♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening, and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." quite a day in financial markets, not a phrase we use a lot on this show, but a lot happened today and there are massive implications for all of us. david portnoy joins us in a moment to explain what those are. first context as to what we're watching right now. last march as the country began to panic about the arrival of a strange new coronavirus from china, a billionaire called bill ackman went on television in anc attempt to make america for afraid than we already were. our economy might be done at this point, he said. over. dead. not coming back. bill ackman went on like this forul 28 full minutes.

terrified cnbc viewers watched slack jawed as he ranted. here is part of his performance. >> hell is coming! this was a feeling like i've never had. like there's a tsunami coming, right? a tsunamias is coming. you feel it in the air. the tide starts to roll out, ok? on the beach, people are playing and having fun like there's nothing going on. that's the feeling i've had for the last two months, ok? and my colleagues at work, ok, thought i was a lunatic! we need to shut it down now! america will end as we knowth i, ok? i'm sorry to say so, ok, unless we take this option. >> bill ackman was afraid, and he wanted you to be afraid. he was especially frightened for the future of hilton hotels. hilton hotels ackman proclaimed, "is going to zero along with every other hotel company in the world. every hotel is going to be shut down in the country. every one!" talk aboutng scary! but in the end, not for bill ackman. not long after that appearance,

we learned that his firm had made more than $2t billion from trading in the stocks many people believed he'd pushed down with hysterically dire predictions you just saw including hilton hotels. is ackman's rant on cnbc part of a very dishonest investment strategy? seems pretty obvious. we said so on the air, ackman's lawyers threatened toa sue us. ackman swore to us his public attack on hilton hotels had nothing to do at all with his desire to buy hotel stocks at a lower price or with the billions in profit his firm subsequently reported. there was no connection whatsoever. he promised and he sounded emotional as he said it. we'll let you assess bill ackman's sincerity. ackman once attacked herballife on television. it's going zero" he predicted in an effort to profit from herballife'se decline.

ugly. that happens a lot on wall street. hedge fund managers bet money a specific stock will decline in value. that's called short selling. short selling has no obvious value tocl the american economy. short selling exists for the purpose of enriching the people who do it. short selling hurts companies obviously. it hurts their investors. it hurts their employees. ultimately, it hurts our country itself.. yet it continues. no one does anything about short selling. regulators ignore it cnbc applauds the brilliance of people who do it. "oh, they're so clever. the hedge fund managers." nbc's business channel regularly lends its airwaves to unscrupulous short sellers who uses air time to tank american companies for profit. they do that all the time. the last administration did nothing to stop this the current administration certainly won't. the biden white house is more tightly controlled by business interests than any administration to history.

virtually every person there is nybeholden to the financial establishment. what's happening on wall street is so clearly awful and so obviously a destructive. the question is, who is going to fight back against it? as it turns out a bunch of guys on reddit will. it fell to them to push back against the short sellers because no one else even tried, so they did a group of independent investors in a reddit group called wall street bets learned that hedge funds planned to short the stock of a fading retail company called game stop. so the reddit investors began buying shares of game stop and game stop surged in value ultimately up by more than 1,000%. the hedge funds for all of their calculations hadn't seen that coming and they lost billions as a resulthe of it. one hedge fund lost so much money it needed a bailout from two other hedge funds. meanwhile, some of the investors on reddit gotr rich. but getting rich was not the whole reason they did it. they also wanted to send a message to the hedge fund managers.an here's one of the reddit guys, a

man called justin speak explain it. >> i'd be lying to say if there wasn't some pleasure out of the fact that i'm a pastor and jesus tells the story about this richs fool who has an overabundant harvest, more than he can store and rather than give the excess to those in need, he chooses to build bigger and bigger barns to store it for himself. rather than share the billions with the less fortunate, they've built bigger and bigger barns for themselves and so, yeah, as 100%, there's a part of me that thought, well, it'd be a fun to be a part of this moment to see this moment where at some level overnight these investors are losing their investing lives that's being demanded from them and they're left wondering what -- who is going to get what they prepared for themselves? >> they built bigger barns for themselves? that's true. not to mention epically enormous art collections. the hedge fund people in case you haven't noticed, in case you don't read the business press is very proud of theirci art collection. very, aggressively, flamboyantly

proud. it's cheap, garish crap people will laugh at a generation from now. that tells you a lot. it turns out a lot of our financial wizards have awful taste. they're as vulgar as the way they do business. no one dares to tell them in a country that worships finance o people. they're the kind of rich people that still think frank gary is a brilliant architect, not a scam artist. so people like that, arrogant, lacking any self-awareness whatsoever understandably generate some resentment from the rest of the population. pause and say, wait a second, bill ackman, and many people on wall street that behave like bill ackman, what exactly did you do to make $2 billion? did you improve anything? it was just another sleazy inside deal the rest of us were excluded from participating in? tell usy now. please speak slowly so we can understand your answer. that was pretty much the message the reddit guys were sending to wall street. watching at home, a lot of

americans were applauding that message. they felt the same way. the hedge funds don't. here is what makes the hedge fund managers different from you. power than you. they control the game. they immediately changed the rules of the game. today, the investment app robinhood used by independent investors to buy and sell stocks banned its users from trading game stop shares as well as from several other company shares. no one even knew that was legal, maybe it isn't, but robinhood did it any way and they did it under pressure from the hedge funds who they really work for. so much for the "free market" geyou're always hearing about. there's nothing free about it. that turned out to be a lie. turns out, though, what wall street really hates is outsider trading.er the idea that people from outside their world might be rich.g that's the one thing they can abide. the management of robinhood didn't admit any of this. they can't. they're still posing instead as aan outpost, inclusive progressive values in the sea of

rapacious capitalism. they sell information they gather from their customers to the hedge funds who use it for their advantage and most customers don't even know. how's that for progressive? on the other hand, they do support blm. they're against hate and systemic racism. they're for science and they want you to know that. here's an ad from robinhood that ran last month. >> remember when greed was good, when you had to look the part, when you had to pay for a seat at the table? t we set out to change it the way the system works, to put the power in everyone's hands, to make it feel, speak, sound and look just like you. we all invest every day in ourselves, our communities, our future. we are all investors. >>ll tucker: ha-ha. it's so fun to watch that stuff after the fact.

that ran a month ago! we set out to change the way the system works, says robinhood. well,, that's for sure. in fact, that's literally true. robinhood changed the system at precisely the moment when people from outside the system started benefitingha from the system. sorry, trolls, no trading for you.ra we're locking your account. other platforms took effectively the same position but pretended more than robinhood did. they justified changing the rules by attacking the very people they were hurting by changing the rules. the communication service discord, for example, banned users from the wall street bets group freezing its platform. why'd they do that? wasn't at all because the reddit guys were beating the hedge fund guys at their own grubby game. that's not allowed. it had nothingte to do with that of course. they were banned because the reddit guys engaged in "hate speech!" of course! the reddit guys were racist! that's why they humiliated the hedgehe fund. only a racist would dot that! you can laugh if you want, but

keep in mind, this is a time-tested tactic. it works!me that's why they do it! remember back if you can to the occupy wall street protest of more than a p decade ago. the 2008 crash wrecked an awful lot08 of families in this count. many have not recovered even now. people were angry about that and many blamed wall street, and they said so. but rather than address their grievances, some of them legitimate, wall street and its countless puppets in the media just es changed the subject so it was right about this point that we started hearing an awful lot about identity politicians. we can prove that. in 2011, when the occupy movement was at its peak, mentions of the word "racism" in the "new york times," "the washington post" and "los angeles times" skyrocketed. in the case of the "washington post," which is america's most committed defender of entrenched power literally owned now by the richest man in the world, mentions of racism nearly tripled at the height of occupy wall street.

oh! and, of course, it worked. they changedtgh the subject. they're doing that again. they alwayss do that. always. over on cnbc, home of the professional short seller, the ones who tell you to "sell" when they profit from it, they haven't started yet yelling about the scourge of white supremacy on reddit though obviously that's coming. it's inevitable. they started their defense of big finance a little more tactfully than that. the problem with humiliating hedge funds explained andrew russ sorkin, is in the end, humiliating hedge funds only hurts the people who do it, so for their own good, they might want to stop this nonsense immediately. >> what i'm concerned about is this is a pump-and-dump schemeis that effected as being -- as mother teresa arrived on the scene. i think there are real underlying issues with the system that need to be resolved. i do not want to protect the system. i love watching the little guy beat the big guy as much as anybody, but what i wonder is

whether these folks trying to "stick it to the man" are ultimately going to be sticking it to themselves. >> tucker: if they don't stick themselves with their scheme. not at all like the guests on this channel do. "this is a scheme!" and andrew russ sorkin is deeply concerned about this thing. he's really, really worried that "average people" might be hurt by this scheme. he can barely sleep whileby thinking about it. that's how much he tossed and turned beneath his goose down duvet as he pondered the fate of america's beleaguered middle-class, which is hilarious. but even if you were to believe it, it's a little late honestly. where was andrew russ sorkin for the last dozen years as the central bank shoveled trillions to wall street? there are enriching a few, devaluing the american dollar,l guaranteeing hyperinflation and destroying the value of the average american's savings. the reddit guys noticed it. that's why they're mad. janet yellen may have something to say about it janet yellen ran the federal reserve for years

under barack obama. janet yellen is responsible for creating the distorted financial system that made the reddit revolt possible, indeed inevitable. o where's janet yellen now? what's she have to say for herself? she's joe biden's treasury secretary. here is what joe biden slack had to say yesterday about janet yellen. >> is the white house concerned about the stock market activity working around game stop and now with some other stocks as well including the -- or whatever, the company that once was blockbuster? have there been conversations at the fcc about how to proceed? >> i'm happy to repeat we have the first female treasury secretary in a team that is surrounding her and often questions about market, we'll send to them. our team is, of course, our economic team including

secretary yellen and others are monitoring the situation. it's a good reminder, though, the stock market isn't the onlya measure of the health of our economy. those don't reflect how working and middle-class families are doing. >> j tucker: so as her first answer, jen psaki is happy to repeat that janet yellen is the first female treasury secretary. she's got nothing to say about reddit, game stop, short selling or the dangerously corrupt position of america's financial market. she made millions from hedge funds including losing money -- we want to remind you that janet yellen is a woman. they're empowered. they break glass ceilings. we can't give you an answer. we won't improve your life. we do have diversity so you should be happy. that's their position. has there ever been in all human history a clear distillation of the essence of neo-liberalism than that? never has been. maybe at this point, people will start to catch onto the game. suddenly, people are catchingo

onto a lot of things, it looks like. looking back, we may see the reddit guys and their effective defense of game stop as a kind of turning point in this country's history. whatever our current system is, it is definitely not the capitalism we were promised, not evenit close. one of the rare people in media who understands this is our next guest. he's a founder of barstool sports as well as an independent investors who trades an awfull lot on line and has done well. dave portnoy joins us now to explain exactly what this moment means. dave this gets to the heart of what you've been doing under quarantinene and i'm wondering what lessons we can draw from this. what is happening exactly? >> you know, i've been trading heavily since quarantine started and i was shocked by this. i personally did invest in amc and nokia. those are two of the stocks that

the reddit guys and the wall street bets guys were pushing. thelieved in the power of internet. when i saw what robinhood was doing, ironically robinhood's take from the rich and give to the poor even though they do the exact opposite, i was stunned. i think it's criminal. i think there has to be an investigation. i think people have to go to jail. whether that actually happens, i don't know, but i've never been more convinced about market manipulation and the people, the hedge funds controlling the i ge than today. i mean, just wake up and say, hey, you can't trade these stocks anymore. you could only sell them. we're going to intentionally crash the market in these stocks and everyone who has it, tough, you're going to lose a ton of money but we're going to save the rich people and the hedge funds. shocking!

like in 20 years of me doing barstool, i'm not exaggerating, it's the most shocked i've been and maybe i shouldn't be, but, you know, when you have aoc and donald trump jr. vote on the same side of an issue, you know something is dramatically wrong! >> tucker: this seems like a betrayal of the basic promise of american public markets which is their transparency. that's why you've been able to make it through quarantine. you make a bet and you win. how amazing to discover that that's not real? >> apparently it's real forra them. and i love the lectures. you hear it from the hedge funds and the suits as i call them but they'll say they're protecting you and we're protecting you against yourself and people don't understand the risk and margin and then you look at them and it's like, buddy, look in the mirror! you're doing the same thing. the hedge funds are betting against companies. we're betting on them. with money and margin, we're doing the same thing. the only difference is we're winning and you're getting your teeth kicked in and you just said time out. we're changing the rules. and it's bananas!

