Knowledge Fight - #1135: Tucker, The Man And His Holocaust Questions

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

In this installment, Dan and Jordan watch Tucker respond to Trump tweeting weird stuff about Jesus and fighting with the Pope by dipping his toes into Holocaust denial....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:03 I know, no, no, knowledge fight. And Jordan, I'm sweating. Knowledgefight.com. It's down to pray. I have great respect for knowledge fight. Knowledge fight. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. Knowledge.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Fight. Dan and Jordan. Knowledge fight. Eat money. In Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first time calling him like you're a fan.
Starting point is 00:00:51 I love your word. Knowledge fight. KnowledgeFight.com. I love you. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan. I'm Jordan.
Starting point is 00:01:02 We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk a little bit about Alex Jokes. Oh, indeed we are, Dan. Jordan. Quick question for you. What's up? What's your bright spot today, buddy?
Starting point is 00:01:12 My bright spot today is actually that someone made a significant donation to Celine's call to justice. Uh-huh. And it reminded me. that I haven't closed that charity drive that we did, I thought it automatically closed. It seems like that's how it should work. So I wanted to say thank you.
Starting point is 00:01:34 That was a really nice gift from a walk. And I'm going to close that. And maybe we'll start another sort of charity thing. I had forgotten that was there. But it was really, it wore on my heart that that was how I was reminded. So thank you. That's great. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:50 That's absolutely delightful. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what about you? What's your bright spot? My bright spot is I went and saw my family. It was nice. I don't know if you recall it the last time that I saw my family,
Starting point is 00:02:02 but my brother's children, this time back to the beginning, did not acknowledge me whatsoever. Whoa. One of them, one of them staunchly refused. I was yelling at her, like directly in her face about how I existed. I was trying to get her to look at me in some form. I'm a very loud person. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:21 Straight ahead. Yeah. That's too much. That's like, it's not going to fall to that. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. I know. I know.
Starting point is 00:02:29 I was trying to steal a look. I think that you got to not trust somebody who's yelling at you that they exist. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. It seems like something a person who didn't exist would do. Yeah. It's scammy. Well, I have interacted with real objects before, though, so I think she would have to.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Sure. Yeah. If she saw you sitting in that chair, that chair is real. It is real. Yeah. But ghosts can sit in chairs. I saw the sixth sense. He didn't like fall to the center of the earth.
Starting point is 00:02:58 I'm trying to remember if there are any chairs in Casper. Remember that movie? I do remember that movie. Man. But that Bill Pullman in it? Probably. I just said, man, and I realized that the next thing I was about to say was that me and Angela Lampesbury, we were trying to watch Rob Schneider's the hot chick. Oh, boy.
Starting point is 00:03:18 Because neither of us knew why the movie existed or what was it? What was it? What is it? It's the hot chick? And her internet crapped out halfway through. So now I've seen half of the hot chick. Did it make sense? No. Of course not.
Starting point is 00:03:30 It sucks. Well, there you go. But it's still disappointing that I haven't finished it. Hey, I just read, I'm telling you right now, I just read that if scary movie something does well, right? We might be getting white chicks too. So the game has changed. I mean, there are questions that were left unanswered. White chicks definitely ended with the.
Starting point is 00:03:52 idea that the Wayans brothers were going to be friends with these girls for life. Right. Like, they really hit it off. Right. But I don't know if we need to see another one. Well, I'd rather see another little man. Little man too? Littleer men.
Starting point is 00:04:08 Yeah. It's Tracy Morgan Beck. Absolutely. That seems that that's where we should have had Walter Matherow and John. That's littler men. Well, we'll get on writing that script. All right. But for now we have an episode
Starting point is 00:04:23 We got to do it And this sucks Oh great This sucks All right And we'll talk about what's up But before we do Let's take a little moment
Starting point is 00:04:31 To say hello to some new wongs That's great idea So first matching garlic bread tattoos Thank you so much You're now, Palsy Wank I'm a policy won Thank you very much Thank you
Starting point is 00:04:39 Next Scrapper wants Cowboy and Crazy Ats To stop fucking around And get in their giant ghost robots Thank you so much You're now a policy walk I'm a policy won't Thank you very much
Starting point is 00:04:49 Thank you and Haldon, thank you so much. You're now a policy wonk. I'm a policy won. Thank you very much. And we got a second credit in the next, Jordan. So thank you so much to Alex Jones, Jackie Chan, and that bitch, McGiver. I'm the number one.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Walk star, what, what, wah, wah. You're now a technocrat. I'm a policy wonk. Four star. Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. Someone, someone, Sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. Daddy shark. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Starting point is 00:05:14 Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent. He's a loser little little titty baby I don't want to hate black people I renounce Jesus Christ I would like the record to show that I added the watt what what I listen There were instructions and I was like I don't need to put those in there
Starting point is 00:05:33 I know he'll pick it up yeah and you did It took me a second but once I got to the McGiver it was pretty clean there you go So Jordan unfortunately today We have a Tucker episode Oh god damn it Why are you doing what you're doing Well, Alex, I'm sorry to confuse you.
Starting point is 00:05:52 But you, Alex, have been out of studio all this week, which I think is the best decision that he could have made at this point. Probably. Trump has completely burned him and Alex's response was the weakest shit that he could have possibly done. He pretended not to be mad about it, allowed Roger to condescend to him on the next day's show. And then he tried to save face by threatening to destroy Trump if he says one more thing. One more. Oh, one more word. 16 or 17 more insults and I'm going to be real mad at you.
Starting point is 00:06:21 Oh, knuckle sandwich. As luck would have it, Trump didn't heed Alex's warning. Oh, did he do one more? On Friday morning, Trump got on truth social and posted, quote, it's easy. Tucker's a low IQ person, always easy to beat and highly overrated. So are Megan Kelly, in quotes, Candice, and then in parentheses, really dumb and mentally ill, and bankrupt Alex Jones, who is completely, quote, fried. There are others also.
Starting point is 00:06:51 Then we have some that are very good. True MAGA all the way and smart. I should do a list of the good, bad, and somewhere in the middle. Wouldn't that be fascinating? President DJT. I'm sorry, did he just, did he just threaten to do a top 10 most loyal media stars list? He soft pitched a... All right.
Starting point is 00:07:11 So he's working for BuzzFeed now. Is that the new plan? President Listical. Yeah, man, I thought that was, I mean, it would be fascinating. Yeah, I mean. I think we know. Didn't Nixon have an enemy's list? Yeah, but not a cool guy's list.
Starting point is 00:07:29 And then a somewhere in the middle list. Yeah, that would be a very strange series of lists. I think we know who he hates and who he likes. Right, right, right. I'd be interested in who's in that middle list. I would be interested in what the existence of the middle list even means. Why would you, why would you feel? so neutral about somebody you had to write it down.
Starting point is 00:07:47 Ira Glass. In the middle. Very neutral on Ira Glass. Real fucking neutral on Ira Glass. So Alex begged Trump to just say one more thing. And then Trump did that. Yeah. He doubled down.
Starting point is 00:08:02 So now Alex has no choice but to burn the house down. Unsurprisingly, Alex didn't burn the house down. Instead, Harrison opened the show on Friday and Alex sent in a hugely disappointing two-minute mope video. It was about the weakest he's ever looked, and I'm not even interested in playing any of it for you. Alex set up the terms of engagement where if Trump said anything else, he was going nuclear. Trump said something else, so if Alex doesn't go nuclear, then, he's showing surrender. Yep. So it doesn't matter what you said.
Starting point is 00:08:33 The end. The end. Yep. The only thing that's at all interesting about Alex's response is that he seems to think that Trump said that Alex was fired. But Trump said fried. Oh. It's weird, but I also don't care that much, and I don't want to look into it. Trump's insane.
Starting point is 00:08:49 I want to look into, not like of all the things. Listen, very low on the list. I would like to, though, know what was going on when he put those scare quotes around Candace in specific? Right. Does that, is that not her real name? Is that, is it a character that he's describing? He uses quotes weirdly a lot. There's a, there's a hundred essence.
Starting point is 00:09:13 Thompson equality to his capitalization and punctuation. Poor? Seemingly random at times. There we go. Okay. But in this tweet, Candace and Fride are the only two words that are in quotes. Wait, fried is in quotes. Yes. See, now that's, that sort of makes it, he said fire.
Starting point is 00:09:34 Thinks he said fire. I mean, it could sort of work, though, because he is using Fride as a metaphor to, like, mean something else. So you could use scare quotes around fried. Or I don't understand Candace, though. Yeah. No, the Candace is tough. I was thinking like, okay, Roger probably has told Trump that Alex is like a drunk.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Yeah. Yeah. He's fried. He is fried. I'm sure. So I could see Trump. Oh, it could be a quote. Okay, it could literally be a quote.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Yeah, like a jab at Alex. All right. Right. But that can't be the case for Candice. No. But I also don't care. Quotes and parentheses for Candice? This is wild.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Really? dumb and mentally ill in parentheses. So Alex wasn't the only media figure who's taken hits in this whole thing. Tucker Carlson was also included in Trump's tirade. He is included in the group of people whose families know they're stupid. He was singled out as a man who is broken by being fired from Fox and someone who needs to find a good psychiatrist. Tucker is sitting in a slightly different position than Alex in terms of how this affects his brand. In the lead up to and right after the 2024 election, Tucker was one of the most embarrassing Trump cheerleaders in the media.
Starting point is 00:10:47 He pretended to be attacked by a demon in his bed, and he famously did a speech where he called Trump Daddy and said he was home and he was going to spank his unruly children. Yeah, he called Trump Daddy. There's no going back from calling. You can't call any man daddy unless you mean it. And then by all means. But Tucker did a tour of live shows before the election, only not called Cam. campaign rallies because that would have been illegal. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:11 Trump's son was one of Tucker's guests, as was J.D. Vance, along with future Trump appointees Dan Bongino, RFK Jr., Vivek Ramoswamy, and the grand finale was with Trump himself. But I think that Tucker was savvy enough to understand that he needed to change gears a little bit once Trump got back in office. He was sitting pretty if Trump overthrew our democracy and went full dictator, but Trump was basically setting up a situation where Tucker was going to be. broke and a joke if the public ever really turned on Trump while the public's opinion still mattered. Tucker would be just taken out with the record. And in the past year, I think that Tucker's
Starting point is 00:11:51 done a decent job of making sure that his career doesn't rely solely on Trump, mostly by making his white supremacist undertones far more explicit and by masking his underlying anti-Semitism with a zealous hatred for Israel. So I was a little curious what Tucker was going to be up to now that Trump has burned him. Sure. To give you a little sense of where he's going, the title of this episode that he put out is, quote, Tucker on the new religion of Trump's America and his mockery of Jesus Christ. Which sounds good. Sounds like things are great.
Starting point is 00:12:22 Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. I would like for anyone, anyone, anyone to say, you know what? I think this is probably because of the stuff I believed and I think I'm going to believe different stuff now. God, it would be great. Anybody. Anybody about anything, really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Yeah. It'd be nice. Some introspection on Tucker's part would be fucking awesome. Hey, maybe I fucked up and I'll do something different. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Daddy's home and he started a new religion. Yep.
Starting point is 00:12:55 Oops. Wow. So we start off and Tucker is wrestling with the question of how can Trump be so religious but also not be religious. Very obvious answers to these questions, I imagine. Donald Trump is a famously irreligious man, just not that interested, basically secular, a product of his time and place. If you doubt that, some of the funniest clips ever of Donald Trump is not a criticism. They're legit funny. Are him being interviewed during the 2016 campaign and asked basic questions like, what's your favorite book of the Bible?
Starting point is 00:13:32 To which he says, with some confusion, well, the Bible, maybe unaware there. component books to it. So Donald Trump is not someone who traditionally, or ever really, has weighed in on questions of faith or theology. It kind of gives it a past or smiles. Yeah, I'm for it. I'm for it. The Bible. It's got to feel really freeing to be in Tucker's position, where you finally just get to speak truths that were plainly evident to everyone this whole time, but you had to pretend weren't true. All of us were saying that Trump was using the illusion of religion to fool people into supporting him, but back then, Tucker was invested in maintaining the k-fabe.
Starting point is 00:14:12 He couldn't just call it out. He was also using the illusion of religion to trick people. Yes. The critical thing to understand is that Tucker knew that Trump was a fucking buffoon using religion as a weapon back then. He just liked what he thought Trump was going to do with that weapon. That isn't true anymore. So all of a sudden, Tucker starts making these amazing observations that any idiot could
Starting point is 00:14:33 have told you a decade ago. What a discovery he makes. What Tucker is doing here is offensive because he's taking lies that he sold his audience in the past and saying, isn't this lie funny? Can you believe how transparently manipulative Trump was about religion? It's hilarious that we got you dumb-dums to believe he was on a mission from God. Understood correctly, he's rubbing his audience's face in this mess. Yep. And trying to be like, that wasn't me.
Starting point is 00:15:01 That was another guy. Yeah. I mean, it is going to be the great. the great rubbing your face in how I conge you is the next couple of years. It's just going to be nonstop people being like, I can't believe you. Suckers believed the things that somebody else totally said to you. Don't listen to me five years ago.
Starting point is 00:15:20 Very rich con people in transition are weird. Yeah. They're fucking weird because they have to get to their new perch, but they have to pretend that they weren't on this other one. And, ooh. The con to get a. away from the con is the most disgusting of cons. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:38 But it's also in some ways more interesting than a stable con. It's the most important one. So, look, Trump tweeted on Easter. Yeah. It was bad. It was that one where he said he was going to destroy Iran. Oh, yeah, yeah, the one that he said where he was going to destroy Iran. Yeah, it's bad. But in the space of
Starting point is 00:15:55 one week, Donald Trump, the same famously irreligious Donald Trump, has weighed in in pretty specific ways on matters of faith and theology and religion. publicly in ways that are disruptive and sort of hard to understand, but worth trying to understand. So all of this began about 10 days ago on Easter Sunday, early on Easter Sunday, before 9 a.m. on Easter Sunday when Trump tweeted that he was planning on destroying civilian infrastructure in Iran.
Starting point is 00:16:23 It was going to be bridge and power plant day, basically promising war crimes, crimes against civilians, against the population of the country. And then in that same tweet or truth, he used the F word on Easter Sunday. And then he seemed to make fun of Islam. Praise Allah, he said. So in one short statement of about 110 words, he seemed to give the finger to the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. Hmm. That was Sunday.
Starting point is 00:16:56 So on the surface, we can all kind of agree here. That was a bad tweet. Super offensive stuff and definitely should have at least got Trump arrested and taken out of power. Probably. But what's important to recognize about Tucker's rhetoric is what's going on behind the surface. He hates Islam and Muslims, so he doesn't give a single shit about Trump insulting them. But he draws attention to how Trump gave the finger to Islam and Christianity in this Easter tweet. The reason he's doing that is because the hidden thesis of his argument is that Trump is doing all this stuff because of the Jews.
Starting point is 00:17:27 And it's painfully transparent. even from like two sentences in to his dumb hour-long lecture. Yep. So. These are the two important Abrahamic religions and the... But Trump only loves one of them. Man, I... Here's what's fun, right?
Starting point is 00:17:46 I imagine that, you know, weather permitting the future might include more Tucker for us. You know what I'm saying? Depending on how things go. I mean, my big plan was to enter the... the dark ages where we just watch dark journalist and dark waters but I started watching their channels and he sucks shit. Yeah, it's gonna be a problem.
Starting point is 00:18:07 The dark ages are literally the dark ages. That's not a show. That's terrible. Yeah. But no, I won't subject you to that much more time. Well, I'm just saying that I was listening to it and it's funny now like the first words of his voice
Starting point is 00:18:21 out of them are visceral. But now that I'm past him, it is funny to listen to this idiot talk. Oh yeah. Like, he's insane. Yeah. It is wild to truly see. It's like when a British person is absolutely nuts, but for somebody who's like, oh, the accent is bewildering, you know, that kind of.
Starting point is 00:18:41 It feels like that's what he's doing. Well, I feel like I've never boxed and I've never been in a real fist fight. But I imagine that once you take your first punch, you see the fight more clearly. Sure. You know, you can appreciate what's going on in terms of like you and your opponent. Yeah. After you get the nerves of that one hit out of the way. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:00 So Tucker's voice comes in and then you see everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, what was the quote? You know, no plan survives a punch in the face or whatever. But if your plan is like, oh, this punch wasn't that bad, then you can move on with your life. Yep. It's nice. I did, while preparing this episode, find a clip of Donald Trump telling that story.
Starting point is 00:19:23 I found like three people telling that story. Yeah. And they were all, they all, said, my friend Mike Tyson said. Like, everyone's friends with Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is inexplicably a center point for all weirdos. You know why? Yeah. Toad.
Starting point is 00:19:41 That does make sense. Yep. So, Trump did this shit, this bad Easter tweet. You said the F word on Easter. Where Jesus could hear him. Tucker fainted. These people are so, these people are so. These people are so absurd.
Starting point is 00:19:57 So then he had the nerve to attack the Pope. No! And then exactly one week later, also on Sunday, the Christian Holy Day, he attacked the Pope, the leader of the world's largest religion and largest Christian denomination, and attacked him personally and said basically he's only Pope because of me. He's bad. The Pope is bad. Tucker does not give a shit about Trump attacking the Pope.
