Naomi Wolf: ‘Under the Guise of a Real Medical Pandemic, We’re Really Moving into a Coup Situation, a Police State Situation’

Following the 2020 presidential election, progressive feminist and author Naomi Wolf expressed regret over her vote for Joe Biden if she had been aware of his possible strategy of returning to lockdowns to combat COVID-19.

Monday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Wolf said she remained skeptical of the approach and was concerned about the trend toward a police state.

Partial transcript as follows:

CARLSON: One person who apparently is not afraid to speak up is Naomi Wolf who is undoubtedly losing friends by appearing on this show tonight. She is the author of “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot” and the CEO of DailyClout. She joins us tonight.

Naomi Wolf, I appreciate your coming on. I never thought I would be talking to you except in a debate format. I’m sure we disagree on an awful lot. But on this, I was struck by the bravery it must have taken you to write it.

I’m sure you lost friends over it, for doing this, tell us why you’re doing this and why you wrote that?

NAOMI WOLF, CEO, DAILYCLOUT: Well, it’s not just think — first of all, thank you, Tucker, I’m really happy to be talking to you.

It’s not just that one tweet, I’ve been writing pretty much every day for months and months about what I see as the terrible crisis that we’re in that we have to recognize, under the guise of a real medical pandemic, we’re really moving into a coup situation, a police state situation and that’s not a partisan thing that you know, as you say, that transcends everything you and I might agree or disagree on and that should bring together left and right to protect our Constitution.

We’re absolutely moving into what I call Step 10. I wrote a book in which I pointed out there were 10 steps that would be tyrants always take when they want to close down a democracy. Whether they’re on the left or the right, they always do the same 10 things and now we’re at something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

You described it really, really well. It is Step 10. And that’s the suspension of the rule of law. That’s when you start to be a police state and we’re here. There’s no way around it.

CARLSON: I’m so embarrassed, and it’s just — it’s another example, there are a million of them of why partisanship is stupid, and it makes you stupid. And I guess I just assumed that we wouldn’t agree on stuff, so I didn’t read your tweets, and I obviously should have been and I missed a lot.

And so again, it’s nice to remember, you should treat people as individuals rather than as standards for whole political parties.

You have been predicting this for a long time, you just said. Why don’t you think others aren’t seeing this?

WOLF: Well, unfortunately, a lot of people are seeing it, but we are not unified, and as you pointed out, we’re a very divided country for a lot of cynical reasons.

CARLSON: Yes.

WOLF: I’m in touch with many patriots from all backgrounds and all walks of life, who are horrified. I interviewed, for instance, Moms for Liberty, a group of conservative moms in Florida who are mobilizing to try to get schools open. They’re so worried about what’s happening to their kids.

And I talked to a mom, Jen Sey, a famous gymnast and activist in San Francisco on the left, who is also a mom, who is horrified.

You know, I’ve interviewed doctors, I’ve interviewed, you know, ordinary people, restaurant owners from all walks of life, who are absolutely unable to even articulate their fear and horror, recognizing that the State has now crushed businesses, kept us from gathering in free assembly to worship, as the First Amendment provides, is invading our bodies, as you mentioned, which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, is restricting movement, fining us here in New York State, I could be fined $15,000.00 a day, if I gather people, you know, more than 10 or 25 people, depending on where in New York State I live.

You know, which is a complete violation of the First Amendment, I mean, the violations go on, and on and on.

I’ve talked to restaurant owners who are looking at a sector in which tens of thousands of small businesses have been crushed, and why were they crushed? Not because the pandemic forced them to, there is no real science underlying a lot of these closures.

It’s because autocratic tyrants at the State and now the national level, are creating a kind of merger of corporate power and government power, which is really characteristic of Italian fascism in the 20s. And they are using that to engage in kind of emergency orders that simply strip us of our rights: rights to property, rights to assembly, rights to worship, and all of the rights that our Constitution guarantees.

So people are definitely horrified and noticing, I think people are shocked and divided, as I mentioned before, and the other thing that happened, as you said, this is all been very sudden.

And when you look back, you know, March 2020, a lot of things started to move that kind of locked into place a set of policies that are kind of 360- degree full on totalitarian policies.

So I think a lot of us are kind of in culture shock. Luckily, or unluckily, I’ve been studying closing democracies for 12 years. So I recognized early on, you know, once I realized New York State had emergency powers, I know from history that no one gives up emergency powers willingly.

CARLSON: That’s right.

WOLF: They always drag it on and drag it on. And so every month I’m getting in my e-mail an announcement that Governor Cuomo is extending emergency measures, extending emergency measures.

Only from studying history, do I know how predictable it is, when you start to have elected officials say we are not going to follow the Constitution because there’s a pandemic.

And I just want to say, lastly, and then I promise it’ll stop. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, all this can be suspended if there is a bad disease. We have lived through typhus, cholera, smallpox, HIV, tuberculosis, polio, the Spanish flu.

You know, we’ve lived through an attack on our soil. Never have there been months and months and months of emergency powers when we weren’t actually fighting a war.

CARLSON: That’s right.

WOLF: So this is completely unprecedented. Lockdowns have never been done before in free societies. And really, we are turning into a version of totalitarian states before everyone’s eyes. And I really hope, you know, we wake up quickly, because history also shows that it’s a small window in which people can fight back before it’s too dangerous to fight back.

CARLSON: Man, I’m starting to think that we’re being divided as a country precisely so we don’t have conversations like this. And I hope you will come back.

Naomi Wolf, what a pleasure. When an eye-opening pleasure it was to talk to you tonight. Thank you.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor