watching "fox news primetime." i'm rachel campos-duffy. we will be back here tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. tucker carlson is up next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." you may have seen just an hour or two ago that the "new york times" essentially accused congressman matt gaetz of sex trafficking. we don't have any background on this story. gates says it's a smear and a shakedown and he joins us on this show in just a minute with his side of this story. but first tonight, remarkable twist in a tragedy still ongoing whose effects have transformed this country forever. just days before authorities reported the first cases of the coronavirus in wuhan, a top inspector at the world health organization sat for an interview that was broadcast on

youtube. that inspector was a man called peter diaz zac and he spoke with his research at the wuhan institute of virology which had been going on for more than 15 years. in that interview he also discussed his nonprofit organization which had received millions from the u.s. government i channeled substantial percentage of the money to the lab in wuhan which he described as, quote, a world class lab of the highest standard. some of that work, again, paid for by american taxpayers, went to something called gain of function research. that involved manipulating viruses in a laboratory to make them more transmissible and more deadly. in his youtube interview peter spoke freely about all of this. at the time he had no reason not to. outside of a handful of diplomats, no one had raised concerns about the kind of research into bat viruses, very dangerous research it turns out, that was taking place in wuhan. according to peter, his research and the grant money that

supported it, was necessary to create a vaccine to prevent the next global pandemic. watch him explain how easy it is to manipulate a coronavirus. coronavirus is a pretty good, you are a virologist, you know all this stuff, can you manipulate them in the world pretty easily. smart protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus. >> yeah. >> risk. so you can get the sequence, you can build the protein and we worked with ralph at unc to do this and backbone of another virus and to do some work in the lab. >> >> you can manipulate them pretty easily in a lab. that was recorded on december 9th 2019. it wasn't long before peter stopped giving interviews about his lab experiment. people were starting to ask uncomfortable questions. wasn't there an advanced virology lab with a history of sloppy containment protocols very close to where the first outbreak occurred?

well, yes, there was. but peter didn't want to talk about that. so he and other bureaucrats at the world health organization came up with an al temperature tia explanation for the pandemic. the virus, they explained to the world, had most likely emerged from an exotic mammal that for some reason was being sold in a seafood a wet market in wuhan. that's what happened. and the media bought that explanation. later we discovered that it was not true. there was never any evidence in fact that covid infections had originated in a eaten for food. the will in wuhan laughed at that idea. peter did not apologize. he kept deflecting attention from the lab in april he told the show democracy how the idea that this virus escaped from the lab is pure bologna it is simply not true. does sack has pushed that line ever since relentlessly last summer he wrote scientists know

covid-19 wasn't created in a lab. he made the point on twitter repeatedly. game of function research has nothing to do with the origin of covid unless you believe the conspiracy theory why mix that it came from bats which is what the evidence suggests. almost every media outlet in the country dutifully repeated these claims fast they were fact. as early as january "national public radio" quoted this a wet market in wuhan, china, is catching blame as the probable source of the current coronavirus outbreak sweeping the globe. that was fast. it was just a few days into the pandemic, it wasn't clear that npr had sent anyone to the ground in wuhan but somehow they knew exactly where the virus came from half a world away in central china. national geographic famous for its expeditions also determined somehow that this issue was settled, quote: wet markets launched the coronavirus, they wrote. here's what you need to know.

so the investigative reporters were satisfied with no investigation. but some people still had questions one of them was alena chan a molecular biologist at the harvard institute of mit. chan noticed something odd about the coronavirus. its genome hadn't changed much over time even though it, the virus, had overgone trillions of replications that's strange. normally viruses that respond from animals to humans jump quickly that's what the last sars virus did in 2003. early stage sars viruses looked very different from sars viruses later in the pandemic. this coronavirus wasn't behaving that way. in fact, it seemed like it was custom built for human transmission when chan published a paper any reporter who would listen. called conclusions preposterous and quote conspiracy theory. most media organizations followed suit and the story went away. after all, lena chan was just

one molecular biologist. what did she know? she was easy enough to ignore. that's exactly of course what happened to a chinese virology dr. lee man yang who we spoke to on this show. he was working in wuhan in the early days of the pandemic. the american pandemic dismissed her as a in the, as a conspiracy thirst. there is nothing see here go away crazy chinese lady. and so she did. but going forward, it may be much more difficult to dismiss this story. on sunday, the former director of the centers for disease control and prevention robert redfield told cnn that based on everything he knows he, too, believes the coronavirus likely came from the lab in wuhan. >> i am of the point of view that i still think the most likely etiology of this pat general in wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped. other people don't believe that that's fine. science will eventually figure it out. it's not unusual for respiratory

pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker. >> tucker: it's hard to dismiss robert redfield as some kind of qanon enthusiast or a lunatic. he is not. redfield is a former army officer who spent his life studying virology that doesn't mean he is always right about everything and, in fact, he has often been wrong during this pandemic. but it does mean that what he says is worth assessing carefully. that is supposed to be what journalists do for a living. they look into claims that have some merit, not proven, but should be looked into, especially claims that have enormous implications for the country. that's not even close to what happened. the scientists over at msnbc and cnn, the same people who silenced alissa khan got work immediately. >> >> former cdc director robert redfield told our own sanjay gupta in a new cnn documentary that he believes covid-19 originated from a lab in wuhan. even though, obviously, there has been no formal evidence to

support the theory. >> the lab leak theory doesn't seem like a plausible theory unless you aggregate the biggest collection of coronavirus and put them in a lab. >> the theory that the virus originated in a lab in wuhan, china. but, tonight, dr. anthony fauci tells national geographic that quote: this virus could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated. >> both scientists and the u.s. intelligence community agree that this coronavirus was not man-made. that is not a possibility. it came from a natural source. it didn't come from a lab. a lot of people love that phrases escaped from a lab because it sounds like something from a marvel movie or comic book. sound like a man made virus that china was weaponizing that got out of control. >> tucker: so scientists and the u.s. intelligence community are unanimous. it did not come from a lab. what's so interesting is, of course are, we don't know. there isn't conclusive evidence in either direction.

so why were these self-appointed tv doctors and talking heads instantly making it political and instantly claiming something they cannot prove. the "new york times" published a hit piece entitled ex-cdc debunked origin theory according to the "new york times" intelligence agencies have no evidence that coronavirus escaped from a lab. that's not exactly true. it's not a settled question. last april the office of the director of national intelligence released a statement noting that the intelligence community has, in fact, not ruled out a leak from the lab in wuhan, intel officials say they will, quote, continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at the laboratory in wuhan. as recently as just last month, the director of national intelligence stood by that statement. so why are so many trying to dismiss these claims out of hand as if they know?

why are they trying to make the former director of the cdc be quiet? part of the answer, of course, to protect china. the world health organization is funded by china and they're certainly working hard to do it. this week the w.h.o. released what it called a report on the origins of the coronavirus. there was only one researcher based in the united states who participated in w.h.o.'s investigation into the origin of the virus. guess who that person was? oh, it's peter daszak, surprise, surprise, now let's see if you can guess what daszak and his colleagues discovered in their investigation? well, a whole lot of chinese innocence. in the w.h.o.'s 120-page report on the origins of the virus, only two pages address the possibility it may have come from a lab. although rare laboratory accidents do happen in different laboratories around the world are working with bat coronavirus. yet, the report says, the wuhan cdc laboratory moved on the second of december 2019 to a new location near the wet market, such moves can be disruptive for

the operation of any laboratory. but tonight get the wrong idea says the w.h.o. it is still a and we're quoting extremely unlikely the virus emerged from the lab why is it so unlikely exactly? here is the explanation. there is no record of viruses closely related to the controversies in any laboratory before december of 2001 or genomes that in combination could provide a sars covid 2 genome. in other words, we didn't find a paper trail because china didn't leave one. if anyone could keep deadly viruses from escaping into the rest of the world, it's the wuhan institute of virology. quote, the three laboratories in wuhan working with either coronavirus diagnostic and/or coronavirus isolation and vaccine development all had high quality biosafety level facilities that were well-managed, closed quote. and case closed. by the way, this is contradicted by firsthand testimony of

