All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - How to Save America: Mark Cuban and Tucker Carlson Debate | All-In Summit 2025

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

(0:00) Introducing Mark Cuban, sadness over Luka Doncic (2:38) America’s broken healthcare system (15:16) State of the two-party system (19:24) Introducing Tucker Carlson (20:01) The fine line betwe...en listening and pandering, is Mamdani the Trump of the Left? (24:27) How to make Americans believe in America again (34:12) AI job displacement (39:29) Lightning round with Tucker: Epstein, Putin, why the West is killing itself, the SSRI epidemic, Iryna Zarutska murder (52:54) Antisemitism and Israel Thanks to our partners for making this happen! Solana: https://solana.com/ OKX: https://www.okx.com/ Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/ IREN: https://iren.com/ Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/ Circle: https://www.circle.com/ BVNK: https://www.bvnk.com/ Follow Mark Cuban: https://x.com/mcuban Follow Tucker Carlson: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Mark Cuban is here ever since he was a child. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just love to compete for whatever reason. I do. We want all our fellow Americans to succeed. The Dallas Mavericks are NBA champions. The first title in franchise history. One of America's most famous professional sports owners is selling his beloved team.
Starting point is 00:00:25 You've done a reality show, just retired from that, cashed out of the Mavericks. check kind of adds up to you're going to run for president and no there's no way no ladies and gentlemen please welcome mark Cuban all right thanks for being here god mark mark it feels like we've been doing this for 30 years and we have that we have I know have um What GLP are you on? What off-the-manue items? None. He's in retirement.
Starting point is 00:01:07 Sells a team, takes a break. All the stress is on. I mean, you really do look incredible. Are you doing something? I'm working out. Yeah. We want to know about the off-the-menu items. We'll talk backstage.
Starting point is 00:01:19 There are no off-the- menu items. No off-the- menu items. Okay. Nothing. Just exercise, huh? Exercise and watching what I eat, yeah. What was more painful in the last year? Kamala losing or Luca getting traded.
Starting point is 00:01:33 Luca getting traded. It's not even close. And no, I had nothing to do with it. We know, and you know, you sold the team. You explained it 50 different ways to Sunday, but there was this idea that you would still be involved to some extent. Yeah, I fucked up. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:49 Unpack it. Yeah, I mean, when I did the deal, the presumption was that I would still be running basketball, and we tried to put it in the contract, but the NBA said, said, the governor is the governor, and they make all final decisions. And then, you know, I was involved, and then we went on this run where we went to the finals. And rather than trying to interject myself all the time, right?
Starting point is 00:02:13 I was like, I don't want to get in the way. We're rolling. And that was a mistake, right? So it went, there was some, you know, some things that happened internally where, you know, the person who traded Luca didn't want me there. And so they won. I lost. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:29 But that's in the past. I'm still hardcore MAVs, MFFL. A rare L for Mark. No, there's been plenty of them. I just try to minimize them. Yeah. Mark, let's talk about health care. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:02:41 You started a business that has had a really profoundly disruptive impact and it's compounding. Tell the people, the business you started, and tell them why you started it and why you just think health care is broke. Sure. So I got a cold email from a Dr. Alex Oshmaianski, and he wanted to create what's called, a compounding pharmacy where pharmacies can make drugs per order. And it was right around the time the farmer bro was going to jail for jacking up the price of this generic drug called Deriprim. And I was like, how can he do this, Alex? And, you know, in investigating it, it became very clear, very quickly that no one knew what the price of any
Starting point is 00:03:18 medication was and there was zero transparency. And so I was like, this is wrong. So we got the URL, costplusdrugs.com, and we set it up so that when you go to costplusdrugs.com, cost plusdrugs.com. And you put in the name of the medication, whatever it may be, we're going to show you our actual cost. And not only we're going to show you our actual cost, we're going to show you our markup, which is only 15%. Plus for mail order is $5 for shipping, $5 for the pharmacist to review, and then we also have the option of local pickup. Now, what really created the change is we were the first to ever do that, and even to this day, three and a half years later, nobody else publishes their price list for medications.
Starting point is 00:04:01 And so when you think about health care, particularly the financial side, nobody trusted at all. And in reality, you know, trust is actually a formula in my mind. Trust equals transparency divided by self-interest. We were completely transparent, and in terms of self-interest, only a 15% markup on medication. it's fair and it's nothing. And so, you know, I get emails all the time. Like, you know, I was looking at having to pay 900 or 1,000 or 1,000 or 1,500 or 2,000, and your price is $21.
Starting point is 00:04:33 But can you, but just explain that. It's not as if it's 21 versus 40 or 90. It's 21 versus 900. Yeah. How does that happen? Because it can. You know, if you have an entire industry of insurance companies and the pharmacy benefit managers that either own them or they own,
Starting point is 00:04:50 controlling the flow, the financial flow in an entire healthcare industry and it's completely opaque by design, they get to charge what they want. Because again, unless you know to go to costplusdrugs.com, you have no idea what your Medicaid. Did I say that right? Costplusdrugs. Dot com. I never, I'm not a salesperson at all. Dot com. The segment brought to you by. Yeah, right? Costplusdrugs.com. But unless you know to go check pricing with us, you're just walking in and, you're just walking in, just hoping you can afford it. And the way the system is set up, now, you know, even at Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part D will be cheaper than your co-pay, and particularly if it's
Starting point is 00:05:31 co-insurance. One of the things that the pharmacy benefit managers did, that's just a complete rip-off, they created tiers of medications. And so there's generic tiers, there's brand tiers, but even in Medicare and Medicare Advantage, they created these things called specialty generics. they're just pills it's like a drug called a matinib of all these multiple sclerosis drugs there's a long list of them but because they designated them as special
Starting point is 00:05:58 they either use a co-insurance or very high co-pay we don't do any of that so a big part of our business is people on Medicare Advantage on Medicare Part D where corporate drugs you can't get access to or you can't compound or you can't make if yeah there's certain drugs like the biggest
Starting point is 00:06:14 brand drugs the eloquists of the world we can't get access to them And the reason why we can't get access to them is because those big PBMs, they have these things called formularies, which determine the drugs that you're allowed to have access to for 180 million plus people. And they've literally told the brand manufacturers, if you deal with costplusdrugs.com, we will diminish you on that formulary.
Starting point is 00:06:40 So instead of reaching 180 million people, and not just for the drugs they work with us on, but for their entire portfolio. Sounds like an antitrust case. Yes, it is. But, Mark, like, if this gets changed, the PBMs gets wiped out. First of all, should the PBMs all get deleted? And if they do get deleted, what's going to happen in the marketplace? Is there suddenly going to be a big commoditization, more competitors for your business, et cetera?
