♪ >> good evening welcome to a special edition of tucker carlson tonight. on this program we tried to content ourselves with simply covering the news of the day or even the news of the month, and all the lot is going on in this country and in this world. long-term changes are taking place, we will completely rearrange this nation for your grandchildren and great grand children. you deserve to know why they are happening. part of the reason why they're happening is because powerful people want them to happen people who are not widely known in this country but ought to be. so we see one of our jobs is to tell you what is going on and who is doing it, that is why we weigh in consistently on some of

the bigger problems facing america. tonight we will revisit some of our more memorable commentaries from the past. one of the reason the country is so different is because the economy is so different. one of the reasons that is true is because of finance, hedge funds, private equity, investment banks. and of the commentaries we did that got an awful lot of attention toward the end of the year was something on hedge fund billionaire and g.o.p. mega donor paul singer. most people have never heard of it singer, but every single member of congress has. he is one of the biggest reasons the parties behavior seems so divorced from the interests and the beliefs of republican vote voters. why do people you vote for keep doing things in washington you disagree with? in some cases, because they are paid to. and this year we recently profiled what singer's actions meant for a small town in nebraska. that segment got a big response, here is what we said. >> if you spend time driving around america recently, you have may have noticed an awful

lot of the country seems to have shriveled up and died. take a trip on route to go in maine sometime, count the paper mills and abound in house as you see. down on route 23 and michigan or ohio, consider the empty factories ringed with barbed wire. outside the coastal cities, it seems like this are everywhere. this is your country now. shuttered car dealerships next to defunct restaurants across the street from thrift stores and methadone clinics. that is america. community after community, desiccated, empty husks with nothing left. huge swaths of the united states look like that now. so what happened? a lot of things happen. some of things are complicated and hard to change. the utter transformation of the way our leaders think about the american economy. during the last golden age hundred and 25 years ago, america's cities were ostentatiously rich. but it was still a recognizably

american class, tycoons accumulated fortunes, but they also felt some obligation to the country around them. steel tycoon andrew carnegie famously built libraries for the education of people beneath him, jon d rockefeller and so-called other robber barons donated huge portions of their wealth and in some cases their property to make this country better. yellowstone, acadia national park, et cetera eight. in january of 1914, henry ford more than doubled the prevailing factory wage to a thin remarkable $5 for an eight hour day. ford didn't have to do that, but his company was succeeding and he thought he should. some historians credit the creation of the american middle-class to that decision. it was nearly impossible to imagine a big company doing anything like that today. attitudes are just too different. your average finance mogul looks at workers as costs to be reduced or eliminated.

private equity isn't building a lot of public libraries these days. instead, by a distressed company, outsource jobs, liquidate the assets to hire middle-management, and then goes to the highest bidder often in asia. it has happened around the country, it has made a small number of people phenomenally rich. one of them is a new york-based hedge fund manager named paul singer. he has amassed a personal fortune of more than $3 billion. how he is he made that money? he made a lot of it by purchasing sovereign debt by financially distressed countries, usually at a massive discount. once a country's economy regains sustainability, he would bombard them with lawsuits. until he made his money back with interest. the practice is called vulture capitalism, feeding off the carcass of a dying nation. in some ways it's not so different from what singer and his firm have done in this country and to this country.

over the past couple of decades, elliott management has made billions by buying large stakes in the american companies and firing workers, driving up short-term share prices and in some cases taking government bailouts. insult to injury. "bloomberg news" wants to describe him as the world's most feared investor, that tells you a lot. no one is pretending his tactics are good for anyone but paul singer and despond. consider the case of delphi, the automotive parts supplier. during the last financial cris crisis, purchased delphi. singer and the other funds at the helm took billions of dollars in government bailouts paid for by you. they compared the tactics to extortion, but continued anyway. once they had they bail out money, they moved most of the jobs overseas and then either cut retirement pensions entirely or shifted the cost to taxpaye taxpayers. later financial commitments at home, factories abroad, sword.

