0 sits on the shelves past human extinction. i mean good, clean stuff. italian butchers. i want to hear from you. that's for it for us tonight. "tucker" is up next. always remember, i'm watters, and this is my world. >> tucker: good evening. welcome to "tucker carlton tonight." happy first tuesday in 2023. we thought we'd be able to announce the new speaker of the house, but, no, the race for speaker is still ongoing. voting has been suspended for the day. it's going to resume again tomorrow. the fact that this race has not been settled by now is being described online as embarrassing by many. it is embarrassing, if you prefer the soviet-style consensus. of course everyone is on board. that's they do. if you prefer democracy to oligarchy, real debates about issues that matter, it's refreshing to see it. yes, it's chaotic, but this is what it's supposed to be. we're going to bring you more detail on what's happening in just a minute, throughout the week, but first an overview to frame the big points. kevin mccarthy of california wants to be speaker. he wants that job more than anything else in his life. he was going to get it, but a group of 20 republican members stopped him, because they decided that kevin mccarthy is not conservative enough to represent a party that's just taken back the house from nancy pelosi. they are definitely right about that. mccarthy is not especially conservative. he's in fact ideologically agnostic. he's flexible. his real constituency is the lobbying community in washington. so if you've got sincere political beliefs that's infuriating to watch. on the other hand, to be fair, this is politics, and mccarthy does have strengths. it's not easy being speaker when the house is this closely divided. and in some case kevin mccarthy is perfectly suited for that. he's skilled in politics. not a small thing. critically, mccarthy is willing to spend the next two years living in hotel rooms raising money for his party ahead of a historic presidential election. what other in the house is willing to do that? as of tonight, no one has stepped forward. so really the pivotal question is, how badly does kevin mccarthy want this job? 20 of his colleagues have just publicly disavowed him loudly and again and again. so to win them back, mccarthy is going to have to give them something real, not more airy promises, which he specializes in. he's going to have to give them actual concessions. if kevin mccarthy wants to be the speaker, he's going to have to do things he would never do otherwise. like what? we can think of at least two things. first, release the january. 6th files. all of them. not to some phony committee that will hide them, in fact designed to hide them from the public, but put them online, release them to the public directly so that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on january 6th, 2021. it's been two years. it's long overdue. it's our right as americans to know. second kevin mccarthy could put thomas massey of kentucky in charge of a new frank church committee, to study what the fbi has been doing. no one wash wants to talk about it. the topic is effectively off limits. in fact, nobody has talked about it for almost 50 years. because of that the rot has spread and democracy has withered. you can feel it. the fbi is now a bigger force in american elections than any single group of voters. this cannot continue. it is poison. and kevin mccarthy is uniquely situated to stop it. mccarthy could restore our system to health. at the very same time get the job he's always wanted. it's not so complicated. let's hope he does it. as we said, more on that story in just a minute. in the first quarter of the nfl "monday night football" game last night, a player for the buffalo bills called damar hamlin made a tackle, before he tumbled backwards. espn announcerrers said they'd never seen anything like it in their careers. >> you play this for the majority full life, and then after that calling games. first of all, i've never seen anything like this. this is unchartered water for everyone. >> right. >> 20 years, i've never felt what i'm feeling right now. haven't seen what we have been watching for the last 10-15 minutes. and it just puts things in perspective real quick. >> tucker: you probably see the tape. you may have been watching live. the buffalo bills announced afterward that damar hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field. trainers performed cpr on him for nearly nine minutes. it was horrible. the players responded not as competitors, but as human beings, compassionate ones, coming together in prayer for the fallen player. damar hamlin is in critical condition in a hospital in cincinnati, and it's unclear sadly whether he will survive. that's what we know. it's tragic. what we don't know could fill volumes, starting with why damar hamlin had a heart attack on a football field. we don't know the answer. there's no way to know the answer. we are not going to lie to you and pretend we know the answer. hamlin was still lying on the field, selfing