Tucker Responds to Trump Assassination Attempt and JD Vance for VP | Milwaukee, WI Speech
Tucker Carlson speaks at Heritage's 2024 Policy Fest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and responds to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:41 Tucker Carlson speaks
18:01 Tucker Q&A
But you look around and you see these people and some of them really have paid a heavy price for telling the truth.
They are cast out of their groups, whatever those groups are, but they do it anyway.
And I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration.
The people around our country are destroying it, and they're doing it on purpose.
What they've done at the border, completely changing the population in the country, letting in millions and millions of people.
My role is to tell the truth to the extent I can see it.
Always with the knowledge that we see everything through a glass darkly.
We don't see things clearly, but you do your best.
And you cannot allow people to force you to lie, period.
I have guns at home, and often on my person when I'm in the United States, I'm proud to say, because I want to defend myself and those I love against violence.
I'm defending what I love.
And if you're against that, I guess I would ask why.
Why would you be against that?
unidentified
Well, so you don't think you harbor any kind of responsibility for these hate crimes?
I just landed and it took me an hour and a half to get here.
There's a lot of security.
All the security guys look like they should have been in Butler PA on Saturday.
They definitely brought the real ones out this time, thank heaven.
Thank you for having me.
I am thrilled to be here.
I didn't want to come to this convention.
Now I'm really grateful that I did.
And I spent the whole day dealing with politics this day, starting at 5 a.m., and I just, I forgot how repulsive a process it is.
And how feline and ruthless the players are.
It was a reminder why I don't like politicians.
I never deal with politicians.
I deal with people who believe in things and some I agree with and some I don't agree with, but they're all basically sincere.
Even the wackos on the other side are generally sincere.
They really mean it.
And I kind of get that.
And because I think I'm pretty, I may be wrong.
I certainly have been, but I mean it.
But you deal with political people and they don't mean it.
All they mean is they want power.
That's it.
And there's been a lot of jockeying because there are a couple big jobs, well, one big job, which was just awarded.
And it's crazy to watch politicians around power.
So there's this job.
One person makes the decision and whoever gets the job immediately has a lot of power.
And it really is like waving a flank state over an alligator.
They're just jumping up and snapping in the air.
But they're not doing it in a straightforward way.
I mean, you sort of, I've always wondered, I spent 35 years in Washington and there were politicians I liked, but I just couldn't help but notice that every single one of them had a weird personal life.
Almost every single one.
Not all, but most of them.
Something they were hiding.
They were secretly gay or they were into drugs or alcoholic or they're cheating on their wife or whatever.
And I thought, this is not a random sample of the population.
Like my neighbors aren't living like this.
Why is all of the U.S. Congress?
And I'm not being mean.
I know it sounds like something you say just to be nasty about a group you don't like, but I'm being sincere.
Why is that?
Why are so many politicians living lies?
And it's because that's who they are.
I mean, deception is at the core, actually, of who they are.
And when you watch them pursue power, it comes right out.
Rather than just saying, you know, I think we should do this because here's the outcome.
And I think we should avoid that because there's the disaster that will result.
It's always, if you do this, I'll give you something secret.
It's like the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
And I haven't been around it in a while, and I just watched it up close over the last 24 hours.
And I thought, man, I'm glad I'm not around this very often.
However, it's worth making yourself see it and in some cases go through the process because it actually matters.
I guess that's the other thing that I learned.
So now, JD Vance is the VP pick.
And I think every person who pays close attention has got to be thrilled by that.
And if you don't know much about JD Vance, I'm not even going to make a case for JD Vance.
I'm going to tell you what I just saw, which is that every bad person I've ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against JD Vance.
And I do think the negative case is often more powerful because I know of myself, I do not think I'm a particularly good person.
I have strong reasons for feeling that way.
I don't always think that my side is right.
I know for a fact I have been wrong many, many times.
And I hope to correct and be honest about my error.
So it's not like I think that, you know, I'm always, you know, God's always on my side.