Starting point is 00:20:24 He likes a lot of Catholics because there's a strong segment of the Christian nationalist community who are Catholics, but there's no fucking chance he cares about the Pope. For most of my life, the Pope has been a figure that the right wing hates because he's been marginally tolerant. Or at least that's the public image that they like to keep up. All of the Catholics that Tucker likes don't believe the current Vatican is legitimate. Right. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't take his shock at Trump fighting with the Pope too seriously. This is bizarre. The people he likes are in favor of burnings.
Starting point is 00:20:57 Yes. Like, that's where they are. They're in the religion of the dark ages, if you will. They think that Catholicism in particular lost its way because it issued fascism. So they said, they said whoops after the Holocaust. I mean, you know, like, okay, this is absurd on its face, the idea that he gives a shit about the Pope, based upon what his previous beliefs are and his current beliefs
Starting point is 00:21:26 and probably all of his beliefs of the future. That's absurd. But even if he was sincere about it, it would be almost more absurd because the Pope, like are you mad that he's mad at the Pope? Or Catholicism? Or how do you think the Pope works, right?
Starting point is 00:21:46 I think that this is a situation where this could have been ignored. Yeah. Like he doesn't like, globalist popes and all that stuff. So he could have probably let this slide, but Trump took it a little too far after this, and now it's just too much. Uh-oh.
Starting point is 00:21:59 And then later that day, maybe most interestingly, bafflingly of all, he sent out this, this meme. Take a look at this. Now, there are two on the screen. The one on the right is the one that he sent out. And it's himself, it's Donald Trump, President of the United States, dressed as Jesus. healing a man. You can see the healing power coming off of his right hand. Sure. Now the image on the left of your screen is the original image, and it was floating around the internet. Who knows exactly where it came from, but it's been there for quite some time.
Starting point is 00:22:35 The one on the right is the one the president sent out, White House Communications Officer, whoever does this, sent out, and you'll notice that it's been changed. And the American soldier over the president's head, the president as Jesus's head, has been changed. and is now, if you look very carefully, a demon, some kind of winged creature of hell. Sure. So it goes from an image that suggests, you know, healing and light to an image that suggests, I don't know, a scene from Revelation. Oh, John's vision on the Isle of Atmos, the end times, the apocalypse, who knows nothing good. The worst.
Starting point is 00:23:14 It suggests demonic power because there is a demon in it. That does suggest demon. So I've seen this picture, and I don't know if I'm convinced about the demon thing. Yeah? I'm not going to say it's not a demon, and I could be talked into saying that it is. I don't give a shit. I don't care at all. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:32 Whether or not some tiny part of this image is a demon is missing the forest for the trees, where the big story is that Trump depicted himself very clearly as Jesus. Yep. This is blasphemy. And any Christian who can see that and not immediately condemn and denounce Trump isn't a Christian. Yep. I think that this tweet is insanely disrespectful. And I feel bad for the sincere Christian people that I know who have to put up with being lumped in with this shit.
Starting point is 00:23:57 But it's also pretty funny. Trump is sending a crystal clear message that he doesn't care at all about any of the things that he used to support. Yep. He loved these opportunist media dipshits. But now, guess what? They're all idiots. He was very serious about his Christian faith and all of the opportunistic scam pastors who prey over him. But guess what?
Starting point is 00:24:18 Now he's Jesus. Well, what are you going to do? Who cares? What are you going to do? Fuck all of you. You know, I find it strange, right? That if you give somebody nigh infinite power, regardless of whatever rules you may or may not have in place for them,
Starting point is 00:24:34 that those people tend to go megalomaniacly insane. Right? And it's so weird because it happens every time. It happens 100% of the time. No one's ever been given infinite power. and been like, hey, guess what? I'm going to be cool. Yeah, I look, I was confused.
Starting point is 00:24:54 Sure. When Trump posted this. Yeah. I couldn't tell if it was trying to piss people off or if it was just a horrible misreading. Yeah. Like he just whiffed on this one. Wow.
Starting point is 00:25:06 Thought this would go over better. Yeah. But whatever it was, it was so crazy. Yeah. That it was almost reality breaking. Yeah. The president had. has tweeted out a picture of himself as Jesus.
Starting point is 00:25:20 Yeah. Very clearly. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how, like, what the, what the craziest emperor of Rome truly got up to? What would they do with Twitter? Right? Like, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying to think of right here.
Starting point is 00:25:35 So many people in Rome probably had no idea how fucking truly insane the emperor was, right? And we're like those people, but the emperor's in our house all the time. Yeah. That's no good, man. No, no, no, no. No, don't like it. I think that there, I think you're right that there are two problems here. One is social media and the other is the president.
Starting point is 00:25:58 One is stacked on the other. Let's put it that way. So, look, this is bad. Yeah. Yes, it is bad. Trump is pissing on God. He's fighting with the Pope. He's saying the F word on Easter.
Starting point is 00:26:11 Yeah. This is some bad stuff. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, Trump deleted. the tweet of himself as Jesus. Oh, oh. So he sent that out. And then withdrew it,
Starting point is 00:26:23 deleted the tweet from the internet after an outcry, but was asked about it, and he said, yeah, I sent that. Didn't explain how the demon got it. I'm crazy! Ha ha ha ha! Didn't explain why.
Starting point is 00:26:38 And he said, I sent it out, but it wasn't me as Jesus, so obviously it is. Cool. It was me as a doctor. Makes sense. Heal people. He's a doctor. He's a doctor.
Starting point is 00:26:49 Believe me, I dare you, you idiot. She did. So maybe a distinction without a difference, but still kind of confusing. A lie. And then today, a day later, was asked about it again, and he said, no, no, no, I didn't. I didn't have anything to do with that. Oh, another lie. Which wasn't exactly.
Starting point is 00:27:07 I'm confused. Even more confusing. What was that? And then, to make it even further mysterious, sent out this means. on truth social, retweeting somebody else, and it's him, Donald Trump, being, I don't know, how would you describe that? Caressed by, healed by, maybe endorsed by Jesus. That's unmistakably Jesus, the Christian Messiah.
Starting point is 00:27:38 Okay, okay, man. Is it unmistakably Jesus the Christian Messiah? It is. I've seen this. There's an aura in a gloat. Whoa. Unmistakably. Was it white Jesus, though?
Starting point is 00:27:53 Of course. You mean Jesus? So look, I think we're dealing with a confusing situation. I was wondering, like, I was genuinely sitting there thinking and just being like, there must have been a true moment where Pontius Pilate was like, what a dope decision I made to not give a shit. Because there's a part of me that goes straight up washed his hands. Absolutely. There's a part of me that just goes like, oh, you're, if you are confused right now, best of luck to you, buddy. There is nothing I can do for you. I feel so good about not giving a shit about you.
Starting point is 00:28:30 Unlike Trump in that meme, I am not a doctor. Yeah. But I don't know what methods of therapy could help you if you're confused by this. If you're confused now. You're so fucking stupid. Yeah. And I'm like normally, I find it difficult to just truly call people stupid because there's a lot of different. You're dumb.
Starting point is 00:28:49 He would be, but he's not confused. No, he's not confused. It's all, it's his persona. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you expect anyone to believe that Trump tweeted a picture of himself as Jesus with a demon in the background. And then he sneakily deleted that post, said, hey, I fucking did that shit. Yep. I don't know how the demon got in there.
Starting point is 00:29:10 What's up? And then later said, I didn't do that. I had nothing to do with that. And then posted another meme of himself with Jesus. Yeah. I don't think you should be confused. Yeah. Like, okay.
Starting point is 00:29:21 It sends a message and you should probably get it. When they did this, when Stalin did the thing and he's like, ah, that's a deer or whatever, you know, whatever story it is, it's a goat and he says it's a deer and everybody who doesn't say they die or whatever. Right. That's, that's easier because it's a closed room and you got a bunch of guys right there to murder the guys, you know? Like, there's a lot of pressure there. Trump can't do it. He can't do it like across the country. He could nuke Tucker's shack.
Starting point is 00:29:50 Sure. I mean, that's fair, but don't, you know, like, at least dare him to take the walk, to travel. I think Trump probably has his assassination coordinates. See, but that's even better. Now I would like to know that this dude is totally willing to assassinate people. That would be another good, that's a next step for a dictator. Have we gotten to the death squad stage of him being mad? I hate to say this because I think that, you know, there are agencies like ICE and shit that are...
Starting point is 00:30:23 Well, sure, they're borderline death squads. Yeah, and that's not funny. Right. But I do imagine him having a Hogan's Heroes level kind of team. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Racktack band of... Well, no, like the guards. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:30:40 They're goofy. They'd be having... Like, they'd be slipping on stuff all the time. And it'd be hilarious. Yeah. If you had death squads. Yeah. Trump would get some funny fucking death squads.
Starting point is 00:30:52 Rob Schneider. It would be, we would have new police academy movies, but they would be death squad, but death squad academies. Rob Schneider. Yep. Jim Brewer. Yep. James Woods. The greats.
Starting point is 00:31:04 The top three. Yep. So look, I mean, what I'm trying to get at mostly is that the message is clear. Yes. And that is that Trump, not a lot of receipts. for this doesn't care. Doesn't care. So all of that in a little over a week. What does it mean? Because it certainly means something. This isn't so much a couple of memes. These are these are icons, a ziconography. These are attempts to send a statement about faith. What statement is the president
Starting point is 00:31:38 sending? Well, not a coherent one. Doesn't actually add up to a theology. it's mockery. He's mocking Jesus. He's making fun of Christianity. The central figure of the religion is being held up for mockery. Of course. And his description of how this got out is itself mockery, mockery of the idea of truth. One day he says, yeah, I did it. Next day he says, no, I didn't do it. Both are on video. That's not really a lie. It's more than a lie. It's bigger than a lie. It's an attack not just on a specific set of facts. It's an attack on the idea that there are facts. It's an attack on truth. That's all fair enough. And Tucker is correct that Trump is mocking Jesus and mocking the idea that there's such a thing as truth. But he's lying by pretending that this is a new realization he's had. This is his business model.
Starting point is 00:32:32 I mean, I... Tucker has known this all along. It just wasn't a problem until now. Trump's actions have always made a mockery of Christianity, but it used to be profitable for Tucker to pretend that that didn't matter. Trump's a lame duck president with a VP who looks super weak, heading into the midterms with sinking approval ratings and an unpopular war. If you're Tucker, you have to see the writing on the wall that one way or another, there's no more money to be made in this Trump shit.
Starting point is 00:33:02 It's great for Tucker to see that Trump is mocking truth and mocking Jesus, but it's a little too late for those observations to mean anything. If he's capable of seeing this now, he could have seen it before. Yep. And instead of telling his audience to fear Trump's mockery of God, he said daddy was home and that he was angry and wanted to spank. Yep. He had Russell Brand prey on his knees in front of a cheering auditorium at his live show slash Trump campaign rally. He did.
Starting point is 00:33:29 Like this was, this was what he made money from. Yep. And that this is the point. Tucker's always known that this was what Trump was like. He just used to think he was on the inside group. Yeah. And now he's been disabused of that notion. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:42 And he's now mad at the gym. shoes. Yeah. You know, I feel like this is, this is a problem for Oceans 11, right? The idea that those guys would pull off that big score and then just move on with their lives, right? Because you can see right now, you can see that Tucker has the opportunity. He's stolen how much money. This dude has made his nut. All he needs to do is stand by the fountain and then walk away into the distance. He doesn't have to be trying. to pull this shit. This is stupid. It is stupid. Right? What are you doing? You're doing Oceans 12.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Skip to Oceans 13 for God's sakes. I think that his dad is CIA. Yeah. And Tucker has been in the CIA all his life so he can't walk away. That is too deep. That is fair. Yeah. So he's, he's, they got him.
Starting point is 00:34:36 So that means, but that means that the CIA, can you believe, can you believe, right, how much Q shit. was based around the idea that there was hidden meanings and shit and the stuff that that motherfucker said. Right? And now here we are. Now here we are. There should be accountability for every Q person.
Starting point is 00:34:55 I don't know. I think some people are still reading into that Easter tweet pretty hard. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Tucker's looking for demons hidden in the background of a meme. The idea. That, man, I mean, if you need Tucker to interpret that for you, this is not a dream.
Starting point is 00:35:12 This is not like a, you're sitting. on the couch. And as a Daniel, he's no Daniel. Right, he's no Daniel. He's going into that fire with those lines, my man. So Tucker has a good point. Yeah. That is that kind of weird that people just
Starting point is 00:35:27 moved on from this. It is! So this was kind of dismissed after a online kerfuffle for a few hours and people were outraged and then they weren't. And we've got other things to worry about they moved on. But for
Starting point is 00:35:42 sincere religious people, for Christians who care about Jesus and what's true and what's not. A lot of them went to their Bibles to try and figure out what are we watching here. And a lot of them came up with a couple of verses that seemed to fit what we're watching. And if you are a sincere Christian or know some, maybe you got these texted to you, but we'll read them just so you know how a lot of people of faith were interpreting this. I agree that this isn't something that sincere religious people can let slide or forget about, but they also shouldn't forget that Trump is in power thanks in large part to Tucker.
Starting point is 00:36:19 Yeah. Tucker's currently doing a podcast because he defamed voting machine companies in an attempt to argue that Trump secretly won the 2020 election. Yeah. Tucker pretended that he got attacked by a demon so he could rile his audience up about how the 2024 election was a battle between good and evil and spiritual forces. It's cute and fun to see him distance himself now, but if Tucker's going to play this game, he needs to accept his part in it. If Trump is the Antichrist, then he's the false prophet. And there's no way around that.
Starting point is 00:36:49 Yeah. He has to own that. Yeah, I think if I was a person who truly believed him, like I was a, I believed that Tucker was telling me the truth. For him to do this now would genuinely make me feel like I have to murder this guy. Yeah. Like to even try and gaslight me to the extent that he, is doing that would make me so furious. The only way that it would seem acceptable is if this was his last show ever.
Starting point is 00:37:18 Yeah. And he apologized. Again, Ocean's 11. And he apologized for misleading people for the last 10 years or, you know, whatever. And, like, recognized how fooled he was and how he translated that to the audience. Totally. Then maybe there's some forgiveness you can find. Possibly.
Starting point is 00:37:36 The fact that the day after this, he put out another episode with Russell Brand, tells me that he's not contrite. The, the, the idea of, the idea of going along with it is heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking. Yeah. It really is. I don't think that there are that many people watching his show that don't suck. So, yeah, I mean, no.
Starting point is 00:37:58 I don't know how much pity you have to have. Because like you're saying, this is so transparent. It's, it's hard to imagine any human being without extreme motivated reasoning not seeing through this. Yeah. But someone who just wants kind of like softcore Nazis. Yeah. That makes sense. That's the only market here.
Starting point is 00:38:16 I'll get over it. Yeah. So Tucker gets around to his email chain letter of scriptures that he wants to share. The first is from Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians. Yo, yo, yo, Thessalonians! Chapter 2, very well-known verse in which he's describing what's going to happen when Jesus comes back. And he says, you're going to hear that Jesus is coming back. Don't believe what you hear.
Starting point is 00:38:45 A bunch of things have to happen before he returns to Earth, redeems the world. History ends. And you'll know that he's coming by these events. And among them will be the rise of a figure he describes as the man of lawlessness, sometimes describes as the Antichrist. But the man of lawlessness is the phrase from his second letter to the Thessalonians. And he says this.
Starting point is 00:39:09 There will be a great rebellion against God, led by that man of lawlessness. This man, quote, will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped so that he sets himself up in God's temple proclaiming himself to be God. He will pose as God. He will mock other gods and put himself in their place. I honestly couldn't believe that this was really where Tucker was going. I thought it would be funny if he tried to say the Trump was the Antichrist. but actually seeing this ball rolling is fucking stupid.
Starting point is 00:39:43 It's not funny. Let's play around for a second with the idea that Trump is the Antichrist. Sure. If that's true, then Tucker was either aggressively campaigning for the Antichrist knowing he was the Antichrist. Or he's the biggest sucker in the world. He's either willfully and knowingly evil or the biggest idiot who got conned by the most obvious con ever. There isn't a scenario where Tucker should think his perspective or opinion on anything matters, and he should be retiring from public life and shame.
Starting point is 00:40:11 But if we're to believe the best possible option that he was conned by the Antichrist, then we'd have to believe that he's never realized before that Trump was mocking religion in any previous instance of something happening. And this clip from 2023, where Tucker is interviewing the head of the Babylon B, seems to make that impossible. Oh, no. Yeah, we have a, we have a very, very sharp writing team. They're very good at this. I think honestly, one of my favorites that got fact-checked was our joke about Trump saying that he had done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.
Starting point is 00:40:47 And that was- That was your headline. That was the headline. Trump, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus. But he kind of said that at some point, didn't he? He did. Well, yeah. So we made that- What? It got fact-checked shortly thereafter because it went crazy viral. And then in 2021, I think it was 2021 or 2022, he said he'd done more for Christianity and religion in general than any other person. in the history. Three years ago, Tucker was fine laughing about the idea that Trump would say he's
Starting point is 00:41:13 done more for religion than anyone before, which is mocking Jesus. Tucker didn't care back then because the liberal tears business was booming. And that's where the next verses from Second Thessalonians become important. Just after the passage that Tucker reads is this. Quote, The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
Starting point is 00:41:57 Tucker's career was building up and defending that powerful illusion that made his audience believe the lie. He's led them to their own condemnation. And he uses all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders. How else would you describe his bullshit about being attacked by a demon or his insistence that Alex Jones has psychic visions? So I guess I'm fine if, like, Tucker wants to play this game where he pretends the Trump's the Antichrist. But I'm going to need him to take his part in it a little more seriously. Yeah. If he's going to start quoting scripture about this shit.
