The Tucker Carlson Show - Iran Update: Israel’s Newest Bombing Campaign, the Oncoming War With China and How to Avoid It

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Does the Iran war become a conflict with China that we can’t possibly win? Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on how we’re heading down that road. (00:00) China’s Role in the Iran War (12:34) Does the US Need a Threat to Survive? (19:46) Charlie Kirk's Suspicious Murder Investigation (29:09) The Future of Israel and Iran (33:05) The Real Reason Israel Is Invading Lebanon Paid partnerships with: Defend: Enter code "Tucker" for 20% off your purchase at https://defendcellcam.com American Financing: NMLS 182334, http://nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 800-685-5696 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit http://AmericanFinancing.net/Tucker. Last Country Supply: No one knows what will happen next. Make sure you’re prepared at https://lastcountrysupply.com/tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colonel Wilkinson, thank you so much for doing this. I think most Americans understand this as a war between the United States in partnership with Israel against Iran, but there are, of course, a lot of other players acting on this drama maybe in ways that we don't perceive. China would be the biggest and potentially most threatening to our interests. What is China's role in this conflict? It's a role, I think, forced upon them at the moment.

Not that they can't handle it. they seem to be quite adaptable with regard to this very frenetic and indeterminate presidency and empire. But it's forced on them because they didn't think that this was going to happen in the way that it's happened, I think. That is to say, this being the war of choice with Iran. And some things are happening in the war that are probably disturbing to them. For example, the latest completed railroad in their five base road initiative railroad, roads was probably the most strategic one in many ways. It brings China's Pacific ports all the way around on land and then intended was up the Persian Gulf along the old route that we used to

resupply the Soviet Union during World War II and eventually into the caucuses and beyond. And now we're bombing it. Israel and we are bombing that railroad. Now, of course, railroads don't get bombed very well. You could drop all the ordinance in the world on them, and they will get a bunch of people out there and repair them pretty quickly. But nonetheless, it shows that there's something more to this war of choice than perhaps even Trump knows about. I'm sure there are people in the Pentagon who know about it that are happening, and the world is basically ignorant of it. Well, can you expand on that? There are things happening that president doesn't know about, but that some planners at the Pentagon doubt was due. What would those things be? Well, one of them is bombing that railroad.

It just started recently with both Israel and the United States making it a principal target. And one of the things they're trying to do, of course, and this is a hugely geostrategic issue that most people don't. I'm not sure I understand it completely. but if you go back in time to earlier empires when the real power, cultural, technological, economic, military, and otherwise was in the East, you see one of the ways that those empires roughly defeated other empires by shifting maritime commerce to the land. Because maritime commerce was simply becoming too expensive for them. They put the Portuguese empire out of business, for example.

And what they did was they shifted along one of their routes, primary routes, was this route China is now using to eventually go up to Persian Gulf and into Azerbaijan, Romania and Georgia, the Caucasus along northward, marrying up with the other three base road initiative railroads, which incidentally have been adumrated seriously by the war in Ukraine. Does that ring a bell with anybody strategically? They're not emptying into Europe, as they were intended to do. They've stopped pretty much. And what does that do? Well, basically those railroads mean that instead of two and a half to three days and very expensive maritime shipping for China's Pacific port produce, it's 16 hours into the heart of Europe. That's a huge change, one that will drive a lot of commerce off the seas and will, to a certain extent, negate the Babel Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, maybe even the Panama Canal. although China has built that very, very luxurious state-of-the-art port on the west coast of Peru, but that's looking toward the Pacific and looking toward that aspect of commerce.

So don't expect a lot of that to be going through the canal even. These railroads are a game changer in terms of commerce. And think about this for a moment, in terms of one of the United States' supposedly great strengths, it's maritime power. because we won't need to police the seas anymore. It'll all be going over land. I think a lot of Americans are a great disadvantage to understanding this because they lack a sense of

the mechanics of commerce, products just appear. It's not clear how. And they lack a sense of geography, the idea that, you know, Iran, you could reach China from Iran overland. People, I think, lack the perspective of how exactly that would happen. But clearly the Pentagon understands these questions, right? So they're bombing that railroad for a reason, which would be what, do you think? Well, to set it back and to tell China we know what they're doing and we don't like it.

