tv Tucker Carlson Tonight FOX News April 18, 2019 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT
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it a beautiful picture. a busy, new day. most-watched, most trusted economists we are great that you spent your evening with us and we will see you tomorrow friday night. i'm shannon bream. ♪ >> weed wanted to see it delived to congress" whatever happened next. now that day has come yet donald trump still a free man, the president, still tweeting. it seems strikingly cheerful impact. the angriest people in't washington night, at the white house white house at cnn. and suddenly, the panel seems to
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have 75 people on it and they are all mad about the mueller report. who expected that? a lot more tonight on why that is, and what's going on. first, fox chief national correspondent ed henrys joins s with more on what the report says. >> good to see you. this report was released, rudy>> guiliani said a knockout blow aimed at critics of president trump, after 22 months and $25 million in taxpayer money, saw the narrative that the president may be an agent of russia come apart. attorney general william barr making it clear as he did in the letter to congress last month, the special counsel found into -- no call collusion by any american with russia, specifically declaring while russia did try to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, they did not get help from candidate trump or his aids. that despite congressman adam schiff other democrats repeatedly claiming they had evidence, not just allegations of collusion but evidence, that robert mueller never found in volume one of his report. volume two of this report is more damaging to the president.
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he lists 10 instances where the president acted in a way that raised questions about obstruction. allegations the president urged white house counsel to fire mueller. he refused and later the president allegedly tried to tamper with mcgann's testimony. but the president took no action to move on firing him. guiliani said the white house turned over about a million pages of documents and never invoked executive privilege, there was nothing obstructed. william barr added the president was blowing off steam about what he believed was a hoax of an investigation. though adam schiff suggests he and other democrats are going to keep investigating the president. >> after nearly two years of investigation, thousands o of subpoenas, hundreds of warrants, and with it interviews, the special counsel confirmed that the russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
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but did not find that the trump campaign or other americans colluded in those efforts. >> the report outlines multiple attempts by the president to mislead the country.mi to interfere with the investigation. to make false statements to the american people. these actions have a material impact on the investigation. >> but the mueller report dealt another blow to schiff and other presidential critics like buzzfeed. the final report says contrary to the january report in buzzfeed the cnn and others used to say there could be impeachment of the president, the president did not directim michael cohen to lie to congress, that was a buzzfeed report shot down by mueller's team at the time. and in the final report they say aynot true. >>ke tucker: weird. they told us that they had seen the documents. hmm. we'll get to the bottom of that, ed, thank you. after two long years here we are, hard to believe any of it actually happened looking back. it was two years of unremitting, never diminishing hysteria about
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russia, continuous wave of panic and superstition over unseen slavic interference stoked by the very people we're told are the most rational in our society. for two years our capital city became a massive cnn panel, a living monument to ignorance and dishonesty with the loudest and dumbest getting the most attention. we just lived through two full years of that. screaming, threatening, surveillance, character assassination,ni loyalty, betral from office holders. people find themselves afraid to go to dinner. scared to send text messages or talk on the phone. for two years we lived in an all pervasive cult of personality, our leaders worshipped the 74-year-old federal prosecutor who almost never spoke in public. he alone was good, they told us. only they could interpret his will. it was all thoroughly bizarre. demented, though nobody said so
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at the time, they were too afraid. seems like a dream n now, which actually it was. none of it was real. nobody colluded with vladimir putin. nobody changed vote totals or met secretly in flag or had a pea tape, whatever that is. there was never a russia conspiracy. hillary clinton wasn't robbed of her rightful poi by julian assange or roger stone or anyone else. hillary lost the election, she was an entitled boor who didn't run on anything. in the end that's what robertnt mueller proved.d. the news anchors couldn't hand that will conclusion. it was too far from what they promised their audiences for so long. they were too invested in the lies. when the report arrived in congress this morning they found themselves reduced to huffing and sputtering. they couldn't admit what was in the report. well, they told us, robert mueller didn't exonerate president trump. okay, i mean that may be true. but. only thee logically?-- thee on logically. mueller doesn't have the power to absolve sin n every other sense mueller's report was
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exculpatory. if dozens of federal prosecutors spent two years trying to charge you with a crime and then found would mean't, it there wasn't any real evidence you did it. that's what happened here. you may not like donald trump, but that's what we just learned from the muellerer report. you would have to be a mindless partisan to deny it a lot of news anchors turn out to be mindless partisans. when the facts contravene their party, they persist. they attack anyone who persists in stating it out loud. the same people who lied to you, for two years about russia, demand under no circumstances are you allowed to believe anything that the attorney general bill barrve might say. sure, barr may look like a conventional republican, he was a jeb bush donor and everything. he does appear to be a close personal friend of robert mueller's. but that's why he's so tricky.