Starting point is 00:42:32 Yeah. Look for yourself in the book, you dumb, dumb. Yeah. he would find out that there's more to it. Oh, no. People cut it out to consume. And I like consuming things. I don't want to eat my vegetables, my friend.
Starting point is 00:42:46 I want to eat the dessert. He's claimed that he's big on vegetables. Then he reads the Bible all that's fucking time and that his faith is sincere. You know, one thing I always thought, right? Maybe I'm the only person who thinks like this. But I was thinking, does the Antichrist think he can win? You know what I'm saying? We've talked about this a bit.
Starting point is 00:43:03 Right? Yeah. So, so then it's like. like, man, shouldn't you, shouldn't you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing? And then, like, subterfuge it? Right. Like, if he thinks he can win, then does that implicate, yeah, does that implicate free will and pre-determination?
Starting point is 00:43:18 I'm not going to do that Bible shit. What are you crazy? That guy loses. Yeah. Yeah. Right? If he's self-motivated. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:26 Or they. Oh, yeah. There we go. If there's self-interest involved and you know you're going to lose, then you wouldn't do the thing that you know leads to you losing. Or if you noticed yourself doing it, you would at least be like, wow, this is a bad idea. Right.
Starting point is 00:43:42 Yeah. So I think the conclusion that we've come to in the past is that if there is an Antichrist, there can be no self-realization. Right, right, right. It can be no self-awareness. He has to be a puppet. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:55 Atomatonish. Yeah. So the antichrist is your God. And has no free will. Yeah. Take that. So anyway, there's another Bible verse that Tucker probably got emailed. by a grandma.
Starting point is 00:44:06 That's from the second letter to the Thessalonians. But that's not the first place in the Bible, old and new testaments, where something like this is described. Variations of this are in a number of prophecies in what Christians call the Old Testament, including those contained in the book of Daniel. The prophet Daniel describes something very much like this
Starting point is 00:44:25 at the end of history, and he's describing this period, really, as is so often described in the prophets, as punishment, punishment for faithlessness and sins. sin. God's people are being punished for not following God. And that punishment, he describes in part in Chapter 11 from the book of Daniel, predicts the coming of a king, and we're quoting now, a king who will do as he pleases, he will exalt and magnify himself above every God,
Starting point is 00:44:52 and will say unheard of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed for what has been determined must take place. It's all ordained, in other words, preordained, he will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors, nor will he regard any God, but will exalt himself above them all. So to a lot of Christians or people who know the Bible well and believe in it, these predictions in both the Old and the New Testament, and there are others, seem to fit where we were watching. Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them. could this be the Antichrist?
Starting point is 00:45:38 I love that this is where Tucker's game has devolved to. He has to get on his show, put on a straight face, and deliver a monologue about how very reasonable people are asking the question if Trump is the Antichrist. It's remarkable how he's still clinging onto some kind of air of respectability. Like if he frames things like he's talking about this story because other people are talking about it, somehow this is less embarrassing. Yeah. But it's not.
Starting point is 00:46:02 It's super embarrassing to be Tucker Carl's. and doing a pre-written monologue about how the guy who got elected and you called Daddy is maybe the devil. Yep. This sucks if you're doing this. I wouldn't want to do it. And I don't want to just keep bringing up that these people don't know anything about the scriptures they cite. But this vision from the book of Daniel doesn't just involve a king showing up and being evil. It's a very complicated story about rival kings and multi-generational grudges that leads up to the stuff that Tucker's reading.
Starting point is 00:46:32 But it's inconvenient for the little lecture. We just ignores all that. Due to a whole series of events, some asshole will show up. But if you get rid of all that series of events, then some asshole could always show up. Right. There's a superficial similarity in that, like, hey, this guy's an ass. He sucks and he doesn't like Jesus. I've been embedded in the end times for most of my life.
Starting point is 00:46:54 It's always been the end times. But it's a little, it's a little SDD flare-up kind of thing. Like every now and again, it's more end times than other. end times, right? And this time, I feel like if I was still in that end times thing, I would be like, oh shit, we're doing it. You know, like, I would be really excited because it feels very end timesy. Yeah. Okay, here's how I would describe it. Yeah. Whenever I would watch a pay-per-view, a wrestling pay-per-view when I was a kid, they would have garbage sponsors. They would have like 1-800 collect. Right. Right. Right. Right. Not like waste management.
Starting point is 00:47:35 sponsors. Yeah. So then I would, like every now and again, there would be like Butterfinger is the sponsor of this paper view. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd be like, oh, we're in the big leagues. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:49 They do Simpsons in their commercials. Yeah, that's true. That is true. This is real shit. Yeah. So it feels like the end times has better sponsors. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:58 It feels like. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Closer to mainstream. That's what I'm saying. I would feel, I would, I mean, if I was, if I was, if I was. if I was still in it, I would feel like,
Starting point is 00:48:06 ooh, now shit's getting real. Like, this dude's the actual antichrist. Let's watch, you know? Yeah. It's not just a group of people who are going to be disappointed or a small apocalyptic cult of people who will probably take their own lives.
Starting point is 00:48:22 Yeah. This is like... This is straight up. This guy has millions of viewers. This is fucked up. If this is going down, I've read my book, Zombies is coming.
Starting point is 00:48:32 Zombies is coming, my man. Well, don't get ahead of yourself. All right, fine. Because, I mean, the jury's still out on this. That's fair. That's fair. No one knows when Jesus is coming. Could this be the Antichrist? Well, who knows?
Starting point is 00:48:47 At least that's my conclusion. Who knows? We're also told repeatedly in the New Testament that you're not going to know that Jesus will return like a thief in the night and you better be ready because you can't predict it. But we're also told there are signs and is this one of them? Well, again, Unclear.
Starting point is 00:49:05 Unclear. Maybe this doesn't mean anything. Maybe this is a, God's about to come back. And the point, man, you're missing the point of religion. Yep. I want to be certain about something and the only way is imagination. I love that he's getting on this show and being like, Trump is starting a new religion. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:49:27 Maybe. I don't know. Possibly. Could be. I don't want to commit to anything in case I wind up in a situation. situation exactly like the one I am in currently. Oh, if this nightmare gets worse. I don't.
Starting point is 00:49:43 So, you know, some of these scriptures, they sound like Trump. Sure. But they also kind of sound like a lot of other leaders from history. Do you mean like when we did this for Obama a bunch of times? Yeah. Yeah. This, by the way, fits the behavior of other leaders throughout history who saw themselves in a kind of rivalry with the of their people and sought to, sought to put themselves over those gods, exalt themselves above
Starting point is 00:50:10 God. That's actually pretty common. That is really the definition of megalomania. Sure. And it's happened before. And we'll doubtless happen again. But that's clearly what this is. This is mockery of God by a temporal leader, by a man. This is the leader of our country saying, I will take no instruction from God because, as he showed in the first meme, I am God. Okay. So that kind of raises the question.
Starting point is 00:50:43 Is that okay? Sure does. I think one of the reasons that people like Tucker can play games like this is that they pretend that the left is mocking God by simply existing. So even though Trump is clearly pissing on their faith, it's still a question of whether or not they should take it seriously. Yep. They are idiots.
Starting point is 00:51:01 I mean, I maintain that I am still pro attacking and dethroning God. And that was supposed to be what I thought we were on board for. And now all of a sudden, the guy who's attacking and dethroning God is on their team? Right. That's not fair. Like, I can't put this any clearer. If anything that Tucker believes is true, there should be so many, like, there should be miracles happening. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:51:26 Someone should call down a lightning bolt that strikes Trump. Like, the way he's acting. is biblical shit. Silly. It is silly to imagine. Yeah. So anyway, is it okay? Is it? Is it okay? Let's ask more questions that there's no possible way we could have always known the answer to based upon everything we've always believed. And sound fucking stupid. Yeah. But I mean, look, let's not tease too much. Obviously, the answer's no. It's not okay. Of course. Is that okay? Seems to be okay. There were no massive protests in front of the White House. There was no attempt really to do anything about this. fact, many Republican leaders shrugged it off.
Starting point is 00:52:05 So can you believe it? You know, he's just just true socialing. Don't pay attention. It's just a joke. It's just a joke. What, you have? No sense of humor? Mocking Jesus?
Starting point is 00:52:16 Giving the finger to God? You're so uptight. And as for his attacks on the Pope, Republican leader after Republican leader, including just hours ago, the Speaker of the House, the self-described Christian, fervent Christian, Bible scholar joined in attacking the Pope. So you've got to have to wonder, is this the behavior of a Christian nation? Is the United States a Christian nation? Well, that depends how you look at it. The United States is the nation with the most Christians, over 200 million. There are more Christians
Starting point is 00:52:50 in the United States than any other country on planet Earth. So it is by that definition a Christian nation. Of course, it's not officially Christian. Our Constitution forbids the U.S. government from creating a state religion. in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. So, no, it's not officially Christian, but it is fundamentally, materially Christian, because it's majority Christian still. And once again, it's the country with the most Christians.
Starting point is 00:53:18 But it's not a Christian country. And in fact, if you take three steps back, it's a nation or it's a government anyway that has, for a long time, really, acted in opposition, explicit opposition to the interests of Christians, not just in the United States, but around the world, or foreign policy, for example, seems to target Christians.
Starting point is 00:53:39 And this has happened consistently enough that it's probably not an accidental byproduct of the policy. It may be the point of the policy. Who knows what the intent is? But certainly a fact of every foreign policy adventure, at least since Vietnam,
Starting point is 00:53:53 which in the end, this is often forgotten, left the Catholics, and there were many of them in Vietnam, in concentration camps. Didn't help the Catholics. At all. I fucking hate this guy.
Starting point is 00:54:06 You know, I went from a Catholic country to a communist country. That's not entirely our fault, but that is, that was the effect. That happened. So Tucker is right that it's insane that more supposed Christians aren't up in arms about Trump's actions and seem fine with moving on. Yep. He's right that this is insane, because he's insane. Yep. The country has a lot of Christians in it, but not like Tucker Christians.
Starting point is 00:54:29 Tucker Christians are fun entertainment because they talk about being attacked by demons and do all this stupid shit for attention, but it's really hard to be a Christian like this if you're not super rich and you can't just turn the act off whenever you want to. Yeah, it's tough. For other people, being a Tucker Christian might get them fired or ruin all of the relationships in their life because their spouse doesn't believe they were attacked by a demon as punishment for supporting Trump. Tucker Christians have to believe in this weird cosmic stuff because they would just be hosting a boring Bible study show if they didn't. So it's really hard for that to exist. in the same space where they're explaining, like, why isn't God striking Trump down?
Starting point is 00:55:09 Yeah. Like, you believe in magic. This should be happening. Yeah. Yeah, you can be rich and believe in crazy stuff for free. Or if you're poor, you have to find a small group of people to reinforce your crazy stuff back and forth for you. And even that may not work. May not work, yeah, because, you know.
Starting point is 00:55:24 You still end up on the streets. You may broke, yeah. Dead. Like, it's tough. Or in the C. Yeah. You could be fucked. Or working for Tucker.
Starting point is 00:55:34 Like, he is, his craziness is facilitated by his massive amount of wealth. Yeah. And, like, the fact that cameras turn off. Yeah. That's basically what he's not taking into this equation. Yep. Also, Tucker may have a point that Catholics in Vietnam weren't in a great position during or after the war, but history didn't begin when that war started.
Starting point is 00:55:59 He should explore how Catholicism mingled with the colonial history there. If he's actually interested in any of this, or else we're just going to have to assume he's cherry-picking stuff to serve his narrative, which is that U.S. foreign policy objectives have been designed to attack Christianity. Yeah. And spoiler alert, it's because of the Jews.
Starting point is 00:56:15 Yeah. And if I, listen, again, everybody's got their own flavor. So the idea of America being so filled with Christians is absurd to me because none of them believe the same shit. No, but I think that there's a lot of people who are Christian by default. Sure. Culturally or, yeah. However the right way to put it is. But I was always told
Starting point is 00:56:38 fuck the Pope, fuck the Pope and fuck Catholicism because they're the ones who say that you need an intermediary between you and that big guy over there. And once you get rid of that, then you have to say that those people are actively blocking you
Starting point is 00:56:54 from having a relationship with God. Therefore, the Pope is evil. Yeah. I have no strong feelings on Catholics, but I do know that growing up, the word dirty often was before papists. So like, papists was a word. That was the adjective that created a compound noun that I heard people say a lot. The papist.
Starting point is 00:57:14 Ah, yeah, yeah. So they're trying to attack Christianity. And they're doing it a lot of ways. And one of them is through migration because people who come here who aren't legacy Americans aren't as Christian. Jesus. Europe, Australia. Canada, New Zealand, our country as well, have all changed substantially, demographically,
Starting point is 00:57:39 and become much less Christian because of immigration. So you often hear people complain. Not ours whenever we took all that land. Europe's becoming Muslim. Yeah. Why is that? Well, because of mass migration. We've abetted it.
Starting point is 00:57:54 The neocons certainly have abetted it. They've been in favor of it. They've attacked anyone who's opposed to it. Victor Orban in Hungary, who just lost. the other day, the Prime Minister of Hungary, was hated by neoconservatives in Washington. Why is that? Because he pushed back against mass migration into Hungary. And he said, Hungary is part of Christian Europe. It's a Christian country. It's one of the main reasons I don't want mass migration. Well, the entire foreign policy establishment in the United States decided
Starting point is 00:58:23 he was an enemy for saying that. So it's not simply that they haven't stopped the destruction of Christian Europe. They've been fully in favor of it. They're fully in favor of it. They're fully in favor of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Net effect, millions of dead Christian men. That's not just, again, an accidental byproduct. That may be the whole point. It may be the
Starting point is 00:58:44 whole point. It seems like you're acting very much like you're convinced that it is the whole point. Yeah. It seems to be central to the thesis. Basically, your false question is an implication. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't think that's
Starting point is 00:58:58 the full story as to why the Ukraine war is happening or why people didn't like Orban. But when you oversimplify things, it really helps tell a story way easier. Yeah, especially if you use a word interchangeably with white. Yeah, weird. There's a lot of fun ways to say white. Yeah, there are a lot of fun ways to say white. You bet.
Starting point is 00:59:20 Huh. So Trump, white, is the first president to openly mock Jesus. Although all the rest of them did it privately. It's just weird that he's doing it in public. Donald Trump is not the first president to give the finger to Jesus, hardly. But he is the first president to do it in public. I want to know names. And this has been going on long enough.
Starting point is 00:59:47 Give me the other president. It's reaching a kind of boiling point right now. Hamilton. Was he a president? With he a president? Certainly this administration. He's on the 10. There always is one.
Starting point is 00:59:59 Good enough. Secular government. Never has been. and one never will be one. A truly secular government would have no purpose. The fuck are you talking about. Destiny. There would be no real reason.
Starting point is 01:00:10 Destiny? To continue on. It certainly wouldn't have any... Government requires destiny? And our government does have evangelical zeal. We're spreading democracy and free market principles around the world, freedom, or whatever. So every government is motivated by religious impulse,
Starting point is 01:00:26 whether the government admits it or not. So I don't think that he made his point there. No, I would strongly say, suggest otherwise. Yeah, there's a, there is a real moment of me sitting there being like, oh, what the fuck? What do you, what? I believe, all religion, all government is religion. Yeah. And religious. Right. Because there needs to be an evangelical zeal. Right. Secular government has no reason to exist. Right. If I, if I, if I, if I, if I'm understanding correctly, and I'm going to draw these lines as best as I can, not knowing the exact crazy here. But,
Starting point is 01:01:01 Um, if you're not actively expanding, then what is the point of you? Right. If you're not colonizing with your religion, the idea. No function that you can possibly do as a human that is not part of your religion is pointless. Right. If you are not reproducing, you're pointless. If you're not moving, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's that kind of concept.
Starting point is 01:01:30 Yeah. I was thinking about that. You know that feeling when you sit down to start a writing project and you just sit there at the keyboard? Sure. That's how I felt when I was thinking about like, what do you say about this clip? What are you saying? What are you saying? I was struggling to find like a deeper thing that has a comment.
Starting point is 01:01:51 Check out this asshole. But I think he's just dumb. Yeah, he's dumb. He is dumb. Yeah. It's just a stupid thought he has. Yeah. It's not like.
Starting point is 01:02:00 There's no gold in them hills. Yeah, I was listening to a thing earlier today about some sort of space nonsense. I was having my fun. And it was so much like, buddy, if you are using this number of adjectives this frequently, you're full of shit. That's what you're doing. You're doing the tricks to keep people from noticing how fucking stupid you are. There's a good chance. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:23 There's a good chance. Yep. A good white chance. So we get to the meat of the issue here. And he's been beating around the bush a little bit. Sure. You know, there's a suggestion that possibly Trump is the antichrist. Right.
