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April 20, 2026 - The Tucker Carlson Show
02:17:22
Buckley Carlson: Writing Trump’s Speeches, Trump’s Shocking Texts to MTG, and the Epstein Cover-up

Buckley Carlson details his journey from writing Trump's speeches in late 2015 to expressing deep disillusionment over the administration's handling of January 6th prisoners, the Iran war, and the Epstein cover-up. He critiques Trump for prioritizing personal status over MAGA principles, failing to defend law enforcement during George Floyd protests, and allowing intelligence agencies to silence loyalists. Ultimately, Buckley argues that Trump's betrayal of his base and refusal to utilize executive power against perceived enemies has fractured the movement, suggesting a potential need for the 25th Amendment amidst fears of long-term foreign influence designed to weaken America. [Automatically generated summary]

Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Participants
Main
b
buckley carlson
01:19:20
t
tucker carlson
dailycaller 47:03
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Speaker Time Text
Hating Trump as Liberalism 00:08:29
tucker carlson
For at least 10 years now, hating Trump has been the surest possible indication of liberalism.
If you really hate Donald Trump, probably filled with hate for the United States.
You probably hate whites, probably anxious to give kids the COVID vax and castrate boys and put non-binary people on the swim team or whatever.
But there was a pretty much for about a decade, a one-to-one correlation between disliking Donald Trump, hating Donald Trump, Trump derangement syndrome and liberalism, or it's sort of a weird American manifestation.
But now we're in a weird moment, an even stranger moment, where a lot of people who really like Trump are very disappointed in Trump.
In fact, more than disappointed, feel betrayed or enraged, feel like suckers, feel like they've been taken for a ride.
How could I possibly have supported that given what it became?
A lot of people seem to feel that way.
But do a lot of people seem to feel that way?
Do they actually feel that way?
According to polls on CNN, 100% of MAGA voters still support Trump.
Is that real?
Well, it's really hard to know given how fraudulent so much polling is.
So we thought we would speak to the one person we know who sincerely supported Trump from the very beginning, wrote speeches for Trump in 2015, voted for Trump three times, knew people within the Trump White House, worked with the Trump White House, and all along that period, 10 years, supported Trump.
In public, not on television, which is easy, but in his own neighborhood, which was 100% Trump haters.
That person is my brother, it turns out.
Buckley Carlson, Uncle Buck, as he's known to us.
And so we thought we would sit down and ask him Are we imagining this?
Did the guy you supported from 2015 in the face of social sanction like you wouldn't believe, did that guy just betray everything you believe and the reasons you supported him in the first place?
Are we imagining this?
Is it real?
Here's the conversation we had with Uncle Buck.
You were the first person I knew personally who supported Donald Trump.
And I remember thinking later when I thought about it, I was like, you're a lifelong resident, 40 year resident of Washington, D.C., which voted for Trump in 2016 at 4.1%.
So you were in the 4% of district residents who supported Trump.
And you're a WASP, and that's the group that hated Trump most.
How did you wind up supporting Trump in like 2015?
buckley carlson
The departure, Trump represented a departure that I had never seen in Washington.
He was, first I should say, I knew him my entire life as anybody who grew up in the 80s did.
unidentified
Right.
buckley carlson
Because he was such a, I didn't know him personally, I know you did, but I knew of him as everybody around us did because he was such a carnival barker of self promotion, gold dip, braggadocio, lying.
I mean, he was a performer and he was the creator of his own story, which On the one hand, it was disgusting because he was a man of obvious faults.
I mean, he was gross and loud and brash and crude and a serial adulterer and all the things that you probably wouldn't want to be and certainly wouldn't want your children to be.
tucker carlson
Well, that's why the WASP didn't like him because he bragged about himself.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Which is like, you know, rule one, you can't do that.
That's why my children didn't like him.
buckley carlson
You know, it's like very much so.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
So that was a massive hurdle.
And I mean, they already had a candidate called Jeb Bush.
buckley carlson
I was aware, I was compelled actually for the first time ever by some of my clients to actually contribute to Jeb Bush.
tucker carlson
But he was the consensus choice of his people.
I mean, he converted to Catholicism, but no one really took that seriously.
He was a birthright Episcopalian.
Like everyone knew, this is our guy.
buckley carlson
It was his time.
tucker carlson
It was his time.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
It was his time.
buckley carlson
He was the adult in the room.
I remember early on, actually, he raised $100 million famously, obviously, and he was just the guy that was going to take us.
tucker carlson
But did you even know anyone who didn't support him?
buckley carlson
I didn't know a single person who didn't support him.
No.
But he had his domestic policy, his foreign policy, everything about him, nothing about him was exciting.
All of it was poll tested, as everything in Washington had been up until the moment Trump came on the scene.
unidentified
Right.
buckley carlson
And Trump was very, if not articulate, he had baseline messages that were unassailable and that he repeated with great repetition.
And the things that he espoused and talked about endlessly were things that I believed in and things that most Americans, when they actually took the time, To separate him, separate Trump's policies from Trump the man were super attractive.
And it was such a departure from what we'd seen from every other elected official, especially obviously, it was the end of the Obama years, which were such a disappointment, but also the destruction of weak, whole tested, you know, very well packaged candidates like who's that forgettable Utah senator?
tucker carlson
Mitt Romney.
Oh, yeah.
Mitt Romney.
buckley carlson
And of course, so Trump talked about actually focusing on America, repairing the problems that this entire class of people had brought upon us, the American citizens.
tucker carlson
But you were in that class of people and you literally worked for a polling company, the most famous polling company, and you were in politics and you live in Northwest Washington, D.C.
And like, basically, Trump is calling for the destruction of your world.
buckley carlson
I didn't see it that way because I think these people had already destroyed our world and I'd seen it up close.
Personally, not only in the education system, but in the environment around me, we lived in a much dirtier country.
We lived in a country that wouldn't even embrace any of the things that were great about America that I had grown up embracing not just freedom, not just individuality, but cleanliness and Christian principles.
And we had such a wonderful country when I was growing up and it had been transformed.
You could see it in Washington probably better than you could see it even in border states.
The disconnect between what people had voted for, what people wanted, what they continually expressed that they wanted from their Republican leaders.
And they were denied it every time.
And Trump came in and said, look, there, there's an end to that.
This is unacceptable.
We failed over the past 30 years.
I've seen it up close and personal.
Just aside from all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality, he was, it seemed someone who had been steeped.
He built things and, and very few people built things by the time Trump came along.
We were not a manufacturing society at that point.
And even if I didn't like his gilded name on all sorts of properties, he had employed a ton of people.
He had.
Actually, it contributed to the economy.
He had been saying a lot of these financial things.
I wasn't really steeped in the financial world and didn't understand our trade policies.
But when Trump explained how beneficial it was to the rest of the world rather than America, our trade policies, I actually paid attention and read up and realized that he was telling the truth.
And then everything he said about the border, which you could see if you traveled around America, which I certainly did, the degradation of America was obscene.
And the The destruction of things that I had held dear my entire life, and I think most Americans did.
It was Trump represented a return to normalcy.
And then, of course, I was totally enamored of his personal strength and his ability to.
There's no one who's been more attacked than Donald Trump, obviously, over the last decade, but nothing more aggressively than when he first came down that escalator and announced for president.
Like he was attacked by absolutely everybody.
In the world, not just the left, not just the media, but as you said, everybody on the right took him as a joke.
Trumps Personal Strength Displayed 00:06:55
buckley carlson
It's like, actually, we're not electing individuals, we're electing the policies that they will defend and put forward when they're in office.
And Trump articulated a very small set of priorities that I really found attractive and did so with calm and repetitiveness that seemed legit and sincere, especially the more he was attacked, because he never bended.
And I'd never seen that in American politics ever.
tucker carlson
And you've been around it a lot.
buckley carlson
Been around a lot.
And actually, you know, jumping forward a decade, and Trump has expanded the coalition so aggressively.
Back when he started, the ideas in the Republican Party about expanding the coalition were not harnessing the things that were great about America.
It was actually surrendering to, you know, speak Spanish if you want to appeal to new voters.
Don't talk about the cultural degradation of America because that will turn people off.
Well, Trump flipped that on its head completely and said, actually, there's a lot about America we should and will be defending.
And so that attracted me to him.
I love that about him.
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unidentified
Wow.
tucker carlson
When did you get involved?
buckley carlson
The end of 2015, I got hooked up with people in Trump's orbit.
It was still a very embryonic campaign.
I mean, the entire campaign was mostly a media campaign, even throughout the whole 16 effort.
tucker carlson
But early on, it never stopped being a media campaign.
buckley carlson
It never stopped being a media campaign.
But there were a few people around him who were actually producing work.
So I got in touch with them, or through a common friend of ours, and ended up writing some early speeches.
For Trump and Stephen Miller.
I was corresponding with Stephen Miller and writing some early speeches for Trump.
tucker carlson
That's crazy.
I didn't realize that at the time.
I don't think I took Trump seriously at all until the summer of 15, probably when our friend Patrick Feeney in Maine told me that he was thinking about voting for Trump or Bernie Sanders.
They seemed very similar to him.
And I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
They're polar opposites.
And my brain started to change.
I started to see the obvious, but you were already on it.
That's so interesting.
I mean, it's a lot to ask anybody to understand his own motives.
But why do you think, to the extent you can analyze it, why do you think you, living in a political world with a political job, being from a group of people who hated Trump, living in a neighborhood that hated Trump, why were you uniquely able to see the things that your neighbors couldn't, like the degradation of America and connect that to the policies that produced it?
And why could nobody else?
buckley carlson
Maybe it was because I had actually worked in Washington for so long.
I hadn't been born in Washington, but I moved there as a teenager and then had worked in politics, elective politics, and then corporate America.
But very much adjacent to the political world, and worked with pollsters and people who message tested.
And I had worked closely with the Republican coalition when they got back in power in 94.
And I saw to the extent that people were phony.
There was a huge disconnect between their personal lives and how they voted and how they campaigned.
unidentified
Gay.
buckley carlson
And gay.
tucker carlson
Super gay.
buckley carlson
Very much in our party, which I was surprised by because the left was always crazy and they were always sort of attracted to these people, at least they were open about it the Bernie Franks of the world.
At least, yeah, yeah, no, totally their weird lifestyles.
But the Republican Party was completely empty.
And I had also lived through empty.
tucker carlson
What do you mean?
buckley carlson
They had no principles that they were willing to stand up for.
And I had seen probably the starkest example was John McCain, who I had grown up really respecting.
I thought he was a war hero at that.
Time I subsequently learned differently.
But it was when he attacked the tobacco industry early on when I was first working for Corporate America, a big PR firm.
And he had led the charge against Big Tobacco and had been a grandstander and a phony.
And I had known him personally and really liked him as a person.
tucker carlson
I did too.
I really liked him as a guy.
buckley carlson
Yeah.
tucker carlson
He was hilarious.
buckley carlson
He was hilarious.
And physically tough, I thought.
tucker carlson
He was physically tough.
And he was also sorry to say it out loud, he was a wasp and he had grown up in.
He'd gone to Piscopal High School and he just had excellent manners.
He was funny in a way that I could relate to.
He had a kind of heart to him, a kind of physical courage that I, of course, you know, we grew up admiring that.
And I was completely taken in by his persona or so, not even the war stuff, but just his sort of, I don't know, his style.
I understood it immediately and I liked it.
buckley carlson
He was the guy, he was totally approachable.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
I remember early on in my.
Political career that I would come across him at fundraisers and cocktail parties, and he's the guy I would gravitate to and stand next to the bar and chat with because he was so approachable and totally funny.
tucker carlson
So funny.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
And he seemed that was representative of a really different time.
I mean, that was, you know, the Lindsey Grahams of the world walk around with huge security details.
tucker carlson
Oh, I know.
buckley carlson
I wish someone would explain that to me.
But John McCain didn't.
John McCain was a man's man.
unidentified
Exactly.
buckley carlson
And he was, as I said, I thought physically tough.
tucker carlson
So, no, that is such a smart point.
Like, Men did not have security details.
It's just a show of rank.
It's also a display of cowardice, honestly.
And McCain would never have a security detail because culturally we don't do that.
buckley carlson
Plus, he seemed capable of beating into death with his comb.
I mean, if he had to.
unidentified
I totally agree.
tucker carlson
I mean, all of this is like lost on people now, but no, I completely.
A security detail?
Tobacco and Political Discourse 00:05:10
tucker carlson
What?
Who do you think you are?
buckley carlson
It's absolutely shameful.
tucker carlson
No, and he had a kind of.
Again, not to make it an ethnic thing, but it's a cultural thing.
He was had like a kind of wasp egalitarianism to him that was completely real.
Like he would have a legit conversation with the waiter.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Was not a rank guy like these fraudulent new money insecure people.
He was like a real guy.
Yes.
Is that fair?
buckley carlson
Very much so.
Plus, hilarious in the sense of humor.
unidentified
Right.
buckley carlson
Demonstrates one, obviously, not only a high intellect, but a certain comfort with people.
And if you can talk to your constituents, or I wasn't really a constituent of his, but I was, you know, a 23 year old and I was an American.
And he made me feel like my opinion mattered and he could, he wasn't self conscious.
He was not a big apologizer.
He didn't think about what he said.
unidentified
Exactly.
buckley carlson
And Trump was the same way.
Trump was like.
tucker carlson
So, but go back to the McCain thing.
I knew McCain very, very intimately well and really liked him, as I said.
But the tobacco thing, tell me why that was significant to you, because I agree with that.
buckley carlson
Well, tobacco represented, first of all, not only one of the biggest commercial products that we have in America, I always thought it was sort of entwined with American freedom through history.
100%.
We had all these tobacco producing states all around D.C., of course, but in the South, That was the point of the colony.
100%.
Absolutely.
They fought.
I mean, they threw the tobacco bales and coffee bales, but tobacco as well.
Um, tobacco was a great American heritage product.
And as a consumer who enjoyed tobacco, I always sort of respected it.
And, but it tied in also with a sense of personal responsibility, which we never see now, is there was a, you know, you had the freedom to smoke.
May it be bad for you?
Yes, I think every smoker knew it was probably bad for you.
You have the obvious, you cough, you get pneumonia every year, you smell bad, your teeth turn brown, whatever.
No one, no one was surprised when the attorney general came out and said smoking's bad for you.
But the hypocrisy, first of all, the overreach, Of someone in the Republican Party, supposedly champion of free markets and freedom and personal freedom, would go after and grandstand about the tobacco companies and how they had lied about the addictive properties of tobacco when everybody knew they were addictive.
The majority of countries smoked at that time.
We had come from a smoking heritage.
And not only that, the majority of governments, including state governments, were well invested in tobacco.
They had taken a lot of public employees.
Investment funds and invested in Philip Morris and RJR and Brown and Williamson and the other big ones.
I guess those are the ones.
unidentified
Laura Lard.
buckley carlson
Laura Lard, forgive me.
So American tobacco was intertwined with the American experience as far as I understood it.
And if you're going to go after it, it's like going after the foundation of your company, it's on your country.
It's wrong on so many levels.
tucker carlson
I agree.
buckley carlson
Such a kick in the crotch, I think.
tucker carlson
And he did it in a grandstanding, fraudulent way.
buckley carlson
Yes, very much so.
And also did it at the last minute.
And I can't remember.
I think he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
I'm not sure why they had purview over it.
And I worked intricately in this in defense of the tobacco companies at the time when they came up with their huge settlement, which involved a lot of humiliation for them.
It was disgusting.
They paid for their own destruction to the detriment of individual Americans, but also to the detriment of people who'd been.
invested in tobacco.
tucker carlson
And to the enrichment of like the trial lawyers and like totally disgusting little 501c3s like campaign for tobacco free kids, Michael Myers.
It's like the worst people in the world won.
Some of the best people lost and the people making the deals sold their own dignity.
And for what?
Did public health get better?
Did the life expectancy in this country rise?
No, it went down.
buckley carlson
I think John Cole got a really big boat out of it.
And I think Dickie Scruggs, also, you know, brother in law to Trent Lott at the time, who was the majority leader.
I mean, it seemed like a setup and it was offensive and it dominated political discourse for a couple of years.
And the country actually hasn't recovered from that.
unidentified
I agree.
I agree.
tucker carlson
Did it make you quit smoking?
buckley carlson
No, I probably actually went from a two peck a day to three peck a day smoker at the time.
There were some benefits actually because Philip Morris and RJR would send that they had.
It was right around the time, too, that the RJR Nabisco merger.
So they used to send these huge packages to our office wrapped in a big faux cream cheese case.
And you'd open it up and we'd have cartons of cigarettes and Nabisco crackers and all sorts of cookies and chocolates.
And the original non smoking cigarette they had, too, which tasted terrible.
tucker carlson
It was awful.
buckley carlson
It was awful.
But it was a neat concept where you heat the tobacco rather than burn it, right?
Financing the American Candidate 00:03:14
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
You get your nicotine, but it was disgusting.
tucker carlson
That was a Philip Morris product.
buckley carlson
I believe that was a Philip Morris product.
tucker carlson
Yeah, they sent it to me.
And I remember smoking in my office thinking, who would smoke that?
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
No, it was like trying Brussels sprouts.
Each time I did it, I was like, I'm going to like this.
tucker carlson
I don't want people to like it.
I never tried it.
No, it's repulsive.
buckley carlson
But that was a huge sense of betrayal early on.
And then when he ran, I was wary of John McCain.
And then when he ran for president, he got the nomination.
He totally fumbled at it.
And it seemed like it was an absolute surrender to this unknown, but obviously Marxist based anti American candidate.
tucker carlson
Anti white.
buckley carlson
Anti white, anti American candidate.
And that was not his to lose.
That was ours to lose.
And he did that on our behalf.
tucker carlson
Do you think he threw the fight?
buckley carlson
He refused to, I mean, on the heels of 9-11, he refused publicly and excoriated people for saying, pointing out Barack Obama's real name, Barack Hussein Obama or Barry Sator, or talking about his early years in, uh, in Indonesia, talking about his church that he went to in this anti-American, anti-white church, talking, refusing to talk about any of his heritage, which was obviously fabricated and, and dishonest.
It was the first time, I think, in American history that a presidential candidate was not only not vetted at all, But you were excluded from knowing anything about him of any relevance.
And John McCain, who was the standard bearer of the Republican Party at the time, had an obligation actually to be the top watchdog about his opponent.
That's your job.
Your job is to fight a battle, and he refused to fight it.
So I never forgive him for that.
tucker carlson
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Writing for an Existential Election 00:07:01
tucker carlson
So then we have eight years of Obama, and it becomes pretty clear in the second term that he hates the country he's leading.
He really hates white people.
Tons of whites voted for him.
Tons of whites voted for him because he was saying we're going to get rid of race consciousness in this country and treat people as citizens and human beings, and we can move past the division of the Like, disgusting civil rights movement thinking and just anti white zero sum.
And that Grant Park speech was like, I didn't vote for him, obviously, but I was like, I hope this is true.
It turned out to be the opposite of the truth.
He's like, hated whites.
And so by the time that ended in 2016, like, it was a different country.
buckley carlson
I had never seen anybody be, I mean, it was a whole new time.
My son was young.
He was in a private school at the time that embraced all of those anti-white messages, separation.
I mean, it was literally the new, they talked about Jim Crow while they're instituting Jim Crow in the educational world and all throughout society and people in DC embraced it heavily.
People I had known.
All of a sudden we came from a country that was happy, self-confident, uh, Really proud of America suddenly questioning and apologizing for everything that had come before.
And obviously, Obama accelerated that to a degree that was disgusting, but it also meant you could no longer have an informed discussion.
I remember I had been in Washington for 20 years at that point, and I had Democratic friends.
I had tons of Democratic friends.
You could have a normal conversation, a normal meal.
And it was during the Obama years I noticed that you couldn't even have a conversation with these people.
They would just cut you off, get instantly angry, obviously, born of.
Some sort of cowardice on their part or regret.
But they were so vicious against open discourse.
They couldn't defend their candidate, or in that case, their president at that point, but they also couldn't discuss it.
And they hated you for it.
They hated you for pointing out if you just said simply, as I did to several Democrats, I'm not attacking Obama, just tell me why you support this man as our president, tell me what he's doing to strengthen our country.
And they would look blank or angry.
And that was pervasive, I think, on the left.
tucker carlson
So then Trump starts making noises about running in 2015, and it's not even on the radar of most people in DC that I remember.
It's like Trump.
I mean, I talked to Trump, but he called me in 2015 and said, I'm going to run.
And I said, I don't believe you.
I think you're selling another book.
I'd seen him do this before 15 years previous.
You know, the campaign was a book tour.
buckley carlson
Yes.
tucker carlson
And he said to me, I think I'm going to surprise you this time.
But I still didn't take him seriously, really.
But you did.
And you reached out to people.
What did you think of the people around Trump then?
buckley carlson
There weren't many.
I was very impressed actually by Stephen Miller's intellect and his writing ability.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
And his commitment to immigration reform or closing the border.
I thought he was a true believer on that.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
I think he probably, well, he certainly was at the time.
He was a great writer and easy to talk to.
And I thought committed.
I don't know what his motivations were, but he seemed like he actually was on board for the long haul for this.
And, and, I will say my entire life I'd only been voting, barely missed the 88 election, but I've been voting since 92.
And in every four years, they would say, This is the existential election.
Like, this is the election that really is going to determine the path we're on.
And by the time 16 came around, it really seemed with the hangover and the depressing anti American, anti white, the Obama program was so dispiriting to witness.
The wreckage I felt socially.
That this was the existential election in 16.
I felt that strongly.
So, Trump is the only one.
Everybody else, I mean, Jeb Bush's program, I couldn't even tell you what it was.
It was forgettable at the time, but it was the same talking points they'd been using for two decades, referencing Ronald Reagan, who I was personally impressed by, but it's not really relevant during the Iraq wars and the Afghan war and all that stuff.
So, and the degradation that America had experienced that was so overwhelming at that time.
It seemed like an existential election, and Trump seemed fully committed.
And by the time it came around to the debates in the end, when he finally got the nomination, this is a man who had withstood every single personal degradation you could possibly imagine and every attack from every quarter of the country.
I was fully committed to his program and thought he was real.
tucker carlson
What kind of speeches did you write for Trump?
buckley carlson
Mostly about immigration stuff, rally speeches early on.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Or during the middle of the campaign.
Probably not.
I'm trying to think when it was late in 15.
tucker carlson
That's amazing.
I didn't even know you were doing that.
buckley carlson
I had a lot of freedom to do that.
That was the other thing the stuff that I delivered.
I had a lot of freedom to, I had a lot of license.
I felt like I was writing from my own perspective.
And that's how aligned I was with what Trump had articulated.
It was like some of the easiest speeches to write because.
They were honest and straightforward and pugnacious and unapologetic.
tucker carlson
So, honest, straightforward, pugnacious, that came naturally to you?
buckley carlson
And you don't see a lot of that.
I mean, normally when you're writing for a candidate, you've got the lawyer, like the campaign manager, or some dipshit consultant breathing over your shoulder.
You can't say that.
You need to soften that.
You need to.
Oh, really?
So, you end up with something that's not even distinguishable from the other side.
Trump was not just distinguishable from the left, he was distinguished himself from the rest of the 19.
You know, subpar candidates who were running, but they were all representative of that time.
And so I was, man, I never really, I didn't spend time around Trump.
I loved his sense of humor, but I loved his consistency.
And I loved the fact that he never backed down, especially with these people barking in his face and claiming he was the worst man on the planet.
tucker carlson
Yeah, racist.
buckley carlson
It's like, someone, I think it may have been you, said, we're not hiring the guy to, you know, babysit our children.
And that was just intuitive to me.
It's like, I'm, yeah.
But he was an outsider too.
And also, he seemed like he had a pretty cohesive family at the time.
I mean, that attracted me also.
It seemed like he had a decent relationship with his children.
tucker carlson
Yeah, his son in law was running everything.
Creating a Heritage America 00:02:34
unidentified
Right.
tucker carlson
That seemed like a good thing.
buckley carlson
Yes, very much so.
And a huge departure from what you'd seen because I'd seen tons of candidates up close whose children were, you know, drunks or drug addicts or suicidal or hated their families, hated their parents, and were losers.
And they seemed the opposite of that.
They seemed like.
They also believed in a heritage America.
They believed in building stuff, creating jobs, creating prosperity.
And even though he was supposedly a billionaire, he was a guy who understood the working man, he understood how the country worked.
Sorry to go on so long, but I was going to say when I did early research, I didn't know a lot about our trade policies at the time.
I just didn't know the details.
And he talked a lot about it, probably second only to immigration.
And when I started doing research on it, I was shocked the amount of stuff that we had given away, just gratuitously surrendered to the rest of the world in our trade policies and how that had an effect on our manufacturing.
I'd always blamed the Clintons for the free trade and our agreements with Mexico and Canada.
Cleaning out, manufacturing.
I was aware of that.
I'd seen it happen.
But I didn't realize how deep the betrayal was until I started doing research against Trump's individual policies.
I just hadn't been focused on it.
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It's interesting.
So, the winter of 2015, you're writing speeches for Trump.
I'm just starting to realize this might be the answer, or I should at least be open minded enough.
Winter of Controversial Quotes 00:15:27
tucker carlson
I think it was January of 16 that I decided I'm totally for Trump and wrote a piece about it.
But the winter, that winter, I remember being at a Christmas party.
You may have been there in our neighborhood on Lowell Street.
In the Northwest, at a friend's really good friend's house, and um, you know, everyone's there, every family you know is there, all of our kids, you know, it's like uh, December 23rd kind of potluck, right?
Just great, great people, great friends, and who we lived next to for so long.
And my wife, who's totally apolitical, people they're all grousing about Trump, I can't believe it, you know, he's a racist.
My wife, totally non political wife, goes, I like Trump.
And I remember someone, and everyone of course likes my wife.
So, but someone laughed, like, oh, yeah, I like Trump too.
And she goes, no, no, I really do.
Like, someone needs to stand up for, I don't know, people who've been shafted and none of them live here, but there are a lot of them in this country.
And like, I like Trump.
People were enraged with her.
Like, the only time I've ever seen anyone mad at my wife, it's just like no one's ever mad at her, but they were mad and embarrassed.
And like, I can't believe there's someone who in the room with me who could like Trump.
And she, of course, like, didn't even notice that people did.
She's like, well, no, what's wrong with that?
But, That was the response that she got.
You were already kind of a more, I mean, you brought your son to Episcopal school on a Harley Davidson.
So, like, obviously, you were a more controversial figure in the neighborhood.
What kind of response did you get?
buckley carlson
I had the benefit of working, I say for myself, but working from home with a couple of clients that I'd had since 2004.
So, I'd already really enjoyed having a good relationship with them personally.
And I worked on issues that mean something to me that I could defend.
And I had a lot of license to speak my mind if I had an opportunity to do so.
So I never, I just didn't live in a world where I was subservient to the machine.
I hadn't been like that my entire life because we grew up in a different America where you could express yourself and people expected you to.
And there was never any apology.
You may be wrong, you may be dumb, but you can say what you think.
And so I just never, I'm so fortunate that I was never forced to think that way, I guess.
I think that's the reason.
And then I was just going to say if you did, you know, every four years they do the blind candidate thing where they describe the candidate without the name, without the history, is just literally a policy prescription, what this person stands for.
And if you did that with Trump at any time during his campaigns and you just separated the man from the policy, his policy is more closely aligned with my worldview and my sense of what it means to be America and American and to be a self confident man who.
Loves your country.
Like, I've never, I'm sorry to jump ahead, but I have never, even knowing how Washington works, even seeing the vitriol that he encountered and the overwhelming opposition from not just political Washington, but the media and the corporate world and everybody else who takes themselves seriously.
It was during Trump's inauguration speech the first time.
And if you read that speech, as I did, it's like, this is.
Unimpeachable.
This is not controversial.
These things that he is saying is such a breath of fresh air that no man in American politics has ever had the balls to say.
Why is that?
Like, how is it that we suddenly are in a country now where it's embarrassing to say that the reason you have elected officials is so they can take care of America and Americans?
To this day, I didn't understand it then.
I don't understand it now.
Maybe I'm simple minded, but I think you do understand it.
I do understand it.
unidentified
Yeah, right.
tucker carlson
I think you know what's going on.
buckley carlson
Nobody knows it.
