Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson began his Thursday broadcast by drawing comparisons to how the political left led by Democratic politicians have handled COVID-19 and how their counterparts in Communist China have.
Carlson explained it was a far cry from seven months ago in the United States. According to Carlson, some elected officials in Democratic-run cities and states are circumventing tenets of a democratically elected, representative government similar to China.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Things have changed so fast so dramatically this year that it is hard to remember what a very different country this was on New Year’s morning.
Back then, a little over seven months ago, the U.S. felt politically volatile. It definitely was. There was an election coming. But it still felt fundamentally American. There was no mistaking this country for any other country. We weren’t Mexico or Luxembourg or Burundi. We definitely weren’t China.
Yes, most of our consumer goods did seem to be manufactured in Asia, but our way of life, our system, our society seemed to be the very opposite of China’s. The Chinese were enslaved. We were free. That was the difference, and it was permanent. It would never change. Not one in a thousand Americans doubted that.
In January, for example, Dr. Anthony Fauci at the time, not yet a household name, did an interview with “The Journal of the American Medical Association” to talk about America’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus. Fauci explained the authoritarian measures the Chinese government had taken to contain that virus. Then Fauci noted almost offhandedly that in America, none of that would be allowed. Watch.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: They’ve not only shut out the traffic out of Wuhan — planes, trucks, buses, ferries rail — but they’ve done it to a number of the surrounding cities.
So rather than say historically, it doesn’t do much good, which is true. I think it’s important to wait and see that maybe the Chinese because of the state of their society that they’re able to do that.
I mean, as you well know, there’s no chance in the world that we could do that to Chicago or to New York or to San Francisco.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: “As you well know, there is no chance in the world that we could do that to Chicago or to New York or to San Francisco.” That’s what Fauci said. Note his use of the word “to.” The Chinese government was doing these things to its people, not for them. In other words, these were punishments, not remedies, and none of that would ever be allowed here in a free country. It just couldn’t happen in America.
Fauci’s words seem quaint now, like a fax machine, or a black and white photograph. Fauci himself has since become one of the most strident advocates of a Chinese response to coronavirus, but he is hardly alone in that.
Yesterday, the mayor of New York announced that he plans to erect armed checkpoints around the perimeter of the city and use plainclothes government agents to follow citizens to their homes. It would have been impossible to imagine any of that in January. Yet, de Blasio’s announcement didn’t seem especially shocking. We’re used to it now. That’s how similar to China we have become.
It’s a big change. But like all seismic shifts, it happened incrementally before it happened overnight.
For years, we watched our leaders prostrate themselves before the Chinese government. Most of us just assumed they were greedy. That’s why they were doing it. China was paying their bills, so they bowed. We never imagined they actually admired the Chinese system. Oh, but they did.
And that became clear with the arrival of the coronavirus. The first tip was their resolute refusal to admit where the virus came from. When strong evidence emerged from Chinese scientists that the disease originated in a lab in Wuhan. Our leaders immediately and adamantly dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. They didn’t want to know more.
Their first instinct was to defend China. They didn’t want the Chinese system discredited.
That seemed confusing, but we soon learned why. The democratic political activist, Zeke Emanuel was among the first to reveal how the left planned to use the pandemic to change the United States. Here he is on MSNBC four months ago this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZEKE EMANUEL, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications.
It is all of that economic pain while we’re trying to stop COVID-19. The truth is, we have no choice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, the truth is, we have no choice. Except in a democracy, we always have a choice. That’s why it’s different from an autocracy.
In a democracy, on the big questions, the public gets to decide what the public wants. The people rule. That’s the whole point of the American system.
But the left had no plans to let the public decide anything, so instead, they issued resolute decrees: remain at home, wear a mask, do not congregate with others.
No one asked voters what they thought about any of this. Democracy played no role in it. The orders came down. Men with guns enforced the orders. The government used sophisticated technology to track down anyone who disobeyed them, just like in China.
Here’s Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D), LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: This has really been marvelously embraced by 99.9 percent of people. We see it in the traffic data. We see it in the cell phone data, but we’re going to hunt down that last 0.1 percent and say, you’ve got to get inside. You’ve got cut it out, and you’ve got to distance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, most people obey but quote, “we’re going to hunt down the last one percent.” In other words, no dissent of any kind allowed, just like in China.