the 29 delphi plants when hedge fund started buying delphi's debt were only operating in the united states in 2012. tens of thousands of unionized and white collar workers lost their jobs. paul singer's hedge fund cashed out for more than a billion dollars. to see that works? >> it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the capitalism we were promised in school. it creates nothing, it destroys entire cities, it couldn't be uglier or more destructive. so why is it still allowed in the united states? the short answer, because people like paul singer have tremendous influence over our political process. singer himself was the second largest donor to the republican party and 2016. he has given millions to a super pac that reports the public and senators. you may never heard of him, but in washington he is rock star

famous, that may be my he is paying a lower tax rate than your average fireman. just in case you are still wondering if our system is rigged, oh, yeah, it is. tonight we want to tell you more about how paul singer does business, the story begins in a small town called sydney nebraska. two hours outside denver, sydney is the longtime home of a sporting goods retailer cabelas which sells fishing and hunting gear. in october 2015, singer's hedge fund took an 11% stake in cabela's and pushed her sold the company. cabela's management announced he wouldn't look for a buyer. at the time, cabela's was a relatively healthy company. it was posting nearly $2 billion a year in gross profits, off $4 billion in revenue. there didn't seem to be any immediate need to sell. but cabello sold anyway, after being pushed. so one year after singer entered

the equation, bass pro shops announced the purchase of cabela's. the company's stock price surged, within a week literally a week, paul singer cashed out. he bought the stock for $38 a share, he sold it for $63 a share. his hedge fund made at least $90 million upfront, and likely more overtime. but in sydney and nebraska, it was a very different story. the rest of the story did not get rich, just the opposite. their community was devastated. the town lost nearly 2,000 jobs. people left, nobody values collapsed, and people couldn't leave they were trapped there. one of the last thriving small towns in this country went under. under. we recently set to producers to sidney to serve in the records. our producers talked to more than a dozen former cabela's employees, almost all of them refused to speak to us on camera fearful of legal retribution from the famously vicious paul singer. but off camera, they told us their story.

here it is. >> sidney is a great place to be, wherein sidney nebraska. for decades a sporting goods retailers cabela's had its headquarters here, as they company grew more prosperous so to the town. >> our model for every one was a small town values, big-time opportunities. >> but that motto was turned on its head when elliott management corporation managed by billionaire paul singer took an ownership stake in cabela's. >> when we got the news this company is coming in from new york city and buying a huge stake in cabela's, that shakes things up. >> at the time, cabela's was making more than a billion dollars a year. but paul singer's firm said it could make a quick buck by driving up the stock price by forcing a merger. >> the once thriving town of sidney lost everything. >> i cried the second i got the phone call. >> that's how a long time

cabela's employee reacted to the news that she was losing her job. >> i lost my future, i don't know what my future is. >> we lost 2,000 jobs, 2,000 jobs gone. >> sidney was devastated. >> he ruined it, a good american town. just destroyed it. >> before the merger, it was great. >> we were buried with business. >> now has a customer base has collapsed. >> how many new homes have been built since cabela's merged? >> in the city limits, one. one house. >> paul singer's hedge fund put cabela's and its site, sidney was experiencing a building boom. >> they would build a new housing subdivision. all of these great things are happening, and instead, we are working our tails off to try and figure out a way to survive. >> but the people of sidney it

has been a disaster. those who want to leave can't go, housing values have collapsed, tethering them they are. for those who want to stay, it's almost impossible to find a job. >> how long would it take you to find a new job? >> it took me just shy of nine months. >> isn't as good as your old job? >> no. >> if sidney collapsed, wall street cashed in. the fund made nearly $100 million. >> they don't care about rural nebraska, small towns. >> i hope paul singer is proud of what he did, the money got to him. he's a pretty sick human being. >> as we were doing that story, we were warned not to criticize paul singer. that is not a good idea, and as that played i got the following text from a very known person in washington. >> i can't believe you're doing this, i am afraid of paul singer. we will see what happens.

>> the u.s. senator in nebraska. you might think the death of a town in his state would be of concern to him, but so far doesn't seem like he's actually commented on what has happened to sidney. we looked hard, then we called his office to see if they could point to a time where he commented on the destruction of sidney or simply supply a statement about what happened there. his office didn't even respond to our producers. that's odd. but then here's one possible explanation for that, during his senate run, he received the largest possible donation from paul singer. >> in recent years, the left has launched a full blown attack on freedom of speech. we know where that's leading, and in fact, we are there. an attack on freedom of thought, freedom of conscience. what you are allowed to believe. we visit san francisco's effort to abolish the word felon from the city's vocabulary and tell

you why they are trying to do that as our special continues next. here's to the straggly ones.

