hope you get better soon and if you are feeling well, stay that way. we will see you back here when "the story" continues on monday night at 7:00. have a great weekend, everybody. take care. ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." a week ago, last friday night when we opened the show, this country was just about to hit 100,000 cases of coronavirus. as of right now there are more than 100,000 in new york state alone for perspective. for weeks, through all of those, the cdc and the surgeon general have told us that we shouldn't buy face masks. face masks are not useful for stopping coronavirus, they said. in fact, they could make us sick and we need to save them for first responders. those two points didn't make sense together and we said so last week. now the government appears to agree with that and is advising americans to cover their faces

in public. it's a big change with big implications, and we'll follow it. in the meantime, rick leventhal joins us. with that in a look at the latest numbers across new york in the country. hey, rick. >> hague, tucker. we just learned about those new cdc guidelines this afternoon where they urged americans to wear nonmedical cloth face coverings outdoors. the president added this. >> we know that the transmission from individuals without symptoms is playing a more significant role in the spread of the virus than previously understood. so you don't seem to have symptoms and it still gets transferred. in light of these studies the cdc is advising nonmedical cloth face coverings as an additional voluntary measure. >> new york remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with 562 deaths in just 24 hours and authorities fear

what's happening here could start happening across the country. with michigan, louisiana and get predicted hot spots based on death rates in proportion of residents testing positive. indiana, illinois, connecticut also shoving spikes in infections with the next major city to claim the epicenter title, possibly detroit, showing a sharp rise in infections and deaths there. but of course, new york, new jersey still the hardest hit states with 35% of those tested have been the virus. the pentagon trying to help. now a green the javits center to take in covid-19 patients with 3,000 extra beds and the chairman of the joint chief of staff is now reconsidering the order that the usns comfort behind, not taking covid patients because it's not set up to do that. we can also tell you that after three days they only have three patients on board. they had 20 patients as of last night but they have 1,000 beds

and they are now trying to change the protocol so they can get more noncovid patients at least onto the ship. they think they will be able to do that very, very soon. tucker? >> tucker: rick, thinks a lot for that report. appreciate it. the administration's mask guidance is a welcome change, but if you read it carefully you'll notice it recommends cloth coverings over your mouth. not necessarily medical masks, and the reason is this, america doesn't produce nearly enough medical masks. as we showed last night, some of the masks we do produce, some of them are made abroad, are not making their way to american hospitals. >> what i asked 3m is unaware that they are authorized distributors from u.s. companies are telling me that the reason why our orders are being pushed down is because foreign countries are showing up with ch to purchase the orders. and when i told 3m that, not only did they not disputed, asked if they put out any guidance to prevent the behavior and the answer was no.

and so when i asked 3m, what is your production, they said they're making 10 million masks a week and when i said great, i have money i would like to purchase some of those, they said i couldn't. >> tucker: that's infuriating. today, thank heaven the president and pope to the defense production act to ban further mask exports and he singled out the company m for specific criticism. watch. >> we are not happy with 3m beard were not happy. and the people who dealt with that directly or not at all happy with 3m. we will see whether or not we do. i heard what he said today. i don't know the gentleman but we are not happy with 3m. >> tucker: earlier today, the ceo of 3m went on television to deny that his company has done anything wrong. >> the idea that 3m is not doing all it can to fight price gouging and unauthorized reselling is absurd. we have increased our production, as you said, by millions and millions and we are bringing more respirators in from china.

we are net importing into the u.s. and we've been telling the administration for days and days. it's important, david, that you understand, we are more than happy to shift our overseas production to the u.s., but there are going to be consequences on a humanitarian level as we are the sole and often the sole provider of those respirators in countries around the world. >> tucker: peter navarro is the white house trade advisor. we are happy to have him here. thanks so much for coming on. it's always a tip-off i think when you hear someone respond to a question nobody asked and you just saw the ceo of 3m defend his company against charges that they are prioritized other countries other than that united states by saying were not engaging in price gouging beer that wasn't the accusation. three m was shipping masks to other countries rather than the united states. while that and now? >> tucker, let me just say that 3m needs to stop whining and just produce masks.

get them to the american people. i've been dealing with hundreds of ceos on the front lines here, president trump's war against the virus, and 3m has been doing nothing but dissembling, he can't get any data out of them. here's the thing, tucker, 3m is operating as if it is a sovereign nation. its press department, it seems like he wants to be the secretary of state. and what they are clearly doing is a multinational corporation, which offers much of our production, basically going through this calculus as a sovereign nation of the short term interests of americans dying at the front lines versus the long-term business interests. the president just assigned -- literally, i just came from the west wing, just signed the defense production act, going to crackdown on the export of masks by two types of bad actors. one of these brokers operating in shady black markets that have

been vacuuming up masks and other protective gear here and exporting, and we are going to stop that right at the border with the help of the cdp and the post office. and apropos of your great segment last night with the guy from florida, these distributors, who, instead of filling orders here domestically, you're taking that money and running off shore, that is going to stop too. president trump, the commander-in-chief and attorney general barr, is the sheriff in town and we are cracking down on that. do your point about what we are going to expect from 3m, 3m is basically going to be helping the american people fight this battle. there will still be some exports from the united states factories to our friends in mexico and canada, but as for the rest of 3m's production around the world we will try to get our fair

share. we will get our fair share of that, and looked, tucker, these guys have got to stop whining and spinning and do their business for the american people. it's like exhausting to work for these people and we don't have the hours, much less the minutes to deal with them. it's really, wow. >> tucker: exactly. >> come on, dudes. >> tucker: peter navarro, the most blatant public official in government. thank you. >> thank you, i wear that as a badge of honor. >> tucker: you ought to. it's a rare thing. the emergence of a new and dangerous form of the coronavirus became known to the public outside of china about three months ago. the first case in this country appeared on january 21st of this year. since the middle of march, much of america has been locked down. we are three weeks into the largest and most disruptive response to a national emergency in our lifetimes. in the middle of that you often get the sense that our leaders are still feeling their way along, making up details ad hoc as they brought forward and the

mass directive is a perfect example of that. why question work well, they're waiting the details of what to do next from the professionals, they have gathered around them for direction and it makes sense. chief among the experts now crafting national policy is a 79-year-old physician from brooklyn called anthony fauci. he certainly has the credentials for the job. he graduated first in his class at cornell medical school. he spent more than half a century practicing medicine. he's been the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases since 1984. for perspective, those of us who are 50 were freshman in high school when he started there, so you can't say he's not experienced. he definitely is. we've interviewed dr. fauci respectfully on this program and we gladly do that again if he came back, and we hope he will come back. he's an impressive person. but that does not mean that he's never wrong. on the question of this pandemic, apache has been wrong repeatedly on january 21st, he appeared on television for example to reassure the public that the wus

was not worth worrying about. >> bottom line, we don't have to worry about this, right? >> obviously we need to take it seriously and do the kinds of things that the cdc and the department of home security are doing, but this is not a major threat for the people of the united states and this is not something that the citizens of the united states right now should be worrying about. >> tucker: it's not a major threat. so, two days after he made the appearance you just saw, chinese security forces quarantined an entire city of 11 million people. in some cases, they locked residents inside their homes from the outside. some died there. chinese authorities were clearly panicked by what was happening, but anthony fauci was not. he assured americans that while they might want to reconsider immediate travel plans to wuhan, going to the super bowl was absolutely fine. but as it turned out, it was not fine at all. ron desantis, florida governor, and believes the super bowl in miami might've been a breeding ground for the spread of the virus.

but dr. apache kept going and he did it in public. february 17th, coronavirus cases were starting to appear all over the world and it was a real concern, he once again reassure the american public that the danger in this country was just "minuscule." he said people ought to worry more about the "real and present danger of the annual flu" than about coronavirus. to be clear, we are not attacking tony fauci for getting around on coronavirus. most people did get it wrong, in and out of medicine. it's never easy predicting which faraway problems will become imminent crises here at home. even the experts make big mistakes. their human beings. they make human mistakes. and that is exactly the point that we ought to remember going forward. human beings frequently underestimate risk, particularly risk on the horizon, then they very often enter and overreact a risk once they identify it and we may be watching that happen right now. two months ago anthony found chief told us not to worry about

this epidemic. now he is demanding that the federal government quarantined the entire country. >> doesn't make sense to you that some states are still not issuing stay issuing stay-at-home orders question whether there should be a federally mandated directive for that or not, i guess it's more t just, scientifically, doesn't everybody have to be on the same page with this stuff? >> yeah. i think so, anderson. i don't understand why that's not happening. as you said, the tension between federally mandated verses states rights to do what they want is something i don't want to get into, but if you look at what's going on in this country, i just don't understand why we are not doing that. we really should be. >> tucker: a nationally, federally mandated shutdown. how long would such a shutdown last? well, just two days ago anthony fauci suggested the country should remain under quarantine until there are no more coronavirus infections and no more deaths.

