Tucker Carlson: The people in charge are intent on replacing democracy with authoritarianism – Fox News
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
We're going to something a little different and to try to explain what this country is fighting with itself about, what are the lines that divide us?
It's pretty obviously not the old partisan divide that the rest of us grew up with Republican versus Democrat. You figured that out now. You look over the Democratic side, you see Rashida Tlaib. You're pretty certain she's not on your side, obviously. But then the question is, is Mitch McConnell on your side? And the answer, as you well know, is, no, not really. So what divides us? What is the dividing line? And it's really simple.
The people in charge are intent on replacing our free democratic system with an authoritarian system where they don't convince you of anything. They simply make you do things and they benefit from that. There are people in this country who are opposed to that, they are anti-authoritarian. And if you look at who we book on this show, that may explain why we do it. You may have noticed we have a lot of former lefties on the show. Glenn Greenwald is the most obvious. Alex Berenson as well. And many others.
Now, we probably don't agree with these people on a lot of things. Are we on the same side on abortion? We've never asked. But one thing we know for certain is that they are totally opposed to authoritarianism. So that really is the divide. People are for an authoritarian America and those who are for a free America. It's that simple. And once you start to understand politics through that lens, you figure out what's really going on.
By the way, looking at polls, is an unusually bad way to understand what's happening in American politics? Polls are often wrong and when they are wrong, they're almost always wrong in the same directionthe last presidential election made that very clear. The polling outfit Quinnipiac, for example, which is attached to some kind of college in Connecticut, predicted that Joe Biden would win the popular vote by 11 points. It also predicted that Mitch McConnell was in tough shape in Kentucky. Pollsters even convinced a lot of Democratic Party donors that they had a real shot of winning the state of Texas. In retrospect, it's clear all of this was partisan fantasy and it had a purpose. It was all designed to make a mentally decaying senator from Delaware look like Teddy Roosevelt riding a massive wave of popular support. Of course, that was a lie.
So once you understand that once you recognize what these polls are actually designed to do. They're designed to put Democratic Party leaders in the best possible light. It is worth noting when the polls move in the opposite direction. When they start to reflect badly on the Democratic Party. That's been happening over the past several weeks. According again to Quinnipiac, a reliably Left-Wing pollster, Joe Biden's national approval rating is now 38 percent. 60 percent of independents disapprove of what Joe Biden is doing as president. A new AP poll noted that just 34 percent of Americans are pleased with the direction of the country. That's called the right track wrong track poll. And for the party in power, it is very bad news.
PSAKI GRILLED ON BIDEN'S REALLY TERRIBLE POLLS, BLAMES DELTA VARIANT, UNVACCINATED AMERICANS
This means that the very same people who just last year lied to you to your face about how popular Joe Biden was are now admitting that he is actually the least popular president in modern political history. Why are they telling you this all of a sudden? Why are these reliably Democratic pollsters telling Democratic voters that their president is unpopular? Maybe because they have no choice. Maybe there are other reasons, we're not sure. What is absolutely clear is that, according to a new poll from Pew, Democratic Party, voters understand what this means and what it means is in a free and fair democratic system, they can't win.
If we allocate power based on who's the most popular with the public and that's the basic premise of democracy, the Democratic Party is in very tough shape and they know that. And that may be why, according to polls, Democrats now overwhelmingly want the government to make their political opponents shut up. More than three-quarters of Democratic Party voters want the tech companies to "restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information." Think about that for a second. More than 60 percent of Democratic voters want the federal government to "control that flow of information over the internet."
So all of that contravenes the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which is the very core of our system of government and of our culture, it's what makes America great. And now the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are against it.
So that's authoritarianism, there's no other word for it. And it's ironic considering for four years, prominent Democrats told us we were living through a fascist system. Donald Trump was a fascist. But of course, they were describing their own attitudes. So we're going to look at the rise of authoritarian impulses on the left and try to figure out where those came from and where they're going. Now, none of this is brand new. You'll recall that Democratic Party politicians have been pushing for censorship for a long time, certainly since Trump won in 2016. They blame that victory on Facebook. Here's Ed Markey in last October, for example, calling for more censorship.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass: The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that theyre leaving too many dangerous posts up. In fact, amplifying harmful content so that it spreads like wildfire and torches our democracy.
Oh, they're not censoring enough because these posts, according to Ed Markey, who will literally say anything you should know, are, quote, dangerous. But Markey never explained what was dangerous about them. But you got the message they all did. A few weeks after Markey said that Big Tech effectively removed the elected president of the United States from the internet, they silenced him completely and virtually nobody said anything about it. So it didn't stop, it merely accelerated. Now, Democrats and their allies in the news media have decided to drop all pretense.
GREENWALD: FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER IS BEING EMBRACED BY LIBERALS INTENT ON CONTROLLING POLITICAL DISCOURSE
Jonathan Chait writes for New York Magazine. He's considered smart on the left, one of the weirdest people practicing journalism today. He just published a deeply revealing piece in New York magazine. Here's the headline from it and we're quoting "Anybody fighting Joe Biden is helping Trump's next coup. All Republican politics is now functionally authoritarian." Right, because Republicans are calling for censorship. So that's how the Democratic Party is responding to the collapsing poll numbers of their president. They're accusing the other side of authoritarianism while practicing it themselves. Right.
So you'll recall that Joe Biden voters destroyed statues and destroyed our country's biggest cities for more than a year, and the police did nothing about it. And our media class applauded. And yet, because justice is no longer meted out equally if someone dares to dishonor the legacy of St. George Floyd, the New York Police Department Special Hate Crimes Division springs into action. Here's an actual quote, by the way, from this week on October 3rd, 2021 at approximately 10:15 a.m. in Union Square Park, a person on a skateboard threw gray paint on the face and base of a statue of George Floyd. That's the NYPD bulletin. Information, contact us!
So that's not really hypocrisy anymore, it's hierarchy. What they're telling you is that crimes against their ideas are the only crimes that matter. Well, that attitude has no popular support in this country, so you can only enforce it by force using surveillance to root out people who've got the wrong ideas. And that's exactly the basis on which the Biden administration is proceeding. That's why the administration has now given itself the authority to monitor everything that happens, for example, in your private bank account.
CNBCs Andrew Ross Sorkin: An effort that I know youre a proponent of for the IRS to collect more information and more tax dollars but more information about taxpayer bank accounts, including annual cash flows. I was curious whether you think the IRS has the wherewithal to actually do that.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: Well of course they do. // And a simple way for the IRS to get sense of where that might be is just a few pieces of information about individuals bank accounts
Did you see that? The most interesting part of that exchange was not the Treasury secretary, she's embraced authoritarianism full-blown. It's the creepy little shill from CNBC. And the question is not does the IRS have the right to snoop into your bank account with no evidence you've done anything wrong? His question is, do they have the wherewithal, do they have the manpower? Can they actually pull it off? To what she says, of course, were the governmentwe can do anything.
WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD: THE IRS WANTS TO LOOK AT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT
So after January 6, this show reported that Bank of America "proactively" rooted through customers private financial information to find individuals who "met thresholds of interests." They spied on their own customers and then, like the good East Germans, they are, they passed those names to the FBI without telling anybody involved. The Democratic Party approves of this, and they want to make certain this kind of invasion of privacy is permanent. It's codified. And of course, they want to control your children to the center of your life. They'll destroy anyone who tries to stand in the way of this.
Bradley Keyes, for example, was a track and field coach at Pembroke Academy. He was fired because he didn't think it was good for his athletes to have to wear masks as they were playing tennis
Bradley Keyes, April 9: My goal is to get these mandates removed. And it's not just track and field. It's tennis. It is baseball. It's every outdoor sport. Masks will be worn at all times: practices and competitions. Tennis, wonderful example. Singles tennis. You go watch practices, everyone is wearing masks. Competitions, they will be wearing masks, even though they're 30 to 60 feet apart on the courts.
So we're going to tell you, we've told you a thousand times before, none of this is science. There's not a single study anywhere in the world that suggests kids benefit by wearing masks as they play sports outdoors. In fact, they are hurt by it. That's both common sense and the scientific consensus on the question. But the fact is it's happening anyway, and that's the point. They don't feel the need to justify their decisions with science, and in fact, they will punish actual scientists who object to these unnecessary medical mandates.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Aaron Kheriaty, for example, as a physician at the University of California, he's the director of the medical ethics program at UC Irvine. Not a small job. He's just announced the university has "Put me on leave for challenging their vaccine mandates in court." Oh, so it's not a question of whether vaccine mandates help or hurt or good for public health, it's about power. And anyone who challenges it is crushed. The weak are hurt the most profoundly, as always.
Here's the story we'll be telling you a lot more about it in the coming weeks about a woman in Colorado who is facing death. She's got stage five renal failure. She's just been denied a kidney transplant. Now she has a donor, a willing donor, who has a kidney for her. Everything is ready to go. But according to the health system there, the woman and her donor have not taken the COVID shot. The donor explained that her vaccination status "does not affect any other patient on the transplant list... How can I sit here" the donor asked, "and allow them to murder my friend when I've got a perfectly good kidney and I can save her life?" That's a great question. No one the Biden administration has bothered to answer or even think about it. Instead, they're forcing anyone who raises these questions to be quiet. That's not a democratic system. That's an authoritarian system.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the October 8, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
- Partisan and creepy interviews are threat to democracy, Nick Robinson says - The Guardian - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Star Wars-themed democracy rally held in Irvine - FOX 11 Los Angeles - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- End Times Fascism: Naomi Klein on How Trump, Musk, Far Right Dont Believe in the Future - Democracy Now! - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Australians sizzle on election day with 'democracy sausage' and 'budgy smugglers' - Reuters - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Claims Criticisms Of Judges Are 'Attacks On Democracy' | Will Cain Show - Fox News - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Hundreds rally in Farmington for democracy and climate action - The Portland Press Herald - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Chilling: Wisconsin Gov. Evers Pushes Back After Trumps Border Czar Threatens to Arrest Him - Democracy Now! - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Students and faculty advocate for academic freedom at pro-democracy rally - The Stanford Daily - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Opinion | 3.5% and the Hopeful Math for Saving Democracy - Common Dreams - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- In Brief with Mu Sochua, President of the Khmer Movement for Democracy - 9DashLine - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Democracy on edge: Germany labels leading AfD a 'far-right threat,' facing historic clash - Haaretz - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- May Day Alaska: Rallies support workers and protest Trump, threats to democracy - Alaska Beacon - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Trumps Assault on PBS and NPR Chooses Oligarchy Over Press Freedom and Democracy - The Nation - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- How Bad Is It?: Andrew Marantz on the Health of Our Democracy - The New Yorker - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Romanias war on democracy Is this a stolen election? - UnHerd - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Star Wars fans join in California rally for democracy on May the 4th - Honolulu Star-Advertiser - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Hundreds of activists stage Malis first pro-democracy rally in years since coups - AP News - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- Cacciari Warns Against Banning AfD As Threat To Democracy - Evrim Aac - May 5th, 2025 [May 5th, 2025]
- The Dangers of Trumps First 100 Days: A Democracy in Exile Roundtable - dawnmena.org - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Democracy is a gift worth fighting for - MinnPost - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Can Ukraines fight for democracy survive without US support? - Middle East Institute - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- This 1938 pro-science manifesto defended democracy against fascism - Big Think - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Three U.S. Citizen Children, Including 4-Year-Old Battling 4th Stage Cancer, Deported to Honduras - Democracy Now! - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Media Freedom Rapid Response Input regarding the EU Democracy Shield - European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- The crucial role of schools in protecting Australia's democracy - The Educator - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- What Im Thinking Now, as a Political Bridge-Builder and Democracy Reformer - AllSides - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Ateneo universities across the Philippines mark the launch of the Philippine Observatory on Democracy - Ateneo de Manila University - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- Whats wrong with democracy in Europe? - The Economist - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- What Greek tragedy could teach us about the decline of our democracy - The Boston Globe - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- What the Trump assault on American democracy has taught us - The Globe and Mail - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Lowering the voting age will benefit democracy | Letters - The Guardian - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Trump calls Harvard a threat to Democracy amid executive orders targeting higher education - NBC News - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Democracy on the Brink: Scholars Warn of Americas Authoritarian Turn - The Fulcrum - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Editorial: Dont Let Trump Kill News and Democracy - InDepthNH.org - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- When White House begins to embrace conservative influencers, where will 'American democracy' head? - Global Times - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Judge Halts Trumps Anti-Voting Executive Order - Democracy Docket - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- The State of Democracy Requires Us to Expand the Map - Democracy Docket - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- A