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it's all a ruse. in fact, barr is a putin stooge like all the rest. >> if you look at his behavior, it is not that of a geriatric, it is?-- geriatric, it is a partisan. >> this is an inside job. shouldn't take anything barr says. >> is barr the president's new fixer? the answer seems to be yes. >> he becomes the first cabinet secretary to plunge into the deep end of trump's conspiracy pool. >> tucker: it was an inside job. that's the assumption in washington. somehow, the attorney general is preventing robert mueller from concluding that donald trump colluded with vladimir putin. and from telling the rest of us about it. how is barr doing that? well it's not clear how he's doing. that but they are certain he is doing that.
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michelleat goldberg of "the new york times" announced this morning,, it marked america's transformation into an authoritarian junta. a colleague at the "new york times" suggested that trump might be a nazi, the white house played a song from the sound of music, which by the way is an anti-nazi musical. but it's suspicious. and dramatic sounding. these are hysterical children. they should not be in journalism. but they are. the mueller report is the single most humiliating thing that is ever happened to the white house press corps in the history of the country. how did reporters in washington respond today when it finally came out? well they did what they do best, they celebrated themselves. over on cnn, former obama official posing as a reporter, said the mueller report debunked all of donald trump's unfair attacks on the media. jeff bezos' newspaper said the
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vast amount of reporting on russia was accurate. uh-huh. even though don't really believe this.on they know they lied. buzzfeed claimed its reporters had seen with their own eyes that michael cohen was instructed by donald trump himself to perjure himself. this was going to be grounds for impeachment. buzzfeed defended that p story even after the mueller investigation took the unusual step of publicly saying it wasn't true. buzzfeed went all in, they defended it, seen with their own lleyes. he told us that on this set on this show. now there's no question about it. it's over, it's done, a lie. that and so much more, all lies. now that wepens know those were lies? what do wewe do with john brennn and james clapper. they used to run the most powerful intelligence agencies. they've gotten a lot richer than they've ever been from yapping about russia on television.
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only problem, all lies. >> what makes you believe that he has more indictments? >> because he hasn't addressed the issues related to criminal conspiracy as well as any individual?-- >> criminal conspiracy involving russians? >> yes. >> is there influence whether witting or unwitting by the russiansce over president trump, and you know, in the intervening year and a half or so, his behavior hasn't done much, at least in my mind, to allay that concern. >> tucker: do clapper and brennan get to keep their cable television contracts? probably. in decadent societies the guilty aren't punished, only the unpopular. her punished. over on the other channel, they are talking about trump tonight, of course, not themselves or their failures. the line fridays today's reports trump's response when he first learned there was going to be a special counsel investigation into russia.tr
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oh, god, he said, this is terrible. this is the end of my presidency. i'm f 'ed. well, as it turns out, trump was wrong. he didn't get indicted. mueller didn't drive him from office, it wasn't the end of his presidency strictly speaking. as usual trump's instincts were clearer, they were dead on. in the ways that matter most, the russia hoax did end his presidency in some sense. it certainly sabotaged it. mueller's investigation ended critical momentum from the 2016 election almost immediately. momentum that every incoming president uses to get your program enacted, make good on the promises you just made to voters. trump didn't have that, thanks to russia. lawmakers, including shamefully large number of republicans we should name but we're out of time but we will at some point, were happier to talk about russia than about changing the status quo in washington. something they were benefitting from, but trump ran against.
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so they did talk about russia. endlessly. the result, an election that should have realigned a political process and change this country had almost no effect. two years later, virtually nothing has changed. millions are still flooding over the border from the third world, encouraged by an army of t nonprofits mocking our laws. the opiod epidemic rages on as horrifying and destructive as ever. suicides are up. troops are still bogged down in syria and afghanistan and many other places. goldman sachs controls our economy. tech companies are spying on you. crushing your freedom of speech. you can have your life ruined for supporting the wrong candidate in public or believing there are two genders. most ominous of all and most often ignored, americans are dying younger and having fewer children. none this was ever resolved, none of it ever talked about. the russia investigation didn't destroy trump but it did a lot to destroy this country.
