fire on a motor officer. two more responding officers are wounded. the suspect, we are told, was killed in the shoot-out. give are joining us tonight. we will be back at 11:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow. ♪ >> mark: hey. good evening. welcome to "tucker carlsongh tonight," i am mark steyn in fort tucker, who is gone fishing. but don't worry, he's joining us tonight for a special appearance. he'll be in his waiters. it will be able to see it on the side shot. while he's fishing, jeffrey epstein is sleeping with the fishes. the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker was sound dominic found dead in his prison cell on saturday morning just hours after hundreds of pages detailing his connection with princess, presidents, prime ministers, senators,ti governor.

we are going to try and put this puzzle together tonight. if we start with fox chief breaking news trace. correspondent, trace gallagher. >> attorney general bill barr says he will get to the bottom of this, pointing out that a number of "serious irregularities" were found at the federal jail. the ag wouldn't go into detail but our reporting shows the following. at thehe time of his death, jeffrey epstein was not on suicide watch. you'll recall back in july 23rd, epstein was found in his jail cell with bruises on his neck. epstein claimed he'd been beaten up, but the injuries were treated as self-inflicted and epstein was placed on suicide watch, meaning 24-hour a day surveillance. but after a series of psychiatric assessments and pressure from his attorneys, the suicide watch was lifted and epstein was placed in a special housing unit with a cellmate. but for some reason, despite a violation of procedure, the cellmate transferred out. so at the time of his death, epstein was alone.

the jail assured the department of justice that epstein would be checked every 30 minutes, but prior to being found unresponsive, epstein hadn't been checked for several hours. the union that represents prison guards says it's a direct result of understaffing and at the time of epstein's death both guards on duty or working overtime. one was doing an 80 hour week. still, experts say it's unusual for such a high-profile inmate to be ignored. we should note there are no surveillance cameras in or outside epstein's cell. numerous reports say epstein hanged himself and our -- did it with a bed sheet tied to a bunk bed and even though the autopsy is complete, results are pending because the medical examiner needs more information. >> mark: so basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong, trace. e that all sounds very plausible. thank you forgo that. what could jeffrey epstein's

autopsy revealed? a water conditions like in that manhattan correctional center where he died? fox medical contributor marc siegel has answers to both those questions and more. let's just start with this autopsy, doctor, is it unusual for the autopsy to be delayed? the results of it to be delayed, as they have wondered. if the medical examiner has reportedly said that the cause of death, as trace just said, is hanging. but they still have to determine exactly how that occurred and whether he actually hung himself. ouat would be one thing on my mind. the other thing is, suicide is very, very common in prisons. it's actually the number one cause of death in prisons, 1 out of 3 deaths in prison aren suicide but this particular facility hasn't had -- has only had one suicide over the past 40 years. i've been there. the metropolitan correctional center is full of squalor, it's full of vermin, it's a

disgusting place. it is not a pretty place at all. but the other question that's come up is where were the cameras? he was moved to special housing. where was the observation? why wasn't he being observed? i can tell you that someone that's supposedly been onsu suicide watch, me as a physician but no psychiatrist would take a person off of suicide watch in this kind of position, this sex offender. take him off of suicide watch and then just say okay, he's fine, he says he's fine. that's not how a psychiatrist would ask. >> mark: basically after six days on suicide watch, his suicidal tendencies cleared up, that's the official decision. that's ridiculous from a medical point of view buried >> i have never seen that in all my years of practice, it doesn't happen. suicide is something that comes on over a long period of time. severe depression. clearly a shocker. it would not go away. if no self respect and psychiatrist would ever say okay, he's no longer suicidal. it lingers. >> mark:ng let's go to that other statistic, that a third of