the first ones. the 'hey', i look good with this' ones. the black, brown, red, and grey ones. the itchy ones. the ones grown by dad. the ones grown for dad. the 'i nearly didn't do it this year' ones. and the absolutely filthy ones. they all raise awareness. raise funds. start conversations and save lives. 'cos whatever you grow', will save a bro' learn more at movember.com

what are you doing back there, junior? since we're obviously lost, i'm rescheduling my xfinity customer service appointment. ah, relax. i got this. which gps are you using anyway? a little something called instinct. been using it for years. yeah, that's what i'm afraid of. he knows exactly where we're going. my whole body is a compass. oh boy...

the my account app makes today's xfinity customer service simple, easy, awesome. not my thing. >> tucker: control what people are allowed to say, and eventually you will control what they are allowed to think. that is of course the point, the modern left understands that principle just as the soviets did. it's the main reason they become so hostile to the first amendment, and attempted in fact to overturn it. earlier this year, we had a particularly bizarre example of this. the left's attack of clear english in san francisco includes the effort to abolish the word felon. why are they doing that? here's what they said.

>> there are more junkies in san francisco than there are high school students. you won't be surprised to learn that the city has also become a threatening and dangerous. the rate of propertied crime in saint pacifico with the highest of any big city in america. more than five dozen cars are smashed and robbed everything the day of the year. it's a disaster, but don't worry, the city's leaders have a plan to respond to this, not more cops or better enforcement of the law. that would be ridiculous. instead, san francisco has decided to ban words that suggest san francisco has a crime problem. people aren't allowed to talk about crime, maybe they won't notice crime exists. that's the thinking, so last month the city's supervisors decreed there would be no more convicted felons in san francisco. going forward, exit cons are to be called quote justice-involved person. if it happens to people they committed crimes against are also quote justice-involved person. victim and criminal are now

morally indistinguishable. that is on purpose, this is woke inequality. there is a problem, back in washington, leaders of the democratic party apparently haven't gotten the memo on this. some are still using the term of felon which is the real f word. so you might want to send the kids from the room as we fall the following clip, it's ugly. >> an overwhelming majority of americans agree that anyone trying to buy a gun should at least have to prove that they are not a -- or someone legally prohibited from owning one. >> i do promote -- right to vote. >> for all those men of color who got arrested and are now -- for life for selling weed on the corner. >> what enabled that young man to get a gun, he was not entitled to. he was a -- he had a conviction.

>> sorry about all the f -- words. how insensitive can you get? somebody better call hr. meanwhile back in the city there are no longer any juvenile delinquents. that whole category disappeared. young people impacted by the juvenile justice system, as if the system not the kid committed the crime. which is what they left in fact believes, it is your fault not theirs. check your privilege, middle america. drug addicts in san francisco are now called people with a history of substance abuse. use, not abuse. get it? heroin addicts are now the same as insulin-dependent diabetics. both use substances, you can't call one better than the other they are both exactly the same. you can laugh this off, san francisco is where all the crazy things happen. but think of the implications, language makes thought possible.

when the words disappear, so does our ability to think about the ideas the words are present. when they prevent you from saying the obvious over time it becomes impossible to see the obvious. that is exactly why they do it. those who control your words, control your mind. >> liberals will tell you they hate the president because he lies a lot. as usual, that is the opposite of the truth. they don't mind when he exaggerates, it's when he tells the truth that's when they go completely bonkers. we will explain, after the break. ♪

>> pope francis urging his mom .3 billion catholics to not let the feelings of the church distanced them from god. it is typical for the pope to use the christmas eve speech to address major events of the preceding year. he two years ago pope francis addressed the refugee epidemic around the world. last year was the global poverty crisis. this year, the head of the catholic church called for people to quote not wait for others to do well before doing good to them. meanwhile operation holiday underway, u.s. military personnel begin delivering stockings stuffed with gifts to the five military bases in syria. as part of the military's effort to bring a little christmas

cheer to those serving overseas. the operation also brought treats and homemade food. now back to tucker carlson tonight. >> tucker: throughout the impeachment drama, the president repeatedly told you he was a liar. his they said his lies will why he had to be impeached. the president's lives are exaggerations, no. what drives them completely crazy are those moments when he tells the truth. >> donald trump is a salesman, he is a talker, a booster, a compulsive self promoter. if he hadn't gotten rich and real estate, he could've made a fortune selling cars. most people know this, it is obvious. it's transparent, really. so is lying really the reason the left despises donald trump? or, could the problem be, as it so often the case, the exact