Starting point is 00:07:05 I don't care about the competition, because our markup's still going to be 15%. And we're so AI-driven. We only have 70 people in the entire company, and we manufacture drugs in the whole nine yards. So if they're all wiped out, or the easier approach is require that the formularies are segregated from the PBMs, because all they really do is auction off access to those formularies. And when they do that. So do you think the PBM should be deleted? Well, there's pass-through PBMs.
Starting point is 00:07:35 I mean, the shit that PBMs do are just insane. Like, if you wanted to go, if your company, if you get your insurance from your employer, And they wanted to go to Lilly or Novo Norse to do a wellness program to determine who's most suited for GLP ones. They're not allowed to do that. And on top of that, all the reason is because contractually, they don't want to get blocked out. They want you to go direct. They don't want you to go direct. And on top of that, like, you would think it would be valuable for the claims for all the people who use, you know, Zepbound or whatever, the GLP ones, to go to the manufacturers so they can determine that here.
Starting point is 00:08:15 what's working, you know, issues, not allowed. Is there- Fact will charge them to get access to that. Are there things that the government agencies or next round of legislation can do to take the advantages of what you've learned and apply it so that everybody can get the benefit of this? And have you talked to the administration about that?
Starting point is 00:08:37 I may have talked to some people, but then they say we're not going to tell anybody we talk to you. But, you know, the simplest approach really is just market-driven. So where you guys get your insurance for yourselves, for the besties, for the companies that you guys work with out there, tell them don't use one of the biggest, don't use any of the big PBMs. Use these things called pass-through PBMs that allow you to own your own claims, own your own data, get the lowest price, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:09:06 So there are market solutions to get there. Right. Is the original sin in this country tying health care to employers and making them responsible for it? And is that what we have to solve for? No. The original sin is allowing these companies to become vertically integrated and enormous. And so, like, there's one big insurance company just for intercompany transfers. Each year, it's about $161 billion. That's 0.3% of our GDP. They have gotten so large and so vertically integrated that they can game the entire system.
Starting point is 00:09:41 You want your medical loss ratio to be where it needs to be will then push the cost to the PBM. You want to increase your profits here. You want to make your Medicare Advantage programs work. Game the system this way. The big insurance companies, think about this, right? We all have insurance or we're on our parents' insurance at some point, but the insurance company defines a plan, right?
Starting point is 00:10:03 And they set a premium, and they set a deduce. deductible and a max out of pocket. The less you make, the more likely you're going to take a lower premium, higher deductible. But excluding the people on Medicaid, 40% of people can't afford a $400 bill, right, or expense. Yet they're the ones choosing the $2,500, the $5,000 deductibles and the $9,000 out of pockets, which means for the insurance companies that they know that they can't afford to get the first level of care anywhere. They can't afford to go to the hospital. So the insurance company is just keeping the premiums. And even if you work for a company, let's say you work for a company
Starting point is 00:10:45 here in LA and your net take home, you know, is $35,000, $40,000 and you have a $2,500 or $3,000 deductible and you're playing basketball and you go to dunk like Jason always does and breaks his leg, you're fucked. Yeah. You know, you're not going. That's why my fingers are like this, right? because, you know, you just can't afford to go use your deductible. That's the problem of the system. And as long as we have these companies that are so vertically integrating and continue to buy more and more companies so that they can game the system even more
Starting point is 00:11:18 and they control the patient flow and they control the flow of drugs. So this is an interesting reaction happening in the markets, which is self-directed healthcare. People are opting to, affluent people in some cases, higher premiums and saying, you know what, I'll just do my own blood work with superpower or function. I'm going to go, you know, take care of my own peptides, or I'm going to go to a compounding pharmacy.
Starting point is 00:11:43 I'm going to go to row.com, and I'm going to get, you know, my whatever I need to do. If you go to rows.com, let me just tell you, for my friends of my age, right, 90, Tadilafil cost less than a bag of M&Ms. Tadilophil is generic Seattle. So we charge less than a bag of M&M's. So if you go to Rose or Hems of those guys, you're getting ripped off. Mark, let me ask you... But the self-directed concept.
Starting point is 00:12:05 But the self-directed... Jay-Sach is going to change his prescription. I'll change my prescription right now. But just on the self-directed... Right, so on that point, right? So we're creating a company called Cost Plus Wellness that hasn't launched yet. It'll hopefully launch at the end of this month.
Starting point is 00:12:18 And what we're doing is we're going out there for my companies, we're eating our own dog food, and we're setting up direct contracts with 8,000 providers at this point. And so it's based off a cash pay because those insurance companies, not only rip-off patients, you know, and deny care, et cetera, et cetera, they also underpaid providers and all these other things,
Starting point is 00:12:38 and they have to respond. And they underpaid doctors, too. And so what we're doing is we're going out there negotiating these cash prices with terms that pay, we'll pay on a cash basis. But what's different about it when we launch, we're going to publish all those contracts. Because there's absolutely no transparency whatsoever on the insurance side. Companies don't know what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:13:00 They're permitted from having to discuss. with each other to compare notes, so we'll publish the contract. Just to wrap that point on cost plus drugs.com, you're not going to, this isn't going to impact your economics personally in any way. You're doing this because, hey, maybe as the third act, you see this as a way to give back to society. I want to fuck up healthcare. Who here thinks the financial side of health care is great?
Starting point is 00:13:25 Nobody. It's a fucking mess, right? You're doing this to prove a point to help people. Because it's fixable. Yes. fixable, but politicians got to do what politicians do, right? Even with the president. Have you gone to D.C. since President Trump?
Starting point is 00:13:38 I know you were campaigning for Kamala Harris. Have you been to D.C. since the election? Yeah, one time. You have. And how did it go? And our experience, maybe we're a little bit influential or whatever because of various relationships. But, like, everyone we speak to, like, it's an open-door policy.
Starting point is 00:13:55 The administration is listening to everyone on all of these important issues. And we're hearing this from industry leaders from both sides. Trying to get them to move, right, is different, right? Because the president, and actually his MFN, EO, was great, right? No knock on that whatsoever. The problem is, like, we literally went to manufacturers and we said, take the PBMs out, and if you take the PBMs out and sell to us
Starting point is 00:14:19 at a higher price than what you're selling to the big PBMs and just let us market up only our 15%. Our price will be close to all the European countries that the MFN wants to compare to, because you know the difference between our countries and theirs? They don't have PBMs, right? So I went to CMS and told them we would do these things, right? Then we started talking to the manufacturers.
Starting point is 00:14:42 Then the manufacturers backed off. And CMS knew they backed off. You know why they backed off? They were more afraid of the PBMs than being removed from formularies than they were of Donald Trump. I even wrote a letter for them to give to the president explaining all that.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Now, whether or not they ever gave it to them, I don't know. but it's crazy that they would rather piss off Donald Trump and make the EO not happen because it's been a lot longer than 90 days and we haven't seen a single drug that falls under the MFN principles. Mark, you've had a lot of chapters in your life, very successful.