all prison deaths in the united states are suicides buried if you were a judge when you don't want to give a guy bail and you want to send him to a jail where he is not going commit suicide or not going to be able to commit suicide, this place, this manhattan correctional center as statistically about the best record in the country. >> which makes me wonder, because, listen, you shouldn't have the kind of bed sheets than you can hang yourself with. you can have paper bedsheets. we shouldn't have anywhere that you can hang yourself from. where are you hanging ourselves from? the ceiling should be too highar from that. you shouldn't have the ability to do it on the site, on the bed, on the doorknob, anything like that. and again, we have the ability and he stays to have the kind of technology to be observing. if you were in a psych ward -- we don't have maximum security in a psych ward, if we were in a psych ward, every 15 minutes, every single patient in a psych ward has to be seen and examined. if it's a suicide watch, it's constant. so it's clearly very, very unusual that he v would be taken

off of suicide watch, put in a room where he is unobserved and no cameras are pointing at him. >> mark: it you know prisons well and you know that sex offenders get treated the worst in prison. they don't have a happy time in there. >> and i also pointed out to you about the suicides, i should add that the number of suicides is highest among sex offenders and also homicides. highest among sex offenders. they get targeted, they get beaten up, they get murdered and they take their own lives. >> mark: how can it be that you have a high-value prisoner like this on the most high-profile prisoners on the planet, and he, according to you, doesn't get the surveillance that an ordinary patient in a psychiatric hospital would get. how does that happen? >> i can't imagine that, because he could have been transferred to a psychiatric hospital or a locked on board. i think that's why the attorney general is saying there are a ligula reduce your very this is almost unbelievable that this occurred. medically it's inexcusable.

>> mark: we've exported from the medical perspective. thank you, doctor. we will explore it from the law enforcement perspective. fitzgerald, a retired fbi profiler, author of this year's "journey to the center of the mind," he also has experiences with the exact prison epstein died and jim fitzgerald joins us now. we've heard all day on fox and other stations about the protocols in this situation, but given the unique situation here, why didn't jeffrey epstein have a kind of custom-built protocol? i mean, he's finger high-profile people not just in the united states establishment, but from countries overseas and elsewhere. why -- why, in other words, was this neglect allowed to happen? >> well, mark, i want to start up with an anecdote and when i was a young detective sergeant

in suburban philly, along with the u.s. marshals, we arrested an international hit man. was involved in killing people in italy in the u.s. and once he escaped other prisons, once we brought him in our little jail cell and it was my job, along with some other officers, to sit in a chair and stare at him through the bars for four hour shifts as the night went along. the marshals took him up to the mcc, he was arraigned there. a year and a half later, guess what? the same guy, he tried to escape the mcc using bedsheets and he didn't make them long enough anm fell out the window and died. whether he was committing suicide trying to escape, who knows, but the point is the protocols failed that night in 1984 and it failed again obviously on saturday morning, friday night, whatever, with how this all fell apart. the doctor beforehand saying about the suicide watch. we live and die by an axiom and the profiling world, past

behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. only two weeks ago he tried to kill himself and he wasn't on suicide watch. something was greatly wrong in those protocols at the mcc. >> mark: let me just ask you something, then, about that profiling side of you, because he had come he might have been suicidal, but he's a wealthy billionaire with all these connections with politicians, with the royal family. wouldn't the natural position of a guy in his situation be to say "okay, if i'm going down, everybody else is going down to too"? in other words, it's not an automatically suicidal situation, is it? >> well, it's not. and i assure you without knowing any of the inside information, but knowing how these types of cases work, there are deals being proffered as we speak, certainly before his death, maybe epstein was willing to give some people up.

who knows? but certainly other people that are accused of things, this case is not going away. there are still plenty of victims out there. if they are adult women now but they were young girls when this all happened. you can't rollout this is a homicide. all indicationshi are suicide. but as any investigator knows, you treat every suspicious death as a homicide until you can consider it otherwise. that's what's happening right now with the fbi out of the new york office. >> mark: that's very important, thanks for that, jim. judith miller is a contributing editor at city journal. she is also an ex-jailbird herself.. and says that what happened to epstein is outrageous and unfathomable. you wear that badge with a certain amount of pride, judith. in fact, you recited your prison number. i don't know whether you remember it. i've got it around here somewhere. we will run it along the lower -- we will run it along the lower third. if it's in biography.

