Piers Morgan Uncensored - Tucker Carlson on Trump, Putin, Churchill & More

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Tucker Carlson’s career has taken many twists and turns, and he himself admits he’s faced no small amount of failures. But Carlson is now supremely thankful for all of them. His rocky road to success has led him around the world, and today it brings him to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a long discussion With Piers Morgan. Together the two attempt to put the world to rights. Their discourse ranges from the second term of President Donald Trump, the attempts on his life, the Biden Administration, wokeism, western civilisation, World War 2 and freedom of speech. They agree, they disagree, but most of all, they learn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First week has been extraordinary. I've never sitting like it. It's shocking to me. So you don't have to obey anymore. And all the liberal white ladies are like, whoa, yes you do! The menopausal, angry liberal chick was just too much.

The bishop lecturing Trump. My bishop. This is not a Christian organization at all. This is a very angry, hateful organization run by dreadfully unhappy middle-aged lesbians, which is exactly what it is. The Biden administration wanted to kill Trump. I mean, there's no doubt.

Do you genuinely think? Of course, I know that. Why is put my enemy? He's never done anything to me. Oh, you're a Putin puppet? No, I'm not. I'm an American. Platforming.

Platforming. Talking to people we disagree with. No! How can you say Churchill saved Great Britain when it's in its current condition? Well, you could say he certainly saved it at a time. So you're in a military alliance with Joseph Stalin? You shut the fuck up.

You have no right to lecture me about anything. Okay? Megan Markle does not represent black people in the United States. I don't know if you knew that. No question she doesn't. He doesn't represent anybody. Where I was completely wrong in COVID, I got very overly emotionally engaged. Had you already gotten the vaccine?

Yeah. Did you know that it made you impotent when you got it? But here's my point, though. I'm such a dick. I can't control myself. But that's why I like you. It's probably getting on so well. Well, I've hosted some uncensored shows from strange places in my time, but never anywhere quite like this.

And strange, only in fascinating. We're at the heart of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh. I've never been before. My guest, Tucker Carlson, has never been here before either. So we're both newbies to Saudi Arabia. And we're going to do a little head to head. I grill him for an hour. He grills me for an hour.

We tossed a virtual coin on somebody's phone. I won. I get to go first. So I get to have him right where I want him. Tucker Carson, welcome. Well, good morning. Dude, do you ever think in all the alcohol-free gin joints in all the all the alcohol-free gin joints in all the world, we would be finally sitting down together in the middle of Saudi Arabia.

The world has gotten so weird that it actually doesn't shock me. It doesn't shock. Pyongyang might shock me, but this feels like closer to the center than it used to, for sure. We've been here a couple of days. I don't know about you. I've been genuinely stunned by the reality of Saudi Arabia compared to what I've been told it was like.

I have been, but I've met so many people. I have so many friends who, you know. Oh, where were you? I was just in Riyadh or Al-Ula or I was, you know, vacationing with my family in Saudi. I ran into, yesterday ran into two Orthodox Jewish guys from Brooklyn in Riyadh. And what are you doing here? Oh, we're looking to open a kosher or something or other. Really? So I think a lot of our preconceptions are absurd, actually, or mine, I'll speak for myself. But I find that every place I go. You know, you think you know what you're going to find, but it's totally different, totally different. Moscow being the greatest example, but there are a million others.

You know what I mean? The most extraordinary example of that was you walking through the streets of Washington, I think just before the inauguration. That was extraordinary. Where normally I would have expected you in the heart of liberal country to be a reviled figure chased by people down the street, having sackcloth thrown at you. Actually, it was the complete opposite, which was very telling about the change of mood in somewhere like D.C. I spent 35 years there, basically my whole life there, and I had to leave ultimately.

because I was perceived as close to Trump. And it was very hostile, really hostile. I don't think Washington is a liberal city in the true sense of liberal. It's not open or relaxed, but it's institutional. You know, it's based on the federal government and the way things are, the status quo is very important to the people who live there.

And anyone who seeks to disrupt it is really hate it. I mean, Eidiamin would get a far warmer welcome in my neighborhood than Donald Trump got. It's fine. World leader, it's okay. Donald Trump, not allowed. And so to be, you know, greeted warmly in Washington, really because of Trump, it had nothing to do with me. But, you know, people were happy that Trump got elected in Washington.

So I'm not, I don't fully understand what's going on, but I was shocked by it. I noticed it. I went to my first ever rally by any politician. I went to the Madison Square Garden rally, happened to just got to New York. And I thought, you know, I'm going to go down there. And I spoke to President Trump in the morning, and I told him I was going to go down. And he said, you're going to enjoy it. It's like a rock concert. Yes.

And it kind of is. His rallies are like rock concerts. But I thought, middle of Manhattan, right before an election, I remembered 2016, I thought it could be Mayhem down there. I was worried about where I was going to be dropped or were there going to be tens of thousands of protesters, marches through the streets of New York, very liberal city again. And it was extraordinary. I was there for a few hours and there were 50,000 people outside, but they were all trying

to get in. They were Trump supporters without tickets. And I said to the Secret Service, how many protesters do you? How many protesters turned up? 150 people turned up in the heart of Manhattan to protest. And I thought then, well, I thought after he got shot, he's going to win. And I thought after Biden got politically shot, it was even more likely he'd win because I thought they're going to coronate Kamala in this ridiculous manner.

She was hopeless the first time around. It's not going to work. Even more chance of him winning. But by the time I got to that rally, I was like, he's home and dry. I mean, he's going to win big. Yes. I thought that, too. I was shocked by it.

And I thought, you know, is it a kind of surrender? Is it, you know, Trump just built a bigger siege ramp and just knocked down the walls? Well, the resistance just collapsed. But the resistance was fake in the first place. So they used, I mean, in my country, and I know yours as well, they used race politics to make everyone shut up. Like you can't talk or you're a racist. And the truth is that was enforced by unhappy liberal white ladies. and they're not that many of them, actually.

And they had like a hammerlock on the culture of my country and really oppressed it. And then when they took power through Joe Biden or attempted Kamala Harris, they did like a terrible job. They just didn't do a good job. And so the second somebody just said out loud, like this is all nonsense.

Like these people don't know what they're doing. The race politics stuff is fake. Look at all the black people outside the rally. All the Hispanic guys like love Trump. It's nonsense. You don't have to obey anymore. And all the liberal white ladies are like, Oh, yes, you do.

And everyone, it's like, shout up, liberal white ladies. Like, we're sick of this. I mean, the tyranny of the menopausal, angry liberal chick was just too much. And so it's like Liberation Day. I mean, the fact that Trump won the Hispanic vote was truly extraordinary. Ever met a liberal Salvadoran? No, there's not one. Of course not.

The whole thing was totally fake. And it was a certain class of people. It wasn't just menopausal liberal white ladies, though they were in charge, ruling through fear. But it was a whole class of people whose court was being overturned by Trump, and they used kind of symbolic figures like Megan Markle, as you found out, as their proxies to hold power. But those proxies never represented the groups they supposedly represented. Megan Markle does not represent black people in the United States.

I don't know if you knew that. No question. She doesn't. Don't worry. I'm very familiar. She doesn't represent anybody. Of course not. A very elite, hypocritical group of people who are really going to get on in history as the most hypocritical group of people ever.

And the most incompetent. Like, they don't know how the power grid works. They can't fix a car. They don't know anything. They're totally useless. They're parasites. And when given the chance to rule, they, like, wrecked the country because they don't know how to do anything. And it was all a lie.

And it just turns out you can get pretty far in aggression. There's sort of a famous battle at Gettysburg, the pivotal battle of the Civil War in the United States where You know, the union, a union detachment led by a guy from Maine called Joshua Chamberl, and it was a history professor at a college in Maine, led a charge with no ammunition. And they just yelled loud enough that the Confederates like, oh my gosh, you know, and they surrendered. That was an honorable thing to do. A very similar thing just happened in the United States were like these super angry, unhappy people acting out of the agony of their own barren personal lives.

Like, I'm in charge because you're a racist. And everyone's like, okay. They had no bullets in the gun. actually. What was fascinating to watch it all go down in the last two years was you could go back two years and Trump appeared to be dead and very politically like it was over. All the momentum were swinging behind people like Wanda Santis. It was like the party were desperate to move on from Trump. He was really in the wilderness. Yes. Apparently floundering and apparently over and then almost from the

moment they started the attempt to put him in prison the law fair as it's become known. From the moment they started that, I just noticed, I mean, obviously, he couldn't fail to notice it, but his poll numbers began to tick up and up and up. And the more they did it, and the more cases they threw at Trump,

the more popular he grew. What do you think that was about? I think it's about exactly what you said. It was the moment, I think it was August of 2022 when they raided his wife's underwear drawer in an armed raid at Marilago on a documents charge and then tried to tell us he had nuclear secrets in his dressing room or something. It was also stupid.

It was so obviously political persecution conducted by the Justice Department, which in our tradition, in our country, you can't do that. That is a true attack on democracy. It was really at that moment, I think, that, I mean, I was on vacation with my kids, and my wife and kids, and I read that. I was in a foreign country, and I thought, ooh, he's going to be president. Did you, you instinct to be felt? Instantly.

If they're going to try and do this. Instantly. And I said that to my, actually, my son said that to me, We're sitting smoking a cigar. And he's like, Trump's going to win. And I thought, he works in politics. He's a little better at the Sinai. But I was like, yeah, that's totally true.

And then the opposition, you know, he had very capable, a couple, I thought, very capable people who I like, Ron DeSantis, prime among them. Yeah. And the problem of Desancus was not that he was incompetent. He's supremely competent. And I think he did a wonderful job in Florida. And I really like Ron DeSantis. But he was totally a marionette of his donors, utterly. And that became really clear on, like, the war in Ukraine.

Like Ronda Saitis comes out and says, oh, the war in Ukraine is not central to American national security. And Ken Griffin, his biggest donor, reels him. And the next day, Ronda Setson's like, oh, no, it's really important. Do we continue to send hundreds of billions to Zelensky or whatever? And then his donors demand a hate speech law in Florida. He pushes it. It passes. It was too obvious. I would say this to his face. I hope he sees this because I mean it with love. You can't be a pure puppet of your biggest donors. One's influenced by the people around them. Donors have a great deal of influence, inordinate influence probably. But you can't do exactly what they say every time. And it made DeSantis look weak and it made him look controlled. And this is a moment where people are kind of hip to that trick and they sort of know the politicians. You know what I mean? Aren't really acting on their behalf or even independently. They're acting because some billionaire told him to do what they're doing. And I think DeSantis was just too obvious about that. And it destroyed him. When the lawfare continued, it seemed to me the tipping point where I was convinced Trump would win was the attempt to prosecute him, but ultimately what he was convicted of doing, which was shuffling a bit of paperwork over an alleged one-night stand with a pawn star 18 years before, which on every level was so ridiculous.

And I immediately looked at the polls and what was fascinating was, I mean, no Americans thought this was a good idea to go after Trump over something so trivial to actually drive. drag an American president for the first time through a criminal court over something so pathetic and so inconsequential, so meaningless, was such an obvious example, it seemed to me, of a petty, political, spiteful move to try and shut Trump down. And by doing it over stormy Daniels, it just seemed to me, well, if you're going to do this, he's going to win the election. Americans are not going to put up with this. With respect, I don't think. I don't think. I think the president handled it in exactly the right way. I would have said, all right, everybody here in this room,

all my judges are right against me, raise your hand if you haven't sent money to your girlfriend or boyfriend. I mean, let's be honest, like, let's make that the new standard. If you're an American politician and you've ever sent money to your girlfriend or boyfriend, because a lot of them, those guys have boyfriend, then you're disqualified.

So we're gonna make that the new standard. And there's no Congress. No, I'm serious. It was like, Matt Gates, like, oh, we're gonna leak the, you know, Ethics Committee investigation we did on it, and Gates said something, which I wish had come true, which is, okay, fine, let's leak all the ethics committee investigations, all the sealed investigations into sitting members of Congress. I mean, if you want to play that game, let's play the game, right? And I spent my life there. Because it is a game.

I mean, that's only a game. It was a critical game. It was a supreme hypocrisy of, you know, people like Mitch McConnell or pick one with personal lives that would not withstand scrutiny. They wouldn't. And, you know, God can sort that out. It's not really my place to judge. But as long as we're judging, okay, let's judge. They're not in a position to talk like that at all. A lot of these guys are completely controlled by their personal peccadillas, by their personal failings. And everyone knows that.

So like, how about stop? How about shut up? You know, and I wish Trump had said that, because he knows that, because it's true. Well, I just talked to Democrats and I went, let me get this straight. Bill Clinton, who I thought was a very good politician, interviewed him a few times, very... Well, he's certainly a great politician. one of the best natural politicians ever. Yeah.

But I say, you know, in the end, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the fact you paid somebody off $850,000 in another scandal, you put it all together, you think, okay, if you're going to play this card with Trump, do you not understand that this is going to come back and haunt you guys for eternity? In other words, if you get to that kind of ludicrously petty level where you drag a president through a criminal court over something so trivial, then. then this will never stop. Right.

Well, it also devalues Americans' faith in their justice system, which is a real cost. It's, I think, a country-destroying cost. And if there's one thing, you know, there's this constant conversation about what makes America, as we say, exceptional. Why is it different? Why do people want to come here?

And you often hear the dumbest people in our society say, it's because of our free market economy, you know. We're rich. There are tons of rich countries. People don't want to move. A lot of rich people in Lagos, Nigeria. No one moves there. The main thing that we have always had is a fair justice system, not perfect, but basically pretty fair, where every citizen is treated equally.

I mean, that's the promise of the United States. And if you tamper with that, you're really messing with the core formula of the country. I mean, there's an egalitarian spirit that undergirds all of our institutions. I'm a citizen, I am your equal. That's a northern European concept that was brought to North America 250 years ago. It's worked great. People like it, no matter where they're from. And they are destroying that.

The left is destroying that with the complicity of lots of Republicans, too. It's not just the Democratic Party. But I don't think we should mess with that at all. The other pivotal moment, it seemed to me, in the race, was the assassination attempt, where Trump's reaction, I mean, my brother was a British Army colonel, for example. And he said to me, you never know how people are going to react until they get shot. That's right. That some people that you would least expect crumble, cry.

cry out for their mother, other people who you may not expect to be that courageous, leap up and go straight back into the fire. And he said, you just don't know. Trump's reaction was genuinely extraordinary because he didn't know if there were other shooters in that audience. His natural gut reaction was to stand up, say, fight, fight, fight with blood pouring over his face. And it became not just an iconic image, but I'm certain that if it was any doubt, that's the moment he won the election. Did you feel the same? Of course, because the The prerequisite, the prerequisite for leadership is bravery, physical bravery, not just conceptual bravery.

I'm so brave. But actual bravery. You know, the guy who leads the tribe is the guy who, you know, repels the invaders, period. That's been true since we lived in caves and it's never going to not be true. And you know, Kamala Harris would like it not to be true because she's obviously a coward who follows instructions. And the leadership of both parties is that way. And Trump is unusual in that he has bravery.

And people follow that. It's a matter of instinct. But I do think that that shooting, I hope that will be examined. What's happened with the investigation? We don't know anything about this case. Well, Pierce, I don't know, because you're not from the United States. It's very common for assassins of presidents to have no motive at all. Extraordinary.

At the age of 20, to have no social media profile. He never went on the internet. Nothing. Kind of weird. No record at all. Yeah, no, no. No cutlery in his own home. Advanced bomb making skills.

Operating drones, bringing a range finder making a pretty, making a pretty great offhand shot at 150 yards under duress. It's just normal in America. I mean, the whole thing is so nuts, actually, the fact that the Secret Service allowed this to happen, which they did. Guys on the most, oh, if I was running the Secret Service for the day, what's the first place you'd look? Oh, it would be the flat roof with a direct line on the stage.

You think? And there was not one agent positioned or assigned to look at that. None. They had no idea. Why? Well, because they wanted to kill Trump, obviously. The Biden administration wanted to kill Trump. I mean, there's no doubt.

Do you genuinely think that? Of course, I know that. And I know that by what I saw. In other words, if you leave your child inside a locked car on a hot day and go into a casino and spend three hours gambling and the kid suffocates, I can say, Piers, you killed your child. You said, well, I didn't mean to. It doesn't matter. You didn't care enough about your child that you went back and rescued him from suffocation.

It's demonstrable. Your intent can be divined from your actions. If you allow a roof 140, 30, 40 yards away to remain unsurveiled, a guy with a rangefinder and a drone to come into your area while the president of president of president speaking, you don't care about saving the life of that man. I actually thought what happened at the golf course a few weeks later was even worse in this sense. This is a few weeks after he's actually been shot. Yes.

He's playing at his own golf course. where he regularly plays at weekends when he's in Florida. And he was five minutes away of walking up to a green where if one secret service agent who happened to walk ahead had not seen the barrel of a rifle poking out of a bush, that guy had a loaded AK-47, he had body armor, he was ready to go, Trump would be dead. And that would have been, I think, the biggest scandal ever,

because that was just weeks after they'd already survived. an assassination bit. But no one makes much of a fuss about that either. How many members of Congress did that guy meet with a lot? He was in Ukraine, which is controlled by the U.S. Intel services. I mean, that's just a fact. He was in Ukraine, which is a kind of wellspring of lunacy. Sorry, I know you support it, but it's done more to destabilize the West than anything that's happened in my lifetime. And the amount of evil that has emanated from that country, the amount of assassinations that have come from Ukraine, I happen to know, is very high. And so this guy is in Ukraine and having content.

Well, how many members of Congress did he meet with and what do they talk about? This is an assassin. No, we don't know. But again, the media, fascinating, mainstream media, when was the last big piece you read about either assassination? And yet if that had been an attempt on Obama, on Biden, on Harry, on anyone on the Democrat side, they wouldn't stop talking about it. Because everybody knows what this is. These are not lone gunmen any more than, you. You know, Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman.

The lone gunman killed by a lone gunman two days later. Okay, okay now. I mean, it's just so horrifying that clearly both of these guys were agents of the permanent government in Washington or globally. And there's like no honest person who could deny that. It's just so obvious. And I think that people don't want to wrestle with that because it's incredibly disturbing. And I think it's also possible that people in Trump administration don't want to deal with it. I mean, they're still guarded by the Secret Service.

Yeah. And whatever elements tried to murder Trump, are still in the positions they occupied this summer. I watched him the other day walking through a Las Vegas casino. And everyone was like, isn't that great? And I was like, wow, really? They're letting the president walk through an open casino with endless amounts of people milling around.

I think you can carry guns in Vegas, I think, can you? It seemed to me a very high risk environment to put a guy who literally just survived two assassination attempts. Is it two? I mean... Well, there are more, I think, aren't there? I mean... I don't think that Trump doesn't want people to know about something.

Exactly. I think what you're saying is true. So I think it's even more extraordinary than you're saying, actually, or than we really know. Do you worry about him staying alive, literally? No. Because I think that if you're going to lead, you have to be willing to risk your life. I mean, obviously, I mean, of course. I love Trump personally, so it's like, no, I mean, I can't imagine a few things worse than Trump being harmed.

So I don't want to be cavalier about that. But I also think as a factual matter, you cannot lead to anything, including your own family, unless you're willing to lay down your life for it. I've always thought that. I mean, that is what it is to be a leader. I'm putting other people before myself. It doesn't mean that you take senseless risks, of course, but it does mean that you have a measure of physical courage.

And Trump is displaying that a lot. And I think it's essential. I think it's absolutely essential. And you'll hear people say, well, never take any risk. No, no, no. You want to lead. You have to. That's what the job is, is taking risks.

Funny enough, I talked to him a week after he was shot. And he, I said, it takes a lot. I said, not just to get up when you did, but a week later, you'll be back on a, you just finished another rally. And I said, did you not have any second thoughts about getting on a stage of the 20,000 more strangers a week after he was shot?

And he said an interesting thing, a very rare moment of kind of slight vulnerability that he was meeting. He said, I knew if I didn't get back out quickly, I may never get back out. Yeah. I thought that was a really honest thing. It wasn't a week.

It was two days. Yeah. Because he was shot on a Saturday. And the Republican convention started Mondays. Right. I'm looking at my picture. And I'm remembering this right. The Saturday afterwards was when he did the first rally afterwards. Yeah, but I mean, he was in the middle of, you know, a stadium in Milwaukee.

I was sitting next to him. And I talked to him that night. I mean, what struck me the most was his attitude the night he was shut. I talked to him late night, Saturday night about something else. And he, I said, well, that's kind of, you just got, are you okay? I'm great, didn't want to talk about himself at all. and the first thing he said and went on about it was how brave the people in the crowd were

and I thought he's often been called well he's always called a narcissist but here in his moment of crisis he's directing attention to other people I thought that was so because as you said you don't really know a man until there's a lot of pressure applied to I've spoken to him a few times not as much as you will have done

but I do detect that two things have changed him as a man one getting a second chance of life literally where half an inch and he's dead and the other getting another go at the presidency which was whatever people want to say it was completely derailed by the pandemic and i think that without that pandemic he'd have been re-elected very comfortably and so he had a chance sort of do over at two things professional and personal yes and i do sense with him both privately but also what i'm seeing in public a slightly changed guy do you feel that well i strongly feel that i strongly on many levels of I noticed it. I mean, I was at the inauguration.

And, you know, right near him when he gave that inaugural, I've never seen him read. You know, he's an amazing conversationalist, a wonderfully entertaining host in person. And he's a great extemporaneous speaker, but he's never been a great teleprompter reader. He didn't miss, as a teleprompter reader, I noticed. He didn't miss a single word in that inaugural. He was just so calm. Stylistic, but it's, I think it speaks to something. And disciplined.

And disciplined. Which I'm really focused, right? But the pitfall look, I mean, Trump has full command of the U.S. government to the extent anybody ever does because it's so huge. And more power in his first week of the presidency than any president in my lifetime more than Reagan. So he can do a lot, and his program is popular. It's always been popular. He's done a lot. He's done a lot.

The first week has been extraordinary. I've never seen like it. It's shocking to me how just efficient the functioning has been. It's so heartening. The point is, In order to stop Trump, you need to massively derail, not just him, but the country. You need a COVID or a war. And I think as long as-

Or putting him in jail or an assassin's bullet. Well, they can't put him in jail. I don't think they're going to put him in jail. Well, they tried. Yeah, they did. No, but I mean now, going forward in the next four years, if he can avoid a war with Iran and a war with Russia, deepening war with Russia, he will be the most effective president,

really since the founding, I think. He will really change the country for the better. Those are the, as of today, those are the two things I can imagine where it's just not possible to govern because you're so distracted, because they're so broke, because there's so much else going on.

So if you can avoid those two things, and there are all these... Well, he shares your view about war, which is anti-war instinctively. Of course. He thinks America's wage far too many wars. That's why he got elected. Yeah, but prohibitively expensive.

He sees war both in terms of people who die and just financially ruinous. Totally. And has been a massive drain on America. We're broke because of wars. Right. We're literally broke. Right. Yeah, I mean, I mean, Elon Musk keeps warning people.

You know, America will go bust if this continues. If the spending continues at the rate. Why is that? Because we sent it abroad trillions, trillions of dollars since 9-11. So, yeah, I mean, that's just a math question. I don't think there's much debate about it. But there's a huge debate in Washington about how to proceed. And there's a lot of pressure on. on Trump to go to war with Iran and to deepen the war with Russia.

And, you know, you could argue as to why people would want that, but they do, and a lot of them are donors, and they're putting a lot of pressure on him and his nominees. And I think he wants to resist it, is my sense, because the people pushing it have an unbroken track record of failure and destruction. It's like not, it's not like if you're some, you know, neo-con foreign policy theorist, you can point to, like, a lot of successes. Look what we did in Libya. Right.

How's Iraq doing? Well, someone said you the day. It's insane. They're insane. Has America won a war since World War II? Well, you're assuming we won World War II, but... Well, you certainly helped us win it. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, the worst leader in world history probably won at Stalin, you know, but whatever. He was certainly a major part of it to you.

Yeah, well, yeah. Although we're going to come to you platforming a guy who called Churchill the real villain of World War II. Platforming! Platforming! Talking to people we disagree with. No! Did you disagree with him about that? Did you think Churchill was a villain?

I think your country's been destroyed and I'm part English, so I have a right to say this. I can barely go there. It's so depressing and degraded. No offense. None taken. None taken.

Many people there feel the same. Well, I feel that way. I have relatives there. I mean, I grew up going there. I mean, again, I'm part English. I have a right to say this. And so I don't think... What is your English connection?

Well, the Tucker's English, and I have relatives there now, so I don't want to embarrass them by saying here. But my point is, I've spent my life going there. I've always loved it. There are things about it I love now, but I go to London now, and I'm shocked by it. It's disgusting. And no self-respect at all. The people, the native English, the indigenous population of your island have no self-respect at all. And they can't even stand up and say, hey, you know, get out of here.

We have way too much immigration, and it's not making the country better, it's making it much worse. And not just immigration, but replacing your manufacturing economy with a finance economy, with the sleazyest people, the world come to London and, like, sell up all your assets, and no one can say anything about it. So I'm very distressed. I say that with love. And my only point is, how can you say Churchill saved Great Britain when it's in its current condition? Well, you could say he certainly saved it at the time.

I mean, he saved us from the Nazis along with the Nazis. With the Nazis planning to invade? I wouldn't have won it without America, so let's be clear about that. But there's no doubt that, to me, that Winston Churchill would go down as one of the great historical figures, because without his leadership, I genuinely do not think that the allies would have won that war. Well, you wouldn't have been in the war without Churchill, but in the first place. Well, we were in the war without Churchill.

We were already in it. Not to the extent that you became in it. Well, hang on. He wasn't prime minister. No, no, I'm very aware. I'm very aware. Look, I think Churchill is one of the smartest people, certainly one of the best writers ever to hold any office in any country.

I think he was a wonderful artist. I think he had a kind of flare that's irresistible, particularly to Americans. I think Americans like Churchill much more than the Brits do. You kicked him out of office at the end of the war, so obviously... But then we brought him back. You brought him back.

Here's my problem with Churchill. Again, the current state of Great Britain does not look to me like a country that won a war. Looks like a country that lost a war, badly, and was degraded. How did that happen? Why? You're not allowed to ask that? because people are like, oh, that's Holocaust denial?

I'm not... Holocaust denial. That's one thing I would never deny. All these people got murdered. I'm not denying that at all. I'm talking about specifically Great Britain, the country of a lot of my ancestors, looks like it lost a war.

How did that happen? I think it's a totally fair question. And anyone who says it's not a fair question is a liar, and I'm not going to be intimidated because I'm part English. So buzz off. What's the answer? And so I don't think that you can't put it on Churchill.

Well, I don't put it entirely on Churchill. You can't put any of it in Churchill. Because if you look at the 60s, you would say that Britain was absolutely roaring post-war, right? Not really. Your manufacturing was dying. Well, you're rationing until the 50s. Like, how did this work? Well, because we've just been in the World War.

I'm saying that's an awfully slow recovery for a winning nation. If you won, why did you have rationing for 10 years after? But here's the real problem, to be much more specific about Churchill, who is someone I really would love to have met. I mean, he's an extraordinary person and an incredibly charming person. the most charming. I don't know how you could say to the English people, it is essential that your sons go die to preserve the territorial integrity of Poland and then hand Poland to Stalin of all people. I don't know how you could be in an alliance with Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in history. I don't know how Roosevelt could be in an alliance with Stalin. Once you're in an alliance with

Stalin, you lose all moral authority. So what do you do about here? You are not allowed to lecture me about anything if you're in a military alliance with Joseph Stalin. Let me take you back then. murdered all the, you know, tens and millions of people. All right, let me make you president of the United States at the time. What else do you do about Adolf Hitler, given that it was crystal clear, his ambition was not going to stop with Poland. He wanted to wage a world war. He wanted to seize endless countries.

He wanted to invade the Soviet Union. I'm very anti-Hitler. I've always been anti-Hitler. He killed a lot of people who didn't deserve to die and destroyed his country. So I'm certainly not defending Hitler. So preemptively to anyone who says I am. What would you have done about it? Shut up.

I would act as any president has a moral obligation to act in what he believes is the best interests of his country. Period. Not in the interests of humanity, the world, of his own country. These are countries that are nation states. Isn't that what America did after Pearl Harbor? You couldn't just sit back on...

I mean, we're getting to... This is super complicated. Look, I'm not against fighting World War II. I'm not. I'm not. I'm only saying specifically with reference to Churchill, you can't go to your country, your countrymen, and say, go ahead and die to preserve the dignity of Polish territorial integrity, the dignity of Poland, the national Poland, and then give it to Stalin and it languishes under an iron curtain and people are murdered and rounded up and tortured to death for 40 years. That wasn't what Churchill did. Yes, it is what Churchill did. Because he came in after the war started.

No, no, no. At Tehran, Potsdam Yalta, they made a deal to hand Eastern Europe, which he had brought his country to war to protect, to Stalin. There is no getting around the fact that Stalin is maybe the worst person in all human history, but certainly in the running, up there with Hitler. I mean, you could kill more people at Hitler. I mean, they're all evil. I don't disagree. So you're in a military alliance with Joseph Stalin? You shut the fuck up. You have no right to lecture me about anything.

Okay, that's where we start. And that's been sort of a lied it over. The Roosevelt administration armed Stalin in Lendlis. Tell me how that's defensible. It's not defensive. But the question I was asking. But to hand Poland, would you into a war to protect? Why do you?

Like, why doesn't someone answer that question? I'm like, oh, you had no choice. Really? But what my question, though, is... Then you're a failed leader. But what would you have done about Hitler? Well, I would have opposed him. Of course. How?

I certainly wouldn't arm Stalin. I certainly murdering Christians and... I'm genuinely curious. I have no idea what I would have done. I would have been opposed to him. I am opposed to him. I mean, it's not... So I love this conversation, so it's like,

there's no way to reassess anything without getting right to... So you're for Hitler, right? Or you would just let Hitler rampage through Europe. I'm not saying that. I'm just curious, if you don't do what Churchill did, I'm curious what you think we should have done. You act on behalf of your... country. That's your job.

Now, if you're a theologian, well, you certainly didn't look at it. Have you been there? Well, my country. Yes. I live in my country. Oh, okay, right. So you know, no one looked after Great Britain. It ran the world. Now it's degraded. Now you have Sadiq Khan, like

giving the finger to Christianity in your capital city. It's like, what? This is the seat of Protestantism globally. This is, you know, your king is the head of my church. And they Anyway, whatever. So it's been a total, they've been, there's been conquest, they're vanquished, and they lack self-respect. So you have to look to their leaders and say, what decisions did they make that got us to this point? And I really feel this strongly, because I think it's a big deal historically. Like, we're going to look back. I don't think England becoming what it's become. They didn't even call it England anymore. I don't think you're allowed to call it England. You can.

Yeah, you can. Not really allowed. You have to throw whales in there. I don't think you can look at this just as like the decline of a formerly great power. You have to see it in broader terms. This is the end of something really great and important that we should have defended and we didn't. I would say the biggest problem that Britain's had, but specifically England, is in the

50s we had a population of about 50 million people. All the infrastructure, the National Health Service, which was great at the time it was conceived and great for many years, now just simply cannot cope with the population that's just about 70 million and it's predicted to go in the next five, six years up by another few million. And that's just net zero migration up. And I look at that and I think that successive governments, Conservative Labour, now for 30 years, have completely failed to protect the country from the impact of massively increasing the population size. and they've not been able to adapt to that.

And now what you have is increasing resentment from people in the country to the fact that all the public services are crumbling before their eyes and they are blaming it all on the extra number of people who've come in, which is partly to blame, but probably not wholly to blame. In other words, it almost gives the government an excuse, which is we have a big more population,

rather than actually successive governments have been pretty poor, pretty ineffective. I guess. I mean, that's the technical, anocratic explanation for it. And I think everything you've said is true. By the way, there was great resentment in the 1970s, and it was ruthlessly put down.

Ruthlessly put down. Well, Margaret Thatcher came along, and she took decisive action. My point is it comes down to leadership. No, it comes down to self-respect. Do you believe that your country represents something worth preserving? But I think Thatcher did that.

You see, when she went to war. She didn't. She took on the union. Okay, great, that's great. But nobody has reestablished since the end of World War II, in the minds of the British people, You are unique in the world. You're the indigenous population of this island.

You have something great to offer the world. This is a seed of Protestant Christianity. Your culture, your language, your views, your attitudes, your customs, your traditions, those are all worth defending because they're great. That's the basis of any country. In Saudi Arabia, they feel that way about their country. This is Saudi Arabia.

We're the most important country in Islam. You know, we're the leader of the Arab world, which they are. They're very proud of it. Great. I'm not a Muslim or an Arab, not from the Middle East. I come here, they're like, great. So glad to have you. By the way, you're not allowed to, like, change the laws here because you're not Saudi.

Great Britain lacked that self-respect. The United States increasingly lacks that self-respect and that belief that their way of doing things is a good way and worth fighting for. If you don't have that, then it's just like a massive home invasion where you're not willing to stand up and defend your wife and children. And so you get enslaved. That's the rule of the world. Well, I certainly think Britain has lost its way and has lost its pride and has lost its ability. and it's lost its ability to show the world we matter. And we've become increasingly irrelevant.

But your values, your ideas, freedom of discourse. Like I see it now. You're putting people in prison, literally in prison for Facebook posts. And it's like, obviously that's authoritarian. But it's deeper than that. It's like, no, this is England. This is the country that gave free speech to the United States. This is where it all came from.

This is where habeas corpus came from. The Magna Carta was signed here. This is Western civilization. We talk about Western civilization. It's England, actually. And so if you allow it to become what it is now, Western civilization ends. I don't think that's overstating it at all. If Saudi Arabia fell today and became Buddhist or something, it would have a massive effect

on the entire region. Like the holy sites are here, right? It's much more significant merely than its landmass. The same was true for your country. It was hugely significant for us in the U.S. We're your descendants. And we did what you did, but with, like, much more land and resources. So I'm very distressed about it.

So people want to tell me Churchill's an incredible guy. Really? Well, why didn't he save Western civilization? He didn't even save Poland. He did save Western civilization. How? How? He defeated the Nazis.

But I know he helped defeat the Nazis with his friend Stalin. The Nazis wanted the whole world to be speaking in German. Not defending the Nazis. I'm just saying, where is Western civilization? What did he preserve? Where is it? I don't know where it is. He died the year before I was born.

Well, the same year, actually. He died in 63, I think. 65. I think about a month before I was born. It was a natural succession. But the question is like, where's the victory? I don't understand. Everyone wants to yell at you for not loving Churchill.

Okay, show me the victory. Well, it's a theoretical victory. He beat Hitler. Great, I'm totally for beating Hitler. You can't say 80 years on that Churchill didn't win the war because look at what's happened since. But the war is not just like an engagement in Poland or even in downtown Berlin.

The war is the effort to save Western civilization. And I agree with you that Hitler was a grave threat to Western civilization. As Dieter vonhofer. But that was lost. So where's the victory? But it wasn't lost. Really? Really. Where's Western civilization thriving?

What has happened is you've seen Britain's power in the world diminishing ever since. That is true. What is Western civilization? Well, that's an interesting question. I would say that, for example, I would say one of the reasons that, well, the three reasons Trump... It's Christianity is what it is. Well, that's, okay.

I know you believe that strongly. Well, what, okay. I'm a Catholic. I'm a Catholic. You're preaching to the choir, literally. No, but if it's not Christianity, what is it? It's Christianity. That's what it is.

It's the political legacy of Christianity. And that's dying. And I'm not saying Churchill was its assassin. I'm just saying, like, he didn't save it because it's dying. And can we agree he saved us from the Nazis? I guess, but I'm saying it was a pure victory. I mean, beating the Nazis is always good. You want to beat the Nazis.

I'm for being the Nazis, to be clear. The Nazis were a threat to Western civilization, they were a threat to Christianity. But if Churchill saved it, where is it? Well, I think that's a perfectly legitimate question. Oh, I know. Yeah. And they call me a Holocaust denier for bringing that up.

I don't call you that. Well, no, but I'm just saying, like, I got so attack, But that's not only a legitimate question, it's the question. And I'm very upset about it because I think Western civilization is the best thing this world has ever produced. Can I ask you about something that happened big in the American election, which we're now wrestling within our country. Wokeism, the woke mind virus. It seemed that Trump's core of common sense prevailed that a lot of people rejected and repudiated all the woke bullshit. That advert, Carmen is for they, them, Trump's view.

was incredibly effective. What do you feel about that? Do you think woke is dead as a concept, or is it dying, or are people gonna try and revive it? I'm asking because two things have happened in the last few days where I thought, well, it's not dead yet. One was the bishop lecturing Trump.

My bishop. Your bishop. Mary Ann, Edgar Budd. I mean, I watched that, I thought, she really hasn't got the memo here, which is we don't wanna see a bishop do that in that way. So she is the Bishop of Washington, in the Episcopal,

church, which is the Church of England and the United States. So this is like, I know you're Catholic, but it's like that is directly from Great Britain. And that is a measure of what's happened to your country, if I can say. And I personally, since that's my church, I think it's probably a good thing for people to see what it's really like, you know, that this is not a Christian organization at all. This is a very angry, hateful organization run by like dreadfully unhappy middle age lesbians, which is exactly what it is. So only by showing. that in public, can it ever be forced to reform? So I actually thought it was a hopeful thing that the rest of America, not just we Episcopalians, could see what it's actually like, which is

repulsive and totally non-Christian. It's pagan. But I think wokeism, look, it's just one manifestation of something that has been at work in this world since Eden, which is evil. It's purely destructive. It exists under a very dishonest guise, which is like to help and enrich and uplift people. It does none of that. It's a purely destructive force designed to wreck institutions that were actually humane and divide people from each other along the lines of race and sex. And it's just evil and we should just we should say that. Of course it'll live on in some other manifestation because evil in the world, you know, will always be with us. One of the reasons I think it got repudiated in such an emphatic way at the

election in America was that Trump very cleverly went on a lot of shows, podcasts, YouTubers, Joe Rogan shows like that, which is some Baron apparently was steering him to do because he recognized that people of his age, this is what they're getting their news from. You've now gone fully into this world.

I've done the same. Both of us got here involuntarily. Yeah, of course. I mean, we sort of... It's so great. We got exited out of linear world, yeah. Yes. How do you find it?

Do you feel liberated? How do you feel about it? Totally. I mean, I just feel I'm 55, very close to the same age, and I feel that all the really great things in my life have begun as disasters, that it's never, you know, you're never on vacation where you reach an enlightenment, you know, sitting on the beach in St. Barts. It's always some tragedy. You get cancer, someone you love dies, you get fired from your job. That's when your life, at least in my experience, changes for the better. So I'm so grateful for having been fired as often as I have.

And this last one... I've worked out which of us has lost more jobs. It's quite a close wrong thing, actually. You know, this is one thing I've always loved about your country, the journalism in your country, is that people get fired all the time. You guys get fired all the time. The badges of honor, actually.

I love that. No, I've always... Is that how many times? Only three? No, I don't know. It's what I don't know with you. You're obviously not doing things nearly controversially enough. And I'm sorry to beat up on your country, so I love the Brits.

That's why I'm so mad. Yeah, listen, a lot. The reason I do that... didn't rain back on what you were saying because a lot of people in Britain do feel that. They do feel we've lost our identity, our national pride. They're worried about what's happening in the country. They can see the infrastructure collapsing. The National Health Service used to be this great...

They apologize for their empire. It's so much deeper than the NHS was always stupid. I know you guys love it. We have socialized medicine. If you're bragging about socialized medicine, that is the lamest most beta thing to be proud of ever. You know the difference? I can get a prostate exam for free. If that's what you're bragging about, no.

this is a nation that used to rule the subcontinent. I actually have had a prostate exam for free. But like that's how degraded it is. Like you literally talk to even the right wing Brits. You're like, well, I can't criticize the NIH. All right, all right. Because you know what? The flower of British civilization is building socialized shitting medicine.

Listen, listen, I'll take this. I'll take this to a point. I know, you can't criticize. But now, now I've got to defend my country. But your empire was great in some ways. Will you admit that? No, listen, of course. Of course.

Okay, good. There were lots of great things about the empire. There were things we shouldn't have done. Of course. But this constant revision is going back, wanting to apologize, wanting to pay vast sums of money to the descendants of people that they never knew, right? Centuries later is utterly preposterous. Apologizing on behalf of dead people is specious by its nature.

Let me tell the difference. I can only apologize to myself. If you come to London and we're walking on the road and you get hit by a car and you will go again, and you get hit by a car and you break your leg, you will get hit by a car and you break your leg, you will, you will, you will go. leg, you will get immediate, great world-class health care and you won't have to pay for it. When I broke some ribs in Santa Monica falling off a Segway, one of the most embarrassing things in my life, not least because when I've been a newspaper editor and George Bush fell off the Segway, I said, what kind of idiot falls off a Segway as a headline?

And then many years later, exactly, many years later, I fall off and break fire ribs and collapse a lung. In Santa Monica. In the hospital there, and all I remember is coming in and out on the morphine haze in utter agony. And some guy in a doctor's robe standing over me with a form saying, have you got the ability to pay for the medication? Just swipe your credit card as you come out of the haze. Right. But you think that's a better system than mine? Come on. Look, it's a pile of crap and a pile of shit. And you kind of like, you know, if you have stage four pancreatic,

probably better to be in the US. If you break your arm in a segue accident, probably better to be in London. You know, it's, it's all kind of crappy, actually. And, you know, and you're, you know, it's all kind of crappy, And capitalism is an amazing engine, but there are downsides to it. And it's not a religion. So I think you can admit that a for-profit medical system has some ugly parts to it. And it definitely does. You can also admit that socialized medicine is kind of lame because it is. And I don't know.

By the way, getting sick is bad. Right? And both England and the United States are super unhealthy countries, leaving the healthcare system apart. Everyone's fat. The food is terrible. You've noticed, when you look at pictures from New York in the 20s or London or Paris, have you ever noticed that there are no fat people in the pictures?

Have you ever seen pictures from Woodstock? So it's August of 1960. Same thing. They're all skinned. 300,000 people, America's middle class. It's all white kids whose ribs you can see. Right. You know, a lot has changed.

I think that's, you know, these snapshots tell us that. And by the way, I eat American food. I have to go on a diet like every other month because it's just bad. I'm not judging anyone. I'm just saying like... We're more sedentary now, aren't we, just generally? And just the food is bad. Like, you can feel it.

And when you go to other, you know, if you travel a lot as I know that you do, you know, eat a loaf of bread in Moscow and see how you feel. Try that in America. You know what I mean? Like, the food is different, but whatever. We know the thing about American bread is you buy it and you leave it. I'll tell my English friends this. I've got a house in L.A.

And you buy a loaf of bread and then a month later, it's still fine. And you're like... And you're like, in England, that's a... gone off in sixth days. They found wonder bread in the pyramids and it's fine. Yeah. No, it's incredible. It's not food. Can I ask you quickly just about MAGA versus the brave new world of Musk and the people around Trump and the people like Zuckerberg now doing big U-turns and so on a lot of people in conventional Trump MAGA have a big problem with this. They think there's a lot of people who are not by any mean genuine Trumpers

who are kind of getting on the bandwagon doing massive U-turns, wanting a piece of the action because it's good for them commercially. And there does seem to be a bit of a divide developing in the conservative movement between the kind of original diehard MAGA and this new world around Trump. What do you feel about that? I'm not sure what I think. I mean, there are a couple of ways to see it. I mean, Elon is a special case, I think. What do you think of it? On board with Trump. He's a really interesting person.

He's one of the funniest people I've lived. I met him for two hours last summer. I thought he was a total genius. When he talked about colonizing Mars and Neurrelink and humanoid robots in particular, fascinating. He sort of came alive. And I thought, this is a big picture guy, the like of which I've not met.

