Tucker: The key difference between 'equality' and 'equity'
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host analyzes how teachers' unions are using 'equity' to keep kids out of school
This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 3, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening. Welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.
We're in reporter mode tonight here with some key stats on your government. Here they are: 42 days into the administration and still no solo press conference from Joe Biden. That is the longest stretch of silence from any new President in at least a century.
So by refusing to speak directly to the media, Joe Biden is attacking our most cherished democratic norms. Even CNN is complaining about it. And we would echo those complaints if we really cared. But honestly, we're just as happy that Joe Biden remains in seclusion.
Imagine a full press conference from Joe Biden, an endless hour of blank spots and mumbling and his wife interjecting with the right answer. How depressing would that be?
It is one thing to know your country is being led by a guy in cognitive decline. It's another thing to see it and we don't want to see it. And what will reporters ask anyway?
We got a taste the other day when one shouted this as Biden shuffled by: "What did you learn from your classified briefing on border security?" That was the question, Joe Biden's answer, "A lot." That was it.
Now do you believe him? Did Joe Biden really learn a lot now or at any time in the past five years? Come on. As we said, the whole thing is too sad to watch, so we're not going to.
Instead we're happy to listen to Joe Biden's flaks. They hold the press conferences now.
In the last month, Joe Biden's mouthpieces have had to explain why he bombed Syria, why he blocked the passage of a $15.00 minimum wage, why Dr. Seuss is racist, and then in their spare time, Joe Biden's scribes produce an awful lot of presidential proclamations.
They're heavy on the proclamations in Washington these days, a lot of proclaiming. One of Joe Biden's very first was entitled "An Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government," end quote.
This was the document that introduced the administration's new Equity Plan, which is going to -- and we're quoting, "Eliminate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for people of color and other underserved groups." It's quite a mouthful. But what does it mean? Has anyone asked what it means? Or did everyone in Washington just graduated from Yale and intuitively understand sloppy, meaningless words like this. Possible.
But the rest of us might still like to know what a systemic barrier is and how Joe Biden plans to eliminate it. That's easy, with equity, of course. But that raises a whole new question, what exactly is equity? And how is it different from equality? Equality being the central principle this country was founded on.
Well, the first thing to know about equality is that it is designed to challenge power. Equity, by contrast, is designed to protect power. Equity is what the British monarchy had. Equality is what the American colonists wanted.
Equality is what allowed Andrew Jackson to rise from a childhood of bitter poverty in the Carolina woods where he was born in 1867, and make it all the way to the White House.
Andrew Jackson was tough, smart and energetic. He lived a remarkable life and America rewarded him for it. That's equality. People like that, rising to the top.
Equity is the opposite. Equity is what allowed Kamala Harris, the privileged child of two PhDs, to stay privileged, and in the end to become one of the most powerful people on the planet, despite having achieved nothing impressive or worthwhile over the span of 56 years.
So, Andrew Jackson and Kamala Harris, both Democrats, one child of equality; the other the child of equity. That's the difference in a nutshell.
So to recap, equality challenges power; equity protects power. That principle has never been on starker display than in the case of the teachers unions, which is some of the most powerful institutions in America. Naturally, you are using the term equity to justify their own prerogatives as they hurt the weak, in this case, school children and their increasingly desperate parents.
Last night, we told you what the President of the Los Angeles Teachers Union, an equity promoter called, Cecily Myart-Cruz.
For months, parents whose kids use public education in Los Angeles have been begging Cecily Myart-Cruz to reopen the schools, and why wouldn't they?
How has Cecily Myart-Cruz responded? Well, by demanding those parents shut up immediately. Those parents, she explained, have the wrong skin color. Therefore, unlike entitled unionized teachers who can never be fired, those parents have privilege.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CECILY MYART-CRUZ, PRESIDENT, UNITED TEACHERS LOS ANGELES: Some voices are being allowed to speak louder than others. We have to call out the privilege behind the largely white, wealthy parents driving the push for a rushed return.
Their experience of this pandemic is not our students' families' experiences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Calling out the privileged, says the lady who can literally never be fired from her job no matter how she acts including like that. Never mind the hundred percent increase in suicides among school-aged children, Cecily Myart-Cruz is not interested in that.
She is interested in equity, which means she is interested in protecting her own unearned privilege by attacking the people below her.
What do the parents and children being attacked think of this? Well, Cecily Myart-Cruz wouldn't think to ask them because she doesn't care.
So yesterday, FOX Los Angeles reporter, Bill Melugin, stepped up and asked them himself, and here's what they said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's almost like minority families want the school to open more than anybody else, and the reason why I say that is because education for us, for our culture, is a stairway out of poverty.
So every day that our children is not in school, that's just a day closer to poverty for them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Lamar Freeman coaches, a youth football team called the LA Rampage. He told Bill Melugin that every parent he spoke to wants his or her kids back in class. Now, these parents are not racists, they just want their kids educated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAMAR FREEMAN, YOUTH FOOTBALL TEAM COACH: Most of our kids before the pandemic, we had 80 percent honor roll rate. Now, since the distance learning Zoom precedent, it dropped to about maybe 20 percent, like most of my A's and B's kids are getting B's and C's.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So purely because the most privileged government workers in the United States won't have to work, an entire generation of children is being destroyed. That's equity, the strong hurting the weak and calling it justice.
Everyone who thinks about this for just a moment knows that it's true and that's why you never hear equity debated or even defined. They won't define the term because they can't defend its definition.
Instead, they bully the population into silence. Cecily Myart-Cruz and the teachers unions are doing that right now.
Jorge Ventura of "The Daily Caller" has obtained a recent e-mail sent by someone who identifies himself as Albert Lowe, an employee at the Los Angeles Teachers Union.
Now, there is an Albert Lowe, who works at the union. We called him tonight, though he didn't pick up to confirm that he sent the e-mail in question.
This e-mail was addressed to a mother who has publicly called a couple of times for reopening schools in Los Angeles, and the e-mail from the union apparently demands to know what race she is, quote, "I'm working on a research project on who speaks on union issues in the 'Los Angeles Times' and coding for race and class," it begins, "You were quoted twice in the last eight months in the paper. Could you tell me how you racially self- identify or point me to a citation on your identity," end quote.
Now, what could possibly be the point of this? Seriously? Why is a parent or a child's skin color relevant in any way to what is supposed to be a medical question, whether the public schools reopen? Well, there's of course, there's only one point to this. It is racial intimidation.
We saw you complained, tell us your race.
How is that not a violation of our civil rights laws? Of course, it'll never be prosecuted or even criticized by anyone in power, because the teachers union is doing it, and they're doing it in the name of equity.
The hunt for white supremacy justifies all including injuring children and scaring their parents into silence. It's not just happening in schools. We're seeing this everywhere in our society right now.
Zaid Jilani is one of the few people brave enough to note it. He writes for "The Spectator" and is also on the Board of Advisors of a new organization called the Foundation against Intolerance and Racism. And boy, do we need that. We're happy to have him on tonight.
Zaid Jilani, only thank you so much for coming on. You must have noticed, and of course, I know you've written about it extensively, that virtually every debate of significance over things that actually matter, will the schools reopen? How do we respond to COVID? What does our economy look like?
All of them immediately, at the direction of those in power, go to race, why is that?
ZAID JILANI, "THE SPECTATOR": Right, Tucker. Well, I think it's important to be sensitive to the fact that race does sometimes correlate with other factors, like the quality of your health, your exposure to pollution, public safety, your income.
The problem is, why are they using a middleman to correlate for that instead of just going directly to that? Why not directly address the needs of those who are poor, of those who are sick, of those who are not well off or those who have public safety problems.
The reason why is because it's often used as a tactic or a tool of elites to flatten the universe, right, to pretend that everybody who is of a certain skin color or have the exact same social status and they have to be deferred to.
Let me give you an example. I think your viewers should pay very close attention to what's happening in Alabama right now. There's an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. This is a very poor place, about a third of the population is in poverty that's trying to unionize.
Jeff Bezos spent the last year telling us how much he cares about Black Lives Matter. He brands his entire website that way. He donated a bunch of money that way, yet his company is doing everything they can to crush that union.
