0 jesse, has johnny put up your christmas lights yet? we'll have johnny put up the light. climb the leader and if he gets fresh -- i'll kick him -- i would never do that to johnny. actually i'm going to have him assemble this train set. god knows i can't figure it ow. just like the dvr, it's impossible. i'm waters and this is "my world." >> tucker: good evening and welcome to tucker carlson. we begin with an unexpected fox news alert. just moments ago barry wise began posting part two of twitter files. these are assessments of internal documents from twitter that have been hidden under previous management but are now being exposed by elon musk who just bought the company. so musk, last week, gave the documents out. wise is unpacking all of this live right now on twitter in a twitter thread. what she has revealed so far confirms what many suspected but none knew for certain which is that twitter routinely censored prominent critics of the biden administration, did so in secret without telling anyone and with no factual justification whatsoever. this is known as shadow banning. twitter did it all the time. publicly they denied doing it. people who were being shadowed ban suspected something was up but didn't know. the twitter legal officer, a woman who was rewarded by the widen administration for their work on their behalf, say "we do not shadow ban and we don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideologies." that's what she said and it was a lie and the documents bari weiss is posting prove that it was a lie. one of twitter's targets for shadow banning was a stanford professor, a physician, ph.d.. one of the most impressive people in american medicine. someone we've had on this show many, many times. there was no justification for censoring him except he was one of the authors of the great barrington, which infuriated the public health establishment including fauci. by opposing covid lockdowns. he's spent his career studying the health feet of various policies on vulnerable populations, so he knew that covid lockdowns would harm children and he said so. that's touched out to be true but twitter doubtless at the request of the authorities shadowed banned professor bhattacharya. they prevented his tweets from trending which meant most of his tweets couldn't be seen. according to weiss, at one point they slapped him with a search ban. that made it impossible for users to find tweets by him, because they were inaccurate? no, because they were accurate. that was the crime. that's always the crime. they never punish you for lying, they only punish you for telling the truth. they also flagged charlie kirk's account with a do not amplify account. the group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the strategic response team, global escalation team or srtget. the team often handled up to 200 separate cases a day. another group within twitter called site integrity, policy escalation support, notice t the -- bureaucratic intangibles, twitter executives who ran the company. none of this has been previously known. it was never disclosed to the public. the threat is ongoing and it's been updated as we speak and we'll bring you more information as we bring it. we'll begin with trace gallagher for an overview. >> because this is old fashion journalism, and if we dined something, so far, there are 14 or 15 handed to me and we'll get to it on the air. she's an independent journalist and began tweeting about 40 minutes ago and has so far released 15 tweets. the common denominator, in the early thread is twitter employees build these blacklists to prevent the tweets from trending and active limit the visibilities of the entire account or even trending topics and they do this all in secret without informing users, which is interesting because over time they have said again and again, that they do not do this, and now we're learning that they do this all the time. and you mentioned about the doctor, who mentioned covid lockdowns would harm children. he argued that again and again. the covid lockdowns would harm children and twitter secretly placed him on a trends blacklist. that means your tweets can't trend and if they can't defend p trend that means they are censoring you and your wider message can't get out you mentioned some conservative voices, like charlie kirk, his twitter account was hit with do not amplify. that also means there is no way for charlie kirk or whatever he treats to trend and he's made this a public fight. he has noticed this, he has brought this out, and he has toll everybody that this is happening. of course, twitter would say all the time, no, because we don't do that. we can certainly expect more conservatives to appear on the list, considering the evidence has pointed in that direction for years. but in 2018, the head of legal policy, as you say, stated we don't shadow ban. here's the big thing. the drop we understand, we hope, will have some moral information on what exactly the f.b.i.'s role was in warning twitter about the hunter biden laptop story, and if former f.b.i. general counsel and then at the time twitter deputy general counsel james baker helped the f.b.i. shut down that story, and what he did to help facilitate that. so far, there are no tweets from bari dealing with the government intervention at all but we continue to get these. 15 so far. 16 and 17 just came in. talking about tik tok, they were on the trend's blacklist and was taken as a do not take action or users without consulting sip. it goes to the whole theme here of shutting down conservative voices. when matt was posting his twitter files he made it clear there were, both sides were censored to some point but because almost all of the employees at twitter were liberal or democrats, the democrats had twitter's ear and those are the ones that mostly got censored and we're seeing proof positive of that right now. we'll continue to cover breaking news as i comes in. >> tucker: amazing. no one can sum up a story with no script ab-lib any better. do you think -- what do you think is going on with youtube? we'll likely know but we can guess. a woman works at "the new york post" which broke the hunter biden laptop story and she's been following it ever since with reaction to the second group of documents. what do you make of this so far? >> i guess it's not surprising, as you said but it's really gratifying to see it laid out in policies, and to catch out those top people at twitter in their lies because they did lie. they said that there was no shadow banning going on. you know, we knew, just by our own experience on twitter, i, for instance, since elon musk bought in, have increased my follow account by 40%, and that's just something that's experienced by conservatives across the board. and you notice from all the names, that bari weiss has brought up tonight, they are all conservatives. she's not a conservative, an ex-"new york times", i get she would be a red pill liberal if anything, if there were left wingers that had been banned you can bet she would have name them to be equal opportunity. i think matt was snowed probably by james baker. he said a couple of things that didn't ring true with those first batch of twitter files like the federal government wasn't involved, and so i think now, that elon musk has been kind of red pilled himself and james baker is gone, we might see more things that are useful, but, of course, you know, as trace gallagher just said there is still nothing on the f.b.i. it's really part of an overall censorship scheme and it was anything that was, you know, anybody dissenting against the biden administration, against federal agencies like the cdc, anything, for instance, i think a lot of -- i think elon musk is getting ahead of the revelations that we're seeing out of that incredible lawsuit being brought by erik smidt, the senator elect from missouri and the attorney general of louisiana. they are suing the biden administration for violation of the first amendment for using the social media companies to do their dirty work, and that included banning or shadow banning dr. jay, who is an imminent physician from stanford, multiple degrees, an incredibly sober, sensible, rational thoughtful person. one of the three founders of the great barrington declaration, which, it wasn't covid denying, it was just saying we know enough to know that it really just hits the elderly and the infirmed so they should be protected and let younger people who aren't affected keep the economy going and basically create herd immunity by, you know, getting sick with the virus and not dying, and that was just the most imminently sensible thing for everybody's mental health, physical health, and economic health. and he was shadowed banned. he and every sensible person online who said children should not be getting these shots because the ill effects outweigh the benefits and they were right. unfortunately, you know, dr. fauci and all these people who just decided that we're going to suppress the truth, they probably cost people's lives. >> tucker: of course they did. of course they did. and it was strategic. they weren't censoring people because they were annoying, they were censoring people because they were providing factual information that might have stopped certain policies or election results from happening. so, you know, this was sophisticated and had an effect on american society. certainly it had an effect on your life and thank you for continuing to report on this for the last two years. >> thanks, tucker. >> tucker: charlie kirk is someone else who apparently was censored by twitter, founder and president of turning point usa. we just told you that bari weiss just reported that twitter set charlie's account to do not amplify status. he joins us right now. thanks for coming on. you're just hearing this, too. this just happened, this is happening, in fact, as we talk about it. >> yes. >> do you have any idea which of your tweets set the censorship in motion? >> i could probably guess. you know, a couple of years ago, axios did a study that showed our twitter account it was fourth most engaged on the planet, right up there with trump. i had been using it for a decade, understood it really well and we were averaging 115,000 retreats each day at our peak and we were talking about, for example, in the midst of the virus how lockdowns may not be the best decision. we started asking the question, are there other treatments we might want to talk about. it could have been that. then we saw, off a cliff almost immediately, our engagement and retweets disappear. i started to talk about this a lot and i was called a conspiracy there it. i was smeared and i started an email. >> tucker: you're crazy. >> you're q-anon. i used to get a hundred thousand retweets and they convince you to stop talking about it, who