washington, d.c., good to speak to you. best of luck to you. that is "the story" of wednesday 20 may 27, 2020. good night, everybody, tucker is next. ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." we will have the latest on the riots in minneapolis last night and yes, they were in fact riots no matter what they are telling you on the other channels. that's a fact and we have the tape. first tonight we will state the obvious. donald prompt tweets an awful lot and many wish he wouldn't do it. whether it's politically wise for themselves to do this, donald trump has an absolute right to express what he actually thinks. even if other people on earth disagree with him. that's what they were talking

about, the freedom of speech. sadly it's becoming a much less free country lately. any time in the past hundred years at least and the people who wield that power have no interest whatsoever in the right to say something they disagree with. in fact they are delighted to to silence you if you try. twitter for example now openly purges users whose political views, and it's bewildering that they are allowed to do this. because like all the tech companies, twitter only exists because twitter enjoys key exemptions from federal law. in the white house does, too. and yet they've done absently nothing so far to help you. until yesterday twitter returned the favor by leaving the

commander commander in chief's twitter feed alone. the president tweeted that mail in ballots could be "substantially fraudulent. as a factual matter that is true and we can prove it. as we told you last night, mail-in ballots have been linked to numerous cases of election fraud. people have been convicted for it. so it's not really up for debate. this is now the central objective of the democratic party and so you are not supposed to know any of that. yesterday twitter placed a so-called fact-check on the president's tweet." trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots will lead to a rigged election. fact-checker say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud." as a factual matter, that is law and there is no other way to interpret it. but worse than a lie is political censorship. so who decided to do that? well, theo or really entitle head of site integrity, on

twitter. an ironing free zone where they don't understand that the titles alone are scary. not surprisingly, roth is a political activist. in january 2017, roth compared kellyanne conway to the propaganda joseph goebbels. that same day he re-he referred to the president's new staff as actual. and a lot more, and these are the people controlling, they are authoritarian. if they sense of the president they will think nothing at all of silencing you and they don't come they would gladly do it. their job was to safeguard the first amendment which was designed to protect the weak, not the strong, the week are protected by the freedom of speech.

their readers and viewers. they weren't supposed to be simply thugs hired to protect the powerful but that's what they have become. watch don lamont of cnn who in his defense often has no idea what he's saying trying to bully twitter into sense and the censg ideas they don't care for. >> twitter wouldn't remove those tweets. people have been removed from twitter for far less outrageous behavior. come on, jack dorsey. >> stop hiding behind the first amendment for profit. stop doing it. do the right thing. stop hiding behind the first amendment says don lamont. in the annals of cable news that must be the most unintentionally hilarious line ever uttered by a script reader, as if exercising

your god-given inborn right to speech and thought and conscience is somehow wrong. it's immoral. don lamont demands a stop thinking for yourself. get on board and obey, until the party line or we will hurt you, that's his message. that's a mirror image of what journalists should be saying. the only reason we have a free press are, it's only one and that's to fight back against authoritarian power structures that demand we read from approved scripts. and now cnn is writing the scripts, it's terrifying. all of a sudden it's everywhere. throughout april and may, youtube through google took down and any part of a video that explicitly -- recommended guidance. if you dare to question the decrees of the politicians, some of whom were impressive and wise and many of whom were dumb and making things up as they go along, but if you criticize them they were censored. facebook ceo mark zuckerberg recently explained why censorship was not really bad.

in fact it saves lives. >> information, and if someone is spreading something that gives people the risk of physical harm then we take that down and we don't allow that on facebook. it is also other misinformation that may not lead to physical harm, but it isn't the type of stuff we want to be spreading to our system. they announced the ideas must be thrown into the fireplace and forgotten forever. and you can imagine who's on the panel, a list of political activists and an aggressive opponent of free speech. and that's a rhetorical question by the way, you know the answer.

thanks so much for coming on. the first question, not sure if you can answer, but why has no one done anything about creeping censorship in this country. these companies operate because congress allows them is a special exemption. why has congress to nothing in the white house done nothing to stop this? >> you may see some reports saying that president trump is going to sign executive orders tomorrow which will address some of these issues. since the 2016 election, the far left has hopped from hoechst to hoechst to hoechst to try to explain the laws of the ballot box. one of them is they go after only platforms for the crime in their view of being neutral in the 2016 election. they are committed to making sure these online platforms are not neutral again. as you laid out and we are seeing at facebook with the oversight board, we are seeing on twitter with the decision to

engage in political speech against the president, i think going forward if these entities want to be political actors, they have first amendment rights. they shouldn't necessarily have these special bonus protections that only that set of political actors have in section 2:30 that we have talked about. >> tucker: it is so infuriating that the congress has done nothing to protect the public from censorship, it's hard to even express it out loud. how can you have a free and fair election when opinions are being aggressively censored to favor one side? >> look. these are fact checks that are going on, this is opinion journalism at this point. they have decided twitter to engage in the president of the united states with its own political partisan viewpoint. they've gone to congress time and time again, if they don't engage in partisan political bias. then we see conduct like this,

just a regular business practi practice. put aside the fact that you choose to speak, you can't go to congress and say we are neutral politically and then engage in this type of conduct, that is a type of unfair or deceptive business practice that would get a lot of other companies under a lot of scrutiny including the federal trade commission. >> tucker: i'm just thinking that someone in the bureaucracy or the senate or the white house could make a name for themselves by saving the country from the darkness of censorship. do you think -- and i want to ask again very bluntly -- can we have a fair election when all go through these narrow toeholds? >> doing nothing at this point is not an option in my view. these companies have told themselves exactly what they are going to do. you mentioned the facebook oversight board that has pam carlin on there and a number of other political actors who had said that the 2016 election was

unacceptable political outcome. facebook has now tossed the keys to content moderation to this group of partisan activists ahead of 2020 election and i think it's fair for the american public to step back and say, i don't know that this one group of political actors should get special benefits above and beyond the first amendment rights that every other political actor enjoys. >> tucker: i think that's right. i think the tech companies are too powerful. i think it's clear now. thanks so much for coming on, great to see you tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> tucker: in response to the censorship efforts, public president tweeted, "republicans feel that conservative platforms totally silent voices and we strongly regulate or close them down before we ever allow this to happen. we saw what they attempted to do, and it would be a

free-for-all and we will see if that happens. dana perino just had an interview with mark zuckerberg, the head and founder of facebook and she asked interacted with the president just said. he was his response. >> he said that he is thinking about regulations or perhaps shutting down social media sites, what is your reaction to that? >> i would have to understand what they actually intended to do but in general the government it chooses to censor a platform, because they are worried about censorship, it isn't exactly the right reflects there. >> tucker: the whole interview airs tomorrow, but for now dana perino joins us. so you just talked to

mark zuckerberg, was it your impression that there was concern that the white house and federal trade commission were ever going to do anything to prevent censorship. does he take it seriously do you think? >> i definitely think they take it seriously, and i think -- i've never had an intervie oppoo interview jack dorsey. i asked him a couple of things, one was specifically about twitter's decision to make its first attempt to fact-check the president on the mail in ballot tweet. there are hundreds of tweets and if they are going to choose one i don't know why they chose that one. i think the first step out of the gate, then they fell on their face because they were basically then fact-checked. so free speech is working pretty well. everybody going back and forth. what facebook has said is they will not weigh in on political speech. now that is something that they

instituted last fall. they stuck to it so far and the left actually is so frustrated with facebook, they think they are evil. when there is a threat either about antitrust actions by the justice department or the ftc or if you look at something like what the president is talking about, this executive order. i don't know all the details, but i think that facebook and other tech companies know that washington is coming to get them and they are trying to figure out ways that we just talked about, they added mike mcconnell, the forma former jude who is the conservative guy, definitely taking a lot of heat. what is facebook's role going to be? is this an entity that has more power than the company and they have yet to sort of figure all that out.

but they are trying at least to figure out a way to make it look like it's more neutral. the other thing about conservatives on facebook in particular, i would say the president dominates twitter but, the conservatives and president trump figured out a way to best communicate on facebook as well and that ran rings around the hillary clinton campaign in 2016. >> tucker: yeah, that will happen again. if we say something libelous on fox news week could be sued for it. facebook, google, twitter or not, they have a business advantage over every other media platform and in exchange for that wedding congress just say, you can't censor people? why is that hard? >> right. this is the section 2:30 that commissioner carr just talked about as well. i do think that there will be a debate about it coming forward to. washington is always far behind

when it comes to legislative new technologies. this has been true forever and i think it but it's true now as these companies have grown. also, they figure out a way to deal with washington and that's not an easy thing for them to do. at least he was willing to come on and talk about it. >> tucker: i mean i'm glad in a way that the president was in effect censor to. our viewers get censored all the time and nobody cares. now maybe people start paying some attention to it. thank you for the clip, and we will watch at 2:00 p.m. tomorr tomorrow, "the daily briefing." writers ripped through the city, but they weren't really writers, they were protesters seeking political justice. because that's what you do when you are mad in america, you smash a police car window. it's insane and it's wrecking everything, we will show you after the break.so

musica♪ you the milk you need. we hope it makes your breakfast a little brighter. your snacks more nutritious. and reminds you when it comes to caring, there is no expiration date. milk. love what's real.

musical physical speed when it writers cut a path of destruction to minneapolis last night after a video went viral that showed a man dying in police custody. mike towbin has the latest on that story. >> tucker, a different scene out here outside of the third precinct of minneapolis. if you watch, we have a pretty thick row of police with some right gear here. you can see you got bike patrol, the got pepper spray at the ready and they've been launching the pepper spray, and here's your crowd of demonstrators. these are the bottles they've

been throwing out the police, and they are chanting right now, i can't breathe. at the moment, you see it the police backing up, i want to point out some of their gear. look for that orange tubes that some of the officers are carrying and those are teargas lockers. as you look up at the room for the third precinct you can see -- well you can see it now but there is one of the flash bangs that went off, there's a flash bang coming our direction right now, careful, thomas. some of the flash bangs are being deployed primarily from the place of the roof to. there is one aiming his teargas launcher from the rooftop. and police are backing up, and

this demonstration has got the attention of president trump and the cause of it has got the attention of president trump who tweeted, at my request, the fbi and the department of justice are already well into the investigation as to the very static and tragic death of george floyd. it seemed for a while the president's interest in this case, the fact that four of the police officers connected to this incident have been fired so swiftly by the minneapolis police department. but as you can see not everyone is satisfied. and frankly, they will have a lot of anger. there is one of those flash bangs that went off pretty close to us here. there is some kind of a chemical irritant and there you see the pepper spray coming out from the police. they got the pepper spray in my eyes.

[coughing] so that's the scene out there, a lot of back and forth with the demonstrators and the cops. >> tucker: mike, we are going to let you breathe for a minute but we will keep those pictures out. we are getting reports that there is looting and other parts of the city so we will come back to a little bit from now. so we know that george floyd died in police custody, and when an investigation is done we will do a lot more. it's possible that at least one police officer will be charged in the case. so as of tonight, those are the facts. what happened was not a political protest but a riot. [people yelling]

[bleep] >> okay, don't hit our car, don't hit the car. [bleep] [bleep] >> tucker: so that's what rioting looks like. we want to be clear, we are not showing you the pictures to defendant behavior of individuals on the minneapolis police department, we are not. we are defending society itself. rioting is one thing you don't want. police brutality, all of that is bad. but none of it is nearly as bad

as what you just saw. the indiscriminate use of violence by mobs is a threat to every american of all colors and backgrounds and political beliefs. democracy cannot exist when people are rioting. rioting is a form of tyranny. it is oppression. but cnn welcomes it and in fact encourages it. if the rioters protesters. >> breaking overnight, protesters clashing with police calling for justice after the death of george floyd. it's been a long night there but people want answers. after thousands flooded the streets tuesday. >> they demanded more accountability and answers. >> that was lying and it's hard to overstate how sinister those lies are or how dangerous they are to all of us.

as we are often related, america is a diverse country. they only survive the groups within them can coexist peacefully and thankfully almost everyone in america wants to coexist peacefully. that's why every day if it does, things will fall apart. peter is a civil rights commissioner. i wonder why you can't be upset by the tape, and also say it's not acceptable to riot. >> the tape itself obviously appears inexcusable, indefensible, horrific conduct and it's not unexpected that you would see this kind of behavior, mainly because to a large extent it's normalized over a number of years. in fact we have some

irresponsible political leadership and media folks who introduce certain elements that are not in evidence to seem to suggest that this was all stok stoked. yet we have political actors who have come to the conclusion, you have the mayor of minneapolis who is understandably in a tough position but you have to understand the incendiary nature of race in this country is going to stoke the flames of division. if people get hurt, property gets damaged and in many hands the people who get hurt are the individuals that come through the neighborhood. >> so if you cared about the country, you would say something like this seems awful. if it turned out there was a racial component, we are very against that, of course. >> we see that on a regular basis because they seem to think

there's a political advantage to doing so. so you have the mayor making certain comments, and it's seemingly a matter of race, and i think he used the term, it is systemic injustice, again without any evidence. the investigation may reveal some of that, but that if the evidence deduces this is a matter of race, then they will be discharged. because of political opportuni opportunism, people get killed and people get hurt, billions of dollars in property damage at all to forward a political agenda. there is a process that they have, do process that will judge this in due time.

i think we have the faculties to remedy the circumstance but not if we have political actors who fan flames. >> tucker: wasn't that -- it's great to see you tonight. so there is obviously a lot going on in minneapolis, still more than we realize. so we will keep those life pictures and we may well go back there for a report at the end of this hour. so increasingly american business owners are stepping up to reclaim their livelihood. up next will talk to a north carolina business owner who is suing the state's governor for the right to do that.

>> tucker: america's political leaders continue in many places to impose lockdown, some extreme on the public well after, long after scientific evidences that can lead it to show pretty conclusively that they don't work very well. the politicians are in no hurry to get back to normal and give up the power they've accrue to. their are safe even by taxpaye taxpayers. they enjoy that.

>> nearly 100,000 americans dead and they are playing games, not to mention millions of americans now doing the same. what about the clowns are ready to double down on the death toll because i want to get their party on for the holiday? i could show you an example example after example, of people acting like fools. not having any sense for their own safety but the safety of others. do you want to wear a mask? no. but is it that big of a deal? not really. so the moral if you don't wear a mask, the funny thing is that the weight lifting correspondent you just saw wasn't wearing a mask of his own when he was screaming at a cyclist last month and he was infected. >> i just said, don't you have the coronavirus? shouldn't you be quarantined? and the next words were, what do

you know about this, what do you know about the rules, you are not supposed to be out here. nobody had gloves on and nobody had a mask song. >> it was widely known, would you be able to do that? and then there is governor gretchen whitmer of michigan. before memorial day she ordered citizens not to vacation in the traverse city area. >> our big fear of course is memorial day weekend we know lots of people have to go north and a small spike could put the hospital system in dire straits pretty quickly which is precisely why we are asking everyone to continue doing their part. don't descend on traverse city from all regions of the state. >> tucker: yeah, don't go to traverse city, it's dangerous. that's exactly the moment that governor whitmer was saying her

husband was using the fact that he was married to her to pressure a small business into putting up their families a boat in the water ahead of the holiday. witmer originally denied that even happened, but then it was exposed it was obviously real. she said it was a bad joke, but it wasn't a hoax and wasn't a joke, it was pure repulsive hypocrisy. justice rebecca dahl it dissented and said wisconsinites will pay the price for going outside. none of them really mean it. not wearing a mask, not social distancing. since leaders will give americans the rights back, it falls to ordinary americans to reclaim them.

he is suing the governor, and that's attorney hite fell back. let me ask you first. you have been closed i think because of this lockdown, why are you reopening? why do you think that we can and should be open? >> while we lost so much revenue that we either have to close our business for good or reopen the doors and face the consequences. we decided to go ahead and reopen and started trying to serve our patrons that we had. >> tucker: so you have no choice i guess is what we said. >> sure.

