Aug. 17, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
44:47
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The government absolutely lied to us. | ||
| The 9-11 Commission lied. | ||
| The FBI lied. | ||
| There's a federal case of victims on 9-11 that want accountability. | ||
| I don't think they would have come for me if this was false. | ||
| What do we know about Hunter Biden's dealings? | ||
| What do we know about the truth of what happened on January 6th? | ||
| What do we know about that Nashville shooter manifesto? | ||
| Yes, we can handle the truth. | ||
| Just give me the hard truth. | ||
| It feels like we're on the cusp of chaos. | ||
| Oh, there's something going on. | ||
| I think we're like in a 1776 moment. | ||
| In this country, we are driving Russia further into China's arms as we arm Ukraine, further strengthening what I see as the single greatest military threat. | ||
| We are dependent on a tiny island nation off the southeast coast of China for our entire modern way of life. | ||
| I will not send our sons and daughters to die. | ||
| Over somebody else's nationalistic dispute. | ||
| End the Ukraine war. | ||
| Reduce our economic dependence on China. | ||
| Weaken the Russia-China alliance. | ||
| I'm not sure what is controversial about any of that. | ||
| They're a dumber group than the foreign policy Republicans. | ||
| Where are we now? | ||
| There's a deeper void and vacuum that we have to fill with an affirmative alternative vision of our own. | ||
| And that takes courage. | ||
| The first Republican debate of the season is less than a week away. | ||
| It's next Wednesday in Milwaukee. | ||
| We have no idea what's going to happen there, of course. | ||
| But one prediction we can confidently make is that a man called Vivek Ramaswamy is likely to make an impression, a political outsider with a complicated name who is unaccountably rising in the polls. | ||
| Who is this guy? | ||
| Is he a BS artist? | ||
| Is he for real? | ||
| We just sat down with him for an hour and found him one of the best-versed voices in policy we'd talked to in a long time. | ||
| That was a surprise. | ||
| This is a conversation worth watching. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| Vivek, thanks for joining us. | ||
| It's good to be here. | ||
| So you, the other day, made a comment about 9-11 in which you suggested that the U.S. government had not been wholly forthcoming about what happened that day, that there had been lying by the federal bureaucracies. | ||
| That seems obviously true. | ||
| The response was unbelievable. | ||
| It was immediate. | ||
| You were attacked as a conspiracy monger, as a lunatic, but not just by the left, also by the goons that the Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote a whole piece about how you disqualified yourself by even asking that question. | ||
| What were you saying and why was the reaction as fierce as it was, do you think? | ||
| It was fascinating, Tucker. | ||
| I've had many of these moments in the campaign where they said, this is the campaign ender. | ||
| This is over. | ||
| He just blew it. | ||
| This is one of them. | ||
| So this is like the fourth or fifth of those. | ||
| But what was interesting about it was, right, this was not a left-wing chorus, right? | ||
| This was mostly actually a right-leaning chorus. | ||
| And Mike Pence, and he was deeply disappointed. | ||
| Chris Murphy, this Democratic senator guy, says something very similar to Mike Pence. | ||
| And so it's fascinating. | ||
| It says there's something going on here. | ||
| So in fairness, Tucker, I didn't suggest it. | ||
| I explicitly said that the government absolutely lied to us. | ||
| The 9-11 Commission lied. | ||
| The FBI lied. | ||
| Now, is this a core point of my campaign? | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| I actually went on a comedy show where some guy asked me, was the moon landing fake? | ||
| I said, I think it was real. | ||
| Then he asked me, did the government tell us the truth about 9-11? | ||
| I said, no, they did not. | ||
| So in response to a question, I'm going to answer honestly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the thing I had in mind was the facts. | ||
| There's this guy, Al Bayumi. | ||
| Now, rewind back to 9-11 and the pre-9-11 day. | ||
| Think of how ludicrous this story is. | ||
| A 42-year-old graduate student, and there's nothing wrong with being 42 and going back to school. | ||
| My dad went back to school much later in life, but he's a 42-year-old graduate student who receives the two terrorists, two of the terrorists who flew planes into buildings in the United States of America, not that long later, receives them at the... | ||
| Airport in L.A., takes them to his house, spends lots of time with them, integrates them into the community. | ||
| But the account for what he said happened was he met them randomly at the airport. | ||
| That doesn't make much sense on the face of it. | ||
| He's kind of happened to be at LAX and- No, exactly. | ||
| You know, you look like guys we might get along with and then suddenly become fast friends at the airport so much so that he takes them home. | ||
| So it's a little suspicious. | ||
| But hey, the 9-11 Commission and the FBI looked into it and at the time they said, His account is accurate. | ||
| Yeah, it sounds legit. | ||
| It sounds super legit, right? | ||
| Now, these guys came from Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Does this guy who received them have any ties to Saudi Arabia? | ||
| That's where they landed. | ||
| But now, 20 years later, in 2021 and 2022, the FBI quietly declassifies documents. | ||
| And they have to. | ||
| 20 years later is the deadline. | ||
| That suggests that, oh, wait a minute. | ||
| They did know, actually, that this guy was a... | ||
| Saudi intelligence operative. | ||
| Interesting how that works. | ||
| Just slips that right under there 20 years later. | ||
| Now, there are real consequences for this right now because there's a federal case of families of victims on 9-11 that want accountability, that are determining answers. | ||
| So they're suing the Saudi government. | ||
| And the case turns on whether or not this is true. | ||
| Because you know those attackers were from Saudi Arabia, the Bush administration. | ||
| You have the 9-11 Commission, bipartisan. | ||
| You have the fact of the FBI, CIA. Everybody's saying that, no, this guy was really just acting independently here. | ||
| But now we say, is a Saudi intelligence operative? | ||
| There's really the question of whether the Saudi Arabia owes damages to these families. | ||
| So this is a relevant question. | ||
| So is this the main point I'm focused on in my campaign? | ||
| No, I'm not. | ||
| We have to focus on the future of the country. | ||
| But if I'm asked a question and I answer honestly based on the facts, I don't think they would have come for me. | ||
| If this was false, if this was ludicrous. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Lying is never punished. | ||
| Lying is never punished. | ||
| But it's speaking the truths you're not supposed to speak. | ||
| That's what actually attracts the immune response, the anaphylaxis. | ||
|
unidentified
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But why? | |
| I mean, you made, I thought, a really wonderful point in one of your responses to this, in which you said it's not okay for the government to lie to us, period, in a democracy. | ||
| It's poison. | ||
| And it corrodes the system that we revere. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| But why would the Wall Street Journal take time out of its busy schedule of defending low capital gains taxes to attack you over this? | ||
| You know, what's interesting is I think that there's a bipartisan consensus in this country right now that we the people, we can't handle the truth. | ||
| It's like Jack Nicholson at the end of the movie, right? | ||
| You can't handle the truth. | ||
| You need me on that wall. | ||
| My view, my basic view in this campaign is, no, we don't need you on that wall. | ||
| And yes, we can handle the truth. | ||
| COVID-19, what was the origin? | ||
| What did we know about the vaccines before we mandated them? | ||
| What did we know about Hunter Biden's dealings before we systematically suppressed that story? | ||
| What do we know about the truth of what happened on January 6th? | ||
| What do we know about that Nashville shooter manifesto, the transgender individual who shot up a bunch of people in a Christian school? | ||
| That's why I went to Nashville not that long ago, because Bill Lee, a Republican governor of Tennessee, now wants to pass a red flag law in Tennessee without releasing that manifesto. | ||
| The whole point is the public can't handle the truth. | ||
| And so I had offline discussions. | ||
| I mean, we're talking with big donors in the Republican Party, big folks in media, executives and otherwise, who said, hey, listen, even if what you're saying is true, this is not helping you. | ||
| You said, why is that the first question that should go through my mind, right? | ||
| I mean, personally, I think... | ||
| The way I'm running this campaign is I'm not thinking about what's helping me or not before I say it. | ||
| So far, at least, that approach does seem to be helping me. | ||
| We're doing all right. | ||
| But even if I weren't, I'd rather lose some election than to play some political snakes and ladders of what we're supposed to say. | ||
| And I think that that's really one of the questions at issue today, as it was in 1776. Do we believe that the public can be trusted? | ||
| With the truth, whatever the truth is, just give me the hard truth. | ||
| I have a friend of mine, her father died recently. | ||
|
unidentified
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She talked about actually her experience of her father having heart attacks even when she was a kid. | |
| He went on to live as far as he did. | ||
| But she said the one thing she just wanted from the doctors, from her dad, etc. | ||
| is, you know, she's 12 years old at the time. | ||
| I can handle the truth. | ||
| Just tell me, like, is my dad going to die? | ||
| Is my dad likely to die before he goes in for the next procedure? | ||
| Don't just tell me he's going to live because you think that's what I need to hear. | ||
| Just tell me the truth and I can handle the truth. | ||
| I think most of us are this way. | ||
| I think we as free human beings, badly, what makes us human beings and not animals is the belief that we can believe in something bigger than ourselves and that we can handle the truth from those who are in power. | ||
| And I think that's the moment we live in today. | ||
| It was the moment of the American Revolution that we the people can be trusted. | ||
| And I think we now live in a moment where the government... | ||
| And not just the government, but a broader establishment in our country believes that citizens of this nation cannot be trusted with the truth. | ||
| So when you describe the way that people who run the country feel about voters, you're describing the way parents treat small children. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I think that that's actually worth understanding because there's one school of thought that says the government and the people in charge are fundamentally hostile to the people. | ||
| If only it were so easy, actually. | ||
| I think the reality of what's going on is Far more dangerous. | ||
| Where the people who are in charge have actually what they think of as a benevolent view of the people. | ||
| That we're doing what's actually right for you, for me, for the populace at large. | ||
| And then if you look at this throughout history, Tucker, for most of human history, that's how it's been done. | ||
| For most of human history, before 1776, in the old world, the vision was the people cannot be trusted to sort out their own differences. | ||
| One person, one vote? | ||
| That's such a laughable idea. | ||
| It has to be church leaders and labor leaders and business leaders that decide in the back of palace halls what's right for the rest of society at large. | ||
| And then we had this weird departure in 1776 that said, no, no, no. | ||
| Actually, we the people can be trusted in a system where every person's voice and vote counts equally with free speech and open debate in the public square, whatever it is. | ||
| Sometimes we might get it wrong. | ||
| Sometimes we get it right. | ||
| But whatever it is, that's the way we do things in this new thing we call the United States of America. | ||
| But then every once in a while, and we're in one of those moments, that ugly monster rears its head again that says, no, no, no. | ||
| The people can't be trusted. | ||
| It has to be now in the back of palace halls, in the back of three-letter government agencies in Washington, D.C., or in the back of BlackRock's corner office on Park Avenue in Manhattan, wherever it is. | ||
| It's that the enlightened have to make sure that the public is protected from the truth, just like a parent protects a child. | ||
| And I think it's that parental instinct. | ||
| It's not the kidnapper's instinct, right? | ||
| It's not the guy who wants to, you know, kidnap and kill the child. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| It's actually almost what they think of as being the instinct of a parent who's doing for you what's better for you than you know for yourself. | ||
| And I think that's what gives it actual staying power because it's not what somebody thinks of as evil who's committing evil. | ||
| They think of it as actually a moral obligation to the public, which explains the bipartisan nature of when somebody speaks the truth about what really happened on 9-11. | ||
| No, hush, keep that under the rug, because Republican or Democrat, we know that the people can't be trusted for that. | ||
| It's not good for the people. | ||
| The children are listening. | ||
| Lower your voice. | ||
| The kids are listening. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you get the sense as you travel the country, talk to people, speak, that it feels like we're on the cusp of chaos? | ||
| I think we're on the cusp of something. | ||
| I'd like to think of it as a revolution. | ||
| In a positive sense of that word. | ||
| I think that, you know, I try to be an optimist at times. | ||
| But you feel like this is... | ||
| Oh, there's something going on. | ||
| I think we're like in a 1775, spring of 1776 moment in this country, actually. | ||
| I think that people are hungry. | ||
| Now, the form I want to see it play out in is reviving those shared ideals that unites, that set the nation into motion in 1776, that I think are innate to our nature as human beings, as Americans. | ||
| I think there's a hunger for a revival of those ideals. | ||
| That's where we are. | ||
| But there's a lot of ways that energy could go. | ||
| The way I would like to play my small role in helping channel that energy, it's not all going to be done by the U.S. president, but there's a role to play, is to channel that energy towards a positive revival of that which unites us across our diverse attributes or divides. | ||
| But if it doesn't go that way, there's a dam that's going to break and the river's going to go somewhere. | ||
| I hope it leads towards a national revival rather than other places where this could go. | ||
| How concerned are you about an economic, like a real economic reset in the next year? | ||
| Quite concerned. | ||
| I think that 2024 is going to be a year where it's not going to take a lot of guts for me to make this prediction because I'll tell you why it's easy to make. | ||
| We're on the cusp of a major economic downturn next year. | ||
| We live under conditions of a deeply inverted yield curve. | ||
| I mean, these are topics that may... | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's basically you would expect in the long run, right? | ||
| Long run interest rates on long run bonds are higher compared to interest rates on short run bonds because there would be higher risk of being repaid back. | ||
| That's how things are supposed to work. | ||
| There are a wide range of factors that can occasionally cause that to tilt in the other direction. | ||
| We're in one of those conditions right now where the interest rates on short term bonds Are significantly higher than they are on long-run bonds. | ||
| And every time that's happened in the last 40 years, that has predicted a recession that followed in the year or so that came later. | ||
| And there's lots of complicated reasons for why and economists can debate it. | ||
| But what's not debatable is that that's exactly what happens. | ||
| That's where we are now, which is why we're, I think, in the calm before the storm, Biden will put up low unemployment numbers. | ||
| Well, that misses the point that we have a deeper structural deficiency where Our real problem is there are twice as many jobs open as there are people looking for work. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the actual deeper structural failure as it relates to the labor market. | ||
| People have stopped looking for work. | ||
| People have stopped looking for work. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, people are being paid more or have been habituated more to staying at home than to go to work. | ||
| People also don't have the skill sets required to actually show up to work because they have four-year college degrees that were subsidized by the U.S. Department of Education without actually having the skill sets that many employers badly need in order to grow their business, whether it's a big business or a small one. | ||
| The inflation numbers, they'll point to saying, hey, the rate of inflation is coming down. | ||
| Inflation is cumulative. | ||
| Things are still 16, 20% more expensive than they were in 2020, and wages have not gone up in the same way over the same period. | ||
| And so there are deep structural issues with our economy. | ||
| I mean, the national debt interest payments are going to be the biggest portion and line item of the federal budget very soon. | ||
| But I think that that short term numbers that we look at right now belie the reality that we're going to have a reckoning. | ||
| I think that reckoning is likely going to act. | ||
| The timing of these things is hard to predict, but I think that likely reckoning 2024 could be a pretty good prediction. | ||
| But that's not just an economic story. | ||
| I mean, people have psychologically, I think. | ||
| A very hard time moving backward. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's one thing to be poor. | ||
| It's another thing to be poor having been rich. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Very hard for people to metabolize that. | ||
| And so if that happens to hundreds of millions of people at the same time, people get radical. | ||
| Especially against the backdrop of already having deep distrust. | ||
| Right. | ||
| In my opinion, appropriately deep distrust in our existing institutions, including the government in this country. | ||
| And so I think there are two ways this could break. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Sometimes you go through hardship. | ||
| And you're strengthened by that hardship. | ||
| I'm just thinking about it as an individual in my life. | ||
| Like, I've gone through a hardship in my life. | ||
| My father's been through hardship. | ||
| In each of those cases, that led us to become stronger for having gone through that and did things that we otherwise would have never done, created things in the world that otherwise would have never existed. | ||
| And that's the positive version of this. | ||
| And it's the version I want to see for our country. | ||
| But there's a very different way this could break, too, is I think that if we don't... | ||
| Channel that frustration in a direction that creates something anew, right? | ||
| A sort of reincarnation of our American experiment, which is what's going to be required. | ||
| Then I think this ends the way that many other revolutions do, is not the creative kind, but the destructive kind. | ||
| And I think the economic collapse that I think calamity, that I think recession, at least that's coming, could just be the catalyst. | ||
| You know, we'll blame it on, that'll be the final match that's lit, but it's the kerosene on the floor that we have to pay attention to in the meantime. | ||
| That's why I think when people ask me, are you a culture issues guy or are you an economy guy? | ||
| Are you focused on foreign policy? | ||
| It's missing the point. | ||
| These things are each symptoms of a deeper place. | ||
| There's no doubt. | ||
| No doubt about it. | ||
| So you said something when I saw you in Iowa earlier this summer. | ||
| You said something really, really interesting about donors. | ||
| You are an interesting figure because you're effectively from the donor class. | ||
| You're a rich guy. | ||
| Running for president. | ||
| Now you're dealing with donors from the other side. | ||
| And you said that your views on Ukraine had given a lot of them pause. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| There's no doubt that I have lost otherwise willing and interested donors or potential mega donors to my campaign over my position on Ukraine, which is fascinating. | ||
| Because I don't think there's any particular self-interest at issue. | ||
| It's not like somebody saying, oh, well, I own... | ||
| You know, a big chunk of Raytheon or something like that, and I'm going to have my interests harmed. | ||
| Therefore, I'm not going to back you because that will harm my self-interest. | ||
| That'd be an easy and fun and facile explanation, but that's not what's going on. | ||
| I think there is a deeper bipartisan institutional consensus, the same consensus that said we can't be told the truth about 9-11 that effectively says that we can't confront some of the same facts about Ukraine. | ||
| And I try not to be reactive, Tucker, because it is a... | ||
| Natural impulse. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| At least the way I'm wired is if somebody tells you not to do something, there's almost a natural temptation to go in that direction. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I would like to think, and I believe my position here is grounded in fact and not that reactive emotion, but it's interesting that it makes me doubly committed to making sure that I'm really speaking the truth about what's going on here, at least because it means that the rest of the field absolutely is not. | ||
| I mean, the rest of the entire Republican field, not one of them. | ||
| Donald Trump, we could say he wants to end the war. | ||
| He doesn't know exactly how. | ||
| But save for Trump, right? | ||
| Nobody on the debate stage, certainly, for the Republican Party has a principled position on Ukraine, partly because they understand those are the directions they've been given. | ||
| So you think it's interesting because there are a couple of fairly smart, I know them, people running for president right now in the Republican field whose positions on Ukraine are like... | ||
| Idiotic. | ||
| Or indiscernible. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It didn't make sense. | ||
| Some are idiotic. | ||
| The idiotic one is just we have to arm them to the teeth, give them as much money as possible because we stand with Ukraine. | ||
| The indiscernible ones are the ones where they'll tell you one thing and then they'll tell their donors one thing and then they don't know where they actually stand because they're being buffeted. | ||
| But that's the effect of donor pressure. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, I think that there's, you know, I think there's finger in wind candidates. | ||
| And I think that that exists. | ||
| So there's a finger in wind candidates on Ukraine, but I think that there are also separately candidates who just believe that this is the way that we do things in the United States of America. | ||
| We don't stop until we have taken down what we have decided is our enemy forgetting that the USSR doesn't exist anymore and believe that that's the only source of victory. | ||
| And so my view, I start from a different premise and there's pros and cons, right? | ||
| You know, on one hand, I don't have national ads running because The Super PAC affiliated with me is tiny compared to those affiliated with other candidates in this race that have television ads blaring and lifting their numbers up in the polls because they're buying a bunch of TV ads. | ||
| The flip side is I'm unconstrained by what I'm able to say. | ||
| And that allows me to speak truth that a lot of people in this country recognize to be the truth, which is that we have no discernible national interest at issue in Ukraine. | ||
| As much as we will fetishize and debate the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which the U.S. wrote, you know, UK and Russia were also parties to it with Ukraine, which I believe we have more than fulfilled our obligations. | ||
| You don't hear a peep about James Baker's 1990 commitment, his not one-inch commitment to the NATO would expand one inch beyond Germany. | ||
| No discussion of that. | ||
| Against the backdrop of the reality that we face, which is we are driving Russia further into China's arms. | ||
| As we arm Ukraine, further strengthening what I see as the single greatest military threat that the United States certainly has faced since World War II. You could make a case that the United States has ever faced if you actually look at where this could be going. | ||
| And yet we are actually the ones responsible for driving that Russia-China military alliance. | ||
| And so one of my advantages is that I am not... | ||
| Some people say, well, you don't have foreign policy experience. | ||
| And I'll say, yes, I don't have foreign policy experience. | ||
| And that may actually be an advantage in bringing a rational American... | ||
| So you're not responsible for the war in Iraq. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| And that's a bad thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I think we could debate whether it's a bad thing or not. | ||
| But if you break the car, you don't turn over the keys to the guy who broke it. | ||
| That's what I would say. | ||
| And so, you know, I think that we are on our way to Ukraine turning into another Iraq or another Vietnam all over again. | ||
| Except this time, I think it could be worse because there's nuclear weapons at issue. | ||
| There's an alliance with China, an economy that we depend on for our modern way of life that's also at issue. | ||
| And the irony is, I think a lot of people today believe that somehow world leaders make their decisions by analogy. | ||
| So Xi Jinping is going to say, oh, well, because Vladimir Putin walked away with a piece of Ukraine that he didn't have, that somehow means that by analogy, I'm going to be judged. | ||
| More favorably, if I go after Taiwan and walk away with a piece of Taiwan that I didn't have, when I basically don't think that's how autocrats or any global leader should or at least does make decisions. | ||
| To the contrary, I think what's actually more likely to happen is we're going to put Xi Jinping in a more likely position to go after Taiwan sooner because he knows that Russia's in his camp because they're in a more solid alliance with the United States. | ||
| There's nothing we can do about it. | ||
| On Taiwan, you mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think that that's mostly right. | ||
| Now, my view is, this is also another heresy that I think have recently managed to cross last night, which is that I think our commitments to go to war in that situation, or to at least even militarily engage in that situation, should change if it's before or after we have semiconductor independence in this country. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think so. | ||
| I agree completely, but for people who aren't following this, explain what you mean. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know, long history here, but for historical circumstances that, you know, are long and unfortunate, we are dependent on a tiny island nation off the southeast coast of China for our entire modern way of life. | ||
| These lights wouldn't work. | ||
| The phones in our pockets wouldn't work. | ||
| These TV screens and cameras wouldn't work if it weren't for leading edge semiconductors that are manufactured by basically one company and a set of companies around them, TSMC on Taiwan, that power our entire modern way of life. | ||
| That's just a hard fact. | ||
| How we got here, it's a long story. | ||
| I think it's sad that we are where we are, but we are where we are. | ||
| China has two reasons to want to go for Taiwan, okay? | ||
| One is a nationalistic reason, which is that back in 1949, they had this complicated civil war. | ||
| Chiang Kai-shek went to Taiwan and claimed that that was actually where the real Republic of China was based. | ||
| And Mao Zedong said, no, no, no, it's the Communist Party of China out of Beijing. | ||
| And for the longest time, actually, the US and the UN recognized actually the real China as being run out of Taipei. | ||
| But at some point along the way, switched to saying, no, it's actually run out of Beijing. | ||
| And so there's this nationalistic thing going on that's super complicated history over there. | ||
| But there's a more modern motivation for Xi Jinping, which is, wait a minute. | ||
| If I now have control over that island, I have control over the entire United States because I now have the economic leverage to get to a deal that the U.S. wouldn't have said yes to. | ||
| And I think what Xi Jinping is going for is the basic deal where he says, I get to make your stuff. | ||
| As long as I get all of your IP and everything else in return. | ||
| And right now, if he says that to the US, we're not going to go for that deal. | ||
| But if he's squatting on the semiconductor supply chain, well, then that's how we ultimately get to parity. | ||
| Consummate the codependent relationship. | ||
| And I think that's step one of a broader conquest of the modern West. | ||
| How hard would it be to achieve, as you said, semiconductor independence in the United States? | ||
| It's not going to be easy, but I'm confident that with focus, I can lead us there by the end of my first term in office. | ||
| And my basic rule of thumb on this one, Tucker, is just to be very practical, looking at this from American interests. | ||
| I do not consent to Xi Jinping holding an economic gun to our head and lording that over for the next hundred years of the future of the United States. | ||
| But if we're no longer dependent on that tiny island nation, then I will not send our sons and daughters to die. | ||
| Over somebody else's nationalistic dispute. | ||
| How difficult is it to... | ||
| I mean, it's interesting, and you said there's a complex history that I'm not familiar with behind it, but how complex is it to build your own semiconductor? | ||
| It's complicated because a lot of it relies on know-how. | ||
| So it's not just raw production capability, but it's the know-how of how you actually make it. | ||
| And so I think that requires pulling people from, you know, TSMC in Taiwan. | ||
| To the United States. | ||
| And I think that that's something that we should be intensely focused on right now. | ||
| There's new giant projects, manufacturing projects in Arizona, near where I live, actually, in my home state of Ohio, that are going to be steps forward in that direction. | ||
| I also think that, like it or not, a relationship with South Korea and Japan is going to have to play a role in speeding up our semiconductor self-reliance as well. | ||
| Samsung is the next best leader. | ||
| It's not even an American company. | ||
| After TSMC, there's like a big jump down. | ||
| Then it's Samsung. | ||
| Then there's a big jump down. | ||
| There's Intel and everybody else here. | ||
| So I think that it's going to require, and I don't like multilateral trade agreements, but if we're going to have to do them, let's keep it bilateral. | ||
| Bilateral agreements with Japan, with South Korea, that's a big part of what's going to be required. | ||
| And so my view is, let's think about first term in office as it relates to this dimension of foreign policy and the Ukraine war on terms that I'd | ||
| get India back on side. | ||
| And, you know, if there's a guy who's going to... | ||
| Rebuild trust with India. | ||
| It better be a guy with the name Vivek Ramaswamy who might be up for that task. | ||
| But, you know, getting India on side to say, you know what, we're going to be making sure that in a conflict situation in Taiwan that we're at least on side with the United States. | ||
| But then more importantly, get semiconductor self-sufficiency in the United States. | ||
| Reduce our economic dependence on China. | ||
| If we're there by the end of my first term, by the end of 2028, the stakes are now just a lot lower with respect to what's actually happening in Taiwan. | ||
| And if... | ||
| You know, is it preferable for China to annex Taiwan even after that scenario? | ||
| No, probably not. | ||
| But that's a different bar for whether or not we're going to actually be willing to send our sons and daughters to die over it. | ||
| And in the meantime, there's one aspect of our national defense that surprisingly nobody's talking about, Tucker, which is actually our national defense of the homeland, where we have actually badly missed the plot for super EMP attacks, cyber attacks, nuclear defense. | ||
| We helped Israel build an Iron Dome. | ||
| How about an equivalent of an Iron Dome for the United States and our own homeland? | ||
| And so that's where I'm focused in my first term, on foreign policy. | ||
| If I can get us to semiconductor independence, if I can get us to significantly reduced, if not total, economic independence from China, weaken the Russia-China alliance by ending the war in Ukraine, that actually keeps China at bay from not having an economic gun to our head over our modern way of life. | ||
| At which point, we then have a different set of commitments where after that, we're going to be in good shape no matter what happens. | ||
| And so I wasn't planning to get into some foreign policy detour, but that's the way I'm thinking about the first term. | ||
| All of that makes sense. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| I'm not sure what is controversial about any of that. | ||
| Well, I think what's controversial about it is they say it's weak. | ||
| How far are those priorities? | ||
| It's weak? | ||
| That's what I've heard yesterday, yeah. | ||
| From whom? | ||
| Well, from a lot of Republicans, actually. | ||
| Is there a dumber group? | ||
| I mean, then the foreign policy Republicans? | ||
| I'm not talking about Republican voters. | ||
| I mean, the members of Congress, the low IQ guys from, including your state, I hate to say it, Texas, who make their entire career about seeming strong, including Reagan, and under whose watch the country has become demonstrably weaker. | ||
| It doesn't lead to strength, actually. | ||
| Where are we now? | ||
| With our transgender army. | ||
| Like, seriously. | ||
| People also miss this, Tucker. | ||
| This makes me uncomfortable as they get very upset when I say this. | ||
| I think there's a chance that if we enter war with nuclear allied Russia and China, the United States as we know it, we may take a risk of it ceasing to exist. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Okay, I'm glad you appreciate that. | ||
| That's good because many people are like, what are you talking about? | ||
| The United States ceased to exist? | ||
| No, I actually think... | ||
| Well, in a nuclear conflict, yes. | ||
| Well, because we don't have nuclear defense capabilities. | ||
| Defense, national defense has not been about defense for a very long time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so, by the way, super EMP capabilities take out our electric grids. | ||
| We have, you know, 60 Chinese transformers that are in the midst, nodes in our own electric grid. | ||
| They could shut down our modern way of life with that. | ||
| You want to talk about actual cyber attack capabilities? | ||
| We're better on offense. | ||
| We have no defensive capabilities. | ||
| And so, you know, when I think about a modern foreign policy vision, I'd revive a modern Monroe Doctrine. | ||
| You don't mess with the United States on our own soil. | ||
| We are not okay with a Chinese spy balloon flying over half our country. | ||
| We are not okay. | ||
| We do not consent to a Chinese spy base off the southeast coast of the United States or in Cuba spying on the southeast corridor of the United States. | ||
| We're not okay with intentionally pumped fentanyl, the raw materials literally coming, I'm not making this up, from Wuhan to Mexican drug cartels that are intentionally being pumped across our southern border as part of Really a one-sided opium war. | ||
| No, we're not okay with that. | ||
| Or with interference in the Western Hemisphere or with China having control over the Panama Canal, something that people forget as well. | ||
| No, we're not okay with that. | ||
| But that is also our top priority. | ||
| Protect the homeland and the interests of citizens here at home. | ||
| That is how America is strong and actually leads on the global stage. | ||
| And so the irony is at least like the, you know, the Reagan version of this was... | ||
| Yes, all of that projection piece through strength, but strategic defense initiative, nuclear defense here at home. | ||
| Now we're in the worst of all worlds where you have a generation of people who vaguely remember the slogans and feel like they want to puff their chest, but can't really do it super confidently. | ||
| So they're like doing it as like a second language. | ||
| Well, altogether, forgetting about the actual defense of the homeland, it's even worse because the peace through strength part, well, the strength part actually provokes that which we're not even prepared to handle back at home. | ||
| You know, so I end up talking to a lot of neocons, actually, in terms of, you know, bolstering me up, because they don't have the right strategic vision, but they know all, like, the names of, like, you know, what an Ohio class SSGN versus SSBN is, and I don't know these things. | ||
| All the war porn, they love that. | ||
| I mean, I wasn't born with this knowledge, but I'm going to be U.S. president. | ||
| I better darn well and train to know it. | ||
| And so I'm probably talking to more liberal hegemony neocon people training me, not because I'm taking their views. | ||
| I deeply disagree with them, but they, you know, know the lexicon. | ||
| And so, you know, I want to put myself in a position where it's easily dismissible. | ||
| This guy doesn't know what an Ohio-class SSGN versus a SSBN is. | ||
| Well, okay, well, now I do, it turns out. | ||
| It took about 30 minutes to get that one under our belt. | ||
| But it doesn't matter. | ||
| You're missing the plot if you're actually failing to actually advance our interest in the box. | ||
| Is there a single neocon with a happy personal life? | ||
| I haven't drilled into it. | ||
| Dinner at Bill Kristol's house, the misery. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| I don't want to psychoanalyze here, but it does seem like their project has nothing to do with helping the United States in any way. | ||
| And it is psychosexual or something. | ||
| They're for war! | ||
|
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War! | |
| As long as other people fight it. | ||
| I mean, it's like a syndrome. | ||
| I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| There is a certain... | ||
| What titillation you see when they're using words like, Virginia class this, or Ohio class that, or Tomahawks facing, you know, there's a certain type of satisfaction. | ||
| If your wife respected you, you probably wouldn't have to talk that way. | ||
| So, no, I think everything you said is self-evidently sensible, and it's hard to... | ||
| By the way, if you took a poll on what you just said, your defense priorities, as you just articulated... | ||
| I can't imagine you get under 90% for that. | ||
| How could you disagree with that? | ||
| I haven't taken a poll. | ||
| I don't think you need to. | ||
| If I'm wrong, maybe I'll get wiped out in the election and I'm okay with that. | ||
| I want to play, and you're busy, you've got to go campaign, but I just want to play one last... | ||
| I want to play a soundbite, a sot, as we say, from you on the campaign trail. | ||
| This is an exchange, which I think just says a lot, where you're approached by a self-described pansexual. | ||
| Here's what happened next. | ||
|
unidentified
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I was just wondering, what were your opinions on the LGBTQ people last year? | |
| Well, I don't think it's one community. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Yeah, I mean, how could it be? | ||
| Just mash together an alphabet soup. | ||
| Trans is fundamentally in tension with gay, if you ask me. | ||
| But what's your opinion? | ||
|
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I am personally a pansexual, so I was just wondering what your views on same-sex couples were. | |
| I don't have a negative view of same-sex couples, but I do have a negative view Of a tyranny of the minority. | ||
| So I think that in the name of protecting against a tyranny of the majority, and there are times in this country's history where we have had a tyranny of the majority. | ||
| We have now, in the name of protecting against tyranny of the majority, created a new tyranny of the minority. | ||
| And I think that that's wrong. | ||
| I don't think that somebody who's religious should be forced to officiate a wedding that they disagree with. | ||
| I don't think somebody... | ||
| Who is a woman who's worked really hard for her achievements should be forced to compete against a biological man in a swim competition. | ||
| I don't think that somebody who's a woman that respects her bodily autonomy and dignity should be forced to change clothes in a locker room with a man. | ||
| That's not freedom, that's oppression. | ||
| And so I believe that we live in a country where free adults should be free to dress how they want, behave how they want, and that's fine. | ||
| But you don't oppress, you don't become oppressive by foisting that on others. | ||
|
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And that especially includes kids, because kids aren't the same as adults. | |
| It's just a beautiful answer in so many ways, but I just want to parse your initial answer, three parts about it I love. | ||
| She comes up and says, what are your opinions in the LGBT community? | ||
| First, you question the premise of the question itself. | ||
| How is it a community? | ||
| Trans is fundamentally in tension with gay, as you say. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| Second, Completely common. | ||
| You explain yourself. | ||
| And third, you say, what's your opinion? | ||
| And you throw it back to her. | ||
| But to the first thing, trans is fundamentally in tension with gay. | ||
| I have not heard anybody say that in public. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Well, I mean, first of all, it's just starting with the L and G. Most lesbians don't like gay men and vice versa, but then now you keep adding... | ||
| I don't think you can say that! | ||
| It's too true! | ||
| And then you sort of, like, further start playing this out. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait! | ||
| Trans is this totally weird separate thing that's, like, so, like, you're just, like, matching this, like, alphabet soup just to create an us-versus-them destruction of modern order. | ||
|
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Sorry, I should say, I... Someone in the studio is nodding. | |
| Who would know what you just said is true? | ||
| It's the truth. | ||
| I mean, really? | ||
| And so... | ||
| The truth is, let's just take, I mean, we could have a lot of fun with this one, but just take some of the suppositions here and see if this logically makes sense, right? | ||
| Like, one of the suppositions in the gay rights movement, which, you know, I'm totally open to this, but it's just partly of how we created gay rights in this country, is that the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born, even though there is no gay gene. | ||
| Now, if you make it one movement, the LGBT movement, that's the same movement that also now says, That your own sex is completely fluid over the course of your life, even though there is a definitive sex chromosome. | ||
| Like, you can't believe these two things at the same time. | ||
| They're fundamentally... | ||
| It's nonsensical. | ||
| It's nonsensical. | ||
| And so that's what it reveals what's going on, Tucker, is that these are... | ||
| Cult-like belief systems, right? | ||
| Because if it's a religious cult, then you don't have to, I mean, you don't have any obligation to logic if you're subscribing to a religion. | ||
| And the worst religions are the ones that fail to recognize themselves as religions. | ||
| I think religion can be a great thing. | ||
| You and I are both pro-religion, pro-faith, if we recognize that we're actually exercising faith. | ||
| But the most dangerous religions of all are those that claim to be secular but are actually religious in their conviction. | ||
| And one of the ways you can smoke out that it's a religion is just these inherent tensions. | ||
| Then you give it a flag. | ||
| Then you give it a symbology. | ||
| You give it an idol. | ||
| The first idol was not good enough, the rainbow flag. | ||
| Then they had to make the trans flag, the upgraded version, the golden idol. | ||
| They started with the silver one. | ||
| And so what this is about is a form of idolatry in the trans flag that is a symbol of a broader religious conviction. | ||
| It's kind of the same thing you see in the climate movement, actually. | ||
| It's like, I kind of enjoy this because you get to the bottom of what's going on by exposing the illogic of it. | ||
| There's a parallel for what's going on with LGBT with climate. | ||
| You'd think two different issues. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Well, the same people who are antithetical to carbon emissions here in the United States are perfectly fine with shifting those carbon emissions to China, even though it was supposedly global warming that we're addressing. | ||
| Or the same people who are hostile to carbon emissions are also hostile to nuclear energy, which is the most productive form of carbon-free energy production known to man. | ||
| Again, you can't believe both of those things at once. | ||
| Unless you're subscribing to a broader religious worldview. | ||
| And I think that religion is actually, it's the same religion. | ||
| Whether it relates to the climate, whether it relates to LGBTQIA plus-ism, whether it relates to racial woke-ism, it's a broader vision that defines itself in opposition. | ||
| To the American vision, to the American way of life that says we are individuals, individuals who are members of these units we call families, families which are embedded in the substructure of this thing we call a nation, and a nation which exists under the broader blessing of God. | ||
| Individual, family, nation, God, that is one worldview. | ||
| And the thing we're describing here is an alternative worldview, grounded in race, in gender, in sexuality. | ||
| And one of the things that I feel for some of the people who subscribe to this religion, I somewhat felt for this woman, right? | ||
| She wasn't, you know, there are others like her. | ||
| There's another one actually at the Iowa State Fair who had similar beliefs that did not comport him or her or they self, whatever this individual was, in the same civil manner that this woman did. | ||
| He had a cowbell and was ringing and was, you know, was, you know. | ||
| Antithetical to having a conversation. | ||
| This woman is having a conversation. | ||
| I kind of felt for her because what I saw in her eyes was she's not an evil person who's trying to be a crusader for some faith to put the other side out of business. | ||
| Those people exist. | ||
| She was just lost, actually. | ||
| I don't know if it was harder to see on the camera, but I was face-to-face with her. | ||
| When I see that, it's why I also thanked her. | ||
| I said, thank you for being civil in your exchange. | ||
| I'll give you the same courtesy in return. | ||
| She was... | ||
| Early 20s, I guess. | ||
| She's lost. | ||
| There's a void there. | ||
| So I asked her the question back. | ||
| There's a blank stare you get in a response. | ||
| It's almost the same blank stare as if I ask most young people on a given day, what does it mean to be American? | ||
| It's that same blank stare. | ||
| That's the void. | ||
| It's like a deer in the headlights. | ||
| And I think that this is our moment, our duty, our job as leaders. | ||
| It's the job of the next U.S. president. | ||
| Might be the most important one of all. | ||
| To fill that void with an answer to the question of what does it mean to be an American? | ||
| What does it mean to be you? | ||
| What does it mean to be an individual rather than riding a tectonic plate of group identity? | ||
| What does it mean to be a member of a family, a nuclear family with a mother and a father that by definition brought you into this world? | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| What does it mean to be a citizen of this nation? | ||
| Not some nebulous, vague, global citizen fighting climate change. | ||
| No, no, no, but a citizen of this nation, on this land, with these ideals. | ||
| What does it mean to believe in God, to be a nation under God? | ||
| I think that's our moment. | ||
| And I believe that if we fill that void with an actual affirmative vision, we will dilute these other poisons to irrelevance. | ||
| They are symptoms. | ||
| They're symptoms of a deeper cancer. | ||
| That cancer itself is a void, a black hole. | ||
| To fill that void with an actual affirmative vision of who we really are, that's got to be how we win. | ||
| And the thing that frustrates me most, actually, about the Republican Party, Tucker, isn't even, you know, the neoconism in our foreign policy. | ||
| I mean, it frustrates me deeply, but this feels solvable through an alternative set of policies, right? | ||
| I can go do deals on a global stage, and let's hope I'll be successful if I'm in that seat. | ||
| I think I will. | ||
| But this is actually the deeper challenge. | ||
| You can only stand up with a spine abroad or in an economy or whatever if you at least first know who you really are. | ||
| And I think that is the far more difficult question. | ||
| It's not going to happen through policy, but somebody. | ||
| It doesn't have to be a U.S. president. | ||
| It could be someone who has a media outlet. | ||
| It could be... | ||
| A religious figure, but it could be a parent. | ||
| Maybe it's not one person. | ||
| Maybe, which is what I think the real answer is going to be, maybe it's going to have to be leaders in the different spheres of our lives, each stepping up and speaking with conviction to the question of answering who we really are. | ||
| And I think the U.S. president has a role to play there in answering who we are as Americans. | ||
| And the thing that really frustrates me back about the Republican Party is, you know, I wrote Woke Inc. | ||
| a couple years ago. | ||
| You were kind enough to help me launch. | ||
| That book with you, and we had a great conversation, and a lot of people read it. | ||
| And then the Republican Party starts reciting, memorized chapter and verses from, you know, not just my book, but maybe others like it, but mine included, but without actually knowing, like, what they're even talking about. | ||
| They understand the word, they're uttering the words, but they don't really understand the phenomenon they're addressing, which stops you from actually getting to the true solution, which is actually understanding that there's a deeper void and vacuum. | ||
| That we have to fill with an affirmative, alternative vision of our own. | ||
| That takes courage. | ||
| That takes vision. | ||
| That takes some level of imagination of what is actually possible. | ||
| You don't have to imagine it too much. | ||
| It's been true for most of our history, so he can maybe just draw from that. | ||
| That's how I do it. | ||
| I don't want to reinvent the wheel. | ||
| Let's maybe just borrow from the people who set this thing into motion. | ||
|
unidentified
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They had a pretty good idea of what they were doing. | |
| But that's what this moment calls for. | ||
| And either we rise to that occasion and we take that 1776 spring spirit and we channel it into a revival of that once more. | ||
| Or else we will be the Israelites lost in the desert asking to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh. | ||
| And that's exactly what this nation is otherwise on a march towards being ruled by quietly becoming a people of sheep so our government can be a government of wolves. | ||
| That's a perfect analogy. | ||
| Vivek Ramaswamy, thank you very much. | ||
| Good luck at the debate. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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People say the news is full of lies in Kennedy's motorcade. |
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