threat to Democracy: Trump continues bashing Harvard amid attacks on major institutions - Politico - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Democracy is hard; freedom is worth all the inconveniences: Arvelo - Seacoastonline.com - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Bookstores are arsenals of democracy - Princeton University Press - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Courts Handed Trump A Slew of Legal Losses This Week - Democracy Docket - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Poll: 61% of Israelis fear for democracy, 66% say internal rift is greatest threat - The Times of Israel - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- In praise of a democracy on paper - The Globe and Mail - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Opinion | When governors sabotage democracy just because they feel like it - The Washington Post - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Reuters: Trump Will Offer $100+ Billion Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia - Democracy Now! - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- DRC Agrees to Ceasefire with Rwanda-Backed M23 Rebels - Democracy Now! - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Don Wooten: Pope Francis, Trump and the tension between capitalism and democracy - Dispatch Argus - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Gen Z Has a Complex Relationship with Democracy, Survey Reveals - The 74 - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Tunisian Authorities Raze Refugee Camps That Housed 7,000 - Democracy Now! - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Rock This Democracy To Hold Next Street Protest, Rally On May Day - The Newtown Bee - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- Opinion: We shouldnt forget those who helped democracy come into being - Anchorage Daily News - April 27th, 2025 [April 27th, 2025]
- The Trump Administration Is Not Just Erasing History, They're Rewriting the Future and Attacking Democracy | Opinion - Newsweek - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- The New Far-Right Coalition Thats Out to Destroy American Democracy - The New Republic - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Thailands fragile democracy takes another hit with arrest of US academic - The Conversation - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- An existential threat to democracy: the US judge facing a challenge to her election victory - The Guardian - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Is Trump about to end democracy in the USA? - Funding the Future - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- President Trump Is Not the Only Threat to Our Democracy - The Regulatory Review - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Key Federal Elections Agency Moving Forward With Trumps Anti-Voting Order - Democracy Docket - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Simple hope alone wont protect democracy and the rule of law - Colorado Newsline - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Op-ed: Why we need human factors to save democracy - The Tufts Daily - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Bad for democracy: North Carolina could throw out valid ballots in tight election - The Guardian - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Debt, development, and democracy: Prospects for meeting the SDGs in Africa - Brookings - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- SIUs Paul Simon Institute hosts Kettering Foundation CEO to discuss future of democracy - WSIU NEWS - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Introducing The Expand Democracy 5 - The Fulcrum - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Your womens, gender and sexuality studies degree isnt useless its essential to maintaining democracy - The Tufts Daily - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- New political party seeking expanded democracy and a return to the center launches in New Mexico - Source New Mexico - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- In Promising News for Riggs, North Carolina Cuts Number of Ballots at Risk of Rejection - Democracy Docket - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- American Revolution: Paul Revere rides again, this time in a democracy coming apart - The Baltimore Banner - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- There is No Democracy Without Direct Democracy - resilience.org - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- When the Fight for Democracy Is Personal - The Atlantic - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Churches to ring bells for democracy: 6 p.m., April 18, commemorate ride of Paul Revere - PenBay Pilot - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Ukraines Democracy Still Works Without Elections - Foreign Policy - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Social Democracy isnt Going to Save the West - Counterpunch - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Trumps not hurting democracy. Hes blowing up their oligarchy, which is why theyre so mad - The Hill - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- New Fund Seeks $20 Million to Aid Nonprofits Standing Up to Democracy Threats - The Chronicle of Philanthropy - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Sinister SAVE Act will do the opposite for democracy | Letter - centralmaine.com - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- We've reached a critical turning point in our democracy - Columbia Missourian - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- A Democracy of Convenience Is No Democracy at All: A Letter from Mahmoud Khalil on His Ongoing Detention - Left Voice - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- DOJ Sues Maine for Refusing to Comply with Anti-Trans Order - Democracy Now! - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]
- Riggs Will Fight as Long as it Takes to Ensure Votes Are Counted in North Carolina - Democracy Docket - April 18th, 2025 [April 18th, 2025]