"Bring Back Merit And Reward:" An AmFest Convo With Tucker Carlson
Why is it so easy to get rich as a bureaucrat, a lobbyist, or a credit card executive, but so hard if you have a real skill that directly helps people? Why don't we talk about predatory debt in American society? What is going on in far-off Russia? Charlie's interview with Tucker Carlson at AmericaFest offered Tucker's usual blend of hilarious and fascinating takes and is not to be missed. Join Charlie's interviews in-person at next year's AmFest by becoming a subscriber at members.charliekirk.com.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This Christmas Eve, we wanted to air my conversation with Tucker Carlson.
A phenomenal conversation about a lot of different topics.
We talk about nicotine.
We talk about Russia.
We talk about war and more.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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I want to thank Charlie.
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Oh!
I didn't realize there would be people here.
I tell you that every year.
I know, and every year I forget, but every year I love coming.
So, Tucker, great to see you.
You have this new product.
Tell us about that.
Well, sure, I'm glad you asked.
It's America's premiere.
I've never sold anything in my life.
I've had a lot of prostate cures sold against my image and scam gold deals and pillows.
But I've never actually sold anything myself.
And this is a new nicotine pouch which has replaced the left-wing monopoly that had dominated the space for the past five years.
It starts with a Z. I won't call it out loud.
It is a sin, it turns out.
But anyway...
It is delicious.
It's called ALP. It's out last week.
I love it.
We have no agenda to talk about.
Do you think there's something to the effect that as America stopped consuming nicotine that all of a sudden our health outcomes got worse?
How did that actually happen?
Ever seen the graphs?
I know, but we were told that we end nicotine consumption, obviously, via cigarettes.
And more cancer, more depression, more suicide, more anxiety, more prescription drugs.
That's strange.
Look, I'm not endorsing smoking.
I quit smoking.
But it is just a fact that the public health establishment did promise us something.
Eat a lot of carbs, get thin.
Quit tobacco, get healthy.
And it just didn't come true.
And I'm not certain of the cause and effect there, but neither is anyone else because they're studiously not looking at it because they never assess their failures.
And adults assess their failures.
Successful people, honest people take a clear-eyed look at their predictions and compare them to the results.
And if there's a discrepancy between the two, they first admit it and they try to figure out what happened.
I thought we'd be greeted as liberators.
We weren't.
I thought they were WMD. There weren't.
I thought if we got everyone off cigarettes, you know, the country would be thin and fit.
It's fat and chronically ill.
Like, where did we go wrong?
And instead, they just sort of allied past it on to the next crisis.
Oh, there are drones.
What?
And, you know, it allows sort of a handy device for them to evade responsibility for the catastrophes they caused.
I mean, the people running the country...
But it has this dual bad effect.
The first is to ensure we get more disasters.
There's no after-action report.
Every functional organization, classically the military, but all organizations and all families figure out when something goes wrong, why did it go wrong?
Why did the plane crash?
Why did the fire start?
We don't want this to happen again, so let's figure it out so we can make sure we don't repeat it.
That's the first.
But the second...
Effect over time it has is in sending the message that it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth, that it's okay to lie.
It's okay to have leaders who are constantly screwing up, denying it, blaming you, and then moving on to the next screw-up.
That makes everybody cynical.
It makes people distrustful of their government and of each other.
And it turns your country into a third-world mess.
People are like, oh, what's so great about America, our free market system?
Yeah, great.
Our resources, great.
But it was a pretty honest, straightforward culture run by a relatively honest, straightforward government, and now it's not.
And I do think the first step is to fix that.
It's like a thematic fix.
The government should tell the truth.
They have no right to lie to you.
You own the government.
If they make a mistake, they should be punished, not you.
And if you catch her housekeeper stealing, you get to fire her.
If you catch the government stealing, same thing.
You get to fire them.
They don't own the country.
You do.
It's a vibe shift.
It's a way of thinking.
And I would add the great anti-smoking, Kim.
And again, I'm not endorsing smoking like everybody.
I have relatives who died of smoking.
It's bad for you.
I don't think it's morally bad, but it's bad for you.
And so, like, don't do it.
But it remains true that, like, everything they said would happen when they banned cigarettes and infringed on your civil rights by telling you what you could do in your own car, in your home, and in a private restaurant, etc., etc.
The outcome was the opposite of what they said.
And the last thing I'll say is they have no problem pushing, like, actual narcotics on the population.
Smoke more weed, son!
You know, so you can, like, grow boobs and never leave the couch.
Like, it's...
It's not an accident that the chemicals they approve of lower testosterone and the ones they despise raise testosterone.
Because an alert, aware, self-respecting country is more difficult to manage.
You have to do it by consent.
So yeah, go smoke some more weed.
Here's your Netflix.
Don't notice what we're doing.
No.
Nicotine is an appetite suppressant, and it also constricts your blood vessels, which of course sharpens thinking and allows a higher processing of information, whereas marijuana dilates your blood vessels and does the opposite.
Are you insinuating, Tucker, that our population would push something really bad on us to try to make us easier to control?
I mean, our government would not do that.
I mean, I do think these are conspiracies of instinct.
I don't know.
I mean, I spent my whole life in D.C., and I know the people, in some cases pretty well, personally, who run it and have for a while.
And they're non-geniuses as a group, I would say.
These are not creative people, not incredibly organized people.
I wouldn't hire any of them, personally.
So I don't think they're sort of getting together at Bohemian Grove or Bilderberg to plot anything, really.
I think they go home and sit and sell in silence with their unhappy wives and then, you know, get loaded scrolling the internet like all losers.
But...
But I think the conspiracy is unspoken mostly.
Is that too vivid?
No, no, I agree.
I don't think that there's like this.
Well, I was very vivid.
They don't rise to the level of Dr. Evil.
At least he's got his act together.
At least he's like self-consciously evil.
He knows who he is.
No, but I mean they do have some skill set.
What is it though?
Is it treachery?
Is it deceit?
Or is it just that this is a group of mediocrity?
Well, look, the whole system is designed, it's set up to thwart the creative and the energetic and the free thinking and to reward the conformists, the losers.
I mean, like, if you really think about it, and this is not just the government, and it's also, sorry to rattle your cage, but it's the economy as well, the whole thing is set up to reward people who could not succeed in a true meritocracy.
I think so.
That's what DEI is, most obviously.
Let's take people who are not qualified for the job and give them the job, okay?
Right?
And let's penalize people who are qualified, score high enough on the test, we're not letting you in.
Like, how does that work?
It's the opposite, right?
So what that is doing self-consciously, I mean, explicitly, is making space for people who couldn't occupy these positions otherwise, okay?
Everyone knows that.
But what they don't understand is that's not just on the basis of race and gender.
It's like, society-wide, the richest people in our society are no longer the most impressive.
That's just a fact.
Like, if I buy some family company, manufacturing company in Ohio, and sell off its parts and lever it up, load it up with debt, and then cash out, leaving the company in ruins, and its workers unemployed, and I go back to Martha's Vineyard with an extra $100 million, that's called private equity.
And I'm celebrated for that.
There is no obvious value to the country in doing that.
At the same time, people who have obvious contributions to make, and I would, much as I despise teachers, I'd have to be honest, we really need good teachers.
That's like an essential thing to have in any society.
Socrates was a teacher.
Like, you pass on your values and the requisite knowledge to the next generation so they can continue, right?
You have to have great teachers.
And just because ours happened to be unionized and dumb, not all, but a lot.
I married one, by the way, who's not either one of those things.
They're great teachers, but...
But the truth is we need great teachers and we should pay them a lot.
That's not a liberal thing to say.
That's a conservative thing to say, obviously.
Just because they currently control the schools doesn't mean they should or will forever.
We need great physicians, not great health insurance companies.
Who cares about a freaking health insurance company?
We need great doctors, people with knives who cut you up and take out the bad things and sew you up.
That's a critical skill.
They're not the ones getting rich.
It's the insurance companies and the pharmacy brokers who are getting rich.
Like, that's a screwed up system, right?
If you just think about it, why is it that people who aren't actually contributing all that much to your society are the ones who are getting the smallest benefit?
The people who change your tire or plow your roads, fix your HVAC, build your home, fly your airplane?
Like, these are critical skills.
But it's not socialism to say that.
It's actually what we have as a form of socialism.
That's right.
Where people are rewarded for unimportant tasks like high facility with accounting or the ability to like weave through a super complex bureaucracy or like I have a special skill at understanding Dodd-Frank.
Therefore, I get a ton.
What?
That's like lower than my housekeeper.
At least she scrubs the sink.
And yet those people—so it's like the whole thing is on its head.
It's all a form of DEI, particularly in the financial sector.
I would say this having grown up around people in the financial sector and having lived around them my whole life.
I like a lot of them.
Some are smart.
But some aren't that smart.
They're just aggressive and predatory, and I'm not sure what they add.
And Republicans have been brainwashed and been like, no, it's really—it's a good thing.
Really?
Really?
Do you know them?
They hate America.
They hate you.
They hate your family.
They're not doing anything for the American economy.
I'm not saying we should shut them down or have the government take over their businesses.
I'm not for command and control.
It didn't work in Bulgaria.
It's not going to work here.
But I also don't think that I should, like, have to pretend that they're heroes.
They're creeps.
They are.
I don't know what to say.
And so we should reestablish the connection between merit and reward.
If you're doing something creative and important that helps people, I think you should be rewarded.
And if you're some bureaucrat, if you're teaching a really interesting course on ancient history in a liberal arts college, you should make the most.
It should not be the administrator who's figuring out how to comply with the ADA in the bathrooms.
It just should not be.
And yet it is.
And that's like society-wide.
So I don't know how I got off on this, but I really feel it.
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balanceofnature.com promo code CHARLIE balanceofnature.com promo code CHARLIE Well, in one part of the financial sector from payday lending...
Ah!
That's all I have to say.
All three Abrahamic faiths, monotheism worldwide detests usury.
And that's lending money and interest.
And that's like, if you say that out loud, that's like more controversial than like anything you can say.
What are you, a socialist?
Yeah, I'm a socialist.
Yeah, I'm a big socialist, okay?
No.
I just don't know why.
If the mafia, well, they used to, lend money at 22%, you need to go to jail.
It's a federal crime.
It's loan sharking when they do it.
And they had, like, pretty easy terms, by the way, compared to, I don't know, Citibank charging 22% on interest on credit cards.
