Robby Soave says angry, woke progressives have made New York Times a toxic environment
New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss announced her resignation on Tuesday, saying she was bullied by colleagues; reaction from Robby Soave, author of 'Panic Attack.'
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," July 14, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
BRIAN KILMEADE, GUEST HOST: Good evening, and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." I'm Brian Kilmeade, and as you probably figured out, I'll be filling in for Tucker and in just a few minutes, Tucker will be joining us here on his very own show.
You could add at least three new names to the roster of people recently forced out by the social justice mob.
This afternoon, get this, Andrew Sullivan, a writer at "New York Magazine," longtime critic of the cancel culture announced that he was leaving his job.
Last night, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art canceled one of his top curators after he suggested that the museum might continue to feature works by white artists. I know, hold on to somebody.
This morning, New York Times opinion writer, Bari Weiss left the paper after three years on the job. Take note that none of these people are partisan Republicans at all. Together, they join an ever expanding list of toppled statues, defaced monuments and canceled careers.
You can be sure that more people will lose their jobs, maybe by tomorrow. It's the moment we live in. But today, some of the people who were canceled are starting to fight back.
Consider the case of Bari Weiss. She announced her resignation in a scathing letter that accuses The Times of being controlled by the mob. Quote, "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times but Twitter has become its ultimate editor." An obvious reference to the leftwing agitators who dominate the website.
She continued, "A new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper that truth isn't a process of collecting discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few, whose job it is to inform everybody else." That's from her.
The letter goes on. She explained that intellectual curiosity and risk taking have become liabilities at The New York Times, which is why the paper refuses to run stories that challenge the emerging woke orthodoxy. Free thinkers, to the extent they exist at the paper are too afraid to express their opinions. They remain quiet, afraid of the backlash and bullying that an independent thought might provoke.
Now, Weiss isn't some sort of Trump-loving conservative with controversial views. She is an urban moderate, who openly sobbed at her desk when Trump was elected. Yes, Weiss is a run of the mill columnist.
In normal times, she wouldn't be considered notable at all. As she says, herself, "Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery." That's how she's been described, though, and yet, it does.
Weiss has paid a big price for that. So what exactly did Bari Weiss do to provoke the anger of her colleagues at The New York Times? Well, one thing she did is criticize cancel culture, for example.
BARI WEISS, FORMER COLUMNIST AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: I think that one thing that's overlooked in this -- when we talk about cancel culture, right, and the social ostracism and the actual firings that can happen when you break with one or another orthodoxy is that the people who are inoculated from it are people that are already extremely successful and can take the risk.
It's why Ricky Gervais can be Ricky Gervais. It's why JK Rowling can tweet what she tweeted a few months ago and survive it because they've already accumulated enough capital.
The people that I hear from that are completely screwed by it are people like artists and poets and untenured professors who aren't famous and no one knows about and are having to go with a begging bowl on Patreon or Venmo or whatever, to get support after they've made a bad joke or whatever it is.
KILMEADE: So you didn't get her views, you just got her analysis of what we're all going through. In the end, Weiss proved she is not important enough or successful enough to overcome that mob. Now, she's gone, but not without a few additional parting shots at her former colleagues.
In her resignation letter, she described them as out of touch. She says, they failed to learn essential lessons from the 2016 election, " ... lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society. Those things have not been learned."
That might sound very familiar because it's exactly what "The New York Times" former public editor, Liz Spayd said to Tucker in December of 2016. Remember this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIZ SPAYD, FORMER PUBLIC EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I consider it almost an unrecognized point of view that that The Times has that comes from being in New York, being in, you know, in a certain circle and seeing the world a certain way, not being in touch with people who don't live like them or don't live in cities and who are the ones that elected like Donald Trump for the presidency. They're just out of touch with that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: You know, not long after that, you may remember Spayd lost her job. It wasn't evident at the time, but she was one of the first to illustrate the power of the mob and the control that shadow editors at Twitter have over "The New York Times."
I don't get why. Robby Soave is an author of "Panic Attack," and has been covering the mob for years as a senior editor at "Reason" magazine. Robby joins us now. How significant is this -- the letter and the move by her, by Bari Weiss?
ROBBY SOAVE, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, REASON: I think it's very significant. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The drama at a number of newsrooms, including and especially The New York Times, remember this is coming shortly after they got rid of their opinion editor, James Bennett, who is also someone interested in cultivating or engaging ideas outside the progressive liberal bubble that has so consumed The New York Times.
What's happening is that the most significant people associated with that effort to broaden the perspective, again, not to just change like what "The New York Times" thinks, but just to consider what other people in this country might think, those people are being rooted out or they just can't work there because it's such a miserable climate because of what the other employees, some small minority of very angry woke progressives are subjecting them to harassment and bullying and gossip, and name calling that's just made it a toxic environment for anyone who disagrees with them.
KILMEADE: Robby, it was interesting, it's not a good business decision. It's not a good business decision to tell a group of people that might think a different way not to buy your newspaper, and I'm not talking about the opinion section.
You could see their opinion in the way they cover stories. Andrew Sullivan writes today who quit also, the underlying reasons are self-evident why he quit. He looked back at her situation and she's a friend of his -- the mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thought crimes, and her editor stood by and watched. Where's the woke culture there?
SOAVE: That's what's so amazing because again, this is -- it's really a small number of people who have that extremely far left viewpoint, even within The New York Times, it's not probably most of the people work there. So you're alienating such a large section of people.
You would think the bosses, the editors, the top guys would want to say, no, this is the wrong way for us to go. But instead, they're afraid that they'll be accused of being racist or sexist, or whatever it is, unless they let the mob kind of get away with whatever they want, unless they let them shout down and chase out people who dissent.
And I mean, this is a terrible consequence for the New York Times. It's a terrible consequence for just being able to have, you know, discussions about different ideas. Again, Bari wasn't even -- she's not a Trump supporter. She's not a conservative.
She has views that probably many people in America would share and many people in America share Trumpian and conservative views, too. There's no way they'll be able to air those in The New York Times if Bari Weiss can't share what she thinks.
KILMEADE: Robby, you told our producers that Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the 1619 Project. She's more with the editors of The New York Times want or Twitter, who the editors of The New York Times want. Why?
SOAVE: Right. I mean, it's certainly the case. Jones is gaining prominence as voices like Bari's are being kind of quieted. You know, Jones is the author of this Pulitzer Prize winning effort. It's an esteemed effort to recast the founding of America as about the Declaration of Independence, as fundamentally about enshrining white supremacy.
She's been criticized for this view by a number of historians, mainstream historians, and she's kind of really shrugged off the criticism or indeed kind of attacked people who criticize her.
But she is the one who is -- she was on TV. I think she went on CNN talking about what's going on at The Times. She speaks for the woke left, and her view is that it should fall in line with what she thinks, not be a space for views that disagree. That's my reading of the things she says about what she wants the New York Times to be.
KILMEADE: And you know, the San Francisco curator that was fired because 200 former employees wrote a letter. You know what this this guy had the audacity to do this, Gary Garrels, he says we should continue to take work from white people, too. Really? No kidding. That's a problem?
SOAVE: I wrote about this today at Reason.com. Yes, it's totally insane. They said that him saying that was an example of white supremacy. Can you imagine? First of all accusing an art curator in San Francisco of being a white supremacist? I doubt there are many in the field.
But this was a perfectly benign statement, you know, 90 percent of people - - I bet a clear majority of Democrats would have heard what he said even and said, that's totally fine.
So again, we're not talking about a large movement, we're talking about a small number of very angry kind of crazy people who are getting their way because people let them and yes, he resigned without so much as a fight after this petition to get rid of him. Just like that. People with totally mundane views are being canceled before our eyes.
KILMEADE: Robby, always great to talk to you. Thanks for kicking up the show. Appreciate it.
SOAVE: Thank you.
KILMEADE: All right, let's kind of stay in the same genre. No place is guiltier of excessive self-righteousness than Hollywood, when we actually had Hollywood, but even some celebrities are tired of the never ending moral preening.
