Ezra Levant dissects Tucker Carlson’s February 9th, two-hour Putin interview—viewed by over 136 million (clips nearing 1 billion)—highlighting its rare depth, including Putin’s $200B+ trade claims with China and BRICS vs. G7 economic shifts, while contrasting it with Western media’s superficial coverage of leaders like Zelensky or Biden’s memory lapses (e.g., mixing Mexico/Gaza). Levant questions whether Evan Gershkovitz, a Wall Street Journal reporter jailed for espionage, was truly an operative, and critiques Canada’s "bad ideas laboratory" role in pushing censorship laws like the Online News Act that stifle independent journalism. The episode underscores how legacy media oligopolies lose trust while authoritarian leaders evade scrutiny, exposing a global crisis of free speech and democratic accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Today we take on Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin.
He was very interesting, very long, over two hours, very popular, well over 100 million viewers.
By the time you listen to this, it's probably 200 million, and that's on the Twitter platform alone.
A lot of people told me shouldn't do the interview, but you watch for yourself and tell me how would you learn and hear the things if he didn't do the interview.
I think they just didn't want a skeptic of the war doing the interview, and I don't think they wanted a citizen journalist doing it either.
Let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast so you can see Putin in the interview and see my other guest I interviewed today.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
And that money, frankly, is how we survive as citizen journalists.
That's Rebel News Plus.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Tucker Carlson interviews Vladimir Putin for two full hours, and the media party goes nuts.
It's February 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug!
Hi there, I'm- I'm going to go in detail and in depth in Tucker Carlson's interesting interview with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.
The interview itself was more than two hours long, including a half-hour history lesson by Vladimir Putin about the region of Ukraine and Russia and Poland.
And it's a very unusual interview.
And there were so many interesting nuggets in it.
Tucker Carlson himself, after the interview, said it's going to take him a year just to intellectually unpack what he had just went through.
He said it was a surprising interview in a number of ways.
And I think one of the reasons is that Putin is not used to interviews.
I mean, he's an authoritarian ruler of a partially free country.
He's not used to the scrums and the back and forth with the media party, which when you think about it, dominates an awful lot of what our politicians do in the West.
They're either writing press releases or having press conference or giving speeches or doing question period even for the consumption of the media.
And then to turn that media product into election success.
Well, none of those things are required for Vladimir Putin.
He spends his time governing, planning, strategizing, learning, including, obviously, learning about history.
So I think there was a bit of a culture class between Tucker Carlson, who's at the leading edge of social media and talk radio and talk TV, and Putin, who really may observe that world, but is not part of it.
I thought there was a lot of interesting things in it.
And I did my live stream on it today for about 90 minutes, which, as you can tell, isn't even enough time to encapsulate the whole interview itself.
And so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to flip the show around.
I did an interview today with my friend Alam Bokhari, who used to be the senior tech editor at Breitbart.com, but now he works full-time for internet freedom.
And I didn't know that until we booked him today, and it was a very interesting conversation.
So I'm going to put the interview first, and then I'm going to put a slightly pared-down version of my live stream because it has the clips I wanted to show you anyways.
So we're going to trim down what was 90 minutes.
By the way, I do the live stream.
We do it once a week now.
We used to do it more often during the lockdowns, but every Friday from 1 to 2 Eastern, which is 11 a.m. till noon mountain time, we have a live stream.
Often it's my friends Sheila Gunrid and David Menzies doing it, but occasionally I do it too.
And so that's where I'm taking it from, but it's the videos I want to show you.
Canada made an appearance.
Of course, Putin took advantage of Trudeau's atrocious mistake of inviting a Nazi SS officer into parliament.
Putin mentioned that.
That was really the only reference of Canada, but it was a wide-ranging discussion.
And of course, when you interview any political leader, you are going to hear propaganda.
I think that's true with Western leaders as well.
There was an enormous chorus of people saying, do not do this interview, Tucker.
This is a traitorous act.
I'm not sure.
I mean, if someone said to me, Ezra, you can interview the head of Hamas or you can interview the Ayatollah of Iran.
Well, obviously that would never happen.
And if it did happen, my first question would be my own safety.
I mean, both of them would want to kill me.
But if I didn't think that that would happen, of course I would take the interview.
And of course, I would do my best to ask questions that illuminated things, elicited things, to draw out their meaning, even though I would know it would be propaganda.
I think that it would be a useful exercise.
I don't know.
Those things will never happen.
And I think the same response would be there for Tucker Carlson.
By the way, other journalists have interviewed Vladimir Putin over the years.
And by the way, he's in a war now.
Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 as well.
Whether it's Barbara Walters or Charlie Rose or a half dozen other American journalists, let alone European journalists.
I think it was more because Tucker Carlson has been a skeptic of the war and financial aid to Ukraine, and because Tucker Carlson is a citizen journalist.
And so you have the ideological opposition to him by the CNNs of the world.
And you also have the professional rivalry.
In fact, some great interviews out there, interviewers out there who I think would do a good job interviewing Putin were just angry that they didn't get the chance.
I saw one video, and I don't think I played it in the live stream, so let me play it for you now.
Here's one video that I think, I hate to say it, sums up the state of journalism in the West on the matter of the Russia-Ukraine war.
And by the way, I don't like the Russia-Ukraine war.
Tucker Carlson's Skepticism00:03:16
I don't like any war.
And as you know, I visited the Ukraine Pavilion of the World Economic Forum twice now, and I found it very touching and very compelling.
And the human cost of that war is absolutely tragic.
And I believe the war must end.
And I think the war ends either with absolute defeat of one side, which I don't think will happen here, or a negotiated outcome.
I mean, you had the unconditional surrender of the Japanese and the Germans in the Second World War after total destruction, total civilian loss.
I don't think anybody wants that.
So one of the discussions Tucker Carlson had with Putin was about the path to peace.
And I thought that was very interesting.
And for all the people telling Tucker Carlson not to do the interview, well, you bet they were all watching it.
Both fans and foes of Putin, both Americans and Russians and Chinese.
In fact, the last I checked, over, well, over 100 million people had watched the interview.
Anyway, like I said, here's an example of a softball interview that the media party is more accustomed to.
This was with Vladimir Zelensky, of course.
Can you believe this?
As a human being, so many people look up to you.
They rely on you.
No one can imagine how hard that is.
Do you do anything for your dearself?
Are you ever able to take a minute to read or to listen to music or something to sort of give yourself that moment?
I have such moments, important to be in silence, to be alone, and early in the morning when there are no sounds and sounds.
No people, nobody.
I mean, the people, people, our stuff.
I mean, nobody is in my cabinet.
Nobody.
I can just read, think, think, and the music house, really.
What music do you like?
Oh, I like ACDC.
ACDC, I don't understand all the words.
Because of, but I like the music.
Yeah, I like energy.
Maybe it's too old, the music for the same.
I love it.
No, no, it's important to have sometimes at six, seven in the morning, some trainings.
Workouts.
Yes, work out, or to do something with music, with such music, which gives you energy for all the day.
Yeah, that's non-journalism.
And maybe out of, I don't know, ideological or geopolitical solidarity, there's a place for that.
But that's not a hard-hitting interview.
I think there's a lot of important and tough questions that should be put to Vladimir Zelensky.
And I don't know if anyone will be impressed that Tucker Carlson put tough enough questions to Vladimir Putin, but I think anyone who watched the two hours will say it was illuminating and they learned a lot.
And they probably saw more of Vladimir Putin last night than they had in the last five years combined.
Because when was the last time you saw any political leader do a two-hour interview?
Revenue Protection Racket00:15:38
That's not the style in the West.
We know for a fact Joe Biden couldn't do a two-hour interview.
The only thing he can do for two hours is have a nap.
And Justin Trudeau could talk for two hours, but it would be blather and babble.
He couldn't give a half-hour historical lecture on the background of Canada.
It was a remarkable interview, and I myself haven't fully digested it.
I think it'll take a while, but it was definitely a historic interview.
So without further ado, let me introduce the first segment, which was my discussion with Alan Bokhari.
And then, after that, we'll have the excerpts from my live stream.
Well, one of the takeaways from our visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos was the focus that the world's oligarchs put on censorship, and not just journalistic censorship, but censorship in every aspect of the world.
I think that's one of the things they hope to unlock with artificial intelligence.
I'm reminded of the massive censorship factories that Facebook used to contract with.
They would have hundreds of human censors going through post after post after post, determining what would be blocked, what would be deleted, what would be suspended.
And after millions of these human interactions, well, the machine watched and learned.
And as far as I know, there are no longer any factories with humans doing censorship.
It's all the algorithm.
It's all artificial intelligence.
That was one of the things on the minds of the delegates at the World Economic Forum, and not just for any general purpose, but to stop Donald Trump from winning the 2024 election.
That's why the two names you heard most over there were Donald Trump, of course, the devil incarnate, and Elon Musk, his angel who would enable him.
Well, one of the ways they are going ahead with this is through the so-called fact-checking industry.
I have in my hand a new report by the Foundation for Freedom Online.
The headline of this report is, Protection Racket.
why the censorship industry needs to bail out the media.
And Canadians will know a bit about that.
Joining us now via Skype from Austin, Texas is the managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, our old friend Alan Bokari.
Alan, great to see you again.
We had you on the show a lot when you were the tech editor at Breitbart.com, but I'm delighted that you have this new position fighting for freedom every day.
Yes, it's, you know, very, very similar topic.
The censorship issue isn't going away.
In fact, it might get even more important in 2024.
They're trying to do the same old things, but, you know, there are more free speech-friendly platforms around now, Twitter or X, I should say, and Rumble, which I know you're on.
So, you know, what we've seen at the Foundation of Freedom Online is that the censorship industry is looking for new methods and new tools to cement the advantages they built up in 2020 when I think censorship was really at its peak.
And in this particular report, we're looking at sort of the other side of the coin to censorship, which is, you know, censorship is the suppression of disfavored speech, of speech that the establishment doesn't want to be out there.
But the other side of that is the promotion of the artificial promotion of the establishment's speech and narratives that they do like.
And the big concern for the establishment right now is that the mainstream media is in decline and it has been in decline for a very long time.
And especially with the rise of digital technologies and social media, there's less and less need to rely on old school newspapers and broadcast channels, the cable channels to receive news.
So there have been all these bills around the world, including in Canada, to effectively bail out the media, to either directly give them taxpayer money, which I know happened in Canada, or to establish a permanent funnel of revenue from tech companies to media companies to ensure that they never go on, but they never go bust.
Well, that's exactly what's happening in Canada.
I mean, reading your report, I thought, well, we're unfortunately further down that road than America is because your report suggests that the censorship fact-checking outfits themselves would be the source or the conduit for the dough.
In Canada, they don't even pretend.
It's from Trudeau.
They are going to be grabbing money from Google.
Facebook has said they're not going to participate for now, but in Canada, the government affects censorship in two ways.
Number one, with a stick, but that's too obvious.
So the more powerful way is number two, with a carrot by basically bribing journalists.
Tell us what you're afraid of in America.
I've read the report and I could read through it, but why don't you just tell us how it would work in America?
Because I don't think your government is quite as meddlesome in the media as ours is because of your First Amendment.
So how are they getting around that?
Tell us how it would work in this censorship fact-checking dystopia.
So in the United States, there's a bill that media lobbyists have been trying to pass for about three years now.
And I covered it a lot of Breitbart News, which was one of the only sort of media companies in the U.S. that really opposed the bill.
There are many Conservative companies that supported it as well.
But it's called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.
And what it does is very similar to the Canada's Online News Act and Australia's News Media Bargaining Code.
Both of those two laws were passed very recently in the past few years.
What it does is it allows media companies to get together in a kind of cartel, a legal cartel.
And that cartel can then go to tech companies and effectively demand deals that give them a permanent funnel of ad revenue, along with other advantages they might ask for.
Of course, you know, the media writes its own rules as to who is and isn't allowed in the cartel.
And there are all sorts of little loopholes in the bill to make sure that sort of independent podcasters and YouTubers and independent journalists can't come benefit from the negotiations of the big media cartel.
You know, for example, you need a special license number that really only established media companies have.
But what the cartel will be able to do is impose these agreements on Silicon Valley companies through arbitration that give them a permanent funnel of ad revenue.
So even if their audiences are going down, even if people don't want to read them anymore, Silicon Valley will still have to pay them, will still have to pay them.
And the way they justify the bill is by saying, well, look, our content is on social media platforms.
Social media platforms are benefiting by getting ad revenue.
The more people see media links and media posts on their platforms, we're giving them activity.
And with activity comes more ad revenue.
But you know, Facebook banned news links in Canada when they passed the poster Rebel News Story on Facebook or Instagram.
It'll show up blocked.
It's like we're in North Korea or something.
I know.
And, you know, it's really bad for independent media outlets.
But one thing, Facebook's usage statistics were not really impacted by banning news links at all.
And it's one thing to say that social media companies, tech companies should share their ad revenue with the people that, with the creators that are bringing them activity, but these bills are strictly limited to establishment media companies.
It's not everyone who's eligible to receive ad revenue share.
It doesn't do anything with people who are getting demonetized by social media platforms, despite bridging lots of activity.
It's really just for establishment media companies.
You mentioned a moment ago about a, I think you called it a license number or something.
You have to get some sort of accreditation.
Now in Canada, that's done by our version of the IRS, the Canada Revenue Agency, a government agency.
You have to apply to the government for your journalistic license.
Here it's called the QCJO, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
It won't surprise you, Alam, that when we applied for this number, we were rejected.
We appealed.
We were rejected again.
So we are appealing to the federal court because the government is deciding who's a journalist and who isn't.
And by the way, it's impossible to draft a rule on who a journalist is that keeps out rebel news, but doesn't kick out other left-wing media.
You know, we're 100% Canadian-owned.
We do general interest news.
We're not controlled by any lobby group or anything.
How do you block Rebel but keep the CBC or the Toronto Star?
There's no way you can do it other than having partisan appointees make the decision.
So we'll see what the federal court says.
My point is, in Canada, it's a government process.
In the U.S., who would give out that license number?
Would that be a government decision there, too?
Because that doesn't sound constitutional.
That wouldn't be a government decision, although nonprofits are included in the bill.
So if the government grants you nonprofit status as a journalistic entity in the bill, that allows you to reap the rewards to get those ad revenue payouts.
Maybe I'm getting too technical here, but I know the Daily Caller is a great conservative news site.
In fact, Tucker Carlson used to be from there.
They have the, quote, for-profit side, and then they have their foundation side.
Maybe there's some technical way around it.
And I know I'm getting too deep into the weeds because that's not what's important.
It's an international standard serial number on ISSSN.
And really, you either need that or you need to be owned by a qualified FIBO3C nonprofit.
Or if you're a broadcaster, you need to be an eligible broadcaster with a license issued by the FCC.
So if you're just making videos online, if you're streaming news to Toronto or something, you don't have that FCC license, then you're not going to be included.
So this is the legacy media.
This is for the big guys.
This is for the legacy media.
Got it.
Sorry to go so technical there.
It's just I'm quite interested in this because we've been in this technical legal battle for two years in Canada.
And, you know, I'll send you, Alam, some of our filings that we recently did.
I think, you know, we're in a lot of litigation up here.
We're always suing the bad guys and being sued by the bad guys.
We do a lot of litigation.
But I say that our battle over this journalism license is perhaps the most important fight of our lives.
Because if Trudeau is able to keep within his power who is or isn't a journalist, and then things flow from that, these people are boosted.
These people are throttled.
These people are subsidized.
These people are penalized.
A lot turns on whether or not you're a licensed journalist in Canada.
And I've heard this law in Canada called the ban the rebel.
Like I've heard it called the Rebel News Law by two external journalists who see it so obviously.
Anyhow, Alam, I didn't mean to talk so much about Rebel News and the journalism license here.
Let's get back to your report.
But I just, it's so eerie what you're talking about because that's awful Canada stuff that it sounds like they want to inject into America.
And I've always looked up to America as the First Amendment freedom place that is more resistant to these censorship viruses than Canada.
I sure hope this doesn't happen to you guys because then we're all hooped.
Yeah, and it's more or less the same bill.
It has exactly the same purpose as the News Act in Canada.
And, you know, Rebel News is a great example of how these laws are written to exclude the independent media.
What infuriates me about these bills is that the media industry has gone to legislators.
They've gone to lawmakers and they said, well, journalism is in crisis.
We need to rescue journalists.
That's not actually true.
It's establishment legacy media companies that are in the crisis because nobody trusts them and there's so much more competition.
It's actually a great time to be a journalist or to start a new media company.
I know Rebel News started because the internet allowed that to happen and made it much more possible to start a new media company and compete with the legacy media.
Breitbart was the same way.
And there are all sorts of independent journalists now on SunStack, on newsletter platforms, on other social media platforms who are just one or two man operations.
So it's actually, and they're still earning revenue.
They're getting subscribers.
So journalism is not in crisis.
The legacy media is in crisis and these bills are designed to rescue.
Yeah.
You know, in Canada, one of our state-protected oligopolies called CTV, which is the largest private broadcaster, and they get enormous subsidies in straight-up cash, but they also get regulatory protection.
I think they took $40 million last year or something.
I'd have to confirm that number in government bailouts.
Well, this week they announced they're laying off 4,800 people in their media division, including shutting down basically most local newscasts they're investigating.
Like they took the cash, Alam, and they fired the journalists anyway.
So the problem, I think, is deeper than, and I don't think government cash fixes it.
In fact, I think it accelerates the problem because who would trust a government broadcaster?
The CBC, which is larger in Canada than all private media combined, its viewership and listenership has fallen in half, even though Canada's population is booming.
I don't know.
Do you think they're going to win?
Like, they keep on pumping up these fake news sites that they call trustworthy, and they keep throttling the alternatives.
Like, they're trying to throttle Twitter.
They haven't succeeded yet.
They're trying to throttle Rumble.
Maybe they're succeeding.
Are they going to win, or is this just an endless cat and mouse game between the censor and free speechers that it'll just be a perpetual battle?
Right now, it seems more like an endless cat and mouse game.
And you've got to give the Republicans in the U.S. credit here because they have put a lot of pressure onto Silicon Valley companies and onto the federal government, which was encouraging censorship for a long time.
We did a lot of that original research at the Foundation of Putium Online showing how government agencies, especially Alfred Biden, took office, used civil society organizations to pressure social media companies to adopt more censorship.
And that tide seems to have turned a little bit.
There's less interest in Silicon Valley.
There's less appetite for censorship there, especially with Musk takeover of X.
And the government, meanwhile, has to deal with all these lawsuits and congressional inquiries.
And, you know, they're a bit more cautious about engaging in the kind of aggressive push for social media censorship that they were undertaking during COVID.
Pressure Shifts in Censorship00:04:33
You know, that being said, the censorship industry is still vast.
They have a lot of resources.
They're going to continue to push for censorship, especially in 2024.
But yeah, I think cat and mouse is about right.
I think there's sort of this tongue of war now between the censors and between the opponents of censorship.
And I think that will go on for some time.
But the bottom line is, you know, you can't force people to watch legacy media channels or to read legacy media newspapers.
And there's so much competition out there now.
And we have these bills that are trying to protect against that competition.
But ultimately, I think that's not going to work because you can't simply force people to read what they don't want to read or watch what they don't want to watch.
You know, and I want to keep in touch with you on this stuff.
It's great to see you in your new capacity.
I apologize for talking too much about rebel news and our own battles with journalism.
Oh, no, it's very, very important if the great Collaborative bills are a bad idea.
Yeah.
And I want to learn more about how they're trying to do this in the First Amendment jurisdiction because they're doing it to us here in Canada.
And who knows?
Maybe in your position as managing director, we can encourage you to write a little story about the dark lessons, the bad ideas laboratory that is Canada.
I sometimes tell my American friends that we are like a time machine.
If you want to see your future five years from now, come and take a look at us today and be scared, be very scared.
And I think right now the world's in a bad place because you have Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden.
Jacinda Ardern is kicked out of New Zealand, but she's taken on this global censorship job.
You've got censors or people censorship friendly in Ireland, in France.
Like there really is no world leader who's saying enough of this crap.
And that's what scares me is that when there's no disruptor like a Donald Trump or maybe a Stephen Harper or whatever, these things can sort of ooz into every country and each country can follow the bad example of the other.
And I think that's the place we're in right now.
There are a few hopeful places.
I mean, Javier Mille in Argentina, but there's very few and they're not at the center of global decision making.
Last word to you.
I'm sorry for talking so much about this, but I guess it's close to my heart.
Of course.
Go ahead, Alan.
Finish it.
Yeah, I mean, it's important to remember that all of this started in 2016.
You know, there was a time when the internet and social media companies were not as censored as they are today.
And a big reason for that is the same media that's now asking to be rescued by online competition.
They were the ones who started whipping up these ad boycotts against YouTube, against Facebook, that really accelerated the pace of censorship.
So, you know, the important thing about these bills is that they're coming from the same place that motivates a lot of censorship, which is media, primarily media companies and their allies trying to suppress their competition on the one hand and elevate themselves by securing special favors from Silicon Valley.
And that's what these bills are.
They sort of give legal basis to Silicon Valley bailing out the mainstream media, whether they're popular or not.
Alam, I'm going to dig more deeply into your organization.
I'm delighted you're there.
And I'd like to share your website with our viewers.
It's foundationforfreedomonline.com.
We've gotten to know Alam over the years with his work at Breitbart.com, and now he's doing it full-time at thefoundationforfreedom.com.
And I have read this report called Protection Racket, why the censorship industry needs to bail out the media.
And I'm sorry I didn't give Alam more talk time.
I just had so many things to say myself.
But I promise you, Alam, if you're willing, I'd love to have you back on a regular basis like we used to do when you were at Breitbart, because this is very important to us.
Not only do we talk about this and do we care about this, we're directly impacted by it.
And we're trying to make a difference too by going to court.
And I will privately share with you some of our legal pleadings, what I think you'll find interesting.
So please take our best wishes for good luck and much success.
And I look forward to continuing our conversation in the months ahead.
Thanks, Esfo.
Having to come back.
Right on.
There you have it.
Alan Bokari, Freedom Fighter.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Why Putin Keeps Lying00:04:40
I mean, he's like a puppy dog.
You know, he somehow has, after having been fired from so many outlets in the United States, I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with outlet because he is a useful idiot.
He says things that are not true.
He parrots Vladimir Putin's pack of lies about Ukraine.
So I don't see why Putin wouldn't give him an interview because through him, he can continue to lie about what his objectives are in Ukraine and what he expects to see happen.
It's really quite sad that not just somebody like Tucker Carlson, who has, as I said, been fired so many times because he seems unable to correlate his reporting with the truth, but also because it's a sign that there are people in this country right now who are like a fifth column for Vladimir Putin.
And why?
I don't know.
I mean, why are certain Republicans throwing their lot in?
Why are other Americans basically believing Putin?
Why did Trump believe Putin more than our 11 intelligence agents?
I don't know.
Do you have a working theory?
How's your working theory?
There's a lot in there, actually.
Let me just take a second there.
And I'm just going to take her at face value for a minute.
I mean, put aside the fact that she's basically against the interview.
Actually, that's sort of the essence of what she said.
She said one of the main reasons was that Putin lies.
So you shouldn't interview a man who lies.
I'm sorry, but I think every politician lies.
And occasionally, I think almost every person lies.
Now, hopefully, most of us don't lie as a matter of course, and most of us don't deal with momentous things that require massive, dark lies.
But I recall Winston Churchill himself said the truth needs a bodyguard of lies.
The truth is so precious, it needs a bodyguard of lies.
He was talking about what life is like in wartime.
You might recall that Churchill had body doubles because deceiving the enemy about where he was was important because, of course, there were German spies trying to kill him.
So in wartime, do you doubt that both sides engaged in lies?
And I'm not here to beat up NATO, but there were so many pro-Ukraine lies.
The ghost of Kiev, some mysterious fighter pilot who was shooting down all the Russian planes, or Snake Island, where a handful of Ukrainian soldiers held off the entire Russian army.
There were all these little propaganda lies.
Welcome to wartime.
You know, war is fought by many means.
A lot of it is kinetic, but a lot of it is propaganda.
During the Second World War, there was Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose, who were English language radio hosts in Germany and Japan, saying demoralizing things to the Western troops.
And, of course, the Allies would drop leaflets on the bad guys trying to convince them to surrender.
Welcome to wartime.
But if we don't interview politicians because we think they're going to lie, so he hadn't even lied yet.
And I'm not sure what there was one thing Putin said last night that might be a lie, and I'm going to talk about it in a minute.
But even if he is a liar, shouldn't we hear the lies?
And maybe we'll expose the lies.
Or maybe they're not actually lies.
Maybe they're just falsehoods that Putin believes.
Or maybe, just maybe, there are certain things he says that we don't like, but may be true.
And for example, his history about Ukraine and its historical authenticity and its historical place, maybe it's wrong.
But I don't think Putin's lying.
He may just have an antagonistic belief.
But if we were to take Hillary Clinton's advice, we could not interview people who engaged in lies.
I don't think you would have a lot of interviews with world leaders.
One last question, and that's about someone who's very famous in the United States, probably not here, Evan Gershkovitz, who's the Wall Street Journal reporter.
He's 32 and he's been in prison for almost a year.
32-Year-Old Journalist in Prison00:05:43
This is a huge story in the United States.
And I just want to ask you directly, without getting into the details of it or your version of what happened, if as a sign of your decency, you would be willing to release him to us and we'll bring him back to the United States.
We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them.
We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner.
However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that.
If our partners take reciprocal steps, when I talk about the partners, I first of all refer to special services.
Special services are in contact with one another.
They are talking about the matter in question.
There is no taboo to settle this issue.
We are willing to solve it.
But there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels.
I believe an agreement can be reached.
So typically, I mean, this stuff has happened for obviously centuries.
One country catches another spy within its borders, it trades it for one of its own Intel guys in another country.
I think what makes this difference, and it's not my business, but what makes this difference is the guy's obviously not a spy.
He's a kid.
And maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he's not a super spy, and everybody knows that.
And he's being held hostage in exchange, which is true.
With respect, it's true, and everyone knows it's true.
So maybe he's in a different category.
Maybe it's not fair to ask for somebody else in exchange for letting him out.
Maybe it degrades Russia to do that.
You know, you can give different interpretations to what constitutes a spy.
But there are certain things provided by law.
If a person gets secret information and does that in a conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage.
And that is exactly what he was doing.
He was receiving classified confidential information, and he did it covertly.
Maybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative.
Considering the sheer fact, this is qualified as espionage.
The fact has been proven as he was caught red-handed when he was receiving this information.
If it had been some far-fetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then.
But he was caught red-handed when he was secretly getting confidential information.
What is it then?
But are you suggesting that he was working for the U.S. government or NATO, or he was just a reporter who was given material he wasn't supposed to have?
Those seem like very different, very different things.
I don't know who he was working for.
But I would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage.
And he was working for the U.S. Special Services, some other agencies.
I don't think he was working for Monaco, as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information.
It is up to special services to come to an agreement.
Some groundwork has been laid.
There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services.
Let me tell you a story about a person serving a anyways.
It goes on.
Do you see how long he's going on about this?
I think it was the longest.
And that's not even the full clip.
That was just a little clip we found online.
Tucker Carlson's like a dog with a bone.
And I actually think that Putin's going to give that 32-year-old.
And by the way, 32 years old is not a kid.
And journalists often are spies.
And because they have access and because asking questions is their job and getting tips is their job.
I don't know if this guy's a spy.
How would I know?
But it's notable that Tucker Carlson was so energetic about it.
And I'm sure that that man's family is grateful to him.
And if he's released, he'll be grateful to him.
And I put it to you that probably most corporate media reporters wouldn't ask that question of Putin.
And if they did, they certainly wouldn't come back at it again and again and again.
In fact, that could have gone on for five more minutes, but that was just a short extract, so we'll wrap that up there.
But again, Putin answers in different ways, doesn't he?
I don't think that Putin would ever answer a question based on feeling pressure from a reporter.
Because I just don't think in Putin's world, reporters are centers of power.
He's not worried about what the front page of Izvestia is going to say tomorrow in the same way that Trino might be worried about what the front page of the Global Mail is going to say tomorrow.
So I just don't think that Putin responds in the same way.
Putin's Diverse Responses00:14:46
And I don't know.
I thought he probably thought that was boring and playful.
There's one more thing that Putin said that I just don't know if it's true.
And it may be a lie.
Because it's just so unlikely.
But maybe it's unlikely because we've just never heard it before.
It's when Putin claimed that there was an I mean, everyone knows there was a negotiation, a peace negotiation very early in the war, a year and a half ago.
I think it was happening in Istanbul, Turkey.
And they had a tentative agreement that Vladimir Zelensky himself had tentatively agreed to.
And there's sort of two parts to the story that are incredible.
The first part is actually sort of already known.
It's that Russia and Zelensky had more or less agreed that we're going to have peace after six months, not after two years.
A peace that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
But Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of the UK, who wasn't even in PM at that time, was dispatched on behalf of NATO and America to scupper the deal, to tell Zelensky, don't you dare sign it.
Do you have that part of the clip?
Okay, let's take a look.
Yeah, I think so.
Let's take a look.
It was they who started the war in 2014.
Our goal is to stop this war.
And we did not start this war in 2022.
This is an attempt to stop it.
Do you think you've stopped it now?
I mean, have you achieved your aims?
No, we haven't achieved our aims yet, because one of them is the Nazification.
This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements.
This is one of the problems that we discussed during the negotiation process, which ended in Istanbul early this year.
And it was not our initiative, because we were told by the Europeans in particular that it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents.
My counterparts in France and Germany said, How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads?
The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.
I said, all right.
We withdrew the troops from Kiev.
As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a long-standing armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe.
That is how the situation has developed.
And that is how it looks now.
All right, that was the second part.
Olivia, I just sent you the clip of the first part.
That, I think, is an astonishing thing that I've never heard before.
Did you hear what he said?
That they were negotiating a peace deal at Istanbul, and Western leaders, I think he said France and Germany, said, how can you have Zelensky negotiate with a gun at his head, pull back from the capital, Kiev?
And Putin claims he pulled back to allow Zelensky to sign the deal.
And that's when the West said, ha ha, we're going to continue to fight.
I've never heard that before.
I've only heard the Western point of view, which is that, no, the Ukrainian armed forces with funding and materials from NATO drove the Russians back.
Not that they deliberately withdrew.
I find it implausible, but maybe it is the truth.
Or maybe it's a lie, a lie that Putin says to keep domestic Russian support.
Because if Russia was losing a war, that would look terrible.
A dictator's power or authoritarian's power is self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling.
As long as the dictator looks and sounds powerful, he will be powerful.
But the moment he looks vulnerable and weak, it'll all come in polluting.
So maybe that's a lie.
But I have to say, even if it's only 1% chance it's true, that's a heck of a counter narrative, isn't it?
But I just sent Olivia another clip that I haven't listened to because I'm on the show, but I saw the description.
That Istanbul meeting that they're talking about, that Putin allegedly pulled his tanks back to give Zelensky breathing room to sign it.
We've heard from other people.
We've heard from the Israeli government who was there saying, yeah, we basically had a deal.
We heard from other leaders who were in the room.
And here's Putin describing how they essentially had a peace deal a year and a half ago, but the West scuppered it.
Take a look.
We support this.
So I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding what you're saying.
I don't think that I am.
I think you're saying you want a negotiated settlement to what's happening in Ukraine.
Right.
And we made it.
We prepared the huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation.
He affixed his signature to some of the provisions.
Not so all of it.
He put his signature, and then he himself said, We were ready to sign it, and the war would have been over long ago 18 months ago.
However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talked us out of it, and we missed that chance.
We support this.
So I just want to make sure I'm not.
You know, I think that's incredible.
We're learning about the war.
We're learning about Putin's openness to a diplomatic resolution.
And now Hillary Clinton says it's a pack of lies.
And I suppose if someone knows lies, she's a connoisseur of lies.
She's an impresario of lies.
She's the master and mistress of lies.
She would know.
Or maybe she just doesn't want to hear Vladimir Putin's point of view.
I don't know.
But I do know that for a course of two hours, Vladimir Putin talked on a range of subjects with a depth and detail that I think few foreign leaders could match.
And that doesn't mean he's a good person.
But what it means is that Russia is led by a powerful leader who understands his country and is focused on his country's national goals.
Can you say the same about the leaders in the West?
Can you say the same about Rishi Sunak in the UK?
Can you say the same about Justin Trudeau here?
One of the things that the anti-Putin propaganda has led us to believe over the last two years, for example, just one detail, is that Putin was physically very frail and dying.
We saw different theories of he had this disease or that disease.
Could be.
I mean, not all diseases are visible to the eye.
But he certainly looked attentive.
He looked engrossed.
He looked physically comfortable.
He didn't look like he was in pain or something.
He didn't look like he was on meds, as Biden sometimes does.
And according to Tucker, I mean, we saw the video.
It was Tucker who wrapped up the interview after two hours.
It seems like Putin could have gone on.
I just don't know if there's a leader in the West who could hold his own in an unscripted, wide-ranging, content-rich, challenging conversation in the same way.
They talked about AI.
They talked about genetics.
They talked about Elon Musk.
They talked about the BRICS group.
That's the China-led alternative economic arrangement.
They talked about sanctions.
They talked about, well, for example, they talked about Russia becoming the largest economy in Russia last year.
In Europe last year.
Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions.
Is it normal from your point of view?
Sanctions, restrictions, impossibility of payments in dollars being cut off from SWIFT services, sanctions against our ships carrying oil, sanctions against airplanes, sanctions in everything, everywhere.
The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied are applied against Russia.
And we have become Europe's first economy during this time.
By first economy, it's the largest economy.
And I was shocked to hear that news a year ago, and I checked it out.
Indeed, it's true.
On a purchasing power parity basis, and what does that mean?
How much you can buy, like the actual value of the economy.
Russia exceeded Germany.
In my mind, Germany was always this industrial powerhouse.
But it's a combination of Germany sort of undoing itself with its green energy schemes and Russia making other arrangements.
I mean, would you have guessed that Russia would pull ahead of Germany in this sanctions environment?
I certainly wouldn't have.
I want to play a clip.
I just sent you an eight-minute long clip, Olivia.
We're not going to play all eight minutes of it.
But what I found interesting about the conversation.
Have you heard of the BRICS?
I think it stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, or something.
It's basically the alternative to the G7.
You know what the G7 are, right?
The G7 is Canada, United States, France, Britain, Germany, Japan.
And I left one out.
I can't remember.
And it used to be the G8 with Russia in it, but then they sort of kicked Russia out.
So the G7 was sort of the leading world's industrial democracies.
I don't know how Canada got in there because I'm not sure if we really are.
But this is a China-led alternative to the G7.
It's challenged.
Yeah, there you go.
That's the G7.
So you can see Japan.
Okay, that's BRICS, actually.
Thanks.
I was confused for a second.
Yeah, there's the Indian flag.
Sorry, I'm looking at the other screen there.
So BRICS is an attempt by other countries to say, you know, we don't have to be in an American-led world.
We don't have to have a U.S. dollar-led world.
And play the clip that I just sent you just for a few minutes, because Putin is dropping statistics and arguments and facts as he goes, no notes.
And it's not about the war in Ukraine.
He's just talking about the changing center of gravity in the world.
Go ahead and play a bit of this.
The question is what comes next.
And maybe you trade one colonial power for another, much less sentimental and forgiving colonial power.
I mean, is the BRICS, for example, in danger of being completely dominated by the Chinese, the Chinese economy, in a way that's not good for their sovereignty?
Do you worry about that?
We have heard those boogeymen stories before.
It is a boogeyman story.
We're neighbors with China.
You cannot choose neighbors just as you cannot choose close relatives.
We share a border of 1,000 kilometers with them.
This is number one.
Second, we have a centuries-long history of coexistence.
We're used to it.
Third, China's foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive.
Its idea is to always look for compromise, and we can see that.
The next point is as follows.
We are always told the same boogeyman story.
And here it goes again through an euphemistic form, but it is still the same boogeyman story.
The cooperation with China keeps increasing.
The pace at which China's cooperation with Europe is growing is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese-Russian cooperation.
Ask Europeans, aren't they afraid?
They might be, I don't know.
But they are still trying to access China's market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems.
Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market.
Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States?
Yes, the political decisions are such that they are trying to limit their cooperation with China.
It is to your own detriment, Mr. Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China.
You are hurting yourself.
It is a delicate matter, and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar.
So before introducing any illegitimate sanctions, illegitimate in terms of the Charter of the United Nations, one should think very carefully.
For decision makers, this appears to be a problem.
So you said a moment ago that the world would be a lot better if it weren't broken into competing alliances, if there was cooperation globally.
One of the reasons you don't have that is because the current American administration is dead set against you.
Do you think if there were a new administration after Joe Biden that you would be able to re-establish communication with the U.S. government?
Or does it not matter who the president is?
I will tell you.
But let me finish the previous thought.
We, together with my colleague and friend, President Ji Jinping, set a goal to reach $200 billion of mutual trade with China this year.
Different Levels of Thinking00:13:13
We have exceeded this level.
According to our figures, our bilateral trade with China totals already $230 billion.
And the Chinese statistics say it is $240 billion.
One more important thing.
Our trade is well balanced, mutually complementary in high-tech, energy, scientific research, and development.
It is very balanced.
As for BRICS, where Russia took over the presidency this year, the BRICS countries are, by and large, developing very rapidly.
Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47%, whereas in 2022, it was down to, I think, a little over 30%.
The BRICS countries accounted for only 16% in 1992.
But now their share is greater than that of the G7.
It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine.
This is due to the trends of global development and world economy, as I mentioned just now.
And this is inevitable.
This will keep happening.
It is like the rise of the sun.
You cannot prevent the sun from rising.
You have to adapt to it.
How do the United States adapt with the help of force, sanctions, pressure, bombings, and use of armed forces?
This is about self-conceit.
Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing under objective circumstances.
And in order to preserve your level, even if someone aspires to the level of dominance, you have to make the right decisions in a competent and timely manner.
Such brutal actions, including with regard to Russia and, say, other countries, are counterproductive.
This is an obvious fact.
It has already become evident.
You just asked me if another leader comes and changes something.
It is not about the leader.
It is not about the personality of a particular person.
I had a very good relationship with, say, Bush.
I know that in the United States, he was portrayed as some kind of a country boy who does not understand much.
I assure you that this is not the case.
I think he made a lot of mistakes with regard to Russia, too.
I told you about 2008 and the decision in Bucharest to open NATO's doors for Ukraine and so on.
That happened during his presidency.
He actually exercised pressure on the Europeans.
But in general, on a personal human level, I had a very good relationship with him.
He was no worse than any other American or Russian or European politician.
I assure you, he understood what he was doing as well as others.
I had such a personal relationship with Trump as well.
It is not about the personality of the leader.
It is about the elite's mindset.
If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions, dominates the American society, nothing will change.
It will only get worse.
But if, in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to the objective circumstances and that one should be able to adapt to them in time using the advantages that the U.S. still has today, then perhaps something may change.
It's a long clip, but I'm glad to have shown it to you.
There were so many things in there.
Now, I want to start by saying something that I feel just watching this, which is, boy, he talks differently than our politicians do.
And there's a lot of reasons for that.
Obviously, he has his own personality, but he's Russian.
And they don't have a vigorous press scrum style.
They don't have it.
In fact, I think his very first answer to Tucker was something like, is this a talk show or something?
As opposed to Putin was obviously ready for a deep discussion.
And he would have kept going.
It was Tucker who said, okay, two hours and seven minutes is enough for me.
Um, so I think the Western ear, the short attention span mindset, the Tiktok generation is not interested in eight minute answers.
Talking about the growth rate of the the Bricks economy versus the shrinking of the G7 economy is a proportion of work.
But but I think maybe that's a Western conceit because we have short attention spans, we have entertainment style politics and we're America centric.
And I say we, Canada and the United States, we're sort of twins.
But in Europe, and I saw this when I went to Hungary, and I saw the speech that Viktor Orban gave, and China, they talk about China in Hungary as much as they talk about America.
And they're closer to China, and they're closer to Russia.
And that's the rest of the world.
Not all the rest of the world thinks LA, New York, Washington.
Other parts of the world think Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, Bombay.
But when Tucker Carlson said, when was the last time you talked to Biden?
His first answer was, I don't know exactly.
And Tucker Carlson laughed out loud.
If you can find that exact moment, please do, Olivia.
Tucker Carlson laughed out loud.
And Putin sort of said, you know, I've got a lot of things, a lot of domestic things I worry about.
And I think Putin was just sort of, it was his reaction to Tucker Carlson being absolutely stunned that Vladimir Putin couldn't remember the exact moment he last talked to Biden.
And Putin was, his response, I think it was a genuine response because it was so reflexive.
It was, yeah, I got a lot of busy things I'm worried about.
I happen to run one of the largest countries, the largest country in the world geographically, a country that has lots of different languages, ethnicities, religions, lots of different borders, military issues.
Yeah, waiting for Joe Biden to call is not exactly, you know, I'm not thinking about him when I go to bed and thinking about him when I wake up in the morning.
But there was a good question and answer exchange there, wasn't it?
And it had nothing to do with Ukraine.
So, I mean, when Hillary Clinton and other Westerners said, don't listen to the war propagandists, don't listen to the killer, don't listen to the illegal invader.
I understand what they're saying.
They're saying he's the enemy.
Don't give him a platform.
But does that mean we can't hear what he has to say about the rising place of China and the BRICS countries and how that's inevitable?
Does that mean that his comments about that are a lie?
Do you think he was lying about China-Russia trade?
I thought it was a very interesting answer that he said, don't tell me about China trade.
Europe is more hungry for the Chinese market than even we are.
I don't know if you caught that part.
I thought it was interesting to hear his reflections on talking about talking to different politicians.
He was friendly with George W. Bush, I believe he would.
He didn't mention Hillary Clinton, which is interesting to me because Hillary Clinton is so hostile to Putin, but he didn't even mention her.
He said he got along well enough with Trump, which I think he did, even though Trump was a large force for increasing NATO spending.
But I think he was on to something where he said, you can change the leader at the top, but what about the elite's mindset?
And it's true that the, I'd even say Russophobia.
And I'm not a Russophile.
I'll never set foot in Russia.
I'm afraid that I would be politically targeted for my criticisms of Vladimir Putin and Gazprom.
I don't like the authoritarian regime there.
I think it's obviously less totalitarian than it was under Soviet times.
But you've got a former KGB agent as president now.
It's not a gentle place if you have political views.
That said, I think hearing from him and understanding him is useful.
And of course, he's skilled in propaganda.
Of course, he is.
On the other hand, he's not as comfortable and routinely chatting with journalists.
It's not as large a part.
I mean, think about how much time our politicians spend in a day dealing with the media.
They have press releases every day.
They have press conferences for those press releases.
The one-hour question period doesn't actually get any answers.
It's just a showtime for the media.
I put it to you that at least 50% of the day for a Canadian politician is how to get media and how to control media coverage of what a politician does.
And then I'd say a quarter of the rest of the time is thinking about the re-election, dealing with constituents, fundraising.
I'd say at most only a quarter of the time of a politician in the West is actually focused on governing, let alone thinking, planning, believing.
And I'm not saying that it's better to have a politician who doesn't have the worries of the media and democracy, because although those exercises are shallow, they actually are accountability exercises.
We need a free press to scrutinize.
We need elections.
We need the checks and balances.
But Putin doesn't have any of those things.
He doesn't stand up in the Duma and answer tough questions.
He doesn't have to go.
I mean, there are elections there, but I think they're pretty much controlled.
It's not a good thing for Russia that they don't have the democratic checks and balances.
But on the other hand, it obviously frees their president to do a lot more thinking and doing and to think more deeply than any politician in the West does.
There aren't too many more clips I propose to show.
I mean, it really was a two-hour marathon.
There were some funny moments.
I don't know if you can find it.
What clip do you have on standby there?
Oh, this is the exact point about when was the last time you talked to Biden?
Let's just play this because I referred to it a few times.
Take a look.
You wouldn't be speaking to the Ukrainian president.
You'd be speaking to the American president.
When was the last time you spoke to Joe Biden?
I cannot remember when I talked to him.
I do not remember.
We can look it up.
You don't remember?
No.
Why?
Do I have to remember everything?
I have my own things to do.
We have domestic political affairs.
Well, he's funding the war that you're fighting, so I would think that would be memorable.
I'm definitely interested.
But from the outside, it seems like this could devolve or evolve into something that brings the entire world into conflict and could initiate a nuclear launch.
And so why don't you just call Biden and say, let's work this out?
What's there to work out?
It's very simple, I repeat.
We have contacts through various agencies.
I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the U.S. leadership.
If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons.
It will be over within a few weeks.
That's it.
And then we can agree on some terms.
Before you do that, stop.
What's easier?
Why would I call him?
What should I talk to him about?
Or beg him for what?
And what messes with the defense?
You're going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine.
Oh, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid.
Please don't.
What is there to talk about?
That's a very powerful exchange.
And I think it's honest, by the way.
I don't think that's a lie.
I think the different agencies are talking to each other.
Of course they are.
Even during the depths of the Cold War, that's why they put in the hot phone, the hotline.
But he's exactly right.
Why would he call Joe Biden?
And would Joe Biden even know who he is?
I don't know if you saw.
Do you have any of those Biden clips from yesterday?
Let me just mention this in passing.
I talked about the stamina, the intellectual focus, the physical comfort, the physical appearance of Vladimir Putin.
And that's relevant because, like I say, I've read reports for years that he's on death's door.
He's sick.
He's ailing.
Mr. President's Defense00:06:10
He has a body double.
What I saw on this interview was Tucker Carlson trying to keep up with Putin in terms of energy.
Putin was attentive.
He didn't forget things.
He was quoting statistics.
They talked about 20 subjects.
Could you imagine Vladimir Putin phoning up this guy, Joe Biden?
And let me just give you a little bit of background.
So Joe Biden, there was a special prosecutor, special investigator, because Biden apparently gave some confidential state secrets to his biographer.
And the special prosecutor met with Biden several times about it to see if a prosecution should be filed.
And the report of the special prosecutor was no, including for reasons that he's an old man who forgets things and he lacks the mental elements to commit a crime because he's cognitively in decline.
So the special prosecutor said, I've spent a lot of time with Joe Biden.
We are not likely to convict because a jury will see him as a kindly old, forgetful man.
In fact, here's the exact word, an elderly man with poor memory.
So they trotted out Joe Biden yesterday because he was really mad about this and he wanted to prove how good his cognitive abilities were.
And I want to show you two clips.
And if it's not in this one, get the next one ready, too, where he said Mexico instead of Gaza.
Let's take a look at this one.
I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events.
There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died.
How in the hell dare he raise that?
Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.
Let me tell you something.
Some of you have commented.
I wear since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from Our Lady of Every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him attended by friends and family of the people who loved him.
I don't need anyone.
I don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away.
Passed away.
Simple truth is, I sat for 500, two days of events, going back 40 years.
The same time I was managing international crisis, their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case.
That's their decision to make.
That's the counsel's decision to make.
That's his job.
And they decided not to move forward.
For any extraneous commentary, they don't know what they're talking about.
It has no place in this report.
The bottom line is the matter is now closed.
I'm going to continue what I've always focused on.
My job of being president of the United States of America.
President Biden, something the special counsel said in his report is that one of the reasons you were not charged is because, in his description, you are a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
I'm well-meaning, I'm an elderly man, and I know what the hell I'm doing.
I've been president, and I put this country back on its feet.
I don't need his recommendation.
You're against your memory, and can you continue as president?
My memory is so bad, I let you speak.
So, look, my memory is not my memory is fine.
My memory, take a look at what I've done since I become president.
None of you thought I could pass any of the things I got passed.
How did that happen?
You know, I guess I just forgot what was going on.
Mr. President, voters have concerns about your age.
How are you going to persuade them?
Do you hear that this report is only going to fuel further concern about your age?
Only by some of you.
Mr. President, I don't want that.
Do you take responsibility for at least being careless with classified material?
I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing.
It goes in and twice out.
Things that appeared in my garage, things that came out of my home, things that were moved not by me, but my staff.
But my staff for months when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words, watch me.
While any American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about your age.
That is your judgment.
That is your judgment.
That is not the judgment.
They express concerns about your mental acuity.
They say that you are too old.
Mr. President, in December, you told me that you believe there are many other Democrats who could defeat Donald Trump.
So why does it have to be you now?
What is your answer to that budget?
I'm not qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started.
You know, that press conference, there were a number of things yesterday that just made he went out to demonstrate how sharp he was, but oh my God.
You know, he mixed up Mexico and Gaza.
And I want to go to, I just sent you a link to a Twitter account called TechnoFog, Olivia, where he's posting various excerpts from this report by special counsel Robert Hurr.
So it found that Joe Biden retained all these secrets, kept him in his garage and stuff.
Can you scroll down a bit?
You know, he unlawfully retained classified notes, gave classified info to his ghostwriter.
But scroll down to where they describe how forgetful he was.
And it's scroll down a bit a little bit further.
Biden's serious cognitive issues are exposed.
Putin's Denazification Claim00:15:24
And he's quoting, yeah, it's right here.
He did not remember when he was vice president.
He forgot when his term began.
He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Bo died.
And you saw he was asked about that, and he was really mad.
How dare you?
I remembered Bo out.
So he didn't deny that he couldn't remember when his son Bo died.
Just was very mad that someone would ask him that personal question.
I show you these clips, and I don't need to show you the clip about he called the president of Mexico the president of Egypt or something.
He confused Francois Mitterrand, a French leader who's dead for years.
Do you really think that Vladimir Putin would call up Joe Biden?
For what reason?
So Joe Biden could ask him who he was again.
I just want to show you one last clip, and it's the CIA one.
I sent it to you, Livia.
Do you have it there?
So Tucker Carlson's an interesting guy.
I'm a big fan, by the way.
I like his style.
I like how he's gone independent.
I love the fact that he doesn't care who dislikes him.
In fact, he sort of loves it.
I like the fact that he cares about Canada.
I really get a chuckle out of the fact that he deliberately mispronounces Ottawa just to get Canadian liberals furious.
There's a lot of things I like about Tucker Carlson.
I don't know everything about him.
I've never met him in person.
I've just dealt with him through a TV camera those times I was on his show.
I didn't know he applied to join the CIA when he was a young man.
And, of course, Putin is a former KGB man.
Let me play this very short clip.
It's just 20 seconds of Putin sort of bringing up the CIA thing in a little jab.
It's sort of funny.
Take a look.
With the backing of whom?
With the backing of CIA, of course.
The organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand.
We should thank God they didn't let you in.
Although, it is a serious organization.
I understand.
With the backing of.
I think that was in response to the question: who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?
Well, listen, we've sort of hopped around the video a lot.
And Olivia, thank you very much for finding those things on the go.
I know I throw things at you, and it's a two-hour video.
So finding the exact moment to the second is not easy to do in a two-hour video.
I recommend it.
I have not yet watched the whole thing from end to end.
I've just really zeroed in on different parts.
And it's sort of tough to get right into because of that 30-minute history lecture on Russia.
But frankly, let's check the view count on it.
Because an hour and a half ago when we checked, did you remember what it was, the view count?
130 million or so.
Let's take a look what it is now, just in the last hour and 15 minutes.
136 million.
So are you saying that it's grown by 6 million?
Was it like exactly 130 million?
Do you remember?
So even as we've been sitting here, 6.5 million people have watched this version.
But there are many, every single clip we've shown you has been cut and reposted by someone else.
A lot of people saw it on Tucker Carlson's own website.
And if it's had 136 million views on that alone, I don't think it's crazy to think that this video and all its clippings have been seen a billion times.
I mean, I think far more people have seen the little clips than watch the whole thing.
Now, I acknowledge that 136 million views, maybe that's only for a few seconds, but even if only 10% of those people watch a significant amount, that is an enormous audience.
And I think people, you don't think Hillary Clinton was watching it?
You don't think Vladimir Zelensky is watching it?
They talked about Zelensky.
In fact, let's just dig up one more thing.
And let me, I would go to Twitter and I would search Putin, Zelensky, father.
Because I thought this was an interesting exchange.
Putin and Zelensky have spoken before.
In fact, Zelensky, when he ran for office, ran as the peace candidate.
And one of the conversations in the video was about, yeah, that's the exact clip there, was about the denazification.
One of the things that Tucker Carlson asked was, what are your goals?
What do you want to happen in Ukraine and how will it happen if you don't conquer the whole place?
And one of the things Putin said is denazification.
I think that first clip there is the one.
It's just a very brief one where he talks about his last conversation with Zelensky about how can you not fight against fascists?
Your father did.
And remember, Zelensky is a Jew.
Take a look.
Said Bologna.
What are you doing?
Why are you supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine today while your father fought against fascism?
He was a frontline soldier.
I will not tell you what he answered.
This is a separate topic, and I think it's incorrect for me to do so.
Isn't that interesting?
So that's just a very tight clip there, but the intro to that would be: he called Zelensky, or they talked on the phone.
I don't know who called whom.
And he tried to appeal to Zelensky's family tradition because his father fought against the Nazis, apparently.
That's an interesting thing.
And an also interesting thing is Putin did not say what Zelensky told him out of, I don't know, some sort of code of honor or something, or I don't know, but I think he did that a couple of times in the interview, where I think a Western politician would have said, aha, I have a juicy tidbit about my enemy.
I'm going to release it now.
Putin didn't give in to that impulse if he had it at all.
I saw Tucker Carlson recorded a sort of a nine-minute after-the-fact, you know, decompressing comment when he was still, his head was surely swirling.
And he said it's going to take him a year to fully understand what he heard.
And I think he's probably right.
I think a lot of CIA and MI5 or 6, or whichever one it is, a lot of people are going to be analyzing that, the Ukrainian intelligence, NATO intelligence.
A lot of Russians are going to be watching it.
And because remember, Putin was talking to the West, but he was also talking in Russian to his own country.
He was talking to Ukraine.
He was talking to NATO.
He was talking to China.
He was talking to the world.
It was the biggest moment for Tucker Carlson, but it was probably one of the biggest moments for Putin, too.
There will be a lot to be studied there.
And of course, Hillary Clinton's right to say politicians lie, and authoritarian dictators probably lie more than most.
But when he describes his views on BRICS and China and the de-dollarization and sanctions and purchasing power and economic reality, how are those lies?
How are those not obvious observations of someone who has a different worldview?
Russia's always straddled West and East.
I mean, Vladivostok is so far, it's over Japan.
That's how far East Russia goes.
So far East, it almost comes west again and touches Alaska.
And yet it's in the heart of Europe as well.
It's always had sort of a split personality.
And is it Eastern or is it Western?
And one of the things that Tucker acknowledged in this sort of after right after the moment videos is he said he felt Putin had some anger about the way things have gone, but also that Putin felt that Russia was rejected by the West, that Russia was not warmly welcomed into the West.
Kremlin with the outgoing president Bill Clinton right here in the next room.
I said to him, I asked him, Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?
Suddenly he said, you know, it's interesting.
I think so.
But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said, you know, I've talked to my team.
No, no, it's not possible now.
You can ask him.
I think he will watch our interview.
He'll confirm it.
I wouldn't have said anything like that if it hadn't happened.
Okay.
Were you sincere?
Is it possible now?
Would you have joined NATO?
Look, I asked the question: is it possible or not?
And the answer I got was no.
If I was insincere in my desire to find out what the leadership position was, but if he had said yes, would you have joined NATO?
If he had said yes, the process of reproachment would have commenced.
And eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the other side of our part.
Isn't that a crazy idea?
I forget who came up with the phrase to explain NATO.
It was to keep the Germans down, the Soviets out, and the Americans in.
It was some British politician, I think, who said the purpose of NATO, keep the Germans down, the Russians out, the Americans in.
How does NATO work if the Russians are in it?
Isn't the whole purpose of NATO to protect against Russia and the Red Army?
Did I blow your mind by, you know, did Putin blow your mind by saying, can we join NATO?
Imagine if they, I mean, I don't even know how that works because that would be like, I don't even know what that would be like.
It's just so, it's like water and fire.
The whole purpose of water is to put out the fire.
But what if the fire says, I'd like to be part of the fire department?
Well, maybe it's not fire anymore, or maybe it's a trick.
I don't know.
Maybe it's an arsonist.
Maybe he's sneaking.
Maybe it's a Trojan horse.
But what an incredible thing.
And he says Clinton would recall it.
Of course, I mean, that would be an, of course, that's, he's not going to lie about that.
What's Bill Clinton's answer to that?
Maybe it's an absurd point, an absurd question that should not have been entertained, but I think the world would have been quite different.
Isn't that interesting?
There's a lot of things in there.
Like that alone will stimulate a thousand reverberations.
Maybe that was well known already, but it was certainly news to me.
I don't know.
Very interesting.
Justin Trudeau gave Vladimir Putin one of his most powerful propaganda talking points.
And to Canada's embarrassment, Putin brought it up last night.
Justin Trudeau invited a bona fide Nazi SS officer to parliament.
Now, Putin adds a detail I was not sure of.
He claims that Yaroslav Hanka actually murdered Jews and others.
I was unaware of that, although I understand in the Nazi SS that was sort of a rite of passage.
Here, let's play that clip.
You say Hitler has been dead for so many years, 80 years.
But his example lives on.
People who exterminated Jews, Russians, and Poles are alive.
And the president, the current president of today's Ukraine, applauds him in the Canadian parliament, gives a standing ovation.
Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology if what we see is happening today?
That is what denazification is in our understanding.
We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it.
That is what denazification is.
That is what we mean.
Yeah, thanks, Justin Trudeau, for giving Vladimir Putin a talking point.
Here's what I learned yesterday in closing.
I learned that Vladimir Putin is physically and mentally stronger than Joe Biden.
You could probably guess that.
I learned that Vladimir Putin thinks about his country in the sweep of history and destiny and national interests, and he thinks about his country's long-term future in ways that our Western leaders do not.
I learned that Vladimir Putin is not used to the back and forth banter as democratic politicians are because there is no vibrant, antagonistic, pluralistic press corps in Russia.
So he's used to giving long professorial answers to people who just sit there and take notes.
I think that half-hour historical answer is sort of how he probably normally talks.
And woe unto the flunky who expresses impatience.
I think that what Putin said about his interests in becoming more allied with the West are most likely true.
If he did, in fact, ask Clinton, could Russia possibly join?
I think that perhaps there was an enormous opportunity that was missed.
And the military-industrial complex of the West said, no, we can never stop fighting Russia.
We always need an enemy.
Of course, now we've got radical Islam and China added as enemies, too.
I think as to the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said something that I think is credible, which is that he's open to a diplomatic solution.
The reason I say that's credible and not a lie is that Putin seemed dedicated to various treaties signed in Minsk and to a treaty that was being hammered out in Istanbul.
And it's been reported from various quarters, including from Israel, that it was Boris Johnson that discovered it, not Putin.
I don't believe Putin when he says he withdrew his military from Kiev as a sign of good faith.
I find that too far-fetched.
It could be true.
It's the first I've heard of it.
And I think that for millions of people around the world, this is the first time they will have heard Vladimir Putin's side of the story, whether they believe it or not is up to them.
And I think Tucker Carlson has shown that he can rise to the occasion.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next week, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.