WATCH: Tucker Carlson explains how Democrat leaders are using COVID to divide America

"Colin Powell died this morning at the age of 84. What a life that was. In his later years, Powell became immeshed in partisan politics and younger people may remember him for that, but for most of his life, he was much bigger than mere politics."

"If you're old enough to recall the first Gulf War, you know that Colin Powell was one of the last public officials that most Americans believed in. Powell's life, his stories, he would confirm everything that was good about this country."

"Powell grew up in the south Bronx, the son of immigrants from Jamaica. In 1958, he received his commission in the U S Army. At that time, much of the country was living under Jim Crow laws, but Colin Powell thrived regardless. He served two tours in Vietnam with distinction. He went on to advise presidents and in the end he made it all the way to the top of the US military. After he retired, he became Secretary of State."

"Toward the end of his life, Powell sometimes said that his remarkable career was proof that Affirmative Action worked, but it always seemed like a half-hearted talking point. Anyone who knew Powell personally can confirm that he was as impressive as any person in the US government, and far more than most of them, he was legitimately smart and deeply knowledgeable about the world. He was openly patriotic. He was hardly a diversity hire. He was so obviously superior to a lot of the people around him."

"When the supposedly brilliant Harvard educated neo-cons in the Bush administration assured us that the occupation of Iraq would be quick and simple, Colin Powell knew better. He may have gone to lowly city college, but he was smarter and wiser than they were, Unlike other people in Washington, Colin Powell got where he was on merit and that was inspiring to watch."

"Powell’s success meant that our system worked. Our system was meritocratic at the time. It elevated the best. 30 years ago our meritocracy was the country's unifying principle. All Americans were proud of it. Colin Powell embodied it. A lot has changed in the years since. And that's one of the reasons that Colin Powell’s death tonight is so poignant."

"Like almost everyone, his age, Colin Powell was fully vaccinated against COVID. And yet according to his family and doctors, Colin Powell died of COVID. Of course that fact does not make his death any less sad, nor is it unusual. Many thousands of vaccinated Americans have died of COVID. Former CDC director, Robert Redfield announced just today that about 40 percent of all recent COVID deaths in the state of Maryland, for example, are among those who've had both shots."

"So what does that tell you exactly? What tells you you've been lied to. Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across the population, they do not solve COVID. That's not speculation, it is an observable fact. People who've been fully vaccinated can still get the virus. They can still transmit the virus to others and they can still die from COVID. Colin Powell is hardly the only example."

"So the question is, why are they telling us otherwise? And the answer is simple. They're telling us that to divide us from each other, to set the country against itself, that's been going on for a long time, but it never needed to happen."

"There's no inherent reason that a virus should rip apart in the United States . COVID could have easily brought us together. Shared suffering often does, 9-11 did that. And yet from the very beginning, demagogues like Joe Biden and many others have used this virus as a hammer to smash the bonds that connect Americans to one another."

"During last year's presidential campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly, and always with a straight face, told us that every single American who died from COVID died because of Donald Trump's negligence. That's not an overstatement. Every single one. 'Just look at the data' they said, but there was no data, that was false. And yet no public health official contradicted it."

"Now Biden is telling us that the only reason people are still dying from COVID is because stubborn, mostly working class Americans, won't submit to his shot. Only the unvaccinated are dying, Biden claims. And yet at the very same time, Biden tells us that the unvaccinated somehow threatened the lives of the vaccinated. It's not logical. It's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense at all. It's not simply divisive. It's absurd. And still some percentage of a terrified population believes it. He's the President after all. And you see the effect of that everywhere."

"People, you know, and love tell you, you can't come to the wedding, you can't come to the funeral. You're not invited to the birthday party unless you've had the vaccine. They're afraid of you. They can’t explain why they're afraid of you. The President told them that you are dangerous. And so they are afraid. The question is over time, what does that do to your most cherished relationships, to your friendship, to your family relationships? What does it do to the country?"

"It means that at the very deepest level, below the level of law, the level of your own neighborhood at the level of your own family, America has once again become what it was when Colin Powell got his commission in the Army. America has become segregated, not between black and white, but between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Clean and unclean."

"The question is, how long will this go on? And how long once it ends, will it take for us to recover? That's impossible to know now, but we do know that it's a tragedy and it did not happen by accident. A small group of credentialed partisans did this on purpose."

"'This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,' they all repeat that line just as they've been told to, but that claim is a lie. This is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated. It never was that. This is a pandemic of the Chinese government born in a lab in Wuhan and brought here either accidentally or not. That's the fact of it. COVID is not and never was something that the average American wanted or caused. Trump didn't bring it here... no one deserves to die from the coronavirus, no matter who they voted for. Failing to support Joe Biden's orders is not a death penalty offense."

"Now you'd think that would all be very obvious, but suddenly it doesn't seem obvious. You'll read that some plumber in Wichita choked to death from COVID alone in a hospital bed. And then you'll watch as the blue checks and social media celebrate his death. 'He wasn't vaccinated,' they'll tell you he deserved it."

"Some preacher and Florida will die leaving behind not just a grieving family, but tweets skeptical of the COVID vaccine. And then suddenly his death becomes a neat little morality play performed at maximum volume for the rest of us. See, this is what you get."

"This is the most corrosive possible way to approach the deaths of fellow Americans. But the President himself joins in gleefully. He scolds these people, these otherwise decent Americans, as they die alone in agony. 'How dare they take up the space in our hospital,' Biden says, 'they're occupying the beds of worthy patients, people who followed instructions and therefore deserve healthcare.' People deserve to live."

"Pause for a moment and think about that. We don't think about it enough, but we should. Colin Powell followed the instructions. He did what Joe Biden asked so did 40 percent of fully vaccinated people who recently died in Maryland. They all died anyway. So what are we to make of their deaths, Since every death is now a morality tale? Are those deaths more or less tragic than the passing of the disobedient plumber in Wichita or the preacher in Waco?"

"In fact, they're all the same in their significance and in their effect, people cried when these people died, people who love them. Vaccinated or not every life matters, every single one. Every death is sad. That's obvious. It's the most basic fact of the human condition. How do we forget that? Because they told us to forget it. And the irony of course, is the people telling us to forget that and treat our fellow Americans as criminals who deserve to die. Clearly don't mean a single word that they are saying they are not sincere. They're not interested. Ultimately in our health, they are fixated on maximizing their own power. And we know that because of the distance between what they say and what they do, that's always how you know."