american diplomats who went in to the lab and said wow, this looks dangerous. but, according to the w.h.o., china and the world health organization did nothing wrong so stop asking questions. and, yet, it's interesting that people won't stop. some people are continuing to act. on sunday a former national security official told cbs news that the w.h.o. report has all the credibility of a north korean evening news broadcast. jamie metzl served in the clinton administration and then the w.h.o. advisory committee can't be described as a right winger. but the report was just too much for jamie metzl and he said so. >> i wouldn't really call what's happened now an investigation. it's essentially a highly chaperoned, highly curated study tour. everybody around the world is imagining this is some kind of full investigation. it's not. this group of experts only saw what the chinese government wanted them to see. it was agreed first that china would have veto power over who

even got to be on the mission, secondly,. >> and w.h.o. agreed to that? >> w.h.o. agreed to that. imagine if we had asked the soviet union to do a co-investigation of chernobyl. it doesn't really make sense. >> tucker: so why are so many people in positions of authority, including the so-called scientific community so adamant that there is nothing to see here? well, here is one suggestion. last year richard ebright, who is a microbiologist at rutgers sat for an interview at boston magazine. he explained why the scientific community might want to hide the origins of a pandemic like this. quote: for the substantial subset of virologists who perform gain of function research, avoiding restrictions on research funding, avoiding implementation of appropriate biosafety hazards and avoiding implementation of appropriate research oversight are powerful motivators. in other words, if something went wrong in wuhan, it might effect them. another scientist antonio

redaldo from mit was more direct about it. if it is determined that the virus came from a lab he said, it would, quote: shatter the scientific edifice from top to bottom. the scientific edifice is one thing washington would like to be preserved. it is what gave politicians the power to abuse power. manipulate elections, small businesses to make certain industries much more powerful and destroy others. tomorrow the biden administration is not going to announce a new investigation into the origins of the controversies. they are happy with the w.h.o. report. instead the biden administration will announce one of the largest tax hikes in the history of the country, maybe the largest. projected to total between 3 and $4 trillion. we don't know the total amount yet. a lot of that cost will fall on people who are not rich. they are middle class. at one point the biden people even tried to work in a gas tax just to make certain that hourly workers were hurt most. the point is it's extremely

expensive. meanwhile, china whose recklessness and dishonesty knocked america from global preeminence and destroyed millions of lives not paid a sense. china is getting richer, we are getting poorer. expect that trend to continue. no one is even suggestions reparations from china for covid. no one even utters that word. reparations are for america to pay always. bill gertz is the national security correspondent for "the washington times," author of deceiving the sky. inside communist china's drive for global supremacy. we are happy to have him on tonight. bill, thanks are so much for coming on. what do you believe nonpartisan national security officials believe about the origin of the coronavirus? >> well, it's clear that it was not something that happened naturally. i read the report today, it says there is no evidence that it came from an animal. they haven't been able to find it in bats. they haven't been able to find it in pangolans. yet, they insist it did not leak

from a lab. it's obvious that they have been conducting massive amounts of virus research. you mentioned the wuhan cdc, they announced last year that they had found 2,000 new viruses, they are obsessed with studying viruses. of course, this lab moved right around the time that the outbreak began. so it's clear that there is more evidence that it came from a lab than it somehow jumped from an animal, a bat, to a human. furthermore, i think the unspoken important part of this story is that the wuhan institute of virology denied that it was engaged in secret work with the pla, the people's liberation army. china has a massive biological weapons program that is being carried out in these laboratories in china and nothing is being done to force them to expose the activities there, including such things as ethnic weapons. that is biological weapons that can target ethnic groups.

>> tucker: it was clear that health officials in the united states knew perfectly well that american tax dollars were being used to membership manipulate vn the wuhan institute of virg. looking back that was deeply and wise probably a crime. why have those officials not been called out to explain why they allowed this to continue? >> i think part of the reason is that the national security community and the intelligence community in the united states in particular lacks the scientific expertise to go after the origin of this virus. therefore, they have been relying on the scientific community which in my view has been completely co-opted as they said do unregulated work inside of china. and i think that it is starting to be realize other scientists like dr. redfield, like others in france, they are coming out and saying, wait a minute, the emperor has no clothes. this is a chinese strategic

deception operation. and we have got to get to the bottom of this or we are going to be fighting pandemics for the next 50 years. >> tucker: of course. maybe the headline is around the world, not just chinese but american scientists are conducting research that is so reckless that it is immoral and no one rains them in. bill gertz i appreciate you coming on tonight. thank you homeless any surging do about it. nothing? they have a plan to help thousands of migrants streaming into the country. trace gallagher has that story for us tonight. trace this. >> turns out taking care of kids here in other countries more profitable than taking care of american. sanchez and his wife are trained to handle children with behavioral problems. over the past seven years they have housed and cared for 20 foster children in the seattle area. but now they have been told to vacate their home to make room

for unaccompanied minors. the sanchez family was renting the home from a group called friends of youth. an investigation by king five in seattle says quoting the organization saw a new funding source with the federal government's office of refugee resettlement and decided to use the house for undocumented immigrant children. the investigation goes on to say the sanchez family is, quote, astonished that the friends of youth would remove washington children who are making strides in a stable foster home and replace them with children from the border. same thing is happening in california, new jersey, and other states where health and human services is using state agencies to help find housing for migrant children. although state agencies are making it crystal clear that all the rent payments are coming from the federal government. finally, after more than a year, public school teachers in san diego are going back to in person classes. not with san diego students, mind you.

but with unaccompanied minors being housed in the san diego convention center as one san diego parent said, quote: who is rescuing san diego unified students? tucker. >> tucker: that is the question. nicely put. trace gallagher for us tonight. thanks so much. >> sure. >> tucker: one state just passed a major piece of legislation to try and reduce the instance of voter fraud. a lot of people don't seem to like that. they are all on one side. brit hume joins us to explain what exactly is in that law as clearly as he always does. also this hour there are apparently sex trafficking allegations against a member of congress. tonight that congressman matt gaetz of florida, joins us live to give his side of the story. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪

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♪ >> tucker: there is often voter fraud in big elections and when the outcome of the election really matters, there is apt to be more voter fraud and there was voter fraud in the last election and the fact that when you say that people become hystl shows you how true it is. when there is voter fraud and are responds no one believes in elections in order and democracy

denies. georgia enacted legislation requires identification to cast a mail-in ballot and prove who you are and limits the number of ballot drop boxes that can be used. that seems sensible, right? according to the president, this is dangerous. in fact, it will lead to mass dehydration at the polls. >> georgia election law? >> it's an atrocity. the idea if you want any indication that it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency, they pass a law saying you can't provide water? for people standing in line? while they are waiting to vote? you don't need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive designed to keep people from voting. you can't provide water for people about to vote. give me a break. >> tucker: you can't even provide water for people who want to vote. they can't drink. they could die. that claim was everywhere on television.

i mean everywhere over the weekend. and what that tells us is that nobody actually read the bill. georgia's legislation bans only political organizations from distributing food and water. that's it. so why is everyone, including people who should know better, lying about what the law says? our very own brit hume has read the law. speaks and things clearly and joins us from our set tonight. brit, great to see you. >> tucker. >> tucker: this law is designed to dehydrate and kill people what else does it say'. >> other than the manslaughter of people who are starving and thirsting to death out on the street outside of polling places. in fact, it permits poll workers and others to distribute water if they so choose. people can bring the water and what they can't do is walk up on the street and say here, have a little water and by the way the water bottle says vote for joe, right? i mean, they are worried about electionee r snr isn't that the

law you are not aloud to approach people if line if you are a partisan. >> you can't police the street outside to identify partisans. >> tucker: right. >> it's a completely exaggerated claim at best. and it isn't even the biggest whopper that the president has publicly told about this law. he said cut back on the voting hours. it most most certainly does not. the voting hours are the exactly same voting hours they had in the most recent georgia election about which nobody complained and during which by the way they had record turnout. what i think people are really objecting to here. this is really a two fold kind of story. one is they don't like this idea of voter i.d. they really do not. voter i.d. is obviously a very sensible way to protect against, you know, people who not who they say they are voting. >> tucker: yeah. >> particularly important in an age when they are going to have mail-in balloting on a scale we are now having it that because that's obviously stownel fraud for obvious reasons that there be some way to identify people. so, you know, they require you have some government i.d. or whatever to establish who you are.