I'm very angry about it.
unidentified
Right.
tucker carlson
But this is one of those topics you're like, I don't understand what's happening here.
buckley carlson
It is unimpeachable to say that we're the average American.
tucker carlson
Of course it is.
buckley carlson
So, yeah, I actually, it was at that point that I really started to loathe the people who were against Donald Trump's program.
Yes, you could laugh at him.
Yes, you could say, take issue with some of the moronic things that he says.
Or the inconsistent things he would say, but he was very consistent about sticking up for America and Americans, first and foremost, and always.
tucker carlson
And you put a Trump bumper sticker on your truck.
I'll never forget.
buckley carlson
I did, and I'm not a bumper sticker guy at all.
And I did it a little bit as an act of rebellion because I was aware.
I was aware.
I mean, I lived in a neighborhood that had a lot of rainbow flags, a lot of anti war signs, which I'm totally anti war, but the idea that you're displaying your political.
Views on your car or your lawn, I just find kind of reprehensible.
tucker carlson
When you live in a city that voted, you know, 4.1% for Trump, it kind of gives you license to because you know everybody agrees with you.
It's a one party state.
buckley carlson
I mean, that's reflexive and easy to be one of those.
tucker carlson
I don't think Albania under Enver Hoxha had margins like that.
I mean, that is just a that's truly just one party state.
So it doesn't make people's behavior better at all.
But you decide when you know that 96% of the people in your city disagree with you to let them know what you think.
buckley carlson
That's what it means to be an American man.
tucker carlson
I totally agree.
unidentified
Amen.
tucker carlson
Nicely put.
So, what kind of response did you get to your?
The bumper sticker said, as I recall, because I was just in love with it and amazed by it and too cowardly to put it on my own car.
It said pro God, pro life, pro gun, pro Trump.
buckley carlson
No, it was actually, but it was during the Trump era.
So, it wasn't explicitly pro Trump, but it certainly captured it was and it had a picture.
It was pro God, pro gun, pro life, anti Obama, and it had the sunset.
Thing and people reacted exactly as you would expect.
Very few people would accost me in traffic, beep their horn, flick me off, yell at me.
My car would get defaced often.
I also had a small American flag in the back of my car that I had to keep replacing because people would steal it.
But most people just avert their eyes in disgust.
And I don't know, those are the kind of people that I just couldn't care less about their opinion, even though they're 96% of the population of the city you live in.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
I had a lot of friends in DC.
I love DC.
Oh, I totally agree.
I couldn't imagine living there now.
But no, I also lived on kind of a cul de sac with a lot of like minded people just sort of by accident.
And also, the kind of people that would be averse to those messages, which again I think are foundational to life and certainly life in this country, don't have the courage to attack you for it because they're spineless weanies anyway.
tucker carlson
Yeah, whose wives hate them.
I totally agree with that.
We saw a lot of that.
buckley carlson
That's exactly right.
tucker carlson
Yeah, those are the guys whose wives hit on you for sure.
Sorry to say that out loud, but it's literally true.
Is it not true?
buckley carlson
Yes, it is.
tucker carlson
Yeah, it is.
buckley carlson
That's the root of adultery a wife who's unimpressed and doesn't honor her husband, doesn't respect him because he doesn't have a spine.
tucker carlson
That's exactly right.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
Weak men make unhappy women.
Why is there a rise in female cheating?
Because there's a rise in weak men.
buckley carlson
That's just a fact.
tucker carlson
Sorry to say that.
buckley carlson
No, it's true.
tucker carlson
Sorry to blame the victims, but it is absolutely right.
So then, the Trump reelect 2020, you I remember you wearing a shirt.
Now, by this point, I'm defending Trump every single day on Fox News on a not always Trump the man, but certainly Trump's policies, and certainly attacking people who are attacking Trump because it became a kind of handy guide to who was against the country's most basic interests.
The people were hysterical about Trump.
buckley carlson
It was a political colander, I like to say.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Those people just separated those who were pro American and reasonable.
tucker carlson
Right.
buckley carlson
Yeah, from the rest.
tucker carlson
And the anti white stuff, which was always the foundation of it.
It's like if you hate whites, you hate Trump.
Even though Trump was in no sense pro white or anything, but whatever that even means.
buckley carlson
He was an equal opportunity lover, I got the sense.
I mean, he'd had a very public life.
I think he liked all kinds.
And he was nice to everybody.
tucker carlson
Which I never wanted to say in public, but it's well known.
It's well known.
That's exactly.
Don't even hesitate to say it now.
But Trump could pretty easily prove he wasn't a racist.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
If you know what I mean.
buckley carlson
Sorry.
tucker carlson
That's just true.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Um, I don't think it's ever been written, but.
buckley carlson
But talk about demonstrable, talk about demonstrating your love for all.
You don't, right?
I mean, you don't.
tucker carlson
No, you're right.
buckley carlson
If you can do that, then you could do anything.
You would support someone.
If you could sleep with someone, you would support them.
If you're colorblind in your sexual aspirations, you're colorblind in everything else.
Right?
tucker carlson
I think that's completely fair.
Yeah.
That's completely fair.
No, Trump is a racist, was that I always felt like there are things wrong with Trump, have always been.
I overlooked most of them or just tried to ignore them or whatever.
And some of them I honestly enjoyed, you know, his vulgarity or whatever.
But his sense of timing is amazing.
No, there's so much about Trump that's amazing.
I completely agree.
But the idea that Trump is a racist, it was like, well, that's actually the one thing he's not.
Why are you calling him a race?
It's not even true.
What are you talking about?
Trump is a racist.
I don't know who came up with that.
It's because they were race obsessed.
That's why.
unidentified
Right.
tucker carlson
Because they really hated the whites.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And they wanted a way, and I still don't understand why they hated the whites so much.
buckley carlson
Let's give them equal opportunity and credit.
The Democratic Party also was an incredibly racist party.
Oh, my God.
It didn't like blacks.
I mean, exactly.
It didn't like anybody.
tucker carlson
Whenever you're race obsessed, you're going to end up hating people on the basis of their race, just period.
unidentified
Of course.
Yes.
tucker carlson
But yeah, Trump is racist.
It was like the dumbest thing I ever heard before.
buckley carlson
Can we go back a minute, one second?
tucker carlson
Of course.
buckley carlson
The famous quote, the fact, I mean, this is another thing that I just so admired about Trump, but it bothered me.
It has bothered me now for almost 10 years how people got the quote, the grab them by the pussy quote, so wrong.
tucker carlson
Oh, I agree.
buckley carlson
Yeah, because the full quote, if I'm not mistaken, was they let you when you're rich and famous to grab them by the pussy.
So I thought that was worth some exploration, but no one else did.
tucker carlson
In what sense?
I totally agree.
buckley carlson
It was an indictment of American culture, actually, that Trump had.
Perpetuated so aggressively over two decades.
The look at me culture, the facade of success, the very shallow idea that you are, you know, that your worth is caught up in your bank account and your display of wealth.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
And that is such a total corrupting dead end.
And it really has hurt the women in this country.
It's been to their detriment, obviously.
We could have a lot of long conversation about the failures of feminism, but one of them is that women.
Tried to aspire to a male sexual voraciousness that isn't conducive to them and also isn't beneficial to them because no man wants a woman who's been with a bunch of men.
That's like, that's a law that's been around forever, a human law.
And no celebration of supposed freedom is going to obscure that fact.
And so that, sorry, but that is exactly what Trump was talking about when he said when you're famous, they will allow you to do that.
And I noticed that everybody cut that part of the quote out, even though I thought it was the most interesting part of the quote.
tucker carlson
He said that to a childhood friend of ours who was interviewing him and who was destroyed just for being there, which was kind of crazy.
buckley carlson
Destroyed by his own employers, and their friend was the NBC and Washington Post colluding together to their detriment, but also to the detriment of their employee.
It was the most.
tucker carlson
So they destroyed their employee?
buckley carlson
Demonstration of disloyalty.
Subservient to political views.
tucker carlson
Someone we'd grown up with and knew really well.
And it was just the whole thing was sad.
But you're absolutely right.
At the core was Trump's vulgar, but unfortunately true claim that rich and famous men have a totally different standard of behavior that is allowed by women.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
And, you know, men should not act that way.
Women shouldn't put up with it.
And that's a fact.
And anyone who's been in the rich and famous world, as I have been a lot of my life, knows that that's true.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And, uh, it's a problem that has at least two authors, men and women.
Yeah.
Is it fair?
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Oh, completely.
And also, it demonstrated how committed he was because he should have been.
There was ever a time you should be overwhelmed by shame.
It was that, saying that in public.
I mean, it was pretty gross and embarrassing and shocking.
But the fact that he actually debated Hillary the next day and did a great job allowed me to believe that this was not about his personal ambition.
This was a guy who actually cared about America.
He's willing to subject himself to that kind of attack and not like fold up and crawl off in shame.
tucker carlson
Do you think Jeb could have withstood the pressure?
buckley carlson
Apologize to my wife.
I think that was like his refrain: wake up at two o'clock in the morning, every night sweating, and apologize to my wife.
I think he said that to Trump during one of the debates.
I think Jeb Bush turned to Trump and said, Apologize to my wife.
It's like no man demands an apology from another man who offends his wife.
You either punch him in the face or you take care of it on your own.
Don't you think?
I mean, if you're going to defend your wife's honor, it's not on a debate stage with those kind of words.
tucker carlson
If Jeb had walked over and just smashed Trump in the face on the debate stage, perfectly appropriate.
buckley carlson
I may have voted for him if he'd done something like that, if he'd been capable of doing something like that.
Otherwise, he.
Actually, I hate, I don't ever revel in other people's, uh, misfortune, but one of the great things about Trump was his dynasty bashing, destroying the fact that he had destroyed the Bush hold on the political world on the right, um, was one of his greatest accomplishments.
Even more so, I think, than destroying the Clintons, because he's never really followed through with that.
And rather he's never prosecuted these people who are so outside the law, but he did peel back the mask of these globalist pussies.
Yeah, who've had such an effect on our lives for so long.
tucker carlson
Well, he really meant it with the bushes.
He hated them because they were wasps.
Palm Beach Club Groups 00:05:28
tucker carlson
He hates wasps, but he's also obsessed with them.
I've talked to him about it many times, and he's obsessed with them.
buckley carlson
And he feels, I mean, the whole Mar a Lago was built when he was denied entry into the BT.
tucker carlson
Yes, which has like totally been lost to history.
They're directly across the street from each other.
And he built his club.
I was happened to be there.
I was in Palm Beach, it was 85 or 86, something like that.
We were staying with our friends there.
You were there, and we're having lunch at the Bath Tennis Club.
And everyone was like, Donald Trump is building a club across the street for basically to give us the finger.
And no, we're not letting him or any of his friends in our club.
And I don't think they have to this day, 40 years later.
Anyway, none of that was ever reported by anybody.
buckley carlson
I'm aware.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
buckley carlson
They focused on the flag, which was pretty cool.
tucker carlson
There were a lot of dynamics here.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Going on that nobody ever wants to talk about.
We just happen to have witnessed them firsthand.
So I know exactly what this was.
But Trump's resentment toward the wasps was the driving force there, really.
And he was an outer boroughs guy, never felt accepted by them, always wanted to be, always bragging.
I went to Penn.
Like, okay, Penn.
You know, like they never liked him.
They never accepted him.
And boy, did he get them back.
unidentified
Yes, he did.
tucker carlson
And even to this day, I mean, six weeks ago, I was talking about this.
His resentment toward the Bushes and its ethnic and social.
buckley carlson
He acknowledges that literally up front?
tucker carlson
No, of course not.
But it's like, but he's very fixated on the wasp thing and does talk about it a lot.
buckley carlson
I believe it.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
With me anyway, it's always like, hmm, what are you saying?
But whatever, I don't care.
Ignore it.
buckley carlson
But there's another group in America that's kind of fixated on the wasps too.
Yeah.
tucker carlson
Well, yeah.
I've noticed that too.
buckley carlson
Equal fervor and hostility.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
I don't know.
But you know, you get what you put up with and they put up with it and like, oh, it's okay.
unidentified
You have a good point.
tucker carlson
Anyway, but yeah, no, he wanted to destroy the Bushes because, you know, he didn't agree with their program, I guess.
He said he didn't agree with their program, but the real reason he wanted to destroy them was, you know, they go to the BNT and he doesn't.
buckley carlson
You don't think it was his anti war position?
unidentified
I thought it was.
buckley carlson
I did too.
tucker carlson
Okay, so let me just say, it's just like one of the reasons I'm just so grateful to talk to you is because you were there and you saw a lot of this stuff.
These details just get lost.
And, you know, some details are not worth preserving because, like, who cares?
But some of them really are at the center of the question.
Like, this is why things happened.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And everyone lies about everything all the time.
And you just want, like, somebody somewhere in the distant future to know what actually happened.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Preserve the truth.
tucker carlson
Preserve the truth.
That's preserve the truth.
So I just want this to be a record of the truth and that, you know, status anxiety, which is a huge driver of human behavior.
Is it not?
It's a huge driver of President Trump's behavior, huge driver of his behavior.
You know, it plays a role in all this stuff, these unannounced conflicts between groups for power and prestige and rank.
These are big questions.
Yes.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
What drives human behavior drives policy in the end.
tucker carlson
Exactly.
And so if you have the total displacement after over 200 years of the American ruling class by a new group, that's a big thing.
But nobody says a word about it.
And I'm not even taking sides in it.
Though you know, obviously, I have a side to take, but I'm not taking sides in it, but like that happened, it happened over 40 years and now it's complete.
And like, no one can say that that happened.
Are you kidding?
buckley carlson
It's absurd, yeah.
tucker carlson
But and but good or bad, like, by the way, that is the story of history, like, groups displace other groups, and there's reasons for that, and survival of the fittest, and all that got it.
Not even decrying it, I'm just saying the fact that no one will acknowledge that that happened and that it had massive effects on everything, and that it Those resentments or aspirations drive behavior that has results that we see all around us, like, and no one will say it.
buckley carlson
It's really shocking.
It is.
tucker carlson
I remember I was sitting, there was a girl called Catherine Rempel.
Rempel, I think she worked at the Washington Post, but she was like a Fox contributor or something.
Not impressive at all.
But I was sitting on the set with her in a commercial break once.
She was like a sort of liberal neocon type person, but not smart.
Anyway, we're talking and I'm trying to be nice.
And she's like a younger person.
And I'm like, you know, where are you from?
And I grew up in Palm Beach.
You grew up in Palm Beach?
That's sort of interesting.
I know Palm Beach.
Don't go there anymore, but I know it, you know, well.
And, um, She goes, Yeah, I grew up there and something about this or that.
And she's like, Yeah.
And we moved there, and my dad sued the Bath and Tennis Club for discrimination because they wouldn't let him in.
And I'm listening to this.
I'm like, He sued a country, your dad?
And if I'm getting this wrong, I just want to apologize.
But I'm pretty sure I remember this conversation like it was yesterday.
This is 10 years ago.
Yeah, he sued because they wouldn't let us in.
And I'm like, Not so not my job to tell you that these are private associations.
Secretly Attending Victory Parties 00:12:26
tucker carlson
Like, I don't know.
What are you even talking about?
Like, that's repulsive to me.
A club should have, you should have the right to hang out with whoever you want to hang out on whatever basis you want to make that decision.
But she was like bragging about it.
And I was like, the hatred behind that, it's like the desire to destroy something that you didn't build was like so evident.
This girl's a hater, actually.
That's what I realized talking to her.
buckley carlson
Plus, that she could be so unself aware and understand that that is the most repugnant thing.
Of course, it dominates American culture now.
It was acceptable when we were growing up.
unidentified
Oh, I know.
tucker carlson
No, I'm aware.
unidentified
No.
tucker carlson
Anyway, okay.
So, I just want to establish for people who aren't aware of all these dynamics just that they do exist and they're absolutely consequential and we're seeing their effects, but no one will tell us that.
So, in your specific case, 2020 comes around, Trump is running for reelection.
And I go over to your house.
We lived obviously in the same neighborhood and you're wearing a shirt that says, Trump reelect, reelect the MFR.
And you're wearing this shirt.
So, I, I'm establishing all of this just so people understand that you are not a fair weather Trump voter.
Is that fair?
unidentified
That's fair.
buckley carlson
Could I actually give thanks to Doug Davenport for that shirt?
tucker carlson
What a good man.
buckley carlson
What a great man.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
Doug Davenport's a Washington figure who is like in the rare, the tiny group that you belong to of people who really were on the Trump program.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Supportive.
What was the experience of wearing that shirt like?
buckley carlson
At that time, actually, you could get.
You know, shot.
It seemed like wearing that.
I'm not a big hat guy, but I did occasionally wear my MAGA hat that I got signed from Trump and his, you know, not very well attended victory party in 2016.
tucker carlson
Did you go to that?
buckley carlson
I did.
I was there till 4 30 in the morning.
I walked in.
tucker carlson
You're like an OG Trump man.
You're my only brother.
I didn't, I mean, I knew that.
I saw you that night, I think, right?
buckley carlson
Yeah, I had dinner with you.
tucker carlson
Okay.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
No, I had dinner with you.
You were on Fox.
I remember.
unidentified
Right.
tucker carlson
I was on Fox, right.
I was like, what was I doing that night?
I was sitting on a set with like grumpy Britt Hume and that guy from 60 Minutes' son, Wallace.
And they were like, ooh, I can't believe this couldn't happen.
And I was like psyched and everyone hated me for being psyched.
But we had dinner.
I totally forgot that because you're going to the Trump victory party.
unidentified
What was that like?
buckley carlson
Really, really.
Actually, it was one of the greatest things ever.
We showed up.
We went out to an additional dinner.
I was with my wife.
Went out to an additional dinner, had a great dinner.
unidentified
Two dinners.
I'm good, Bob.
buckley carlson
Two dinners.
Went to this wonderful French restaurant that no longer exists in New York.
Showed up at this very sparsely attended victory party.
And the best thing about it is it had a wall of televisions from floor to ceiling behind the stage.
And it was an up close picture of all of the assembled people in the.
In the Javits Center, which is where all the Democrats and the Victory Hillary Party was taking place.
No one seemed to think Trump was going to win until, of course, he flipped Florida.
And then it was a raucous party.
It was actually a raucous party.
tucker carlson
Who was there?
Do you remember who you ran into?
buckley carlson
Oh, I almost got knocked over by the, I'm trying to remember her name now.
She was the female governor of Arizona, just plowed, just super hammered.
Do you remember her?
I can't remember her name.
tucker carlson
I do remember her.
She was a smoker.
buckley carlson
She was a smoker.
She was a massive drinker.
She was jubilant.
People were jubilant.
tucker carlson
But like to go to the Trump party in 2016, no one even bothered to go.
I ran into Kellyanne Conway, Fitzpatrick, or whatever she was at that point, Conway, I guess, that morning at like 5 a.m. on the set at Fox.
She's the campaign manager.
buckley carlson
Oh, I remember.
tucker carlson
And I said, We're in the hallway.
I'll never forget it right off the set.
And I said, What do you think the numbers are tonight?
And she always asked the campaign manager that, like election day.
And she goes, I'd say 45.
43, something like that.
There's a campaign manager telling me.
I've talked to a lot of campaign managers on election day, like since 1992 or whatever.
I've never met one who didn't predict victory on election day ever.
Ever.
It doesn't matter.
buckley carlson
Plus, it's bad juju.
I mean, your job is to demonstrate the utmost optimism, even in the face of so.
tucker carlson
So, if your campaign, and by the way, Trump thought he was going to lose.
And I think he said that.
He certainly said it to me.
But I know that he believed he was going to lose.
So, if you're going to the Trump party when the candidate and his campaign manager both believe they're going to lose, but you're at the victory party, We know it's a snapshot in history.
buckley carlson
I actually did think I know because you pulled our table.
We had a table of about eight people for dinner, and it was me and Caitlin Collins to her credit.
tucker carlson
Oh, wow.
buckley carlson
Two of us, I think, I think you said, I think three of us out of like eight or nine people said Trump was going to win.
tucker carlson
It's kind of crazy.
This is going to like set off conspiracies, but you and I are having dinner with Caitlin Collins on the eve of the 2016 election.
I love Caitlin Collins.
I don't even, I've never seen her on TV because I don't have a TV, but I don't watch her on TV either.
buckley carlson
I'll preserve my sweet girl.
tucker carlson
I know you're not allowed to say that.
buckley carlson
I have thoughts of her in that dinner because she was riotous.
She was a great girl.
tucker carlson
She's a smart girl.
She's a great girl.
I totally agree with that.
buckley carlson
Despite whatever she says on TV, I'm not even aware of it, but I haven't watched CNN in a decade.
tucker carlson
I hired her out of college and always thought so much of her.
She's one of the hardest working people I've ever met in my life.
That girl, I don't think she slept past 5 a.m. in her entire life.
Like she is a worker.
buckley carlson
Super admirable.
tucker carlson
I respect that.
Yes, I do.
Almost above everything.
unidentified
Anyway.
tucker carlson
So, you go to the party, it's sparsely attended, and then he wins.
buckley carlson
Then it transforms.
Jeff Sessions was right next to us.
I love Jeff Sessions.
tucker carlson
Me too.
Good man.
buckley carlson
Great man.
Not tons, but a few elected officials that I recognize from around the country.
Not many.
unidentified
Mostly.
tucker carlson
Mostly.
Jan Brewer.
unidentified
That's exactly what I'm saying.
tucker carlson
Jan Brewer, sorry.
unidentified
Governor.
buckley carlson
I think I prevented Jan Brewer from falling down.
She fell into me and had full momentum, and I remember pulling her back, and she.
Couldn't have been cheerier.
tucker carlson
Saving governors.
buckley carlson
Not a grumpy president.
unidentified
Hold on, governor.
buckley carlson
It was amazing.
In fact, not only did they not think they were going to win, it was really hard to assemble the entire team and the entire family.
I'm assuming some of them were asleep.
I have no idea.
But once it was clear that he had won, and the best part of this celebration was seeing in real time, floor to ceiling, all of the self assured, really vindictive celebrities and other elected officials who had assembled to.
Cheer on Hillary in tears.
I mean, just inconsolable.
tucker carlson
So, you went for the suffering that I did.
buckley carlson
I don't normally, but there it was really hard not to appreciate.
I mean, it was in technical terms.
tucker carlson
The sense of entitlement that the Hillary people had.
It was.
It was crazy.
It's her turn.
She'd never done anything.
buckley carlson
Well, she'd flown a million miles when she was second.
tucker carlson
Oh, flown a million miles.
buckley carlson
That was literally like her top talking point.
tucker carlson
But I think she had a record of like zero achievement.
buckley carlson
Zero achievement.
But really high self regard.
tucker carlson
But the most banal observations about the world.
Like, I always thought that.
She had, you know, high feral intelligence, but I never thought there was any evidence that she had any abstract intelligence at all, like conceptual intelligence.
Like she couldn't understand the world.
buckley carlson
She was too busy surviving.
She was a survivor, first and foremost.
She was a cockroach, like that way.
You couldn't kill Hillary.
I mean, we've been around since Hillary showed up on the scene.
tucker carlson
No, been there the whole time.
I ran into her in Riyadh two months ago.
You think you were there?
No, I.
Yeah, she's still here.
buckley carlson
Beard humor.
tucker carlson
I almost ran into her.
I walked in and wow, Hillary Clinton is right in front of me.
She's like four feet tall at this point.
buckley carlson
Confirmation that she's still with her girlfriend, who's married to George Soros.
unidentified
I know.
tucker carlson
I know.
buckley carlson
What a sham that is.
Most people don't talk about that.
They should.
tucker carlson
I know.
buckley carlson
I'm sorry.
She's in public life.
She doesn't have a private life.
It's worthy of examination.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Sorry.
tucker carlson
I'm going to stick to my no outing policy.
The only person I've broken it for is Barack Obama.
I just couldn't.
buckley carlson
I'm sorry.
tucker carlson
You know why I did that?
Because I really don't think that you should do that.
I feel guilty every time I call Lindsey Graham Gaek.
I shouldn't be doing that.
That is not the Christian way at all.
The only reason I did it for Obama was because there was a guy, an accuser, and they arrested him and tormented him.
And he died in poverty and obscurity pretty recently.
He was a very screwed up dude.
He was kind of sad, prison gay kind of guy.
buckley carlson
He was credible.
tucker carlson
He's absolutely telling the truth.
There's no question about it.
In my mind, you know, it's he said, he said, but I don't even know if Obama's denied it.
But Obama was on the down low for sure.
buckley carlson
Big time.
tucker carlson
And everyone's like, oh, how dare you say that?
Well, his biographer said that.
Obama himself in a letter to a distant cousin of ours.
I'm embarrassed to say we have a relative who dated Obama, but which is like shocking.
But anyway, I don't marinate on that.
I know you don't know that.
But anyway, in a letter to a relative of ours, said, You know, I've considered being gay, but it's not challenging enough.
It's like, Did you ever write letters like that in college?
buckley carlson
I don't think I wrote letters to any men, actually.
No.
tucker carlson
Did you write letters to your girlfriend being like, You know, I was thinking about being gay.
Just thinking about, you know, this morning, I was thinking, maybe I should be gay.
That's not enough of a challenge.
buckley carlson
I would say about Lindsey Graham, it is fair game.
Because that man holds somehow a lot of power over America's future and America's boys who fight in our wars.
unidentified
Right.
buckley carlson
And he is.
tucker carlson
No, I know.
It's just, I think we have to in our business or just in life fight against the tendency to judge everyone but ourselves.
unidentified
For sure.
tucker carlson
And I think if you're going to tell the truth about other people, you should be required, you should require yourself to tell the truth about yourself first.
So, because it's just so easy to be like, oh, they're bad.
They're secretly, you know, sodomites.
unidentified
Okay.
tucker carlson
Well, we're all secretly something.
So, like, it's just important to say that.
Anyway, sorry.
buckley carlson
Did you say we're all secretly sodomites?
Something, not all secretly sodomites.
tucker carlson
Sorry, just to clarify.
unidentified
No, we're not.
I mean, speak for myself.
buckley carlson
There is a lot of that in the Republican Party.
I don't understand.
tucker carlson
It's insane.
buckley carlson
Can't be accidental.
Someone we had dinner with last night who's very wise said, Demonic influences concentrate on those with power.
And that is so clearly true.
tucker carlson
I believe that was my wife of 35 years who said that.
She's a wise chick.
No, that is totally right.
Demonic influence concentrates on those who have power.
Beware of power.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
That's why it's.
buckley carlson
And those who seek power.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
No, that is true.
It's a chicken and the egg thing.
Do screwed up people go into politics and business?
Or does the reality of living near power, having power, destroy them?
buckley carlson
I think clearly both.
I mean, they've done studies that show an inordinate amount of sociopaths gravitate towards elective office and also corporate power.
unidentified
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
buckley carlson
This past year, actually, they was something like 60% or something.
unidentified
Really?
buckley carlson
Demonstrably sociopathic.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
And if you wake up every morning and say, I am the wisest, I am the toughest, I'm the leader of all men, and I can make decisions for other people, there's something wrong with you.
unidentified
I've never thought that one time in my life.
tucker carlson
I've never looked in the mirror and said, You're a leader of men.
buckley carlson
I've suffered some delusions, but not that one.
Not that one.
unidentified
I'm like, Yeah.
tucker carlson
Well, this is why I think this to myself all the time.
We should require every man to have a mirror outside his shower.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
As you emerge from the shower every day, you see this lumpy, furry primate staring back at you, and you're like, Weird fur in places.
Can't take yourself too seriously.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Amen.
God bless our women tolerating and loving us despite that.
Fish Dressing Hatred Ideas 00:02:59
tucker carlson
There's this amazing exchange between Jesus and John, and Jesus and Peter, excuse me, at the end of the Gospel of John when Jesus reappears and A couple of the disciples are fishing on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus has prepared this, like, basically fish barbecue breakfast.
He's cooking fish over charcoal.
And I don't understand a lot of what it means, but there's a one point at which Jesus says, When you're young, you dress yourself.
I'm paraphrasing, but when you're young, you dress yourself and go wherever you want.
But when you're old, others dress you and take you where you don't want to go.
And I know that there are, of course, theological meanings that I'm probably not smart enough to fully.
That means a lot, and I don't understand everything that it means.
But on the most literal level, it's true that there comes a time for all of us when we lose agency and autonomy and sovereignty, and we're dependent on others, and we're so reduced.
I'm going to make you emotional thinking about it because it's the nightmare.
Jesus describes it as a nightmare, by the way.
He doesn't say it's okay.