Sometimes I'm not on God's side.
But I definitely know who's representing the other side.
It's a lot easier to tell who the people who are only in it because they like, I don't know, killing other people in pointless wars.
Like, I know who those people are.
And their odor is so powerful that I can smell one when he walks in the room.
And every single one of those people in a line that would extend from Milwaukee to Chicago was lined up over the last week to knife JD Vance.
Not on personal grounds.
I mean, he's a perfectly nice guy.
He's like one of the only members of the Senate with a happy marriage.
True.
But because they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people.
That's it.
That he would be an impediment to their exercising power.
And boy, they went after him in a way I've just kind of never seen.
Which I think happens every day in Washington.
I just don't have a vantage on it because I'm far, far away and grateful to be.
And again, I was just reminded that this process is so ugly that normal people do not want to participate in it.
And yet normal people have to suck it up and do so anyway because the consequences are just so profound and so very serious.
That's the first thing I was reminded of.
And the second thing I was reminded of, and I've been thinking about this for the last 15 months since I spoke at Heritage's 50th anniversary, which was the beginning of a total change in the way that I see the world, is that this is not ultimately political.
This is much deeper.
And I think what happened on Saturday, the assassination attempt against President Trump, reminded a lot of people this or awakened a lot of people to this.
There is a spiritual battle underway.
There is no logical way to understand what we're seeing now in temporal terms.
You just can't.
These are not political divides.
There are forces, and they're very obvious now, they've decided for whatever reason to take off the mask, whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction.
And there are the rest of us who, once again, are not always certain we're right, but we know that that's bad and we're against that.
Sort of standing watching, thinking, is someone going to explain to me why this is politics?
This is not politics at all.
This is much deeper and older and more recognizable than that.
This has been going on since the beginning of time.
And I do think, by the way, that the more literal among us, and I would count myself in that category, fail to see this because we're so desperate to ascribe some kind of recognizable human motive to what we're seeing.
So we call it leftism or neoliberalism or communism or anarchism.
We come up with some phrase to describe it.
But those phrases are inadequate.
They do not describe what's actually happening.
So what you're seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Nom Penh.
It's all the same.
These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.
By the way, explain that for a second.
What kind of movement could be against people?
There are all sorts of movements that are against people now.
Transhumanism, AI is inherently anti-people.
The climate cult is inherently anti-people.
Explain that rationally.
If your view of the world is, as mine was, derived by an understanding of evolutionary biology.
All of us have been raised to see the world through the lens of evolutionary biology.
The species does what it does because it's acting in its own interest.
And its own interest is to procreate, to pass on its genes, to continue.
And so you tell me what we're looking at if the defining movements of our time are against carrying on our genes, procreating, continuing.
Is that human?
Well, no.
Is there any other animal species that kills itself?
No.
Is genocide known in the natural world?
No, it doesn't even make sense.
Dogs don't commit genocide against other dogs, maybe against rabbits.
That's because they're hungry.
But no animal decides to eliminate itself because it's unnatural, so it doesn't happen.
No animal commits suicide.
That's not found in nature.
Okay?
That's something outside of nature.
That's supernatural.
And that's what we're seeing, but it's also what we've seen again and again and again throughout history.
There are forces within every society, because they reside in the human heart, that are against people.
They are dedicated to the destruction of people and the civilizations that people build.
And if you pay any attention at all to history, you will recognize it.
It's like, wait a second, people are saying exactly the same things.
The climate people, the AI people, the transhumanist people, the Biden administration, they're seeing exactly the same kinds of things, the same themes that every other movement of this kind, and they had a million different names for them throughout history, were also saying.
That's the first thing I noticed.
The second thing I noticed is what do all of these movements over the past 2,000 years have in common?
Who do they hate most?
As you can tell by what I said about JD Vance, I think you learn very much by taking a look at who's mad at whom and about what.
So if there's something that threatens you, pay close attention to what makes them angriest.
It's certainly true in my business, which is the speech business.
What are they trying to get you not to say?
What are they punishing you for saying?
Those are likely to be the truest things.
Not the falsest things.
It's not misinformation.
It's not disinformation.
It's truth.
That's why you hate it, obviously.
It's obvious now.
Took me about 10 years to figure this out.
I'm not a super genius.
But what group do they dislike most?
What group are they absolutely terrified of and hoping to eliminate?
Well, it's Christians.
That's who it is.
It's Christians.
And I'm saying this as not a particularly fervent, lifelong Christian.
I am a Christian, but I haven't spent my life surrounded by plumes of incense deep in prayer.
I spent my life in a newsroom saying the F-word.
I mean, I'm not sort of a pious person at all.
But I try to be a noticer since I'm paid to do that.
And the group that makes them angriest triggers them most, I guess we would say now, is Christians.
Christian nationalism.
People pray outside abortion clinics.
People who celebrate Easter and not Transvisibility Day.
These are their real enemies.
But that's been true in every revolution in the past 2,000 years.
It was true during the Cultural Revolution.
There weren't many Christians in China.
They were the first to be killed.
It was true in the French Revolution.
They beheaded nuns.
What did the nuns do?
Were the nuns really an impediment to progress?
No, the nuns existed.
And they pledged a higher fealty to Jesus.
And that was their crime.
And for that, they were killed.
It was true in the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the communist side, which wasn't really communist at all, it was anti-Christian.
Who's the first person they executed?
Well, it wasn't a person at all.
It was a statue of Jesus, and they opened fire on it with a firing squad.
In a picture that when I was a child was famous, it's now probably forgotten in history, probably still available on Google as of this afternoon.
You should look it up.
But if you find yourself firing bullets at a statue, what you're really doing is revealing your deepest priority.
And that's to kill Christians.
And why?
Well, you know, I can't fully answer that question because I am hardly a theologian.
But I think I do think it tells you everything.
I think the most obvious reason is anybody who pledges a higher loyalty to the people in charge who believe themselves to be gods is a threat.
But I think it's more than that because it's not every religion, actually.
There are a lot of religions.
I respect them all, by the way.
I'm just a believer in faithfulness and acknowledging that you're not God.
I'm probably the only right-winger in the world who's not bothered when I see Muslims praying five times a day.
Amen.
Anyone who acknowledges he's not God five times a day is not my enemy.
That's how I personally feel.
But it's not my religion.
But it's actually not Islam or any other religion that makes these leaders angry.
It's Christianity.
It's the religion of Jesus that makes them angry.
And that suggests that maybe there is something a little deeper going on here.
It's not just that they're in the way.
Christians are hardly in the way.
They're the most peaceable people there are.
They worship a God who tells them not to hurt other people, to turn the other cheek, to pray for their persecutors.
So it's not like they're disruptive.
They're the opposite of disruptive, and yet they are the enemy.
So you should know this, I think.
I don't know if there are any Christians here or people who are interested in continuing to live in the country you grew up in, but these are the terms and these are the stakes.
They are not the ones that we've been told they are.
Left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.
I learned that the hard way in the last couple of days, watching the leaders of the Republican Party, not all the leaders, but a lot of them, some of the most powerful and richest people in the party, reveal who they really are.
And it made me think that for the purposes of this election, I mean, let's be honest, Trump just won.
He won.
Not only did he survive an assassination attempt, he stood up without knowing whether there were other shooters there.
He stood up and faced the crowd and raised his hand and said, fight, fight, fight.
That's it.
You do that, you win.
And by the way, I happen to notice that the crowd, which also didn't know whether there were other shooters, who watched Trump get shot in the face, they did not bolt.
It wasn't like a fire in a theater, actually.
They sat there, they watched him intently, and when he stood up, they applauded him, and many cried.
He did it by being a man in a nation of people who weren't quite, just being honest.
Okay?
He acted like a man, the kind of man I respect.
And I think every person feels this way.
Every person, no matter what you think of Trump.
Because leadership isn't actually all about the way you talk.
