BUCK: Tucker Carlson does a great show. I go on the show once in a while, always appreciative when I get a chance to hang with Tucker there. It’s a great show on Fox News. And it’s just always interesting. And that’s so rare these days in a media ecosystem that quite honestly on both sides is often a little bit derivative, people saying the same stuff, the same talking points.

It’s just the nature of the cable news business in particular, but certainly of commentary, right? But Tucker’s show you never know what you’re gonna get. I watch that monologue most nights, I would say, I watch the monologue most nights. Very little time to watch anything, always prepping for this show and doing things in my day-to-day.

But, as you all know if you watch it, it’s really worthwhile. I bring it up because the New York Times went with this fellow Mr. Confessore of the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore. He’s been in the game for a little while. He’s a smarmy lib. I’ve seen him on Twitter say things before. I go, “Oh, God. Another smarmy lib.” I don’t even know…

pic.twitter.com/FJ76ULBSBG

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 1, 2022

I’m guessing he lives somewhere in Brooklyn ’cause that’s where the MSNBC, New York Times crowd likes to be in New York City. And he’s written this attempted takedown of Tucker. It’s great. Tucker shared a photo of him laughing at it. The whole thing is so absurd. I read the argument. I was looking at this thing, you know, did they find something that they’re actually gonna be able to make a thing of?

And it was pathetic. The answer is no. The answer is no. But that’s not a surprise. Why are they going after Tucker? Because he’s effective. Understand this. The left doesn’t have good arguments right now. They’re not gonna try to persuade you. They’re gonna try to verbally — hopefully just verbally — bludgeon you into submission.

“Wear that mask, peasant! Pay those crazy taxes, peasant! Use the words we tell you to or else. Support the trans agenda for children or else.” They’re wanting to use cultural, political, and, yes, just plain old-fashioned force to get you to comply, to agree, to celebrate whatever they tell you to. And those who are effective at making arguments on the other side as Tucker is, those who draw an audience to what they do that is growing — an audience that in the case of Tucker Carlson Tonight has a lot of Democrats who actually watch, that terrifies them.

Apostasy from the DNC is something that terrifies the left, or once we start bringing over their people, right? Oh, my gosh. Can’t allow that. But you can tell how effective someone is by the nature of the ferocity of their enemies. Tucker’s got all the right enemies. I’ll tell you right now, the same people in the media who hate him hate me, same people in the media who come after anybody who’s effective, anybody who has a platform, a large platform.

It’s a badge of honor. It really is. It’s a badge of honor when the left — when the New York Times — tries to cancel you now, it just shows that you are worthwhile in what you are doing. And when people come after me, come after others out there, it shows not that they’re bad people who are lying to you or racist or sexist or homophobes or any of these things or transphobes or whatever.

That’s actually not what it shows. What it shows is that the left is terrified at people who are effective in making an argument that they have no real rejoinder to. They don’t explain how Tucker is wrong, they don’t explain how I’m wrong, and they certainly don’t someplace how Chris Rufo is wrong ’cause really what does Chris Rufo do? Now we’ll transition into the trans agenda and whether they want to teach this stuff to your kids in school.

Because I try to approach everything I do with skepticism. And let me hold that for a moment. We’ll come back. I try to approach every initial assessment with a skepticism of, “Could I be going too far? Am I getting too worked up on this issue? Is it exaggerated in my mind?” And I think actually on the trans agenda for children I’ve learned that, no, no. If anything I was too far in the other direction of maybe we need to see more of this.

No, I’ve seen enough. I understand what’s going on here. Why is Chris Rufo so effective? Why is the Libs of TikTok account so effective right now — and therefore look at what they’re doing! I mean, Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post tries to dox and destroy the Libs of TikTok creator. The New York Times front page trying to take down Tucker, and it’s laughable.

It’s absurd. It’s sad at some level too that a newspaper that has been around as long as the New York Times is going to debase itself so thoroughly but Tucker knows that it’s bird cage lining anyway and we all did. And it doesn’t have any effect. No one reads that and says, “Oh, my gosh. You mean Tucker wants secure borders and thinks that maybe we shouldn’t have a trans agenda for children?

“I’m never watching his show again!” (laughing) You’re watching it, you’re sitting there saying, “What are they even talking about?” The New York Times is a joke. It is a joke. They lie all the time, by the way, about a whole range of issues. No ethics, no decency, no morality over there in any meaningful way. But Rufo is being attacked viciously by the left, Chris Rufo, and he has a very…

He’s really creating, in essence, part of a political movement here of parental involvement, of truth in education that is gonna deliver just a butt kicking to the Democrats coming up in the midterms, and they know it. So instead of the usual, which is where they just say, “Oh, he’s lying. It’s not true. He doesn’t have those things,” he brings the receipts, so to speak.