opposite of what they claim it is. think back over the last four years, when have the cnn anchor's be ben angriest? was it when he exaggerated his own accomplishments, no, they are used to that kind of lying. everyone who spends time around politicians is used to it, what infuriates them is not one trump lies, it is when he tells the truth. truth is the real threat to their power. there is an unspoken agreement among the people in charge of our country not to talk about what has happened to it, they are personally implicated in its decline for one thing. often they are profiting from it. the last thing they want is a national conversation about what went wrong. so they maintain an increasingly strict policy of mandatory reality avoidance. everything is fine, they shout. voices rising in hysteria, diversity is our strength, shut up or we will hurt you. but trump won't shut up, he keeps talking. that is his crime, that is why they hate him.

it started with his very first speech as a presidential candidate. >> when mexico sends us people, they are not sending us but the best. they are not sending you, they are not sending you. they are sending people that have lots of problems. they are bringing those problems with them. they are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they are -- some are good people. >> trump didn't claim that everyone coming over the self-importanborderis a criminay because it is true you are under no circumstances allowed to say it. acknowledging that not every illegal alien improves america raises uncomfortable questions. if illegal immigration has a downside, then why is washington allowed so much of it? if the people in charge actually cared about us, they would protect our borders. but they don't care, so they have left millions and millions

of foreigners whose names we don't even know for certain screen and from abroad to use our services, lower our wages, and in some cases, commit crimes. that is all true, which by definition made it unacceptable to say. the news anchors pretended that by saying it, trump was somehow attacking defenseless mexicans. but actually, he was attacking them. if the gatekeepers in our national media. the people who should have been sounding the alarm about all of this, but instead made common cause with the ruling class they were supposed to be covering and keeping on us. our system is rotten and corrupt, and the news media are a major reason for why that is. that is what donald trump pointed out, and not surprisingly, they despised him for doing it. ask yourself, what's a bigger scandal to your average journalist? the fact that homicidal ms-13 gang members have flooded into this country from central america and now terrorize communities from los angeles to long island? or the possibility that someone might complain about that? we don't need to guess the

answer, because last year donald trump dared it to complain about ms-13. watch. >> when the ms-13 comes in, when the other gang members come into our country i refer to them as animals and guess what? i always will. >> tucker: keep in mind that the motto of ms-13 is literally kill, rate, control. you might not know the details of what ms-13 actually is or what ms-13 actually does, it received far less media attention then donald trump's criticism of. murdering people with knives might be bad, but insulting illegal alien murderers is a far graver sin. >> the serious problem with the president if he mentioned any group of people in the united states. even if they are hardened criminals. >> the history of political leaders dehumanizing people even criminals and using animal metaphors is a dangerous one.

>> it is a very dangerous slope when you start dehumanizing people. it is what the did. >> dehumanizing people of the united states, these aren't people, these are animals. you have to wonder, does he not believe didn't the spark of divinity? >> we are all god's children, she tells us. spoken like someone who knows her own children will never face the consequence of the policies she supports. lost in the haze of all this was any meaningful discussion of those policies. a cynic might say that was by design, the whole point of the tantrum. it's certainly a theme in washington. a similar attack unfolded a few months before when the president was speaking candidly about immigration. during a conversation with advisors, trump asked why so many immigrants come to the u.s. from impoverished countries. if it is supposed to make america better, shouldn't we try to draw people from the most advanced societies? it's an obvious question, it's a

real question. so of course, cnn had to scream at you just to make sure you would never ask a question. >> this is a very deeply offensive language, it is the president quoted here, why are we having all these people from -- countries come here? racist remarks about immigrants coming from countries >> do you have an example of any country that the president referred to that is predominantly caucasian? >> i am not surprised, i am proud of. we are not all created equal, is at least not if you were born in a country. >> oh the posturing. but let's be real, is there a single living person who disagrees with trump's assessment of haiti? probably not. certainly haitian immigrants agree with them, that's why they moved here. nobody on any of the panels you

just saw is relocating to haiti anytime soon for same reason. oslo, helsinki, vienna, vancouver, no problem. port-au-prince? no. if you want to know what people actually think, watch what they do. no one really believes haiti is an appealing place. on the other hand, criticizing haiti in public calls into question decades of elite approved immigration policy so it must be forbidden lest our leaders be embarrassed. that is what is about. that's what it's always about. pick a topic. last year after the killing of saudi columnist jamal khashoggi resident trump said that while he disapproved of the motor, saudi arabia it remains a u.s. ally. president cited the $450 billion worth of saudi investments in the united states as well as agreements to buy american military equipment. if we broke our alliance with them, he said, the u.s. economy would suffer and china and russia would benefit instead.