i think that's reasonable. but, the democrats hate this and long have. >> tucker: why do you think you need an i.d. to get a vaccine? why do they object to using i.d. to vote? >> because i think they want anybody who they can get to go try to cast a ballot to be able to do so. there is incentive to have fraud. beyond that, i think there is. this they have this bill hr 1 which would basically federalize the rules for elections. and that is a big item, you know it's called hr 1 and now been passed and sent to the senate passed by the house and senate to the senate and known as s 1 to pass. this would establish a uniform set of regulations across the country it. would cancel a lot of state regulations that are now in existence, thereby taking away the traditional role that the state have had in setting the terms of elections. they want to do that in my view because it would help them politically to have this done. so, casting aspersions on the georgia law becomes a rationale for federalizing the rules

nationwide which then opens the door to the kind of open-ended goings on that these state laws are designed to guard against, including the georgia law. which is a perfectly reasonable law by the way. on nearly all respects. in fact, the voting -- these drop-off boxes for votes. they didn't really exist until they were used in the pandemic. and what's happened is we have all these loose practices that were used because of the pandemic that the democrats want to codify everywhere. and the georgia law allows some of that but a lot of it doesn't, so that's where we are. >> tucker: amazing. >> remarkable. >> tucker: amazing and not surprising. brit, great to see you don't. >> you bet. >> tucker: so-called tucker carlson today in progress. first episode available now on fox nation. the second episode coming out tomorrow afternoon. watch ton fox nation. just go to the website and you can sign up. next on this show, congressman matt gaetz just before he went to air, the "new york times" reported that he has been

accused of sex trafficking. we wanted to hear his story and we will after the break. ♪ ♪

>> tucker: couple hours ago the "new york times" ran a story saying florida congressman matt gaetz is under federal investigation for playing some role in sex trafficking and potentially having a relationship with a 17-year-old girl. there are very few details in major news outlets tonight about this story. we have no background on it at all and not even any very informed questions. instead we have invited congressman gaetz on the show to respond to these stories and give us his view of them. congressman, thanks so much for coming on. i appreciate it. so, this is obviously a serious allegation. tell us what the truth is from your perspective. >> it is a horrible allegation and it is a lie. the "new york times" is running a story that i have traveled with a 17-year-old woman and

that is verifiablably false. people can look at my travel records and see that that is not the case. what is happening is an extortion of me and my family involving a former department of justice official. on march 16th, my father got a text message demanding a meeting where in a person demanded $25 million in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away. our family was so troubled by that, we went to the local fbi and the fbi and the department of justice were so concerned about this attempted extortion of a member of congress that they asked my dad to wear a wire, which he did with the former department of justice official. tonight i am demanding that the department of justice and the fbi release the audio recordings that were made under their supervision and at their direction which will prove my innocence and that will show that these allegations aren't true. they are merely intended to try

to bleed my family out of money and this former department of justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of $4.5 million as a down payment on this bribe. i don't think it's a coincidence that tonight somehow the "new york times" is leaking this information, smearing me and ruining the investigation that would likely result in a one of the former colleagues of the current doj being brought to justice for trying to extort me and my family. >> tucker: so a couple of obvious questions that come to mind and, again, just to restate this just happened. don't have any other information beyond what we have already said and you have said. first of all, who is this department of justice former elm >> emily: employee who is trying to extort the money from you you say. >> his name is david mcgee. he was a top official in the leadership in the northern district of florida as a prosecutor. he currently works at the begs and ellayna law firm.

as a as a matter of fact, one of the recordings that was made at the fbi and department of justice request occurred at that law firm and the money that was supposed to be paid today that would have shown even more evidence of david mcgee's work in this extortion scheme, that was foiled by the "new york times" story and i believe that's why this horrible information and these terrible allegations have been used this evening. >> tucker: so -- and i will get to the investigation in just a second. but you are saying that david mcgee was motivated by greed. he was trying to extort money from your family? that's his motivation, you are saying? >> i know that there was a demand for money in exchange for a commitment that he could make this investigation go away along with his co-conspiratorrers. they even claimed to have specific connections inside the biden white house. now, i don't know if that's true they were promising that joe biden would pardon me. obviously i don't need a pardon. i'm not seeking a pardon.