Starting point is 01:02:36 But what does this really mean? Good question. What is the new religion? So what is the civic religion of the United States? What's the religion of the U.S. government? What's the religion, honestly, of Donald Trump? It's not Christianity, clearly. It's Israelism.
Starting point is 01:02:54 It's the defense of Israel. Now, how do you know that? Oh, boy. Well, because the United States has set up as its chief foreign policy in the defense of Israel. That's one clue. There's that. But it's much deeper than that. Who are the main enemies as identified by the president of the United States of his government domestically? Who are his enemies? Who does he dislike? Who does he attack? Who does he go out of his way to undermine what's people who doubt Israel? People who stand in the way of the aims of the
Starting point is 01:03:28 secular government of Israel. and that would include Marjorie Taylor Green, Thomas Massey, and the Pope. Now, how do you know that's what it is? Well, because that's the only thing they have in common. I know one other very specific thing that Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey had in common,
Starting point is 01:03:48 which is that they wouldn't shut up about Epstein when Trump told them to. Weird. But I guess, you know, Tucker will just say that's Israel. Probably Israel, whatever. Yeah, probably that. It's great that Tucker has decided that he solved the great mystery
Starting point is 01:03:59 and that Trump's religion is Israel, but this doesn't really work. They're way stronger and more popular critics of Israel than the people that Trump tweeted about, like Nick Fuentes or Andrew Tate. If it unifying thread between all of the people Trump's attacks or that they're hostile to Israel, then it doesn't make sense that those folks weren't included,
Starting point is 01:04:19 and it's weird that he did include a lukewarm Israel critic like Alex on that list. Alex is wishy-washy at best. At best. Also, what's a civic religion? If it's the foreign policy choice to be allies with Israel, then that doesn't seem like a religion. It just seems like a government decision that Tucker opposes. If you want to use a term like civic religion, you need to define it.
Starting point is 01:04:41 Because it just sounds like a bullshit term that he's using to obscure the fact that he's saying that the Jews control the government. Yeah. I would say that civic religion is like the difference between Subwayism and elevated trainism. You know what I'm saying? like we're Chicago, so we're L, but we've also got underground from time to down. That's true, that's true. But we're not sub, you know, we're not only underground. Right.
Starting point is 01:05:05 Yeah. Like the New York. Yeah, exactly. Well, they've got elevated. Yeah, they've got elevated. I was just making a joke. None of it's real. No.
Starting point is 01:05:14 Yeah. Neither is this. Yeah, exactly. Funny how that works. Fucking dumb. So anyway, I don't know if the Pope that fight is about Epstein. But I know that Marjorie Taylor. Green and Thomas Massey.
Starting point is 01:05:27 That was specifically. I refuse to accept that anybody gives a shit about the Pope. In this whole, in this region, not anybody gives a shit about the Pope. But in these, in these people, like in Tuckerson, in Trump, in all of these people, in the people who are having a comment publicly about the Pope, none of them give a shit about the Pope. Yeah, yeah, a shockingly low number probably. Yeah. Yeah, you should have at least some vested.
Starting point is 01:05:56 interest in the Pope if you want to be like, can you believe he said that about the Pope? Well, Tucker has some mildly nice things to say about it. I don't know. All right. The Pope, the American Pope, First American Pope, Pope, Pope Leo. Hell yeah. Is in American political terms a liberal. He is, by the way, for mass migration.
Starting point is 01:06:14 Shamefully so, I would say. Well, he did move to Italy. Catholic. It's not Italy. Well, not anti-Israel. He's not a Zionist because Catholicism doesn't recognize Zionism as part of a it's catechism. There are plenty of Catholics who love Israel, and there are some who don't love Israel, maybe some who hate Israel, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the core
Starting point is 01:06:36 tenets of Catholicism. And unlike so many other newer versions of Christianity, Catholicism has been around for thousands of years and has a very clearly articulated catechism. You know what Catholic... That's never changed. And what it tells its members, its parishioners, it's Catholics, communicants to believe. It's all written down. and unwavering support for the state of Israel is just not on the list at all. At best, it's a faith that's agnostic toward the political fortunes of the Netanyahu government. And that's not going to change because, again, there's a structure and there is a list of beliefs, a creed written down. So it's pretty hard to force a church like that to change its views because,
Starting point is 01:07:27 those views are effectively set in stone and have been for a very long time. So right off the bat, as you pointed out, a lot of stuff isn't really written in stone. Well-established church doctrines change sometimes, and Tucker knows that. But I want to talk about how Tucker's being a weasel here by using Catholicism as a comparison to the United States
Starting point is 01:07:47 because the Vatican is technically a state, but it's also the seat of a religion. The pope is the head of Catholicism first and the head of state second. He can't make any political decision that's not also a religious one because he's the head of a theocracy. It's a literal impossibility for a non-Catholic to ever be the head of state in the Vatican. So for them, religion and government are the same. That's the idea.
Starting point is 01:08:11 You can compare the Pope and the president as both being leaders and public figures, but you can't compare how they interact with the world because one's part of a democracy and the other isn't. And so in order to make these things analogous, Tucker has to come up with this idea of civic religion in order to turn our government into a papacy. Right. If you believe in Catholicism, then you accept that God chose the Pope as his representative. If you don't believe in Catholicism, you can think he's a good or bad leader for a major world religion, but he doesn't have any power over you.
Starting point is 01:08:45 The U.S. president's power doesn't come from belief. Their right to lead is supposedly based on the consent of the governed. Until pretty recently, it was understood that we chose our leader, who wasn't a matter of of God selecting someone to rule. Tucker was an instrumental part of pushing the narrative that Trump was chosen by God to be president and that God saved Trump from the assassination attempt in Butler. So if you take a step back, it starts to look like what's going on here is that Trump and his media surrogates were a zealous force in making our secular government into a religious
Starting point is 01:09:18 entity. They were selling the idea that Trump's right to power didn't come from us voting for him. It was ordained by God. our votes were merely a recognition that we understood that God wanted Trump in office, and we were submitting to that. I guess. This is kind of blown up in their faces, and it turns out that the guy that they all thought hated the people that they also hated, he hates you too. This should be a moment for introspection where someone like Tucker reflects on how carried away this stupid show has gotten and how his bow tie was way less embarrassing than this. But I don't think he can, and I think Alex told us why.
Starting point is 01:09:55 Tucker isn't speaking out against the president because that's popular. Leftists don't buy anything. They don't buy your nicotine pouches. They don't buy your supplements. Tucker's audience is just Nazis, white identity adherents who insist they aren't Nazis, and maybe some well-meaning people who were hooked on the excitement of the spiritual battle between good and evil story that he's telling. He knows that he can't hold on to the Nazis if he doesn't ditch Trump,
Starting point is 01:10:22 and he can hold on to the good versus evil story. storyline people if he just makes Trump a villain who's been working for the Jews all along. This is the path that satisfies the audiences that Tucker's created for himself that he's able to sell products to. Yeah. So it's almost inevitable that this is where we're going. Yeah. But at the same time, you can't go too far because people are probably coming back shortly.
Starting point is 01:10:47 You know, this is like a lull in the season. It's a mid-season. Everybody's kind of tired. We're waiting for the fucking season finale to get here. So everybody will jump back on whenever it's time to... Tucker is definitely playing like he thinks that there's going to be a Democratic presidency next. Oh, yeah. He's...
Starting point is 01:11:05 Ooh, fun. I don't think that these storylines come from a person who is planning on dealing with Trump for a long time. All right. Best of luck to him. Well, it just becomes really problematic when he's not the devil. Right. Well, that is a struggle. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:24 That is a struggle. I don't think there's anywhere to escalate. Every time I've ever thought that, I've been extremely wrong. That's a good point. Yeah. Every time I've ever thought that, I've been extremely wrong. Yeah. So, Trump, he only likes Christians who like Israel.
Starting point is 01:11:50 There we go. Yeah, that's it. Okay. The religion is Israelis. It's the support of Israel. That's why the president is totally comfortable surrounding himself with evangelical preachers, every one of whom has one thing in common, whether they're word of faith preachers or charismatic preachers or not. That's a huge split among evangelicals.
Starting point is 01:12:12 Lies? Phrastatic or not. Private jets? That glossolalia, tongues, prophescing, has a role in contemporary Christian worship, church services. They're mad at each other about that. Trump probably is even aware of that distinction. All of them are welcome as long as their faith includes unwavering support for Israel. That's the common denominator. That's the only thing that matters. And because that's the only thing that matters, the coalition, the ever-shinking, day-by-day shrinking
Starting point is 01:12:45 coalition that supports this president is now out in force explaining that actually the Pope and Catholics, The Catholic Church itself, which about 20 minutes ago, most people thought was conservative in that it's pro-life, for example. That used to be a tenet of conservatism before this president. It wasn't for abortion. That the Catholic Church is somehow liberal and not just liberal, anti-Semitic. It's evil. It hates Jews. Well.
Starting point is 01:13:19 Watch Lindsay Graham make this case. They're religious Nazi. and the Catholic Church, God bless the Catholic Church. In the 30s, you didn't really get Hitler. To the Pope, you really don't get this religious Nazi regime, the Aitoua, and its henchmen. They are evil. They will kill all the Jews if we let them, and the Jewish people, one Holocaust is enough. Oh, see, the Pope doesn't really get that Nazism is evil.
Starting point is 01:13:48 Catholics just somehow miss that memo. I obviously disagree with the perspective that Lindsay Graham, is taking here, but that clip is selectively edited in order to make it sound like he's saying that the Catholics are Nazis. He was saying that Iranians. Yeah, the Ayatolians. Yeah. That's the larger context.
Starting point is 01:14:07 But if you just take that, you could hear that and think he was saying. I feel like I got it pretty easily. Yeah. But who knows? I think a tuckler, tuckler listener. A tuckler and Ayatolus or a tuckler? So I think Lindsey Graham is, you know, he's advocating for war. with Iran and I disagree with him. But he's right about the Vatican's relationship with Nazis,
Starting point is 01:14:28 and that seems to be the part that Tucker is trying to mock. Yeah. The Vatican archives have been opened, and we know the relationship that existed between Hitler and Pope Pius the 12th. It wasn't that Pius supported the Nazis or that he didn't know that what they were doing was wrong. He sincerely believed that the Nazis were going to win, and he wanted to appease Hitler so the church would be safe in a Nazi-controlled Europe. Yep. That was a continuation of the relationship between the Vatican and fascism that existed with Pius the 11th, who worked closely with Mussolini, which makes sense because they were both sort of in Italy. You can't say with certainty that if these people acted differently, they could have stopped
Starting point is 01:15:06 the rise of fascism, but you can definitely look back and say that the fact that they had such a mild stance on it helped normalize fascism among people who believed themselves to be religious and wouldn't have had that excuse otherwise. Lindsey Graham's argument is bad and he sucks, but the history is, of the Catholic Church isn't the part he got wrong. Tucker seems to be reacting as if Graham is lying about the Vatican during World War II, which seems strange. But it's not really that strange.
Starting point is 01:15:35 All of the Catholics that Tucker likes are Catholic fascists who think that Pope Pius the 12th was the last real Pope, and that everything since has been Vatican too. Yep. So, yeah. B... Yep. Yep.
Starting point is 01:15:48 He thinks that the Vatican went off course after. after they appeased Hitler. Yeah. When they took a turn towards, like, being a little chill. Yeah. It's always interesting whenever you read some of the stuff from, like, a guy who demonstra-like, like what we are seeing now is regardless of how much power you think you have, the amount of power you can take is a lot more than you could ever imagine.
Starting point is 01:16:17 Most people are going to roll over to the point where you see it happening from the fucking Pope. He rolled over before he, like, the Pope could have rallied an unimaginable number of people to give a shit. Well, we'll talk about exactly the timeline about this later. I think you'll think it's silly. But yeah, sure. Back in World War II times and right now, the Pope could probably rally a lot of people to be a little more like, take this seriously. All they have to do is just claim that they can do it and people will be like, I guess you can. Yeah. But maybe it's not like a magic solution, but like there's definitely like, okay, we can see the history. Nobody in their right mind would be like the Catholic Church did everything right during this period.
Starting point is 01:17:07 Yeah, it'd be a struggle. So Lindsey Graham, like he's saying this shit. He could never have said this a year ago. They would never get away with it. It's interesting because a year ago, no Republican member of Congress would have been. dared say anything like that. First of all, that's insane. It's a slander against Catholics, saying this is a birthright lifelong Protestant, but it's just not true. It's a horrible thing to say about anybody, but as a political matter, it would have been crazy to say that because Catholics,
Starting point is 01:17:41 sincere church-going Catholics, vote Republican. In fact, the more often you go to Mass, the more likely you are to vote Republican. And that's true across races, by the way. so you see all these weird thing to say and he got more Hispanics to vote for him it is true in 2024 than any Republican maybe ever more than
Starting point is 01:18:05 Jeb Bush speaking Spanish married to a Mexican lady how did he do that one of the reasons he did that is because a lot of Hispanics are very Catholic they're Christian they're religious they go to mass a lot
Starting point is 01:18:18 and because they do because their faith for some of them, their faith is at the center of their lives, they voted for the candidate who seemed most predisposed to their religious views. Maybe he's not a Christian or a fervent Christian, but he seemed like a man who would protect Christians, Catholic Christians included, and so they voted for him.
Starting point is 01:18:42 So let's unpack this for a second. According to the show Tucker is doing right now, these Hispanic Catholics were wrong to vote for Trump, and they were misled to believe, that he was Christian or would protect Christians. If that's true, you have to ask where they got that idea for. Who would have misled them with that information? The answer to that question is people like Tucker.
Starting point is 01:19:01 Oh. It was a huge selling point during all of Trump's campaigns that if he didn't get in, the left was going to more or less outlaw Christianity. That was the idea. So Tucker is on his show saying that these Hispanic Catholics voted for Trump because he and his media surrogates successfully tricked them into thinking that he was aligned with their religious beliefs. Can you believe it?
Starting point is 01:19:19 This definitely is a blow to Tucker's. credibility. You would think. Yeah. You would think. But then, the idea that there are Hispanic Catholics really hurts Tucker's point from earlier about how migration is meant to hurt the Catholic Church, or the Christian Church in general. Sure, sure, sure, sure. His ideology sees Hispanic people as an outside group, regardless of where a person was born or how long their family has lived here. So the idea that there can be sincere, good Hispanic Catholics kind of means that the people he views as outsiders can actually live here just fine. Yeah. Even beyond that, his whole point, his whole point, point is that Lindsey Graham wouldn't have insulted Catholics like that a year ago.
Starting point is 01:19:55 But according to Tucker, Graham's views haven't changed. He was a warmongering neocon back when Tucker was too, and Graham still is. Tucker isn't actually speaking to Graham's beliefs in any way. What he's actually trying to illustrate is a diminished cultural power that he feels like Catholics hold in U.S. politics. Graham can get away with this kind of talk because he doesn't need the Catholics anymore. They've been replaced. Tucker's not really saying it yet,
Starting point is 01:20:23 but it's pretty clear who he's suggesting they were replaced with. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And it brings to mind a tiki torch. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Almost somebody should appease those people.
Starting point is 01:20:35 That's what I'm saying. Huh. Yeah. It's an interesting thought. I think it'll work. I think it'll work this time. It is so funny whenever you just hear some fact that is kind of, that is unrelated, or at least not directly related.
Starting point is 01:20:50 but is emblematic of everything that is the reason we're here, which is Lindsay Graham was there during the first time we went over and murdered a bunch of people. Yeah, he was. And now he's still there. And can you believe we're back murdering a bunch of people? And he's doing relatively similar things. Yeah. Like, he's consistent.
Starting point is 01:21:10 Tucker, like, he was super into the bow tie and the Iraq War and Bush and all this shit. He's the one who's waffled all over the fucking place. Everywhere. Like Lindsey Graham's wrong, but I knew who he was like when I was 16 or whatever. We cannot be surprised that we're in the same place if the same people are there too. Yeah. Tucker just keeps trying to fix the thing. Get ahead of the whatever group of pitchforks and torches is out there. Tucker is running as far away as it can.
Starting point is 01:21:45 Yeah. And I think it speaks to his underlying intellectual cowardice. Yeah. And the fact that everything he does is basically just lies. Yeah. Like he's just lying about Lindsey Graham. So a year ago, no, and every Republican knows this because there's lots of polling on it, because politicians think in terms of coalitions and who's going to vote for me and why.
Starting point is 01:22:04 Do they? They know this very well. So a year ago, no Republican would ever get up on TV and say, you know, think about Catholics is they're kind of Nazis. But there's Lindsey Graham doing it right there. this is a profound break and it's a it's a very clear window into what the actual faith is Israel is the deal killer anyone who doesn't support the military aims of the modern Israeli government cannot be part of the mega coalition and Lindsay Graham has just told us can't be a Christian it's very easy to take what Lindsay Graham said and disagree with it
Starting point is 01:22:44 but still Tucker feels the need to lie. Graham didn't call Catholic Nazis. He was calling the Iranian regime Nazis, which he did to argue that the Vatican is not recognizing the danger Iran presents in the same way that they didn't recognize the danger of Hitler. Instead of arguing against the point Graham actually made, Tucker is pretending that he called Catholics Nazis and said that you can't be a Christian unless you blindly support the state of Israel.