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senior political correspondent brit hume joins us. how can the rest of us act like our assumptions for the past two years, their assumptions the last few years were ratified, were right. why doesn't the city of washington stop andig ask hersef how were we so wrong? >> well that, can be attributed to the present divide that you -- the partisan divide that you see across the country and very much in washington. some of us, such as those of us at fox news, who don't have any of this collusion dog doo all over our shoes and never did. we look at this and we think to ourselves, well, yeah, i guess we sized that up properly. we didn't buy into that. we didn't make a hero out of michael avenatti, couple of hundred times, talk about what a serious presidential candidate he was. we didn't spin every story that came along to suggest that it
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pointed in the direction of the collusion that was talked about endlessly, we didn't do that. a big segment of our audience didn't buy into thatdn stuff either. none of us tonight has anything but regrets that this took up at much of our time and as much of our political air as it did as you point out. but, watch this happen, now, tucker. the collusion narrative is dead. some will still cling to it. but they look increasingly ridiculous. but a new narrative has arrived in the form trump was not be on solved of obstruction of justice. never mind he would have been obstructing an investigation of a crime that had not occurred, coordination, collusion,on conspiracy charge bandied about. and never mind the fact that his white house despite his continuing protests on the air, on twitter, elsewhere against the mueller investigation, the white house cooperated massively, vast numbers of documents, none that i know were ever denied mueller.
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with it testimony, including his white house counsel.on now, we're hearing today that the president isn't declaring executive privilege, asserting executive privilege. he didn'te, assert executive privilege during the investigation why we know what we know aboutiv don mcgann, he allowed his white house counsel, his white house counsel to testify. so we have all of this information. and it does emerge from the mueller report. that he didth tell don mcgann to get?-- to go to the justice department and get rid of mueller. mcgann didn't do it. trump pushed back, mcgann didn't do it. mcgann was ready to quit, he stayed on six months longer and left in apparently in good standing. trump there by was saved from one of his worst and most foolish impulses by his staff something that happened before. but the bottom. line is, the investigation proceeded to its conclusion, and the investigator was unable to assert that trump had, indeed, committed the crime
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of obstruction of justice, where we are. believe me, the episodes cited in the report, that relate to be obstruction of justice?-- obstruction of justice we'll hear about them from now until election day and possibly beyond. >> tucker: in 30 seconds, if the president is not allowed to fire than executive branch employee, then, i mean, the basic principle of democracy is inoperative, that elected officials get to run the government. how do we get to a place where you can't fire an independent counsel?l? >> well, your point is well taken, you can't infer obstruction of justice from the firing of a subordinate, it's intent. if you are doing so for the express purpose of undermining or torpedoing the investigation, i think an obstruction of justice narrative could be created. the fact. matter, for his ranting and raving and fuming inside the white house about the people investigating him for r somethig he knew he didn't do, nobody got
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fired. except for james comey, and you'll find in this report that the james comey matter is passed over, and has little significance in the final conclusions. that's where we are. >> tucker: brit hume, what a you.tion, thank >> you bet. >> tucker: as you assert collusion was in the end a total bust. after years of lying, nobody cat tell the truth any more, so instead cnn wanted to full denial mode. the governor's brother promised viewers that the pad orangeman could be removed, this time for obstruction of justice. >> special counsel bob mueller did not exonerate the president on obstruction. there's a lot of stink. there's a lot of wrongdoing here. on this, and on what they call collusion. collusion is not a crime. it's a behavior. there is a lot of bad behavior. >> tucker: congressman adam schiff of burbank is still the charge of the house intelligence committee even though he has demonstrable instability.