These are -- this is a workforce that's 85 percent black, right? But he is not talking about poor people's lives matters. He is not talking about working class people's lives that matter, right? He wants to talk about race, because he wants to distract from the fact that there are rich people of every single race out there. Right?
His greatest fear is the same fear of, let's say, old time George Wallace and Lester Maddox, that poor white people, poor black people, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans recognize that, yes, there are differences between them. They have different cultures, they have different histories, and sometimes different challenges. But they're also all poor, and they have more in common with each other, certainly than they do with Jeff Bezos.
CARLSON: That is such a wise point. Why does no one say this out loud? And why don't you ever hear people raise their hand on behalf of poor people?
I'm not a poor person. I'm just noticing this. So there's no self-interest involved. But like, why doesn't anybody say the poor are being oppressed. It's always in racial terms.
They don't actually want to help the poor, I'm starting to conclude.
JILANI: Well, look, there was a really interesting study that came out a few years ago that showed me that something like half of the top editors and reporters at "The New York Times" come from a small batch of elite colleges, right?
These people, I think, often see themselves as victims through, you know, their gender, through their racial status. But they have very little interaction or engagement with I think, working class people, with poor people, with the people who are dying in massive homicide spikes last year, which is why crime is rarely ever talked about, even though it's a huge concern if you poll poor people of every race, particularly black and Latino, but I think of every race.
I mean, we see a sort of a structural tilt in our country, towards an upper class elite, which increasingly as the country becomes racially diverse, is a racially diverse elite, but it doesn't necessarily help the poor person in Bessemer, Alabama to be talking about the symbolism of Dr. Seuss.
Or to be talking about, you know, diversity and equity inclusion when you're not talking about redistributing actual power, which in this case, could be in the form of getting those people in Bessemer, Alabama a union that actually gives them wages that they can spend in their community and improve their lives.
And unfortunately, I think elites have played on a very proud tradition of civil rights to divide people, rather than for them to actually address each other's common humanity, which is the actual way that you address racism, not only racism, but also economic inequality and deprivation and sort of the larger issues that we're all facing as a people.
CARLSON: Well, the traditional civil rights they refer to is based on the goal of equality, and the goal of equity is entirely different and they -- I don't think they've told us that clearly enough.
Zaid Jilani, I appreciate it, and good luck with your new effort. Thanks.
JILANI: Thank you.
CARLSON: Well, in the name of equity, schools all over this country just celebrated Black History Month. At one school, a student dared to praise the work of Candace Owens in a presentation. That didn't go over well at all. That student joins us to tell us what happened and what it means, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Julia Saville is a high school student in Virginia. Last month, her School, St. Margaret's in Tappahannock, Virginia asked her to choose someone to honor for Black History Month. Julia Saville made the mistake of assuming she could pick a black person who wasn't on the list of approved black people, so she picked Candace Owens who she likes.
That's when a school-wide e-mail circulated calling Candace Owens -- wait for it -- a racist.
Julia Saville joins us now to explain what happened. Julia, I really appreciate your coming on. It must be weird to be doing this. You're brave, too. Tell us what happened at your school.
JULIA SAVILLE, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: Thank you for having me on tonight, Mr. Carlson.
So I picked Candace Owens to present for a Black Trailblazer that I admired, and I stated why I admired her and I admired her hard work within the black community. And I received an e-mail that morning of my presentation that it was disrespectful of me to highlight her as a Black Trailblazer, and she stated how she believed Candace was racist, and she has done absolutely nothing for the black community.
CARLSON: So, I'm sorry to laugh. So presumably you picked Candace Owens, not, I don't know what your politics are not just because you agree with her, but she is demonstrably strong and independent minded. She says what she thinks.
This isn't -- she is kind of the person that we teach our daughters to be. Did this teacher explain how Candace Owens was racist?
SAVILLE: No, it was the student who said that Candace was racist, and that's all she said in the e-mail that she was racist and she had done nothing for the black community. She never went in detail to explain why.
CARLSON: Yes, I bet she didn't. So how did the school itself -- how did the administration respond to this?
SAVILLE: So the Dean of Students arranged a Zoom meeting with me and the student who had addressed this in an e-mail and she apologized personally to me.
