There are almost no words in the English language that suffice to describe the disgrace of the first Republican debate that took place on Fox News. It's a cry for help from a wounded country. What the American people saw last night was a window into the anger that has been stoked by Fox News. Whether it's the out of control jeering, booing crowd that doesn't want to hear things like there was, in fact, an insurrection, or that Donald Trump, in fact, lost the election, the Fox News crowd is reflective of Fox nation -- bitter, aggrieved, angry and completely loony. The idea that somebody like Vivek Ramaswamy is on a presidential debate stage is ludicrous. He is a full-on fame-seeking millennial demagogue who knows nothing about the world. It's very important for the American people to understand something about the war in Ukraine. The United States is not fighting in Ukraine. The United States is arming the Ukrainians, so no American soldier ever has to fight. Should Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine and decide to move his aggression west across a NATO border, this is a very simple concept to understand. The Ukrainians are fighting, not Americans. The chances of Americans fighting go up if the Ukrainians lose. The fact that presidential candidates don't understand this concept is very alarming, but it's so much more than that. It's the rampant dishonesty. It's the utter lack of vision, the total detachment from obligation and responsibility. The hollow men and woman who stood on that debate stage after decrying the things that Donald Trump did, to a person, with the exception of Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie, raised their hand and promised their devotion to Trump, even if he's a nominee from prison. It was a ludicrous event. And there's no reason why Donald Trump after it will ever attend another Republican debate. It was a surreal affair between the people who are losing to Donald Trump by 50 points. As scary as the Republican debate show was, it wasn't as scary as the show playing out over on what used to be known as Twitter, X, between Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump
VIDEO OF INTERVIEW WITH CARLSON: "The trajectory since 2015, when you got into politics, you know, for real and then won. They started with protests against you -- massive protests, organized protests by the left, and then it moved to impeachment twice. And now indictment. I mean, the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they're going to try and kill you? Why wouldn't they try and kill you?
Honestly, they're savage animals. They are people who are sick, really sick. The first thing to notice about this interview is it's demagoguery -- its malice, and how dangerously it incites violence, against who you ask? Well, against "the they." Listen to it in the interview, over and over and over again. There is always a day, a secret, lurking insidious day. "Wild, dangerous animals," as Trump puts it. Now, let's be clear about something. The wild animal who Donald Trump is referring to, that he's talking about is the woman that he constantly smears, that he's obsessed by, that he's fixated on. She's a law enforcement official, who has levied charges against him. It's Fani Willis from the state of Georgia, the district attorney of Fulton County. What is it that happens to rabid, dangerous animals, the type of animals that Donald Trump is talking about? They get killed. And more than that, it's justified to kill them. Donald Trump, for seven years, when any hypothetical question arose about his not getting political power or losing political power, his answer was always the same. It was an intimation towards violence, a threat levied against the country, a proverbial gun held to America's head, with Donald Trump, overtly declaring, "you pick me or I cause chaos. You make me the president or I pull the trigger." That's the Trump message. Let's look at this life-sized portrait of George Washington that hangs in the Capitol rotunda. It depicts the scene where Washington resigns his commission. The chair where his cloak is draped, is a bit bigger than the others in the room, was larger than the chairs the members of Congress are sitting in, but it goes unoccupied. George Washington refuses the throne. He lays down and drapes his military cloak over the chair. He will not be a Caesar, it will go unoccupied. George Washington submits to civilian authority. He bows before the Congress in a highly-scripted ceremony. That painting, which was described by its painter, is depicting the most noble act in history, an act of profound humility and submission that breathed life into the United States. He described it as history's most noble act. That painting was hanging on the walls of the Capitol Rotunda. As the insurrectionists came, as the Confederate flag came and marched by it, it was the darkest day in American history. Yet here we have Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump telling the American people about its abject beauty. How sick can you possibly be to not understand what this is? It is a window into angry America, to the hearts of the aggrieved, to the hearts of the faithless, to the people who for whatever reason, as we approach the 250th anniversary of this country, have risen up and want to burn it down. It's happened because of cowardice and weakness. A political class vested in its own power that regards itself is above the country has refused to stop this. This country stands at an hour where it needs to wake up. What played out on last night's debate stage was a travesty, a debacle for a free society. These debates fundamentally raise a question that we thought was settled in 1783 in this country: are we capable of governing ourselves? Is this nation of 330 million people capable of decent, honest self- government? Or, has it collapsed? Because if it has, we are about to regress back into the darkness. Because for Americans, unlike the other people of the world, there is no other place for us to go if liberty is lost in this land. Watching Donald and Tucker Carlson's travesty on X, anybody who thinks that liberty in this country is not imperiled, is a fool.