Starting point is 01:23:08 I have no interest in defending Lindsey Graham because he sucks, but Tucker made a good point earlier about how he got to stand up for the truth. And so like stop lying on the Graham. Come on, man. I mean, hey, what are you going to do? You're going to just be honest about Lindsey Graham? Why, what is there that you could possibly say negative about Lindsay? You have to lie about this guy.
Starting point is 01:23:33 Too good. That's my review of Lindsay Graham. Too good. That's the problem. Did you know that Space Jam was originally supposed to be Lindsay Grape, Scheduling conflict. Scheduleing conflict. Wait, for the, for Porky Pig?
Starting point is 01:23:48 Jordan. Oh, for Jordan. Yeah, for Michael. Michael Jordan. Well, because, yeah, because Bill Murray is basically the reason that movie exists. And he and Lindsey Graham are tight. Exactly. So he wasn't going to replace Bill.
Starting point is 01:23:59 Mm-hmm. Yeah. See, what happened with Bill Murray. He just kept showing up in South Carolina. So weird. And taunting Lindsey Graham. Yeah. And being like, no one's ever going to believe that I was here.
Starting point is 01:24:10 And they just became friends. Yeah. Well, it's nice. Yeah. It's good to make a friend in, Later life. So I think one of the things, like I said, one of the reasons that Tucker's show has to be this constant, like back and forth. I didn't say that, oh, I'm really this guy.
Starting point is 01:24:27 Right. That kind of stuff is because he lies all the time, but also because he just doesn't focus on stuff that matters. But it's not just Lindsay Graham. This is everywhere today in case you haven't seen it. Here's Patrick Bet David on his podcast a day or two ago. Watch this. I don't know why Catholics, you know, have this issue with Jews. I do know what it is.
Starting point is 01:24:51 See, the problem here is that Patrick Pitt David's an idiot. They only care about him because he made a bunch of money in a multi-level marketing scam and has created this network that has the appearance of viewership. So we're going to go ahead and ask this question genuinely. Catholics, why do they have a problem with the Jews? Cool. Cool. If Tucker's argument that everyone is turning on Catholics begins with lying about Lindsey Graham and then complaining about PBD, I think he should go pray for better content because this stinks.
Starting point is 01:25:24 Yeah. You're not making a solid point. Yeah. I think, you know what I think? I think this is a very distinctly American problem because for these people, right, history doesn't go that far back. Right? Because America doesn't go that far back. You know, if you're in America.
Starting point is 01:25:41 Vietnam started as a Catholic country. Exactly. You know, like that's what we're talking about. It doesn't go that far back. You don't have to, the Catholic Church shouldn't be held accountable for all the stuff the Catholic Church did. Come on. That was way back.
Starting point is 01:25:55 I don't even remember it. Cruz sweat. I wasn't there. You don't know anything. Could have been any reason. Yeah. Could have been anything. People talk.
Starting point is 01:26:04 Yeah. Stories, they grow over time. You never know what the French are going to do. So some at times you crusade. It was the teen crusade. It wasn't children. Everyone just... You guys enjoy your twilight now.
Starting point is 01:26:17 The kid can be a vampire, but he can't go kill a bunch of people in the Middle East? Now what? So in this next clip, I don't know how to describe this other than Tucker tries to defend the way that Trump behaves. Right. Sort of through primate psychology. I like this. Yeah. Now we're talking.
Starting point is 01:26:38 It's a good swing. Okay. Now again, Trump is someone who... you know, has a lot of problems showing respect to other powerful figures. And this is, it's not just Trump. Most men like Trump are that way. They get along well with women because they're threatened by women. Woman's probably not trying to like kill you and become king.
Starting point is 01:27:03 They're kind of loyal. But other men, every other man to a certain male personality type is a potential threat. That's why kings kill their sons. Every man is a potential threat. And so Trump is not on a gut level, instinctively respectful of anything or anybody. And that's one of the reasons he was a much-needed transformative political figure for so long in the United States. Because he was willing to ask questions that most people in Washington had never even thought of out of deference to the existing system. Like, why do we have NATO?
Starting point is 01:27:38 Is it really good idea of offshore manufacturing? What? Or immigration actually, our system helping the United States or hurting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All famously the questions that Trump asked, but the way we were doing things were made possible. He was able to ask those things because he doesn't have reflective respect for anybody. So these are two entirely disconnected thoughts that Tucker's trying to present as one coherent idea. The first is that Trump doesn't reflexively respect people because women are weak and all men could be threats to his power. Wild.
Starting point is 01:28:08 He lives in a constant dominant struggle with everyone around. him for literally no reason other than he just, if he lets his guard down for a second, that could be the second when a new alpha man takes him down. I mean, we could say that this is exactly the type of relationship with one's father that would lead to you being a bad human being later on in life. But who could tell? Also, there are kings in the modern world. I don't think King Charles killed his kids.
Starting point is 01:28:31 That's true. Whatever. So then the second thought is that Trump was a much needed change in politics because he asked questions that no one else would. It feels like the second third. thought flows from the first one, because it's kind of like Trump doesn't reflexively respect ideas in the same way that he doesn't respect people, but that doesn't work. Tucker is trying to take Trump's psychopathic bullying and anti-social tendencies and rewrite them as some kind of instinctual
Starting point is 01:28:58 distrust of things around you that might be a threat. He has this dynamic with people and that same inherent contrarian nature makes him have to rethink our government's policies, starting from first principles. But that's not true. Trump entered office both times with extreme agendas. Both times people told him various things he wanted to do wouldn't work, and then he got mad and did them anyway, which then serves as a fun real-life example for why many of these policies we used to have were there to begin with.
Starting point is 01:29:27 Yep, would have been useful. Yeah, we kind of solved some of these things. Would have been nice. And those things that Tucker lists as ideas that Trump has are bullshit. We know why NATO exists. We know why manufacturing jobs moved out of the country. We know whether or not immigration is a net positive. None of these are real questions.
Starting point is 01:29:47 They're all complicated issues that Tucker wants to provide an easy answer for. NATO exists because the world order that came into being after World War II is not stable. And the best plan that we could come up with to make all-out war less likely in the future was to create a network of alliances that would theoretically defend the existing borders of countries from encroachment. It obviously hasn't worked, but saying it hasn't worked isn't a lot. a solution or even an idea. It's just a complaint. Manufacturing jobs left the country because
Starting point is 01:30:17 companies were allowed to make more money doing it that way. American labor was too expensive and unions had gained just enough power that the owners saw sending those jobs overseas that was the best way to maximize profits. Manufacturing could come back if we made foreign manufacturing more expensive
Starting point is 01:30:33 or if the organizing power of labor is crushed. Then that would bring it back too. Yeah, yeah. If we could be slaves, they would definitely keep it here. That would be the cheapest solution. Totally. Absolutely. Immigration isn't that positive in every metric other than how it makes Tucker feel as a white man. That one's not as complicated as the other ones.
Starting point is 01:30:52 No, no, that one's fairly simple. None of this is sincere questions. And Trump's not like reconsidering the, what if I look at this angle? Now it's a whole new apple in front of me or whatever. I find it interesting when men are very, very. dumb about something that should be very obvious. Like, for instance, if one of the fundamental tenets of fascism is controlling every aspect of women's behavior, it is not because you are not afraid of women that you are trying to
Starting point is 01:31:26 control every aspect of their behavior. I don't need to control them because they're loyal and they're good, not like other men who want to kill me and you assert my power. Right. Or you are terrified that giving them any sort of power would. remove all of your bullshit and allow us to live happily and free. I need to give them power because they wouldn't use it anyway. Fair enough.
Starting point is 01:31:47 They're happy. You win this round. Yuck. And I also think there's something really fascinating about this because Tucker, like, he's describing Trump like some kind of caveman kind of like, you're a threat to my dominance. I must take you out. Tucker doesn't live like that. He doesn't.
Starting point is 01:32:08 He has this weird fantasy that that's how. men, men, work. Yeah. And like, you don't, you don't live like this. No one lives like this. Trump's an asshole. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:32:19 It is crazy how many conversations we have about something that by its very nature should disqualify the president. Just by us asking that question means he should never have been president. If a president forces you to ask any of those questions, it is because you fucked up royally. Rebuttal. Yeah. Mulligan. Can I get a whoops on this?
Starting point is 01:32:43 You know what? How about nobody changed their mind about anything and we run it back? Yeah, it's cool. So Trump was, you know, like, he saw Jesus. Sure. And the Pope. Right. And he was like, I'm going to big dog these guys.
Starting point is 01:32:56 Well, you got to. I'm going to alpha them. You got to. And so when. You got to neg the Pope. Jesus and the Pope and Christians and tweets out the F word on Easter morning, kind of like, well, this is awful. But it's also kind of consistent.
Starting point is 01:33:11 with the Trump we know. This is just Trump turned up to 11. But what's interesting is there are certain circumstances where Trump shows sincere reverence. There are the outlines of an actual religious faith here. And they're not what you would expect. So here, for example, is Donald Trump the month before the last election, this is October 2024 visiting the grave of a man called Rebbe Schneerson, Rabbi Monachem Schneerson, who is, was, he's since passed away, the leader of a large Orthodox sect.
Starting point is 01:33:55 So, like, why are you assuming that Trump is being reverent and respectful? Like, there's not audio that he's playing, which allows you to imagine that Trump isn't mumbling about golf. Yeah. But he's an asshole. Yeah. He was probably being an asshole there too. Well, think about it this way, right?
Starting point is 01:34:15 He's our president. We thought he was working for God. We loved him. We cried. Again, whoops. Right. We did all of that stuff. Now, on the other hand, have you considered that it was not at all our fault or his?
Starting point is 01:34:31 And it was Israel. Right. So let's none of us do anything different. Also, Tucker's saying that this guy has since died. implying that it was... Wasn't he already dead? Yeah, he died in like the 90s. Did he die?
Starting point is 01:34:44 Yeah, I was going to say. He died since he did the things so that he did while he was alive. That's true. Yeah, that, well, that's fair. So anyway, Tucker's like, can you fucking imagine if Trump made fun of this rabbi?
Starting point is 01:34:57 Yes. There's... I totally can. Yeah, me too. Standing there. Looks like maybe Ben Shapiro there. Howard Lutnik, wearing a kippa on his head.
Starting point is 01:35:08 as you look at that, ask, is it possible to imagine Donald Trump ever mocking Rebbe Schneerson, who, by the way, and this is kind of the point, is considered by some of his followers to be the Messiah. Sure. And to be completely clear, every American is allowed to decide for himself who the Messiah is, so that is not mockery of that belief. I don't personally believe it, but one of the reasons we've been able to live with people of different faiths in this country for 250 years is we don't mock other people's religious faith unless we're absolutely forced to.
Starting point is 01:35:46 What? Make me the fuck! Attend your religious ritual. Fuck you! For a God, I don't consider God. Unless it comes to that, we kind of let each other have our own religious views. Yeah, we're cool. And that has worked.
Starting point is 01:35:59 That's changing very, very fast. My God. But ask yourself, can you imagine Donald Trump sending out a meme mocking Rebbe Schneerson? And of course, under no circumstances could you imagine that because under no circumstances would that ever happen. Trump would not be allowed to do that and Trump would never even consider doing it. But sending out multiple images mocking Jesus? No problem at all. So that gives you a more precise sense of what our civic religion actually is.
Starting point is 01:36:31 I can't take this seriously because as you immediately responded, so did I. I could very easily see Trump disrespecting this rabbi. Absolutely. And Tucker just oozes insincerity when he's talking about the merits of religious tolerance. I mean, insane. It's just impossible to humor this because around the time that Trump was visiting that guy's grave, Tucker was doing speeches about how Daddy was home and he was going to spank us. Yep. Like, this is fucking nonsense, man.
Starting point is 01:36:57 Calm the fuck down. I mean, furthermore, furthermore, just this, this fact alone should keep everybody on their toes, right? if you haven't called at least two out of the past five Trump insane things, you should not tell me what he will or won't do, right? If you didn't call, that motherfucker's just going to steal a president. He's just going to go somewhere and steal the president. If you didn't call that, don't tell me what he might or might not do. He could do fucking anything.
Starting point is 01:37:27 I was thinking about, like, when you said he went to steal. Yeah. Like, I legitimately was like, is he going to say the, Trump's going to steal first? That was the craziest thing I could think of this. This motherfucker tried to steal home on a full count with one out. One out, a man on third and he's trying to steal home on a full count. Get the fuck out of here.
Starting point is 01:37:50 Who does he think he is, right? Ricky Henderson. He stole a lot of bases, right? He stole the most bases. Yes. So I was very grateful for one thing that happens in this next clip. And that is that Tucker sort of tries to define. what he means by civic religion.
Starting point is 01:38:08 Okay. A civic religion, by the way, is not a conventional religion. Civic religion is a series of customs, some enshrined in law, not all, that a society, civilization, and its government observe. And it doesn't necessarily mean there's a god at the center of it. That's why it's a civic religion rather than a conventional religion.
Starting point is 01:38:27 But our civic religion is, if you, again, takes three steps back and it's to assess the country with the eyes of a visitor, a modern Toakville, you can see it really clearly. What are the events? Who are the people who we treat with reverence? What are you actually not allowed to make fun of? I'm glad that Tucker is defining his terms now, but unfortunately, that definition is so vague as to be rendered meaningless.
Starting point is 01:38:54 It's kind of everything and nothing. But bigger picture, I don't think that it's ever wise to imagine that Trump's behavior is reflective of us as a population. I get that he posted a meme that was disrespectful to Jesus, and two years ago he looked solemn at a rabbi's grave, but I wouldn't read too much into that. He's an asshole, so whatever he's doing to anyone at any given time doesn't reveal some kind of grander truth.
Starting point is 01:39:18 This doesn't show that you can make fun of Jesus, but you can't make fun of Jews or Israel. That's just the image that Tucker is selling the audience now to hopefully distract them from the whole daddy's home thing. Also, he's saying you can't make fun of Israel and stuff, but like, you don't mess with a Zohan came out in 2008. Right? Come on, man.
Starting point is 01:39:37 You can make fun of Israel. I'm not sure exactly what it is that Tucker wants here, but he's just rephrasing an old line he probably saw on a meme. Quote, to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. Right. This is a quote that goes around constantly and is attributed to Voltaire. Thomas Jefferson.
Starting point is 01:39:55 Nope. No. Voltaire. Okay. Although I will defend the death. You're right to say things I don't agree with. Probably going to go with Jefferson on this. one. It needs neither of them. Okay. It was said by neo-Nazi Kevin Alfred Strom, the founder of the
Starting point is 01:40:08 National Vanguard, who went to jail for possession of child abuse material in 2008. Sure. Which is ironically, the year that you don't mess with the Zohan. Yeah, no, it makes sense. It makes sense. That would have been right up his alley. It's a shame. Yeah. He'll never get to know the joy of Zohan. Yeah. So anyway, Tucker is paraphrasing and promoting the idea that was popularized by a child abusing Nazi. I think we know. Jesus Christ.
Starting point is 01:40:38 So in this next clip, this is a little bit longer, but I needed to have a feel here. It needed a little bit of a feeling. And the feeling that I get is that Tucker is mad about a Holocaust remembrance ceremony. Great. Those are the questions you ask
Starting point is 01:40:55 if you are trying to understand what our operative religion is. What's the religion of our leaders? Again, it's not a conventional religion necessarily. It's not Torah Judaism or rabbinic Judaism or evangelical Christianity or Catholic Christianity. It's the actual religion, the real religion. The set of beliefs that we treat with reverence. Well, it just so happens.
Starting point is 01:41:23 There was a religious ceremony ongoing today in the United States Capitol, complete with very recognizable. religious iconography, symbolism. You may not even have known this was happening, but it was happening today as part of an eight-day celebration of remembrance of the Holocaust. The period in the 1930s and 40s where the German government, the Nazi government,
Starting point is 01:41:50 murdered, in addition to a lot of other people, a whole bunch of Jews. How many? And that ended... A whole bunch? In part because the United States sent troops to Europe, millions of troops to Europe. You can you know millions. Government and with the
Starting point is 01:42:06 help of the Soviets, our allies at the time, we did that. And in the process of doing that, over a quarter million Americans, American men were killed trying to stop the Nazi government. Is that a whole bunch of men?
Starting point is 01:42:22 A quarter million. A whole bunch. American men died fighting the Nazis. A whole bunch. A grip of dudes. But in today's ceremony, in the Congress, a chunk. There was no mention of them. There was instead this. Watch.
Starting point is 01:42:36 Ladies and gentlemen, a museum leadership program has included more than 72,000 U.S. military members. Through examination of the Holocaust, they gain insight into their own professional
Starting point is 01:42:51 and individual responsibilities. The candlelighters are members of the United States Army third infantry regiment, the Old Guard. Scattered applause. I am Sergeant Ethan O'donin. I remember.
Starting point is 01:43:23 Okay. That is a current that was it? ...informed U.S. military member from the Old Guard, the third infantry regiment, which is ever present at our public events
Starting point is 01:43:47 in Washington. saying lighting a candle at the menorah and saying, I remember. No explanation of, I remember. I remember what? What are we remembering here? And we do have a sense that we're not remembering the American soldiers who liberated Dachau for a whole bunch of American soldiers. We're not remembering the quarter million American men.
Starting point is 01:44:10 A whole bunch. Who joined a war they had nothing to do with inherently. It wasn't taking place in North America. It was taking place in Europe. It was really just a few. And the dispute was over Poland and Czechoslovakia. and they sacrificed their lives to defeat the Nazi government that was murdering Jews and a lot of other people, Poles and Russians and gypsies and Czechs and lots of people, a lot of Jews as well.
Starting point is 01:44:30 A whole bunch. But they gave their lives to stop that, but we're not remembering them. We're remembering only the victims of one specific ethnicity during these eight days of remembrance. And why is there a National Women's Day? that we also have that's also enshrined in American law in January. So there's a total of nine days of remembrance of one group of victims in a war that killed tens of millions of people globally, tens and tens and tens and tens of millions. The numbers are actually not even clear.
Starting point is 01:45:00 So many people died. We're not exactly sure how many died, but many tens of millions died, including close to a half million Americans over a quarter million in Europe fighting this Nazi regime, not remember. So I was listening to that. And the reason that I needed to play a longer version of it was I legitimately wasn't sure what point he was trying to make for most of that. Yeah. I got that he was upset, but I couldn't tell like, why are you mad? What are you mad about?
Starting point is 01:45:26 Is he mad that people were remembering the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Yeah. Does he think that Jewish people are hogging all the attention around World War II and that the good old boy American soldiers don't get enough credit? Yep. This honestly just seemed really fucked up to me. and it doesn't make sense outside of the knowledge that this is just a Nazi show. Yep. If you hear an American soldier say,
Starting point is 01:45:48 I remember about World War II and you're upset that he isn't being more specific, you're fucked up. What could that soldier have said that would have satisfied Tucker? He's mad about what he imagines is happening at a solemn moment. And also, if Tucker actually cared about any of this, he could look a little more into it and find that the days of remembrance involve speeches about all the victims of the Holocaust, as well as liberating armies.
Starting point is 01:46:12 How about that? His whole act about how no one remembers anyone but Jewish people is complete bullshit that he's making up to serve his own purposes. And like, yeah, I don't know. I wasn't able to find every single year's text transcript of speeches. Sure. But I found ones going back to Bush and Obama. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:46:32 And they didn't only talk about Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It's nonsense. Further, Tucker is pretending that we got into work. World War II is some kind of benevolent act just to save the Jews from Hitler. He's conveniently leaving out Pearl Harbor, as well as tons of treaties and alliances we formed after World War I that were threatened by the idea of Hitler invading all of our allies in Europe. We were directly attacked, and we had massive geopolitical reasons to not want Hitler to win that war, even beyond the moral obligation to stop a genocide if you can.
Starting point is 01:47:04 Those American soldiers who went to fight in World War II weren't doing it just to stop Hitler from killing Jews, they were doing it because of that day that lives in infamy, because our national interests and economic partners were threatened by Hitler, and because it was the right thing to do. If Tucker wants to re-litigate World War II, then I guess that's his prerogative, but I know where this stuff goes. I've read enough books that sound just like this to know that he's gearing up to just ask some questions about the Holocaust. Oh yeah. When he says that Israelism is the civic religion, what he actually means is this. He's arguing that the civic religion in the United States
Starting point is 01:47:42 is a myth that was built around the Holocaust, which probably wasn't as bad as everyone says it was. Whole bunch. Or maybe it was that bad, but Aryans had it bad too. Come on. Yeah, come on. That's what he's talking about. Yeah. He's trying to build up the courage to deny the Holocaust.
Starting point is 01:47:57 Man, it is wild to think that this guy, having done all that he's done, his backup plan, his backup plan is to go more Nazi. That was his end game. Like, I'm trying to be a little Nazi, but I guess I've been pushed to the point where I got to question the Holocaust. I got to see if I can outflank Fuentes. Imagine thinking to yourself like, shit, I got to question the Holocaust. What a day that must have been for telling.
Starting point is 01:48:34 Hey, Dipshit, um, how old are you? Are we sure that more than a whole bunch of Jews died? Could have been a few, really. What new piece of information did you stumble across? Well, you know, there's a new book was written where they removed numbers and replaced it with approximates. And, uh, that's really changed my view on a lot of things. Have you been reading that Strom guy's books? Because, uh...
Starting point is 01:49:03 Millions of people. died and a whole bunch of Jews whole bunch. This is shit. Yeah. But Tucker is a classy guy. Sure. He makes sure that he comes back immediately after this and he's like, hey, no disrespect to the Jews. No disrespect. No fooling. So that is not to
Starting point is 01:49:20 disrespect the Jewish victims of the Holocaust or the Second World War, of course not. Merely to note that in this country, only one group gets to be remembered. And remembered with grave immunity by uniformed members
Starting point is 01:49:38 of our military who take no credit for ending this Holocaust. So that doesn't make any sense. I mean, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. No, the backstory in any of this and someone wrote that down and told you, be like, well, what? That doesn't, what?
Starting point is 01:49:53 And it almost seems like there's a kind of guilt implied in this, which is a little weird. There are countries where, you know, that might be appropriate. This is not one of them, because again, this was the country that helped liberate people from those camps and fought the government that built those camps. We're the good guys.
Starting point is 01:50:13 What is this? It doesn't make any sense except when you see it in the only terms in which it makes sense, which is as a civic religion. This is legitimately just content you'd find on Nazi message boards in the early 2000s. It's not new. It's not interesting. It's only even notable because the fact Tucker Carlson is pushing. this bullshit, and that's a testament to how little we punch Nazis in this country.
Starting point is 01:50:38 Yeah. He should be afraid to go outside. Yeah. Like, this is ridiculous. Straight up. Anybody who says, no disrespect to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is fighting an uphill battle. I don't think that I've ever heard something like that from someone who wasn't just
Starting point is 01:50:51 trying to be like, I'm about to deny the Holocaust. I'm just a little bit afraid. I got to take a drink before I do. The most easy thing in the world is to not disrespect Holocaust victims. It's so easy. Every day I don't do it. Right now, I'm not doing it. I never apologized once.
Starting point is 01:51:11 I've never accidentally done it. I've never like tripped and been like, oh, sorry. I disrespected the Holocaust. A lot of people put up Hall of Fame numbers in not disrespecting victims of the Holocaust without knowing it. 365 days every year. Not 363, not 364 fucking day in, day out. put in the work to not disrespect the Holocaust. Eight days a week.
Starting point is 01:51:37 Yeah, absolutely. 25-7. Yeah, yep, yep. Tucker's just lying about how no other groups get to be remembered in terms of the Holocaust, but I know what he's talking about. Yeah. No one has any problem with recognizing that it wasn't only Jewish people who were killed by the Nazis, and no one working at the Holocaust Memorial is threatened by this
Starting point is 01:51:56 information. But everyone is suspicious of the guy who has to point out that it wasn't just Jews whenever the Holocaust comes up. Yep. We all instinctually understand that this guy isn't saying what he's saying because he needs to correct the record or make sure everyone has the facts. It's about accuracy. He's saying it because he's angry and he thinks that the Jews are trying to play on his
Starting point is 01:52:17 sympathy. Yeah. And we all kind of know that. And Tucker is that guy. Yeah. And he doesn't like that people respond to him that way. Yeah. You can't, buddy, 10% of our movies are still all about how great Americans were in
Starting point is 01:52:30 World War II. A lot of them. We're fine. Yeah. Yeah. No, but no one talks about it. Yes, they do. No.
Starting point is 01:52:38 Oh, okay, fair enough. Saving Private Ryan doesn't exist. They almost always talk about it. Band of brothers. The idea. You don't mess with the Zohan? Man, yeah, it is, it is like, the one thing that I've always thought about it, which has never really been made clear, right? Is we made peace with the country of Germany.
Starting point is 01:53:01 We did not make peace with Nazi. And a fashion. Do you see the difference there? There's a difference. Some of them we put up with. The head Nazi, he died. Took care of that for us. He did take care of that for it.
Starting point is 01:53:13 I would be disappointed if we weren't capable of pulling it off on our own. True. Yeah, that would be a real bummer. True. Yeah. There was a reckoning afterwards. So I think that we can all get the sense that what Tucker is talking about is not about accuracy or history. No.
Starting point is 01:53:30 He's angry and he feels manipulated. Yeah. And this is where the guilt part of what Tucker is saying comes in. No one should feel guilt about the U.S. not getting involved in the war sooner. What happened happened, and most of us weren't even alive then. So you don't need to feel guilt. But you should feel something close. You should feel regret.
Starting point is 01:53:48 You should feel disgust that people do that kind of shit to each other. You should feel something like we can't allow this thing to happen again. That's not guilt. And I don't know anyone, like, if I ever met anyone who wanted me to feel guilty about something like, the Holocaust or slavery. Yeah. Mostly people want you to understand the scale of what happened, how it was allowed to happen, and how that relates to the present day.
Starting point is 01:54:11 They want you to take some of the lessons that we learn from the horrors of the past that we can't change and try to apply them to the present, which maybe we can change. Yeah. To cut through the bullshit, Tucker experiences this kind of thing like guilt because on some level he knows that his white identity beliefs require racial and ethnic violence. And Holocaust remembrance days feel like someone reminding him of what it's going to to look like if he gets his way. And that makes him feel uncomfortable.
Starting point is 01:54:36 Yeah. Because he's reminded of how this works. You know, people aren't like right now, I'm very popular. And people like what I'm saying right now. But whenever we do it, it seems like people don't like us. It's almost like we shouldn't be doing it. Mm-hmm. It's almost like we're lying to trick people into doing something they don't actually want to do,
Starting point is 01:55:01 nor is for their own benefit. People are trying to guilt me by talking about the Holocaust because on some level they know that I'm not really against it that much. Right. I was going to say, people try and guilt me about the Holocaust because they know I'm kind of into it. Cool, man. So civic religion. Sure. It's Israelism, which I'm not sure if it's distinct from Zionism or I don't know what these words mean. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:55:26 But they have blasphemy laws in this civic religion. Do they? They call everything anti-Semitism. Oh, my God. Only terms of. in which it makes sense, which is as a civic religion, which is what it is. And it comes complete with blasphemy laws. Can't say the F word on Easter, right?
Starting point is 01:55:46 That's a blasphemy law. What religion matters, it's the religion that can't be mocked. So clearly, that's not Christianity. I'm Jesus today. No, I didn't do that. Oh, he's your God. Okay, I'll send a meme out with me posing as your God with a demon over my shoulders. There's nothing you can do about it.
Starting point is 01:56:03 I'm not even going to explain what that was. I don't need to because I don't care about your faith at all. Now, but there are certain things that are blasphemy. And at the very top of that list is something called anti-Semitism. Again, these are just old neo-Nazi talking points. He's riffing off Kevin Alfred Strom's quote and complaining about how anti-Semitism is the blasphemy of our civic religion. And it's all just the same shit. Also, I feel like Tucker is taking Trump's memes way too seriously.
Starting point is 01:56:35 I respect that he's offended, and I think that's fine, but pretending that Trump's memes reflect underlying truths about who controls society is really dumb. Plus, Trump had to take that meme down. So if we're using Tucker's logic, he literally wasn't allowed to make fun of Jesus. He did that and then had to lie and pretend that he didn't. Yeah. This is softball, weak-ass, lukewarm Nazi trash. Tucker needs to stop chewing.
Starting point is 01:57:00 around the edges and just say what he fucking means already because this is annoying. It would be nice. It would be nice. I mean, obviously it wouldn't be nice. But at the very least, the word, okay. You know, when I was growing up, there was always a word count requirement.
Starting point is 01:57:17 They always wanted like 500 words. They always wanted you to demonstrate that kind of stuff. And now that we're in the present, I feel like they should have gone hard the opposite way. Within the smallest number of words possible, be clear about what you're saying.
Starting point is 01:57:32 You know? Like, that seems like such a good skill because this motherfucker is spending so many words on not saying the very obvious thing. But he is saying it. He's just saying it in a coward, weasily way. Right. But, I mean, he could have just been like,
Starting point is 01:57:50 I'm a Nazi. Yeah, but then he might get treated appropriately. Like a Nazi? And he doesn't want that. Yeah, that is true. He still wants to be able to, like, go to. a restaurant. Why was everybody so mean to Hitler, right?
Starting point is 01:58:05 Like, he was just a head of state. You should be inviting him to your restaurant, the same way you might want Trump to show up at your restaurant. Who might be the Antichrist. Well, but he'd sell a lot of fucking heroes. So Tucker seems to think here in this next clip that anti-Semitism is a crime. Sure. And then he tries to pull.
Starting point is 01:58:28 Has he been to America? He tries to pull one of. the craziest moves I've ever seen. Okay. Now, what exactly is anti-Semitism? It's one of those crimes that's a, it's a true crime in the United States, and actual anti-Semitism hating people because of their blood is a crime. Certainly, in Christianity, that is a crime.
Starting point is 01:58:49 That is wrong. You're not allowed to do that. But that is a universal crime. It applies to all people. Whites, blacks, Asians, Jews, everybody has a right to be treated as an individual. because everyone was created by God as an individual. That's the Christian understanding. It's a universalist understanding of rights.
Starting point is 01:59:07 And that's the old civic religion we had. The civic religion of civil rights. Now, there was a civil rights movement, which was fraudulent, maybe at its core, maybe its aims were not advertised honestly. Maybe there was another point to that. Just possible.
Starting point is 01:59:26 But conceptually, it's kind of hard to argue with the fact that the assumptions behind civil rights are Christian assumptions. They're Western assumptions. They're the assumptions upon which our whole civilization is built. And the core assumption is that standards, rules apply to everyone, because every human being possesses a soul given to him by God at creation, which is not an act that men brought about, but that only God can bring about.
Starting point is 01:59:55 God creates life. He endows each human being with a soul. That soul is eternal. each individual possesses rights granted him by God, not government, and a good government protects those rights. And in so doing, upholds God's law. That's Western civilization right there. And in a kind of deluded, silly way, the civil rights movement was upholding those ideas.
Starting point is 02:00:21 Come on, man. So if I'm following Tucker, the current civic religion is Israelism, which seems to be a form of white guilt that's been foisted upon the Western man. and because of the Holocaust. Sure. Tucker is against this and is nostalgic for the past when civil rights were the civic religion,
Starting point is 02:00:36 but not the civil rights movement. That was a silly communist conspiracy. The old civic religion of civil rights meant that all people were created equal with a soul from God, which is why black people couldn't vote and women couldn't get a job without their husband's permission. Yeah. Because we're equal. God knows they shouldn't get a credit card. Right.
Starting point is 02:00:52 There's only one way to describe this content, which is reassurance. Tucker is saying some horrible shit and regurging, It regurgitating straight up Nazi talking points from way back, and he's trying to soften how it sounds to his audience by doing this dumb act about how he loves civil rights. He's feeding the audience Nazi shit, then trying to reassure them that they're not Nazis. They're actually the only people who care about civil rights,
Starting point is 02:01:16 unlike those civil rights activists. Also, being anti-Semitic in the United States isn't a crime. Holocaust denials... It's a pastime. It's illegal in some other countries, but based on the fact that all of Tucker's friends not being in jail, he should realize that it's totally cool here. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:01:32 Yay is still, like he's doing concerts. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how to describe it. This, I don't know how we would get this law or how we would enforce it. But this level of gaslighting is a physical crime. This is an assault. I truly, it hurts. It hurts my head.
Starting point is 02:01:56 You were rinsing a little. It hurts my head to have somebody gaslight me, because it is like, do I even exist? Does my memory happen? Am I a fiction created to keep this man sane? Are you saying that the way that Tucker is behaving is an affront to truth? Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:02:16 I would say, I would say, it's an affront to just like basic physics. Like, if anything he says is true, then I can no longer believe that force equals mass times acceleration. This world is cuckoo. If anything he says is true. Yeah, yeah, I don't, I think that, you know, in the same way that, like, quantum stuff made us rethink physics. Sure. And, you know, like, oh, these rules, they're different than we thought. Sure.
Starting point is 02:02:43 We got to get to that level with laws where it's like, it doesn't really make sense how we write this law. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Something's got to be done about this. Yeah, we need quantum laws. I understand, I understand, yeah, it needs to be a superposition of both legal and illegal at the same time until we collectively decide Tucker needs to fuck off. Yeah. Somehow this must be illegal but not encroach on free speech. How are we going to do this?
Starting point is 02:03:04 Hey, listen. Quarks. You're probably fine. Tucker's not. So just don't be that guy. So Tucker, I don't think he realizes it, but as he talks, he ends up like severely contradicting himself. Well, some of us thought stupidly, but the cattle we are, that the real lessons of World War II were every person has inalienable rights. That's what we were taught.
Starting point is 02:03:28 That was a pretty common understanding. and say the 1970s and 80s, Nazis are bad because they redlined one group and said, these people don't have the same rights as everyone else by virtue of their blood. Is that just, is that the only reason Nazis are red? Eugenics. And they were interested in people's bloodline. Who are you related to? We're going to find out if you're a secret Jew.
Starting point is 02:03:49 Well, that's disgusting. We used to say that's Nazi behavior. And then the next thing you know, every other federal form you get, ask you what your race is. And you're thinking, well, why does that matter? I thought you told me it didn't matter. I thought you told me it was evil to care about that. But you wake up in 2026 and our closest ally is using our weapons to kill and displace people because of how they were born. And not only is that okay, the only real crime is complaining about it.
Starting point is 02:04:24 Well, that tells you, well, it tells you a lot of things. So Tucker might not realize it, but he's doing the exact same thing he's complaining about everyone doing, which is making the Holocaust all about the Jewish victims. He's explaining why the Nazis are bad, and he's saying it's because they chose one specific group and tried to exterminate them. This whole show has been complaining about Jewish people claiming some status as singular victims in the Holocaust,
Starting point is 02:04:47 but he just casually affirmed that this is the case because he's not really confident with this material yet. He's kind of an open micer at Nazis stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not a good Nazi. Also, he doesn't know that you don't have to fill in those things. forms, all that stuff. I mean. And a lot of them have an option that says, I prefer not to answer for questions like race and stuff.
Starting point is 02:05:08 Specifically, not for the people themselves. Because people like Tucker exist. Yeah. Yeah. He's really upset, but his complaints seem kind of petty. And sure, it sucks that Trump is buddied up with the Palantier people who are supplying technology and weapons to Israel to commit genocide against the Palestinians. But that's not something that just happened after the 2024.
Starting point is 02:05:30 election. Trump's been connected to Peter Thiel for years, and the only reason J.D. Vance is the vice president is because of Teal. The first Trump administration openly used Palantir to aid ICE with deportations and shit, and Tucker didn't care at all, because none of these concerns are real. Yeah. This is all bullshit that he's using in order to justify the coming denial of the Holocaust that he's going to engage in. Yeah, it's, I mean, it could not be more coming down the pipeline. Yeah. The idea that we aren't already automatically saying, oh, this guy is denying the Holocaust. We don't even need to go further.
Starting point is 02:06:08 The future doesn't need to exist. Currently, he is denying the Holocaust. I don't, I want to be clear about something. I haven't listened to every single one of his shows. So it's entirely possible. He might already be denying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Starting point is 02:06:20 Yeah. But this is a situation where we could set up a elaborate, like you press a button and confetti shoots out when he finally does it because it's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no... Soon, if not already. Yeah. Like, but here's the thing about that is if you're already denying the Holocaust,
Starting point is 02:06:39 there's no reason to use this many words, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I don't... This feels like a... This feels like scaffolding for a good Holocaust denial. I think maybe he needed to fill time to, like, get his ads in or something. I mean, I don't know, but like if you're denying the Holocaust, you know, you're soft denying it by saying a whole bunch.
Starting point is 02:06:58 But that's not full on denying it. You know, that's him trying to be like, oh, well, some people are 250,000 and some people, you know, like, he's doing that whole thing. That's what I'm saying. It's like he's well versed in being slippery and smooth when it comes to like white identity. Yeah, yeah, kind of talking points and racism and, yeah. But I don't think that he really has sea legs when it comes to like, all right, fuck it. I'm going to do the thing that there's probably no return from. I think you do have to practice being a Nazi.
Starting point is 02:07:33 Again, I have a spotless record not being a Nazi. You got to get your reps in to be, like, believable. Not one time have I ever, have I been a Nazi? It's not even been a thought I've had. I bet you'd suck. I would be such a bad Nazi. So Tucker complains here a little bit about the definition of anti-Semitism. Oh, great.
Starting point is 02:07:55 And that civic religion once again is called Israelism. And it means that any criticism of Israel is by definition bad, and any praise of Israel is by definition virtuous, because the only truly good thing is Israel. And we know that by the actual definition, and there is one, of anti-Semitism. So what is anti-Semitism? And if you've been called it or if someone's ever implied it, you have a problem with the Jews. You're kind of obsessed with the Jews, say people who are completely obsessed with the Jews. You probably wonder, like, what are they accused? me of. Well, here it is. This is the IHRA International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. IHRA,
Starting point is 02:08:37 you may hear this, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Do you know what it is? It's on their website. It's worth looking at. Spent the morning reading it. Fascinating. So here's the actual definition of anti-Semitism. And by the way, this is a now globally recognized definition enshrined in law around the world in more than 40 countries. This is the definition. And I'm quoting. anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews so anti-Semitism is a perception it's a feeling okay is that what a perception is
Starting point is 02:09:13 I thought you're allowed to have any feeling or perception you wanted you could look at facts and come to any conclusion you wanted no no no no no the IHRA didn't say you can't be anti-Semitic so far from what Tucker's read they just described what anti-Semitism is yeah you're free to have whatever feelings you want but people are also free to describe them. There are a lot of different definitions of what constitutes anti-Semitism, and Tucker is choosing the IHRA version intentionally, because it includes this in the list. Quote, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Starting point is 02:09:48 Sure. It also includes this, quote, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. I think that these are both understandable and definitely can be tools of anti-Semitism, but because of how they're worded, many valid criticisms of the Israeli government could fall under these headings. Yeah. And that's messy. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:10:09 It's not, it's imprecise. Yeah, they were assuming that that wouldn't happen. But even so, it's not illegal to be a bigot. Plus, the IHRA put out this definition in 2016. The U.S. approved it in 2019 during Trump's first term, and it isn't legally binding. But you'd think that if Tucker's so upset about this and how it changes the civic religion of the United States, he wouldn't work so hard to reelect the guy who adopted this definition during his first term. You'd think.
Starting point is 02:10:37 Daddy wouldn't be coming home if this mattered so much. Yeah. Seems really hard to justify his actions during 2020 election, 2024. Don't remember those. That was too far back. Oh. How long have we been doing this? Just a couple of days?
Starting point is 02:10:53 Trump just showed up and started behaving weird. Oh, man. He was so weird. He's changed. I can't believe he changed so much within a very short period of time. God, I spent so much time with him before. He was so cool. It's so crazy.
Starting point is 02:11:06 The thing that changed, though, really was him being mean to me. We... Oh. The bully doesn't want to hang out with me anymore. Now I realize he's a bully. Daddy's mean to me. So Tucker has this definition. He kind of riffs a little bit around.
Starting point is 02:11:23 Yeah, I have a little phone. Yeah. Certain perceptions are inherently immoral. They're, quote, anti-Semitic, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Oh, so you don't have to hate the Jews to be anti-Semitic? No. Yeah. That's, well, that answers the question for those of us who don't hate Jews at all.
Starting point is 02:11:43 How could you be anti-Semitic if you don't hate Jews? Well, you can be, according to the official definition of it, continuing the quote, rhetorical, rhetorical, meaning talking, words, speech, formerly. protected no longer, rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and or their property toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. Wait a second. So anti-Semitism is not necessarily hatred of Jews, and it can be expressed toward non-Jews.
Starting point is 02:12:15 So you don't have to hate Jews, and you don't have to express or have these perceptions, these feelings toward Jews. You can be non-Jews, too. What is this? Tucker brings to mind a Nazi Muppet. His delivery is so clownish and infantile that I just can't imagine he's not made of felt. Yeah. Like, what's this?
Starting point is 02:12:37 What are you talking about? How do you lift this glass all the way to your mouth? I don't have feet. Yeah. All of this is very simple to understand and explain. And if he's actually confused by this definition, then he's just revealing he's super dumb. Let's say you carve a star of David onto a guy's girl. garage door. He's not Jewish, but you know that he just signed a deal with some business people
Starting point is 02:12:59 who are. Maybe you don't actually hate Jewish people. Maybe you were in the running for that deal and you're just mad that you didn't get it. That's a very simple scenario where a person who doesn't hate Jewish people can carry out an act that is super anti-Semitic against the property of someone who isn't Jewish. Yeah, it took you about how long to say that? Yeah, that was about as long as it needed. The important thing to understand about a clip like this is that Tucker fully understands this. he's just pretending like he's reading a foreign language because the alternative is to take this conversation seriously and that would start to indict him and make him feel bad about how he's getting ready to deny the Holocaust. I mean, the, how can you be anti-Semitic if you don't hate them? Yeah.
Starting point is 02:13:41 What if you just think there are sub-race of people not equal to you? Yeah, and to be totally clear, I'm not like fully signing off on and endorsing the IHRA's definition. I think that there's some useful things in there that are, you know, quite accurately describing anti-Semitism. And then there's some stuff that's kind of like, I don't know, I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is how we want to phrase some of this. So I'm not here like taking that position against Tucker. Sure. I'm taking the position that what he's saying is stupid. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:14:14 I mean, listen, when you write that stuff down, you're thinking, well, we're probably not going to commit a genocide in a few years, right? but then when it happens you're like well we can't rewrite it now to include sometimes we commit genocides that's real fucked up it's messy yeah it's messy so tucker claims that two-thirds of the examples of anti-semitism are actually just criticism of israel sure in this definition i'm sure well the people who wrote it at the i h r a probably anticipated this would be confusing to you so they gave 11 examples of what anti-Semitism is, just so you know. Like, how do I know if I'm being anti-Semitism? Well, here are 11
Starting point is 02:14:55 examples. Of those 11 examples, and we did the math, two-thirds are criticism of Israel. Good math. The state of Israel. The nation, with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi,
Starting point is 02:15:12 criticism of Israel in two-thirds of the examples that the IHRA gave. What's two-thirds of 11? That's anti-Semitism. So this just isn't true, but it's more complicated than saying that it's false. For example, I brought up that example from the IHRA definition earlier, quote, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor. This is one of the 11 bullet points on the IHRA definition, and it's a situation where things could be in a gray area, which is a great name for a podcast. Someone could
Starting point is 02:15:47 use that standard to call a lot of criticism of the Israeli government anti-Semitic, when the criticism may not be rooted in anti-Semitism at all. At the same time, what that bullet point is describing definitely could be an anti-Semite saying anti-Semitic shit. It's not so much that this is calling all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism. It's more that it's not precise in a way that makes the definition easy to exploit by both ends of that spectrum. Sure, sure, sure, sure. When Tucker says a bunch of these bullet points are just criticism of Israel, what he means is that Israel is that Israel is mentioned in a number of them. The issue is that some of them are things like, quote, holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel.
Starting point is 02:16:27 That mentions Israel, but it's not saying that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. This is an easy distinction to make if you care at all about the truth, which Tucker does not. No. And it's silly to pretend. It's an instantly easy decision to make. Right. It is always important to remember that when they're writing these down, it is generally a response to the most common shit they hear. Not a like, okay, listen, one out of a thousand times we hear this absolutely useful criticism. We get it. We're all for it. We criticize people too. But 99 times out of that 1,000, this motherfucker is saying anti-Semitic shit.
Starting point is 02:17:08 Okay? So we can include that sometimes it's not, but fuck it. Fuck that guy. Yeah. Like this definition would exclude and wrongly label some valid criticism. Sure. But it would also accurately describe a fair amount of people who are like Tucker. Yeah. So that's why it's messy.
Starting point is 02:17:28 Anytime I have ever had a conversation with somebody in good faith and they have a valid criticism and I have a valid criticism, neither of us go, oh, you're anti. We go like, oh, shit, yeah. It's only when there's an invalid criticism that somebody goes, fuck you! Whenever I talk to racist Muppets, it goes bad. Somehow it always goes bad for me. Yeah. So Tucker, you know, he's going down this list of things and he's having a fun time.
Starting point is 02:17:57 That's anti-Semitism, including, here we go. Quote, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. Oh. In other words, if you think what's happening in Gaza, is genocide, well, Nazis committed genocide. Now the state of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, meaning they're trying to eliminate people on the basis of their blood.
Starting point is 02:18:20 You were an anti-Semite. Oh, okay. You're an anti-Semite if you think that. That's kind of tough, because I can kind of see all the sides here. On the one hand, Tucker is making the point that the Holocaust was a genocide and the world agrees that Gaza is too.
Starting point is 02:18:35 If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. That's how it works. It's clear-cut math. On the other hand, I get the point that a group like the IHRA is making, and I get that there are meaningful differences that make the logical formula not fit, but it's also messy. I generally try to avoid these kinds of comparisons because they're fraught with meaning and pain
Starting point is 02:18:55 that I have the luxury to not be personally connected to, but I can also see how some would say that it can't be bigoted just to make a comparison. Sure. But I can also see how, like, that's really attacking someone, in a point that is soft. Yeah, no, I mean, there was a time when it would have been, now it's not. Sorry, bummer. It's messy.
Starting point is 02:19:18 You shouldn't have done it. I definitely don't agree with Tucker, but if there's one bullet point on this list that I can see some real trouble with, it's this one. But I also understand why it's a bullet point. I get it. Well, I mean, nobody really thought they were going to do it. So why wouldn't you put it on there? Because they weren't. Sure.
Starting point is 02:19:37 And now that they were, it's kind of tough. So also, it turns out that being Christian is anti-Semitic. That sounds right. It also tells us that the suggestion that Jews killed Jesus is, quote, classic anti-Semitism. Classic anti-Semitism. There goes the New Testament. The whole New Testament is anti-Semitic, too.
Starting point is 02:19:56 Read the Gospels and see if they fall under that definition. They do. Why does this matter? Well, because about 40 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and our biggest city Miami, Los Angeles, have adopted this. This is their standard that they voted on and adopted. It's in the law. This standard.
Starting point is 02:20:21 So it's anti-Semitic to say that the Jews killed Jesus, and the Gospels don't back this up. No matter how many times Tucker is seen the Passion of the Christ. Come on. There's a beauty to how the story of Jesus' crucifixion is told in the Gospels, where it was definitely the Romans who killed Jesus. But it couldn't have happened without the consent of the public and the scheme that was set in motion by the elites and shit.
Starting point is 02:20:44 Yeah. No one can be blamed for killing Jesus because we all did. That's the idea. Everyone killed him. Yeah. On the cross, Jesus literally said, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Do you think that same guy is interested in finger pointing about who is more responsible?
Starting point is 02:21:00 No, no, no, no, no. They know what they do. They don't know what they do. Those guys, though, they know what they did. Yeah. Do you think that Jesus is like, oh, the avenger. me. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:21:10 Or do you think that blaming certain groups for killing Jesus is part of a human legacy meant to stigmatize out groups? Huh. Basically, I think if you're religious, that's awesome and I respect your beliefs. However, if you're a Christian and you want to argue about who killed Jesus, I think you're a loser who doesn't get the point. And that's really how he feels. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:21:29 I mean, listen, my wife, she loves watching true crime. Loves watching true crime, right? And a lot of the times whenever they do those cold case files, they'll have found out. who did the crime, but they're already dead, right? So at the end of that true crime documentary, they don't go, and now we kill everybody that that guy knows, right? That seems a little bit too crazy, right? Somehow that doesn't seem to be the case for these guys.
Starting point is 02:21:56 Weird. Weird how that works that you can't think for two seconds. Yeah, but you got to keep moving. Yeah, it's important to keep moving. Yeah. Like, who, you know what Tucker makes me think of? a fucking guy who's about to get a temporary swastika tattoo
Starting point is 02:22:13 just to see how it feels. You know, like, but not a permanent one. Just, you know, wash it off. And then he goes to a show and somebody plays Nazi punks fuck off one time and he's like, I'm not wearing this anymore. And then he just walks home sadly, kicking a rock down the street.
Starting point is 02:22:27 I'll never be cool. Like he's fucking Snoopy. Oh, nuts. Yeah. So, um, this is where things got bad. This is where things got bad. This is where things got bad.
Starting point is 02:22:38 it was earlier. Oh, okay. But I looked at this and there was an hour left in this. Fuck you. Fuck you. Nope. Not in ours. Not in ours, God damn it.
Starting point is 02:22:49 So that's why I was confused when he said this. I want to end with probably the most mocked and yet clearest evangelist of this new faith, this Israelism. You could say it's Christianity without the New Testament. And that would be someone, again, who's often made fun of for being dumb or he doesn't know what he's talking about. But it's sometimes people like that that give you the clearest picture of what the people in power really are talking about. And that person would be Sean Hannity over Fox News.
Starting point is 02:23:24 Not a bad guy, not a mean guy. Lifelong Catholic. If you asked him, are you a Catholic? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm a Catholic. And he think he is. Not an attacker, even a claim to understand his personal religious faith. faith. But watch Sean Hannity, cradle Catholic, describe the Pope. This is his reaction to the President of the United States attacking the Pope, the Catholic Church. And here's Sean Hannity's response as a Catholic to that. Watch. He doesn't want any conflict anywhere, and he was talking
Starting point is 02:24:01 about violence. And I'm like, have you even read the Bible? Have you read the conflicts, the wars that or that the Israeli people that were they were empowered by God to defeat their enemies. Did you ever hear the story about David slaying Goliath through the power of God with a slingshot against this massive giant or the conflicts and the wars of King Saul and so on and so forth? And frankly, all throughout Israel's history, they've been, you know, surrounded by enemies. But as God's chosen people, they against all odds keep. winning pretty amazing so it does take a kind of cable news mentality to say of the pope hey you ever read the bible it's hilarious on the ones hey the thing about the pope is guys never read the bible he's just
Starting point is 02:24:55 the pope so there's that got his ass got his ass so here's how i know that my brain is just gone Yeah. I was listening to that and I was like, I got to listen to Sean Hannity's show. This sounds like shit. He sounds so boring. I got to check out an episode of this. That's not good. No, that's no good.
Starting point is 02:25:18 So to be clear, Hannity is not splitting with the Pope because the Pope criticized Israel. Hannity is splitting with the Pope because the Pope and Trump got into a Twitter fight. Incidentally, the day after Tucker did this episode, Hannity got on his show and said he was no longer a Catholic and that it totally. wasn't because of the Twitter fight that Trump got into with the Pope, and it actually happened a long time ago, and he's not a loser. Tucker can try his best to make this all a big Israel or Jewish conspiracy, but the truth of the matter is this is about Trump. Hannity sided with Trump over his lifelong religion because that's what people around Trump are expected to do. Hannity gets it. He's a blowhard who thinks way too highly of himself, but I think he at least
Starting point is 02:25:59 understands the game that he's playing. The game all of these people decided to enter in. into was one that was scripted well in advance and Trump wins. In order to become a Trump media surrogate, you have to debase yourself because the thing you're doing is preposterous. It's Donald Trump and you want him to be president. Sure, Trump is crazy, but you're the guy who tried to sincerely argue that the crazy guy should be president, so maybe you're the crazy one. It comes with money and a lively, mean audience and a proximity to power, but the price is that you've lost from the jump. Hannity gets it. He's playing to lose and he doesn't care how stupid he looks because he's got an audience of one. All of these other Trump people are kidding themselves thinking that somehow they're going to be the one person who enters into a shady deal with Trump and comes out ahead. All of them are they've already lost and they have no idea. Insane. If you're Tucker and this is your response, you look like a crybaby loser. If he had anything, he would be releasing documents and taking Trump down with his tax report.
Starting point is 02:27:03 turns or whatever intel he could get his hands on. But this, it's just more explicit Nazi whining where Trump is maybe now the Antichrist. By doing a show like this, Tucker is more or less revealing that this is the best he's got. And if you're Trump, you've got to feel pretty good about the decision to cut this loser loose. Because he sucks. He's no threat. He's got a low IQ and his family knows he's fucking stupid. And he means a psychiatrist.
Starting point is 02:27:27 He really does. Yes. This is terrible. You are. This is a white flag. This is bullshit. Yeah, Hannity's going to get through this. And I got to watch that boring-ass show.
Starting point is 02:27:39 I mean, I do. I was listening to that and I'm like, he's drunk, right? Like, that sounds a little drunk. He sounds terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, people, he's a slings. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:27:51 Yeah. Hey, Pope. You know about David and Gly? If Hannity's drinking, I think we might have something to look into. I feel like if there's someone who cares less. Yeah. about being taken seriously, then Tucker, it's got to be Hannity. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:28:06 Like, he's been doing it for too long. Yeah. To have, if he gave a shit, it's way too. It's way past expiration date. Yeah. I kind of want to check out a Hannity or two. Yeah. I might do that.
Starting point is 02:28:16 Eh. Yeah. Who knows where Alex is going to be? Who knows where he is right now? So look, dude. Yeah. The Pope. He just said some chill anti-war stuff.
Starting point is 02:28:25 Sure. Right. And then Trump was like, uh, you're not Christian. He was kind of a dick. Yeah, man. It was ugly. but listen to the content, which is actually more interesting and less funny and a little meteor than it seems at first. So the Pope is saying, look, I'm a Christian leader, the Christian
Starting point is 02:28:43 gospel, which I represent, however imperfectly this Pope may represent it, from my perspective imperfectly, but whatever, all Christian leaders have a duty to consult the gospel as they think about their positions on things. That's the whole point, is the gospel. And as a Christian leader, the leader of the biggest Christian denomination, like I'm not for war. And maybe some wars are possibly defensible under just war theory, which no one ever really explains. But you can imagine a war of self-defense that most Christians would feel comfortable with. Being a Christian probably doesn't necessarily mean you oppose all violence in all circumstances.
Starting point is 02:29:23 Maybe it should. But in practice, it doesn't. But this pope is just saying something pretty conventional. like that. Nothing crazy, actually. No name-calling. No great departure from Christian theology or ethics as people have understood it for thousands of years. And the response is, hey, you haven't read the Bible? There's a ton of killing in the Bible. Israel's constantly under attack by its neighbors, the Malachiites, the Philistines, you name it, and they fight back with God's blessing and they kill. And that's what they're supposed to be doing. Which is true, by the way. That is all
Starting point is 02:30:01 in there. But it's not in the New Testament. And for Christians, that's the difference. It's not a matter of the Old Testament being irrelevant. It's certainly not. And Christians understand it as one long story. And as Jesus famously said, I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to bring it to its intended conclusion.
Starting point is 02:30:23 I'm here so that the law will have its desired effect on you. But Jesus never offers a single order. to kill or hurt anybody. And there's no place in the entire New Testament, the four Gospels, the letters that follow, mostly from Paul, and the vision at the end by St. John called Revelation, there's not one page or sentence in the entire New Testament in which Jesus is recorded saying, they're very annoying, or they're a threat, or they disagree with us, or they're of another faith, kill them. Not once. In fact, it's the opposite of that. In fact, it's the opposite of that. In fact,
Starting point is 02:31:03 it's so clearly the opposite of that. You have to wonder who's reading the Bible and who isn't. Yeah, who's reading that Bible. So after Trump threatened to end Iranian civilization in one day, the Pope made a little comment that was begging both sides to calm down and saying that this wasn't good for anyone. In response, Trump tweeted at the Pope saying that the Pope was, quote, weak on crime and took credit for him being chosen as Pope
Starting point is 02:31:27 because the bishops were all trying to suck up to Trump by picking an American. Yeah, I'd say that's probably true. the whole history of appeasing fascists, it's probably not a great sign that Trump is bragging that he thinks that the Vatican chose a new Pope based on their fears of what he might do to them. Yeah. So that kind of sounds like appeasing. It does. So Trump encouraged him to, quote, get his act together as Pope, which is a ridiculous sentiment.
Starting point is 02:31:49 I love it. I love that. Shape up Pope. I'm, I'm, see, this is the problem. Sometimes whenever you go after the Pope, I'm fine with it. Well, the phrasing of it is so fucking crazy. Pope, get your shit together, man. So that day, Trump continued to talk shit about Pope Leo and then posted a picture of himself as Jesus.
Starting point is 02:32:07 The next day, Trump kept on talking shit and saying that the Pope should stay out of politics. Then the President of Iran tweeted a message of support to the Pope. The day after that, the Pope responded, saying, quote, The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone, and the message of the gospel is very clear. Blessed are the peacemakers. I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I'm here to do, what the church is here to do. We're not politicians. We don't deal with foreign policy with the same perspective.
Starting point is 02:32:38 He might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the gospel as a peacemaker. In response, Trump tweeted, quote, Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a nuclear bomb is absolutely unacceptable. Thank you for your attention to this matter. All caps. is back to the Pope.
Starting point is 02:33:04 Can someone get the Pope on the line? I mean, oh boy. So then the Pope sub-tweeted Trump saying, quote, woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. You know what I love about the Pope? Cowardous.
Starting point is 02:33:26 Huge fan. You sub-tweeting people. Yeah. That is bullshit. That undercuts every single fucking. bullshit thing you could possibly say about fucking anything. If you're sub-tweeting a motherfucker, it's because you're a coward. It's because you're a loser.
Starting point is 02:33:41 It's because you fucking suck. Wait till the end of the story, George. Shit, Pope. Wait. Fuck this guy. It's a reasonable reaction, but wait until the end. Sure. So, after the Pope said this, Trump accused the Pope of supporting Iran having nukes and
Starting point is 02:33:56 insisted that they totally weren't fighting. Hell yeah. Then the Pope came out and said that some of the things he tweeted and said, were written weeks in advance and were not responses to things Trump said. Quote, much of what has been written since then has been more commentary upon commentary, trying to interpret what has been said. The talk that I gave at the prayer meeting for peace a couple days ago
Starting point is 02:34:16 was prepared two weeks ago, well before the president ever commented on myself and on the message of peace that I'm promoting. And yet, as it happens, it was looked at as if I was trying to debate again the president, which is not my interest at all. And that gave everyone kind of an off-ramp, so everything cooled down after that
Starting point is 02:34:33 because the Pope was like, I don't want to debate, bro. All of these people can go fuck themselves. It's not good. The idea of you fucks being allowed to talk to each other, let alone through the internet.
Starting point is 02:34:50 Infuriates me. The president tweeted a picture of himself as Jesus and the Pope tweets anything. I mean, we can't handle it. Everybody go home. Everybody go home. home for a good two weeks.
Starting point is 02:35:04 Think about what you've done. Get rid of all your clothes. Wear potato sacks. And then let's all go outside together as one. And let me say this, Pope. Trump is wronger. He's more wrong. No, I disagree. I disagree. You can't, you lose.
Starting point is 02:35:20 You lose. Now, I get what you're saying. When you start a fight with the person that you know is crazy, then you're crazy. Either you're crazy and you lose or you're crazy and you win. So you lost. I get that argument, but also Trump is definitely wronger. Sure, but that's like saying that the lightning is wronger than the clouds.
Starting point is 02:35:40 Like, this dude's going to be a piece. We know what he does. You know what he does. The responsibility is on you now. Well, I think that you're undercutting the Pope. Yeah, fuck that guy. Is the Pope not a force of nature? Absolutely not.
Starting point is 02:35:53 Apparently, he's a little loser who cries and whines whenever the President mean to him. Yeah, and like, Trump is like, hey, man, could someone get the Pope on the line? Why didn't he call Leo? He could have. Leo's Agami. Why didn't he call a guy? He could have called him. Yeah, he could have called the Pope.
Starting point is 02:36:10 True. That's available to him. He's the president of the goddamn states. The Pope was traveling. Fuck. So this has nothing to do with Israel or any kind of grand political conspiracy where people are making rational choices.
Starting point is 02:36:22 We have a lunatic as our president and he was trying to bully the Pope. That's all that happened. Yep. Also, a major point about Tucker's clip, what he said, He and Alex Jones have a fundamental disagreement about the New Testament. Alex believes that Jesus is not a pacifist at all, and he encourages righteous violence
Starting point is 02:36:39 and says that people who preach that Jesus wants us to turn the other cheek are globalists, trying to pacify the Christian patriots. These two cannot possibly have compatible religious views, and yet they pretend to be so in sync with each other. Almost like neither of them actually cares about this shit at all, and it's all for show. Yeah, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So we got one last clip here, and I'll say that the reason there was another hour left is because Tucker interviews some celebrity online Orthodox pastor, which I find to be difficult to understand because I feel like that's prideful.
Starting point is 02:37:18 Yeah. And so an Orthodox pastor shouldn't have a YouTube channel where they're like self-promoting and stuff. I feel like that kind of contradict. Oh, well. Celebrity itself is against God. It's weird. Anyway, I didn't care to listen to whatever. That was going to be 50-50 shot.
Starting point is 02:37:39 It was going to be about how the Holocaust wasn't real. Tucker will get there eventually. I imagine so. Yeah. But for now, here is a good off-ramp. In Jesus's very first sermon in the very first gospel, Matthew, Matthew 5, the famous sermon on the Mount, he addresses this really cool. clearly. And I think anybody reading it for the first or hundredth time comes away thinking,
Starting point is 02:38:04 well, a lot of things, but among them would be Jesus is really down on violence and he's really down on greed, very much opposed to both because he says it really, really clearly. And not just down on violence and greed, but taking the prescriptions against those things in the Old Testament and accelerating them to a point that shocking, really, to modern ears, to ancient ears, to to any human being, the demands that Jesus makes on people are shocking. He says, for example, all in Matthew 5 worth reading, amazing, really, radical, not really of this world at all, which is kind of the whole point. He says, you've been told not to kill, don't commit murder.
Starting point is 02:38:48 Moses told you that. I'm telling you, don't be angry. If you curse somebody, you risk going to hell. that's what he says. So you can debate what that means. Is it possible to apply that standard? Can you actually live up to that pretty hard? But what you can't conclude
Starting point is 02:39:11 is that Jesus is in favor of dropping bombs on kids, blowing up entire apartment buildings, raping people in prisons. You can't conclude that because it's the opposite of that. And so if you have concluded that, by reference to Old Testament texts, the Book of Ruth, you're espousing the tenets of religion, but it's not Christianity, it's our new religion, Israelism.
Starting point is 02:39:44 That's just what it is. Call it that. Call it that. Just be honest about what you're saying. Outline it for us. Give us the creed. They give a new name for it. Give us 10 points.
Starting point is 02:39:55 We can all recite them. People who don't can be punished. But tell us what the religion is. Be straightforward with us. Stop playing this head trip on us and telling us that something that's clearly anti-Christian is, in fact, the real Christianity because that's just not true. And this kind of deception is making everybody crazy. Spring is the most refreshing time of year.
Starting point is 02:40:18 Nothing complements it better than Black Rifle Coffee. Lots of it. So that clip started with the sermon on the Mount really being against greed. And it's nice that it ends with him. plugging a sponsor, super fun, kind of book-endie. And I would say that I don't agree with Tucker what he's saying. Yeah. But spiritually underneath what he's saying is people need to just be more clear about what they believe.
Starting point is 02:40:48 Yeah. And I would say you too, buddy. Yeah. You're talking about yourself. These kind of lies are driving everybody crazy? No, they're driving you crazy. Yeah. Because you are a clear Nazi.
Starting point is 02:40:59 Yeah. And, yeah, I mean. You just can't. He feels so free when he's able to say, like, isn't it funny how stupid Trump was that we've been pretending it wasn't the case this whole time? Man. If he would just let go and be like throwing slurs around. Yeah. Talking about how, like, maybe Hitler was right.
Starting point is 02:41:19 Have fun with it. I think he would feel so free. Yeah. He's being driven crazy by a fear that black rifle coffee will leave him. Yeah, man. I just don't know. It feels like it feels like
Starting point is 02:41:33 that when you win you should get to celebrate like this is the problem with these kind of guys, right? Good people, cool people, score a touchdown, they have an end zone celebration.
Starting point is 02:41:45 They do something. They throw the ball into the stands. They live a life. You just did something cool and eventually you'll die. Right? Guys like these, eh,
Starting point is 02:41:56 I don't want to do. I don't want them. Pathetic. Pathetic. Enjoy your win. Be a Nazi to the max. Either, yeah, they're the kind of people who, like, only have two modes. They don't have fun touchdown celebration.
Starting point is 02:42:10 No. They have that, or they snap someone's neck. They, like, go way too far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that, yeah, Tucker's the boring mope version. Loser. Loser. Loser.
Starting point is 02:42:23 And it's too fucking obvious that, like, you're out. You got cut out. Like, yes, he was starting to go against Trump and he was far more open than some other people were about trying to shift his brand up. But, like, he got fired. He was on his way to quitting, but he also got fired. Maybe he was on his way to quitting. Bingo. He looked like he was on his way to quitting, but maybe being on your way to quitting is a nice way to get a little bit more so you don't quit.
Starting point is 02:42:54 But if you've been fired, fuck it. Yeah. Yeah. And if he's going to come out with a show like this that is transparently anti-semitic Nazi talking point garbage and he's going to be like, oh, maybe Trump's the Antichrist, all this shit. And he's not pulling out blackmail that he has on Trump. Yeah. And he doesn't have anything. Nope.
Starting point is 02:43:17 He's impotent. Yep. And I would expect he's just going to lash out with more of this and see if there's enough money in. this territory. Yeah. And then if it is, he'll get that tattoo permanent instead of the stick on. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:43:34 I mean, I guess the question for all these guys, right, is can we jump or do we have to like little bit at a time? You know, are we just going to dip our toes in and then take another little step out of the kiddie pool and so on and so forth? Or are we just going to jump off the diving board and go into Nazi, right? And it's frustrating to see them try the stairs when it feels like to all appearances, get on that diving board and do a backflip, buddy. Well, and I think when you're in an environment where everybody is going down the stairs,
Starting point is 02:44:12 it looks normal. Yeah. But when you have like, Nick Fuentes has gone off the diving board. That guy from Fresh and Fit podcast has gone off the diving board. Like these other people are doing moves. and you look silly inching your way into the water. That guy did a twist and then a flip. And then was like, and the Holocaust didn't happen.
Starting point is 02:44:35 You're like, maybe it was a bunch of people. Shut up. Also, you're in your 50s. Yeah, absolutely. Get in the fucking pool or dry off. Absolutely. Splash or get the fuck out. You fucking prick.
Starting point is 02:44:47 Yeah. Anyway, I hate this guy. Yeah. I'm sorry that I did this. But, hey, Alex was out of studio because who knows what the fuck is there on. Are he? He's completely bailed on his own career, apparently. Yeah, that's fair.
Starting point is 02:44:59 That's fair. So, anyway, I hope Alex comes back because I'm not covering Harrison. Mm-mm. The Dark Ages didn't work. Yeah. And now I'm thinking about watching a Hannity episode. What happens if Hannity turned into real good crazy? I remember Hannity when I was with my grandfather.
Starting point is 02:45:15 He would listen to him on the radio. And he was fucking nuts. Was this, when he had that, let freedom ring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That song is about domestic violence. Man, we are old, and that was fine back then.
Starting point is 02:45:29 Oh, boy. Yeah, I remember those days too, and I slot him in as kind of a boring guy. Yeah. But, I mean, we're 20 years later. Yeah, maybe he stepped up his game. Yeah, we'll see. That sucks. Oh, well.
Starting point is 02:45:46 Oh, well. We'll see what we find for next time. But until then, we have a website. Indeed we do. It's knowledgefight.com. Yep, we'll be back. But until then, I'm new. I'm Leo. I'm Deasyx Clark. I am the mysterious professor.
Starting point is 02:45:56 Who, yeah! And now here comes the sex robots. Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.

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