He's like, this is bad.
It's going to happen to you, and it's going to happen to all of us.
And I just think it's important to keep that ever present.
buckley carlson
Well, it's a really good reminder to respect and love those who are younger than you and those in your orbit to really pay attention to your children and your extended family.
I mean, these are the people you'll be dependent upon when you're older.
And that is not a concept that you hear much in America.
I mean, we move away from our family members.
We move away from our parents when in fact we should be embracing them, learning from them, but also taking care of them.
Yes, absolutely.
tucker carlson
That is really smart.
buckley carlson
It must be by design.
It doesn't happen by accident.
Nowhere else has that happened.
People live.
tucker carlson
Well, I was watching Ben Shapiro the other day and he said, if you can't find a job in the town you're from, where your parents are buried, where you spent your whole life, that's on you.
buckley carlson
Yeah, move out.
tucker carlson
Yeah, move out.
Go somewhere else.
Become a migrant.
Like, who do you think you are?
You think you deserve to live in the town you grew up in just because your parents are buried there and your grandparents built it?
You think you have some right to that?
Don't you understand the rules of capital, of the globalized economy?
buckley carlson
Like, who, honestly, the gall, the entitlement.
You should reap the benefits of that which you've worked for your entire life and that what your ancestors have worked for.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
Man, I don't think there's anything that's upset me more than that clip.
I mean, his many attacks on Jesus, his calls for slaughtering populations, it just is the bigotry, the cruelty of his program.
I don't think anything has made me more enraged than that.
Just the kind of like, what?
You think you have a right to a community, to a nation?
Who do you think you are?
buckley carlson
This is a concept.
tucker carlson
Yeah, it's an idea.
buckley carlson
This is an idea.
Yeah, exactly.
tucker carlson
What's a really evil idea?
buckley carlson
Yes, it is.
unidentified
Is the truth.
buckley carlson
And not sustainable as we're learning.
Early Administration Vaccine Doubts 00:14:42
tucker carlson
No, no, not now.
Of course, it leads to collapse, which is, of course, the point.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
Because it's animated by hatred.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And people who espouse ideas like that are lying.
They're not ideas.
It's not a philosophy.
It's not an ideology.
It's an expression of hatred toward a population.
And that's real.
Like nothing's more real than that.
So, anyway, sorry.
Getting a field.
I beg your pardon.
So, but to Trump, because I just think it's so interesting what's happened.
So, there are three elections for Trump.
You vote for him in all three.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And you do so not reluctantly, but enthusiastically.
And in fact, you work for Trump.
You write his speeches at the beginning.
You know the people around him, including his son in law.
And you're kind of punished for it.
By your neighbors and by people you know.
I'm sure you lose business for doing that, but you keep doing it.
What's the moment where you're like, I don't know about this?
buckley carlson
I'd had a few reservations, probably during one, I thought, actually, early on, I was confused that he brought in first, empowered his son in law, who I was kindly disposed to and thought was motivated by loyalty to Trump's program and to Trump.
And then early on.
tucker carlson
You knew Jared.
buckley carlson
I did.
And corresponded with him quite a bit, met with him a number of times during the early administration.
One of Trump's obvious.
tucker carlson
Well, I met Jared through you, so I know you know him.
Yeah.
buckley carlson
One of Trump's obvious deficits to anybody who was looking at him, even if you loved him for being an outsider, you knew that Washington was like a really complicated machinery.
And you need people who are well versed in navigating it and making it work because the federal government is just an enormous kind of out of control machine.
And if you don't have people who understand the levers of power and how To propel your program forward, you will fail.
And especially Trump, who had a very adversarial Republican Party, weasels like Paul Ryan, who had been elevated by Trump's victory and was newly the Speaker of the House, hated Trump.
tucker carlson
And so why would Paul Ryan hate Trump?
buckley carlson
It's a really good question, especially because he should have been really grateful that Trump was in power and thereby his power derived from Trump's success.
But none of them, none of them seemed to feel that way.
tucker carlson
Paul Ryan especially hated Trump.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Yes, he did.
tucker carlson
What do you think that comes from?
buckley carlson
I think he was a weak man and a bitter man.
And boy, did he use his obstructionist power to the detriment of not just Donald Trump, but the people who had voted for Donald Trump.
So early on, Trump didn't take that seriously.
One thing that made him super attractive was he was an outside candidate.
He wasn't a politician, he was a businessman, and he was there for a very specific purpose.
And yet, he came in and Not only didn't understand how Washington works, he didn't take the appropriate measures to protect himself and his agenda.
Instead, he reverted to type and hired a bunch of Goldman Sachs people and billionaires and empowered his son in law, who had been a Democrat until the day before.
I think through the election, he had been a Democrat and a globalist.
And so that was concerning and upsetting.
And then the country got completely overwhelmed by the faux controversy around the Russia stuff, which was on its face absurd.
Knew anything about Donald Trump or anything about the campaign, you knew that not only did they not rely upon Russia for help, they had a hard time like coalescing their own power.
I mean, they were not an organized machine and they were not allied with any foreign power.
And so that was insane, but it occupied the country.
I'm still quite bitter about it, actually, and people don't talk about it.
We've suffered so many humiliations on the national stage since that people don't focus on it enough.
But it paralyzed the country and paralyzed the administration.
And I felt like Trump is responsible for that because leaders need to be able to delegate and they need to recognize where their weaknesses are and they need to account for those weaknesses.
And he didn't.
And he empowered a lot of people he shouldn't have empowered.
So I was dispirited during the early administration.
It was clear to me and anybody else who was watching that he was going to win reelection despite all the COVID stuff.
And at that time, we didn't know the details, how complicit Trump was by empowering the pharmaceutical companies during COVID, how responsible he actually was for that offense, that biological war against the country that he's supposed to lead.
At that time, I think most people and I were sympathetic to Trump, the position that he was in.
And then when so it was clear that he was going to win re election, I thought it was clear that he won re election on election eve.
I mean, he was over the top.
I mean, the numbers were there for him.
He won until they stepped in and took it away from him.
So and then I thought he acted crazily.
tucker carlson
I mean, who is who is they?
buckley carlson
The summer of love with George Floyd, which was obviously a complete scam.
The man was killed, unfortunately, but he had had a, you know, he'd stuffed a bunch of fentanyl in his ass and he was upright and forthright with the cops who showed up on the scene.
The famous video started actually minutes before when he'd come out and come out of the store and he was sitting in his car with those two other people and he tried to pass the counterfeit dollars and he said to the cop, I cannot breathe.
So it was clear that it was a manufactured crisis from the beginning.
It was designed to divide America and it was designed to.
tucker carlson
Get rid of white cops.
buckley carlson
Get rid of white cops.
tucker carlson
Preparatory to whatever's coming next.
buckley carlson
Yes, very much so.
And the left's, you know, Antifa hordes took over neighborhoods in America, destroyed statues, killed people, destroyed businesses, ran rampant all over the country, but also in Washington, D.C., where Trump was president.
He didn't have any natural allies in the media, of course.
They distorted it, they lied about it.
That was clear.
But Trump is the chief executive, Trump is the president of the United States, and yet he failed.
To exercise his power and to quell the riots, he failed to articulate what was going on.
He failed to defend the law enforcement officer who was still riding in prison, by the way, who was wrongfully prosecuted and, you know, obscured the original report that demonstrated that Floyd had died from a fentanyl overdose.
But really, he failed to exercise his power.
Trump did.
He failed to.
tucker carlson
Still had a riot outside his house.
I called him at that time, like, dude, you cannot allow people.
To set things on fire across from your house, you're the president.
buckley carlson
Like the oldest Episcopal church in the country.
tucker carlson
St. John's.
buckley carlson
Yeah.
So he abetted that by weakness or indecision or whatever.
It doesn't matter.
He failed in his job to reassert power and control, and he failed to articulate what was at stake, and he failed to protect himself and his countrymen and his physical country.
So, yes, I was upset about that.
And then he won re election.
He also won re election and was taken from him, but even his efforts to galvanize support throughout the country, to direct the FBI to investigate, to direct the Department of Homeland Security to articulate clearly that it had been stolen.
He just kept repeating silly talking points that weren't that compelling and made him look crazy, but he failed to use the power at his hand.
And then, of course, it was taken away from him and he sulked off into ignominy.
He was impeached but not convicted.
And then he went off into the wilderness where he soon started raising an enormous amount of money.
And my understanding is that he raised over a billion dollars during those wilderness years.
And every time he spoke about it, it was all about Donald Trump's personal woes, which were significant because these people were not only trying to crush him legally and abuse the judicial system against him.
In Florida and Georgia and New York, famously.
But it was all about Donald Trump.
It was all about the Donald Trump suffering.
It was never about the people that had gone there with legitimate license to protest against an election that was stolen from them, stolen from them in front of them.
These people were exercising their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly.
And they were crushed by their own government and they were crushed by people within their own party.
And the other party.
They were crushed by law enforcement.
They were abetted by the military.
They were abetted, of course, by the media and the corporate losers all over the country.
So there was a major headwind.
But Trump has the strongest voice in the country.
Even then, people listened to what Trump said.
Trump could have an impromptu press conference wherever he went.
Whatever Donald Trump said was worthy of listening to.
So he had the biggest microphone in the country.
And he never once utilized that for the benefit of the Americans who'd supported him, not only in 16, not only throughout the entire Russia nonsense, not only throughout the George Floyd nonsense.
but through the election in 2020.
That gave me a lot of pause.
I was like, what kind of reprehensible human being would not?
It's the most basic thing to protect your friends and in politics, your supporters, but anybody who's on your side and your fellow Americans.
And he had a lot of power to do so.
And he didn't exercise that power on behalf of anyone else.
It was all about Donald Trump.
So there was a period.
tucker carlson
You're making my heartbeat fast.
buckley carlson
Sorry, I hadn't tapped into this emotion in quite some time.
A lot of people are having this discussion now in the context of Trump's obvious betrayal of the American public, not just his voters, but the people who thought 16, 20, and certainly 24 were absolutely existential elections and that there was no other person on the planet who could come in and right the ship, return sanity to our great country,
to save our country is like the last opportunity on every front.
Like we're.
Crumbling, where we've got these enemies within, we've got these enemies all over the world who'd taken advantage of us during the Biden years because we had such a weak and incompetent and obviously joke of a presidency, and all these people around Biden who had wielded his power in his name to destroy this country.
So Trump was legitimately the last hope in 24.
But before that, in 2021, 2022, in 21 and 22, when he was raising all this money and it was the Donald Trump.
You know, victimhood show, he had failed when it mattered to articulate what Americans were protesting during January 6th, to articulate that it was actually a conspiracy by the federal government, abetted by all of these other big interests.
tucker carlson
Yeah, I'm the one who put those tapes out there.
buckley carlson
Oh, I'm a guy.
tucker carlson
I don't know how it fell to me, but yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
I'm like some stupid cable news employee.
unidentified
Right.
buckley carlson
You're just a truth seeker and a.
tucker carlson
Yeah, but I mean.
buckley carlson
That's it.
But you have no institutional power.
unidentified
No.
tucker carlson
It's like a dumb cable news show.
Who cares, right?
buckley carlson
But what's the point of having law enforcement?
What's the point of having a military?
What's the point of having a judiciary if you can't rely upon them to protect the Constitution and protect the Americans who abide by it and pay their taxes and work hard and raise their families and love this country?
That was after COVID.
tucker carlson
Now, you said something really interesting.
You didn't take the vax.
Thank God, literally, thank God.
buckley carlson
Never once considered it.
tucker carlson
I did neither.
buckley carlson
So obviously, thank God.
tucker carlson
But Trump did and encouraged everyone else to take it and then never apologized, even when it became clear that the vaccine killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
has never really been studied in this country, but we can extrapolate and assume it killed, I mean, it killed people I know.
buckley carlson
Me too.
I know young men now who took it who have myocarditis and other heart problems.
For sure.
tucker carlson
It was poison.
Look at the cancer rates, look at the fertility rates, like everything about it was a bioweapon aimed at US.
And Trump didn't apologize for that.
I don't know.
All the things that I've just ignored or forced myself to ignore, whatever, my flaws come out as I remember all of this and my shame emerges.
Well deserved shame.
buckley carlson
But anyway, Trump is completely absent shame about it.
He, to this day, will still talk about the success of Operation Warp Speed, which allowed these things to come to market, which allowed the.
tucker carlson
You know what he said to me?
I actually raised it with him because I'm so upset about it.
It's just killed too many people and it made too many women infertile, and that's just the most evil thing ever.
And it's still on the schedule.
And it's so immoral.
It's hard to believe this is even happening.
But he did exactly the same thing.
Again, it's my fault for not being like, whoa, that's a red line.
I can't cross it.
But he did the same thing he did on the Iran war.
When I talked to him about the Iran war, you say, Well, like, this is hurting all these people.
He's like, You don't believe in the polio vaccine?
Like, that was a good vaccine, don't you think?
It's like, I guess I believe in the polio vaccine.
I don't know.
I mean, but that's not what we're talking about.
The polio vaccine is a totally different thing.
I mean, I don't even know enough about it, even though we grew up next to the Salk Institute.
It's like, What does it have to do with it?
You mentioned Iran.
He's like, Do you think they should have nuclear weapons?
No, I don't think, not for nuclear weapons in general.
But it was a non sequitur designed to shut down the conversation.
buckley carlson
And the same tactic that's been employed by his political adversaries his entire political life.
tucker carlson
Exactly.
buckley carlson
So it's like, really?
Breaking Point Decorum Cascade 00:17:10
buckley carlson
You're going to misquote.
You're going to misdirect.
You're going to.
Yes.
tucker carlson
Construct a straw man.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
There we go.
tucker carlson
Well, you're an anti Semite?
unidentified
You're racist?
tucker carlson
Do you think Iran should have nuclear weapons?
Are you pro Islam?
unidentified
It's like Paul.
tucker carlson
No.
I'm an Episcopalian.
Leave me alone.
unidentified
I mean, what?
buckley carlson
I saw data yesterday that said 80% of Americans took the kill shot.
Seven million babies have been compelled to have this shot this year alone.
tucker carlson
This year?
buckley carlson
This year alone.
Yep.
And every medical, every doctor.
tucker carlson
Are you being serious?
buckley carlson
I'm being totally serious.
Every new med student who comes out of doctoring school is compelled to take it.
Hospitals are so.
tucker carlson
So you've got to commit an abortion and take the mRNA shot before you can become a doctor.
Wonder why, you know, Doctors are like the worst people in America because they break them at the outset.
buckley carlson
Exactly.
tucker carlson
They make them complicit in a true crime.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And once you're complicit, it's like you can't join MS 13 until you kill somebody.
You can't be an OBGYN until you murder a baby.
Then you're like in on it.
buckley carlson
You can't wear the Hells Angels patch until you shot someone in the face and gotten gonorrhea.
Okay.
tucker carlson
No, it's so right.
Yeah, there's almost too much.
Sorry.
You're working me up into a frenzy.
buckley carlson
Sorry, me too.
I'd shelved some of this.
tucker carlson
Okay, so that's kind of my question.
So, this all happens in COVID.
You're a COVID dissenter, you're an honest man who believes in actual health.
You're not taking the shot.
Your family's not taking the shot.
But Trump is encouraging the shot and then is still encouraging the shot and they're still giving it out under the Trump administration.
Was this a red flag for you or you're just like, oh, it's too much?
I can't deal with this.
buckley carlson
It's really so hard to keep track of it because at the same time, the entire world seems like it's crumbling all the time.
Seems like we live during the Twilight Zone during the Biden administration.
Everything was like a daily offense.
Really, could that be happening?
There are no adults around.
Like no one's going to.
tucker carlson
Tearing down all statues to whites.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Replace them with like.
buckley carlson
The judicial system has become totally corrupt.
And frightening.
tucker carlson
Exactly.
Jury trial is like a nightmare scenario.
Yeah.
I mean, you don't have any peers left in America to try you?
buckley carlson
A jury of your peers.
Oh, yeah.
unidentified
Oh, man.
buckley carlson
No, you're right.
tucker carlson
There's just a cascade of tragedy.
So it's like hard to think.
buckley carlson
Got to earn a living at the same time and protect your family and your children while all of these offenses are going on.
It's really hard to keep up.
But when you start thinking about the things that Trump had done, especially when you're looking back now on the incredible.
Not just betrayal, but his sense of disdain for the people that had worked on his behalf, for the people who believed in him, for the people who had sacrificed so much.
And it really is hard to know, hard to remember now, but it was only a couple of years ago if you said you were a Trump administration, if you were a Trump voter, Trump fan, people had license to like beat you up in public and take your stuff, smash you in the face, take your hat off your head.
Like that was the prevailing attitude in America, and it was allowed.
To continue, like law enforcement would never come to your rescue.
It's like, oh, it's like the age old thing.
Oh, you wear a slutty outfit, so you're being raped.
It's like, oh, you wore Trump paraphernalia, therefore you know that you're going out in public and someone's going to assault you.
Like, that was pretty much the law of the land during so many years.
I think it's my perspective about it.
tucker carlson
We're literally true.
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Literally true.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Terrifying.
So, um, I didn't focus on it.
And also, you know, it's a binary choice.
Who is going to run this country?
It wasn't obviously Cackling Camel Toe was not going to be entrusted with power.
tucker carlson
Who is Cackling Camel Toe?
buckley carlson
She's that.
tucker carlson
Was she on the ballot?
I actually voted in this election.
Don't normally do it.
I didn't see any Cackling Camel Toe on the roster.
buckley carlson
She was that Jamaican lady who, you know, was the AG of California.
tucker carlson
Oh, Carmella Harris.
buckley carlson
Yeah, that one.
And then she.
tucker carlson
The woman who couldn't pronounce her own first name consistently.
buckley carlson
Literally three or four different pronunciations.
Hammered all the time and not in a good way.
tucker carlson
Her husband's like smacking women around.
buckley carlson
And also probably on the other team, I think.
unidentified
I know.
buckley carlson
I mean, I never, but it was a joke and it was an in your face offense daily.
Like, I mean, these are the people who employed Corinne Jean Pierre at the White House podium, right?
tucker carlson
I totally forgot about her.
buckley carlson
I mean, we grew up at a time where serious.
People presumed to speak on behalf of the president of the United States.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
The president of the United States was like, had some decorum a ton.
He was the daddy.
You know, even if you didn't agree with the president of the United States, you kind of respected him.
He's got all this power invested in him on your behalf.
And every word mattered.
Every word was parsed.
And the people who spoke on his behalf were serious people.
And my entire life, they were serious people.
It was like.
tucker carlson
So maybe it's inevitable that you get, once the patriarchy has been overthrown as it has been.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Do you get a president like this who's emotional, all about himself, is perpetually the victim?
buckley carlson
Remember, they used to say the president's most valuable commodity was his time.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
buckley carlson
That's the most valuable thing the president has.
What does he focus on?
How does he spend his time?
He's got a finite amount of time.
What does he focus on?
And with Trump, you're like, oh, he's focusing on the iTunes background music for his thing.
He's focusing on the new Arc de Triomphe to Trump that he's putting up at the Andam Memorial Bridge.
He's focusing on.
unidentified
The ballroom.
buckley carlson
It's like, are you serious?
Get real and get serious about your responsibilities.
And he's no one ever says anything about that.
In fact, these days I find this is a new phenomenon I've never encountered.
You attack Trump on the basis of substantive policy decisions that he's made, betrayals that are obvious and quantifiable, and you will get people in your face.
How dare you attack the president?
Are you serious?
That guy works for me.
That guy works for you.
tucker carlson
Yeah, listen up, bitch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
buckley carlson
I'm sorry.
No, your opinion matters.
My opinion matters.
Every American's opinion matters.
We should be heard.
We should be respected.
And no way am I going to be kowtowed and not saying the obvious, which is this guy has failed in his responsibility.
He is disdainful towards the American people.
He's disdainful towards the people who put him in office and the people who sacrificed a lot, real physical and economic injury to get this man in office and to witness.
The vitriol and the moronic, the moronicy, and just the never ending me, and you're not with me.
I'll define what the program is now once I'm in office.
It doesn't work that way.
You define the program before you run for president.
People attach themselves not to you as a person, they attach themselves to your program for their benefit.
And that's the whole point.
So, yeah, I'm mad about it.
tucker carlson
So, when was the breaking point for you as someone who?
Had a Trump bumper sticker, wrote his speeches, voted for him three times, wore the Trump t shirt, wore the MAGA hat in Northwest DC.
What was the point at which you'd and who also has acknowledged that, like, for a decade, attacking Trump, hating Trump, being mad at Trump were all kind of markers for attitudes that were anti American, anti white, anti you.
buckley carlson
Absolutely.
tucker carlson
So, like, for you to be criticizing Trump in public and to feel as vehemently as you do, you certainly have justification.
I think you've shown that.
But to say it is another question.
Like, what was the point at which you decided, like, I can't, I can't be part of this?
buckley carlson
Part of it is the, the rebirth he had in 24.
It was just the I mean, you could discard as irrelevant a lot of the attacks on Trump because they became just like background noise.
Oh, he said this.
Oh, he even early on when he asked Hillary, he asked the Russians to steal Hillary's emails when that clearly wasn't what he said.
That was clearly wrong.
Oh, he.
He's a white supremacist and he's never denounced these people.
I mean, all of that stuff took on with such universal background noise that you'd be like, okay, you're absurd.
Anybody who says something like that, you're just a liar.
You're dumb.
It doesn't even mean anything.
tucker carlson
He's a racist.
buckley carlson
It doesn't mean anything.
But then, legitimately upset about his failure to stand up for America and Americans during the George Floyd thing, his complete abnegation of responsibility with January 6 political prisoners.
tucker carlson
But he pardoned them.
buckley carlson
Oh, he did pardon them.
He did.
And that represented the first time that he'd ever stuck up for them.
And what really mattered is when they were rotting in prison with no constitutional guarantees of a speedy trial or hygienic conditions or ability to eat real food or not being assaulted by cockroaches or prison guards who used them as sport.
And it was completely not only allowed, tolerated, but expected and even celebrated in the media and by Republican elected officials.
Many of whom are still in Congress, by the way.
So there was that.
But he, yes, he pardoned them once he was in office.
But my understanding from several people, I remember witnessing it at the time because I was upset that he said nothing on their behalf.
Again, that's the power he could have wielded when he was in the wilderness.
He could have talked about them first and foremost.
He could have informed people about the conditions they were in and he could have supported them.
But he also could have supported them with the huge financial cash that had been flooding in to him personally because he never stopped raising money.
He raised an enormous amount of money in the wilderness years, and he spent not a dollar of it for the benefit of those people.
Didn't pay for their legal fees, didn't take out advertisements on their behalf, didn't do anything that he should have done, that anybody with a lot less resources would have done.
So I forgot your question.
Forgive me.
tucker carlson
Given all of that.
Oh, but he pardoned them.
buckley carlson
But he originally pardoned them, yes.
But it took an enormous amount.
There's someone named Suzanne Monks, who was a very active advocate on their behalf.
I think she's a wife of a fellow who was incarcerated.
I may be getting that wrong, but she was dogged and persistent throughout all of it.
She claims now, and I believe it, she's reminding people at the moment that the Trump we have now, that has betrayed his base and well beyond his base, every other American who relies upon him to steward this country with sobriety and concern for them first and foremost and only, that it wasn't easy to get Trump to pardon them, that she had to.
Personally, rally people, and you were helpful in this to push his hand, to force his hand, to make it untenable for him not to pardon them.
And so he did.
tucker carlson
I did do that.
I talked to you about that.
buckley carlson
I know you did.
tucker carlson
It's just on principle.
I didn't, you know, whatever.
buckley carlson
But you say on principle, it's principle that you have.
It's not principle that Donald Trump had.
tucker carlson
You've got to fight injustice.
That's the whole point of leadership.
buckley carlson
Yes, very much so.
tucker carlson
Is to help your people.
And to the extent you can, like we're never going to defeat injustice, it's the state of the world, but you have to keep trying.
buckley carlson
Yeah, you do what you can.
And he had a lot.
In his arsenal to do that, and he did it.
And it's pretty easy, as he's demonstrated, to sign documents pretty easy, pretty easy to do, you know, to sign executive orders, whatever power they have.
But uh, so it wasn't a lot of skin off Donald Trump's back to do that.
Uh, he did the right thing, and I applaud him for it, just as I applaud him for closing the border.
It's like those two things I can't really think of many other things that he's done.
I can't think of anything else really that he's done.
Um, since he's been in office now for a year and a half, um.
So he did the right thing eventually under great pressure, and good for him for doing it.
But he could have done it a lot earlier.
He could have made a much greater impact for the benefit of those Americans who were not rich, who were not well known, who were motivated by completely reasonable and constitutionally protected outrage over what had been done to them.
I mean, they are representative of America, not just Trump voters, America and Americans.
The best kind of people, I think.
And to see them, by the way, in the background, I know it didn't get a lot of news at the time.
Periodically, it would.
No time in American history has the FBI been rallied with such vigor and focus and economic empowerment to go in and root out these supposed criminals.
What had they done?
They had walked on the grounds of the US Capitol, the people's house.
Exactly.
And then they'd gone about.
Back home to their hometowns to take care of their children and their jobs.
And they would have manhunts, like publicized manhunts with, you know, 30 guys in SWAT gear and helicopters in their neighborhood.
tucker carlson
Arrest the unarmed whites.
Yeah, got it.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
Meanwhile, all of our cities are crumbling, and Washington, D.C. was like a free for all for gangs and carjackers and people walking around with guns in public.
You know, it's okay for the criminals to have guns, but God forbid there would be some hardworking taxpayer exercising his right in the Second Amendment and the First Amendment.
So, The two foundational freedoms in our country, and Trump was unwilling to protect them in any meaningful manner until he signed their pardons.
Again, good for him for doing so, but he still failed in that responsibility, as far as I'm concerned.
tucker carlson
So, what was the breaking point for you?
buckley carlson
Really, initially, it was the, the attack, the attack on Iran initially last year when I guess we successfully eradicated all of their nuclear capability.
unidentified
You aware?
buckley carlson
Cause it was still on.
tucker carlson
I'd heard that.
buckley carlson
It may still be on the, the White House website cause it was on there as even when we engaged in this latest war with Iran, this unnecessary, what will be probably a forever war that will has killed Americans and is going to degrade us as a country.
Um, significantly already has.
Um, It was that.
And then it was his reaction, well, his complete failure the first year to hold anybody to account for all of the crimes, the obvious crimes, all of the things that had been exposed from Russia to COVID policy to the January 6th stuff.
I mean, all of that has been demonstrably revealed to be the Capitol Hill pipe bombers.
Capitol Hill pipe bombers, all of the Biden era corruption, the auto pen scandals, the preemptive pardons, the.
The people who had abused their national security credentials and their positions of power to hurt Americans.
That is all laid out, laid out even by his own intelligence officers.
Tulsi Gabbard, you know, a year ago revealed that Barack Obama was directly guilty, I believe, of treason.
I don't know how you could say it any other way.
A former president who advocated and financed and allowed his national security apparatus to survey and obstruct and take out a sitting U.S. president, who again, Is not a man.
He is representative of the power that we invest in him as Americans.
So it's not an offense against Donald Trump, it's an offense against you and me and everybody we know.
Um, so his complete failure to utilize the information that he had at his fingertips and in the Justice Department, and by the way, US Congress, US Senate, three levers of power supposedly designed and at his disposal to enforce the law, to restore sanity, to hold people accountable for breaking the rules, um, to the detriment of our country and Americans.
And he failed to do that.
And then he attacked Iran.
Then Charlie, I guess there are many other things in between, but once, uh, Charlie Kirk was murdered.
I feel like he failed on a tonal level.
I don't feel that he displayed enough real sympathy or focus on finding Charlie Kirk's death.
I mean, killers, forgive me.
Charlie Kirk Murder Absurdity 00:05:26
buckley carlson
And on solving the crime, on using the entire apparatus of the US government to solve this crime in a way that would allay people's fears of a conspiracy or other things going on.
Donald Trump should have gotten up and given a press conference and said, We are going to find out who's responsible for this.
It doesn't matter what the end results show.
We have a responsibility as a public figure who was publicly assassinated.
And we're not going to tolerate this.
And whoever's responsible for it is going to be brought to justice.
And he's totally failed to do that, I think.
He failed to articulate that.
And he failed to use, again, the apparatus that is entrusted to him to do that.
And it's a huge apparatus, by the way.