In China, the government loads disobedient citizens into trucks and carts them away. We have video of that happening. In Los Angeles, they just starve you out. They take away your water and your electricity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARCETTI: These large parties are unsafe and can cost Angelenos their lives. That is why tonight, I’m authorizing the city to shut off Los Angeles Department of Water and Power service in the egregious cases in which houses, businesses, and other venues are hosting unpermitted large gatherings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Recognize that? In some ways, all authoritarian societies are the same. They are characterized by corruption, a lack of social trust, and a deep cynicism about government. All those attitudes are endemic in China. Suddenly they are nearly universal in this country.
The public understands that our leaders are lying to us. Politicians use lockdowns for political ends. In the name of public health, they reward supporters, and they punish their opponents. They’re barely hiding this anymore.
They’ve done it since day one, but most of us wrongly assume that our Bill of Rights would prevent them from going too far. That was our backstop against tyranny, but we were wrong. The Bill of Rights has not prevented them from doing precisely what they want to do.
In state after state, governors, for example, have targeted the faithful on the assumption that most traditional Christians do not vote Democrat. Therefore they must be punished.
Now banning the exercise of religion is unconstitutional. Obviously, it’s a direct violation of the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment. It’s never happened before, but they have made it happen. They’ve done it anyway.
As in China, our government has enthusiastically persecuted Christians. Here’s New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy explaining.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: You have closed church services and synagogue services and arrested people for attempting to attend them. Did anyone say that maybe practicing your faith might be important to someone’s mental health?
GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): Listen, I think we’ve had a very good common ground with faith leaders of literally every faith who understand this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So listen carefully. Governor Murphy says he has reached agreement with those faith leaders who quote, “understand this.” He doesn’t say anything about the faith leaders who quote, “don’t understand this.” The leaders who instead like to worship their God as the Constitution guarantees they can.
There’s no common ground for them. They will be arrested just as they are in China, nor can they fight back.
In a free society, self-defense is the most basic right. All other rights rest upon it. Self-defense is illegal in China, and suddenly it’s illegal in this country, too. The Democratic Party’s militia loot stores, deface our cities, attack people with impunity, they are rarely punished for doing it.
Yet Americans who try to protect their families from the violence face the full rage of the state. They risk going to jail. They have been indicted.
As in China, there are now two standards of justice. The party has decided who can be armed. Everyone else must submit. It wasn’t always this way in the United States. In fact, until recently, we had a functioning Constitution. But anyone who remembers that is a threat to the state. History itself is a threat to the state.
In China, there is no history. Like religion, the past is purely a political tool to be shaped by temporary leaders seeking to protect their power. In place of God, the State offers secular cults in which citizens worship party approved political martyrs. It doesn’t sound very American, but suddenly it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We are here to honor George Floyd. For those who wish to, we will now kneel for our moment of silence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Anyone who challenges the cult, who refuses to join it, who won’t know before it is punished, and then their complaints are scrubbed from the permanent record. China does this. Chinese censors scour the internet to make certain dangerous ideas never reach the public. Does that sound familiar to you? That’s where our tech oligarchs learned it.
The United States, in other words, very clearly is becoming very much like China at very high speed. It doesn’t mean that two countries are identical, there’s still real differences between them.
In China, for example, leaders still think beyond the next election. They don’t have real elections, so they can take a long-term view. And in China, they understand that countries in which the population is divided against itself, countries in which citizens have nothing meaningful in common with one another are weak countries. And over time, countries like that are doomed.
And so China emphatically rejects identity politics. It’s illegal there. Leaders in China don’t narrowcast to tiny constituencies based on their quote, “identity.” The idea is appalling to them. The Chinese focus instead on national identity. They don’t worship diversity, they promote unity, and that’s why long term, they believe they will win.
The Chinese also believe — and this is another striking difference — that their economy is worth saving. They didn’t destroy it with coronavirus quarantines, harsh as they were. Unlike the United States, China was a poor place until fairly recently. And so they know firsthand that poor countries are powerless and they don’t want that.
In other words, the Chinese care about themselves and their future, and that’s one thing we could actually learn from them. But we don’t seem to be.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor