>> trace: it's a great phrase. thank you both for joining us. best of luck to you. that is "the story" of wednesday, july 8, 2020. we'll see you back here tomorrow night at 7:00. tucker carlson right now. ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." tom friedman has been a columnist at "the new york times" for 25 years. in that quarter-century, friedman has raised banality and cliche mongering to a kind of art form, like picasso, he wastes nothing. there's not a single piece of my list conventional wisdom floating around washington or new york city the tom friedman hasn't managed to whip into a hasty column at one time or another. naturally our ruling class would love to see him, they read tom friedman on the palatine every morning and feel affirmed. he is as dumb as they are. we refer you to the column this morning because there's no question it's taste of things to

come and very soon. in that column, friedman calls for joe biden to skip the fall presidential debate. for cover, friedman adds a couple silly caveats. biden should only consider debating, he writes, if donald trump releases years of his personal tax returns and then agrees to have a panel of journalists set on stage to call him a liar in real-time. otherwise, no debating. turns out tom friedman is not really a genius with pretty habits what's going on here. this is the most cynical election strategy ever lysed or ever perpetrated on american voters. hide the candidates until election day. the country can find out what the administration after it's in power but until then no appearing in public and my god, don't ever tell the truth. so what if the biden campaign would take tom friedman's advice? of course they will take it because they have no choice. biden is up in the polls will be can't let them talk. that could wreck everything. people might discover that

joe biden bears no resemblance to joe biden they remember. >> they would put 720 million back, million women back in the workforce. i love this place. what's not to like about vermont in terms of the beauty of it and what i need town. poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids. we choose science over fiction. we choose truth over facts. think about it. we hold these truths to be self-evident. all men and women created by that -- you know the thing. >> tucker: you know the thing. in fact, we do know the thing, but poor joe biden does not know the thing and he doesn't seem to know anything or even recognize his own way. imagine biden spending six hours on stage with donald trump trading jabs on live television. oh, he can't do that. so he's not going to do that. instead they're going to keep joe biden hidden behind a curtain. he will read a prepared speech from time to time. on a good day, he can pull that

off and nothing extemporaneous or off-the-cuff. he's not capable of that. it's all pretty shocking if you think about it. we've kind of accepted accepted about pull back a little bit. they are running a candidate for president who can't govern and e doing it anyway. so what does it say about that people around joe biden? well, they are ruthless obviously, and they are not into debate, not just presidential debate but any debate. they don't like they disagreed with. they don't believe there are two sides to any question. they believe their own views are the only legitimate views. when you criticize them, they won't engage with you. they don't bother to rebut your point. basically tacky. joe biden himself attacked the show today, in fact. he didn't respond to the questions that we raise. he called us names. and then his minions tried to pull us off the air. we survived because thank god we work here. but you should know that's how they plan to run the country. biden will pick some running mate whose identity makes it impossible for anyone to

criticize her, and then they will describe any criticism of their governments as a hate crime. we got a taste of that. years under barack obama. you know how it works. of course they did again for years on college campuses and incorporate diversity seminars. any place with a total control. now the entire american population is getting the very same treatment. tonight close to 1,000 companies are boycotting facebook's advertising platform. why are they doing that? because they are demanding that facebook censor the president and his voters. ban conservative news outlets, allow only publications controlled by the left to decide what's news. let's most anyway because there's only one mass media coma that consistently dissents from the left's view of things. you're watching it right now. what do you think they plan to do to fox news if they take power? you can imagine. we are in their way. so these people aren't liberals. we call them that but they are not. they don't wring their hands and wondering what to do next like

your flaky fifth-grade teacher who wore sandals and were about the feet of the baby park seals or had a save the whale sticker on her volvo. no, they are nothing like that. they are not sentimental. these are totalitarians. they know exactly what they want. they don't wring their hands. they want power. they know how to get power. why are some of the people being fire right now? for absurdly trivial offenses, liking the wrong tweet, commenting on the rotten toast, making the wrong hand gesture accidentally. why is that happening? simple. to terrify the rest of us into obedience. we better not say that. we could be hurt too. that's love lesson we take as we watch people around us fired and destroyed for doing very small things. that tells us the people around joe biden, they're the ones doing this, ruled by fear. they do not rule by consent, as you are supposed to in this country. they are in fact the true enemies of democracy. they don't care what you think. i'm just in case the rest of us

missed the point, they're working hard to make self-defense against their mobs, their militia, a crime. you cannot resist us or we will prosecute you. st. louis circuit attorney kim gardner is threatening to arrest mark and patricia mccloskey for daring to defend themselves against a mob that was threatening to murder them. a bob of democratic voters. a they are the criminal. this is why the left wants to abolish the police. they are not abolishing law enforcement. they are replacing them with a woke militia of armed social workers, psychologist, and ethnic studies majors. a obedient democratic voters. and it's why in places where the police still exist, they want to make certain you are too afraid to call them. in san francisco, supervisor introduced the caution against racially expert tate of nonemergencies or karen act. hilarious if you think about it. allow we are told is against hate that is named after a racial slur. but it's not actually that

funny. the bill would make it a hate crime for citizens to call on enforcement based on "racial bias." how exactly do you think that law will be applied? you don't have to wonder. call the police because you're frightened of mostly peaceful protesters threatening to kill you? you are the criminal now. and day by day, liberalism evaporates and the left's troops who call themselves liberals, children of the enlightenment, are falling in line behind what is clearly a power grab. just today, the founder of vox.com, ezra klein, someone regarded as an intellectual on the left, went on twitter to explain why free-speech is actually very bad. "a lot of debate that sell themselves about being about free speech are actually about power and there's a lot of power in being able to claim and hold the mantle of free-speech defender." oh, we see where you're going. actually ezra klein is half right. free-speech definitely is about power. power for people who don't have

any. people like ezra klein want less free-speech for others so they can have more power. when they can tell you what you can say, what they are really telling you is what you're allowed to believe. they are not controlling your mouth. they are controlling your mind. and there is no deeper control than that. any person who tell you that is someone you should be very afraid of. saagar enjeti is the chief washington correspondent for "the hill" and we are happy to have a montagnais. saagar, you came up in journalism. you exist in the journalistic spheres such as that is, i guess now. are you surprised by how little debate remains, legitimate exchanges, civil exchanges of different views. >> no, mcenany , i'm not. as you pointed out, the culture wars, everybody said going on these american campuses was ludicrous for the white turtle right to focus on. many of those people grew up in the graduate and now they work at vox.com.

now they work at "the new york times." now they were to the most torrid and most important elite institutions and the country. many of them work on the biden campaign, as you rightly pointed out. we should have absolutely no illusion that whenever these people come to power, especially with some of the elect joe biden at the helm who barely understands what is going on, his department of justice, his government, any of the powers that are invested in the highest institutions will be used expressly in to put out any dissent whatsoever. it is all a crescendo and to that moment. it's all driven by the idea that we must not engage. you must deplatform. we must remove, we must expressly move away from anybody who holds a different view. just remember that "the new york times" fired its top editor for publishing an op-ed by senator tom cotton who was causing the position which at the time it was published

or supported by 50% of americans and that is using the united states military to restore order in american streets. if they can shut down majoritarian positions in those institutions, that's what they are going to do whenever they come to power in this country. >> tucker: what's so striking is the ferocity of their passive aggression. so i expressed strong opinions on the show. people don't like them, they criticize me. it never hurts my feelings. totally fair. i criticize others and you can criticize me back. they consistently set themselves up so they are immune from criticism. you can criticize me because i'm this person or i did that. i am immune from critique. how do they get away with that? >> it's kind of incredible, right? they will be like, you are a disgusting maryland racist mis i imagine i will be like hold on as i can hear they are like he's harassing me. he's harassing me. i responding to me and i'm like but you just called me a disgusting virulent racist, that's the worst possible thing that you can say about somebody in american society. rightfully so.