it cannot happen. i saw the robinhood guy on tv. he's lying through his teeth. listen, the thing that really is scary, robinhood -- i'm going to give this guy r a shred of cred. when he woke up and he said we're going to halt trading and ruin our most -- our client base, he knew that was the end ofru robinhood. robinhood is done that company will cease to exist because what they built it on the day trader, the retail trader, they're never going back. he willingly blew up his company today.e he knew that was going to happen. why? who is in the back end? who is pulling the strings? who is making the decisions? we have to find out. by the way, it's not enough to be like, oh, we're going to slap you on the wrist and give you a fine. these are billionaires. they can write billion dollar checks like we write $10 checks. someone has to go to jail for this. c this is intentional market manipulation. it's everyday people. not just the reddit people. i have people hitting me up all the time, today, yesterday, they're putting their rent into this. they got caught up in the momentum. if you lose money fair and square, fine, but no one was

under the impression someone could just press the stop button and say guess what? we can crash this stock without you having any say! you could only sell it. you can't buy it. what happened? this is like the movie "wall street!" it's insane! >> tucker: i just read a piece about 15 minutes ago that said -- and it seems right -- that robinhood's real customer is not retail investors like you. its real customer is the hedge fund. they sell data on trades to the hedge funds which use it to their advantage. assuming that's true, did you know that? did you think robinhood knew that? >> i did not know that. i didn't know that until today. i don't think anybody knew a lot of the things that were going on until today. um, you know, again, robinhood was operating under the guise this was a retail trading

platform. a lot of people said i helped build it because we had all of our retail bros as we call them, goinghe there. they're going to democracies trading. it's the exact opposite. now they're saying we're going to go back to normal tomorrow. we're going to let everybody do the normal trading tomorrow. what changed? the billionaire hedge funds got out of their shorts tonight. this behavior not risky tomorrow but it was today? it's because they're being pulled by strings. it's criminal behavior what happened today. plain and simple. people have to go to jail. plain and simple! >> tucker: best description i've heard. i've got to ask you before you go, several weeks ago you announced you're starting to raise money to help those restaurants that were affected by the coronavirus shutdowns. >> we're closing in on $33 million raised. over 200 businesses we've helped. over 200,000 people have donated to it. again, i'm a prickly guy but it's been gratifying to be able to help and thank you to everybody who has donated. we continue to do it. we're helping a lot of small businesses and a lot of employees and a lot of communities.

it actually -- it's been great! it really has! >> tucker: it's amazing. you're like your own federal agency at this point helping people when others won't. i appreciate it. dave portnoy, thank you for coming on tonight. >> thanks, tucker. >> tucker: so, amidst all of the tumult, there's an actual power struggle but it's more than that, it's a struggle over ideas, over ideology, over philosophy going on in the very center of the republican party. you should know about it because it'll help define what the party is going forward. congressman matt is in wyoming tonight. we'll tell you why he's involvef in that. plus, teachers unions decided they don't want to teach your vechildren. last night, we showed you a poignant, a moving video of one parent who confronted a school board about it. >> the garbage c workers who pik up my freakin' trash risk their lives every day more than anyone in this school system. >> that man joins us straight ahead.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> tucker: we're in a new era, obviously, and among the many realignments taking place in american life, we just spent 25 minutes telling but one going on in wall street tonight, there's also quite an intense struggle underway about what the

republican party represents going forward. there are a lot of people involved in this. we want to single out two that represent poles in the party, opposite ends. one is congressman liz cheney of wyoming, the state's only neo-conservative representing the older republican party in the bush years, probably more precisely. c on the other end is congressman matt gaetz from florida with a different outlook. the question is, how much power in the new republican party will liz cheney have? will today, congressman gaetz went to the state capitol there joined by hundreds of protesters who don't believe that liz cheney should be one of the people running the republican party going forward. congressman joins us right now. thank you for comingg on. i like liz cheney. i think she's smart.

this is not personal. thisn is philosophical. the question is how is someone who is so closely aligned with a bill crystal, very sinister person and many other neo-con. that so hurt this country, how is that person so close to the top of the leadership of the republican party tonight?ou >> because inside the beltway of washington d.c., the establishment has concentrated their power and now they want to be able to reconstitute the republican party in their image. my theory of the case, tucker, is if we only fight the neo-cons in washington d.c., then they're on their home turf. we need to go out into the country. we need to inspire a positive populism and stand against these america-last politicians who are a lot like america as a whole, owned by foreign interests abroad and special interests at home and at times deeply unpopular. i saw a poll that came out yesterday that had liz cheney at

