all right, panel, thanks so much. tomorrow, "special report," despite the numbers of what the so-called squad want, president biden's show no let up of support for israel. thank you for inviting us into your home tonight. that is it for two for tonight's "special report," fair, balanced and still unafraid. "fox news primetime" hosted by ben starts right now. >> ben: i think that sounds like a great afternoon, dated the ballpark despite what chuck said. good evening and welcome to "fox news primetime." ♪ ♪ consider the possibility we are led by idiots. it's a line i've reiterated to our team for years at ""the federalist"." it is a sticker on my laptop, serving as a reminder, no matter how elite the unviable elite may seem there is always the possibility that they are very

stupid people doing their jobs well past their prime and operated by a tax funded hubris that blinds them to their own failures. plenty of examples in the past. i read that originally about james comey whose anonymous social media accounts were found mere minutes after he teased them in an interview but our new example is the god emperor of covid anthony fauci whose emails were released and showed what a false god he was. the emails are explosive. that's no exaggeration. there is hypocrisy in them, mixed messaging, spin, naivete and malice about his unwillingness to accept that the chinese communist party was suppressing information about covid during the early days. they detail and absolutely scandalous effort by dr. fauci to push the animal theory about the origins of covid and undermine the theory that it leaked from a lab and that is even more when you consider this

timeline. in 2020, bret baier, multiple sources were increasingly confident that the virus sprung from the wuhan lab. the following day, nih head forwarded a link of the "hannity" appearance under the subject line "conspiracy gains momentum." the rest of the messages redacted as is fauci's response. why is this redacted? why can't you see this? that is the question you should be asking. the next day, fauci downplayed the lab leaked to the reporter saying the mutations it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with the jump of a species of animal to a human. the day after that, april 18th, fauci gets an email from the head of eco-health alliance, which funneled millions of dollars to the wuhan lab thanking them for supporting the natural origin theory. did you see what just happened there? that is a scientific bureaucracy in real time and it should

inspire dozens of questions from every american, but not the american press corps or at least the ones chosen by the white house today. they did not ask a single question on edge. two democrat members of congress tried to intimidate cable providers into pulling this network off the air. that idea even got a hearing on capitol hill. the government wants to be able to enforce their preferred narrative and most of the needy are generally happy to comply. in that environment, we need media willing to challenge the government consensus, not government and media outlets that linked arms with facebook, as the emails show dr. fauci did to censor legitimate inquiries. over the past few years we have seen a lot of reporters patting themselves on the back, squeezing into embarrassing t-shirts about how they are the guardians of democracy, coming up with cringeworthy taglines about democracy dying in darkness all while they were propping up one false idol to another from anthony cuomo to dr. fauci himself while attacking people like "the federalist,"

"the new york post," "the daily caller" and fox news for being right all along. how do they get away with it? fauci's eagerness to jump on the lab leak thesis as conspiracy shows the twisted nature and enduring power of d.c. elite groupthink. the idea goes the because you have the right degrees, the right connections, you shouldn't be questioned when you bring your pronouncements down from the mountaintop because you are one of the raiders of the lost ark's top men. >> we have top men working on it right now. >> who? >> top men. >> ben: if you are not interested in following the science, what did fauci know and when did he know it and why does such an obviously incompetent person have so much power? whether it is the mask research of the truth about disease emergence, he doesn't seem to think he is anyone an explanation and it's doubtful he will be taking questions from bret baier anytime soon. in early 2020 there was the

impression that fauci was the indispensable man, who had been preparing his whole life to lead us through this crisis. his fandom in the media was incredibly over-the-top. his mug was put on t-shirts, pillows, candles, the covers of magazines but it is now embarrassingly clear that fauci is at least a decade past his sell by date. he's a buddy buddy bureaucrat. dr. fauci is one of the highest paid employees and the government. he said covid would be no worse than the flu, that estimates of 500,000 dead would be extremely high, that there was nothing to be done to stop the spread since masks wouldn't work. why are we still paying this guy? our public health experts spend a literal year lying to us and their argument in their defense is what? that it was a noble lie? how can we have public servants if they can't be fired and now they can't even be pressured to resign even when they disgraced themselves while working to