that's what the issue is, we have a governor in north carolina whose wanting to be the king here, and i've had two deployments to afghanistan, and they would allow me to fly a multimillion dollar aircraft with 15 people in the back, but they don't trust me enough to operate my business safely in hickory, north carolina. but at the end of the day, i'm not being allowed to provide for my family and make a living. >> tucker: is a lot safer than an abortion clinic. on what legal challenge are you issuing this lockdown was to mark >> these are far-reaching executive orders.

and merely enforce the law or unconstitutional. that will be a separation of powers and that the legislative branch be the one that makes the law and the executive branch, they will be the one to merely enforce the law. the governor uses emergency powers to declare a state of emergency. there is no criteria or qualification or even definition of what a state of emergency is. the governor can declare the state of emergency, and we can see those effects on businesses and livelihoods with the scope of what it could do, what a government can do.

then it will last indefinitely. only when the governor says, it's a state of emergency come up with no tax on that decision, will it end. the framers never intended for any one person to have such immense power >> tucker: if there is no provision for the constitution. in acts throwing business has to be the coolest kind of business. 30 million americans are out of work thanks to the lockdown. they are fighting to bring in even more foreign workers into the country to take scarce jobs. we are going to name who they are and show you their pictures, you need to see them. plus a "new york times" columnist as melt down completely on nbc's business network. this has a lot about the

leadership class in this country. kind of an amazing thing, we got it for you next. >> it's about the ppe, panic about never going out again. never going back to normal. >> why not help people -- ♪ bottom line is, moms love that land o' frost premium sliced meats have no by-products. [conference phone] baloney! [conference phone] has joined the call. hey baloney here. i thought this was a no by-products call? land o' frost premium. a slice above.

>> tucker: if you haven't scene nbc's business channel in a while, and it's okay if you haven't, you have no idea how far left it's gone and it seems surprising. it's an odd direction for a network that covers financial markets. cnbc is a new activist management and the world cringes at where they are headed. at the man they hope will take them there is a "new york times" columnist called andrew ross sorkin. he is both seamless corporate shill and a thoroughly progressive rich guy.

in other words he has a most protectable possible views on absolutely everything. last year, a demented credit card companies punish gun owners for the crime of exercising their second amendment rights. he's also been hysterical and consistently wrong about the markdowns now wrecking the country. this morning, he had the following exchange with his cnbc closed joe kernan. case you've never seen the show before, he's screechy one. >> you panicked about the market, panicked about covid campaign necked about the ventilators come panicked about ppe, panicked about never going out again. and we acted normal. >> 100,000 people died. >> i understand that. >> 100,000 people died, joe, and all you did was try to help your brand to the president. that's what you did. every single morning on the show. every single morning on the sh show. you use for your position.

you used and abused her position. >> i'm trying to help investors keep their cool, keep their heads. and as it turns out that's what you should have done. i wasn't arguing about people stocks, i was arguing about people's lives. people's lives, it's of a global pandemic. >> do the news, i'm begging you to do the news, joseph. >> tucker: watch that again online, it's a fascinating quality comic colloquy. he is frustrated by his wrong opinions, so how does he respond to this? not by defending his own possessions, instead he invokes donald trump and attacks joe kernan personally. he patronized his joe kernan, and do the news joe, do the ne news. he's a stand-in for entitled

liberals, and confront them with their mistakes and they attack you and then she will way. every time. you want will make no wonder it never gets better. so thanks to the chinese style quarantine our leaders mindlessly adopted 40 million americans have lost their jobs. that's more unemployed than any time in american history and we are including the great depression. this is a crisis, as profound and dangerous in crisis as any war we've ever fought. god help us if we don't fix it soon. finding work for americans has got to be our top priority. thankfully there something we can do to help right away. huge number of american jobs are now occupied by foreign nationals and not just the seasonal lettuce picking that we hear so much about, those fabled jobs americans just won't do. but also many jobs that americans would be thrilled to do and have come a white collar jobs. some big company would rather

pay foreigners at a cheaper wage. that's happening all over the country and has been for years. it's illegal because congress made it legal through h1b visas and if there was ever a time to utter this a moral outrage that hurts americans, at that time is right now when the future of the nation depends on getting americans back to work. amazingly many in congress disagree. today nonrepublican centrist sent a letter to the president and demanded he continue to allow foreigners to take american jobs. those senators in order to increase their well-deserved shame were putting their pictures on the screen right there. those senators are lindsey graham of south carolina, john cornyn of texas, james rich and mike crapo of idaho, lisa murkowski and dan sullivan dan sullivan of alaska, james lankford of oklahoma and todd young of indiana.