i think being a racist is a terrible thing. are you a racist because you want to have less immigration to the united states and less competition for american wages? with a control speech. they controlled the rules of the debate. when they can do that, they can make it so that even the active defense is an active so-called offense against them. it's just complete madness. >> tucker: well, and i hate to blame the victims in all this because the deacons are people i know and love. it's normal people. but we all kind of participating in our own oppression a little bit, aren't we question racquet they say knowing you can't say that, why don't we just voice the middle finger and laugh. why are we playing along with this? most people aren't racist. people are decent, good-hearted people obviously. so why are we allowing them to control us? >> it's a great question, tucker and i trickle it's probably oned to the republican leadership because unlike the democratic leadership they have no idea how to actually use power and protect their constituents and the people that brought them

to power. they think that by appeasing the democrats or the left or any of these cases that they like oh, well, they will just love us if we give them this particular thing but it's the light version of woke. this is never enough for them. it's at the very core ethos of his ideology. >> tucker: yeah, it doesn't work in prison and it doesn't work in politics. i'm serious. don't ever given. saagar enjeti, great to see you tonight. thank you for your wisdom. >> thank you, tucker. >> tucker: ghislaine maxwell, we have searched far and wide for the correct pronunciation. ghislaine maxwell is in jail and probably about to face justice for her role in assisting jeffrey epstein but who is she? former new york corrections officials assessed as a real risk that she will not make it to a courtroom. he joins us next. you say that customers make their own rules.

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♪ >> tucker: jeffrey epstein's consiglio area repeatedly his has been arrested and charged with a number of times including sex trafficking, her name apparently is pronounced "galen" maxwell, spelled ghislaine. maxwell is just as bad as the

billionaire. >> she is a rapist. she destroyed what was supposed to be the best years of my life. she is just as evil as jeffrey epstein as everybody has painted him to be. ms. maxwell was his business partner in this. she did this to many girls. it was a hateful and degrading rape and i was dumped off in my grandparents yard naked and was told that i wouldn't come back alive the next time. >> tucker: another alleged victim told "60 minutes" australia about how maxwell ensnared young girls. >> his private sanctuary, an isolated prison known as the

island where he would share the girls like pray with his rich and powerful friends. >> we weren't anything important to them at all. we weren't even a human being to them. we were just another toy to be passed around. and that's what they did. prince andrew should be panicking at the moment. because ghislaine doesn't really care about anyone else but ghislaine. i was in the car with her and she would ask the driver to stop the car, and she would -- across to the school or the park or wherever she was going and she e number for a child, a young girl, and then i would see that child at the house. she would say they are addition. i found a model in the park and i thought it was really strange because i did see a couple girls and braces and i've never seen a model with braces. >> tucker: that's disgusting. maxwell has now been arrested but then of course jeffrey epstein was arrested too. how confident can the rest must be that maxwell will reveal what

actually happened on the island and other places? who was involved, who paid for it with their foreign governments? how confident can we be she will make it to a courtroom. gavin is a retired deputy warden for the new york city department of corrections, the man to answer that question and he joins us tonight. thank you so much for coming on. are you concerned that maxwell won't make it to court? >> i think there are some issues that we have to contend with. when you think about what happened to jeffrey epstein, he supposedly committed suicide in prison? i don't think so. dr. michael baden, renowned pathologist, examine jeffrey epstein and he determined that the hyoid bone was fractured and that's more consistent with homicide by strangulation instead of suicide by hanging. of course the cameras conveniently weren't working. i don't think the feds can handle these prisoners. such high-profile prisoners like maxwell or epstein. if i were william barr, what i would do is i would seek to

obtain a substitute jail order that i would try to have ms. maxwell place on rikers island with the new york city apartment of corrections. the jails are empty because de blasio has police reform" will has bail reforms everybody everybody's on the street so there's plenty of room at the end on rikers and then we have an emergency services unit that could handle her and i think that's the best thing that could happen and the reason i say that is because the jail she is currently in, metropolitan detention center in brooklyn, ir the sexual abuse of female inmates. let me give you a couple of examples. in 2011 there was a female correctional officer there. she had sex on duty with eight employees, two were superior officers. she also had sex with two inmates. one was a gang banger and a drug dealer and the other killed new york city police detectives and finally we have a lieutenant and two correction officers recently were convicted of sexually abusing over ten women.

