The Chris Cuomo Project - Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo Go Head-to-Head on the Media, Putin, January 6th, and More

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Tucker Carlson (host, Tucker Carlson Network) joins Chris Cuomo for a raw, unfiltered conversation covering a spectrum of America’s most contentious issues. Touching upon their television news careers, Tucker's interview with Vladimir Putin, January 6th, COVID-19, and much more, Cuomo and Carlson explore the depths of political and social division as well as the driving forces behind the dysfunction. Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conversation is the cure. All of this division and talking about who you disagree with and which side is worse and chopping them up and gotcha and all the stuff that plays on social media, where's it getting us? Everything's getting worse in terms of division, in terms of the lack of any dynamic, of any kind of fixes. Opposition is the only real position in politics today.

Why? Because the game and it's got to change. And conversation is part of the cure, talking to people that you don't agree with, talking about why, but doing it with decency, face to face, and trying to figure out if there are points of common concern. Thank you for being here on the Chris Cuomo project and checking out our Tucker Carlson interview.

Thank you for subscribing and following and checking us out on News Nation, going to the sub-stack and subscribing to get into the long COVID experiments that we're doing there with my own treatment. This is all about how we get to a better place. Not about me agreeing with Tucker Carlson. It's not about me liking Tucker Carlson or us being buddies. It's about if two people who are supposed to be

the opposites of each other, who are supposed to be avowed enemies, which by the way, I don't do, by the way. I don't do enemies. I don't give people that kind of power over how I feel. But we certainly disagree. But are there common concerns that do something other than just feeding the food fight that our politics has become? And if so, wouldn't that be amazing

if we were able to shift the dynamic over this food, from this food fight to getting it back to the responsibilities of the people we've put in power to do something about those concerns? So for your own observation, for your own use, here's a conversation. For your own observation, for your own use, here's a conversation, me and Tucker Carlson. ["Tucker Carlson"] Chris, thank you for coming.

So one of the reasons I think that you called me was because we had such similar lives, and you're one of the few people who kind of understand and both of us Spent decades in one world. We're exiled from it And I think the question is like what if we learn from this you first? I'm still trying to figure it out and I knew it was important to reach out when You were going through your exit. Let's call it because I knew the was important to reach out when you were going through your exit, let's call it, because I knew the pain of it,

and I knew the challenge of it. And everything is different, but I do believe that one of the lessons I've learned is you have to think about how other people are being affected by situations, especially once you have pain in your own life. And it doesn't matter what you agree with, what you like, what you don't like.

It's all gotten so far removed from humanity that the idea that, I don't like that Tucker Carlson takes a bite out of my ass on his show. I don't really care about his. I think you had a good reason not to like me. I think that would be fair. But that that means that this is not somebody who you should care about as a human being.

And I feel like our culture isn't working anymore. That everybody retreats with their own. And as a result, everybody is against one another for the same kinds of reasons. And it's not working. And if it's not working, then why aren't we trying something different? Why wouldn't I reach out to somebody who has a family

and who has a following and is dealing with a hard time to see if I can help and see what's going on in their life and what they're about. And I was concerned about calling you at first because I thought you might be thinking that this is like a spite phone call or something. You know what I mean? Or be like, why are you calling me?

What do you want to gloat or something? I didn't want to make anything worse for you. But as you say, there's such tremendous power in conversation. Yes. We only know what we're told about people and the snippets that people want us to see and the context. Now, I'm not saying that you're one benefit of context away

from never of saying anything that I don't think you should say, but what is lost by doing this? What is lost by this? How can this not be helpful to sit across from somebody and talk to them instead of about them? So, of course, I couldn't agree with you more, which is why we're here. And I think both of us have tried to talk directly

to people that we disagree with legitimately on some things, but because it's a really useful and important experience. So why doesn't it happen? It does make you kind of wonder, maybe there are forces trying to prevent those conversations and what's the motive there? I call it the game. You and I have been in the game for a long time.

And whether you like it or not, whether you mean it or not, you wind up playing the game. You can, especially with the platform that you had, you wind up essentially picking sides. And you wind up having agendas either that present themselves to you or are foisted upon you. But either way, you wind up in the same place.

And in doing that, it becomes habit. It's what people are celebrating around you. It's what you see around you. People start to come after you. Now you have a natural enemy. These people, I'm resistant to them because they're attacking what I'm saying and they're getting it wrong or they're getting it right

and I still don't like it. That's the culture and that's what the media enforces. We are not supposed to be doing this. I am doing something bad right now, not just wrong. This is bad. I am giving a platform. That's the new word for censoring, right? You're, I'm giving Tucker Carlson a platform.

I'm talking to him about who he is and what he's about and why he does what he does. Why? He's bad. And that's the end of the analysis. But look where it's gotten us. Nobody talks to each other anymore. You've got politicians residing because they say, yeah, it turns out

nobody really wants us to do anything here, but fight and I've kind of had enough, I'm gonna go. I mean, whoever thought we would see any of this and yet nobody's trying to remedy it? I think it's really hard. And the one way in which I really sympathized with you, and I said this in public at the time, is that you were attacked, and I don't know the details,

I'm not gonna ask you to reveal them, but felt like you were fired because you remained close to your brother who was governor of New York and he was going through a bunch of stuff he left office and you were still talking to him and you like weren't allowed to and my take on it from a distance knowing neither you nor your brother was you got to stick with your brother. It's your brother. And that obligation supersedes all others because that's your family. That's like a moral obligation. My brother committed triple murder. I'd be against triple murder, but I would never abandon my brother because he's my brother. And so anybody who says your obligation to me overrides

your obligation to your own brother, that person's evil, that's how I feel about it. And I felt like they were doing that to you. That was just my perspective from watching. People feel differently about family, which was somewhat of a new concept for me. I don't say- In what way? I had a big shot media person say to me

in an interview on their platform, I would not have helped my brother. Not if it would have conflicted with my ethical obligations as a journalist. Or your career ambitions, is what they're really saying. Well, it's disgusting. Either way.

And I said, well, first of all, it didn't because I didn't cover my brother's situation on my show. I've never had the audience give me a hard time until they started hearing things in the media that didn't square with what they had thought. But look, we- Can I say, whoever said, I don't know who you're talking about,

it could have been any of them because they all have the same view, but they're the moral criminals as far as I'm concerned. If someone is gonna say, I would sell out my brother because my boss wanted me to, what do you use, listen to yourself? Like that's the ultimate betrayal. Look, people can have their own ethics,

their own morals, their own standards. Well, I'm gonna judge the crap out of him for that. Knock yourself out. For me, it was more, I got myself into a situation I didn't see coming. And I thought, and my therapist like laughs when I say this, he lived with me all through this. He's been like a life coach to me for a really long time,

great guy in my life. I never say his name because he'll lose all his elevations if anybody knows that he's working with me. But he was like, what do you mean? You didn't see this coming. The media was all over your brother. They wanted him to go down. They wanted him to go down.

They wanted you to go down. They hated what was happening during the pandemic with you having him on the show and all the admiration you guys were getting. This is a jealous business. And I hear that, I understand it, but I don't want to accept it. And what I have decided was,

look, I didn't have any control over how getting fired happened. All I control is what I do next. And I tried to get myself into that place, and that's what made me call you, is that that was so hard. It was so hard for me to see all this stuff that I had worked so hard on, and I had valued so greatly, just vanish.

And well now what am I? And now what do I do? And now is it over for me? Like is that it? I'll never be number one on a huge platform again. So what am I about? What do I do? Of course, like you, I love my wife, I love my kids,

I love my family, I love the family that I choose, my people, and they're for them. I'm a great friend in crisis, I'm great. I'm not great when things are good, but I'm a great friend in crisis. And I had to really think about things I'd never thought about before. And I wanted to check in with you about that,

to see how you were negotiating that space, because it had been so painful. But when I met you, and you know, you should, we should talk about this. You were not the way I was. You were abulient. You were laughing. And you were, yeah, well, let me tell you,

it was a favor to me. And this is gonna be okay. I'm gonna be fine This is a weird world and now I know things I didn't know before Yeah, and I thought that that was a real blessing for you. What did you figure out that you didn't know before? Well, I sort of mean I'll just say You know, I loved working there. I was there 14 years. They were always nice to me. They never told me what to say.