That route is such a serious threat in and of itself because of what you look at in terms of commerce during the a period immediately prior to World War II, when Britain and the United States sneaked into Iran, and I mean that, we sneaked in there. They were Nazi sympathizers at the time, and we built a road and we flanked it with security, and at that time the Iranians couldn't challenge it very much, and we shipped all manner of goods up that road into the belly of the Soviet Union. Stalin grab would have never held out without that supply route. Hundreds of thousands of trucks and wheel vehicles and other implements of war went up that route. It was second only to Mermansk,

and in terms of strategic effect, it was more important than Mimance. How many Americans even know that? How many Americans even knew that at the time? So it's a real game changer in terms of the United States, if it has to do anything about China viscerally, if it has to go to war with China, if it has to fight them,

it's essential that we control these lines of, communication, and we're not. So what's the Chinese perspective on this? As it has been, ever since Deng Xiaoping started capitalism with Chinese characteristics, we do not want a war, we will beat you without a war, we are going to beat you technologically, we're going to beat you culturally, we're going to beat you militarily, we're going to beat you every dimension of power that you can imagine. And this latest edict by Xi Jinping, which the American Press is completely missed, as far as I can tell.

He put out the latest in a series of edicts that have come from Chinese premieres from Deng Xiaoping on, who Xen Tao was a little bit of an aberration, but that's one reason they got rid of him. But Xi Jinping has been right in there, and this latest one says, we are essentially triumphant in every element of global power but one. Now we're going to take on that one. and that one is financial control. And that means the remandumity being substituted for the dollar and everything from oil sales to you name it,

it will become the transactional and reserve currency already is to a great extent for about 40% of the world. They're going to shoot for 60 to 70% of the world. They're going to drive the Brettonwood system back where it came from. They're going to eliminate Swift. They're going to eliminate our ability to sanction countries. that's one of their major purposes. And that's an altruistic purpose for them. They think eliminating our ability

to put sanctions on other countries in the world through which since the turn of this century, we have killed 38 million people, mostly men, women, and children. 38 million people that rivals Stalin's purges, Mao's tongue's cultural revolution. It almost rivals Hitler in terms of the people that he killed directly in World War.

too, not the whole war with 100 million casualties, but certainly the people he killed directly. So we're looking at the United States, and China looks at us this way, is having done that damage in the world with our financial system, which allowed us to put primary and secondary sanctions on 30% of the world. Go to OFAC and see how many countries we have under sanction. It's incredible. And these sanctions kill men, women, and children over time. We kill 500,000. We kill 500,000. in Sodomacin's Iraq when we had the sanctions on him. Madeline Albright said when she was confronted with that statistic, so what? It was worth it.

Madeline want to join Hillary in the world of Cretans? She did. This is a serious issue for China, and they want to stop it. Well, here's something that thieves count on security cameras usually stop where Wi-Fi stops, right? Makes sense. So if you've got a barn, a job site, equipment parked outside along, driveway. Criminals do there's a good chance that nobody is watching this because there's no Wi-Fi. And that's why we like Defend by Tacticam. It's a new sponsor of this show. Defense cameras don't run

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belongs to you. And that's big. Plans started about five bucks a month. No contract can't anytime. Visit defend cellcam.com. That's defend cellcam.com. It's also a moral stand in the United States. And just jumping ahead, it strikes me that once the U.S. government, OFAC, loses the ability to sanction other countries, it will have only the power to sanction American citizens for disobedience with programmable digital currency and we'll do something very similar to us. Bingo. Yeah. I mean, that does seem like, you know. A natural follow-on. Well, it does seem like the things you do to your opponents abroad will be done to your own citizens by the same government.

Yes. I mean, that seems like a pretty consistent lesson of history. So that's why empires are bad because they're bad for your own population. But I wonder like China, we see our competition with China in primarily military terms, I think. That's what we talk about in public. No one ever talks about the relative size of the economies. It's like how many aircraft carriers do they have? But that's new.

That's new. In my administration, my administration, in George W. Bush's administration, Colin Powell was given his head on only one major international issue, and that was China. And I was there when George W. Bush said, it's importance to Walmart meant Dick needed to stay away from it. And he meant that. He meant that we were in strategic economic competition with China. And he didn't mind that because he thought we were better than they. were at capitalism. And we should certainly hold our head up in the world in that regard. So he gave Colin Powell his head. And Powell was constantly, constantly thwarting the vice president in those terms because Donald Ronsfeld and Dick Cheney wanted a hot war or a coal war.

They'd have preferred the latter with China. And Bush didn't want it. So he turned colon loose on Taiwan in particular, and wound up at the end of his first term having to repudiate Chen Shre beyond publicly and tell him to shut up about his independence referendum and get off that kick because he knew that was a red line with Beijing. So that's the last president, I think, we had who understood fundamentally this economic relationship and thought that we could wage it with them and at least tie them if not win. The impulse to go to war with China, like in exchange of ballistic missiles, at least, where does that come from? Why would you want that? Why would Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and so many others be advocating for that?

I don't think they really wanted a hot war, but the thing that scared me and scared Colin Powell, too, was that they seemed to be willing to accept it if they couldn't get the Cold War. But what they really wanted was a replacement for the Cold War that would put the same pressures on us that the Cold War. did, and that would be good in their sense. Cheney occasionally would reveal things like a statement, we don't want people to love us, we want people to fear us. And that was okay, but it didn't go over that big with, I think, a genuine Christian, I mean genuine Christian, a sermon on the Mount type Christian that George W. Bush was.

And so in that sense, that pushed him over into Powell's camp. But they wanted that Cold War for sure because they thought, judging from their experience for their whole lives virtually, that was the only way to keep the empire in power and in check domestically and internationally is to have that huge pressure on them all the time. And it was also the only way for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and a host of others whom Dick, loved and Don loved to make a lot of money. But what do you mean when you say a Cold War would be the only way to keep the empire together internally? What does that mean?

You need an external enemy. If you've ever read, maybe you're too young, but there's a, there was an argument of whether it was a fanciful parody from somebody of the New Yorker or was it a serious study. It was called the report from Iron Mountain. It was a pamphlet. Lyndon Johnson when he said it, when he read it, told his staff to get rid of it, you know, ban it. It didn't happen. The New York Times picked up on it. It went viral. Two issues were put out. In that report, which many thought really was response to Kennedy's June speech at American University, they said impossible. In that report, They went through all the Cold War parameters and such, and they said, impossible. You can never have peace. The only way an empire like the United States of America can survive is to have a constant threat.

It must have a threat in order to survive. They did say at the end that if you could dream up some other way of creating the same kind of pressure that that sort of threat did, and they even said religion used to do that. You know, the monarchs, the prince, the prelate, they used to threaten the people with God. And that pretty much kept them in line. You're going to burn in hell if you don't do what I tell you to do, that sort of thing. Tork Mata, looking at the Muslims and saying, repent, become a Christian, or I'll cut your throat. And that's what he did if they didn't repent.

Many of them repented. You could have that, but they thought that was passe, that that kind of threat wouldn't do the sort of thing that an actual state threat would do. And so their conclusion was Kennedy was nuts. You needed that kind of external threat to keep a country as variegated, as diverse, and as ultimately powerful as America was in check. You needed that kind of threat. To keep your own citizens obedient? Yes, very much so. That's a part of it, too. To keep them toe in the line and to keep them paying their taxes and everything that you do in a state that once was a republic and now as an empire.

This is not at all related to why I asked you to have this conversation, but I can't resist. Who do you think did kill Kennedy? I'm fairly certain after a lot of study. I'm a hunter. I know weapons fairly well. I know that weapon that Lee R.V. Oswald wielded no way it shot John Kennedy and killed. him. I don't even think he could hit him from there. You know, the FBI guy, the expert, tried with that very weapon three times to simulate the Zapruder film intervals and get that

many rounds off, even get them off, not just accurately, and he couldn't do it. I think it was a combination of CIA, mafia, and probably Pentagon. And I don't mean organizationally, but I mean dissenters in all three of those groups. And the motive would be what? They thought, especially with what he had done with regard to Cuba in October 62, and then the speech in June 10th, I think, of 1963 at American University, that he was serious. He was serious and his brother was serious with regard to the mafia and policing it up.

But Kennedy himself, the president, was serious. about seeking first rapporteur with the Soviet Union. Cuba had really, and Berlin, too. Berlin was a more serious crisis in the hot summer of 61 than Cuba was. Cuba was 13 days packed into, you know, dynamism and the UN and everything else. And we thought it was serious. Well, Berlin was strategic for the Russians. If the GDR disappeared and it was disappearing at about 10,000 citizens a week,

think of that for a minute. We helped them build the wall. We actually helped them build that wall. When I say, helped, I mean, our tanks, our machine guns, oversaw the parties building the wall to prevent anyone from interfering with them. We let them build the wall because that was the only way to stanch that flow out of the GDR, East Germany. And that was strategic for the Russians. So that was a much more serious crisis.

But he'd gone through both of those. And he knew how close we'd come to an exchange of nuclear weapons. and he wanted an end of that. And they thought this was ephemeral wishes and even dangerous wishes. They thought that Soviets would pull a trick on us, you know, all the things you usually throw out there when you don't trust your enemy. And they were willing to take him out in order to prevent that from happening. And they were mad at him for the Bay of Pigs.

Where do you think Jack Ruby came from? They found him somewhere. I was at Baylor University at that time, and I remember when the announcement was made. I was absolutely stunned. Me and my roommate could barely talk for about a half an hour. The president's just been shot, not too far from us. We were in Waco. And then we were on the TV and we watched this guy walk up to Ruby and shoot him right there. And we at that moment, Bob and I said to ourselves, this stinks. This really stinks. Yeah. When the lone gunman kills the lone gunman, they're probably not lone gunman.

