Tucker’s Brother Buckley Carlson on Dogs, Childhood, Nicotine, Frank Luntz and America’s Future
Twitter phenomenon Buckley Carlson makes his on-camera debut.
Find Buckley Carlson on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buckleycarlson?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Find Buckley Carlson on X: https://x.com/buckleycarlson
Paid partnerships with:
Black Rifle Coffee: Promo code "Tucker" for 30% off at https://www.blackriflecoffee.com
Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% off your entire order with code TUCKER at https://cowboycolostrum.com
Last Country Supply: Real prep starts with the basics. Here’s what we keep stocked: https://lastcountrysupply.com
#TuckerCarlson #brothers #nicotine #dogs #America #TSA #childhood #Twitter #CIA #alcoholfree #humiliation #siblings #news #politics #podcast
Chapters:
0:00 Buckley Carlson's Rise to Internet Stardom
9:39 The Number One Way to Fight Tyranny
10:56 Buckley's War With the School Administrators
20:10 Buckley's Love for Dogs
22:50 The Carlsons' Childhood
28:25 The Death of Creativity
30:55 Buckley's Love of ALP
44:27 Why Dogs Are So Important
52:39 Buckley's Hilarious Encounter With Park Police
1:02:21 What Happened to America's Men?
1:08:50 The CIA's Involvement in People's Everyday Lives
1:15:14 Are There Demons Among Us?
1:21:24 Why Buckley Quit Alcohol
1:28:37 Buckley Falling Asleep While Flying a Plane
1:32:44 The Decline in Quality of America's Politicians
1:37:23 Buckley's Career With Frank Luntz
1:57:22 The Disdain for WASPs
2:07:20 How Does Buckley Feel About Being Suddenly Thrust Into the Public Eye?
So you're on, I didn't even know you were on Twitter.
And then the ghouls decided to, you know, destroy my son, who's got the same name as you, because in our family, there are only like four names and everyone's required to use one.
And I think they mistook your Twitter feed for his.
I don't even know if he has a Twitter feed.
And all of a sudden you became really famous.
And a couple of your nieces called me, Uncle Buck's on Twitter.
And actually, recently, since they've instituted the Real ID and they have you stand and take your picture, I know they have your picture everywhere else and they have your biometrics.
I took a principal stand a few times and said, oh, no, I don't think I want a picture.
Well, every time that's happened, they managed to discover that I have a duplicate ticket or no TSA badge and I have to go back to the front of the line.
Although I figure once you've surrendered and you can't do anything in American life without surrendering to some extent, even emailing or texting, you know that other people have it.
So at some point, you should just adopt an attitude.
After we won World War II and we got to luxuriate in our freedoms and all the economic prosperity that has led us to be freer and able to speak our mind.
No, no, it's actually tragic.
And if you have young children, as you do, I guess they're no longer young.
But you really see it with the way our children have grown up and the restrictions they've had on thought and speech, especially.
I mean, we grew up at a time, as you know, where I don't think anybody's ever heard this question before in a, in a school setting.
One, ask any question you want.
In fact, you're encouraged to ask a question.
I was always taught, ask any question.
You'll never get in trouble.
And then that silly little diddy, you know, sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
That was real.
And none of our children were taught that.
No American child goes through life thinking that they can deviate from the script, that they can offer some opinion that's counter to the authorities that are in front of them.
I think actually that slogan, which if you're under 50, you may not be familiar with, but it was a staple of, well, England, by the way, and then the United States, it's child.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
It's actually been inverted where we've endorsed sticks and stones.
And I'm fortunate because I've grown up in an atmosphere where actually I was encouraged to say what I believe.
I don't have a lot of governors in my life, especially now that my child is old enough not to be embarrassed by me daily.
I don't have to fight with his various academic institutions that charged me a lot of money and tried to wipe out the boy and wipe out the creativity from my son.
And that was a, you know, 12, 14-year battle that I had to fight.
And also, I, so I don't really care.
There are very few people whose opinion matters to me.
In the end of the day, I have a constituency basically of one, and that's the woman I love and live with, and my son, and then the slightly expanding circle of you and other family members.
Beyond that, and every one of those people is perfectly apprised of my deep flaws and my history.
And as one of my children said to me, well, in fact, all of my many children said to me, and my nephews, when you made your public immersions on Twitter, the legend of Uncle Buck is now out there for the public to appreciate.
I mean, truth changes everything, and you may not live to see it come to fruition, but it still is the most profound thing you can do to fight tyranny is to tell the truth about tyranny.
And I think, and there's a huge amount of people in this country and across the world who do.
And it seems like they, aside from podcasts like yours, and they're very few, there are few opportunities for people to express themselves honestly, unfiltered.
Well, 2026 is likely to be the year that some companies will find patriotism.
They'll discover it.
During the Biden years, corporate America thought hating our country was the thing to do, so they did it.
Now that we're in a new era, they are coming back to reality.
It's not real, though.
It's a trick.
They don't mean it at all.
Black Rifle means it, and they've been doing it since day one.
They're not just discovering patriotism.
They were founded on the premise.
As this country celebrates 250 years of existence, Black Rifle is brewing bold American roasted beans built for people who believe in the values that made America great.
So kick off 2026 with roasts made for patriots, not spectators.
And for the new year, Black Rifle is launching cold brew coffee cans in just black and vanilla.
Well, my wife convinced me to send yours to the school that our kids went to.
And of course, it turned out to be a sub-awesome school, very liberal, crazy school.
But, you know, it was our neighborhood school, whatever.
We did it.
Let's not regret it.
But you were the only person in this rich person's school that we sent our kids to to confront, you know, with politeness but firmness, the administration of the school about what they were telling your child, which was like totally bonkers.
Like men can become women and hate yourself if you're white and all this stuff.
And boys are bad.
Testosterone's bad.
Masculinity is bad.
And everyone else was like, okay, well, it's a prestigious school.
We'll just go along with it.
And you were like, I know.
And I remember all the moms kind of hated you, but were also sort of attracted to you, just to be honest, about it.
And they were like, oh, I can't believe your brother's always making a fuss.
It seemed it's the only thing that could be important.
It's the only enduring thing.
When people asked me when I was a kid, probably because we had such a happy, thoroughly fucked up childhood, but really happy thanks to our father, who was so extraordinary in every way and made it very clear that we were the number one priority in his life.
I mean, and he was like the busiest guy I've ever known, involved in so many things.
And yet we were, without a doubt, his only focus and his primary focus.
I think the first thing I encountered when I took him to that school that pretended to be a nice Episcopalian school with its own chapel, I noticed, they were anything but Christian in their attitudes.
And it was the middle of the Obama administration when everybody got super empowered about indoctrinating children on a level that I don't think I'd ever seen.
And you pay all this money because there's really no chance that you would send your children to a public school in Washington.
I thought, didn't there's actually an argument probably for sending your children to something other than what we sent ours to.
Anyway, I remember showing up.
It was right after the election, and I'm not a big bumper sticker guy, but I had a bumper sticker, probably the only other, only bumper stick I've ever owned.
And it was a series of four memes.
And it was pro-God, pro-life, pro-gun.
And then it had the Obama Horizon with a cross through with a slash through it.
And that was in the back of my Chevy Tahoe when I pulled up and dropped my son off at school.
And the visceral reaction from the entire teacher platoon that was outside was obvious.
And so actually, I made a commitment right then and there.
Again, I was kind of embarrassed to have a bumper sticker in my car.
Like, who does that?
But I kept it on there religiously for the next like eight years until the car died.
Until one of our friends actually took that car that I had tried to flip and destroy many times and unsuccessfully was unsuccessful and he flipped it and broke his neck.
So it's like, of course, we supported you, but I just, but I was not as brave as you, not even close.
And I felt exposed because I had a public job.
Like, I didn't want to get, you know, whatever.
I felt a little bit constrained, but you're just, you're braver than I. That's just a fact.
And, but the reaction from the other parents, all of whom liked you, because everyone likes you, but they were, they didn't want you, even the ones who agreed with you, to keep saying stuff like this because I think they wanted to ignore it.
They wanted to fit in more than they cared about their own children's moral and intellectual development.
There are people who have aberrant children that they're, I believe, are not responsible for.
But I think the majority of the weird child behavior stems from shitty parents or parents who were occupied with other people's problems rather than their children's problems.
And the product is designed to work with your body, not against your body.
It is a pure and simple product, all natural.
Unlike other brands, Cowboy Colostrum is never diluted.
It always comes directly from American grass-fed cows.
There's no filler.
There's no junk.
It's all good.
It tastes good, believe it or not.
So before you reach for more pills for every problem that pills can't solve, we recommend you give this product, Cowboy Colostrum, a try.
It's got everything your body needs to heal and thrive.
It's like the original superfood loaded with nutrients, antibodies, proteins, help build a strong immune system, stronger hair, skin, and nails.
I threw my wig away and right back to my natural hair after using this product.
You just take a scoop of it every morning in your beverage, coffee or a smoothie, and you will feel the difference every time.
For a limited time, people listen to our show get 25% off the entire order.
So go to cowboycolostrum.com, use the code Tucker at checkout, 25% off when you use that code, tucker at cowboycolostrum.com.
Remember, you mentioned you heard it here first.
So I should just say for the record that you were scoffed at for having the pro-life, pro-God, pro-gun, anti-Obama bumper sticker at a Christian school.
At a Christian school, right?
No pro-God, no pro-life at a Christian school.
But then you decided to take your Defiance another click up the ladder by driving your son to school on a big Twin Harley in Carpool Line, which I personally saw.
He was like a little kid and there'd be all these Range Rovers involved.
You look be like, there's Uncle Buck with the A-Pangers.
That's just such a wonderful, it's funny that that's triggering to people.
Whatever it was, you were triggering people.
And I felt like it was such an act of bravery because it's one thing to like, you know, stand up at the Congress and say something unpopular or even like go into battle, but to stand apart from your neighbors at the $50,000 a year Episcopal school in Northwest Washington where there's just so much conformity.
And you've used the word creativity a couple of times.
It felt to me looking back, I never have thought about it until recently as I see the decline in creativity and the awards given to people who are totally non-creative, which is almost everyone in our professional class, like zero creativity.
And the creative people are penalized.
And that's made me think that maybe the saddest change is the disappearance of creativity and the abundance of it in our childhood.
I think they're expecting the Bangladeshi guy in the convenience store to tell you to hand you the KY and the surgical glove and just be like, I think you know how this works.
It's like when they have those little crack pipes at the counter with the flower in them and like, no, it's not a crack pipe.
I think they're a whistle.
So I think they're expecting like, if you're using Zen, you know how this works.
So I actually feel like a bit of an amateur asking this, but I talk to people and all of a sudden I feel like my Biden, my upper palate is like coming out.
Your Biden is my Biden, you know, like the fake teeth I have up here.
Well, it wasn't that long ago that many Americans thought they were inherently safe from the kinds of disasters you hear about all the time in third world countries, a total power loss, for example, or people freezing to death in their own homes.
That could never happen here.
Obviously, it's America.
People are recalculating, unfortunately, because they have no choice.
The last few years have taught us that.
Remember when the power grid in Texas failed in the dead of winter?
Yeah, it happened and it could happen again.
So the government is not actually as reliable as you hope they would be.
And the truth is the future is unforeseeable and things do seem to be getting a little squirrely.
So if the grid does go down, you need power you can trust.
Last Country Supply's newest product is designed for exactly that.
The Grid Doctor is a 3,300 watt battery backup system that will power full-size appliances, medical devices, and tools with clean, reliable power.
It's even EMP protected.
That means it's shielded from lightning, solar flares, or an actual electromagnetic pulse event.
There's no gasoline, no noise, no emissions.
You just plug it in, charge it from the wall, from your vehicle, or from the included 200-watt solar panel and keep going day after day, taking care of yourself and the people you love is solely up to you.
And the amazing thing is with these new batteries, we use one at home, by the way, is they're super easy to use.
There's no inverter you need to figure out on the front of it or anything like that.
There's like three buttons.
It's very easy and totally reliable.
Highly recommended we literally use one, as I said.
The closest I ever got to asking Pop about it was he obviously married like a complete lunatic and he was such a smart person and he really understood women and loved women and really paid close attention to women.
Encouraged to do mescal or any other stuff, but you're the greatest pariah in America.
You probably encourage well, you are encouraged to like, have touchy-feely love with the people in your gender, but if you're a cigarette smoker, you're the literally the dirtiest pariah in in America.
Actually, that attitude is is overwhelming now, but it was still around 12 years ago when I quit smoking and if it hadn't been, I would have quit smoking probably 15 years ago.
I most certainly did, maybe not on someone's cheek, but on their wrist.
I held their hand because he was holding my hand.
I remember it was like my second job and he was a guy who had a married guy Christian self-avowed, loudly Christian, and he had cute kids and a nice wife.
Yeah, at a company picnic, like the first week I was on the job, and I said, please remove your hand from my knee, and he didn't.
So I grabbed his hand, grabbed his wrist and put my cigarette out on his hand.
It was a saturday afternoon and I had had some cocktails, but I also felt completely justified in doing that.
I did it and he pulled his hand away.
And I remember sorry to go down this rabbit hole, but I uh, the next I thought about it soberly on sunday and monday morning as I was going into the office and that there could be real repercussions for doing this.
He was like the chief of staff of the organization it was a political organization and he wielded a lot of power and I went in.
I remember I was doing some copying some document and I was standing in the break room next to the xerox machine and he came up to me and he said, can't believe you put a cigarette out of my hand.
I said I can't believe you touched me and you wouldn't let go.
That was it, and we had like a staring contest and then he, like you know, his lip curled and he looked down and walked out.
But I can't imagine you as an individual don't suffer.
And now that I'm 54 and I'm old enough to actually witness people who've lived their lives this way, and I mean self-focused all the time, not one of them is healthy physically, mentally.
It's stifling, it kills something in someone.
It's like, it's like, I'm not to attack people who aren't able to have children, but people who've chosen, men who've chosen not to have children.
They reach a certain age and they are intractable in ways that are damaging to them and those around them.
She was not a man, but she had that same problem.
And I think, I think she like was drowning and like me.
But the last thing you want to do is convey that to your children.
So, I mean, that's a good way to fuck up your children.
So having dogs around and instills in them, they have their first, my first loving relationships were with my very small family, of which you're half, and dogs.
And people, I mean, have written endlessly and talked endlessly about how wonderful dogs are, but I don't think they talk enough about how wise dogs are and how dogs are clued into like a communications channel that most people are not picking up.
My dogs know what I'm going to do long before I do it.
They know exactly my intentions.
It's weird.
If I'm working in my office and I've got four dog beds in my office underneath the bed, underneath the desk, and if I get up to go.
So where does the fifth dog go?
Three of them are shamefully small.
So two of them, two of them, anybody else's brood, I'd say those are pseudo dogs.
But actually, one of my small dogs is an incredible, relentless, actually, you know, her.
She will hit you right in center mass every time she sees you.
I have more scars from that dog on my face.
In fact, in the morning when I wake up, I now have started putting lightning collars on three of the five before I even let them into the backyard, which is actually kind of impressive because it's dark.
I've had no coffee.
I'm usually naked.
And I'm affixing lightning collars to three dogs, one of whom continually bounces up and slams me in the face with her snout.
Well, actually, even today, I was telling because it's Christmas, so everyone's at the house, a lot of people are at the house, your relatives are at the house.
And Uncle Buck's coming.
Oh, is he bringing?
And because I've never seen you travel, I don't think a single time ever in life without a dog, at least one dog.
My dogs have actually a very better understanding of the English language than I think most people I deal with outside of this room.
They're so much smarter than people give them credit for and wise and kind.
And of course, it does remind me of the great little joke: lock your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car, come back after three days and see who's grateful.
The answer to that is always not your wife.
So they're forgiving.
They are actually the essence of purity, I think.
Even though they're capable, they're not capable of artifice.
A dog will never pretend to be happy when it's not.
And they have no sense of vanity.
They're perfectly willing to display their immediate and current emotion at all times.
I'm not about to render an opinion about which is best, but can I just say not to make this into a cultural thing, but and I know that there are other, I'm sure that there are other cultures that feel the same way.
I don't know what they might be, but the culture that we grew up in, which was a culture, was, I mean, none of these were even questioned, like dogs and other things, politeness, bravery, loyalty, but dogs were in that lit, like those that were questioned.
I have many pictures of that dog on my phone because I, not my dog, but I did, I felt real love for that dog.
And my favorite picture of that dog was called Bella was in the dog park in the Rich Lady Dog Park directly across the street from our house in Washington that we both used every day.
And there are always a million ladies in the park.
You know, they're all nice.
I don't, I'm not, I don't mean attack anybody, but they're all a little bit uptight.
This is in a city rife with all sorts of other crime.
So every time, I know it's not this story, but every time I was accosted by someone and the next door, that silly next door online thing, pre-COVID, in a city that has overwhelming physical and property crimes, the number, the most prevalent complaint on that listserv.
Oh, I saw someone walking without a leash and this is a terrible thing.
And literally, that would garner the most commentary from any next door post.
I was walking through a beautiful meadow at about 10.30 in the morning, absolutely deserted.
And I had four dogs with me.
And we got all the way to the end of the meadow and I heard someone say, hey, hey, someone clearly yelling, not in, not like they needed help, but like they were trying to get my attention.
I'm sorry.
I don't respond to that.
And so I turned and I saw it was on a slope, this meadow, and I could see these blue helmets coming up the meadow.
So they got, they finally got up to me and it was a very authoritative, squat, muscular woman who was the authority figure and then two men, men, and who were embarrassed.
And I made them further embarrassed because I said, first of all, don't speak to me like that.
Don't ever speak to me like that.
Don't threaten my child.
And she didn't like that, but she backed down a little bit.
So agitated by the time I got, even by the time I got back to my car, which is like 15 or 20 minutes later, I opened up the top of the clam chowder and promptly launched it into the air where it came and landed on my dashboard directly in the air conditioning unit.
In fact, that Chevy Tahoe smelled like clam chowder for literally the next three years.
But I was, I don't normally hold on to anger for very long.
I've got like a reasonably quick wick and I can get pretty hot, but it dissipates fast.
This didn't.
I was still mad 20, 25 minutes later.
And I drove, I think I pushed my meeting back.
I had to drive downtown.
I think I texted them.
I was like, I had a bit of an emergency.
I'm going to be a half an hour late.
And I drove around the entire perimeter, at least that western perimeter of that park looking for the telltale sign of the horse carriage because I actually really did want to record their names and make a formal complaint, not that it would have gone anywhere, but or write a piece about it.
So everyone, I should say for the fifth time in our tiny little, very cohesive neighborhood where we spent most of our lives and know every single person, almost everybody disapproved of this kind of behavior from you because it was disruptive and like it wasn't, you weren't getting in line with everybody.
I never, of course, felt that way because we grew up together with the same attitudes.
But now I think that if like eight more people in our neighborhood and 800,000 more people in our country had taken that attitude, we'd be in much better shape than we are now.
And, but I think there people are waiting to be galvanized by someone who's willing to say, I'm not saying I'm that person, but they need someone to rally around.
Someone, Trump was obviously that guy.
That's obviously part of Trump's appeal, that he was that, you know, hey, fuck you.
This is what I believe and I'm not going to back down kind of guy.
And I think our country used to be full of people like that.
Yes, it did.
And they were real heroes in this country.
This country didn't have an easy time of it for the first couple hundred years.
And the only people who exercised real power and authority were men who were courageous and willing to speak their mind and willing to follow through also and kind to other people.
But whatever, leadership qualities that you just don't see in America that often.
But I guess my question is, did you know until relatively recently what a huge role Intel agencies, foreign and domestic, played in the life of our country, not just the political life, but the civic life, the cultural life?
And it reminds me of what you said a little earlier in this conversation about not being aware of what's going on around you because you're steeped in it, of course.
And I worked for some, I worked for a corporate intelligence firm that was founded by all former spooks.
And also one of them died like the best death ever.
Had grandchildren.
His children were married.
Walked out of his on K-Street, walked out of his accountant's office, having received good news and had a massive heart, like life-ending heart attack right there on K-Street.
Sorry, I think it's also important to mention my attitude has changed like so many because of COVID.
But even a little bit before that, I just had taken it on faith that we had a good government that was well-meaning, that makes mistakes, but that was answerable to the people.
I actually always thought that growing up.
I generally didn't think what I heard from the government was a lie.
I didn't think it was a manipulative lie.
I remember, I mean, the most important thing that went on in our lives as we were growing up, the most important enduring conflict was the Iron Curtain and communism.
And I remember talking with you and others all the time about those poor people who live in the Soviet Union who have no access to real news.
They have TAS and they have Zvestia.
What was the other thing?
Zestia.
Zavestia, Pravda.
And they don't have the freedom to go to church.
And they obviously their economy sucks because it's managed by a government and that never works.
But really, they didn't have access to accurate information.
And further, they had been taught as a society terrible things about America and Americans.
And specifically, we used to also talk after the Iron Curtain came down, had the same attitude about North Korea.
