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Oct. 30, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:13
20231030_piers-morgan-uncensored-vivek-ramaswamy
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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American Interest vs Global Chaos 00:15:12
Tonight on Pearson are censored in America.
Vivek Ramaswamy has electrified the race to be America's next president.
Age just 38, he wants to be the youngest man ever to sit in the Oval Office.
And his fans think he's got the gumption and pizza to do it.
But how can he beat Donald Trump without criticizing Donald Trump?
And with conflict raging in Israel, does he really have the experience to be leader of the free world?
As I was waiting to interview you, I was looking at your tweets today, actually, about Israel.
And it just seemed to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed to me you'd suddenly decided to take a much more direct and tough position.
And you said this, now is the moment for Israel to return to its founding premise.
The Jewish state has an absolute right to exist, a divine gift, gifted to a divine nation, charged with a divine purpose.
Israel has an absolute unequivocal right and responsibility to defend itself to the fullest, applying the only language its adversaries understand, the language of force.
And what would David Ben-Gurion say?
Don't depend on anyone else's fleeting sympathies or permission to do it.
If Israel wants to destroy Hamas, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hamas.
If Israel wants to destroy Hezbollah, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hezbollah.
If Israel and Mossau want to pull off Munich 2.0 and take out every last leader of Hamas, whether they're hiding from Doha at Dresden and host a red wedding at the four seasons in Qatar, they should go ahead and do it.
Now, when I read that, I was a bit taken aback because your rhetoric about Israel, I would say, before all this, back in the summer, was not as strident as this.
Because in the wake of an attack, what I'm saying is the principle is the same.
The U.S. should not be involved.
But when the U.S. is not involved, I think that's better for the U.S.
It's also better for Israel.
Okay, but here's the question I was going to ask you.
It sounds to me like your support for Israel is they can do what the hell they like.
Yes.
But you want to be president of the United States.
And there are many people in America, you know this, who are extremely concerned about the proportionate scale of the Israeli response already.
And it's only likely to get a lot worse before anything is resolved here.
Is your support for them unconditional?
Because it sounds like it is.
They can give their right to national self-existence and self-defense and carrying out whatever the heck they think is appropriate in response to the attack submitted on them.
Yes, it is not our job to get involved in this in one direction or another.
Historically, it's been America's position in the world to be leader of the free world, to be almost the world's global policeman.
And it sounds to me, if you were to become president, what you're saying is any country can, in interests of its own self-defense, can do what the hell it likes, and you won't condemn it.
Is there no limit to that?
Well, look, I think that within the bounds of following international law, right, within the bounds of the legal framework that we all abide by, yes, it's not our job to be the global policeman.
And I think there's a lot to what you said there, Piers, that's true.
Historically, especially if you look at the last 25, 30, 40 years, that has been the role of the United States is to try to play this role of global cop.
Well, I'm running for President of the United States of America.
And my job as the U.S. president is to look after American interests.
That's a shift from the neoconservative view.
It's a shift from the model of liberal hegemony.
And I think part of this is because I come from a different generation that has seen the costs of $6.5 trillion of our national debt attributable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that did not advance U.S. interests.
Thousands upon thousands of innocent lives sacrificed in those two wars alone.
Yes, I grew up into a generation where we saw that.
I reject that vision.
But that means we have to practice what we preach in all directions.
That means this is Israel's right to defend itself.
They should be unconstrained and unrestrained.
The IDF can, I believe, get its own job done.
For those who would call for U.S. military involvement, I say no.
My view to Iran is you stay out and we stay out, and that's something that'll keep Iran out, and we stay out of it as well.
But that's a different view also than saying that then I'm somehow going to second guess what decisions Israel makes.
No, Israel has a right to national self-infliction.
You don't want to help them.
Not militarily.
Diplomatically, I do.
We have $3.8 billion in aid that's going to Israel.
I don't propose cutting that off.
We've made that 10-year commitment for a reason.
But I think actually, I'm not sure that that's exactly what Bibi would say.
I mean, I gave you what Bibi's address to Congress was in 1996.
It's also call out the unspoken truth here, Piers.
One unspoken truth of those carrier groups going to the conflict area.
Part of the reason they're there is also to play big brother to Israel, to sort of say what Israel can and can't do.
So I say go back to David Ben-Gurion's founding vision for Israel.
That's what I would tell Bibi.
You do what you need to do.
Okay, but I would say to you, the reason actually those carriers have been sent in is because it is absolutely in America's national interest what happens now in this war.
Because if things were to escalate, and just before I sat down with you, I saw a statement from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, extremely censorious, demanding an immediate ceasefire, saying that they think this could be a disaster for the region.
You've got President Erdogan of Turkey calling Israel overtly war criminals now at a rally in Turkey.
This is really escalating fast.
So I think we need to de-escalate it.
And I don't think our military is not.
I'm going to come to how that may or may not transpire.
But the idea that this is not relevant or pertinent to America's national interest is for the birds, isn't it?
Well, I'm not saying that it's not relevant or pertinent what's happening in the world.
My question is, does our military engagement help our national interest?
The United Nations voted a motion for ceasefire in this war.
The United States voted against that motion.
The United Kingdom, my country, abstained.
Where do you sit on that?
I think the United Nations has outlived its purpose.
I personally think that we should have an open conversation about the U.S.'s continued involvement in the UN.
I don't think that that should be a foregone conclusion.
Really?
So I want to be very clear about where I stand on this as someone running for U.S. president.
I'm not running for President of the UN, I mean, Secretary General of the UN, whatever it is.
I'm not running for President of Israel.
I'm running for President of the United States of America.