cares about your twitter account, not a big deal and now you see actual verified documents where my twitter account was labelled as do not amplify, which i could only infer means not safe for work. safe tags. they were treating my account with more scrutiny and censorship than the prime minister of iran, than hamas, than people who do actual terroristic type damage. they saw what i had to say as a direct threat to the regime. >> tucker: there is a huge amount of unfiltered hard-core porn on twitter to this day but it was your twitter account that was not safe for work. >> apparently. apparently. asking questions about our lockdown policy, which, obviously, hurt children and hurt our target audience at turning point usa college kids where they had to go home and stare at a screen all day long. i started tweeting about that. apparently that was a threat. my question, though, tucker is, were they told to do this by anthony fauci? were they told to do this by the federal government? were my tweets somehow able to create viral countermessaging to what they wanteded to see happen in 2020? we may never know, but twitter at its best, when it was really something that was worthy of appreciation, i hope it gets there soon, was a place where opposite ideas were able to spread and rally and hold people powerful accountable. i happened to have one of those accounts for a couple of years and twitter went out of their way to censor it. >> tucker: let me ask you, did you complain, you understood the platform so you knew something fake was happening, someone was putting a thumb on the scale, did you complain to twitter about it? >> yes, i did. i had a very warm meeting with some of the twitter employees, i actually met with jack dorsey personally who assured me shadow banning wasn't happening, i wasn't experiencing a lot of what we considered censorship, and then six to 12 months later, i started to write them, something is not right here, silence, and then the virus happened in 2020 and could you not get a response out of twitter. and then would you start to tweet at jack and tweet at the twitter management, and it was almost as if it became a wholly operated company that kind of changed their modus operandi from being somewhat of a social media platform to a super pac and i don't think they cared. elon, praise god for his courage and bravery revealing. this i tried to get lawmakers involved and other people. i don't think we'll be able to measure the impact of what twitter did to our lives. the lives lost, the kids from school closures and the outcome of the 2020 election all came from a censorship of twitter. >> tucker: and they did it last week partly because everyone that works there is a liberal, and partly probably because they were threatened. charlie kirk, great to see you tonight. thank you. >> thank you. >> tucker: the founder and editor of compact, he says the problem is deeper, no corporation should have this much power over our freedom to speak. thanks so much for coming on tonight. that was my summary of your view. tell us, what do you conclude from this? >> thanks for having me, tucker. the great danger in what we have seen, we suspected it, of course, all along but now we have confirmation that shadow banning was happening, great danger in this isn't that our freedom of speech is expressed, although that's horrible and these platforms is where freedom of speech lives or dies, but that the process that allows elite opinion formation is a sealed off bubble. right? we hear, for example, that vladimir putin doesn't hear alternative views about his war strategy in ukraine and that's why he makes bad decisions. the same thing happens through a state directed mechanism in the united states and across the west. it happens through privatize censorship through entities like twitter, facebook, et cetera, if our elites aren't willing to listen to dissident voices like dr. jay, as we now know for sure, then they don't make good decisions, right? because they are convincing themselves, they are sealing themselves in a bubble, not ultimately that different from the kind of bubble that, you know, a qaddafi or a putin create in a different way in their own sort of counsels of decision making. that's the scary part of this, the elite themselves are structurally turning themselves into bubble boys. >> tucker: into what they say they hate. i wonder, i don't know the answer but could russian media be more controlled than american media is? maybe, but maybe not. >> yes, i mean, in 2020, obviously i was working at "the new york post." that confluence of corporate, big tech, deep state, blue check media, all working together, you saw that. in a way it was sort of more terrifying because there is no censor of power. hey, it's this one person, we can appeal through this recognized process, which is why, tucker, we still need to insist on section 230 reform. the reason twitter and facebook and youtube and all of these others get away with this is because of a law in the 1990s that was designed to help them censor things like pornography. called the communications decency act. they are using that, abusing that now to act like publishers but without bearing any of the traditional publisher's liabilities, and so that has to be changed. if you and i libel someone in the print or media, we face this kind of liabilities, and they do not and that's why they get to censor. they get act like worldview publishers but without being -- bearing any of the traditional publisher's liabilities. that needs to change. i'm really greatful, god bless elon musk but it's not just one company. it's these others as well. they are they are giants and we need to have a public policy response. >> tucker: thank you for joining us. one of the accounts on twitter that we just learned was shadow banned very aggressively was an account called libs of tik tok. there is a reason they censored it because it's one of the most important accounts on twitter. there are very few opinions expressed on this twitter feed. it's almost entirely video, real video, no one disputes that it's real, showing what's happening inside classrooms, where your children are being taught, hospitals, where your loved ones are being treated all over the country. so twitter, on the basis of what justification, none, prevented libs of tik tok from trending. that means many people never saw what they posted. according to weiss, after their suspension, admitted that the account of tik tok was not breaking any rule. the memo said this. "acknowledged that libs of tik tok is not engaged in violative hate. conduct policy." they didn't do anything wrong but twitter censors kept censoring and shadowing the account of libs of tik tok anyway. because according to the memo, it either leads to or intends to incite harassment specifically against hospitals that are castrating the children. that memo was prepared by the twitter senior leadership. the person who runs libs of tik tok joins us now by phone. >> i sure appreciate you coming on. you must have had some sense that you were being -- you were suspended multiple times, but you are being censored in ways they weren't telling you. did you sense this was happening? >> hi, tucker, great to be back. yes, i absolutely knew i was being censored. i had a very large account. i never was able to trend, and now we find out i was on the trend blacklist. there were sometimes days or weeks at a time where i felt like my tweets were getting much less engagement than usual, than they should. now it's clear that there was suppression and shadow banning. >> tucker: what's so infuriating about this specific example is that you were reporting, i mean, you weren't -- our viewers can verify this for themselves, if they just go on your account, you're not actually putting a lot of your own views in here, you were disseminating reported material whose authenticity no one doubts. so you're doing what the "new york times" claims it does but you're actually doing it unlike them. what could possibly be the justification for censoring you? >> well, i think it's clear that their views, they don't stand up to scrutiny, and when i spread their views in their own words, they don't want you to see it because they don't stand up to scrutiny, and it makes them look bad and that's what they are really scared of. and the craziest part of this whole thing is, that they admitted, that i'm not even violating the policies, and they still suspended me seven times. seven times, three of which were for a week at a time, i was suspended for probably a month altogether for what? not even violating their policies just because they don't like their own views. they don't want you to see it. >> tucker: that's exactly right. they were hiding and you exposed them. you have devoted your life to this, it's not a hobby. >> host of "fearless" and one of the clearest of minds on topics like. this you're watching this unfold as we are this is coming in real-time, what are you thinking? >> tucker, i just want to thank you for what you're doing. real-time, awesome live television journalism that we're all witnessing. i'm glad to be a part of it. i hope i can unpack here. i've been on this topic for seven or eight years. this is deeper than censorship. this is about propaganda and mind control, and the control of the american public. twitter, and the social media aps have been rigged to control our minds and what we think, and so, i want to be careful because i don't want to unpack too much, it's hard for people to understand but just think about what alex jones has experienced over sandy hook and the lawsuits against him and the money they have taken from him, and now i want you to think about twitter has done to america for the last seven or eight years with black lives matter. they promoted the myth, and the anger, and the animus and emotion, that the police were out here randomly killing black people, and everybody should be outraged, everybody should take to the streets, everybody should burn down cities and communities, people should kill police. so if you're the wife of david dorn, you should be trying to sue whoever is responsible. twitter, the democratic party, that use this propaganda machine to stir the emotions of the american people and create this myth, that the police were out just randomly indiscriminately killing black people and what you should do is overthrow this government. go tear down buildings. if your business was destroyed during these riots, these five or six-year span, obviously, crescendoed in 2020, but if you lost a loved one, lost your business, you're owed a great debt. twitter, this propaganda machine was part of controlling the american public's mind and promoting a level of violence and chaos and anarchy that hurt everyday americans, cost peoples' lives, they need to be held accountable. the politicians, this is series. this isn't about charlie kirk or me or anybody who didn't get to grow the twitter account, it's about the mind control propaganda game that they have been playing on the american public to overthrow our constitution and our way of life and they have been successful and these people are evil and need to be held responsible. >> tucker: you can only hope that elon musk reveals the degree to which intel agencies from around the world have been operating on twitter, and i think it's pretty clear it's extensive. mind control. that's exactly what it is. you've been saying it for six years. great to see you tonight. >> thank you. >> tucker: as we told you, this information is continuing to come out and obviously we'll keep track of it. there was another big story today. in december 2018, an iraq war veteran called paul wheeling flew to moscow to attend the wedding of a friend he had known in the marine corps. days after he arrived, six days we think he was arrested and charged with spying. restaurant authorities claimed he had accepted a flash drive loaded with classified information from an intel agent in russia. he was put on trial and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage. from the very beginning he claimed he was set up. he said he was in moscow on vacation. at the wedding. he wasn't spying on russia. we tend to believe him although we can't know for sure, how could we? but either way, whether he was set up or actually spying on russia, paul's case would be a priority for any american government. here you have a man who has actively served the united states in the marine corps and possibly is an intel asset in a hostile foreign country, that man is languishing -- in a prison cell. it turns out they didn't mean a word of it to bring him home. the biden administration announced that they had secured the release of a prison in russia, a female basketball player, brittney greener. in exchange they hadded over an arms dealler -- viktor bout. >> viktor in my eyes someone of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth. >> on the face of the earth? >> without a doubt. >> mike brawn, former chief of operations for the u.s. drug enforcement administration told us he first exploded on the scene in war-torn africa in the late 1980. elevating bloody conflicts from machetes and single shot rifles to -- >> ak47's, by the tons of thousands. >> he transformed these young adolescent warriors into insidious, mindless killing machines which operated with assembly line efficiency. >> the u.s. has indicted him or four terror-related charges including conspiracy to kill americans. >> what makes him a threat to the united states? >> he's a shadow facilitator. he's arming note only designated terrorist groups, insurgent groups but he's also arming very powerful drug trafficking cartels around the globe. >> tucker: so that's the guy that joe biden just sprung from prison, the international arms dealer who is arming terror groups and drug cartels. the same administration who did that is spoiltly calling for the arrest and imprisonment of american citizens who have handguns of more than 10 mounds. it was a very costly prisoner swell. certainly from paul whalen's perspective it was, earlier today, he spoke to a cnn reporter from the penal colony where he's being held south of moscow. listen to him. >> i would say if a message could go to president biden, this is a precarious situation that needs to be resolved quickly, and i would hope that he and his administration would do everything they could to get me home regardless of the price they may have to pay at this point. >> i have to say i'm greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up. i was arrested for a crime that never occurred. i'm happy that brittney griner is going home today and that trevor went home when he did but beyond why i'm still sitting here. my bags are packed, i'm ready to go home. i just need an airplane to come and get me. >> tucker: poor guy. i don't understand why he's still sitting here. you can imagine how he feels. the former marine who has been there for four years already gets left behind in russia while the celebrity athlete gets busted with hash oil, championed by her celeb media friends, is home in just months. that's what happened. it seems like a metaphor for how america under joe biden is working, but, no says joe biden. we had no choice but to take brittney griner over paul whalen. putin demanded that. >> we've not forgotten about paul whalen who has been unjustly detained in russia for years. this was not a choice of which american to bring home. >> tucker: this was not a choice of which american to bring home. really? it clearly was a choice and we know it was a choice because the first accounts of the prisoner swap with russia said it was a choice. earlier today, andrea mitchell of nbc, this is somebody who has been in washington covering news for more than 50 years, someone who is deeply supportive of the joe biden administration, contributed to a story that contained this line. "the kremlin gave the white house the choice of either griner or whelan or none." so mitchell's piece attributed to a senior u.s. official, it was not a guess, it was sourced. and then, as with the earlier reporting on paul pelosi last month, that account was scrubbed. the kremlin ultimately gave the white house the choice of either griner or no