Speaker | Time | Text |
---|---|---|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
Thank you. | ||
Thank you. | ||
Thank you. | ||
I need you so I can pretend All the fears on my mind Help me get it outside I'm thinking everything I'm thinking everything Never means anything Your love is infinite Presence like a sky | ||
All the fears Cause you're there And you're so I can't I need you so I can't I'm thinking everything I'm thinking everything Never means anything | ||
You're waiting better on the east side Put your hands in single one Kissed a real look tight | ||
And a big city with a big city nightlife Doesn't matter how it hits town It was true a little out of line I took you so long to come clean Big city with a big city part Dress Touching that I'm a fool of you Cause it's the old town we're around | ||
And all your movements turn to laughter Big city with a big city actor Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive Shut down baby | ||
Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive Shut down baby Let's go for a drive So you hate the Hollywood fakes It's a cheapskate taste But you know you can relate We're all waiting for our break Looking for something to praise Looking for something to blame Anything you'll escape from this | ||
We're all waiting for our break. | ||
Looking for something to praise. | ||
Looking for something to blame. | ||
Anything you escape from is. | ||
Big city with a big city appetite Big city's gonna eat you alive tonight Big city, big city appetite Big city's gonna eat you alive Keeps gate taste, but you know you can relate. | ||
Big city, big city appetite. | ||
Big city's gonna eat you alive tonight. | ||
Big city, big city appetite. | ||
Big city's gonna eat you alive. | ||
Put your hair down, baby, let's go for a try. | ||
Big city, big city, big city, big city. | ||
Thank you. | ||
Fuck you. | ||
I can't take this shit. | ||
You say you love me, but you don't know. | ||
I ain't been getting moody since you want to use me. | ||
Baby girl, there's usually nothing left for me. | ||
And I've been in a movie searching for what's new to me. | ||
Baby girl, it's you and me. | ||
There's nothing left to see. | ||
I ain't been getting moody since you want to use me. | ||
Baby girl, there's usually nothing left for me. | ||
Baby girl, there's usually nothing left for me. | ||
Hey, what's going on, everybody? | ||
It's me, Nick Fuentes, back with another stream. | ||
Today, we're gonna be watching the Tucker Carlson-Lex Fridman interview. | ||
I had no idea they were gonna do this, but it dropped, I think, yesterday, so I said I just gotta cover it. | ||
So, it's three hours. | ||
unidentified
|
I don't know if we'll watch the whole thing. | |
We'll watch as much of it as you like. | ||
How's that? | ||
We'll watch a lot of it, I think. | ||
Maybe all of it, I don't know. | ||
We'll skip around, because these... I can't do three whole hours, but... | ||
Uh, well, we'll maybe watch most of it. | ||
But anyway, check in in the live chat if you're here. | ||
Say what's up. | ||
What's going on, everybody? | ||
Pop in. | ||
Say hey. | ||
We got FishGroiper, KebabRemover, CalliZoomer, TrumpSellGroiperBurger, AngloZoomer. | ||
What's up, AngloZoomer? | ||
KaiserRev, PanhandleGroiper. | ||
What's up, everybody? | ||
All right. | ||
Let me post on telegram, let everybody know we're live, and then we'll dive into it. | ||
unidentified
|
Let's see. | |
Okay. | ||
All right. | ||
Here we go. | ||
We're locked in. | ||
I'm gonna pause the music so we can hear the stream. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
Depending on the questions you ask. | ||
We can skip the intro. | ||
unidentified
|
What was your first impression when you met Vladimir Putin for the interview? | |
I thought he seemed nervous. | ||
And I was very surprised by that. | ||
And I thought he seemed like someone who'd overthought it a little bit, who had a plan. | ||
And I don't think that's the right way to go into any interview. | ||
My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it's better to know what you think, to say, you know, as much as you can, honestly, so you don't get confused by your own lies. | ||
And just to be yourself. | ||
And I thought that he went into it like an over-prepared student. | ||
And I kept thinking, why is he nervous? | ||
But, you know, I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it. | ||
unidentified
|
But he was also probably prepared to give you a full lesson in history, as he did. | |
Well, I was totally shocked by that and very annoyed because I thought he was filibustering. | ||
I mean, I asked him, as I usually do, the most obvious, dumbest question ever, which is, you know, why'd you do this? | ||
And he had said in a speech that I think is worth reading, I don't speak Russian, so I haven't heard it in the original, but he had said at the moment of the beginning of the war, he had given this address to Russians in which he explained to the fullest extent we have seen so far why he was doing this. | ||
And he said in that speech, I fear that NATO, the West, the United States, the Biden administration will preemptively attack us. | ||
And I thought, well, that's interesting. | ||
I mean, I can't evaluate whether that's a fear rooted in reality or one rooted in paranoia. | ||
But I thought, well, that's well, that's an answer right there. | ||
And so I alluded to that in my question. | ||
And rather than answering it, he went off on this long, from my perspective, kind of... He always says rather. | ||
Have you ever noticed that? | ||
I said this years ago, but I picked up on this. | ||
He always says robber. | ||
Why does he say robber? | ||
Tiresome, um, sort of greatest hits of Russian history. | ||
And the implication I thought was, well, Ukraine is ours or Eastern Ukraine is ours already. | ||
Um, and I thought he was doing that to avoid answering the question. | ||
So, you know, the last thing you want when you're interviewing someone is to get rolled. | ||
Uh, and I didn't want to be ruled. | ||
So I, a couple of times interrupted him politely, I thought, um, but he wasn't having it. | ||
And then I thought, you know what? | ||
I'm not here to prove that I'm a great interviewer. | ||
It's kind of not about me. | ||
I want to know who this guy is. | ||
I think a Western audience, a global audience has a right to know more about the guy. | ||
And so just let him talk. | ||
You know, because it's not, you know, I don't feel like my reputation's on the line. | ||
People have already drawn conclusions about me, I suppose, to the extent they have. | ||
I'm not interested really in those conclusions anyway. | ||
So just let him talk. | ||
And so I calmed down and just let him talk. | ||
And in retrospect, I thought that was really, really interesting. | ||
You know, whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it's relevant to the war in Ukraine or not, that was his answer. | ||
And so it's inherently significant. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, you said he was nervous. | |
Were you nervous? | ||
Were you afraid? | ||
This is Vladimir Putin. | ||
I wasn't afraid at all. | ||
And I wasn't nervous at all. | ||
unidentified
|
Did you drink tea beforehand? | |
I did my normal regimen of nicotine pouches and coffee. | ||
No, I'm not a tea drinker. | ||
I tried not to eat all the sweets they put in front of us, which that is my weakness, is eating crap. | ||
But you eat a lot of sugar, as you know, before an interview, and it does dull you. | ||
So I successfully resisted that. | ||
But no, I wasn't nervous. | ||
I wasn't nervous the whole time I was there. | ||
Why would I be? | ||
I'm 54. | ||
My kids are grown. | ||
I believe in God. | ||
I'm almost never nervous. | ||
No, I wasn't nervous. | ||
I was just interested. | ||
I mean, I couldn't... I'm interested in Soviet history. | ||
I studied it in college. | ||
I've read about it my entire life. | ||
My dad worked in the Cold War. | ||
It was a constant topic of conversation. | ||
And so to be in the Kremlin in a room where Stalin made decisions, either wartime decisions or decisions about murdering his own population, I just couldn't get over it. | ||
We were in Molotov's old office. | ||
So for me, I was just blown away by that. | ||
I thought I knew a lot about Russia. | ||
It turns out I knew a lot about the Soviet period, the 1937 purge trials, the famine in Ukraine. | ||
I knew a fair amount about that, but I really knew nothing about contemporary Russia, less than I thought I did, it turned out. | ||
But yeah, I was just blown away by where we were, and that's kind of one of the main drivers at this stage in my life. | ||
That's why I do what I do is because I'm interested in stuff, and I want to see as much as I can and try and draw conclusions from it to the extent I can. | ||
So I was very much caught up in that, but no, I wasn't nervous. | ||
I didn't think he was going to kill me or something, and I'm not particularly afraid of that anyway. | ||
unidentified
|
Not afraid of dying. | |
Not really, no. | ||
I mean, again, it's an age and stage in life thing. | ||
I mean, I have four children, so there were times when they were little where I was terrified of dying, because if I died, it would have huge consequences. | ||
But no, I mean, at this point, I don't want to die. | ||
I'm really enjoying my life. | ||
I've been with the same girl for 40 years and I have four children who I'm extremely close to, well now five, a daughter-in-law, and I love them all. | ||
I'm really close to them. | ||
I tell them I love them every day. | ||
I don't, I've had a really interesting life. | ||
unidentified
|
What was the goal? | |
Just linger on that. | ||
What was the goal for the interview? | ||
Like, how were you thinking about it? | ||
What would success be like in your head leading into it? | ||
To bring more information. | ||
unidentified
|
Disinformation. | |
To the public. | ||
Yeah, that's it. | ||
I mean, I have really strong feelings about What's, you know, happening, not just in Ukraine or Russia, but around the world. | ||
I think the world is resetting to the grave disadvantage of the United States. | ||
I don't think most Americans are aware of that at all. | ||
And, uh, so that's my view. | ||
And I've, I've stated it many times, um, because it's sincere, but my goal was to You have more information brought to the West so people could make their own decisions about whether this is a good idea. | ||
I mean, I just, I guess I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective, which is, you know, a tiny group of dumb people in Washington has decided to do this for reasons they won't really explain. | ||
And you don't have a role in it at all as an American citizen, as the person who's paying for it, whose children might be drafted to fight it. | ||
Just shut up and obey. | ||
I just reject that completely. | ||
I guess I'm a child of a different era. | ||
I'm a child of participatory democracy to some extent, where your opinion as a citizen is not irrelevant. | ||
And I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy. | ||
And I will say again, I am not an expert on the region or really any region other than say Western Maine. | ||
I'm not Russian. | ||
But it was obvious to me that we were being lied to in ways that were just... It was crazy, the scale of lies. | ||
And I'll give you one example. | ||
The idea that Ukraine would inevitably win this war. | ||
Now, victory was never, as it never is, defined precisely. | ||
Nothing is ever defined precisely, which is always to tell that there's deception at the heart of the claim. | ||
But Ukraine's on the verge of winning. | ||
Well, I don't know. | ||
I mean, I'm hardly a tactician or a military expert. | ||
For the fifth time, I'm not an expert on Russia or Ukraine. | ||
I just look at Wikipedia, Russia has a hundred million more people than Ukraine, a hundred million. | ||
It has much deeper industrial capacity, war material capacity than all of NATO combined. | ||
For example, Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground war, at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined. | ||
That's all of Europe. | ||
Russia is producing seven times the artillery shells as all of Europe combined? | ||
What? | ||
That's an amazing fact, and it turns out to be a really significant fact, in fact, the significant fact. | ||
But if you ask your average person in this country, even a fairly well-informed person of good faith who's just trying to understand what's going on, who's gonna win this war? | ||
Well, Ukraine's gonna win. | ||
They're on the right side. | ||
And they think that because our media, who really just do serve the interest of the US government, period, they are state media in that sense. | ||
Have told him that for over two years. | ||
And I was in Hungary last summer talking to the prime minister, Viktor Orban, who's a, you know, whatever you think of him, he's a very smart guy, very smart guy, like smart on a scale that we're not used to in our leaders. | ||
And I said to him off camera, so is Ukraine gonna win? | ||
And he looked at me like I was deranged or I was congenitally deficient. | ||
Are they gonna win? | ||
No, of course they can't win. | ||
It's tiny compared to Russia. | ||
Russia has a wartime economy. | ||
Ukraine doesn't really have an economy. | ||
No, look at the populations. | ||
He was like, looked at me like I was stupid. | ||
And I said to him, you know, I think most Americans believe that because NBC News and CNN and all the news channels, all of them tell them that because it's framed exclusively in moral terms and it's Churchill versus Hitler. | ||
And of course, Churchill's going to prevail in the end. | ||
And it's just so dishonest that it doesn't even matter what I want to happen or what I think ought to happen. | ||
That's a distortion of what is happening. | ||
And if I have any job at all, which I sort of don't actually at this point, but if I do have a job, it's to just try to be honest. | ||
And that's a lie. | ||
unidentified
|
There is a more nuanced discussion about what winning might look like. | |
You're right. | ||
unidentified
|
A nuanced discussion is not being had, but it is possible for Ukraine to quote unquote win with the help of the United States. | |
I guess that conversation needs to begin by defining terms. | ||
And the key term is win. | ||
What does that mean? | ||
unidentified
|
Peace, a ceasefire, who owns which land? | |
Yes. | ||
unidentified
|
Coming to the table, With, as you call, the parent, the United States. | |
Yes. | ||
unidentified
|
Putting leverage on the negotiation to make sure there's a fairness. | |
Amen. | ||
Well, of course, as a, and I should just restate this, I am not emotionally involved in this. | ||
I'm American in every sense, and my only interest is in America. | ||
I'm not leaving, ever. | ||
And so, I'm looking at this purely from our perspective. | ||
What's good for us? | ||
But also as a human being, as a Christian, I mean, I hate war, and anybody who doesn't hate war shouldn't have power, in my opinion. | ||
So I agree with that definition vehemently. | ||
A victory is like not killing an entire generation of your population. | ||
It's not being completely destroyed to be eaten up by BlackRock or whatever comes next for them. | ||
So yeah, we were close to that a year and a half ago and the Biden administration dispatched Boris Johnson, the briefly prime minister of the UK to stop it and to say to Zelensky, who I feel sorry for by the way, because he's caught between these forces that are bigger than he is, to say, no, you cannot come because he's caught between these forces that are bigger than he is, to say, no, And the result of that has not been a Ukrainian victory. | ||
It's just been more dead Ukrainians and a lot of profit for the West. | ||
It's a moral crime, in my opinion. | ||
And I tried to ask Boris Johnson about it, because why wouldn't I, after he denounced me as a tool of the Kremlin or something? | ||
And he demanded a million dollars to talk to me. | ||
And this just happened last week. | ||
And by the way, in writing, too, I'm not making this up. | ||
I'm not making this up. | ||
unidentified
|
Just for the record, you demanded a million dollars from me to talk to me today. | |
I did! | ||
And you paid! | ||
No, I'm, of course, kidding. | ||
And I said to his guy, I said, I just interviewed Putin, who is widely recognized as a bad guy, and he did it for free. | ||
He didn't demand a million dollars. | ||
He wasn't in this for profit. | ||
Like, are you telling me that Boris Johnson is sleazier than Vladimir Putin? | ||
And of course, that is the message. | ||
And so I guess these are really, it's not just about Boris Johnson being a sad, you know, rapacious fraud, which he is obviously, but it's about like the future of the West. | ||
And the future of Ukraine, this country that purportedly we care so much about, all these people are dying and like, what is the end game? | ||
It's also deranged that I didn't imagine and don't imagine that I could like add anything very meaningful to the conversation because I'm not a genius, okay? | ||
But I felt like I could at the very least puncture some of the lies and that's an inherent good. | ||
unidentified
|
Vladimir Putin, after the interview, said that he wasn't fully satisfied because you weren't aggressive enough. | |
You didn't ask sharp enough questions. | ||
First of all, what do you think about him saying that? | ||
I don't even understand it. | ||
Is that a real laugh? | ||
unidentified
|
Questions. | |
You weren't aggressive enough. | ||
You didn't... Do you think that's a real laugh? | ||
Do you think he's actually tickled? | ||
Or do you think that's... I can't ever tell if it's a put-on laugh, if that's fake, or if that's real. | ||
Like, is that a... | ||
Like a voluntary, involuntary reaction or... What do you guys think? | ||
You think it's real or fake? | ||
unidentified
|
Ask. | |
Sharpen off questions. | ||
Satisfied because you weren't aggressive enough. | ||
You didn't ask. | ||
Sharpen off questions. | ||
First of all, what do you think about him saying that? | ||
I don't even understand it. | ||
The way that he collects himself so quickly makes me think it's fake. | ||
The way that he... Because if you're genuinely tickled by something where you're laughing out loud, you don't just go like... | ||
I don't know. | ||
It's hard to tell, though. | ||
We'll have to, we'll be on the lookout for the next one. | ||
I guess it, it does seem like the one Putin statement that Western media take at face value. | ||
Everything else Putin says is a lie, except his criticism of me, which is true. | ||
But, I mean, I have no idea what he meant by that. | ||
I can only tell you what my goal was, as I've suggested, was not to make it about me. | ||
I watched, you know, he hasn't done any interviews of any kind for years. | ||
But the last interview he did with an English-speaking reporter, Western media reporter, was like many of the other interviews he'd done with Western media reporters. | ||
Mike Wallace's son did an interview with him that was of the same variety, and it was all about him. | ||
You know, I'm a good person, you're a bad person. | ||
And I just feel like that's the most tiresome, fruitless kind of interview. | ||
It's not about me. | ||
I don't think I'm an especially good person. | ||
I've definitely never claimed to be. | ||
But people can make their own judgments. | ||
And again, the only judgments that I care about are my wife and children and God. | ||
So I'm just not interested in proving I'm a good person. | ||
And I just want to hear from Him. | ||
And I had a lot of – I mean, you should see – I almost never write questions down, but I did in this case because I had months – well, I had three years to think about it as I was trying to book the interview. | ||
Which I did myself. | ||
But it was all about internal Russian politics and Navalny, and I had a lot of, I thought, really good questions. | ||
And then at the last second, and you make these decisions, as you know, since you interview people a lot, often you make them on the fly. | ||
And I thought, no, I want to talk about the things that haven't been talked about and that I think matter in a world historic sense. | ||
And the number one among those, of course, is the war and what it means for the world. | ||
And so I stuck to that. | ||
I mean, I could answer. | ||
I did ask about Gershkovich, who I felt sorry for, and I wanted Putin to release him to me, and I was offended that he didn't. | ||
I thought his rationale was absurd. | ||
Well, we want to trade him for someone. | ||
I said, well, doesn't that make him a hostage? | ||
He's a spy! | ||
He's a spy! | ||
That's where that whole, that's where this aw shucks routine falls apart. | ||
Because that's just a total lie. | ||
Like, Tucker's dad was in the CIA. | ||
He knows how this stuff works. | ||
Tucker's been a journalist for 25 years. | ||
To say he was surprised that Putin wouldn't release a spy to a journalist from America? | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, I know. | |
I was insulted. | ||
Why wouldn't he do that? | ||
There's no reason to do that. | ||
So what was that guy? | ||
I don't even know the guy's name. | ||
I know he's from the Wall Street Journal So this is the guides Evan Gershkovich and Evan Gershkovich is an American journalist and reporter, Wall Street Journal, covering Russia. | ||
He was detained by Russia's Federal Security Service on charges of espionage, marking the first time a journalist working for an American outlet had been arrested on charges of spying since the Cold War. | ||
So let's see. | ||
He worked for New York Times, Moscow Times, French press agency, Wall Street Journal. | ||
He lived in Russia for six years prior to his arrest. | ||
He was working in Yekaterinburg when arrested covering the Russian mercenary military group Wagner, Wagner Group. | ||
March 29th the counterintelligence department detained him Does it give any details about why he was arrested I Let's look at this one, CNBC. | ||
unidentified
|
Bruh. | |
Ad blocker. | ||
How do I get rid of my ad blocker? | ||
Bruh, dude. | ||
I just can't. | ||
I just can't, honestly. | ||
I'm just over it. | ||
Everybody on the stream tells me get an ad blocker get an ad blocker. | ||
I do it makes half the internet Non-functional Russian President Putin Said an agreement can be reached Over the release of detained Wall Street journalist Did not outright solicit A swap but indirectly compared The case of Gershkovich To Vadim Krasikov | ||
Well I don't know the details of Gershkovich But to pretend like that's something That's totally off base You know well there was no reason For him not to release this You're in the middle of a war! | ||
The United States is engaged in a war with Russia right now, in case you've been... That's what this whole thing is about! | ||
The United States is supplying Ukraine with intelligence, officers, planning, missiles, anti-aircraft, you name it, To disable the Russian military. | ||
They brag about it. | ||
Lindsey Graham goes out and says, we're killing Russians. | ||
Like, that's what we're paying to kill Russians. | ||
We're paying to destroy their equipment. | ||
And Tucker's like, yeah, I don't know why he didn't release an American prisoner to me for nothing. | ||
That's when you know this aw shucks thing isn't real because he knows that to pretend like he doesn't is just a deception and that's that to me tells me that it's a put on that the whole thing's a put on when he says Well, I'm just asking questions. | ||
I got my family. | ||
I love God. | ||
I just want to learn more. | ||
I just want to see the world. | ||
I don't know why Putin wouldn't release a spy to my custody for nothing. | ||
He wants a prisoner swap? | ||
So what, is he a hostage? | ||
I've never heard of such a thing like this before. | ||
It's like, yeah you have. | ||
You've been a journalist for 25 years. | ||
Your dad was in the CIA. | ||
Your dad fought the Cold War in the CIA propaganda department. | ||
You don't understand how that works? | ||
Of course you understand how that works. | ||
You know, which of course it does. | ||
But other than that, I really wanted to keep it to the things that I think matter most. | ||
You know, people can judge whether I did a good job or not, but that was my decision. | ||
unidentified
|
In the moment, what was your gut? | |
Did you want to ask some tough questions as follow-ups on certain topics? | ||
I don't know what it would mean to ask a tough question. | ||
unidentified
|
Clarifying questions, I suppose they would... I guess. | |
I just wanted him to talk. | ||
You know, I just wanted to hear his perspective. | ||
Again, I've probably asked more asshole questions than like any living American. | ||
As has been noted correctly, I'm a dick by my nature. | ||
I just feel at this stage in my life, I didn't need to prove that I could be like, Vladimir Putin, answer the question! | ||
unidentified
|
Sure, for sure. | |
34 instead of 54, I definitely would have done that because I would have thought this is really about me and I need to prove myself. | ||
No, there's a war going on that is wrecking the U.S. | ||
economy in a way and at a scale people do not understand. | ||
The U.S. | ||
dollar is going away. | ||
That was, of course, inevitable ultimately because everything dies, including currencies. | ||
That death, that process of death has been accelerated exponentially by the behavior of the Biden administration and the U.S. | ||
Congress, particularly the sanctions, and people don't understand what the ramifications of that are. | ||
The ramifications are poverty in the United States, okay? | ||
So I just wanted to get to that because I'm coming at this from not a global perspective, I'm coming at it from an American perspective. | ||
unidentified
|
So you mentioned Navalny. | |
Mm-hmm. | ||
After you left, Navalny died in prison. | ||
Yes. | ||
unidentified
|
What are your thoughts on, just at a high level first, about his death? | |
Well, it's awful. | ||
I mean, imagine dying in prison. | ||
You know, I've thought about it a lot. | ||
I've known a lot of people in prison, a lot, including some very good friends of mine. | ||
Aw, shucks. | ||
unidentified
|
That's awful. | |
Imagine dying in jail. | ||
So I felt instantly sad about it. | ||
You know, Tucker's pretty likable, but some of some of this stuff, it's like, oh, brother, I don't hate him. | ||
And I'm I think the jury's out on whether or not he's some kind of spy or some kind of intelligence. | ||
But when he does that, it just doesn't pass the spell test when he sometimes it's a little bit too much to believe, you know, terrible. | ||
Like, come on, man. | ||
From a geopolitical perspective, I don't know any more than that. | ||
And I laugh at and sort of resent but mostly find amusing the claims by American politicians who really are the dumbest politicians in the world, actually. | ||
You know, this happened and here's what it means. | ||
And it's like, actually, as a factual matter, we don't know what happened. | ||
We don't know what happened. | ||
We have no freaking idea what happened. | ||
We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I don't think you should put opposition figures in prison. | ||
I really don't. | ||
I don't. | ||
Period. | ||
It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I'm against all of it. | ||
But do we know how we died? | ||
Short answer, no, we don't. | ||
Now, if I had to guess, I would say killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of a debate over $60 billion in Ukraine funding, Maybe the Russians are dumb. | ||
I didn't get that vibe at all. | ||
You know, I just don't I don't see it. | ||
But maybe, you know, maybe they killed him. | ||
I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I'm against. | ||
But here's what I do know is that we don't know. | ||
And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny. | ||
It's like, I'm allowed to laugh at that because it's absurd. | ||
You don't know. | ||
unidentified
|
There's a lot of interesting ideas about if he was killed, who killed him. | |
Because it could be Putin. | ||
It could be somebody in Russia who is not Putin. | ||
It could be Ukrainians because it would benefit the war. | ||
They killed Dugin's daughter in Moscow. | ||
Yeah, it's possible. | ||
unidentified
|
And it could be, I mean, the United States could also be involved. | |
I don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes. | ||
Oh, wait. | ||
No, we do it a lot and have for 80 years and it's shameful. | ||
I can say that as an American because it's my money in my name. | ||
Um, yeah, I'm really offended by that. | ||
And I never thought that was true. | ||
And I spent, again, I'm much older than you. | ||
And so I spent my, my, my worldview was defined by the cold war. | ||
And very much in the house I lived in, in Georgetown in Washington DC, you know, that's what we talked about. | ||
And yeah, and the left at the time, you know, I don't know, the wacko MIT professor who I never had any respect for, who I know you've interviewed, etc. | ||
Like the hard left was always saying, well, the United States government is interfering in other elections. | ||
And I just dismissed that completely out of hand. | ||
You didn't learn that until you were middle-aged? | ||
against my country, but it turned out to all be true or substantially true anyway. | ||
And that's been a real shock for me in middle age to understand that. | ||
But anyway, as to- You didn't learn that until you were middle aged? | ||
When precisely did he learn that the United States did that? | ||
That's another, see, that's another thing where, again, you have to understand the household that Tucker Carlson grew up in. | ||
As he said earlier, he said it in this interview, that his father was always talking about the Cold War because his father worked for the CIA. | ||
He was appointed by Ronald Reagan to work in the CIA's propaganda department. | ||
Iran Voice of America, which is a non-military U.S. | ||
propaganda outlet, international, especially during the Cold War, and has worked in foreign governments, at the Hungarian embassy, doing a variety of different things. | ||
And Tucker Carlson has been a journalist for 20-30 years. | ||
He was in Nicaragua with the Contras in the 1980s. | ||
So, let me just replay that. | ||
When exactly did he learn that the United States interferes in other countries' elections? | ||
Because if he said that he learned that in middle age, that is just not true. | ||
That's obviously not true. | ||
I don't know the wacko MIT professor who I never had any respect for, who I know you've interviewed. | ||
Etc. | ||
Like the hard left was always saying, oh, the United States government is interfering in other elections. | ||
And I just dismissed that completely out of hand as stupid and actually a slander against my country. | ||
But it turned out to all be true or substantially true anyway. | ||
And that's been a real shock for me in middle age to to understand that. | ||
But anyway, so he learned. | ||
Yeah, come on now. | ||
So he learned in middle age again. | ||
We go to his dad, Dick Carlson. | ||
And Tucker was adopted by this guy, by the way. | ||
Let's see. | ||
In the summer of 1986, President Reagan announced his intention to nominate Carlson as Associate Director of U.S. | ||
Information Agency. | ||
To succeed, Ernest Pell. Carlson became director of Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded, state-owned, multimedia agency which serves as the U.S. federal government's official institution for non-military external broadcasting. | ||
So it's literally state media. | ||
State propaganda for other countries. | ||
Under the CIA. | ||
It broadcasts 24 hours a day in nearly 50 languages to 130 million people around the world. | ||
He was the longest-serving VOA director in its 50-year history. | ||
In June 1991, he left Voice of America, became ambassador to Seychelles. | ||
I don't know how to pronounce that country. | ||
I know it's off the coast of East Africa. | ||
In March 1992, became CEO of CPB, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people, which I don't know too much about this. | ||
unidentified
|
We could look into that. | |
Publicly funded non-profit. | ||
Oh, so it's an NGO. | ||
Nice. | ||
Corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content, telecom services. | ||
efforts to defund political concerns in In 2004 and 2005, people from PBS and NPR complained CPB was starting to push a conservative agenda. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