the lieutenant was in charge of the unit. one of his functions was to teach the officers about the present rape elimination act. can you imagine, the guy who was supposed to be training officers how to prevent rape in prison is actually raping the inmates. i do think the facilities capable of handling it. there's too much that's going on there recently and i don't think any female innovate should be housed there and another thing i firmly believe, i don't believe female inmates should be house in the same facility with male inmates. doesn't make any sense and we need to change that. >> tucker: unless you believe there is no difference between the sexes in which case you are a moron. i'll link anybody mourns the death of jeffrey epstein is a man but what does it say about the country when a guy can be possibly murdered in a jail cell. it suggests that a lot of people played along with that, people who were supposed to be watching him, perhaps official of the

facility. why are not of them in deep trouble right now. why don't we know the truth? i don't understand. >> i'll tell you why. we have corrupt police officials. we have corrupt officials at the fbi and we have corrupt officials in the u.s. attorney's office. look at what jeffrey epstein d did. going back ten or 15 years ago. he paid money to the palm beach police department. police department shouldn't be accepting money from private citizens. what sex offender, what sex offender gets work released from jail? the palm beach county sheriff's office is facilitating that. epstein formed a company so that he could pay deputy sheriffs to babysit him while he was on work release. i was a deputy warden at a new york city correctional facility in 2000 and we house about 400 sex offenders. i never had one sex offender that was released on work release. it's unheard of. so then you have the states attorney way back when who didn't even bother to interview

the children or their parents. as you know, tucker, i've been doing human trafficking investigations for the last 14 years on the streets of new york so i know a lot about that and child protective services was never notified. family court was never notified and social services never had an opportunity to protect those children so law enforcement has blown this from the very beginning. and now all of a sudden, ten years later they arrest jeffrey epstein at an airport? now all of a sudden, they find this clown up in new hampshire? give me a break. >> tucker: i totally agree. >> the law enforcement authorities that have handle this, it's bizarre. i've never heard of anything like it. i do not trust the people that were involved in this investigation. >> tucker: right, so instead they are crushing local police departments. i agree. give me your ten seconds. ed, thank you for that, thank you for coming on tonight. appreciate it. well, killings have more than doubled in new york city compared to this time a year

ago. in 2013, cnn's don lemon seemed to care about that. today's don lemon thinks it's hilarious that children are being killed. we've got the video which is actually going to shock you. we never make that promise. we are going to fulfill this one. one reason the actual black lives matter organization doesn't care about urban mayheme group is directly linked to a convicted domestic terrorist. you probably haven't seen this story. we'll bring it to you next.

>> tucker: if you don't have much money and you don't have much power, especially of very bad time to live in new york city, frightening time. the economy has been shut down for months. hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished. they may not come back to the neighborhoods of new york have been scarred by rioting and looting. now most ominously violence is surging in what used to be not so long ago america's safest big city. shootings this june more than doubled compared to the same

month last year. on sunday alone, 64 people in new york were shot. ten were killed. it's obvious what's going on here. new york's leaders are indulging the mob. it works for them. in the end. they are attacking police officers, holding back law enforcement from normal people, criminals and predators are doing what they always do, they are taking advantage. weak and vulnerable people of all races are paying the price for this. this is not a concern over at cnn. don lemon doesn't care. he is a highly paid news anchor. for him, the shootings and murders are the stuff he covers on television, not something that affects his life. in fact, the whole thing is kind of hilarious. watch. >> democratic cities are in chaos right now. is this what you want from joe biden, they are going to take your country where they are taking on the statues. >> crime is rising. defined police. >> oh, my gosh, it's so bad. defunding police. it's like,... >> tucker: talk about caught telling the truth on camera and

it wasn't the only time he did. on tuesday, lemon invited hector terry crews on his show and explained correctly that despite its name black lives matter doesn't really care about black lives. >> you look at the city of chicago, there are nine children who died by gun violence, by black on black gun violence from june 20 all the way to today. the black lives matter movement has said nothing about this. >> what does that have to do with the quality? the black lives matter movement was started because it was talking about police brutality. if you want an all black lives matter movement that talks about gun violence in communities including black communities, then start that movement with that name but that's not what black lives matter is about prayer black lives matter movement is about police brutality and injustice in that manner, not about what's happening in black neighborhoods. >> tucker: if you're running a