destroy our country. the truth is these rules apply to only one team. there is no mystery why elites not only covered up but actually slept down the lab leery almanac theory in 2020. because trump might have been reelected if the story got out. political tribalism won out over truth and you can see that reflected again today when, i repeat, there were no questions from the white house press corps about any of these emails. the narrative you were peddled by the corporate propaganda press, fauci became this oracle-like figure who couldn't be challenged by other clients and debate the issue. through it all, fauci operated with a complete lack of humility. instead of being honest and saying there was a lot we still don't know, instead he repeatedly tried to manipulate public opinion on masks and everything because he thought you were too stupid or ignorant to act like adults. he spent hours on tv talking to

reporters. no booking was too small, no outlet to obscure to print his name or take his picture by the pool. people in the white house trying to figure out an actual crisis in our country complaint at the time that they hadn't even heard of some of the outlets he was asking to appear on every day. top doctor indeed. understand these elites are the same people who have been wrong about everything for decades. how did nixon win? no one i know voted for him. the story of the last two decades of american leadership, from the '60s, to nixon, global cooling, the cold war, immigration, trump, and hillary's historical significance to the emerging democratic majority, to beto o'rourke, bernie sanders and socialism, everything. they are wrong like it's their job. and any group of people you are going to have an elites, you're going to have power and wealth and some people will be better at it than others. no matter how you write the rules there is going to be an elite who wins the game, but the

collection fools, especially the ones the media funds over is just embarrassing. when they are called to perform, they fail. we have the wisdom of america's founders to set up america's government but we should not be ruled by anthony fauci because ultimately, this isn't about him. that's missing the point. it's about the fact that the founders never intended for him to be ruled by bureaucrats no matter how well-intentioned. woodrow wilson did his best to change that. he envisioned a rule by the administrative state, the brilliant bureaucrats, decent man in an indecent time but as you know, it turns out human nature applies to bureaucrats as well. at some point our government forgot that it works for us and started to grumble that the people have forfeited the confidence of the government and wished they could dissolve the people and elect another. but they can't. we are here, we are awake, and

we are not going away. here, the people rule. or we should. any system of government where we, the people, don't rule needs to end starting today. my grandfather loved "star trek" and growing up we would watch old episodes together. one scene sticks in my mind. it's an episode where captain kirk awakes among a primitive people who believe him to be an immortal god. but when one of the aliens challenges him, he is shocked to find his knife draws blood. he shouts, behold, a god who believes! bureaucracy inclines towards immortality. it's easy to get a god complex when everyone around you treats you like a god. if you are a patriot who is a way, understand that no man let alone a careerist bureaucrat is infallible. it's time to remind your fellow americans that government is a god who bleeds. i'm been dominant and this is the american crisis. joining me now, john davidson,

political editor for "the federalist," karl rove, deputy chief of staff for george w. bush and morgan ortagus, former spokesperson. i want to talk to you all about this revelation that has happened tonight but i want to start with you, morgan because i know that you were instrumental in trying to get this information out of the trump administration. this has got to be an infuriating day for you in terms of the revelations. >> i came out of maternity leave ready to focus on this for secretary mike pompeo and the designation that we did a for what has happened with the uighurs there and i have to tell you that secretary pompeo, i sat with him every day for almost two years and he really let this on very, very early on, in february, before the world was talking about covid-19, secretary pompeo was saying in meetings and telling all of us he smelled a rat, that the evidence did not add up. we started putting into his

speeches before other government officials were talking about it warning what the chinese communist party would do and what was really frustrating is we saw, and again, you can see this through the whistle-blowers in china, the courageous doctors who came forward only to lose their lives or disappear or be fired. courageous chinese citizens, doctors, scientists to tell the world what happened. they were silenced by the chinese communist party and whatever we decided to do, to withdraw funding from the w.h.o. because we knew they were accepting china's lies and by accepting those lies, more people were getting infected with covid and dying from covid, we were vilified from withdrawing from the w.h.o. we made the case last year but as you said in your monologue it didn't fit the political narrative at the time and it is incredibly frustrating now to be proven right. >> ben: i know that you have paid attention so much to the fact that there are no

consequences for so many of these bureaucrats who are supposed to serve us but seem to have other priorities in mind. this is an incredibly infuriating moment to read through these things play out. what can happen in terms of the political consequence now when it comes to anthony fauci who has been on such a pedestal by this current administration and the media. >> first of all, we are trying to assign blame and we haven't yet -- i've been long convinced that tom cotton is right. i have a friend who studied this whole issue for years and has been deeply concerned about the wuhan lab because we have experience and evidence that it was not up to snuff when it came to handling these dangerous pathogens but we have yet to prove this and we may not be able to prove this unless we take some very affirmative steps, but also by the international community as well. we can stay stuck about what did