you been in these cells and you've heard this thing now about the bedsheets, for example. if you will move to high-security, you're given these paper -- to try to hang yourself with them, you fall apart and you just land on the floor with a bump. >> the many circumstances in mr. epstein's death that just doesn't make sense. i mean, you are -- watched allf the time when you are on suicide watch. we were not on suicide watch, the protocols of this jail required that he be checked every 30 minutes. he was not. the protocols of the prison required that he have a roommate, but the roommate that he had was transferred out on friday night, the night before he died. >> mark: prisons, for hundreds of years, predating the birth of this republic, all have been designed so that two or three things can go wrong, but the

fourth, fifth, and sixth will work and save the day. here, everything that could go wrong did gove wrong, is that correct? >> it's what they say happened and that's why i think bill bar bill barr -- the attorney general is so upset about this particular case and what happened to jeffrey epstein -- because my hard huss name is epstein, i like to make that difference. my concern is that everything depends on at least some of the protocols being observed. and in this instance, as you point out, conveniently, everything went wrong. i have so many questions still about what happened in that jai jail. there are usually, by the way,il no cameras in a specific cell but there are cameras everywhere in the common areas so that jail would who went in and out at what time, presumably.

>> mark: just to go back with basics, when you went to prison, you were convicted. >> no. >> mark: actually volunteered. >> i was protecting the first amendment. >> mark: but my point is is that disguise at the polymeric stage. all the united states government had to do was keep him alive until the trial. and it's brazen -- if you were writing a thriller, you wouldn't put in anything as obvious where he just gets whacked before the trial. brazen either in its incompetence or in its cynicism and corruption and the american people seem to be leaning towards the latter one of those explanations. >> i know that people love to embrace conspiracy theories, mark, but i really think we have to wait until all of the facts are in, and the facts, by the way, are changing a lot. we know some things about his

death. if we know others. for example, why was he taken off suicide watch? now, his lawyers wanted him off -- >> mark: supposedly. >> supposedly carried >> mark: they won't be straight forward on that. attorney-client privilege. >> exactly, they can't speak to this. we are going to know that and these serious irregulars of the prison, which william barr referred to, i think are the dash really should be the focus of journalistic effort and enterprise right now. that and the promise that anyna coconspirators who were working with mr. epstein to traffic in young girls will be brought to justice. that's what's really important now. >> mark: you think that will happenpe? because maxwell, for example, this so called "society lady" from london. >> your time. >> mark: somewhat of a

euphemism. they don't -- apparently the feds have lost her whereabouts. i don't understand how that can happen either. >> there are so many odd things that have happened in this case that it's almost impossible to believe, but i remain shocked andd outraged by his death. this shouldn't happen. no one should die of unnatural causes while awaiting their day in court. that's just not w right. >> mark: that's absolutely true. a great day of shame and absolutely outrageous. thank you for that, judith. later this hour we are going to revisit the epstein case and some of the wild conspiracies swirling around his sudden demise. also had gum joe biden. can't even remember when he served as vice presidential ter term. but "the washington post" says you should ignore his growing number of gaps. that's next and of course tucker is fishing but he's putting down the pole and he's going to be making a special appearance wit us today. you won't want to miss that. ♪

♪ >> mark: joe biden has been gaps -- on the trail for decades. his first presidential run ended when he plagiarized an entire speech from a welsh politician. nobody serious plagiarized this from a welsh politician but his third run could be the worst yet. last week in iowa, he stumbled by dividing america's children into poor kids and white kids.

>> poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids. wealthy kids. black kids. asiann kids. i really mean it, but think how we think about it. >> mark: that same day biden also announced that he believes in the truth so much he prefers it to the facts. >> which was unity over divisio division. we choose science over friction. we choose truth over facts. >> mark: and then over the weekend, he forgot his ownsi vice presidential term and believed he was still in office during the parkland shooting last year. >> i watch what happened with those kids in parkland, came up to see them when i wasre vice president. some of you covered it and you watch what happened when they went up in the halls of congress. congress will basically cowering, not wanting to see them. they did not want to have to face them on camera. >> mark: at this rate, he may soon excellently announced that he is running for president of costa rica or tajikistan.

but "washington post" writer paul walden says it's unfair to cover biden's gaffes and said we should all lay off instead. we are not going to take that advice. instead, we are going to lay on with radio colossus howie carr. how we, this seems to be like just warm up gases and by december when he's seriously stumping in iowa andho new hampshire, these gaps are going to be coming every 45 minutes or so. >> yeah, mark, there's a famous seinfeld episode where his uncle leo is caught pilfering books at the library and they grabbed him and the books are falling out of his wrinkled and he starts yelling "i'm an old man! i'm confused!" and that's what's going on here. you fill in for rush limbaugh. that's three hours a day. i'm on d four hours a day every day on the radio and you know

vigilance when you're speaking in public. if that's the way it is. so if i ever get in a jam, if i misspeak, i don't ask for any special treatment. just treat me like joe biden. >> mark: we'd all like that one. let me ask you this, since you mentioned is just a confused old man. he's made -- been making gaffes since he was 12 years old. he made gaps when he was running against -- he hasn't changed in that respect, but c what's different is he looks kind of woozy and wobbly and out of it now, just compared to bernie or elizabeth warren. neither of whom are spring chickens, but heck seems out oft compared to the way the other geezers in the primary are varied >> right. last week he was having trouble pronouncing ku klux klan and apparently somebody went home and just said just say kkk. he couldn't even announce that. >> mark: you know how to

pronounce it, that you're the racist. your guilty by pronunciation there. >> and mitchell on msnbc, she explains the way the poor kids gaffes by saying he was tired. okay, let's accept that, but with the ever extend the benefit of that out to donald j. trump? i rather think not. and this whole thing, he was making these same gaps when he was in his 40s. that's why his campaign exploded 32 years ago. the irony here is you are talking about the welsh politician he lifted the speech from, that wasn't the iowa state fair too. you would think that he would say -- i'm not going to let lightning strike twice in the same place, but no, this is the guy who said it's all about a three letter word, jobs. 2008 he introduces barack

america. he said he was the first clean and articulate -- the list goes on. just in the last week he says he's just made a complete fool of himself, but the thing is, the democrats in the media are defending him because i think the other front running candidates are so unpalatable and so dreadful that they've all sort of -- they are attached to this guy. they think he could at least muddle through. >> mark: they did that four years ago. they try to dragon unlikable, unsuitable candidate across the finish line. i don't think it's going to work. it didn't work then, i doubt it will work a second time. but thanks for that. it's a like the number 27 bus. you wait a third of a century at the iowa state fair and another joe biden gaffe comes along. it's amazing. lisa boothe, having discussed front runner, we will now discuss the 57 other candidates. lisa boothe is a senior fellow at the independent women's voice

and she's our go to gal for drilling down on these presidents in waiting, with which the democrat party is spectacularly endowed. >> i do my best. here's what i think is really weird that is going on. democrats are going down the same road that hillary clinton went down into thousand 15. remember what you labeled half of trump supporter's is a basket of the portables. she is labeling 30 million people as racist, homophobic, sexist, and the list goes on. guess what? trump won states that republicans hadn't won for decades. and he won places like michigan. he picked up 22 counties. he was able to flip. it was constant, rather. michigan, 12 counties he wasmi able to flip and democrats are going to want to try to win back those counties, win back those states. but instead, what they're doing is going down that same road, watch beto o'rourke. >> you said to me last week that you thought president trump was a white nationalist.

i just wonder, sir. president trump won your home state of texas by nine points, almost 63 million americans voted for him. do you think it's racist to vote for president trump in 2020? >> i think it's really hard. after everything that we've see seen. >> mark: he does think it's racist, but he can't quite bring himself to sayt' it. >> began, but what was even worse than this, you saw last week when representative castro doxxed trump supporter's come up with the names on twitter to harass them instead of being able to look at that and think this is wrong, he shouldn't have done that, senator kirsten gillibrand, also a presidential contender,se refused to do so, take a look. >> what about though -- joaquin castro, did this week publishing the names of some of president trump's top donors? publicly available information, but some would say he was t targeting these individuals. is that helpful or is that dangerous than what you are

describing? >> those are his choices, not mine. >> mark: she is what tucker calls a zombie candidate. there's nothing inside there. >> her bigger problem is that she has just flipped her policy positions so much. definitely one of the candidates that puts her finger to the wing and will say whatever she needs to say to win would even be on some of these other things that we've addressed tonight, we also have an msnbc guest who called for people to show up with pitchforks and torches at stephen ross' house when he held these fund-raisers for donald trump over the weekend. here is what he said on msnbc. >> i have no problem with shining the light back on the ldonors who fund this kind of racialized hate. i want -- i go further. i want pitchforks and torches outside this man's house in the hamptons. i've been to the hampton's, it's veryhampi' nice. there's no reason why it has to be. there's no reason why he should have a nice little parties.

>> mark: at this guy is actually paid by msnbc and he's inciting the mob to go to private citizens multnomah combs. >> i believe is a guest but he is a frequent guest on msnbc is my understanding, but you're right, he's calling for action. a lot of people on the left and died in president trump's character, indicting the character of his supporters, saying insightful rhetoric that is leading to people going down these dangerous roads. democrats like we just heard literally calling for people to show up with pitchforks and torches, so they are hypocrites. >> mark: absolutely, but they don't get called on it, oddly enough, the way that donald trump does ceaselessly. >> they don't, i think one of the biggest things we learned under the age of trump is the perception of any sort of objectivity that exists in the mainstream media is gone. with people in the mainstream media who at least try to attempt to appear objective, no longer care. now they are just wearing their partisan democrat on the sleeve and they don't even care.

>> mark: keep watching these guys, lisa, for us because no normal person does. bill de blasio had 15 people at his iowa state fair. i could get more than 50, i'm not even eligible to run. >> is that an announcement? >> mark: that is an announcement. thank you for that. german lawmakers considering invoking a meat tax on their citizens. while the left bring that to america next? that's just ahead. and then, tucker carlson puts down the fishing rod and joins us for a special segment. all coming up. ♪ ♪ ♪[upbeat music]

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ask your eye care professional today go to vettix.org. >> mark: into thousand six, al gore made a lot of bold predictions about what climate change would do to the world. in fact, he said it would kill the world if we didn't stop global warming by 2016. that's three years ago that the world would be finished.

well, it's 2019 and we are still here, just about, but he says that doesn't matter. in a new interview he says he was actually right all the way back into thousand six despite us being three years past the point of no return. he's still campaigning for more climate activism, but just don't expect him to give up his suvs or private jet. if that's right, some people are doing exactly that. in sweden, 23% of people claim they decided against flying for climate reasons. there's a swedish member of the european parliament who takes an all day, 850-mile train ride twice a week to brussels just to avoid ever boarding a plane for a one hour flight. i like that swedish guy. he's principled, not like leonardo dicaprio with his fancy guys of the climate conference or prince harry. i'm happy to put in a word for that swedish guy. getting a lot of strange climate ideas over in europe.

in germany, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would increase by 90% value-added tax to all the meat in the country. and in the united kingdom, goldsmith university in london has banned all beef, all burgers in the name of the planet. make no mistake. if there are people who want to do the same thing in america, until we all have to get our protein by eating mealworms and grasshoppers. i love a grasshopper this time in the evening. ashley byrne is associate director of peta. if she us. peta actually is in favor of a meat tax, is that correct? >> well, peta has been an advocate for a meat tax for many years because of the fact that we already have similar taxes on products like soda, cigarettes and alcohol for their effect on human health, and we have a similar tax on products that are

harmful to the environment. so when you look at the fact that the meat industry -- sorry, that meat consumption is a top contributor to the disease that's killing americans like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke, and it's one of the primary culprits behind every major environmental concerns, whether you're talking about climate change, water pollution, air pollution, or deforestation, we think we should be following a similar path for meat. >> mark: is that that -- alexandria ocasio-cortez obviously want very big when she launched the green new deal on the bovine flatulence, but you've done -- that doesn't apply to all animals. a survey of the university of waterloo in canada, for example that suggested that using pig methane, you could actually use that as fuel and it would be in fact more environmentally

friendly than, say, natural gas. >> if we want to get a real picture of the environmental impact of the meat and animal agricultural industry as a whole, we need to look beyond the methane and beyond climate change. we need to look at things like air pollution andd water pollution and the fact that deforestation is happening at an alarming rate to create farmland for grazing. >> mark: that's mostly in africa and other parts of the southern hemisphere, where they've got a population explosion. essentially reinforcing in north america and the rest of the developed world. >> we are losing giant chunks of the amazon about us to global demand. and again, if you look at things like water pollution right here in the united states, the epa says that animal agriculture is the leading culprit behind water pollution. and the reason for that is clea clear. the fact that the animals raised

and killed for food in the united states produce ten times more excrement than the entire in this country so we really have an environmental crisis on our hands because of the meat industry that goes beyond climate control. >> mark: just go back to that survey i mentioned, the university of waterloo, for example, seems to think that instead of just leaving it there to run into this river running alongside the field, which is what you're talking about, that we can actually take that stuff and power our homes and motor vehicles with it. isn't that innovation? isn't that more likely to be beneficial to the planet than simply abolishing what's a staple of the human diet? >> it's not, because there are other concerns. for instance, the fact that we use tremendous resources, water, food, land, to produce meat and it only gives us a small amount

compared to what we are putting in. the resource waste is incredible. when you look at the fact that actually we have alternatives now like the beyond burger that has the taste of meat, the texture of meat, they are delicious and their impact on the environment is so much lower. why would we deal with these industries that are dirty and outdated, not to mention cruel when we have better options? >> mark: isn't it because it's a popular taste? you look at the big chains here. burger king, mcdonald's, wendy's, and that's the other point here. isn't this a regressive tax? the people who like, you know, arugula on a bed of a rule ago a are they elites at the fancy salad restaurants in beverly hills and martha's vineyard and then it's the man in the street was getting a burger at lunch. so this meat tax would be a regressive tax on the poorest people in society. >> first of all, the man on the street is looking for a

plant-based options now too which is why restaurants like burger king and carl's jr. are adding vegan options to their menu. but, we also have to look att health concerns, and that's another reason that a lot of people advocate for a tax on meats. again, meat is one of thee leading contributors to some of the top killers of americans. and the fact is that right now, meat is heavily subsidized. and the taxpayer is footing the bill for the poor decisions the people who are choosing to eat meat, even though they know it's bad for their health and bethany environment. >> mark: we will watch this one, ashley. i saw that fell at the ball game this morning who was holding a burgerar in one hand and caught the ball in the other. that seemed to me to sum up the situation. the trump administration has announced a new rule change that will deny green cards to immigrants in america who rely on welfareee programs. the acting director of u.s.

citizenship and immigration services, a branch of the bureaucracy i know well and he joinss us today. i'm slightly confused by this, director, because i have vivid memories from my own application for immigration in which the official was deeply concerned -l i was self-employed back then so i didn't have a regular source of income and he wanted to ensure that it wouldn't become a charge on the public w purse. so that question was around a while ago. is it just not being asked anymore?? >> well, it's actually been around, mark, for almost 140 years. it wasn't news. to you. if they didn't make it up just for you, shouldn't feel singled out. [laughs] but i will say the last couple of decades, because of the guidance issued after the 1996 version of this law, it's been

ineffective. and so the s rule we issued tod, the public charge rule, is intended to once again give meaningful effect to the public charge standard and what that is in ordinary english, for people watching, is basically that we tried to avoid having immigrants come through our process, come to our country or become green card holders who are likely in the future to become welfare-dependent. that is what this rule isre abo. >> mark: in the left is up in arms. as they see it, this applies to legal immigrants. people talk about permanent residents, but a green card has to be renewed every ten years. so are you saying if you came into the country and work for six months and then spent the nine and a t half months as a public -- nine and a half years as a public charge, you wouldn't renew the green card of people who were resisting so-called "permanent residence."

>> so the point at which our agency will encounter folks is when they try to get that first green card. it's t called when they adjust their status. i know you know more about this than your viewers do. >> mark: i can do an interpretive dance of adjustment stages. you don't have to worry about that. >> i'm sure you can. i'm sure you can but probably better during the commercial. just my own opinion, but this is a point at which we will now screen and more effectively for the possibility that people may become dependent on the government in the future and the congress has told us we have to look at her age, health, financial status, skills, education, and this is a way we measure the possibility they will be on the dole in the future. >> mark: we are going to follow this one. thanks very much and thanks for letting me stay, by the way. [laughs] as promised, the regular all-american host of this program, his paperwork for early

to fully in order. his neck spirited out of his fishing break and back on screen. also had, big pharma flooded american cities with painkillers even after it was obvious they were addicting and killing thousands. that's all to come on "tucker carlson tonight." ♪ ♪

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>> mark: it's the moment you've been waiting for. here's tucker. >> tucker: america is right in the middle of the worst drug epidemic in its history. hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have died so far. the epidemic is driven, as you know, by highly addictive opioid painkillers made and sold by pharmaceutical companies and used for legitimate purposes, treating cancer, for example.

but these companies, despite some responsibility for this epidemic, have avoided all responsibilities so far and it's not because they're not guilty. directly fueled addiction by flooding towns by massive amounts of angles. many? an attorney represents several communities and assuming pharmaceutical companies and joins us for some perspective. thanks a lot for coming on. >> thanks for having me. >> mark: some perspective, when we read this or that drug company flooded a community with opioid tablets, what does that mean? >> i think it started in 2016 when the charleston gazette, a local newspaper, reported 780 million opioid pills were distributed in west virginia during a year window. we only have 1.8 million residents in our state. so that data comes from a

database held by the dea. it's through this natural to national litigation without access to the national data and across the country during this eight year window, 76 billion pills of opium were distributed. >> tucker: clearly the federal government was tracking this. you have the numbers. the drug companies themselves knew it was going on. i'm sure state law enforcement had no idea. why did nobody say anything about this? >> it's a difficult question that congress has been asking and from what we understand, it's sort of like the ftc was wall street. millions and millions of transactions happen every single day on wall street and the sec, they are not the clearinghouse. just because the transaction goes through, doesn't make itgh lawful. but what the sec can do, they can go backwards in time and identify a particular actor or a particular series of

transactions and recreate exactly what happened. the same thing applies with the dea's database. there's literally hundreds of millions of transactions.o if there's no feasible way for the dea to monitor and clear them as they go through. but what they are able to do is go backwards in time. what we've done in this litigation is we've been able to get access to the entire database, go back in time and identify which communities were flooded. >> tucker: we know a lot of those who were ohio and west virginia, asho you said. if you're a drug company and your spending millions and millions of opioid tablets to a single small county in west virginia, say, you have to know what's going on, don't you? >> you would think so. what i want to make clear is that this wasn't an isolatedn event. this happened all over theth country. for instance, i looked up -- you want to trinity college in