he did not suggest when that might be, if ever. the politicians followed his lead anyway. virginia governor shut down his stay until june 10th. a source acknowledged tonight that andrew cuomo has privately discussed locking down the state of new york until possibly fall. meanwhile, various epidemiologists are talking about putting an entire hear of cycled shutdowns. that means americans will be allowed back to work and home again and then back to work over and over again. to be clear, these are extreme measures. we can only guess of the social and economic destruction they might wreak, but it would be profound, that is for sure. with this much at stake it's important to know more about the science behind these proposed policies. so, what is the science? begins with sophisticated computer models that predict where and how quickly the virus will spread beer the purpose of these predictions is to come as you've often heard, flatten the curve. not necessarily to lower the death rate. we haven't been able to do that much, but to slow the spread of the pandemic over a longer

period of time. why? because if everyone were to get sick at once our health care system would collapse and that would leave coronavirus patients and many other sick people without care and that would be a disaster, so were trying hard to prevent it and we should be here but it means these productions really matter. how reliable have they been? well, many government policymakers have relied on the model created by the institute for health metrics and evaluation. the ih me. by some measures by death rate that model has been fairly accurate. yesterday for example the model predicted 1,036 deaths nationwide and that turned out to be close to what happen. today it protects about 1200 and judging by the numbers right now, 8:14 eastern time, that should be roughly accurate too. but on other, likely more important numbers, these productions have been terrible at best. as of yesterday, the ih and e model predicted the country would need 135,000 hospital beds just to treat coronavirus patients. that's what they said. new york alone a predicate would

need 56,000. that turned out to be not even close. yesterday, new york was about 13,400 coronavirus hospitalizations. that's not even a quarter of what the model predicted and even that is closer than what the model predicted in other states. for example, the model predicted oklahoma would need 1,000 hospital beds. how many are they using a customer at 38. louisiana was forecasted to need 5,800 beds. instead yesterday they had about 1600 cases, just a small fraction. and so on and so on. nationwide, three states had more hospitalizations than the model predicted and in all three of those they were small states with very small outbreaks so far. so why does this matter customer hears the problem with getting these numbers so horribly wrong. these numbers have driven massively disruptive government policy. our entire national shutdown is based on the fear that coronavirus patients would overwhelm hospitals. outside of parts of new york city, that has not happened. and we are glad for that, but

we're concerned about what we've done to prevent it on the basis of models that have been wrong. so, flip it on its head. what would've happened if the model had been accurate? if it had accurately predicted how many hospital beds we needed? if we had known that, would we have quarantined the country cosmic that is a good question. unfortunately, it's too late now. more than 10 million americans have already lost their jobs. imagine another year of this. that would be national suicide, and yet, that is what anthony fauci is suggesting, at least. now, we're not suggesting that the fat she wants to hurt america. doesn't seem like he does come he seems look a very. but fauci is not an economist or someone who fears being unemployed himself. this is just an observation. fauci has bulletproof job security. he's not thinking that way. he has the luxury of looking at the world through the narrow lens of his profession. he doesn't seem to think much

outside that lens. watch this exchange from nbc's morning show yesterday. >> i know it's difficult, but were having a lot of suffering, a lot of depth. this is inconvenient from an economic and personal standpoi standpoint, but we just have to do it. >> tucker: inconvenient? 10 million americans out of work and staring at poverty. that is not "inconvenient," as you just heard dr. fauci put it. it's horrifying. in fact, it's a far bigger disaster than the virus itself by any measure. tony fauci, decent as he may be, can't see that because he doesn't think it's his job to see it. but even a doctor should be able to think beyond the models. our response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation. poor countries are unhealthy countries, always and everywhere. in poor countries, people die of treatable diseases. in poor countries people are far more vulnerable to obscure viruses, like the one we are fighting now. you want to keep americans from

dying before their time? question recommend don't impoverish them. for all his credentials, his experience, his apparent personal decency, dr. anthony fauci does not seem to understand any of this and we should never let someone like that run this country. bret baier is our chief political anger and host of "special report" every evening at 6:00. were always glad to see him, particularly tonight for some political perspective you think you so much for coming on. >> sure, took appeared to be spoon these underneath it all are essentially political questions. these are decided by the people we elect as politicians. what is the political backdrop behind the question of law can be of the president to decide on a federal lockdown or not. where do you think they are at on that right now? >> i like how you started, saying the dr. fauci is one of the world-renowned infectious disease experts in the world and he and deborah birx have had the sway and the ear of president president trump, especially in recent weeks when his tone is

obviously have changed and his actions changed. i do think the president is leaning towards letting the governors in this federal society decide, make these decisions on shelter in place rules, and, as you mentioned, he is balancing out basically a nuclear bomb on the u.s. econo economy. the u.s. chamber of commerce, and say what you want about the u.s. chamber of commerce and the data that it puts out, said that one in four small businesses is either closed or teetering on closing. you have efforts to salvage these things, but for another month alone, let alone talk about a year, you're talking about major devastation on the economy and that is a policy decision that goes beyond the medical decision. the seriousness of it not taken away, you've been doing interviews about this virus since january, but there is a balancing here that even dr. fauci talked about with steph curry just a few days ago. he said that there are places, i

think there are places in the country where you want to look carefully, maybe you want to pull back a little bit on the restriction so long as you don't let it rip and say i don't care what happens. treat new york city a little bit different than the way you treat nebraska. >> tucker: so, and that is certainly encouraging to hear that. without getting into the details of the numbers, i don't think i'm fluent enough speaking for myself, but it seems like the model has been fairly accurate on the death rate. maybe the easier part to predict. it's not been accurate at all on the hospitalization rate, which is really significant for reasons we just explained. have you, in covering this story, heard anybody make any decisions mentioned that? that their massive loss with the predictions here? >> when pressed on it, experts say the models are only as good as the data that you put in, right? so the data they're getting from spain, from italy in these countries all abroad, and now here in new york and new orleans and washington, they're putting that in.

it could change that curve and once you start going down, may be a change of the trajectory. our late great friend dr. dr. charles krauthammer said this about ebola. he said quarantine is the ultimate violation of civil liberties. having committed no crime, having done no wrong, you're sentenced to house arrest or banishment. it's unfair, it's un-american, but in an epidemic threatens, when it does we do it because we must. viruses don't wait. the sooner we reset the balance, the sooner we get serious. of the problem you have to get over that hump in the economy ho come back. >> tucker: that's right. bret baier, great to see you tonight. thank you for that. up next we will speak to a scientist featured in a netflix documentary who says he may have found a cure for the coronavirus pier but first, we look at the usually bustling town of santa monica in california.

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♪ >> tucker: just days after this news come of this novel version of coronavirus surfaced in wuhan china, netflix released a series called "pandemic." talk about good timing. one star of the series was a doctor called jacob glanville. he talked about how a small lab was able to beat major actors of finding treatments for deadly diseases. watch this.

>> we should not have been able to beat major pharmaceutical companies will weigh more people and money than us but my experience with big pharma as they typically move very slow and they are risk adverse. so there actually aren't that many people as you would think working on new techniques. that is worked to our advantag advantage. >> tucker: now the physician you just saw says he may have found some kind of care for coronavirus. dr. joins us now. doctor, think you so much for joining us now. at the outset we said we approach anything like this with skepticism and also with the mind of a nonscientist. explain, for our audience, me, what this is and why you think it works. >> sure, thanks for having me on, tucker. what we've done is we've engineered neutralizing antibodies that go and block the virus. the coronavirus come if you were to zoom in on it, you would see a ring of spikes and uses the spikes to invade human cells. we've identified a series of super potent antibodies that block those spikes and therefore

make the virus no longer infectious. >> tucker: if so, is this something that is done to defeat other viruses? >> yeah, this is the thing that turned the tide against ebola. ebola used to be a death sentence. about 50% mortality rate, and then once a good antibody solution was made i think 90% of people can walk away. that transformed ebola from a dangerous crisis to a manageable treatment. we've also got antibodies to treat rabies. we've got antibodies to treat rsv in babies. antibodies are used for antivenom. so this is an extremely well-established platform technology and has the advantage that you can produce antibodies much faster than you can make a vaccine. as i mentioned previously on all that modeling come every day counts. preventing an incredible amount of money out of our economy and risking lives they want to have a medicine as quickly as possible. >> tucker: welcome of that is exactly right. assuming this does work, how long would it take to get from your lab to the public?

>> well, yeah, and to address the question of skepticism, i'm glad you brought that up. our next move is we have this off to the u.s. military, a contortion of the gates foundation and some private groups, and all of them are going to test the potency of neutralization of our therapeutic and were also working with laboratories to make sure this is safe to put into people, and were also going to scale up manufacturing. so we do a phase 1/2 human trial and were aiming to do that around august. you're giving that about 600 patients and an anti-buddy come and give to patient and it works in five to ten days to protect them whereas, a vaccine, you need six or seven weeks before the person is protected so that is another advantage. as soon as we know that a come it safe that people can take it without hurting them and b, it's effective and people are no longer dying or getting much more sick, then you can release the drug through cynical compassionate use and this is something that was also done in the ebola virus where if you don't have something fda approved yet but you've got

proof of efficacy and nothing else could come he can start releasing it to the masses. >> tucker: last super quick question because our segments on tv are not long enough to expensively so complex and i know are followers are going to want to look at this online. if you want to type into google to get a direct approximation of what this and, what would you type in? >> i would type in our website which is a whole lot of information about monochrome all therapeutics. >> tucker: sent a fax. thank you so much for coming on and of course, we are rooting for you. >> thanks so much. >> tucker: from the early days of the coronavirus, doctors have relayed promising news about the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine. they cited that drug at one point as potential therapy. because the president was helpful, the press with the opposite of that.

they opposed finding a cure for the coronavirus because they fear to make of the presidents and political advantage. this was everywhere. here are a few examples. "usa today" wrote this, "dr. donald trump pedals snake oil and false hope." ." cnn needless to say said the same. "trump pedals unsubstantiated hope in dark times." of "the washington post," a loathsome publication of a fairly even a newspaper now, declared "trump is giving people false course. it's all snake oil." cliches being a specialty of "the washington post." none of these people had any freaking clue what they were talking about. in fact, they were the ones that were peddling unsubstantiated snake oil. hydroxychloroquine is still being researched but this will tell you a lot. doctors who were actually treating people who were sick with the coronavirus seem to believe in it. many of them do. here's how we know that. a global survey of 6200 medical professionals currently fighting the coronavirus pandemic found that

hydroxychloroquine was the most frequently cited drug they would turn to treat patients. it had the plurality. 37%. it was number 1 out of 15 options. the biggest believers in hydroxychloroquine were not people who watch fox news or even governed by donald trump you they were doctors in spain and italy, two countries where the epidemic has been the worst. just to let you know unequivocally, and for all time, that the media lied about a potential therapy to defeat this disease and save your life because they are politically partisan. that tells you everything you need to know. fox medical contributor dr. marc siegel joins us tonight be a thank you so much for coming unpaid without dragging you into all the clinical nonsense, it's not your world, not where you live, not where you want to live, tell us what doctors are saying about hydroxychloroquine. >> hi, tucker. first of all, hydroxychloroquine has been looked at in the test tube in china and found to be

very, very effective against this coronavirus, specifically a part of the cell where the virus enters. that was a very strong study. then john also has some follow-up studies where they looked at the effects in people and it had some effects on people. in france, we talked about a study in france which was pretty small but showed that it was effective. now, as you said, doctors have been using it all over the united states, many are saying that it's working. we've seen it in new york state, giving it to hundreds of people right now in hospitals with a lot of promising signs, and finally, the university of pennsylvania has just begun a major double-blind, randomized, prospective clinical trial and you know when they do that, when they spend that kind of money? when they believe a treatment may work. i can't prove to you that it works at this point, but it's extremely promising, and there's a lot of evidence that it does work. >> tucker: that's so interesting. do you think, and this is

politically tinged but i cannot resist, the terrible publicity that this drug has received, just relentlessly come over the past three weeks, this is a crackpot cure, this is snake oil. do you think that has made physicians hesitant to try it as a therapy? >> no, i think physicians go with what works. i think they're facing a situation where they don't know what offer patients. patients are getting worse for the idea that there is a drug out there that is very well tolerated for malaria prophylaxis and rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, that they could use it for something like this makes doctors want to try it. >> tucker: right, that's right. i think a lot of us -- i know i've taken on trips abroad to malaria zones, it's a common drug. so here's a question i wanted to ask. it is a message you said he would like to deliver to nurses and doctors tonight fighting the coronavirus. what is it? >> talk to caius kelly was a nurse who died last week

tragically. may not have had enough personal protective equipment in new york. john murray is a 92-year-old physician who helped discover the kind of lung problem that is actually killing people from coronavirus and he died of coronavirus. we've been seeing a lot of medical professionals on the front lines, emergency technicians, nurses, doctors, over 60 doctors in italy have died trying to treat the covid-19 coronavirus. i'm a medical student who i trained and he is now graduating three months early at nyu medical center to go on the front lines to fight covid-19. he's reinvesting his soul and why he went into medicine in the first place. he has fear, he is worried about his family, but he is investing himself. a lot of doctors around new york right now are changing their professions. the going from being an orthopedist or being retired or having been on the front lines, now to go to fight the virus. that is the war against the virus. health care workers, nurses,

doctors, emts, they're on the front lines. paramedics. and we should congratulate them for their efforts. >> tucker: i couldn't agree more. of the rest of us are cowering in fear, and we should be afraid, and these people are jumping face first into a situation that could kill them. i really admire that. i think we should all admire that. thank you, dr. siegel, for saying that. >> thank you, tucker. >> tucker: well, if you thought the shutdown in response to coronavirus might give you a rest and a brief holiday from the political lunacy we've been marinating in for three years, think again. we'll describe what some are doing to advance the woke agenda as america fights a pandemic. we will be right back.

>> tucker: so, the rest of the countries thinking about keeping their loved ones from dying from the wuhan coronavirus, but some political activists see this pandemic is a perfect chance to push through their pre-existing political agenda. california governor gavin newsom said as much out loud this week. house majority whip jim clyburn reportedly told party members of the virus was "a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision." which, by the way, is disgusting. for congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, fighting a deadly virus is just a smaller front in the fight to push or punish americans, reward or punish them for their skin

color, for race obsession. that is a topic she is completely fixated on peer to roasted in tweet. "covid deaths are disproportionately spiking in black and brown communities. why question right because the chronic control of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap et cetera underlying health conditions. inequality is a comorbidity. covid should be drafted with th. >> tucker: let me say there's nobody dumber or more shallow in america than this child of privilege, alexandra geiser cor. she should be quiet and this time and anyone who listens to her is foolish. a research fellow and contributing editor joins us tonight but thanks so much -- and i'm not accusing most democrats of this because i don't think they're guilty of it -- but there are some at the core who see this as an opportunity. what are they trying to do with it? >> exactly right and for the

last 100 years, progressive and socialist movements have always thought to capitalize on the opportunities for morris, to famines, from crisis and epidemics to implement their political agenda and receive the same thing happen now. criminal justice advocates are using this moment to empty out thousands and thousands of people from jail. you have people in congress like rashida tlaib who are now advocating for $1 trillion platinum coins and disturbing te people, and you are seeing every kind of expansive progressive and socialist idea, but i think this is the real thing, is that they are falling flat. if you have 10 million people out of work, this kind of identity politics that has really captured american life over the past few years is falling on deaf ears and i hope if there is a silver lining with the coronavirus it's that we can focus on real, tangible problems and leave identity politics behind. >> tucker: well, of course, because there's nothing more corrosive. it will destroy your country.

it turns the country against itself. it has always been a recipe for destruction. it's never been a healing idea. i wonder, do you think this is speculative, that i can't resis. do you think the audience for this has shrunk because marketing the average person even hears that garbage anymore did they wave their hand and say, oh, be quiet? >> it really shows the disproportionate nature of our discourse. on twitter you have this kind of high octane rhetoric that is capturing a small group of activists but if you actually go out to the city in towns across america, people are really worried about the things that matter. they're worried about their families, worried about their jobs, worried about small businesses. they're not worried about any of these abstract issues and i think what it really reveals is the decades long failure of progressive politicians to tackle those real kitchen table issues and they are averting to abstractions because they can't make an argument on the merits that is working in real life. >> tucker: totally right.