dr. fauci know and when did he know it but that is not really the important thing. take for example this exchange he has with the intermediary who is received the funding and passed it on to the wuhan lab. he makes a statement, fauci makes a statement saying the most likely outcome, a natural jump from animal to human and he gets the email saying thanks for knocking down the conspiracy theory and his responses thank you for your nice note. what we know as it did make a natural jump from an animal to a human. and in all likelihood it happened however inside the wuhan lab and three people got sick and went to the hospital in november of 2019 a month before the chinese admitted that they had somebody in the hospital at all. the first person shows up in early december, december 8th, i think it is, of 2019. i'm not convinced, maybe it was deliberately engineered as a bio

weapon but i think it was probably in confidence, but the question is how do we get to the bottom of this and tom cotton again has talked about specific things we need to do. that is where the focus needs to be, lots of people who miss read this. >> ben: i think that's a situation here where we may not get to the bottom of this because of the biden administration's decisions in terms of the way they have approached these situations here, wanting to outsource it to the w.h.o. who is being conflicted by china and has been, historically. what do you think about this situation? >> when you have a press corps that want to ask any questions you have been administration that is going to put faith in the w.h.o. and you have an administrative state and emperor god kings like fauci who feel they don't know anybody an explanation but the american people are owed an explanation. there's a lot of questions that should be asked now. first of all, what in the world are we doing funding the wuhan

institute of virology in the first place? they got this subgrant from eco-health alliance to do research. could china not fund that themselves? why on earth are we funding these things? i think the american people have a right to understand why our massive bureaucracy is making decisions and potentially funding research that caused the pandemic that brought the economy to its knees. anthony fauci may not think we are owed an explanation but we need to demand one of him of him. >> ben: unfortunately we have reached a point in this country where the decay in our institution is something that is almost impossible to stop and i worry that something like this, playing out in front of people is only going to make it worse. morgan, karl, john, thank you for joining us. up next, concerned nurse who is suing houston methodist hospital

over forcing its employees to be human guinea pigs, straight ahead. ♪ sometimes you wanna go ♪ ♪ where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪♪ ♪ and they're always glad you came ♪ ♪ you wanna be where you can see(ah-ah) ♪ ♪ our troubles are all the same (ah-ah) ♪ ♪ you wanna be where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪ you wanna go where people know ♪ welcome back, america. it sure is good to see you.

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♪ ♪ >> ben: over 100 nurses and other staffers are suing a texas hospital for mandating the coronavirus vaccine. in march, houston methodist hospital made its policy very clear, all employees must be vaccinated by june 7th or risk termination. as the deadline approaches, nonvaccinated workers aren't backing down. instead they are fighting back with a lawsuit that says since the shot has yet to be fda approved methodist hospital is "forcing its employees to be human guinea pigs as a condition for continued employment." joining me now, jennifer bridges and attorney jerrod woodfield. thank you for joining me tonight. >> good to be with you.

>> thank you. >> ben: tell me why you are undertaking this lawsuit and why this is so important to you. >> this is very important. were basically fighting for everybody's rights right now just to make our own decisions. nobody should be forced to put something in their body if they are not comfortable with it and lose their jobs over it. it is a huge decision especially over emergency youth authorization. >> ben: one of the things i think a lot of people are concerned about is we obviously know that the vaccines work, that they clearly have passed a number of different tests in order to work but we also have more long-term concerns that many people have including women who are trying to get pregnant or other concerns about the level to which this has been accelerated. in terms of your argument as a nurse as to why you would resist taking this or why you don't think you should have two is a condition for your employment, what do you say about this

position to your friends? >> basically, i think everybody should be entitled to their own choice and if you're comfortable taking it go right ahead but you need proper informed consent. nobody is telling these people the exact risks that are involved and there is no long-term data right now, nothing under research and basically just being in the hospital i have seen so many adverse reactions through patients and employees who have been fully vaccinated and it is too risky, way too risky and everyone needs to know the risks before they injected into their body so they can make a good, informed decision. >> ben: on the legal side tell us about the argument you are advancing regarding the type of defense, these many individuals who don't want to be forced into this situation. >> for the first time in our history, the history of our country, here at houston methodist hospital who says if you want to continue to work here and enjoy your salary and all the benefits he recruited and required over the years then