10% approval rating with republicans in her own state. by contrast, moammar gadhafi had a 13% approval rating in his final days and so it's a bit ironic liz cheney is less popular among republicans than the arab dictators that she wants to throw out of office. >> tucker: so here's the confusing part, again, it's not personal but philosophical. if you were to poll republican voters on their beliefs, they'd come much closer to yours than the beliefs of liz cheney and bill crystal so why would kevins mccarthy, leader of the republicans in m the house, back liz cheney? it's a sincere question? >> of course to be able to maintain power, tucker. i don't think there's any love lost between kevin mccarthy and liz cheney but if you're a member of the establishment and the leadership, the most dangerous concept in the world to you is that anyone in the leadership could be removed by virtue of a vote of the membership. kevin mccarthy needs to hold a vote on liz cheney and if he

doesn't, the republican conference is a total joke. more than half of the republican conference has said that this person does not speak for us. now, you and i both know the republicans basically have no power in washington d.c. right now. the only power we have is to communicate and if the person we've designated to communicate for us is the conference chair doesn't have the support of the majority of the conference, it is a total fiction you've created regarding the entire structure of leadership. >> tucker: of course. interesting. now that we're all defending democracy -- a vote seems like a good idea. voting is a democracy. hope you get it. thank you for being here. >> thank you, tucker. >> tucker: the total number of coronavirus deaths is a huge deal. used to be at cnn. coronavirus death tracker. the coronavirus death numbers have been different from what we've been led by politicians to believe. very different. especially in one state. we'll tell you where next. ♪ ♪

type 2 diabetes can have a big impact on your life. but how can it be prevented? well, the first step is knowing if you have prediabetes, a serious medical condition that puts you at high risk for type 2 diabetes. 1 in 3 american adults has prediabetes, but more than 80% don't know they have it. the good news is prediabetes can be reversed. and for many people, healthy changes in their daily routine can make a big difference. take the 1-minute risk test today at doihaveprediabetes.org

>> tucker: we showed you tape last night of a parent who speaks for so many parents for school-aged children in this country right now, brandon michon from northern virginia. here's what he told the school board in his county. >> you think you're some sort of martyrs because of the decisions you're making when the statistics do not lie that the vast majority of the population is not at risk from this virus. >> tucker: they should be working. they're not. we'll speak to the man who said that in just a moment. but first, it's not very often that politicians show signs of self-awareness, self-reflection, but on tuesday, we did see one of those moments coming from new york's emmy award-winning governor andrew cuomo. the government that andrew cuomo runs is totally incompetent. >> incompetent government kills people. incompetent government kills people. more people died than needed to

die in covid. that's the truth. >> tucker: he said it twice, so he means it. maybe he was trying to get the attention of the anchors. either way he's right. new report from the attorney general's office confirmed the assessment of andrew cuomo. andrew cuomo's government has been undercounting nursing home deaths during covid for up to 15%. 50% undercount of death. what? >> it's worse than we thought. we knew andrew cuomo wasn't responding. we knew he wasn't being transparent. to find out the deaths are 50% underreported is absolutely an unbelievable shock. he was not being transparent. he would not answer questions by anyone, and here you've got this governor who is promoting himself all during this

pandemic. you know with his brother fredo on cnn, they have the cuomo brother show, laughing and talking about how great they are. he writes a book on leadership about himself in the middle of the pandemic and how he's really handling this pandemic so well. i mean, you know, think about it. what leader, what great leader do you know who during a war or a pandemic says, you know, i'm so great. i'm handling this. i happen to know he's a bit shady. i ran against him a long time g ago, but the truth is that he was the one who was sending covid-infected patients into nursing homes. and that is what caused the number of deaths to sky rocket. you don't have to -- you don't have to be a genius to figure that out.t and then when he was questioned about why are you sending covid-infected patients into nursing homes, he blamed it on donald trump. meanwhile, donald trump was the one who was giving all of the help he needed, you know, and giving him whatever he asked for

and he thanked him in march and april and may and then all of a sudden now everything is donald trump's fault. you've got andrew cuomo who is ridiculing people, who have loved ones who are dying in these nursing homes like our own janis making fun of them and at the same time he wins an emmy for being such a great guy. you got to give credit to the left, but here's where the trouble comes in. it's a cover-up, tucker. it was a cover-up when he undercut the numbers by half. and it may even be more than that, ok? and number two, he then makes the decision to give immunity to nursing homes and hospital administrators in a law that he signed shortly thereafter so that they cannot be sued civilly or criminally. even the attorney general says that that should be changed. to me, that's consciousness of guilt. here is this guy who is doing it intentionally, sending themay i, blaming cuomo all the time being