i have not done anything improper or wrong. but what i am troubled by is the real motivation. ted lou is call for me to be removed from the house judiciary committee. i believe we are in anner are a of our politics, tucker, where people are smeared to take them out of the conversation. i'm not the only person on screen right now who has been falsely accused of a terrible sex act. you were accused of something you did not do so you know what this feels like. you know the pain it can bring to your family and it puts people on defense when you are accused of something so salacious and awful but it did not happen, it is not true the fact it is the basis to extort my family tells a lot. if the fbi and department of justice will release the tapes that they are in possession of, the american people will see what is really going on. >> tucker: you just referred to a mentally ill viewer who accused me of a sex crime 20 years ago and, of course, it was

not true. i never met the person. but i do agree with you that being accused falsely that being accused falsely is one of the worst things that can happen and you do see it a lot. let's go back to the investigation you say it was or is underway. there was an investigation. what is the basis of that investigation? what is the allegation that really not very clear from these news stories. >> yeah, again, i only know what i have read in the "new york times." i can say that actually you and i went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there and i brought a friend of mine, you will remember her. and she was actually threatened by the fbi, told that if she wouldn't cop to the fact that somehow i was involved in some pay for play scheme that she could face trouble and so i do believe that there are people at the department of justice who are trying to smear me, you know, providing for flights and hotel rooms for people that you are dating who are of legal age is not a crime and i'm just troubled that lack of any sort

of legitimate investigation into me would then per mute, would then convert into this extortion attempt. >> tucker: i don't remember the woman you are speaking of or the context at all, honestly but i would like to know who -- so they are saying there is a 17-year-old girl who you had a relationship with; is that true? and who is this girl? what are they talking about the "new york times"? >> the person doesn't exist. i have not had a relationship with a 17-year-old. that is totally false. the allegation is as i read in the "new york times" is i have traveled with some 17-year-old in some relationship. that is false and records will bear that out to be false. >> tucker: how long has this investigation been going on, do you know? >> i don't know. >> tucker: when you first informed of it? >> you know, again, i really saw this as a deeply troubling challenge for my family on marcu know, talking about a minor and

that there were pictures of me with child prostitutes. that'sat's obviously false. there will be no such pictures because no such thing happened. but, really on march 16th was when this got going from the extortion standpoint. >> tucker: so what happens next? i mean, you can see there is this investigation. i guess a criminal investigation. i'm not quite sure what the sex trafficking part comes. in i don't, again, for the fifth time i don't really understand this story very well. but, where does it go from here? i mean you have made an allegation against someone by name on the air and accused him of trying to extort millions of dollars from your family. what happens tomorrow? >> well, what was supposed to happen was the transfer of this money that would have implicated the former colleague of these current doj officials. but that's obviously not going to happen tomorrow because the "new york times" story was leaked in order to quell that investigative effort. so here is what needs to happen next. the fbi and the department of justice must release the tapes that are in their possession

that were done at their direction. those tapes will show that i am innocent and that the whole concept of sex charges against me was really just a way to try to bleed my family out of money and probably smear my name because i am a well-known outspoken conservative and i guess that's out of style in a lot of part of the country right now. >> tucker: matt gaetz. i appreciate your coming on tonight. >> thanks for giving me the chance to tell the truth, tucker. i appreciate it. >> tucker: more interesting and complicated story than i knew from reading about it. thank you very much. so, we have just been informed that we may have something called a vaccine passport. get one and you can li your life sort of normally. if you don't, you can't. what is this exactly? should would he be worried about it? glenn greenwald joins us.

