rely squeezed orange juice. now no fruit is forbidden. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight," the battle in congress over the border wall is still ongoing, now into its third week. large swaths of government remain shut down, trash remains on the ground. the president maintains he will not give in until he gets funding for a border wall. the president plans to address the company, country tomorrow night. going to travel to the border to make his case. on the democratic meanwhile, the battle lines remain exactly in place of their work last week. they can't allow a wall to be built under any circumstances, they said so many times mainly because of the risk it might actually secure the border. they can't say that out loud, needless to say, so they have other story lines. you know how those go.

they argue that because walls of work well for thousands of years, somehow they won't work now. >> if were talking about border security, the overwhelming number of undocumented people in united states overstayed visas. they did not cross the border. the solution to that is not a concrete wall. this wall is no deterrent. >> by proposing the solution in terms of this medieval portable for a 21st century problem. >> we don't think the wall is a good technology to do the objective. >> tucker: possible if that's iva coordinated talking points, just guessing. in case it doesn't work, here's another talking point, walls are just immoral, whether they work or not. >> that you draw from the wall, that actually is andou immorali. it builds walls in people's minds about who should come here. it's a very sad thing. >> i think the wall is immoral, i think it's wasteful. >> are welcome to country that puts a wall between ourselves and allied nations? a wall is an symbol for our

country. >> tucker: just in case you're keeping track on your morality chart at home, walls are laudable when they're built in jordan or israel or tunisia with american backing. when they're built here to protect her own population they are immoral. that's argument number two, here's argumentot number three, popular with cable news creations like rick wilson. anybody who supportsbe the walls inbred. >> the idea of a physical wall -- donald trump love selling this to his base, these are people who are not sophisticated, they are not bright. they do not understand the complexity. >> here we go with condescending to us in the trump base. >> tucker: that's complexity. people who aren't rick wilson wouldn't understand, they are not intellectuals like rickpe wilson. that's what he's telling you onn cnn. most of the arguments. what are the actual arguments

for arguing against a wall? we found someone who's had the difficult job of overseeing that. let the border patrol under president obama, did not stay for president trump, he joins us tonight for his view on that. thank you very much for coming on. >> thank you for having me. >> tucker: the idea that walls don'tt work, that seems like the most real of the argumentsms tht we just heard. do they work? >> yes. they absolutely work. if you look in the past you don't have to go too far back in history, bipartisan legislation that was passed, 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: i just want to be completely clear, i have no idea what your politics are. who worked for obama, you did not work for trump. i don't know what that says, but just to be totally clear, we're having a want to talk about this in your capacity as someone who knows a lot about the subject.

is there a real argument against having a wall that you are aware of?t >> no, i don't. if you look at the experts -- the other day -- both the president of the border patrol council as well as the president, they were actually -- i was removed as the chief and i'm here today to tell you -- >> tucker: you were removed by whom? >> by the current of>> administration. >> tucker: so you were taken out of your job by donald trump but you are here to tell us that a wall makes sense anyway. >> correct. >> tucker: just to be clear. >> the president's right, the president of border control council is right. the other day when they had their national press conference and they got up and set the wall works, they ared right. it's not based on a personal political ideology, that's based on historical data and facts that can bee proven. >> tucker: so why do you think people oppose it? >> that i think is a political point that they are trying to make. i personally, in my experience -- also at the fbi for 20 years, special in charge of the el paso division right on

the border. i cannot think of a legitimate argument why anyone would not support the wall as part of the multilayered border security issue. >> tucker: right. so is it frustrating to you as someone who has actually done this for a living and as far as i cansu tell is not political -- obviously no partisan reason for doing this, is it frustrating how little time we spend actually debating the question of the wall and instead we are debating trump of this, trump that, but where's the conversation about the actual border emetic and wish to protect it? >> i think you're right on. we are too wrapped up in the style, the approach, the fact that it's coming from the current president rather than the substantive issues. if you look at the issues, strategies never change. from the gatekeeper strategy from years ago it's about infrastructure, technology and personnel. the strategy workedinhn on, it s worked now. secured in the secure fence act in 2006 and 12, it works out. i don't understand what's changed. he >> tucker: what you make of the argument of anyone who thinks there's a border that

needs to be secured -- cnn literally put quotes around is a bigot, what you think of that? >> then you can call me that because i believe in what the president is doing. when he said this is a national security problem, he isai absolutely correct and that doesn't come just from me, that comes from the professionals that have been doing this their entire adult lives, serving the country on the border, protecting the citizens. they are saying it works. why are we listening to the experts and the people who do it every day? i don't understand it. >> tucker: i don't know why we haven't had you on earlier. that's the most compelling case have seen for this wall. thank you very much. great to see you. >> thank you. >> tucker: we just alluded to it a minute ago and you've heard it a thousand times, it's like background noise now, walls are racist. they say it constantly could give you a thousand examples, this is one from msnbc just over this past weekend. >> this wall but theee president wants is a monument to white nationalism. anybody who agrees to give any

money to this wall iso foolish. >> tucker: that was editor of the root.com, the political editor jason johnson but hundreds of different people could have said the exact same thing and have almost word for word. for f the media questioning the racism of donald trump's border wall is like questioning gravity, you have to be an idiot. it's an open and closed case. if you want a wall or any kind of secure border you are 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,f, who exactly supports unexpected unrestricte immigration? who benefits most? if you made a chart, let's bene honest, you would have to put rich white people at the very top of the list of supporters. our endless supply of new immigrants gets them, people in my neighborhood, access to much cheaper household, nannies, housekeepers, gardeners, whatever. it makes the products they buy cheaper. most of all it makes them feel virtuous like they are helping

the employees who workma for thm achieve the american dream. if there's any group in america that supports having more than 20 million people here illegally it's not our poor, its people in our richest neighborhoods. nobody else even comes close. so what's the flip side? who gets most by our new borderless country? again, not a close call, it's african-americans. there's cornell economics professor, "because most illegal immigrants seek work in the low skilled labor market and because the black american labor forces are disproportionately concentrated in this same sector there is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in this sector of the laborio market. even the inordinately high unemployment rates forced low skilled black workers is obviou obvious, the major loser in this competition are low skilled black workers." in other words, and you already knew this, anybody who thought about it for a second does. low-wage immigration is costing african-americans jobs and money. other studies have reached the

same conclusion. 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. it's why they scream bigotry until you shut up, but we won't shut up and instead we're going to talk to a lawyer and the u.s. civil rights commissioner eddie joins us time. thank you very much for coming on, as always. so it just seems to me that this line, border walls are racist, secure borders are racist, you don't like people who looked differently from you, you are a what's a premises. this is the definition of propaganda given who is hurt by these policies. >> it may be an aspect of projection. if you're going to give them the best opportunity to describe themselves and not described to them racism or immorality, which they describe to anybody who wants a secure wall. exactlyto right, the professor testified, the one demographic in the united states most harmed, most palpably harmed by

legal immigration are black americans and politicians, open borders politicians. they know this because of the numerous hearings before congress on these. i testified in a number of these hearings. stephen cammarata has testified and we presented all of this evidence, all of this data that the pernicious effect of illegal immigration open borders, has had on black americans in terms of employment, nearly 1 million blacks work today because of competition from legal immigration and otherwise would be the case if we had a secure border. the president's wage raised by her to have 18 of $ a year, the depressive effects of illegal immigration are anywhere from 99 billion to $118 billion annually cumulatively has the most significant effect on the black community. then you have the downstream effects from the economic effect.no that is you have higher crime rates and incarceration rates.

no one gets married when they areti poor. that has the worst effect on the black community where you have a 72% out of wedlock birth rate in the blackk community. but it goes even beyond that. if you take a look at crime rates in the black community we know that in a number of places and in fact if the obama administration's justice department that brought indictments and convictions on the basis of 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, it's not 30% black and a large part of that is because of this targeting other communities have suffered the same thing. if you ask yourself what's racist i would like to ask members of congressional black caucus is, their moniker, they purportedly have assigned this designation to themselves because they have a peculiar interest with respect to issues pertaining to the black community, ask them about this.

instead, they have capitulated to the open borders crowd for political reasons because the influx of immigration or illegal immigrants they believe secures them the electoral advantage. and they throw blacks on the bus in thera process. >> tucker: if you mention what has happened to compton,, california. y that's at very least an interesting story. i don't think i've everpt 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's white supremacy. unfortunately this has salient see only in elevated academicat certainty, in the real world that is notly true. what you are seeing on the ground is economic competition, you are seeing crime rates, you are seeing a whole host of things that happened to poor black folks and other americans

and the elites apparently are either consciously oblivious to it or unconsciously oblivious to it but a lot of politicians know precisely what's going on yet they do nothing aboutus it. i know they know precisely what's going on because of the testimoniesno given, because of the data we've submitted and simply ignored. >> tucker: and if you talk about it they call you names. it's always great to see you, thank you very much. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez has been in office a veryun short time, already making news with the push for a 70%s tax rate varied details on that after the break. ♪ ♪ [ dog snoring ]

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♪ >> tucker: newly elected congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez has been in d.c. for just a couple weeks and she's already a permanent fixture in your purity in an interview last night with 60 minutes she called for big changes to this country started with raising taxes to as much as 70% on the wealthy. here's part of it. >> want to get to the tippy top on your $10 million sometimes you see tax rates as high as two or 70%. that doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed. at an extremely high rate but it means that as you climb up this latter you should be contributing more. >> tucker: republican congressman steve scalise of louisiana criticized the proposal on twitter and got the kind of abuse you would imagine, comments like kick his cane! he responded to that this morning on fox. watch. >> a lot of her followers

started making some very inappropriate references and comments and i said i'm not going to have this debate here. >> when you say inappropriate, everybody knows you were shot, almost killed. or miraculous story that you warned, thank goodness that all of a sudden his followers are saying they're going to snipe you. you got threats. did she call you, contact you in any way? >> i haven't heard from her yet. >> tucker: lisa boothe follows this kind of stuff for us, senior fellow and joins us tonight. thanks so much for coming on. >> thanks for having me. >> tucker: was there a back story here? at the two of them tangled before? >> i don't think so. if you have to remember too, this interview she did in her calls for increasing the marginal tax rates by 70% of those highest earners has gotten a lot of national attention, as you r know. now she's got also publications asking is this something we should do? us all reports by boss, i think

cbs ran a story so 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 is now as a freshman member of congress 29 years old, started this national conversation. republicans should take her very seriously. >> tucker: this is exactly what we're going to get if we don't get this moment under control. i couldn't agree with you more. our other democrats starting to mimic what she's saying? to think she's having that effect already? >> i think she will. i honestly do and i think it's also important to remember she represents new york's 14 congressional district. she's here to stay. unless she gets primary different from the left she's not going to be beaten by the right. she's probablye going to be around for a while. but i also thinknk what's important for republicans is to take a step back and asked -- she is essentially asking for this tax increase toba solve a problem that's already being

solved. she wants this green deal and an effort to fight climate change and reduce carbon emissions, we are doing that on her own. the united states is the leader in the world and reducing carbon emissions. if we are doing that be a natural gas, market forces by the private sector and innovation. so she's asking to solve a problem that the united states is solving on its own through innovation in the private sector. >> tucker: somebody better start making that case i would say in public pretty fast. concord of see where this is going. >> one other thing, she's bemoaning corporations what she wants to take this money, likely from taxpayers and what they're going to ultimately do is the same thing that president obama did with the stimulus, companies like solyndra.si she's going to continue to seize thatat corporate welfare and corporate greed and yet she bemoans corporations and corporate greed. >> tucker: i wonder where she is on google. thank you very much. the ocasio-cortez interview was interesting and lengthy, unsurprisingly, she things the

president is a racist. but she's also accusing him of inventing a fake crisis at our southern border. here's part of that. >> do believe president trump is a racist? >> yeah, noo question. >> how can you say that? >> when you look at the words that he uses, which are historic dogoo whistles of white suprema, when you look at how he reacted to the charlottesville incident where neo murdered a woman versus how we manufactured crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our border. it's night and day. >> tucker: ocasio-cortez also defended making occasional flubs on factual matters. she accused her critics of having the wrong priorities. >> one of the criticisms of you is that your math is fuzzy. "the washington post" recently awarded -- >> i think there's a y lot of people more concerned about

being precisely actually and semantically correct then about being morally right. >> but being factually correct is important. >> is absolutely important and whenever i make a mistake i say okay, this was clumsy and then i restate what my point was. >> tucker: speaking of morally correct, author and columnist mark steyn joins us tonight. hey, mark buried >> hey, tucker. >> tucker: what do you make that interview? >> i actually thought that last point gets to the heart of democrat identity politics. if you are, the idea to be morally right over being factually correct. if you are going to talk about marginal tax rates, then characterizing it as the tippy tops is actually probably a cute way to sell the taxation to large numbers of people. the whole point about being a democrat or a progressive or

socialist is you are nicer than everybody. you have views about minorities and poor people and all the rest of it and doesn't matter if they devastate the black family or they had met ms-13 gangs, it doesn't matter, you are essentially advertising your niceness and the problem with a lot13 of democrats as they are t obviously very nice. if you look at chuck schumer for example, he's almost like a stereotypical shark. you can see him polishing his fan as he's talking to you. and the danger for republicans is that alexandria ocasio-cortez actually presents these moral issues in a very appealing way. i agree with lisa on that. >> tucker: so it's -- i mean what's the response. i agree with you completely and with lisa boothe. 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'the we? >> i think so. if she made a very interesting point. as a foreigner i always find those 60 minute interviews horribly over edited so they are proximate to know no rhythms of human speech but she got in a couple of words. 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 said she talked about education and health care, america spends more than other countries and gets worse results, that's a conversation, that's a a startig point a lot of people on the right would be willing to share with her. she wants to go in different directions. but her personal story, her father got cancer, and died. it's not just to 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. that story is very common and republicans -- republicans have to be careful. this is not chuck schumer. this is not hillary clinton. this is someone -- and we should thank god byum the way that you have to be older than 29 and a half to run for president because otherwise the democrats would have a completely different scale. >> tucker: very smart, i agree with that completely. i agree with everything you say, always. to seer: i you. >> now now, tucker. >> tucker: it's true. kind of spooky. we opened this year by calling for conservatives to focusus on families above all and that got a strong response. we will talk to a critic of our proposal after the break. ♪

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>> tucker: in our opening show of the year we talked about the central problem of american politics, that 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. it's notrm complicated. response we got, a lot of you agree with that. the piece resonated more than anything we've done in the last two years. in washington though it wasn't very popular. at one writer at national review suggested we are peddlingng something called victimhood populism. that's missing the point. populism is neverng the goal, is

the symptom. populism is what you get when you blow off the country's problems for so long that voters feel 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 protectable, they screamed bigotry, which is always what they do when they don't want you to talk about something. in this case they accused off, cost of sexism. we cared to talk about the role of falling mail wages and the destruction of the american family. that's not allowed. okay. let the record reflect that we are not the first ones to notice this phenomenon. as at least one well-known politician who thought deeply about this more than a decade ago.y in fact, wrote an entire book on the subject. see if you can guess who that was. all right, time'sec up. it was elizabeth warren. back in 2003 warren was still a harvard professor. if that year she published a book written with her daughter entitled "the two income trap. it why middle-class mothers and fathers are going broke."

the central thesis of the book was that the mass entry of mothers into the workforce has been a disaster for families and most of all for women. mothers who work have to spend far more time away from their kids which for many isn't liberatingim so much as it's deeply sad. companies i love it of course because more workers means cheaper labor but middle-class families, they 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 fresher with two parents working. if that hasn'tk f happened. virtually all the income gains have been consumed in an arms race to maintain the status quo. most things in american life are cheaper than they were 50 years ago except for the things that middle-class families need most, those are all much more expensive.d health care, day care, college tuition, housing and places with good public schools. buying those things now requires two incomes rather than one. that puts a strain on families in which both families so my parents work.n itwh absolutely crushes single

parent households. warren puts it this way. "a generation ago a single breadwinner who worked diligently and spent carefully could ensure his family a comfortable position in the middle class but the frenzied bidding wars fueled by families with two incomes changed the game for single income families as well, pushing them down the economic ladder. keep mom at home the average single income family must forfeit decent public schools and preschools, health insurance 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 their 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 to.t afford not " just to restate, this is not a press release from theea mennonites for a position paper for some think tank, this was written fairly recently by senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts, the same one, the

hero to the left.ss later in the book, and we read it. warren lays out the long-term consequences of an economic system that requires both parents to work. more families go broke. this increases the rate of domestic abuse, divorce and broken homes. some people simply decide not to have children at all and her response to that is striking. again, another quote from elizabeth warren, many of your parenthood as nothing more than another lifestyle choice, not so different from joining a commune or developing a passion for windsurfing but it isn't true for society at large. what happens to a nation that rewards the 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 important, who will populate the great middle-class of america's future? " again, and we can't say this

enough, elizabeth warren wrote that. not a 1936, but in 2003, the modern era. we had jet planes and frozen yogurt. if elizabeth warren said that out loud. if nobody seemed to mind. she would never say that today, it's not allowed, like so much else that is true and important. we would love toha talk to her about her book anytime. obviously she won't come on.t if she can't talk about the things that she believed ten years ago. no modern democrat can. they can't say they are protecting and encouraging married two-parent families ought to be the goal. if that's not their base anymore but we can talk about it and we will we will celebrate elizabeth warren and anyone else who will join us in that conversation. this is not a partisan issue. it is all that matters. talk radio host and frequent guest on the show. she was critical of our segment lastgm week about market fundamentalism and asked to come on a debated and obviously we are happy to have her. great to see t you. >> thanks forre having me back. >> tucker: thank you. our tax code in our regulatory

schemes, every single one, every tax, every regulation either encourages or discourages human behavior. since we held a strong middle-class families, independent families, are the basis of democracy in the market economy for that matter, why wouldn't we do what we can withinou reasonable limits to support strong middle-class families? >> so what you're talking about there is market intervention. when i watched her monologue last week and kudos to you for starting off the year with a bang, tucker. when i watched that, what i thought is while you and i have at 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 her monologue is that your conception of value is lacking one particular aspect, that thesp 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 will to produce human values, that's kind of a separate exercise, but if you take progress for example, which are talked about as a component of happiness, purpose is something that if it'srp going o make you happy for you to pursue a purpose in life, it's something that you choose for p yourself. imagine if the government gives you a list of approved purposes. every market intervention, the ones that you are talking in the intro, the regulations on the tax code and everything else are little bits of force that the government exerts to keep people from making free choices and value requires that you use che itit. >> tucker: what you're saying is true, that all law, all regulation, all taxes, as i said in the intro to my question to you encourage or discourage human behavior and therefore

limit choice, that's their nature. that's never going to change so 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 -- >> not an anarchist but i don't think that a government, the existence of government in the long-term once a whole lot of people agree with l my ideas, oe that happens you don't have to have involuntary taxation. what we could do is we could have a paper service for a government and there's proposals about how to do this but it so far down the road and it's academic right now. it doesn't depend on that. >> tucker: i know the nature of d the fantasy but i'm wondering -- let me just ask you this, you dislike socialism -- you dislike socialism a lot of course. i don't think it works either. we are about to get it, that's very clear, we are to get socialism where ocasio-cortez is famous for a reason and we are

acting like the romanovs, everything is fine and that's the reason we are about to get this system that you hate. so wouldn't it be wiser to do what's necessary to bring these forces under control, to help people so that we don't get socialism, does that make sense? >> so what you're saying is compromise 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 have in mind? >> tucker: i'm saying that any country, and a government as long as we are accepting the reality of government, and think for the time being we can agree on that, that we have a government, that produces a system in which healthy families are very hard to maintain is a failing system. so why wouldn't we deal with that? >> here's the thing, government should not be initiating force, all are to 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's about. government cannot make people happy. no market system can make people happy. the iphone cannot make someone happy. >> tucker: but it can certainly make them very unhappy and that's what i think our current system is doing and i honestly think both of us will be lamenting the rise of some socialist lunatic very soon. >> also where we disagree -- we disagree about that nature. >> tucker: i will give you the last word. >> we 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 choice but we don't have a free market right now. caused that are government intervention. >> tucker: always game for a good conversation, thank you. >> thank you. >> tucker: people in charter suddenly for weed. is it because they are super cool or is there some other reason they might want a passive population?

i'm going to get some chips and think about it, dude. be right back. ♪

♪ >> tucker: momentum is building by the day to fully legalize marijuana nationally. ten states of already done that, more restrictions fall away every election cycle. the federal government barely cares about fighting any of this. less and less about the helplessness off marijuana, does that mean there are no risks? only that many people have an interest in concealing them. former "new york times" reporter, a great novelist and now he's the author of an unexpected new book called tell your children the truth about marijuana, mental illness and violence, he joins us tonight. thank you very much for coming on. i say unexpected because your bio gives no hint of the kind of person would write this book but

you have. why did you write it and what did youriri find? y >> who can blame my wife because she's a psychiatrist, a forensic psychiatrist and that means she deals with the criminally mentally ill and a couple years ago she said to me practically every case i see people are -- people were using cannabis at the time they committed these terrible crimes and i said to her that sounds like nonsense. that sounds like reefer madness and she says maybe you should look at the studies instead of man's blaming me and i did. never argue with your wife, she was totally right. it turns out there is a proven link between cannabis and psychosis. there's a very, very strong risk too much whenoke you're in your teens are more likely to develop schizophrenia, which is really a devastating mental illness for not just for the people who suffer but their families, it destroys families and furthermore, there's a downstream link between psychosis and violence. so reefer madness basically is

real as a psychiatrist in australia said toil me. >> tucker: let me just pause by noting how uncool you sound by saying that. >> i know. if you know what? i don't care. i don't want them to get psychosis, i don't want them to get schizophrenia. i want to tell them the truth and the reason i wrote this book so the parents who have kids who might be using can read this and really m understand what the science is. there's a lot of evidence that if you took us the truth about drug use and addiction and harms, they will respond. hopefully this book and help with that. >> tucker: maybe they don't care. >> the legalization community has been very, very aggressive about yelling reefer madness about anybody who tries to bring this up and science is complicated. it took us 30 years to prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer and along the way everybody said a correlation does not equal causation. well guess what? those people are saying -- not