they impose no limitations at all on h2 a or h-2b guest visas and instead allow for new placements to continue to stream into our country unimpeded and take jobs. again, this is not about migrant workers picking grapes in the central valley in the hot sun. the senators would like to see foreign doctors, physicians, dentists, cybersecurity experts and many other categories of white-collar workers come, too. there certainly no shortage of americans desperate to do these jobs. so many of our doctors and dentists for example are working right now but don't worry, say the senators. all the americans are getting generous unemployment benefits. so at this point we want to be clear about something, not all of these nine senators are bad people, we know and even like some of them. lankford for example is a nice guy but we are fervently rooting for their defeat anyway. we are hoping that the next republican primary, all nine of the people you are looking at right now will be defeated and replaced by people who care about unemployed americans, that is the very least we can expect

and in fact we should demand it again and again. ♪ >> tucker: riots and looting are ripping apart minneapolis at this hour. unexpected and uncovered, but it's happening. we will be joined by another reporter on the scene, right after the break. musica♪

♪ >> tucker: this is a fox news alert. these are live pictures tonight

from minneapolis. they are from our fox nation helicopter and they show happening as we speak, the writers using a man in custody. and businesses have nothing in downtown minneapolis. a few moments ago for local fox minneapolis with disturbing footage of the looting. the reporter had to clear that specific area. that reporter is karen's call in and she joins us by phone. karen, thank you for joining us. what are using in minneapolis right now? >> i can tell you i was a few short steps away from the protest that had been going on all day and then i heard a little bit and so i started working towards the store that had been closed for the day. and i'm assuming because of the protest, there were people tearing up television. they were stacking them on their cars. two code tvs on of cars, clothes, bicycles, movies, cameras, you name it it was

coming out. it started with a smashed window by the door. and you look inside the store and it looked like people were literally stopping and then they would come out with a cart full of goods inside the store like no big deal. no police anywhere and probably about, i would say 30, 40 minutes into it, he had been tweeting about it and a couple of deputies rolled up and that was it. looting continued. and i have never seen anything around it like here in minneapolis. >> tucker: were they shouting political slogans or saying they wanted answers or just tv? >> it appears they were just dealing. there were no political anything going on there at first. and a short step away at the third precinct, yes, there were

plenty of chance, shouting and the police were continuing to fire rubber bullets and tear gas on that side of things. so sort of two with separate things going on at the same time. >> tucker: amazing, amazing video and thank you for joining us tonight karen come appreciate it. and we talked to mike tobin who's having trouble breathing. he got hit with cs gas and we will check in with him to see how he's doing, hey, mike. >> a look around the area and talk about looting, this barricade they erected in the middle of the street is primarily made up of grocery grocery carts from target. and they are chanting in the distance. people behind the barricades don't have much in the way of strategic advantage, but there are the people chanting george floyd right now. i can tell you some of the people in the crowd are armed and the police and some riot gear with the gas mask and write helmets on. the precinct how broken up it is.

you have the door boarded up and that is the scene, tucker. >> tucker: mike tobin in minneapolis, good to see you. the america we created. you are out of time and the great sean hannity takes over 9:00 p.m. hour in new york. >> sean: tucker, thank you as you heard from tucker, breaking news and "hannity" monitoring these large protest in minneapolis. mike tobin on the ground and we will get to him in a few seconds. we also have this video the four police officers have been fired and as soon as we have michael we will go to him and lost it for a second. the officers have now been fired. i looked at this videotape and n trained mixed martial arts for seven straight years, this is what i do. whenever you go for go for anybody's neck at any period of time it is game over. that is a dangerous spot in it