The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker and Chris Cuomo Debate JFK/Epstein Files, DOGE, Joe Rogan, NATO, Transgenderism, and DEI

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

What does it mean to be an American? The Chris Cuomo debate.  (00:00) Chris Cuomo Admits Tucker Was Right (08:46) Joe Rogan Changing the Media Landscape (16:56) Andrew Cuomo vs. Eric Adams (20:00) How Do We Fix New York? (54:16) The Epstein Files (59:59) Bill Barr’s Involvement in the Epstein Cover-Up Paid partnerships with: Beam: Get 47% off for a limited time using the code TUCKER at https://ShopBeam.com/Tucker Liberty Safe: Promo code “Tucker” at https://LibertySafe.com/Tucker Jase Medical: Go to https://Jase.com and use code TUCKER at checkout for a discount Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash viporter to learn more. So last time we talked was a year ago. You somehow look younger. I feel worn out and fatter. I've been on the road for too long. The first day of Lent, I'm getting right now. But anyway, it's been a year

since we talked about this. And last time we talked, I think you were still like, and I probably was too little off balance from being vomited out of television world into this, the great beyond. But I was seeing you this morning and I was thinking, I bet he's really grateful he's not at CNN now. So it gives me no particular joy to say this, but you were right about it. Well, okay. Don't get used to it. It's the last time you'll hear it time embrace uh doing what you're doing and don't look for the acceptance of where you were yes and that was really good advice. It's not easy to do, but News Nation has been what I would call a blessing in my life.

I didn't know it at the time. And like, so my brother's running for mayor, my bosses, and of course they had the benefit of going to school on what happened with me at CNN. Yeah. But the embrace, the willingness and acceptance of, wow, this is great for your family. You know, this is great for your brother. We're excited for you guys. I like, I thought it was like a test, you you know that if i seemed okay about that they'd be like aha we knew we and the difference the change of one conversation of them saying

well we're with you we support you and i said well i'm gonna just tell the audience though i'm not gonna cover the race obviously because i'd have a conflict. And they were like, yeah, duh. They know that. If you feel like you have to say it, say it. And I realized, wow, they really believe in what I'm doing here and supporting me. I love that. And so there's just a really profound gratitude. So there's not this weird hypocrisy where they encourage you to have your brother on because he's famous in the news, is what CNN did to you. From my perspective, watching,

they encourage you, hey, Chris, call your brother, have him on. And then, like a year later, like, oh wait, you were talking to your brother,

you're fired. Yeah. Like it's too fake. Look, as we both know, in every business and especially in ours, you do what you have to do to protect yourself.

And if it's me or you, and I put myself in a position where I was vulnerable, then it's gonna be me. And that's what happened. And I accept it. I don't blame CNN. This was really about two people making decisions about my life, not the organization.

I miss the people. I wish the place well. That is all true. But I have a connection with News Nation and these guys where I am anxious to bleed for them. I am excited about putting it all on the line every day, anywhere in the world. Because of my upbringing and my disposition, when I know you're there for me when you don't need to be, it's not necessarily, you know, there are a lot of big names that you could grab in the media right now. For News Nation to give me the chance and to let me do it and to support me and to support me when Andrew decides that he's got to be in public service, can't put a price on it, could never be grateful enough. So from a year ago until today, I now know that.

And there is something comforting about that. It's an ugly business. It's an ugly time. The ugliest business. All the wrong things are being rewarded, but I'm in the right place for me. It's funny. I don't want to spend two hours beating up on the media because everyone hates them already, but it's been almost two years for me since I haven't worked in the media.

And it's weird how when you do work there for your whole life, you just accept that, like, yeah, everyone lies all the time, and it's totally treacherous, and people who claim to be your friends actually hate you and every dispute is settled with a lawyer. It's like, oh, it's so disgusting. But you just accept that's like the way things work. But that's not how things work outside the media. Nowhere else in your life. You know, it's part of politics and media.

Right. There's certainly related related if not married and i think that the biggest frustration the look that you and i both know there are lots of great men and women who do the job for the right reasons but as a culture it's okay in the media for me to destroy you by a standard that i would never want imposed on me. And there is something that is really dangerous about that. I agree. When, well, I don't want you to know about my life, but you, we're going after. 100%. And that dichotomy, let's call it, that paradox is really... Well, it's hypocrisy. Yes. And it's really dangerous. And look, unfortunately, it works so well. If I were to cover you in any situation

and put a positive spin on it, that's a puff piece. It's weak. Cuomo's been red-pilled. He got bought up by that preppy, smiley chucklehead. And if I then say, well, I sat with Tucker, and as I knew it, devil spawned. Ooh, that was a hard-hitting piece. You know, he really came at him. They're such children. The commodity is negativity. If you want to be a hard journalist, you better say something negative about somebody.

It's a proxy for insight. I just interviewed Sam Bankman Freed yesterday from jail. It hasn't aired yet, but, and I actually really enjoyed the conversation. And about five minutes in, I was like, oh shit, I haven't asked him a single mean question about his business. He's in jail for 25 years. So I thought, I don't really need to make the case that he did something wrong. A jury's already, you know, already decided that. And I think it's okay to just like have a conversation with the guy. I don't, and then I thought, well, I'll probably be criticized for sucking up to Sam Bankman-Fried. And I thought, I don't care, actually. Well, look, you're in a unique position,

right? Because one, you have no boss. Two, the media is already not looking to be a friend to you. You don't think so? So you don't have to impress anybody. I'm not going to win them over. Margaret Brennan's not going to text me congratulations. You can do whatever you want to do. And there's a lot of freedom in that. And of course, there are challenges of you having to support yourself and find opportunities and build your own infrastructure. There's a lot of entrepreneurial stuff that you and I never had to deal with before. That's for sure. So you can just have a conversation with him because the media doesn't know what to do with digital and independent media. The instinct was to disrespect it. Oh, of course. Right? Marginalize it. And I think on a reporting level, that's still safe ground. I mean, what's popping on digital media isn't investigative

reporting per se. There are some, Taibbi, Schellenberger, stuff like that, but Barry Weiss at the Free Press. But it's mostly hot takes. But now that we're realizing in our society, and I'm very excited about it, power is shifting back to people and from institutions. And that's really uncomfortable

for some people. Yes. I think the Democrats are in a weird place where they seem like, which is such anathema as Mario Cuomo's kid, he was so anti-establishment, but they seem pro-establishment defenders of the elites in a very real way. And digital media is much better positioned to be empowered by that than what they're now calling legacy media. I don't buy into that as a pejorative,

but I see it. And I see that people are really open to getting, two things are happening at the same time, siloed, absolutely. But, people are realizing that they can reach out and get different versions of events and takes on things in a way that they couldn't before. And I think that's really exciting, and the media doesn't know what to do with it. It's amazing. And, you know, I think the most influential people in media, I think you have to put Rogan at the top of that, you know, kind of don't work for anybody. Nope.

And it's just so interesting. If you look at the ads on Margaret Brennan's show, it's like, you know, Nissan and Joe Rogan, it's like prostate health cures. It's like that, it's the whole, guys like Rogan have become rich, famous, influential completely

outside the conventional structures. Yes, certainly Rogan. Certainly Rogan. But all of them. I mean, all of them. Megyn Kelly is enormously influential. I haven't seen her ads, but like... But she's still corporate backed, right? She's SiriusXM.

She was Fox, as you well know. Didn't work for her at NBC, which really wasn't a surprise to anybody in there. You know, it's being a network anchor, being a storyteller, being a host that is accommodative of broad audiences that are looking to be inoffensive. Yes. That's a very different skill set that she clearly was going to struggle with. So I wasn't surprised by that. But she's Sirius XM. Now Rogan is Spotify, but he built that all himself. But you're wondering, though, but still i mean rogan is you know in some sense like bigger than spot he could leave spotify i think mega i was surprised

he took the deal i was surprised he took it gives him a lot of freedom but here's my question you see every kind of mid-sized independent business in america getting scooped up by private equity so every veterinary practice, every dental office, CAC places, cemetery associations, like there is this inexorable trend toward like conglomerates. Yes. Small independents getting scooped up by some big umbrella group. That's going to happen in media, I would think. We are presently realizing, so there was that big wave of deals that you and I missed in the podcast space where people were just throwing money to have a footprint in it, right? Rogan was the biggest of those deals, right? But then it went

away. And when I got into it, I'm all self-financed because, well, I was damaged goods, but people weren't looking to just throw money at a podcast because no one was making money on those deals. It was like relearning the Howard Stern lesson that they paid him all that money at SiriusXM. And it's like, what was the yield? Now, different people are starting to buy up podcasts that are traditional media companies. And they are the seed capital behind the private equity behind those organizations are starting to buy up these properties. See, it freaks me out because the reason independent media are credible is because they're independent.

