Various news media outlets deceptively frame the issue of immigration — both legal and illegal — as a “fake civil rights issue,” said Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, host of the eponymous TV program Tucker Carlson Tonight, in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Marlow said, “It really does seem like the media has done a bait and switch [on the issue of legal and illegal immigration], where we’ve completely dropped the ball. Our eye is not on the target on this issue, and it is an existential threat, and it is barely discussed.”

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Carlson replied, “One of the most amazing kind of acts of magic I have seen conducted in my lifetime is the transformation of what is basically an economic question — who lives in you county and what are their wages? — into this fake civil rights issue.”

“So when we talk about immigration, we never talk about what’s actually happening, which is the effort of rich people to pay less for labor, or the effort of a political party to import more voters against the will of the rest of the population,” added Carlson. “That’s what’s actually happening. This is an economic and political question. Instead, we talk about compassion and, you know, ‘You’re a bad person if you don’t want to give this group of people a’ — quote — ‘better life.'”

Carlson continued, “So once the conversation is framed in those terms, — and it’s totally dishonest, I would argue — you’ve lost, because the conversation is about, ‘Alex, are you a good person, or not? Because know I am. I don’t know if you are.'”

The status quo immigration — particularly illegal immigration — facilitates the development of a de facto feudal social hierarchy in America, assessed Carlson.

“Is it really compassionate to create a feudal system, where the bottom level are serfs and they basically obediently serve the desires of America’s ruling class?” asked Carlson. “‘Vote as we want you to vote, shut up and make my bed while I’m at Soul Cycle.’ That’s basically what it is. What’s compassionate about that? Only Republicans would be dumb enough to fall for it, and they basically have.”

Marlow drew on a Breitbart News interview with Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Manuel Padilla, Jr., the chief Border Patrol official responsible for securing the busiest sector for illegal crossings, detailing

“[Manny Padilla Jr.] said this is devastating, economically, to these Central American countries where these immigrants are coming from, because they’re not improving,” said Marlow. “Their focus is on getting into the United States illegally, not improving their own countries. So the current policy is actually quite cruel to the migrants [and] these countries that a lot of the left claims that they pity and would like to help.”

“This isn’t good for us,” said Carlson of the immigration status quo, “and it’s making our country unstable. It’s actually bad for our country long-term, despite the GDP mongers always popping up from AEI lecturing you about [how] we need more immigrants because of GDP growth. These people are idiots. They don’t know what they’re talking about, and they’re the reason that our economy was completely hollowed out, and it’s precarious, and it’s benefiting a tiny percentage of the population while everyone else’s prospects are in decline.”

Carlson warned, “The American Dream is dying. People are not convinced their kids are going to have a better life than they do, because they’re not, and why is that? Because these [AEI-type] people ran the economy, and these are the same ones who are like, ‘No, we need to import more [immigrants]. We’re not having enough children.’ Really? I wonder why, because the economy that you’ve created makes it impossible to raise kids on one income, for example. So who’d want to have kids if you can’t afford them and you can’t raise them? The whole system is so rotten, and the very people who have made it rotten are lecturing the victims of its rottenness. It’s like insult to injury.”

Marlow invited Carlson to remark on political censorship from Google and other technology companies, referencing a Friday-published Wall Street Journal report titled, “How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results” with the sub-headline, “The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks and an army of contractors to shape what you see.”

Carlson responded, “God bless Breitbart. You guys have been on this for so long. I’m not even sure what it is about this dog whistle that you heard that others didn’t, but I’m just glad that you did. It seems very obvious that if you have one company that has a chokehold on all human information, that you would be interested in what that company does, and if that company is showing signs of political bias and dishonesty — which, of course, Google is — that that would be a concern for you, because you can’t have a democracy in a country with a company like Google.”

“It’s just too much power vested in too few hands,” continued Carlson. “The whole thing is predicated on a lie, and the lie is that robots are doing this without human interference, and therefore it’s totally fair. But it’s not, of course, controlled by robots. It’s controlled by human beings. And the so-called algorithm is written by people with subjective views on things. So the promise itself is a total crock. … How are we going to have a fair election if Google is controlling all the information, ad they have a pronounced political agenda?”

News media outlets use “nonsense” to distract their audiences from substantive issues, noted Marlow.

“70,000 died last year of drug [overdoses],” replied Carlson. “That’s many more than died during the entire 11 years of Vietnam. … That’s more than have ever died in any comparable epidemic, way more than died from AIDS. It’s way more than died from crack. … We’re totally pretending this isn’t happening, and I don’t really understand why, and I think maybe part of the reason is that the people in charge don’t care because the people who are dying are worthless to them, but part of the reason is we’re so absorbed with ephemera and nonsense like impeachment that there’s no bandwidth to talk about the things that matter. So I agree with you completely. I really resent that.”

Insecurity along the U.S.-Mexico border across which drug and human trafficking is conducted is broadly ignored by media outlets, stated Marlow, reflecting on his visit last week to the southern border for a series of SiriusXM Breitbart News specials focused on border security.

“We witnessed — literally witnessed — while we were on a ride-along on the Rio Grande, Chinese nationals coming over with the help of Mexican cartels,” recalled Marlow, “and this is because China has figured it out. They go to Mexico, bring the fentanyl there, it gets through to the United States, cartels win, Chinese drug creators win, and we’ll just talk about Adam Schiff today and what’s on his mind.”

Carlson is the author of Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.

Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.