cpr when self-described medical experts in the media, people with no demonstrated medical ethics at all, effectively witch doctors, skieded to use his tragic life-threatening injuries as an opportunity to spread more propaganda about the covid shots. it could not have been the shot. shut up. they're lying. they don't know that. they don't know anything more than we know, which is effectively nothing. we can't say it was the shot. we can't say it was the shot. we don't know whether he got the shot. we don't know. neither do they. why are they telling you something they don't? it's not the first time of course. tonight in the appropriate spirit of humility, we'll speak to medical experts and scientists, people who like to follow the data, ask relevant questions, regardless of political pressure. getting to the truth is the essence of science. one of the people we'll speak to is a cardiologist that's done a lot of research on the number of young people, particularly athletes, who have experienced heart attacks, cardiac events in the last two years, a surge in heart surgeries among the young. we're not sure why, but we know it's real and scary. when young people start dying we ought to pay attention. so in a few moments we're going to talk to peter mccullough about what this is and we know about it. first to place last night's incident in context, we're joined by michelle tafoya. you have covered sports for a living. were you as shocked as the rest of us? >> of course i was. i've seen a lot of injuries in close to three decades covering the nfl. they've ranged from spinal to concussion to -- we covered a coach once who collapsed at halftime. we didn't know, again, if it was life or death. we didn't know. we had to cover that story. but nothing like this. and everyone has said it, no one's ever seen anything like it. you've got a player lying on the field, who needs cpr, because his heart has stopped beating. that's a terrifying visual. and even more so were the faces of all of his teammates and the players on the cincinnati bengals also. i mean, everyone was so distraught. i'll tell you, they had a much better view and feel of what was going on down there than any of us watching at home. it's a very different environment, when you're right there, feeling it, sensing it, watching it close up. >> tucker: you told us two relevant and important things. one, this is not normal. you've done this all your life. you were shocked by it. this doesn't happen all the time. and two, the players responded by as human beings, with great decency and reverence for the tragedy they were watching. they prayed. they didn't do anything but that. i thought that was so impressive. you've covered these guys. were you surprised by that? >> not at all. not at all. these guys are brothers. they spend so much time together. they're working with each other toward a common goal. they have relationships that we could only hope to have in places like congress and academia, sometimes even in families. these guys are brothers. they'd do anything for each other. then there's the mutual respect among teams. everyone knows what it's like to get injured, to get hurt, but to watch this, a 24-year-old -- i mean, it really wouldn't have mattered if he was 25 or 22, but the fact is this is a young, strong, seemingly healthy man, and you're right to point out we don't know anything more about his background. we shouldn't speculate. but to watch this young, strong player, go down in such a way that was -- clearly it was not the effect of the hit. it was cardiac. it is really something they could not get past. clearly they could not go on with the game. that wouldn't have been right and wouldn't have been possible for any of them to be mentally able to function out there. >> tucker: yes. it was great decency on the field from my perspective. it was heartening to see that. i appreciate your take on it. michelle tafoya, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> tucker: so as we told you, after damar hamlin collapsed on the field last night, trainers rushed to begin cpr almost immediately, and continued doing that for about 10 minutes. ultimately an ambulance took him off the field. a lot of people are asking procedural questions, is it unusual to perform cpr for that long? what does it mean for the prognosis of mr. hamlin? joining us to assess is dr. mark segal. what do you make of what we saw? >> tucker, thanks for having me. obviously america is praying for damar hamlin tonight. a man of great courage, by the way, who rose up from poverty and showed great courage in what he's accomplished in life. he also, by the way, has been first-rounding for his town where he grew up, mckees rocks. what happened on the field? there's more we don't know than what we do know. we don't know whether he has underlying problems, if oxygen was interrupted. he's in the hospital in a coma, probably using steroids to decrease swelling and watch and monitor. the fact he's under probably doesn't mean anything. what's really disturbing, of course, is that he had a blow to the chest that wasn't that severe, and yet he crumpled to the ground, and looked like he was in ventricular fibrillation. the aed improves the prognosis greatly. i don't know when they administered that. i don't know when the heartbeat came back. that's really important. i don't know if he got cpr for 9 minutes, his youth will be on his side, but it's a question -- because the cpr is about 30% of the usual cardiac output. is that enough? we don't know yet. you know, wh we don't know why t took that long. he's brought to the hospital. again, i'm watching the brain more than the heart. they're saying his vital signs are now stable, that he's stable. he's back in a normal rhythm. we're hearing that much. the fact is we don't know whether he's had enough oxygen to the brain. i do know that the foundation he's in charge of, had raised only $3,000 up until the point of this has happened, has raised close to $5 million, because of the rabid fans from buffalo, people all over the country, to get toys in his hometown of mckees rocks, pennsylvania. america still has heart still, tucker. america has heart. our heart is out tonight for damar hamlin. we're praying for his recovery, tucker. >> tucker: amen. poor kid. gosh, just awful. marc siegel md, great to see you tonight. thank you. as we've said multiple times, it's worth saying, because it's a sign of respect for the man tonight in the hospital, we don't know exactly why damar hamlin collapsed last night. at the same time there are concerns about cases like this, young athletes collapsing on the field of heart problems, and there has been a dramatic increase. you're not imagining it. what is it? researchers looked into this trend in europe, european sports league, and found that prior to covid, the covid-19 vaccines, there were 29 cardiac arrests in those european sports leagues that year. since the vax campaign began, more than 1500 total cardiac arrests in those leagues, and 2/3 of those were fatal. does that prove something? we don't know. but you should know that. dr. peter mccullough is a cardiologist, the author of "courage to face covid-19." doctor, thank you so much for coming on. this is one of those phenomena that people on social media are aware of, but i don't know the last time i heard, if ever, an american public health authority address this directly and tell people what is this. this is real? tell us your findings from your actual study. >> the concern here is that athletes at a professional level, tucker, are carefully screened for underlying heart disease. hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the athletes are screened for this, general abnormalities that can present, but sudden cardiac death is an unusual phenomenon. as your report indicates, it's extremely unusual in the nfl. there's a differential diagnosis that doctors go through when this happens. i watched it live. then i watched the replay as a cardiologist. to me it looked like he made a hard tackle, head and neck impact, but he got up, he clapped his hands, then fell over backwards. it looked like a primary cardiac arrest. everything that was done on the field looked perfect. the resuscitation is in a window where he can have neurological recovery. covid-19 can cause heart damage. it can be asymptomatic, and the initial presentation can be a cardiac arrest. there's genetic abnormalities of rhythm disturbance, a spinal cord type of interaction with the heart, but the leading here is vaccine-induced myocarditis, if indeed he's taken the vaccine. the bills doctors and doctors at university of cincinnati medical center have a public health obligation to tell us if he's taken the vaccine. >> tucker: that's fair in the coming days. the cdc, seems to me, since the absolute numbers of heart incidents among young people are dramatically up across the west, and the cdc, as far as i know, has not been honest enough to address it, sent out a tweet the other day, saying you may be struggling with blood clots if you're a young athlete. seems like they're trying to tell us this is normal. is it normal for young athletes to have life-threatening blood clots? >> we should never have our agencies try to normalize side effects. the fda says the vaccines cause myocarditis and heart damage. autopsy studies show it can be and is fatal. the same is true for blood clots and neurologic damage. our agencies should be protecting the health of americans and safety is job one. i'm disappointed that they're minimizing it. >> tucker: yeah. i mean, honesty is a prerequisite for trust. when people lie to you consistently, you can't trust them. dr. peter mccullough, thank you. so it's hard to believe that the d. justice would be concealing evidence that the president's son received payouts from foreign governments, but looks like they are. we have evidence of that straight ahead. plus, as we've told you, the future of the leadership of republicans in congress is in doubt tonight. there is no new speaker at this hour. negotiations are ongoing. we're monitoring them. details ahead.