Oct. 25, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
13:31
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I thought early, and I actually wrote a piece, not for the Daily Caller, I'm embarrassed, but for Politico, because I wanted to sort of drop a bomb into my neighbor's laps, and said, look, you may think that Trump is a ludicrous figure, and you know, you may be onto something, but fundamentally what he's saying is not crazy at all, and in fact it's necessary. | ||
| And if you don't want to have another revolution in the country, you should probably start paying a little bit of attention to what the people beyond Washington think. | ||
| And I thought then that was January of... | ||
| 2016, I thought that that message was so rooted in common sense and also in observed reality that he would probably win, and he did. | ||
| So I got a lot out of making that one call correctly in my life. | ||
| And I really did think that we would see, say, five or six, seven years hence, a political system that more closely matched that idea. | ||
| You know, that the works product coming out of Washington would... | ||
| Bear a little closer resemblance to what people wanted, and of course the opposite happened. | ||
| It's crazy how that idea just went away, and no one actually believed in it, which that blew my mind most of all, including a lot of people I thought were on my side. | ||
| Including a lot of people who paid a lot of lip service to, you know, put the country first. | ||
| I personally don't like the term America first because I think it is loaded, but just like, just common sense stuff. | ||
| Like if something really dramatic in your country happens, like young people can't, I don't know. | ||
| Get married, you know, or buy houses or have any hope for a future that approaches, you know, the middle class upbringing they had, then you've got a huge problem and someone should be responding to that. | ||
| And if your economy is like on the brink of collapse, you know, if your country is literally bankrupt, someone would say that. | ||
| And if food inflation gets so crazy that, you know, people are actually complaining about it, at least where I live. | ||
| I spend a lot of the year in rural Maine. | ||
| It doesn't make me an expert on the people or anything. | ||
| I'm a fundamentally rich kid, obviously. | ||
| But I do live among people who aren't rich, and they're like legit upset about what groceries cost, like for real, and what gas costs. | ||
| And now that we've drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, they're about to find out that it could get way higher than it is. | ||
| So these are just real concerns. | ||
| It doesn't mean they're the only concerns. | ||
| But they can't be completely ignored, or you're going to have a volatile situation on your hands, and why wouldn't you? | ||
| You know, angry people who feel like they have no recourse, who don't think elections are real, and they're totally right, obviously. | ||
| Let's stop lying. | ||
| There's a lot of truth in that. | ||
| And those people are, you know, they have real grievances, legit grievances. | ||
| And the only way... | ||
| To tamp those grievances down is not by creating some East German surveillance state, comma, which we have done, comma, or throwing people in prison for loitering outside the Capitol, which is their house, after all. | ||
| That doesn't work long-term. | ||
| It didn't work in Eastern Europe. | ||
| It won't work here. | ||
| The only thing that does work is kind of giving them not all they want, but some. | ||
| Or how about this? | ||
| Let's just start with pretending you care. | ||
| But you know what doesn't work? | ||
| Saying we're going to spend $100 billion in other countries. | ||
| And I don't care how virtuous the case those countries make is, and I don't care how much I personally may agree or disagree with what those countries are doing. | ||
| That is immaterial. | ||
| The job, the moral duty of the people running a country is to look out for the people in that country. | ||
| Period. | ||
| That's always true. | ||
| And it doesn't mean they can't help other people or whatever, but if they pay no attention whatsoever... | ||
| And in a moment when every person, 350 million Americans, everyone, regardless of political affiliation, can feel that something bad's coming, everybody knows that. | ||
| Everybody knows that. | ||
| I mean, if you've been to church once in the last year, have you thought about the end times recently? | ||
| Yes, you have. | ||
| I'm serious! | ||
| Because you can feel that abrupt change is coming, and that's very disconcerting. | ||
| And so rather than reassure people that, you know, we kind of got your back a little bit, By the way, we're going to spend $100 billion on other people? | ||
| Oh, and the boarding security part is purely designed to make it easier for more people to come here illegitimately. | ||
| That's freaking scary, okay? | ||
| So I don't have TV at home, and I don't watch TV. We haven't in years, because my wife is fiercely opposed to television. | ||
| But obviously, I have some familiar with the genre. | ||
| So I'm thinking to myself, the other day I was like, I wonder what they're saying about this on TV, but I'm just being honest, I have no way really of knowing. | ||
| So today, I'm today, this afternoon, 2 o'clock this afternoon, I'm in the hospital visiting a very sick relative, and in the room, and I'm very focused on this, and it's, you know, a drama familiar to everyone who has a family, and these are the saddest moments in your life, but I'm sitting there, and the TV is cranked way up, because it's a facility for older people, and no one can hear well, so when they watch TV, it's like, bam, it's loud! | ||
| And it's a channel that I'm familiar with. | ||
| I guess I'm familiar with all of them, having worked at all of them and admit I've been fired from all of them. | ||
| But this is what I know well. | ||
| And I'm thinking, well, I wonder what they're saying about all this. | ||
| You know, because their job is to be, you know, opposed to this. | ||
| And they take the White House briefing. | ||
| And the White House briefing is just a humiliation exercise because it's administered by the dumbest person in public life. | ||
| Like, so dumb it's unbelievable. | ||
| I'm not being mean. | ||
| I feel sorry for her. | ||
| By the way, intelligence is not a moral category. | ||
| My dogs are dumb and I love them. | ||
| So I'm not sort of judging her, but I'm just saying, you know, this is like a mouth breather, okay? | ||
| And the whole point of her being the White House spokesmoron is to tell you that the people in charge have no respect for you, so we're going to put the dumbest possible person we can up there. | ||
| And she's prattling on about Iran. | ||
| And I'm just waiting for her. | ||
| She doesn't know Iran from Innsbruck, okay? | ||
| She has no idea what she's talking about, right? | ||
| And I'm literally waiting for her to say, you know, to attack Saddam Hussein, the president of Iran, okay? | ||
| Because literally, her shallowness has no bottom. | ||
| It's like a Zen cone. | ||
| That's almost like a Kamala Harris line, actually. | ||
| Anyway, and then they come back, and they're totally taking her seriously. | ||
| And then the oiliest fakes... | ||
| Admiral spokesman who've ever commanded a ship can't run, literally can't run a Boston Whaler. | ||
| He's been a flak his whole life, Admiral. | ||
| He's a liar, and I know him personally. | ||
| He's a liar, and everyone who's dealt with him knows he's a liar. | ||
| And they're like, well, he says this. | ||
| And the upshot is, we've got to attack Iran. | ||
| Now, I'm thinking to myself, I have no love for Iran, and I can certainly see why people want to attack Iran. | ||
| All I'm asking is, just to put one person on TV... To point out that there are consequences to the United States that may not be entirely positive to doing this. | ||
| That maybe another moral victory, and we've won a lot of those recently. | ||
| I don't know, are you guys sick of winning moral victories? | ||
| We've won a lot of important moral victories. | ||
| I interviewed someone the other day, a major political figure from the UK, and he's like, well, we've let all these refugees in, and it's really been a great moral victory. | ||
| And I was like, I was just in your country, and it's garbage. | ||
| I mean, it smells, and it's pathetic. | ||
| And like, do you think that... | ||
| I know you're psyched about your moral, but you're good people. | ||
| Trust me, you're good Anglicans. | ||
| I'm really so impressed by you. | ||
| Morally, but like, has there been a downside in real terms? | ||
| And he's like, oh, I can't answer that question. | ||
| Not allowed. | ||
| So anyway, I just wanted someone to stand up and ask the obvious question. | ||
| I'm not even arguing against a war with Iran. | ||
| I'm merely saying there are consequences to doing that. | ||
| One is we can't win it, probably, with the defense that we have currently. | ||
| I think that's fair. | ||
| But even if we could, I mean, what would happen if they mined the streets of our moods? | ||
| I mean, you know, I'm no energy expert, but I think that we would have an immediate energy shock that would send our country into an economic spiral within, like, hours, okay? | ||
| And we don't have any cushion because we burned it all, because the senile guy's running for president again, okay? | ||
| And we sort of let that happen. | ||
| We sold some of it to China. | ||
| We sort of let it happen. | ||
| So that's not a small thing. | ||
| One thing Americans are not used to is being poor. | ||
| In the rest of the world, people really worry about the economic effects of everything. | ||
| Why wouldn't they? | ||
| Because they're not generationally rich like us. | ||
| But what if we ran out of money? | ||
| At the very same moment that American society is more fractured, our social fabric is in tatters, and we've let in millions upon millions of people who have no affinity for the United States, who are merely here... | ||
| For the economic benefits, which, by the way, is not all bad, and I think a lot of them are good people. | ||
| I'm not attacking them. | ||
| I'm merely saying their addition does not make us a more cohesive country. | ||
| It makes it a far less cohesive country. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| No matter how admirable they may be, and I know some of them, and I really like them. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| I've even met illegal aliens. | ||
| I really like them. | ||
| I'm just being honest. | ||
| But if you have millions upon millions of people with no loyalty to the United States who are all on public benefits and the country goes bankrupt, what happens? | ||
| You know, last time we had a depression, the country held together. | ||
| Because Americans had a lot in common with each other. | ||
| But what happens next time? | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| Moreover, when your country's at war, civil liberties disappear. | ||
| And we saw this in the last 20-year war on terror. | ||
| And I supported all that stuff, and I have egg in my face. | ||
| I'm worse than that. | ||
| I'm ashamed of the measures that I supported, which were, of course, turned against me. | ||
| And the NSA got busted reading my text messages on Signal, which is supposedly secure. | ||
| Spoiler alert, it's not. | ||
| Keep the naughty pictures off Signal, okay, because they're looking at him. | ||
| But they did that. | ||
| They got caught doing it. | ||
| No one resigned or even apologized, and that was all legal because of the measures we put in place the last time we were fighting the bad guys over a 20-year period that measurably weakened the country and from which we derived nothing in the end. | ||
| So I'm merely saying maybe we should just pause for one second to ask, could we be doing that again, but at scale? | ||
| Not one person. | ||
| You're not allowed. | ||
| Because everything is some moral argument. | ||
| Well, are you on the side of the bad guys? | ||
|
unidentified
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No! | |
| And so I look at how this is arrayed, and again, I can't tell you how disgusted I am by the behavior of people who said they were conservative and cared about the country, and clearly don't. | ||
| Because no one asks that question. | ||
| They're all too afraid. | ||
| And then the other side, the wackos running around calling for, you know, the pro-Hamas people, decolonize, you know, they're mad at Israel for being white and they want to kill everybody. | ||
| Obviously, if forced to choose, I'd go with Ben Shapiro, okay? | ||
| But I shouldn't have to choose. | ||
| Like, there should be the America guy in the middle, who's like, I have strong sympathies here, and, you know, morally I'm on one side, but I'm an American, and I've got a ton of kids. | ||
| I'll speak for myself. | ||
| I am an American. | ||
| I was born here. | ||
| I will die here. | ||
| I have a ton of kids, and I kind of want them to be able to live here in a country that resembles the one in which I grew up. | ||
| And what about them? | ||
| Shut up! | ||
| Well, shut up's not good enough, actually. | ||
| And I just, the spirit of fear, and I hate to use the term, but groupthink, that is descended upon lawmakers and, I would say, movement leaders in Washington, where no one can say something that's completely obvious. | ||
| Because, what, you're anti-Israel? | ||
| Well, no one's going to call me anti-Israel. | ||
| I like Israel. | ||
| And one of the things I love about Israel... | ||
| In addition to the fact it's beautiful and great food, took my kids there on vacation, is I like the Israelis. | ||
| What do I like about the Israelis? | ||
| They're proud of themselves and their country. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like secure people. | ||
| But I don't know a single Israeli, and I say this as a compliment from my heart, I don't know a single Israeli who would jeopardize his own country's economy or safety for another nation. | ||
| Because they care about their nation. | ||
| Like, what the hell? | ||
| I'm saying this as a compliment. | ||
| But why would we? | ||
| And when I see leaders on the left and right call for refugees from Gaza to be imported here? | ||
| They're too dangerous for other countries, but we should take them? | ||
| What are you saying? | ||
| What are you saying about how you feel about my country? | ||
| You're saying you consider it a trash bin. | ||
| Throw the refugees there. | ||
| No one else wants to deal with it. | ||
| America will deal with it. | ||
| Well, how about no? | ||
| How about anyone who even suggests something like that? | ||
| Speaking of a betrayal of your country, that's just telling me everything I need to know about how you feel about the United States of America, and I'm disgusted by it. | ||
| Did you even think something like that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| And yet that is considered kind of within bounds, and I notice there are a few Republicans who are like, well, that could happen, and we're going to pass legislation preemptively to make sure it doesn't. | ||
| It's like, why would we even have that conversation? | ||
| That is truly nuts. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| And more than anything, it's revealing of an attitude that is poisonous and that everyone else in the country can feel. | ||
| They know it. | ||
| And again, don't look to me because I live in my family's summer house. | ||
| I'm not pretending to be, you know, what J.D. Vance actually is, which is a son of middle America, of working America. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| But I try to observe and I try to talk to people. | ||
| I like people. | ||
| And I can tell you, I can promise you. | ||
| That the level of resentment toward those attitudes is extremely high. | ||
| It's extremely high. |
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