be careful before you embark on a career in vigilantism, we can't hear at prime time be responsible for anything that happens. that's all for tonight, don't forget to dvr prime time. happy labor day, and it was, i'm waters, and this is my world. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> good evening and welcome to a special edition of "tucker carlson tonight." it's hard to believe we are about to hit 200 interviews that we've done for "tucker carlson today" over on fox nation. that's our chance, that platform, to conduct longer interviews with people who are really interesting who we want to talk to for more than three or 4 minutes as we would on the regular nightly show here on fox news. so these are our long discussions with some of the smartest people, newsmakers,

authors, lawmakers, philo philosophers, and the appeal for our perspective is this isn't a subscription service so it can't be censored by big tech, period. so it's always going to be there. you've maybe seen a few minutes of some of these interviews here or there on our previous shows both netware going to show you a lot more, we are going to be focusing on just three people. also include country legend john rich, competitive swimmer riley gaines, who turned out to be enormously interesting and principled and tough, but first we speak to one of the clearest thinkers we know, victor davis hanson, frequently on our nighttime show, one of our favorite guests, and viewers are constantly asking us to hear more from victor davis hanson. so we're going to bring it to you now. in this first party tells us how he went from earning a phd to becoming a dirt farmer in california's central valley. really an interesting story. his story. and it begins here. ♪ ♪ >> i'm in the same house, 150

years, and my parents were dying and they said i don't know what to tell you, victor, but would you please keep the house, so i don't know if my children would live there or not, but it's in great shape, i work on it all the time and it's kind of like a museum for me because i don't want to be the first to give it up, but i walk in rooms and it's just kind of crazy. i hear my aunt. she was crippled. she lived in the living room for 65 years. i see work -- >> tucker: she lived in the living room? >> yes, because moby had -- you didn't put people who had polio -- she was crippled with terrible polio, she couldn't go anywhere. i remember talking to her and i see my grandmother -- >> tucker: you grew up and your aunt was living in the living room? >> yes! we had a little house next to them and then when they passed away i moved in there, but i visit her every day. free range, we would like 6 and they would just say go out, and we would roam all over 130 acres and my grandparents had a house, we had a house, neighbors would take care of us.

it's ideally -- i thought i could recreate that artificially in the 1980s, so when i came back i thought my kids are going to be free range, i'm going to put them in the public schools just like i did, going to teach them all the skills and then i realized i was -- people thought they were crazy because, you know, they would say your children are going to those schools? you went to stanford? but they are very great kids. they say to me now, you know, thank you, because all our friends are multiracial. my son was a great forklift driver and i think it was orchard supply or home depot and the truck came in and nobody was there to unload it, so he wasn't a certified forklift driver with a little costume on every thing so he just jumped on and just unloaded it really quick and they fired him. >> tucker: for unloading the truck? >> yes, because he was unauthorized and he didn't have the authorized skill from that particular store and he was a masterful truck driver, he'd

been doing it since he was eight, so he came back to me and he said they got angry at me, and i said congratulations, i'm really proud of you, that's really good. so those skills -- i was very proud that they had those and i'm very close to my two children. i had a daughter that passed away and she was the same way. she was just so practical and she would go out picking tomatoes. we try to recreate that artificially, but i'm not sure it was the same. it was so fun for us. it was hard work but it was in a bubble. >> tucker: the life you describe trying to create does seem like an ideal, it sums wonderful. >> i worry now, that i put my kids through kind of an ordeal to prove a point that they could still be agrarian's and have a family farm? we grew up really poor, poor than i did because farming was worth and at some point i just said to myself they have no

health insurance, i'd like to straighten their teeth may become i've got to go back in the system and so i cleaned up my act -- >> tucker: you raised your kids poorer than you were. >> yeah, we were called progressives we were leaving the middle class and becoming peasants and then i became a professor. >> tucker: what were your politics like at this time? >> my parents were -- my mother had gone to stanford, she was a -- i guess you would call them pat brown -- remember pat brown? >> tucker: very well. >> can do democrats. every little town, you know, there was the wealthy guy who was the undertaker, the big car dealer, 90% tax rate and there was no mobility and they were all republicans in every body else was democrats, so my parents, it seems crazy, but they were very socially and culturally conservative. no drinking, if you go to a party you have to shake their hands, we have to look them in

the eye, victor, my mom would pick us up, did you say thank you to the host, i have said i did. no you didn't, get back there. but they were also in those days you could be democratic, democratic party was different. but my siblings are all very much more liberal area >> tucker: still? >> on the black sheep of the family. >> tucker: interesting, so when you graduate stanford with this doctorate in classics and decide to go back to pruning fruit trees, did you have a political ideology at this point? >> i was conservative from a young age. i told my mom i could not vote for jimmy carter when i was -- and i like him, but i just couldn't vote for him. she got kind of upset about that because she was a democrat. he was a southern democrat in those days, not quite like -- but the biggest problem i had was -- i rode a book about fields without dreams. i thought it was wrong that you gave your product and you worked

so hard and yet you had to be vertically integrated and that required connections with the government and capital. >> tucker: totally. >> i started to have a populist streak. i always had, but that made it much so -- when the trump maga thing came along, i was never -- i mean, i was receptive to that, the idea that we're going to go back and look at these hardworking people that we've written off as losers, deplorables, trump's people that biden called chumps or drugs, and i really identified with them because i had grown up with them, so for me it wasn't so much donald trump a person, but it was what he represented, and i couldn't figure out while these republican candidates in 2016 didn't say why are we giving china all of these -- why are we opening our border? these wars -- i supported the iraq war, but they were not in a cost to moral sense working out for the people that were fighting them, so i couldn't

understand the never-trump movement, because i thought everybody wanted to help the middle class and conservatives, but i realize that the republican party was more but i had grown up with. my father said to me alike republicans -- just a member, victor, they have a certain class, they have a certain view of you, and i had kind of returned to that even though i don't vote democratic, but i'm not comfortable with very wealthy country club repub republicans. not to stereotype, it's unfair. >> tucker: i don't think it's unfair at all. >> you don't? >> tucker: i grew up in that world so i can tell you it's not unfair at all. now i realize it's completely -- it's absolute witchery. most stereotypes are rooted in some truth or they wouldn't have evolved, of course, but did that affect -- by the time trump came around you were an established, famous -- i mean, i read you for

a long time in the national review. >> i don't know if i was famous. >> tucker: famous among intellectuals for sure. and you wrote one of my favorite pieces i've ever read on the changes to the central valley, so people knew who you were who were paying attention. did it affect your friendships? did you lose friends over it? because you were an early adapter or adopter, whatever the phrase is. >> i didn't know much about donald trump, it wasn't a supporter of his in the primaries but i knew he was going to win. i just knew it. because he was saying things that i could not believe, and you know, we're going to redo youngstown, ohio, and then he came to california, i talked a bunch of farmers and said did he come here and if you have a straw in the mouth and the caterpillar cap. no. he had this black suit, it was 105 degrees, he had a queens -- so i said in other words he wasn't hillary clinton, you know, or joe biden, put you all in chains. he didn't change his act.

he's authentic and his were present in the middle class. so i thought he had a very good chance. but as far as your other question, yeah, i lost all of those friends. >> tucker: really? >> i left national review this year after 20 years and i think they were happy to see him leave too. >> tucker: why did you leave national review? >> because there were certain issues that would pop up occasionally and i could predict was the answer was going to be, the covington kids, i just sensed that before we know anything, people would come and condemn them, or the access hollow -- >> tucker: people at national review condemned its? >> there were certain people in the republican movement or establishment who felt it's their duty to internally police their own, and that's kind of a virtue signal to the left. we are just part of your class, we share the same values as you do and we keep our crazies, and

they are not empirical. you sought on january 6. i mean, we all condemn that, but within two weeks i said to myself, ashley babbitt was shot unarmed we don't know anything about the policeman. we don't know anything about -- when a policeman shoots somebody who's unarmed, there's pictures everywhere. >> tucker: no warning, by the way. >> they are having an officer lie in state but i want to know what evidence is that he was killed. he wasn't killed, he died of a stroke or some type of -- >> tucker: so national review wasn't on that? >> no. there was an armed insurrection, there were no weapons found on the people. they're not even being charged and tried with dispatch, they're sitting in purgatory, and so these issues i would get angry about and i would try to convey that anger, but i think they felt that -- many -- i can't say they all, but i think a lot of them felt it was their duty as

republican establishment aryans to tell the world they didn't approve of donald trump's tweets or his crudity, and that was -- my message was always but -- it's good for the middle class. and he's kind of like a shane or magnificent seven or high noon, he's a gunslinger we hired and we are the townspeople that are impotent and he came in with certain skills and he started to have success and now we have the luxury of saying we don't like the fact that he has a six-gun, but he's not -- you know, he has to write off in the sunset. >> because of the actions that happened on 9/11, i went back in. it was important for me to try and get overseas as quick as possible. the day was injured it was between 13 and 18 knots, jump out of a propeller.

>> tucker: does a lot of barking and yelling but when we look back when the smoke clears from what we are living through right now, victor davis hanson will be one of those people historians look to to understand what really happened because he takes a long view. he's a wise man. in his book, "the dying citizen coastal, hanson writes the american citizenship as we know it is vanishing, and that's partly because politicians have used the immigration system to dilute the meaning of citizenship in order to get themselves in power. in the second part of our interview, hanson tells us how elites shield themselves from the effects of the policies, particularly the open border policies, and what that means for the rest of us. ♪ ♪ >> i'm confident if we would just have legal measured

meritocratic and diverse immigration it would work, as it always has with the italians and people -- >> tucker: when you say diverse, what you mean by that? >> we have 20,000, 34,000 from mexico, we have some from kenya, we have some from finland, you know, so we don't get a tribal block where people do not see others that are unlike themselves. >> tucker: so that is one of the big differences in our immigration scheme present, it's overwhelmingly from one region, one language, one ethnicity, whereas before, you know, it was from greece and france and germany and mexico. >> ted kennedy in the 1960s, he changed the immigration law, family unification rather than their credit, but that was a euphemism for change the demography to benefit the democratic party as the party of, you know, the patron, and these were going to be the peasants they were going to be indentured and they were going to show their fealty for expanded welfare.

that is simplistic but it's basically what happened. i'm confident it's going to change though. we were starting to see that, weren't we, in 2018 and 2019, the gradual reduction in the illegal immigration and the powers of assimilation i think would have kicked in. starting to see more people from asia, but am very pessimistic, 2 million scheduled in this fiscal year to come across the border. it's going to be a disaster. >> tucker: how will that play out over time do you think? >> well, it sure won't affect the people who engineered it, they will be in the bicoastal elite conclaves, and their knowledge of people who speak spanish will be maria, you know, the housekeeper, and juan the gardener, but they will never put their kids an integrated school or entertain or socialize with people from mexico. i can see it in palo alto where i work at stanford. but in the long one we're going to -- it's going to impact the mexican american lower and middle classes because when you have these people from

central america to go in, the first thing they do in the class, they will say you are a, you don't speak spanish to a third-generation mexican-american kid. or they will have crime or you will not have advanced placement courses because he will have to return to the bilingual -- and the people who pay that price for these local communities in california, the american southwest, they are mostly mexican-american, and there progressive -- if i can be reductionist, along the trajectory of the italian americans, if i say today cuomo or giuliani, you can't tell by the italian name what their affiliation is. because they've assimilated. there were catholic, southern european, they came from sicily, southern italy, it took longer, but basically until this wave where we gave up on assimilation and control borders, they were starting to mimic the patterns of italian americans. >> tucker: you think that's changing? >> absolutely. i mean, there's a wide open border today. it reverberates through our whole society, so we're telling people you must be vaccinated.