Starting point is 00:15:17 But if you are able to crack this, it will obviously not just be a great service for people, but you will build an immense amount of social and political capital. And, you know, we mentioned this backstage, but some folks have whispered and said, you know, when we ask, who is the leader of the Democratic Party, you know, and they say it's Mark Cuban. Eric Smallwell said this on our show. That was a long time ago. But Mark, can you just transition and just talk about that, which is where is the Democratic Party? If you're able to get this done, how can you sort of reinvigorate that side of the aisle?
Starting point is 00:15:53 I don't care about the Democratic Party. People think I'm a Democrat. I'm not. I think you're a Democrat. I'm not. If it were up to me, I'd kick both parties to the curb. I think both parties suck, right? I'm with that.
Starting point is 00:16:06 Moderates and independence, common sense. So does that mean you're pro-America Party, if you were advising Elon, would you tell him, stay out of the Republican Party, just try to win some seats for common sense, and would you back him with the America Party? Depends on, you know, the policies and who the politicians were, but yeah, I said, I tweeted, posted, yes, I'm wide open to that. We need to look at each individual situation for its own merits. Yeah. Right.
Starting point is 00:16:32 I just don't care about either party, you know, both, like the Republican Party isn't the Republican Party anymore. It's the Trump family business. And the Democratic Party doesn't even exist anymore because, you know, they don't even know what they're doing and there's nobody in charge, right? They both suck. Do you get calls from Democratic leadership saying, what should we do, give us up? And what do you say?
Starting point is 00:16:54 Well, basically what I tell them is you have to learn how to sell. They have no idea how to sell. I'll give you a perfect example, right? Right now with the enhanced ACA credits, subsidy credits, are set to expire at the end of this year, right? That, when they expire for 12.5 million people... These are the Obamacare health care credits. Right, right, for the ACA, right? And so when they expire, let's just take a family of five from the state of the state of
Starting point is 00:17:24 Texas, the great state of Texas, $125,000 in income, three kids. By the time you look at all their adjustable gross income and all that kind of stuff, their net federal tax rate is 3.3%. Their effective tax rate, 3.3%. That same family, right, if they lose their enhanced credits, because they're eligible for them, their monthly payments will go from $880, give or take, per month to about $2,300 a month. So that delta, $1,500 a month, that's $18,000 a year. That's everything. That's, you know, 20% tax increase.
Starting point is 00:18:04 Now, that's right in front of the Democrats to jump all over when it comes to, you know, all the stuff that's coming up, right? Yet not a single word that this is the biggest increase in the history of tax increases ever. And so they're not cognizant of just the obvious things. And the Republicans aren't cognizant of it either because they've got to realize that you are about to screw over 12.5 million people in a way they've never been screwed over before. You know, it's just right there, right in front of them, and nobody's paying attention to, like, and we wonder.
Starting point is 00:18:38 When you say that, what do they say? When you point this out to Democratic leadership that calls you, what's the response? That's a good point. And it seems like they're leaning into this ban the billion. millionaires, social. Yeah, and that's so stupid. I had that conversation the other day. 942 or however many people.
Starting point is 00:18:58 Look, it's like the Mondami thing, right? They haven't learned from 10 years of Trump. Mandami is just Trump progressive version, right? You just say what people want to hear. You want rent control? Yeah, I'll give you rent control, right? You want free transportation? Got it, right?
Starting point is 00:19:14 You want grocery stores paid for by the government? Done. That's Trump 101, you know? And so they, he has figured it out. the rest of them have not. I think this might be a good time to bring out our stay here, Mark, but I think we want to bring out. We want to introduce it to a friend of ours.
Starting point is 00:19:31 Let's just add one more bestie. Let's add a bestie. We're going to add a bestie. Hey, Tucker, surprise bestie coming out. Tucker, Carl, Carl. Surprise bestie coming out. Tucker, Carl, Kurtz. Oh, oh, who-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Starting point is 00:19:47 And it's in. Thank you. Thank you. Gentlemen. All right. Nice to see. Thanks for coming up. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:19:58 Yeah, come on. But actually this, what Mark? The right and the left here. Mark raised an interesting question there, which is, I'm curious to get your take Tucker, which is, where's the line in a democracy Tucker between giving the people what they want, which is democracy, versus what Marx needs to be saying, which is pandering to them or something or offering something that... Where is the line? I mean, I can identify it.
Starting point is 00:20:19 It's at cost plus drugs.com. plusdrugs.com. Yes, sir. No, it's true, it's true. It's happening. I was thinking backstage like, this is one smart man. Where do I meet my SSRI needs?
Starting point is 00:20:32 Like, let's say I need, I don't know, a pallidabenzis, postplusdrugs.com. I would say that that falls on the kind of radical democracy end of the spectrum, which I oppose. No, I mean, it's a balance. Obviously, defending documents reflect the balance that the balance,
Starting point is 00:20:50 founders for all their sort of overhyped genius, they really were geniuses, actually, and they thought deeply about this. And how do you not devolve into the ugliest form of democracy, which inevitably leads to tyranny, where you're just like taking payoffs and seeking affirmation from the mob, and the oligarchy that is the other extreme? And clearly we're on sort of like, or were up until Trump's election, sort of at one end, where there's no demonstrable effort by the government to meet like the basic desires of the population doing just the opposite there was never like any effort to pull people like hey would you like 40 million new Americans like no one's for that in any country
Starting point is 00:21:35 ever and they just sort of gave it to you and shouted you down whether you wanted it or not hey maybe we should you know the real problem is the Houthis okay oh the Houthis all right as my father said to me growing up just beware the Houthis. Ancient, ancient enemy of our people. Like, what? And they would just sort of present these things, or Putin is bad. You got to hate Putin. Really? I don't
Starting point is 00:21:57 really have strong feeling. Shut up! Russian tool or whatever? This is even before I loved Putin. I was like, what are you even talking about? So in place of sort of the actual organic desires of the people, which are never that different from society to society, peace,
Starting point is 00:22:14 prosperity, hope of a better future for your children, the promise of grand children, not just sterility. In place of those, they manufacture these things you're supposed to want. So that's obviously like way on the other side of what we think of as just basic responsive government. Are we going too far otherwise? I don't know. We're not even in your end. But that is the tension. Tucker, I want to get your reaction to what Mark said. Mark characterized Mamdani as Trump on the left, like he's taken the Trump playbook and inverted it and applied it in a more, with leftist rhetoric. Do you agree with that characterization? What is working in
Starting point is 00:22:50 Mamdani and what is the same and different versus? Well, I mean, I'm not an expert on Mamdani. I don't know him. I've tried to interview him a bunch of times because I think it would be interesting. There's clearly something there. And it's not just about hating Israel or the foreign policy stuff. I don't. I refuse to believe that's the core of it. I think it's part of it. But I think the core of it is just economic frustration. And I think this is a marker for what we're going to see a whole lot more of, which is economic populism. That's the actual next chapter. That's going to scare the shit out of everyone in this room.