It's about how brave you are.
That's what people want.
They want a brave leader.
So he won four months before the actual election.
But it doesn't mean that he doesn't have enemies.
And the truth, and no one wants to say it, but it is true, a lot of the enemies are people who claim to be his friends in the political party that I voted for my entire life.
And they seek to subvert him.
And they seek to channel the energy into a super dark direction.
And above all, I'm just telling you, this is the last thing I'll say, and I'm sure this is like very upsetting to everybody, but it's just, I just saw it.
What do they care about?
What do you want to know what they care about?
They only care about war.
That's it.
That's what they care about.
They don't care about immigration, obviously, at all.
Our country's being colonized by the rest of the world.
And that's the power, of course, everyone who wants to be God seeks to possess.
That's why human sacrifice was the thing.
I have the power to kill.
Only God has the power over life and death.
And that's the power they want.
And Trump has stood in their way.
Imperfectly.
But Trump's the only president, you know, since Jimmy Carter, most of my life, who hasn't committed us to a brand new war.
That's what they hate about him.
And that's what they were trying to change over the last couple of days.
I saw it.
That's all they cared about.
And they lied about it, of course, and said all kinds of things that are like insane and totally untrue.
But that was the motivator right there.
And when Trump came out in 2016 and said the Iraq war was a mistake, which was very obvious to those of us who were in Iraq while it was going on, it was like news to nobody.
It was shocking in Washington.
And that was the point at which they sicked the FBI on him.
They started bugging him.
They decided we cannot have this guy because he was trying to limit their most important of all power, which is to hurt other people.
And so you should just know this.
That's what the stakes are.
I think he's going to win.
I think it's going to be really important to rolling back some of this insanity.
But, you know, there are a lot of people who have other agendas, and you should just be aware of that.
Thank you so much for letting me spoil your afternoon with that stuff.
Based on what you just said, things have changed since Saturday.
A lot of Americans in the center, and maybe even some Americans on the center left, saw that near tragedy, that near assassination of President Trump, and they realized, oh, maybe I've not quite figured out what's been going on.
A lot of us have been in that category.
You've talked about that yourself.
We at Heritage have said that.
What do you advise the people who are in this auditorium and also the people online to do with members of their family, friends, neighbor who still don't get it?
What's the advice that you give us in having those conversations to bring them into this movement that Trump has built?
Well, I kind of feel at this point that any, you know, first of all, anyone who thinks the status quo is a good idea is probably not convinceable.
You know, if you let tens of millions of people into your country illegally, you destroy all your cities, you wreck the economy, you can't afford to go out to dinner, you know, things aren't going well.
And if you're willing to ignore that, then you're probably not someone I can persuade.
So I would say that.
Never give up on anyone, but probably best to just pray for those people instead of talking about politics.
I really think the core problem in the country right now is bad leadership.
And by bad, I mean weak.
And I think more broadly, weak men are the problem.
You watch these schools indoctrinate kids and try and turn them into freaks, circus freaks.
And in the country that I grew up in, the dad would just punch the counselor out, you know, put me in jail, I don't care.
Like, you weirdo?
I mean, that's like child molester stuff.
Talking to my kids about sex without telling me, where's dad?
He should be beating this person, like physically.
And I'm happy to, I just said I'm against violence, but that's like a very basic, that's the most basic requirement of fatherhood, but also of leadership more broadly, is to be willing to die for the people in your care, period.
And if you're not willing to do that, you're contemptible.
And what is that?
What are we looking at when we acknowledge that?
Well, we're looking at the fact, which is strength is the basic requirement of leadership.
Weak leadership is an oxymoron.
And with weak leaders, a nation dies.
A family dies, a weak father will destroy a family.
You know, a weak officer will get his men killed, and a weak president will wreck his country.
And that's exactly what we've seen.
I mean, Biden's core problem is weakness.
And what Trump displayed on Saturday was strength of the most basic kind that is absolutely impossible to fake.