Yes. They're not controlled. Yes. Now, I struggle with that a little bit. That absolutely can be true. And again, Taibbi, Schellenberger. Okay. But I don't dismiss, and Barry Weiss, I don't like leaving her out. Free press is a really cool thing that she's building there. And I like that she's able to do something that I never saw at a news organization before, which is she's decidedly pro-Israel. Okay. She's Jewish and beyond her own cultural and religious affinity, she has an ideological one and she owns it and she's out there for it. You may disagree. That's okay. But you know, whereas what the world that you and I grew up in media wise, they had all these opinions, but you'd never know it. You know what I mean? You'd have to glean it from what you saw on camera. Nobody ever came out and said it, you know, that we think that this is right. We think this is wrong. Very, very rarely. So what I like about it is I believe that there's space for all of it. Okay. When I got into this business

25 years ago, they told me, you know, network news is dead, right? The number one show on television is world news tonight. So the idea that it's dead, it's not dead. It's just changing and there's stratification. But I do think there's a challenge afoot. People in every different platform have to reconnect with their constituency. Trust is at an all-time low with every kind of institution. Now, within that is a burden for the media, but also an opportunity. That's

why I'm so excited that I may have been in the wrong place at other phases in my career, but I'm in the right place right now because News Nation is like one pebble on the beach at a time of, hey, everybody's going crazy about this, not us. Tariffs are kind of scary and they can hurt prices, but Trump does this and he's looking to get something done. Let's not microanalyze him saying tariffs like this is definitely going to happen this way forever. And let's see what happens. News Nation, we're allowed to do that. Most outlets have to pick a side. Tariffs, best thing, like Fox News. Tariffs are great. We can't wait. This is going to be great. It's going to unleash the economy. Get rid of the income tax. MSNBC, this is the worst. It's going to crush the economy. You got to have a take. You got to have a side.

News Nation is able to harness the independent mentality of, there's a plus minus on this, right? And we're going to have to see here, right? There's going to have to be some patience, right? And I love that space. It's harder. It's way harder than saying, I hate Trump or Trump was sent by Jehovah. You know, those are much easier positions, but I believe in the potential.

Well, honesty is kind of the point. I mean, I think you should be allowed to arrive at whatever conclusion you sincerely arrive at and you should be able to tell people that that's your job. And if you work at a place where, like, you know that you can't say something you believe is true, it's the wrong place for you. I agree. But look, we're benefiting from the change. Do you feel that there are things that you, it's an unfair question to ask you with the cameras going, but.

It's the only con you ask, Carl. I do specialize in that. But do you, do you feel like there are things that you can't say like if you came to a conclusion now i don't mean about like some individual sex life or like nasty personal attacks but i mean like a policy position that you came to that you would be like i probably can't say that no i'm there to say it um so really you don't feel like there are any red lines my bosses are very worried about you advancing agendas that you don't disclose. Me or one?

Me. You know what I mean? Well, if you come to News Nation, then yes, you too. But right now, it's, you know, hey, look, if you feel that way, just you better say it. Don't just stack your show with guests that are all on one side of something. Oh, I love that. And then pretend you're fair. So be honest.

Don't do that. Yeah. Be transparent. The same thing. Be transparent. And you may be wrong, right? That happens often. But own it, correct it, move on.

Do not hide the ball. They really say that? The 100%. Because also remember- Well, I admire that. I'll just say I admire that. News Nation is owned by a company that really knows local TV, right? They own the most local TV stations. What has the most currency in media still? Visual media, local news.

The boss of me directly, I have like 10 bosses starting with Dusty on up, but the Mike Korn is an ABC news pro who did every job. So he's not a corporate guy. He was in the field. He knows how to edit. He was in the control room. He was, you know, he did all the jobs. He's written the pieces. So he knows the alchemy of journalism. So he understands when someone's faking the funk and what's transparent versus what is trickery. So they've got a good setup there for it. However, I'm still a Cuomo. And it was really important to me

when Andrew decided he was going to run that I had to go to them and say, I work for you. What do you want me to do on this? Do you want me to, I offered, do you want me to take a leave for dependency of the campaign? I'm not running the campaign. I'm not part of the campaign. That's not going to happen. But if you think,

you know, I haven't lived through this before, I don't want to hurt News Nation. What you're doing is so important, way more important than me. Do you want that? Now, obviously, they said, no, you're being silly and traumatized. But that was helpful also. So can Andrew win? Can he win? Yes. So I should say I know Eric Adams and I like him. Eric Adams can win.

I am highly distressed by how dirty and chaotic and dangerous New York is. I'm really, really bothered. I almost don't even care about the ideology. I don't care what, you know, rent control debates or tax. I just want to be safe walking down the street. I get it. And he doesn't seem to have been able to do that.

Well, let's defend Eric Adams, shall we? I have. I'd like to hear you do it. And so have I. Why? Your brother's running against him. That's not what my family is about. If Andrew is the better choice for the voters in the primary, then he'll win. If he isn't, then he'll lose.

And you sign up for that when you decide to get into it. Do I want him to win? Of course, he's my brother. I don't even vote in New York City., this is a family thing for me. But all you got to do is Google it. I believe the indictment against Eric Adams was weak sauce. And yes, I heard much, much later that they had more. They never put it out. An indictment is already just probable cause. It's the lowest layer of a prosecutorial instrument. It's totally immoral for the government at any level to impugn your character without charging you. If you have the evidence, charge me. And they charged him, but they should have brought out whatever they said. What they said is everyone looked at the indictment is like, wait, you accepted airline upgrades. And by the way, every member of

Congress does that all the time. I believed it was weak sauce. Now, other people disagreed with me. That's fine. But I didn't know my brother was doing anything politically when I started my coverage of Mayor Adams. And I believe Trump's deal with him is not fair to Eric Adams. Should have pardoned him or dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning you can't bring him again. Because think about it, Tucker, if I had that deal with you is right now, you're fine. You do what you want to do. But we're going to reassess after this event in the future. That means everything to you. And then we'll see if I'm going to prosecute you. It does seem a little like a leash. And I don't think it's fair. So, you know, your criticism, your analysis of, hey, I think he should have been doing other things. My take on that is OK, and the voters will decide that but the guy has the biggest gorilla in the world

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Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. That's fair, but that was later in his term. He didn't take crime seriously. Nobody did. And so my question is, let's try and take your brother and Adams out of it. If you were running for mayor of New York, what would you run on? Free pizza.

You like it. You're going to attack it, but now that you've thought about it. I do like pizza. Obviously, a lot, too much. I've given up pizza for a while. We both know the city very well, right? New Yorkers deserve their reputation. It's a tough place.

And it is a place where the rules have to mean something. It is too many people in too small a space to have anything chaotic. A little bit of a problem blows up really fast in that city. One, two, three, four, five things happen in the subway. It's like 5,000 things happen in the subway. The feel becomes magnified. So having grown up, right? I mean, I'm born and bred. I remember life in the 70s. And that's how people talk today. I think I could make a case that statistically,

it ain't the 70s in a lot of different ways for the better, but that's how they feel. And I haven't heard this talk. I haven't seen people on the subway as I do now, unless they're in their 20s and therefore unable to look up from their screen because they've been completely destroyed by these devices. Everyone's looking around now on the subway. When you're walking on the street, eyes are up. People have their hands out, just like it was when it was in the 70s. I remember people were afraid. When you say you're going to the city, people talk to you like you need to have a plan. And that's corrosive. It hurts property values. It hurts the corporate interest in being there. So york is a place that uniquely needs to have that sense that things

are under control and that is not an easy job not an easy job well it just takes a fascist um to do it no it does not i don't mean the way that just slides out of your mouth fascist yeah like like bloomberg i don't mean i don't mean a fascist fascist and like hating people on the basis of ethnicity or anything like that. I mean like someone who enforces the rules and is not embarrassed about it at all. It's just like, I'm sorry, that's against the law. We're not putting up with it. Not for one second.

No, you can't. And by the way, you're smoking weed on the street? How about no? Like, no. We're not. A little bit of Singapore and New York City. Honestly, as someone who travels a lot, I find it really embarrassing going to New York. I find the airports embarrassing.

The drive-in is embarrassing. I'm an American. I love my country. LaGuardia is the number one airport. It's my brother's signature achievement. LaGuardia is the number one airport in the country. It's way, I don't know by what standard. I think it's way better.

I agree. But like it took like 20 years to do that. It was pathetic. It's just like build a freaking airport like everyone else it's hard andrew was the only one who could get it done two days ago i texted my wife for this picture i was like this is what we could have if people would just stop being ridiculous well but build something beautiful maintain it it's not that i agree but the reason i come at you about saying you need a fascist i shouldn't have used the word

fascist but i mean you like need like that's why i'm here took you just saying you need a fascist. I shouldn't have used the word fascist, but I mean, you need like- That's why I'm here, Tuck. You need someone who's committed to protecting the weak. Yes, but here's the difference. And I know what you mean. What I'm saying is this, and it's worth examining right now with what people are worried about

with the Trump administration, is it's gotta be bigger than you. The problem with FASC is it's not about you. Okay. It's not about Trump. It's not about who is mayor of New York City. There's a system. There are institutions. There is law and order. And you've got to work within that and you've got to be zealous about wanting those things to work for the right people the right way. But it can't get any bigger for the individual. Well, I would just strongly agree with that. I'm totally opposed to cults of personality.

Because Bloomberg was not fascist. He was good at using the system. That's a term that I... That's why you got three terms. Yeah. Look, I hate... I think it should be legal for politicians to name things after themselves. No politician should ever have anything named after himself.

That's my view. Because we're paying these people. They're our servants. Why are they taking our money to build money and spend it to themselves? So I'm against all self-aggrandizement by anybody, actually, especially politicians. I'm just saying it's the greatest city in the greatest nation on earth. And it looks like garbage. Like it smells.

It's dirty. It doesn't work very well. It's like it's not acceptable to travel around the world. Not everyone lives like that. Right. And we don't have to. So like let's just make it worthy of the great nation that it represents. Look, I think there are a lot of people who feel that way.

And I could explain it away. There are a lot of things that would be really hard to control that are at play in New York City. But it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. It's how people feel. And look, I listen to my brother very carefully about this. As someone other than his kids, I mean, there's nobody that Andrew matters more to than me. Andrew raised me. He's not just my brother. He's 13 years older than I am. Everything I'm into are all his hobbies and attributes because he taught me all these

things. My father was so committed to public service that he was away a lot when I was young. He was in Albany and we were in Queens. So Andrew taught me how to throw a ball, taught me how to ride a bike, taught me how to tackle, taught me how to defend myself, taught me why you're there for your family and how, taught me about why you got to keep the driveway clean and how to work on cars, like all these things, how to fish, how to boat, all these things was my brother. So I am really, really attached to him and his well-being. And when you hear someone that you love and care about say, hey, I think I'm going to go run for office again.

I've got to serve. I know why that sounds great to New Yorkers. But to me, it's you want more of that? That is the dirtiest, most unfair, savage business in the world. There's no chance. It's like he's telling me he wants to go wrestle a Komodo dragon. You know what I mean? It's like, hey, I really got to do this. You're going to bleed. They're actively going to try to hurt you with no regard for the merits. And we call it the game, but it's like Thunderdome. So as someone who loves him, why would I be excited about him wanting to expose himself? Of course not.

But look, when I hear him, it's like, you know, I almost tear up because it's so much like my father. My father used to describe public service. You know, my father hated that I went into the media, by way i'm sure there's sure i'm sure my my therapist could have like a whole field i don't even open that box of chocolates with my therapist because i know i'd be paying for the rest of my life about just explaining that but his problem with it was why do you want to be part of a group that just criticizes people who are trying to get things done when you could actually be trying to get something done. And that's why he believes in public service. Andrew is the same thing. He skips right past the price of entry, which I could never, I could never get past it. I'd be like, no way I'm going to have a hundred Tucker Carlson's chewing on my ass like a dog

toy every day. Not going to happen. I won't be able to handle it um i want to fight them all the time and he goes right past that to the all these ideas about what he could do in that capacity and what needs to be done and i'm like yeah but you have to go through this gauntlet to get to this place just to try to do this really hard thing. And he looks at me like, and? And? So, I got to support him. I mean, I'm for that level of intensity. You just cannot let people wreck the city.

You can't let them live on the sidewalks. That's how he feels. You can't let them smoke weed in the parks. I agree with you. I would just want somebody else to deal with it. Yeah. No. Because, look, it's such a hellscape right now. Look what works in politics.

If I'm running against you for anything, okay, strategy is simple. We got to destroy him. What can we find on him? Well, actually, I think the lesson is it doesn't work because Trump is now the president. Well, that is true. He did overcome. I mean, they went after his family. They tried to put his sons in jail.

He did overcome. They tried to put they did overcome sons in jail he did overcome in jail right they shot but he is he is a unicorn also he is the true teflon don but it's an inspiration like what you know whatever you think of trump or what he does he's basically saying the same things he was saying 25 years ago you can pull the tape on larry king live about tariffs about immigration about foreign policy. He's basically, I mean, he's changed, of course, on a lot of little things, but on the big things, exactly the same. And he just kept going, and it worked.

So, maybe Trump is a lesson that there are limits to what the personal attack is. That's what I was going to say, is that I think that he's more of a symptom than he is a cause. People, the election message was, you guys are focusing on things that don't matter to us the way you want them to. And what does matter to us doesn't matter enough to you. And what they saw in Trump were two main things. One, the personification of this, that you are trying to destroy this guy on a basis

that we are not really okay with. And the second thing is that he wants to disrupt all the things that we believe need disruption. And his views between the cancel culture and different cultural wars, as we call them, Donald Trump, for whatever you want to say about him negatively, approximated normal to the American voters more than the Democrats did. And that's the message. more than the Democrats did. And that's the message. Well, the tranny stuff just scared the crap out of everybody. But that's an example of what I'm saying.

I think there are many examples, but that one was like so florid and crazy that, and it's still going on, that to this day, I don't understand it. And we live in a world where there are always going to be people who want to wear women's clothes or whatever. Oh, I understand it. Look, you saw it.

To elevate trannyism to like the top of the agenda list? I can explain it to you very easily. It's readily apparent. And look, we saw the same mistake on display when the president addressed Congress. Okay? That is not a time for you to be obnoxious. If he wants to be obnoxious, fine. You are there at a respect for the office. There are rules of decorum in that place. I believe there should be rules of decorum in all places, in media and

politics, but there aren't, but there are there. And they willfully and wantedly abuse them to make a point that they are against Trump. And it was a bad look for the Democrats. What is it an extension of? We as Democrats, they will tell you, we are resisting who he wants to abuse and what he wants to destroy. Like what? Trans are a unique minority in this country. They are uniquely targeted. They need protection. We are going to protect them. Okay. But this particular aspect of the issue, guys my size who decide to become female and play against my daughter in high school, that is not what you need to protect them from or against. That's something that doesn't make sense. Nope. We have to hold to the purity of the cause of protecting this minority group.

Yeah, but you're not protecting them. You're protecting the people that are playing against them because they're 230 pounds. Yeah, it happens but if it happens once it's something that never needed to happen the purity test the absolutist nature of binary politics that if you are for something you have to be all in on it beyond any conception of reason that's what we're dealing with in our politics that's what that is well of course i can think of a million topics on which that is true. I think- I see that with guns on the right, by the way.

Maybe right. You know, I'm an absolutist on that. I could tell you why. It's not even that interesting. But what I think, but, you know, the right to self-defense is a part of natural law.