>> tucker: you just saw our matt gaetz interviews that was one of the weirdest interviews i have ever conducted that story just appeared had on the news in the couple hours ago. on certainty there is always more than you read in the newspaper we immediately called

matt gaetz and asked him to come on and tell us more which, as you saw, he did. i don't think that clarified much. but it certainly showed this is a deeply interesting story and we will be following it. don't quite understand it but we will bring you more when we find out. ♪ well, countries like japan and china and denmark have already introduced vaccine passports. now, the point of a passport is to force the people to take the coronavirus vaccine and if they don't they can't live a normal life. it would be hard to imagine a better way to discourage people from taking the vaccine if you wanted to scare the hell out of people about vaccines you would do something like this. if you wanted them to take it you would brag about how great the vaccine is and you would show that it is. yesterday the white house announced it own plans of a sort for vaccine passports. private businesses will handle it. if they want to reopen? >> a determination or development ever vaccine passports or whatever you want to call it, will be driven by the private sector.

>> tucker: glenn greenwald is an independent journalist he is on subsack as you already know and he joins us tonight. glen, thank you for come on. i know you are in favor of vaccines i think of myself as pretty pro-vaccine myself. this seems almost designed to scare people on the subject of vaccines and make them feel coerced or maybe it will work. what do you make of this? >> well, i think you have to start with noting how draconian of a invasion this is in three different ways. number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don't want in their body. a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy one of the most fundamental rights we have. secondly, gathering a new data base that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses and then thirdly, you are restricting people's movement, freedom of movement is one of the most

fundamental rights we have. it is actually guaranteed in the constitution. now, i'm not saying there is never a scenario where you can imagine that maybe vaccine passports wouldn't be justified if it were really a health catastrophe but why are we even talking about it right now when the problem isn't insufficient people wanting the vaccine, the problem is there is not enough vaccines for the people who do want them and then at some point soon we are going to reach herd immunity because enough people, polls show, want the vaccine such that the people who are unvaccinated don't pose a threat to the society or anybody else so why is it necessary to stigmatize them and create a cass system and as you say the american culture is such that when the american government tells you to do something there is a tendency to not want to to do it seems to me driven by things other than science and health concerns. >> tucker: are you comfortable with the idea of massive multinational monopolies having your health information and passing it between one another?

>> i have spent the last 10 years of my work, tucker, as a journalist, as you know, reporting on the grave dangers of what happens when the state collects information. they always promise that it's going to be temporary, that it is just for a specific problem when they eneacketted the patriot act in 2001 don't worry it's just going to be three or four years and going to be done once we get the problem of terrorism solved and here we are 20 years later nobody thinks about eliminating the patriot act and it grew weapon beyond its intentions that's one of the things that happens. a huge cultural strain here that liberals have this kind of punitive strain in their politics that they like the idea of being able to stigmatize people that don't agree with them on vaccine by creating a second class citizenry for them. i think that's a big part of the motive. >> tucker: just reminded me once again that i ideologically supported the patriot act. i just want to apologize again to the country for doing that do you think there is -- really quickly, do you think there is any way out of this? you hate to see a scenario where

people are vaccine-reresisters but maybe we are moving toward that. >> i think what we have always heard is herd immunity is the promise land. and if we can demonstrate as a think is already being demonstrated that enough people want to take it, it will kick the legs out of the rationale for doing this. >> tucker: yes. and i certainly, i certainly hope we get there before we get to clorgs. glenn greenwald, thank you so much. i appreciate it. >> thanks, tucker. >> tucker: quite a night so are if a. we will be back in just a moment. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ >> tucker: tomorrow night, matt gaetz for the hour. just kidding. but tomorrow we are dropping our second episode of "tucker carlson today." 4 eastern. first episode already online. go there and sign up. totally worth it.

actually, tomorrow is going to be even better. we will be back 8:00 p.m. eastern on the show. every weeknight, the sworn enemy of flying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. sean hannity. >> sean: thank you, tucker. great show. welcome to "hannity." tonight we are tracking multiple breaking stories. we have more information that we can possibly get in for the full hour. i promise you will not see or hear this and the other media mob. a new report from san diego where, that's right, illegal migrant unaccompanied children recently released from biden's cages are now receiving in-person schooling from different places around the country and this place, all while local students in san diego, they have not stepped foot inside a classroom and more than a year. so, this is what america and america last policies look like. we will explain. coming up, we also have shocking new footage on