challenge like cnn, you want dub people on tv because they are compliant. they will see what they are told. they will tell the audience with the moment demands. they will level stray from the script and that's exactly what mr. leman is doing. seven years ago it was a different country and people were kind of a lot to say what they thought was true. at the time, here's what don lemon was saying about black communities. watch this. >> more than 72% of children in the african-american community are born out of wedlock. that means absent fathers. studies show lack of a male role model is an express train ride to prison. the cycle continues. so please, black folks, as i said, if this doesn't apply to you, i'm not talking to you. pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace, a culture that glorifies everything i just

mentioned. thug and reprehensible behavior. a culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you, and it's not going to. >> tucker: wow. can you imagine what would happen if don lemon or his body building buddy over there or any of these people said something like that? on cnn tonight or msnbc? it would be their last live broadcast ever. they would be fired immediately. you can't express views like that. so they don't. it tells you a lot. well, despite its immense political power and it does have immense power, the group black lives matter isn't really much of a group. it's a flimsy organization, doesn't really have a legal existence of its own. officially the primary black lives matter group is the project of another organization. the current vice chair of thousand currents is a woman called susan rosenberg and she is a convicted terrorist

who spent 16 years in federal prison before she was given a pardon by bill clinton on the very last day in office. bernie kerik remembers this well. he's the former police commissioner of new york city but before that he worked in new jersey and he personally escorted susan rosenberg from the federal courthouse in newark in 1985. he knows the story well and we are happy to have them on tonight. mr. kerik, thank you for coming on. that picture is remarkable. susan rosenberg. >> i had here then, tucker. i had hair. >> tucker: and an ar-15. who is susan rosenberg? why is it significant that she now in effect works for black lives matter? >> well, for me, on a personal note, it's important for your viewers to know who she is because black lives matter, as i've said dating back to 2015, it's a revolutio revolutionary t groups, that's what it is, the

group who wants to overthrow the government, the country, it's a group that its founders, its three founders, were inspired by a woman named joann chesimard who goes by an african name, assata shakur, who lives in exile in cuba after she assassinated a new jersey state trooper. she was involved in a number of bombings and executions of new york city cops, cops in san francisco, the cops in new jersey. that's who they are. that's what they are about. when i try to explain that to people come over the last two or three years, they didn't get it. now in the last few weeks, we learned susan rosenberg is one of their fund-raising gurus, let's say. susan rosenberg, 1985 when you look at the photo, she was convicted of possessing hundreds of pounds of explosives. she was involved in the brink's robbery where two cops were killed and a security guard were

killed. she was involved, her and her organization, the main 19th communist organization, they were involved in a number of police assassinations, bombings. the u.s. capitol bombing. the naval war college bombing. a number of others in the united states. she was a radical revolutionary, and she was let out of prison. she was commuted on the last day of president clinton's term in office. after 16 years of prison, she was given 58 years in prison. and now she's out. who does she work for? black lives matter. i think, i think we are missing something here. i think doj should be looking at black lives matter as a terrorist group, as a terrorist organization. and i think, i find it astounding that all of these u.s. firms, some 200 that you have chronicled on your show, they are just pounding money

into a group that's all about the overthrow of this government. and if you can't see it on its face by what they do normally on a daily basis, then you need to start looking at their associates, their inspired errors, and the people around them, because this stuff has ben going on since 1960, '70, the early '80s, these people, these revolutionaries, marxist revolutionaries wanted to overthrow this country. >> tucker: it's just amazing that all the rich ladies in aspen and greenwich think blm is about ending racism which obviously all of us are for when in fact its revolutionary group may be the u.s. government can take decisive action and by doing that make it really clear that this is a terror organization. >> you know what, tucker? black lives matter was truly working for black lives, they would be marching tonight in chr cleveland. i can give you 20 other cities. >> tucker: no, i know.

it's having the opposite effect. needless to say. bernie kerik, thanks so much for that. great to see you tonight. >> thanks, tucker. three to the site is absolutely clear and it's not disputed. americans should reopen this fall, they are reopening in eura reason. an unexpected ally and that, we'll tell you next.