Me and my family requested that she apologize in the same format that she attacked me through e-mail, which they did not want to do.
CARLSON: They, being the school didn't want to do that?
SAVILLE: Yes, sir.
CARLSON: Why?
SAVILLE: I'm not sure. I guess, they just thought an apology wasn't nice to be addressed to the group that she sent the e-mail to.
CARLSON: What lesson have you learned for this? I mean, Candace Owens, Black History Month, she's obviously black. She is well-known. She is playing a role in American culture. I can see why you thought she would be allowed.
Now, that you have been through this experience, what have you concluded? What have you learned?
SAVILLE: I think I've learned that experiences like this cannot make me be silenced and other conservatives be silenced, and back down just because administration or other students will attack you and call you racist.
So I think it was just the biggest lesson to me was to not be silenced and not back down and just to keep sharing my opinion and being vocal about what I believe.
CARLSON: I think I'm -- I'm glad for you that you had this experience, because you've learned the best lesson of all, which is that nothing matters if you're not strong enough to say it out loud.
Julia, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thank you.
SAVILLE: Thank you.
CARLSON: So Democrats won everything in November really in January, but they control the entire Federal government now. The last thing they want to do is have another real election, so to forestall that possibility, they are trying to add millions of new voters to the rolls, who they believe will be loyal to them.
Now they want 16-year-olds to vote. Heard anything more cynical this week? Probably not. Newt Gingrich is here to assess the whole picture. What are they doing and why?
Plus, unlike you, illegal immigrants are allowed to travel everywhere in this country. Nobody is worried about them spreading COVID, some apparently are. Johnny Burtka though is being shut down in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The State doesn't like his politics. He joins us in a moment to say what happened to him. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The first thing Joe Biden did when he was sworn in was to promise unity, and that's something that almost every American, no matter who you voted for, really wanted. Let's bring the country back together.
The question is, did Joe Biden mean it? Did he know what he was saying? Well, look at what he has done, and it answers the question very clearly.
In his first two months in office, Joe Biden has pushed a series of policies that polls show are both unpopular and deeply divisive. In fact, maybe the most divisive policies any President could push.
Like if you sat down and thought, what probably is the most divisive thing you would -- force girl sports teams take biological men? You would hand out money to farmers based on their skin color? You will completely open our southern border and change the composition of the United States without taking a vote on it.
Today, Democrats pushed another policy that no sane person wants. It's hard to believe, but a majority of House Democrats voted to lower the voting age to 16. Do you have a 16-year-old? Should they be voting?
The measure ultimately failed, thank God, but the fact they raised it and voted for the majority tells you a lot. One Republican Congressman from Texas, Pat Fallon pointed out the Democrats don't want 16 or 17-year-olds charged as adults when they commit murder, but they are fine with letting them vote.
Can't have guns, but they can choose the President. What?
Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the House. He is a very smart man and we thought we'd invite him on tonight and ask him: what is going on here? Why did Biden pick the most divisive policies upfront?
Mr. Speaker, thanks for coming on tonight. What do you think we're watching here? What's going on?
NEWT GINGRICH, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you know, it occurred to me that Biden had lived through two Democratic disasters. When Clinton was elected, two years later, they lost 54 seats, and we became a majority for the first time in 40 years. When Obama was elected, two years later, they lost 63 seats.
And I think what they've done is a very calculating, and I think, cynical ploy, which is they have given up on keeping the House. What they are doing is ramming through everything they can get done before they lose in 2022.
So this is kind of a sprint to radicalism, even though it's going to cost - - you look at these votes in the House, you've got 30, 40, 50 members who are not going to be able to go home and defend them. They're not going to be able to explain it.
And I think that the Biden-Harris model is we're going to lose the House anyway, we might as well grab everything we can while we've got the power, and it's astonishing.
Just take the $1.9 trillion political pork bill, which is not a COVID bill, only nine percent of it is COVID. The other 91 percent is just political pork. That bill has more radicalism in it than the eight years of Clinton and the eight years of Obama combined. Just that one bill. And you're going to see wave after wave. I describe it as a flood tide radicalism.
CARLSON: I've got to wonder though and your analysis makes total sense and you -- I mean, you know, you ran the house so you know how it works, but I just wondered the motive behind the things that they want.
You said they want to get the stuff they want upfront, it makes total sense. But all the things that they want hurt the country in measurable ways.
We're energy independent, they want us not to be. They want to totally destroy our control over the border. They're letting foreign nationals roam the country unimpeded with COVID. Like, why would you want those things?
GINGRICH: Yes, I mean, I just did a tweet this afternoon, saying if there's a problem with COVID in Texas, it's not Governor Abbott, it is Biden's illegals. And we just had to call them, these are Biden's illegals coming in the country. No public health check.
Many of them back in the 1880s, we had public health checks if you came to America.
CARLSON: Oh, yes.
GINGRICH: But, Tucker, I really admire your show. I really think you're remarkably trenchant in your insights. But I just want to offer you a thought. They don't want to protect your America. They want to create an alternative America.
It is an America of racial deep inequality and an anti-white, and by the way, anti-Asian basis. It's an America in which transgender dominates Christianity and Judaism.
It's an America in which they want to actually pass a bill to create a permanent machine, just like California, Chicago, and New York, and that's not --
So when you and I talk about why would they do this for America? It's because they really want a radically different country. And they realize -- they just proved it with Dr. Seuss, they really despise America.
CARLSON: Man, that's not democracy as we've defined it, at all, and I appreciate your analysis. Speaker Gingrich, thank you.
GINGRICH: Thank you.
CARLSON: So tens of thousands of small businesses, not Amazon, not Apple, but small businesses, the ones working right in the margin are still closed because of coronavirus lockdowns.
Meanwhile, as we just alluded to, the Biden administration is allowing foreign nationals here illegally who are infected with the coronavirus to travel wherever they want.
The numbers are hard to track, but FOX News's Griff Jenkins is reporting that at least 108 coronavirus positive migrants in Texas have been allowed to hop on buses bound for the interior of the United States, which is insane and getting almost no coverage.
Joe Biden's top flak was asked today about all of this. She admitted that the White House was just issuing guidance, which everyone is ignoring.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: While their cases are being adjudicated, testing for COVID-19 is done at the State and local level.
Our guidance, regardless of status is testing positive for COVID-19 or experiencing COVID-like symptoms is to isolate, continue to social distance, and wear a mask.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So that's what's happening with foreign nationals breaking our laws by being here. That's how they're being tricked. Yes, right, whatever you want. We don't need to be too tough on you.
But what about you? An American citizen who pay taxes and obey the law. Johnny Burtka is an American who pays taxes and obeys law. He's not here illegally.
He is the President and CEO of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The Virginia Department of Health just shut down his conference this week. Why'd they do that? They don't like his politics. He joins us to explain. Johnny, thanks for coming on. Tell us what happened to you.
JOHNNY BURTKA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDIES INSTITUTE: Yes, thanks, Tucker.
So this week, 72 hours before our Annual Collegiate Network Student Journalism Conference, which brings together some of the smartest, most courageous young reporters from campuses like Stanford University, University of Chicago and Hillsdale College for a weekend of educational formation and career development, we received news from our hotel that the local Department of Health in Alexandria, Virginia, in response to an anonymous health complaint, someone called allegedly expressing concerns about the safety of the attendees at our conference.
In response to that complaint, an eager and willing bureaucrat, complied and reclassified ISI's Educational Program as a social event and all social events in the State of Virginia are limited to only 10 people, effectively canceling our student journalism conference this weekend.
CARLSON: In what kind of country A, do we punish people on the basis of anonymous complaints? East Germany, anyone? And B, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual medical guidance, because aren't there other conferences going on the same weekend in the Commonwealth of Virginia?
BURTKA: Tucker, there have been conferences week in and week out in Northern Virginia and throughout the State of Virginia and we were willing and eager to comply with all of the local and State COVID Health Guidelines, but that didn't seem to be enough.
This had nothing to do with public health. What it had to do with is there was someone who clearly did not want this event to happen. They didn't want our young and courageous student journalists interacting with some of the editors of the most major conservative publications in the country. So they went out of our way to get us cancelled.