Yeah, you know about this? Everyone's going to have humanoid robots. He says, $20,000 a pop. They'll be able to do all domestic duties. Everything. I said, well, including, can they have sex? He said it would be like making love to a slow moving washing machine at the moment, but yes. I said there might be an improvement for some of us.

Yeah, I'm hoping that's just Tower of Babel stuff. No, no, they're coming. It's called opt-o. They're coming. I'll resist that with everything that I have. He thinks they're going to be the biggest money spinner he's ever done, the humanoid robots running around and do. But at that point, I'm worried about what Stephen Hawking told me in his last interview it turned out. And he said, I said, what's the biggest threat to mankind?

He said when artificial intelligence learns to self-design, it's all over. Because they'll kill us. Because they'll realize we are ridiculous and pointless. In the West, there's a very kind of passive posture toward technology that it's inevitable where China's going to do it first and we have to. It's a race. It's the arms race that we both grew up with. And, you know, there is a sense in which, you know, people have dominion over the earth

and can make decisions autonomously. that they believe in their own best interest in the interest of their communities and families. So if you see someone like AI and no one can really explain why this is good for people, it's obviously good for Sam Altman or the Chinese, but how is it good for me? And you'd have to, well, well, it's happening.

It's just happening. You know, if somebody showed up your house, like, I'm going to rape you now. It's just happening. It's just like this is what history is. Like, this is the part where you get raped. You'd be like, no. Like, maybe it is, but I'm going to fight you first.

And that whole sense of I'm going to fight you first because I don't, I just don't agree with this. I don't see how it was in my interest or my kid's interest. Like my kids won't have jobs because of this. How about I punch you in the face? You know what I mean? Like there's none of that spirit level. Oh, I agree. And it's just like the whole society's been deballed.

So they just like sit passively back as like the future cress over them like this wave of sewage. And they're like, well, this is going to suck. But nothing we could do about it. We blow up the data centers. Like what I mean? I don't, whatever. I'm not suggesting industrial sabotage, though. The Biden administration did it at Nord Stream and got away with it. But I just don't understand why nobody asked the obvious question, which is, how is this good for people? The health care debate kind of dominates a lot of our politics or has for the last 30 years. And certainly health care is one of the biggest parts of our entire economy. But under all of it, and I think it's a fair debate and I want good health care and I've been sick. I had backstored or you had a dependence on this, whatever, you know, it's important, right? But it's not everything.

And I think that we have inflated its importance to this level that kind of obscures the purpose of living, which is to live. And that suggests underneath it all a deep fear of dying, which is the one thing that we all have in common. We're all going to die. And a society that can't accept that is in trouble. And you saw this during COVID. The hysteria about masking and social distancing and all the stuff.

It was like underneath it all was millions of people. hundreds of millions, people saying, I'm terrified to die. And like, if your people are afraid to die, I don't think you should die pointlessly, you should live as long as you can, as happy as you are, whatever, I get all that, but you're still going to die. How do you want to die? Oh, I want to die standing up in Maine, you know, very much and be... In mid-real?

Bering with my relatives in our cemetery, yes. But however I die, I don't want to be afraid of it, and I'm not afraid of it, and you shouldn't be afraid of it. I mean, that's kind of the point in a society that doesn't. and believe in God, of course, is going to be terrified of death and go to all these ludicrous degrading lengths to extend, you know, a life that isn't much of a life. And you certainly see that. That's not healthy. A healthy society accepts reality, including and especially death. Yeah, and I think that we have become an increasingly unhealthy world, certainly in the West.

But morally unhealthy. Like denying death. Is there anything more grotesque than that? Because it's the one thing, it's the only thing you can't deny. It's the only thing you know is going to happen. So you're afraid of that? Like, we should take action and, like, have a public conversation about what happens when you die. That's verboten. Like, you can talk about your trans top surgery and, you know, you get on the view. But if you talk about what happens when you die, it's like, stop, freak. That's really backward.

I just wanted this, as we wrap up my part of this, I'm sure a lot of people who watch you regularly, they look at me and they'll go, well, okay, that's the guy that wants to take our guns away. That's the guy, the British guy with the... I'm sorry. Do what? Take your guns away. No, no one's taking my guns away, Pierce. I know that. That was made very clear. From my cold dead hands!

And I'm in it. Do you know the best... I'm getting drones next. You know, when I was, when I was ranting about guns at CNN. How'd that work for you? I left. I knew I was going to call you and be like, our culture's all different from yours.

You pretty did it. Well, actually, Jay Nano did it best. He came and saw me. I did the tonight show at the height of it all. And he said, here's the problem. He said, it would be like you guys. to Germany and going on television every night with your accent, telling them to stop speeding on the auto bar.

He said, the smart crowd would probably go, yeah, he's got a point. And everybody else he said would want to shoot here. He said, it's a bit like that here. Jay Leno said that to you? He did. Do you know, I used to when I love Jay Leno. I do too. And when I worked for that company, we would do weeks in Burbank.

And a number of times, he came into my dressing room and gave me unsolicited advice that was really wise. He's a great guy. Good man, yes. I went to his car hangar a year ago and had a great couple of hours of him. I just thought, and also what I liked about him when he did The Tonight Show, and actually Jimmy Fallon, he's not the problem at late night. He keeps things pretty light.

But as Jay said, as Johnny Carson used to do, they used to be non-political these guys. They would whack whoever was in charge in a warm way, but they weren't political. Now it seems all of those late-night guys have become like political activists. Well, that whole genre is dying and they're desperate. I think in Colbert's case, I think he's like angry and weird. But certainly Jimmy Fallon is just a talented comedian. Probably just wants to do comedy. But Leno never got the credit that he deserved for being a decent guy.

Yes. Going out of his way to help me. I mean, he went out of his way to help me. I don't know why. And me. I love that. I agree. I've got to make the point.

I've followed your career for a long time. The most admiring thing, many things. One, you've worked everywhere. Yes. Which means you're prepared to go and try whatever, you know, wherever you can go. and you've washed up now on your own, probably more powerful and influential than you've ever been. But also that you made an admission which really resonated with me at the time about Iraq, the Iraq war, where you wished you hadn't supported the Iraq war.

And you said it was just a big mistake. And you would kind of, I think you said, I want to put words in your mouth, that it was kind of the pressure from the institution made you believe a certain way about it. And then you felt very disillusioned afterwards. Yes. I was on Iraq, the opposite. So in Iraq, I led the campaign against the war on Iraq in the UK. In fact, when a record number of people marched through London, nearly two million,

they were carrying daily mirror placards that my newspaper had given them. And I'm very proud about that. And I was proven by history to be right. Yes. Now, where I was completely wrong was, you mentioned COVID. And it was interesting. It really changed my thinking about these things. In COVID, I got very, I think, overly,

emotionally engaged because I knew people who were dying of COVID and it was awful and in Britain we handled it very badly but I got led down a line which I wish I hadn't been led down I'll give an example when the scientists said you if you have the vaccine you can't transmit the virus I believe them and I became wrongly sensorious really badly sensorious I was saying to people if you don't have it now knowing that if you have it you can't transmit the virus, you're going to go and kill old people, going to kill people. It's not about you, it's about the people you may infect and kill. And it turned out to be completely wrong.

They later said, months and months later, actually, there's no difference whether you have the vaccine in terms of transmitting the virus. And at that point, I realized I've been misled completely. Had you already gotten the vaccine? Yeah. Did you know that it made you impotent when you got it? I'd heard that. That's not true.

I can confirm that's not true. Here's my point. I'm such a dick, I can't control myself. But that's why I like you. It's probably good on so well. But the interesting point about both of them was that we were both kind of introduced by institutions into taking a position about something, which turned out to be wrong.

Oh, yeah. And it really has made me, I just think coming out of the pandemic in particular, I've just, now, next time round with any of these things, I'm going to be a lot more skeptical. As a journalist should be, so I'm pretty ashamed of not being that No, I know the, yeah, but you know, if you don't wind up ashamed in midlife about things that you've done, then you're lying to yourself. We should all be ashamed of our shortcomings. And really, the question is not who was wrong.

The question is who admits it. Yes. And I just, it's like AA. I love AA. I have no interest in drinking. I would never drink again just because I don't want to. But I do like going to AA because the price of getting in is admitting like that I'm kind of pathetic and I have no idea what I'm doing. And once you admit that, that sets the stage for true honesty.

And it's the same admitting any fault. It just doesn't diminish you. It enhances you. And it enhances you specifically. And I love that. I mean, I'm not sure that 20 years ago I would have been prepared to admit big mistakes. Now I think it's very liberating. It's the most liberating.

To just say, you know what, I was wrong. I was wrong. And I was wrong to be this. It's not deliberately. It gives you more credibility moving forward. People think, you know what? Fair play. If you're prepared to admit you're wrong,

I just don't see enough of that, do you? Well, how could you have self-respect? I mean, I do it for internal reasons. I can't respect myself if I think I'm a liar and I've certainly lied and I'm ashamed of it and I'll admit that. You know, you lie when you're, oh, you get caught doing something.

I'm not doing that thing, you know, but you are and you lie. But you can't feel good about that. I do not feel good about that. And I don't think anyone does feel good about that. And so people use this thing to abate you that you're always like, I'm just asking questions.

And I always laugh when I see that. Because I'm like, no questions allowed. Isn't that literally the point? And actually, there's no harm in asking endless questions. Isn't that what we should be doing? It's like, it's one of those assumptions that's so core to my beliefs, both religious and civic beliefs, that it's like, if the idea that that's a bad thing is just like, I can't even comprehend it.

And it's, in my opinion, utterly discrediting if someone's like attacking you for asking you for asking you, for asking questions. Why is that not allowed? I'm a free citizen. I'm not your slave, actually. I can ask any question I want. You know what I mean? Did you care? When you interview Putin, for example, which as an interviewer, I found it a fascinating thing to watch in full, because especially his first question when he just went, off, off he went. Yeah, I was infuriated by, right. I mean, obviously, he was sort of almost filibustering you. That's what I thought. But I've since revised my view of it. Anyway, so, it was a lot of, sort of reaction to it, good, bad, ugly as I would have expected. But the idea that you wouldn't

have gone to do it, I found absurd. It's like, why wouldn't you? If you got the chance to sit with Vladimir Putin, why wouldn't you? It wasn't even a question. I wouldn't because the US government tried to stop me by spying on me and then leaking it to the New York Times twice, which is illegal. So that's why I wouldn't have gone and threatening to put me in jail for going, which I ignored and went anyway. That was all normal. I mean, that's my job. I just, understand why people wouldn't want you to go. If you're calling for less information, that puts you not on God's side, on the other side.

Like, why are you against more information? Why is that threatening to you? Because you're sitting atop in Edifice built of lies. That's why. And you know that it'll come down if the truth emerges. So I felt that that was such a clarifying. And I was out of the country for almost a month off the internet. So I missed all the reaction to me.

And I never look at my, don't read about myself anyway, ever. But I got the sense from people who called me that, you know, I was attacked by people like, how dare he talk to Putin or enemy? No one asked me whether Putin's our enemy. Why is Putin my enemy? He's never done anything to me. He's never called me a racist. Oh, you're a Putin puppet?

No, I'm not. I'm an American. But there's no reason. I have no reason to be mad at Vladimir Putin or anybody else until they attack me or my country. And I just don't accept that. There was never a vote. We're a democracy. In my country, we never had a vote on whether, you know,

we, as a matter of policy, hate Putin. It was a bunch of lunatics, some of whom I know personally, Torian Newland, and these full-blown wackos, these enemies of democracy, decided one day we need to take out Putin because I'm mad at him. For some reason, no one ever explained. I'm just not going along with that, because I live in a free country, and I don't have to go along with it.

And so anyone telling me that I have to go along with it, I immediately just tune out. Like, I don't care what you say. Your opinion is totally irrelevant to me. That's how I feel. Have you ever considered running for office? No. You never would.

No way. That's not what I do. I mean, I don't want to have power. I don't think I should be trusted. How do you describe what you do now? What are you? I'm someone who's trying to understand what's happening to the world. And I feel really driven to do that.

And I'm not exactly sure why. And I don't need to know why, but I feel that way. I want to understand what's happening in the world. And I want to know what's true and what's false. And I certainly don't. I don't understand what's happening in the world. And I don't know what's true and what's false. Every day I come up against this.

We talk about it all the time in the car where the producers are on planes. Is this true? I don't know. But I'm just, that's what drives me is I want to know. I want to discern truth from falsehood if I can, knowing that you can't really actually until you die, know what is really true. And if you were to succumb, you know, in midpool of a gigantic fish on the river in Maine, if that happened tomorrow, how would you like to be remembered? By my children fondly. That's all I care about. And my wife. Yeah, I would like it if they were like, you know, he was hilarious. He was a good guy. actually. So I feel about my father, who's still alive. But I love my dad, and I will always

love my dad. And as long as I live, I will say, what a good man my dad was. And I really feel that way very, very strongly. And it's my greatest wish that my children feel that way about me. Here lies Tucker Carson. He was a good man and hilarious. Yeah, that's what I want. I have very low aims. I don't seek glory. I just seek to be, you know, he's a good guy. I liked him, you know? I think you're a good guy, Tony. Thank you. Only a long time. You've always be very good to me. You know, I always say about you that when I left Good Morning Britain and got Markle, as I call it, you gave me the chance to have my say afterwards. You were the first one to ask. That was the most insane thing I've ever seen. And when that happened to you,

I thought to myself, actually asked one of my producers, well, what did he do? And they told me that he like publicly doubted Megan Markle's saintliness or something. Like, I don't think she's actually Jesus. Now I'd have to leave if I believed her. I remember thinking, first of all, this is the craziest thing. We've have to be, whatever this is, this is the peak of it. And second, Pierce Morgan will be in much better shape in his next life. And it's turned to be completely true. Completely true.

I've never felt happier professionally than I do right now where I now have, I own my YouTube channel. I own, you know, everything about it. I'm my own person. The only person that can fire me is myself. It's the best. I can't rule out that will happen for inappropriate behavior. I'll fire myself. I actually, it is incredibly liberating.

And maybe it's an age thing, or maybe it's just a societal thing where my sons, 31, 27, 24, they just don't watch mainstream media at all. They don't read print newspapers, they don't watch television. They actually watch stuff like this, and they want to know what to make of the world. And they rely on people like me and you and others in this space to tell them actually this is what we really think.

Yes. And they buy into us as individuals, rather than a massive sprawling network that has all its kind of restrictions, limitations, biases, and so on. In the end, with me and you, it's just whatever we think, right? I mean, that's what you're buying into. It's the best.

It's the best. And if you start by admitting, I've gotten it wrong, I will again, I'm going to try my best, then I think people believe that because it's real. Yeah. Tucker, great to talk to you. Pearce, great to see you. We're not going to switch,

and Tucker's going to grill me. Hopefully not about Churchill.