So it's on an attack on them to say that I was hemmed in by the fact that I work for someone else. And that's just the nature of the relationship. No matter how free you think you are, part of you is assessing like, well, I actually am an employee. I do have a boss and I knew that they disagreed with me on a bunch of big topics.

And to their great credit, they never tried to change my view of on those topics. And I would say that now, you know, even though I'm not there anymore, good for them. But you aren't fully free if you work for someone else. Like that's how I felt about it. And I just had reached this time in my life where I felt like there's always really important things

going on, I want to be as honest as I can possibly be at all times. And that was a hindrance to me. So I, and I also had this kind of supernatural sense that everything's gonna be fine. And that in the end, you know, you die anyway. So what are you afraid of exactly? And I'd also done it for too long, too long,

too long same gig, it's good to be, and I have been fired before a couple of times. So it's good to be fired, because it brings you low and you don't become the overbearing asshole that every TV person is on some level. I mean, I already am that, but I kept it in check a little bit.

Republic humiliation is really important for a man. I would recommend it to all men. And so I was very happy from day one, but it was a different, maybe a different time in my life or something. You know, I was ready for it. Everybody who I reached out to about you said, you know, he's changed.

He's different because of this. And when I spoke to you recently not the beginning, but recently you said Yeah, I'm not that guy anymore What does that mean for you? Well, I just I mean I had been I don't think I was playing a role ever I was definitely used By your former employer and mine CNN to flack for the Iraq war, and I allowed that without even really knowing what was happening, and I was always bitter about that

in the way that you are when you've done something wrong. In other words, if you fight with your wife, and it's 100% her fault, you're not that mad. But if it's really your fault, then you're extra mad because you're mad at yourself. And I've been mad at myself for 20 years over the things that I said and was pushed into saying promoting the Iraq war,

which is totally indefensible in my opinion. But other than that, I have always, I think, been myself. But I just, you reach a stage in life where I don't feel like I have anything to prove and I don't need to be nasty to people. I've done that. I have a PhD in it. You were probably the last person I was really, really nasty to. Sorry. You got an A in that class. You're faster.

So I don't go into things like I just talked to Putin and everyone's like, you got to be rough on Putin. Actually, you're not my boss. I can do whatever I want. Yeah, I can go in there and tell Putin, you're a monster. Okay, what do we get out of that? So I can prove that I'm a tough guy, I don't need to prove that. I'm not insecure about that. I'm tough enough anyway. So that I just don't have a chip on my shoulder at all

about any of that, I just don't care. I've got nothing to hide, nothing to prove, and I just want to hear people talk because I think it's interesting, I think it's important to hear people talk. And so I can kind of pull myself out of it more than I was able to before. If you're 31 and trying to make it in TV, you know, you're sort of, you're itching for a confrontation to show your skills.

I can win. And now it's like, ah, I've done that. I just, I'm not interested in that. It's totally pointless. I don't elicit any interesting information. It's all about me and my performance. And I know you know what I'm talking about because you've lived the life,

but there's a lot of pressure on you to make a moment. And now I'm just like, I've had a lot of moments. You can look up on YouTube if you want. So do you feel that when you look at how you used to do it versus how you're doing it now, was it a function of this will work? How much of it was, this is how I feel and how much of it was, this will be funny

or this will resonate, this will land, this will get clicks or lights or whatever. No, it's not that. No, I mean, I've always been an instinct player 100%. And the only times I've gone really wrong as with the Iraq war was when I suppressed my instincts and joined a herd. That was really the last time 2002 that I did that.

Now somebody gives you that answer. You know the follow up is what do you mean? You're a big boy, you're a smart guy, you're supposed to be an intellectual. You got duped by people in a newsroom to be for war? I got duped by someone in the Bush administration. Ah, so it wasn't CNN. It was not CNN.

But I was on a show that was inherently partisan, left versus right, Republican versus Democrat. And the Republicans were in favor of invading Iraq and the Democrats were opposed. Now of course it's inverted completely. But at the time that was so so there was on the one hand I didn't want to be on the same side as like Barbara Lee of Berkeley. I'm still not on her side in most things. And on the other side I had these people from the Bush administration saying to me actually we have a lot of intel that we can't give you but it's totally real. And my question my questions are always the dumbest possible questions. It's like, what does Saddam have to do with 9-11?

Right. Like what? Right? Like explain to me so I can understand. Like, look, we can't really tell you. So I just went along with it. Anyway, it's not that interesting. I think a lot of people did the same, but I-

Oh, it was a big deal though. Not you making this judgment. Yeah, a million people died. Right. But it was such a big deal because it changed things. One, Congress would never own Violence again. No, they would never vote as the Constitution Demands. Oh, yeah, they gave it to presidents and right and left and they are anyone's gonna take the power, right?

You're in the power game your president. You want to give me power as Congress? I'll take it and we saw it with Bush. We saw it with Clinton. We saw it with Bush We saw it with Obama. They all take the power. we saw it with Bush, we saw it with Obama, they all take the power. But you give up the power, it's like, you'll never get it back. You'll never get it back. And they don't want it back.

They won't even redo the AUMF. So what changed? Then you're a bitch, I'm sorry. Well, you can call it that way. No self respect. Again, the benefit of not having a boss. But the, what changed? The dynamic one was Congress isn't gonna own

their responsibility anymore. They'll let the executive go with it, and if the president screws up, it's on them, and if it goes well, we all win. Great. Second thing that changed was it started to be okay to give bullshit rationales for military action. Oh yeah.

Because 9-11, we went into the wrong country, and everybody was so angry that if you tell me the guy who did it is in there I'm not asking any other questions. Oh, we wouldn't have been in Italy. Oh for sure if they and if we had had these Then we would have what we're seeing in the Middle East right now And we're what's happening in this country where people be like whoa, what are you doing in Fallujah? What are you doing in Mosul? Wait, where are the bad guys? What are you doing in Fallujah? What are you doing in Mosul? Wait, where are the bad guys?

Who are these people? But they didn't have the exposure. So that really was a very formative experience for us. Now, you felt it, I mean, you must have felt it over the years, something big happens. My professional life. And the team has a view. Yes.

Oh yeah, yeah. Look, I am what they call hard to manage, okay? And that used to bother me. I used to be like, no, I wanna be a team player. I'm a team person. I like being part of a group. I like that. And I'm not hard to manage.

I just wanna know why you want me to do what you want me to do. I'll do anything. I'll go anywhere. I'll put myself in any kind of danger. If I think it's important for people to understand and I have the ability to go and they don't, I'll go. But I wanna know why, I wanna know why it's worth it. And some people, they don't like the questions.

Just do what I told you to do, meet puppet. This is your job, as you go where I tell you to go. This is what we're gonna do tonight. Stop asking so many questions. I get that, I get why that would be frustrating for a manager, but now I embrace it. And people who know me know it's coming from a good place. I'm not a diva, I'm not difficult for no reason.

I just wanna, I have such a strong sense of purpose. And living through 9-11 taught me such hard bad lessons about holy shit, you're supposed to check power. You got this totally wrong. taught me such hard bad lessons about, holy shit, you're supposed to check power. You got this totally wrong. You did not go after these people the way you were supposed to. And you didn't do it for the wrong reasons,

which were, one, you were covering it, right? And so, you know, you're kind of into the continuation game. And the American people didn't want you checking it. Do you remember? Are you speaking at the Patriot Act specifically? Well, no, before when Bush said, Hey, stop asking all these questions about the weapons of mass destruction and the yellow cake. You're starting to create bad conditions on the ground for our fighting men and women.