And he was running at 1992, King World Public, Foreign Relations, testified dozens of times before congressional committees including Senate Foreign Relations, House Foreign Relations. | ||
He has been involved in negotiations. | ||
On behalf of the US government, with many foreign governments including China, Korea, the Soviet Union, Germany, Costa Rica, Belize, Liberia, Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Morocco, and Israel, He has negotiated on behalf of the government. | ||
That means he's a spy! | ||
That means he's a spy! | ||
If he's not an ambassador, if he's not in the State Department, but he's negotiating on behalf of the government in Asia, Central America, Europe, that means he's a spy! | ||
In 1990, he jointly addressed the Knesset with Malcolm Forbes Jr. | ||
Three years later, addressed the House of Commons with Richard Branson. | ||
He was an international observer at the first democratic elections in South Africa. | ||
He's just like Forrest Gump. | ||
He's everywhere. | ||
He's all over the place. | ||
In 1997, he was an observer at the parliamentary elections in Albania during the Yugoslav Wars. | ||
In 2003, he became the vice chairman of the Foundation for Defensive Democracies, so another state department NGO, was there for eight years. | ||
From 92 to 97, president of Intermedia, which conducts opinion surveys for government agencies in 75 countries, he is currently its chairman. | ||
He was an advisor of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. | ||
He is also a longtime member of the European and Asian Broadcasting Union, Director of Policy Impact, lobbied the U.S. | ||
government on behalf of Viktor Orban. | ||
Sorry, didn't we just like 10 minutes ago, didn't we just hear that Tucker said that Viktor Orban is on a level of intelligence surpassing all of our politicians? | ||
And his dad lobbied the US government on behalf of Viktor Orban and as recently as 2021 worked for the Hungarian government. | ||
Victor Orban was a pig farmer just so you understand So that's crazy Thank you. | ||
That's so crazy that he was running the propaganda outlet during the Cold War. | ||
He was at the Democratic elections in South Africa when the Apartheid regime was overthrown. | ||
He was in Albania in 1997 in the heat of the wars with Kosovo and Serbia and all that. | ||
That's wild. | ||
But Tucker Carlson only learned recently, even though his dad is a bona fide spy, his dad has been a bona fide US spy confirmed for 30 years, 30-40 years, and Tucker just learned recently, huh, that, you know, maybe the government is involved. | ||
This is a little interesting. | ||
He sought an appointment to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Following year, he decided to run for mayor of San Diego in a contentious campaign against Roger Hedgecock, who was under indictment for perjury and conspiracy. | ||
Carlson's campaign came under scrutiny for its close ties to Great American Savings, which had ties to the Reagan White House. | ||
30 employees donated over $4,000 each to his campaign, while only one donated to Hedgcock. | ||
When pressed on the connection and on other campaign issues, he began to skip candidate forums. | ||
A member of the press deemed it difficult to get a hold of him. | ||
After spending $1.2 million on the campaign, outspending Hedgecock by a 2-1 margin, he lost 42-58. | ||
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
hmm I'd like to read more into this That's very interesting. | ||
That is very interesting. | ||
Great American First Savings. | ||
So I wonder what that is Here we go. | ||
Great American Bank. | ||
American Savings and Loan Association in San Diego. | ||
That's a little sus. | ||
Let's see. | ||
What are the ties to the White House? | ||
Very interesting. | ||
Founded by Moses Luce in 1885. | ||
But it says it was founded in, oh no, okay, 1885. | ||
Until the 80s it operated as San Diego Federal Savings and Loan and then it became Great American First in the 80s? | ||
We got to do some further investigation on this because this is pretty sus. | ||
unidentified
|
This is pretty suspicious, this whole deal. | |
What did he do before the campaign? | ||
He was a banker. | ||
Okay, I probably should have started there. | ||
Let's go all the way back. | ||
Hired by KBC-TV in LA, working with Peter Noyes. | ||
He won several awards. | ||
Invited to join as an anchorman and investigative reporter. | ||
Carlson walked away from the job after 18 months, tiring of news, calling it a kid's game that was insipid, sophomoric, superficial, laced with arrogance and hypocrisy. | ||
Sounds a lot like Tucker. | ||
Doesn't Tucker say the same thing? | ||
That the news media is arrogant and hypocritical and sophomoric? | ||
He admitted to being part of that hypocrisy by citing a piece he did that outed a local tennis player as a transgender woman. | ||
As a banker, he joined Great American First Savings, headed by Gordon Luce, former cabinet member, close friend of Ronald Reagan. | ||
Okay, so that's who this guy is. | ||
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
He was appointed English lecturer in Rangoon. | ||
That's very sus. | ||
Whenever somebody is teaching English in Indochina, you know they're a fad. | ||
That's just a little tip I picked up over the years. | ||
If somebody's out there teaching English to Vietnamese or Chinese or Burmese, they're a fad. | ||
Is this the same guy though? | ||
unidentified
|
Maybe it's a different guy. | |
Doesn't mention anything about savings alone here. | ||
unidentified
|
So maybe that's a different guy Dude Thank you. | |
This thing again. | ||
unidentified
|
Hmm, hmm, hmm. | |
Oh, his grandfather founded it in 1885. | ||
This guy was born in, that's why I was confused, because the other one had a real old-time picture, and it said the guy founded it in 1885. | ||
I'm like, that can't be the same guy. | ||
Served in the Army, fought in World War II, went to Stanford. | ||
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
He met Reagan working on Barry Goldwater's campaign in 64. | ||
During Reagan's run for governor in 66, he served as San Diego's County Campaign Chairman. | ||
As Reagan's Secretary of Business and Transportation oversaw a number of agencies, including SNL, real estate insurance. | ||
unidentified
|
Hmm. - Hmm. | |
Mm-hmm. | ||
Well, I'll look into this another time. | ||
I admittedly haven't done a total deep dive on Dick Carlson yet, but suffice to say, without getting carried away, very, very sus that Tucker, his dad, so as you can see, his dad was a spy, and Tucker says, well, I didn't learn until I was middle-aged that the US government interferes in other countries' affairs. | ||
It's like, your dad's been a spy since you were born. | ||
As to Navalny, look, I don't know. | ||
But we should always proceed on the basis of what we do know, which is to say on the basis of truth, knowable truth. | ||
And if you have an entire policymaking apparatus that is making the biggest decisions on the face of the planet on the basis of things that are bullshit or lies You're gonna get bad outcomes every time Every time and that's that's why we are where we are Does it bother you that basically the most famous opposition figure in Russia is sitting in prison? | ||
Well, of course it does Of course it bothers me. | ||
I mean, it bothered me when I got there. | ||
It bothers me now. | ||
I was sad when he died. | ||
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the measures of... It's one of the basic measures of political freedom. | ||
Are you imprisoning people who oppose you? | ||
You know, are you imprisoning people who pose a physical risk to you? | ||
I mean, there's some subjective Decision-making involved in these things. | ||
However, big picture, yeah. | ||
Do you have opposition leaders in jail? | ||
It's not a free, it's not a politically free society, and Russia isn't, obviously. | ||
And as I said, a friend of mine from childhood, an American actually, he was a wonderful person, lives in Russia with his Russian, in Moscow with his Russian wife, and I had dinner with him. | ||
He's a very balanced guy, totally non-political person. | ||
And speaks Russian and loves his many Russian children and loves the culture, and there's a lot to love. | ||
The culture that produced Tolstoy, you know, it's not a gas station with nuclear weapons, sorry. | ||
Only a moron would say that. | ||
It's a very deep culture. | ||
I don't fully understand it, of course, but I admire it. | ||
Who wouldn't? | ||
But I asked him, like, what's it like living here? | ||
And he goes, you know, it's great. | ||
Moscow is a great city, indisputably. | ||
He said, you don't want to get involved in Russian politics. | ||
And I said, what? | ||
He said, well, you could get hurt, you could wind up like Navalny if you did, but also it's just too complicated. | ||
You know, the Russian mind is not exactly the same. | ||
It's a Western, it's a European city, but it's not quite European. | ||
And the way they think is very, very complex, very complex. | ||
It's too complicated, just don't get involved. | ||
And I would just say two things. | ||
I'm not sure. | ||
I mean, I don't know. | ||
But my strong sense is that Navalny's death, whoever did it, probably didn't have a lot to do with the coming election in Russia. | ||
My sense from talking to Putin and the people around him is they're not really focused on that. | ||
I mean, in fact, I asked one of his top advisors, when's the election? | ||
And she looked at me completely confused. | ||
She didn't know the date of the election. | ||
She's like, March? | ||
That's awesome. | ||
And I asked a bunch of other people just in Moscow, who's Putin running against? | ||
Aspirational. | ||
So it's not a real election, right? | ||
In the sense that we would recognize at all. | ||
Second, I was really struck by so many things in Moscow and really bothered by, deeply bothered by a lot of things that I saw there. | ||
Um, but one thing I noticed was the total absence of... I wish it was like that with Trump. | ||
I wish that Donald Trump were president and you would go to the White House and say, hey, when's the election? | ||
People would be like, uh, November? | ||
Who's running against him? | ||
We don't know. | ||
That's aspirational. | ||
Imagine if Trump were president for 25 years and that was the response. | ||
Cult of personality propaganda, which I expected to see and have seen around the world. | ||
Jordan, for example. | ||
I don't know if you've been to Jordan, but go to Jordan. | ||
In every building, there are pictures of the king and his extended family, and that's a sign of political insecurity. | ||
You know, you don't create a cult of personality unless you're personally insecure, and also unless you're worried about losing your grip on power. | ||
None of that. | ||
It's interesting, and I expected to see a lot of it, you know, like statues of Putin. | ||
No, there are no statues of anybody other than like Christian saints. | ||
So that was like, I'm not quite sure. | ||
I'm just reporting what I saw. | ||
So yes, it's not a, in a political sense, it's not a free country. | ||
It's not a democracy in the way that we would understand it, or I don't want to live there. | ||
Okay? | ||
Because I like to say what I think. | ||
In fact, I make my living doing it. | ||
But it's not Stalinist in a recognizable way. | ||
And anyone who says it is should go there and tell me how. | ||
unidentified
|
I mean, this question about the freedom of the press is underlying the very fact of the interview you're having with him. | |
Right. | ||
unidentified
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So you might not need to ask the Navalny question, but did you feel like, are there things I shouldn't say? | |
I mean, how honest do you want me to be? | ||
I mean it when I say I felt not one twinge of concern for the eight days that I was there. | ||
Maybe I just didn't. | ||
And I feel like I've got a pretty strong gut sense of things. | ||
I rely on it. | ||
I make all my decisions based on how I feel, my instincts, and I didn't feel it at all. | ||
Um, my lawyers before I left, and these are people who work for a big law firm, this is not Bob's law firm, this is one of the biggest law firms in the world, said, you're going to get arrested if you do this by the U.S. | ||
government on sanctions violations. | ||
And I said, well, you know, I don't, I don't recognize the legitimacy of that actually, because I'm American and I've lived here my whole life. | ||
And that's so outrageous that I'm happy to face that that risk because I so reject the premise, okay? | ||
I'm an American, I should be able to talk to anyone when I want to and I plan to exercise that freedom, which I think I was born with. | ||
I gave them this long lecture, they're like, we're just lawyers. | ||
But that was, let me put it this way, I don't know how much you dealt with lawyers, but it costs many thousands of dollars to get a conclusion like that. | ||
They sent a whole bunch of their summer associates or whatever. | ||
They put a lot of people on this question, checked a lot of precedent, and I think, and they sent me a 10-page memo on it, and their sincere conclusion was, do not do this. | ||
And of course it made me mad, so I was lecturing on the phone and I had another call with the head lawyer and he said, look, a lot will depend on the questions that you ask Putin. | ||
If you're seen as too nice to him, you could get arrested when you come back. | ||
And I was like, you're describing a fascist country, okay? | ||
You're saying that the US government will arrest me if I don't ask the questions they want asked? | ||
Is that what you're saying? | ||
Well, we just think based on what's happened that that's possible. | ||
I'm just telling you what happened. | ||
So you were okay being arrested in Moscow and arrested in... I didn't think I was... I didn't think for a second... I mean, maybe... Look, I don't speak Russian. | ||
I'd never been there before. | ||
Everything about the culture was brand new to me. | ||
You know, ignorance does protect you, sort of, when you have no freaking idea what's going on. | ||
You're not worried about it. | ||
This has happened to me many times. | ||
There's a principle there that extends throughout life. | ||
So it's completely possible that I was in grave peril and didn't know it, because how would I know it? | ||
I'm like a bumbling English speaker from California. | ||
But I didn't feel it at all. | ||
unidentified
|
But the lawyers did. | |
Yeah, I mean, it scared the crap out of people. | ||
And look, you have to pay in cash. | ||
They don't take credit cards because of sanctions. | ||
And you have to go through all these hoops, just procedural hoops, to go to Russia. | ||
Which I was willing to do because I wanted to interview Putin because they told me I couldn't. | ||
But then there's another fact, which is that I was being surveilled by the U.S. | ||
government, intensely surveilled by the U.S. | ||
government. | ||
And this came out, they admitted it, the NSA admitted it a couple of years ago that they were up in my Signal account. | ||
And then they leaked it to the New York Times. | ||
They did that again before I left. | ||
And I know that because two New York Times reporters, one of whom I actually like a lot, said, oh, you're going, and called other people, oh, he's going to interview Putin. | ||
I hadn't told anybody that, like anybody, like my wife, two producers, that's it. | ||
So they got that from the government. | ||
Then I'm over there, and of course I want to see Snowden, who I admire. | ||
And so we have a mutual friend, so I got his text and come on over, and Snowden does not want publicity at all. | ||
And so, but I really wanted to have dinner with him. | ||
So we had dinner in my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Moscow. | ||
And I said, I tried to convince him, you know, I'd love to do an interview, shoot it on my iPhone. | ||
You know, I'd love to take a picture together and put it on the internet because I just want to show support because I think he's been railroaded. | ||
He had no interest in living in Russia, no intention of being in Russia. | ||
The whole thing is a lie. | ||
But anyway, whatever, all this stuff. | ||
And he just said, respectfully, I'd rather not anyone know that we met. | ||
Great. | ||
The only reason I'm telling you this is because, and I didn't tell anybody and I didn't text it to anybody, okay, except him. | ||
Semaphore, Semaphore, runs this piece saying, reporting information they got from the US intel agencies leaking against me using my money in my name in a supposedly free country. | ||
They run this piece saying I'd met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something. | ||
So again, what my interest is in the United States and preserving freedoms here, the ones that I grew up with, And if you have a media establishment that acts as an auxiliary of, or acts as employees of, the national security state, you don't have a free country. | ||
And that's where we are. | ||
And I'm not guessing, because I spent my entire life in that world. | ||
33 years I worked in big news companies. | ||
And so I know how it works. | ||
I know the people involved in it. | ||
I could name them. | ||
Ben Smith of Semaphore, among many others. | ||
And I find that really objectionable, not just on principle either, in effect, in practice. | ||
You don't want to live in that kind of country. | ||
And people are like, they externalize all of their anxiety about this, I have noticed. | ||
So it's like, Russia's not free! | ||
Yeah, I know. | ||
You know, neither is Burkina Faso. | ||
Most countries aren't free, actually, but we are. | ||
We're the United States, we're different. | ||
And that's my concern, preserving that is my concern. | ||
And so they get so exercised about what's happening in other parts of the world, places they've never been, know nothing about. | ||
It's almost a way of ignoring what's happening in their own country right around them. | ||
I find it so strange and sad and weird. | ||
unidentified
|
So the NSA was tracking you? | |
Do you think CIA was? | ||
Is people still tracking you? | ||
Look, one of the things I did before I went, just because of the business I'm in, all of us are in, and just because we live here, you know, we all have theories about secure communications channels. | ||
Like, Signal is secure, Telegraph isn't, or WhatsApp is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, you can't trust... Okay. | ||
So I thought, you know, before I go over here, I was getting all this We're having all these conversations, my producers and I, about this. | ||
And I decide, you know, I'm just gonna actually find out what's really going on. | ||
So I talked to two people who would know, trust me. | ||
And that's all I can say. | ||
And I hate to be like, oh, I talked to people who would know, but I can't do it. | ||
But I mean it. | ||
They would know. | ||
And both of them said exactly the same thing, which is, are you joking? | ||
Nothing is secure. | ||
Everything is monitored all the time. | ||
If state actors are involved. | ||
I mean, you can keep the, you know, whatever, the Malaysian mafia from reading your texts, probably. | ||
You cannot keep the big intel services from reading your texts. | ||
It's not possible, any of them, or listening to your calls. | ||
So, and that was the firm conclusion of people who've been involved in it, you know, for a long time, decades, both, in both cases. | ||
So, I just thought, you know what? | ||
I don't care. | ||
I don't care. | ||
I'm not sending a ton of naked pictures of myself to anybody. | ||
unidentified
|
Not a ton, just a little. | |
Fifty-four, dude! | ||
Probably not too many. | ||
So the guys travel with three people I work with who I love, who I've been around the world with for many years, and I know them really, really well. | ||
And they all got separate phones, and I'm leaving my other phone back in New York or whatever, and I just decided I don't care, actually. | ||
And I resent having no privacy. | ||
Um, because privacy is a prerequisite for freedom. | ||
Um, but I can't change it. | ||
And so I have the same surveilled cell phone and you know, I do switch them out because there it is. | ||
Uh, because if you have too much spyware on your phone, this is true. | ||
It wrecks the battery and no, I'm serious. | ||
unidentified
|
It does. | |
And we got, it was, I don't know, five or six years ago, we went to North Korea And my phone started acting crazy. | ||
And so I talked to someone on the National Security Council, who actually called me about this, somehow knew that your phone is being surveilled by the South Korean government. | ||
I was like, I like the South Korean government. | ||
Why would they do that? | ||
Because they want more information. | ||
They thought I was talking to Trump or whatever. | ||
But I could tell because all of a sudden the thing would just drain in like 45 minutes. | ||
So that is... | ||
That's the downside. | ||
unidentified
|
So you keep switching phones, getting new phones for the battery life? | |
Yeah, I mean, I try not to do it, you know, I'm kind of... I think that happens to everybody, doesn't it? | ||
I mean, I'm not an expert on Apple products, but I'm pretty sure, doesn't your phone battery die anyway? | ||
If you have it for a long time? | ||
I'm a little bit... | ||
skeptical of some of his claims. | ||
People are saying they want it in 1.5 times. | ||
When they make these claims like, well, they hacked into my Signal account and they knew that the government told the press that I was gonna interview Putin. | ||
It's like, yeah, I don't know if I believe all that stuff. | ||
I don't know how much I buy all that story. | ||
Flinty Yankee type in some ways. | ||
So I don't I don't like to spend a thousand dollars with a freaking Apple corporation too often. | ||
But yeah, I do. | ||
unidentified
|
I mean you say it lightly, but it's really troublesome that he was a journalist would be tracked. | |
Well, they leaked it to semaphore and they leaked it to the New York Times. | ||
But it's I would even put up was nothing I can do. | ||
So I have to put up with everything. | ||
Okay, but I would probably not be actively angry about being surveilled because I'm just so old and I'm actually do pay my taxes. | ||
Sleeping with a makeup artist or whatever, so I don't care that much. | ||
The fact that they are leaking against me, that the intel services in the United States are actively engaged in U.S. | ||
politics and media, that's so unacceptable. | ||
That makes democracy impossible. | ||
There's no defense of that. | ||
And yet NBC News, Ken Delanian, and the rest will defend it. | ||
And it's like, and not just on NBC News, by the way, on the supposedly conservative channels too, they will defend it. | ||
And there's no defending that. | ||
You can't have democracy if the intel services are tampering in elections and information. | ||
Period. | ||
unidentified
|
So you had no fear. | |
You know, your lawyer said, be careful which questions you asked. | ||
You said, I don't have... Well, the lawyer said, no, he said very specifically, if, you know, depending on the questions you ask, Putin... | ||
Um, you know, you could be arrested or not. | ||
And I said, listen to what you're saying. | ||
You're saying the U.S. | ||
government has, like, control over my questions and they'll arrest me if I ask the wrong question? | ||
Like, how are we better than Putin, if that's true? | ||
And by the way, that's just what the lawyer said, but I, I can't overstate, one of the biggest law firms in the United States, smart lawyers we've used for years. | ||
So I was, I was really shocked by it. | ||
unidentified
|
You said leaders kill, leaders lie. | |
Yeah. | ||
I don't believe in leaders very much. | ||
Like, this whole, like, Zelensky's Jesus and Putin's Satan. | ||
It's like, no, they're all leaders of countries, okay? | ||
Like, grow up a little bit, you child. | ||
Do you, have you ever met a leader? | ||
Like, all of the, first of all, anyone who's... I know my way about Hitler. | ||
That's how I, and that's how I feel about Hitler. | ||
It's so funny, you can say that about Putin, but you can't say that about Hitler. | ||
If you say that about Hitler, you are Hitler, and Hitler's evil. | ||
unidentified
|
Uh, so is Hitler. | |
It's power is damaged morally, in my opinion. | ||
You shouldn't be seeking power. | ||
You can't seek power or wealth for its own sake and remain a decent person. | ||
That's just true. | ||
So there aren't any, like, really virtuous billionaires, and there aren't any really virtuous world leaders. | ||
You have grades of virtue. | ||
Some are better than others, for sure. | ||
But I mean, in other words, Zelensky may be better than Putin. | ||
I'm open to that possibility. | ||
But to claim that one is evil and the other is virtuous, it's like you're revealing that you're a child. | ||
You don't know anything about how the world actually is or what reality is. | ||
unidentified
|
That's quite a realist perspective. | |
But there is a spectrum. | ||
There's a spectrum. | ||
Absolutely. | ||
I'm not saying they're all the same. | ||
unidentified
|
They're not. | |
And our task is to figure out where on the spectrum they lie and the leaders. | ||
But I actually reject even that formulation. | ||
I don't think it's always about the leaders. | ||
I mean, of course, the leaders make the difference. | ||
A good leader has a healthy country and a bad leader has a decaying country, which is something to think about. | ||
But it's about the ideas and the policies and the practical effect of things. | ||
So we're very much caught up in the personalities of various leaders, not just our political leaders, but our business leaders, our cultural leaders. | ||
Are they good people? | ||
Do they have the right thoughts? | ||
It's like, no. | ||
I ask a much more basic question. | ||
What are the fruits of their behavior? | ||
And I always make it personal because I think everything is personal. | ||
Does his wife respect him? | ||
Do his children respect him? | ||
How are they doing? | ||
Is the country he runs thriving or is it falling apart? | ||
If your life expectancy is going down, if your suicide rate is going up, if your standard of living is tanking, you're not a good leader. | ||
I don't care what you tell me. | ||
I don't care what you claim you represent. | ||
I don't care about the ideas or the systems that you say you embody. | ||
It's dog-barking to me. | ||
How's your life expectancy? | ||
How's your suicide rate? | ||
What's drug use like? | ||
Are people having children? | ||
Are people's children more likely to live in a freer, more prosperous society than you did, and their grandparents did? | ||
Like, those are the only measures that matter to me. | ||
The rest is a lie. | ||
But anyway, the point is, we just get so obsessed with, like, the theater around people. | ||
Or people. | ||
And we miss the bigger things that are happening, and we allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that what doesn't matter at all matters. | ||
That moral victories are all that matter. | ||
No, actually, facts on the ground victories matter more than anything. | ||
I mean, you certainly see it in this country. | ||
Black Lives Matter, for example. | ||
How many black people did that help? | ||
It hurt a lot of black people, but in the end, we should be able to measure it. | ||
You know, like how many black people have died by gunfire in the four years since George Floyd died? | ||
Well, the number's gone way, way up. | ||
And that was a Black Lives Matter operation. | ||
Do you find the place? | ||
So I think we can say... | ||
unidentified
|
BLM doesn't actually help the black people. | |
It's a factual matter, data-based matter. | ||
Black Lives Matter didn't help black people. | ||
And if it did, tell me how. | ||
Well, these are important moral victories. | ||
I'm over that. | ||
That's just another lie. | ||
You know, a long litany of lies. | ||
So I try to see the rest of the world that way. | ||
But more than anything, I try to see world events through the lens of an American, because I am one. | ||
And what does this mean for us? | ||
And it's not even the war. | ||
It's the sanctions that will forever change the United States, our standard of living, the way our government operates. | ||
That, more than any single thing in my lifetime, screwed the United States. | ||
Levying those sanctions in the way that we did was crazy. | ||
And that was that for me, the main takeaway from my eight days in Moscow was not Putin. | ||
He's a leader with whatever. | ||
None of them are that different, actually, in my pretty extensive experience. | ||
No, it was Moscow. | ||
That blew my mind. | ||
I was not prepared for that at all. | ||
And I thought I knew a lot about Moscow. | ||
My dad worked there on and off in the 80s and 90s, U.S. | ||
government employee, and he was always coming back Moscow. | ||
It's a nightmare and all this stuff, no electricity. | ||
I got there almost exactly two years after sanctions. | ||
Totally cut off from Western financial systems, kicked out of SWIFT, can't use US dollars, no banking, no credit cards. | ||
unidentified
|
Remember, hang on, hang on, hang on, timeout, timeout, timeout, timeout. | |
So remember when Tucker said that he was offended that Putin wouldn't release the Wall Street Journal reporter to his custody? | ||
Why wouldn't he do that? | ||
So he's a hostage? | ||
So wait a second, so your dad throughout the 80s and 90s was actually in Moscow? | ||
As a government employee, government-funded journalist, you don't understand how that works? | ||
So a Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Jewish journalist is in Russia reporting in favor of the Ukraine side during Russia's war with Ukraine. | ||
He gets detained. | ||
Well, what even is that? | ||
I've never heard of such a thing. | ||
Release him to my custody. | ||
I am offended if you don't. | ||
But your dad was in the heart of the Soviet Union? | ||
In the 80s and 90s, working for the government as a Voice of America director? | ||
Yeah. | ||
So something there is not true. | ||
And that city, just factually, I'm not endorsing the system. | ||
I'm not endorsing the whole country. | ||
I didn't go to Lake Bakal. | ||
You know, I didn't go to Turkmenistan. | ||
I just went to Moscow. | ||
Largest city in Europe. | ||
13 million people. | ||
I drove all around it. | ||
And that city is way nicer, outwardly anyway, I don't live there, than any city we have. | ||
By a lot. | ||
And by nicer, let me be specific. | ||
That's not true. | ||
I talked to a Russia Today journalist in Miami, and she said she hated it. | ||
Pacific. | ||
No graffiti. | ||
No homeless. | ||
No people using drugs in the street. | ||
Totally tidy. | ||
No garbage on the ground. | ||
And no forest of steel and concrete soul-destroying buildings. | ||
None of the postmodern architecture that oppresses us without even our knowledge. | ||
Is that even true? | ||
Is that even true? | ||
First of all, you know, Chicago's pretty clean. | ||
There's not garbage on the streets in Chicago, and Chicago's not even a good city anymore, but it's pretty clean, and there's not a ton of homeless people. | ||
Let me pull up Moscow. | ||
Moscow has skyscrapers? | ||
What are you talking about? | ||
They don't have postmodern architecture? | ||
That's just made up. | ||
This is the Moscow... What are you talking about, dude? | ||
What are you talking about? | ||
unidentified
|
That's not postmodern! | |
None of these soul-destroying glass and concrete skyscrapers! | ||
Okay, what am I looking at then? | ||
What am I looking at right here? | ||
And it's like if he's talking about the old town or whatever that they might have in the city, Washington, D.C. is the same way. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
Washington DC doesn't have soul-destroying glass skyscrapers. | ||
If he means, you know, there's maybe a neighborhood by like the Kremlin or the Red Square where it's not like that, look at DC. | ||
DC looks like London. | ||
DC looks like London or Paris or Boston. | ||
There's a building code they can't build over a certain limit. | ||
But if you go to Arlington, Next door, you're going to see the epitome of postmodern skyscrapers architecture. | ||
So what are you talking about, dude? | ||
What are you talking about? | ||
Crap. | ||
It's a truly beautiful city. | ||
And that's not an endorsement of Putin. | ||
And by the way, it didn't make me love Putin. | ||
It made me hate my own leaders. | ||
Because I grew up in a country that had cities kind of like that. | ||
That were nice cities. | ||
That were safe. | ||
And we don't have that anymore. | ||
And how did that happen? | ||
Did Putin do that? | ||
I don't think Putin did that, actually. | ||
I think the people in charge of it, the mayors, the governors, the president, they did that. | ||
And they should be held accountable for it. | ||
unidentified
|
So I think cleanliness and architectural design is not the entirety of the metrics that matter when you measure a city. | |
They're the main metrics that matter. | ||
They're the main metrics that matter. | ||
The main metrics that matter are cleanliness, safety, and beauty, in my opinion. | ||
And one of the big lies that we are told in our world is that, no, something you can't measure that has no actual effect on your life matters most! | ||
Bullshit. | ||
What matters most, to say it again, beauty, safety, cleanliness. | ||
Lots of other things matter, too. | ||
A whole bunch of things matter. | ||
But if I were to put them in order, it's not some theoretical, well, actually, I don't know if you know that the Duma has no powers. | ||
Okay, I get that. | ||
Freedom of speech matters enormously to me. | ||
They have less freedom of speech in Russia than we do in the United States. | ||
We are superior to them in that way. | ||
But you can't tell me that living in a city where, you know, your six year old daughter can walk to the bus stop and ride on a clean bus or ride in a beautiful subway car that's on time and not get assaulted. | ||
That doesn't matter. | ||
No, that matters almost more than anything, actually. | ||
And we can have both. | ||
And like the normal regime defenders and morons, Jon Stewart or whatever he's calling himself, they're like, well, that's the price of whatever he's calling himself. | ||
unidentified
|
That's a dub. | |
Freedom, like people shitting on the sidewalk is the price of freedom. | ||
It's like, you can't fool me because I've lived here for 54 years. | ||
I know that it's not the price of freedom because I lived in a country that was both free and clean and orderly. | ||
So that's not a trade-off I think I have to make. | ||
You can't, that is the beauty of being a little bit older because you're like, no, I remember that actually. | ||
It wasn't what you're saying. | ||
We didn't have racial segregation in 1985. | ||
It was a really nice country that kind of respected itself. | ||
I was here. | ||
And I think with younger people, you can tell them that and they're like, oh, 1985, you were, you know, selling slaves in Madison Square Garden. | ||
It's like, no, you weren't. | ||
You're going to Madison Square Garden and not stepping over a single fentanyl addict. | ||
unidentified
|
It is true. | |
There doesn't have to be a trade-off between cleanliness and freedom of speech. | ||
But it is also true that in dictatorships, cleanliness and architectural design is easier to achieve and perfect and often is done so so you can show off, look how great our cities are while you're suppressing... Of course! | ||
Of course! | ||
I agree with that vehemently. | ||
This is not a defense of the Russian system at all. | ||
And if I felt that way, I would not only move there, but I would announce I was moving there. | ||
I'm not ashamed of my views. | ||
I never have been. | ||
And for all the people who are trying to impute secret motives to my words, I'm like the one person in America you don't need to do that with. | ||
If you think I'm a racist, ask me and I'll tell you. | ||
unidentified
|
Are you a racist? | |
No, I'm a sexist though. | ||
If I was like a defender of Vladimir Putin, I would just say I'm defending Vladimir Putin now. | ||
I'm not. | ||
I am attacking our leaders. | ||
unidentified
|
I am. | |
I am. | ||
I'm defending Putin. | ||
The low expectations of our people. | ||
You don't need to put up with this. | ||
You don't need to put up with foreign invaders stealing from you. | ||
You know, occupying your kid's school. | ||
Your kids can't get an education because people from foreign countries broke our laws and showed up here and they've taken over the school. | ||
That's not a feature of freedom, actually. | ||
That's the opposite. | ||
That's what enslavement looks like. | ||
And so I'm just saying, raise your expectations a little bit. | ||
You can have a clean, functional, safe country. | ||
Crime is totally optional. | ||
Crime is something our leaders decide to have or not have. | ||
It's not something that just appears organically. | ||
I wrote a book about crime 30 years ago. | ||
I thought a lot about this. | ||
You have as much crime as you put up with. | ||
Period. | ||
And it doesn't make you less free to not tolerate murder. | ||
In fact, it makes you unfree to have a lot of murders. | ||
And so I just, but it makes me sad that people are like, well, you know, I guess this is, I can't like live in New York City anymore because of inflation and filth and illegal aliens and people shooting each other. | ||
But you know, I'm just, I'm glad because this is vibrant and strong and free. | ||
It's like, that's not freedom actually at all. | ||
unidentified
|
Your point is well taken. | |
You can have both, but do you regret? | ||
We had both. | ||
That's the point. | ||
We had, I saw it. | ||
unidentified
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Do you regret to a degree using the Moscow subway and the grocery store as a mechanism by which to make that point? | |
No. | ||
I mean, I thought I, I mean, look, I'm one of the more unselfaware people you will ever interview, so to ask me, you know, how will this be perceived? | ||
I literally have no idea and kind of limited interest, but I was just so shocked by it. | ||
I was so shocked by it. | ||
And there were two, and to the extent I regret anything and am to blame for anything, it would be not, and I've done this a lot, not giving it context, not fully explaining why are we doing this. | ||
The grocery store, I was shocked by the prices. | ||
And yes, I'm familiar with exchange rates, but very familiar with exchange rates. | ||
But those don't, and I adjusted them for exchange rates. | ||
And this is two years in to sanctions, total isolation from the West. | ||
So I would expect, in fact, I did expect until I got there that their supply chains would be crushed. | ||
How do you get good stuff if you don't have access to Western markets? | ||
And I didn't fully get the answer, because I was occupied doing other things when I was there, but somehow they have. | ||
And that's the point. | ||
And they haven't had the supply chain problems that I predicted. | ||
In other words, sanctions haven't made the country noticeably worse. | ||
OK, so again, this is commentary on the United States and our policymakers. | ||
Why are we doing this? | ||
It's forcing the rest of the world into a block against us called BRICS. | ||
They're getting off the US dollar. | ||
That will mean a lot of dollars are going to come back here and destroy our economy and impoverish this country. | ||
So the consequences, the stakes are really high. | ||
They're huge. | ||
And we're not even hurting Russia. | ||
It's like, what the hell are we doing? | ||
One, on the subway. | ||
That subway was built by Joseph Stalin. | ||
Right before the Second World War. | ||
I'm not endorsing Stalin, obviously. | ||
Stalinism is a thing that I hate, and I don't want to come to my country. | ||
I'm making the obvious point that for over 80 years you've had these frescoes and chandeliers, maybe they've been redone or whatever, but like somehow the society has been able to not destroy what its ancestors built. | ||
The things that are worth having, and they're a lot. | ||
And that, like, why don't we have that? | ||
And even on a much more terrestrial plane, like, why can't I have a subway station like that? | ||
Why can't my children who live in New York City ride the subway? | ||
A lot of people I know who live in New York City are afraid to ride the subway, young women especially. | ||
That's freedom? | ||
No. | ||
Again, it's slavery. | ||
And how can, if Putin can do this, why can't we? | ||
Like, what? | ||
It's not, in other words, I mean, this is, like, so obvious. | ||
I'm a traitor? | ||
Okay. | ||
So if I'm calling for American citizens to demand more from their government and higher standards for their own society and remember that just 30 years ago we had a much different and much happier and cleaner and healthier society, Where everyone wasn't fat with diabetes at 40 from poisoned food. | ||
Like, how is that? | ||
I'm not a traitor to my country. | ||
I'm a defender of my country. | ||
By the way, the people calling me a traitor, they're all like, you know, they're not, I would not say they're people who put America's interests first. | ||
unidentified
|
There's many elements, like you said, you don't like Stalinism. | |
You know, you're a student of history. | ||
Central planning is good at building subways in a way that's really nice. | ||
The thing that accounts for New York subways, by the way, there's a lot of really positive things about New York subways. | ||
Not cleanliness, but the efficiency, like the accessibility, how wide it spreads. | ||
The New York network is incredible. | ||
But Moscow, under different metrics, results of a capitalist system. | ||
You actually said that you don't think US is quite a capitalist system, which is an interesting question. | ||
We have more central planning here than they do in Russia. | ||
unidentified
|
No, that's not true. | |
Of course it is. | ||
unidentified
|
You think that's true? | |
The climate agenda? | ||
Of course. | ||
They're telling... The U.S. | ||
government has, in league with a couple of big companies, decided to change the way we produce and consume energy. | ||
There's no popular outcry for that. | ||
There's never been any mass movement of Americans who's like, I just... I hate my gasoline-powered engine. | ||
No more diesel! | ||
That has been central planning. | ||
That is central planning. | ||
And you see it up and down our economy. | ||
There's no free market in the United States. | ||
You get crossways with the government, you're done. | ||
If you're at scale, I mean, maybe you've got a barbershop or a liquor store or something, but even then, you're regulated. | ||
By politicians. | ||
And so, no, I actually am for free markets. | ||
I hate monopolies. | ||
Our economy is dominated by monopolies. | ||
Completely dominated. | ||
unidentified
|
Like what do you mean? | |
Google. | ||
What percentage of search does Google have? | ||
unidentified
|
90? | |
Google's a monopoly by any definition, and Google is just rich enough to continue doing whatever it wants in violation of U.S. | ||
unidentified
|
law. | |
So there's no monopoly in Russia as big as Google. | ||
I'm not, again, defending the Russian system. | ||
I'm calling for a return to our old system, which was sensible and moderate and put the needs of Americans at least somewhere in the top ten. | ||
Somewhere in the top 10. | ||
I'm not saying that Standard Oil was like interested in the welfare of average Americans, but I am saying that there was a constituency in our political system in the Congress, for example, different presidential candidates were like, no, wait a second. | ||
What is this doing to people? | ||
Is it good for people or not? | ||
There's not even a conversation about that. | ||
It's like, shut up and submit to AI. | ||
And no offense. | ||
unidentified
|
And so I'm just- Offense taken. | |
We will get you. | ||
You'll be the first one to know. | ||
Well, as a white man, I just won't even exist anymore. | ||
unidentified
|
So much to say on that one. | |
I bet when you Google my picture, 20 years from now, it'll be a black chick. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, I hope she's attractive. | |
I hope so, too. | ||
unidentified
|
It'd probably be an upgrade. | |
So, well, the central planning point is really interesting, but I just don't... I don't know where you're coming from. | ||
There's a capitalist system... I mean, the United States is one of the most successful capitalist systems in the history of Earth. | ||
So he just has... All that he has are these Steve Pinker humanist talking points saying, free market lifted a billion people out of poverty. | ||
We're the most free market country. | ||
But Tucker's actually right. | ||
It's not the country does not resemble a free market at all. | ||
There is no real private enterprise. | ||
And and he made an important distinction. | ||
He said if you're starting a small time business like a liquor store barbershop, you're OK. | ||
But he's exactly right. | ||
The higher you go, the more regulated it becomes. | ||
And and he's right. | ||
The climate thing, I feel like that was their next big play and I think it got deferred by a few developments like COVID. | ||
Because if you pay attention to the 2016 election and the rhetoric, even in the Democratic primary in 2019 and 2020, | ||
Before the pandemic it was all shaping up to be about climate, you know, it's the ICLEI It's the agenda 2030 And all that stuff environmental social governance I mean environment was supposed to be a huge part of it and that's how they redefine property ownership Because under the guise of climate they're able to effectively recategorize a lot of property and subjected to their jurisdiction, so He's right about that. | ||
There is a lot of manipulation and it's true how many monopolies there are. | ||
When you look at most of the most important industries, it is dominated by just a few major companies. | ||
That's true of almost everything in the tech sector. | ||
You could call it a monopoly or an oligopoly. | ||
You know, I mean, look at like, uh, X. What is the competitor to Twitter as a microblog tech platform? | ||
Is there one other competitor in the space? | ||
You might say Gab or TruthSocial, but what's the user base on those platforms? | ||
X, they say, is 300 to 500 million. | ||
Does TruthSocial come close? | ||
Does Gab come close? | ||
Does Telegram? | ||
Telegram's not a microblog. | ||
Different. | ||
But there is no other microblog. | ||
Same thing with... I mean, in the TikTok space, there's a little bit of competition. | ||
YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. | ||
But, I mean, really in terms of American tech, TikTok is, of course, Chinese. | ||
American tech, you've got Meta. | ||
That's really it. | ||
You got Meta, you got Google. | ||
Google runs the search platform, they run YouTube, Meta runs Facebook and Instagram, you have X which is a microblog, and Amazon runs Twitch. | ||
And Amazon also is the number one, it's an e-commerce giant, it's like half of all e-commerce in America. | ||
So, the most valuable companies, Apple as well, you know, Apple's by far and away the number one American phone company, and in terms of a lot of the hardware. | ||
By far and away the most valuable industry that America has, which is the tech industry, the most valuable companies, they're monopolies. | ||
And they're monopolies protected by the law. | ||
They're monopolies protected by regulation. | ||
So, that's 100% right. | ||
And people like Lex, they just have this kind of ancient, it's basically just an anachronism to say that America is this liberal free market democracy that, like I said, it's that Steve Pinker humanism thing, neoliberal thing, it's very trendy these days, but it just isn't true. | ||
What's the most successful? | ||
I'm just saying that I think it's changed a lot in the last 15 years and that we need to update our assumptions about what we're seeing. | ||
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
And that's true up and down. | ||
That's true with everything. | ||
It's true with your neighbor's children who you haven't seen in three years and they come home from Wesleyan and you're like, oh, you've grown. | ||
That is true for the world around us as well. | ||
And most of our assumptions about immigration, about our economy, about our tax system are completely outdated if you compare them to the current reality. | ||
And so I'm just for updating my files. | ||
And I have a big advantage over you because I am middle-aged. | ||
And so I don't... | ||
unidentified
|
You've called yourself old so many times. | |
I don't trust my perceptions of things. | ||
So I'm constantly trying to be like, is that true? | ||
I should go there. | ||
You know, I should see it. | ||
And I guess just in the end, I trust direct perceptions. | ||
I don't trust the internet, actually. | ||
Wikipedia is a joke. | ||
Wikipedia could not be more dishonest. | ||
It's certainly in the political categories or things that I know a lot about. | ||
Occasionally I read an entry written about something that I saw or know the people involved. | ||
I'm like, well, that's a complete liar. | ||
You left out the most important fact. | ||
And it's like, it's not a reliable guide to reality or history. | ||
And that will accelerate with AI where history or perception of the past is completely controlled and distorted. | ||
So I think just getting out there and seeing stuff and seeing that Moscow was not what I thought it would be, which was a smoldering ruin, you know, rats in a garbage dump. | ||
It was nicer than New York. | ||
What the hell? | ||
unidentified
|
Direct data is good, but it's challenging. | |
For example, if you talk to a lot of people in Moscow or in Russia and you ask them, is there censorship? | ||
They will usually say, yes, there is. | ||
Oh, yeah, of course there is. | ||
Well, I agree. | ||
I mean, just to be clear, I'm not I have no plans to move to Russia. | ||
I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia. | ||
Ed Snowden, who is the most famous openness transparency advocate in the world, I would say, along with Assange, doesn't want to live in Russia. | ||
He's had problems with the Putin government. | ||
He's attacked Putin. | ||
They don't like it. | ||
I mean, I get it. | ||
I get it. | ||
I'm just saying. | ||
What are the lessons for us? | ||
And the main lesson is we are being lied to, like, in a way that's bewildering and very upsetting. | ||
I was mad about it all eight days I was there, because I feel like I'm better informed than most people because it's my job to be informed, and I'm skeptical of everything, and yet I was completely hoodwinked by it. | ||
I would just recommend to everyone watching this, like, you think you know, like, if you're really interested, if you're one of those people, and I'm not one, but who's like waking up every day and you've got a Ukrainian flag on your Mailbox or whatever your ukrainian lapel pin or absurd theater, but if you like sincerely care about ukraine or russia or whatever Why don't you just hop on a plane for 800 bucks and go see it? | ||
Okay. | ||
No, that doesn't occur to anyone to do that And I know it's time consuming and kind of expensive sort of not really Um, but you benefit so much. | ||
I mean I could bore you for like eight hours And I know you've had this experience where you think you know what something is, or you think you know who someone is, and then you have direct experience of that place or person, and you realize all your preconceptions were totally wrong. | ||
They were controlled by somebody else. | ||
In fact, I won't betray confidence, but off the air, we were talking about somebody, and you said, I couldn't believe the person was not at all like what I thought. | ||
unidentified
|
That's happened to me- In the positive direction. | |
In the positive direction. | ||
By the way, for me, it's almost always in that direction. | ||
Most people I meet, and I've had a great- Privilege of meeting a lot of people over all this time. | ||
They're way better than you think, or they're more complicated, or whatever. | ||
But the point is, a direct experience unmediated by liars, there's no substitute for that. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, on that point, direct experience in Ukraine. | |
So I visited Ukraine, and witnessed a lot of the same things you witnessed in Moscow. | ||
So first of all, beautiful architecture. | ||
Yes! | ||
unidentified
|
And this is a country that's really in war. | |
So it's not... Oh, for real? | ||
unidentified
|
Like, for real, where most of the men are either volunteering or fighting in the war, and there's actual tanks in the streets that are going into your major city of Kiev, and still the supply chains Are working. | |
Yes. | ||
unidentified
|
A handful of months after the start of the war. | |
Everything is working. | ||
The restaurants are amazing. | ||
Most of the people are able to do some kind of job. | ||
Like the life goes on. | ||
Cleanliness, like you mentioned. | ||
I love that. | ||
unidentified
|
Security, like it's incredible. | |
Like there's the crime went to zero. | ||
They gave out guns to everybody. | ||
The Texas strategy. | ||
It does work. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
When you witness it, you realize, okay, there's something to these people. | ||
There's something to this country that they're not as corrupt as you might hear. | ||
Right. | ||
You hear that Russia is corrupt. | ||
Ukraine is corrupt. | ||
You assume it's just all going to go to shit. | ||
So that's been, and I haven't been to Ukraine and I've certainly tried and they put me on some Kill him immediately, List, so I can. | ||
I've tried to interview Zelensky. | ||
He keeps denouncing me. | ||
I just want an interview with him. | ||
He won't. | ||
Unfortunately, I would love to do it. | ||
unidentified
|
I hope you do. | |
I do, too. | ||
But one of the things that bothers me most, I'd love to hear that, what you just said about Kyiv. | ||
But I'm not really surprised. | ||
One of the things that I'm most ashamed of is the bigotry that I felt towards Slavic people, also toward Muslims, let's be totally honest, because I lived through decades of propaganda from NBC News and CNN, where I worked, you know, about this or that group of people and they're horrible or whatever. | ||
And then you wind, and I kind of believed it. | ||
And I see it now, like, we can't even put the word Russia at Wimbledon because it's so offensive. | ||
What does the tennis player have to do with it? | ||
Did he invade Ukraine? | ||
I don't think he did. | ||
You know, stealing all these business guys' yachts and denouncing them as oligarchs. | ||
What do they have to do with it? | ||
You know, whatever. | ||
Here's my point. | ||
The idea that a whole group of people is just evil because of their blood. | ||
I just don't believe that. | ||
Okay, but it isn't... Okay, but that... I don't agree with that. | ||
I mean, I don't agree with the war against Russia, but if you are engaged in a war with Russia and the goal is regime change, it's not about hating Slavic people. | ||
I don't think it's an anti-Slav thing at all. | ||
You punish the oligarchs so that the oligarchs will exert pressure against Putin. | ||
That's the purpose of that. | ||
You sanction the rich people so that they might conspire to overthrow Putin. | ||
At least that was what was even said more or less explicitly two years ago when the war started. | ||
So it's got nothing to do with the tennis player. | ||
It's not because he's ethically Russian. | ||
It's because he's a representative of a pariah state or a revisionist power. | ||
According to the security apparatus. | ||
So I'm not defending that. | ||
I don't think we should be doing the war. | ||
But if you are in a war, you do those things. | ||
So to say that it's some kind of anti-Slavic prejudice, I don't think that has any basis. | ||
I think it's immoral to think that. | ||
And I can just tell you my own experience after eight days there. | ||
I think it's a really interesting culture, Slavic culture, which is shared, by the way, by Russia and Ukraine. | ||
Of course, they're their first cousins at the most distant. | ||
And I. | ||
I found them really smart and interesting and informed. | ||
I didn't understand a lot of what they're saying. | ||
I don't understand the way their minds work because I'm American, but it wasn't a thin culture. | ||
It's a thick culture, you know? | ||
And I admire that. | ||
And I wish I could go to Ukraine. | ||
I would go tomorrow. | ||
unidentified
|
So I think after you did the interview with Putin, you put a clip, I think on TCN, where like your sort of analysis afterwards. | |
It wasn't much of an analysis. | ||
unidentified
|
No, but what stood out to me is you were kind of talking shit about Putin a little bit. | |
Like you were criticizing him. | ||
Why wouldn't I? | ||
unidentified
|
It spoke to the thing that you mentioned, which is you weren't afraid. | |
It would be badass if you criticize Putin for killing journalists. | ||
He is such a faggot, dude. | ||
and made the point you were making, but also criticized Putin, right? | ||
Criticized that there is a lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the president in the supermarket. | ||
It would be, it would be badass if you criticize, if you criticize Putin for killing journalists, he is such a faggot, dude. | ||
He is the worst. | ||
It would be totally freaking badass if you wore a Ukraine lapel pin and said, listen up, Putin, stop. | ||
Stop killing journalists! | ||
Navalny was a CIA agent and Russia didn't kill him. | ||
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
Oh, you mean if I also said that? | ||
Well, yeah, I mean, of course I think that. | ||
I'm not... So, I guess part of it is that I'm a little... Because I have such a low... Max Friedman hates Russia because he's a Jew. | ||
Because he is a Ashkenazi Jew. | ||
And he hates the Tsar. | ||
He hates the Tsar because the Tsar discriminated against the Jews and the Tsar... Well, what is the Tsar? | ||
Does anyone know where that comes from? | ||
Tsar comes from Caesar. | ||
Caesar, Tsar, Caesar, Tsar. | ||
And what the Russians believe, it's a big part of the Russian consciousness, that the Tsar is the third successor to the Roman Caesar. | ||
That Rome migrated from west to east. | ||
that Rome started in Rome, went east then to Constantinople, and the Russians believe that they are the inheritor of the Roman Empire from Constantinople. | ||
So they have their Tsar, they have their Caesar, they have their Rome. | ||
And of course, the Caesar in Constantinople was religious as well as a secular authority. | ||
They had a concept called Cesaro-Papism. | ||
And so the Jews have a special hatred for Russia because the Jews have always hated Rome. | ||
The Jews believe that Rome is Esau. | ||
They believe that Rome and Israel are twin brothers, like Esau and Jacob are rather just brothers, and that are set against each other, that are hostile towards each other, and that the lesser, or the younger will serve, or the older will serve the younger. | ||
So the Bible story goes. | ||
So, there is a long history of Jews hating Russia because of the Pale of Settlement, because of the policies by Alexander III, after the Jews killed, I think it was Alexander II, and they also hate Russia because of the anti-Jewish discrimination there, because they're Orthodox, | ||
A lot of the high-ranking bishops were anti-Semitic that influenced the Tsar. | ||
And so all these people then came to the United States like Lex Fridman or their grandparents did or their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. | ||
And they told the Jews here in America about how horrible Russia was and how they were segregated and they were put in ghettos and they were blamed for killing the Tsar and all that. | ||
So they hate, they hate Russians. | ||
But of course, The Jews are not the victims. | ||
The Jews instigated a lot of the problems in Europe, and then that is why they were discriminated against. | ||
The Jews were the Bolsheviks. | ||
The Jews were also the anarchists. | ||
Because it wasn't just communists that were the problem. | ||
In 19th century Russia, there were a lot of different types of revolutionaries. | ||
There were liberals, there were anarchists, there were communists, there were socialists. | ||
And the Jews made up a significant percentage of a lot of those groups. | ||
So... | ||
You know, the Jews were instigators. | ||
Just like how in Germany, all the communist revolutions in the interwar period came from German Jews. | ||
And then they say, well, Hitler came and attacked us for nothing. | ||
It's like, well, the Jews were the progenitors of the transsexualism and the homosexuality. | ||
They were the authors of the communist revolutions and other subversive activities. | ||
And then they got, uh, there was retaliation by the law. | ||
And then they say, well, we were just victims. | ||
Same is true in Russia. | ||
But it's sort of like a divorce. | ||
It's sort of like that TikTok thing where that TikToker is talking about how her dad left her when she was a girl and didn't pay for healthcare. | ||
Have you seen this? | ||
That Maddie Hart girl? | ||
And then dad comes in and goes, well, she's just been brainwashed by her mom. | ||
And that's kind of like the Jews. | ||
They're very feminine in that way because they're the eternal victim. | ||
So Lex Fridman just hates Russia. | ||
Just like Victoria Nuland, just like all the neocons in the State Department that are... Just like Ben Shapiro. | ||
Ben Shapiro descends from Lithuanian-Russian Jews. | ||
That's where his ancestors came from one or two generations ago. | ||
So Shapiro hates Russia. | ||
Friedman hates Russia. | ||
They hate Russia because their great-grandparents told them about the Pale of Settlement and all that stuff. | ||
So, Alexander III, the Jew, hates the Tsar. | ||
opinion of the commentariat in the United States and the news organizations which really do just work for the US government. | ||
I mean, I really see them as I did Izvestia and Pravda in the 80s. | ||
Like, they're just organs of the government, and I think they're contemptible. | ||
I think the people who work there are contemptible, and I say that as someone who knows them really well personally. | ||
I think they're disgusting. | ||
I'm a little bit cut off, kind of, from what people are saying about me because I'm not interested. | ||
So I try not to be defensive. | ||
Like, see, I'm not a tool of Putin. | ||
But the idea that I'd be flacking for Putin when, you know, my relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. | ||
Like, I'm as American as you could be. | ||
It's, like, crazy to me. | ||
Ann Applebaum calls me a traitor. | ||
Okay, right. | ||
It's just like so dumb. | ||
But no, of course they don't have freedom. | ||
No country has freedom of speech other than us. | ||
Canada doesn't have it. | ||
Great Britain definitely doesn't have it. | ||
France, Netherlands. | ||
These are countries I spend a lot of time in. | ||
And Russia certainly doesn't have it. | ||
So that's why I don't live there. | ||
I'm just saying our sanctions don't work. | ||
That's all I was saying. | ||
And we don't have to live like animals. | ||
We can live with dignity. | ||
Even the Russians can do it. | ||
That's kind of what I was saying. | ||
Even the Russians under Vladimir freaking Putin can live like this. | ||
And no, it's not a feature of dictatorship. | ||
That's the most, I think, discouraging and most dishonest line. | ||
By people like Jon Stewart, who really are trying to prepare the population for accepting a lot less. | ||
He is really a tool of the regime in a sinister way. | ||
Always has been. | ||
Like, how dare you expect that? | ||
What are you, a Stalinist? | ||
It's like, no. | ||
I'm an American. | ||
I'm like a decent person. | ||
I just want to be able to walk to the grocery store without being murdered. | ||
Is that too much? | ||
unidentified
|
Shut up! | |
You don't believe in freedom! | ||
It's really dark if you think about it, you know? | ||
unidentified
|
So there is a fundamental way in which you wanted Americans to expect more. | |
You don't have to live like this. | ||
We don't have to live like this. | ||
You don't have to accept it. | ||
You don't. | ||
And everyone's afraid in this country they're going to be shut down by the Tech oligarchs or have the FBI show up at their houses or go to jail and people are legit afraid of that in the United States and my feeling is So like show a little courage like what is it worth to you for your grandchildren to live in a free prosperous country? | ||
It should be worth more than your comfort. | ||
unidentified
|
That's how I feel We should make clear that you know by many measures you look at the World Press Freedom Index You're right us is not at the top Norway Norway is us is scores 71 same as Gambia Ukraine is 61, and Russia is 35. | |
The lower it is, the worse. | ||
Close to China at 23, and North Korea at the very bottom at 22. | ||
Didn't Ukraine put Gonzalo Lira in jail until he died for criticizing the government? | ||
How can they have a high press? | ||
unidentified
|
Yes, that's why they're 61 out of 0 to 23. | |
I don't know what the criteria are they're using to arrive at that, but I know press freedom when I see it. | ||
I try to practice it, which is saying what you think is true, correcting yourself when you've been shown to be wrong, as I have many times, being as honest as you can be all the time, and not being afraid. | ||
And those are wholly absent in my country, wholly absent. | ||
People are afraid in the news business, I would know. | ||
Since I spent my life working there, and they're afraid to tell the truth. | ||
They're under an enormous amount of pressure, and a lot of them have little kids and mortgages. | ||
I've been there. | ||
So I have sympathy, but they go along with things. | ||
Like, you are not allowed, if you stand up at any cable channel, any cable channel in the United States, and say, wait a second, how did the Ukrainian government throw a U.S. | ||
citizen into prison until he died for criticizing the Ukrainian government? | ||
And we're paying for that. | ||
That's what's offensive to me. | ||
We're paying for it. | ||
That happens all the time around the world, of course. | ||
But this is a U.S. | ||
citizen, and we're paying the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats. | ||
Like, we are the Ukrainian government at this point. | ||
And, like, if you said that on TV, on any channel, well, you'd lose your job for that. | ||
So, like, that's not... I don't care. | ||
Norway is at the top. | ||
Really, Norway. | ||
If I went on Norwegian television and said, NATO blew up Nord Stream, which it did. | ||
NATO blew up Nord Stream. | ||
The United States government, with the help of other governments, blew up, committed the largest acts of industrial terrorism in history, and by the way, the largest environmental crime, the largest emission of CO2, methane. | ||
Could I keep my job now? | ||
So how is that a free press? | ||
unidentified
|
Well, we don't know that. | |
I mean, the whole point is... In Norway? | ||
Yes. | ||
Well, as a Scandinavian, I can tell you, they would not put up with that in Norway for a second. | ||
unidentified
|
It's been a while. | |
Are you deviating from the majority? | ||
No. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, deviating maybe is frowned upon, but do you have the freedom to say it if you do deviate? | |
That's the question. | ||
Can you keep your job? | ||
That's one measurement of it. | ||
It's not the only measurement. | ||
Obviously being thrown into prison is much worse than losing a job. | ||
I've been fired a number of times for saying what I think, by the way. | ||
And it's fine. | ||
I've enjoyed it. | ||
I don't mind being fired. | ||
I've always become a better person after it happened. | ||
But it is one measurement of freedom. | ||
If, you know, if you have the theoretical right to do something, but no practical ability to do it, do you have the right to do it? | ||
And the answer is not really, actually. | ||
unidentified
|
You mentioned Jon Stewart. | |
The two of you have a bit of a history. | ||
I don't know if you've seen it, but he kind of grilled your supermarket and subway videos. | ||
Have you got a chance to see it? | ||
I haven't seen it, but someone characterized it to me, which is why I pivoted against it early in our conversation about how the price of freedom is living in filth and chaos. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, that was essentially it. | |
So in 2004, that's 20 years ago, Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire, a show you hosted, and that was kind of a... | ||
Memorable moment. | ||
Can you tell the saga of that as you remember it? | ||
I mean, for me, you know, as I was saying to you before about how it takes a long time to digest and process and understand what happens to you, or at least it does for me, I didn't understand that as a particularly significant moment while it was happening. | ||
I just got off the plane. | ||
Norway, by the way, I just want to jump in here before we get away from it. | ||
The Norway thing is, like, these people just have no real understanding. | ||
They have no real Um, encounter with how the world really works. | ||
When you say things like, well, the Press Freedom Index, who makes the Press Freedom Index? | ||
Is that an objective measure? | ||
So, from the start, when people use these things like, well, the Gini Coefficient, or the Freedom Index, the Press Index, those are not real. | ||
Those are not quantifiable. | ||
Those are... People are making those judgments. | ||
They can set the parameters For what they're looking for, and how they quantify that, and they can get the result that they'd like. | ||
That's one. | ||
So to say, well, our press freedom index, that's a meaningless, that's a meaningless measure. | ||
That's one. | ||
Two, when you say that Norway is number one in press freedom, Norway is not the empire that runs the world. | ||
So, what's the population of Norway? | ||
How much, what percentage do they spend from their GDP on their military? | ||
The United States has a nuclear arsenal. | ||
The United States has military bases on every continent. | ||
The United States has branches or divisions within their military for every corner of the globe. | ||
The United States protects international shipping and it goes on and on and on. | ||
The UN is headquartered in the United States. | ||
So, yeah, the United States is going to treat the press a little bit differently than Norway. | ||
Which is an outpost of the United States. | ||
And it's not, listen, you know, I love Europe, I love Europeans and everything, but it's just fundamentally different. | ||
If Norway had the same global importance as the United States, The way that they treat the press would reflect that. | ||
And I'm not defending that. | ||
I'm a victim of censorship, of course. | ||
I'm a victim of all that stuff. | ||
I've been subpoenaed by the government, put on a federal no-fly list without a trial, without a charge, had my bank accounts frozen, all that. | ||
I've had bank accounts banned. | ||
I've had credit card processors ban me. | ||
I'm banned from all major social media. | ||
So believe me, I get it. | ||
I'm the biggest victim of that. | ||
By the same token, you understand why things are the way that they are. | ||
And they're probably worse than they ever happened in terms of censorship, in terms of control, but to say, you know, Denmark and Norway are the most happy! | ||
It's like, yeah, maybe if you completely ignore the composition of those countries, if you ignore the demographic composition, if you ignore their economic development, if you ignore global importance, global firepower, Huge difference. | ||
The country that is a steward and custodian of a nuclear arsenal, it's a different place than Denmark, than a freaking island city, an island city-state. | ||
So I just wanted to throw that out there. | ||
I was out of it, as usual. | ||
And I was very literal, as usual. | ||
And so from my perspective, his criticism of me, to the extent I remember it, was that I was a partisan. | ||
Well, he had two criticisms. | ||
One, that Crossfire was stupid, which it certainly was. | ||
In fact, I'd already given my notice that I was moving on to another company by that point. | ||
Crossfire was stupid. | ||
Crossfire didn't help. | ||
Crossfire framed everything as Republican versus Democrat, whatever. | ||
It was not helpful to the public discourse. | ||
I couldn't agree more. | ||
And that's why I left. | ||
So that was part of his critique. | ||
Fair. | ||
I'm not sure I would have admitted it at the time, because I worked there, and it's hard to admit you're engaged in an enterprise that's, like, fundamentally worthless, which it was. | ||
But his other point was that I was somehow a partisan, or a mindless partisan, which is definitely not true. | ||
I mean, it is true of him. | ||
He is a mindless partisan. | ||
But I'm not, and I haven't been for—I really haven't been since I got back from Baghdad at the beginning of the Iraq War, and I realized that The Republican Party, which I'd voted for, you know, my whole life to that point, and had supported in general, was like, pushing this really horrible thing that was gonna hurt the United States, which in time it really did. | ||
The Iraq War really hurt the United States. | ||
And I realized that I had been on the wrong side of that. | ||
I said so publicly, immediately, from Baghdad I said that, to the New York Times, and I really meant it, I mean it now. | ||
And so to call me partisan, you could call me stupid, you could call me wrong, I certainly have been wrong, but partisan, I just didn't think it was a meaningful, I mean, it's like, that's just not true. | ||
It's the opposite of true. | ||
So I didn't really take it seriously at all. | ||
And I never thought much of him, so I was like, whatever, some buffoon jumping around on my show, grandstanding. | ||
But I do think it was recorded. | ||
And by the way, that happened right at the moment that YouTube began. | ||
I think that was one of the first big YouTube videos. | ||
It was one of the first big YouTube videos. | ||
So it had a virality that, if that's a word, it went everywhere in a way that didn't used to happen in cable news. | ||
I mean, by that point, that was 20 years ago, as you point out. | ||
I've been in cable news for nine years. | ||
So, before 2004, we would say something on television, and then it would kind of, it would be lost. | ||
Like, people could claim they heard it, but you'd have to go to the, I think the University of Tennessee at Knoxville archives to get it. | ||
Suddenly, everything we said would live forever on the internet. | ||
Which is good, by the way. | ||
It's not bad, but it was a big change for me, and I just couldn't believe how widely that was discussed at the time, because I thought he was not an interesting person. | ||
I think he's obviously a very unhappy person. | ||
I just didn't take him seriously then, and I don't now. | ||
But, uh, so anyway, that was it. | ||
It was a smaller thing in my life at the time. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay, you said a lot of words that will make it sound like you're a bit bitter, even if you're not. | |
So, you said unhappy person, partisan person. | ||
Well, he's definitely partisan, for sure. | ||
unidentified
|
So, can you elaborate why you think he's partisan? | |
Well, so, I think that, and I see this a lot, not only on the left, but people who believe that whatever political debate they're engaged in is the most important debate in the world. | ||
And so, they bring an emotional intensity to those debates, and they're inevitably disappointed because no eternal question is solved politically. | ||
So, they're kind of on the wrong path, right? | ||
And they're doomed to frustration. | ||
That's true. | ||
believe that. | ||
And many do. | ||
He certainly does. | ||
That whatever the issue is, so, you know, Clarence Thomas, stop your Supreme Court justice. | ||
And the implication is, well, if someone else is Supreme Court justice, we'll live in a fair and happy society. | ||
But that's just not, it's a false promise. | ||
So I think that people who bring that level of intensity to politics are by definition bitter, by definition disappointed, bitter in the way the disappointed people are. | ||
And that the real questions are like, what happens when you die? | ||
And how do the people around you feel about you? | ||
You know, those are, those are the only questions in life, but they're certainly the most important ones. | ||
And if we're spending a disproportionate amount of time on who gets elected to some office, not that it's irrelevant, it is relevant, but it's not the eternal question. | ||
That was kind of like the same discussion I had with Destiny. | ||
money. | ||
When, years ago, one of the first times we kind of reconnected after a while, and I think it was on the Sneakostream or something like that, and I said, well, what do you, do you think about what happens after you die? | ||
And he's like, why would I think about that? | ||
I want to, I care about things that matter here, like making things marginally better for people. | ||
And then we kind of had a follow-up the last time I spoke with him on Fresh and Fit, and I said, like, what is your reason for living? | ||
Why do you live? | ||
Why don't you kill yourself? | ||
And he was like, hobbies? | ||
Hobbies and friends? | ||
And I said, yeah, but your parents are gonna die. | ||
So what happens then? | ||
And you're gonna die. | ||
You're gonna get sick. | ||
You're gonna get frail. | ||
Horrible things will happen to you. | ||
You will be filled with grief. | ||
You'll be overflowing with grief by the time you die from friends dying and things not going your way. | ||
I said, so what then? | ||
Why is life worth living then? | ||
And the next day, he had this epiphany where he goes on his show and says, oh, I had this dream last night that all my younger fans were at the park and I couldn't play with them because I was sick, because I'm getting old. | ||
He said, and that's the first time I've ever thought about my mortality. | ||
That was like the next day right after the debate, so... But I've always had that discussion with them because fundamentally, the distinction is that those, that side, more than that they are liberal or leftist or whatever, they are materialists. | ||
They're not just atheists. | ||
They're not just atheists, meaning they believe there's no God, or that we're not created. | ||
They believe that all there is is matter. | ||
They believe that all we are is matter. | ||
All we are is the sum of our chemical processes and atomic particles. | ||
And that's all that there is. | ||
That's all we are. | ||
That's all everyone else is. | ||
That's all there will ever be. | ||
And that, I think, leads to, like he says, nihilism, despair. | ||
And I think that what liberals are just on, like, a timed release of nihilism. | ||
That's why liberals are very dysfunctional, and then they go and shoot up a church, or then they kill themselves, or then they die from a drug overdose, or, you know, something... There's usually a tragedy at the end of that kind of pathological leftism. | ||
There's really... I don't think anyone really gets out of that unless they convert to something else. | ||
And that's why they're I think in many cases dysfunctional people it's because They're in the process of distracting themselves from their own mortality and you can only do that for so long and they distract themselves with Drugs, sex, and travel. | ||
That's the motto of Destiny's wife. | ||
Destiny's wife said, my life is STDs. | ||
Sex, travel, and drugs. | ||
That's her life. | ||
And that's a pretty good summary of all the things that a person can do, all the things a well-off person can do in today's society to escape a reflection. | ||
To escape your reflection in the mirror, which is a mortal, aging, dying face. | ||
So people get high, they forget where they are, they forget about their problems, people get involved in sex, these kind of all-consuming drama and relationships, and do they like me? | ||
I don't know, you know, I like them, blah blah, that kind of shit. | ||
unidentified
|
I like this one, oh I don't know. | |
And travel, where if you ever feel like you're dying in your house because you're, you know, the trash is piling up and you have a bad memory in your living room and you feel despair, life's not worth living, well you go and get a change of scenery. | ||
Now I'm in a new place and I'm so tantalized by the novelty of the experience that I'm, you know, I'm just kind of distracted. | ||
And if you fill up your life with all these different things, I'm constantly in a new place. | ||
I'm constantly in an altered state of mind. | ||
Up or down. | ||
I'm constantly chasing a new relationship or thinking about one or something like that. | ||
And you can do that for a long time and you can forget that you're getting old and dying. | ||
But you can't do it forever because Death asserts itself everywhere. | ||
People you know die. | ||
People you know get sick. | ||
Horrible things happen all around you. | ||
It's unavoidable. | ||
And eventually you start to die. | ||
You start to think about... | ||
The fact that your fucking back hurts, you know? | ||
Ow! | ||
I wake up and it hurts! | ||
I have some chronic health problem I have to live with now, and I have to take this pill every day, so that means that I need a doctor, which means I need a prescription, which means, you know... And you start to realize, no, we need to be rooted. | ||
We need to... The only thing that will give us any kind of lasting peace on Earth, or satisfaction, is rootedness. | ||
Rootedness with family, a church, a community, those things. | ||
But fundamentally it proceeds from the resignation that this is temporary. | ||
That this is passing. | ||
That whatever chemical processes, particles you are, that will not be doing it for long. | ||
These particles will not be in this arrangement for very long. | ||
Processes are... There's a time limit. | ||
So... | ||
You need to accept that fact. | ||
And then, that is when you start to think about death. | ||
When you realize that we will die, then you think about death. | ||
And you might fear death, because death initially is very scary, because it's all you've ever known. | ||
And, you know, if you're dead forever, and then born, and then dead forever after that, this brief time you enjoy life, it's almost like losing everything when you die. | ||
But that's when you start to think about a life after death. | ||
And that's when you start to think about eternity with God and what that means. | ||
But that's really typically the progression. | ||
But if you are a left-wing person and you're just, again, you have not encountered death in that way, it's like Tucker says. | ||
They're given to being bitter and thinking that it's really just a matter of, if I just do this, they're chasing these things like happiness or whatever, a hobby, some kind of cause, some kind of campaign. | ||
I mean, You know we're in the terminal stage of leftism. | ||
You know we're in the terminal stage of materialism when they have taken up causes Because that's kind of the last stop on the train to complete nihilism, when you say, you know, because for a long time it's like, oh, well, we live for peace and love, man, and sex, and getting high, and that kind of stuff. | ||
Well, then it's music! | ||
Then it's music and it's art! | ||
And now we're in this terminal stage of denial on the part of these materialist nihilist types. | ||
Where they say, NO MORE SEX DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL! | ||
We need to get serious! | ||
We need to get into political causes! | ||
Because we need to be a part of something bigger and we need to chase some kind of ethical thing! | ||
But then they realize even that is futile! | ||
And what happens when you realize that political causes and campaigns are futile? | ||
You will never eliminate poverty! | ||
You will never free the people! | ||
You will never succeed! | ||
It will never happen! | ||
Ever! | ||
Because we live in the world and the world has fallen and man has fallen. | ||
So sin and evil have crept in to this realm and they will never go away until the end of days. | ||
So all of that will fail forever, and eventually people realize that. | ||
And that's when they give themselves to the dark. | ||
They either convert, they accept their death, they accept evil in the world, they accept the fundamental problems and truths about our reality, or... | ||
It shepherds, and I think this is where society is heading, it will herald and shepherd the coming of the darkest age we've ever seen. | ||
Full-on Satanism, full-on Antichrist, full-on black magic, full-on evil. | ||
And we got a taste of that in the last century, but I think we may get a lot more of it in this century when a lot of these, especially the women. | ||
The women are going to grow up childless, miserable. | ||
Things are just going to march on as they always have. | ||
And I think then people are going to kind of go to the next stage of development of that idea, intensification of that idea, which is magic, outright evil. | ||
But it's kind of, I think everyone can understand it's coming to an inflection point. | ||
And that's why you're seeing more and more of that these days. | ||
You're seeing a lot more witches and magic and crystals and outright embrace of the devil. | ||
And so I feel like he's not the only kind of bitter, silly person in Washington or in its orbit. | ||
There are many. | ||
Dude, this live chat is just embarrassing. | ||
This guy, Liam, says, reality is the most stupid creation. | ||
Get the, dude, shut the fuck up. | ||
What did I, Grumble is just like, it is not my usual audience. | ||
It's how you get people that wander in here and they're like, bro, reality is stupid creation. | ||
Get the, what did you, where did you come from? | ||
Did you wander in here from a vape shop or something? | ||
Listen, buddy, the gas station is down there. | ||
We don't sell vapes here. | ||
Bro wandered in, he was looking for a, Looking for a smoke shop. | ||
No, we don't sell that here. | ||
I'm a Republican, so... But I just thought it was ironic. | ||
I mean, everything's ironic to me, but, like, being called a Russia sympathizer by a guy who calls himself Boris. | ||
Like, that just made me laugh. | ||
No one else has ever laughed at that. | ||
Boris Johnson's real name is not Boris, as you know. | ||
He calls himself Boris. | ||
It's his middle name. | ||
And so, like, if you call yourself Boris, you don't really have standing to attack anyone else as a Russia defender, right? | ||
That's my... I think that's funny. | ||
No one else, as I noted, does. | ||
But... | ||
But Jon Stewart, like, you know, if he... There are a lot of things you could say about me, but he's much more partisan than I am, so to call me a partisan, it's like, what? | ||
unidentified
|
He would probably say that he's not a partisan, that he's a comedian who's looking for the humor and the absurdity of the system on both sides. | |
He's a dead serious, he's a very serious person in this, I will say this, and he shares this quality with a lot of comedians, I know a lot of comedians. | ||
I know a cross-section of people just having done this job for a long time and a lot of them are very serious like about their views and they have a lot of emotional intensity and he certainly is in that category he's not that's that's like the silliest thing yeah he's a comedian for sure he can be very funny for sure he has talent no doubt about I've never denied that but he is a piece motivated by By his moral views. | ||
You know, this is right, that is wrong. | ||
And I just think that it's a misapplied passion. | ||
unidentified
|
Wait, do you think I'm just a comedian? | |
I don't think any serious person thinks that. | ||
I mean, if you're just a comedian... And I... I'm not trying to claim... I couldn't claim that I haven't said a lot of dumb things. | ||
And one of the dumbest things I ever said was when he was on our set lecturing me. | ||
You know, he's a moralizer, which I also just don't really care for as an aesthetic matter. | ||
But he was lecturing me about something, and I said, I thought you were here to tell jokes. | ||
Which I shouldn't have said, because he wasn't there to tell jokes. | ||
He was there to lecture me, and I should have just engaged it directly, rather than trying to diminish him by like, here's a good comedian. | ||
Well, he doesn't see himself that way. | ||
But I would just say this. | ||
Jon Stewart's a defender of power. | ||
Like, Jon Stewart has never criticized, like, what's Jon Stewart's view on, you know, the aid we've sent to Ukraine? | ||
The $100 billion or whatever. | ||
Like, what happened to that money? | ||
What happened to the weapons that I bought? | ||
He doesn't care. | ||
He has the exact same priorities as the people permanently in charge in Washington. | ||
That's so funny. | ||
You know that he's such a cable guy. | ||
You know that that's like cable TV brain when you talk about Mika Brzezinski in 2024. | ||
I wonder how many people watching this stream even know who that is. | ||
Maybe ten years ago or seven years ago or whatever you might say. | ||
Oh yeah, I wonder what Morning Joe said about such and such a thing. | ||
Does anybody care about Joe and Mika anymore only somebody who's at Fox News for you know, and I you know, that's just he's a creature of cable news But it's just funny you kind of see that shine through and they throw out an illusion like that Does Mika Brzezinski it's like Mika Brzezinski I haven't heard that name in a long time. | ||
I haven't heard Morning Joe in a long time. | ||
I'll just be honest that I watched it just recently, that video. | ||
From 20 years ago? | ||
From 20 years ago. | ||
I watched it initially, and I remember it very differently. | ||
unidentified
|
call yourself a truth teller you're a court comedian or a flatterer of power okay that's fine there's a role for that but don't pretend to be something else i'll just be honest that i watched it just recently that video and 20 years ago from 20 years ago i watched it initially and i remember very differently i remember that john stewart completely destroyed you in that conversation and i watched it and you asked a very good question of him which was and you there's no destruction first of all uh and you asked a very good question of him Why, when you got a chance to interview John Kerry, did you ask a bunch of softball questions? | |
Yeah. | ||
unidentified
|
I thought that was a really fair question, and then his defense was, well, I'm just a comedian. | |
So I thought that was disingenuous, and I haven't watched it, I never have watched that clip one time in my life, and I don't like to watch myself on television, I never have. | ||
So, and that's my fault, and I probably should force myself to watch it, though of course I never will. | ||
But I think the takeaway for me, which was really interesting and life-changing, was I agree with your assessment. | ||
I'm not just... I've lost a lot of debates. | ||
I've been humiliated on television. | ||
I'm not above that. | ||
It certainly happened to me. | ||
It will happen again. | ||
But I didn't feel like it was a clear win for him at all. | ||
Maybe a TKO, but it was not a knockout at all. | ||
And yet it was recorded that way. | ||
And I remember thinking, well, that's kind of weird. | ||
That's not what I remember. | ||
And then I realized, no, Jon Stewart was more popular than I was. | ||
Therefore, he was recorded as the winner. | ||
And that was hard for me to accept because that struck me as unfair. | ||
You should rate any contest on points. | ||
Like, here are the rules. | ||
We're going to judge the contest on the basis of those rules. | ||
And no, in the end, it's just like the more popular guy wins. | ||
Every TV critic liked Jon Stewart. | ||
Every one of them hated me. | ||
Therefore, he won. | ||
And I was like, wow, I guess I have to accept that reality. | ||
And you do, like the reality of the sunrise. | ||
You just have, you know, you're not in charge of it. | ||
So that's just what it is. | ||
unidentified
|
Unfortunately, it's a bit darker, I think. | |
The reason he's seen as the winner and the reason at the time I saw as the quote-unquote winner is because he was basically shitting on you, like personal attacks versus engaging ideas. | ||
And it was, it was funny in a dark way and like making fun of the bow tie and all this kind of stuff. | ||
And it was fair to call me a dick. | ||
I remember he called me a dick. | ||
And I remember even when he said that, I was like, yeah, I'm definitely a dick. | ||
That's not my best quality. | ||
unidentified
|
But also, to be kind of... I thought Jon Stewart came off as a giant dick at that time, and I'm a big fan of his, and I think he has improved a lot. | |
That may be true. | ||
unidentified
|
We should also say that, like, people grow. | |
People, like... Well, I certainly have, or change. | ||
Anyway, you hope it's growth. | ||
You hope it's not shrinkage. | ||
But, um... But... It is pulled outside. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I mean, look, I haven't followed Jon Stewart's career at all. | ||
I don't have a television. | ||
I'm pretty cut off from all that stuff. | ||
So I wouldn't really know, but the measure to me is, are you taking positions that are unpopular with the most powerful people in the world, and how often are you doing it? | ||
It's super simple. | ||
Not for its own sake, but do you feel free enough to say, you know, to the consensus, I disagree. | ||
And if you don't, then you're just another toady. | ||
That's my view. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, I think he probably feels free enough to do it, but you're saying he doesn't do it. | |
On the big things. | ||
unidentified
|
- An hour and 20 minutes, bro. - This is my estimation of it. | |
Others may disagree. | ||
The big things are the economy and war, okay? | ||
The big things government does can be, I mean, a lot of things government does. | ||
Government does everything at this point, but where we kill people and how and for what purpose and how we organize the economic engine that keeps the country afloat. - I'm gonna skip this part. | ||
I don't want to hear this part about the war in Ukraine. | ||
I've heard enough of this. | ||
We're an hour and 20 minutes in. | ||
I have not heard anything super interesting. | ||
I'm going to skip the Putin thing. | ||
I'm going to skip... I might do the Hitler thing. | ||
I'm going to skip the nuclear war thing. | ||
I might just go to the Trump part. | ||
I just want to see what he has to say about Nazis. | ||
I'm ashamed of it. | ||
unidentified
|
What do you think of Putin saying that justification for continuing the war is denazification? | |
I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard. | ||
I don't understand what it meant. | ||
Denazification? | ||
unidentified
|
It literally means what it sounds like. | |
You know, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this. | ||
I hate that whole conversation because it's not real. | ||
It's just ad hominem. | ||
It's a way of associating someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore. | ||
But in point of fact, Nazism, whatever it was, is inseparable from the German nation. | ||
It was a nationalist movement in Germany. | ||
There were no other Nazis, right? | ||
There's no book of Nazism. | ||
Like, I want to be a Nazi. | ||
What does it mean to be a Nazi? | ||
There's no Mein Kampf. | ||
Mein Kampf is not Das Kapital, right? | ||
Mein Kampf is like, to the extent I understand it, it's like he's pissed about the Treaty of Versailles. | ||
Whatever. | ||
I'm very anti-Nazi. | ||
I'm merely saying there isn't a Nazi movement in 2024. | ||
It's a way of calling people evil. | ||
Okay, Putin doesn't like nationalist Ukrainians. | ||
Putin hates nationalism in general, which is interesting. | ||
But of course he does. | ||
He's got 80 whatever. | ||
But not... Nazism means something different for the Russians. | ||
So that's... That wasn't for the West. | ||
It wasn't... And it wasn't merely saying that Ukraine is evil. | ||
Because they're talking about something very specific. | ||
They're talking about these Galician Nazis who were regarded as heroes from World War II. | ||
And... | ||
A lot of them were extremely anti-Russian. | ||
They have ethnic hatred of Russians and a big part of the war, I mean this is one dimension of it, is that Russia says that they will protect the ethnic Russians inside of Ukraine and against the discrimination against the Russian language and the Russian people east of the Dnieper River or what would have happened in Crimea of Ukraine if this government in Kiev controlled Crimea. | ||
And the other thing is the historical legacy of World War II, and to some extent World War I, which is that the Nazis invaded Russia and tens of millions of Russians died repelling that invasion, and many Russians were killed as prisoners of war of Nazi Germany, and they regard | ||
That is a similar threat to what's happening with NATO and Ukraine, that Ukraine would accede to NATO with this anti-Russian government and may be used as a launching off point for an invasion, which would come from the Great European Plain, the same direction that the Nazis came from back then, with a NATO and European Union alliance anchored in Germany. | ||
It's like a pan-European Western European alliance with potentially soon with its own military with missiles on Russia's doorstep and specifically backing this this specific regime in Ukraine which is anti-russian. | ||
So it means something very different in the Russian consciousness than it does in the American consciousness. | ||
It's not the same thing. | ||
Republics, and he's afraid of nationalist movements. | ||
He fought a war in Chechnya over this. | ||
So I understand it, but I have a different, I'm for nationalism, for American nationalism. | ||
So like I disagree with Putin on that, but calling him Nazis, it's like, I thought it was childish. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, I do believe that he believes it. | |
So that's so interesting. | ||
I agree with that. | ||
I was, cause I was listening to this because in the United States, everyone's always calling everyone else a Nazi. | ||
unidentified
|
You're a Nazi. | |
Okay. | ||
But I was listening to this and I was like, this is the dumbest sort of not convincing line you could take. | ||
And I sat down and listened to him talk about Nazis for like eight minutes. | ||
And I'm like, I think he believes this. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, and I actually, you know, having had a bunch of conversations with people who are living in Russia, they also believe it. | |
Now, there's technicalities here, which, the word Nazi, World War II is deeply in the blood of a lot of Russians in Ukraine. | ||
I get it, I get it. | ||
unidentified
|
So you're using it as almost a political term, the way it's used in the United States also, like racism and all this kind of stuff. | |
So you know you can really touch people if you use the Nazi name. | ||
I think that's totally right. | ||
unidentified
|
But it's also, to me, a really, like, disgusting thing to do. | |
I agree. | ||
unidentified
|
Because, and also to clarify, there is neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine, which is just very small. | |
You're saying that there's a distinction between Nazi and Neo-Nazi? | ||
Sure. | ||
unidentified
|
But it's a small percentage of the population, a tiny percentage, they have no power in government. | |
As far, I have seen no data to show they have any influence on Zelensky and Zelensky government at all. | ||
So really when Putin says denazification, I think he means nationalist movements. | ||
I think, I think you're right and I agree with everything you said and I do think that the war, the Second World War, occupies a place in Slavic society, Polish society, you know, Central and Eastern Europe, that it does not occupy the United States. | ||
And you can just look at the death totals, you know, tens of millions versus less than half a million. | ||
So it's like this eliminated a lot of the male population of these countries. | ||
So, of course, it's still resonant in those countries. | ||
I get it. | ||
I just I think I've watched I don't think I know I've watched the misuse of words the weaponization of words for political reasons for so long that I just I just don't like and though I do engage in it sometime I'm sorry I don't like just dismissing people in a word oh he's a Nazi he's a liberal or whatever it's like tell me what you mean what don't you like about what they're doing or saying and a Nazi especially I don't even know what the hell you're talking about what troubled me about that is because... Didn't Tucker say that? | ||
I have a clip from Tucker where he says that if you are if you support white identity you're a Nazi Let me pull it up. | ||
Yeah, okay. | ||
So let's run that back in a second. | ||
Here's a clip from Tucker. | ||
This is from my Telegram. | ||
I will say this if I can just make one prediction. | ||
So the United States is becoming non-white. | ||
Everyone's excited about it. | ||
Or whether you're not excited about it, it doesn't matter. | ||
Whites are going to be in the minority. | ||
So what that means soon, so what that means is you're going to get at some point probably in my lifetime people standing up and saying, I represent white people! | ||
I'm the candidate of the white voter! | ||
And I just want to say on the record that I'm going to tell that person to fuck off. | ||
Because nobody speaks... I'm an adult man, and nobody speaks for me because he shares the same skin color as me. | ||
Like, I just reject that entire idea. | ||
If I agree with you, I'll let you speak for me, and if I don't, I won't. | ||
But this idea that someone of a certain skin color, any skin color, or any ethnic background, speaks automatically on behalf of all people who share that skin color, ethnic background, is a Nazi idea, and I'm totally opposed to it. | ||
And I will be opposed to it when it happens So that's a Nazi idea. | ||
White identity politics is a Nazi... Oh, actually, here it is on Twitter. | ||
I didn't know I had a link here. | ||
be like i don't even know you dude i don't even know you i refuse to allow you to purport to speak for me because so that's a nazi idea white identity politics is a nazi oh actually here it is on uh twitter i didn't know i had a link here okay so that doesn't exist seriously i Okay, so I guess that tweet isn't available or am I just rate limited? | ||
Okay, well, that account doesn't exist anymore. | ||
Well, whatever. | ||
Okay, well, yeah, anyway, we got the clip. | ||
It's with Adam Carolla. | ||
Let me see if I could actually just pull it up. | ||
unidentified
|
speaking of that yeah get it on got to get on a choice maybe on a mandate get it on in a very unique show where tucker carlson's you know in a sort of related subject and there's a few i have so many points and so little time but I mean, the endless attacks on the whites, and I'm not defending white, there are plenty of, in fact, most people who annoy me are white, okay? | |
But to attack any group as a group, you can hardly believe it, as someone who core lessons Old Crow and the Sceptery, but everyone's too, in the, this, everyone's, the basis, in a group, is, in fact, most people who annoy me are white shits. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Right. | ||
unidentified
|
It's, it's jokes. | |
Okay, where's this, where's this clip? | ||
Yeah, they also think that a prince can ever attack me. | ||
I don't think they're embarrassing. | ||
I think they're not. | ||
I'm fucking some and punishing them, others, punishing others, and they're calling me a Nazi. | ||
unidentified
|
Really? | |
Okay. | ||
Um, so like, they have no power over me whatsoever. | ||
None. | ||
unidentified
|
No, I, I agree. | |
But it's interesting that you are a caricature, a sort of cartoon caricature. | ||
I can't get the trans, usually transcripts right here. | ||
They don't have it. | ||
Well, whatever. | ||
You heard the clip. | ||
We played it. | ||
I just can't find it in this interview here. | ||
unidentified
|
Would it be maybe... Where would it be? | |
Here we go. | ||
unidentified
|
Telling him what red shits put kids of black in him over me. | |
I love that though. | ||
Not to speak for me because we look the same, period. | ||
Well, of a certain skin color, any skin color or any ethnic background speaks automatically on behalf of all people who share that skin color, ethnic background is a Nazi idea. | ||
And I'm totally opposed to it. | ||
And I will be opposed to it when it happens to me, when some, and this will happen. | ||
Someone's going to go, Oh, white people. | ||
And I'll be like, I don't even know you, dude. | ||
I don't even know you, I refuse to allow you to- So if you do white identity, you're a Nazi! | ||
What about, what did you just say here? | ||
I think I've watched, I don't think I know, I've watched the misuse of words, the weaponization of words for political reasons for so long that I just, I just don't like, though I do engage in it sometimes, I'm sorry, I don't like just dismissing people in a word, oh he's a Nazi, he's a liberal or whatever, it's like tell me what you mean, what don't you like about what they're doing or saying? | ||
And, and Nazi especially, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. | ||
unidentified
|
What troubled me about that is because he said that that's the primary objective currently for the war and that because it's Not grounded in reality. | |
It makes it difficult to then negotiate peace because like what? | ||
What does it mean to get rid of the Nazis in Ukraine? | ||
So like he'll come to the table and say well, okay I will agree to do ceasefire once the Nazis are gone. | ||
Okay, so can you list the Nazis? | ||
Plus can you negotiate with a Nazi? | ||
unidentified
|
Right, exactly. | |
I totally agree with you. | ||
unidentified
|
It was very strange, but maybe it was perhaps had to do with speaking to his own population and also probably trying to avoid the use of the word NATO as the justification. | |
Yes, that's all. | ||
Of course, I don't know, but I suspect you're right on both counts. | ||
But I would say it points to something that I've thought more and more since I did that interview, which was like two weeks ago, I guess. | ||
I didn't think he was, like, as a PR guy, not very good. | ||
Like, he's not good at telling his own story. | ||
You know, the story of the current war in Ukraine is the eastward expansion of NATO, scaring the shit out of the Russians, with NATO expansion, which is totally unnecessary, doesn't help the United States, NATO itself doesn't help the United States, and so I'm not pro-Russian for saying that, I'm pro-American for saying that, and I think that's a really compelling story, because it's true. | ||
He did not tell that story. | ||
He told some other story that I didn't fully understand. | ||
Again, I'm not Russian. | ||
He's speaking to multiple audiences around the world. | ||
I'm not sure what he hoped to achieve by that interview. | ||
I will never know. | ||
But I did think that, like, this guy is not good at telling his story. | ||
And I also think, honestly, on the basis of what, I mean, I know this. | ||
Very isolated during COVID. | ||
Very. | ||
We keep hearing that he's dying of this or that disease. | ||
He's got ALS. | ||
I mean, I don't know. | ||
I'm not his doctor. | ||
There's a ton of lying about it. | ||
I know that. | ||
But one thing that's not a lie is that he was cloistered away during COVID. | ||
I know this. | ||
And only dealing with two or three people. | ||
And that makes you weird. | ||
It's so important to deal with a lot of people, to have your views challenged. | ||
You see this with leaders who stay in power too long. | ||
It's been in power 24 years, effectively. | ||
You don't know. | ||
You know, there have been upsides, I think, for Russia, the Russian economy, Russian life expectancy, but there are definitely downsides. | ||
And one of them is you get weird. | ||
And you get autocratic. | ||
You know, like, this is why we have term limits. | ||
Very few kings don't get crazy in old age. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, and you said some of this also in your post-Kremlin discussion while you're in Moscow still, which was very impressive to me that you can just openly criticize. | |
This is great. | ||
I don't care. | ||
unidentified
|
I understand this. | |
I just wish you did some more of that also with the supermarket video and perhaps some more of that with Putin in front of you. | ||
Putin in front of me? | ||
I'm such a good person. | ||
unidentified
|
I know you see it as virtue signaling. | |
Yeah, it is. | ||
Have you seen some of the interview he did with some NBC News child? | ||
unidentified
|
Yes, I understand. | |
So I think you're just so annoyed by how bad journalists are that you just didn't want to be them. | ||
Yeah, that's probably right, actually. | ||
unidentified
|
Some great conversations will involve some challenging... Like, you were confused about denazification. | |
Well, first of all, I accept your criticism, and I accept it as true, that in some way I'm probably pivoting against what I dislike. | ||
And I have such contempt for American journalists on the basis of so much knowledge that I probably was like, I don't want to be like that. | ||
Fair. | ||
That is a kind of defensiveness, and dumb. | ||
So... | ||
You're right. | ||
As for the Nazi thing, I was like, I really felt like we were just speaking so far past each other that we would never like come to, it's like, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. | ||
And that, and especially when I decided or concluded that he really meant it, I was like, that's just too freaking weird to me. | ||
It's almost like, yeah, I can think of many other examples where you're interviewing someone, they'll say something that's like, I was interviewing a guy one time and he started talking about the black Israelites. | ||
We're the real Jews. | ||
And I was like, you know, You mentioned there's a bunch of conspiracy theories about Putin's health. | ||
How was he in person? | ||
Like, what did he feel like? | ||
kind of understand common terms on that. | ||
unidentified
|
So you mentioned there's a bunch of conspiracy theories about Putin's health. | |
How was he in person? | ||
Like, what did he feel like? | ||
Did he look healthy? | ||
You know, I'm not a health person myself. | ||
So, I mean, I can easily gain 30 pounds and not know it. | ||
So, like, I'm probably not a great person to ask, but no, he seemed fine. | ||
He seemed, um, he had his arm hooked through a chair, and I heard people say he's got Parkinson's, and, um, Parkinson's can be controlled, I know, uh, for periods with drugs. | ||
So, it's, it's hard to assess. | ||
I'm just not, uh, one of the tells of Parkinson's is gait, you know, how a person walks, I think, and his walking seemed fine. | ||
I walked around with him and talked to him off camera. | ||
Um, his, he's had some work done, for sure. | ||
I mean, 71 or two. | ||
unidentified
|
Lessons, you mean, like, visual purposes? | |
Yeah, I'm 54. | ||
He's, like, almost 20 years older than me. | ||
He looked younger than me. | ||
unidentified
|
What was that like, the conversation off camera, like you walking around with him? | |
What was the content of the conversation? | ||
I mean, I can't, you know, I feel bad even booting anybody, like, talking about stuff that is off the record, but... | ||
I'll just say that when I said that he didn't want to fight with NATO or with the U.S. | ||
State Department or with Joe Biden because he wants a settlement, that's a very informed perspective. | ||
He doesn't. | ||
Say whatever you want about that, believe it or not, but that is true. | ||
unidentified
|
So he's open for peace. | |
For peace and negotiation. | ||
Russia tried to join NATO in 2000. | ||
That's a fact, okay? | ||
They tried to join NATO. | ||
So just think about this. | ||
NATO exists to keep Russia contained. | ||
It exists as a bulwark against Russian territorial expansion. | ||
And whether or not Russia has any territorial ambitions is another question. | ||
Like, why would it? | ||
It's the largest landmass in the world. | ||
Whatever. | ||
But that's why it exists. | ||
So if Russia seeks to join NATO, it is by definition a sign that NATO's job is done here. | ||
We can declare victory and go home. | ||
The fact that they turned him down is so shocking to me, but it's true. | ||
Then he approaches the next president, George W. Bush, that was with Bill Clinton at the end of his term in 2000. | ||
He approaches the next president and said, let's, in our next missile deal, let's align on this, and we'll designate Iran as our common enemy. | ||
Iran, which is now effectively in league with Russia, thanks to our insane policies. | ||
And George W. Bush, to his credit, is like, well, that seems like kind of an innovative good idea. | ||
And Condi Rice, who's like one of the stupidest people ever to hold power in the United States, if I can say, who's like monomaniacally anti-Russia, because she had an advisor at Stanford who was, or something, during the Cold War. | ||
No, we can't do that, and Bush is just weak. | ||
Who is their advisor? | ||
Because when you hear Stanford, Stanford's a big red flag, like I said with that other guy before. | ||
unidentified
|
Who is their mentor? | |
I'm curious now. | ||
Rice was hired as an assistant professor. | ||
unidentified
|
Does it say? | |
She plays the flute, right? | ||
Or the piano. | ||
Majored in music. | ||
Attended an international politics course taught by Joseph Korbel, who sparked her interest in Soviet Union and international relations. | ||
Described him as a central figure in her life. | ||
Well, who's this guy? | ||
Let's check the early life. | ||
Joseph Korbel is a Czech-American diplomat, political scientist, served as Czechoslovakia's ambassador to Yugoslavia. | ||
Became a professor of international politics at University of Denver, where he founded the Graduate School of International Studies. | ||
His daughter, Madeline Albright, uh oh, served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, and he was the mentor of Condoleezza Rice. | ||
His granddaughter, Alice Albright, is the CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation under Joe Biden. | ||
He was born under the family name Korbel to Czech Jewish parents, Arnost, Olga, Korbel. | ||
Both of them were killed in the Holocaust. | ||
Ah, so there's another one. | ||
You know, it's so funny because I have, I'll show you this. | ||
Let me jump off camera here for a second. | ||
So I'm working on a project about the neocons. | ||
And I have all these books about the neocons. | ||
So this is Neoconservatism by Justin Vace. | ||
Vanishing Tradition, edited by Paul Gottfried. | ||
Twilight of the American Enlightenment, George Marsden. | ||
The Great Purge. | ||
This was edited by Richard Spencer, I think. | ||
Neoconservative revolution, Murray Friedman. | ||
Rise of the Vulcans. | ||
By James Mann and Conservatism in America, Paul Godfrey. | ||
And it's like in this one, it talks about the Vulcans and the Vulcans, they say, are this group of foreign policy experts. | ||
They're on Bush's war cabinet. | ||
It goes through and it profiles all of them. | ||
And it talks about how the main ones... It's in my other notepad. | ||
The main ones are... | ||
It doesn't talk too much about the Clean Break authors, doesn't talk too much about the Jewish ones, but in a lot of these it says, oh, well, you know, some of them were Jewish, and some of them were this, and, you know, but a lot of them weren't, you know, but Dick Cheney wasn't Jewish, and George Bush wasn't Jewish, and, and Condoleezza Rice wasn't Jewish, but then you go and find, well, even the ones that aren't Jewish, they're mentored by Someone Jewish. | ||
They're mentored. | ||
You know, Madeline Albright's dad is this guy. | ||
I didn't even know that. | ||
And Condoleezza Rice's mentor was this guy. | ||
Let's see. | ||
His parents. | ||
Blah blah blah. | ||
Served as a diplomat in the government of Czechoslovakia. | ||
His politics in Judaism forced him to flee with his wife and baby Madeline after the Nazi invasion. | ||
Moved to London. | ||
Served as an advisor to Edward Benet in the Czech government. | ||
He gave speeches for the BBC's daily broadcast. | ||
The Korbels converted to Catholicism. | ||
Oh, did they? | ||
Returned to Czechoslovakia after the war. | ||
Following the Communist Party's rise to power, he applied for political asylum in the United States. | ||
unidentified
|
Peace. | |
Thank you. | ||
He received asylum and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. | ||
Well, well, well. | ||
Remember how Alex Jones is always trying to say, Oh, it's the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie's. | ||
So the Rockefeller Foundation is bringing Jewish neocons to found international relations schools at our universities. | ||
With the benefaction of Ben Sherrington. | ||
Established a graduate school. | ||
I wonder who this is, though. | ||
unidentified
|
That'd be kind of interesting to see. | |
Well, it's not a baseball player. | ||
unidentified
|
Is it this guy? | |
Thank you. | ||
Yeah, it would have to be. | ||
Well, this guy's white Very interesting I Doesn't say too much about his beliefs though. | ||
So that's funny. | ||
So Tucker Carlson's woke. | ||
So he clearly knows what's up. | ||
He says, oh, she had this mentor. | ||
unidentified
|
Very interesting. | |
So Tucker's hip. | ||
Tucker knows. | ||
Well, maybe he knows something. | ||
I can too much though about his profile and | ||
Anyway... And so he agreed, it's like, anti-innovative, good idea, and Condi Rice, who's like, one of the stupidest people ever to hold power in the United States, if I can say, who's like, monomaniacally anti-Russia, because she had an advisor at Stanford who was, or something, during the Cold War, no, we can't do that, and Bush is just weak, and so he agreed, it's like, what? | ||
That is crazy! | ||
If you're fighting with someone, and the person says, you know what, actually, our interests align, and you've spent 80% of your mental disk space on hating me and opposing me and whatever, but actually, we can be on the same team, If you don't, at least, see that as progress? | ||
Like, what? | ||
Why would you? | ||
If your interest is in helping your country, what would be the... What's the counter-argument? | ||
I don't even understand it. | ||
And no one has even addressed any of this. | ||
The war of Russian aggression! | ||
Yeah, it was a war of Russian aggression, for sure. | ||
But how did... How did we get there? | ||
We got there because Joe Biden and Tony Blinken dispatched Kamala Harris, who does not freelance this stuff, okay? | ||
Fair to say? | ||
To the Munich Security Conference two years ago this month, February 2022, and said, in a press conference, to Zelensky, poor Zelensky, We want you to join NATO. | ||
This was not in a backroom thing, this was in public, at a press conference. | ||
Knowing, because he said it like 4,000 times, we don't want nuclear weapons from the United States or NATO on our western border. | ||
Duh. | ||
And days later, he invaded. | ||
So like, what is that? | ||
And if you even, I raised that question at my previous job. | ||
And I was denounced as, of course, a traitor or something. | ||
But okay, great, I'm a traitor. | ||
What's the answer? | ||
What's the answer? | ||
These are not, you know, Toria Nuland, who I know, not dumb. | ||
Hasn't helped the U.S. | ||
in any way. | ||
Architect of the Iraq war. | ||
Architect of this disaster. | ||
One of the people who destroyed the U.S. | ||
unidentified
|
dollar. | |
Okay, fine. | ||
But you're not stupid. | ||
So, like, you're trying to get a war by acting that way. | ||
What's the other explanation? | ||
By the way, NATO didn't want Ukraine because it didn't meet the criteria. | ||
So, for admission, so why would you say that? | ||
Because you want a war. | ||
That's why. | ||
And that war has enriched a lot of people to the tune of billions. | ||
So, I don't care if I sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy nut because I'm neither left-wing nor a conspiracy nut. | ||
Tell me how I'm wrong. | ||
unidentified
|
Who do you think is behind it? | |
If you were to analyze, like, zoom out, looking at the entirety of human history, the military-industrial complex, you said Kamala Harris. | ||
Is it individuals? | ||
Is it, like, this collective flock that people are just pro-war as a collective? | ||
It's the hive mind. | ||
It's, and I, you know, spent my whole life in D.C. | ||
from 85 to 2020, so 35 years. | ||
And again, I grew up around it in that world. | ||
And I do think that conspiracies, of course, there are conspiracies, but in general, the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions. | ||
It's a bunch of people with the same views, A hive mind? | ||
Hang on a second. | ||
Hang on. | ||
This is very important. | ||
Who is behind it? | ||
That is the operative question! | ||
unidentified
|
Who? | |
Names. | ||
Names. | ||
Hang on. | ||
unidentified
|
Profile. | |
This is very important. | ||
unidentified
|
The military industrial complex. | |
Left-wing conspiracy nut, because I'm neither left-wing nor conspiracy nut. | ||
Tell me how I'm wrong. | ||
unidentified
|
Who do you think is behind it? | |
If you were to analyze it, zoom out. | ||
Who is behind it? | ||
That is the operative question. | ||
Who? | ||
Names. Names. | ||
Profile. | ||
Who are they? | ||
unidentified
|
The entirety of human history. | |
Answer! | ||
unidentified
|
The military-industrial complex. | |
You said Kamala Harris. | ||
Is it individuals? | ||
Is it like this collective flock that people are just pro-war as a collective? | ||
It's the hive mind. | ||
It's, and I, you know, spent my whole life in D.C. | ||
from 85 to 2020, so 35 years. | ||
Hive mind. | ||
And again, I grew up around it in that world. | ||
And I do think that conspiracies, of course there are conspiracies, but in general the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions. | ||
It's the hive mind. | ||
That sounds like when Chris Rufo was asked the same thing. | ||
I wonder, do I have that clip on my telegram? | ||
It's the hive mind. | ||
There was a time when Rufo and Jordan Peterson and them, they all had their own answer for, you know, who is responsible? | ||
Who is behind it? | ||
And Rufo said something like, oh, it's, you know, wokeism is like a car. | ||
And, you know, this is the engine and these are the tires. | ||
And Jordan Peterson had an answer. | ||
I wonder if I have that clip anywhere. | ||
Damn. | ||
Someone get that for me. | ||
Someone get that for me now! | ||
RufoWokeism... Damn, where is it? | ||
Matt Walsh, there was like a little symposium where Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, and Chris Ruffa, they were all basically asked the same question, which is, who? | ||
And they all gave this convoluted answer. | ||
Jordan Peterson said something like, it's a decentralized something that inhabits a multitude. | ||
that temporarily inhabits a multitude. | ||
And every answer, each one was more convoluted than the other. | ||
I don't know if that was when I was on Twitter and so it's not on my telegram You know what it's probably my Google Docs | ||
Oh Oh Oh Keith just tagged me maybe he has it Whoops get out of here. | ||
Okay Here we go, here we go, here's the post Thank You Keith Keith is such a W dude the bro the Brody All right, this is, uh... Oh, I'm blocked! | ||
I'm blocked on... Okay. | ||
I'm blocked on this account. | ||
Damn it! | ||
Can I archive it? | ||
I'm gonna have to... Oh, but you know what? | ||
I think the archive is probably... They probably prevented it from data scraping. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
Here we go. | ||
unidentified
|
We got it. | |
Here we go. | ||
Thank you, Internet Archive, because otherwise we'd just be screwed by Elon here. | ||
unidentified
|
So... | |
That's funny. | ||
Oops! | ||
Guess I'm blocked by everybody on the Grimace Shake account. | ||
Where's the original? | ||
We can't get the original. | ||
We can't get this video. | ||
I wish someone had the video, but I don't have this post. | ||
But Jordan Peterson says something like, oh, it inhabits a multitude, and then James Lindsay says, think of it like a car. | ||
unidentified
|
Jordan Peterson. | |
So who is responsible? | ||
That's the question, isn't it? | ||
Who is responsible? | ||
Jordan Peterson eventually has to respond, well, who's doing it? | ||
He says, well, it inhabits a multitude. | ||
I wonder if I could find that. | ||
unidentified
|
Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay. | |
The world or God demands that you constantly... | ||
Dude, why does the transcript, why is there no transcripts on any of these? | ||
Or did they... Is it down here? | ||
Oh, here it is. | ||
unidentified
|
Used to be here. | |
There's a system of ideas that's an animating, that's a set of animating principles. | ||
Sure. | ||
unidentified
|
Right? | |
And it partially inhabits a multitude of people. | ||
Well, I think there are two answers. | ||
What did Yarvin say? | ||
Yarvin said something. | ||
Do you ever notice they all say the same thing when they're asked? | ||
unidentified
|
Uh oh. | |
I don't know what this is. | ||
But I don't know what that is, though. | ||
unidentified
|
This has put a lot of blood on my hands. | |
Outgunned, the fast and furious You'll find many who will answer no to the first question, but there are ways of giving. | ||
There's no way that could happen. | ||
Climate scientists. | ||
Fucking Yarvin, dude. | ||
Do I get, uh... Come on, give me the clip, though. | ||
When they don't put the transcript, that makes it very difficult to scrub through. | ||
Sound only. | ||
Welcome to Tucker Carlson today. | ||
unidentified
|
It wasn't that long ago that the United States had an entire class of people known as, as I've sometimes called it, you know, because when I actually look at, you know, what the Vatican is, or in this case, the swamp, the deep state, the cathedral, as I've sometimes called it, you know, the sort of the oligarchic power structure of America, which is completely decentralized. | |
There is no center to it anywhere. | ||
There is no, like, they. | ||
There's no one you can point to. | ||
There's no race or class or little meeting of, like, protocols of elders of Zion that's happening. | ||
There's no conspiracy. | ||
It's completely decentralized. | ||
That's what makes it so hard to kill. | ||
So let's see. | ||
So let's just put these. | ||
This is, this may be tedious. | ||
Maybe some of you find this tedious. | ||
But trust, okay? | ||
This is good stuff. | ||
Gotta get rid of these timestamps though. | ||
Because they're all connected and they all say the same thing. | ||
That's what makes me different. | ||
That's what makes me special. | ||
That's what makes me the special boy. | ||
This is Curtis Yarvin. | ||
Oops, not Tarvin. | ||
Curtis Yarvin. | ||
Okay, this is Curtis Yarvin. | ||
This is James Lindsay. | ||
And where's Jordan Peterson? | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
I hate this font, but this is what we got, okay? | ||
So I think there was supposed to be one more from that period, like that same week, that said something very similar, but these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. | ||
Can I make this bigger? | ||
unidentified
|
There we go. | |
Okay. | ||
So Yarvin... This is Curtis Yarvin, who's a pretty big deal, and let's just also... | ||
Do this really quick. | ||
Curtis Yarvin. | ||
Echoes, echoes, echoes. | ||
Curtis Yarvin. | ||
Echoes, echoes, echoes. | ||
Curtis Yarvin says, I actually look at, you know, what the Vatican is, or in this case, the swamp, the deep state, is the cathedral, as I've sometimes called it, you know, the sort of oligarchic power structure of America, which is completely decentralized. the sort of oligarchic power structure of America, which is There's no center. | ||
Decentralized, there's no center anywhere. | ||
There's like, there's no one you can point to, there's no race or class, a little meeting, there's no protocols about the Zion, there's no conspiracy. | ||
It's completely decentralized. | ||
That's Courtesy Arvin's take on this question. | ||
James Lindsay says, think of it like a car. | ||
There's an engine, but the tires make it move. | ||
The tires are the diffuse they. | ||
The World Economic Forum is the transmission. | ||
The UN, IMF, WHO, and others are the drivetrain and the chassis. | ||
Who's the engine? | ||
Well, you know, we have guesses. | ||
And then you have Jordan Peterson. | ||
There's this, there's a system of ideas that's animated, that's a set of animating principles, right? | ||
And it partially inhabits a multitude of people. | ||
Okay, and then now you got Tucker. | ||
Uh, it's nobody. | ||
People with the same views. | ||
That's the hive mind. | ||
And I do think that conspiracies, of course there are conspiracies, but in general the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions. | ||
It's a bunch of people with the same views. | ||
Totally, you know, views have not been updated in decades. | ||
Putin said something That I thought was absolutely true. | ||
I don't know how he would know this, but it is true because I lived among them. | ||
So the Soviet Union dissolves in August of 91, on my honeymoon in Bermuda. | ||
I'll never forget it. | ||
And it was a big thing, you know? | ||
If you lived in D.C. | ||
I mean, the receptionist in my office in 1991 was getting a master's in Russian from Georgetown. | ||
He was going to be a Sovietologist. | ||
And he was among, you know, thousands of people in Washington on that same track. | ||
And so the Soviet Union collapses. | ||
Well, so does the rationale for like, you know, a good portion of the U.S. | ||
government has been Dedicated for over 40 years to opposing this thing that no longer exists. | ||
So there's a lot of forward momentum. | ||
There's a huge amount of money, the bulk of the money, in the richest country in the world, aimed in this direction. | ||
It's very hard for people to readjust, to reassess. | ||
And you see this in life all the time. | ||
You know, I love my wife. | ||
All of a sudden she ran off with my best friend. | ||
Holy shit! | ||
I didn't expect that this morning. | ||
Now it's a reality. | ||
Like, how do I deal with that? | ||
Well, you know, I got stage four cancer diagnosis. | ||
Okay? | ||
And it's all bad, but I'm just saying, like, that's the nature of life. | ||
Things you did not anticipate, never thought you'd have to face, happen out of nowhere. | ||
And you have to adjust your expectations and your goals. | ||
And people have a hard time with that. | ||
Very hard time with that. | ||
So, that's a lot of it. | ||
unidentified
|
You know, if you're Condi Rice... So, yeah, let me just... So this is the Tucker. | |
And then this is the Tucker. | ||
In general, the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions. | ||
It's a bunch of people with the same views. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay, so who's responsible? | |
The answer is nobody. | ||
Nobody's responsible. | ||
According to Curtis Yarvin, by the way, can everybody see this right? | ||
Okay, Curtis Yarvin says... Can I make it bold? | ||
Oligarch it's a decentralized. | ||
Oh, it's already bold, isn't it? | ||
unidentified
|
No. | |
Why can't I make this bold? | ||
Bruh. | ||
Okay, anyway. | ||
So he says it's an oligarchic power structure that is decentralized. | ||
James Lindsay, well, it's like a car. | ||
Jordan Peterson, it's a system of ideas that partially inhabits a multitude of people. | ||
Tucker Carlson, it's the hive mind. | ||
It's a bunch of people with the same views. | ||
Really? | ||
Well, what are the views that they have? | ||
Condoleezza Rice is mentor. | ||
Who is also the father of Madeleine Albright. | ||
What are his views? | ||
What kind of a person is he? | ||
Is he decentralized? | ||
Does he not have a particular race? | ||
Yeah, but they all have the same answer regardless. | ||
You know, James Lindsay, he's his own kind of spook. | ||
Jordan Peterson works for Daily Wire. | ||
Curtis Yarvin is what he is. | ||
But they all have the same answer to this question, which is kind of like the central question. | ||
And they all have the same answer to it, which is nobody. | ||
We don't know. | ||
It's decentralized. | ||
It's a multitude. | ||
It's a principle. | ||
It's a car. | ||
Sort of like highly ambitious midwit who gets this degree from Stanford and your whole life like thinking that Russia is the center of evil in the world. | ||
It's kind of hard to be like, well, actually there's a new threat and it's coming from farther east. | ||
It's primarily an economic threat. | ||
And maybe all the threats aren't reduced to tank battles. | ||
That's the other thing. | ||
Oh, here we go. | ||
Here's the Jordan Peterson clip. | ||
In a way, there's no they. | ||
unidentified
|
There's a system of ideas that's a set of animating principles. | |
Sure. | ||
unidentified
|
Right? | |
And it partially inhabits a multitude of people. | ||
Well, I think there are two answers to this. | ||
There's a very diffuse they. | ||
If we say the woke, we generally know that we're speaking about people who think in certain ways, that they've adopted some of this power analysis. | ||
But it's very diffuse. | ||
And maybe it's only a small amount. | ||
Maybe it's a great amount. | ||
unidentified
|
Maybe it's on this issue and not... But then there are the people who pay for it. | |
And I mean with large sums of money. | ||
They're a very distinct they. | ||
Somebody has decided to pour the gasoline into this fire. | ||
unidentified
|
And they decided... Do you think that they have any sense? | |
They again? | ||
These people? | ||
I think they know exactly what they're doing with it. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, there you go. | |
Is he at Manhattan or is it Rufo? | ||
I guess it must be Chris Ruffo right yeah he's at the Manhattan Institute which comes from Roger her talk I'm pretty sure Paul Singer and Hurtog. | ||
Paul Singer, who's, you guessed it, You guessed it. | ||
Is these people are so inelastic in their thinking, so lacking imagination and flexibility, that they can't sort of imagine like a new framework. | ||
And the new framework is not that you're going to go to war with China over Formosa, Taiwan. | ||
No, the framework is that all of a sudden all the infrastructure in Tijuana is going to be built by China. | ||
And like that's a different kind of threat. | ||
But they can't kind of get there because they're not that impressive. | ||
unidentified
|
So you actually have mentioned this. | |
It's not just the Cold War. | ||
It's World War II that populates most of their thinking in Washington. | ||
You mentioned Churchill, Chamberlain, and Hitler, and they're kind of seeing the World War II as kind of the good war, and the successful role the United States played in that war. | ||
They're kind of seeing that dynamic, that geopolitical dynamic, and applying it everywhere else still. | ||
Yeah, it's a template for everything. | ||
And I think it's of huge significance to the development of the West, to the civilization we live in now, to world history. | ||
It was a world war. | ||
And so I think it's worth knowing a lot about, and being honest about, and all the rest. | ||
But it's hardly the sum total of human history. | ||
It's a snapshot. | ||
And so you keep hearing people refer to not even the war. | ||
No one ever talks about the war. | ||
How much does Tony Blinken know about the Battle of Stalingrad? | ||
Probably zero. | ||
He doesn't know anything. | ||
Largest battle in human history. | ||
But everybody knows nothing. | ||
The Holocaust! | ||
That's crazy! | ||
Uh, yeah, Antony Blinken, a Jew. | ||
He knows about the cliches about Neville Chamberlain. | ||
No, I think he knows about the Holocaust. | ||
That's crazy. | ||
And not everything is that formula. | ||
That's all I'm saying. | ||
And the Republicans have a strange weakness for it, particularly the closeted ones. | ||
Yeah, Antony Blinken, a Jew, he knows about the cliches about Neville Chamberlain. | ||
No, I think he knows about the Holocaust. | ||
I wonder, does he have like Holocaust relatives or something? | ||
It's funny when he, because he's actually on the money when he says it's important to know World War II because they're obsessed with it and they don't even really know about the war, but they know about something else. | ||
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
That is very critical to understand. | ||
Does Tony Blinken have any Holocaust? | ||
Is he a Holocaust American? | ||
Yep, wouldn't you know. | ||
Our Secretary of State. | ||
...told the story of his stepfather, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. | ||
Yeah, somehow I don't think he's obsessed with the Neville Chamberlain thing, per se. | ||
There's a different aspect of World War II he's obsessed with. | ||
Weird, the weird ones were like, have no life. | ||
The same thing, by the way, that probably Susan, or Catalisa Rice's mentor's obsessed with. | ||
Other than, like, starting more wars. | ||
unidentified
|
Probably. | |
Everything to them, the most vulnerable, I would say, among them, emotionally, psychologically vulnerable, the toughest, they will always say the same thing. | ||
And it appeals to Republican voters, unfortunately, that every problem is the result of weakness. | ||
Everyone's Chamberlain. | ||
Like, Germany never would have gone into Poland and Czechoslovakia if England had been stronger. | ||
That's the argument. | ||
Is that true? | ||
I don't know, actually. | ||
Maybe. | ||
It might be totally true. | ||
It might not be true at all. | ||
I really don't know. | ||
But not everything is that. | ||
That's not always true. | ||
If I go up to you in a bar and I say, I hate your necktie, I'm being pretty aggressive with you, pretty strong. | ||
You might beat the shit out of me, actually, or shoot me if I do that. | ||
Like, an aggressive posture doesn't always get you the outcome that you want. | ||
Sometimes it requires a more sophisticated Mediterranean posture. | ||
I mean, it kind of depends. | ||
It's a time and place thing. | ||
And, uh, they don't acknowledge that. | ||
It's like everything is this same template. | ||
And I just, that's not a, the road to good decision making at all. | ||
unidentified
|
Since we're on the time period, let me ask you a kind of almost cliche question, but it applies to you. | |
But you've interviewed a lot of world leaders. | ||
Yep. | ||
unidentified
|
If you had the chance to interview Hitler in 39, 40, 41, First of all, would you do it? | |
And how would you do it? | ||
I assume you would do it. | ||
I love how he does... He takes a little breath and he goes... He fears. | ||
They fear the Tsar. | ||
They fear Hitler. | ||
Let's get it. | ||
Let's run it back. | ||
Let's run it back one more time. | ||
unidentified
|
Run it back, brother. | |
This is what it's all about. | ||
Dude, Lex Freedman hates this. | ||
unidentified
|
Why? | |
I would interview him. | ||
I would interview him. | ||
interview him. | ||
Yeah, Lex Friedman hates that. | ||
unidentified
|
41. | |
First of all, would you do it and how would you do it? | ||
I assume you would do it giving 41. | ||
He says, he goes, would you do it? | ||
First of all, would you do it and how would you do it? | ||
I assume you would do it given who you are. | ||
Man, it would be a massive cost for doing it. | ||
It may destroy my life to interview Putin, though I can tell you as much as I want that I'm not a Putin defender. | ||
I only care about the United States. | ||
That's 100% true. | ||
Anyone who knows me will tell you it's true. | ||
I keep saying it. | ||
But history may record me to the extent it records me at all as a tool of Putin, a hater of America. | ||
You know, that seems absurd to me, but absurd things happen. | ||
What would I ask Hitler? | ||
I don't even know. | ||
I guess that I would probably ask him what I ask Putin, which is what I ask everybody. | ||
Like, what's your motive? | ||
I agree! | ||
We should re-platform Hitler and let him talk! | ||
into Poland, like, why are you doing that? | ||
You know, what's your goal? | ||
And then, you know, the question is, is he going to answer honestly? | ||
I don't know. | ||
You know, you can't make someone answer a question honestly. | ||
You can only sort of shut up while they talk and then let people decide what they think of the answer. | ||
I agree. | ||
We should re-platform Hitler and let him talk. | ||
Let him talk. | ||
unidentified
|
Bar fight, there's different ways. | |
There are different ways, that's exactly right. | ||
That's exactly, man, is that true? | ||
That is absolutely right. | ||
unidentified
|
I mean, your energy with Putin, for example, was such that it felt like he could trust you. | |
I felt like he could tell you a lot. | ||
I just wanted, I just wanted to get it on the record! | ||
That's all I wanted! | ||
unidentified
|
I think it was extremely, like, we have to acknowledge how important that interview was for the record and for opening the door for conversation. | |
Like, opening the door to conversation literally is the path to, like, more conversations and peace, peace talks. | ||
Well, I would flip it around and say anyone who seeks to shut that down, By focusing on a supermarket video of four minutes versus a two hour and 15 minute long interview with a world leader. | ||
Anyone who doesn't want more conversation, who wants fewer facts, fewer perspectives is totalitarian. | ||
Probably doesn't have good intent. | ||
I mean, I can honestly say for all my many manifold faults. | ||
I've never tried to, like, make people shut up. | ||
You know? | ||
It's not in me. | ||
I don't believe in that. | ||
unidentified
|
So, Putin's folks have shown interest for quite a while to speaking with me. | |
So, you've spoken with him. | ||
What advice would you give? | ||
Oh, do it immediately. | ||
How's your Russian, by the way? | ||
unidentified
|
Have you kept up with it? | |
Yeah, fluent. | ||
So, he would most likely be in Russian. | ||
So, that's the other thing is, I do have a question about language barrier. | ||
Did you feel it was annoying? | ||
It's horrible. | ||
unidentified
|
It's horrible. | |
I mean, I don't have much of a technique as an interviewer. | ||
Other than listen really carefully. | ||
That's that's my only skill. | ||
I don't have the best questions. | ||
I certainly don't have the best questions. | ||
All I do that I'm proud of and I think works is I just listen super carefully. | ||
I never let a word go by that I'm not paying attention. | ||
It exhausts me, actually. | ||
But you can't do that in a foreign language because there's a delay. | ||
Here, I'm just whining, but it's real. | ||
unidentified
|
It's not whining. | |
Can you actually describe the technical details of that? | ||
Are you hearing concurrently, like at the same time? | ||
Yes, but there's a massive lag. | ||
So what's happening is, so the translators, so we were, of course, extremely uptight about the logistical details. | ||
So we brought our own cameraman, who I've been around the world with, who worked at Fox, came with me now. | ||
Amazing. | ||
And he did I don't want to hear about the interview anymore. | ||
cameras, lighting, everything. | ||
Like we had full control of that. | ||
I don't want to hear about the interview anymore. | ||
I'm over it. | ||
I was not named in. | ||
I had nothing to do with it. | ||
unidentified
|
Your private texts about him around the 2020 election were made public. | |
In one of them, you said you passionately hate Trump. | ||
When that came out, you said that you actually know you love him. | ||
So how do you explain the difference? | ||
My texts reflect a lot of things, including how I feel at the moment that I sent them. | ||
That specific text, I happen to know, since I had to go through it forensically during my deposition in a case I was not named in. | ||
I had nothing to do with whatsoever. | ||
It's crazy how civil suits can be used to hurt people you disagree with publicly. | ||
But I was mad at a very specific person. | ||
I mean, really, you're asking me, I'll tell you exactly what that was. | ||
It was the second the election ended and they stopped voting, stopped the vote counting on election night, Interesting how he starts touching his face on this question, isn't it? | ||
Has he touched his face one time in this interview? | ||
I'm just gonna scrub through. | ||
I don't think he's touched his face even one time during this entire thing. | ||
At least if he has, not a lot, not like this. | ||
But so he's asked about these texts where he says he hates Trump. | ||
And look at the way his hand covers his entire face. | ||
I'll tell you exactly what it is. | ||
I'll tell you exactly that discrepancy because I remember. | ||
And then he covers his mouth. | ||
Then he puts his hand on his face and covers his mouth. | ||
I mean, you're asking me, I'll tell you exactly what that was. | ||
It was... | ||
And then he covers his mouth. | ||
Then he puts his hand on his face and covers his mouth. | ||
The second the election ended and they stopped voting... | ||
And then he scratches his brow, concealing his entire face. | ||
I'll tell you exactly what that was about. | ||
I'll tell you exactly what I was doing. | ||
I don't think I've seen that this entire interview. | ||
We've watched two hours of it. | ||
It's kind of interesting. | ||
Stopped the vote counting on election night. | ||
I was like, well this is, and it's all now mail-in ballots, electronic voting machines. | ||
I was like, that's a rigged election. | ||
I thought that then, I think it now. | ||
Now it's obvious that it was. | ||
But at the time I was like, I feel like there's, that was like crazy what just happened. | ||
I want, but I don't want to go on TV and say it's a rigged election because I don't have any evidence it's a rigged election. | ||
You can't do that. | ||
It's irresponsible and it's wrong. | ||
So I was like, I want, the Trump campaign was making all these claims about, you know, this or that fraud. | ||
So I was trying my best to, to substantiate them, to follow up on it. | ||
Everyone's like, shut up, Trump. | ||
You lost. | ||
Go away. | ||
We're going to indict you. | ||
Um, but I felt like my job was to be like, no, the guy's, he's president. | ||
He's claiming the election just got stolen and he's making these claims. | ||
Let's see if we can, Well, the people around him were like, so incompetent. | ||
It was just absolutely crazy. | ||
And so I called a couple of times. | ||
I finally gave up, but I'd call and be like, all right, you guys claim that these inconsistencies, this, you know, whatever this happened, give me evidence and I'll put it on TV. | ||
You know, it's my job to bring stuff that is not going to be aired anywhere else to the public. | ||
I couldn't it was like it was insane how incompetent and unserious they weren't able to provide well here's the here's the point of the story and of that text so then they say well dead people voted well that's just an easy call okay if a dead person voted we can prove someone's dead because like being dead is one of the few things we're good at like verifying because you start to smell okay and there's a record of it so the death certificate so it's like give me the names of people who are dead who voted then we can get their registration we can show they voted Five names. | ||
So I go on TV and I say, Caroline Johnson, 79, of Waukegan, Illinois, voted. | ||
Here's her death certificate. | ||
She died. | ||
And the campaign sends me this stuff. | ||
Now, I, in general, don't take stuff directly from campaigns, because they all lie, because their job is to get elected, or whatever. | ||
So I'm very wary of campaigns having been around it for 30 years. | ||
But I made an exception to my rule, and I got a bunch of stuff from them. | ||
Well, of the six names, two of them are still alive. | ||
unidentified
|
What? | |
I immediately corrected it the next night. | ||
CNN did a whole segment on how I was spreading disinformation, which I was, by the way. | ||
In this one case, they were right. | ||
I was so mad. | ||
I was like, I hate you. | ||
I'm not talking about you. | ||
I'm so mad. | ||
Anyway, that's the answer. | ||
That's what that was. | ||
No, no, that was not. | ||
Nope. | ||
That's a lie. | ||
Not this one, not the one about how white men fight. | ||
one about Trump we have screenshots of them We are very very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. | ||
I truly can't wait. | ||
There was one other one where he says, I hate Trump passionately. | ||
Is it all here in the Washington Post? | ||
The more this election drags on, the worse it is for Fox. | ||
At this point, it would help the network for it to be called ASAP. | ||
Can't imagine what weekend coverage would be like. | ||
Let's see, where else? | ||
On the bright side, Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures. | ||
That's for sure. | ||
All of them fail. | ||
What he's good at is destroying things. | ||
He's the undisputed world champion of that. | ||
He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. | ||
It's so obvious. | ||
Many viewers were upset tonight we didn't cover election fraud. | ||
Yeah, probably should have. | ||
But it's all our viewers care about right now. | ||
Mistake. | ||
I just hate that shit. | ||
And then where is text from after? | ||
Because he had text after January 6th. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, here. | |
This is after January 6th. | ||
Trump has two weeks left. | ||
Once he's out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his own supporters. | ||
My view is the most important thing we can do, maybe the only thing we can do, is try to save the things that make America worth living in. | ||
For me, that begins with the First and Second Amendment. | ||
There's no question that he will jeopardize those things. | ||
He's a demonic force, a destroyer. | ||
But he's not going to destroy us. | ||
I've been thinking about this every day for four years. | ||
Okay? | ||
So he goes on this interview and says, Oh, I was mad because the Trump campaign gave me some misinformation. | ||
And these texts he sent repeatedly for two months. | ||
Trump is a destroyer. | ||
He's terrible at business. | ||
He destroys everything. | ||
He's a demonic force. | ||
He's destroying the first amendment. | ||
I can't wait until he leaves office. | ||
I've been thinking about it for four years. | ||
He becomes less powerful. | ||
Really? | ||
So that's a lie. | ||
Here he is on January 4th, 2021, months after that. | ||
We are very, very close for being able to ignore Trump most nights. | ||
I truly can't wait. | ||
I hate him passionately. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
He was pushing voter fraud stuff. | ||
I have no doubt there was fraud, but at this point Trump and Lyn and Powell have so discredited their own case and the rest of us to some extent. | ||
It's infuriating, enrages me. | ||
That's the last four years. | ||
We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. | ||
But come on, there isn't an upside to Trump. | ||
That's not the same. | ||
To say, oh, well I was mad because they gave me a false report and Sidney Powell's retarded. | ||
I mean, he's right about that. | ||
What he said on Lex Friedman is true. | ||
What he said on Lex Friedman about the Trump, you know, save the election effort, that was completely incompetent. | ||
Sidney Powell and Lin Wood were ridiculous. | ||
The Trump legal counsel wasn't even trying. | ||
It was Peter Navarro's office, specifically this guy Garrett Ziegler, that were really the ones doing the lifting. | ||
So it was a joke. | ||
I mean, the whole thing was a joke. | ||
Fair enough. | ||
But that's not what these texts say. | ||
He says, oh, that's all it was. | ||
The texts say, we have nothing to show for the Trump first term. | ||
Trump is demonic. | ||
He destroys everything. | ||
I can't wait until he's out of office. | ||
I've been thinking about it for the past four years. | ||
We'll never have to talk about him again. | ||
I can't wait. | ||
That's completely different. | ||
So, we still have not had a full accounting for all these texts. | ||
I think he's just covering his ass because Trump is back, and Trump is probably gonna win. | ||
So now, that he got caught on the, he got caught red-handed, he's gonna say, oh well, it was really nothing, oh I was just mad about this one thing. | ||
My producer, and I was like venting, it's like a producer I was really close to, and I've known him for a long time, he's really smart, and uh, and he's like, he was someone I could like be honest with, and I was like, ah! | ||
And by the way, it's so funny, I mean, now I'm doing What Was Me, which I will keep to a minimum, but... It's like stealing someone's text, like... He did it for months, too. | ||
He did it in November, December, and January. | ||
So the initial thing that he's talking about here was in November. | ||
This is in January. | ||
This is November, December, and January. | ||
I was an idiot. | ||
I should have said, come and arrest me. | ||
I'm not giving you my freaking text messages, okay? | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
But I got bullied into it by a lawyer. | ||
I didn't get bullied into it. | ||
I was weak enough to agree with a lawyer. | ||
My fault. | ||
Never should have done that. | ||
unidentified
|
Fuck you! | |
They're my texts. | ||
I'm not even named in this case. | ||
That's what I should have said, but I didn't. | ||
I said I was mad on the air the next day, but not in language that colorful. | ||
But whatever. | ||
Whatever. | ||
I try to be... I try to be transparent. | ||
I mean, I also think, by the way, if you watch someone over time, you don't always know what they really think, but you can tell if someone's lying. | ||
You know, you can sort of feel it in people. | ||
And I have lied. | ||
I'm sure I'll lie again. | ||
I don't want to lie. | ||
You know? | ||
I don't think I'm a liar. | ||
I try not to be a liar. | ||
I don't want to be a liar. | ||
I think it's, like, really important not to be a liar. | ||
unidentified
|
You said nice things about me earlier. | |
I'm starting to question. | ||
I have questions. | ||
I have a lot of questions. | ||
I'm gonna have to see your texts after this. | ||
My texts are so uninteresting now. | ||
It's like crazy how uninteresting they are. | ||
unidentified
|
Emojis and gifs. | |
Yeah, lots of dog pictures. | ||
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
You said to some degree the election was rigged. | ||
Lots of dog pictures. | ||
A lot of hating on Trump. | ||
So it's a lot of hating Trump. | ||
A lot of dog pictures too. | ||
Okay, buddy. | ||
Was it stolen? | ||
It was 100% stolen. | ||
Are you joking? | ||
unidentified
|
Like it was rigged to that large of a degree? | |
They completely change the way people vote. | ||
He didn't cover it. | ||
Tucker didn't cover it at all. | ||
He didn't cover any of this. | ||
You know what he came on when the election was stolen in 2020? | ||
He came out and said the polls were wrong. | ||
He said they said Biden would win Michigan by 40 points, but he didn't. | ||
That was Tucker's coverage in 2020. | ||
I remember because we were calling him out in Atlanta. | ||
And he didn't cover any of this. | ||
Now, when it's safe, Excuse me, all these years later, now that Biden is firmly in, and we're facing the next one, and now he says, oh yeah, of course it was totally fake. | ||
- Hey, where was this in 2020? - Vote right before the election on the basis of COVID, which had nothing to do with- - So in that way it was rigged, meaning like- - 100% and then- - Manipulated. - Then you censor the information people are allowed to get. | ||
Anyone who complains about COVID, which is like, by the way, it might've hurt Trump. | ||
But I mean, it's like, whatever. | ||
I mean, you could play it many different ways. | ||
You can't have censorship in a democracy, by definition. | ||
Here's how it works. | ||
The people rule. | ||
They vote for representatives to carry their agenda to the capital city and get it enacted. | ||
That's how they're in charge. | ||
And then every few years, they get to reassess the performance of those people in an election. | ||
In order to do that, they need access, unfettered access, to information. | ||
And no one, particularly not people who are already in power, is allowed to tell them what information they can have. | ||
They have to have all information that they want. | ||
Whether the people in charge want it, or don't want it, or think it's true, or think it's false, doesn't matter. | ||
And the second you don't have that, you don't have a democracy. | ||
It's not a free election, period. | ||
And that's very clear in other countries, I guess, but it's not clear here. | ||
So, but I would say it's this election that, I mean, it took me a while to come to this, but it's this election that's the referendum on democracy. | ||
Biden is senile. | ||
He's literally senile. | ||
He can't talk. | ||
He can't walk. | ||
The whole world knows that. | ||
Leave our borders. | ||
People are, you know, everybody, everybody in the world knows it. | ||
He can't, he can't, you can't, a senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world. | ||
Unless they're fraud. | ||
Period. | ||
Like, who would vote for a senile man? | ||
He literally can't talk. | ||
And nobody I've ever met thinks he's running the U.S. | ||
government, because he's not. | ||
And so, I think the world is looking on at this coming election and saying, and a lot of the world hates Trump, okay? | ||
It's not an endorsement of Trump. | ||
But it's true. | ||
If Joe Biden gets re-elected, Democracy is a freaking joke. | ||
It's just true. | ||
unidentified
|
I think half the country doesn't think he's senile. | |
Do you really think that? | ||
unidentified
|
They don't think he's senile? | |
Yeah, I think he just has difficulty speaking. | ||
It's like gradual degradation, just getting old. | ||
So cognitive ability is degrading. | ||
What's the difference between degraded cognitive ability and senility? | ||
unidentified
|
Well, senility has a threshold. | |
It's beyond a threshold to where he could be a functioning leader. | ||
Okay, that may be a term of art that I don't fully understand. | ||
Maybe there's like an IQ threshold or something. | ||
But I'm happy to go with degraded cognitive ability. | ||
unidentified
|
Sure, but that's an age thing. | |
But he's the leader of the United States with the world's second largest nuclear arsenal. | ||
unidentified
|
I'm with you. | |
I'm a sucker for great speeches and for speaking abilities of leaders and Biden with two wars going on and potentially more. | ||
The importance of a leader to speak eloquently, both privately in a room with other leaders and publicly, is really important. | ||
I agree with you that rhetorical ability really matters. | ||
Convincing people that your program is right, telling them what we're for, national identity, national unity, all come from words. | ||
I agree with all of that. | ||
Lex Friedman is just a retard. | ||
He is just a straight up retard. | ||
unidentified
|
The way, I need some good speeches. | |
I need some, I need a Winston Churchill movie speech. | ||
I need an IMDb, World War II movie, Steven Spielberg feel-good speech about how democracy needs to fight Putin. | ||
Yeah, that's the problem with having a mental retard running your government. | ||
Where's all the base speeches? | ||
Where's all the good speeches like that Obama would give? | ||
Someone who grunted at the microphone would be more reassuring than a guy who clearly doesn't know where he is. | ||
And I think everyone knows that. | ||
And like, I can't imagine there's an honest person in Washington, which is gonna vote for Biden by 90%, obviously. | ||
Those are all dependent on the federal government for their income. | ||
But is there any person who could say, like, out of 350 million Americans, like, that's the most qualified to lead? | ||
Or even in the top 80%? | ||
Like, what? | ||
That's so embarrassing that that guy is our president and with wars going on, it's scary. | ||
unidentified
|
But it's complicated to understand why. | |
Those are the choices we have. | ||
Well, I agree. | ||
Well, it's a failure of the system. | ||
Clearly, it's not working. | ||
If you've got one guy over 80, the other guy almost at 80, people that age should not be running any. | ||
unidentified
|
So you have on the Democratic side, you have Dean Phillips, you have R.K. | |
Jr. | ||
until recently, I guess, he's independent. | ||
And then you have Vivek, who are all younger people. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Why did they not connect to a degree to where... It's such an interesting... I mean, I think it's a really interesting question. | ||
There are a million different answers. | ||
And of course, I don't fully understand it, even though I feel like I've watched it pretty carefully. | ||
I would say the bottom line is there's so much money vested in the federal apparatus, in the parties, in the government. | ||
As I said a minute ago, our economy is dominated by monopolies, but the greatest of all monopolies is the federal monopoly, which oversees and controls all the other monopolies. | ||
So it's like, it's really substantially about the money. | ||
It's not ideological, it's about the money. | ||
And if someone controls the federal government, I mean, at this point, it's the most powerful organization in human history. | ||
Like, it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard to fight that. | ||
In the case of Trump, I know the answer there. | ||
They raided Mar-a-Lago. | ||
They indicted him on bullshit charges. | ||
Like, and I felt that in myself, too. | ||
Even I was like, come on. | ||
You know, like, whatever you think of Trump. | ||
And I agreed with his immigration views. | ||
I really like Trump personally. | ||
I think he's hilarious and interesting, which he is. | ||
But it's like, okay, there are a lot of people in this country. | ||
Let's get some, you know, let's have, at the very least, let's have a real debate. | ||
The second, I messed up your camera, sir. | ||
Sorry, I'm getting excited. | ||
But the second they rated Mar-a-Lago on a documents charge, as someone from D.C., I was like, I know a lot about classification and all that stuff and been around it a lot. | ||
That's so absurd. | ||
But I was like, now it's not about Trump. | ||
It's about our system continuing. | ||
If you can take out a presidential candidate on a fake charge, use the justice system to take the guy out of the race, then we don't have a representative democracy anymore. | ||
And I think a lot of Republican voters felt that way. | ||
If they hadn't indicted him, I'm not sure he would be the nominee. | ||
I really don't think he would. | ||
unidentified
|
So now a vote for Trump is a kind of fuck you to the system. | |
Or an expression of your desire to keep the system that we had, which is one where voters get to decide. | ||
Prosecutors don't get to decide. | ||
Look, they told us for four years that Trump was like a super criminal or something. | ||
I've actually been friends with some super criminals. | ||
I'm a little less judgy than most. | ||
So I didn't discount the possibility that he had, I don't know, he's in the real estate business in New York in the 70s. | ||
Like, did he kill someone? | ||
I don't know. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
You know, no, I'm not joking. | ||
And I'm not for killing people, but like anything's possible. | ||
unidentified
|
It's good that you took a stand on that. | |
I was like, well, who knows, you know? | ||
And I didn't know. | ||
And what they came up with was a documents charge? | ||
Are you joking? | ||
And then the sitting president has the same documents violation, but he's fine? | ||
It's like, it's crazy this is happening in front of all of us. | ||
And then it becomes like, at that point, it's not about Joe Biden. | ||
It's not about Donald Trump. | ||
It's about preserving a system which has worked, not perfectly, but pretty freaking well for 250 years. | ||
I know you don't like Trump. | ||
I get it. | ||
Let's not destroy that system. | ||
But we can handle another four years of Trump. | ||
I think we can. | ||
So calm down. | ||
What we can't handle is a country whose political system is run by the Justice Department. | ||
That is just You're freaking Ecuador at that point. | ||
No. | ||
unidentified
|
So speaking of the Justice Department, CIA and intelligence agencies of that nature, which you've been traveling quite a bit, probably tracked by everybody. | |
Which is the most powerful intelligence agency do you think? | ||
CIA? | ||
Mossad? | ||
MI6? | ||
SVR? | ||
I keep going. | ||
The Chinese. | ||
It depends what you mean by powerful. | ||
Which one bats above its weight? | ||
We know. | ||
unidentified
|
Which one Which one? | |
Oh, damn, dude. | ||
This is spy games. | ||
There are two spies. | ||
Lex Freedman's a spy. | ||
Tucker's a spy. | ||
Which one bats above its weight? | ||
We know. | ||
Yes, we do. | ||
Yes, we do. | ||
That's hilarious. | ||
Oh, man. | ||
Is massage... Which one bats above its weight? | ||
We know. | ||
Which one is... Massage, just to be clear, I guess is weight. | ||
Well, of course. | ||
Tiny country. | ||
It's very sophisticated in its purpose. | ||
Which one... | ||
Of course! | ||
He wouldn't even say it. | ||
He wouldn't even say the words. | ||
Lex Friedman had to say, you mean Masaad Goy? | ||
unidentified
|
Goy, did you mean Masaad? | |
It has the greatest global reach and comms. | ||
Which one is most able to read your text? | ||
I assume the NSA. | ||
But Chinese books are pretty good. | ||
Israel is pretty good. | ||
The French actually are surprisingly good for kind of a declining country. | ||
Their intel services seem pretty impressive. | ||
No, I love France, but you know what I mean? | ||
And all that. | ||
But the question, I mean, I grew up around all that stuff. | ||
It's all totally fine. | ||
A strong country should have a strong and capable intel service so its policy makers can make informed decisions. | ||
That's what they're for. | ||
As Vladimir Putin himself noted, I don't talk about it very much, but it's true. | ||
I applied to the CIA when I was in college. | ||
You know, I was familiar with it because of where I lived and had grown up and everything, and I was like, seemed interesting. | ||
That's honestly the only reason. | ||
I was like, live in foreign countries, see history happen, like, I'm for that. | ||
I applied to the operations directorate. | ||
They turned me down on the basis of drug use, actually. | ||
True. | ||
But anyway, whatever. | ||
I was unsuited for it, so I'm glad they turned me down. | ||
But the point is, I didn't see CIA as a threat, partly because I was bathing in propaganda about CIA, and I didn't really understand what it was and didn't want to know. | ||
But second, because my impression at the time was it was outwardly focused. | ||
It was focused on our enemies. | ||
I don't have a problem with that as much. | ||
The fact that CIA is playing in domestic politics and actually has for a long time was involved in the Kennedy assassination. | ||
That's not speculation. | ||
That's a fact. | ||
And I confirmed that for someone who had read their documents. | ||
They're still not public. | ||
It's shocking. | ||
You can't have that. | ||
And the reason I'm so mad is I really believe in the idea of representative government, acknowledging its imperfections. | ||
But like I should have some say. | ||
I live here. | ||
I'm a citizen. | ||
I pay all your freaking taxes. | ||
So the fact that they would be Tampering with American democracy is so outrageous to me. | ||
And I don't know why Morning Joe is not outraged. | ||
This parade of dummies, highly credentialed dummies, they have on Morning Joe every day. | ||
They don't seem to... That doesn't bother them at all. | ||
How could that not bother you? | ||
Why is only Glenn Greenwald mad about it? | ||
I mean, it's confirmed. | ||
It's not like a fever dream. | ||
It's real. | ||
They played in the last election domestically. | ||
And I guess it shows how dumb I am because they've been doing that for many years. | ||
I mean, the guy who took out Mossadegh lived on my street. | ||
You know, the Roosevelt CIA officer. | ||
So I mean, again, I grew up around this stuff, but I never really thought, I never reached the obvious conclusion, which is that if the U.S. | ||
government subverts democracy in other countries in the name of democracy, it will over time subvert democracy in my country. | ||
Why wouldn't it? | ||
That is, the corruption is like core. | ||
It's at the root of it. | ||
The purpose of the CIA was envisioned, at least publicly envisioned, as an intel gathering apparatus for the executives of the president. | ||
Someone in the live chat says, say that again. | ||
The guy that killed Mosaddegh lived down the street from Tucker? | ||
For those that don't know, that's the one who replaced, the CIA killed him in Iran to reinstall the Shah in the 50s, in what, 56? | ||
Say that again. | ||
So the guy that killed... | ||
So, and wait a second, didn't he say at the beginning of the show that he didn't learn that the U.S. | ||
government kills people until his middle age? | ||
He said, uh, finding out that the U.S. | ||
government interferes in other countries affairs came to me as a shock because I learned it in my middle age. | ||
But the guy that killed the Iranian leader And the 50s lived down the street from you and you were growing up and you bathed in CIA propaganda because your dad was a fed? | ||
So, like, it seems like the li- Didn't I say that at the beginning? | ||
Didn't I say that was cap? | ||
I said that was bullshit? | ||
The whole thing! | ||
This, like, aw shucks, why didn't Putin hand over the spy to my custody? | ||
There was no reason that he should have- that he shouldn't have done that. | ||
Oh, I had no idea the US government's involved in everyone's affairs until I was 40. | ||
And now we learn, yeah, I applied for the CIA, oh. | ||
I saw the documents about Jack Kennedy getting killed. | ||
The guy who killed most of Doug lived down the street from me. | ||
Very...and he hates Trump, just like Peter Strzok. | ||
And Tucker Carlson had his Lisa Page, Peter Strzok moment when his texts were leaked and he covers his face and says, oh, I have no idea. | ||
Oh, let me tell you exactly what that's about. | ||
Let me tell you exactly what I meant by that as I cover my mouth and cover my face. | ||
We could make wise foreign policy decisions. | ||
What the hell is happening in country X? | ||
I don't know. | ||
Let me call the agency in charge of finding out. | ||
The point wasn't to freaking guarantee the outcome of elections. | ||
unidentified
|
I'm doing an Israel-Palestine debate next week, but I have to ask you just your thoughts, maybe even from a U.S. | |
perspective, what do you think about Hamas attacks on Israel? | ||
What would be the right thing for Israel to do, and what's the right thing for U.S. | ||
to do in this, looking at the geopolitics of it? | ||
I mean, it's not a topic that I get into a lot because I'm a non-expert. | ||
And because I'm not, unlike every other American, I'm not emotionally invested in other countries just in general. | ||
I mean, I admire them or not. | ||
I love visiting them. | ||
I love Jerusalem, probably my favorite city in the world. | ||
But I don't have an emotional attachment to it. | ||
So maybe I've got more clarity. | ||
I don't know. | ||
Maybe less. | ||
Here's my view. | ||
I believe in sovereignty, as mentioned, and I think each country has to make decisions based on its own interests, but also with reference to its own capabilities. | ||
It's a long-term interest and it's very unwise for, uh, I'm not a huge fan of treaties. | ||
Some are fine, too many bad. | ||
Uh, but I think U.S. | ||
aid, military aid to Israel and the implied security guarantees, some explicit, but many implied security guarantees of the United States to Israel probably haven't helped Israel that much long-term, you know? | ||
It's a rich country with a highly capable population like every other country. | ||
It's probably best if it makes its decisions based on what- It doesn't help Israel. | ||
The foreign aid and the security guarantees long-term don't help Israel. | ||
Wasn't there, is it commentary magazine? | ||
unidentified
|
I think. | |
Or is it a different one? | ||
Might be a tablet. | ||
They did a symposium on this recently, and they had everybody weigh in. | ||
And let me see, was it, it might have been something, it might have been tablet. | ||
or was it yeah here we go So, Tablet last year did a symposium. | ||
The publication on July 16th 2023 of an article by Jacob Siegel, who is a total spook, by the way. | ||
I could pull him up in my brand new Obsidian. | ||
Jacob Siegel, son of Fred Siegel. | ||
Fred Siegel works for the Manhattan Institute, old friend of David Sidorsky, mentor of Kostin Alomariu. | ||
Anyway, Jacob Siegel and Leo Leibovitz called for an end to USA to Israel, opened a fresh debate over a topic dominated by outdated assumptions and emotional entreaties. | ||
To deepen the conversation, Tablet invited a group that includes a retired IDF general, U.S. | ||
senators, members of Congress, Middle East diplomats, writers, to give their thoughts on it. | ||
Let's read the article from Jacob Siegel, by the way, because this echoes what Tucker just said. | ||
We just go to maybe we just I haven't read this by the way. | ||
wait we skip to the end get the get to the conclusion here um cut the stranglehold of aid Let America pursue its interests. | ||
Let Israel follow its own interests, which sometimes align with Washington, sometimes don't. | ||
If Israelis think it will ensure their security to decapitate the Iranian regime or give the Golan Heights on a platter to Bashar Assad, or develop their own homemade fighter plane and sell it to India or Saudi Arabia or China, let them go ahead. | ||
Let Israel decapitate the Iranian regime. | ||
AMERICA FIRST! | ||
unidentified
|
AMERICA FIRST! | |
Cut foreign aid to Israel! | ||
unidentified
|
YEAH! | |
AMERICA FIRST! | ||
So that they can depose the Iranian regime. | ||
Wait, what? | ||
Jacob Siegel says, let's cut foreign aid! | ||
AMERICA FIRST! | ||
AMERICA... So that we can kill the Iranian mullahs and sell fighter jets to China! | ||
Wait a second... | ||
unidentified
|
Hang on! | |
And let American Jews who care about being Jewish focus on observance and learning their people's history instead of pimping for Lockheed Martin. | ||
If the commitment to Israel is deeper than political fashion, if it is more than a secularized idolatry, then it's time to prove it by smashing ideological idols of America's Israel debate. | ||
They are afraid of progressives using foreign aid to Israel as golden handcuffs. | ||
That's what they're afraid of. | ||
So when Tucker says our security guarantee isn't good for Israel, it's echoing what has been a growing Jewish position since Obama left office and maybe shortly before, really since the JCPOA. | ||
Some are fine, too many bad. | ||
But I think U.S. | ||
aid, military aid to Israel and the implied security guarantees, some explicit, but many implied security guarantees of the United States to Israel probably haven't helped Israel that much long-term, you know? | ||
It's a rich country with a highly capable population like every other country. | ||
It's probably best if it makes its decisions based on what it can do by itself. | ||
So I would definitely be concerned if I lived in Israel because I think... Well, good for Israel. | ||
...fair or unfair, and really this is another product of technology. | ||
Well, good for Israel. | ||
Good for them. | ||
You know, we're giving them so much money that now that we have some expectations for them, now it's bad for them. | ||
We need to do what's best for... I think it's time we do what's best for Israel. | ||
Now that the foreign aid is actually restraining them rather than helping them expand, I think it's time to stop and let them do what's best. | ||
Let's just do what's best for those people. | ||
I'm worried about that. | ||
Public sentiment in that area is boiling over. | ||
And I think it's gonna be hard for some of the governments in the region, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, to contain their own population. | ||
They don't want conflict with Israel at all. | ||
They were all pretty psyched, actually, for the trend in progress, the Saudi peace deal, which was never signed, but would have been great for everybody. | ||
Because, like, trade, peace, normal relations, like, that's good, okay? | ||
Let's just say. | ||
I know John Bolton doesn't like it, but it's good. | ||
And it's kind of what we should be looking for. | ||
But now it's not possible. | ||
And, you know, if you had like a coalition of countries against Israel, I know Israel has nuclear weapons and has a capable military and all that in the backing of the United States, but like you don't, it's a small country. | ||
I think I'd be very worried. | ||
So there's that. | ||
And I don't see any advantage in to the United States. | ||
I mean, I don't, I think it's important. | ||
For each country to make its own decisions. | ||
unidentified
|
But it also is a place, like you said, where things are boiling over, and it could spread across multiple nations into a major military conflict. | |
Yeah, well, I think very easily could happen. | ||
In fact, probably right after Ramadan, if I had to guess. | ||
And I pray it doesn't. | ||
But again, I don't think you can overstate the lack of wisdom, weakness, short-term thinking of American foreign policy leadership. | ||
These are the architects of the Iraq War, of the totally pointless destruction of Libya, totally pointless destruction of Syria, and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan that resulted in a return to status quo. | ||
So like, the Vietnam War, Their track record of the Korean War, even going back 80 years, is uninterrupted failures, one after the other. | ||
So I just don't have any confidence in those leaders to improve. | ||
When was the last time they improved another country? | ||
Can you think of that? | ||
Oh, the Marshall Plan. | ||
Well, you look at Europe now and you're like, I don't know, you know, if that worked. | ||
But even if it did work, again, 80 years ago. | ||
So when was the last country American foreign policymakers improved? | ||
So if I were Netanyahu's in a very difficult place, politically impossible. | ||
I mean, I'm glad I'm not Netanyahu. | ||
And I'm not sure he's capable of making wise long-term decisions anyway. | ||
But if I was just, like, an Israeli, I'd be like, I don't know if I want, like, all this help and guidance. | ||
So yeah, I actually think it's worse than just having just returned from the Middle East and talking to a lot of pretty open-minded sort of pro-Israeli Arabs who want stability above all. | ||
The merchant class always wants stability. | ||
So I'm on their side, I guess. | ||
And they're like, man, this could get super ugly, super fast. | ||
American leadership is just completely absent. | ||
It's just all posturing. | ||
It's like people like Nikki Haley. | ||
You just wonder, like, how does an advanced civilization promote someone like Nikki Haley to a position of authority? | ||
It's like, what? | ||
Like that would be the appropriate response, but everyone's so intimidated. | ||
Like, oh, she's a strong woman. | ||
She's so transparently weak and sort of ridiculous. | ||
It doesn't know anything. | ||
And it's just like thinks that jumping up and down and making these absurd like statements, repeating bumper stickers is like leadership or something. | ||
A self-confident advanced society would never allow Nikki Haley to advance. | ||
I mean, she's really not impressive. | ||
Sorry. | ||
unidentified
|
I just feel like you hold back too much and don't tell us what you really think. | |
Sorry! | ||
unidentified
|
I think you just speak your mind more often. | |
I mean, you can completely disagree with my opinions, but in the case of Nikki Haley, it's not like an opinion form just from watching television, which I don't watch. | ||
It's an opinion form from knowing Nikki Haley, so... | ||
unidentified
|
Strong words from Tucker. | |
Well, felt too. | ||
Well, the world's in the balance. | ||
I mean, it's not just like, well, you know, what should the capital gains rate be? | ||
It's like, do we live or die? | ||
I don't know. | ||
Let's consult Nikki Haley. | ||
So if you're asking, should we live or die and consult Nikki Haley, clearly you don't care about the lives of your children. | ||
That's how I feel. | ||
unidentified
|
Not to try to get a preview or anything, but do you have interest of interviewing Xi Jinping? | |
And if you do, how will you approach that? | ||
I have enormous interest in doing that. | ||
Enormous. | ||
And a couple other people and we're working on it. | ||
unidentified
|
I should also say, like, it's been refreshing you interviewing world leaders. | |
I think when I've started seeing you do that, it made me realize how much that's lacking. | ||
Well, yeah, it's just interesting. | ||
unidentified
|
I mean, from even a historical perspective, it's also important. | |
It's just interesting. | ||
It's just interesting. | ||
It's just interesting that his dad was in South Africa for the election and he was in Albania and he lived down the street from the guy that killed Mossadegh and he was and Tucker was bathed in CIA propaganda his dad now works for the Hungarian lobbying firm and you know when Tucker and and his father negotiated deals on behalf of the U.S. | ||
government with Belize and with USSR and Korea and China And it's just interesting when Tucker interviews world leaders. | ||
When Tucker goes abroad and interviews world leaders, like shortly before Millet gets elected and pulls out of BRICS, or when he goes and interviews Santiago Ovax, or he interviews Orban, or goes in Canada before Trudeau's election where he's expected to be overthrown this year. | ||
It's just interesting. | ||
That's all it is. | ||
It's just interesting. | ||
It's just fascinating, for curiosity's sake. | ||
unidentified
|
From a geopolitics perspective. | |
And nothing else. | ||
Well, it's really changed my perspective, and I've been going on about how American I am, and I think that's a great thing. | ||
I love America. | ||
But it's also, you know, we're so physically, geographically isolated from the world, even though I traveled a ton as a kid, a lot, you know, more than most people. | ||
But even now, I'm like, I'm so parochial. | ||
I'm so, I see everything through this lens, and getting out and seeing the rest of the world, to which we really are connected, like, that's real. | ||
is vitally important. | ||
So I, yeah, I mean, at this stage, I don't, you know, kind of need to do it, but I really want to just motivated by curiosity and trying to expand my own mind and not be closed minded and really see the fullest perspective I possibly can in order to render wise judgments. | ||
I mean, that's like the whole journey of life. | ||
unidentified
|
I was just hanging out with Rogan yesterday, Joe Rogan, and I mentioned to him that it's me being a fan of his show, that I would love for him to talk with you, and he said he's up for it. | |
Any reason you guys haven't done it already? | ||
I don't know. | ||
I've only met Rogan once, and I liked him. | ||
I met him at the UFC in New York. | ||
He was with somebody, a mutual friend of ours, and Rogan changed media. | ||
I mean, maybe more than anybody. | ||
And he did it, what I admire about Rogan, without knowing him beyond meeting him that one time, I mean, I'm still in media, but I've always been in media. | ||
You know, it's like not a great surprise. | ||
I'm doing what I've always done, just a different format. | ||
But Rogan, like, he's got one of those resumes that I admire. | ||
You know, I like the guy who's like, I was a longshoreman. | ||
I was a short order cook. | ||
I was an astrophysicist. | ||
I was like, he's called a man of parts. | ||
And this guy was a fighter, a stand-up comic. | ||
He hosted some, you know, Fear Factor. | ||
Like, how did he wind up at the vanguard of like, The deepest conversations in the country. | ||
Like, how did that happen? | ||
So I definitely respect that. | ||
And I think it's cool. | ||
And he, Rogan is one of those people just kind of came out of nowhere. | ||
Like no one helped him. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
unidentified
|
He was doing the thing that he loves doing and somehow keeps accidentally being exceptionally successful. | |
Yeah, and he's curious. | ||
So that's like the main thing. | ||
And there was a guy, without getting boring, but there was a guy I worked with years ago, kind of dominated cable news, Larry King. | ||
And everyone would always beat up on Larry King for being dumb. | ||
Well, I got to know Larry King well, and I was his fill-in host for a while. | ||
And Larry King was just intensely curious. | ||
He'd be like, why do you wear black tie, Lex? | ||
Because I like black tie. | ||
Why do you like black tie? | ||
No, no, everyone else wears a striped top, you wear a black one. | ||
And he was like really interested. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, genuinely so, yeah. | |
Totally. | ||
And I want to be like that. | ||
I don't want to think I know everything. | ||
That's so boorish. | ||
And also false, you don't know everything. | ||
But I see that in Rogan. | ||
Rogan's like, rah, how does that work? | ||
And people will... And it's so funny how that's threatening to people. | ||
It's like Rogan will just sit there while someone else is, you know, free-balling on some far-out topic, which, by the way, might be true. | ||
Probably truer than the conventional explanation. | ||
People are like, I don't know, how can he stand that? | ||
You know, he had someone say the pyramids weren't built 3,000 years ago, but 8,000 years ago, and that's wrong! | ||
How do you know when the pyramids were built? | ||
Second, why do you care if someone disagrees with you? | ||
Like, what is that? | ||
This weird kind of, like, groupthink. | ||
It's almost like, you know, fourth grade. | ||
There's always, like, some little girl in the front row who's, like, acting as the, you know, kind of the teacher's enforcer. | ||
Like, whip around and be like, sit down! | ||
unidentified
|
Didn't you hear what Mrs. Johnson said? | |
Sit down! | ||
That's, like, the whole American media. | ||
How dare you ask that question? | ||
And Rogan just seems, like, completely on his own trip, like, doesn't even hear it. | ||
He's like, well, really? | ||
When were the pyramids built? | ||
And I was like, oh, I love that. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, curiosity, open-mindedness. | |
Yes! | ||
unidentified
|
The thing I admire about him most, honestly, is that he's a good father, he's a good husband, he's a good family man for many years, and that's his place where he escapes from the world to, and it's just beautiful. | |
Without that, man, you're destroyed. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
If I had a wife who was interested at all, in any way, in what I did, I think I would have gone crazy by now. | ||
When we get home, we don't, she's like, how was your day? | ||
It was great. | ||
Oh, I'm so proud of you. | ||
That's the end of our conversation about what I do for a living. | ||
And that is such a wonderful and essential respite from, you said, how do I not become an asshole to the extent I haven't? | ||
I kind of have. | ||
But how do I have, like, not been, you know, transformed into a totally insufferable megalomaniac who is checking his Twitter replies every day or every minute? | ||
It's that. | ||
Yeah, you got to have the core of your life has to be solid and enduring and not just ephemeral and silly. | ||
unidentified
|
So the two of you have known each other for, what, 40 years? | |
We've been together 40 years. | ||
unidentified
|
Together 40? | |
40 years, yeah, 1984. | ||
Aw, he's so humble! | ||
He's so humble, he just doesn't know anything! | ||
Oh, I don't know, I'm just trying to do my best. | ||
unidentified
|
Just looking in the mirror. | |
Very nice. | ||
So what's the secret to a successful relationship, successful marriage? | ||
I don't even know. | ||
I mean, no, I'm serious. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
I got married in August 91, so that's, well, it's our third year of being married. | ||
unidentified
|
Followed with the collapse of the situation. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as noted. | ||
Yeah, so. | ||
Oh, he's so humble. | ||
He's so humble. | ||
He just doesn't know anything. | ||
Oh, I don't know. | ||
I'm just trying to do my best. | ||
unidentified
|
Aw. | |
You know, you hear these people. | ||
It's actually changed my theology a little bit. | ||
Not that I have deep theology, but. | ||
unidentified
|
I grew up in a society in Southern California. - I'm so sick of the false modesty, I'm over this. | |
That's from a different era. | ||
When I was little, it was, like, a totally self-created society. | ||
I mean, Southern California was... It was the root of libertarianism for a reason. | ||
It was like, that's where you went to recreate yourself. | ||
And so, the operative assumption there is that you are the sum total of your choices. | ||
And that free will is everything. | ||
And we never consider questions like, well, why do children get cancer? | ||
What do they do to deserve it? | ||
Well, of course, nothing, right? | ||
Because that would suggest that maybe you're not the sum total. | ||
Your choices matter. | ||
If I smoke a lot, I get lung cancer. | ||
If I use fentanyl, I may OD. | ||
Got it. | ||
If I don't exercise, I might get fat. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
But like on a bigger scale, you're not only the sum total of your choices. | ||
Like things happen to you that you didn't deserve, good and bad. | ||
And marriage is, and I'll speak for myself, in that case, in my case, just one of them, and I could say, I mean, clearly spending time with the person you're married to, talking, enjoying each other, you know, I have a lot of rituals, we have a lot of rituals that ensure that, but in 40 years, like, you change, you're like a different person, you know, I like did drugs, I was drinking all the time when we met, you know, it's been a long time since I've been done that, I'm very different, and so is she, but we're different in ways that are complimentary and happy, we've never been happier, so, like, how do we pull that off? | ||
Just kind of good luck, honestly. | ||
And then I see other people. | ||
No, I'm not kidding. | ||
But that's true. | ||
I think it's so important not to flatter yourself if you've been successful at something. | ||
The thing I've been most successful at is marriage. | ||
But it's not really me. | ||
And I haven't. | ||
unidentified
|
So I think what you're indirectly communicating is it's like humility, I think. | |
It's not even humility. | ||
Humility is the result of a reality-based worldview. | ||
Okay. | ||
Once you see things clearly, then you know that you are not the author of all your successes or failures. | ||
And I hate the implication otherwise, because it suggests powers that people don't have. | ||
It's one of the reasons I always hated the smoking debate or the COVID debate. | ||
Someone would die of COVID if they didn't have the vaccine. | ||
unidentified
|
See, that's what you get! | |
You smoke cigarettes, you die. | ||
Well, shit. | ||
Yeah, if you smoke cigarettes, you're more likely to get lung cancer. | ||
If you don't, whatever. | ||
Cause and effect is real. | ||
I'm not denying its existence. | ||
It's obvious. | ||
But it's not the whole story. | ||
There are larger forces acting on us. | ||
Unseen forces. | ||
That's just a fact. | ||
You don't need to be some kind of religious nut. | ||
And they act on AI too, and you should keep that in mind. | ||
The idea that all... Interesting way you said that. | ||
No, it's true. | ||
It's demonstrably true. | ||
We're the only society that hasn't acknowledged the truth of that. | ||
And the idea that the only things that are real are the things that we can see or measure in a lab. | ||
Like, that's insane. | ||
That's just dumb. | ||
In the religious context... | ||
When you start to talk... That's another red flag. | ||
When you start to talk about unseen forces are operating in the world. | ||
We're the only... Western civilization is the only society that doesn't acknowledge that. | ||
They operate on AI. | ||
It's a little sus. | ||
Is this guy like a Mason or Kabbalist? | ||
Because that sounds like... Unless he's talking about angels and demons. | ||
Unless he's a... He's not Catholic as far as I know, right? | ||
I don't even know if he's fully a Christian. | ||
He doesn't talk about Jesus. | ||
He talks about, I believe in God. | ||
Okay, so does everybody. | ||
Do you believe in Jesus? | ||
Do you believe in Jesus Christ? | ||
Has he ever said that before? | ||
Maybe he's nominally a Christian, but has he ever said that? | ||
Because that sounds like some Mason-like Kabbalist talk when you start to say that kind of stuff. | ||
And Peter Thiel happens to believe that, by the way. | ||
unidentified
|
About AI. | |
So does Arvel. | ||
Oh. | ||
categories that i really like that of the two kinds of people people who believe they're god and people who know they're not which is a really interesting division that speaks to humility and a kind of realist worldview of where we are in the world oh can uh can atheists be in the uh latter category no there are very few atheists I've never actually met one. | ||
There are people who pose as atheists, but no one's purely rational. | ||
And everyone, I mean this is a cliche for a reason, everyone under extreme stress appeals to a power higher than himself because everyone knows that there is a power higher than himself. | ||
So really it's just people who are gripped with a delusion that they're God. | ||
No one actually believes that. | ||
If you're God, jump off the roof of your garage and see what happens. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
No one actually thinks that. | ||
But people behave as if it's true. | ||
And those people are dangerous. | ||
And I will say, by contrast, the only people I trust are the people who know their limits. | ||
And I was thinking actually this morning in my sauna, of all the people I've interviewed or met, this is someone I've never interviewed, but I have talked to him a couple of times, the greatest leader I've ever met in the world is literally a king. | ||
It's MBC Sheikh Mohammed of Abu Dhabi, who is Muslim. | ||
I'm definitely not Muslim. | ||
I'm Christian, Protestant Christian. | ||
And so I don't agree with his religion, and I don't agree with monarchies. | ||
But he's the best leader in the world that I've ever met. | ||
And by far, it's not even close. | ||
And why is that? | ||
Well, I could bore you for an hour on the subject, but the The reason that he's such a good leader is because he's guided by an ever-present knowledge of his limitations, and of the limits of his power, and of his foresight. | ||
And when you start there, when you start with reality, it's not even humility. | ||
Humility can be opposed. | ||
Like, oh, I'm so, I'm so humble. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
Humblebrag is a phrase for a reason. | ||
It's like way deeper than that. | ||
It's just like, no. | ||
Can I, do I have magical powers? | ||
Can I see the future? | ||
No. | ||
That's just a fact. | ||
So I'm not God. | ||
But I've never seen anybody more at ease with admitting that than MBZ, just a remarkable person. | ||
And for that reason, he is treated as an oracle. | ||
I don't think people understand the number of world leaders who traipse through his house or palace to seek his counsel. | ||
I'm not sure that there is a parallel since, I don't want to get too hyperbolic here, but honestly, since Solomon, where people come from around the world to ask what he thinks. | ||
unidentified
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Bro. | |
This guy is so sus, man. | ||
This guy is such a spook. | ||
My favorite leader is an Emirati king. | ||
And he's the greatest leader since King Solomon. | ||
It's like, bro. | ||
Why would they be doing that? | ||
Because Abu Dhabi's military is so powerful. | ||
I mean, he's rich, okay. | ||
Massive oil and gas deposits, but like, for a lot of, you know, so's Canada. | ||
No one is coming to Ottawa, Ottawa, to ask Justin Trudeau what he thinks. | ||
No, it's humility. | ||
That's where wisdom comes from. | ||
I want to know Tucker's thoughts on Solomon. | ||
That would be very informative. | ||
What do you think about Solomon, Tucker? | ||
I spent my whole life, like, mad at America's leadership class, because it's not just Biden or the people in official positions. | ||
It's the whole constellation of advisers and throne-sniffers around them. | ||
And it's not that even I disagree with them. | ||
It's I'm not impressed by them. | ||
I'm just not impressed. | ||
They're not that capable, right? | ||
So that's what I'm saying about Nikki Haley. | ||
Hey, Chad of Chad's in the chat. | ||
Oh, I haven't seen Chad of Chad's in a minute. | ||
What's going on? | ||
I don't think Nikki Haley's the most evil person in the world. | ||
I think she's ridiculous, obviously. | ||
And everyone's like, oh, Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo. | ||
What? | ||
unidentified
|
Great leaders are so rare that when you see one, you know it right away. | |
It blows your mind. | ||
And what blows my mind about Sheikh Mohammed in Abu Dhabi is that everyone in the world knows it. | ||
And I've never seen a story on this. | ||
And I'm not guessing. | ||
I know this is true because I've seen it. | ||
Everyone in the world knows it. | ||
And so if there's a conflict, he's the only person that people call. | ||
Like, everybody calls the same guy. | ||
And it's like, he runs this tiny little country, the UAE. | ||
I mean, he's the... In Abu Dhabi, there are a bunch of emirates, but he's the president of the country. | ||
But still, and it's got a ton of energy and all that wealth and all that. | ||
Dubai's got great real estate and restaurants. | ||
But really, it's a tiny little country that wasn't even a country 50 years ago. | ||
So how did that happen? | ||
Purely on the basis of his humility and the wisdom that results from that humility. | ||
unidentified
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That's it. | |
What advice would you give to young people? | ||
You got four. | ||
You somehow made them into great human beings. | ||
What advice would you give to people in high school? | ||
Have children immediately. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, that? | |
Including in high school, yes. | ||
I think that. | ||
That's all that matters. | ||
Like, in the end, you know, again, these aren't even cliches anymore because no one says them, but when I was a kid, people would say, on your deathbed, you never wish you spent more time at work. | ||
And I mean, everyone said that it was like one of these things. | ||
And now now I don't think Google allows you to say that. | ||
It's like, no, you're gonna wish you spent more time at work. | ||
Get back to your cube. | ||
But I can't overstate from my vantage how true that is. | ||
Nothing else matters but your family. | ||
And if you have the opportunity, a lot of people are being denied the opportunity to have children. | ||
And this messing with the gender roles. | ||
I'm not even talking about the tranny stuff. | ||
I mean, I mean, feminism has so destroyed people's brains and the ability of young people to connect with each other and stay together and have fruitful lives. | ||
It's like nothing's been more destructive than that. | ||
It's such a lie. | ||
It's so dumb. | ||
It's counter to human nature. | ||
Nothing counter to human nature can endure. | ||
It can only cause suffering. | ||
And that's what it's done. | ||
But fight that. | ||
Stop complaining about it. | ||
Find someone. | ||
By the way, everyone gets together, most people get together on the basis, in a Western society where there's no arranged marriages, they get together on the basis of sexual attraction. | ||
It's only natural. | ||
Get off your birth control and have children. | ||
Oh, I can't afford that. | ||
Well, yeah, you'll figure out a way to afford it once you have kids. | ||
It's like, it's chicken and the egg, but it's actually not. | ||
When you have responsibility, when you have no choice... This is true of men. | ||
I'm not sure if it's true of women, but it's definitely true of men. | ||
You will not achieve until you have no choice. | ||
As I always think of men, men do nothing until they have to. | ||
But once they have to, they will do anything. | ||
That's true. | ||
That is true. | ||
Men will do nothing unless they have to, but once they have to, they will do anything. | ||
I really believe that from watching and from being one. | ||
And I would never have done anything if I didn't have to, but I had to. | ||
And I would just recommend it. | ||
But by the way, even if you don't succeed, it evens your core. | ||
Having spent my life among rich people, I grew up among rich people. | ||
I am a rich person. | ||
Boy, are they unhappy. | ||
Well, that's clearly not the road to happiness. | ||
You know, you don't want to be a debt slave or starve to death or anything like that. | ||
But like making a billion dollars, that's not worth doing. | ||
Don't do that. | ||
Don't even try to do that. | ||
If you create something. | ||
I want to be a billionaire. | ||
It's beautiful and worth having and you make a billion dollars. | ||
Okay, then you have to deal with your billion dollars, which will be the worst part of your life, trust me. | ||
But seeking money for its own sake is a dead end. | ||
What you should seek for its own sake is children. | ||
Talk about a creative act. | ||
Last thing I'll say, the whole point of life is to create, okay? | ||
The act of creation, which is like dying in the West, in the arts, and in its most pure expression, which is children, that's all that's worth doing while you're alive, is creating something beautiful. | ||
And creating children, by the way, it's super fun. | ||
It's not hard. | ||
I can get more technical off the air if you want. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, please. | |
I have a lot of thoughts on it. | ||
Do you have documents or something? | ||
I could draw you a schematic. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
But yeah, that's the greatest thing. | ||
And the fact that corporate America denies... Oh, freeze your ass, I have an abortion! | ||
You're evil! | ||
Are you kidding? | ||
Because you're taking from people the only thing that can possibly give them enduring joy. | ||
And they are successfully taking it from people, and I hate them for it. | ||
unidentified
|
You founded TCN, Dr. Carlson Network. | |
What's your vision for it? | ||
I have no vision for myself or my career, and I never have, so I'm like the last person to explain. | ||
unidentified
|
Just go with it. | |
Yeah, I'm an instincts guy, 100%. | ||
I have a vision for the world, but I don't have a vision for my life or my career. | ||
So really, my vision extended precisely this far. | ||
I just want to keep doing what I'm doing. | ||
I just want to keep doing what I'm doing. | ||
And there was a five-hour period where I wondered if I would be able to, because I feel pretty spry and alert. | ||
And I'm certainly deeply enjoying what I'm doing, which is talking to people and saying what I think and learning, constantly learning. | ||
But I just wanted to keep doing that. | ||
And I also wanted to employ the people who I worked with a fox. | ||
I've worked with the same people for years and I love them. | ||
And so I had all these people and I wanted to bring them with me. | ||
So we had to build a structure for that. | ||
unidentified
|
But this feels like one of the first times you're really working for yourself. | |
Like there's an extra level of freedom here. | ||
Totally, totally. | ||
And you know, I'm not, you don't want me doing your taxes. | ||
Like I'm good at some things, but I'm really not good at others. | ||
So I'm more than be like running a business. | ||
unidentified
|
No idea. | |
I'm not interested, not a commerce guy, so I don't buy anything. | ||
So it's like a whole thing I'm not good at. | ||
But luckily, you know, I'm really blessed to have friends who are involved in this who are good at that. | ||
So I feel, I feel positive about it, but mostly I am. | ||
I'm totally committed to only doing the things that I am good at and enjoy, and not doing anything else, because I don't want to waste my time. | ||
And so I'm just getting to do what I want to do, and I'm really loving it. | ||
unidentified
|
What hope, positive hope, do you have for the future of human civilization in, say, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years? | |
People are great just by their nature. | ||
I mean, they're super complicated, but I like people. | ||
I always have liked people. | ||
You know, if I was sitting with Nikki Haley, who I guess I've been pretty clear I'm not like a mega fan of Nikki Haley's, I would enjoy it. | ||
You know, I've never met anybody I couldn't enjoy on some level, given enough time. | ||
So as long as nobody tampers with the human recipe, the human nature itself, I will always feel blessed by being around other people. | ||
And that's true around the world. | ||
Like I've never been to a country, and I've been to scores of countries where I didn't given a week really like it and like the people. | ||
So yeah, bad leaders are like a, you know, recurring theme in human history. | ||
Like, they're mostly bad. | ||
And we've got an unusually bad set right now, but we'll have better ones at some point. | ||
I just don't want to... I don't... One thing I don't like more than nuclear weapons and more than AI, the one thing that really, really bothers me is the idea of using technology to change the human brain permanently. | ||
Because you're tampering with the secret sauce. | ||
You're tampering with God's creation. | ||
And, um, totally evil. | ||
I mean, I literally sat there the other day with Klaus Schwab. | ||
I was like, Klaus Schwab! | ||
It's like a total moron. | ||
I'm like 100 years old. | ||
I'm like, there's no idea what's going on in the world. | ||
But he's like one of these guys who, speaking of mediocre, everyone's so afraid of Klaus Schwab. | ||
I don't think Klaus Schwab is going to be organizing anything again. | ||
He's just like a total figurehead, like a douchebag. | ||
But anyway, but he was talking and he's reading all these talking points, like all of the cool kids are talking about Adapos and whatever. | ||
And he starts talking about it in his way, in his accent. | ||
I think it's so important that we follow an ethical way. | ||
Always an ethical way. | ||
Of course, very ethical. | ||
I'm a very ethical man. | ||
That we follow the, you know, using technology to improve the human mind and implant the chips in the brain. | ||
And I'm like, okay, you have no idea what you're talking about. | ||
You're like as senile as Joe Biden. | ||
But what was so striking is that no one in the room was like, wait, what? | ||
You're fucking with people's brains? | ||
Like, what are you even talking about? | ||
Who do you think you are? | ||
unidentified
|
I mean, you're right. | |
The secret sauce. | ||
The human mind is really special. | ||
Like, we should not mess with it. | ||
We should be very careful. | ||
Whatever special thing it does, it seems like it's a good thing. | ||
Like, human beings are fundamentally good. | ||
Like, these sources of creativity, the creative force in the universe, we don't want to mess with. | ||
Oh, I mean, what else matters? | ||
I don't understand. | ||
I mean, I guess, look, I don't want to seem like the Unabomber, and I'm not. | ||
unidentified
|
We are in a cabin in the woods. | |
No, I don't. | ||
I'm sympathetic to some of his ideas, but not, of course, sending mail bombs to people, because I like people. | ||
But, I mean, I don't believe in violence at all. | ||
I think the problem with technology, one of the problems with technology is the way that people approach it in a very kind of mindless, heedless way. | ||
And I think it's important this idea that it's inexorable and we can't control it. | ||
And if we don't do it, someone else will. | ||
And there's some truth in that. | ||
But it's not the whole story. | ||
We do have free will and we are creating these things intentionally. | ||
And I think it's incumbent on us. | ||
It's a requirement of a moral requirement of us that we ask, like, is this a net gain or a net loss? | ||
What extent we can foresee them will the effects be? | ||
Et cetera, et cetera. | ||
It's like it's not not super complicated. | ||
So I just I prize long term thinking. | ||
I don't always apply to my own life, obviously. | ||
I want to. | ||
But, uh, I prize it, and I think that people with power should think about future generations, and I don't see that kind of thinking at all. | ||
They all seem like children to me. | ||
And, like, don't give children handguns, because they can hurt people. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah, fundamentally, you want people in power to be pro-humanity. | |
And we don't want people who are 81 who are gonna die anyway. | ||
Why do they care? | ||
And by the way, if your track record with your own family is miserable, why would I give you my family to oversee? | ||
I just don't... Like, again, these are artistic-level questions that someone should answer. | ||
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for asking those questions, first of all, and thank you for this conversation. | |
Thank you for welcoming me to the cabin in the woods. | ||
Thank you. | ||
unidentified
|
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tucker Carlson. | |
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. | ||
And now, let me leave you with some words from Mahatma Gandhi. | ||
I think we're good. | ||
I think I'm good on the Mahatma Gandhi quote. | ||
Yeah, I think we don't. | ||
unidentified
|
That's unnecessary. | |
Completely unnecessary, but thanks anyway. | ||
All right, well there you have it. | ||
There's your review of the Tucker Carlson Lex Fridman podcast I'm very interested in what Tucker has to say because of course he's extremely influential now maybe even more so than he was when he was at Fox News and I'm always curious to hear what he says about specific matters not necessarily Russia, but these things like Trump and Israel-Palestine and his upbringing because of course | ||
That's the revealing aspect. | ||
To know that Tucker's dad was a spy is a lot more revealing than watching years of his show, actually. | ||
So very interesting stuff. | ||
Not a ton of surprises. | ||
Some things that were a little bit kind of like, whoa, okay. | ||
Like about most of the deck. | ||
Who could have seen that one coming? | ||
I could, because I've been saying it for years. | ||
Other people have not. | ||
But anyway, so that's that. | ||
That's the show. | ||
It's been three hours. | ||
I gotta start my show in a couple hours. | ||
I'm gonna try and get it on at like 10.30, 11, okay? | ||
I promise! | ||
10.30, 11, Central Time. | ||
So I don't even really want to stream much longer, because I gotta start getting ready for my next act, for my next stream. | ||
So if there's any super chats, I'll take a look at these. | ||
If there's a lot of them, I'll read them now. | ||
There's like 20. | ||
You know what? | ||
I'll read them after my show tonight, okay? | ||
Or should I read them now? | ||
I'll read them! | ||
You know what? | ||
I'll read them now. | ||
Because I'm gonna be frustrated if I have to do it later. | ||
Okay, I'll read these right now. | ||
And then I'm gonna go. | ||
Natasha $17.76 and $15. | ||
I've always wondered if you would hire females. | ||
With my editing experience, I would consider it a privilege to assist you with content but have held back due to not knowing your stance. | ||
The women are America first nevertheless. | ||
Thank you for all that you do. | ||
Uh, it depends. | ||
I mean, if you're good... If you're good, we're gonna be opening up applications again soon so you can apply and we'll take a look and... Yeah, maybe. | ||
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
Well, thank you. | ||
percent five dollars rki immolate for njf okay no no immolation rena sent three dollars i am rape kill or die for nicholas j fuentes started rcia because of you and ended things with an african guy i'm black and mexican i had gone out with ultimately because of your influence god bless well thank you hey i'm glad to hear you ended your um well | ||
if you're black then it's fine You know, black people should be with black people. | ||
So if you were black, then that's fine. | ||
But yeah, I don't know how much black and how much Hispanic are. | ||
If you're like 80% Hispanic, then it's like, oh brother. | ||
But anyway, either way, hey, glad to hear it. | ||
I'm glad to hear you're an RCIA. | ||
Good for you. | ||
I hope you stick with it. | ||
And good for you. | ||
We need more people to do that. | ||
Groim sent $10. | ||
Do you find it annoying when you spend an hour monologue painting a clear picture of something and then superchatters repeat it back to you like it's their idea? | ||
I'm just annoyed by everything the superch... everything that superchatters say is just... well, not all of it, but most of it is just completely unthinking nonsense. | ||
unidentified
|
So, that's why. | |
Okay, I don't... You don't never need to clarify. | ||
Sorry if I came off as a dick. | ||
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. | ||
I actually agree with you on most everything, including Aaron Bushnell. | ||
I was just saying what you've also said, which is that on the right nobody has the same passion, while also stressing out that he most likely hated us. | ||
Okay, I don't, you don't never need to clarify. | ||
I'm completely uninterested in people clarifying, but thank you regardless. | ||
Luke the Evangelist says, I don't usually do interviews, but maybe. | ||
I'm not reading that. | ||
Piece of shit. | ||
That's right. | ||
I like to say his name. | ||
Sovereign Broad. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, maybe. | |
I don't usually do interviews, but maybe. | ||
Chance Wilson sent $3. | ||
I'm not reading that. | ||
unidentified
|
Piece of shit. | |
Frog Zipping sent $3, for all the people whining about start time. | ||
The king of content starts whenever he wants. | ||
Shut the fuck up. | ||
That's absolutely right. | ||
Lone Star Groi percent $5. | ||
Love you, brother. | ||
What's the significance of reclaiming the incel label when celibacy isn't involuntary for most men? | ||
Easy women are a dime a dozen. | ||
Volkl seems more accurate, but maybe there's some lore I'm missing? | ||
Yeah, you just don't get it. | ||
H3. | ||
H3M1NGW4Y sent $10, watching since 2022. | ||
Was raised Episcopalian and was a Freemason from 09 to 23. | ||
Left it all behind because of you and started going to Mass. | ||
Started RCIA with my daughter. | ||
God bless you 1626o slash love you man. | ||
Love to hear that, man. | ||
God bless you. | ||
Keep doing it. | ||
I love to hear that you're getting your family in the church as well. | ||
The Freemasonry, it's evil. | ||
You gotta get away. | ||
And you ought to know why. | ||
Because it is inherently universalist. | ||
They don't... You can be a Muslim mason. | ||
You can be a Jewish mason. | ||
They don't believe in, necessarily, Jesus Christ. | ||
And Catholicism is enough. | ||
You don't need some other ritual. | ||
You don't need some other thing. | ||
Catholicism, the church that Christ founded, is enough. | ||
So you don't need these extraneous rituals with magic and Talmudic practices. | ||
So I'm glad to hear that, man. | ||
Good for you. | ||
God bless you and your family. | ||
Oliver Anthony sent $3. | ||
I've grown up atheist and last night listened to your advice and for the first time asked God to help strengthen my faith by any means but since then my cat's been missing for 15 hours. | ||
Is it already over? | ||
Okay, well don't blame God for your cat going missing, okay? | ||
unidentified
|
Cats are not good pets. | |
Cactus Lamarter sent $50. | ||
I've seen an old debate between you and Arthur Sharp. | ||
You put him in his place. | ||
Has ever apologized to ever since? | ||
No, haven't heard from him since. | ||
That must have been six years ago, five, six years ago. | ||
unidentified
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So no, I haven't heard from him. | |
Hey Nick, what college degrees do you feel like can help a political movement the most and how important is the college that you get into? | ||
Well my advice for any Groipers is to go to community college for two years and then apply to the college you want to graduate from because for someone like me and for most people if you don't have money to go to college It can be extremely cost prohibitive. | ||
I went to Boston University. | ||
I got $49,000 a year to go there. | ||
A lot of it was structured like some of it was grant, some of it was loan. | ||
loan um but i got like 49 000 in a uh in a scholarship to go there and the tuition was like 55 000 plus like 10 000 for room and board and all the rest of I mean all together must have been $70,000 per year to go to school. | ||
You know, and it was already... I went for two semesters. | ||
If I had gone for the full four years, I would have graduated with considerable debt. | ||
I mean, not unmanageable, but considerable. | ||
With a liberal arts degree in international relations from a great school. | ||
I know a girl who I went to school with at the same time. | ||
She's a bitch. | ||
All loans. | ||
$70,000 a year. | ||
All loans. | ||
For four years. | ||
So she's graduating. | ||
I mean, I don't know how much of it she paid down. | ||
I don't know how much of it she worked, but you just do the simple math on that. | ||
You're talking about a considerable amount of debt. | ||
That's a mortgage when all is said and done. | ||
With a liberal arts degree, you shouldn't do that. | ||
So you should follow best practices. | ||
If I could do it all over again, and part of me wishes I could, just on the academic side, because I wish I actually stayed in universities, Because I feel like I can't now reach my full potential because I never followed through on that. | ||
If I could have done that all over again, I would have gotten an associate's degree, a two-year degree at a community college. | ||
I would have then transferred to maybe U of I. | ||
Or another school in Illinois so I could get in-state tuition. | ||
So I would have went to U of I or maybe tried to get into Northwestern or UChicago. | ||
And then I would have graduated from there with much lower tuition because it's in-state tuition and much lower debt because I'd only be going to a major university for two years. | ||
And then maybe I would have went to graduate school and then it's different. | ||
It's a different story But that is what if you are if you're rich, it doesn't matter if your parents can pay then let your parents pay But and you do whatever you want but if you are like most people and it's cost prohibitive Go to a two-year college. | ||
Because I know a lot of people that did that that graduated from very good schools. | ||
And you know you got to talk to your own academic advisor if you're in high school or whatever. | ||
You got to talk to your own people. | ||
I'm just telling you this is what I've heard people do. | ||
I know a lot, not an insignificant number of people, they went to a community college for a couple years. | ||
They transferred to a school they wanted to go to. | ||
And then they graduated that way, saved a lot of money. | ||
And you want to go to the best school that you can get into. | ||
The best school that you can get into and afford, you should do. | ||
So it does matter actually. | ||
And in terms of what you should study, it depends on what you want to do. | ||
If you want to get involved in politics, you know, most politicians are lawyers. | ||
But it's not unheard of that politicians have a business degree. | ||
Our political science degree, bachelor's degree in political science or something like that. | ||
Don't overthink it. | ||
One of the primary, here's the thing, my view on college for the most part, unless you're a serious academic, it's credentialism. | ||
Get the credential. | ||
That's first and foremost, graduate, and you have the degree, the degree's your ticket. | ||
That's one. | ||
Two, the other benefit of college besides what you learn is the network. | ||
Network. | ||
When you're in college, go to the College Republicans or whatever and network. | ||
Get involved in campaigns. | ||
Do as much political activity as possible. | ||
That's what I did for the one year that I was there. | ||
Networking. | ||
Because if you go to a really good school, it's not necessarily the value of what you learn, although that's part of it. | ||
If you go to Columbia, it matters who you meet there. | ||
It matters the professors you meet, it matters the other students you meet, because if you go to the Georgetown IR school, Or whatever it is over there. | ||
You're going to meet every future Secretary of State, every future State Department employee, every future ambassador, diplomat. | ||
They're going to be in your graduating class. | ||
They're going to be older, younger, or in your class with you. | ||
So it's about the network. | ||
And you may find a wife there, too. | ||
If you're a high IQ person, you may find a high IQ girl there, as well. | ||
That's another... Some people say that's fool's gold. | ||
I think it's worthwhile, because that's where you'd find them. | ||
So, that's my advice on that. | ||
Well, it's one of the only ones that matters, that's for sure. | ||
But thank you, Matt. | ||
in American politics. | ||
God bless. | ||
Well, it's one of the only ones that matters, that's for sure. | ||
But thank you, man. | ||
I appreciate it. | ||
Ollie the Autistic Grope sent $3. | ||
Nick Nicky can't you see sometimes your words just hypnotize me. | ||
So awesome! | ||
Thank you. | ||
Mosey Mo sent $3. | ||
Fun fact about Lex Friedman is that he got his start on TikTok live where he did ASMR. | ||
Is that true? | ||
Whispering very sensually and practically moaning into the mic and tapping it with his acrylic nails. | ||
Seriously? | ||
M-M-H-G-G-H. | ||
I did not know that. | ||
Doesn't seem to be any videos of it Or did you just make that up | ||
unidentified
|
Okay, so we're going to do it. | |
It sounds like you just made that up. | ||
That doesn't sound right. | ||
That's not real. | ||
No one has ever said that, other than you right now. | ||
That's made up. | ||
Someone says, W-bait. | ||
W-troll. | ||
I was gonna say, that sounds like bullshit. | ||
I was like, they didn't bait me! | ||
You said something! | ||
I was like, yeah, that doesn't sound right. | ||
And then I looked it up. | ||
Acrylic nails. | ||
Hey, I don't know, man. | ||
He's a Jew. | ||
Jews are into weird shit like that. | ||
I'm sure it's just part of his personality. | ||
But it is annoying, right? | ||
Tucker's perpetual self-deprecating is so off-putting the more and more he does it through all of these interviews. | ||
Is that a rhetorical tool or is he just like this? | ||
I'm sure it's just part of his personality, but it is annoying, right? | ||
Cactus LaMarder sent $3. | ||
Venezuelans are the new blacks. | ||
unidentified
|
Wait a second. | |
Doctoral advisor Moshe Cam, Jewish-Israeli electrical engineer. | ||
You know who else is an electrical engineer and a Jew? | ||
unidentified
|
Bernard Alamario. | |
wheel. | ||
Interesting. | ||
I'm sure it's coincidence, though. | ||
Father Groyper sent $3, I can't tell if these NJFA loggers on Twitter are all Jewish, or just jaded superchatters pissed you called them retarded. | ||
Because they're 50-50 sub-70 IQ. | ||
They did eat dinner though. | ||
unidentified
|
That's a mix. | |
Aaron Bushnell sent $3, Russia's artillery advantage is overstated. | ||
One laser guided shell can do the work of 20 conventional shells. | ||
Ukraine has survived despite a 10 to 1 disadvantage, but the Russians are now catching up. | ||
unidentified
|
Okay, here we go. | |
Military expert. | ||
Sounds like BS. | ||
Pragmatic Culture sent $5. | ||
If you want to know about World War II, read David Irving's books. | ||
Simple as. | ||
You're right about that. | ||
Very true. | ||
Mhoplite sent $100. | ||
unidentified
|
No message. | |
Thank you. | ||
Whoa! | ||
Thanks for the big super chat, Hoplite. | ||
I appreciate it. | ||
God bless, buddy. | ||
I'm Hoplite's just like a menace, by the way. | ||
He was up to some real hijinks at, uh... Well, I don't want to dox him, but this guy's a real maniac. | ||
I'll just say that much. | ||
Addison Woodbury sent $20, thanks for you work and sacrifice. | ||
Looking forward to your documentary that connects dots on JQ. | ||
Intuition only goes so far, however convincing to thoughtful observers. | ||
God bless. | ||
Thank you, yup. | ||
Gandalf Gray sent $5, that Tucker Cackle is a total bullet pill. | ||
unidentified
|
I don't know what a bullet pill is. | |
Okay, all right, that's our last super chat I'm gonna get out of here. | ||
I gotta go man. | ||
I gotta get ready for my show now cuz that's my life So So I gotta go but hey, thank you for watching. | ||
Thanks for the super chats. | ||
Hope you enjoyed the stream I'm gonna try and do another one this week about patriot front. | ||
It's just this thing came up So I wanted to cover it, but I'll probably do another one of these hopefully earlier in the day later this week or weekend So I'll keep you apprised of that. | ||
Smash the follow button! | ||
Follow me here on Rumble. | ||
And follow me on Telegram. | ||
I'll be back here in like two hours, two, two and a half hours to do my show. | ||
1030, 11, Central Time. | ||
I'll let you know on Telegram if that's gonna happen. | ||
But that's it for me. | ||
I will see you later tonight. | ||
Let me get my outro song. | ||
We'll do a little Vultures. | ||
And I'll see you guys later tonight. | ||
unidentified
|
night. | |
Thanks for watching. | ||
unidentified
|
After everything said, huh? | |
Wank, Wank. | ||
After everything said, huh? | ||
Wank, Wank. | ||
Crazy. | ||
you Bipolar. | ||
Anti-Semite. | ||
And I'm still the king. | ||
Still the king. | ||
Still the king. | ||
Think the headlines was my kryptonite. | ||
Still the king. | ||
It's true. | ||
It's what you're all been waiting for. | ||
Guess a real nigga couldn't check no more. | ||
Niggas mad cause they can't talk to you no more. | ||
It was fucks given now and ain't no more. | ||
If you ain't mean it, what you say it for? | ||
She just won the fuck at double take a start. | ||
When she took me off, I should be trying more. | ||
Attention to my bitch cause she ain't gonna look like that. | ||
Free post shots right now. | ||
Shut the hell up or you get it down. | ||
And I'm still crazy. | ||
Bipolar at the semi. | ||
And I'm still. | ||
They thought Headlines was my quick night Bitch! | ||
I'm still the king. | ||
I'm still the king. | ||
Paparazzi love me, they show up to everything! |