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shown on it this show. he's prone to believing wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theorys and people who disagree with him he accuses of treason. he had no apologies today, he prom is to broaden the witch hunt. >> the attorney general's action would make the president above the law that, he can't commit the crime of obstruction of justice that was not the special town still's vow. h of -- counsel's view. if the special counsel as he made clear found evidence con rating the president, he would have said so. he did not. he left that issue to the congress of the united states. and we will need to consider it. >> tucker: andy mccarthy is a former chief assistant u.s. attorney, joins us tonight. andy, thanks for coming on. are you a former prosecutor, detail man. assess the claim that the president is vulnerable on obstruction?-- perjury for obstruction of justice. >> well, tucker, he's vulnerable in the sense that congress does
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not need a penal offense to impeach. the definition of a high crime and misdemeanor does not have to be a crime that's in the federal penal code that prosecutors, like i used to be, would prove in court. i think what their strategy will be in looking at this in congress, and we're talking about schiff and those characters, will be even though we don't need a crime we're in a situation where the prosecutor actually said that he couldn't say that s a crime didn't happen here.ld that's why i think it was really outrageous for the special counsel not to do the one thing that he was arguably needed to do, render a prosecutorial judgment about whether there was obstruction or not. he said that he wasn't in the business of making a traditional binary prosecutorial judgment. that quaint old-fashioned stuff where you say we have enough
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evidence to charge or we don't. >> tucker: but hold on. isn't it demonstrable, if he had enough evidence to charge wouldn't he have done so or said so? >> yeah, implicitly that's right. the real danger, tucker, what he has done, mueller, by not saying that the fact that i am not, bringing charges means i don't have a case, is that he has basically undermined the presumption of innocence and the burdent of proof. the burden of proof is not on president trump to show that he did not obstruct justice. it's on the prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did. and by not resolving that he essentially, you know, signals to congress thatr they still hae a potential obstructionbs case. and puts the burden on the president to try and prove that he's innocent.he not the way it is supposed to work. >> tucker: well, we have gotten into such third world crazy
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land. thank you for clarifying that, appreciate it, good to see you. >> thanks. >> tucker: much more tonight on thee mueller report. this we hope will be the last night we ever address anything related to russia and the russian hoax, certainly. rather than honestly confront its manifold failures, the press is denouncing the attorney general as a liar. we'll tell what you they're saying and if it's true. ♪ everyone's got to listen to mom.
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when it comes to reducing the sugar in your family's diet, coke, dr pepper and pepsi hear you. we're working together to do just that. bringing you more great tasting beverages with less sugar or no sugar at all. smaller portion sizes, clear calorie labels and reminders to think balance. because we know mom wants what's best. more beverage choices, smaller portions, less sugar. balanceus.org >> i'm not sure what your basis is for saying i'm generous to the president. >> you faced a lot of >> i'm not sure what your basis is for saying i'm generous to the president. >> you faced a lot of situations, you're going out of your way?-- >> is there another precedent for it? no. >> unprecedent is an accurate description. >> yes. >> tucker: depend how long early you got up this morning you could have heard the attorney general denounced as lying propagandist before he said
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anything. now the mueller report is out and it has essentially vindicated what he wrote in the summary a month ago. congressman and presidential candidate eric swarlow said that barr must resign, the crowd demands its sacrifice. >> you can be the attorney general of the united states and represent all of us. or represent donald trump. you can't do both. because attorney general barr wants to represent donald trump he should resign. >> tucker: "wall street journal" editorial board member, joins us, kim. how would you assess the response to the attorney general's role in all of this? >> look, the reason that so many e critics of donald trump are md is because billok barr is actuay for the first time in a long time we have an attorney general who is representing the united states.s you know, i have to tell you, tucker, i would be cringing right now to think about what things would look like if bill barr were not in town.
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you know, for starters, you know, he actually is requiring some accountability for those that may have started all of this. something that didn't happen up until now. and in factan they fought for years to make sure didn't happen, both by inspiring a special counsel probe and then getting jeff sessions to recuse himself. now, you know, think about what actually happened today. the attorney general has been talking about the fact that we do not convene grand juries ande go down this road for the purpose of putting out innuendo. in fact, that is sort of what mueller didid today. he had his jim comey moment. remember the infamous press conference july 2016 where he berated hillary clinton but didn't bring charges? that's the second half of the mueller report. the collusion report. it is himio admitting up front that he cannot bring charges against a sitting. president but then engaging in 200 pages of a mental exercise about what such a prosecution would look like. bill barr was the grownup and said, okay, i'm making the
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decision, no obstruction charges are being brought. >> tucker: so, i mean, as a practical matter, moving forward, apart from what seems to be remote possibility of impeachment, this is over. am i missing something? >> no, it's over. look, i think the other thing that is highly disturbing about that second half of the mueller reportf is you look at the beginning section and he says, look, we're putting all of this out there, because congress still has the authority to act on this if they want. he's basically saying here's your bread crumbs in case you want to pursue impeachment. you're correct from a legal perspective, charging perspective, this is over, it's now in the political realm. democrats have to make the decision if they want to go down the road of trying to bring some sort of charges where even the special counsel after two years would not go. >> tucker: hard to see them doing that but we'll ask one in just a moment.