Here's comedian just referenced before, Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes in January.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICKY GERVAIS, COMEDIAN: If you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, all right? You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.
Come up. Accept your little award. Thank you agent and your God and [bleep] off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Still funny -- to everyone except for the people in the audience.
A few days ago, Gervais doubled down in support of free speech without the laughter.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
GERVAIS: There's this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can't. And it's a really weird thing that there's this new trendy myth that people who want free speech, wanting to say awful things all the time. This just isn't true. It protects everyone."
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
KILMEADE: And Gervais is so good and so successful, he is impervious to the mob. But he's not alone in his thoughts.
Film director Oliver Stone told The New York Times Magazine yesterday, quote, "Everything has become so fragile, too sensitive. Hollywood now, well, you can't make a film without a COVID adviser. You can't make a film without a sensitivity adviser. It's ridiculous. Will any of that make a difference? He asks.
Dean Cain has been in Hollywood a long time, and I took down some of your credits, Dean. You have 177 movies. You've produced 16. You've written on four. You've directed at least two the last time I tallied. So you've seen a lot of movie sets, a lot of TV sets. Have things changed?
DEAN CAIN, ACTOR AND PRODUCER: Well, you know what, we haven't gone back to work yet. But things have been changing for a long time.
If you look at the films that have been made in the past that couldn't be made today, even the "Gone with the Wind" getting pulled off the air for a while. You look at something like "Blazing Saddles," which I thought was hysterical. You could never make that movie today.
As far as onset, I'm going to find myself agreeing with Oliver Stone completely. Having a COVID adviser, having all these sensitivity advisers, having -- it's all regulation. And that regulation is job killing.
It stops people from being able to make films. The small filmmakers can't afford all of these different advisers, all of these different people, so they won't be making as many movies and it really is a job killing thing and that's what President Trump doesn't get enough credit is the amount of deregulation he has done with our economy. It has been unbelievable.
But that's not going to happen in Hollywood right now. Hopefully, there'll be a backlash, and we'll be able to clear things up and get back to work.
KILMEADE: Hey, Dean, what's so amazing is, we're talking about a liberal industry that was very critical of the rest of the world, high and mighty and aloof, and now, that world has come back to bite them. It's almost like the #MeToo Movement that took Al Franken. Oops.
CAIN: Yes, there's no question. Look, the left -- this whole cancel culture thing is a cancer. It's awful. It's terrible. I'm a hundred percent behind what Ricky Gervais says, free speech needs to be protected and the speech you don't like needs to be protected.
I'm open to hear everyone's point of view, and I think everybody should be. Twitter being the cancel culture and those people getting out there and trying to get everybody fired. I have been the subject of numerous attacks over my beliefs or my support for President Trump or just literally anything.
I've been attacked for this gaming chair I sit in. I mean, the most ridiculous stuff. So, I'm glad to see that that big letter came out last week to "Harper's" with JK Rowling and everybody else. I'm glad to see Bari Weiss do her thing. Andrew Sullivan, you know resign.
I'm hoping that there's going to be some sort of real comeback to reality and this ridiculous cancel culture stuff is going to end.
KILMEADE: And just my final wrap up for you Dean, and we have no time for you comment, but when things got -- when people started thinking that you were too conservative to book, you wrote your own movies, produced your own movies, did your own thing. That's why you cannot be stopped. You're a force, but top of the resume is "Fox and Friends" host. I hope that still says on there at the top of the ledger.
CAIN: Yes.
KILMEADE: All right, good job, Dean. Talk to you soon.
CAIN: Thanks, Brian. Cheers.
KILMEADE: Let's be honest, we didn't even inconvenience him, and all he did is put his knee on his desk and clicked on Skype.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus outbreak appears to be getting worse in Florida, although these may be issues with how state laboratories are reporting new cases. Did you hear about this?
WOFL's Robert Guaderrama has the story in our Orlando affiliate. Robert, what did you discover about how they're counting the coronavirus tests?