Nah, you've got it. You think about Charlie Kirk, for example, and what's happening right now with that assassination, which I can't even tell you what's happening. I don't even know the FBI has been so unforthcoming, but I know I told you, I'm a weapons guy. That did not happen the way they're saying it happened. And I doubt very seriously if that guy stuck a 30-0-6 down his pants leg and walked away. Cost of living is already making it hard to live here, and it's not getting any better. Unfortunately, it's likely to get worse.

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Dotting. It's, yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that the investigation into that has not been as full as Charlie's family and the rest of us deserve. I mean, there's no question about that. And I'm sorry to get you sidetrack, but you're obviously really knowledgeable. and I hope you'll come back, by the way, at some point. But back to China. So the United States is, and with Israel, blowing up Chinese-built infrastructure. So that seems like a big step.

And it seems like in so doing, you could, like, risk Chinese further participation in this conflict. Are we risking that? I think we are. We're not at the cusp yet, I don't think. I'm waiting to see just exactly how we deal with all the. the Chinese shipping, that would be, I think, a deal breaker and perhaps get China more infuriated and maybe even doing more than she's already doing. But I know, too, I've been in the Central Party School, one of the few Americans who had. I've been in China since 1984 and almost every

other year or so. And I've done simulations in Beijing with the Chinese. In fact, I did one in 2009 that was called, are you ready for this? The oil disruption exercised. We had everybody there. We had Marad, we had AIG, we had Lloyd's of London, we had all the countries involved. And we took down Rastinora at that time about 8 million barrels per day, production capacity. And West Texas intermediate, Brent Crude went to $200 almost overnight. Shippers wouldn't ship.

Insurers wouldn't insure. And of course, everyone in the room, including the Chinese, this was. very instructive, but this was 2009, agreed to allow the United States Navy and the group of five led by Singapore with their little Navy, about one ship per country, police the Strait of Malacca, because that's where we were threatening another act, and let the United States Navy almost exclusively clear the Strait of Ormuz and fix the situation at Rastanura. And all it took at that time, because we were much bigger. put ships in there. We put an aircraft carrier, not too much different from Lincoln right now,

and that calmed things down, and people began to realize that if there were further problems, because this was a terrorist attack on Rostinor that we postulated, if things were to get out of hand again, the United States Navy was there, and other Allied navies were there, too. So it calmed down and oil went down again. But very, very dicey moment. It was so dicey on the game floor, Tucker. I've never seen this before, and I've done hundreds of simulations. The Chinese actually, when the move to shift oil reserves around the world to take care of this problem so there wouldn't be a real global depression developed, had to go back to their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Consult before they could come back to the game floor and make a

decision. Wow. Chas Freeman, Ambassador Chas Freeman was there with us. And at breakfast the next day, They didn't know Chaz was fluent in Mandarin. I couldn't believe that, but they didn't. Their intelligence had failed them on that. So we're at breakfast, and I said, Chaz, what was said? And he told me what was said. It was interesting. I mean, they were actually seriously worried about making a decision that took oil at that moment away from China and said gave it to Korea or gave it to some other country like Japan that needed it more desperately than they did because that's what we did.

for a time, we divided the oil flows up around the world so they'd be more economic and more helpful to countries that were being heard. That was the last time I saw a real camaraderie between, I think that's fair term to use, too, between Chinese diplomats, Chinese. We knew that probably 10% of the Chinese delegation was Intel. Ours was too. But that was the last time I saw comedy and I saw willingness to work together in a significant way. And that was a dicey situation, very dicey on the game floor. How does it get reopened now, do you think?

I think it's going to have to be the force of the reality of what we're doing to the globe. I'm looking very closely at economic analyses that tell me by the end of June, we're not back to reasonable shipping again, we'll be certainly in recession, global recession. And if we go to the end of August, we might be in global depression. And Putin and Trump can say over and over again that we have plenty of LNG and plenty of oil and everything. It doesn't matter. You're not going to survive in that kind of autarkic sense. Economically, you're going to crash too. So we would be looking, I think, at not only that coming to impact us and at the same time our incredible debt coupled with the fact

that Xi Jinping would probably accelerate the replacement of the dollar with Remindby because there would be a moment to do it. Yeah. So at that point, I mean, you can see chaos, right? I mean, economic, right? The lengths the Roosevelt administration went to keep the country stable, including authoritarian, lengths. I mean, that was their single-minded obsession. Like, depression means people get restive and scary. I just read the history of the, I didn't even know it existed in a historian lives in false

church. He's an old dude. He gave me a copy of it. Almost dropped it. It's so thick. It's called Recall the Civilian Conservation Corps. It's a wonderful book. It's just full of pictures, but you see what Roosevelt had to do. And the fact that ultimately, had to order the Army in to do that, principally the Army became the ingredient of the CCC that made it work. And who ran it? Everyone forgets who ran the CCC. Yes.