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kim, thank you, great to see you. >> thank you. >> tucker: imagine putting together an eight-person cable news panel where all eight people have exactly the same view. a that's called cnn. watch the panel where every single personh is mad in the sae way about the attorney general of the united states. watch this. >> it was excessive and suspicious to be pounding the table and pounding over the america's people head. this person spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the oprah moment of the feelings of the president of the united states? you've got to be kidding me. >> i have to say the attorney general had an opportunity thise morning too rise above the politics. and he blew it. that was completely inappropriate to me. >> and why are you chuckling? >> it's just, if this isn't obstruction of justice, i'd like to see what is obstruction of justice. >> tucker: glen greenwald is co-editor at the green press. glen, where is the diversity in
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general. >> this is one of the problems that allowed the media to go so far off the rails. especially those two cable networks and also newspapers, pretty much prohibited dissent from ever being heard. so they constantly fed each other these conspiracy theories and told each they are they were on the right track every time he advanced it further. never really had to confront anybody who presented or challenged them in any way. i've spent the last two years debating everyone can i find who had different views than i had on this whole saga, i wanted to make sure the things i was saying were scrutinized. that's what they avoided, that's the reason why they went so far off the rails. first time i saw your new show, when you had adam schiff on the set for 12 minutes and you went back and forth and debated. what the other2 networks refuse to do.nd that's why they're in such a bubble where they have no idea
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what's going on in the world. >> tucker: i think after today, the focus, my focus would shift to how do you fix this? you need a functioning media, even if i don't agree with the people in it or don't like them or don't like who they vote for. you still need adults covering news and keeping the powerful, you know, under a close eye..ix how do you fix this? they're so discredited and broken and unwilling to admit it. what do you do now? with the american media. >> after the iraq war when the media helped the bush administration convince the country to go to war based on false claims about the weapons program of saddam hussein, there was some self-reflection, some introspection, some journalistic inspection about statements made and attempts too reform. here i don't see that. if you listen to the media discourse, outside of a few circles, they've just put collusion and conspiracy and all of those conspiracy theories
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they've endorsed flushed it down the toilet like they don't exist and seamlessly shifted to obstruction. then they're conflating them to claim that they were right all along. that is really the alarming thing. in a lot of ways donald trump broke the brains of a lot of people, particularly people in the media who believe that telling lies, inventing conspiracy theories, it's all justified to stop this unparalleled men as. -- a menace. that's a good thing for activist to think and really bad thing for a journalist to think. >> tucker: you don't sound hopeful it can be repaired.ll >> you were talking just now about impeachment. already, adamen schiff and steny hoyer have said they don't intend to pursue impeachment charges. that tells you all you need know meabout the assessment of the political value. they have been discredited. i think if democrats on the hill know this whole thing has could lambed as a hoax hopefully the media allies of theirs will come to that same realization and have a little bit have shame
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about what they've done to their cred about it. -- credibility. i'm hopeful though i don't think it's inevitable. >> tucker: you never grow if you're not ashamed. i never learned anything except through failure and shame. i hope they do. glen greenwell, you were right, you have nothing to be ashamed thof. >> thank you. >> tucker: how are the candidates running for the democratic nomination in 2020 reacting to the implosion of their conspiracy theory? not well.. >> tucker: democratic party isis having a primary for the 2020 so with xfinity mobile
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having a primary for the 2020 election. but it's candidates focused on rerunning the electionre of 201. that means a lot of talk about russia. just like cnn they opened by denouncing the attorney general. senator elizabeth warren tweeting, it's a disgrace to see an attorney general acting like he's the personal attorney and publicist of the president of the united states. before the mueller report came out they knew it wouldn't be enough. amy klobuchr said we want to hear from director mueller himself. mad atdi him too, i guess. after the report dropped, kamala harris issued her demands, she said congress needs to see the full unredacted mueller r andnd all of the investigation's junked lying elements. -- underlying evidence. robert mueller must testify publicly before congress. they're mad. condemn mat stood out, mike gravel of alaska, older man, tweeted this, quote, while thea, press worries about palace intrigue and american idiot told a russian idiot, rural countries don't haveve good water, militia harassing thing my grants and
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43% of people can't spend $43 in an emergency. which candidate has no shot of winning the nomination in the modern party? the one who has tangible concerns about tangible things. dana perino joins us now. will there be some one other than mike gravel who pivots off of this and says the average person isn't affected by russia, this is a side show, here's my agenda? >> dana: they would be smart to. 2020 democrats, i think there's 24 of them, all in a pack. no oneem has been able to break out of that. they're beholding to whoever is empowering congress. it's jerry nadler at this point. as the previous guest said, stenny hoyer, the minority speaker, whatever, the one below speaker pelosi, he said we're not going to do impeachment. they're trying to signal
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everybody stand down. none of the candidates said that. but imagine if one of them were to be able to say stop, enough. yes we know this happened, we have the report. but i want to win on the merits, i want to win in the electoral college, i'm going beat him on healthcare, on the economy, et?cetera. you name it. and to be able to change the story line a little bit, and to be able to break away. it might be the way to do that. right now, all of them are fundraising off of the issue of russia. but remember every election that any american has ever voted for isn't because of looking back.em americans always want to look forward. it's in our nature, why you had hope and change in 2008. didn't really mean anything but didn't matter. you can't really run on 2016 russia collusion. i think you're going to see a strong scrutiny, all of the russia collusion stuff was supposedly happening, like, during. obama's administration. it didn't end. so there's going to be accountability there, if i were the democrats i would try to find a way to move on.