ROBERT GUADERRAMA, FOX ORLANDO REPORTER: Yes, there seems to be confusion, Brian on so many levels here with the coronavirus numbers. Now, we were tipped off that the numbers didn't quite look right on the state's daily case report.
And looking at the breakdown of test labs, I quickly noticed astronomical positivity rates. Now, mind you, Florida's COVID-19 positivity rates currently at just under 11 percent, but dozens of labs are reported as having 100 percent positivity.
Some only reporting positive cases, the negative column absolutely blank. So, I asked myself, how could 100 percent of people getting tested at these locations be testing positive?
So, I reached out to several of our major hospitals in the area, Orlando Health and the Orlando VA confirming errors in their numbers in that report.
So after several requests for comment today, the Florida Department of Health confirming that some small private labs have failed to report negative results, some reporting zero negative results.
So the department says, it is working to obtain those results and update the statewide report to fix those inaccuracies. But these labs are required by the state to report all test results -- positive and negative.
A spokesperson -- here is something else that kind of adds to the confusion -- a spokesperson for Lee Memorial Hospital that's out of the Fort Myers area tells me that they believe there is a problem with the state's data gathering system, because it is their knowledge, their understanding that the negative results from their hospital were submitted to the state.
So Brian, more questions to be answered, but this news all coming as so many Floridians already are doubting the numbers being reported by the state.
KILMEADE: Because your death toll was so low thankfully, when someone says 98 percent positive, I meant 9.4 percent. I want every Fox affiliate at least to do exactly what you did and pour over these numbers and make people back them up.
And Robert, I'm going to get your name right now, unlike how I introduced you, Robert Guaderrama. How did I do?
GUADERRAMA: Guaderrama. There you go.
KILMEADE: Close. All right, thanks a lot, man. Talk to you soon. Meanwhile, major news out of Washington with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital. New information is coming into us. This story is developing. Don't move.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KILMEADE: Fox News Alert. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment for a possible infection is what they are telling us.
She was initially treated at a hospital Washington last night. She was experiencing fever and chills. Doctors expect the 87-year-old Justice to remain in the hospital for at least a few days. We will keep you posted on her condition.
The President was asked about it and wishes her the best.
Meanwhile, urban unrest is tearing our nation's cities apart. Portland, Oregon, for example, has been experiencing violent mayhem for six straight weeks at tremendous cost to the city.
Over the weekend, a Federal officer was beaten with a hammer outside the courthouse. Here's the video.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
KILMEADE: Jason Rantz has been all over this story. He is located in Seattle, a very successful talk show host who has a lot of contacts in the region. Jason, this is as bad as it gets in America. It's already cost the local businesses about $23 million in looting and rioting. I mean, this is organized, isn't it?
JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RADIO SHOW HOST: It's a hundred percent organized. You have people who are either loosely or very closely connected with local Antifa organizations, whether they're talking about these loose organizations of individuals who just share their dangerous ideology or they're literally communicating on Twitter and on Facebook and via signal of these different apps trying to get people to show up.
And the reason why they keep showing up, the reason why you've had six weeks straight of this kind of violence is because every single day for the last six weeks in Portland and across this country, cops are being demonized and villainized.
The bad behavior is being justified. You have politicians either too terrified to say anything for fear that they might upset the Democratic base that they rely on to keep them in power, or they're part of the people cheering this kind of stuff on and encouraging it.
And so when you have this kind of message coming out, of course, people are going to feel more justified to put up this kind of violent act, whether it's Portland, Seattle, New York or D.C.
KILMEADE: And this Mayor gave a little and he is paying the price. He's been humiliated and didn't waste any time blaming the President, said he made things worse by bringing Federal troops in. Really?
RANTZ: Yes, it's always President Trump's fault. It definitely has nothing to do with the feckless, meek leadership of Ted Wheeler in Portland. It is so ridiculous.
You have people who still want to pretend that the police are the problem. What's going on in Portland has nothing to do with George Floyd. Everything right now that's happening in Portland has to do with the anarchists, it has to do with a greater socialist ideology.