And my prism, and I think that this is going to be the foundation of a future that will lead to greater peace in the United States and I think around the world, is to be very candid that my decisions will be made through one filter.
What advances the interests of the United States of America?
And I don't believe that it advances the United States of America for us to assume the position of a shadow ICJ in International Court of Justice, deciding what is or isn't proportionate from our armchair position in Washington, D.C., when we have problems of our own and threats of our own to deal with.
And so my view is, again, Piers, this is part of the broken foreign policy establishment in both political parties.
Once you've crossed that Rubicon, then yes, you're committed to taking the state of the United States.
Let me ask you this.
But it's not my job to adjudicate this as the U.S. president.
There are the injustices in this country to most of the American people.
I mean, that's a massive departure.
That would be a massive departure.
And NATO?
So NATO, I think, is a different conversation from the UN.
I do think that there's a conversation first, a table-stakes conversation with NATO, when you have a majority of its members still not meeting its minimum 2%.
But an American president has to have a moral compass, too.
I do.
About whatever's going on anywhere in the world.
Well, I have a moral compass.
My question is this.
Right now, there are thousands of children.
You're a father, two young kids.
I'm a father of four kids.
There are thousands of young children getting killed in Gaza.
Innocent Palestinian kids.
Half of Gaza kids.
Women being blown to pieces.
Houses and whole areas being completely decimated.
A million Gazans have had to move from the north to the south out of their homes, which they will not be able to return to in most cases because they've been destroyed and they're going to be destroyed.
And I get that the purpose, that Israel's stated mission purpose is to get rid of Hamas, and I agree with them.
But how they do that, the whole world is watching.
And the other parts of the region, including Saudi Arabia, that are on the verge of a new accord with Israel, are now recoiling at what they see as a disproportionate response.
So I disagree with that.
So my question is that characterization of the question.
My question, a long-winded question, but my question is, on a human level, with the moral compass required by an American president, do you not look at what's happening now in Gaza and slightly recoil at the scale of this and what it may become in the next days, weeks, potentially months?
Do you not think that the honorable American president wouldn't say to Prime Minister Netanyahu, just hang on here?
So if I may, Pearson, I appreciate you providing the backdrop for that question.
And I'm not giving you the answer.
No, I know you're not.
I'm asking you.
Yeah, and I take it as a question.
Yeah.
It's a difficult question.
It's a difficult answer.
I think my first obligation, in the way I've lived my life to this date, is to my family, to those two sons, those two boys we're raising.
And then we go concentric circles to my nation.
I'm a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen fighting climate change nebulously somewhere else.
I'm a citizen of this nation.
If I'm running to lead this nation as commander-in-chief, I do have a moral obligation.
This is my moral compass speaking.
My moral compass is to the United States of America.
And once we have dealt with wage stagnation and a border crisis and the people who are suffering in this country, people who are suffering for threats vulnerable to cyber attacks, super EMP attacks, nuclear missile attacks from a Russia-China alliance that poses a great threat to the United States and our citizens today.
Once we've dealt with that, then maybe we can get to hunger in the Congo after that.
But that's the order we need to go in.
Yeah, but this sounds, if you don't mind me saying, this sounds incredibly isolationist.
It's not isolationist.
But I don't think the number one superpower in the world can just ignore a moral compass elsewhere in the world, particularly in countries which are your allies.
I'm not saying don't get involved or not.
I'm saying the question of whether or not we get involved is decided through one prism, of whether it advances the American interest.
And so there may be certain cases in which we do make the determination that that does advance the American interest.
I'll give you one right now.
Taiwan.
If China were to invade Taiwan right now, I think it is the job of the U.S. to affirmatively defend.
Why?
Because we depend on Taiwan for semiconductors that power our modern way of life.
So you would, if you were president, you'd send troops in to defend Taiwan.
I would defend Taiwan, and I'm not going to telegraph exactly which means there are many.
Why would you defend Taiwan militarily, but not Israel?
Well, I think that right now we depend on those little semiconductors for our modern way of life.
Israel also doesn't need it.
But Israel provides a lot of stuff to Americans.
Well, here's my point.
And this is the whole point, Piers, is it's not some top-down cookie-cutter analogizing.
I analyze each situation in Italy.
And then there are principles.
Israel is able to defend itself right now.
And I think Israel will be better able to defend itself if we don't muddy the waters.
But your list is no chance.
Your red line said to me.
It's just China, and it matters to the U.S. American interest.
It was if American citizens got attacked.
We will hit you back 10 times harder.
Okay, but American citizens were attacked.
So that's what makes this conflict difficult.
Is Israel able to take care of that job?
If American targets are hit as American targets, right, let's say they know they're hitting us on an American base, that's a direct hit on the United States.
But if Americans get killed in Israel or get kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas, you don't see any improvements.
I don't prioritize getting those American hostages out.
That is a top priority.
Militarily?
It is a top priority for me.
Just to clarify, you would send American troops in to get the hostages.
I would not take an option off the table in a limited way to protect Americans.
Right.
To protect Americans.
America First includes all Americans.
You did say earlier that you would not want to send any American military into this situation.
I don't want U.S. military involvement in somebody else's war.
You just said that you'd send troops in to get the hostages.
American hostages.
Only the American hostages.
Special forces targeted at.
But Piers, it is also...
Going to say, you Americans.
I'm paying attention to the negotiations, I trust.
There are very clear delineations that Hamas has drawn right now for releasing civilian hostages of other nations.
But just to clarify.
To clarify for this.
I mean, you're not seriously suggesting that you would send in American troops down to get hostages.
Special forces or otherwise.
But initiated.
But literally only get American hostages rather than, say, Israeli hostages.
The only condition under which we will have shown up there was because they hold American hostages.
Right.
But if we're there, we're going to do the best deal we can to advance American interests, which includes releasing Israeli.
But I would say there's inconsistency to what you've now been saying about this.
Do you think at the moment they are acting in accordance with international law and the Geneva Convention?
Because many think they're bringing...
I believe there's no evidence to suggest that they're outside of that in the context of the laws of just engagement in the context of what Hamas did.
But as the UN boss clumsily put it, this is not a new conflict.
This has been going on.
Is it fair that the Arab people, the descendants of Ishmael, have 20 some odd countries, yet none of them will take on the Palestinians, even as they nominally stand for them against the US?
I think that's a very good question.
So I think these are questions that we should elevate in our capacity as citizens and as leaders diplomatically.
And I think this may, hearing you, Piers, this may be actually, we might have a lot more common ground than the last 10 minutes might suggest.
There's a role for diplomacy.
Was it diplomatic of you to say that if it was left to you, you know, you'd see Israel putting up the heads of the top hundreds of people?
Not that if it's left to me, if it's left to Israel and that's what they decide to do, I'm perfectly okay.
But this is your idea was that they put the heads on stakes of the hundred top Hamas leaders.
That's not diplomacy, is it?
I mean, that's going to be literally a pouring a bucket of fuel onto a raging fire.
I actually think that that might be far better, Pierce, as an alternative.
Really?
To a prolonged ground invasion with Gaza involving a bunch of civilians versus taking the top 100 leaders of a terrorist organization that are carrying out a form of genocide.
Isn't that the kind of medieval barbarism which they perpetrated on the people of Israel on October the 7th?
I think there's one crucial difference.
The civilized world should seek to be above that.
Piers, there's a real difference there, a fundamental difference.
One is an armed militia doing it against civilians versus going after the perpetrators.
And I specifically said the top 100 leaders of Hamas.
And this is a fun conversation.
It's interesting to me because I've actually just taken objections the other way, saying that that's far too limited in scope, right?
Just to say the top 100 leaders of Hamas, well, why wouldn't we expand the scope of who we hold responsible?
So yes, I do think that's diplomatic.
But Barack Obama never showed images of a dead Osama bin Laden.
Defending Democracy Against Dictators 00:09:22
He didn't feel that would be the right thing to do.
He felt that would be too inflammatory, is my understanding.
Well, I'll say two things in response to that.
That's Barack Obama is not my arbiter of what counts as good diplomacy or not.
And second is each situation is different.
I mean, each situation is different about asking what is in the American self-interest.
So I'm not saying on the Israel point, I was very clear in my speech when I brought this up.
That is, it's said about three times.
That is Israel's decision to make, not ours.
And I think that that provides a level of, yes, moral clarity about who the leader of a nation owes an obligation to.
David Ben-Gurion had a vision for Israel.
Self-sufficiency makes its own decisions for its own security.
George Washington, in his farewell address in the United States of America, had a vision for this nation, the lead founding father of our nation, that we look to the interests of our citizens without foreign entanglements.
And I think if we're honest about that, I actually think that that opens up greater possibility for peace everywhere because both our allies and our adversaries can actually trust what we say.
Red lines will actually be red lines because if they're crossed, it means it really violates the national self-interest.
One of the other candidates for President Ron DeSantis has said that the students who've been protesting across American campuses, very pro-Palestinian, a lot of Jewish students feeling very threatened by it, some of these students actually beaming pro-Hamas imagery to the buildings at George Washington University and so on, that they should be taken out.
If they have visas, they should be revoked and so on.
You said you don't believe in that because of free speech.
But again, is there no limit to that free speech?
If people are actively supporting and promoting a terror organization like Hamas, isn't that hate speech, not free speech?
Well, to be clear, I am an ardent defender of the First Amendment.
I agree with you.
So the First Amendment does not protect against actual incitement to violence to say, hey, go kill that guy right there, do it now, shoot him.
That's not protecting.
What about saying Hamas?
So in the U.S., the jurisprudence on this, I mean, the U.S. is very clear.
Anything that is an expression of an opinion is protected.
So if you're expressing an opinion, however heinous, that opinion is protected by the First Amendment.
All opinions are protected.
Now, my view is some of those are heinous opinions.
We're the country, the United States of America, who said the Nazis could march in Skokie, Illinois.
Many people around the world would disagree with that, but that's what makes America itself.
I disagree vehemently with those Nazis, but I will defend to the death, this country, in this country, the right of anybody to express their opinion.
You'll defend to the death the right of people to be Nazis in America.
The right of people to express an opinion.
Being a Nazi can involve more than that, right?
If you're taking action based on that, no.
Heck no.
But if you want to...
But if you're promoting and supporting a Nazi ideology, why would you want to accept that in America?
I don't want to accept that.
The way we defeat it...
Why would you tolerate it?
I don't tolerate it.
We don't tolerate it through more speech.
You defeat it in the marketplace of ideas, and we're not tolerating it.
Because think about what you're doing to somebody who has that nasty opinion and then tell them that they have to keep it to themselves.
You tell people they can't speak, they scream.
But would you allow people to speak?
If you tell people they can't scream, that's when they take physical action.
So I don't want to see that.
But would you be happy to see pro-Nazi?
No, I'm not happy.
Of course I'm not happy.
If you're a president of the United States, you would allow it to happen.
Nazi marches.
I'll tell you something deeper, Piers.
This is how it works in the United States.
It's not even my power to decide whether to allow it to happen.
The Constitution and the Supreme Court has already long held that the expression of heinous opinions is part of the American constitutional life, to say that the government, no government actor, should ever decide which opinions can and cannot be expressed.
Let me read you a quote from Nikki Haley, one of your other rivals to be president.
She says, you want to go and defund Israel, you want to give Taiwan to China, you want to go and give Ukraine to Russia.
Under your watch, you will make America less safe.
Now, we've discussed Israel.
You've clarified your position on Taiwan.
And I think it's significant that you now said you would send in American troops to defend Taiwan should China try and attack it.
I say we would militarily defend.
You'd send troops in?
Military.
It depends on whether ground troops are actually what matter or not.
You could talk about destroyers.
You could talk about SSGNs.
But you would send American military in to defend the Taiwan.
Would militarily defend Taiwan, yes, at least until we've achieved semiconductor independence.
I mean, that wasn't.
And I'm the only candidate who said it.
But this brings me neatly to Ukraine.
Yes.
Which was invaded and attacked.
It's a sovereign democratic country.
It was attacked.
Democratic with an asterisk.
No, no.
Democratic.
With an asterisk.
Well, it had a massive majority voted for democracy.
Well, much of the regions that are occupied haven't been represented in Ukraine's parliament for nine years.
Right.
So, table stakes discussion there.
But it is, okay.
You can call it asterisk democracy.
I'll say democracy.
But it was attacked and invaded by Russia.
And you originally, when you first tweeted about it, you were quite censorious about what Russia had done and pro-Ukraine.
Your rhetoric.
I was pro-Ukraine, but I found it offensive.
I mean, I've said this at every step.
Putin is a craven dictator.
Putin is absolutely a craven dictator.
Is he a war criminal?
I don't know.
I don't have enough information to suggest he's a war criminal.
The ICJ makes that judgment.
Again, the U.S. president.
You don't think what he's done in Ukraine constitutes a war crime?
Based on what we've seen, a lot of it looks likely to meet the ICJ's test, but I don't think the U.S. president...
It meets any test, isn't it?
Well, I think that a lot of people have committed war crimes then on that basis, right?
So you can't just selectively single him out.
Well, illegally invading a sovereign country is a crime, isn't it?
For us to get on the same page, is Putin an evil dictator?
Yes, he is.
Just because Putin is bad, does that mean Ukraine is good?
No, it does not.
Okay, this is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties.
This is a country that has consolidated all of its media into one state TV media arm.
This is a country that celebrated a Nazi in its own ranks in front of the Canadian parliament, Zelensky did.
This is a country that's effectively threatening the U.S. not to hold its elections unless the U.S. forks over more money.
And also against the backdrop, Piers, it's worth wondering why that initial incursion to Kyiv went nowhere, but Luhans and Donetsk were easily captured without counter-resistance.
Why?
These are Russian-speaking regions.
Many residents there don't even view themselves as part of Ukraine.
They view themselves as part of Russia.
And for the better part of the last decade, almost 10 years, they haven't even been represented in the Ukrainian parliament.
Well, there are a lot of people who are in the United States.
So we have to measure that against the government.
You would give Putin what he's taken.
I won't give him anything.
There's a deal.
What would you give him?
I wouldn't give him anything.
I would give him a deal.
What's the deal he's going to take them?
Well, here's the deal.
He has to exit his military alliance with Xi Jinping.
End the Russia-China military alliance.
That's the top threat that the U.S. deal with Ukraine is.
And in return, what we get is a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO.
In truth, that's just keeping the- But what about the land he's taken?
Well, this is the most important part.
Is the NATO hard, this is what matters most to Putin.
There's other parts of this deal I can talk about on both sides.
The most important element of each, and then I can go to the second most.
The most important element is Russia exit its military alliance with China.
We make a hard commitment that NATO not admit Ukraine to NATO, which, by the way, Piers, that violates, we've systematically violated a commitment we made back in 1990.
James Baker, the U.S. Secretary of State, made a commitment to the UK.
Tell me on this deal.
And then here we'd freeze the current lines of control.
What?
Freeze the current lines of control.
You would give Putin everything.
I would freeze the current lines of control.
What does that mean?
These are Russian-speaking regions that are occupied today.
You would literally give Putin what he's stolen.
You would give that guy you stand.
I'm not giving him anything.
I'm giving him a deal.
What did you describe him as to the United States?
It's conditioned.
What did you call Putin?
He's an evil dictator.
You're given a dictator.
So would countless others.
The land he's stolen by killing people.
You would give him the land.
Piers, I'm not going to give him anything.
I'm giving him a deal.
You've just said you give him the whole.
I'm not going to give him.
That's your word, not mine.
I'd give him a deal.
What I would do is, no, we would require Russia to exit its military alliance with China.
What threatens the United States of America?
What message do you say?
To the Russian-China military alliance?
If you're president of the United States and you say, all right, Vladimir, I know you invaded illegally a sovereign democratic country and they fought for the UK.
It's not a democratic country.
And they fought.
Ukraine is not a democratic country.
And they fought.
Ukraine is not a democratic country.
I don't agree with you.
I mean, look what they're doing to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church right now.
Let me finish this.
It's just a myth.
Let me finish.
But we're having a mythological conversation.
Ukraine is not a democratic country.
The people of Ukraine voted for democracy.
A massive majority.
For the ones that didn't vote that happened to be in the regions occupied by Russia.
But you would give this area they've stolen back to the Russians, right?
So you're telling me that you're telling everybody.
I would not do anything other than we get what we want.
You're telling every evil dictator in the world, you can go and invade any country you like, take whatever land you can in a bloody war for as long as you can.
Here's what I find fascinating.
And then eventually, I'll just give you a question.
How many hours of your show or minutes or seconds have you dedicated to what Azerbaijan has done to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh on the different region on the other side of the Caspian?
Zero is probably the answer, just like every other major member of the media.
Why?
Because Ukraine has been as successful in selling this Pied Piper myth in the United States as Azerbaijan has.
Yet what Azerbaijan just did in Nagorno-Karabakh over the same region, dating back to even September of this year, pin dropped silence.
So if you're going to apply that standard, you would be applying it far more broadly.
But applying your standard as president of the United States seems to be...
Alex Jones and Free Speech 00:04:09
My standard is stay out of them all.
Because if you're in Ukraine for that reason, the United States would be in 10 other conflicts right now.
And so you're selectively applying it, if I may say, Piers, not even to the best example you could make, because Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy.
But I remember in World War II when the Americans came in to help Britain finished.
When Pearl Harbor was hit.
Yes.
So it's a hard answer.
Better late than never would be my response to that.
Well, America should look at self-interest.
When America was attacked itself, then America did come into the war and did help Britain, wouldn't it?
That's correct.
When America was hit, that happened.
And thank God they did.
And I'm grateful that America and Europe should be grateful that we did.
And now NATO can spend maybe 2% of its GDP on military spending, which it's still failing to do, so much for gratitude.
So on that point, I agree with you, and I agree with Donald Trump.
And he did the right thing.
When he said NATO was obsolete, he meant the way the finances are not being paid by a lot of the member countries.
They're just not.
A majority of them aren't.
Let's turn to conspiracy theories.
People think you're a conspiracy theorist.
Are you?
No, I'm a conspiracy realist.
I believe in actually some of the most mundane so-called conspiracies have been obvious realities hiding in plain sight.
Do you think the Sandy Johnson?
I mean, people said it was a conspiracy theory, by the way, when I said that the, like many others, the COVID pandemic originated in a lab in Wuhan back when we were supposed to buy this wet money.
And it's most likely it did.
And most likely that it did.
So I think history has taught us that many of the things that we rejected.
Do you believe the...
I'm guided by fact.
Do you believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax?
No.
Do you think the parents of those kids who died were actors?
No.
Okay, so why did you appear on Alex Jones' show?
I learned from people that were on the inside what was going on.
So I had a long education over the last 29 years.
This has really been an education.
And so I just get deeper and deeper into my understanding of how it all interconnects.
What I'm hearing is the story of a journalist.
Yes.
A guy who's curious, records things, describes them, and shares them with people.
Why would you invite someone like that onto your podcast?
Give me some examples of people you've seen.
Isn't he called truth?
Have you ever called it?
What's a podcast called?
Truth.
Truth.
So you have all the truth.
You have all through free speech and open debate.
So you have the worst liar in America, a man who calls.
See, I don't believe in creating obstacles to who?
Let me finish my character assessment of Alex Jones, right?
I didn't make a character assessment.
I'm about to make one of him, right?
Because as you know, he was found guilty in October 2022 of defaming the families of the Sandy Hook victims after years monetizing the lie that it was a hoax and the families of the dead were actors.
He's been ordered to pay a collective $1.5 billion to the people who he so sickeningly defamed.
And yet there's you, a guy who wants to be president of the United States, inviting this guy.
Saying that that was dead wrong.
He's dead wrong.
Now, my view though, Piers, is in the whole premise of the podcast, all the people I've talked to.
Chris Christie said when he heard you did that, he said.
I could care less for what Chris Christie has to say.
But he said that to him was disqualifying anybody on its own.
Well, I think it's disqualifying to anybody who believes that we have to preordain who we do and don't talk to.
Do you give platforms to just blatant conspiracy theorists to come on and talk about the church?
I think that part of the reason is what's a conspiracy theory yesterday is a truth tomorrow.
Did you challenge him about Sandy Hooke?
I did, and I told you what he said, actually.
As far as I know, it's the first time I've heard it said.
I think it was useful.
He said it was wrong.
He regretted it.
He made a mistake.
Human beings have made mistakes.
It's not the first time he said it.
He said it to me.
Well, good.
You platformed him?
Yeah.
Well, interesting, Pierce.
I platformed him.
Why would you do that?
Because I spent the entire interview going after him about his wicked lies.
Pierce.
And I also had a mother one of the victims on, because I was on air at CNO.
Open debate is good.
And I like you for that.
I like you for that reason.
But I think the American way is not to decide there's certain pariahs and people we don't talk to.
Far left, far right.
I mean, look, I went on the Young Turks podcast, something the Republican presidential candidate doesn't do either.
I practice what I preach.
When a protester shows up to my, I was in Iowa, crazy protester just barges in in the back of the event.
Guns, Health, and Self-Interest 00:05:23
Security's taken her out.
I said, bring her back, we'll give her the microphone.
That's just how I roll.
I believe it's the founding spirit of the United States of America that all ideas get expressed, and the way we defeat bad ideas is through free speech and open debate.
And so, unlike others, Piers, I practice.
No, hey, Pierce.
I just think you've got to, again, you've got to have some limits.
I disagree with that.
With respect to the expression of opinions, violence is a limit, right?
I mean, I don't stand for violence of any form.
But Alex Jones' lies did inspire people to commit acts of violence against these families.
People turned up and threatened them as an act of violence.
So literally the expression of a heinous opinion is different than not, and it was taken to the court system.
I mean, the court systems have handled this.
That's different from saying that somebody should not be talked to by a fellow American.
I just don't think that's the American way.
Let me talk to you about guns generally, because there was another horrible mass shooting in America in the last few days.
18 people killed.
I saw your tweet response, and it was a very conventional Republican response to mass shootings, of which there are now so many you can almost hardly get over the one before, before there's another one.
And it was all about mental health and this and this.
The one thing you didn't...
It's really important.
I know.
I know it's not like a mental health.
I mean, this is a real fundamental topic.
Many other countries have mental health problems just at the same level that America does.
The difference about America, almost exclusively of anywhere in the world, is that America has 400 million plus firearms in circulation.
So when people are mentally unstable or sick, they have easy access to guns.
And you didn't mention the word gun in your statement.
And I was curious why not.
Do you not think guns play a part in gun massacres?
Well, obviously, guns, definitionally, per your question somewhat tautological there, guns play a role in guns massacres.
They don't play a role in massacres of any kind.
Do you think guns kill people?
I think people kill people using guns and using other instruments to do it.
I'm curious, look, as a British citizen who has a home in America, I can go and get a semi-automatic rifle very easily tomorrow.
Yeah.
And I'm not even an American citizen.
I just have to apply for a hunting license, give my American address, and I'll get access to any firearms I want.
I can kick myself up like Rambo, right?
Legally, legally.
What I can't do in America is buy a kinder surprise chocolate egg.
They're banned on safety grounds.
Well, I think that makes no sense.
You're a very bright man.
I'm a mental health.
Can you explain that?
Can you explain to me why it's deemed more dangerous that I should have a chocolate egg with a little toy inside it that might choke people compared to an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle that could slaughter a lot of people in a very short period of time?
So I'm a pro-freedom person, and so I'm not going to sit here and defend some other foolish restriction that the United States has on a million things that I'm generally against.
But I can speak to the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment is not about a technocratic judgment about maximizing or minimizing the number of people who were killed.
The Second Amendment is about something else altogether.
It's analogous to the discussion we just had about free speech.
It's a different value judgment.
Are there risks to allowing free speech?
Yes, there are, but we bear those risks because that's who we are, that we trade that risk off to say that's how we preserve freedom when it comes to the First Amendment.
The Second Amendment makes a similar value judgment.
The purpose of the Second Amendment actually wasn't to allow people to have the freedom to hunt.
That's not what it's about.
It was about repelling and keeping a foreign, in that case, started British monarchy at bay.
It's like mutually assured destruction in the Cold War.
Both sides have nuclear weapons.
Well, that's how you assure a stable peace.
It's a mutually assured destruction relationship between the citizens and their government, between the governed and their government.
That's what this is about.
And so why is the United States of America still for all of our imperfections 250 years into this ballgame still the place that when you open the borders, as sadly one administration has, people don't go running out, but they come running in?
Why is it the country that still gives hope to the free world?
One of the reasons why is the Bill of Rights.
And the Second Amendment is the one amendment that gives teeth to all of the other amendments in that Bill of Rights.
So that's a value judgment we make.
The Second Amendment was not written with the question of what minimizes the number of deaths.
Those are other policies.
It was that you could arm yourself as part of a well-regulated militia, and then over time, actually, until the 80s in America, it was considered by the Supreme Court to mean just that.
And then as the NRA got more political and became less apolitical, and some hardcore Republicans got onto the board of the NRA, they then put pressure on the Supreme Court, which they eventually were successful in doing, in reframing the interpretation of the Second Amendment to mean an individual right to bear arms.
And what has happened?
I think the history is a lot more complicated.
But what has happened, and it may be a complete coincidence, but what has happened since that reframing of that interpretation is that the number of mass shootings in America has begun to skyrocket.
So I think that in the data that you cited, a lot of confounding variables, one of which is the rise of mental health crises in this country.
You can look at data points over certain periods where before you really saw a rise in violence, you could see per capita gun ownership being about flat over the same period that you did see violence and killings rise.
One of the biggest explanations is the shuttering of psychiatric hospitals in this country.
Election Integrity and Indictments 00:07:57
You want to draw the lines of correlation.
There are many ways to draw lines through a scatterplot.
Over the same period that you saw the shuttering of psychiatric institutions, you saw almost a direct inverse correlation in the other direction in the rise of violent crime in this country.
Tell me who wrote this after January VI.
It was a dark day for democracy.
The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again.
I'm referring, of course, to Donald Trump.
I wrote those words in my book in the same juxtaposition to Stacey Abrams filling that.
Do you stand by them?
So look, I think that here's what I'm saying.
You went on to say Trump delivered another tale of grievance.
Here's what I'm saying.
No one likes a sore loser.
One of the worst victimhood complexes of all said his claims about the election were weak.
So here's my point.
What he did was downright abhorrent.
I mean, do you stand by all that stuff you said about Trump and January 6th?
The reason I have a different view today is that they have been going after him.
So there's a time and place to say something, okay?
I tend to not say what everybody else is saying at the time.
And part of the reason is what needs to be said needs to be said when it's hard, not when it's easy.
Well, I think you were right to say it at the time.
I said the same thing.
I fell out with him over at the time.
So I would have done things very differently.
I would have done things dramatically differently, and I will note to you, I'm running for president in the same election this time.
Just to be clear.
But against the background of not being prosecuted for this, I think it's, I take the other side of this to say.
So you don't think he had the election stolen, do you?
Well, I think that, to tell you the truth, were the election stolen, it was stolen in a different sense of the word.
And we can go to this if you want, big tech.
Google and other search algorithms and the very interesting point.
I think that that's really where the real issue was.