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but of course you know where we got move on, remember that? >> tucker: i was there. it was 1998. and it was an anti-impeachment organization, started by the left, made someon valid points. now they're pushing impeachment on trump. >> dana: ironic. >> tucker: profund misalignment between democratic donors, the nine billionaires who fund the ,party, and what democratic voters want. tom stiers.ie pushing impeachment but democrats. >> dana: we saw it last week in the polls, the democratic party is not actually as progressive as twitter would have you believe.s this week, the five, we got to leave washington?-- leave new?york, go to nashville, of the and about for a day. it was so refreshing. you realize that there's a reason that the numbers on mueller, the investigation, russian collusion, they've never changed despite all of this. nothing has changed in the way people look at it. it is not high on their list of concerns. that doesn't mean you can't
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think it's an important story or might want to get to the bottom of the origins of the investigation for if you're a democrat saying look at the people walking right up to the line of obstruction. can you think all of that. it's still not going to win you an election. i'm interested and hoping to get to talk about the issues comingl up. >> tucker: yeah. i'll just admit from the first day i felt russia was stupid, boring, ludicrous, i've never found it compelling. i don't understand why people do. but hopefully this the last day we're talking about it. dana, thank you. >> dana: maybe one more day tomorrow. >> tucker: okay. good to see you. former dnc communications director, believed that donald trump was an agent of putin, came on the she to say it. what does he believe now? we'll explain it tonight, thanks for coming on. >> thanks, tucker.nk >> tucker: now that the reportt is out, and you're one of the people who said that you thought that he was an agent of putin, do you think think he colluded? >> last time i was here, i made
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clear i think he plays up to dictators around the world, in a way that's really ugly. that doesn't make sense for america to be standing on a stage deferring to vladimir putin instead to have your own intelligence agencies. >> tucker: it depends. i mean, our intel agencies are not that impressive sometimes. they missed the fall of the soviet union. i mean we don't to have worship our own intel agencies. >> we don't to have worship foreign dictators. >> tucker: some much them we make common cause with. roosevelt made common cause with stalin. the moralizing is a little dumb. is trump an agent of putin? that was your claim, do you still think it? >> i think that one of the problems that you see with the mueller report is that there were a lot of contacts with the russians and that what attorney general barr presented doesn't line up with the actual text of
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the mueller report. that made it very clear that all of the extensive contacts that people in the campaign have with the russians, that they had with wikileaks, and even in his own comments barr walk?-- comments barr walked up to the line, while the campaign talked to wikileaks and appears to have coordinated with them, wikileaks didn't carry out the hack, that's why there was no crime on the collusion side. however?-- >> tucker: i'm starting to feel sad, a little pity, this is obviously demented, and maybe you'll feel, maybe your head will clear in a couple of days. can you win onsi that? do people think?-- >> i don't think it matters. to be honest, this is part what we need to do to restore trust and faith in the american democracy. stop acting just looking at the next election. that's plaguing our democracy for years. >> tucker: if you accuse somebody of treys on shouldn't you be apologize if it's not there? >> he walked right up to the line of coordinating with wikileaks. on obstruction of justice, robert mueller says there was
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obstruction. what he argues, he, because of the memo, doese not have the authority to decide. as result, something that congress has to take up. >> tucker: and have fun impeaching him. democratic office holders accused the president of treason. shouldn't they apologize for that? treason. treason, that's what they said, treason.'s >> tucker: anyone who wikileaks andith with the?russians to be supportive of them, there were moments when the mueller report showed?-- >> tucker: we can't even admit that. >> find hillary clinton'sla e-mails, trump said that?-- >> tucker: in the middle of a campaign. >> try to attack the hillary clinton e-mails. >> tucker: time for a vacation.e >> the report has a lot of truth it in. >> tucker: thank you. the investigation is over, will we investigate how we got the investigation in the first praise? t -- place?