we're looking at 30% unemployment in alexandria kaser cortez giving a rich girl lecture on racism, it's like too much. just, be quiet, please. he so much for coming on, appreciate it. well, one goal that has been in progress for a long time among activists is being pursued with gusto during this shutdown that is the plan to empty the nation's prisons. recently california federal judge ordered immigrants to be released from detention if they are medically "vulnerable," which by the way, would describe most of the country at this point. one beneficiary of that order was a man called martin vargas. he was released for having diabetes and hepatitis c. he is a sex offender. he's guilty of child molestati molestation, lewd acts with a minor. another diabetic immigrant was convicted despite a conviction for child abuse so proudly that a standard now. until we have a vaccine for coronavirus, and who knows when that will be, we have to police

child molesters as long as they have diabetes. meanwhile, people are being threatened with jail for going outside with out permission. use authorities in florida are rest minister having a church service. they put the christians in prison, they let the child molesters out. oh, in virginia you saw a shopkeeper in prison. he's there without bail for the crime of defending himself against burglars. by the way, he has diabetes too. he just collapsed from it. that is progressive paradise. they shouldn't have wante want e for coronavirus production say that, everyone wants a cure. but they shouldn't be using this moment to leverage political. it's wrong. now they're rolling out the production of hand sanitizer and possibly other important products. we will tell you why and how after the break. plus, the very latest footage out of a weirdly quiet los angeles.

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♪ >> tucker: early in this epidemic, medical laboratories were blocked for testing for the disease by the cdc p that is the story that needs to be told and much more detail and at some pod out how and who did it. but for right now, america is suffering a shortage of hand sanitizer. alcohol distillers could step up to fix that shortage because a core of hand sanitizer's ethanol. but they are now being hindered by fda safety rules.

it's hard to believe, but it's true. jim copeland's director of legal policy from the manhattan institute. we're happy to have him on, thank you so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me, tucker. >> tucker: explained that, if you would. of course. >> when it comes to hand sanitizer, the alcohol for hand sanitizer goes through the food and drug administration, so they've been slow here, just as they've been slow throughout this process, most notably at the testing process where they basically told private industry to stay away and let the cdc, the centers for disease control, develop, manufacture, and conduct all the testing in the united states, which is why our testing was so far behind most of the other developed countri countries. >> tucker: we've kind of laid off criticizing the cdc on this show because there's a lot of gd people there and we believe they are trying hard, but when the history of this period is written, cdc is going to look

like a villain, i think, because they really screwed up at the fact they're slowing this down -- i mean, we've had ethanol for thousands of years. we know what ethanol is an ethyl alcohol, all the derivations. what would they need to test quest markets hand sanitizer! >> it's letting the perfection be the enemy of the good and that is what we've seen time and time again. that is the way our court system is set up your courts defer to these experts, their experts but in a narrow way. as you are talking about earlier, dr. fauci, his boss is a broad knowledge as decades of research dealing with hiv, and , they're not political acts in these jobs. but they don't necessarily know how to mass produce and distribute a test on the scale that is necessary here and we

needed to bring in the private sector. we are seeing now the companies in the private sector are developing much better tests much more quickly and rolling them out at a much greater scale. >> tucker: can just ask the obvious question, and again, there will be time to get forensic about what happened, but is anyone at the cdc taking responsibility for their failure, producing flawed tests very late. has anyone apologized? >> i believe dr. fauci did say it in one of these press conferences that, you know, there were failures made. i mean, listen, no one wants to discourage these folks. they are working hard. >> tucker: for short periods because they do have the best interest of the country at heart. the problem is our regulatory structure is a 1972 regulatory structure and we are more worried about eliminating error rates than having perfectly safe tests, perfectly safe vaccines then we are rolling things out, and this is what my colleagues

and i have been talking about for years. hope we re-examine this. i hope at the end of this we re-examine our regulatory structure and realize that delaying the introduction of antibodies and drugs also costs lives. >> tucker: jim kaplan, thank you for coming on tonight. good to see. more to come, we will be right back. (music)

♪ >> that's it for us tonight.

we're out of time, the week is over, it's a different country than it was on monday and it will be a different country next friday. we hope you enjoy that. thanks for spending an hour with us tonight. sean hannity next. ♪ >> sean: think about this, a lot of breaking news this friday night. one month ago today, what were we thinking about? voters in 14 states went to the polls. was super thursday if you're joe biden, super tuesday but in all seriousness, what a difference one month can make, so much has changed. the shocking events of the last few weeks on the character in the course of this republic. this is a transformational time. you're watching daily the books