized those two reports in "the new york times" and "the washington post." i hope he sticks to his word and that will be very popular with voters, staying in and changing the plan. >> shouldn't someone go on tv at some point and explain to us why it's so important to protect the kurds? i think most educated people have no idea who the kurds are or why they should care. why all of a sudden has washington decided this is the thing to do? >> you go back and look at the original european, british and french bureaucrats, bureaucrats who basically carved up the middle east after world war i into these unstable political entities that made no sense,

that sort of what's going on in washington. the idea that just because we fought in parts part with the kurds, it's nuts. never been put to the president or congress. >> tucker: or to the public. >> the they think they know ber than the emperor. >> on that sad but accurate note, thank you. a young girl's murder in houston is described as a case of racial terrorism. what's the truth of that? we will investigate after the break. ♪ after walking six miles at an amusement park,

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♪ >> tucker: the horrifying murder of 7-year-old jasmine barnes in houston was briefly a rallying cry for activists across the country who said it was an unprovoked act of racial terrorism. it scared people. now police have made an arrest in that story line is changing. trace gallagher has more on tha that. >> even with zero evidence and no motive, the shooting death of jasmine barnes was labeled a hate crime by some. an attorney for the victims families that he believed the murder was racially motivated because the nation is racially

charged. jasmine was in a car with her mom and three sisters on december 30th when a vehicle pulled alongside them and opened fire. the family reported seeing a red truck with a white driver in his 40s. a description that led to a sketch, and the statement from texas democratic congresswoman sheila jackson lee "i believe and having written a hate crime legislation, knowing the criteria, i believe this should be looked at as a hate crime. three days later, new york-based social activists and writers stop, shawn king got a tip that the suspect was a 20-year-old black man named eric black. king sent the tip and eric black was later arrested and reportedly admitted driving the car, saying his passenger was the shooter. the potential second suspect is currently being held on drug charges. the critics point out that john king and sheriff gonzalez continued tweeting and promoting the white suspect narrative even

after the credible type. and congresswoman jackson lee maintains that her hate crime statement was just fine. watch. >> absolutely not. nothing is irresponsible when it comes to the loss of a precious seven or 8-year-old. >> investigators say that jasmine's death appears to be a case of mistaken identity. >> at these people are so irresponsible. thank you for that clearheaded report, i appreciate it. that's it for us tonight, we will be back tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. good night from washington. sean hannity, live from new york city, right now. >> sean: tucker, thank you. great show as always. in this hour president trump will deliver a prime time addressed to all americans speaking about the crisis at our

southern border. a partial government shutdown is still in effect as democrats bury their heads in the sand, close their eyes and pretend that america's borders are totally safe and secure. they are not. democrats are adamantly refusing to give border patrol agents the tools they desperately need, and are asking for. that is a strategic wall on the southern border, but even one top democrat tonight admitting that president trump does in fact have the power to build a