asked about why are you doing it, not answering the question and engaging in an ego trip. now, what he's saying is nobody is going to be prosecuted. don't worry about it. i've got you all covered. i passed a law. this guy is the essence of corruption.is he is mean-spirited. evil. what he did -- by the way, new york is the epicenter of the coronavirus. >> tucker: i know this. >> we have more deaths in this state than any other state in the country and he wants to talk about what a wonderful guy he tis! >> tucker: jeanine pirro, appreciate that assessment. good to see you tonight. thank you. >> thank you. >> tucker: we showed you the tape last night. it moved a lot of people. brandon michon say parent in loudoun county, virginia. they week, he confronted the teachers union who refuses to go back to teach the children. >> you're a bunch of cowards hiding behind our children refusing to keep our schoolsho open. there are people like me and a

line of other people out there who will gladly take your seat and figure it out! >> tucker: brandon joins us tonight. thank you for coming on tonight. what moved you to do that? >> look, we've gone for months to the school board meetings and as parents, you know, our voice wasn't being heard. what you didn't see in that video was my five-year-old and eight-year-old speaking and after they spoke, there was no acknowledgement of that. school boardmembers who are trying to just move you onto the next thing and there's no acknowledgement. it's scary to talk in front of these people. it's scary for adults to even do it. and so what happened was when i got up there, you know, my blood started boiling a little bit. as i began speaking, i said, look, um, i want them to hear me. i want them to look up and pay attention. i think we got some acknowledgement from that. >> tucker: i bet you did! you certainly woke up a lot of country.

the camera shot is static. we don't see their reactions. what were their reactions? >> you know, i think it was a little bit of awe, right? you know, there's b the quorum they want and i wasn't fitting that, but to take a step back,th this is about the children. this isn't about a political party. >> tucker: t right. right. >> r the teachers themselves, they're -- you know, they're trying their best. they were thrown into these circumstances and i feel for them. look, a kindergarten teacher never signed up to be an online professor.an f so we're all trying to figure this out together. children, teachers, what we want is them back in schools learning and being children. >> tucker: see and every parent who has watched kids languish for the last year feels the way you do. do you think the administrators or the union leaders understand this now? >> you know, look, we have elected officials. we bring them in. they're supposed to have a job to do. a lotf of times it's easy to sit

back and let other people lead. what i said and what i was passionate about is, look, if you're not going to lead, this country was built on strong leaders.ut take a step to the side. that's ok. let other people step into that void. if you're not going to get our kids back, make a plan and execute it. and you know what? you may fall a little short but it's better than no plan at all. the key thing i think is, like, you've got to put something out there and take a little bit at risk. >> tucker: this country was built on strong leaders. boy, that is such a wise observation. no leadership is almost worse than making, you know, wrong decisionsem and then correcting them. do you seeou anybody in your ste or your county or town stepping forward to provide that leadership?to >> look, i think there's a lot of parents -- l and, look, i'm just a father, right? i have kids and i want the best for them, but there's so many others who just want the best for their kids. there's a lot of people who have reached out to me from across the country ironically saying thank you for being a voice.

and the only thing i could really say is as citizens, we vote, we speak, and we couldhi make change, and so go to your local school board meeting. look it up. see when it is. go and see, um -- write something. phone in. write an e-mail. try to make some change. try to get our kids back in school, because our kids arere e most important asset in our life and then learning and being mentored and being educated is all we have to look forward to, because they're going to be taking care of us when we're old. >> tucker: what do you do for a living? what does your employer think of this? >> i don't want to get into that. this really isn't about me.in >> tucker: i get that. >> this is about the children, right? >> tucker: yes. >> my colleagues have an understanding. this is nothing to do with me. this is my side and my view that children should be educated in a certain way and give them the option, right? if some parents want to keep their kids at home, that's great. if some parents want to send their kids to school, that's all right as well. kids need to be kids.

parents should let them grow and let the teachers that want to be there with them, give them that option. >> tucker: that is not a political point, that is the truth. i hope you're celebrated and not punished for making it. i appreciate you coming on. brandon, thank you. >> thank you so much. appreciate it. >> tucker: so what you've seen with the reddit investors in game stop isn't just a news story. s it has profound implications for this country and this economy. what are those implications? glenn greenwald hasp been watching this carefully and has a really interesting answer. he'll be joining us after the break. ♪♪

♪ ♪ >> look in the mirror, you're doing the same thing. the hedge funds are getting against companies. we're betting on them. with money and margin, we're doing the same thing. only difference is we're winning and you're getting your teeth kicked in. it's because they're being pullede' by strings. it's criminal behavior what happened today. plain and simple. people have to go to jail!