The idea that a man can become a woman by wishing it so is not only a violation of natural law, it's a violation of nature itself. It's like inherently insane. That's a denial of physical reality. And so why, so the argument is, you know, there are people with weird sexual impulses who we shouldn't like scapegoat and hurt. I mean, I'm totally in agreement with that. It is a perversion of live and let live. But to force the rest of us to tell a lie, that is a perversion of live and let live so but but to but to know in the interest of the rest of us that's right that's the perversion that's where that's that's when

you feel like well this is a spiritual attack well it's it doesn't have to be a lie in the interest of live and let live right which is a signature american freedom or should be right you don't want these people to live the way they want to live you are infringing on their rights we will protect them now i understand the political philosophy behind that but once it entered a realm of where the people that you say you're trying to protect are now a problem for another group that need protection also which are these kids these kids, they didn't click into the common sense. It's more than that, though. It's like, the idea that the government should be involved in people's sex lives is a shocking concept to me. I don't think it should be. Me either. And they're promoting homosexuality, promoting it. And I'll tell you how we know that they're promoting it,

because its incidence has risen dramatically. Now, when I was a young man, there was a debate over what percentage of the population is gay. I was never anti-gay for the record, and I'm not now. But it's an interesting question. They would say, you're born that way. You're born gay. So you cannot criticize someone on the basis of his immutable characteristics. Great. I totally agree with that. But then we saw the absolute incidence of self-reported homosexuality, like triple. So clearly people aren't born that way. You know, 30% of eighth graders were born gay. No, that's not true. And so there's been this dramatic rise that none of us are allowed to notice. It's like, you can't notice that. Well, why? Okay. Yes, I can. And I'm sort of thunderstruck by it. Like, what is that? And it clearly is a manifestation

of the deeper truth, which is maybe some people are born gay, but people can also be moved towards self-identifying as gay. And that's exactly what's happened. So why? Anyway, so like, I don't think that's good. I don't think that's good. And I also don't understand why the government should be taking my tax dollars to convince people that certain forms of sex are better than others, particularly non-procreative sex. Like, what the hell is that? Well, look, it's an easy legal and moral backstop that government should not be in the business of type. Okay? That's easy. There's plenty of things that government should be be in the business of type. Okay. That's easy. There's plenty of things that government should be doing that isn't necessary. I believe that is an

extension to how people choose their own bodies and how they use them. I believe in reproductive rights. I think it is a right. However, I see gay acceptance a little differently. The difference of a generation from our kids to us is it's much safer to say that you're gay now than it was. You used to get beat up. You used to get ostracized. You used to get excluded. That happens less now. It still happens, but it happens less.

Is there also a cultural formation that we see like in America? Everything goes in these big swings in different directions, always reaction formation. Are we more gay friendly in our culture, aggressively so, assertively so than we were when we were growing up? Yes. Can that make it more attractive to young people who are struggling and trying to figure themselves out? Maybe. And that's why I remember when I was in college, there were a lot of people who were struggling and trying to figure themselves out maybe and that's why i remember when i was in college there were a lot of people who were gay in college who weren't gay afterwards now a lot of them were gay in college and gay afterwards but i think there's something to experimenting and certain people play out with identity it's like okay but i just want to get

the core question which is where does this come from being gay is? Is it inborn? We were told you're born that way. Okay, so where's the gene? There isn't one. I don't know the genetics, but I do believe- Well, no one has isolated a gene. But you haven't noticed when you were raising your kids that there would be certain kids that you were like, I think this kid's going to be gay?

100%. 100%. Oh, yes. Like where they were too young to be mimicking it. I absolutely did notice that. And so I'm not saying there's not a genetic component. I'm just saying, and I don't know the answer is the truth. But what I do know is if you've got a third of middle schoolers saying I'm not heterosexual, that's not-

Plays to a fad. That's not inborn. More than it does. That's not inborn at all. I think that there's two things can be true. You can have that it's easier to be accepted today. I'm not saying that it's the same. I'd still believe that when people are gay, it's like the main descriptor of them. Whereas you and I don't identify, oh, Tucker Carlson, you know him, straight's say, in a guided or misguided sense of acceptance. And I think it is safer for people to come out now than it was a generation ago. Yes, both are true. But it's, I guess the point I'm making is it's really clear that the

federal government, state governments, local governments, and NGOs are promoting homosexuality among kids, obviously true to me, and transgenderism among kids. And my point is that is not acceptable. And when I was a child, if an adult went up to a kid in a park and started talking to him about his sex life, he could shoot the guy because that's not acceptable to talk to other people's children about sex, period. And now it's not only acceptable, it's the rule and it's paid for by my tax dollars. And I'm just saying like, that's really destructive. Look, it is a very persuasive argument. I don't know.

It certainly hasn't been my, it hasn't been my experience in my kids' schools, public and private, that I felt that they were being indoctrinated. They didn't have Pride Week. Into anything. Or Pride Month or Pride celebrations. I don't remember it specifically, but even if they did, let's say they did.

I can't prove that right now, but let's say they did. That to me is not the same thing as indoctrination. I have no problem with adults and children being exposed to different belief systems and different ways and different cultures. I have no problem with tolerance. Now, indoctrination is a different word. Well, pride is not tolerance. Pride is the opposite of tolerance. Pride is a celebration. Right. And so you're celebrating certain sex acts with other people's kids.

And I just think right there, you've crossed a line. Well, Pride Week doesn't have to be children, right? When you have the St. Patrick's Day parade, it's not making people be Irish. I totally agree. I'm talking about kids. I'm talking about schools. By the way, I don't have any problem with heterosexual pride, gay pride know people are happy about the way that they live that's fine i have a huge problem with schools or governments getting involved in the sexuality of children yeah i 100 agree but every school does it there's not one school that doesn't have their job is to keep everybody safe no but it's not safe it's promoting it it. No, I got you. I get why it would bother you. I'm saying their job is to keep kids safe, which means if my kid is gay, your kid can't beat him up on that basis. That's the role of the school. That's the rule of the law is, you know, people

have to be able to live and be free and safe. It's different to you trying to teach my kid to be gay. If that's going on, obviously it would be a problem. I mean, I think if... I've never experienced that. A massive percentage of middle schoolers are gay. In general, possessions are overrated, but there are some things you really would not want stolen. And to me, family shotguns, including a whole bunch of them I got from my father, are at the top of that list. So I keep my dad's shotguns in a Liberty safe because it's safe and it's also really attractive. Liberty safe just created something really cool. It's a limited edition safe that commemorates the inauguration of Donald Trump, America's 47th president. The original design celebrates Trump and his swearing in while upholding Liberty's commitment

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sunk beneath the waves. The JFK story 62 years ago, the president's murdered. It's pretty clear that the story we were told isn't true. And it bothers people because it gets to a core question, which is, is the president capable of making independent decisions or is there a threat of physical violence against all American presidents that persists? Well, we know there's a threat of violence because we just watched our president get shot in the head. Of course, but from whatever group has been able to keep these files secret for 62 years. So my question to you is like, what is that? Why have these been secret for so long? Look, you know, the idea of the deep state to me

is a convenience more than it is a reality. It's a boogeyman. Why don't they put it out? Because institutions protect themselves, Tucker, as we both know. Really? And there is clearly information in those files that are going to make the CIA look bad. Just the CIA? Well, whatever. Different agencies. No, no, no,

whatever. I mean, let's... Well, I don't know because I haven't seen it. Okay, so here's... But it could be the FBI, it could be the CIA. Okay, so I've always thought that. And then in January, you know, there was a scramble over who's going to get what jobs in the new administration. And at one point, there was someone who was being discussed for a job in the intel world, and a member of the SSCI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Intel Committee, went to the people making the decision and said, you cannot hire this person because this person will be certain to push for the release of the JFK files. So this is in, this is a fact, so this is in 2025, less than two months ago,

and you have a sitting member of the United States Senate whose main goal is to keep those files secret. And then you have to ask yourself, what is that? Why? Yeah. Exactly. Why? Yeah. Why? Were they even alive?

Of course, no one was alive. It was 62 years ago. Yeah, I know. And by the way, the institution, no one could even tell you who the CIA director was. Do you remember the name of the CIA director? John McComb, I think, 1963. But that person is like completely lost to history except a specialist. And the CIA has already been through 50 years ago, the church committee hearings, 1975,

where we sort of know they're sassing people, dosing people with acid, all this stuff. It's like the CIA has already been discredited. So if you're telling me that six weeks ago, a member of the United States Senate was trying to keep someone out of a job in order to keep these files secret, that is to protect the CIA, I don't believe that for a second. So what do you think it is? I don't know.

But this is, I mean, there's no one at the cia who is involved then actually yeah who's involved in the kennedy assassinations there's no one in america who's involved right in the assassination so here's what i know um first of all i don't believe that the cia has been completely discredited i believe in the institutions they have to be checked you know the media used to be in the business of checking the institutions now we're in the business of like defending them tacitly because we have a president that attacks them all the time. But the, so Mike Pompeo gets in there. He's in charge of the CIA.

Trump says, I'm releasing the files, okay? Somebody says something to Mike Pompeo that he then goes to the president of the United States and says, you can't release these things. And Trump acknowledges it. Now, do I believe that Trump did it under threat? No. I think that Trump just decided that whatever he was being told made sense.

But it's, and I'm not even speaking of Trump or Pompeo, who's a very sinister person. And you're absolutely right. Pompeo was the driver behind that. But who's driving Pompeo? I mean, it doesn't actually make sense. The story doesn't make sense. And by the way, we have the file numbers of most of the files that have not been disclosed. So it's like Trump issues an executive order on January 23rd saying you're going to release this stuff. They kind of can't not release it. And yet now it's the first week of March and they haven't released it. So pressure is currently being applied on the administration not to release those files.