hartford, connecticut, . 192 million pills were sold in hartford, connecticut, during an eight year window. there's a pharmacy a half-mile from trinity college that sold 350,000 pills of opium in one year. so what my hope is is this is a great awakening. every community in the country needs toto understand this didnt happen in someone else's backyard. this happened in your backyard. >> tucker: so the point is, if the opposite of the lie that we are told by the libertarians, which is that this is a demand problem, we have a drug epidemic because americans americans wa. what you're telling us is when you flooded community with drugs, a lot of people become addicted to drugs. >> it's shocking, right? but let's make clear what we are floodingpl with. it's opium. it's been around since the byzantine era. governments have been toppled over it. the chinese had a war with it. it's opium, and we sold

76 billion pills of pharmaceutical-grade opium in america, so it's not shocking that what we are seeing is the fruits of laying all of these seeds across america. it's abuse, addiction, morbidity, mortality, and it's a tsunami and we haven't seen the end of it. >> tucker: yeah, and our politicians blame the population for ill notice. thanks very much for coming on tonight. godspeed. >> no problem. thank you. >> mark: going on in hartford, connecticut. almost everybody seems to have a conspiracy theory about jeffrey epstein's death. we are tracking all of them just for you. that's next on "tucker carlson tonight." ♪ is a ♪[upbeat music] ♪now i'm gonna tell my momma♪ ♪that i'm a traveller ♪i'm gonna follow the sun♪ ♪now i'm gonna tell my momma ♪that i'm a traveller

transitions™ light under control™

being with the paralyzed veterans of america, they have shown me so much is possible. (upbeat rock music) and i'll never walk again, but that hasn't stopped my ability to succeed. i went from laying in a hospital bed dying to being a collegiate wheelchair basketball player, a professional wheelchair basketball player, and it started with that one moment where (snapping)

there is life. the pva has taught me to be unstoppable in life, never to give up. i'm strong. i am unstoppable because the paralyzed veterans of america is by my side, and for the rest of my life, i will be unstoppable 'cause they are there with me. how many falls i take, i still get back up and play the game. i'm a competitor. paralyzed veterans of america, we. [shaun] we. [latoy] we are unstoppable. ♪believe we're still worth the fight♪ ♪you'll see there's hope for this world tonight♪ ♪i believe, i believe ♪yeah

♪rock guitar ♪ >> mark: almost everyone is suspicious of jeffrey s

beans convenient death trace gallagher has been putting together all the theories. >> when you're a sex offender with ties to presidents and princes and you kill yourself when guards decide to ignore the nation's highest profile jail inmate, attends digital conspiracy theories. msnbc's joy reid is not convinced answers will be forthcoming. ftch. >> this is a facility under the control of the department of justice. this department of justice does not exactly inspire confidence, let's just be blunt. william barr's justice department is not when you can readily rely upon and feel confident in. >> meantime, alec baldwin says the russians are in charge of everything and president trump also waited into conspiratorial waters, retreating -- suicide watch, yeah, right. how does that happen? jeffrey epstein had information on bill clinton. he is dead. i see from body count trending

but if you are not surprised, clinton crime family, kellyanne conway says the president wants everything investigated. >> mark: thanks for that. tune in each night to the show that is the sincere and sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. sean hannity is here. >> sean: market, it took me a year to get tucker to hit the post. i will get you on the post at some point. i don't know when. >> mark: over run 3 minutes tomorrow. >> sean: great. take it away. great show, good to see you. >> mark: all yours. buckle up. >> sean: yeah, buckle up. a lot of breaking news in the deep state. a horrific disaster this weekend for sleepy creepy crazy uncle joe biden. the media mob is even sicker. everything they are saying and doing. they are never going to admit they are wrong. they've peddled lies, conspiracy theories, a hoax. now they've just doubled down on all of them. it will be that way from now un