Like, here are these poor, emaciated captives who can't leave their own country, who don't, who think these terrible and untrue things about Americans.
And it was only a couple of years ago that I suddenly realized I had this epiphany.
We're fucking North Korea.
We are North Koreans.
And so much of what the government has told us throughout our lives about big events and small events are simply not true.
Not just massaged, but like 180 degrees from truth and reality.
Once you have that realization, it's very unsettling and dispiriting, I think, and scary.
And obviously the election of 2020 brought it into focus, all of the suppression of Twitter and the New York Post piece from Miranda Devine on Hunter Biden and all the false news about masks and the vax and everything else.
I mean, the list is endless and could go on and on.
But no, to answer your question, I was not aware of it.
I didn't pay attention to it.
I didn't suspect it.
And I really had no reason to suspect it, actually, because life was different even a decade ago in America and certainly in Washington.
And now they've just, it seems a certain air of desperation or something that they're clamping down to such an aggressive degree, even with Trump in the White House, which I wish someone would explain to me.
I have my theories.
But anyway, and the fact that they used to be good liars, this is the thing I find the scariest is they used to tell compelling, thought out, well-fashioned, plausible lies.
And they no longer do that.
Now it's just, hey, this is it.
And you either accept it or shut the fuck up and we'll put you in prison or we'll take all your liberties away.
And I do think it's akin to finding, you know, the great debate.
Are you going to look under the bed or are you going to jump across the room and leave the door?
It's like, once you look under the bed, you might actually find the monster.
And now it's clear that our government is the monster and the intelligence agencies are the monster.
And once you've seen it, you can't really not unsee it.
That has been, I try to talk about it too much because it's obviously way too personal, but the realization about the intel agencies has been one of the really big things for me.
I just, I can hardly even believe it.
I can hardly believe it.
I know that sounds stupid, but it grows out of a totally different understanding of the U.S. government.
And the problem with the U.S. government was there, you know, were a lot of lazy people with guaranteed jobs and like big bureaucracies don't function very well.
They're just, they just don't work.
But the spirit that animates them, which is the spirit to protect and improve the country, is kind of unquestioned.
So I, boy, have I had the same experience, I guess, my whole life, but I didn't recognize it for what it was until pretty recently.
And I certainly would never, you know, as a wasp, I would never mention it because you're not like, that's one thing you're not supposed to talk about, your spiritual views, period.
I remember exactly where I was when I first had this conversation, and it was with you, and it was in the state of Maine, which is obviously wonderful, but also something about the state of Maine is very close to whatever's going on around us that we can't see.
It's happening in Maine a lot more than anywhere else.
It's such a departure from the I won't mention the name of the church because I know family members of ours still go there, but I was baptized there and it was just too it was beautiful architecturally.
And that's about what it had to recommend it.
Yeah.
The pews had a nice patina from, you know, hundreds of years ago.
We both, I mean, I, so yes, no, I didn't think about it enough.
I always had a reflexive faith.
I always knew God existed.
I never questioned, but I didn't know a lot about, I still don't necessarily know a lot about the history of religion or the intricacies of certain scripture.
I'm not criticizing it no no no, I didn't think you were, I just actually i've had heard some fascinating stories at those AA meetings.
It's been years since i've been to one, but I did have some concerned friends who'd gone through this journey themselves and who pulled me in and I was receptive to listening um, not necessarily receptive to stopping, but receptive to learning more and um, and I was flirting with it.
Flirting with stopping, because you take those tests that they have and like, answer 10 of these questions and if you answer even three of them, then you've got a drinking problem.
And it was always like i've answered yes on all 10 and I could probably give you six more questions to ask.
Um so, and i'd been, i'd had a few run-ins with the, with authorities, quite a few actually.
It had affected my life.
Anybody asks you, oh, do you think alcohol is affecting your life?
Oh gosh, I don't know.
Let me contemplate that.
Oh so, and i'd also reach.
But principally, what happened was my son was born, and that was a tough pregnancy, an early birth and um, the moment I saw that child be born, i'd had a lot of preparation from you, because you'd already had a couple of children, and from others.
But I, and it was an aspiration for me for the entirety of my life to be a father.
But the moment I saw that child be born and they're purple and unattractive my son urinated all over the doctors.
It was great, so very proud of him.
But I remember unbidden speaking of unbidden thoughts and emotions.
The first thing that I thought when that child was born was, i'd kill for this child yes, and I would do it with relish, like if someone ever, someone ever threatened this child, I would.
I had my last cocktail 23 years ago in march, coming up incredible, and talked about it and thought about it and had concerned people discuss it with me um, and had dialed back.
But then had really an amazing and epic weekend with my son's godfather, a great friend of both of ours, who came in from New Orleans the, and had like three-day bachnalia in in Georgetown and got like physically ill and so did my wife and she had a full-on divine intervention where God like spoke to her out loud and said enough and and she,
that was it removed it from her.
Completely incredible, completely.
And then I was sympathetic on board with it because not only was I trying to convince myself that I should lay off it for a while, I was trying to convince her And, like most, she was resistant.
And so that day I made the commitment, you know, I'm going to join her.
But then one of my great friends was having a bachelor party like in two days.
So I said, okay, well, let's just get through this weekend and then I'm committed.
Physical revulsion, where I could, to this day, 22 and a half years later, summon the taste of a great goose martini or summon the taste of like a three-inch glass of Maker's mark.
And I could make myself vomit in like 15 seconds.
And also for that first year, no one ever talks about this.
At least I've never heard any talk with this, that for that first year, I couldn't sleep, sweating constantly, had horrible nightmares every night.
And the enduring nightmare that I still have occasionally, I would say once a month, I'll be somewhere socially in my dream and I'll be talking to someone and I'll just reach and have a cocktail.
And I'll, as soon as it hits my mouth, like start sobbing in my dream and wake up really agitated and really upset with myself.
But anyway, God removed the desire completely from me.
And I've had a much better life since.
And I've never run.
Interestingly, I've never run.
I could give you hours of stories about stupid and dangerous and destructive things I did as a drunk person, but I never have hooked up with an old friend that I haven't seen in like two decades, have a meal and they like order a drink.
And oh, do you want to drink?
And I'll say, no, actually, I quit drinking.
I've never had someone say, what the fuck did you do that for?
And so we developed this great strategy where we'd go out, we'd like drink all day on the beach and then go out to a wildly hedonistic meal.
And then we'd get back to my apartment at like two in the morning.
And then he would stay up smoking and reading so he could make sure that I got up at 4:30 to go make it to the flight line.
I was in flight school at the time.
And so I did that for two weeks.
He subsequently got food alcohol poisoning.
I think I did too.
But I was just exhausted.
And, but I love flying.
And it was actually the only academic experience I've ever had that I was really passionate about.
I love flying and I was in a great flight school.
I took it seriously, not too seriously, not seriously enough to quit drinking, but over to sleep.
But yeah, I showed up at dawn, flew, you know, places prone to massive fog banks everywhere.
It's flat.
It's actually in this state on the Atlantic Ocean.
And the flight school itself shares an international airport with like six carriers, big carriers.
So it's got like a 10,500-foot runway.
It's got north and south and east and west.
It's got a lot of traffic.
And so I was wary and feeling, you know, tired or exhausted.
But it wasn't until I took off that I thought, this is bad.
Like this is dangerous.
Like I really can't focus and I'm falling asleep.
And so I went about 10 miles north and came back because I didn't want it to be super suspicious, just take off.
You have to basically declare an emergency to get back in the pattern in an international airport like that.
So I went north for like 10, 12 miles and then called approach and said I was coming back.
I'm going to have to identify why.
And it was in the approach with like 737s flying around and other, it was a very high trafficked airport.
And I was on like a five mile downwind or crosswind, trying to think, whatever.
I was on a long approach to this airport and communicating with the tower on the radio and I would fall asleep in between communication, you know, Sasana November, 678 Echo.
Are you there?
Sassina November, 678 Echo.
Here.
Oh, yeah.
It was, and I said a lot of prayers.
And as I said, I smoked some cigarettes in that plane and I pinched myself.
And I landed safely, excellent landing and got to the flight line and turned the engine off and promptly took a nap in the plane for like an hour.
It was bad.
And then I got, I hopped, I had a motorcycle at that time too.
And I hopped on my motorcycle and I went home and I was like, you got to go back to your real life, man.
So then you wind up, you're a blackjack dealer on a riverboat in Mississippi.
You work for a couple different political candidates, a presidential campaign, and all nice guys.
I don't, you know, I say one thing.
Like, if you name, I'm not going to name them, but you can if you want, but like people you thought were impressive 30 years ago in politics, they're also discredited now.
Like 16 Republicans, even then, but they could still raise some money and they could make some noise because there were no other Republicans.
And actually, it was great for me because I was the communications director, which really means I was writing nasty press releases and trying to generate lots of news.
And, you know, it's a fully corrupt state.
And so there's a lot to talk about.
And no one's looking over your shoulder because it's Maryland.
And he was going to be like the face of Republican success.
And he had a failed Senate campaign, whatever.
10, 12 years go by.
And in a much different iteration in my life, I was writing still, but like doing more interesting and more lucrative things than the Maryland Republican Party.
And an old friend of mine named Lance Copsey, who's no longer around.
I don't know if you remember him.
He's a great guy.
He's been gone like 15 years.
He called me and said, Hey, I'm running Michael Steele's campaign for the RNC.
Will you write some speeches for him?
And I was like, Hell yeah, I'd love to do that.
I got paid to do it.
And I also believed in Michael Steele.
And so I wrote Michael Steele's acceptance speech.
And when he became the RNC chair, not a huge deal, but like kind of fun.
And then he immediately like became reverted to type, and by which I mean corrupt politician and immediately blew like $800,000 on, you know, redecorating his personal office.
And no one took it more seriously than Frank Luntz.
So Frank Luntz aspired not only to hang out with famous people, like in really close proximity, but to be on TV.
And he's very articulate and he's very aggressive.
Like people say, people occasionally say, oh, that guy's shameless.
No, no, no.
You've never seen shameless until you've met Frank Luntz because he literally has no shame gene.
Like there's nothing you could do to Frank Luntz in public to shame him.
He's unshamable.
But then again, part of the dichotomy is like also super socially awkward and socially aspirin.
Like he wants to hang around people, but he's autistic in his eruptions, which are usually pretty funny.
So he's very verbal.
He's energetic.
He's got limitless aspiration to make dough and be on TV.
And he recognizes actually that's a pretty common thing in corporate America and on the Hill.
So he's very close with Newt Gimrich in 94, and he got a lot of credit for coming up with the contract with America.
I think he was maybe a little bit, he was definitely very much involved.
I don't think it was his entire baby.
I think it was more Newts and the people around Newt.
But whatever, Frank weaseled in there, got a lot of credit for being part of the contract with America.
And then, of course, the Republicans come in and they're in power for the first time in my lifetime.
And first time in like, I don't know, 32 years or something, maybe 36 years.
The first, I can't remember, the 94 election when Republicans got back into the House.
It was the first time in three decades at least.
And so Frank was there and his business model was, I will come up with language and words and speeches for members on the Republican caucus.
I'll do it for free.
Then I'll promote those messages in corporate world and make a ton of money with people who also want to be on television, corporate heads, excuse me, Fortune 500, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 companies.
And I'll go pitch them on some research product project that will allow them to understand their customers better.
And I'll incorporate the language that I'm devising and using for the benefit of Republicans.
So he ingratiated himself with Republicans at the same time.
He's ingratiating himself with corporate America all around this old antiquated, now defunct medium cable news.
And it was brilliant.
So he made it, and he had no overhead because his entire business model relied upon getting people, even though he was incredibly label conscious, like he went to UPenn.
He went to Oxford.
He had an honorific doctorate that he insisted people call him doctor.
Yeah, humiliate the executive, generally in front of his underlings or a sub, like not a CEO, but like the guys who are angling for the CEO spot, the various vice presidents and stuff who are sycophantic towards the CEO.
He would gather all the all the executives in one room, either a conference room or sometimes bigger, like a like an auditorium inside a Coca-Cola's headquarters or Dow's headquarters.
And he would go and he would give a presentation.
And like five minutes into the presentation, he would identify one of the sub-executives by name.
And he would do everything he could to humiliate that person in front of all of his peers and his boss.
So this is a guy who actually understands the worst part of human nature because that does actually excite the sadist in certain people.
Right.
And so who gravitates to those jobs except people who, a lot of them, not all of them, but some of them have that gene, like, oh, public humiliation?
Love to publicly humiliate you.
And every single person, like if you could see the, if you could see the thought bubble above everybody's head, they're all saying, holy fuck.
I'm so glad that's not me.
Right.
So everybody, so at the end of it is like, well, how would he humiliate when he finds, oh, the most personal stuff, their clothing, the asymmetry of their face, you know, big earlobes.
No, no.
I mean, like, I know he was predatory, relentless, ruthless, and entertaining as hell.
Like he's really facile with the English language.
He's like fast.
He's super fast.
I'll give him that.
He's and very articulate.
And man, he would go after them.
And so at the end, he'd like softened up the entire.
And that's actually something I think about often, actually.
I bought into the whole line.
It's like, you're telling me before, did you know that the intelligence agencies played such an aggressive role in American life and elections?
No, I didn't.
I also really didn't know.
It turns out I should have listened to a lot of the blue-haired, vagina hat-wearing crazy women because a lot of the shit they said about the Iraq war, obviously true, about Bush administration, obviously true, only in hindsight for me at least.
So I grew up thinking that, and it dovetailed well with my job because I ended up, I mean, they're not all evil, of course.
And a lot of them employ tons of people and do good things.
And we couldn't survive without them.
So I'm not attacking all of them.
Gladly attacked the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma, though, because that not only, you know more about this topic than most, but you know it also dovetailed with an entire societal effort that they had, which I was very much a part of, to convince Americans that there is no such thing as acceptable pain.
You cannot be in pain.
You shouldn't be in pain.
Someone needs to be responsible for your pain and you need to eradicate your pain.
That was what they were talking about in 2000, in 1999, 2001, 2 and 3.
They engaged in a society-wide campaign to convince Americans that pain was unacceptable, not just for chronic cancer sufferers or people who'd been injured in war or people who'd had back injury 20 years ago.
You should not be feeling in pain ever at all.
And there's a solution for that.
And they obviously had the solution.
Further, they're the ones, as you know, who maybe didn't pioneer it, but they took it to the next level attacking the people that they'd hooked on OxyContin when they said, and I said, engaged in a ton of research projects and jury messaging with that company where we'd go in and test messages and arguments,
but really sort of like a push-pull designed to not just gauge public opinion, but to very much influence public opinion.
And then, of course, because of his business model, he would use those messages and it would be incorporated in thought leaders and elected officials around the country.
They would use that same language.
And that was in its essence, you're not responsible for your pain.
You shouldn't have pain.
But further, this is a non-addict.
This is not an addictive product.
And if you are addicted to it, it's because you've been abusing it.
It's because you have some latent, some long dormant, addictive thing within you that's now been released.
And you also probably have been abusing the product.
Like, have you been hitting it with a hammer and smashing it into dust and snorting it?
And I never, you're thinking about it much more broadly than I ever have.
So I have always been focused on the addict, you know, the physical addiction, the societal destruction.
You know, you and I both spend a lot of the year in a place that's been really, really hollowed out.
Hollowed out by it.
And we know people, a very good friend of ours is now in prison because of drug addiction.
So anyway, whatever.
We have seen it, both of us, but I have never really thought about what you just said, which is they were making a broader pitch about pain and how pain is always bad.
And I think if you, any, any man, especially in middle-aged, looking back, has to recognize that the painful moments are the best, some of the best moments, the most, the most important moments.
It was actually, well, the business model was amazing in terms of, it was very profitable.
It was effective.
He came up with some effective language.
So it's a quasi, it's a dual track research thing where you do quantitative research, you know, actual polling, calling, polling is long before online polling, and then qualitative research with people in a group, a focus group.
But he expanded it to like six times the normal size.
So your normal focus group has like eight to 10 or 12 people in it.
And obviously it depends who you recruit to be in that focus group.
But then he expanded that to like 60 people.
And then he had an electronic dial, which was actually a dial, but he called it dial testing, where you could gauge individual words and sentences in real time.
So every single person in the audience is reacting to a speech, a speech which is littered with messages that you're testing, and they could react in real time to each word and phrase.
And I think a lot of the language that he came up with was great.
But because of his total inability, because of his manic behavior and his dishonesty and his penchant for yelling and screaming and treating people horribly, didn't actually treat me horribly.
He lied to me a number of times and I got into some big arguments with him.
And I was too young and unwise to understand you're not supposed to confront your boss and the way you would confront anybody else.
I was more respectful to the park rangers, probably.
The two men I felt bad for.
But anyway, no, but sorry, I was trying to compliment him, which is all he cared about was the product, which was the written word.
And he never gave you enough time.
There was no schedule.
He was deluged with clients, with high-paying clients, and he was disorganized.
And so he would rely upon, there was a period where we were handling like 12 huge clients and it was like three writers or two writers and client hand holders, you know, interfacing with the client because Frank wasn't good at that.
He was very good at humiliating them and coming and coming to the crux, understanding human nature to the extent that he could get someone to say, yes, I'm going to pay you a ridiculous amount of money for a research project that will take six weeks and then allow me to understand my customer better.
That he was great at.
He was not great at allocating.
He was not great at planning.
And so the end result was a total, beautiful meritocracy.
Like you could only survive in that situation unless you produced.
And it was like, campaigns are like that too.
I'm sure you know.
Of course.
It's like, it doesn't matter where you came from.
Doesn't matter what you did yesterday or tomorrow.
It matters that you fucking produce now on time.
You can't, it's like in that old medium cable news.
So you didn't have an opportunity to be like, I'm not done with my script.
It's seven o'clock and you're going on the air regardless.
It was the greatest part about it because of that job, because you just had no room for failure.
And every day was an opportunity to prove that you were up to the challenge.
And then further, silly cliche, but true, that, you know, oh, he's got an inch wide mile long knowledge.
I feel like that a little bit because I was compelled, as were the other guys I worked with, to absorb the details of something that's very complex, a particular business that I had never been involved in, or a policy or some capability of a future product or, you know, something, initiative.
And you had to be able to speak about it, write about it articulately and compellingly on no notice at all.
I wrote him a letter actually like six years ago and just contemplative letter saying, despite all of our differences, despite the various tensions we've had, despite the fact you fired me three times and then hired me back the next day and paid me more money, still not fairly, but despite all of those things, I thank you because it was the best, most satisfying job I've ever had.
So Franklin, I remember, and I don't want to be, I mean, I feel sorry for Frank and I love the fact that he's improved after his stroke, both that he's okay and that he's, that it's made him a better person.
I do think that's common.
I mean, as we were saying about pain, it actually can certainly improve me.
Oh, that's, well, he would just say nothing, nothing hugely creative, but he would say, oh, that's what the wasps, oh, you do that, or you've got such, you attack my name occasionally or my dress.
He went to collegiate in New York, which was a really good school, rigorous school.
And they went to Harvard, got his PhD, forced to do a ton of reading.
So he had read, you know, Aeschylus and, you know, he had read a lot and Rousseau.
And he could kind of remember parts of it and sort of half quote it sort of.
But what you realize, which was impressive, and I'm not against that.
He had like three lines of poetry he could probably do.
But you realized over time that that was more a party trick than a reflection of his like actual erudition and that on the wisdom scale, like there was none.
But anyway, I'm sympathetic to the fact that he is a sibling, a non-public person, and a sibling of people and the son of a man who was attacked relentlessly by people who didn't have specificity in their attacks, didn't even know what they were talking about, and had no trouble attacking family members to him personally.
And yet he's going to engage in the same thing with me.
Exactly.
I mean, I thought this is that's actually when it really came home to me that the WASPs have not just lost, but that they've lost will and they've surrendered totally.
They're unwilling to make a stand.
And the fact that he had adopted that leftist attitude without being smart.
I'd be happy to have dinner with Yamin's brother and never, you know, attack him for cannibalism because he's not the one who committed it that I know of.
Well, Uncle Buck, I just got to ask you one final question.
You've spent your life.
I haven't even, I'm not, I'm not going to violate your privacy by explaining some of the things you've done or places you've been or people you've worked with or whatever, because it's nobody's business and you'll divulge it if you want to.
But you've had a really interesting life, but it's been a very interesting life, but it's been like our father, but it's all been very private.
If I can just end with one vignette that's been in our family all this time, but it's, I don't know, almost 10 years ago, I was at work because my job, the time I was at work was public.
So when I was at work, Antifa came to our house.
And of course, as I've said, we've always lived next to each other our whole lives.
So my wife was home alone and all these people came and tried to bang through the front door and spray painted her house.
And, you know, Antifa mob came to her house, whatever.
I was not even aware this was happening.
So my wife is in the pantry of the house.
Like people are trying to bart, you know, break down the door.
Dogs are barking.
She does not call the police.
She calls you first because everyone in our family would always call you first if there's a problem.