I mean, we're having a nationwide conversation about defunding the police when we should be defending the police. The Federal agents, the Portland PD, cops all across this country are facing a war on them and it's getting out of control.
KILMEADE: The F.B.I. needs to be called in. We've got to take apart the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front. That's a division we understand of Antifa, another despicable organization.
Jason, thanks for covering this. One day, I wish we could talk about this in past tense, but it's still going on tonight. Thanks, Jason.
RANTZ: Unfortunately. Thank you.
KILMEADE: Meanwhile, the nationwide -- you've got it -- meanwhile, the nationwide rioting story in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd. Rioters there burned out a police precinct and looted many local businesses.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
KILMEADE: You believe that the governor of that state wants us, the taxpayers, to pay for that anarchy?
Amid the unrest, residents in the Minneapolis Powderhorn Park neighborhood decide to so-called check their privilege by collectively agreeing never to call the police again.
One man told "The New York Times" that he regretted calling 911 after he was robbed at gunpoint. So, how did that turn out?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): Powderhorn Park has become a city of sorts. What started out as 20 to 30 tents, we're told is now at 560 tents and about 700 people.
The encampment does offer plenty of free food. We're told there's laundry service. There's restrooms and showers. It even has its own security of sorts.
We were told we needed permission to be on the sidewalk around the park. Neighbors who live near the park say they are no longer welcome or feel safe to use the park.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: The sprawling homeless encampment is now associated with three separate sexual assaults, and you know, there's many more. Since "The Times" first report on the neighborhoods decision to not call the police anymore. Naturally, many locals now want to leave.
One resident told the local paper that people are fleeing the neighborhood because no one is, quote, "protecting their rights to a safe neighborhood." No kidding.
Scott Johnson has been reporting on the Powderhorn Park for Power Line. He joins us now from Minneapolis. This is the most predictable problem in the history of America. How do you get out of this?
SCOTT JOHNSON, POWER LINE BLOGS: Well, that's a difficult question. But I think you've done the right thing in identifying where the trouble comes from. It comes in Minnesota. It comes right from the top, Governor Walz.
One of the 78 Executive Orders that he has promulgated in the era of one man rule following the COVID-19 epidemic prohibited law enforcement from removing homeless people from parks, and the Powderhorn Park is one of 38 in the City of Minneapolis with homeless encampments in it.
And it's grown in the way that you said to include 560 tents. Tomorrow night, the Parks Board is meeting to try to bring the number down from 38 parks with homeless encampments in them to 20 parks with homeless encampments in them.
In Minneapolis, that would be progress, but it's really pathetic. And despite the sanitation that you refer to in the introduction, you know, I took a drive around there this afternoon. It's disgusting. No surprise there either.
So I think it would be progress if they reduce the number of parks with homeless encampments to 20, reduce the number of tents as they kind of played doing to 25, and start enforcing the law and finding alternative facilities for these people who prefer to be in the parks rather than in facilities where they came from.
KILMEADE: Scott Johnson, thanks so much. We're about to lose your feed, but I have got 20,000 more questions to ask you, but what do we learn from this? Appreciate you work for Power Line for us.
We learned, when you give a little, you get nothing but abuse. It happened in Minneapolis. It happened in Seattle. It happened in Portland and it's never stopped in Minneapolis, too.
Meanwhile, coming up straight ahead, Tucker is making an appearance right here on his own show. Can you believe it? You don't want to miss Tucker's interview on how you can get a great education without attending a university. That story, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KILMEADE: Got some good news. Tucker is back to take a look at whether college is really worth it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST,: As if you needed more proof that higher education is the most sophisticated and most predatory racket underway in this country right now, there's this.
Harvard just announced its classes will be entirely online this fall. But the school isn't taking a single dime off its tuition. That's still $50,000.00 a year. Of course, it's by design. That tuition is not paying for a better education, it is paying for bloated administrator salaries, and an army of pointless bureaucrats.
In fact, not just pointless, but some of them poisonous.
Right now, for example, the University of California system has 280,000 students enrolled. At the same time, it has 227,000 employees. Do the math on that.