I always bring this up with people, and they always look at me like I'm a freak, like they expect me to endorse Hugo Chavez or something.
And I'm like, no, I'm opposed to socialism.
I just don't know why I'm supposed to think that's good.
I don't think it's good.
And, you know, you often hear people talk about, you know, the American middle class is dying and all their problems and the price of eggs and all that stuff.
And it's like, if you actually talk to middle class people, I'm not a middle class person, never have been one.
but I know some and I'm interested because I think you need a middle class base in your country.
You need a majority middle class country in order to have a democracy.
Definitionally.
Definitionally, that's exact.
People with a rooted stake in the country with a future here, not renters, owners, you know, small owners.
And that's the basis of any healthy society and we're losing it.
It's less than 50% now.
And if you actually ask them, like someone who makes 75 grand a year with two kids, like where are your actual expenses?
What do you actually worry about?
Of course, it's mortgage and credit cards.
And it's really, at this point, credit cards, because a lot of people can't even afford to own.
So I think that's a huge problem.
I'm not exactly sure how to solve it, but as a professional talker, I believe, and as a Christian, I believe— We're not even allowed to, like, criticize— But that's the point.
Saying the truth out loud in the beginning was the word.
Saying the truth out loud is the first step toward fixing things.
The spoken truth.
And the spoken truth.
The spoken truth.
That's exactly right.
And by the way, that's my job.
I mean, I'm not an economist.
I couldn't balance a checkbook, assuming there even are checkbooks, and I wouldn't know because I don't handle money in any way.
So I'm totally ignorant of economics from beginning to end.
But I am interested in people, and I talk to a lot of them, and it's credit card debt that torments people.
And I'm thinking...
It's worth asking, is there a good reason for that?
Credit card debt is one of the very few forms of debt that's not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Now, why is that?
Well, I happen to know, because I was there, that was made law in the bankruptcy bill.
And that was led by Joe Biden, who later became the worst president in the history of the country.
But at the time, when he was sentient, he was, of course, representing Delaware.
Wilmington, Delaware was the credit card capital of the country in an exchange for adding that to the bankruptcy bill that you can discharge all kinds of debt, medical debt, all kinds of personal debt, like your landscaper.
You don't have to pay your landscaper in a bankruptcy.
You don't have to pay your caterer.
You don't have to pay your builder.
They all get shafted.
Credit card companies, you have to pay them.
Like, how'd that happen?
What happened?
They gave Joe Biden a house.
Look it up.
That's a fact.
That's corrupt.
But it had this effect.
And I brought this up like a thousand times when I worked at the TV channel.
And I never had one person...
They'd always look at me like, were you criticizing the credit card companies?
I think they're on our side.
Like, don't criticize the banks.
And it's like, I'm not saying I hate the banks or we should shut them down.
It's a thought.
But, I mean, I'm open to it.
I'm kind of shutting down the bank's agnostic, leaning toward.
But whatever.
I'm not sold on the idea.
But I do think it's worth a conversation.
And why do we never have that conversation?
Ever, ever, ever, ever.
And the fact that they're sending credit card solicitations to college students.
By the way, I sell a nicotine pouch.
I'm not allowed to say this because it's against the rules of the FDA. You're not allowed to make any medical claim about this.
You can make medical claims about anything else but not nicotine because it's bad.
But this is considered much more dangerous than credit card debt.
And I just don't think that it is.
Having experienced both, I can say nothing wrecks your sleep, nothing can hurt your marriage more than debt, faster than debt.
I would say it's a bigger problem than sexual infidelity, which gets a lot of attention, which is bad.
I'm not endorsing that either, obviously.
But I'm saying if you were to actually look at the numbers on why people get divorced, debt is a bigger driver of divorce than sexual infidelity.
And it's driven in this country primarily by credit cards.
I mean, debt is the slavery of the free.
The entire financial system is leveraged.
Everything from the federal budget to how hedge funds operate to how we finance even the most simple things.
I mean, you could go a step further and say the entire American economic project is on credit.
Well, I don't think that's a stretch to say that, because it is.
And it's a habit of mind, by the way, that is a relatively new development in the Christian world and in the Jewish and Muslim world.
I mean, again, this was a precept of— It's one of the 613 laws of Judaism.
Exactly.
And it was, you know, not allowed at various times during the Dark Ages, which are actually pretty light, it turns out, but another story entirely.
It's one of those things that, you know, was the basis of, like, American politics for a long time.
I mean, political leaders 150 years ago, really up until, you know— The First World War constantly talked about things like monetary policy, the banks, and debt, as you know, just as students of political history.
And now it's totally vanished in favor of identity politics, race war, gender war.
And that's, of course, intentional, right?
You know, fight amongst yourselves, hate each other on the basis of characteristics that never change, immutable characteristics so you won't notice that the country's being looted.
And I personally, I had an idea the other day that was not at all popular with the people I mentioned it to.
They thought it was crazy, but I'm going to say it again because I kind of like it.
It would be kind of fun to have a political party that was like the credit card party.
And the only requirement for membership of the party would be that you would pledge at a certain date in the coming year to stop paying your credit card bills.
And if you had, say, 100 million people in that party, it's sort of the old line about how you're afraid of the bank until you borrow enough that they become afraid of you.