It seems that way. By whom? I don't know. Some like mid-level analyst at CIA who just doesn't want to discredit the institution he works for? I don't think so. Like, what is that? I don't know. Who is pressuring?

I don't believe it's the Rockefellers, the Pope, and whatever. I'm not even guessing. All I'm saying is we can say with certainty that there is a force acting on these people, a very serious force to the point where they're embarrassing themselves because they promise they didn't release this and they haven't. Look, I don't disagree with the- What the hell is that? I don't know, but it's not just that, right? Now we get this weird story about the Epstein files. Who even cares? You know what I mean? I want it released. I believe in transparency. I think it's the route to trust. And it's not just because I'm in the media. It's just common sense. But A.G. Bondi,

I don't have any reason to be anti-A.G. Bondi. And she says she's going to release the files. And I don't even care that they released them to their pod people. I mean, I thought that was stupid, but I mean, that's fine. They want to do what they do it. They're playing to preference. Okay. Now, then there's a story about well the new york fbi they hid all the files and then we're gonna have to get them we're gonna fire this guy who's supposedly by most accounts is a pretty solid guy that they they had quit well where are the files where are they and because i thought trump was the antidote to this and to me the heartbreak has already come and gone ufos to me is the best example of what

you are picking back up and i totally agree i just want to just linger for one second on the epstein things so what is that i mean once again you clearly have a force that's applying measurable pressure on the people who should have the power. The elected president of the United States should have the power under our system. That's called democracy. And his appointees have derivative power from him. But they appear to be powerless in the face of some other source of power. And the question is, what is that source? I don't know. And where's your boy, Kash Patel? I mean, he went in there to supposedly bust all this up. I can't answer that. He put out this weird tweet, you know, that was very general, like, you know, things are going to change and we're going to do this. After we learned that

someone under his control now, right, because he's the head of the FBI in that office that's under him. Why wasn't he there? Why didn't he go there and say, give me the files, give them to me? Weren't you just saying the deep state's not real? I don't know. I don't believe in the deep state as a boogeyman. What the hell is going on? But look, they're his guys. I'm just saying, why didn't he go there and say, give me the files? So let's just use logic.

I can't answer that question. I think it's a great question. But let's just use logic for one second. Clearly, if you watch this, in my case, for the same as you, 35 years, watching this stuff carefully and somebody gets in office, I'm going to do this, that, and the other thing. And then like five days later, they're like, well, actually, someone has called that person to say,

there's something you didn't know. Here are the consequences of doing that. Someone has applied very serious pressure on this person. Pressure so serious that that person is willing to humiliate himself. So wait a minute. Here's the part I don't understand. So who's that person exerting the pressure?

But you are uniquely qualified to get this answer because one of us can call the president of the United States right now and ask him. And the other one is me. So why don't you know? That's a great question. It's the only kind I ask. So what I brought to it was the knowledge that a member of the senate intel committee i'm not guessing called over and said you cannot appoint this person so why don't you expose that person first of all so we can start chasing tom cotton

of arkansas did that tom cotton yes correct and did you ask him i haven't no i haven't asked him what the hell's going on with you i'd like to um and kind of makes people suspicious of you by the way because if you know that if you know that tom cotton said you can't pick this person that is correct and then you didn't go to him and find out why well i need to sit down with him i'm not sure that he'll do an interview with me with you i'm waiting you are you are you are like the spirit animal of that administration. No, no, no. But it's a fair question. It's a totally fair question. And the answer is, I hadn't thought to do that. And there's a lot going on. And I've been distracted. And I've kind of been- Now I think you're part of the deep state. And just like that-

You think that? I probably wouldn't be saying any of this if I was part of the deep state. Unless that's what they would do, is make me think that it exists. But you're not sure because it's actually you. One of the worst things that ever happened to me ever is last year when I was interviewing Putin. It was such a long interview and it was being translated and I couldn't always hear the translation very well. And apparently in it he says, you applied to work at CIA, which I did. You know, I'm not hiding that. I didn't get in. And your father worked for the Intel world and all.

I didn't hear him say that. I did not hear him say that. And I have been living with that ever since. I have nothing to do with any of that for whatever it's worth. But the number of people have texted me, been like, oh, you're working for the CIA. It's like, no, actually, nobody believes more strongly in radical reform at CIA than I do with, I would say, some knowledge of the subject.

Look, I mean, people can think I work for the deep state. I don't. I don't think there is a deep state. Here's all I'm saying. Someone is applying massive pressure to elected officials and has for a very long time.

And I would like to know who that is. Ask Mike Pompeo why he told. Oh, I have. Oh, I oh i have oh i have and when i got into it with mike pump no i mean i i've talked about this before i don't want to be boring but i when i tell you to ask dan crenshaw but he's not going to take no he's not for sure he's not going to call him a liberal but you wonder dan crenshaw's dan crenshaw is emotionally out of control. And I feel for him. Honestly, I'm not. Stop provoking him then. I didn't even provoke him.

I just pointed it out. I just pointed it out. You provoked him. I saw it on stage. His state was just invaded by Mexico and he's worried about Ukraine. It's like, what? Wake up, son. Here are your duties.

Let me put them in order. To your family, to your community, to your them in order to your family to your community to your voters to your state to your nation and maybe ukraine down there at the bottom but anyway that's all i was saying here's my point please i am really concerned not just because you know i am curious and i want to get the bottom of mysteries which is true but i'm really concerned that the failure to disclose big things like details about the murder of mysteries, which is true. But I'm really concerned that the failure to disclose big things like details about the murder of a president in a democratic country, republic, that that will convince people that our system itself is fake. And it's kind of hard to argue

that it's real. I totally agree. You can't even know who killed the president. Transparency is trust. 62 years later, pompey was working to keep american citizens from knowing who murdered their president who are you working for mike and we just had an election is that and by the way i just want to say one time you cannot convince me i'm not some world expert in the cia but i've certainly watched it closely over the years it's not the cia the cia cia is like a huge federal agency with all kinds of different components and warring tribes within. And like, there's no CIA. Bill Burns is not like calling Trump

and being like, don't release the files. I agree. Just credit CIA. Look, the president knows we just had an election where he was hammering on these things. And even with UAPs or UFOs, whatever terminology you want, we couldn't get more information.

These things are all over the place. Sure, some are helicopters, some are fixed wing. Okay, not all of them. And they don't know? Of course they know. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the programs. And then we get all our hopes up, right? The media loves mocking NewsNation about this

because they think that, oh, Cuomo thinks they're little green men in the basement of some building. No, I don't. It's about knowing that we spend hundreds of millions of dollars and use special operators to do things that you won't tell us about. And at a minimum, you should say, well, here's why we won't tell you. So what are they? That's exactly right. Well, so, but what are they?

Do you think? I don't tell you. So what are they? That's exactly right. Well, so, but what are they? Do you think? I don't know what the fuck they are. The point is that they know and they won't tell us things. And I think it is anathema to democracy. Can I, of course, I agree with everything you're saying, except one specific point, which is I'm not sure they know. They have programmed. They certainly know more than we do.

Put it that way. They do. They may know that they don't really know, which is the scariest thing of all. And I've certainly called a lot on this topic. I've stopped talking about it in public. I've tried to stop thinking about it because it's just one of those things that drives you crazy. But my strong impression is that they don't really know, that there isn't a consensus on this, and that they're not from Russia or China. He campaigned on it

it was supposed to be a no-brainer and then they put out exactly what the biden organization i'm aware of that administration i'm aware of that and i'm aware of that do you i mean that's just my view i could be completely wrong but i i don't think it's as simple as they know exactly what's going on and they're hiding it well again these are your people why don't you talk to them they love you oh my gosh i have and so what do you got for me i think come all the way down here we don't we don't cross all these bridges we don't know and i think that's kind of the scarier answer is flying over military bases shutting them down and you're shutting shutting down yeah and you don't shoot them down and then figure out what it was well maybe you

can't you know so that's and so look mean, I think we're getting to the same answer if, if there is a very obvious mystery that's publicly known, there's public pressure to solve the mystery, to divulge what you know, and you don't. Yes. Then there's, there's a real reason behind it. It's not just ass covering. Or do you have the arrogance to believe that you don't have to tell me? No, not anymore.

Not anymore. Because now that, you know, especially in this administration that was elected on the promise of transparency, there's a real reason. Because there's tons of counterpressure. People are aware. Like, where the hell are my Kennedy files? What's going on with these things over New Jersey? You said they were over your house in Bedminster. What is it?

You know? And what is this Epstein thing, which all of us watched? George Stephanopoulos is having dinner with us. Everyone you know is over at Epstein's house. Like, Ehud Barak is there every day. Like, what the hell is this? Who killed this guy?

He was clearly killed, obviously. He wasn't committing suicide. Look, just start there. Show us the files that substantiated the theory of his suicide. Just show them to us. Or where's your investigation into his death, which you promised Attorney General Barr that you're going to do. Show us.

And you never did. Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying is if you take three steps back, you're like, wait, this really is. This isn't just, you know, maybe some of the details are wrong. Or certainly stories like this draw all the wackos like a bug light for sure. And they come up with these fantastical theories to explain it. But just the knowable facts, the confirmed facts suggest something really, really big. Like the moment that I never thought much about the Epstein story until I realized that the Republican, two-time Republican Attorney General Barr lied about it.

Why would Barr lie about this? Epstein's a big Democratic donor. Barr was not close to Trump. He's not covering for Trump. What is that? And I don't know the answer, but that was the moment where I was like, whoa, all of a sudden, Bill Kristol's lawyer is involved in this, which he was. You know, I don't know. There's just a lot. There's a lot there. There's so much there that it starts to make you nervous and it makes you think like maybe the it's not just that things are screwed up on the margins but maybe at the core is something really dark i don't know i don't either look because look this is the problem with the vacuum of information right is that you then start speculating about why they won't just

tell you these things and and i'm not i'm not going to speculate on it because I don't know and I don't even have like really good theories. I do have some theories, but they could be completely wrong. All I'm saying is a rational person arrives inevitably at the conclusion that there's a real reason these have not been discussed.

Maybe. It's not just entropy. I have a conspiracy theory about it. I'm not so sure anymore. So we love the word patriot, okay? We love it. We love to say that we're patriots. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know anymore. When I look at the Trump administration, I'm not accusing anybody of anything treasonous. I'm just saying there seems to be a lot of currency these days in destroying things. And I've never seen a president in our lifetime say that everything in government is bad. Trump is the only president, even his speech, which I thought was well-written and well-delivered

for what he wanted to try to achieve, which is, hey, I got a lot of balls in the air. Forget about me promising what would happen day one. Stuff's going to get worse before it gets better, kind of vibe, which I get why he wanted that speech given what's happening in the polls. But justice doesn't work. The elections don't work. Wall Street is corrupt. None of the institutions of government can do everything. All the tax dollars are wasted. It's like I keep getting the same message from them. And Musk, to me, has been a huge disappointment. I believe the man is a genius, okay? He has done remarkable things.

He doesn't know that the federal judiciary is able to check the executive. He doesn't know that the federal judiciary is able to check the executive. He doesn't know that social security, the trust fund, isn't part of our debt structure. I can't believe a genius doesn't know these things. So then why would he be messaging this way? Unless he doesn't want people to like the justice system. He doesn't want people to want social security. He doesn't want them to believe that government can do anything. And I don't understand that as a political message from a guy who's in charge of everything now. And what is underlying it in terms of your real ambition?

I think I can answer some of them. I think Elon builds electric cars and rockets and tunneling equipment and telecom, satellite-, satellite-based telecom, et cetera, et cetera. He's a builder of things. He's a businessman. He's an engineer. I'm not surprised he doesn't know the details of how Social Security is structured at all. And I'm not surprised that as a naturalized American, he's not, you know, didn't grow up with Schoolhouse Rock and doesn't understand the three branches perfectly. His job, from what I can tell, is to deal with the one thing that nobody has dealt with, which will be the end of the country,

which is the country's bankruptcy. So the debt is what? $37? $36.9, something like $37 trillion. Revenues last year, 2024, total federal revenues were under $5 trillion. So that doesn't work. And at a certain point, the people who are floating the country, the bond buyers, the foreign bond buyers, like I'm not, this doesn't, and everything will collapse. And

that's been known for a long time. No one has dealt with it. And from what I can tell, Elon's job is to try and get the spending down. And no one's been able to do that. Well, get the spending down has to be in the budgeting process. To me, it's a penny wise pound foolish notion. I'm okay with getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse. You and I grew up listening to both parties argue when the other one was in power that there was all this waste, fraud and abuse and you had to curtail it. And I know it's true. It's always been true. Nobody has ever looked for it and failed to find it. I'm okay with them doing that. But I'll tell you what, if they had called up Carlson and Cuomo and said, would you guys like to serve your country

and see what you can find in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse. And we said, yes. I'll tell you what we wouldn't do is keep going off half cocked every day about what we were finding when we weren't sure. We would not do that. We would have immediately come to an agreement. Yeah, we'd probably get- Let's look, let's find stuff, okay? And then we're going to go to Congress and we're going to say, look at all this shit we found. And because we don't trust them, we would then go public with it as well at the same time.

Yeah, I don't think that's – we would have a blue ribbon commission and we'd present our findings. But he's going off half-cocked. None of that's worked. And I feel like – look, we don't know if it's going to work or not. I'm praying that it does because I think it's our last chance to save the country. I'm fine with it working. I want it to work or not. I'm praying that it does, because I think it's our last chance. I'm fine with it working. I want it to work. I feel like he's working against his own goals by getting things wrong all the time. Maybe, but big picture, he's right. So USAID, which I grew up around in Washington, I really grew up around it. I can just tell you

firsthand, having seen it, it is a force for evil in the world. I think it does probably good things on the margins, but bottom line, it is destabilizing other governments. It's a form of the ugliest kind of imperialism, totally detached from American interests. It's like really bad. And the more you know, that's why it's so shocking to read it all, the more indefensible it becomes. The Secretary of State disagrees with you. He may or may not. I'm just saying, you know, he's from Miami. I'm from D.C. So I just tell you, I have, I think, deep exposure to this. And there's no doubt. By the way, USAID gets zeroed out. How many third world presidents complained about that? Do you see any being like, oh, my gosh, we want our aid. They don't want American aid in that form because it destabilizes democratic governments it overturns the culture of the country oh you need more trans athletes they hate it and there's nothing they can do about it i don't think a single foreign president in a poor country complained when we shut off that aid

because they didn't want it so that tells you right there now that's a minuscule part of the entire federal budget agreed and he just happened to start with the agency that's investigating him i i don't think usa id has an investigative arm okay they do okay well whatever elon's being you know attacked on many sides this was before anything happened okay look i'm just saying you and i wouldn't have picked an agency that was looking into one of us without letting people know that i'm not even aware why didn't he tell us big picture the government is strangling the country. I don't think there's any doubt about that. What does that mean? It means that the richest place in the United States is the one place that produces nothing

but bureaucratic jobs, D.C. It's the richest place and it's the highest concentration of wealth in the United States. The counties around D.C. are the richest. They're like the majority of the top 10 are in D.C. And all that money is federal money. None of those people can ever be fired or are. It's not even clear what they're doing. A lot of their budgets are classified. The Intel EIC, it's like all, you don't even know what they're spending. They own businesses around the world. This is a fact. I mean, they'll admit it if you

ask them. And basically, there's no democratic control over any of this. The voters have no say in how this money is spent and the people spending it are beyond any kind of correction. There's nothing you can do about it. And so it's truly out of control in a way that makes democracy impossible. And it's also they're acting in strong interest. So, and then there's the debt overhang, which really threatens in an imminent way to make all of these conversations just irrelevant. If we're a poor country that can't support a military and can't keep up with our own infrastructure, then none of this stuff even matters. So do you believe that the answer is to change the institutions, to destroy the institutions? What do you think the answer is? Everybody loves and appreciates first responders. When things go haywire, they're the ones who show up

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You need to you can't get into debate with Benny Thompsonning Thompson and say, I can't believe that you're participating in this scam for decades that hurt this country, impoverished its citizens. You did this. And it's only from that posture that you have any power to negotiate the reforms necessary. You sort of have to do what the trans lobby, the human rights campaign did, which is you sort of come out of nowhere. And rather than sort of make the case that, hey, don't beat up trans kids, which I'm for, don't beat up trans kids or anybody. They come out and they're like, you're a transphobe. We're going to pick at your house and kill you if you say anything. And people are like, holy shit, they're so intimidated that they just kind of go along with your program. I think a functional country doesn't operate that way,

but this is not a functional country. This is a country that is more dysfunctional than we will admit to ourselves, and that may be the only option for reform. But one thing that I think no honest person can disagree with, we need reform, like immediately, on every level. needs to be reformed the way that our economy is structured clearly benefits just a tiny percentage of the population that's not sustainable etc etc like we need reform badly we can't keep doing it this way well we've been saying that a long time i know and trump is the first and again i don't know if it's going to work i'm praying that it will because it's this country is the last hope of the world i really believe that more than ever having just come back from other countries right that's why we have to make our kids travel, because everybody thinks America is the worst place in the world until you go somewhere else. Dude, yes.

And the thing that we need to preserve, I'm more convinced. That's why I'm a little worried about all the bashing of our institutions. Reform? Sure. Do it better? Do it differently? Do it less? Do it more?

Whatever it is? Sure. But the idea that there is no more justice in America, I don't believe that. All the elections are rigged. I don't believe that. We can't function. It's demonstrably false. So making things better is fine if you have the ideas and the wherewithal to make it happen. But what I'm sensing from this administration is it's all broken, tear it all down. And that's easy to say, but I don't know that it's good. Well, it's actually easy to do. It's easy to tear things down much easier than it is to build them. And you want to be careful of revolutionary moments. I mean, very few improve things. Ours did, I think, in this country 250 years ago. Very few others did.

I can't really think of any that did. Well, we had an oppressive force. You know, interestingly, and this is something I'm very anxious for you to explain to me. So I get fired and I'm watching the Ukraine war. And it was personally maddening to me because I had not covered a conflict since I got involved in the business. So I'm watching. The whole country is behind Ukraine. When did you get fired? Right there, like 2021. When did I get fired?

Yeah. So right when the Ukraine war broke out, I was fired. And it was a real reinforcer to me about how much I had lost, right? But anyway, I was much more concerned about what was happening in Ukraine. So everyone's on board. There are blue and yellow ribbons all over my neighborhood. I was not on board at all. Well, the country was. The Republicans were and the Democrats were. Yes.

And I kept hearing, boy, you know, it's like, they're kind of like us. You know, they're fighting against this oppressor and trying to shut it off so they can be their own way and get away from the kleptocracy and everything else. And then Trump has that bad phone call with Zelensky and leads to an impeachment that I thought was a complete waste of time. You were never going to remove him. And it's a political operation. So I didn't know why they did it, but that's their choice. They went their way. Then Biden comes in. Everybody's still doing what they were doing to try to help Ukraine. Biden is slow walking it, not giving them what they needed,

the wrong kind of ambivalence. Now Trump comes back and all of a sudden, all the people who are in favor of Ukraine on the right now say that it's a kleptocracy and Zelensky is a bad guy. And Putin, you know, not so bad. Russia, not so bad. Their concerns about NATO, pretty justified. It's really NATO and America that has done the wrong thing here and forced Russia's hand. And Ukraine and Zelensky kind of did too. And they're really dirty. And they're stealing all our money and selling all our stuff. I don't believe any of it. And I hear it all the time.

You are a big purveyor of this. And I want to understand it. How did everything change this way well it changed because politicians in general with some exceptions but not many have no principles at all and they do what's popular what they think is popular and they respond just to one stimulus which is election that's it and if they think something will get them re-elected they'll say it and if they don't they won't and so just, I mean, that's just what they are. I don't think it's even worth being mad.

I mean, they're like animals whose behavior is really predictable or machines. You know, you can program to do a certain thing and you know it's going to do that thing every time. So the fact that like these guys are standing up and being like, oh, you know, Zelensky, who was my blood brother last week, is now a bad guy. Like, of course, they're saying that. I've said the same thing, I think, since day one, which is this is not in our interest at all. And we've really hurt ourselves and we've dislodged the dollar from its preeminence. And that has consequences people are not thinking through. And Russia, of course, has an interest in what happens in Ukraine. And of course, they don't want American missiles on their border any more than we'd want Chinese missiles in Tijuana. Of course, that's a real thing. And moreover, the thing that

you want if you're thinking big, and you should if you run America, the thing you fear most is the alignment of Russia with China, because then you unite the world's largest country, the largest nuclear arsenal with the world's largest economy and the world's largest population. And that becomes a block that many others gravitate to. We're calling it the BRICS now. And that becomes, you know, something that you can't resist. That controls global trade routes. That controls global currency.

And that reduces you, the United States, to the bitch position very fast. Understand. But even within that, the premise is Russia bad. China potentially bad. What does bad even mean? I mean, like- Russia bad means they are consistently invested in what's bad for America. Putin is a-

Well, they certainly are now. They're aligned with China. So, yeah, that was not true at the beginning of 2022. And so, I would just- But invading Ukraine was wrong, what they did. And Ukraine did not start that war. Well, the whole thing was wrong. No, Russia invaded Ukraine for one specific reason,

despite all the lying from Ann Applebaum and the Atlantic Council and the professional liars and morons in Washington who got us into the Iraq war and Libya and Syria and every other disaster. I've never apologized for it and penalized for it. The truth is that Russia's concern was that Ukraine remain not part of NATO. They want to control Ukraine to some extent. It's their neighbor in the same way that we want to control, I don't know, Canada or Mexico. You don't have to,

you know, run the municipal elections in the country, but you don't want, like, if you had a government in Canada that was, like, bent on destroying the United States, you would overthrow the premier of Canada because you can't have that. It's your neighbor. You're a great power. And that's how Russia sees itself. Now, you could say, well, that's against international law or whatever, but that's the way nations behave. And great nations have an expectation. They're not going to have an enemy on their border if they can help it. But NATO isn't inherently an enemy. It is to protect against the illegal and wrongful annexation of sovereigns. Okay, Ukraine is not sovereign.

And Ukraine's government was installed in a coup by the CIA in 2014. So it's not a sovereign nation. Well, the Ukraine's regime. We installed their government. They're not sovereign. Ukraine is a sovereign nation well the satellite ukraine's regime installed their government they're not sovereign ukraine is a sovereign as you know but in what way russia had put a puppet in there was a democratic revolution there that zelensky wound up winning that election second round of voting that was to remove the russian puppet who went back with a lot of money into russia no you're you're yeah whatever i mean you're skipping over that's actually not at all what happened zelensky did not become president in 2014 which was when my no but i'm saying that's

my don square was a reaction to a russian puppet regime in that country well that's what they were against a russian puppet regime where did the guy go back to well he fled to russia yeah on the verge of getting killed but the bottom line is russia wanted a friendly government in ukraine okay i get it the united states which is nowhere near russia or ukraine went across the atlantic ocean to install its president in Ukraine in a coup. That's a fact. And they were caught on tape doing it. Bob Kagan's wife was caught doing that. You can listen to the tape. And so, okay, I guess both are bad. But if you're being an adult about it, you understand that great powers have an interest in not having other people's nuclear weapons on their borders. That's just a fact. And you could say, well, it shouldn't be a fact, but it is a fact. So we don't have

nuclear weapons on the border. The only nuclear weapon... Well, really? So NATO doesn't have... Look... In Ukraine? No. Okay. Their concern was... And Ukraine used to have a lot of nukes, and they agreed to get rid of them on the basis of protection from Russia. Those were Soviet nukes, and that was negotiated by the United States. Right. Okay. All I'm saying is, if you're thinking about it from the perspective of what's good for the United States, you do not want Russia becoming in close military alliance and economic alliance with China. You don't want that because that becomes a block that you can't defeat from which you will soon be taking orders. And every administration has

understood this. The Biden administration went to the Munich Security Conference in February of 2022 and had the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, say at a press conference, Tuslansky, we want you in NATO. NATO did not want Ukraine. There never was a referendum in Ukraine what the Ukrainians wanted. We want you to i there's never was a referendum in ukraine what the ukrainians wanted we want you to be an american satellite with american weapons in your country she said that knowing that was the red line putin's like look i just don't want ukraine and nato that's it you've had all these countries around my borders in nato i don't know why you're doing that i still don't know to this day why we're doing that that's an aggressive offensive move but you cannot have

ukraine it's too big it's too important Our energy pipelines go through it. No. And they insisted on doing this. And Putin gave a speech immediately after in Russia. No Americans ever watched it. You should. It's really interesting saying this NATO thing is too much. We have to invade and we're doing it. Those are the facts. OK, so the question is, why would you do that? Ukraine is not sovereign. It never was. You know that Ukraine cannot beat Russia in a conventional war. Russia's got 100 million more people and much deeper. But that doesn't mean you let them roll over.