Isaac Morehouse has. He's a CEO of Crash.co. It's a company that helps people without degrees get good paying jobs. He also founded Praxis, an organization that's now paying kids $1,000.00 to drop out of college and enter apprenticeships instead.
Isaac, we're happy to have you on always. So it seems like this is a moment for you because a lot of people, correct me, if I'm wrong, are starting to realize that college is a scam.
ISAAC MOREHOUSE, CEO, CRASH.CO: Yes, it's a huge moment. I mean -- this -- college has basically been scamming young people for a long time, and it's been able to get away with it because they're heavily subsidized through tax dollars, protected from competition. They're essentially monopolies.
And there's been a religious superstition that you have to get that degree. You've got to get that bullet point on your resume, and I think more and more people see that that's not true.
I mean, what you just said, if you're paying $50,000.00 to go to classes on Zoom, you know, the argument that you're getting some intangible benefits, like the only intangibles are the pensions of the administrators are getting. That's why that's funded.
So, more people are awake to this, which I think is a great thing. It's been a huge opportunity for people to see what really matters on the job market.
CARLSON: So, it's I mean -- I mean, this isn't just a conversation about the ethics of whether or not to go to college because I think there are big ethical implications in it. But the money doesn't even make sense.
Give us an idea -- because most parents are afraid not to send their kids to college. Give us an idea what your options are, if you don't want to send your kids? What their options are?
MOREHOUSE: Yes, it's amazing how few people think about what it is they actually need to win a job. And I'll tell you right now that you know, hey, look, I bought a degree and I listed it on my resume. You can burn your resume. I'm telling you, that's not how you get a job anymore. You have to gain some real skills, and then pitch companies on the value you can create for them.
That's kind of what we help people do with Crash is to create, you know, something that showcases their skills in a tangible way, instead of just saying here, this institution said that I'm okay. You know, I passed.
And so if you can get those skills, like I'm telling you right now, you can do this in months or a year or two. A lot of programs like Praxis, you don't even pay tuition unless you get a job. So there's direct accountability and a lot of boot camps out there. You know, you can go and you can apprentice or intern and get the experience first before you sink a bunch of money that you're never going to get back.
I mean, college isn't going to give you a refund if you don't get hired. They're going to be laughing all the way to the bank with that money.
So there's a lot of opportunity out there to discover, you know, the kind of things that you're interested in and then build things around those, actually do something tangible instead of just, you know, sort of following the rules and saying, hey, I got this credential.
CARLSON: So there's not a correlation between getting some credential and your effectiveness. Really quickly, how does a parent or a child who is thinking about what to do next get involved with Crash?
MOREHOUSE: Yes, so Crash is really designed for, if you are on the job market now and that could be an internship, it could be a first job. It's really a way to find how to showcase your skills and not have to rely on having fancy credentials or anything like that and put together compelling pitches to companies and we kind of help you walk through that process.
And you know, if you're ready for that, if you're ready for the job market now, definitely check out Crash.co. If you're not, I would encourage you to look into boot camps. If you're interested in coding. There's a host of coding boot camps. Praxis is a boot camp for non-coders.
And again, right now, Praxis is offering if you're going to drop out of college, they'll pay you $1,000.00 and it's really rigorous training in the skills, in demand in fast growing companies today.
So I mean, those are just a couple of places to start. But there's more opportunity than there's ever been to learn relevant skills. And I'm telling you, none of that opportunity is in college classrooms right now.
CARLSON: That's right. We're all unlearning the GI Bill, 75 years later. Isaac, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much.
MOREHOUSE: Thanks for having me, Tucker.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KILMEADE: Yes, the Zoom College is making everyone consider that, too. Meanwhile, straight ahead, Joe Biden's handlers finally let him out of his own basement. So, how did it go? How is he doing? We're going to find out.
Today, he took a cue from AOC and says we only have nine years to save the planet and I'm talking about our favorite planet, Earth.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KILMEADE: All right, Joe Biden emerged from his basement and kind of hit the campaign trail in his own town a few minutes away from his house.