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a recent report says the d.o.j. inspector general is preparing to present his findings on that question. how will those findings reflectt on the former british intelligent agent author christopher steele, are other investigations needed? former d.o.j. official joins us tonight.ch francie thanks for coming on. are we going to find out how we got to this? >> i sincerely hope so. i think we need it.al i listened to your last guest who refused to apologize for calling our president a traitor, what many, many people did. they owe him an apology. more important than any apology, which he's never going to get from people like that, more importantly than that we need to find out what happened. you're talking about a small kabal of people who used the levers of american power, covert surveillance power of this country against american citizens.su and it looks very much like they did so, based purely on partisan animus. that concerns me as a former
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prosecutor. i love the department of justice, i respect the fbi deeply, i'm proud of the time i spent at the department of justice. i'm worried what a few people whose names we don't know yet, the prosecutors, who signed those fisa warrants against carter page and the renewals, who are they? >> tucker: how can we have a secret hearing in a democracy? i know this is patriot act, 9/11 insanity.. why do we continue to have secret proceedings in a free country? >> well, i can say having done fisa warrants myself and having practiced in front of that secret court, that are reasons for that.t. there's classified information, reasons we can't let the american public know that we are, i can't use real examples?-- i'll use an example everyone knows. we were clearly intercepting the russian ambassador's calls and that's how we knew what mike flynn was saying to him. that was made public. can't tell the public that, we can't tell our enemies that, the targets.
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>> tucker: i don't think we spy on americans secretly. and authorize that in secret form. i think if it's our country, then it's our country, it doesn't belong to a creepyt' bureaucrat. >> why the fisa act requires more than just you think there are agents of foreign power for an american citizen. you have to show they're committing a crime. >> tucker: right and they never did with a bunch of these. >> they alleged it but they never showed it. >> tucker: thank you very much. >> thanks, tucker. >> tucker: well, it turns out virtually everyone in washington was completely wrong about russia, embarrassingly. how did that happen and how can they start to get things right for the sake of our country? separate ahead that question. ♪ save on the gear you need at bass pro shops and cabela's
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ehelps girls learn life longl scout lessonsprogram in people skills, decision making, and goal setting. it's amazing how much you can learn from a cookie. >> tucker: remember the kid who sat in the >> tucker: remember the kid who sat in the front row in the eighth grade class?me "call on me, call on me"?
