Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson criticized Congress for the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief bill for millions going to international priorities and mocking it for the $600 in stimulus.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Relief is finally here after tense negotiations and multiple rounds of televised theatrics, the Congress has passed a definitive spending bill. It is 5,593 pages long and it amounts to $2.3 trillion. That includes nearly a trillion in COVID relief.
All of it comes right from the U.S. Treasury, which is busy printing it right now. That’s a lot of money.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of need. Thanks in part to government lockdowns, more than a hundred million Americans are out of the workforce tonight. One in six restaurants is closed. Huge parts of the retail sector are in tatters.
J Crew is in bankruptcy. So it’s Pier 1, Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers, Century 21 and many others. So if there was ever a time that Americans need relief, it’s right now. You will be glad to know there is something for you in this bill. It is entirely possible that you could get a $600.00 check courtesy of the U.S. Congress. That money should you receive it, is yours to keep. Do what you wish.
Buy a moderately sized television set and watch the free channels all night if you want. Rent a Tesla for a day and drive it until the power runs out. Or splurge and order two full appetizers right off the tasting menu with the French Laundry in Napa, tip not included. Whatever. The sky is the limit here. Go crazy — $600 all for you. It’s good to be an American.
On the other hand, it’s also pretty good to be a Jordanian. This same bill passed but not read by the United States Congress allocates $500 million for border security in Jordan. That’s enough cash to buy the French Laundry in Napa a couple of times over, but that’s not what the money is for.
Congress wants to help Jordan build a wall along its 275-mile long border with Syria. Apparently, Congress is worried about illegal immigration over there and you can see why. Illegal immigration is illegal and that’s bad. And that’s why Congress allocated another quarter-billion dollars for additional border security in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman. God knows those countries need it.
Borders make a nation. Remember that. Except here in the United States, which is unique among nations through history, borders are not relevant. In fact, borders are racist and that’s why this very same bill which does so much for the Jordanians and the Egyptians, the Lebanese and the Tunisians, and the people of Oman, defunds American border security.
And ladies and gentlemen, we need that defunding. That way, we won’t be bigots. So the bill slashes funding for I.C.E. detention space and blocks request to hire more deportation officials. Excuse me. It catches in the throat.
Immigration authorities in this country will have, I beg your pardon, 11,000 fewer detention beds starting this year. And if that hurts, imagine all of those people moving here permanently. They’ll have to. Problem solved. It’s like they’re trying to sneak into Jordan.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is excited about this. He bragged about it in a press release today. There’s also you should note, $33 million in the bill for what are called Democracy Programs in Venezuela, because we’re experts on democracy. We’re spending $231 million to help pay down the national debt of Sudan. And of course, that’s another area of expertise for us, national debt.
Meanwhile, the bill, and you want to know this for certain, spends huge amounts of money to diversify the workforce in our so-called Intelligence Community. That’s another key national security objective. And just in case, you were worried that American society wasn’t yet divided enough, this bill creates two new monuments to the interest groups that have the most political power at the moment.
So henceforth, the Smithsonian will create a Women’s History Museum, as well as what’s called the National Museum of the American Latino and that’s just here in America. There’s a whole lot more for the rest of the world.
This bill spends $10 million on what it calls Gender Programs in Pakistan. Now, Congress doesn’t specify exactly what those are, Lindsey Graham seems to know and he is thrilled about it. Watch Graham’s enthusiasm this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Pakistan is a place I really worry about. In 85 countries a woman can’t open up a bank account without her husband’s signature. She can’t inherit property if you’re a young girl in Pakistan. Life is pretty tough, so we are trying to make life better for women throughout the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So Lindsey Graham is worried about a lot of things, but he is really worried about Pakistan, not worried about the fact that Pakistan has built a vast nuclear arsenal. That happened during the Clinton administration, Graham was in Congress at the time, actually.
Now, that’s merely a minor concern given that Pakistan is an unstable country locked in a permanent state of war with India. Lindsey Graham can handle details like that, most statesmen can.
What concerns him most? What he is quote, “really worried” about is the state of gender roles in Pakistan. Now, Graham has never had a family, now imagines he is an expert in how the people of a country 7,000 miles away, whose language he does not speak, whose culture he does not understand should be running their families.
Lindsey Graham doesn’t like how young people in Rawalpindi or Lahore, to easily accept the customs of their elders. He’d like to shake things up in Pakistani society. He’s got big ideas for how to create more enlightened Urdu speaking households on the subcontinent and he is going to use your money to do it.
We’re trying to make life better for women throughout the world, Graham announces like of course, he is capable of doing that. It’s now on the list: take out the trash, feed the cat, pick up spaghetti sauce, and make life better for women throughout the world. It’s all in a day’s work for an American politician.
Overreach you say. These are the same people who can’t get the votes counted in a congressional election. Yes, but they have got bigger aspirations than that and those aspirations are all over this spending bill.
On one page, you will find tens of millions of dollars set aside to recruit and retain women in the Afghan Army. Okay. But why is the U.S. paying for this? Is that something that will help the United States in some measurable way? Would help Afghanistan? Why are we doing this?
Well, the real reason Congress is spending that money, of course, is because crazed ideologues and various interest groups in the Federal bureaucracy would like to change one of the world’s last remaining traditional societies.
Someday some unhappy 26-year-old American Foreign Service officer can write her Master’s thesis in Gender Studies on how she undermined the patriarchy in Southwest Asia. That’s the whole point of it.
Meanwhile, no one in the State Department or the Congress has paused to think about what the Afghans think, the very same people who lecture you about cultural imperialism, think it’s totally irrelevant what the native population might think of this, and in fact, it’s possible they may not consider this progress.
Maybe they are happy with their ancient culture, unsavory as we may find it. That culture existed a thousand years before ours arrived, maybe they’d like to keep it.
Come to think of it, why would anyone in Pakistan ever take advice from us on how to organize the society? You must allow market forces to destroy your gender roles says a civilization that’s become miserable by doing the exact same thing. Yes, no, thanks. Maybe they will tell us to keep our money.
But no matter what they say, we will not stop sending them our money. Foreign aid is the most effective possible way for the academic left to export its poisonous social program to the rest of the world.
The Roman Empire built roads, we demand poor countries become woke. Before long, our aid budget will consist entirely of advanced weapon systems to the Middle East and taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for Africa.
And the State Department will be happy about that. Lindsey Graham will celebrate it. But how will you feel about it? Well, who cares how you feel about it. You got 600 bucks, so shut up.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor