Ezra Levant records late-night in Jerusalem amid U.S. military drills near Iran, where rising tensions could trigger Israeli bomb shelter demand—echoing Trump’s past threats over 30,000 Iranian protester deaths. Dr. James Lindsay traces "woke right" antisemitism to radicalized European currents and foreign disinformation, warning Carlson’s embrace of Maduro, Sharia praise, and Nazi-aligned guests risks isolating him in extremist circles. Dinesh D’Souza’s film The Dragon’s Prophecy argues Israel’s biblical and military claims (1948–1973) outweigh U.S. historical ones, while criticizing Carlson for fracturing conservative alliances, including evangelicals and Jewish voters Trump relies on. Carlson’s "ventriloquist journalism" and potential Heritage Foundation ties suggest a power play that could backfire if he alienates core GOP demographics. [Automatically generated summary]
That's just the lights from the cars that were passing by.
It's late at night here in Jerusalem.
What am I doing here?
Well, when I left Davos, Switzerland, I didn't go straight home.
I came to Jerusalem because Abiy Amini and I were invited to a conference hosted by a cabinet minister in the Israeli government about anti-Semitism.
And I thought, well, you know, we're halfway there and we spent our own money to go there.
I want to let you know that because some people take free trips.
We don't take free trips paid for by governments.
So we flew out there and we had some really interesting interviews with not just Israeli leaders, but people from around the world about the state of anti-Semitism and how it's so often linked to mass immigration.
So we've been out here.
I'm actually tomorrow morning.
I'm getting on a plane coming back to Canada.
So I will be back tomorrow.
I just thought, you know, let's jam in a couple of days since we're all the way out here.
And the crazy thing is, and I didn't know this, is the U.S. chose this time to steam a massive aircraft carrier to the region.
And they're starting exercises around Iran and rattling their sabers.
So there's a chance that when this goes to air, I hate to say it, that there may be another war out here.
Donald Trump said he would smash Iran if they started killing their own peaceful protesters.
And I saw some shocking reports that in the last two days alone, more than 30,000 peaceful protesters in Iran have been killed.
30,000 in two days.
And Trump said that was his red line.
I mean, look, I have no idea if that strike is going to happen, if the aircraft carrier is just some sort of walk softly, carry a big stick kind of thing, as Teddy Kennedy would say.
But there's a chance that we'll actually be in bomb shelters tonight because, of course, even if America attacks Iran, they'll most likely fire missiles at Israel, America's ally in the region.
I tell you, it's all Israelis are talking about.
Hopefully, the casualties will be low on all sides, and hopefully it'll be almost surgical, like it was when Nicholas Maduro was snatched by the U.S. military.
Anyways, I'm recording this in a taxi as we head out into the night.
I want to tell you about two interviews I did at the conference today, and that forms the bulk of my show today.
The first was with Dr. James Lindsay, and you'll remember Dr. James.
He's the one who studies so deeply the philosophic, the philosophy of being woke.
And a couple of years, he invented the idea of what he called the woke right.
And I didn't understand that.
I said, what woke to me means left.
It means critical theory, Marxist theory, like, you know, just like Marxist race theory or Marxist gender theory.
I thought, how can you be woke right?
I didn't get it.
Maybe I wasn't smart enough or maybe I was listening carefully enough, but now I get it.
It's largely internet Groypers, as they call themselves, who are anti-Semitic and in some cases, anti-American and anti-Trump.
And it's this whole new phenomenon online.
And I hate to say it.
My former hero, Tucker Carlson, is going down that road.
So I talked to James Lindsay about it.
Want to understand.
How did that happen?
I'm 53 years old and for the first 50 years of my life, the idea of encountering an Anti-semite, a born in Canada, conservative anti-semite.
Never seen one.
Never seen one in my whole life.
And now suddenly the internet is crawling with them.
How did that happen?
So I talked to James Lindsay about that, and then I had a heart to heart with Dinesh De Souza.
You know who i'm talking about.
So both these men were here for this anti-semitism conference, and Dinesh D'Souza is so smart I keep forgetting what a public intellectual he is.
And not only did we talk about that, but we also talked about his new movie and other work he's doing.
So that's uh, the show for today.
I'm in a cab.
I'll sign off.
But enjoy these two interviews that I did at the conference on antisemitism.
Dr. James Lindsay, I bump into you in all the best places.
We're here at an anti-semitism conference in Jerusalem.
What's your message?
Well, I mean, we're not just at an anti-semitism conference in Jerusalem, we're here on Holocaust memorial remembrance day as well 81st one, right and so that's important to remember.
Uh, my message I mean obviously the big picture message is uh, that never again is now we have rising Anti-semitism, kind of from the three axes the left, the radical Islamists, and then now this new anti-semitism on the right.
I've been warning about it for a while.
I got in trouble, called it woke right, but trying to get people to understand where this comes from, where this you know politics of friend and enemy this uh grievance, oriented envy, oriented alienation centered mentality comes from, and how it metastasizes and becomes very radical, very dangerous movements that threaten our free societies and western democracies.
You know, you and I have been talking I really love our in-depth interviews for years now, and I remember when you first said woke right and I confess I didn't quite understand it because I thought that was a an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp how can you be woke and right?
I think I finally get it now.
Tell me a little bit about where it came from though, because from my whole life until about two years ago, the idea of someone in North America on the right being anti-semitic was almost unheard of.
I mean, I and I, I just it.
Suddenly it.
I suppose it's slowly, slowly and then very quickly it happened.
Where, how did it start?
Radical Shifts in Right-Wing Thought00:13:27
I'm talking about a lot of online Groypers.
They call themselves and others, even some would-be Christian leaders are taking an Anti-semitic line i've never seen before.
Where's it from?
There are three answers to that question, kind of meaningfully.
One is reaction.
We've been under this woke left tyranny frankly, in Canada, especially now tyranny uh, for at least a decade, very clearly 2015.
By that point, it's clearly a problem.
2020, it's undeniable and taking over our societies and there's a reaction to that and that reaction has alienated white men.
It's alienated um, a lot of white Christians in particular, and they're you alienate somebody long enough and they say, we're going to band together and fight back.
And they take on a toxic identity politics and start looking for philosophies that justify it and they take Elements from the thing they're reacting to and say the tactics they're doing work so we can do that.
So that's the reaction.
Another is that this is a current that has been there.
The Groypers are not new.
The alt-right was a conversation people were having 10 years ago as a concern, 2014, 15, 16, 17.
It erupts at Charlottesville.
President Trump calls it out and it goes underground.
So it's been insinuating into the conservative movements ever since, playing nice, making friends, fitting in, filling positions.
Short march into the institutions, you might call it.
But it's the continuation of the alt-right, which is this alternative European-style conservative philosophies, the right-wing philosophies, not conservative, the anti-conservative, that are now making their way into the North American continent, very alien to us.
And then the third answer is foreign powers.
The enemies of America, the enemies of the free world, the enemies of Canada, I mean, your prime minister now notwithstanding, are very invested in splitting apart our countries to take over, to destroy America, the great Satan, as it's called, you know, here in the Middle East by certain players.
The Chinese regime has every incentive to try to break American and Western hegemony in the world.
The Russians, besides the fact of wanting to get back on the world stage and always playing these KGB games, have the insult of having lost the Soviet Union in revenge.
So there's a new axis rising around the world, which I think sadly Canada is now declaring allegiance to, or your prime minister at least has.
There's a new axis rising, and they want America to fail.
They want Israel to fail.
They want Western democracy to fail.
And so what will they do?
Seed these movements, the existing alt-right, this growing reaction with the worst ideas possible to fragment everything, to make everything worse, to isolate people, to set people who are friends as enemies now, and to transform the world to their own advantage.
And they'll sweep in and pick up the spoils when things are broken.
So three sources.
Reaction, foreign interference, and this long-running kind of existing movement of radical right-wing European-style politics that's been hiding under the surface and is now trying to emerge.
You know, Tucker Carlson, who I think is the most respectable of the woke right, he was a hero of mine for years.
I looked up to him.
I was delighted to be a guest on his show from time to time.
And I've seen him say, I'm worried about Sharia law.
I'm worried about radical Islam.
Conspiracy theories about 9-11 disrespect the victims that day.
Like I saw him say reasonable national populist conservative things.
Now he's saying 180 degrees the opposite.
And I'm not asking you to read his mind.
None of us can, but what's your theory about how a great leader of conservative populism is now talking up in his own way Maduro and promoting every anti-American tyranny, says he hates Christian Zionists more than anything.
His daily newsletter is often 20, 30, 40% about Jews in Israel.
I just, I mean, I don't want to pretend he was a close friend, but I admired him.
How did he do a 180?
You know, I would like to know.
I don't know.
You mentioned, you know, some of his new alliances.
He's just, it came out just the other day.
I saw it.
It's all in Arabic that he's going to be speaking at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's 2030 conference coming up soon with some new company.
You know, unexpected characters like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are on the docket alongside him, which is an interesting company for him to be keeping.
And again, in Saudi Arabia, of all places as well, for a 2030 agenda, beyond that.
But no, I don't know if this is how far back this goes.
I know he has a different political philosophy.
I don't know how much of an opportunist that he's been over the years.
In 2019, he was already talking about post-liberal economic policies, agreeing with many in many respects openly.
It was a controversy at the beginning of 19 with Elizabeth Warren with her so-called Accountable Capitalism Act that she had put forth at the end of the previous year.
That caused a stir.
He's had this paleoconservative leaning for a while.
But for some reason, in the past three to four years, I think it's a little longer than just since October 7th or just in the last year or so, he's been trending more and more in that direction.
He's been interviewing characters like on stage.
Gotti Todd brought up that his interview with his infamous interview with Daryl Cooper, who is a David Irving style historical revisionist, Nazi apologist in truth, to forward the idea that perhaps we've misunderstood World War II and who the good guys and bad guys were, as though there weren't, as though it's not a pretty clear moral question to answer.
And that kind of was this big signal flare that he's now taking this other direction.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what degree he's emboldened by his new friends.
I don't know what degree this is a long-running agenda.
The text messages previously came out that he was not a fan of Trump.
He wished Trump would go away.
I think he believes, I guess he believes, I'm guessing, that MAGA represents the post-Obama opportunity for a paleoconservative rise, not to have done so.
MAGA stole his thunder.
He does like this different economics, accountable capitalism, common good economics, whatever they call it.
I don't know how much of it's that.
I don't know how much of it's rank opportunism.
I don't know how much of it is just once, these are weird roads.
When you take the anti-Semitic road, it's a very one-way street.
It's very, it's not impossible.
Forgiveness is all, it's very hard to come back.
So you go this way, you interview Daryl Cooper.
What do you say next?
Do you say, I'm sorry?
Do you back down?
What do you do?
And there are things that are very hard to come back from.
So it's like the old metaphors crossing the Rubicon.
So when he interviewed Daryl Cooper, did he cross the Rubicon?
If so, he has one direction to go only, which is forward, either to victory or defeat.
And I feel like there's an element of that.
He just has gone past where he can easily come back.
Maybe there's other motivations for why.
Maybe it's personal.
Maybe he's made a mistake.
But it's hard to come back.
So that's, I think, an element in this as well.
But he certainly, in my opinion, crossed the Rubicon.
If he didn't with Daryl Cooper, once he interviewed Nick Fuentes, Charlie's mortal enemy, after Charlie's death, which by the way, that interview came out while I flew home from Israel last time.
It came out while I was on the plane flying out.
I'm like, what is this?
On an LL aircraft.
I mean, what is this?
And so once you've crossed these lines, it's very difficult to come back.
But maybe he wants to go that way.
Maybe he's stuck going this way.
Maybe there are other forces compelling him to go this way.
But I don't know how he actually comes back.
So what is there otherwise to do, but now go to a conference with Hillary Clinton and make new friends.
You know, I'm Jewish myself, and so I want to make sure my thinking about anti-Semitism isn't just a personal reaction.
And so sometimes I think, okay, let's substitute anti-black racism.
For example, the use of the N-word.
Like, that word is so powerful that if someone says it, at least I changed my view of who they are because it is freighted with so many things that it implies.
And so there's a social pressure in polite company.
You wouldn't say that.
Maybe you would secretly, sneakily say it, but you would never say the N-word loud and proud.
And that's what I think.
I mean, anti-Semitism, I think, was sort of the same thing.
You would be very cautious about it because it would keep you out of certain circles.
I mean, but I think that taboo is being smashed to pieces, partly because of social media.
Ironically, the best thing that's happened in the last few years, Elon Musk freeing Twitter has also enabled people to do things.
And comedians, I think, are doing it because they love breaking taboos.
And this one is safer than going after Islam.
But that's the thing.
Once you've broken that taboo, can someone else come back?
I think I see lots of young conservatives, maybe who I consorted with in recent years.
And whether it's for attention or clicks or to seem edgy, they're tiptoeing into saying the N-word, so to speak, but about Jews.
Literally.
I feel like they are burning bridges because they're doing something that's not just immoral, it's dumb.
It violates conservative principles of take personal responsibility for your life.
Don't just blame everything on the Jews.
Don't judge people collectively.
Well, the Jews did.
There's a lot of reasons being anti-Semitic can be tempting.
This cosmic enemy that caused all your problems.
Like there's a lot of reasons people indulge in it, but I'm worried, can they come back?
I hope so.
So I'm going to say two things, but the first of the two is like, I think it's like, this is a weird metaphor, and it's easier if we had a visual, but sometimes when you have the little wand and you're taking your kids to blow bubbles for the first of the soap bubbles, right?
And it stretches and it stretches and it stretches and then it breaks off and it's an orb in the air, right?
So right now it's stretching and stretching and stretching and they're in the tunnel and they can come back far enough or it can detach and they're stuck, right?
So you go too far in this road, you want to play the edge game, you go too far, eventually the bubble detaches, you're trapped in the bubble, and what does a soap bubble do is it floats through the air for a while and then it bursts and it's over.
So you don't want to be stuck in the bubble.
I wish a lot more young people would realize this is the dynamic they're in.
But let me steel man their position.
I'm always trying to be as fair to my adversaries and their views as possible.
I wish to, honestly, maybe it's a little bit of an intellectual flex.
I want to know it better than they do.
And then I want to show them I know it better than they do.
And I'm very proud.
Of all the things that I think that happened, one of the things I'm most proud of, and it happened recently at Yale, I spoke at Yale and it happened.
People come up to me and they'll say, I'm trans or I'm a communist and I thought you were going to be a demagogue.
I thought you were a blowhard.
I disagree with you, but you represented my views correctly.
I think that's important.
So let me steel man the situation they're in with why this edginess is so popular.
And I call this, I have a name for this.
This is pretty deep, actually.
I'm excited because I got it from a friend, so I can say it's deep.
It's not me.
It's called the politics of the third rail.
So when you have a word like the N-word, it's a great example you brought up, or anti-Semitism, and you said within polite society, there's taboos, you could create, there's a core where you must not and should not and cannot go because it's evil, because it's wrong, because it's moral confusion and failure and just unnecessary.
And then you have this halo around it.
So for example, a few years back in the woke madness, there was a professor, I think he's at USC, he's a communications professor, and he's teaching his communications 300 level class over Zoom is during COVID years, teaching them, if you communicate with a Chinese businessman, you are going to encounter a very common phrase in Mandarin, which means um or here in Hebrew, M.
Yeah.
It's the filler word.
It's when you can't think of it.
Well, in Chinese, they're very literal in some ways.
So it literally means inside the thing.
Nega.
Nega.
So you'll talk to a Chinese and they'll say something in Mandarin, a nega, nega, nega, Ezra.
You know, they'll try to remember your name.
Nega, nega, ezra.
Someone thought, I remember this story.
Someone thought that was the N-word.
Well, he was explaining that it wasn't.
Do not think that that's what it is.
Well, right.
You might be as a communications class.
And somebody watching the video said he used something close enough and it was offensive and he lost his job.
Right, I remember that.
This is what I'm saying with a third rail politic.
There are perfectly reasonable things to do.
For example, if you were quoting directly to make a historical point from Huckleberry Finn and the N-word's there and you say it, that's called the mention of the word, not the use of the word.
You didn't declare it loudly and proudly.
You used it historically accurately.
Goodbye.
Reading from a text.
That's perfectly valid.
We all know that's perfectly valid, but there's been a grievance mongering around it, like the Nega Nega experience from Mandarin, that was not valid.
And so in this space, there have been censorship and control of things that are ridiculous.
And the left excels at creating this third rail space.
Kanye's Faithful Missteps00:05:19
And what's happening is these edgy people are stepping into that space, not responsibly, not with clarity, and not following leaders with clarity, but irresponsibly, recklessly, and following not just fools, but actual demagogues.
So they have the instinct of I want to rebel, I want to break taboos, I want to tell the censors to hell with you, I want to defy, I want to be a rebel, but they're not being thoughtful about it.
Is that a summary of what you're saying a little bit?
That's a little bit.
It's a little more important how this works, which is that there is an illegitimate taboo that they want to break that transitions into a legitimate taboo and they don't know the boundaries.
Right.
You know, you've been very generous with your time and you're in such high demand here.
Everyone wants to buttonhole you, but I have one interesting observation.
I think it's interesting.
In the last couple of days, I've seen a couple of people who have been part of this woke right.
Maybe take a step back.
Kanye West published a full-page apology in the Wall Street Journal where he said, look, I was a little, I was off my meds.
Basically, he said, please, I wasn't myself.
And I think there was some honesty there.
I think there was from the heart.
And I mean, I could be wrong, but it felt meaningful.
And I see Andrew Tate, who I think has been one of the worst.
I feel like he think things went too far when he was in that van going to a nightclub in Miami and they were all playing the Kanye song Heil Hitler.
And they all got banned from all the clubs in Miami.
And I think it was the real world coming into the internet world.
And he's recently be saying, and Jews aren't the universal problem.
Don't always talk about Jews.
And like, I see sort of, I sense that he feels like he went too far on the Jew thing.
So I feel like some of them are getting a bit of buyer's remorse.
And part of me hopes that other young would-be Andrew Tates or Kanye West are saying, ooh, maybe I won't go full in anti-Semitism.
I don't know.
Do you have any thoughts on those two small observations about Kanye West and Andrew Tate maybe blinking a bit?
Well, I mean, I think it's a fair observation that Kanye may really well have been off his meds and that this is a mental issue.
But what would you do if somebody has a visibly known mental issue?
You have compassion, you have understanding, you can have forgiveness, but you also recognize you're still dealing with a crazy person, so you don't put them up in a position of authority.
You don't hold them up as an icon.
He's a singer, and I think he was built into something much more.
Right, you must understand what these people are and what they represent at that point.
And he was a wonderful singer.
I mean, the thing is he transformed his personal capital from great songs into political approval.
And that's sort of what Tucker did.
He took 30 years of building up capital with the American viewer, and now he's saying, I'm going to draw down my personal capital with tens of millions of people and try and persuade.
I mean, in their own way, they did the same thing.
They were famous for this.
They wanted to capitalize that and do that.
So look, some people are acting in good faith or so they think and making mistakes.
That's error.
Other people are acting in bad faith, and that's malice.
The difficult part for us is telling you the difference between error, which we forgive, and we welcome people back and help them get on the right course, and we welcome their friendship and allyship afterwards.
And then there's malice.
So I don't trust Andrew Tate.
Flat, flat statement.
I don't trust him.
I think he's a bad faith actor.
I think he's a lot of bad things.
I think he's covering his ass.
I think Nick Fuentes is doing the same thing.
He's covering his ass.
We have a synagogue that got burned down in Jackson, Mississippi, the only one, Jackson, but the most historic, oldest synagogue in Mississippi, burned down.
By all appearances, the character likely followed some of what Nick Fuentes said if he wasn't a Groyper outright.
Terrible thing that happens.
He's finally getting the Jews, calls it the synagogue of Satan, which is not something that Nick says as much as Candace, but he's in this right-wing, edgy orbit, clearly, and his influencers.
And there's a moment now where, I mean, we even see Democrats hedging back from this, where it's time to start to back away from this ledge.
And some of that will be people realizing they made mistakes.
And this is our challenge.
Good people have this challenge so much, but there are bad faith actors who are saving their ass to have the next narrative so they can push the next one and get away with it again.
And so we have to, the same thing.
If Kanye's crazy, maybe he is, maybe he's not, but if he's crazy, we remember that he's crazy and dealing with him in the future.
If people have led us in a wicked road, we also must remember that they've been wicked.
And so trust is earned and trust is earned slowly.
You can destroy trust in an instant, as you said with people who use the N-word, but it's earned back slowly.
We can't be so in a hurry to have a big platformed ally or a powerful friend to say, you know what, everything's fine.
Come on back in when the wolf is laughing from under his sheep's clothing.
We've got to be discerning.
We've got to make those that have acted wickedly hard to discern.
They have to go through true penance or be left out.
Political Risks and Rewards00:11:50
You know, I could talk to you for hours, but I can't do that here.
It's great to see you.
I hope to see you in Canada again.
We love it when you visit there.
And thanks for coming on my show from time to time, too.
Yeah, anytime, Ezra.
Nice to see you.
Cheers.
Some of America's leading thinkers have come here to Jerusalem for the conference on anti-Semitism.
One of them is Dinesh D'Souza, author, filmmaker, and I'd say public intellectual.
Great to see you.
Thanks for taking some time.
Hezra, great to see you again, and it's a pleasure to be here.
Now, why would you come here?
You're not Jewish yourself.
You historically have talked about other issues.
For example, the Democrats and the history of the Democrats and slavery, even MAGA.
Why are you interested in anti-Semitism?
I made a movie about not anti-Semitism, but about Israel, Hamas, radical Islam, and the Bible.
The film was a bit of a departure for me in that my earlier films have all been in one way or another about the meaning of America.
This one connects the issue of biblical archaeology.
Ultimately, the argument is over whose land is it.
That's where the archaeology comes in.
Politics, but also a hint of biblical prophecy.
So it turns out it's a topic that's been on my mind.
The other issue that's developed is the schism on the right over Israel.
And to me, it's very dismaying because with the emergence of the Red-Green Alliance, you have two groups, the left and the radical Muslims.
They don't have that much in common, but they're united by a common hatred toward Jews and Christians, toward America, toward the West, toward Israel.
And so it seems quite obvious that Jews and Christians should come closer together.
America and Israel should draw closer together to repel this threat, which, and yet, you've got prominent figures on our side of the aisle, on the right, who are driving a wedge, both theological and political.
And this is, in a sense, territory that interests me a lot.
Arguments about replacement theology, for example, arguments about whether Israel is a friend or an enemy to the United States.
And so I decided pretty early on to try to be outspoken in the debate and take a strong position against the sort of Tucker canvases of the world.
And that's tough to do in some ways because they're so large, they have very large audiences, and there's been a sort of harmony on the right for a while.
And this feels like, if not on the grassroots, it feels like at least online, it's a kind of civil war, which are the worst wars.
Fighting against someone who was your friend 10 minutes ago is very difficult emotionally.
It's almost like a divorce, isn't it?
Well, initially it seemed to me that the debate was over Israel and Jewish influence in American politics.
Once Tucker began to migrate further out, defend Maduro and Venezuela, talk about the benefits of Sharia law, make some sympathetic comments toward Hamas.
One time he talked about apologizing to bin Laden.
It's pretty clear that this guy has gone off the reservation.
And so I actually feel much more comfortable in opposing this whole movement ideologically and doing so in the sense that I think the effect of it is very harmful and destructive to the MAGA movement, Trump, certainly to the Republican Party as we've known it since the Reagan days.
And so the other thing about it that's to me very strange is that Tucker, for example, has now developed a curious new interest in theology.
Not a topic that interests him at all, but it appears to be motivated by a desire to drive a wedge between Israel and the evangelical community.
He says he hates Christian Zionists more than anyone in the world.
He said that.
Right.
And he also says things like, well, this is the oldest heresy in Christianity.
Well, I mean, Christian history is a topic of interest to me.
I mean, I know about the various heresies, the Manichaeans and so on.
Christian Zionism is not on the list.
So when you have this kind of strange doctrinaire pronouncements by a guy who's manifestly ill-informed on the topic, something insidious is afoot.
And for this reason, I think it's not a time to ignore it.
And we don't know if he's being, we know he's making a lot of money from his subscriptions.
And there was at least one registration with the Foreign Agent Registration Act that Qatar paid $200,000 to get their prime minister on a show.
I don't think we have any evidence, at least, and he seems to deny it that he's being paid to say these things.
I was talking earlier to Dr. James Lindsay, who suggests some of these ideas were always with him, but I think some of them are very new.
And it's so opposite to what he used to say.
It feels like it's bought and paid for.
I know that I'm impugning his motives, but I can't think of any other motive.
How can you do a 180 on radical Islam, Sharia law, on Islamic dictatorships?
I just, he's been radicalized either ideologically or financially, but something's happened there.
The financial motive doesn't make sense to me.
Not to me.
I mean, he's a rich guy.
Yeah, exactly.
And he has a big enough following.
He doesn't need it.
And also, he has gone so he's veered so far off.
No one in the mainstream of the Republican Party can endorse this.
Even the Groypers will not defend the particularity of Tucker's positions.
They'll say things like, Tucker has a right to say it.
But that's a whole different thing from saying that Tucker's right on Sharia.
So to me, Tucker is taking far too much risk with his own future and his own career to be worth some kind of payoff from Qatar.
I don't really pretend that.
I think you're right.
But it's just so radical.
I mean, it's almost like he's platforming each of America's international enemies now, too.
Yeah, the fact that he was willing to go to the extent of Churchill is the bad guy in World War II.
Now, Tucker, interestingly, he's very selective in his guests.
His guests, he practices what I would call ventriloquist journalism.
He doesn't have people on who challenge him.
He has people on who say what he wants them to say and what he knows they're going to say, but he pretends like he doesn't know.
And so he feigns astonishment, like, wow, this is a mind-blowing insight.
He coaches the viewer how to respond.
Wow, that's amazing.
I haven't heard that.
That's been covered up before.
We're the only people who are brave enough to say it.
Right.
It's a kind of a shtick, and it travels, it makes headway with people because it is camouflaged as a certain type of open-mindedness.
And so I run into mainstream Republicans all the time, and their view is what happened to Tucker.
You know, part of it is that they were fans of the old Tucker.
Me too.
Yeah.
And they can't grasp the fact that he has metamorphosed into a completely different creature.
And my view is, look, you can be on board with the old Tucker and get off the bus when it comes to the new Tucker.
I don't want to get too political.
I really admire Donald Trump, and that's tough to say as a Canadian because he's always sparring with us.
But he has hosted Tucker in the White House as recently as a couple weeks ago.
Now, perhaps Trump is not extremely online.
I mean, he tweets, but I don't think he spends his day scrolling on the phone.
Trump is busy trying to fix America and save the world.
But Tucker still obviously has access to the highest heights.
And there are some who say he's close with the vice president.
His son works for the vice president.
Are you worried about any of that?
I mean, I know that you are a very strong Republican, strong MAGA.
What do you make of the fact that Tucker's still very welcome in the heart of power?
I am concerned about Tucker's aspirations with J.D. Mance.
I think Tucker's view is that I'm not going to get Trump.
If I can get Heritage and if I can get Turning Point USA and if I can put Vance in my back pocket, I will have tremendous leverage on the Republican Party post-Trump.
That is a real issue.
Now with Trump, The strange thing about him is that his instincts are conservative, but he's not ideological.
Trump is transactional.
And Trump thinks of himself as the CEO of the United States of America LLC.
And for Trump, when he encounters some kind of an ideological debate, he always backs away from it.
And he tends to reinterpret it in the form of personal loyalty.
What can you do for me versus what I can do for you.
And I think if you wanted to poison Trump's affection for Tucker, you don't go to Trump and say, Tucker's wrong on Maduro.
What you say to Trump is, Tucker has been bad-mouthing the guy that you endorsed in Florida.
That will infuriate Trump.
And I think ultimately, Trump will break away from Tucker based on the fact that Tucker is becoming increasingly hostile to core institutions in the Republican Party.
But Trump sees that this is going to affect evangelical Christians.
This is going to affect groups that he cares about and he needs.
And even the Jews have moved in some direction towards Trump, especially in the last two years.
To break the Jews off from the Republican Party, I don't think that's a net positive demographically or voter, and certainly not financially.
No, and I think this is actually where the online world and the rank and file mainstream of the Republican Party are two different animals.
You know, you'll sometimes see people, Cernovich and others, they'll be like, you know, Trump is alienating his base.
And I'm like, no, Trump's base is not the guys who are active on X. Trump's base is like the Federation of Republican Women.
Original Inhabitants' Claims00:02:36
These are old ladies in hats who go door to door at election time.
And that's the rank and file Republican.
That base is undisturbed by Tucker and Candace.
They still have a certain measure of affection for those two, but they would not be on board with the itemized list of where they stand today.
Well, I'd say I really appreciate your insight here.
I don't want to monopolize you.
I know you're very popular with the crowd here.
Tell our viewers in closing what your new projects are or the best way to follow you if they want to hear more from you.
Follow me on X at Dinesh D'Souza.
My latest film is called The Dragon's Prophecy.
It's about Israel, Hamas, radical Islam, and the Bible.
Where can they get that film?
It's now on Amazon.
It's on iTunes, Apple.
Crazy.
And the website is thedragonsprophecyfilm.com.
You can stream it, you can buy DVDs, and it's a very timely film, and it's a little different than the other films I've made before.
I haven't seen it yet, but you got me really interested, especially if there's that biblical layer there.
Absolutely.
The film is a bit of a foray into also biblical archaeology, which bears on the question of, you know, whose ancestral homeland is this?
It's not the only way you establish the title deeds to a country.
But my argument is that generally, if you look at the map of the world, you can get title deeds to a country in one of three ways.
One, you were there first.
You're the original inhabitants.
Two, you got it by some treaty or negotiation.
Three, you got it by conquest.
I can't think of a map that's been drawn not based on one of these three.
And the beauty with Israel is it checks all three boxes.
The Jews were here first.
They got it from the UN after World War II, and they fought a bunch of wars, 48, 67, 73, to hold the land.
So I think that the claim of the Jews to Israel is perhaps stronger than, it's certainly stronger than the claim of the white man to be in America.
Because, of course, the American Indians were there first.
So arguably the American Indians have it by ancestry.
Now the white man has it by conquest.
So it's a disputed claim.
But in the case of Israel, there's no dispute.
Amazing.
Well, I look forward to watching that film.
Thanks very much for all your time today.
Pleasure.
Good to see you.
Nice to see you.
Ezra Levant here, along with Abiy Yamini.
I'm in Jerusalem for an international conference of leaders against anti-Semitism.