Tucker Carlson explains how moral panics are destroying America

"By the way, moral panics diminish the people engage in them and hurt the people who don’t," said Carlson. "They're degrading. They're crazy. They're the opposite of what you want. You want to live in a country where wisdom and restraint and rational behavior and decency determine the outcomes not screaming."

He continued on to talk about what he considered the first moral panics of recent years: the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests and riots that followed, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"So for nearly two years, the shouting has not ended. Hysteria is now the official language of public discourse in the United States. That's not good for anyone except those benefiting from it," said Carlson.

"Who is benefitting?" he asked. "Anyone who lies for a living."

"The liars have perfect cover. Ask yourself: How much of what you first heard about BLM and then about the coronavirus turned out in the end to be true? How many of the first stories were true?" Carlson questioned.

He said that not many were true, but "you didn't know that at the time because you were busy being yelled at."

"If you dare to point out that 'actually, all lives matter.' They denounced you as a racist. If you express concern about vaccine mandates, of course they called you an anti-vaxxer. Sound familiar? The pattern never changes," said Carlson.

He then pivoted to recent events in Ukraine regarding the Russian invasion, commenting, "'Hey, hey, maybe war with Russia is not a good idea for the United States.' Say that out loud some time. It's not an extreme position. Most Americans would agree with you. But you'll immediately be denounced as a tool of Putin."

Carlson called it "name calling as a means of social control."

"The people in charge have decided their primary job is to decide who you should hate. In an environment like this, everything feels like propaganda, and that's because much of it is," said Carlson.

He noted that reports last week came out that Russia had bombed a nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which turned out to be a building outside of the reactor complex, not the reactor itself.

"In the words of Mark Nelson, who's a nuclear energy analyst, 'I’m afraid to say this looks like a coordinated effort to induce panic.' Of course, it was what we call disinformation. And it was designed to get you to support a war against Russia," said Carlson.

Carlson then played a segment from Good Morning America, which displayed women fighting in Ukraine, including Anastasiia Lenna, former Miss Grand Ukraine. He noted that this story was false, and Lenna was actually holding an airlift gun in the photos.

"So the whole thing was not a news story, though you read it as such. It was a propaganda shoot. It was meant to deceive you. It was meant to make you want war with Russia, sympathize with one side over the other. It works. That's why they do it," said Carlson.

He then slammed decisions by social media companies to ban a number of news outlets, including Russian ones.

"Now we're supposed to think this is a victory over Putin or something, but a victory for what? Less information? Fewer perspectives? If getting to the truth was the point of the exercise, we as American citizens will be able to read whatever we wanted to read; that was the rule for centuries in this country. It no longer is because truth is no longer the point," said Carlson.

Comparing the coverage of Ukraine to coverage of other recent conflicts in other countries around the world, Carlson said that there has been "no coverage" of conflicts in Yemen, Ethiopia, the Mexican drug wars, and the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

"Trust us. They're awful, but it's not a crisis," Carlson said as the screen displayed images of the Mexican drug wars. "It's totally normal says the Biden administration. Open the southern border. The border we care about is Ukraine’s."