one. in other words, joe biden's version of events is now perfectly in sync with the official nbc news version of events. of course. a writer on stackhouse noticed it and we're glad that he did. this kind of thing happens all the time in washington, usually without the public knowing that it happened. so at this point, we can assume the obvious, the biden administration chose griner over paul whalen. the basketball player over the marine facing 16 years. there was only room for one, the lifeboat, and the marine got left behind. why did they make that choice? you should know that whalen is a trump voter and he made the mistake of saying so on social media and he's paying the price now. griner is not. different politics. she despises the us, she's been very vocal about that. this country is so rebel lent and immoral that two years ago she said "i honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our basketball season." she hates the country so much she doesn't want to hear its anthem. that's the kind of position that gets you rewarded by joe biden. hate america, perfect. we'll free the guy that sold weapons to drug cartels to get you out early. there is that, and then there is the matter of identity, which is central to equity, she's not white and she's a lesbian. they may be irrelevant to you but they are not irrelevant to the press secretary. those are essential qualifications for a prisoner swap. watch? >> it came to either bring griner home or no one. as the president said this morning, he'll never stop working to secure paul's release and return home, and he will not give up. on a personal note, brittney griner is more than an athlete, more than an olympian, she's an important role model and inspiration to millions of americans, particularly the lgbti and americans and women of color. she should never have been detained by russia. >> tucker: so there is joe biden's press secretary telling you that brittney griner is important because she's a lesbian woman of color, and by the way, so am i. how perverse is it? well, imagine a press secretary from the last administration saying sean spicer, pausing in the middle of a briefing to tell you, "on a personal note, it is thrilling when a straight white man gets out of prison." what would you think of that? you would probably see that as an offense against the idea of the rule of law. against the idea of a country where we're all treated equally because we're all citizens. liberals don't see that it way because they don't believe in abstract principles so they are a hundred percent behind that idea. here's van jones on cnn. >> it just shows this president got it done. he cared enough about this individual person to get her home. it was shocking but i think for young americans to see an icon like that snatched, locked up, what you don't have and what you can't allow to happen, is to have a black female icon treated like garbage and for america to do nothing about it. something was done about it and people can be proud about that. >> tucker: you can't have an american mistreated by a foreign government. you can't have a black female icon mistreated by a foreign government. you get more rights based on what color you are and sexual orientation you are but that's not how this country works, or should ever work. that's immoral. -- has spent virtually all of his adult life as a marine corps officer. he's out now. he joins us to assess, thanks for coming on. whatever his real story is, i don't know, he's a marine corps veteran and they chose someone who was in on a drug charge over him, what does that tell you? >> it tells me we need leaders to do what's right and not easy. to prioritizing our service members and their sacrifices. we released an arms dealer that starts wars in places that marine and service members responds to and right now we placed the priority of the famous basketball player over the marine. >> tucker: that's such a smart point. we released the guy who starts the conflicts that marines have to respond to in order to leave the marine behind. do you think, i mean, you live in a different world from those of us in the media but people who have taken up arms in defense of the country like you have, do you think that they see this? the military enlisted and officer ranks understand what's going on here? >> absolutely, tucker. i think president biden's comment that vladimir putin didn't give him a choice just shows the weakened position that our leaders are in right now. we need a leader with courage. we need a leader that can do what we as the american people expect them to do. and right now, i just don't see that across the board from our leaders. >> tucker: yes. it's distressing and humiliating as it has been so much recently. appreciate you coming on tonight. thank you. >> so these twitter files are continuing to come out, and they are legitimately interesting and they tell you a lot about the state of the country in 2022. people think certain things because they haven't been exposed to other ideas because those ideas have been censored. censorship has practical effects. that's why they do it. as more come out we'll bring them to you. so if you look around like, whatever happened to al sharpton? he kind of went -- he's over at msnbc but his place in the p pantheon, has been taken over, by a guy who is both ridiculous and kind of menacing. we'll tell you all about jonathan greenblatt after the break.