As I said to him when I interviewed him, I said, you're fighting the wrong stolen election claim.
And he said, what do you mean?
I said, well, when the New York Post story exposing Hunter Biden's last question would have changed the outcome.
When that was basically vaporized by big tech to protect the Bidens and Rumble.
And you and I both looked at the same polls.
Those would have changed the result of the election.
It could have changed.
So there's evidence of a potential election.
So on that, I kind of agree.
Yeah, that's what I've said all along.
But that's not the problem.
And here's another thing.
That's not the position he takes.
Well, it's fine.
And we are allowed to have different positions.
My position also is the 2016 election was the real election that was decisively stolen from Trump.
The one that he won.
For sure, decisively.
Everyone agrees with Trump.
She didn't win his family.
Because he wasn't allowed to govern with an impeachment in his.
How are you going to be?
Every time he gets indicted, it's quite an extraordinary situation.
If I just finish my point, indictments are wrong.
Okay, but all of them?
I think all of them so far are wrong.
He's Mother Teresa?
I don't say his Mother Teresa, but he's not a criminal.
So nearly 100 criminal charges, they're all baseless.
So the ones I've read, I mean, those are four indictments we're talking about, and I read each one thoroughly.
Okay.
Okay.
Each one is a- Each one is using a novel legal theory.
So even innocent assumes that the thing that's even being alleged for him.
Do you genuinely believe he's innocent of everything he's been charged with?
I think we can talk through each one.
And yes, I believe the answer is innocent because the legal fiction of the charges themselves are made up interpretations of the law that have never been used in this country.
How are you going to beat him?
By convincing voters that I have fresh legs.
I am from a different generation.
And we're in the middle of a war in this country.
And I do believe that.
We're in the middle of a war between those of us who love this country and our founding ideals.
And Trump loves the country.
And we're all on the same side of this war, right?
We're all, Trump, myself, et cetera.
I even think many independents and some Democrats are on the side of this war.
Those of us who love this country and our founding ideals and a fringe minority, and I do believe it's a fringe minority, who hate this country and our founding ideals.
That's the real dominance.
And so how am I going to beat him?
How am I going to beat the rest of the Republican field?
The question is, who is the right general to now lead us to victory in that war?
Well, here's one of the tricks.
Half the people on the other side of that war, Pierce, are people younger than me who never learned those ideals in the first place.
We can bring them along too.
Now we're talking about somebody who has not been wounded in that war.
I have fresh legs.
I am 38 years old, five years older than Thomas Jefferson was when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but less than half the age of the other people who were running, many of them.
So I believe I have an ability to take our America first agenda to the next level.
And honestly, God, I would love Trump as an advisor, as a mentor, telling me exactly where the bodies are buried in the administrative state or otherwise, to be able to go further.
He rolled that log over.
We saw what crawled out.
You thought about him?
I've thought of him as a mentor.
I don't think he would take the VP job.
I'll haven't asked him.
I'll keep it on the list.
But I think that...
Are you tempted to run out?
It's highly unlikely that he's a good idea.
Are you attempting to run out and commit a lot of crimes to get indictments to get your poll numbers up?
I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to wrap up very soon, but just a few little quick words.
The truth is, Pierce, I just think it's really important that, again, you understand this.
I think you understand this.
I don't mean to be preachy, but there is a difference between making a bad judgment and committing a crime.
And I think it is a danger to our liberty.
I'm not saying he's a criminal.
I'm not trying to conflate those things.
No, wait, I'm not saying he's a criminal.
And have you seen it?
Have you seen those indictments?
It is an extraordinary state of affairs where someone can face that volume of criminal indictments.
Yeah, and I think that's the only thing.
And his poll numbers keep going up.
I mean, in England, that candidate would be dead and buried after the first barrage of them, right?
I think.
That's on the politics of it.
I think that the reality is the opposite here is the fact that all of these indictments are coming at the same time right as he's running for office using novel legal theories that have never been.
I think a lot of that has merit.
It has to do with the fact that he's running.
I think they're over-regging the souffle, as I would say, the opposition.
I think they're just determined one way or another.
Did you ever hang out with Trump?
Have you ever talked to him?
I've talked to him a few times.
When was the last time?
It's been a while.
Yeah.
How long?
Before the first debate, easily, yeah.
Do you think you should have debate?
Is he being a bit gutless, not getting on that stage?
I think as long as he's this far ahead, I kind of get it.
But I hope that we have a chance to have open discourse in this race.
But, you know, it's like you're the NBA playoffs, the team that's, you know, number one by a stretch gets a bye.
You know, we're about to have the third debate.
I'm focused on making sure that I'm the clear second before.
I think you've been very good at the debate.
I think you're a great energizing force in the race.
I've said this to you from the very start.
I appreciate it.
I've interviewed you in much shorter context many times.
We've sparred.
We've had our fun.
Yeah, but I like it.
And also, I think you get out there and you put yourself in the lion's den, which I respect.
I do respect it.
And I have to say, we haven't really gone into it, but all the woke madness stuff you've been absolutely rock solid on.
And I completely agree with you.
I appreciate you saying that.
And the thing is, and this also about me is related to one of the other questions you were asking.
I wrote the book Woke Inc. back when it actually was a risk to write that book.
Yes, you did.
Now, the reason I don't, I mean, I share all the same beliefs, but I don't talk about it as much because, I mean, any Tom Dick and Harry can go criticize wokeness today, right?
It's the new popular thing.
They do write that.
It's almost what the cool kids are doing.
The people who are doing it today were the people who were too afraid to do it in 2020.