Starting point is 00:23:22 And I get it. I'm not even calling for it. I'm just saying when your kids can't buy a house or even dream of buying a house, when they're buying DoorDash on credit, you're ripe for some kind of revolution. And the question is, is it a violent one, God forbid, or is it a kind of sincere Bernie Sanders? But either way you're going to get some kind of massive reaction.
Starting point is 00:23:42 to that because that is a core human need. What's the impact of social media in all this? Because I think one thing that, another thing that Madami and Trump have in common is they know how to make the algorithms work in their favor. You know, when Trump talks about they're eating cats and dogs. Which I think they were, by the way. Well, maybe one person was, right? But it was certainly.
Starting point is 00:24:05 Okay, maybe one person? So that's not a day. Eating one dog is too many. That's not a thing. can means anything. If you could boil down a national creed to one statement is no dog eating here. What about cats?
Starting point is 00:24:19 I'm agnostic on cats, but like no dog eating. Yeah. Cats are pricks. That's like a foundational principle. Well, no, but if it is about wages, if it is about affording a home, let's put the
Starting point is 00:24:34 political parties aside. What's the path forward, Mark Tucker, of maybe letting the bottom third believe in America again. Should we raise the minimum wage? Do we need to have a Manhattan project to do something as easy as build five million homes? I mean, we live in the great state of Texas. They build homes like you wouldn't believe. And rents have gone down in Texas three years in a row. I mean, there are solutions to these problems. What should we solve for as a country? Politics aside, if we had a top two or three things, what do we need
Starting point is 00:25:06 to solve? Mark, and then Tucker, same for you. I think we've forgotten about entrepreneurs. You know, I think that's one of the challenges of the tariffs that we hear about $500 billion investment, $600 billion investment, $2 trillion whatever in aggregate investment, but we don't talk about the 10% effective or 15% or 20% effective tariffs and the impact on small businesses and not just from the actual tariffs per se, but from the friction that they create for the companies trying to run their companies, right? Like for my Shark Tank companies, it's put several out of business. And when you hear the president talk about them, I understand he's trying to work on a macro basis.
Starting point is 00:25:45 That's what he's trying to do. That's fine. But for, you know, there's 33 million companies, 30 million of them are solopreneurs. You know, there's only 22,000 companies that have 500 or more employees. 60% of new jobs are created by small companies. I think they're being ignored. And to your point, if he's able to reduce friends, in terms of zoning, in terms of anything else that makes it more difficult to run,
Starting point is 00:26:13 whether it's using AI or whatever it may be. Then I think the American spirit takes over, right? You guys are entrepreneurs. You're an entrepreneur. You know that, you know, the ideas are there. The people who want to implement those ideas are what makes this. You can go around the world and they don't talk about the French dream, the, you know, the Houthi dream. They talk about the American people.
Starting point is 00:26:36 the French government collapsed, I understand. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. But they talk about the American dream. That's what makes this country great. That's what makes this country different. And I think for a long time now, we've forgotten about those entrepreneurs. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:26:49 I agree. Tucker, what do you got on the short list? I think housing is the core of kind of everything. You know, where you live is like one of the central questions of your life. I don't think it's actually about housing. It's about autonomy. Actually, both sides want to subvert it. the left is always talking about housing, the unhoused
Starting point is 00:27:08 as if the core problem with homelessness is we don't have enough, like, you know, section 8 high density buildings or something. It's nothing to do with that. And the right talks about it, like, even to address the question is to sort of buy into the Mamdani program. You're a socialist or something.
Starting point is 00:27:24 And no, I think the material condition of your people is like a really big deal, and you should focus on it. It doesn't make you a socialist at all. I am not a socialist, obviously. And then they go too far. Like, I don't think, you know, building condos in Yellowstone either is the answer. We have way too many people in the country. So like the big, like the top line numbers really matter.
Starting point is 00:27:43 How many people live here? Well, we don't actually know the answer. Right. Trump told me directly. He thought it was 50 million. He's the president of the United States. He doesn't know how many people whose identities we don't really know live here, which is a little weird in a time of facial recognition.
Starting point is 00:27:55 Like, I have to have my nose scan to get on an airplane, but like we don't know who's here. I call bullshit. But whatever, we don't know. But we do know that, and you know from traveling, that how many people a country has determines the nature of the country almost more than anything, right?
Starting point is 00:28:10 I mean, this is kind of why the places you go on vacation are not densely populated. So we need to articulate just like the obvious supply and demand principles out loud. Don't we have more fundamental issues than that, though? There's no more fundamental issue than who lives in your country, dude. There is, right? Because if you want...
Starting point is 00:28:26 Okay. Because if you want... The cost of prescription drugs? No, but if you want the birth rates to go up. I may have an answer to that, Mark. Thank you. What was the name of the place? Costplusdrugs.com.
Starting point is 00:28:39 Smart man. For your drug needs, I'm Cal Worthington. Sorry. But if you can't afford to live here, you can't afford kids, right? If you can't afford health care. Mark, let me ask you a question. What's your take on whether we should be sending money to Ukraine or not? Were you in favor of that?
Starting point is 00:28:57 Man, they need it. I mean, honestly, I don't have a good answer. You know, I can make an argument both ways. And half my family is Ukrainian for my grandparents. And so, you know, personally, I think we should help. But I don't have a studied answer for you. How much money have you sent to Ukraine? None.
Starting point is 00:29:15 Oh, so what do you mean by we? You're the one who's families from Ukraine. Like, why don't you send them a billion dollars? Because I'm trying to fix health care. Why don't you fix their health care if you're like so deep? If you think we need to help, why don't you start? How about you first? I noticed that's never like even an option for anybody.
Starting point is 00:29:31 It's like, we need to help. That's not what charity is. Forcing other people to help is not charity. Here's the good news. The good news is all the weapons were on loan lease. We're getting it back. And our dear president, Trump, has negotiated that we own half the minerals. So he turned this horrible, tragic of a war into a profit center, which is one of his unique gifts.
Starting point is 00:29:53 I think we can all agree. Can I just follow up on another alternative root cause? And I've harped on this a lot, federal spending. ultimately if the federal deficit remains as it is, six and a half percent of GDP we're printing money. The Federal Reserve has to buy all the treasuries to fund the government, that money printing and all of those inefficient programs for lending,
Starting point is 00:30:15 for housing, lending for student loans, spending on stuff that has no ROI, et cetera, et cetera, ultimately leads to inflation and leads to everything becoming unaffordable. Is it not an option and how much do you both care about or think about reining in the federal spending and having those kind of pointed conversations
Starting point is 00:30:31 about the importance of this. Go ahead, Tucker. You look back here. I mean, I think about it a lot. I think about the devaluation of the dollar. I think about it's just not worth as much. And I know that in my own, I'm not an investor. I don't invest in anything, but in the things that I buy
Starting point is 00:30:46 with an eye to retaining value, they're physical things. They just don't believe in any of this at all. And so I caught myself the other day. And I'm at such a low sort of level compared to everyone else here. I'm not especially rich, but like I had a little bit of extra. money. And I'm like, it really was like the Vimar impulse. Like, shit, I got to buy something soon. Before I lose. Before the dollar is worth less. Yeah, I mean, everyone I know, and I live in a very rural area, and I, most of my friends are crazy, but people I know are thinking in terms
Starting point is 00:31:17 of like land, gold, ammo. Like, I don't think that water, I don't think that's, no, I mean, are you really laughing? Are you tittering nervously? Because you know that's not insane. I own a shit ton of Bitcoin, first and foremost, right? It kind of a hedge and have probably five years now. But we do need to cut costs, and I'm hoping AI is a path there. You know, government as a service, AI as a service, reducing the number of people it takes to get things done, understanding that laws that were written in the 60s, and this is kind of the abundance thing, right? Laws that were written in the 60s that are still in place don't apply now.
Starting point is 00:31:59 kind of like the government version of the innovator's dilemma. We have to modify things that are in place already so we can start to optimize. And I think we haven't done that in a long, long time. And I don't think we're in the process of changing that right now. But may I ask, and I'm not against anything you said. I mean, I'm for technocratic solutions to moral problems too, but I wonder, just kidding,
Starting point is 00:32:22 I'm wondering what the aim is. It seems like with any project, like you begin by articulating your goal. Right. Which is like one thing America is super bad at. So if you want to get to the moon, say so. And then if you don't get there, just fake it or whatever like we did. But it begins with, again, kidding. But it begins with saying what the goal is.
Starting point is 00:32:43 Like what kind of society do you want? No, but you never, I'm not attacking you at all. I do think you should have money to Ukraine. But I think it's, we're all at fault. It's all like, well, how can we do this more efficiently? We'll do what? Like in the end, I want to live. in a society where people live in single family homes with little lawns that they own
Starting point is 00:33:03 that are not going to be taken away from them like actual property rights not theoretical property it's like my house okay i want married people and i want them to have children and grandchildren with the rough assurance the future of course being fundamentally unknown but rough assurance that like it'll kind to be the same radical change all the time drives people insane yeah but so there has to be radical change dude i grow in this city i don't recognize I'm only 56. That's radical change. What, you're talking about Los Angeles? Yeah. Like, what is this?
Starting point is 00:33:33 Look, you can go in any decade, any generation. No, there's never been, there's never been population. Okay, then I dare you then, because I know you're historian, give me another example other than the mass rate by the Mongols of population change like what we've seen in the West over the past 50 years. You can't, because there isn't one in all recorded history.
Starting point is 00:33:56 So you can be for it or against it, but you can't say there's a precedent. You keep on answering your own questions. That way I get to the right answer. I just answer my own questions. This is a monologue posing as a polyquate. Let me bring us to
Starting point is 00:34:11 AI job displacement. It's been a big debate we've been having on the pod. We all know that AI is going to replace a large number of jobs. Do we know that? I don't know for that either. Any self-driving car replaces four or five drivers, full-time positions.
Starting point is 00:34:28 that's... But there could be different jobs. Well, okay, we're going to get to that. But for our guests, do you think we're going to have a job displacement that could be acute and how should we handle that? Because we're seeing people make optimist robots. The idea that any human is going to be in a factory sorting things, and all the factories are making today are designed explicitly to not have humans in it.
Starting point is 00:34:50 We may be talking about bringing back and on-shoring factory jobs. That's not happening. All the new factories are going to be run by robots. We all know that there are lights out facilities. So what's the best, worst-case scenario here in terms of management? Can I give you the upside? Please. And everyone knows this, but, like, you know, the IBEW is fine.
Starting point is 00:35:08 Like, your electrician will still exist. We've got one million lawyers and a little fewer than one million lawyers in the United States. And a lot of them are just SOL. And I think it's just so great to think of unemployed. No, I'm serious. So it's going to, I do think, to something said, it's going to affect the worst, most entitled, most annoying classes of people, okay? So that's an upside.
Starting point is 00:35:29 I don't want to see any other working-class people. So kind of see, there's one thing. You can, you can displace farm workers. What are they going to do about it? You can displace factory workers. They'll just kill themselves with drugs and fast food, which they have done. And you'll feel sort of guilty, but then ignore it. If you do that to lawyers and nonprofit sector employees, who I lived around in D.C.,
Starting point is 00:35:49 you will get a revolution. And I mean that. I'm dead, where did Paul Pot come from? I mean, there's never been a revolution that wasn't farm. by frustrated members of the sort of insurgent class. It's totally true, sub-aristocrat, but the striving class, the most repulsive people there are, I think we're fair to say, but also the most intent on getting what they want. And if you put them out of business, I mean, I'm not joking at all.
Starting point is 00:36:15 I think you could get in the statement. We're seeing this already, and one could argue that the Mamdani election surge may be the result of young people coming out of colleges that were in that exact same situation. It's driving elite, and they don't have a non-ran. And they were told that if they take on $400,000 of debt, they'll end up making a good living and progressing in life, buying a home, and all of that turned out to not be fucking true. So I got two kids in college.
Starting point is 00:36:39 And what I tell them is if you were looking for a job at a big company, you're not going to get it. Because the big companies can implement what they need to do with AI in the short term. The small to middle-sized companies need all the help they can get from AI, natives, right? Because walking in and understanding AI and being able to implement for that company is a huge step forward to them. So I think that's one way to where we will adjust. Number two, right, the tools you have as someone in college, there's no better time to be in college or just graduating than right now. Because you have more resources available to you
Starting point is 00:37:19 in your phone than anybody in the history of everything, right? Because if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do whatever it is, you have every expert that's right there available to you. And it's not going to go as far as you think in the short term, but in the long term, it comes down to robotics. Because the electrical workers, if robotics do what robotics need to do, they're fucked, right? Because here's the disconnect right now that I think people don't understand in AI. On one hand, we're so used to the large language models, right? But those are all text-driven. They don't know anything that's happening here. They can't acquire all this video. adapt, there's a huge latency, and it's all text, and all their IP is being siloed, right?
Starting point is 00:37:59 They're going to have to pay for it so they'll all have their own specialties. A lawyer, large language, there'll be millions of large language models. Robotics, on the other hand, it's not even so much about self-driving cars or what I use in the factories of cost plus drugs. It's about in your house. It's about walking down the streets. It's about doing those things. So if you tell, you have to get to a point, we have to get to a point for it to be impactful
Starting point is 00:38:19 where you can say to a robot, clean the house. and they'll know not to touch Jason's socks, right? And they'll know, right? The whole idea is robots use video and they capture and they have to be able to process that video which means understanding the laws of physics. Skid marks, yeah. Would you let a robot with a video camera in your house, honestly?
Starting point is 00:38:42 Yes, right? And beyond that, right, houses are going to be redesigned? Right. Houses are going to be redesigned because right now when we design houses and we design robots, we designed them to work, for us and the optimal robots aren't going to look anything like us at all. Mark, thank you. Hold on.
Starting point is 00:38:59 We're running out of time. Tucker, Lightning Round. Was Epstein a spy? No, no. Is Putin a... We're going to stay with Tucker now. We're going to stay with Tucker for a little bit. Yeah, we're going to stay with Tucker.
Starting point is 00:39:08 Okay. We just want to think... You gave it away, man. Now I'm going to prepare my answer. Let's thank Mark Cuban, everybody. Tucker's going to stay for a little bit. Okay. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:39:17 Great job, brother. Move over one. Okay, Tucker. Now, you get your own segment here. your own segment here. All right. So I need to, I need to get these answers. Okay. Costplusdrugs.com. Yes. Was Epstein a spy? Is Putin a war criminal? And what was Sachs like in college? Go. Was Epstein a spy? No. I mean, I don't think, I mean, I don't know. I do know a lot about the story. I don't think he was a conventional. He wasn't like an asset
Starting point is 00:39:43 or something. He did a ton of work on behalf of Intel agencies. He did do work on behalf of intelligence. Yes. Well, no question. He was involved in Iran-Contra. American, French, Israeli, probably British, I mean, I, you know, but, but there are a lot of, I mean, I know a million people, and so do you, in that category. Yeah, there's a number of people who travel a lot. Okay, now, Putin, war criminal? Let me define war criminal. A war criminal is anybody who kills the innocent. And that's what terrorism is, that's what a war crime is. That's the basis of Western justice is that we punish the guilty. We punish people as individuals, not as groups, because we don't believe in, you know, in blood guilt. We don't believe in collective punishment. And so by that standard, you know, there are very few are innocent.
Starting point is 00:40:33 I'm not being a relativist here. I'm just, but I think it's really important to define the term. And just to say it again, a war crime and terrorism have the same root crime, which is punishing the innocent, period. And if there's one thing that Western civilization exists to uphold, it's his sense of fairness and justice, and it's rooted in that. we punish the guilty. We do not punish the guilty's relatives. We don't punish people who look like the guilty from the same place as the guilty. We punish the individual because we believe that all people are fundamentally equal, not in their aptitude, but in their value because they're all created by God. That is the West. The West, the West. We're fighting to uphold the Western value. No, what is it then? That's what it is. And so to the extent you fall short of that, yes, you were a criminal. Period. Now, most importantly, what was Sachsworth? like in college. Take us back to totally fucking out of control. You know, I never, it's funny,
Starting point is 00:41:26 people are always like, if you mix cocaine and ayahuasca, it's really hard to stand on the roof of a moving car. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Until you see someone do it. Absolutely. But more importantly, if you bang one of these, you don't want
Starting point is 00:41:42 to hear more? Where are we at? Are you, no, we're going to get there, but I want to be on the same level as you. Are you banging nines or threes right now? I don't want to say, on the grounds, it'll make me seem impossibly cool, but nines, obviously. You get it chilled. What are you got? What are you packing? I know you got some. I pack, and I'm not allowed to make any medical claims, though.
Starting point is 00:42:00 These do your illness. No, these just make you a god. I can just tell you, these make you a god. But what are you got? Come on, trust. You got to share. It's my version of cost plus drugs.com. Oh, wow. Oh, sweet nectar. Sweet nectar. Yes, I have one in for morning till night. Well, that puts me at 12. Let's go. I've used nicotine for 41 years.
Starting point is 00:42:18 Come on, sacks. Get on the level. is going to become so difficult this afternoon. Oh, man. It's crazy what they do. You know, the health benefits are insane. I never go to the doctor. I eat a lot of pizza. I never intentionally exercise.
Starting point is 00:42:31 I'm 56. And I feel great, and I mean that. I mean, you look great into sacko. Okay, I need to get this back on the rails. I need to get this back on the rails. Okay, back on the rails. Tucker, I would like to go around the world in the 11 minutes that we have and just get your reaction to a bunch of different things.
Starting point is 00:42:46 Okay, let's start. In Europe. UK and then just continental Europe, what has happened? I feel like all of those nations, the Anglosphere specifically, but Western Europe in general, is poised for massive change, and I just hope it ends peacefully. But the story in the West is population change, period. That's the story. And following from that comes culture and political change.
Starting point is 00:43:12 And it's always painful. I don't think it's always bad, personally. But at the scale it's happening, it's happened. way too fast, and there will either be, you know, like a true reaction of the kind that none of us want to see, or there will be full totalitarian clamped down.
Starting point is 00:43:28 What was at the root of, for example, there was a post on X that said that Canada's population increased by 30% in, like, the last seven years? 35, 35%. 10 years. In the UK, when, you know, you... Simultaneous with government
Starting point is 00:43:44 sponsored suicide, where native Canadians are courage to kill themselves at government expense for non-terminal illnesses up to and including economic distress. And that's sponsored by the government is called the Maids Program. It's the darkest thing that's happened since Europe in the 30s. We're instructed to ignore it. The government advertises it in conjunction with private businesses in Canada. And it's like it's one of those things where your grandkids, assuming you have them, are allowed to have them, are going to ask you like, what was that and why didn't anybody say anything about it? I gave a speech in Canada recently
Starting point is 00:44:15 and mentioned it, I started with it because it's like so mesmerizing horrifying. And people just stared at me like, I don't think we're supposed to talk about that. It's like the brainwashing is so generational and crazy that they can't even notice when people are dying at the behest of the government.
Starting point is 00:44:31 The behest, by the way. And to be clear what we're talking about, assisted suicide, end of life suicide, you can go in, you can set a day. Not for the terminally ill for like the bummed out or veterans who don't have adequate housing. We'll kill you for free. And they are pushing that program. And thousands of people have died, and they, of course, they don't release most of the numbers,
Starting point is 00:44:49 but they did release numbers this summer that showed it's like 100% Native Canadian. Because people who show up there from Gujarato, it's like, why would I kill myself? This is awesome. Like, they have the spirit of life in them. And what is that? It's not just the government. I mean, there's something going on with Western populations that is suicidal, and they're participating in it. Giving that's related to fertility and birth rates?
Starting point is 00:45:09 It's a fertility and birth rates, their decline, reflect the change that I'm describing, which is very obvious. I spent a lot of time in Europe for a bunch of reasons and I'm family there and it's like, I was just there and it's like, I can't even not believe this is happening.