This afternoon he made it very clear that you should probably keep him away from your children.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, D-PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: To get our people to work and our kids at school safely, to get our kids to market swiftly, to power clean energy revolution in this country, we need to modernize America's infrastructure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Right, a little confused by the crawl as well as the statement. Well, he better get the kids to market soon because the planet does not have much time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Science tells us we have nine years before the damage is irreversible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Okay, in the spirit of that, Biden embraced a $2 trillion Green New Deal proposal while we can all agree that the plan will radically expand Biden's power over all of us.
Not everyone agrees that will help fight global warming. Michael Shellenberger is the President of Environmental Progress, and bestselling author of "Apocalypse Never." Helped write the New Green Deal. Michael, what do you think -- what do you say to Joe Biden's proposal from what we know, adding to the $2 trillion over four years to have all clean energy. He wants a hundred percent clean electricity standards by 2035.
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS: The problem is that we already know the effects of these policies, I hope to implement them and advocate them in the early 2000s. We spent over $250 billion on renewables, and everywhere they're deployed at scale, electricity prices go up.
In fact, a former Obama administration economist did a major study for the University of Chicago finding that in all the states that did renewable mandates, electricity prices rose.
In my home State of California, electricity prices rose six times more than the national average. So, you're actually paying twice. We're paying first with subsidies, which increase the deficit, and then we're also paying higher electricity prices.
And then the second big concern, of course, is that because renewables are so inefficient, industrial wind farms and industrial solar farms require about 400 times more land than a natural gas or nuclear plant.
The impacts on wildlife are enormous. So, we see industrial wind turbines, killing condors, bald eagles, and now they want to string up transmission lines through the sand hills of Nebraska, which would potentially kill whooping cranes, one of our most beloved endangered species.
KILMEADE: Mike, who's writing this stuff? This is something that we heard Jay Inslee talk about, we heard Elizabeth Warren talk about. This has never been part of Joe Biden's agenda. Since when?
SHELLENBERGER: Well, that's probably fair. I mean, I think the obvious thing, if you cared about nuclear power, you would do nuclear energy. If you cared about climate change, sorry, you would do nuclear power.
The only country that significantly reduced its emissions is France, 75 percent nuclear. It spends about half as much electricity as Germany, which is phasing out nuclear and scaling up renewables.
Look, I just think that the radical left has just taken a big part of the Democratic Party. One of the things that I was really surprised to discover in researching "Apocalypse Never" is that really it's just about a dozen people that were major donors to President Obama who benefited the most from really about $90 billion in subsidies, in taxpayer subsidies.
So my concern here is it's not just that it's bad for consumers, it's bad for workers. You increase energy prices and there's always the risk that more jobs will go to China. Unemployment is already at 10 percent.
But it also just ends up rewarding the insiders, the people that have special access to the President.
KILMEADE: Michael, 30 seconds. What will happen if we rejoin the Paris Climate deal?
SHELLENBERGER: Look, I think there's always been this effort by United Nations officials and some scientists who want to try to control energy and food production around the world. Those decisions are really best made by countries on their own.
Look, you know, most carbon emissions in rich countries have gone down. Our carbon emissions have gone down over the last 15 years. In "Apocalypse Never" I talk about how that's actually due to the fracking natural gas revolution, which most environmentalists oppose.
So the two technologies that have done the most to address climate change and reduce humankind's impact on natural environment, fracking and nuclear power are actually opposed by candidate Biden's coalition and that's what concerns me.
KILMEADE: Yes, interesting. And so it was great to be in agreement with Russia and China, they always live up to their obligations.
Michael, thanks so much. Appreciate your expertise. It's a great book.
SHELLENBERGER: Thanks so much.
KILMEADE: Meanwhile, we forge ahead. Nearly four years -- you're welcome -- after her humiliating election defeat, Hillary Clinton is still refusing to go away.