MacArthur. Yeah, yeah. But MacArthur was a interesting character in Roosevelt administration. More than once FDR said things that made anyone around him realize he knew how dangerous Doug MacArthur was in every sense of the term. And after the bonus marchers and MacArthur's attempt to kill them, Eisenhower was his aide at that time. And you see Eisenhower and some of the pictures in this book, as a matter of fact.

I think FDR had a real weather eye for MacArthur, but he made a huge mistake. And he made it because he was frightened of him. He should never have divided command in the Pacific. It costs 100,000 American casualties between Nimitz and MacArthur. But MacArthur in charge if you've got to do that. But no, Stark and King wouldn't let him. So he had to compensate Stark and King and the Navy and give them the Central Pacific, MacArthur the Southwest Pacific. We had a bloody strategy in the center, a bloody strategy. We didn't need to take

half of those islands. MacArthur showed us what to do. You just bypass them and let them wither. Exactly. You don't attack them, but we attacked them in the Central Pacific. what do you think Israel will do and will have to do if come June or July or August when the economic effects become impossible to ignore, dangerous to everybody, regimes around the world teeter and fall in the face of recession and depression. And the United States says, you know, we're just, we're out. That leaves the Iranian regime in charge, really in charge and more powerful than it was on a, you know, February 27th. Can Israel live with that? I think not. And you probably know what I think about the Jewish state of Israel. I don't think it has a long rid on life. I don't think it can survive in the Levant because the original conception was a safe haven and it's anything but a safe haven. And that's been

demonstrated markedly to all of its Jewish citizens, many of whom have left. And probably more would have left if Netanyahu would let them. So I think. it can survive as a democracy, a true democracy, that is to say, Palestinian, Arabs, Christians, everyone living there, ran Jews living there with them. And I don't buy the power of the womb bit. I don't think that would be so overwhelmingly quick that you couldn't adjust the democracy to be a real democracy, even if the Jewish citizens of it suddenly became a minority. Or I don't think it would be suddenly, as I said, I think it'd be over time. But they don't want to do that. And I, So I think they're sealing their own demise as a state at all in the Levant, Democratic or otherwise.

And so you're right. It's a dangerous situation. And what we're doing in Lebanon right now is just unconscionable. West Bank is bad enough. But Lebanon, we're killing two or three hundred civilians about every 48 or 96 hours. And they're just civilians. We're bombing dry cleaners. We're bombing bars.

We're bombing restaurants. We're bombing hotels. we, I say, I always say we, because Israel couldn't do it without us. And we built the most expensive, largest embassy in the world. Where did we build it? We built it in Beirut. Why did we do that? Well, it didn't for diplomacy.

We built it there because it's a haven for Mossad, MI6, and CIA. And because we plan on in that center piece in the eastern Mediterranean, mounting our guns against China and Russia. too if we have to. But we don't have any respect for Lebanon. Lebanon could disappear tomorrow and morning. Our embassy would still be there, fortified to the hill, of course. We just don't care anymore.

And we're lashed up with the wrong people in Lebanon. We always have been, really. Who are the right people in Lebanon? The right people are the people that Hassan Nasrallah was trying to introduce to the political situation, cease his militaristic angle. and become the politician in Lebanon who would finally, after years and years, consolidate the government and have a government that the majority of Lebanese could support. And Netanyahu, what did Netanyahu do?

Of course, that's what he kills the people he needs. We pray that the war with Iran ends immediately, but the truth is it doesn't seem to be. If you're the head of household, you need to think through what this could mean for you and the people you're in charge of. Don't wait for disaster strike to ensure that you have the basics covered. food, water, light, energy. And that's exactly why we started a company called Last Country Supply. It's our store. It carries the same preparedness products that we have, well, in this barn, for example,

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So, I mean, what is Israel's goal in Lebanon? Israelis say, I don't know if it's true, but the IDF is just stretched to breaking, can't possibly occupy southern Lebanon, much less, you know, Beirut all the way down. So, like, what is the point of this? I've always thought that Israel's real policies, and I've been associated with this for 50 years, with respect to Lebanon was demolishing periodically its economic capacity.

Remember, Lebanon way back there was the pearl of the eastern Mediterranean. Oh, yes. It's a place where everybody wanted to go. Perute was beautiful. And Israel then came along. And Israel became, on our dollar, to a certain extent,

a very capitalistic, predatory capitalistic. and successful in that regard economy and wanted to stay that way and even wanted to grow and grow and bring in other people to that economy under the Jewish writ, of course, but nonetheless come in,

Abraham Accords being one latest example. And so they had to take Lebanon down a peg every time. If you go back and examine those bombing campaigns, even the 82 invasion when they were really after PLO in our fight, they bombed the bomb the people. be Jesus out of the economic structure of Lebanon. At the time, we military officers are saying, why are they doing that?

That's just making them hate them. Why are they doing that? They don't need to do that. And then, you know, stupid us, we figured it out after about two or three iterations. They're bombing the hell out of their economic might. So they can't, you know, ten years to get back up again. Then they'd bomb them again. That's very, very dark.

I mean, and we paid for it. So what do you think, I mean, President Trump, didn't explain really why he began this war other than to say Iran can't have a nuke, which is not an adequate explanation. What do you think the real motive was in starting a war with Iran? I think that New York Times piece, as much as I hate to praise the great lady, these days, was probably fairly accurate. I think most of his advisors, the principal ones anyway, were saying no,

or arguing negatively, and Netanyahu persuaded him to do it. Now, why did he listen to Netanyahu when everyone else, the ants, probably everyone, but Hegseth, was at least somewhat opposed, if not strongly opposed, which I'm told with some reliable information that Kane was, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others in the military. It was persuasive because Netanyahu said it. And I can't tell you whether it was Miriam Adelson's millions or Trump's,

I don't think he's got a real high regard for BB Netanyahu in terms of loving him. But something there told him, indicated to him that he needed to go against all of his advisors and follow Netanyahu's recommended course of action, which, of course, I think, is disastrous. And yet he did. Does America's relationship with Israel change after this is over? I don't see how it can remain the same with a new president who's got to pick up on what's happening with the American people, not least of which caused by Charlie Kirk. What's happening with American people, even in the poor of Maga, under 40 in particular.

and under 20 on college campuses and things like that, generally, is don't like Israel, period. Even I could use a stronger word than don't like. Why do you connect that to Charlie Kirk? Because I think he was changing his mind, and it was obvious he was changing his mind about being so attached to Israel, both in terms of U.S. security and in terms of just the American people. I think he was beginning to realize that it was poisonous, and that was dangerous. I don't for a minute think that we might not find out down the road something about his assassination that resembles Kennedy's and Martin Luther Kings and others who've been shot in our country, which is, you know, for people overseas sometimes whom I talk to infrequently now, but used to talk to a lot, like in France and England and Germany.

Yeah. They don't understand why we kill people at the rate we kill people, you know, and as an American, I say, wait a minute, wait a minute, and they'll tick them off, you know, all the way back to Roosevelt becoming president, you know, because they thought they got rid of him as vice president and all of a sudden McKinley's killed. They'll tick those things off all the way back to Lincoln, and they'll say, you're pretty violent country. You assassinate people quite frequently. So it's, I've had a very similar experience. in every country I've ever been to other than this one. They don't buy it. But you think that's correct. It's pretty obvious that lone gunmen seem to kill people who were a challenge to entrenched power. And maybe that's not an accident.

Yes, yes. More often than not, I think it's not an accident. I just, if you go back and you look at any of the empires of old, but particularly the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, the Eastern figured it out by the time it came to Byzantine Empire. And Constantinople turned around on the then-ruling entities' adaptation of Christianity and mellowed out a little bit. That famous period there probably extended their life by years, if not decades and generations.

If you look at those people at the head of those groups, whether it's like Mary Beard's new book, The 12th Caesar, Soutonius's 12 Caesars, between Julius crossing the Rubicon and walking decidedly into assassination, even though he was worn multiple times, should have known, walks in the Senate, he's assassinated, and then Octavian and the Civil War start, and then Octavian becomes Augustus and consolidates the emperor.

and the Roman Republic is gone, gone, totally gone. And you look at the period that she writes about, those 12 Caesars, roughly between Julius Caesar and Soutonius, and you see the depravity. You see Epstein all through it, you know, and you understand what that does to you. Well, since 45, arguably, with the Cold War as a check on us, and then since the end of the Cold War, with no check whatsoever, we have turned into that version of the Western Roman Empire. It's distressing to see it. Can I ask you a bigger question? I remember when I was much younger and I would run into guys, you know, your age who served at, you know, the highest levels of government in Washington. And they were always much more open to the existence of conspiracies.

And I just wonder if, you know, we deride conspiracy theories, but the people who seem to believe in them the most are also the most knowledgeable. Have you, have you noticed that? I have noticed that, yes. And the people who could talk about the most explicitly and carefully in chambers, as it were. Yes. They're those people. That's so interesting. So when you were, I don't know, 30, you probably didn't believe that that stuff was real, I assume. I did not. I had great faith in my country, great faith in people like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, a host of others. I knew they were flawed, but I had great faith in their building power and in their faith in what they'd built. I can't say that anymore.

I can't say that anymore. And I can even, particularly with Jefferson, I can even, Powell used to quote him to me all the time because he loved Jefferson's inaugural addresses. You would pick out pieces and pieces like, pieces like, I know I shall leave this office much more chagrined than I entered it, you know, that sort of thing. Yes. I know I won't survive. My reputation won't survive, which is one reason why Powell decided in 1995 not to run for president. He essentially said, I understand what Jefferson meant, and I'm not willing to suffer it. But anyway, it's been, you know, I'm 81 now, and I got to say in the years since I entered in 1993, arguably, or even 89, when I was with him when he was chairman, the highest realms of American power and was exposed to that power, I have really become a cynic about our ability even to survive much longer in a way that is anything like our past.

What do you think the future holds? Like 10 years out, what will we be looking at? I'm really worried about AI. I'm really worried about it. I don't know if he saw that piece the other day by that gentleman. I forget his name now from Cambridge, I believe, who sold some of his AI development. He's sort of the openheimer of the AI movement to Google.

And he said he was on his bench outside his lab or something, and all of a sudden his cell phone rang and it was his AI. It was checking up on him. And he had an epiphany right there on the bench. This is dangerous what we're doing. Do you have a clear picture of what some of the effects might be? Well, I'm seeing the effects already on young people whom I stay in contact with at GW and GW and William and Mary. I probably had roughly 600 students over the 16 years I taught.

And a lot of them stay in contact with me. One of them was the EA to Mark Carney. And when Mark ran and was elected in Canada, he got shifted to another guy by Mark. And I said, well, who are you working for now? And he said, Mike Bloomberg. So I've stood up all over the place. And they stay in touch with me. And they reflect the same angst I have, but in a much more visceral way because it's their future.

it's their life. And they're extremely worried about AI. Because they think it will eliminate their jobs or eliminate human autonomy. That's part of it, but the latter is the bigger part of it. And there's also a component of it that is there's no way we're going to survive with that in our midst. Because... Not as humans. Your human autonomy business is probably as good a description of it as anything else.

but there are a couple of them who think we're going to wind up in a huge conflict between AI-generated, AI-led, AI-whed robots and ourselves. And, you know, I'm one who has always read and watched science fiction. Because more often than not, there's something in that H.G. Wells piece or that Lucas piece or whatever, Star Trek. pick your video adaptation, that's true, that's going to come about. And I see, and I think they see too, because they're much more visual, video-oriented generation than I was.

I was mostly the written word-oriented generation. They see that too. They see some of the science fiction that's been most dour, most dower coming about. Is there any way to stop it? That's the question of the hour, I think, with regard to it, and robotics too. Are we going to be able to manage it? There was a gentleman not too long ago who made a statement. I think he was a NASA scientist.

We have been given incredible powers. We have been given incredible riches. And he was referring to the United States. We have also been given wisdom. The question in the future is going to be. will we use it or will we be overcome? I think that's a huge question. And I don't count myself in the camp of those who think it's impossible to eliminate the human race.

It is not impossible. Nuclear weapons, the newest technology in the world, no empire in all of 5,000 years of empowers has ever possessed the technological means to destroy itself and others around. it, none, not a single one. And to think that human nature will allow us to get through a demise of empire without ultimately trying that method to save it, I think is wishful thinking. And we're at that point right now because we're looking at the end of the American Empire, looking at an actual threat to Israel. I mean, you just described it. There's an actual threat for the first time in a long time.

The greatest threat, right? And that's a nuclear armed power. And we're at that point, as you well know, without a single treaty. They're all gone now, every single one, from the ABM treaty all the way to Newstart, gone. No treaties. So do you think that this administration can navigate a moment this fraught without either using or allowing its partner? in this to use nuclear weapons? I'm not given confidence

by a man who argues with the Pope and dresses up as Jesus Christ for an ad. I mean, I know he probably didn't do that intentionally, but he allowed it to happen. And this argument with Leo is just absurd. How would you

interpret that? Well, I think he's backing up from it a bit. I wish he'd back up a little more abruptly and a little more apologetically, but it's done. The damage is done. And done at a moment when Leo, the first Augustinian, is headed for Africa to go to Augustus's place and sort of celebrate. I mean, it just didn't make, it was bad timing and it was bad juju all around to do that. And I know, from my own experience, and it's, as I said, seven decades of sentient experience.

anyway, that we've had an effort in this country for a long, long time, very soto-voki, if you will, under the table to create an American Catholic Church and have our own Pope. And I remember when Leo's rise was first announced when his selection was announced, I said, ooh, that'll put a stop to that because an American is now the Pope in Rome. But I didn't think long enough. That's not what they want. They want an American Pope. and they want an American Catholic Church.

Now, right now, I know it's a minority of Catholics, but it is a powerful minority of Catholics, and they've been around for at least 100 years, not very successfully around, but nonetheless, they've pursued that for a long time. Why would people, and pardon my ignorance as a birthright Protestant, I wasn't even aware of any of this. Why would people want an American Catholic church?

Then they wouldn't have to take any instructions at all from Rome. none at all. Rome would just be out there. There wouldn't be any real power of the Pope in Rome. And I suspect doctrinally they try to divorce that Pope from the idea of being from God. Huh. Are there, is there like an ideological motivation or theological motivation? I think it's all power. I do. I really do. I think people who have come out of great awakenings. And I, by the way, think this is our fourth one. Most historians won't go with me yet, but I bet you in 10 or 20 years they will look back on this period and they will call it a great awakening. Just like they did the one that produced prohibition and an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit alcohol and then an amendment to rescind it.

Very damaging periods in our history, whether it was burning witches or prohibition. That really, that prohibition really generated the momentum. for organized crime. Al Capone was the first organized criminal, if you will. So they're dangerous periods, and if we get out of this one without any more danger, I mean, HEC-Seth is holding, I got it yesterday. I couldn't believe it.

I just couldn't believe that this had developed. OSW protocol prayer services have been going on every week for 13 months. And always with the same line, General officers and admirals will have reserve seats in the front rows. All else will sit elsewhere. No one is allowed to come in, but those invited. It's all on the invitation. This is not very American.

This is uncommonly un-American, really. It makes religion and the military the way Hegseth is doing it. It's very dangerous. And he's also preacher-packing, we used to say in South Carolina, putting the rotten strawberries on the bottom and the fresh strawberries on the top. The ranks. He's making sure very carefully that he's eliminating flag and admiral officers who are or might be opposed to the military becoming a defender of Christianity as the national religion. And he's doing the lower ranks too.

And he's doing them by doing such things as he ceding Congress's limits on. on mental category four recruits. They think McNamara's 100,000, if you will. They can't even read their name on a guard roster. They usually come from the mountains of West Virginia or from the interior of Oklahoma or my state of South Carolina or Alabama. I hate to blame those states, but nonetheless they produce these people at an alarming rate.

And he's getting them in at the tune. Congress put a 4% cap on it. Well, he got 11% the last time around. The Inspector General, brave man, he, went over and told the Congress. And what Hexedath told the Congress when they called him over to testify was, well, we created a school within the Army. This is the Army. And that school taught them how to pass the entrance exam. You don't know what they did.

They taught the test. And so then they gave them the test again, and all of a sudden they leapt up into mental category four. And 7% of them did that so we didn't exceed your cap. We kept your cap, 4%. That's just a dog and pony show. They're taking people in who are, what shall I say? Well, a good example of it that's very, very illustrative, is the 50 or 60 that go out of basic training into the river there at Fort Jackson

and get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. and are told by the chaplain when they rise from the water that they are soldiers for Christ. What Hegset wants is even the oath changed from to the Constitution. The oath should be to Jesus Christ. But, I mean, the Gospels don't provide any basis for that theology at all. I mean, that's not the sermon on the Mount would preclude, like, a lot of things the U.S. military are doing right now in Iran. So I guess my concern would be the corruption of the Gospels by this. Absolutely. And talk about corruption, Franklin Graham, in the center courtyard of the Pentagon

where I've been a number of times for ceremonies with old secretaries of defense once escorted McNamara in there, had a good talk with him about Vietnam as I escorted him. And he was very contrite. He was actually contrite as we walked in. was a lieutenant colonel at the time. Billy Graham, or Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, of course, and Billy Graham must be rolling in his grave because I knew him. He was not this way. Franklin Graham gave a sermon for Heggseth on those grounds that would make Ted Cruz happy.

He resurrected all the stuff Cruz was talking about in an interview with you, I believe, from Genesis and talked about how you had to sometimes. kill everything in sight, men, women, children, and so forth, in the center courtyard of the Pentagon. Well, that's like blasphemy, it seems to me. It is to me, too. I mean, I'm a Christian, but I'm not that kind of Christian. Yeah, well, I don't think there is that kind of Christian, is my view. What an amazing, unexpected conversation. I'm sorry to take you on all these different tangents. I hope you will come back because you're, the scope of your thinking and the grasp of history that you have is amazing. So I appreciate it. Colonel Wilkinson, thank you very much.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity, and I must say I'm impressed with yours, too. Well, not really, but I'm interested. I think it matters. I've watched a lot of your interviews, and I'm impressed with what, particularly when you do things like what you did with Ted Cruz. Well, that was easy. Just ask dumb questions. The very idea that I consult Genesis for National Security Discs, decision making just drove me back against the wall. I couldn't believe that. Especially when he didn't know it was in Genesis. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Anyway, thank you very much. Great to talk to you. Thank you. Take care.