And I think it'd be sort of nice not to tank the banks or put anyone out of business or hurt anyone at all, but just as an expression of resistance and power.
Like, hey, we have power too.
We owe you money, and if we didn't pay you back, then you would have to talk to us as adults and not just patronize us or stick your dogs on us.
But you would have to, like, have a real adult conversation, as adults do with each other.
You know, each with their point of view, and we can reach a negotiation.
But I think that would be great.
I mean, I kind of love that idea.
And I brought that up to a prominent conservative.
I was like, what?
What?
You know, it's like totally fine to talk about, you know, our political power.
We all get together and vote.
Well, I don't know.
I feel way...
I don't personally, because I don't have any debt, but I have in times of my life.
I feel like people are way more oppressed by their credit card debt than by anything else, actually.
If we're being honest about it, which no one ever is.
I mean, it's way easier to talk about your sex life Than it is about your spending habits and your debt.
No one ever talks about it.
Every time I'm in an airport, somebody's talking about this crazy sex life.
Two women are like, I can't.
I'm like, whoa, I don't want to hear it.
I've never one time been in an airport and there are two college roommates being like, yeah, I'm $30,000 in debt to MB&A and I can't pay.
Not one time.
I'm serious.
No one ever talks about it.
So it would be kind of nice to bring that to them.
The question is, why?
You lure me into this deal?
Like, I'm responsible for not paying my credit card on time.
I get it.
But you're also kind of responsible.
In the same way, people watch pornography.
I'm against pornography.
It's bad to watch pornography.
It's also kind of bad to make pornography.
And to make it readily available to everybody.
Like, the pornographers are part of the problem, too.
Aren't they?
I think they are.
And most of them, to their great credit, are sort of ashamed to be pornographers.
And that's why they're not, you know, on the NBC Nightly News being like, well, in the pornography business, like, they hide.
They all live in Puerto Rico evading taxes.
And so they understand there's a shame attached to their business.
And I just think that banks should feel the same way.
Because why wouldn't they?
They're enslaving people.
So that's my view.
So speaking of another topic that we're not allowed to talk about.
I don't know why it feels so radical to say that.
It seems so obvious.
And this is something I really want to dive into, and then I want to get some questions from the audience.
You recently visited Russia again.
I did, yeah.
So deep is my commitment to Putin.
Putin!
Putin!
So how's the weather in Russia right now?
It's brisk.
Now, am I brisk with a hint of totalitarianism?
And wait, so I got a text from Tucker.
He said, hey, I'll respond to your other text.
I'm going to Siberia tomorrow.
Yes.
Usually that doesn't go well.
So how was all of that?
I swam in a lake by call.
The largest lake, 20% of the world's fresh water is in Lake Baikal.
I've always wanted to see it.
I love, you know, evergreens.
I love pines and spruce and birch.
And I love cold, fresh water.
So I've always wanted, like passionately.
And I sauna every day.
So I always have wanted to get out of the sauna and dive into Lake Baikal naked.
And I did.
Life goal fulfilled.
I don't know why.
We all have goals.
Some people want to make a billion dollars.
I have zero interest in that.
You know, some people want, you know, whatever weird things, some like car or whatever.
I drive a crappy truck.
I'm not interested in cars, but I definitely wanted to jump and link by call.
That's not why I was there, but I did do that.
It was a 14-hour round trip flight, but I pulled it off.
How deep in Siberia is that?
Don't get me going in Siberia, man.
That place.
I mean, it's...
So America is about, what, 3.7 million square miles, including Alaska?
Siberia itself is like 9 million?
Over 5. That's insane.
Just Siberia.
It's all of North Asia is a synonym for Siberia.
And there are 12 million people in the entire place.
There are 350 million in our 3.7 million square miles, and there are 12 million in their over 5 million square miles.
So there's nobody there.
And it's just pine, fir, spruce, birch, rivers, lakes.
So if you like, let's say, western Maine and the Appalachians, where I happen to live, this is like—it's just—it's at scale.
So I love that.
I don't know if that's not really relevant to anything.
I don't know why I'm telling you this because I'm super excited about it.
But no, hold on.
We're told it's barren.
It's like there's almost this idea that it's just like flat tundra.
What you're— Oh, it's definitely not tiny.
Well, by the way, it's so huge that...
I mean, I flew over a lot of it in a helicopter.
Not a lot of it.
I flew over a tiny postage size.
But, I mean, several hours.
And at least where I was, you know, it didn't seem to look very much like Maine or Finland or any kind of, you know, northern conifer forest, which is my favorite landscape by far.
Everyone wants to go to, like, the beach and look at a lone palm tree in, like, an endless expansive ocean.
Yeah.
I want to be in place where there are trees.
It's one of my great interests in life.
But that's not why I went.
I went because we are on the verge of a civilization ending conflict with Russia.
And I don't feel like people here understand it.
And I'm just immune to criticism at this point because I just don't care.
I'm obsessed because I have so many children.
I want to get to January 20th.
That's how I feel.
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And I just know, having lived in the country for 55 years, that there are truly powerful forces arrayed against that happening.
And at this point, really the only way they can stop it is with a true catastrophe.
And there are a couple I won't even mention, some obvious ones.
But one of them is war with the world's largest nuclear arm power, which is Russia.
So they're really trying hard to do that.
The Biden administration acting through NATO and the government of Ukraine, they have been trying to do that for almost three years.
And they're really trying now, which is actually people should be arrested for that.
You can't have a guy win the majority of the popular vote in an election in which he said repeatedly, I will stop the war, no more wars.
And then the second he wins the majority of the popular vote, a mandate, a democratic mandate, you accelerate efforts to start a war that could very easily, in fact, it will, if not stopped, go nuclear and kill everybody.
You should be in prison for that.
We send people to prison for all kinds of things.
You know, Sam Bankman Freed's crimes are nothing compared to that.
Nothing.
Assad's crimes are nothing compared to that.
You know, Iran's crimes are nothing compared to that.
And I'm not in favor of Sam Bankman Freed, Assad, or Iran.
I'm picking bad people to make a point, which is nothing they've done approaches that in its recklessness or potential for mass death.
So...
I don't even understand why nobody...
People are just like in a dream state, in a fugue or something like, oh, it's not happening.
Oh, it's definitely happening.
And so I just went over there in my autistic way just to like talk to their foreign minister.
I asked...
Sergey Lavrov.
Sergey Lavrov.
I asked zero insightful questions.
He's a good English speaker.
I just opened the floor, let him talk for an hour and a half in the hope that someone would hear it and be like, oh, wow, that's interesting.
This is real.
Summarize what he said.
He said, I should say, Lavrov was a Soviet diplomat.
Incredibly sophisticated.
Yeah, he's like the longest-serving diplomat in the world, longest-serving foreign minister in the world.
He's lived in New York most of his life.
His daughter didn't even speak Russian.
I mean, he's very familiar with...
With the United States having spent most of his life here and has a million friends here since February of 2022, he's been like a criminal or whatever, but he knows everybody.
He's just a diplomat.
If you're from Washington or on the east side of New York around the UN, there are diplomats everywhere.
They'll know each other, and they're not that political.
He's one of those.
And he just said, you know, they're accelerating this and without being boring in the one sentence, the key misunderstanding of Putin is that he's a dictator with absolute power.
It's an authoritarian country.
There's no doubt about it.
You know, less than some, more than others, but that's what it is.
But the president does not have absolute power.
That's just not true.
In fact, no leader has absolute power.
Stalin didn't have absolute power.
You know, MBS doesn't have absolute power in Saudi Arabia.
People rule by consent.
And Russia is especially complex because it's so big.
It's the largest landmass in the world.
It's 20% Muslim.
Lots of different republics.
Lots of different constituencies.
And Putin is acutely aware of his popularity and of, you know, dissent in the country.
acutely aware of it.
Here's the point.
If there are continued attacks by the Biden administration on Russian soil, and enough Russians get killed, they just murdered one yesterday in Moscow with a bomb, then Putin has no choice but to act in some way that shows his rivals in the military, his population in Russia, that he's not letting his his population in Russia, that he's not letting his country get taken over, that he's fighting back.
You can't seem weak.
No leader can seem weak without risking his job, period.
That's just the truth.
That's always true in every country throughout time.
And so if Putin is made to seem weak, he will be forced to act.
And I'm not defending Putin.
I'm just noting what any honest person who knows anything about it will tell you.
He's one of the most pro-Western people in Russia.
Fact.
He tried to join NATO in 2000, whatever.
The lying is so insane, it's almost not worth even pushing back against it.
I'm not endorsing Putin.
I'm just saying if they end up killing Putin, which they've tried to do repeatedly, then you've got this nuclear stockpile that's 6,000 nuclear weapons Where do they go?
Who runs Russia?
This is like the craziest thing that anyone's ever done, and I'm filled with shame that my government has done it under Joe Biden.
I have to interrupt.
There's this contradiction, though.
When you talk to some of the war hawks and you criticize the vertical escalation, at the core is actually this embedded belief that Putin is very rational.
And they'll say, oh no, Putin won't do nuclear war.
He knows better than that.
And essentially what they're saying is like, okay, we can do interior missile launches into Russia, but the Warhawks say, but Putin will never actually respond in nuclear war.
So we're betting on the restraint of Putin, the man that we're told is a madman.
That is the argument from the neocons in D.C. It's hard for me at 55, having lived in D.C. since 1985, I finally fled, but I spent my whole life there.
My dad worked for the government.
It's hard for me to see the planners of the Iraq War, who I knew and worked for at the time, still have a voice in public.
It's like, you should be ashamed, and you should have to atone for what you did.
You killed all those millions of people.
It was a war crime.
Absolutely.
And there's still...
Because they have no shame out there telling you that they know what's up and that they have a plan and that you should listen to them.
And if you don't, you're a bad person.
It's like how they still have moral authority is so shocking to me that I can barely deal with it.
But let me just say this.
The problem with countries is the same as the problem with families.
And that is when they're rich for too long, they get arrogant.
And it produces hubris and incompetence.
And that's why the third generation in any rich family is always drunk and driving the Maserati into the tree.
I'm going bankrupt.
And you see the same thing in countries.
If you're rich for too long, you get people like Kamala Harris.
You get these...
Dan Crenshaw.
These people who have no idea what they're talking about who are so arrogant.
You don't know anything.
You don't speak the language.
You've never been there.
You've never read three books on the subject.
You're not wise.
You can't even organize your personal life in a way that anyone would admire if they knew the details.
You're totally without accomplishment, and you're driving decisions on which the lives of the world hang.
It's just crazy.
It's a lack of wisdom.
The fear of the Lord.
That's exactly right, which is itself both the product of and the way you get to humility.
You can't...
Have wisdom or knowledge of God or a relationship with God without humility.
It is the prerequisite.
I am not God.
I don't know what tomorrow brings.
I mean, it says this in James.
I was just reading it.
But it's just true even if you're not a Christian.
It doesn't matter your religion.
It's just a fact of life.
If you think for certain that you know what the future holds, you're an idiot.
And you'll be punished for that.
Period.
Because you don't, because no person can know that, because you're not omniscient.
So let's just start there.
The law of unintended consequences has never been repealed.
It is always in effect.
And it's an effect in our lives, and it's an effect in our nations.
I do this with my children, my wife, my job, also with my country, because it's always true.
And I think I'm gonna get this, but I get that!
And then I get a whole lot of other things I never thought of!
Like, that's just a fact!
And it's true at the level of foreign policy as well.
It's especially true, and then people die.
So I just don't have any patience.
Here's what we do know.
We know that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time in history.
We've had nuclear weapons for 80 years.
They've been used once.
The weapons used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were less than a hundredth as powerful as the weapons that all these seven nations now possess.
So everything is at stake, and anyone who would even risk that, like Dan Crenshaw or other morons like that, should be laughed off the stage, in fact, jeered off the stage.
You have no right to have a position of authority because you are taking my family's life and putting it at risk for no good reason.
So you can, like, seem cool on Twitter or get some job at, you know, AEI or some stupid think tank or, like, get accolades from Bill Kristol or whatever your motive is, it's not good enough.
It doesn't justify putting 350 million lives at risk.
My life, my kid's life.
It is fundamentally pathological.
It's insane!
And they're so racked with you.
You know, and I go through these thinking, like, and I don't mean to beat up on Dan Crenshaw, the poor guy's in agony.
LAUGHTER No, obviously.
I mean, he's just got no self-control.
He spends all his life on Twitter yelling at people.
Like, that's pathetic.
But there are so many people.
And then you think, well, maybe you're just evil.
But I don't think they are all evil because I know them.
And they're not evil.
What they are is diluted by hubris.
They really think they can control the outcome in a dynamic situation.
You can't control the outcome with your wife.
Nobody can.
I'm serious.
You can't make anybody do anything.
You can't.
You can't make your kids do anything.
You can't make your wife do anything.
You should be able to, I think.
But you can.
You can.
You have to get buy-in from them.
You can yell at them, shut up, I'm talking, I'm the man here.
Oh, she'll get you for that.
You know, it's true.
Fact.
Fact.
You want your wife to do something long-term.
Short-term, you can make anybody do anything.
Pull out a gun, do it.
But long-term, you have to convince them.
Consent is required in leadership.
Period.
And they've forgotten that because they've been preeminent in a unipolar world for so long.
And they become idiots.
And they don't realize.
They're like, who cares what Turkey thinks?
Well, okay.
Maybe in an ideal world, we shouldn't have to care what Turkey thinks.
But we have to care what Turkey thinks because they have a big army.
And look where they're situated on the map, Dumbo.
They're on the med.
You have to care.
Russia, who cares what they think?
They're a gas station with nuclear weapons.
Okay, anyone, by the way, anyone who says that is a moron.
Immediately disqualified.
Immediately disqualified.
Yeah, they wrote Tolstoy.
Okay, yeah, gas station.
Not only gas station attendants write Anna Karenina, but whatever, shut up.
You don't know anything.
But leaving aside that, it's like, no, you have to deal with other people.
If I said to my neighbors, I think I'm the coolest person on my block.
I think I've got the best house, the hottest wife.
That may be true or not, whatever.
But I still can't tell my neighbor, like, you know, not a word out of you.
You know what I mean?
I'm going to park on your front lawn, and if you don't like it, you know, whatever.
I'll shoot you.
Like, work for a day or maybe a week, but in the end, it's probably not a long-term strategy for, like, having a neighbor.
That's not how life is!
Anyway, whew!
Let's do some questions.
That is Alp at work, by the way.
That right here.
Sorry.
That is brought to you by Alp.
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Hello.
Great.
Hey.
Hello, Talker.
I just want to say thank you for removing the legitimacy of the legacy media, especially for the people on the right.
You shined a light on Fox News, and I'm very grateful for that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Great.
I believe we see a lot of actors on the news networks and not necessarily journalists speak in their mind.
I want to know how much control the news hosts have over what they say on the networks and was there ever anything that you were extremely passionate about but could not talk about on air?
I have every incentive to be mean to Fox.
They fired me or whatever.
But I don't feel mad at Fox at all.
I'm really grateful.
By the way, let me just say, I think every man who thinks he's successful should get fired at least every five years.
And humiliated, just to make sure you don't become a total unbearable douche, because you will if that doesn't happen.
So my wife was totally thrilled that I got fired, like thrilled.
And it's not my first time, so I've been through it before, getting fired.
But...
No, but of course I have every, you know, there are people I don't like at Fox, of course, you know, but not really passionately.
I feel sorry for people who are still not just at Fox, but that business is dying.
No one believes them.
They lied too much and they kind of blew up their business.
Yeah, no, I agree.
But I can just, I'm just being honest, no one at Fox ever told me what to say.
And I was so cut off.
I had an amazing and still have the same staff that came with me.
Literally, I got fired and they all came.
I flew out with one of them today.
So I'm grateful for that.
But they kept me so insulated.
But no one ever told me what to say, not one time.
The only time anyone ever told me what to say is when they called me in the morning last year and were like, you're fired.
That was it.
And I always said to them, and to their great credit they went along with it, I was like, it's your channel.
It's your company.
I believe in private property.
Despite what I said about the banks, I actually do believe in private property.
And it's your company.
I'm just an employee.
I don't own the company.
If you don't want me to work here, you can fire me.
Until then, I'm going to say exactly what I want to say.
I'm never going to take instructions because I'm too old.
But if you don't like it, just can me.
And one day they invoke their option.
Let's get to the next question.
Yes.
Hi, my name is Alicia Morales.
I attend St. Mary's College, and I have been a lifelong listener.
I grew up to listening to you in my dad's truck.
Go your dad!
I was wondering, I go to a very liberal college, and if there's any advice that you have to give to a college student trying to put conservative ideas back on the college campus, what would it be?
Yeah, I mean, there's no one better than Charlie Kirk, who didn't even go to college, which is so great.
We're an unrecognized chapter, so we're not allowed to be a chapter on St. Mary's campus.
You know, I mean, I think it's worth getting kind of aggressive.
Like, you're paying money to go there.
It's an all-women school.
Yeah.
I mean, in the all-women school, and as a father of three daughters, like, I'm not really sort of pro-men at all.
So I love the idea of pro-women schools.
I mean, of all-women schools, but they're all, like, the most insane.
I don't know why that is.
I've just noticed that.
But I think it's important to say to them, look, you run a failing business.
Once the Chinese wake up and stop sending their kids here, you're done, okay?
You're scamming the US government with the loan system.
My parents are in debt to pay for this worthless degree.
And so you, as someone who's committing fraud, should be a little nicer to me.
And stop imposing your insane and, by the way, totally unpopular views And I just think you should be super direct with it, with them.
You know, you're paying for a service.
And so they don't have—so much of life is figuring out who is the moral high ground.
This is just the truth.
And the one thing that liberals are super good—they're not good at anything, really.
They can't build an energy grid.
They have no idea how anything works.
They're, like, helpless.
You know what I mean?
Call the super if something breaks.
Like, they're just pathetic.
But the one thing they're really talented at is immediately occupying the moral high ground and staying there.
Like, I'm on the side of children.
Democracy.
Like, standing inside Planned Parenthood lecturing you about children.
It's like crazy.
But no one ever calls him on it.
And so I think it's super important to say to them, look, you have no legitimacy, you're a criminal, and I'm in charge now because I'm paying for this.
And so you're my employee, and I'm not going to lord it over you or make fun of you or whatever, but you better obey.
Because what you're doing is really wrong.
And if you just say that calmly and smile, I mean you throw them off because they're used to like lecturing you all the time about everything.
And I think we need to reverse that.
Not in a hateful way at all.
And the last thing I'm going to say is, be cheerful.
The divide is really between people whose lives are miserable, that's why they embrace the politics of death, and people whose lives are really happy and they want to keep them that way.
You know what I mean?
Because they have the right values, they have families and relationships with God and meaningful work.
They love nature and dogs.
Not cats.
And, um...
No, it's just true.
You can have a cat.
It's totally fine.
But, like, if you're obsessed with cats in, like, this weird, morbid way, posting pictures of, like, a cat...
I mean, a cat has an agenda, okay?
And I've had cats and loved them, but if it's only cats, it's a problem.
It's a sign.
And...
That's not appealing to anyone.
Right?
So you be the light.
You bring the joy.
That is more effective than anything.
And they're like, just smile with your dog.
You know what I mean?
Good evening, Tucker.
My name's Henry.
And three years ago, my father actually passed away.
And when I got to see him on weekends, he was very quiet, man.
Your show was actually the one area of my life that really opened him up.
And it was the one thing that started conversation.
So I sincerely have to say thank you for that.
Thank you.
My question this evening is, as someone who unfortunately is going to have to move to Washington, D.C., what is the area...
homeless problem there as it's kind of threefold with drugs and the debt crisis as well as just lacking social services without the conservative perspective being kind of transitioning to that democratic approach of increased taxpayer-funded social services stuff like that i mean stop paying for it is the truth As a sober person, a long-time sober person, I have true empathy for addiction, of course.
And I mean that.
I'm just saying that.
And I've tried my best to help people with addiction, having been through it.
Homelessness is a manifestation of addiction, clearly.
But overwhelmingly, not all, but overwhelmingly, you're looking at addicts, people addicted to drugs and alcohol.
You know, stop paying for the drugs, and you get fewer drug addicts.
Don't allow the drugs.
It's hard to keep drugs out of your country, but what we're doing is the opposite.
We're just allowing them to flow in, and we're increasing, I think intentionally, the number of drug addicts.
And first, you've got to stop that.
Second, you have to stop paying the NGOs to solve homelessness.
The more money you send to the homeless representatives, the more homelessness you get, obviously.
They're disgusting.
They're poverty parasites.
And you should say that, speaking of no moral high ground, if you're a homeless advocate, encouraging people like the denomination, I won't even name it, that I grew up in, all the tents in Washington where I spent my life that the homeless are living in are provided by I'll say at the Episcopal Church.
And it's like, are you really helping homelessness?
No, you're abetting it.
You're making it permanent.
You're causing it.
And it's unfair to the homeless, but much more important, it's unfair to the people who live there, including me and my family.
This is my view.
I feel sorry for the homeless.
I feel more sorry for my kids.
By the way, who has a right?
Who pays property tax?
At some point, people who do the right thing, I think, get served first.
I feel sorry for the homeless.
I'm a Christian.
I do think the least of these are a true concern for us.
But I also think if you penalize people for working hard and paying taxes, then you don't have any society at all.
And we need to say that and not be embarrassed.
Like, no, you can't live on the sidewalk in front of my house.
I'm sorry.
How about no?
That's how I'd put up with that in my house if I had...
Whatever.
Don't get me going.
I don't want to be self-righteous about it, but...
I'll just say one of the reasons I left D.C. was the homeless thing because it made me so mad to think of members of Congress walking from Union Station, which is the prettiest train station in the United States, totally destroyed by homelessness and drugs, and stepping over the bodies of their fellow Americans dying of fentanyl to go vote for Ukraine.
And I just couldn't deal with that.
That made me so angry.
I was like, I'm becoming a hater.
I have to leave.
And I did.
That right there, like, if you are paying for more homelessness, you are by definition not serving the homeless.
And we should just say that.
We have time.
We have five minutes.
So let's try to get to two more if we can.
Charlie.
No, no, no.
This is the questions that need to be tighter.
So yes, Daisy, where are we at?
Okay, yep.
Hi, Tucker.
Hi, Charlie.
My dad wanted to know, when did you go from wanting to maybe keep your distance from Trump to openly supporting him?
Man, that's, I don't know.
You know, I've thought about that.
I was standing backstage at Madison Square Garden, and it felt totally natural.
I was actually with Trump, and it felt totally natural and fun and It was just great.
But then I had this weird moment where I was like, wow, I can't believe I'm here.
I'm speaking at a politician's rally.
Boy, I've never done that in my life.
I never thought about doing that.
I've always looked down on that.
I actually really dislike politicians.
They're the one group where, you know, contact does not create warmer feelings at all.
You always feel like, if I knew him, I'd probably like him.
That's not true for politicians.
It's like the more you know, the more you dislike.
The deeper the creepiness is.
They're actually really bad.
All of them.
So I just couldn't believe I was there.
And that's sort of the answer to your question.
It was organic.
And part of it was the shooting.
Part of it was the realization that, you know, people always say it's the most important election.
This really was.
And I felt like if the cartel, you know, Kamala Harris, I was never mad at her.
She's just like some hapless chick who, you know, fit the part.
You know, she couldn't even pronounce her own first name consistently.
Like, she was, you know, whatever.
Kamala Harris is wrecking America?
She has no idea what's going on in America.
She's not making any decisions.
She's just like a sad figurehead.
Same with Joe Biden, air quotes, assuming he even exists.
Yeah.
And no, but the people actually running things, Tony Blinken, high on that list, those people are just flat out evil.
They're risking nuclear war and they cannot do this again.
We can't have this.
So then I decided, since I don't really work for anybody anymore, I was like, it just came naturally.
And so I spoke at the Republican convention.
I didn't have a prepared speech.
I didn't even really think about it until I was standing backstage with like two minutes to go.
I was like, wow, I have to give a speech.
And I mean, I always do it that way.
You know, I never write anything down, but I don't have a speech prepared for five minutes from now.
But it's different.
It's Charlie.
I love Charlie.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm speaking to the Republican National Convention.
I have no idea what to say.
And it was crazy how...
Easy it was.
Yeah, because I really felt it.
I really, really felt it.
And part of it is I know Trump well, and Trump can be frustrated.
It's Trump!
But I kind of love Trump.
I'm just being honest.
I don't have to hide it.
I really do.
I like him personally very, very much.
And I just think he's brave, and I think he's great.
So it wasn't as weird as it seemed.
Last question, where are we at?
Then I gotta get Tucker on stage.
Yes, sir.
Hey, so I'm wondering, do you do nicotine?
Me?
Yeah.
No.
Okay, that's what I thought.
And then Tucker, I have one request.
Could you please pack one of your Alps when you're on stage?
The college kids would love that.
I always do.
And I, you know, I was, I've never been embarrassed about it, to be totally honest.
And I grew up in a completely different country and a society, you know, I won't even get into it.
But it was not, you know, everyone I knew used tobacco and I was allowed to use it as a young traveler.
Oh, it's so bad.
But whatever.
But I was, you know, I guess it wasn't putting in people's face, but I just don't, I don't feel bad about it.
I really like it.
And I can say after 41 years of using it, I've gotten a lot out of it.
Sorry.
You know, I don't drink.
I don't use drugs.
I just drink coffee and use a lot of nicotine.
And I guess someone should...
I've asked a million doctors, is this bad?
And they're like, yeah, it's bad.
Why is it bad?
I don't know.
It's bad.
All right, give me a good reason, okay?
Sorry.
You're not supposed to say that, but I really feel that.