Starting point is 00:45:23 Why doesn't anybody say anything like that? There was a survey that was just published today. I got to pull it up, but it surveyed 12 things, rank them in order of importance. Men that voted for Trump, number one, was having children. Women that voted for Kamala number 12
Starting point is 00:45:37 out of 12. And do you remember the percentage? This is women who voted for Kamala. American women asked your priorities. A percentage said having children was an interest of theirs. What was it? 6%. Why?
Starting point is 00:45:49 So that's suicide. That's you're watching the end of something. Why? That's people voluntarily. Is it a deep pessimism about society? Is it a deep depression that I can't progress in life? No, I think, I mean, yes, yes, yes. Of course that's what it is.
Starting point is 00:46:02 But I mean, that's without precedent, really. Even in the final years of the Soviet Union, there was no indication that it was that bad. But it is reflective of what a defeated empire does. like a defeated peoples, but I personally think there's something bigger going. Why is it happening in New Zealand? Why is it happening in Ireland? These are not colonial power. Ireland was never a colonial power.
Starting point is 00:46:23 They were colonized, actually. South Korea. Korea, which if you spend a day time in, by the way, a Korean friend of mine said to me, in 50 years there will be only North Korea. Are these all just post-industrial? Is that what they are versus rising industrial? It's not happening in Africa. It's not happening in parts of South Asia that are rising.
Starting point is 00:46:38 Just the opposite. You can feel the life force when you go to place. Fertility rates or birth rates in Africa, I think, are like, six to seven. But the global south, more broadly, that is true. And Middle East, but, yeah, I mean, there are lots of causes, but there's a spiritual route. I mean, the secular places are killing themselves. Yeah. And the religious place, it's not happening with Orthodox Jews in Borough Park. Does the industrialization kill religion? The atom bomb killed religion. Hiroshima killed West. Because, of course, you're God now. And every
Starting point is 00:47:07 every assumption we've made since August of 1945, 80 years ago, has been based on the core often unstated belief that we're in full control of nature. It's also why we became so deeply techno-pessimistic, I think. Well, I think there's some evidence to support that pessimism.
Starting point is 00:47:23 This is something that the Japanese people can kind of teach us from because the last two times I was there, two different people said they weren't having kids, I asked why, and they said it's immoral to bring children into a world of global climate change and that
Starting point is 00:47:39 it would just be totally immoral because the temperatures are rising and I was just like are these people been hallucinating like well they don't even get through the steps required to have children in the first place right so like any society where people have to be encouraged to have sex
Starting point is 00:47:55 is a society that has decided to extinguish itself because that's like the most that's like that honestly that's like being Bobby Sands and starving yourself death that's like you're at war with nature you've decided my most basic impulse must be overridden in the service of what? Death. And so I've never been a super religious person.
Starting point is 00:48:15 I'm certainly becoming one, that's for sure, at high speed, just in reaction to watching what's happening. And I think it's the darkest thing that's happened in a thousand years, at least. We were talking about SSRIs earlier. What's your take on this medication of everybody with these antidepressants? Illegal immediately. SSRIs, I mean, don't get me going. But let me just say, and I should say as a sober person who doesn't use deodorant and doesn't believe in any of that stuff, I don't take any pills ever.
Starting point is 00:48:45 You don't have to be as crazy as I am to wonder, like, what is the, what is necessary I do? Well, we've been taught falsely that they correct a chemical imbalance. Okay, if it's an imbalance, what's the baseline? There's no answer to that. What's the actual diagnosis of, say, bipolar disorder? Unknown. There is none. No.
Starting point is 00:49:00 So on the basis of, that's not science at all. That's witchcraft. It's a questionnaire. But on the basis of it, they prescribe drugs which do not. correct to chemical imbalance. They limit emotional range. And limiting emotional range is taking someone's soul. Emotional range is your soul. Like, that's what it is. You feel sad when someone dies. You feel joyful when something great happens. That's what it is to be alive. That's called life. The human experience. So, by the way, the effects of this, unintended, but very common
Starting point is 00:49:29 effects include genital amnesia. You know what that is? That's when you feel nothing between your knees and your navel permanently. And there are tens of thousands, probably, hundred hundreds of thousands, because one fifth of the entire American population is on SSRIs who feel nothing, who are permanently sexually disabled by these drugs? Now, are there people you know or I know personally who were going to kill themselves and they got on an SRI and they didn't? That's a massive success. Thank God for that.
Starting point is 00:49:53 There is no indication ever for prescribing an SSRI for five years, 10 years, same with Benzos, which are also prescribed. Same with amphetamines that we give to our children. The whole country is addled on drugs and it's changing the nature of people and making them into something that is less than people, and it should be banned immediately. 100% agree. I think it's crazy that it's happening. I mean, we're giving kids speed.
Starting point is 00:50:17 We're giving them meth. And good people are doing it. People I know that I'm related to who love their, who would die for their children, are told by doctors, air quotes, doctors, who know nothing about the long-term effects because they've never been studied, to put their kids on meth. And they do because they love their children. I want to make sure we get to a couple of other things. Tucker, just react to what happened this weekend in Charlotte.
Starting point is 00:50:37 on the train with the woman who was stabbed by... I think it's got to be a turning point. I mean, I think that the number one thing you don't want... How can there be just a coordinated suppression? How does that happen? Well, that's... You know, this is how people wind up with really dark theories about what's happening, because why would you suppress that?
Starting point is 00:50:56 If a young woman, by the way, a Ukrainian, I wish costplusdrugs.com is here so I could ask him, but, like, if you really... Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban, sorry. Cost plus drugs. I wish I could ask if you care about the Ukrainian people, one was just stabbed to death on a train for being white. Why doesn't anybody say it?
Starting point is 00:51:15 Where's Bill Crystal on this? Like, we love the Ukrainians. One just got stabbed in the neck on public transportation and no one cares? Like, what, I don't have an answer to your question. I will say that the one thing you have to worry about in a multi-ethnic society is ethnic conflict because it's enduring. It doesn't go away. It's generational. And we're moving toward that.
Starting point is 00:51:33 She was stabbed because she was white. And everyone knows that, actually. And knowing that and not being able to say anything about it because you fear you're going to be called names doesn't make the problem go away. It makes you move to Bozeman and it makes the problem worse. And that's what you're seeing. Everyone I know who can afford it is moving to Bozeman or Jackson or, you know, Sun Valley or whatever, but they all have one thing in common. Okay, let's just stop lying. And I don't like that, okay, because that suggests a future of ethnic conflict, which is like, ask anybody from a country that has, ask a Belgium.
Starting point is 00:52:07 Belgium has ethnic conflict. So this is inherent to the human condition and you want to be very thoughtful in trying to avoid it and things like that exacerbate it like to a crazy, crazy animal level. Tucker, let me just ask, do you, three parts to this, but short, do you believe that there is rising anti-Semitism in the West?
Starting point is 00:52:29 And why do people say that you are contributing to it? Why has that become? Well, I think there's rising anti-Semitism on the left and right. There's definitely rising anti-Semitism, for sure, and I hate it. You don't have to believe me. You hate it, on the record, right? Of course I hate it. Yeah, because there's a lot of social media, a lot of this coordinated effort from large industry groups saying Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semite.
Starting point is 00:52:51 Why is that the case? Attacking my children over it. Yeah, I'm aware. And I actually called an Israeli official, who I know, I know a bunch of them, including the prime minister, and said, why are you doing this to me? If you think I'm your enemy, man, you're really out to lunch, and they're totally out to lunch. And they, I've never seen anybody mismanage anything the way the government of Israel is mismanaging the response to what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank. And the way to, the way to, and it's not my country, but I'm just noticing that this is really bad for everybody. Two things.
Starting point is 00:53:23 One, you have to be willing, if I stand up and say, you know, I'm an American, my family's been here for 300 years and I love this country, but my government's done a lot of horrible things, no one's like, you hate America. If you're like, I love Israel and I like Israel, I'm a visitor to Israel, frequent visitor to Israel, but this is not good. Shut up! That's not helpful at all. Like, you turn your allies into enemies by acting that way. A, B, conflating a nation state with an ethnic group is not a long-term strategy. It's not wise because you were tied to the temporal politics, the politics of the moment.
Starting point is 00:53:59 Like, Bibi's political, I don't hate Bibi, but his political fortunes, individual political fortunes play a role in his calculation in everything that he does, true with all politicians. You want to tie an entire group to that? I don't think that's very smart. You can say, I really like Israel, I love Israel, family in Israel, whatever you think about Israel, but like, I don't think this is a good idea, or I'm offended by it, or whatever. If you eliminate the distinction between a political organization, which is a synonym for government, and an ethnic group, boy, you're going to hurt that ethnic group, and that's exactly what's happened. It's so bad, and it freaks me out. And I will say, once again, that my views on
Starting point is 00:54:40 Israel apply to the United States, they apply to Senegal, they apply to Malaysia, they apply it to people. But not to the Jewish people. Come on, dude. No. And I'm not even, I don't even fight back against it because I'm like, that's so low. I'm not playing your fucking game, okay? What my view is really simple. I don't think that it is allowable. It is the most in moral thing to punish the innocent. The United States government has punished the innocent a lot. They did during COVID. I yelled about it every night on Fox News. All governments do this because all leaders get carried away with hubris and they treat people like numbers or enemies or non-human beings and they kill them. I'm opposed to that. You should be, we're all opposed to
Starting point is 00:55:21 that, by the way. I'm opposed when it happens in Gaza. I'm opposed when it happens in Texas. I'm opposed. I'm just opposed. And all of a sudden we've reached this place where people are so overwrought and defensive, like he meant and said something about, you know, I don't know, I'm glad we beat Imperial Japan. I'm kind of sad that we incinerated all those people with the atom bomb. Ben Shapiro did a whole segment about how I was like a quizzling or something. You hate America. No, I love America. That's why I don't ever want anybody to kill people who didn't do anything wrong. That is the basis of justice. We punish the guilty. We can argue about to what degree they should be punished. Should it be Norway where they get high-speed internet and massages? Or should it be, you know,
Starting point is 00:56:01 to mean Malawi where they rot in a cave. But why are we not allowed? We don't punish the innocent. And that includes children, all children. Tucker, why are we not allowed to say we are absolutely saddened at the tragedy that happened on October 7th and we're absolutely appalled at watching people starve and innocence being killed in Gaza and not being able to get the made? Why can't you say both things and not be criticized? You should be. And I've decided that I'm old enough and I know, God, now I sound like such a fraud. I know my heart. But like, you can feel the hate coming off people or whatever.
Starting point is 00:56:35 I would hear Obama talk, and I always really liked Obama before you became a senator, but I would hear him talk and it would be like, wow, that's animated by hate. And it would be in this, this is your captain speaking voice, but it didn't matter. I was like my dogs. Like, I could feel what was in him. And I feel very confident in my views. I like people. And I just feel that way.
Starting point is 00:56:53 And I'm not going to play the game where I have to be like, oh, actually my wife is part Jewish or whatever. Final question. I'm not going to do that. I think we should stand on principle. Don't punish the innocent. I don't care who you are. No one has a special dispensation that allows him or his country
Starting point is 00:57:08 to punish the innocent. And if you do, I'm going to call you on it. And let me just back up. In lieu of a final question, I just want to back up Tucker on this, that the basis of conservatism is not believing that any government is sacred. Thank you, David Sachs!
Starting point is 00:57:24 Every government should be subject to criticism because we know that they will always abuse their authority. Power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely. All governments must be subject to criticism. And governments shouldn't seek to make themselves immune by essentially calling people names. And I've known Tucker for 30 years. He doesn't have an anti-semitic bone in his body. And it really pisses me off the way that he gets attacked for criticizing the conduct of a government. I'm not even that critical, by the way. That's the hilarious thing. I'm not even that critical. Like, I have been around. David, as we wrap here,
Starting point is 00:57:59 People do shitty things, and I'm not like... I think, for what it's worth, you're an American treasure. I appreciate that you love to. Thanks. Yeah, and Sacks, as we wrap here, tell us about the meet-cute moment when you met Tucker and you fell in love with Dr. You love Tucker. Oh, the meat-cute. Give us the meat-cute. You come around a cubicle, what happens?
Starting point is 00:58:17 You see Tucker, he's got the bow-tie. Do you guys lock eyes? How did it... Yeah, what happens? Thank you, guys. It was at lunch at Union Station in Washington, D.C. I'll never forget. Tell us, Sacks, your earliest memory of Tucker. It's just camaraderie born of some common views. Yeah. And can I say one thing about David?
Starting point is 00:58:33 David was saying, I don't even get into it, but he was saying things that now would be considered, well, of course, but at the time we're like pretty brave, I thought. He had written a book, and we had a mutual childhood friend, and I was, like, super impressed because he was saying things that the people around him would be like, you don't need to say that. Why are you doing that? And he was just totally principled, completely principled.
Starting point is 00:58:54 And he just don't meet that many people like that. You have a straight shot to the presidency. Are you going to take it? You, Tucker Carlson. To being president? Your fans want it. They want you to run. You have the audience.
Starting point is 00:59:09 You have the skill. You have the intellect. Would you consider public service? Not even for a second, but if I did, I would be like, John F. Kennedy was very moderate, actually, on almost everything. They killed him anyway. So, like, I'd make it about 10 minutes. Self-preservation is a strong.
Starting point is 00:59:25 I mean, I get the Jack Ruby kind of cancer. Who knows where he got it, you know? Ladies and gentlemen, Tucker Carlson. Thank you. It's awesome. Thank you. Crushed it, brother. Thank you.

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