In an ironic twist, now, she fears that if Trump loses, he won't go away either. That story, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KILMEADE: Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton fears that Trump might refuse to leave office if he loses the election in November.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I think it is a fair point to raise as to whether or not if he loses, he's going to go quietly or not, and we have to be ready for that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Someone should tell that host, it's summer. One person who refused to go away after losing a presidential election is of course, Hillary Clinton.
Tammy Bruce is host of "Get Tammy Bruce" on the great Fox Nation app. She joins us now. Tammy, why is she saying this?
TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, she obviously is projecting, bright as classical projection where she is accusing her opponent of doing what she is doing.
She is the only person maybe other than Stacey Abrams, who has for years now refused to accept the result of 2016 and she is showing that.
Now look, at the same time, she should be asked -- nobody asked her why she isn't fighting for her second term. She should be running.
I mean, obviously Trump is running for his second term. She really believes that she won the presidency. She should be fighting for her second term, but she's not doing that at all.
I mean, this is -- the only other explanation is that she broke into the Chardonnay cabinet and keeps thinking that it's 2016, it's hard to say.
But the fact is also, that all of this stuff with mail-in ballots and the problems that Democrat allied groups have been creating in cities, various riots and problems is that they may be anticipating creating a dynamic with a voting system that is so corrupt and so chaotic, that maybe they're hoping that we wouldn't really know who the winner would be if it was close, and they're preparing people for that kind of chaos.
This is what the Clintons would do. They know they're not going to win the White House because of who their nominee is, but also because of the success of the President. And we're watching something fascinating unfold.
The only show she hasn't done yet, Brian, by the way, is "Dancing with the Stars," and she might want to think about moving into that direction at this point because she'll lose that to.
KILMEADE: Tammy, you're onto something, though, because Joe Biden said the same thing. I'm afraid he's not going to leave. They're going to have to haul him out, and the Republicans would be insane to allow this mail-in balloting for the masses.
BRUCE: That's right.
KILMEADE: Lastly, Christopher Steele is in a court case now and he is asked about the dossier and what went into it. One of the things he said I found fascinating that he was under the belief that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton both knew that he was investigating the Trump campaign.
BRUCE: Yes, I mean, this is important. We don't have the Durham report yet about the entire nature of what was happening and the Trump campaign being targeted. So people are going to be inevitably indicted at some point, and someone might want to you know, give up the scope of the nature of what this was.
But they knew to ask him about this in this obscure trial in England, brought by a few Russians who were accused by him as well, and they had F.B.I. notes, where Steele told the F.B.I. that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS told him -- he remembers being told by Simpson himself that Hillary knew and was involved.
And so that's when they asked about that. They got him on the record in this new legal case, and of course -- of course, look, this is the most -- this is a woman with control issues.
You see her. She still can't let go of what happened in 20. Of course, she was going to be at least involved or knowing a bit, no one was going to go off and do something like that on their own without her knowing about it.
She controlled that infrastructure, and when it collapsed, is when everything obviously when she lost is when everything started to become exposed.
So, this should be interesting. We're not at the end of this. Americans deserve justice, and hopefully at a point coming up soon, we might start seeing that happen for us.
KILMEADE: Yes, I just think that she stay in the wings just in case fragile Joe Biden cannot finish this run in a very odd year, one of the oddest election cycles in the history of this country.
Tammy Bruce, always great to talk to you. I'll see you soon.
BRUCE: Thank you, Brian. Thank you.
KILMEADE: All right. Meanwhile, that's about it for us tonight. Don't forget to tune in to the "Brian Kilmeade Radio Show." I know you'll love it. It's nine to noon Eastern time. That's every single day, Monday through Friday.
Also "Fox and Friends" six to nine. I'll be wearing a different outfit, I promise.
Also, I want you to do this, tune in each night at eight o'clock to watch the show or you could DVR the show. You know the show's slogan is, the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.
Have a great evening, everybody. I appreciate you watching.
Now. It's time to go over to my good friend, possibly my only real friend. He's got great hair, that he's been ready to go since about six o'clock in the morning. The great Sean Hannity.
Sean, I am not Tucker, I'm giving you 11 seconds. I am giving you 11 seconds.
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