now, whatever you think of the saudis, what he said is literally true. this is the arrangement we had, we have had with the saudi kingdom for generations now. everyone in washington knows that because a lot of them are on the saudi payroll. trump crime was saying it out loud. that's always the crime, the same of course is true with baltimore. baltimore may be the most depressing big city on the eastern seaboard, have you been there? everyone and washington has been there. if you want to take a sellout from washington to new york, you have to pass through baltimore. if it's daylight out, there is no denying the awful reality of the place. this summer the president told the rest of the world what it's like, baltimore he said is a "rodent infested, not to mention a corrupt mess post quote .

why is baltimore so bad, how did it get so poor and hopeless? part of the answer is 50 years of uninterrupted democratic party rule hasn't helped baltimore. but saying that would be embarrassing to the democratic party, so the party's apologists don't want to have the conversation. instead, they attacked the man who tried to started. speak out this weekend, racist messages ranging from the president's twitter. >> donald trump makes a racist debate about baltimore. >> another racist attack on the african-american member of congress. >> he uses the racist appeal, he uses a bait and switch. >> in the most bigoted and racist way. >> tucker: meanwhile in washington the leaders of the episcopal church, imagine air quotes around the word church, issued a statement calling the president's words about baltimore dangerous. you know that felt virtuous

issuing that statement, but nothing in the end changed in baltimore. baltimore remained actually dangerous, not in some theoretical academic episcopal church kind of way were all the violence is -- but real danger, the kind where your kid gets shot riding his bike to the store. that is what life is like in the physical city of baltimore a place where msnbc contributors and left-wing protestant clerics dare to tread. that place is still sad and desperate and screwed up, not one person in washington, d.c., he cares all that it is. except to the extent that they want to make certain you never think or talk about baltimore, because that would -- or thinking or talking about the war in afghanistan, immigration, middle-class life expectancy, pick something, thinking or talking about any of that might point out their own egregious failures unselfishness. whatever we do, we can't bring that up because it is embarrassing. so instead, let's just agree that donald trump is a racist

liar and move on. did you know that he's up to 14,000 lives by now? my gosh, what a bad person he is. unlike us. while walmart has gutted rural america, uglier, sadder and poor will make any chinese our main wrong rivals. how has walmart gotten away with that? by joining the vanguard of woke capitalism and attacking our constitution and attacking you. it will tell you how they do it, next

>> tucker: for decades, liberals attacked walmart. they said, it suppressed labor, it kept wages low, they said it filled american households with cheap chinese imports. all of that was true. they don't attack walmart

anymore, why? because walmart realized it was easy to keep doing everything it wanted to do while still getting love from the democrats. all they had to do was attack your constitutional right. here is how it works. >> walmart ceo doug mcmillan issued a statement calling on congress to ban many sem semiautomatic rifles as well as to seize firearms from some americans who have not been convicted of a crime or even charged with anything. for a company that operates primarily in rural america, all of this was a big step. how do rural americans feel about it? we can only guess, there is not a lot of pulling going on in montana or roxbury maine. but we do know that the new york city and washington and los angeles, all of the smart people were deeply impressed. they love walmart now. >> you know, good for walmart for doing this. these are weapons of war. >> may be what's actually happening is walmart's listening to its own customers. listening to the american

people, who want to not only in the stores, but in society. >> you have business being able to act in a more enlightened way than government does. >> walmart today announced new actions insisting that the status quo is unacceptable. >> i was happily surprised, i think this is a momentous decision. a watershed moment. >> tucker: so now walmart is now more enlightened than government is. says liberals. that is a fascinating turn around, because for years you will remember, walmart was the target of coordinated attacks on the left. progressives used to attack them for destroying small-town america and for exploiting workers. walmart hired p.r. consultants to push back for years, but the company never really changed its business and yet somehow the left has mostly stopped attacking them. how did that happen? part of the answer is that liberals got rich, and then lost interest in economics. they adopted identity issues instead. walmart figured out that he