And the American people stopped watching the news. And I remember, I was at ABC, and they stopped watching because it seemed like we were jeopardizing our troops. And it worked. And everybody pulled back on that and just covered the war. And we all went in our embed training and everybody went over there and did it. And I never forgot that. And that's why I'm always chasing members of Congress about something that everybody thinks is a stupid

in the weeds issue, which is, hey, why don't you do a vote on this? Why don't you vote on what we're giving Israel? Why don't you vote on what we're giving Ukraine? Why don't you vote on what we just did when the Houthis were attacking us? Why aren't you voting on that? Why didn't you vote on when Trump bombed in Syria? Well, why? It's that's not a part of America. It's not an immediate interest for us. That's personal to us in our safety

I'm sure it's strategic, but that's not what the World Powers Act is about. That's not what the AUMF is about That's all the Constitution's about and they always brush it off. They always brush it off because that's where we are now. We are stuck in a game that's about nothing but advantage. And I had time to think about all this when I got shit-canned and to go back and look at what I had been about and what I had done and what I had not done. And if I were gonna come back,

because you're tougher than I am, not physically, I would literally twist you like a bandit. But you are, you had more resilience about this than I did. I still feel like I'm on one knee and getting back up. And what motivated me to come back was two things. Three things. One, my wife told me I had to. Two, you know, she was like, you gotta get up,

and we got kids, you gotta get up, you gotta do something with your life that is helping people and making something of this place. That's what we're supposed to be about. You are not about that right now. You are a space rug right now, that's what you are. You're a 230 pound lump on the floor. Get up, do something with your life.

Okay. So was that your response, okay? My response was, get away from me and my bottle. More customers, please. There's more. My response was that I was embarrassed and I knew she was right. But sometimes you know what's right,

but you don't have the energy, the will, or the self-confidence or belief to do it. So if I were gonna get back into this, because there's such a price for entry. And another thing, I was thinking when I was walking around outside, you got security outside your house. And I was thinking to myself,

God, I know what this is about. And your kids are old, they're lucky for you, but they're still aware, they're still exposed. And I put my family through so much that I didn't understand that I was doing it at the time because I blinded her on. Gotta help Andrew, this is wrong, I gotta help. I wasn't thinking that my son was having to deal with stuff. My daughters, my daughter making up accounts online to defend her uncle.

It killed me, my wife. So dealing with all those things, that's fine. First of all, good for her. No, they're good kids. They're good kids. They got a good genetic selection. They got a couple of my good genes and they got mostly their mom. So they're in good shape.

But I said, I wanna come back, I wanna do this, but I know why now. And I'm only doing this job the way I want to do it and what I think matters about it. And if that's not good for my employer, then I'm done. And I have the podcast, I'm building the podcast, my own platform, I'm gonna talk to who I want, about what I want, I'm gonna focus on what I think matters.

And I'm not playing the game, I'm only gonna expose the game. And the reason that this is wrong is because everything is about silos and sides. And people will say, no, no, no, there's a line. And Tucker has crossed that line. And I will say, yeah, says who? Says you in the media who also cast me out?

Not the millions of people who wanna take it, well that makes it even worse. No, it means that he, you already have a platform. You already are relevant. Why wouldn't I wanna understand this person better when you have the reach that you have? Doesn't make any sense, except if you're just playing a stupid game that has rules about who you're supposed to

like and who you're not supposed to like. And I'm not gonna be there for two reasons. One, it's a stupid game. And two, I lost that game. So I'm not gonna advance something that I thought was dirty when it was done to me. And I don't think there's value to the American people. They don't know what to believe

because nobody ever shares ideas. And we can go through different stuff that I say that you say because I still want to know why you came after me as much as you did because I'm a dick probably because it's easy because I don't like CNN and I really mean that and in my heart of hearts I really just but why me I don't know how can you not know it was was so intentional. It was so frequent. Because people kept saying, you mean videos or Instagram?

You. It was me. It was you. I said in the first video, and then it was best for you. What was wrong with me lifting weight? You're an outdoors person. I just couldn't. I mean, I was pissed about the COVID thing. That is totally true. I didn't buy any of this from day one. That was totally real. But that's not what I did was not really a pure refutation of your positions on COVID.

It was me taking the cheap shots, which I'm not always above. But you should be. You should be above that. Did it feel good when you would come after me felt a little dirty Felt a little dirty good or dirty. You know, I'm not really a dirty good guy You know what I mean? Because you enjoyed it I guess cameras aren't picking up all people sitting here, but I mean in the sense that You know, I don't want to use any kind of sexual metaphor, but there is one for this. It's like something you shouldn't be doing,

but there's kind of the animal thrill of doing something wrong, I guess is what I would say. You loved it. You loved it and it works for you. But I will say this, I will say this. And my in-laws watch you. Do you know how hard it is to deal with having your in-laws enjoy a joke that makes you want to do bad things that are going to cost you civil litigation money? Somebody did say, you know, Chris Cuomo is a lot bigger than you. Maybe you should be careful. I just couldn't, you know, I almost,

I have weaknesses. I will say, I don't think I have a weakness for women. I gave up drinking many years ago, but I'm still beset by the weaknesses of the flesh. And one of them is mockery. I just can't help it. And my wife, I will say, who we were just with, was an unusually good person.

And would always say, I don't like it when you're mean. You're not a mean person, you shouldn't be mean. Oh, and I'm very dependent on my wife's approval. Like I'm totally happy to admit that. And she never criticized me, but she did in a gentle way. Like, I don't like it when you're mean. That's not who you are. It's kind of who I am, that's the problem.

You are. It's kind of who I am. That's the problem. One out of three of us report being sleep deprived. Okay, well, what is it? Well, there's stress is all kinds of things. But the wrong sheets can make you hot, can make you cold. I'm telling you, I don't even believe it either. But cozy earth sheets breathe, and here's what I love about them. Cozy earth's best selling sheet is a bamboo set, okay? Temperature regulating.

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You're gonna need a subscription. It's required. Plus, the price is gonna vary based on product and subscription plan. But I'm watching your stuff now. You know, I watched a lot of your stuff for this. And it's a different vibe, Tucker. I mean, look, if we had been in more contact

before you did the Putin interview, I would have told you, you gotta check some boxes with this guy. I get why you're gonna say, I'm not gonna get there and get into a fight with a guy who may not let me out of the country. No, no, no, I was never afraid. I was afraid of the US government, not of Putin at all.

Of them doing what? Arresting me when I got back for sanctions violation. That's what my lawyers told me. If you go talk to Putin, and if you don't ask him tough questions, the Biden administration very easily arrest you. It's a big law firm told me that a big law firm, one of the biggest law firm. But how bullshit is that? I thought it was and I was like, I don't care.

I'm an American citizen. I'm going anyway. But I felt no threat whatsoever. I felt definitely felt threat. You know, when the story came out that they had arrested somebody in Russia? Mm-hmm. That got like no attention. One of the things that you have to know about this guy, which I didn't believe, but now I do,

because I've been looking around this house like a little snoop, you don't watch TV and you don't pay attention to your social media about what's being said about you. That's why your hair is so full. And so rich in color. No, it's, I know who I am. I don't need to be told by people who don't know me.

So you don't monitor it? Not at all. You don't know unless somebody tells you. I never, my old job, I never, my executive producer sitting right there, I never got the readings ever, ever, ever, ever. I don't want to know the readings. I wasn't on the email list.

I don't do email actually. And so no, I don't want to know that because I'm no social media. How am I doing? How's this getting picked up or not? You don't do it. I don't watch myself on television or on tape or whatever it is and they don't.

And you don't look at comments. No. Why would I? Look, I have a big family, my immediate family, which is large and then a large extended family with whom we're very close. And so I immediately get worried if I'm doing something that offends them, which is not very often, but I have, and they'll tell me immediately.

And so that's what I care about, and I care about, you know, my religious faith, but why would I care about some commenter? I just don't. And by the way, I think it's really wrong to do that. Why would you give emotional control to a stranger? Like, don't do that. Because we are, well, look, you've gone on your own now, so it's different. The metrics are different. But for a pawn like me, I am somewhat at the mercy of how people decide to feel about it. No, you can, but you, once you self-liberate, or you liberate yourself from the completely irrelevant opinions of partisans and strangers

and focus only on the people in your world who God has put right in front of you, then you're completely free and that's like, well. But our business is all about it. It's totally incestuous. See what you do better in the business. And it's dependent on social media as a proxy of Vox Populi.

They believe that's the people speaking. Right, but not caring is, as a practical matter, much more effective because then you don't have any voices in your head other than the ones who matter. Yeah, until your boss picks up the phone, or the comms person picks up the phone and says, we gotta clean this up. These people are not happy online

because you use the word mouth breather and it turns out that that's a form of a breathing thing that people are upset about and you have to apologize. The sleep apnea lobby's bad again. Whatever it is. And you know, you're like, oh, okay. And you look online and it's only 400 people who said this randomized thing, but it now matters.

The media has made it matter. And now the Washington Post calls. So I would always say to them like, if you think you can host a TV show, why don't you? Okay? But actually you're working in the PR shop at some, like, depressing company. Like, you don't know anything. And if you think you're better at my job than I am, why don't you do it? You know? But they can't. And so their whole justification for their sad jobs, at which they're not very good, is to make you feel insecure.

And I just, I'm not interested in playing along. Like why would I care about some 32 year old, unhappy, unmarried PR person? It's like the single dumbest, most insecure group in America. And they're like, oh, you gotta do the New York Times Magazine. How about no? I'm like, oh, you gotta do the New York Times magazine. How about no? No.

You know what I mean? I get it. I get the turning yourself off to criticism, although I think that's harder to do than to say. No, not criticism. My wife looks at me cross-ed, she brings me to my knees. I'm saying social media criticism. Yes, irrelevant criticism.

Why wouldn't you do that? Because it's actually really dangerous not to, it is, I always think this, it's giving a toddler a handgun. I'm a gun person, I shoot a lot, I'm totally for guns, but not in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing with guns who are irresponsible, because it's too much power, right?

And it will be misused. And the same is true with opinions and letting them in to your head, keep all that stuff out and just follow the voice and the more quiet you are, the clearer the voice is. I wanna talk to you about where that takes you in terms of what you're doing and how it's the same or different for me,

but I gotta tell you, on one level, now that I know that you are not responsive to the external in terms of social media, the masses, that makes you coming after me as much as you did even worse, by the way, because it's not like you were part of some feedback loop where you were like, man, this is raining, I gotta keep doing it.

It was just you. It was, and I try never to be passive aggressive, I really pride myself on just aggressive. Yeah, I'll give you that. And not passive aggressive, you know, I'm a man, okay, there's no excuse for passive aggressive, I really pride myself on just aggressive. Yeah, I'll give you that. And not passive aggressive. You know, I'm a man, okay, there's no excuse for passive aggression. But in some sense that was, I'm not just saying this to spare your feelings, but I mean it, it was passive.

Spare my feelings. Spare my feelings. I'm trying to explain. So it was, I think so little of Jeff Sooker, who I texted immediately when he got fired though on principle, but I worked for him and I just, you don't have to comment, but I really have a low opinion of Jeff Sooker. I don't think he's a good person and I mean that.

And a lot of people up and down managed me at CNN, I know personally since I spent years there, and I felt very hostile toward them. And to some extent it was like my passive aggressive way of you were the biggest show of, you know, striking out at CNN. I'll tell you something, one, and people always say I'm saying this gratuitously,

but why would I at this point? Zucker is the best maker of television I've ever worked with. And he gave me all the opportunities that put me in a position to succeed. He would not let me go back at you, by the way. Wow. He would not let me do it.

He said, one, that's not what we're about here and where's it gonna go? Where's it gonna go? You say you wanna be trying to be in the arena to make things better. Now, this is the man who fired me. I have a lot of feelings about him. I will say one of your coworkers,

and I cannot remember his name, but he's a very weird guy who did the media show. Brian Stelter. Stelter was about to attack my children and called and told me that, and I threatened him and called him names and all this stuff. And I called him a very bad word, and he called my employer to complain

that I was a sexist because I called him this word. Anyway, it was comical, but upsetting. I didn't want him to attack my kids. So I did, I called Zucker on his cell, and I said, one of your guys about to attack my kids, and he goes, oh, and he shut it down. So here I'm saying, I don't like sucker. I appreciated that.

What the voice tells you to do. I don't disagree that sitting across from Putin and getting into a shouting match or whatever is gonna bear much fruit for people. I understand that. And I get that it's a commodity in the media, but I get that it may not be the highest good. Well, it's also just a vanity. It's a vanity.

Right. I'll give you that. There is an aspect of it. But you made choices. Like, you didn't ask him about Navalny. You said, well, all the leaders kill. But don't you feel that if you are going to go and sit with someone like that, you have to hold them to account for things that matter? I did. The fact that he may have murdered somebody or a lot of people? Well, I don't, I mean, the Ukrainians say that he didn't kill Navalny, so I think it's, I think.

Well, who killed him then? Guy looks good one minute, the next minute he's dead. I mean, in some larger sense, the Russian government. And what do Ukrainians say they don't? Zelensky says he killed him. No, he doesn't. No, the Ukrainian government said, no, he died of natural causes.

Now what is actually going on there? I can't even guess. Okay? Navalny died in the middle of the Munich Security Conference, also in the middle of the debate over Ukraine funding in the United States, and his death was within hours used by the President of the United States to justify another 60 billion. So those are just facts. I haven't the faintest idea.

Putin put him in prison, okay? So there's that. So in some sense, he's responsible. Here's what I learned, and I'm hardly a Russia expert, is this is an extremely complicated political environment, extremely, like next level, okay? These are the people who dominate world chess. And so their politics are incomprehensible to me

So what's actually happening? I mean I've been in a lot of countries and covered a lot of stuff abroad and the one thing I've learned is you actually don't really know what's going on and So I had a bunch of evolving questions to answer your question in my you know 4,700 questions that I've written out And I decided on the fly not to ask it because I felt like, what about Navalny? Well, whatever he's gonna say, I'm not gonna move the ball at all.

There's a war going on that is resetting the world. I'm not for throwing your political opponents in prison. I hate it. I'm mad that the Biden administration is now doing it. I'm worried about it happening to me. I mean, honestly, I wanna get that on the record. So, but, so I'm not for that in any sense. I don't choose to live in Russia.

I'm not a Putin supporter, but there's a war going on. And it's crushing the United States economy. And most Americans don't understand that. And I just wanna, I wanna talk about that. And so I made that decision. It's crushing the economy. It's not crushing the war economy though. A lot of that money winds up coming back to the univari Actually, the economy is not crushing the war economy, though. A lot of that money winds up coming back

to the Univari, the corporations that do that. Rich, no, I totally agree, but kicking. They always find a way to win. Kicking Russia out of Swift, stealing people's stuff, the oligarch stuff, at least with nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. That's not the rules-based order, actually. That's the hardest-edged possible politics being played by the US government using the

US dollar and the sanctions regimes to do it. What is the message to the rest of the world? Get the hell away from the United States. These people, if they elect somebody who's seen on like Biden or someone doesn't like us, they will use the dollar and sanctions to destroy us. Get away. It's not a safe haven anymore. And so that fact will change world history,

change the course of American history. We're gonna live with that for the rest of our lives, our grandchildren will live with it. I don't think Americans understand that, and I want them to. And I wanna hear what Putin's thinking is. And I don't know if I achieved that or not, but that was definitely.

But what I didn't wanna do is try to convince other journalists for whom I have no regard at all, for the most part, that I'm a good person, I don't care what they think of me. They call me a Nazi all the time, which I'm not. So like their views are totally immaterial. I just want to focus on what I want to focus on and if you don't like it, don't watch it.

You know, that's kind of my view. I agree that every time you go you don't like it, don't watch it. You know, that's kind of my view. I agree. That every time you go into an interview, one look, you know, you hear voices in your head, though, like, you got to do this, you got to do that. Right. No, I don't. The I can do it, I want.

The first blush of it was Carlson doesn't get to interview Putin. That I absolutely disagreed with. And in fact, as much as it pained me, I defended that proposition that I don't of course and in fact, as much as it pained me, I defended that proposition that I don't, of course, Tucker Carlson, if he can book Putin, he can interview Putin. That's how it works in our business.

If you can get him, you can do the interview. Why Putin chooses Tucker Carlson, what Tucker does with the interview, will judge when he does it. This was, so I was abroad and as noted, not kind of obsessively following the coverage of myself. I don't have a Google alert. They didn't want you to do it

because they thought that you would be a stooge for Putin. And then you showed up in Moscow. They won't even be here in five years. I know. People are John Carl and all these people, they'll all be gone. But you make it easy for them. You show up in Moscow, you say,

this is the best place I've ever been in my life. The city is better than anywhere in America. It is. Get out of here. On what basis? It's so much better on the basis that I described. People making like no money. That's why the price is a cheap.