♪ >> tucker: last night on this show, we told you what the science has concluded about schools and covid-19. children, and this is conclusive, are less likely to get the virus, unlikely to spread it and in the end, and virtually zero risk from it. there are far greater risks from the annual flu. four times as many kids have died of that disease and then died of the coronavirus. many countries and reopen their schools for this reason, without masks or other requirements, and there's been no spike in cases. so the evidence is overwhelming. school should reopen in person this fall. covering coronavirus, plenty of criticism of dr. anthony fauci but wouldn't he spoke with our dr. mark's signal on sirius xm

radio, he got this response. >> if you keep children out of school, the unintended negative ripple effect consequences can be profound with regard to what do the parents do? do they stay home from work to be able to take care of their children? what about child care? what about children who rely on schools for their lunch? for maybe the most important nutritional meal that they'll get? so the broad approach would be, obviously, but paying attention to the safety of the children which is always paramount. but within the context of doing whatever you can to safeguard the health and the welfare of the children. we should try to get the schools open. >> tucker: yeah. and what about each other? people need each other. children included. it's not good for people to be alone. dr. marc siegel who did that interview joins us tonight. hey, doctor. >> tucker, i was so glad to see

dr. fauci finally taking that position. when you consider the position that we need to take is we are opening the schools. how do we go about doing it? what guidelines can help us? not the guidelines getting in a way of it, and so the centers for disease control are reissuing guidelines next week that may be more personal. maybe they will actually work. i am reminded of a child named landon fuller, 11 years old. i size picture on the front of the albuquerque journal this past weekend. back at the end of april he was in such a state of despair from the closed schools, the closed seas state of new mexico, that he took his own life. it wasn't covid-19. he took his own life. we need to remember landon fuller as we move forward because as vice president pence said today there's a lot of damage if we don't reopen the schools and reopen them fully. we have special needs children that only get their needs taken care of at schools. we have nutritional issues. some people only get their full meal at school. socialization.

people, kids playing together, and mental health issues. as the vice president says, often only in schools. i want to tell you as a physician, now back taking care of patients, i didn't fill hole before and i bet if you survey teachers they would tell you the same thing. they want to be back in school. they want to be taking care of kids and so we can -- dr. fauci told me antigen testing is about to be rolled out, we can test millions and millions of people. universities we talked about, he agreed with me on that as well that universities definitely should be fully reopened. you can quarantine. they are a quarantine waiting to happen. if somebody gets sick, you isolate them. test professors, test students, but don't do it the way harvard is with online only or the way my alma mater, brown, is doing it with sessions. do it the way duke is doing it or notre dame or cornell. everybody back in full force, tucker. tucker, in the state of new mexico, which i started off

with here, 20% of increase, 20% increase in unexpected deaths since this pandemic started. unexpected deaths. suicide, homicide, car accidents. that's not just in new mexico. that's all over the country. our own landon fuller who i started with here, 11 years old, is gone. our heart goes out to his family. let's reopen the schools in his memory. let's bring the soul and heart back to our country in our schools, tucker. the heart of our country. >> tucker: we should care. you are beastly do. dr. siegel , thank you so much. >> thanks, tucker. >> tucker: roger stone is about to go to prison essentially for the rest of his life but his enemies aren't satisfied with that. they are kicking roger stone off the internet. that is next. dana perino here to tell us how joe biden will escape the debates this fall if indeed she thinks he will. that's next.

♪ >> tucker: roger stone has been ordered to report to prison next week for the crime of being unpopular with people in charge. once he's behind bars, he will be a threat to no one. in fact, he's never been a threat to anyone. he's going to prison because of its politics. not because of anything he did. but he's been -- even spending years in prison isn't enough for the people sending him. they want him destroyed in every way and he related on the way out. that's why they sent the fbi in a brigade unit to his house to arrest him at gunpoint and then invited cnn to chronicle the whole thing. it's why today facebook announced its deleting roger stone's personal facebook account and banning him from the platform. the alleged crime is a connection to something called misinformation, whatever that is, it's about as valid as the crime stone is going to prison for. it's all an excuse. his real offense was supporting the wrong presidential candidate