could buy immunity from criticism from the left by mouthing left-wing pieties. that is all it takes really, sounding woke and they will leave you alone. walmart looks to sell the remainder of its ammunition, so this couldn't really be about saving lives. obviously, it's about the money. it's only about the money. that is not a surprise, there is a lot of money at stake. by revenue walmart is the largest company in the world. the walton family is the richest family in america, collectively they are worth more than $150 billion how did they get so rich, by selling foreign goods to domestic consumers. cheap, chinese garbage manufactured offshore at wages that american companies could never match. america actually lost 400,000 jobs thanks to walmart's reliance on imports. it shows, here is what many american towns look like today thanks to walmart. here are some of the gleaming new cities that the chinese

government built with the process. don't you wish we had that? we don't. at times walmart sold goods at a loss just long enough to drive american competitors out of business, smaller retail and if the jobs they provided just vanished. in many places, walmart became one of the few remaining employers. as of today, more than 1.5 million americans worked at walmart, it's not an improvement over what we had before. it is not getting better, 200520% worked part-time. today the majority work part-time. why? if walmart keeps employees hours low enough it can avoid paying them benefits. you can't live like that, walmart knows it. but they know the federal government, that is to say, you taxpayers, will subsidize lower wages with welfare. in other words, you aren't working so the walton family won't have to pay their employees enough to live. that is happening right now, but we are not talking about it.

because walmart is now pushing gun control. so take steps back and let's think about what is happening. the company more responsible than any other company for destroying and degrading rural america, for making our towns uglier and cheaper and poor, the same people who pushed the appalling lie that brightly colored plastic from china will make us happy, that company is now lecturing normal americans. at the very americans they have heard about how immoral they are for daring to protect themselves with firearms. if that is what they are saying. everyone in washington, new york, and los angeles is applauding them as they do it. it's not a good sign, dominic. >> tucker: elizabeth warren wants taxpayers to cover the cost of fixing the student loan bubble. of course she does, she was a professor. when our special continues, we will describe our alternative. if there is one, colleges are getting rich from student loans. people like elizabeth warren got rich because of student loans.

why don't they pay to fix the crisis? seriously. up next [female narrator] some missions don't take a holiday.

some work must go on. standing guard. keeping the peace. lending a hand. this is our chance to lend one back. there are more than one million active duty service members stationed around the world. and this holiday season, hundreds of thousands of them will remain on duty. on the water. on patrol. away from home.

now more than ever, they need your help to bridge the distance to family, home, and country. so this year, as you celebrate your favorite traditions, take a moment to send a piece of home to our nation's heroes. because even the smallest gesture can lighten the load. be a force behind the forces. visit uso dot org slash holidays to send a gift of home to our service members. where's tommy? (sfx: stage doors opening) i thought he was with you? no jack! (sfx: piano plays "twinkle twinkle little star" tommy? (sfx: audience laughing) go get him! don't stop. keep playing.

(sfx: pianist playing masterful duet) here we go here's the fun part did you do this? great job! (sfx: audience applause) >> tucker: welcome back to tonight special hour. student loans are one of the biggest burdens, they are white people under 30 tend to be angry, broke. student loans did that. now saying ask loan forgiveness is the answer or free college, both of which tax payers will pay for.

promising to steal his populist thunder and a band this year's election for democrats. doesn't have to be that way. earlier we presented our own idea, it's simple, put the burden on the people who are getting rich from student loans. if you're wondering why the majority of americans under 30 say they prefer socialism, and student loans are killing them, and they never go overweight thanks to extensive lobbying efforts here in washington, student loans cannot be erased by bankruptcy. recently it was explained what the consequences of that are. >> default who is going to be left holding the bag? one of the challenges is you can't actually get through bankruptcy, you can't remove this debt where you can with everything else. so what are you going to do? you're not going to pay or credit card bill. you are not going to pay your

mortgage. if you're not going to pay her hormone because you don't have a choice in bankruptcy do not pay your student debt. >> the student loan crisis is a modern problem. just 13 years ago, the average new graduate owed $20,000 in student loans. today, that number has dropped to $27,000. student debt is rising far faster than the embers of american workers, the earnings that are supposed to justify student loans in the first place. for professional degrees, it goes higher than that. the average law school graduate carries more than $110,000 in student loan debt. for no doctors, the burden is nearly $200,000 by the time they finished medical school. overall, 2 million americans owe more than 100 grand in student loans. imagine starting life that far behind. many of the people of paying off college loan debt never even earned a degree. they try to improve their lives by attending college. they wound up poor and in bondage, and not just a few of

