Tucker Carlson: There must be "consequences" for those who demand Russian collusion if the Mueller report shows nothing | Video

For now, we would like to take a moment to put this sprawling story into perspective. Our work on this show is to remind us of things, to create a record of what has happened in this country in recent years and what has happened to it. Our grandchildren will want to know. If the left has its way, they will never see the details. Everything will be whitewashed like many other things in our history. So let's remember for the record of the investigation of Robert Mueller, why we had a special advice at the beginning. It was not a question of whether the president falsified deductions on his tax returns thirty years ago. It was not to know if he wanted to build another hotel in a foreign country. From the first day, Mueller's investigation was justified by a single question: Did Donald Trump collude with the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election? Has the president betrayed his country? For nearly three years, Democrats told us that he actually had:

BETO: There is no doubt that if there was no collusion there would be at least one collusion effort.

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ADAM SCHIFF: I think there is a lot of evidence of collusion or conspiracy to everyone

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MAXINE WATERS: There is still a lot to learn about this. I believe that there was collusion.
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JOHN PODESTA: He's starting to feel more and more like collusion

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NANCY PELOSI: We have seen irrefutable evidence of the Trump campaign: the Trump family was definitely planning to possibly talk to Russia.

If you grew up in this country, it's hard to avoid accusations like the ones you just heard. Maxine Waters is an irrelevant person, a live show. But Nancy Pelosi is hardly that. She is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. She is third in line with the presidency. Adam Schiff is the chair of the House's Intelligence Committee. He is aware of the most classified information our government has. John Podesta was the chief of staff of a White House and a senior advisor of another. Beto O'Rourke has raised more money than all the other presidential candidates in 2020. These are not peripheral figures. They are the most serious people of the modern Democratic Party. We took them seriously. We felt compelled to understand why they treated the US president as a traitor. So we asked them. We interviewed a number of them during this broadcast. One of the most persistent accusers was California MP Eric Swalwell, a member of the House's intelligence committee. If there was indeed evidence of collusion with Russia, Swalwell would have it. Yet he has never produced one. We asked him several times. Swalwell accused us of interrupting him, of not letting him plead his case on the air. Finally, frustrated, we gave him half an hour, live on this show, to do it:

CARLSON: If you have any evidence of collusion, whatever it is, and I do not care about its small size, I will give you the floor and I sincerely believe it. I want to finish this. I'm sure you too.

Months later, Swalwell accepted our invitation. He has never produced any evidence that the Trump campaign was complicit with anyone. Instead, he accused us of working for a foreign power. We asked Swalwell why the public did not have access to a note on the investigation of Russia. Here's how he responded:

CARLSON: In the case of today 's memo, what did I specifically adopt that reinforces the threats to our country?

SWALWELL: You are peddling the story that the Trump administration is publishing, which is also Putin's story, as they retweet with their Russian robots. If you're on the same side as WikiLeaks and Putin —

CARLSON: I wonder if you perceive the total collapse –

SWALWELL: If you're on the same side as WikiLeaks and Putin, you should step back and ask who are you really bidding for?

For wanting to see a government document that he himself had seen, Congressman Swalwell suggested we were traitors. We have talked a lot about this in the last two years. This completely changed Washington. The inhabitants of this city are afraid. They watch what they say. They do not send e-mails. They fear being denounced. Demagogues like Swalwell terrified them. Since the beginning of this investigation, there has been virtually no honest public debate about what is happening. Watch this exchange from the early days of administration. Congressman Adam Schiff appeared on the show. We asked a simple and factual question about what we know and do not know: are we sure that the Russian government has hacked John Podesta's email account? This is how Schiff responded:

CARLSON: Can you look directly into the camera and say that I know for a fact that Vladimir Putin's government was behind John Podesta's e-mail hacks?

SCHIFF: Absolutely. The government of Vladimir Putin was behind the hacks of our institution and the spill of information –

CARLSON: From John Podesta's email?

SCHIFF: Not only in the United States, but also in Europe.

CARLSON: You know what? You dodge.

SCHIFF: And, Tucker, you are –

CARLSON: Look and say that I know that they sent John Podesta's e-mail. They hacked them.

SCHIFF: And I think Ronald Reagan would turn in his grave and bring water to the Kremlin.

CARLSON: I do not wear water. Look, you are a member of the Intel committee congress and you can not say that they hacked –

SCHIFF: You'll have to move your show to RT, Russian TV.

To date, even the most basic questions about the history of Russia have remained unanswered. In the meantime, we have upset all our foreign policy, we have put Americans in jail, all on charges that nobody wanted to prove. "How do we know that, Congressman?" "Shut up. You are a Russian agent. The hawks of the plot seemed utterly insensitive to shame or reason. You can not debate it because they would not participate. They just threw insults. They felt that it was not necessary to demonstrate that this was true:

MARGARET HOOVER: At what point do you trace the line and do not accuse the President of the United States without any evidence of being an agent of Russia?

SWALWELL: Yeah. He betrayed our country and I do not say that lightly. I worked as a prosecutor for 7 years

HOOVER: But betraying the country – by the way, we want evidence before saying that, but you mentioned an agent from Russia.

SWALWELL: Yeah. He works for them

HOOVER: But as a prosecutor, that would not be evidence in court. You know the difference between tangible evidence and circumstantial evidence. I still have no proof that he is an agent of Russia.

SWALWELL: I think it's pretty clear. He is almost hidden from view.

It was not just Swalwell and Schiff. Some of the most respected and supposedly sober personalities in our society have adopted this behavior. They said things so reckless and so damaging to our country that it was almost hard to believe it was happening. Do not forget, while you are watching this clip, that it was not long ago, John Brennan was the director of the CIA, the most powerful intelligence agency in the world:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: McClatchy announced that special advocate Robert Mueller had evidence that Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had made a secret summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the case. . The confirmation of the trip would confirm part of the Steele file.

JOHN BRENNAN: The information that Mr. Cohen was in Prague despite his repeated denials. There are more and more indications that there is something here that is far away, far from being anything near a witch hunt.

Michael Cohen was in Prague, meeting with his Russian masters. That's what Brennan claims. You would think that if anyone knew it, it would be the director of the CIA. The CIA knows everything. Except perhaps on this one issue, Michael Cohen himself might know more. Cohen was questioned about this during his testimony before the congress. Cohen had no reason to protect Donald Trump and many reasons to hurt him. This is what he said:

Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC): Have you ever been to Prague?

Cohen: I have never been to Prague. I have never been to the Czech Republic.

Ralph Norman (R-SC): I give up the rest of my time.

At the same hearing, Cohen also informed the congress that during all his years as Donald Trump's personal attorney, one of Trump's most intimate relationships, he had never seen the slightest evidence collusion with Russia. Anyone just would consider the end of this story. Case closed. But it was too late. At this point, the investigation on Russia had become a real boon for cable news channels. They had no incentive to admit defeat, nor even to acknowledge reality. So they continued as they had done since inauguration, as if the story was entirely real. Night after night, they brought us an endless parade of screams, jesters and turn-arounds, all demanding knowledge of the conspiracy. To choose one from a thousand examples, Malcolm Nance, an expert in intelligence, describes his own analysis on MSNBC:

MALCOLM NANCE: When Benedict Arnold gave the plans to West Point, to Major André and they captured Major André, they had no information to link these plans to Benedict Arnold, apart from the fact that he was in his presence at one point during that day, but everyone knew that it was treason when they caught the man and they hanged him. So, at some point, there will be a data bridge that will be unassailable.

Thank you for the history lesson: they hanged it. Let's hang this guy. After a while, voters started to agree. Thanks to propaganda like this, 53% of registered voters now think that the quote from the Trump campaign "helped Russia influence the 2016 elections". Among the Democrats, 67% think that Russia has somehow falsified the number of votes. Nobody ever explained how the Russians could have done it, but of course they did it. Russia rigged the elections. CNN says it every night.

There must be consequences for that. Once the Mueller report is published and it becomes indisputable that, whatever its faults, Donald Trump did not collaborate with the Russians, we must punish the many people who have persistently invoked the fact that there was no evidence that he had collaborated with the Russians. Not charged or imprisoned, but perfectly ashamed and obliged to apologize. If the Republicans spent three whole years falsely claiming that Barack Obama was in collusion with the Iranian government, would those who would claim it again work in politics or in the media? It's a rhetorical question.

Lying and recklessness must never be ignored. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the assumption that Saddam Hussein had huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons. Many of us have believed it. But the statement was false. Thousands of Americans are dead. Billions have been wasted. Nobody was punished. To this day, Max Boot receives a pay check from the Washington Post. Bill Kristol appears on MSNBC. John Bolton is the country's national security advisor. Their foolishness and dishonesty had no consequence. No. So we started a series of strangely similar wars, all with entirely predictable results. Nobody has learned anything.

Are we going to learn something about the collusion hoax with Russia? Or will the same group of liars and jesters simply switch to the next scam? "Climate Change! The Green New Deal! We Can not Give You Details. It's Too Important. Obey or Not!" It could easily happen. In fact, it will happen for sure unless we remember exactly what it is. that we have just seen.