He has the evidence — the documentary, often video or textual evidence — of what the agenda is. And that’s why left — and I’m talking about now trying to get your kids to learn certain things in school that any rational parent would say, “Why is that going on? I don’t agree with that. That shouldn’t be taught to my children at school.”

Here is an education specialist activist, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, so a product of the machine, as you know, Diane Ravitch, listen to how viciously this person attacks Chris Rufo. And, again, this is a badge of honor for Chris.

Yesterday, Randi Weingarten compared my activism to genocidal Nazi propaganda. Now Diane Ravitch says I would prefer a society in which “most black people were enslaved, women had no rights, [and men] had the right to sexually abuse their young female slaves.”

Deranged lies. pic.twitter.com/GyyIfFChS8

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔ (@realchrisrufo) May 1, 2022

BUCK: Here’s what I say. She’s a liar. She’s a liar. That’s just all slander. But again, notice the viciousness of attack. The same way the viciousness of attack against Tucker, the viciousness of attack against Rufo. Built on lies! Chris doesn’t advocate for any of that. Tucker is not a racist or a white nationalist or any of those things. But they go after the biggest platforms they can in the nastiest way, to lie in the most vicious way.

I mean, what that woman said about Rufo, just a crazy person talking. Like, that has nothing to do with anything Chris says. He’s never said that. I know his work well, I’ve talked to Chris many times, interviewed him. They’re just lies. But you have to see it — if you’re going to be a warrior for the truth in this country right now, you have to see it — as a badge of honor when they come after you with lies, when they come after you to undermine not your work, who you are as a human being, to try to destroy you socially.

This is the way they approach it because they’re desperate. Their arguments are weak. Look at what’s happened in Florida, look at what’s happened with Governor Ron DeSantis. Oh, it’s the “don’t say gay” bill. What? No, it’s not. Here’s what the bill says. Here’s what the people of Florida actually think about it. Here’s actually what Democrats by poll — and no one has disagreed that that’s what the polling shows — think of the bill, and here’s what the bill actually does.

And, oh, by the way, now Disney is getting a bit of a slap for its role in all of this. Now what you’re going to see increasingly, I think, is they’re not just gonna go after Governor DeSantis in Florida on issues of policy. The smear machinery, the smear machinery will get turned on with everything that they’ve got. Remember, they think that lies about people they don’t like are righteous.

That’s how you have to understand the left that we are facing today, like that education activist what’s said about Rufo, with what the New York Times front page is saying about Tucker. They think that lies about people they don’t like are inherently righteous. It doesn’t matter, you see. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant to the greater cause, in their minds, of destroying anybody who stands in the way.

And this is not policed at all on their side. You’ll notice that no one is calling out the New York Times from the left and saying, “Okay. Scratch that.” There are a couple of people, but they happen to be people that you’ll actually see occasionally go on Fox and speak to conservatives, right? Glenn Greenwald was pointing out what the truth is of the New York Times.

This was in a tweet that he had over the weekend, that the reality here is that New York Times writing 15 years ago — the New York Times writing 15 years ago — that somebody was a racist would have destroyed their career, would have ruined them in public life. Now it’s a joke. It’s a joke because of how far the left has gone, how much the machinery of destruction is willing to embrace lies, is willing to embrace character assassination, to say the most vile things.

Look at Kavanaugh. Why did they do what they did against Brett Kavanaugh? Because however they found a way, they thought — however the left, the Democrat Party thought they could destroy somebody — was justified under circumstances, no matter how crazy it was, no matter how many lies were told, no matter how many people came forward with totally implausible stories with Kavanaugh. Didn’t matter. Stop him!

This is about power. So they’ll lie about Tucker, they’ll lie about Rufo, they will lie about anybody. They’ll lie about the aims. They’ll lie about the words that they use. Doesn’t matter. That is what we are up against. And I’m just telling you this so that you recognize it’s going to get uglier. It’s going to get uglier going forward because they don’t have good arguments.

They do not have the ability to actually explain to the American people why they want to do some of the things they do, and I’m gonna tell you right now: Some of the stuff on the indoctrination of trans youth that’s coming out ’cause now people are looking for it, the left has a big problem, friends. They’ve got a big problem.