Which, while the rest of America is degrading and getting less effective, I think we have a very effective, very clued in surveillance and technology and well funded US military and law enforcement apparatus that knows every detail about Americans at all times.
They can reconstruct, they could tell, you know, if you were in the Capitol during January 6th through a whole variety of means, but your cell phone primarily.
They know who was there, they know who's everywhere, they know where you are at all times, they can listen in on you.
But they can certainly pinpoint where you've been and what you've done.
So, why wouldn't you utilize that power to the benefit of justice?
unidentified
Yeah.
tucker carlson
I mean, the director of national intelligence, the head of the counterterrorism center, like, these are people who are appointed by you to root out corruption, to, you know, fight back against foreign threats, make America safer, but defend our citizens against not just attack, but foreign attack.
buckley carlson
If there's any element of Foreign involvement here, which it seems early on there was.
Um, And then the fact that he, sorry, can I continue this answer only because it makes me so mad?
The weird dynamics surrounding Charlie Kirk's death, the investigation, the initial press conference held by the supposed head of the FBI, Kash Patel, who said a lot of nonsensical things behind that podium, and no one has ever explained it.
What does it mean to see, I'll see you in Valhalla, Charlie?
What is the significance of the number 33?
tucker carlson
What does that mean?
buckley carlson
I don't know.
No one's ever been compelled to answer that question, but Kash Patel stood at the podium and made a very big point.
He could have made a lot of points.
First of all, they released video of the supposed killer, Tyler Robinson, jumping off like a 20 foot roof.
It was a very bad quality video, even though they had high quality video on that entire campus.
They released this ridiculous, like absurd, like 1973 quality VHS tape video of the supposed killer.
They released all of his supposed text messages that detail all of the.
If you were looking to incriminate yourself, if you had gotten away with the perfect crime, then you inexplicably decided to write down everything, every incriminating detail of your crime.
We're supposed to believe that he did that.
We're supposed to believe that the guy in the crowd, George Zinn, who'd been in various other hotspots like the Boston Marathon bombing, and he'd been a witness at 9 11, that George Zinn is going to just immediately erupt.
Out of his seat, take his trousers off and run down, screaming, waving his hand, saying, I shot Charlie, like within the first 30 seconds of it.
unidentified
Right?
buckley carlson
Like you wouldn't, if you wanted people to believe.
tucker carlson
Feels a little Jack Ruby y.
buckley carlson
It does very much so.
I was expecting him and Tyler Robinson to be visited in prison by Lewis Joyland West.
Yes, exactly.
I pronounce you crazy.
And then you have an inexplicable fast-acting cancer that kills you within six months.
That's normal.
But sorry, back to the Kash Patel thing, the fact that he gave this press conference that was devoid of any real detail that you would want in the aftermath of this public execution.
But then to emphasize things that seem so random and inexplicable, like Valhalla.
Who the hell knows what Valhalla is and how is it appropriate to this guy?
tucker carlson
Well, as Scandinavians, we know what Valhalla is, which is, you know, it's the Norse heaven.
It's a pagan understanding of heaven.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Right?
So Charlie Kirk is a serious.
Orthodox, you know, lowercase o Christian.
He's like a real Bible believing Christian.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
He does not believe in Valhalla.
He rejects Valhalla.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Like that's ridiculous actually to say that about a Christian man.
unidentified
Valhalla?
Yes.
tucker carlson
No, we're monotheists who believe in Jesus.
There's no Valhalla in my world.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Why would you say that?
buckley carlson
And no one's ever held him to account.
He's never been felt compelled to explain it.
Or the emphasis on 33.
It took 33 hours to bring this guy to justice.
And then he repeated it several times.
tucker carlson
I don't know.
I literally have no idea.
buckley carlson
So, everything surrounding it creates obviously unrest and disillusionment and anger.
tucker carlson
Can I say my favorite line?
We had dinner with Russell Brand at Homeless Night.
Epstein Files and Good People 00:15:46
tucker carlson
Obviously, you were there.
And his line that, you know, the thing about lone gunmen is they always seem to assassinate people who challenge institutional power.
It's kind of amazing.
Your average lone gunman just goes out, who knows why, and kills people who are criticizing the people in charge.
Maybe the people in charge should connect with the lone gunman community.
Kind of like McDonald's and Coca Cola got together.
It's just like a natural partnership.
Have they ever thought of that?
Sorry, I shouldn't be laughing with the murder of a friend of mine, but like it is.
buckley carlson
The absurdity of the murder of a face.
tucker carlson
And I'm not laughing with the murder of a face.
But it's, yeah, the lone gunman.
Yeah, that's incredible.
The lone gunman never take out anyone who's helping establish power.
You ever notice that?
buckley carlson
Oh, I have.
You'd think they'd stop using the lone gunman.
They've used him so often.
tucker carlson
But it was the war that finally scrambled your eggs.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Yes, the war, Charlie, and then, of course, the Epstein files.
unidentified
Oh, the Epstein files.
buckley carlson
The Epstein files, the JFK files, the 9 11 files, all things that he had committed to showing to the American people who actually own it and have every right to know the details about that huge terrorist attack and the assassination of our president.
And Obviously, the Epstein network, which not only had a ton of victims, but obviously represented hidden power over our elected leaders.
So, Trump had committed to doing all three of those things.
He's done none of them.
But beyond just abdicating his power, he was disdainful of those.
This is when he first started defining MAGA, Make America Great Again, as Donald Trump the man, like investing within himself.
In almost biblical fashion.
Like, no, MAGA is not what I articulated clearly and coherently for 10, 12 years in public life.
And as President of the United States, MAGA is what I say it is today, tomorrow morning, anytime during the day, because I'm Donald Trump.
So I will determine what is MAGA.
And further, if you consider yourself to be allied with this political coalition that I created over a decade, then I don't need you.
If you're insisting upon transparency and the things, You're insisting upon me making good on the promises that I made to you in this relationship that we have.
I promise you something.
You vote me into office so I can effectuate the change that you voted for.
Then, if you were insisting upon that, then you're a flipping kook and I don't need you.
So, it was really at that moment when that was his response to the Epstein files.
And then when he engaged in the most ham handed PR stunt I've ever seen.
Which was great because it revealed how many fake, paid for, supposed influencers there are on the right, brought them to the Oval Office, gave them binders full of Epstein material that had already been in the public domain for a very long time, and said that was the entirety of it.
And then, of course, because he's Donald Trump, he contradicted himself six or seven times.
Epstein wasn't real.
Epstein was a pedophile.
He didn't have any victims.
He got his elected officials out there to say those things in front of Congress.
It's just laughable.
And then, of course, he turned on Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think, of all the elected members of Congress, represents in sincere, hardworking fashion what it meant to be a not Trump fan, but a Trump lieutenant.
I mean, this was someone who was inspired by Donald Trump and Donald Trump's program to leave her successful business, run for Congress.
And thank God for her because she got there and discovered what a captured institution it is, how flawed the individuals there are, how hostile they are to the American people who put them there, and specifically the Republican voters who'd put them there.
And then to see Trump turn on her and treat her the way that he treated her was, you know, she's an individual and she's tough and she can handle it.
But that kind of like repetitive, crazy disloyalty.
And to treat someone who had actually put themselves to hard work to great effect.
Was unforgivable, I thought.
That's when I really started.
tucker carlson
She texted Trump and she said, My son is getting threats because I've disagreed with you on the Epstein files.
And Trump responded to her by text message and said, He deserves it.
It's your fault.
People threatening the kid's life.
And Trump says, No, no, no.
You brought this on him.
It's on you.
buckley carlson
That's disgusting.
It's outrageous.
I didn't know that.
That's terrible.
It's terrifying, too, actually.
To be so tone deaf, to be so evil, but to also be so tone deaf.
tucker carlson
So, what, and then the war in Iran, which he clearly, you know, had no plan for, wasn't enthusiastic about at all.
He was fully aware of the risks.
He was fully aware that it was a betrayal of his explicit promises for 10 years not to do this.
He did it.
He did it against his will.
That's my highly informed read.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
I mean, I could be wrong.
You know, you don't know what people's motives actually are, but I mean, from very close, I can say I don't think he was excited about it, but he did it.
Clearly, he felt he had no choice.
So, and I think that's widely understood.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
buckley carlson
But I have no sympathy for him for doing that.
Right.
I don't.
unidentified
Why?
buckley carlson
Sorry.
Because he, yes, he's Donald Trump the man, but he's just one man.
And invested in him by all of us and, you know, 72 million American voters is an enormous responsibility.
Here's a guy who had had demonstrable success in his life, had done a lot of things, accumulated enormous power and money, and has a big family.
He's 80 years old, he's got grandchildren.
I just don't have any sympathy for someone who is.
I do have sympathy for a regular person who is being threatened and pressured.
Yes.
So, physical threats.
unidentified
Okay.
buckley carlson
So, someone shoots you.
They tried to shoot him, someone tried to shoot him twice.
That's demonstrable, but his level of fear over that to me is not even, I'm not sympathetic to it.
It's not excusable.
He is not just one man.
He's the president of the United States.
He, even if his power is limited, as he's demonstrated, it obviously is limited, he does have the power to stop and hold a press conference and be like, I don't know what it looks like, but he could say, I'm under incredible pressure from this outside force.
Obviously, Israel is exerting this pressure on him.
He could be forthcoming and straightforward about it and rally the American people behind him, people who.
A lot of people know it.
A lot of people are aware of it and they're upset about it.
And he should just acknowledge it and say, I'm in this untenable position, but I'm no longer going to put up with it.
And even if our government is thoroughly corrupted in every single aspect of our government and there's this outside foreign power that is generating all this fear, there are some elements of the US government he could be using to his benefit to root them out.
Oh, for sure.
It just requires him to have the fortitude.
To declare it.
The other thing is No, can I ask you to pause?
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
That is one thing you learn from growing up in DC and just being around it a lot is that these agencies are totally corrupt and the structure of them is just rotten and it's really hard for good people to have any effect on outcomes.
It doesn't mean there aren't good, patriotic, intelligent people serving in every single one of these agencies and you never want to say a nice word about CIA or DOD or DOW or whatever they're calling it now, but any of these agencies.
But it's just a fact that there are really good people motivated by patriotism who work there.
And they're not the majority, clearly.
They're not in control of the levers, obviously, but they're there.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And some of them have migrated over to the White House.
I mean, they work there right now.
I know them.
So, and really smart.
Like, wow, I can't believe someone that smart works in the government, that patriotic, that pure of intent, like really good people.
I can hardly believe it.
I guess maybe it's just a numbers game.
You get 10 million people in a government, like some of them are going to be outstanding, but they are.
And like, there's been so little effort to find them, to empower them.
And to the extent that they have been empowered, Joe Ken, for example, they get completely destroyed.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And then you have like people like Sebastian Gorka.
Who I don't even know if he's an American citizen, but he's clearly like a highly damaged person, not a smart person, not a loyal American in any sense.
unidentified
And he's still there.
buckley carlson
It's such a daily offense to those people.
tucker carlson
I guess what I'm saying is, and you would just know this because of the life that you've led, you could make a good faith effort at identifying those people.
Of course, you'd have to go through and be a huge fight.
It was very, very hard.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
But you could try to find those good people, right?
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
I would think so.
That's my point.
He could coalesce the true, legitimate, smart, dedicated Americans who are there who must feel impotent rage over what's going on.
tucker carlson
They're all like on the verge of resigning.
Yeah, no, I know.
buckley carlson
It's been hugely dispiriting, actually, that Joe Ken seems to be the only one who's come out publicly and on principle.
tucker carlson
Well, they're all making this calculation like the good people, and there are a ton of them left in the administration, including in the White House.
There are good people.
I just can verify that.
unidentified
Yes, there are.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
unidentified
With good personality.
tucker carlson
There are.
I mean, they don't all agree with me on everything, but that's okay.
But their motives are pure.
They're not there to get rich, they're there to serve their nation.
And they're all thinking to themselves, the ones I have spoken to, which is a lot of them.
Like, well, you know, I'm here.
I can do good on the margins.
Like, something will pass my desk and maybe I can have an effect.
Like, God put me here for some reason.
I should probably do my duty, even if I hate it.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
They have to start thinking bigger picture.
You may be right.
tucker carlson
You may be totally right.
buckley carlson
I'm sure they're siloed or whatever.
And I'm sure that's some comfort to know that they're being true to themselves and true to the country.
But at some point, it's going to take those people actually talking to each other and saying, enough is enough.
I mean, I actually think we do have.
Remedies for an out of control, megalomaniacal, destructive president.
I think honest people who have that power should consider taking it.
The 25th Amendment is there for a reason.
It's not crazy to talk about it in this context.
If our country is suffering great and lasting damage, which it seems to be, then sober minds need to come in and exercise what power they have for the benefit of all of us.
Easier said than done, I'm sure.
tucker carlson
Right.
Easier said than done.
But I mean, it's certainly.
I think saying the truth, whatever you think that it is, is the first step toward redemption of yourself and of your country.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Tell the truth.
That's your number one duty.
buckley carlson
Can I say one other thing?
tucker carlson
Of course.
buckley carlson
I'm certain the fear of physical, the physical threat is real.
tucker carlson
That's, yeah, obviously.
buckley carlson
Demonstrated a lot.
But also, if it's shame, if there's blackmail material, as there is on so much of our elected officials, if there isn't Trump, It's like, I'm sorry.
You've demonstrated that you don't have any personal shame.
I mean, you've demonstrated that a lot.
You persevered through all of these accusations of disgusting personal behavior.
How shocking is it, really, if there are pictures of you doing compromising things?
Not very.
And it doesn't even matter.
Like, actually, I hate the term, but sack up.
Like, really, you again, it comes back to the obligation that he has, not just to Donald Trump, to everybody else in the country, well beyond Donald Trump.
Who cares?
He can survive.
tucker carlson
So, looking back, being because I mean, you and I, and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him.
I campaigned for him.
I mean, we're implicated in this for sure.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind or like, oh, this is bad.
I'm out.
It's like in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.
buckley carlson
Yes.
tucker carlson
So I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences.
Uh, you know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time.
I will be.
And, and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people in, it was not intentional.
That's all I'll say.
But anyway, but the question does present itself immediately.
Like, what is this?
Was this always the plan?
You don't want to be a conspiracy nut, but like, clearly there were signs of low character.
We knew that.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
But it didn't, there are tons of people of low character who like outperform their character.