i don't want to get in the science of that, but citizens are supposed to be vaccinated, but not 2 million people coming across the border unvented, 100,000 refugees are not going to be asked to be vaccinated but the soldiers who escort them at risk to their lives have to be vaccinated the vaccination is not the point, its why do we make it harder on a citizen then a noncitizen, that's what i just -- >> tucker: i've noticed the same, and i see it on a bunch of different levels. but it's oh is the same theme, we make it harder on the citizen than on the person. >> i think it's partly a generic idea that the underdog, the left always wants to romanticize somebody who's poor and coming here, we're going to have different roles, sort of like affirmative action for immigrants but there is a racial component to it. i think the left in this wokeness, antiracist -- you have to be racist if you're going to be an antiracist. if we european poor coming in

from eastern european, they would have no tolerance. i do think is an ethnic element. there are some a catalyst for illegal immigration, mexico wants the 60 billion that it shares with central american remittances, they want a safety valve, you know, march across the border, not on mexico city, they are racist compared to the way they treat their people. >> tucker: aggressively racist. >> absolutely. then we have the movement that wants to change demography. we have the democratic party from california, nevada, colorado, i think texas and arizona, so they are a factor. and then we have the corporate world where, you know, he really drove down wages, you hire somebody. everybody said, well, yeah, but you're just -- it's not that different when you paste buddy $6 or $8 in cash versus ten or 12, but it was different because the hardest workers in the world where people were desperately poor and have never seen people work that hard, at least the

first generation. >> tucker: very hard. >> very hard. wonderful people, hardworking, and exploited, and it really -- what was ironic about the democratic party, they destroyed their old union base or the lower middle class of all tribes and races, because they bought into this open borders idea. >> tucker: your old -- you are old enough to remember very well cesar chavez. >> yes. i grew up with him -- delano. he came to my hometown all the time. >> tucker: united farm workers, great pictures union famously boycott california grapes because -- and he was eight -- i think it's fair to say -- a savage opponent of illegal immigration. >> he went down to the border and used force to stop people from coming across and the word "what back" if you go back, i can remember is rallies that would say no wet backs, for the call them scabs.

they were very -- and in the teamsters sort of outsmarted them by pressuring both republican and democrat administrations to open the border to destroy the united farmworkers. and then he got into a lot of weird things. >> tucker: he kind of went crazy at the end. >> he went crazy at the end. >> tucker: why would -- this is kind of far out of field, but i'm interested, the american labor movement lead restrictions immigration for 100 years, restriction is to measure was a product of their lobbying. but then they decide they want to open the borders, which honestly hurts their members. >> the teamsters union, they wanted to get all of the union into the teamsters and certified established unions, and that was -- there was an ethnic chauvinism that united farmworkers was more than a labor unit, it was a social, cultural, political movement, and the corporate world looked at that a and i thought these gs are -- i guess they thought they were communist or socialist, so we're going to deal with the

devil we know, the teamsters, so they backed the teamsters to break the united farmworkers, but it wasn't hard to do when robert f. kennedy health fund was corrupt and chavez's family, all octopus and tentacles all over the union, so they kind of self imploded, but the corporate world would rather deal with the teamsters any day then ufw. and the whole union thing grew up and now most of the labor is not unionized buried >> tucker: rail again certainly never expected to become a political figure, she dedicated her life took competitive coming in the ncaa and university pennsylvania allowed a man called leah thomas to compete against her and to walk through the locker room as she and her teammates were changing. so that changed her life completely. for an episode of "tucker carlson today" we spoke to riley gains about what that was like. listen next as she tells us about the moment she learned about leah thomas. we will be right back.

we were told, super young, that you have to be tough, you have to be macho in a male perspective. you feel like, you know, you're not able to open up and, you know, be vulnerable with your feelings, you know what i mean. you have this idea of this machismo, right? like that you have to always be the toughest, the strongest. for me as a man, it's about opening up. not feeling too macho to tell someone how you're feeling when you're feeling down. opening up your heart and sharing with other people the way that you're feeling. i have a twin sister who, when i'm sad, i call her and talk to her and we normally have the same feelings. i face time, my grandchildren. that always seems to kind of give me a boost, even when you're having your darkest moments. kicking the stigma means talking about it. it's something that a lot of people go through. it's normal. nothing's wrong with you. and in fact, come join us because we all feel this way. it's okay to feel not okay.

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♪ ♪ >> welcome to fox news live on this monday night, i'm jackie ibanez in new york. with midterm elections a mere nine weeks away, president biden hit the road this labor day hoping to sway some undecided voters. esther biden traveled to the battleground states of wisconsin and pennsylvania. speaking with labor union members, he addressed what he calls the dignity of american workers. the unofficial start of fall, labor day, traditionally kicks off political crunch time with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of november 8th. political news causing quite a ripple across the pond today. british foreign secretary is england's new prime minister. the nation's third woman to hold that title, she replaces boris johnson, who was forced to step down amid a series of scandals. the formal handover will happen

tomorrow after they meet with queen elizabeth. i'm jack avon has, now back to "tucker carlson tonight." enjoy. ♪ ♪ >> tucker: riley gaines spent her life becoming one of the top collegiate summers in united states. she set the 200-meter ncaa championships record but the ncaa championships this year, she was forced to compete against a man. at the university of pennsylvania swimmer calling himself lia thomas. for "tucker carlson today" we spoke to riley gaines about how hard she trained for the championship and about how she first learned that a man planned to compete against her. here's what she told us. ♪ ♪ >> tucker: of the nine months here in -- school is in session, how many of those? >> so we are there over summer, we are there over christmas, we are there over thanksgiving, where there over spring break was fall break, we don't get to go home ever. >> tucker: for real?

>> yeah. we get christmas eve off and christmas day to come home, but we have a lot of international students who obviously you can't make it home in that amount of time, and so they are forced to kind of stay there. we are there over all breaks, summer, you never leave, you get a week off in august and then you are back to it. >> tucker: so that's kind of what i was hoping to tease out of your, i didn't realize that with that profound. so this is a commitment of -- like people can't even -- >> no. all summer you have to stay there, you have to take classes because just when you have to take classes come into take classes you are there to swim, so it's kind of like this cycle where your school and swim all the time, so like you said, i know you're being funny but there's really not time for anything. there's hardly time you know, to form relationships outside of swimming, it's hard time to see her family and things like that. >> tucker: why did you do that? >> i know. it's crazy. >> tucker: sincerely! >> honestly, it is a bit like that she looked back and especially now that i'm done, unlike how do they commit -- i

commit that much time in that much effort or something? but it's kind of the price you pay when you're not invested towards your goals and towards getting better at something that you just kind of oddly love. >> tucker: how tight was the team? >> yeah, really close, we have about 40 girls our team, so it's kind of interesting dynamic dynamic, but like i said, when we spend all that time together, you have classes with their teammates, we are at the pool essentially all hours of the day. it ends up being like your family, which i think kind of replaces the feeling of not being able to see a real family all the time. you do have people that are like your family, which helps. >> tucker: did you -- where he was to your team it's? >> yeah. i lived with three other girls, we were like this, and so having that was nice. >> tucker: amazing. >> yeah. >> tucker: so all of you, i assume everybody on the kentucky teeth kind of came up as you did, like they've been doing a since they were little, moving