Yeah. Well, actually, look, I'm no expert on the Russian economy. I can only tell you what I saw, which is a city of 13 million people, larger than any, much larger than any city we have, hard to govern a city like that. And there is no homelessness, no graffiti.

It's spotlessly clean. The public spaces are beautiful. The architecture has not been degraded by postmodern, the oppression of postmodern architecture, which is designed to demoralize and hurt you and destroy your spirit, I believe that, because it's true. You believe that postmodern architecture, which is designed to demoralize and hurt you and destroy your spirit, I believe that, because it's true. You believe that postmodern architecture is designed to kill your spirit? Of course.

Why? What's the message of it? Well, look, anything that we make with our hands, it's the purest expression of our creativity. So there's a purpose behind everything that we make. There's a message behind all of it, as there is in all art. You don't paint a painting with no vision behind it. You paint in painting because you're saying something. And so buildings that are warm and human and that elevate the human spirit are pro-human and brutalism for example are the I.M. paid glass boxes that crowd every city in the United States, those are not elevating.

What's the message of working in a cube in a room with a synthetic drop ceiling and drywall on the walls and fluorescent lighting ahead of you and no privacy at all? What's the message? The message is really clear. You mean nothing. You are replaceable. You are a widget in a bin awaiting assembly.

You're just a cog in a machine. You have no value. Everyone ignores this like, well, that's the way buildings always been. No, that's not true. An architecture and anything made by human hands is the purest expression of the society that produced it. So we were like, oh, they're handicrafts.

No, they're not handicrafts. They're a visible and tangible sign of who you are, not just as a person, but corporately as a society. And if you live in a place that creates nothing beautiful and doesn't provide people uplifting buildings to live and work in, that's a very sick and dark society. And it wasn't always that way. That's the only point I made look.

Moscow, I'm not moving to Moscow. I'm an American, I'm never leaving. But Moscow is not so different from the cities of the United States and my youth. We had a free society, much freer than we have today. We had much more capitalism free markets for monopolies. But you're not saying Moscow was a free society. I'm saying the United States was a free society.

The country that I grew up in had a semi-functioning capitalist system with competition. It wasn't all like four companies dominating everything, which is what we have now. That's not capitalism. Okay? That's a monopoly economy, which is bad. And you had freedom of speech. I guess there are probably some limits, but I wasn't aware of what they were because they were so broad.

And you had safe, for the most part, clean cities. And that's exactly what Moscow is. So again, as I've said, and I really mean it, and I said it to our producers who we were traveling with at the time, this does not make me love Putin. It makes me despise our leaders. And so I say this for Moscow and John Steward

who is just such a tool of power, it's crazy. He's like, well, you know, fentanyl ODS are the price of freedom. Really, he's gonna try and convince me of that? It's like, well, you know, fentanyl O.D. is the price of freedom. Really, you're gonna try and convince me of that? It's like telling women, working at Citibank is liberation. No, it's slavery actually. That's not liberation.

Getting to raise your own children is liberation. Getting to do what you want to satisfy the deepest desires of your heart, that's liberation. They've redefined liberation. Liberation is living in some shithole? No, that's slavery. And so I try to make this point,

I don't think it's super subtle or esoteric or complex, but they're like, oh, Tulip Putin, no, no, no, no. You are flacking for the indefensible. That's what's actually happening here. So for you, it's not Putin's better, Russia's better. It's that it gave you perspective on what you think has changed America for the worse. Of course, I look at everything.

It's not how it came across. I'm sure it was at least in part due to my inability to explain it fully, which has been a problem all my life. It's incumbent on me to explain things, that's my job, and I don't always succeed. So I'm willing to believe that. But it's also a product of intentional distortion of what I'm saying.

And which is this is an indictment of our leadership class, which deserves to be indicted. So I'm willing to believe that but it's also a product of intentional distortion of what I'm saying and Which is this is an indictment of our leadership class which deserves to be indicted and imprisoned in my opinion and I mean that so All my views are that all my views are through an American lens. I've got a big family I'm not leaving my family's been here for hundreds of years. I'm not going anywhere I'm the most American person you've ever met don't have another passport I'm like a lot of other people. And so I'm stuck here by choice and circumstance, and I want my country to be as great as it can possibly be.

And that's why I opposed the Ukraine war from day one. This is not gonna help us, period. And they're like, oh, tool of Putin. It's like, no, tool of America, that's what I want. What about the argument that they make that if you allow Russia to exercise reach, it'll keep doing it? I would say show me the evidence.

I would say show me the evidence. The Soviet- Started in Crimea, now they're taking at least half of it. They had a referendum in Crimea where they asked the overwhelmingly like 90% Russian population of Crimea, do you want to be part of Ukraine after the coup of 2014, or do you want to be part of Russia? And they said Russia. So that's the democratic process. I would say there. Right, but you don't change sovereignty over what the popular vote is. Well, it depends how committed it's a democracy you are. I mean, democracy is the promise of

self-government. But if where we are right now decided it wanted to be its own state, they don't get to just go. No, because if you have a constitution, you have larger ideals involved. Sure, but as a matter of principle and practice, if you're committed to democracy, you should let people choose how they seek to be governed. But the truth is, Ukraine is not a sovereign country and hasn't been since at least 2014, when the West, the CIA, and this has been documented in great detail, staged a coup with a color revolution and took over their government. And now we know all the details that, you know, we have biolabs and CIA offices

and it's not a sovereign country in any sense. So whatever, I mean, look, I don't even care that much. Do you know what I mean? If- It's heavy stuff though. It's very heavy. I mean, of course I care, but I care in the sense that if, you know, Burundi invades Rwanda, which has happened,

or Vietnam invades Cambodia, which has also happened, I'm against that because I'm for sovereignty. But what I care about is the country that I live in, I want it to be a sovereign country, it's not. We act at the behest of the demands of other countries. We imperil our own national security on behalf of other countries. That's why we're in NATO. We have a security guarantee with Macedonia.

What? I didn't sign up for that. That's not the Constitution. I want my kids to die from Macedonia. No. But their rationale is an extension of collective strength. At BMO, we know every business is unique. I'm Massimo Leca.

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and get 10% cashback on business expenses for the first three months. Terms and conditions apply. Hey, I'm Tom Power. I'm the host of the CBC podcast Q with Tom Power. I get to talk to artists from all over the world, writers, musicians, actors, directors, all kinds of creative people. And we try to have the conversations you have

with really, really good friends. The conversations you have when you share a love of something, about ideas, when you wanna hear about everything, I feel really lucky to have these conversations. Q with Tom Power, available now on Spotify. Now, here's the problem. I don't have any problem with you owning any of these opinions that you do.

Well, these seem kind of nonsense. I can have my own opinion about the level of sufficiency of your reasoning. But I think you'd find it unimpeachable. It's that, oh, it's definitely not unimpeachable. But it is that you shouldn't be demonized for it, though. And to flip it, because your audience is gonna very much want to understand this. What do you believe personally

or do you believe people believe that I say or report or represent that I shouldn't? The you? Yeah, like COVID for instance. What do I mean to you when it comes to COVID that bothered you about the coverage or the reality or any of it? I was completely opposed to, from the very first day,

the idea that you can restrict people's freedom of movement or force them into taking any medical treatment of any kind, period. And I am strongly and have been really my whole adult life opposed to abortion, which I think is killing, is killing. However, the one abortion slogan I always liked was my body, my choice. I thought that was a good argument.

I don't think it's actually your body, so I don't think it's a rational argument if you think it through, but as a slogan, I totally believe it's my body, my choice. And then my body, my choice, people are like, actually, no, it's not your body or your choice. It's my body and my choice, and you're gonna do this or we're gonna hurt you.

And I'm just completely opposed to that. And so anybody who seemed to be endorsing it as you did, I was like completely opposed to that. I understand, and I've heard this. I see reproductive rights differently, and I do think that it was a very dangerous, politically it's an easy analysis of the dog catching the car and getting rid of Roe v. Wade.

Now you have it state by state, you have this IVF thing that happens in Alabama, you're gonna have a lot of crazy stuff happen now, and women are gonna have to pay the price for it. But here's where I was coming from on COVID and I want your take on this. So we're in this emergency situation that I very much believe was real and I wanted to believe President Trump that this is being hyped and it's gonna go away. There's gonna be a few dozen cases and we'll be okay. I would've loved for that had been true. I didn't want people to get sick, let alone me.

So then it becomes like a really big thing. And I have these unusual set of inside eyes, right? Cause my brother is running one of the biggest states and dealing with some of the most cases. So I'm like deeper into it probably than anyone else covering it in the country because I'm watching my brother get overwhelmed by need. And the hospital, that's how I got COVID

was going to visit hospitals, because I kept hearing these stories about all these dead people all over the place and how the Gurney's flying, and they were. And then I wound up catching COVID. The government says, this is what we have to do. And there are similar practices going on around the world. I understand the restriction argument.

I totally get the liberty argument. But why was it wrong for me to say, this is what they're telling us to do? And clearly it's imperfect. All of their answers are imperfect. They don't know what's happening right now. This is a first. But isn't that the job?

Is that this is what they're saying? Here's their explanation. Yes. Asking questions about it. That's part of the job. But I wasn't like pro vaccine or pro mask. I'm the guy who got busted in the New York Post because I took a run without a mask on,

walked back in my lobby and somebody ratted on me and then I became a hypocrite. I want you to wear a mask, but I'm not. Not when I'm taking a run, I'm coming back into my apartment building. I'm sweaty. Look, I get it. I didn't wear a mask.

You came after me for that. At all. I did and I'll tell you why. Please. I didn't wear a mask at all. And me for that. At all. I did and I'll tell you why. Please. I didn't wear a mask at all. And that's one attack that I will not walk back because I think it's fair. I didn't wear a mask and when told to do it on airplanes,

I always punched a hole through it. At a spike? No, because I couldn't breathe. Otherwise I can't get the cigarette in there. If there's a- Yeah, that's right. Just kidding. No, I quit smoking by then.

But I couldn't breathe and it's not good not to get oxygen. I believe in sunshine and air. My wife and I have not slept with our door closed and I mean many, many years, no matter what the climate, we sleep at the door open because we believe in fresh air. And so I believe that and no one's gonna keep me from getting fresh air, sorry.

So, but if it's true that you must wear your mask at all times, then you must wear your mask at all times, whether it's inconvenient or not, don't go far wrong. Well, it wasn't all times. It was a social distancing thing, and I had been jogging. But people are getting arrested on the beach alone. I understand that it went too far. What I didn't understand, I totally get it.

And I feel the same way about the vaccine and what was understood and not understood. Wait, because I ask you one question, that really was the pivot point for me when I realized these people are liars and it's my job not to affirm what they say, but to question and to challenge them, no matter what they call me, and they call me a murderer and all that.

But when the BLR, M riots happened and public health officials said it's okay because fighting systemic racism which they never defined despite my request is more important than shielding people from COVID. And I'm like you may think that as a political matter but as an epidemiological matter you've just revealed that you're a freaking quack and you don't give a shit about public health because you were just telling me that this is not allowed except when it's a militia helping you. You're an evil person.

That was like my initial, and no one ever explained to me how it's okay to infect people with COVID as long as they're challenging Donald Trump. I understand the argument. I guess the way I was watching it in real time is they can't control, if it's a protest, it's one thing. And you can have rules, but do you really want to go

arresting your way into a crowd of people who are already outraged by something? They arrest people on a beach, surfing. I know, but people, look, and I don't like that. But, and I didn't like it then, I never said I did. If a bunch of Nazis came out in the early summer of 2020 and said, well, Nazis were fine. I don't think they would go mask arresting,

although a lot of those guys do wear masks. To hide their identity. Are you hitting? I don't, I don't think they would. They would get mucked down. I mean, I just think it would be too dangerous. And I think they felt the same way. Well, would they have had drones and automatic weapons. Like they, look, the one thing we know about the people-

But you're not gonna shoot these people. You know what I'm saying? They shot Ashley Babbitt. You know, she was five two and unarmed, you know, like, and then no one apologized for it. Tucker, they shot Ashley Babbitt. What was she doing at the time? She was pushed against a door going into the Senate chamber, but she was killed without

warning and no one ever said, maybe we shouldn't. I'll just start here, from my perspective, don't shoot girls. That's like my rule. You don't commit violence against women, period. I actually, I'm the last person apparently in America who thinks that. An unarmed woman should not be shot under any circumstances. If she's unarmed and she's 5'2", I think it's totally dishonorable. And to see Joe Scarborough of all people,

of all people saying that's okay, I'm like, oh. Look, I mean, so many of these situations are so impossible. But I'm getting off the track. Sorry, sorry. No, no, no, no, I think this is the track because the whole point is nobody has these conversations. Yeah.

No one, now they do in their real lives. People have friends where they don't agree on things. Trump has changed a little bit. The Magistrate have changed it a little bit for people. They started being mean to each other in their personal lives. But you've got to talk like this. Do I see it the way you do? No.

I think you do on some model. Hold on, hold on. I don't believe that you should, shooting on armed people is a very dicey proposition. Women, women. I don't make a gender distinction. Really? I know too many women who can kick my ass.

You know what I mean? Like, they're too easy. I don't think you do my sink. That's not true. I do. Name one who could kick your ass. So I'm 6'1", or you was before I had back surgery. I was gonna say.

Yeah. You know, we're trying to be real with each other here. You know what I mean? Well, you're a lot taller than I am, okay? So I'm just saying, and you're famously a bodybuilder, there's not one woman in America who could kick your ass. It's just not true. And you know it's not true.

And you have to say it to make the unmarried. You went to the UFC fight. You think you could get in there with the women who are fighting, you come out looking like that? No, I'm saying you specifically. Yeah, I'm telling you. I have a polygraph exam

and I didn't want to have to do this on camera, okay? But if I applied it to you. I would pass in flying colors because I know how to beat the test. And I can tell you how if you want to know. That's why they're not invisible in court. But can I just ask you, like, you know in your heart you don't actually think there's a single woman

in this country who you do. No, I really do. What's her name? I really do. I know. The whole point is, is that I don't have to know them by person. Men and women are very different, much more different.

We spend all of our time on racial differences. You're a race, my race, and there are differences between races. There is no difference between races that's a quarter as profound as the difference between sexes. These are biological differences that are physical, they're psychological, they're hormonal. Well that's kind of the found difference. But that's kind of the point about drawing racial distinctions is that you're really the same. And obviously biologically you're different. But I And obviously, biologically, you're different, but what I'm saying, I don't see it as a less than.

Can women lift as much weight as men, on average, of course not. No, no, no, no, I'm making the opposite argument. It's not less than, I like women better, and I think that my job, all of our jobs, as men, is to treat women differently, and better than we treat men. That is the idea, oh, that's chivalry. Yeah, okay, honey, good luck in a world without it.

And I'm serious, if you got into an argument, and I know you well enough to know, if you're standing in a restaurant, someone's like, fuck you, Chris, come on, you punch him out. If a woman did that. Depends where my cash flow is. Okay.

I really don't have a lot of capital right now. You would want to, you would want to, you're quick with the puns. I would definitely want to. If a woman did that. Depends where my cash flow is. I really don't have a lot of capital right now. You would want to, you would want to. You're quick with the punch. I would definitely want to. I happen to know that. If a woman got way up in your face, you would know. Exactly. I wouldn't.

Exactly. So it is a bigger sin, not just against her, but against yourself and your dignity and your responsibility as a man. Your job is to protect women. I'll give you the gender. I don't see it exactly the same way. Because you don't want to admit it. You're telling me some girl is gonna kick your ass.

If you know this, that's not true. Hold on. There are women who could, okay? There's no question in my mind. There are all these professional fighters and women who train in self defense who will beat my ass. I'm a 53 year old guy. How many female fighters have gone against male fighters?

They're roughly the same. Very rare, although did you see that girl just won the high school wrestling championship? That was cool. It must have been a late, well look. She was in the morning, it was lightweight. But they're extremely female and it's unfair. But by weight, muscle, it's unfair.

It's not just unfair, it's immoral. It's totally moral. It's immoral. If a woman feels. Why don't we have a Violence Against Women's Act? If the, well. That. Why do specifying in law that it's worse? Hold on, there's a through line. Yeah.

You have violence against women because you have a cultural preset of victimizing women and putting them in positions that are inferior. And it was important enough that society decided to punish it extra. No, it's not the, it's illegal to be as, you know, fair to women act. It's not the illegal to-

Should be. Maybe. You should have that also. Maybe. Because there's gender inequality. But it's the violence against, violence against women. Yeah, because you have a culture of where men, you know what the rule of thumb is?

The rule of thumb comes from British common law if you can beat your wife with anything that's not bigger than your thumb. Actually, the British Empire is the empire that stopped widow burning in India. There was no force for female liberation, more powerful than the British Empire, ever until the American Empire showed up and inverted it and started telling women, true liberation

is working for some soulless company that hates you and will pay for your insurance to freeze your eggs so you can put off what you really wanna do in life and work for us. That's not- Liberation is choice. Is that you get to make your own choices, people don't make them for you.

Well, Did you just blow off my point? Well, I did to this extent. Of course liberation is choice, but these are choices that individuals don't get to make, like how's your economy structured? And as Elizabeth Warren. There are structural things that take away your choice.

That is true. I think the inability to raise children on a single income is like the biggest change in American society. But when you propose something like family leave or allowing men or women to be able to be there with the newborn, nobody wants to give a mind for it. Allowing men to be there with the newborn? Yeah.

Other question, why? You didn't spend time with your kids when they were first born? Of course I did and I have a lot of children but I so I know for a fact not as a matter of theory that a child needs two parents and that each parent brings something vital and but different to parenting but the one thing I definitely know is that there's not one man on the planet who knows intuitively what to do with a newborn. There's a period for the first several months that if you're not a woman, you are not comfortable making the right choices for a newborn.

That's just true. And if you can find a man who's totally comfortable around a newborn the way any five-year-old girl is, then I will give you $1,000 because you can't. It's like finding the girl who can beat you up. You can't. Yes, I can. Because there is anyone. I'm telling you. And so the truth is the difference between men and women. You're going to want to have a finding the girl who can beat you up you can't get one I'm telling you the truth is the difference between women where someone wants to admit it because we're like oh it's not that it's not totally that look I'm telling you our whole conversation is we're like in a hammerlock there's a

tiny percentage of the US population which is an overwhelming percentage of the Democratic electorate which is unhappy overwhelming percentage of the Democratic electorate, which is unhappy, unmarried women, and they control what everyone can say. And they don't want to have the conversation, and they're like, oh, you hate women. Yeah, I hate women. I don't think I do. The people who think it's okay to punch them in the face, the people who don't punish rapists, the people who allow you to be afraid on the subway, those people hate women. Once we're telling you, forgo your family to work at Citibank,

those people hate you, obviously. There are definitely people that hate women. There is a real thing. There is definitely a cultural problem we have in terms of allowing. Have a portion, we love you so much. Allowing women to have the same exercise of options that men have, and we know this.

And there are different ways to correct it, and sometimes you go too far and in the wrong directions. But I don't think there's anything wrong. But it's always the same direction. It's always to give up your family. If you read any survey of women, what do they want? They want a lot of different things we all do.

But men want that too. Didn't you get married to have kids? No. I got married because- You didn't want kids? You didn't want to start a family? I'm not really, no. But I got engaged at 21.

Yeah, you were very young. Yeah, I was super young and I was also. And you guys had been together? Well, I was also especially shallow. And I got married because I really liked my wife and I thought she was hot. And so I married her and she was the one who was like, we should have children.

And I was like, oh, you know, that's good, whatever. It's not even interesting. Well, she had to be thinking, what am I gonna get out of this? Well, I think this was, I'm a Christian, so I'm stuck. But this is not what I thought. I think there's possibly some truth there.

But the point is, if you ask women what they want, the overwhelming majority will say, I want to be married and have children. You know that men want that also? Yeah, they may do. I mean, I did and ultimately and- That's why I got married.

100%. I'm talking specifically about women. They want to be married and have children and that is the thing that the Democratic Party prevents them from having through policy. And the reason they do that is because the single most important constituency, as you well know, is not black voters, they always say that it's black voters. No, it's unmarried women of all races.

And so they do a lot of different things to discourage marriage and fertility. One of them is paying single moms not to be married, another is constantly promoting anti fertility measures like abortion and birth control. They actively work to prevent women from forming families. And I think that's evil. And I don't think it serves women at all.

That's my view. It is your view. I disagree. I see it differently, but that doesn't make you evil. You see what I'm saying? A little evil. No, and I'll tell you what, you use that word a lot. I don't use it.

You are more judgmental and stronger in your convictions than I am. Yes. I have a lot more latitude in how things go. Like Ashley Babbit, look, the whole thing was so regrettable. And I didn't think it was right. It wasn't right to call it an insurrection because an insurrection is a real thing.

And I know people get mad at me about this, but who gets mad at you about that? There's a real- Just tell me some names. Is this the girl who's gonna beat you up? Is it gonna be mad at me? There are a lot of women. I'm telling you Tucker,

I'm gonna start bringing them around you the next time we see each other. I'm afraid of these checks. And you will see, you went to that UFC fight. If you had said this before and then walked into that fight, Trump even couldn't have saved you. So this is what I saw there. Insurrection is a crime, okay?

There's an insurrection act, you have a statute, you have the whole thing. There has never been an insurrection that was largely unarmed, okay? And I know people are gonna say they had fire extinguishers and sticks. If your intention is to take over the United States government,

you're gonna come heavy, you're gonna come hard, you're gonna be armed. This was a riot, and that's bad enough. January 6th was bad enough, it was a riot. Ashley Babbit, for good reason, bad reason, no reason, was where she was. She put that officer in fear of his life with like 10 other people. And that's how she got shot.

We don't know that she put him in fear of his life because there was never an investigation into it. They did, so Michael Byrd, the man who shot her to death, had already been sanctioned for leaving his loaded Glock in the men's room of the Capitol. Now you tell me, I don't know what your view of firearms is, but I have a lot of views on firearms, you can't leave a loaded, a striker-fired handgun with a bullet in the chamber with no safety. And you leave that in the men's room as a cop.

You should be fired immediately. That's negligent and a mortal threat to anyone else who uses the men's room, so especially children. So that guy shot her. Oh, that's great. So I'm not. Winchester pump?

That's not my gun. That's not my, that's not, that is my son. That's Mario. Oh, I love that. And that is a, yeah, that's not, that is my son. That's Mario. Oh, I love that. And that is a, yeah, that's a breach loaded Winchester. So I know my guns. I'm not, I'm not anti-weapon, but here's the thing.

There was no investigation. I know, but hold on. He's, first of all, the investigation is what we all saw in video. The, and what he said. Did cops get to shoot people without a warning? I don't think they do actually. Cops don't get to shoot you without a warning

in a situation where they are exercising a use of force in apprehending you. In a situation where there is a mob descending upon this guy, he's trying to hold the glass doors because he wants lawmakers to not get hanged or whatever. And they're breaking through. He then made a judgment that his life

was gonna be threatened otherwise. What I'm saying is it criminal. And him leaving a weapon somewhere is a bad move, but it doesn't have any relevance in terms of what he did here. Well, of course it does, because it speaks to his judgment. And here's the point I would make,

is that Ashley Babot was not a mob. She was an individual. She was of. Right, but he didn't shoot a mob. He shot an unarmed woman who was under 5'5", who did not pose a mortal threat to him. And if she did, tell me how. And he killed her.

And so just on the basis of those facts alone, I need to know more, but we don't know more because there was no investigation. It was just swept under the rug and then he goes on TV and accuses everyone of racism who doesn't like the killing that he committed. And then you have people on television saying, I'm so glad that she died.

I'm so glad that she was killed. This is a veteran, by the way, who runs a pool company in San Diego. This is the person who served the country and who is getting the least benefit from it. She runs a freaking pool company, okay? She's not working at BlackRock. And her death is totally fine because we don't like her politics. If they think it's okay to kill Ashley Babbitt when she posed no mortal threat to anybody,

not even conceivably, then they'll be happy when I die. That's how I feel about it. God forbid, and you're probably not wrong because the fact that there's even a they in your analysis of it shows that we're in the wrong place. Get morning joy, specifically morning joy. Yeah, but what I'm saying, no, no, but what I'm saying that humanity

should be in absolute value. You know? Amen. When, like January 6th, I know people will say it wasn't insurrection, people have found, okay, fine, he wasn't charged with that. And there's a reason he wasn't charged with that and it's not a technicality. And your approach and the approach of others people

that, hey, this was just, you know, these guys were in the wrong place, the wrong way, but that's all it was. I don't agree with that. I think it was a riot. And I think they were way over the line, and I think that they were motivated to go way over the line, in part,

by the President of the United States. Obviously more of a riot, but let me ask you just a couple of questions. One is, why can't we know how many federal agents were in the crowd and what they were doing there? I'm fine with knowing. I love transparency. It is the key to understand.

It's the opposite of what we have. And there are thousands of hours of tape, and the release of which will not jeopardize security in the capital. You cherry picked that tape, by the way. I aired what they sent me. You cherry picked it, though. And you made it look like the least.

I don't know what that means. Like you kept showing the Indian guy walking around like it was a shaman guy. The Indian guy did over two years in prison for no crime whatsoever I talked to him yesterday again his name is Jake Chansey He's a very smart guy actually I think I interviewed him also by the way. He's a good definitely his lawyer He's pretty far out, but he's no more far out than Janet Yellen or anybody else You know what I mean? So like yeah except Janet Yellen wasn't busting into the Capitol and walking around It's an actual criminal.

I mean, Janet Yellen was Fed Chair and then taking millions of dollars in speaking fees from the banks. What? But look, that's criminal behavior. I'm fine with those types of ethical lapses and how we allow the system to keep going around. Cuffer, baby!

Lock her up, is that what you mean to say? But I do think that, look, I think that what I see in January six, what I see when it comes to immigration, what I see when it comes to Russia, all of these things wind up becoming fodder for division. You have to have a take. And it winds up having to be the opposite take that the other side has.

And I really think that it's symptomatic of our decline. I totally agree. January six was either no big deal, the BLM stuff was worse, or it was an insurrection. And everybody there is treason. We don't like what the president does, treason. You know, or he did nothing. Everything is like that, immigration, the migration stuff. You are hit with the stick of,

you are forwarding the replacement theory that the Democrats want to bring in as many brown people as possible to replace white people. Well, they've said that. Well, like three books have been written on it. We have so many. Three books, that's not the policy. It's not to replace white people with brown people.

So what I'm interested, and by the way, I've never said white people. I said the current Oc people who are born here, many of them are not white. I don't know how we get to white people. You contextualize it as white people. You'll say like, well white people created everything. They don't want us to have white babies.

Where's it, why is it coming from? I've never said they don't want us to have white babies. Haven't said that. Though the attacks on white people are one of the biggest thing that's ever happened in our country. The fact that people in the media can just sort of blithely attack an entire group

on the basis of their skin color, I just grew up thinking that was completely out of balance. Does it matter if the group is a majority or a minority? Well, the principle never changes, which is you're not responsible for your skin color, you're only responsible for what you do. Right. And so you can't attack people on the basis of immutable characteristics, and if you can,

then tell me why segregation was wrong. I don't really understand. I think segregation was wrong, and I've always thought that, I think it now. Good. And I think attacking people on the basis of their skin color is always wrong. It was every bit as wrong as what's happening now. It's every affirmative action, totally immoral. How can you give someone a job

on the basis of a skin color? How can you deny someone a job on the basis of a skin color? You're not allowed to do that in our country. That's what I was taught growing up in a very liberal place in California. And then I get older and it's like, oh, we're definitely gonna do that.

And you can't complain about it or you're the racist. And it's like, no, no, no. You're the one punishing people for how they were born, for their skin color. I thought that was like bull corner stuff. I thought we hated that. I thought that was the load star of American politics. The one thing we hate is attacking people,

denying them opportunity on the base of their skin color. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no. Not only do we do that, but you can't mention it. Well, I think I can actually. And boy, I've had a lot of people, Republicans, tell me I can't mention that. Why? Why?

Well, they never explained, just shut up. Well, make some radioactive. I don't care. That's wrong. You know? Because it is substituting a level playing field where there isn't one. So the way affirmative action was supposed to work

was that it would enable a merit-based system that people who are minorities were being kept out of for two reasons. One, they didn't have the opportunities early on to build up the tools that a lot of white people did because of what they call now privilege, but really it's opportunity. And the second reason is that,

because white people were the majority and didn't like the minority. Okay, so the second- So you had a system that was set up against them and to be remedied. That was the theory. It's almost impossible to apply logic to this because it's based on obviously racial

hostility and political calculation. It's not based on any principle of justice. But hold on, that is justice. Fairness under law, meaning that just because this person is brown doesn't mean you can treat him like a dog. My gosh, of course not. But that's what it was supposed to remedy. Just because this person is any color, any color, you should never punish someone for

how he was born, period. But the country did. Of course, and that ended in 1965. No, it didn't. Okay, well, let me ask you a couple questions then. If whites become the minority, which I keep reading, is gonna happen really soon, should they be beneficiaries of affirmative action?

If they start to get discriminated against. Okay, so would you, On the basis of that, Well, they're already discriminated against. Okay, so would you- On the basis of that. Well, they're already discriminated against. In college admissions, in hiring, both federal and private sector, whites are, I just saw this the other day, I was kind of shocked by it.

If you're to break out the country by ethnicity, which I hate, I don't think we should count by race, I think we should address people as they were created by God, which is as individuals. That's fine, as long as everybody's getting a fair shake. Because whites are not in the top five for income in the United States right now. Nigerians, on average, make more than whites.

So if you're talking about a world that is black and white and the whites have some sort of entrenched privilege and beneficiaries of all this stuff, you're really talking about a country that's generations gone. And so in the current country, virtually every immigrant group has a higher income than native born whites. So I'm not mad about that, I'm just saying that's not a basis upon which to

discriminate against whites. And if you continue to with those numbers in hand, and those are public numbers from the Labor Department, then you're really doing this because you hate whites. And I don't want to live in a country where you punish people because the people in charge don't like their skin color because we've lived in that country before and I don't wanna live in it again.

How is it that the people in charge are mostly white but they hate whites? Well, that's a very deep question. And I would say this, I mean, I don't know the answer, but I would say this just as I travel to the extent that I do, I have never one time been yelled at by a non-white person, not one time. Not one time.

No black person has ever yelled, Resist! I've had way more, you know, never. I've never had a Spanish person or Asian person, any non-white ever do that. It's been about 99% 32 year old female white lawyers. I'm just saying. What do they say?

Racist! Okay, so look, there's a deep psychology here. I don't fully understand it. There's a lot I don't understand, including this. But I don't need to. Because in this country, you should never be allowed to punish people on the basis of their skin color.

I just start and end there. And I don't, all these rationales, well, systemic this, systemic that, you don't have the evidence to support your position, not you, but the person making that case. And even if you did it, wouldn't matter. You can't punish people for the color of their skin. That's the whole freaking lesson

of the entire civil rights movement. You know, we're like pretending it's like the opposite lesson? No, it's that how do you enable? Equality if it's not going to happen naturally, okay? How do you enable if you find a way to do that that wouldn't punish people or advantage people either one? On the base of their skin color if you could find a way that wouldn't let some people sit in the front row and others sit in the Balcony or give some people you know a water fountain in the lobby and some a water sit in the front row and others sit in the balcony or give some people a water fountain in the lobby

and some a water fountain in the utility closet, then we could talk about it. But no scheme devised or conceivably could be devised doesn't wind up helping some people in the base of their skin color and hurting people in the base of their skin color. And they used to tell us for years like, oh, a front of action doesn't hurt white people.

Look at the hiring numbers. What are these guys getting bored over here? What are you guys doing? They're quite, they're quite, anyway, whatever I'm going on. ["The Conversation Was a Valley"] Thank you very much for watching this. I hope the conversation was a valley.

That's what matters. Not that I get an ad a boy, oh, you took it to Carlson. Who cares? How does that move the needle? People who believe in him just hate me more. People who believe in what I'm saying just hate him more. Where does that get us? Where has it gotten us?

What do you think? Let me know. I'll see you at News Nation, 8 and 11p Eastern every weekday night. Thanks for being here and checking out the sub-stack. If you care about the long COVID convo, or you just want the podcast ad free, I appreciate you giving conversation a chance.

Let's get out of here.