those people but people are saying the same thing right now. you don't have the evidence. there's a huge amount of evidence and the national academy of medicine basically made this point in 2017 and it was ignored. the elite media just really does renot want to deal with the hars caused by cannabis. >> tucker: you got a lot of guts. if i'm dead serious. it's a very unfashionable position for someone u in your world in my world to have so i'm impressed that you wrote this. thank youro very much. i hope it sells a lot. the left across the country is pushing toos decriminalize marijuana and not just that, but to criminalize minimum comic many types of clamped on crimes, shoplifting, theft. stamped on those that remain. joins us tonight to explain why that's happening. richard, i don't want toto be cynical but you have to think if you're running a country that really kind of shafts young people and makes it very hard for them to get married and have

kids, even buy a car, maybe youv want them to be spaced out and passive even if more of them are going to get schizophrenia. am i being too cynical in assuming that? >> are you including the states of utah? >> tucker: i am. all these red states. politicians are all the same. >> are you discern between medical marijuana? >> tucker: of course. i'm sure that there are health benefits for medical marijuana. there's a lot about marijuana we don't know 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 this? >> i don't think we should be pushing it, certainly on children. i take what alex just said to be true, that we don't want their kids to become psychotic. but the fact of the matter is the amount the people are going to be using is going to be used whether they are 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 have the free market takeover. >> tucker: the free market. how are you on organ sales? since you're a free market guy now and are all about letting people do what they want with their bodies. >> i have been a free market guy all along. >> tucker: where are you on the poor selling their kidneys? >> i'm down with that. >> tucker: you're okay with that. >> the fact of the matter is obviously every thing that he just said, that alex just said, couldt. be said about alcohol. why don't we tell our kids about the dangers of that too? >> tucker: i agree. >> somehow or other we've given up onul that one that somehow or other we are going to fight this. >> tucker: just because one is bad doesn't mean the others better. rahm emanuel, did nothing to fix chicago at all. the city is in worse shape than when he got there in 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 clear

message, i don't care all about the people who live for. i hate them and i'm trying to exploit them with more addictions. >> other copoliticians have encouraged gambling. that's not a partisan issue. we can concede that. >> tucker: already said that at the outset. i'm just saying it's disgusting, it's totally wrong and nobody says that. >> i don't think gambling is a great positive influence on the country and i think as far as weed is concerned, the fact of the matter is what he's trying to do is -- as opposed to -- frankly, let's just talk about the wall for a second. >> tucker: [laughs] >> if marijuana were legal, we would have less crime. we know that because the bad guysys in mexico would not have the incentive and we've actually seen that in california. >> tucker: says i have the data on it and it sounds like yount don't, has legalized marijuana eliminated the black market of marijuana? the answer is no, not at all. >> we actually know that 70% border border patrol people seizures are down. where it'sdo up, marijuana is

moving through the actual border -- the entry sites. a wall isor not going to stop -- >> tucker: americans grow better marijuana. indoor, hydroponically, one of the great success stories of american agriculture. it's just really bad for you, that's the point and politicians don't care because they don't care about the people who live here. >> can we agree that the research and data could actually contribute to this, why not have llit here? we have it elsewhere. i think it would be good. >> tucker: i'm always for science, t always. unlike the left, i believe in science. we will continue. the president announced today the troops will be coming home from syria but it doesn't seem like they are. that withdrawal has been paused. 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 saved from attack by turkey. turkey is a nato ally, that n

means the u.s. is levying threats against our own ally in nato. it's all very confusing and that's what we are grateful to talk to christian witness, former state department senior advisor in the trumpet budget ministrations, joins us now. i'm not here to attack the kurds, but i'm all of a sudden hearing that we are -- the well-being of kurdish forces is now more important than getting our troops home. when did this become a critical national security imperative? >> that's an excellent question anything bolton may have actually been misquoted. >> tucker: i hope so. >> he says just that turkey ought to consult with us before they do something in the areas where the kurds are but there is definitely a large unseen force here in washington that want to go from the actual mission, which is killing ices, something i think we were all on board with, president trump sold to the american people and succeeded onto protecting the kurds, essentially creating another defective state in syria just like the ones we helped create in iraq.