>> tucker: that, as you know, was earlier in the show, dave portnoy who runs the sports site barstool. some of the smartest analysis what we're seeing on wall street now with from a guy with a sports site. one of the smartest pieces written on this today came from someone who is also not strictly speaking a financial journalist. he covers foreign policy. glenn greenwald, independent journalist. hope you support his work. we're grateful to have him on tonight to explain what this means. you wrote a great piece this today, glenn. there's so much to say. how would you assess what we're seeing with game stop and the hedge fund? >> there are a whole bunch of different power centers in the united states, many of which we often openlyly discuss, the intelligence community, silicon valley, the u.s. government, lobbyists. obviously, one of the mostll important and powerful, if not the most powerful is wall street and hedge funds in particular on wall street who are in the top of that food chain. we almost never talk about how it is they get to be

multibillionaires, about really producing anything ofet value, just leeching off the american economy, taking huge amounts of money in exchange for nothing. whenever you think of silicon valley, they get back by producing something whatever you think of those products. >> tucker: totally agree. >> these people don't produce nothing. they just take. and they just take and they just take.d for the first time, not only are we seeing them have f pain inflicted on them, not by people who are stealing from them or committing crimes but people who have figured out their game and learned how to exploit it by doing what they should do which is studying it but they're also getting dragged out into the sunlight. so for the first time, we're talking about people like melvin capital and citadel and hedge fund shortnd sellers and understanding what it is that they're doing to this country and it only happened, tucker, because the internet a free internet -- when it's free -- enables citizens to band together in large enough numbers to challenge the ruling class elites. that's why we talk so much about the imperative nature of defending the internet from surveillance, defending it from censureship.

it's a very powerful weapon in the hands of citizens against ruling class elites. that's why they're so bent upon seizing it back, controlling it, regulating it and censuring it. >> tucker: i think you make such a wise point. if i made $1 billion, people would say, where did you make $1 billion?if and for what? i would feel incumbent upon me the responsibility to explain what i did. i never hear anyone discuss what the upper echelons of finance have really done or as you pointed out contributed to become billionaires. why is that not a conversation we're having all the time? >> rightht and the other thing i think is so interesting from this particular case is you see people on the left and people on the right reacting in very similar ways, namely in favor of what these redditers did to these hedge funds. why? because if you're on the right, what you believe in generally, traditionally is free market economics.n if you're on the left, what you believe in is government intervention and the economy to help the neediest. we have neither of those. what we have is a totally red system where the government

constantly intervenes in the economy but not to help people who are in need but to help the richest and most powerful who are funded and owned and controlled by those very rich people who fund their campaign to pay their lobbyists who give them enormous speaking fees when they're out of power and it's a system that no one, either on the left or the right, supports. the only people that support it are the establishment centrists in both wings of the parties and they see these people uniting that's whym and they're desperate to reimpose a wedge between us so that we can't unite anymore. >> tucker: ha-ha! but there's a realignment coming which is is the good news. the great glenn greenwalt. thank you. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> tucker: that's it for us. we appreciate your spending the hour watching this show. you may not agree with everything we say or think, but the one thing you can be certain of, we are saying what we really

believe because we can. this is the free-speech channel, the last one left in american media. we will rejoin you tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, groupthink. sean hannity takes over from here. >> sean: only a couple of us, tucker. only a couple. not many. and efforts to silence the few voices. anyway, good show. thank you, tucker. welcome to "hannity." tonight, a david versus goliath story is now unfolding. david was winning,su until the sort of big government, well, jumped in to help goliath and save goliath. as we speak, retail investors are and have been squaring off against wall street and winning. gamestop closed today at over $193 a share, down from, look ae this, a whopping $450. excuse me, just a short time ago, was trading around $5 a share. and then two major tradingen