I think what I absolutely respect about you, you saw the dangers of it, and you saw that it was becoming, under the guise of liberalism, it was becoming a new form of fascism.
And I think you served a valuable public service in blowing that lid up.
And I feel it's beginning to turn.
I think it is, too.
The majority of people are just sick and tired of it.
Well, I think this election makes a big difference in that result, just in terms of not even the laws we pass.
There's some element of that.
But just the tone of national character that we set in the country.
Because if you think about what allows, you know, wokeness or anything like it to fester, it's a deeper generational hunger for purpose and meaning.
And I think it's been a long time since we've had a president that has revived and spoken to our national character.
And that's half the job.
I mean, people grill on policies.
That's just half the job.
The other half of the job is, do you have an understanding of what our national character is?
And then can you actually bring it back?
Well, let me ask you about your character.
And for young people, we're able to do that.
Let me ask you about your character very quickly.
Romantic Climb and National Tone 00:05:00
How rich are you?
It varies depending on the stock market.
You know, a billion on a good day and maybe $600 million on a bad day.
U.S. dollars.
Yeah.
A billion on a good day.
Maybe a little more than on a good day.
Yeah.
Did you like being a billionaire?
I don't particularly relish the title.
I am not one of these people that that's been a life achievement of mine.
I'm thrilled that this country allowed me to achieve everything that I have.
I'm proud of my accomplishments.
I don't apologize for success, but I also don't fetishize green pieces of paper.
I think sometimes it's something that leads people to deep unhappiness, and I've been around a lot of them, and I'm careful to make sure I don't become one of them either.
We try to live in a way that maybe would reflect a fraction of that net worth in a way that actually hopefully allows our family to avoid some of the traps that some of my wealthier friends have fallen into.
Your wife, Apova, I think is how she pronounces it.
She said your two best qualities were your joy and optimism.
Is that what she said?
That's nice of her.
What do you think of that?
Is that true?
Yeah, I think I'm naturally a very optimistic person.
It's funny she says that because she's the person who experiences my crankiness the most at times, but there's a joy and optimism in there.
On certain days it's buried more deeply than others.
When was the moment you knew she was the one for you?
We were hiking a mountain in, it was a flat top mountain in Colorado.
We were in Rocky Mountain National Park, and she was the one who was beating me all the way up the hiking trail.
She had actually done Kilimanjaro not long before that, but we were going pretty hardcore to the top.
I had been there to the top before, and I wanted to show it to her.
And it was just the final maybe 300 feet, 200 feet to the top.
But there was a massive snowstorm that set in.
And she's somebody who's made it to the tops of these mountains before.
I said I was going to go and wanted to make sure we saw that through.
And she grabbed my hand and said, we're going to come back and do this sometime in the future, but we're going to have a long future together.
And we turned around and we made it all the way back down that mountain.
And you knew.
And here we are.
Yeah.
How did you propose?
I proposed, it was actually, you know, the real story.
I mean, the cake was baked long before I proposed.
I think that we wanted to get to a place where both of our families were all there.
We knew what the destination was going to be.
And yeah, I haven't told the story before, but she sort of said, all right, all right, like at this point, I don't really care about the ring or anything else.
If you don't get on this, you might find me proposing to you and let's just get this over with.
So I got a, so I was, you know, put the perfect ring plans to one side and we got a little ring pop and we did it in the streets.
You're going to a ring pop.
What's that?
It's like a little lollipop as a ring.
It's like a big ruby.
You gave your wife a lollipop ring.
She was thrilled with it.
And you're a billionaire, man.
What were you thinking?
Yeah, I was at the time.
I was working my way up.
But we got her.
Did you at least go on?
Her red ruby ring to follow the.
Did you go on bended knee?
I did.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We went through the lollipop.
You went on bended knee.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We did.
With your lollipop ring.
With the lollipop ring, yeah.
It was in a nice case, though.
It was a very nice case.
And what is finally, what is the secret to married life?
Ooh.
I think we practice, actually, is a good way to look at it.
I think that if you look at every iteration as a round of practice, then that presumes that you're on the same page about the destination.
You're just iterating and practicing to get to the version of perfection.
And so it's never perfect, but it's about the pursuit of perfection.
And romance?
Are you a romantic guy?
Maybe on a good day, yeah.
What's the most romantic thing you've ever done?
I don't know what I can't profess on my own self-romantic thing.
I don't know.
I feel like a little bit, I'm not a guy who's going to pat, I could think of some examples right now, but I'm not going to be able to do that.
Give me some.
It's not the kind of thing that I want to do.
Give me a little bone.
You know, I think.
A romantic bone.
I think that it was maybe one of our, I don't know how Porva felt about it, but our Valentine's Day gift, she's a tough one to please because she's not really into, you know, stuff.
She has stuff.
She's not particularly into stuff.
But I thought about what I could do that was better than her, which are few and far between.
But I gave her a tennis lesson.
And we actually went through it.
And she's an actually athletic person, but we picked something up that we were then able to do together for a while.
Really?
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
It's a small thing.
I don't know.
No, but she is.
There's no big ceremony around it.
Oh, I get that.
Yeah.
It's a nice thing.
And she loves it.
She seemed to like it, yeah.
Who wins?
I mean, it's the sport I've played since going up.
She's a better volleyball player.
That's what she plays.
So you basically got her to play something you knew you could beat her at.
I had to pick something.
I had to find something.
She has me beat out.
Is that basically your character in a nutshell?
You know, it's interesting.
I'd have to do some Freudian introspection for that one.
That might have been the toughest gotcha of the whole interview.
The whole thing was leading to that.
It's good to see you.
It's good to see you, man.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
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