towards a goal, making these massive commitments. >> yeah. >> tucker: all of a sudden into this pretty protectable world, this pyramid of swimming, right, moving towards the top, his throne this completely -- this curveball of a guy who's competing. so why did you first hear about this? >> so i first heard about thomas in about november of last year, which is about the middle of our season, and so how swimming works is you kind of have dual meets in the beginning of the season and the middle of the season, which like i said, is november, decemberish. all teams will go to one bigger meet and this is typically where the fastest times thus far in the nation are posted, and so -- >> tucker: you guys must all know each other. >> exactly, so typically you kind of any sport i imagine works, your better swimmers know of your better swimmers, regardless of what school or what conference are at. you know. that's just how it works, you know each other, you compete

internationally together, even if you're not on the same collegiate team, you've probably been on teams together before, if that makes sense. so you do all know each other and so all of a sudden out of nowhere there's this article posted that says, you know, lia thomas, swimmer of you pen posts one poll 41 200 freestyle, which is a very, very fast time, so this is what after i had -- >> tucker: you would be impressed. >> that is very fast. i, be someone who was contending for a national spot, i see this in that same event, i see this, and i'm like holy moly, that's really fast, who is this person, i've never heard of them, and so i click on the article and it says it's a senior swimmer, she's from you pen, which isn't historically a swimming school, and so i was completely thrown for a loop, so i'm talking with my coach, and i'm like was this person, because i've never heard of them, and this is a really fast time and they are a senior, so they must've just come out of

nowhere to post the fastest time by a great margins in the event that i was hoping to win a national title in buried so that was kind of the end of that, i get back to training of staff and a couple days later another article is posted -- >> tucker: did anyone notice lia thomas? >> no. it was very much like -- at least for a couple days. it was very much like -- who is this person? and then another article is posted that very briefly disclosed lia thomas was formally will thomas and swim on the men's side for three years and then back to the other information of the article, so i'm sitting there, and honestly i was like relieved, because i was like oh, awesome, this isn't a threat to me anymore because they will be able t to to swim,o great, i'm back in my top contending spot, perfect. >> tucker: you are one of the fastest plumbers in the country? >> yeah come in at 200 freestyle. >> tucker: in your event. >> i think at the time i was

about third or fourth ranked in the nation, so -- >> tucker: so how fast was his time i'm a a slash lia thomas' time compared to yours? >> at least a second that i have faster. >> tucker: wow. >> and that was the time i think they swam at a dual meet, which is -- if you know swimming -- really rare. it was kind of dislike who, how -- who is this person? i was just like kind of -- but when i found out lia was formerly well, i was thrilled, because i was like okay, the ncaa would never let this happen to where we have someone who swim three years as a male, swim with the females at our national championships. and so i kind of just went about my training, so i was like this is a good thing, maybe. but it turns out two weeks before our national championships, the ncaa announced lia will be competing with the females and i was just like mind blown. >> tucker: you can find "tucker carlson today" episodes

on fox nation, you can see what riley gaines told us about the night that lia thomas showed up in the locker room and what happened next. in a moment, bringing you one of our best and it is ever, country music star john rich. straight ahead. ♪ ♪

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you'll never amount to a hill of beans if you don't go to college and my very cocky and disrespect the answer came back, well, the hill of beans is not what i intend on amounting to. bye! and i took off, van pulling a trailer, playing holiday inns all over america from vancouver down to orlando. everywhere in between. but that's where i got sharp and that's where he learned how to perform and i was about guys that work better than i was, which is something i continue to do, surround myself with people way better than me. they've got a far higher so i know i'm still pushing trying to get up there and i got sharp around those guys and got good at what i do and have stayed on it since buried >> tucker: how many gigs a year would you play the year? >> back then? a couple hundred. >> tucker: what's that like? >> brutal. i'm glad i did that. i would not do that now, but it 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, that's when you are suited to take on work like that, and listen, there are so many great writers and singers and performers across

this country that you are up against, your competition is ridiculous. there is no end to how great somebody can write a song or play a guitar or sing or entertain. there's really no limit to it, which is what excitement about it, there's never any ceiling i'm going to hit, i can always get better than i am, and so because of that you realize if you want it, man, go get it. if like the show, you talked about the pursuit. we are not guaranteed the right to be happy, tucker, we are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness and you are not always when you're pursuing it, but you've ought to be happy that you've got a right to at least go for, we should take advantage of that in this country that we have the right to pursue happiness and absolutely exhaust our potential every chance we get. >> tucker: how hard is it to get along with the other guys in the van? >> it's real hard! >> tucker: you always read about that. >> everybody got different lives, some guys are married with kids, some guys are in their early 20s, no strings attached. a lot of moving and shaking goes on in that, but you learn there as well your team and you got to

give, you've got to give sometimes, and it can get out of the road, you lock a bunch of guys up for that many days in a row. >> tucker: how did you get a record deal? >> it's finals also. after playing that long, word started getting out that these boys from texas are pretty good and a record label heard about us and this little tiny lounge, we got in and played on "60 minutes" at -- >> tucker: where was it? >> it was in nashville at the upper mantle telling a little tiny lounge called the backstage lounge and we laid a set, the guy walks up and he goes you guys should be making records. and we go yeah, we think so too. that moved into our first record deal. >> tucker: how to the record do? >> i think that when sold two or 3 million copies. >> tucker: so at that point you are -- >> at that point you get a tour bus. like yes, i can lay down! on the road, because you're in a van, man, you're like -- i'm calling the floor -- i just want to lay down, you're in between seats and you have to struggle

and suffer to go get these big things. you just do. i think people these days think that if they don't get what they want when they want and exactly how they want it, they're going to throw a brick through my window. and they're never going to accomplish anything that's truly great because they don't understand what it takes to go get it. they're not willing to bleed for it. >> tucker: so as soon as you get the record deal, then you become by definition established, you're making money, people are investing you, and then out of the woodwork him all the people who attach themselves to you to make money for themselves. >> correct. >> tucker: what was that like? >> i think early on they are somewhat necessary because you don't know what the hell you are doing great >> tucker: of course they are. >> my first check came in on a song, my dad calls me, my mail was going to his house, and he says i just got in a check in the mail, and i do really he opens it up and he goes this can't be right. i said what does it say come and he tells me the number and i went good god -- he went do you

think that's a real -- i said the song went number one, i don't know what you get paid, it must be right. he said you take 33% of that and put it in a savings account, because you're going to have the pay taxes on this and 10% of it is ties and don't forget that part, but he starts laying it out and i went yes, sir, and that's when you start getting business managers and attorneys and managers and all those things, because he really don't know anything about it. you smite your whole life just getting good at what you're getting good at. >> tucker: yeah, and you lived in a trailer as a kid in the panhandle texas all of a sudden you make money, what you do with it? >> i don't even know what this means. >> tucker: what did you do with it? >> i bought my grandparents house. >> tucker: really? >> yes, sir. first thing i did, my grannie rich and my grandpa, world war ii vet, here's a woman to born in the dust bowl days in the middle west texas in the great depression. >> tucker: tough. >> simultaneously these things are going on and social security, she is still working 40, 50 hours a week at a dollar store, he's trying to

flip used cars. i get my hands on this money and i thought, you know what, the only reason i get to go chase down drains like this is because of old men like that that went out and fought and bled and died for our right to go do it, and i don't like them being on social security and flipping used cars and stocking shelves at a friend's dollar store. so i'm going to buy them a house so i bought them a house out of country, a big house and i remodeled the basement and that's where i lived for the next four years. >> tucker: no way, with your grand parents to mexico that's right. best time of my life. >> tucker: there must've been thrilled. >> is nothing better walking up the stairs and your grandpa has been up for three hours smoking his fifth cigarette and he go sit down, need to tell you a story and it is something about world war ii or some horrific thing you can't imagine, you know? and man, just what i got from that, being around that generation, the greatest generation, has never left me.

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human being ever has to reach up is you have to put them down first. if i walk up to tucker carlson on my own two feet, shake your hand like this, right, what does it take for me to have to shake your hand like that? i have to go down. >> tucker: yes. >> to put me down to reach up and that's what i see going on in our country and i will not abide by that. i will not set that example for my kids, i want regular everyday americans out there watching guys like me with both fists up and still got a grin on my face go "i'm going to do that too in whatever area i live in, whatever my life is, i'm not so mike also not going to bend the knee." good, that's how you save your country. >> tucker: and your own dignity, by the way, and self-respect, and you are able to live with yourself if you stay a man in the face of all of this. so if we had everybody you know in nashville come all the craters, the artists that you know in nashville, at a dinner right now that was not being recorded, everyone could be honest, what percentage would agree with what you just said?

>> just talking but the artist? >> tucker: the artists. >> i'd say you would be way north of 50%, 60%. >> tucker: still. >> yeah, you've got artists that are absolute -- they are full-blown dedicated liberals. good for them. it's america, go be that. the problem is, they are allowed to be a wide-open liberal and still succeed in the industry, but if you're an outspoken conservative, that is no longer allowed. if you see it in businesses and corporations, that's how it is, but art and music cannot be contained. it is an x factor. >> tucker: period. >> it is invisible, it is missed, it is smoked through the keyhole. you cannot keep it down, it's all it takes is that the creators of that music have to have enough resolution but they are going to make sure it at least gets heard one time, and you can't stop music. that's what's so exciting about it. >> tucker: was interesting listening to talk since i happen to know your story, and i know

that you are genuinely talented at business, so you are an actual creator, you are an actual songwriter, not just taking other people's stuff and singing it. but you're also good at commerce and business. how did you do that? that's an unusual combination. >> yeah, it is an unusual -- >> tucker: you don't meet many people who can do that. >> i signed a lot of bad contracts, got into business with people that i shouldn't -- i learned the hard way. >> tucker: you've met some sleazy people along the way? >> no, never, in the music business? there we go, conspiracy talk again. >> tucker: [laughs] >> i've always been the kind of guy that always asks god on a fairly regular basis, hey, can you help me see around this corner? because i can see straight ahead and i can see behind me, but i can't see around the corner. can you give me an idea of what's over there? just whenever. and throughout my life he has given me little -- moved me

around a little bit and i get to peek around the corner and i go interesting, that's an interesting thing. make take me ten years to see that come to fruition, but that's a -- that's what's around the corner probably. thank you for the note. and so then i will move in that direction and take a long time doing it and still doing what i love to do buried >> tucker: so you trust what you hear? >> if you can't trust him... you can't trust anybody. he's the only one you can totally trust. i call it short ball, long ball. if got to play them both at the same time. shortfall might be that i'm out on the road doing 100 concerts, but i don't want to do that forever. long ball is this other thing that's weighed on the road that takes a long time to see if that's even possible, but that keeps guys like me saying because i don't see an end to where i can possibly go, i see no ceiling above my head because i can see around the corner little bit and no that that's possible if we do this the right way. >> tucker: that's it for us tonight, you can watch the full

length interview, all the ones you just saw i had, well, about 200 others, on fox nation. free sign-ups available on tuckercarlson.com and of course we will be back, 8:00 p.m., the show that is the sworn enemy of line, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. have the best night with the ones you love. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> sean: welcome to the special edition of "hannity" buried tonight for the full hour we will highlight some of our exclusive interviews from the past few months. first up, my interview with republican gubernatorial candidate, congressman lee zeldin after he was viciously attacked onstage during during a campaign event by a man with a weapon. take a look at this. >> there's only one option. >> you are done, you are done.