on top of that and really at the people in charge. they hate that more than anything, so they are destroying roger stone and they are getting away with it, as i always do. well, we told you of the top of the show that tom friedman of "the new york times" does not want joe biden to debate. he is saying that because many democrats are saying it privately. biden is ahead. there is no reason to risk it by talking. can biden get away with that? it's part of an ongoing conversation that we've had with our friend dana perino, who as you well know, hosts "the daily briefing" and joins us again tonight. dana, thank you for coming on. couldn't resist bringing you back. you usually write only have a dispute but in this case, i said there is no chance joe biden is going to debate donald trump and you said he must. my contention and i will leave it with you, tom friedman's column today is the opening of a

series of columns like that that will convince the biden people they don't have to debate. >> i will say, tucker, that you and tom friedman being in agreement was a plot twist i did not expect in 2020. >> tucker: [laughs] >> i think tom friedman, am i wrong, tucker, that tom friedman's consider the person's been most consistently wrong in washington, d.c., over his entire career? >> tucker: probably ever, yes. speaker okay, okay. i do think that part of this is yes, i think party elders or may be concerned that joe biden could blow it. that's exactly why i think he has to debate. because the questions about his mental acuity, his capabilities, his faculties, if he doesn't debate, all of those will definitely be on the table. i think he has to step up. one, he owes it to the voters to give us a debate so that we can

see. but also i think that he has to prove that the president is wrong when the president says that he's lost his step. he has dementia, whatever it is. he's sleepy. i think the debates are the way to do it. >> tucker: isn't that already up for debate now? in other words, biden is hiding. he says it's because of the coronavirus. trump is essentially the same age as biden. biden is pretty physically fit. biden is staying at home. trump is everywhere. so biden is already basically conceding that he does not want to answer unscripted questions. and he is still ahead. so why would they change that formula? >> yeah, i mean, it's a good point. i can see the strategy. i just don't think it will work. i do think that the race is tighter than it appears on paper right now, and regardless, i do know that it will tighten even further. this is not going to be a landslide either way. it's going to be a close election. here's the other thing. tom friedman is using this

column of his to talk about donald trump's tax returns. what he said is that joe biden should not debate, or he should say i will not debate you unless you release your tax returns from 2016 and 2018 and that that would be the reason but that that might drop president trump out and get the tax returns. one, i don't think that's going to happen. it's been very much litigated but what happens tomorrow morning, tucker? you have the supreme court finally going to decide on this question on whether the president's tax -- president could be compelled to release his tax returns. we will know at 10:00 a.m. i think that's what tom friedman was trying to get out. in addition to helping the joe biden could just skate by, win the election without having to debate. i still don't think that's possible. >> tucker: can i give you my theory of the case? my theory is that you are such a good person and you believe so fervently in our system and that's a compliment.

that it's too offensive to you personally to think that anybody of either party could ever be elected president without standing in a presidential debate hall. you won't allow that that could happen. >> and don't you think there are enough americans that think like we do, that that would be so offensive that it would definitely be a reason not to vote for that person, if they skipped a debate? >> tucker: yes. i fervently hope so and maybe i'm getting too cynical as i get as old as i'm becoming. i'm starting to think, i mean, if you won't even take questions, if you say certain questions are out-of-bounds by their nature, you're a public servant. you have to answer all questions. it's our government. >> tucker, i have to tell you this morning when i woke up and i started reading the news and i saw that column, the first thing i thought was "tucker is going to crush me on this tonight because it's exactly what you brought up. i maintain biden will debate and if i'm wrong, i will let you off on the other bet that you owe

me. >> tucker: if you are right, i will be thrilled. i really will. dana perino, great to see you. weekdays 2:00 p.m. we are out of time. we hope you have the best evening. shelter from the ongoing storm in your home. the great sean hannity is right now. stay long welcome to "hannity." tonight we are at a tipping point. everything that is exceptional, everything that's great about this country, the greatest country god gave man, our united states of america, i tell you tonight it's in jeopardy. in 118 days, guess what you're the ultimate jury and the very way of life that we cherish in many ways is at stake. i will give a long explanation. everything we value and cherish like capitalism, liberty, freedom, the constitution, the rule of law hangs in the balance because the most extreme radical socialist democrats are planning, and they are saying it, to fundamentally transform