them, millions and millions of them. what are the effects of this? well, the damage is far more profound than anything caused by climate change. young people are broke. as a result, they are delaying the vital life transitions that were automatic for earlier generations. in 1990, a quarter of american adults lived with their parents. today, the number has risen to 32%. the own ownership rate formally knows dropped 8 points from the generation before. unable to afford homes, millennials are getting married later, less often, and having fewer kids. it's not because they don't want children. according to gallup, the number that want children has not changed in 25 years, yet fewer are being born. the middle class cannot replace itself. that is why we are being told he must bring in millions of new workers from abroad. young americans want homes and families. helping them get those things ought to be our top priority as a country. we can't begin until they reform

the student loan system. why haven't we done that yet? a hugely powerful lobby stands in the way, colleges an. not surprisingly, these are the people who benefit from student loan debt. drive through rural america and you see how well they have done in a sea of poverty and despair, you will notice gated islands of affluence. these are colleges. outside the gates, people are unemployed and dying of opioid overdoses. inside the gates, and it's like the rates on south beach. if you haven't been to an american university lately, see it for yourself. everything is new. there has been a building boom underway for decades on campus, all of it funded by debt that has destroyed a generation of american kilts. over $100,000. there are hedge funds with schools attached. what to call justin with this money? they have hired massive stats of like-minded people, for one think about 1987 to 2012, the

number of administrators on campus colleges doubled. far bigger than the increase of students going to college. college administrators routinely make sick 6-figure salaries paid what they do? not a single thing that makes this a better country. college presidents often get seven haven figure salaries. their pay is probably the only thing in america rising as fast as tuition cost. academic publishers are getting rich from all of this too, prices of textbooks have tripled in the last 20 years. printing has gotten more expensive. nonacademic books are cheaper now than they were two decades ago. but students are a captive market and they are being exploited ruthlessly. nobody says a word about it. so to sum up, young people in this country get poor every year. college administrators, probably the least impressive group in the country, are getting richer at their expense. it's not a law of the universe that this has to happen. it's a product of policy and of the incentives are society's grated over time. right now, the federal government allows young people

to take out an almost unlimited amount in student loans. colleges know this, of course, and they hike their tuition to capture as much of that money as they can. young people have little choice but to go along with it. colleges control access to the credentials that we are all convinced are necessary, it mandatory to achieve success in the modern economy. it's a racket. these are the gatekeepers of modern society, and they are ripping off every kid who passes through those doors. what is the solution? well, here's one. have colleges cosign the loans. and why shouldn't they? if you and i enter into a partnership in business and we succeed, we share the rewards, but we also share the risk. if we fail, we are both on the hook for that. that is how honest arrangements work. college phones don't work that way. colleges get rich no matter what happens to the kids. kids are on their own.

if students get a degree in a decent job and repay their loans, that's great, but if they drop out of college or the degrees turn out to be worthless, as so many are, and they can't repay what they have borrowed, so what? the college doesn't care. they've got no state on the outcome. colleges get all of the benefit and none of the risk rate that is the definition of a scam. it's amazing it could be legal. it should not be legal. maybe congress should take 20 minutes from the russia hoax and posturing about climate change and fix one of the actual problems, one of the biggest problems this country faces. pass a law forcing colleges to share the liability on defaulted student loans. what would be the argument against that? that colleges can't afford it? the taxpayers should shoulder all the risks of that wesleyan or brown can build another diversity and inclusion and hire more useless, overpaid deans of sensitivity qwest markets hard to make that case out loud. it's too stupid. the student loan system is going to collapse, that is inevitable. before it does, it's been very clear about who has been profiting from it. well, that's all for tonight's special presentation. will you will be back, 8:00 p.m.

every weeknight, they show that if they sworn enemy of, prosody, smugness, and groupthink have a great night with the ones you love. see you soon. ♪ >> sean: welcome to this special edition of "hannity." merry christmas eve. and for the full hour tonight, we will highlight some of the big interviews we have done over the past few weeks. first up, my interview with president trump. i want to go to the double standard again, whether it's the dossier, whether it is ukraine helping and interfering in our elections, whether there is no quid pro quo, then you can at hunter biden joe biden on tape breaking about using taxpayer de firing of ukrainian, no experience in oil, gas, energy, or private e