It doesn't have to be.
buckley carlson
Sort of the norm, actually, these days.
Right.
tucker carlson
I've outperformed my character a lot.
I don't have especially high character, right?
But, you know, you try to, whatever, you try your best.
But what was this?
Was this always the plan?
buckley carlson
You know, looking back after the last year and a half, it seems like it kind of was.
And it's easy.
Well, you could get really deep about it and say, what was Butler?
Like, how was it that he, and Ryan Ruth?
I mean, he was subject to two legitimate assassination attempts.
Have we ever gotten to the bottom?
I know you've talked a lot about this.
But have we ever gotten to the bottom of that?
tucker carlson
I haven't talked a lot about it.
I don't know the answer, but I know that those investigations have been stymied.
unidentified
Fact.
buckley carlson
Yeah, stymied from the very top, from people who actually would have the power to get to the bottom of that feeling.
tucker carlson
And the motive.
buckley carlson
Yes, very much.
So the enormous amount of money he got from Miriam Adelson now seems, it seems suspect to a lot of people at the time.
But, you know, there's a lot of money in politics to run for president requires an enormous amount.
I mean, Cacklin Camel toe went through $2 billion in four months.
unidentified
So.
buckley carlson
Sure, there's an argument to be made that you get money from those who will give it to you.
It's just the nature of that game.
But it's still reprehensible and it's still a big question mark.
Why would someone who has obvious and demonstrated allegiance to a foreign power give Donald Trump $250 million while he's running for president?
I mean, how is that defensible?
It's really not.
If Russia had given a PAC for Trump, if the mayor of Moscow had somehow You know, assembled an enormous amount of money and put it in a 501c3 for Trump's benefit.
Religion and Foreign Allegiance 00:02:49
buckley carlson
Would that have been acceptable?
Of course, it wouldn't have been.
So, what does someone get in return for that amount of investment?
And it's clear.
tucker carlson
I get it.
No, I mean, of course, I agree with every word that you're saying.
I just think, given his behavior and his demonstrated disloyalty and viciousness to previous supporters.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Why wouldn't he display the same lack of loyalty to Miriam Adelson?
I mean, that's kind of the question.
The only people he's been loyal to are the neocons and his donors.
So he's attacked, you know, so he attacks Islam.
Some of us stand up and say, probably shouldn't be attacking a religion.
Oh, you're a Muslim, secret Muslim.
You love Muslims.
No, just I like reverence and I don't think you should attack people on the basis of their religion.
Don't attack the religion.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And all these like evangelicals are like, oh, see, you're a Muslim.
The next week he attacks Jesus.
Okay, because it's all connected, right?
buckley carlson
Clearly.
tucker carlson
Of course.
buckley carlson
Well, beyond money, obviously.
Well, right.
tucker carlson
But the one person he's never going to attack is Rebbe Schneerson.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
And, you know, the Chabad leader who's passed, but who I'm not attacking, by the way, but who was regarded as the Messiah by many of his followers.
I don't think Trump should attack him, to be clear.
But Trump would never attack him.
That's the one Messiah he will never attack.
So, like, what is that?
Am I wrong?
buckley carlson
No, you're not wrong.
unidentified
No.
tucker carlson
It's totally cool to attack Jesus.
Oh, it's a joke.
I was saying I was a doctor.
I heal people.
Well, that's how Jesus described himself, by the way.
You're still attacking Jesus.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
No, demonstrably so.
tucker carlson
He did that on a Sunday.
Obviously, on a Sunday.
You're attacking Jesus on a Sunday.
It's totally fine.
But we all know.
And again, I'm not asking that he attacked Rebbe Schneerson.
He should not.
But he never would.
He'd die first.
So, like, what is.
You tell me what that is.
buckley carlson
Gosh, I wish I knew.
I wish I knew, but I know.
But he should be called.
To respond, I agree.
Yeah, very much so.
It makes no sense.
Although it's revealing, as you're indicating.
Plus, Trump is a totally secular human being who never held the Bible, didn't put his hand on the Bible.
Obviously, that's an offensive statement right there that should have been.
He's the only person in the United States who's never put his hand on the Bible during this inaugural.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
What the hell is that?
tucker carlson
I don't know if that means he's a secular person.
I think it means he's got a different religion.
buckley carlson
No, I'm saying he had been perceived as a secular individual.
Clearly, there's.
tucker carlson
So where does this go?
buckley carlson
I wish I could answer that question.
I don't know.
Secular Human Being Trump 00:03:32
buckley carlson
I don't.
It doesn't seem like we're getting out of Iran anytime soon.
It doesn't seem like the Strait of Hormuz is going to open anytime soon.
It doesn't seem like Bibi Netanyahu is going to allow us to achieve peace.
It doesn't seem like American power is getting any stronger.
It doesn't seem like the American people are going to stop suffering anytime soon.
I think at some point, I mean, there are mechanisms for dealing with a.
With a government that's not responsive.
I hope it doesn't go there, but it does.
People are upset, man.
I've never seen anything like it, actually.
tucker carlson
Is that true?
buckley carlson
Oh, people are outraged.
And why wouldn't they be?
I mean, do you don't?
tucker carlson
And at this point, I mean, given your views and your name and your life, like you're not hanging out with liberals.
You've never hung out with liberals ever.
You're the least liberal person, American liberal.
unidentified
I'd say that's true.
tucker carlson
You literally carry a gun and smoke unfiltered cigarettes.
unidentified
Yeah.
Do they have one?
tucker carlson
Oh, of course you may.
And sleep in bed with dogs and like the whole thing.
So it's not, you're not coming at this from like, you don't have a lot of friends who are Starbucks baristas, right?
buckley carlson
I do not.
tucker carlson
Right.
buckley carlson
No, although I do share.
I mean, I wish I'd kind of wish I'd listened.
The evidence was there that Trump didn't have a stable footing and wasn't.
tucker carlson
What are the.
By the way, is that even still sold in this country?
buckley carlson
They're very hard to find.
They're very expensive, especially in a world where tobacco is quite expensive.
tucker carlson
Those have been made continuously since 1913.
buckley carlson
I think every American military man up until Vietnam had these in his sea rations.
tucker carlson
Yep.
General Blackjack Pershing cabled back from France.
To President Woodrow Wilson and said, Send more camels.
We will win the war with these.
buckley carlson
A friend of mine, right before this interview, a great guy named Paul Leslie, sent me a rider from Frank Sinatra, one of Frank Sinatra's concerts in the early 80s.
And it was a rider stipulating all of the various things he needed in the back room.
It was like, you know, specific chocolates, specific booze.
And it was two cartons of camel straights.
Isn't that great?
tucker carlson
You've been smoking those since you were a child.
How do you feel?
buckley carlson
Empowered.
I really do.
I do.
I feel so much better.
I've been back on them.
I left them aside.
I never thought I was a quitter.
And I left these behind for a decade and a half.
Is that true?
unidentified
I did.
buckley carlson
I love nicotine, but actually having the physical, having this in your hand, being able to exhale, being able to.
It's an amazing taste.
It's unrivaled taste.
unidentified
It is.
tucker carlson
That's the brand I smoke my whole life.
And it's just a.
It's a great cigarette.
By the way, it's a lot lighter than people believe.
unidentified
Yes.
buckley carlson
Lucky Strike's a lot tougher, actually.
tucker carlson
I wish our father smoked.
Yeah, it's a strong cigarette.
But no, that's not a strong cigarette, especially.
unidentified
It's a smooth cigarette.
tucker carlson
Yeah, I totally agree.
Flavor with chocolate.
Same formula, pretty much, I think.
buckley carlson
We'd have to call RJR to find out, but it's no different than the one I smoked in 1982.
I think.
I was 11 in 1982.
tucker carlson
Yeah, it's a good cigarette.
Retribution Protecting Women Children 00:07:34
tucker carlson
So, anyway, sorry.
But my only point was, and I think it's obvious to people watching this, you're probably not hanging around with a bunch of, you know, non binary Kamala Harris voters.
So, most people you know voted for Trump and strongly supported him.
buckley carlson
Very much so.
tucker carlson
How do they feel?
buckley carlson
I don't know a single person who doesn't feel betrayed, left behind, upset, hostile, freaked out about the consequence of this.
unidentified
Yeah.
buckley carlson
I mean, it's not a small thing what we've done.
I mean, if the president of the United States is not just your.
I don't think he was my protector, but he's the protector of the country.
He represents the country.
That's correct.
And that's his sole job.
Actually, one job, one job, one job only is to husband the resources that you have, that you were given.
And he's failed on every level, but he's also degraded what we have, what we had, and was already under attack for so long.
So it's unclear what's going to happen.
But I've never seen, you know, I'm 55.
I've seen a lot of.
What could have become unrest, I've never seen more fertile ground for real unrest than what we have now, especially with the advent of AI, the current economy, our debt, and the prospect of more Americans dying in a country they can't find on a map and fighting a fight that they can't articulate, don't understand, and don't want.
tucker carlson
You got to wonder if that's accidental.
I mean, like if you wanted to destroy the country, this is exactly what you'd do.
buckley carlson
For the latter half of my life has seemed designed to weaken this country, to divide people, to make them less happy and more enslaved.
tucker carlson
It does seem that way.
I don't know that there was like a meeting at Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove or whatever.
buckley carlson
It's so precise and so overwhelming and so universal on every front that it could not have been accidental.
These are not just.
tucker carlson
Yeah, you wonder if it was a conspiracy of instinct.
I mean, when the George Floyd thing happened, I was confused as to what was going on because I'm literal.
I mean, I'm against.
You know, obviously, vandalism and rioting and hate the whites.
It's just like, that's just a no go for me immediately.
But I didn't understand its purpose.
I didn't understand its scale.
Like, I just didn't get it.
I was mesmerized by what was happening in Minneapolis outside the convenience store, right?
And the New York Times ran a piece.
I'll never forget it.
And in it, they quoted some art critic from New York, like from the West Village or something.
It was literally in New York.
And he said, like, two days in, he goes, This is the revolution.
It's like people, certain people tuned into the frequency of destruction of evil.
Like they recognized it immediately.
Just like they recognized Trump immediately as a threat to them.
They've neutralized that threat somehow.
But I guess.
But anyway, they could feel it.
And this art critic whose name I can't even remember, but he was celebrating it.
He was celebrating it.
Oh, absolutely.
He was absolutely celebrating it.
But he knew that this was more than simply about the death of some guy.
Trying to pass a bad hundred at a convenience store.
This was a reordering of American society.
We're going to get rid of all the white cops because we need to do that in order to something, whatever.
I mean, there's some reason why they wanted that.
unidentified
And you get.
buckley carlson
Perfectuate peace?
tucker carlson
Yeah, no, probably not.
unidentified
Anyway.
buckley carlson
Protect the women and the children.
tucker carlson
Protect the women and the children.
No, to destroy.
That's the point of evil, of course.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
So I don't know.
Maybe these are unknowable questions.
buckley carlson
It can't be a confluence of random events.
It is clearly by design.
It's clearly been a long term plan.
That's just obvious.
unidentified
Last question.
tucker carlson
Do you, given the attitudes you've described, like total contempt for people who supported him, total reverence for or unwillingness ever to criticize people who are clearly opposed to the United States, do you feel personally threatened?
buckley carlson
I think the backlash that we're going to see and whatever comes, I mean, the reaction from the lunatic left is going to be overwhelming.
They may be disorganized now.
That's the other thing we didn't talk about is that Trump's coalition that he put together, he had so demonstrably and definitively spanked, shamed, destroyed the left.
I mean, the level of dispiritedness and disorganization among the left in November of 24 and December of 24.
I mean, they didn't engage in any kind of retrospective or They didn't try to figure out how they could represent the country or the party or fix the problems.
Of course, they never do that.
tucker carlson
But we're going to take this opportunity to help black people.
We love black people so much.
We're going to spend our years in the wilderness trying to elevate black people.
unidentified
They didn't do that.
tucker carlson
That never occurred to them.
buckley carlson
They'll never do that.
tucker carlson
They'll never do that.
buckley carlson
But what they did do was they recognized that their political fortunes were dashed for some time to come because it was obvious.
It was obvious that Trump had a total mandate.
To do the things that he had been, which is obviously why people are so upset that he didn't grasp the nettle and do what he said he was going to do because he had such fertile ground to do it and he had both houses of Congress and he could have actually accomplished a lot more than just signing executive orders and closing the border.
God bless him for closing the border.
But why hasn't he, you know, expelled the 50 million people who are here illegally?
tucker carlson
Why are we still importing people?
And they're announcing now we're going to import more people.
We're going to give citizenship to the illegals that we supposedly were going to deport.
Now we're giving them citizenship?
buckley carlson
It's absolutely obscene.
But people don't talk about that enough.
The way forward was really rosy and it was a rebirth of America in November of 24.
People felt that.
And the left was crushed definitively.
And now we're several months from the midterm elections.
It seems very clear that the Republican Party hasn't delivered anything.
Trump delivered a war and delivered higher prices and delivered misery.
That's demonstrable.
And unless it's a corrupt election, which of course it will be.
The Republicans are going to lose power.
Trump's agenda, if there is one, is going to come to a halt.
And the left has, if anything, a very long memory, and they are vindictive planners.
They are not reactive, they are reactive, but not effectively so.
They're effective planners, and they spend a lot of time thinking about this and the retribution.
They will use retribution.
Trump is accused of planning retribution.
It would have been actually justice.
He never made that point, though he should have.
Restoring order and restoring justice to the system.
The left is going to be vicious and it's going to hurt a lot of people at a time when.
tucker carlson
Probably not Trump, 80 year old Trump.
buckley carlson
Probably not Trump's family either, which is something we haven't talked about because the focus that he's had, we talked about, you know, he's focused on arches and music, but he's really focused on business for Trump and the Trump family.
Planning Real Assets Wealth 00:00:26
buckley carlson
And they've conducted a lot of it.
And.
They've amassed a lot of wealth on paper, but also a lot of real assets and real cash.
And they're going to be inoculated, and none of his supporters will be.
tucker carlson
So, Uncle Buck.
buckley carlson
Thank you for having me.
tucker carlson
Buckley S.P. Carlson.
buckley carlson
Thank you for having me.
tucker carlson
I love it.
buckley carlson
I love it.
tucker carlson
I will see you in Maine.
buckley carlson
I love it.
unidentified
Thank you.
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