>> tucker: you've been here so long and you've worked in a bunch of governments and you know what's really happening. the president comes out and says we are bringing our troops home from syria, everybody believes or said it's not going to happen. they are not going to let them do that, are you joking? symbols and got out there to say actually we're putting this on pause. it's according to script actually, it's perfect. >> i think at the end of thedi day, what trump has said, he says we are getting out. if all this talk about that's not really what he meant, for months or longer and then he said i don't know where four months came from and today there's this other, may want to manage serious airspace or the airspace overir the kurds for a while, a longtime neoconservative dream, to have a no-fly zone in syria, that's a long-term commitment, think about the one we had over iraq. went on for more than decade with the president actually criticized those reports in "the new york times" and "the washington post." i hope he sticks to his word, ai hope we get out and that will be very popular with voters staying in and changing the plan won't. >> tucker: shouldn't someone

go on tv and explained to us why it's so important to protect the kurds? i think most people, educated people have no idea who they are and why they should care. why all of a sudden has washington decided this wasor te most important thing we should? >> this new form of imperialism we i have. a british and french bureaucrat bureaucrat -- bureaucrats who basically carved up theal middle east after world war i into these unstable political u entities that made no sense. that is sort of what is going on in washington. this idea that just because we fought in part with the kurds at having neverfo made them a specific promise that we owed them their own defective state,w which is the implication here, it's nuts, never been put to the president, never been put to congress. >> tucker: or the public. it supposed to be a democracy. if you should some way of influencing their foreign policy if you are the citizenry. >> the palace unix think they know better than the emperor. >> tucker: on that sad but accurate note, great to see you.

thank you. young girls murder in houston described as a case of racial terrorism, what's the truth to that? we will investigate it after the break. ♪ a young girl's murder in houston is described as a case of racial terrorism. terrorism. what's the truth of that? ♪ ♪ ♪

since you're heading off to dad... i just got a zerowater. but we've always used brita. it's two stage-filter... doesn't compare to zerowater's 5-stage. this meter shows how much stuff, or dissolved solids, gets left behind. our tap water is 220. brita? 110... seriously? but zerowater- let me guess. zero? yup, that's how i know it is the purest-tasting water. i need to find the receipt for that. oh yeah, you do. i thought he was with you? no jack! (sfx: piano plays "twinkle twinkle little star" tommy? (sfx: audience laughing)

don't stop. keep playing. (sfx: pianist playing masterful duet) here we go here's the fun part

♪ >> tucker: the horrifying the

order of 7-year-old jasmine barnesas in houston was brieflya rallying cry for activists across the country who said it was an unprovoked act of racial terrorism. scared people. now police have a made an arrest in that story line is changing. trace gallagher has more. >> even with zero evidence and no motive, the shooting death of 7-year-old jasmine barnes was labeled a hate crime by some. an attorney for the victims family that he believes the murder was racially motivated because the nation's 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 end of the statement from texas democratic congresswoman sheila jackson lee quoting "i believe and having written hate crime legislation and knowing the criteria, i believe this should be looked at as a hate crime. three days later, new york-based

social activist and writer sean kane got a tip that the suspect wasth a 20-year-old black man named eric black. king gave the tip to harris county sheriff ed gonzalez and eric black was a later arrested and reportedly admitted driving the car saying his passenger was the shooter. the potential second suspect has been held on drug charges. critics point out that sean king and jared gonzales continue tweeting and promoting the white suspect narrative even after the credible tip. congresswoman jackson lee maintains her hate crime statement was just fine. just watch. >> absolutely not. nothing is irresponsible when it comes to the loss of a precious seven or 8-year-old. >> investigators say her death appears to be a case of mistaken identity. >> tucker: these people are so irresponsible.

that is it for us tonight, sadly. we could go on forever. tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity and group smugness. 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. that brings us to our first hannity watch tonight. as we speak, 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