But we refuse to let our student journalists be canceled, and we're working to find another city. I won't say where, but another city and another valley that welcomes free speech, that welcomes freedom of assembly, and welcomes civil discourse across a variety of perspectives.
So I'm hoping that our problem will be resolved by the end of the week. But America has a much bigger problem with cancel culture, and if we don't address it now, and if we don't bring together people from across the political spectrum to say enough is enough, we're going to destroy this country.
CARLSON: Yes, that's for sure. Thank heaven, there are still free states. Federalism really is our last resort, thank heaven, so I hope you find your way to one.
Johnny, great to see you tonight.
BURTKA: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, last night, we told you that they're going after Dr. Seuss, not because he was a racist, but because he wasn't, because he believed in what Martin Luther King believed -- a colorblind society.
Now one of the main voices driving the propaganda and shutting down honest conversation in this country, the Southern Poverty Law Center is out right admitting this. We will tell you what they said, next.
Plus, we have another example of woke-washing for you tonight courtesy of the men and womxn -- W-O-M-X-N. I am not clear what that means, maybe it is women. Anyway, they are Bain & Company. Mark Steyn is here to assess all of this, our rapidly changing nation under his lens. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Behold hold the multilayered complexity of Mr. Jeff Bezos. Bezos isn't simply the CEO of amazon.com, the world's largest retailer, not simply the owner of "The Washington Post," our capitalist hometown newspaper, not simply depending on that he is the richest man in the world who seeks control over every part of your life. No, he's more than that.
If you ask Jeff Bezos, he will tell you that he is really a kind of secular Pope, he sets our moral standards.
Jeff Bezos tells us what behavior is acceptable, and he punishes anyone who steps out of line. And that's why when professional activists would like a book banned, and let's pause here to consider -- have good people ever banned books? No, they haven't.
But they're being banned now, and they're being banned because they are racist or transphobic or insufficiently deferential to Tony Fauci. And when they are banned, it's Jeff Bezos who does the banning because he's the world's largest bookseller.
Over the past few years, Jeff Bezos has given these activists exactly what they wanted. We've talked to several authors who have been affected by censorship.
In the process of censoring these authors, Jeff Bezos has set a new standard for anyone who wants to sell products in amazon.com. If you're accused of something, then you're guilty of it. There's no trial. It's not adjudicated.
If some person accuses you of a crime, Jeff Bezos says you're guilty. If a mob calls you a racist on Twitter, then you're a racist. It's that simple.
So why are we telling you all this? Because we've got some sad news to share with you tonight.
We mentioned at the top of the show, we want to give you some more detail. Jeff Bezos is a racist, it turns out. How do we know this? Because one of Jeff Bezos's employees, he is a manager at Amazon called Charlotte Newman has just filed a lawsuit against Amazon.
Newman, who is a Business Development Manager at Amazon Web Services says that Amazon underpaid her for years, gave her jobs she was overqualified for. She also says that a male supervisor used racist language around her.
Specifically, the manager allegedly said that Newman was aggressive and too direct, and quote, "just scary."
Now, is that racist? We don't know. We don't set the standards. Jeff Bezos sets the standards.
Thanks to Jeff Bezos, now that Jeff Bezos has been accused of racism we can know for a fact that Jeff Bezos is in fact a racist. A dangerous bigot who in the name of equity must be silenced for our collective safety. And if Jeff Bezos is a racist, think this through, class, then so is his personal media outlet/dream journal, "The Washington Post."
Ponder this. We have a white nationalist newspaper operating freely in Washington, D.C. This poison, this filth is being directly into the computers and the iPhones of members of Congress.
How long can this continue?
Well, last night we told you that people calling Dr. Seuss a racist aren't doing it because he was, they know he wasn't. Dr. Seuss devoted basically his whole life to combating racism.
They're doing it because Dr. Seuss believed in equality. Equality. They don't want equality anymore. They hate it. They want equity.
Now one of the groups leading this charge against Dr. Seuss and this show and every other person who tries to speak the truth, tries to say things that bring the country together, to encourage others to judge each other on who they are, and what tribe they're from, the group that is pushing so much of this garbage, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has explained why they're doing it.
This is a direct quote from an essay from the SPLC. Quote: "This message of acceptance [in the book the "Sneetches," one of the most beautiful stories ever written about the universal brotherhood of man] does not, acknowledge structural power imbalances. Instead of encouraging young readers to take action against injustice, the story promotes a race neutral approach."
Oh, so a race neutral approach in which we recognize that we're all human beings, we're all equal in the most fundamental sense. That's not allowed anymore.
Colorblindness is immoral. Racism is demanded. So they want you to think that Dr. Seuss is evil, so you won't notice that people didn't always have diseased brains in this country. There were once clear thinking liberals.
Here's another example. This week, Bain & Company, this is a management consulting company. What have they done for the management of American companies? Have they made this a better country? They don't want to have that conversation.
So instead, they send tweets like this and we'll try to read it verbatim, "Womxn's" the word is W-O-M-X-N-apostrophe-S, presumably, it's some kind of stand-in for women in which women aren't included.
"Womxn's History Month is a time of reflection, celebration, and deep consideration for how we can continue to improve as a workplace that empowers all womxns to thrive, personally and professionally. We are amplifying womxns' voices to educate our communities through the month."
They provided no actual example of womxns. They didn't explain what one was. But by sending that tweet, maybe they got you to pause from considering what they do for a living for just a moment.
Mark Steyn has thought a lot about this. He's one of the smartest people on television. Tonight, he joins us to assess woke-washing and what it is.
Mark, it is great to see you. Womxns. Have you celebrated their inclusion and their equity?
MARK STEYN, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST: Well as my distinguished compatriot, Shania Twain used to sing, "Man, I feel like a womxn." I would -- I don't think there are many in my part of the world, unfortunately.
You know, you explained the whole Dr. Seuss thing so well last night, Tucker. And basically the appeal of that kind of mid-century ideological liberalism. You know, I don't particularly like Dr. Seuss and you can argue that that kind of ideological -- idealistic liberalism; man, we're all the same. I can sing a rainbow, "I'd like to buy the world" of Coke that mid- 20th Century liberalism is actually quite appealing as sappy and sentimental as they are.
CARLSON: Yes, I agree.
STEYN: So it has to be destroyed. The way you change the way people think, so that they are seriously going around thinking, well, we used to have men and women, but now we got men and womxn and we've got trans-womxn, and we've got cis-womxn, and there'll be another kind of womxn along any moment.
The way -- the only way you can do that is to absolutely destroy the past. So that people just live bobbing around in the flotsam and jetsam of a hyper present tense, so that even people from the day before yesterday like Dr. Seuss, or even more recently, the poor old woman, Eve Ensler, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues," which was a play you had to do at American campuses two decades ago and now cannot be performed, because it's transphobic.
So she had to write in scenes in which women with things other than the titular body part in "The Vagina Monologues" were included in it.
That's the thing. If you were a principled liberal, you'd think to yourself, what's the point? Because it is necessary to destroy not just the long ago past, but as I said the day before yesterday, because only when people are unmoored, and living in a hyper present tense, are they right for the crazy social engineering by which they can be seriously persuaded to go around thinking that the female sex are called womxn.
CARLSON: I mean, it's just -- I hadn't heard that about "The Vagina Monologues," but it just tells you everything. I mean, remember when liberals used to say, you know, the right is attacking women's bodies?
STEYN: Right, right.
CARLSON: I think most normal people, men and women, like women's bodies, you know, right?
STEYN: No, yes --
CARLSON: But, they are literally attacking women's bodies. I mean, saying that you can't describe a woman's body anymore.
STEYN: No, no, and all of that stuff. Keep your rosaries off my ovaries. Now, it's how dare you suggest that having ovaries is anything to do with being a woman. You know? I mean, that's the point. You're actually -- it's very important, this, because they're actually detonating, blowing up the key pillars of any functioning society.
CARLSON: That's right.
STEYN: And in the rubble, they can remake us in the most basic sense, including -- you know, on the right we just -- where we get all excited about a corporate tax cut, and on the left they are abolishing biological sex. That's not an equal contest.
CARLSON: This is a war on nature, which is the only thing that endures. The only thing we learn from is nature and they hate it because it's in their way. It proves they're not God. It's really shocking.
Mark Steyn, I appreciate your coming on and your wisdom as always.
STEYN: No, my pleasure, Tucker. Thanks a lot.
CARLSON: Thank you. Well, Texas has just lifted its mask mandate and reopened. Other states are still under strict lockdowns and small businesses are struggling. Very few are doing much to help. We're going to talk to one man who is doing a lot to help -- help those businesses. That's just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: The Barstool Fund started by Dave Portnoy has raised an awful lot of money, tens of millions of dollars for small businesses who have been abandoned by their government.
Portnoy's latest call was the owner of Ramsey Corner Cafe in Ramsey, New Jersey.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVE PORTNOY, FOUNDER, BARSTOOL SPORTS: It's happening.
JOHN SIDERIS, OWNER, RAMSEY CORNER CAFE: Oh my God. I can't believe this dude. You can't be serious.
PORTNOY: Yes. Your persistence paid off.
SIDERIS: Dude, come on, bro. You just saved my life here. I mean, thank you so much, bro. You're -- I don't even know what to say right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It's a heartening thing to watch and he is not doing it alone. Jeff Bartos is a partner of Portnoy's. He's a businessman in Pennsylvania. He's the cofounder of the Pennsylvania 30-Day Fund.
He is overseeing the disbursement of about $3.5 million dollars to more than a thousand businesses, obviously save jobs, every time.
He joins us tonight. Jeff, thanks so much for coming. I just cannot get enough of this because the headline is, everyone else abandons some of the most vulnerable in our society, small business owners and people like you step up. What's it been like? Are you shocked, you had to do it? How long will it continue?
JEFF BARTOS, COFOUNDER, PENNSYLVANIA 30-DAY FUND: Tucker, thank you so much. We started this work 10 months ago, if you can believe it. I mean, in that time, as you mentioned, we've raised $3.3 million, and helped over a thousand small business owners across all of Pennsylvania, keep the lights on and save thousands and thousands of jobs.
And to your point, I've spoken to 500 or more of these small business owners and they're amazing people, as you would expect.
And you see it in Dave's calls, and we do those calls as well. And they love their communities, they love their employees. They're worried about making sure that they can provide for everyone.
And they're also furious. They don't want anything from the government. The only thing they want is to be open. And so when they look --- when we talk to them, they say, you know, every step that the government has taken, whether it's a state government or the Federal government over the past year, has favored giant companies over small companies, and all they're asking for is a level playing field.
And I think we have to ask ourselves, and I love the work that you are doing and what Dave is doing to cover all this. Who are we as a society when this pandemic is over, if all that's left are giant companies?
And so Dave's work, our work, this collective work, and thank you so much for highlighting it, we are determined to make sure that these small businesses survive across Pennsylvania and across the United States.
CARLSON: Who are we if all we're left with is the big companies? I think that is such a smart and deep point. I just keep thinking as I talk to you and Portnoy, it's like, why has it fallen to you? I don't think you're a billionaire. Where are the billionaires? Sincere question. Why aren't they doing this?
BARTOS: It's a great question. I mean, I am heartened every day. As soon as I leave here, I'm heading to Altoona and Blair County. I don't know if you've ever been to Altoona, Pennsylvania.
CARLSON: I have.
BARTOS: But the business community there, Tucker, it's unbelievable. They have rallied to help the small businesses in their community. That community alone has raised $300,000.00 and helped the hundreds of small businesses just in Blair County as part of our statewide effort.
And it is -- it's amazing, and you know, it's interesting, to your point about unity. This is what unity is. This is what unity is. The business community coming together because politicians have failed us.
The elected officials that we rely on have crushed small businesses and in effect, have crushed our communities.
CARLSON: And in some places, and with the help of leaders like you, those communities are rallying and saving their own people, and I just think it's so inspiring and I probably should do a lot more segments like this, but I'm grateful you came on tonight.
Jeff Bartos, thank you, from Pennsylvania.
BARTOS: Thank you for having us. I'll come back anytime Take care.
CARLSON: Thanks a million.
Well, we are out of time tonight. Unfortunately, we could go on forever. But we're going to wait until tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. and every weeknight.
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With that, have a great evening.
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