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he lives in washington now and so does everybody like him from every eighth grade class in america, they all live in washington. they are the smartest people in the world and they were all totally convinced that donald trump was a traitor, he sold out americans to vladimir putin. they were all ludicrously wrong. they've been wrong about everything, the border,th libya, the whole country in 2016. the smart people turn out to beh done. whyth is that? is there something wrong with our system? j.d. vance has thought a lot about this, author of a terrific book, "hillbilly allergy," andh he comes on tonight. thank you for coming on. this is a much broader question. maybe it requires more than 5 minutes to answer. part of the most impressive people in our society turn out to be not impressive at all? >> is a really important question, tucker. context, when you think about the past 20 or so years of american history, and late ''90s, everybody knew thatke if we trade with china, t will make our country more
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prosperous, make the chinese more democratic. in 2003, everybody knew that iraq had wmds. in 2007, everybody knew that our economy was solid and there wasn't a financial crisis on the horizon. of course, as you mentioned, in 2016, everybody knew that hillary clinton would beat donald trump at the election. the problem is, people don't know. i think that it does suggest something much deeper and much more systemic about the way it leads create and then enforce conventional wisdom. i am wrong all the time. i'm sure that you make mistakes. >> tucker: yeah. >> there's a difference between making mistakes and being wrong about something and then being wrong but offering no contrition, no reflection on why you were wrong, and importantly, facing the consequences. so part of the answer to your question, why do these people so consistently keep being wrong is that there is no consequences when they are wrong.ng they are collecting paychecks for saying the same thing, even
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when they are consistently wrong about the big issues. >> tucker: the system resin police itself, and there something about the way that we create our leadership class that isn't working. if we lost every engagement we were in, the u.s. military lost every engagement, we would say come we need to take a hard look at the serviceac academy, they e not producing the right kind of leaders. but we are not taking a look at the ineffective academies for our cultural leaders. why not? >> i think the reason, of course, is that the people who support those academies, as you call them, are the people who call the shots. there is a self policing mechanism that is really not working here. when i think about this, i think that it fundamentally operates through social networks. you work your entire life, if you are one of those front-row kids who's always raising his or her hand, you make it to harvard, you make it to yale, you make it tost stanford, and once you get there, you find that you are rewarded for saying
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certain things and seeing them in a particular way. these institutions tend to turn people into automatons. that is how you make it through them, that is how you succeed. of course, as you succeed, you go into elite law schools, you work at mckinsey or goldman sachs. there is just a real award for being part of the system and working the system successfully. the problem, of course, is not the people who are part of the system that are succeeding in it. the problem is for the people in the rest of the country who arer supposed to be served by the conventional wisdom. if you look at the society, you've got people who served in the military, people who work and pay their taxes, people who raise families, and they all have a job in our society, they all have a role in our social contract. the role of our lease, fundamentally, is to be right about some of the big issues, to make sure that we stay ahead of some of these critical questions. to prove reserve our leadership positions, to make it so that te chinese don't catch us and overtake us. and they are so consistently
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wrong, and until they face consequences, i don't think anything is going to change by that can only be done through democracy, i think, but luckilyk we still get to vote for you to are right. dad is an alcoholic, the family is out of control. j.d. vance, one of the smartest. thank you. it's been a remarkable day. we'd like to wrap it up with a bow, only one man can do it. you know who it is. mark steyn. we are happy to have him join us now. mark steyn, you bought to the wholepa experience, two and half years of this. what is your conclusion? >> welcome it to be honest, the limost startling thing of this show tonight, tucker, is "the new york times" reporters are so stupid they think that edelweiss from the sound of music is a nazi song, if you believee that, what you mentiond about 58 it minutes ago, if you just float around in the fall to match up some of the shallows of your own myopia long enough,
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then the whole russia collusion thing makes sense. to me, this report is fascinating. it's written and it kind of pseudo-legalese way. they've thrownla everything in there, although they don't have a theory of the case, so hookers in a moscow hotel, trump wanting to build a building over there, all some part of a grand theory of a case that they never explain. the most revealing thing to me is on page 1 of the report. we all want to know how this thing got started. they claim it is george papadopoulos being fingered by my old pal, alexander downer, the australian high commissioner to the u.k. i've known him on and off for 15 years. the fact is, to put it in andy mccarthy terms, not only do they not have anything beyond a reasonable doubt, not only does it not meet the civil standard of a preponderance of the evidence, they have no probable
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cause for launching this thing. >> tucker: exactly. >> that ought to deserve every single -- they had a nobody, george papadopoulos, having a set of drink and a london wine bar, and on the basis of that, they destroy carter page's life, george papadopoulos' life, this is disgraceful, and the idea of the government o investigating s political opposition, that is venezuela. if it moves to washington, we are all in big trouble. >> sean: totally wrecked anm entire term of the presidency and overturned the will of voters. you are right. >> tucker: you were dead on right about that. so depressing, i am glad we can ignore it forever afterwards. great to see you, mark steyn. great to see you. thank you. out of time tonight. we'll be back tomorrow night.
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8:00 p.m. brand-new world without russia. this will still and will always be the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. we will see an hour post russia world tomorrow night. in the meantime, we will bring you over to new york city, sean hannity. >> sean: tucker, anything going onon today? >> tucker: it's making me so mad, i can barely -- i can't even talk about russia anymore.u >> sean: get in-n-out burger. you'll feel better. it wasn't closed at 6:00 at night. thank you, tucker. buckle up, welcome to "hannity." big news tonight with a fox news alert, the witch hunt is officially over. the mueller report is out and the president of the united states has been totally and completely vindicated. watch this. >> i'm having a good day too. it's called no collusion, no obstruction.
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