you are going to have to participate in a vaccine trial and that is exactly what it is. it's a vaccine trial. they are saying you are going to have to have an experimental drug injected into your body, a drug that we don't know what the long-term side effects will be or what it will look like and that is a condition of employment. essentially, they are saying to these employees, people like jennifer who are on the front line every day, if you don't serve as a human guinea pig we are not going to be able to pay you. what does that mean? can't pay for your family or your mortgage, your sentence to bankruptcy court so i believe it is illegal, unlawful and clearly immoral. >> ben: one thing i believe has been unfortunate about this pandemic is we have seen how many people are willing to go along with everything they are being told by government without really raising any questions about it or having any kind of hesitation. i would like to ask you both. jennifer, you first, does that concern you? this seems to be part of the whole element, changing the relationship between employers

and government and those who work and live under their rule. >> yes, it is a huge thing right now. they are not giving the proper information like they should be to the public and everybody is so trustworthy, there's quite a few individuals like myself better challenging that because we want the research, we want to know for ourselves that something is safe before we put it into our body but a lot of people out there unfortunately, they trust the government, they trust the media, they trust everybody who is telling them it's safe, you need to do this and they don't know any better until it is too late and i have come across that so many times and it is so unfortunate. >> ben: jerrod and jennifer, i want to thank you so much for taking the time tonight. >> thank you so much. >> ben: the biden team is trying to put an end to what they call america's systemic racism with some racism of their own. we will tell you about their plans straight ahead. advanced non-small cell lung cancer can change everything.

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♪ ♪ >> ben: we have heard it time and time again from the biden administration. america is systemically racist. how do we combat it? with more racism, of course. >> we must find the courage to change the things we know we can change. that is what vice president harris and i are focused on. today we are announcing two expanded efforts targeted towards black wealth creation. >> ben: with these efforts, biden plans to boost the value of black neighborhoods and boost contracts to minority owned businesses by 50%. he's trying to right the wrongs of the past by discriminating against a different group of americans. joining me now are the director of the independence form and david as a rod, professor at hillsdale college. thank you so much for coming on. >> thank you. >> ben: patrice, this seems to be completely wrongheaded.

you might have the well-meaning intent of righting wrongs but instead this seems likely to only increase resentment and foment a kind of racial division in our country. what do you think about this plan on the part of president biden? >> it used to be that two wrongs didn't make a right and unfortunately, two wrongs are everything that is right with the left right and hell trying to remedy past discrimination right now by preferential treatment of other races is not going to right the wrongs of the past. it is going to continue to stoke the fires of division, it sets young black people up for claims of they are not qualified for the positions that they are in and frankly, it takes the individual down to adjust to their base qualities, their skin color, their gender, when people are individuals and made up of just the way they were born, their skin color and where they come from, i think it's sad that

the leader of this country is giving credence to this idea of equity. this idea, not going to advance the cause for blacks and minorities in this country. is going to frankly set us down a path of saying that we are not really able or capable of what we are achieving. >> ben: david, i know you have written a good deal about it and a lot of attention to these developments along the lines of critical race theory we see happening particularly in our education systems today. seeming designed to make a racist argument under the banner of antiracism. what is going on with that? >> americans were promised that civil rights would be about ending discrimination and this is why americans got behind them but it was a bait and switch tactic. what we got instead from the outset was this national obsession with equalizing racial

outcomes. anytime there is a disparity. right now, president biden is talking about wealth and education. there was only one acceptable answer: racism, which means our fellow black american citizens are never held responsible for their actions, which means that whites are blamed for everything that befalls black americans and the solution is always pushing this malicious and divisive script. you punish and humiliate whites, you reward and flatter blacks. well, this is in no way to run a multiracial country. >> ben: this is what i think is so at the core of my frustration with what i see of this corporate-backed campaign featuring people like robin d'angelo and others to the tune of millions of dollars from the likes of jack dorsey in order to foment this kind of division that reduces people only to their skin color. i feel like this is so un-american on its face. why do you think they have had

such success pushing this through corporate boardrooms and all the other nonprofit institutions? >> let's take a step back and think about where this started. some of this started in law firms and some of it started also in academia. a lot of these young people who were trained under these college professors, they have figured out they have a lot of power to push -- >> ben: i want to continue this as we are trying to get patrice back. it seems like one of the big things we have to deal with today is that there are many people and corporations and in firms across america who are frankly feeling like they are under threat. they feel like they have to be silent and when they are told they have to go along with his indoctrination campaign on race that basically their job would be at risk and because they are not politicians or thinkers and

intellectuals like you that that is something that obviously comes secondary to keeping their job. what should people in that kind of circumstance do to push back and fight back against these fundamentally anti-american ideas? >> the sad truth is there is no value and martyrdom in america. what he going to do, speak out, get fired and canceled and have your name forever smeared and demolished on the internet? this is a cruel and unforgiving regime when it comes to these baseless accusations of racism. i will tell you, at the end of the day i don't have much sympathy for corporate america because the cases you describe do exist but on the whole i see a lot more using this to morally launder their corporate nature, their wealth, their power and privilege. it's a very useful for them to do some performative wokeness to get behind these claims of systemic racism so that people are not asking questions about how much money they are earning, how they are paying workers and how they are treating.

>> ben: pay no attention to the makeup of our board or our relationship with china, just pay attention to this woke performance we are putting on. thank you, david and patrice for joining me this evening. coming up, the rnc is ramping up their pressure to ensure that republican candidates are finally treated fairly in presidential debates. mollie hemingway has more on that coming up next. i'd like to take a moment to address my fellow veterans because i know there's so many of you who have served our country honorably.

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kale, the eagles, musically and supports, and the commission on presidential debates. the commission is an antique, it does not serve the interest of the american people. you've seen it time and time again employing biased moderators who undermined the candidate and give the democrat every opportunity to win. it's the most obviously biased game since tim donahue through the western conference finals to the lakers over the kings. it's a joke, we all know it. since the moment cnn's candy crowley acted as a second debater against mitt romney in 2012, republicans should have moved on from the commission. >> it took the president 14 days before he took the attack in benghazi an act of terror. >> get the transcript. >> he did, in fact, sir. he did call it an act of terror -- >> can you say that a little louder, candy? [applause] >> he did call it an act of terror. it did take two weeks or so from

the idea of there being a riot about this tape come out, you are correct about that. >> ben: the commission is a feeble relic of wind -- were on tv. this time around they set up a debate with a c-span anchor who was openly acting anthony scaramucci for debate questions against president trump and lied about it, claiming he was hacked. he should know joy reid can only get away with lies like that. for years i've been calling for the g.o.p. to ditch the tire debate format and run these things differently. it's a long past time we got rid of format restrictions and anchors with obvious bias. i would rather watch a debate moderated by tucker carlson and rachel maddow or laura ingraham and van jones and then submit to the likes of the aggressively hack ash john harwood whose opening questions in the 2016 opening debate was this -- >> mr. trump, you've done very well in this campaign by

promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it, sent 11 million people out of the country, $10 trillion cutting without decreasing the deficit and make americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. >> that's right. [laughter] >> let's be honest, is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign? >> ben: what a question. today the rnc finally announced they would be breaking with the commissioner, finally. after repeated missteps in partisan actions that underscored last cycle it is clear that the commission on presidential debates is no longer providing the fair and impartial forum for presidential debates, which the law requires and the american people deserve. last year i hardly endorsed the idea that joe rogan should endorse the debate and why not? he's the best interview were working today and i predicted this is the last year in which the commission on presidential debates will be determined about

these things. people are tired of this format, ready to move on to something in the age of youtube and they're not going to have a bunch of people born in the ' 30s and '40s dictate parameters and their favorite tv hosts to do this in 2024. joe rogan may not get to moderate a debate this time but eventually, he will. that's a good thing. it means we might actually get some answers that matter. joining me now, senior editor for "the federalist" and a fox news contributor. thank you for joining me, mollie. >> great to be here. >> ben: why did it take so long for the rnc to do this thing we all as viewers have viewed as an obvious problem for a long time? >> it's amazing it took so long. the trump campaign the year before the election said they were thinking about not working with the presidential debate commission but then they did and it was a huge and catastrophic error for them here the democratic party had a strategy for 2020, to keep joe biden kind of hidden and do massive amounts of mail and, early balloting. the debate commission, ones that

started happening, that there were all these early voting, president biden said shouldn't we move the debates up since people are already voting and the committee steadfastly refused knowing it would hurt the democratic strategy of how to elect joe biden. the first debate happening after nearly a month after people began voting and then the issues you were talking about with moderators favorable towards biden, they had to drop the second debate because of problems with the moderator who claimed he got hacked and they were embarrassed about it. they said they were going to do a foreign policy debate, which is president trump strong point, and because it was a strong point, they dropped. they no longer did a foreign policy debate. this is a high level of meddling in an election that is inappropriate for a group that is supposedly bipartisan. >> ben: this was a situation where uniquely because of the restrictions of the pandemic, debates matter so much more. this was like the only time you

were ever going to get real reaction from joe biden or have him answer any of the critical questions that seem rather relevant now, especially as it relates to our relationship with china, iran, israel and the like. why did we have such a complete media shut down? why were they clamoring for the debate commission to push these things up so they could actually have these questions answered? >> the media were on the same side as the democratic party and the debate commission, all working in everybody's favor but the people who lost out where the american people and this is something that has been a problem for so long. we need to have really good debates so we can dig deep and see what people's different positions are and not just what they will answer in a very short period of time. i am so glad this era is over, he needed to die a long time ago but going forward i hope we get some really good discussions between the candidates and also maybe not just the two main party candidates but other parties that might need an airing as well so there's a lot

to happen. >> ben: it's absolutely crazy to me because i know that you love debates the same way that i do. we are junkies, going back into so many critical moments that have been determinative in american politics that come from them and yet, this seems to be something that the major parties and those involved really haven't been able to get right for a long time. what is one change you would like to make it to the debate format or the way that moderators are chosen that would lead to having some good outcomes and better questions than answers. >> i would like no moderators. i would like to see each candidate ask the other candidate a question and see what kind of questions they are asking in the issues that are important and have a real conversation. moderators have not worked for a long time now so go ahead and let them go but let's have the candidates have some real debates. >> ben: i am certainly in favor of that. i think as a substitute instead of a debate, we could also have

the candidates just manage a dairy queen for a week and see who came out on top at the end of the week because that to me would actually be more reflective of the current back-and-forth which has been so artificial. thank you so much for joining me tonight. members of the mainstream media are refusing to talk about a new bombshell book that exposes how journalists were manipulated into spreading disinformation about president trump. the author of that book joins me next.

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interview the author. pulitzer prize journalist and author of scoop. thanks so much for coming on. >> thank you, ben. this to me seems to be one of the most important stories in the media today. the influence that is being exacted by these private spies, historically has not been something that people read. affecting coverage, pushing agendas, and often working in ways that we can't fully evaluate in terms of who they are representing. this is an enormously important story. why do you think that people aren't really willing to grasp? >> well, i think there is a growing realization of the role these private spies are playing. and that was the reason for my writing. when i retired from the times, there were a number of huge stories that were erected. it was the steele dossier, the harvey weinstein case. when i looked at them, i

realized that the thread that connected all of them was the involvement of private intelligence agencies or private spies. so i thought it was time to flip the script and investigate this industry and look at the type of influence they were having across the board, including the media. >> ben: the influence that they have is really disturbing for a lot of different reasons. regardless of what you think of president trump or the steele dossier, this is a situation where you had people basically going after and criticizing journalists for trying to work them behind the scenes in order to prevent the realization about this major and prominent american company, that it was really basically vaporware. what did you find within that experience in particular that may be should raise some concerns about the level of influence these types of spies are having? >> well, in the case of thoroughness, what fusion gps,

they were monitored touring monitoring we as journalists make these requests all the time. but what fusion was doing was doing it through a cut out through a middleman and essentially obstructing that middleman to kind of frame the request in a way that john wanted realize they were looking at him. they didn't try to torpedo his story, but the tactics that were being used, i found really troubling and kind of emblematic of the techniques and the strategies that these private intelligence used behind the scenes. >> i try to always advise our younger colleagues when they look at a newspaper to ask

themselves what the of four watching right now should they think about when they see these types of stories appear about what might be going on behind the scenes? >> well, i think that's a great point, ben. part of the reason for my writing the book was to kind of inform viewers about what they should be looking for. who has got on the agenda here? who is pushing the story? and the other reason was for my media colleagues to revisit this question. i've been a journalist all my life. i'm a great believer in journalism. but i think that we as reporters, as journalists, as media organizations need to be more transparent with readers about where the stories are coming from. a lot of the stories don't pop up out of the blue. they are planted and we need to let people know that. >> ben: absolutely. thank you so much for taking the time and joining me tonight.

>> thank you. i appreciate it. >> ben: thank you for watching "fox news primetime. i'm ben domenech. we'll be back tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. tucker carlson is up next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." the utter fraudulence of tony fauci is obvious now and it is widely acknowledged. but it was not always obvious. in march of last year, we interviewed dr. fauci on the show. we treated him with respect and took his answer seriously. we are americans, so we assumed the man in charge of protecting the u.s. from covid must be rational and impressive. we also assumed he must be honest.