You can think whatever you want about Trump or whatever you've heard about Trump.
You watch that tape.
The guy is shot in the face and is bleeding and forces the Secret Service to allow him to stand up and face the crowd.
I mean, you know, all men, when they're boys, tell themselves, well, something happened, I would jump right in.
And you know what I mean?
Like, I'd stop the shooter.
But you don't know that, actually, because you're not faced with it.
I mean, very few people are tested in the way Trump was tested on Saturday.
And not only did he pass, he got the highest score ever recorded.
And so you can't look at that.
And it's not, again, it's not fakeable.
That's just real.
It's undeniably real.
No one staged that.
And so anyone who looks at that video, I think, comes away thinking that person has to lead the country because the option is more destruction.
During your comment there and also your comment from the podium, it occurred to me that C.S. Lewis' great phrase, men without chests, is really apropos here.
And not to go too intellectual or academic here, although, remember, I do lead a think tank, it seems as if, yeah, I would agree with that.
I would agree.
It seems as if Americans are saying, Washington elites, New York elites, all of these elites have complicated life.
And what Trump showed us in that moment of near-tragedy, as you said, is just something basic.
And what we're all yearning for is just a return to normal.
And it is normal for a strong man, for a man, period, to respond the way you described to the school counselor, you know, with all this disorder.
It's normal, although very, very heroic on a tremendous scale for President Trump to have responded the way he did.
But it shows how starved this country is for just normal things.
What's your prediction for themes this week at the RNC from a messaging expert who's got his pulse on things?
What should the campaign really focus on?
Not just for President Trump and Mr. Vance, but for people out here in the audience and digitally who are going to be involved in local campaigns.
Well, I mean, I think, can I say one thing really quick, which is the definition of strength I think needs to be a little more precise.
Strength is not abusive behavior or authoritarian behavior.
That's what weak people do.
That's what Gretchen Whitmer did during COVID in the neighboring state of Michigan.
This is a demonstrably weak person with a facelift who's like terrified to go out in public, and yet she's telling people they can't buy paint in a paint store.
That's not strength.
That's fragility.
She is fragile and brittle, and that's why she's acting that way.
True strength is calm.
That's the first thing about strength.
Someone who's actually strong is in command, doesn't need to prove it, because people can smell it.
The second thing about strength is it serves others.
I mean, willingness to die for the people you lead is a prerequisite, okay?
I'm not afraid.
I'm willing to lay down my life for you.
That's clearly the message of strength.
It's what Trump displayed on Saturday.
And people's reaction to it is amazing.
They instantly calm down.
Dad's home.
Everything is okay.
It's received on a visceral level.
So to the extent that the campaign, and I'm not a messaging person, obviously, I'm like half insane and can't stop talking, so I'm not good at messaging.
But to the extent that they can convey that, you know, it's fine.
And I do think the campaign is trying to say that in its unity message.
And a lot of people hear unity and they think, well, unity implies some sort of compromise conversation.
You can't have a conversation with people who are unwilling to compromise.
The left, which is a religious movement, is unwilling to compromise on any level at all.
They won't even admit men can't become women.
So how can you have unity with people like that?
And of course, you can't.
But I think what they're really trying to say is, let's ignore some of the insanity, actually.
Be in charge.
You don't need to constantly remind people you're in charge.
Just do it.
I mean, a good father is not constantly telling you how hard he works to pay for the food you're eating.
He just does it.
And you notice after a while, and you're calmed by that.
And I think maybe that's the message.
We don't need to respond to all this nonsense.
You're too small to respond to.
That's the way, that's what I would do.
No one wants to hear, like, why is MSNBC still on the air?
Nobody watches it.
Same with CNN.
Nobody watches it.
And if I look back on my life, I've worked at both CNN and MSNBC.
So for me, it's the hatred is absolutely real.
But too much, though.
Too much.
Unhelpfully.
Don't feel hatred.
That itself is a sign of weakness, in my opinion, a lack of self-discipline.
But why are we even talking about them?
Nobody watches.
Nobody watches.
My nephew gets drunk and posts something on X and he's got more viewers than MSNBC Primetime.
I'm serious.
So like, why are we even giving them oxygen by engaging with them?
Their audience is tiny.
I hope that's part of what they're saying.
I saw Don Jr., who is really my favorite person in Trump world, who really I think does understand.
I shouldn't even be saying this, but it's true, understands the voters and how they feel on a real level, on a gut level.
But I saw him do an interview with MSNBC today, and they're like, you know, are you going to separate more families at the border?
Really, you let in tens of millions of illegal aliens and wreck our country and that's your concern?
And he just looked at the guy.
He's like, yeah, go away.
Like, enough.
He didn't yell at him.
Just go away.
It's not even worth it, actually.
And I think that posture is kind of what's needed right now.
I'm not going to engage with you.
I've tried for seven years now, eight years, to have a conversation in good faith.
I used to try to book these people on my show.
Not one person would come on my show to debate the other side.
And then, of course, I got fired anyway.
But it's like it's better just to be like common in command.
And I think that restores tranquility to the country faster than any rhetorical argument you could make.
So that's high-profile national example, which is great.
And I also want to give some folks an idea of what they might be able to do locally.
And it seems as if you're saying, whomever you are, national profile, don't engage with these outlets that are dying.
Don't give them the oxygen.
That there's also a lesson there about what we might do at the local level.
What I hear most of all as I'm traveling the country from people like in these in this audience, I know you do as well, is Kevin, what advice do you have for me talking to my local school board, talking to my local city council?
They, of course, want to cancel us, but at some point, people are going to those meetings, especially school board meetings, because they are invested in it with their own kids and grandkids.
What's your advice for them?
Because my, and I think you know this, but our rationale at heritage in asking that question is we want this to be not just about D.C. and New York power centers.
We want Americans after Saturday's tragedy to understand this is also about what we're doing in our lives on a daily and weekly basis and to give people that advice about how to expand the ranks of this movement locally.
Well, I think Saturday is the inspirational moment to do that.
And what's the lesson of Saturday?
I mean, there are probably many lessons.
One is like if a guy 150 feet away at a political rally climbs a ladder with a rifle, you know, maybe this whole system is not quite what we were told it is.
Sorry.
So there's that.
But the big picture takeaway is bravery is the essential quality.
It's the essential quality.
What's the takeaway from Saturday?
Trump's going to be president because he's brave.
Period.
Period.
Like actually brave, physically brave.
Like facing death, shot in the face and unbowed, unafraid, defiant.
And that's the only thing that works.
And I do think there's been so much whispering among the persecuted right about, wow, you know, does this come to a time when we have to like physically fight back?
And I don't think it takes that.
It doesn't, you don't have to hurt anyone to save your country.
You do have to willing, you have to be willing to be hurt, however, period.
You have to be willing to make a sacrifice.
You do.
And I think people are cowards.
I'm just saying that.
Sorry.
Not no one in particular.
They're an awful lot of cowards meet sometimes too.
But Trump, as a reminder, that doesn't work.
The only thing that works is bravery.
So if you walk in to a school board meeting, the first thing they do is seize the moral high ground unjustly.
These are the people who have the least claim on the moral high ground.
They're amoral.
They're filthy, actually.
They're sexualizing your children.
They should be in prison.
But somehow they manage through rhetorical tricks to make you feel like you're the freak because you want them to get their tentacles off your kids.
And you've already lost if you allow that.
And so the way to approach them, I mean, it's a matter of employing words, but moral force.
You will not do that.
I will not accept that under no circumstances.
I will do everything I can, as long as I draw breath, to stop you from doing that to my children.
You have no right.
What you're doing is totally immoral.
It's criminal.
And I will stop you.
Period.
You don't need to scream.
And I think to say, when people approach you and say, well, if you're against this, you're a racist, or if you're against that, you're whatever.
They call you names, someone who has been called a few names.
I can promise you that not one person calling you names believes that you are those things or even cares.
In fact, they're almost always those things themselves.
It's purely a leash around your neck designed to control you.
It's a manipulation device.
Everyone here knows that already.
We've been going through this for many years.
And so if you're still worrying about it, then that's on you.
Like, I don't care what you call me, actually.
I also don't care if you put me in jail.
I really don't.
I mean, Gandhi, I know, I mean, I have mixed feelings about Gandhi, but he did end the Raj after he kicked the British out of India after 300 years.
And all he did was talk and just stand there and be obstreperous in a peaceful way.
And that worked.
I mean, it's a little more complicated than that, but that's kind of fundamentally what happened.
One guy was like, no, as Solsnitson famously said, to bring down a tyranny, it takes one man who will tell the truth.
One of the other lessons, I think, too, is how disordered the left is regarding the centrality of politics.
I mean, you even said it here a few moments ago that politics, in essence, is religion for them.
And it seems to me that we, not just we on the right, but just we, period, as Americans, whatever our political ideology may be, ought to reject that concept and understand that there are things so much more important than politics.
In other words, to be engaged in that kind of framework with the left, we're always going to lose, or often going to lose.
I've heard you talk about living the good life.
And I've reflected on that since Saturday night from that moment as standing with my 14-year-old daughter who was sobbing because we thought the absolute worst when we first saw the news, as I'm sure everyone did.
But then I realized, ah, here's a moment in addition to the politics and the policy, which are important, where we've really got to get back to, especially us here, to living the good life.
What advice do you have for us for keeping this in perspective?
I mean, one of the lies about living in a certain way is that you have to be rich.
And it's hard for me to say because I made a lot more money, a lot more money than I ever thought I would.
So it's like, oh, yeah, rich guy lecturing us about, you know, how to live.
But if you saw how I actually lived, I think you'd see it could be done pretty cheaply.
I'm not into spending money.
No, I mean, for me, the good life is a life that's rooted in physical reality, actually.
I think one of the main problems with the modern world is how abstract, which is to say digital, everything is.
And I find it essential to maintaining happiness and clarity and perspective to get away from that.
My rule is if I can't smell it, it's not really real.
And I believe that.
really do I sniff everything and everybody in my I'm not joking at all You sound like Joe Biden.
I mean it.
I defended his hair sniffing because I do the same and I'm not ashamed of it.
But I'm not a weirdo or a creep.
I didn't shower with my daughter.
So it's cool when I think it's defensible when I do it.
But the point is, don't spend your life in a fake world.
Spend your life with other people who you can touch and smell and whose eyes you can see.
I think animals are incredibly important.
I really believe that.
The older I get.
I think it's really important.
God created animals.
We have dominion over them.
It doesn't mean that they're totally different from us.
They're not.
And there's something about animals that brings us back to reality.
I could never live without dogs.
We have a lot of dogs.
I think it's very important.
It's not just like, oh, it's my pet.
It's like, no, no, no.
It's an expression of God's creation and of beauty.
And I think nature and trees are just essential.
I could not live without them.
I don't understand how people can live in glass cubes on the 27th floor in Midtown.
I think it's terrible for you.
I think it's wrong that we would encourage that.
And I don't think a lot of the things that are described as progress are progress at all.
I think that they are imprisonment.
And I think technology is a mixed blessing at best.
I really do.
I have very extreme views on this, which I'm not going to share with you because I don't want to reveal how crankish and crazy I really am on the subject.
But we accept technological progress as progress when it's enslavement, actually.
And that's super obvious.
No one does anything about it.
You hear people say in think tank worlds or cable TV news world, oh, yeah, we're spending too much time on our phones.
It's like, no, actually, we really are.
And it's destroying our souls and making us crazy and unhappy and dividing us, most importantly, from one another.
So, you know, take affirmative, very aggressive, like, don't allow a cell phone in your bedroom, you weirdo.
What?
No.
Don't allow it in the bedroom.
You know, I wouldn't allow, I don't know, a circus elephant in my bedroom, too disruptive.
Don't allow an iPhone.
Just like, how's that?
So for at least eight hours a day, I don't have that.
There are other activities that the bedroom was designed for.
And, you know, your phone, or whatever.
Anyway, take that seriously, I think, and get outside.
And if you're not married, just grab someone off the street and do it.
We tend to, on the political right, think in worst-case scenario terms, but we at Heritage, as you know, try to get people to think in best-case scenario terms.
What's the best case scenario for the message regarding what he's accomplished, but also, more importantly, where the country's going?
Well, by far the most important question is, does the country hold together?
And the country can only hold together if there is a consensus view, not a universal view, but a consensus view, a majority view, on what it is to be an American.
It's not a racial group.
It's now a linguistic designation.
The population of the country has changed so radically in such a short period that it risks breaking apart because not enough people have enough in common with one another.
That would be a tragedy.
That would never end well, despite the fantasies you read on Twitter about how we, you know, that's not going to happen without massive bloodshed.
You don't want that to happen, period.
So you want the country to hold together, but it can only hold together if most people understand that they are Americans because why?
What do they have in common?
It can't just be competing groups who are trying to screw the other ones out of some prize, you know, some money that other people made.
That's very quickly where we're going.
And so above all, above all, after avoiding nuclear war, which has got to be the first one, and only Trump will do that, and JD Vance, everyone else was like totally into nuclear war.
All the other people he was considering going, let's have a nuclear war.
Okay.
Children.
Anyway, so after that, the most important long-term question is what do we all have in common?
And only a leader can establish that.
It doesn't need to be explicit, by the way.
I don't think Trump's going to give a speech when he's president saying, here are the five things we require of every American or every American must believe.
It's not quite that simple, but there has to evolve a sense of what we have in common, of what we share.
Because we don't look alike, we don't speak the same language oftentimes.
We don't have the same religion.
So what is it we have in common?
That has to be the overriding goal above all others.
And the last thing I'll say is I think the big change in the last week is the social sanction levied against people for supporting Trump is disappearing fast.
It is.
One of the reasons this was such a divided country is that people were not allowed, like normal white-collar professionals, were not allowed to even consider the possibility that Trump might be less than Hitler.
And now I think they can.
I do.
I think after Saturday, that is the big change.
People are like, you know, maybe I didn't like Trump.
I didn't vote for him the first time.
But all of a sudden, I'm seeing, I don't know, Elon Musk just endorsed him.
I think the country's largest government contractor, a guy with an awful lot to lose.
If there was anyone with a lot to lose, yeah, he's the richest guy in the world.
Okay.
He's also got the most to lose in the world.
And that guy just endorsed Trump publicly about five minutes after the shooting.
That is a watershed, in my opinion.
Bill Ackman, someone I don't agree with on a lot of things.
Bill Ackman, also a lot to lose.
Someone who's, I doubt, ever voted for a Republican.
Those are signals to the rest of the country.
Again, these are not people I necessarily agree with on the issues at all.
However, what those gestures signal to everyone else, it's like, well, I guess I could do that if I wanted to also.
That is a prerequisite for national healing and for national unity.
Doesn't mean you have to agree with some.
In other words, if somebody said to me four years ago, like, you're not allowed to support Joe Biden.
Well, I never supported Joe Biden.
I don't agree with him on anything.
I didn't yet hate Joe Biden.
I now do.
I'm ashamed to say I actually hate Joe Biden.
But I don't want to feel that way, but I do.
I do because he's wrecking my country.
My kids live here.
But if someone said to me four years ago, you're not allowed to support Joe Biden.
I said, that's a bad thing.
You should be allowed to support any candidate you want.
This is a free society.
It's a free country.
It's a free country, a phrase that was common in my youth and now extinct.
But it is still a free country.
It must remain a free country.
And in order for that to happen, you have to have the right as the average person to support anyone you want.
And I do think you now have the right to support Trump.