And Ukraine is a sovereign. It's its own country. In what sense are they making independent decisions? I'll give you an April of 2022, two months after this war started. It's very clear that Russia is going to win. It's just a much bigger country. Period. And so the Ukrainians and the Russians start having peace talks.

And they move them around a bunch of different places. They went up in Istanbul, Turkey. And they have a bunch of different data points. The first is no NATO. The second is what do we do with Crimea? Which since 2014 had been like Russian aligned. They took it, by the way.

They took it. They took it. What do you do with that? There's a Russian military naval base there, as you know. And what do you do with Donetsk and Lugansk, the eastern part of Ukraine? They basically reached terms in Istanbul two months into the war. All of a sudden, the former prime minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, shows up in Kiev and delivers a message from the Biden administration. No, no peace.

You are not allowed to negotiate a peace. This is he's telling a sovereign, a quote, sovereign country. This some unemployed, you know, indebted Brit is showing up on behalf of the United States to lecture the so-called president of Ukraine about what he can do with his own country. It's not sovereign in any sense. And they break off the peace talks. This is all like, I'm not making this up. Look it up. And a million more Ukrainians die.

The country is totally destroyed forever. And then Zelensky goes and changes the law in Ukraine to allow foreigners to buy farmland in Ukraine, to buy the soil of Ukraine. So you wind up with a country whose population has just been killed, that no longer owns its land. So big American companies, multinational companies, you want to just buy Ukraine.

That's the total destruction of a European nation. And in the United States, we feel like, oh no, we're fighting on behalf of Churchill. No, we just destroyed Ukraine because we want to fight Russia. And now that is the core, the desire of the American foreign policy establishment to have a war with Russia. That does not make any sense to me. I'm not a Putin lover. I don't speak Russian. I've got

nothing to do with Russia. I just don't understand why it's in America's national interest to be at war with Russia. It's not. And these are people with very deep, emotional hatred of Russia. I can't even speculate as to where that comes from. But it's real. I've certainly seen it a lot. And it's not consistent with our interests as a nation has not helped the United States at all. It's hurt us. We spent over a hundred billion dollars when we're bankrupt. And all we've achieved is destroying this nation that didn't really do the poor Ukrainians didn't do anything. It's a horrible what we've done. Zelensky articulates a very different case, right?

What's his case? His case is he wanted America and Europe to help them fight back Russia because Russia wants to reestablish the USSR. And he wants to keep Ukraine sovereign. Of course, he has cultural and geographic issues in the eastern part of his country. And that has been an ongoing problem for them. I was in Ukraine when the Russian separatists shot down that Malaysian Airlines plane, lied about it, wouldn't let the bodies be reclaimed. It was a whole thing. Putin installed a guy named Borosky, who was supposedly a prime minister of Donetsk. It was all bullshit because that's what Putin is. So they wanted help. They want to stay sovereign. America was helping them with that.

And now all of a sudden, Zelensky's a thief. They're stealing all our money. They're selling all our weapons to Mexican cartels. None of these things are true. Why? No, it's not true. It's not true. But I don't understand what's the just go in order give me the point of it and then ukraine just to define sovereignty sovereignty is the freedom to make independent decisions and ukraine does not have that and has never had that since 2014 when its government was installed by an american coup zelensky would say he was democratically elected well he's not democratically elected he's passed his term well and so by what authority by hold on let me question go ahead by what authority does zelensky negotiate on behalf of this country rule his country he just he just put his main

political opponent under indictment and froze his personal funds under internal sanctions the security services of ukraine sounds familiar doesn't it i don't know we just we just went through the same thing in this country sounds like what i'm saying by the way no but he's not a dictator and then by what authority does he rule ukraine so well here's how he was elected and now under their constitution he does have the ability to stall elections and operate under martial law during the conflict. So you're comfortable with people saying, I'm going to blow... No, he could certainly have an election if he wanted.

If he wanted, but he is empowered. He doesn't want an election. You're from a political family. It's the same thing with Israel right now. They're not having elections either because they're in the midst of an active conflict. It's not a time for transition of power. But I don't know why we make excuses for dictatorship.

It's not a dictatorship. Of course it is. Any unelected leader who has the power... He was elected. He was elected. Actually, he has a presidential term. Right. If Joe Biden just said, you know what, we're in a conflict right now, I can't have elections, I'm canceling the election,

or if Donald Trump... But there's a constitutional provision for this. If... Okay. He could have an election whenever he wanted. He could have an election right now. No one doubts that, actually. And his opponent was calling for that before he was just shut down by the Ukrainian intel services a week ago. So there's no authority. He doesn't have democratic authority over his country. What he has absolutely, as a matter of fact, the Ukrainian military has sold those weapons on the black market around the world. And these are facts. They've run up in the hands of, among others, the Mexican drug cartels, the Taliban, Hamas, Hamas in Gaza. Fact.

And a lot of other groups. And it's incredibly destabilizing, by the way. The United States did this years ago in Afghanistan, as you know, and sent a bunch of Stinger missiles to the Mahajanin in 1979 and 80 to fight the Soviets. And those missiles caused huge problems for all of Southwest Asia for like 20 years. And so this is a big deal. And I don't know why people feel like they have to lie about it now. I don't know that it's about lying about it. I don't agree that those are facts you don't believe that that the ukrainian military uh you know what i'll tell you i'll bet

you my car that in the next kind of car is it what was some crappy oh then i'm not gonna bet that okay um no i don't have nice cars i'll admit that oh i've never bought a new car so we're not doing a swap okay but anyway the point is um that's and as i no one believes me i know someone who bought some of the weapons i'm just you know whatever i can't well first of all you would have to substantiate you know who it is that you knew because you believe the most corrupt country in europe which is so corrupt that nato didn't want it as a member you believe it's outside their own possibility that facing defeat the leaders of that military would not sell the weapons that they're getting from the West? You cannot substantiate a claim on the basis of mere suspicion.

It's not mere suspicion. I know someone who bought some of the weapons. I believe that you think that. What I'm saying is. I don't think that. I know it. I'm saying that, well, you know that they say it. You don't know whether they did. And I'll tell you why I'm suspicious.

Because the missiles that Russia put out those pictures of were from like 2014. And they didn't even have javelins then. So the idea that Ukraine could have been selling weapons that were taken from a different time as an obvious ploy by Russia to make them look bad is, to me, propaganda and not proof that they did it. Okay. Are you texting while I'm having a conversation with you? I'm texting right now. Very rude. No, no. I'm texting on WhatsApp right now on this exact subject. Tucker, I'm not saying you're lying. I'm saying I'm disagreeing that it's a fact that the military there is spending weapons that they very much need to Mexican cartels. Why does Mexico's cartels need to get weapons from Ukraine when they get them across our border with straw buyers all the time? I mean, to me, it doesn't even make sense from a practicality standpoint. But it seems like—

You can get surface-to-air missiles from straw buyers? No, not surface-to-air missiles. No, no, no. Small arms. Small arms. No, small arms. Small arms, you know, small arms you can buy anywhere. No, no, no. I'm talking about weapons systems. But this is not documented stuff, and it seems to want to smear Ukraine and make them the bad guy and make Russia the good guy. It's not a matter of smearing Ukraine.

Okay. This is one of those topics that I'm just going to— I'm not mad at you, buddy. No, no, no is one of those topics that I'm just going to... I'm not mad at you. No, no, no. It's a conversation. I'm mad because I know this is true. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying I don't know it. It's a fact.

And unfortunately, I can't, and maybe I shouldn't have brought it up because I can't name the person who told me this. I don't want you to expose a source. I'm not going to. What I'm saying is, look, people... Let me bottom on it by saying, I have a huge amount of knowledge on this one topic. I'm wholly ignorant of many topics.

I know a lot about this topic. And you think Zelensky's a bad guy who's a dictator? What I'm telling you is, the Ukrainian military has sold huge amounts of American-supplied, NATO-supplied weapon systems

around the world. And that they're purchasable now by governments and armed groups and are being purchased and why hasn't it been documented um i'm i'm just telling you that i if if this this will be documented and i got that directly once again from someone who purchased quite a few of those weapons who i know personally and in another country and knows a lot about this it runs a military and um and it's just frustrating because i can't i can't say i'm not look my point is not to frustrate you tucker it's to understand this mentality of framing ukraine it's not a mentality it's not

look it's noting the facts the guy's not elected he is elected his term has been expended constitutionally comfortable if we were well we are in a war with russia right now if donald trump no it is war with russia americans have died in proxy it's a war that we're funding we're not on the ground there. What do you mean? There are many Americans in Ukraine fighting. U.S. military is not in the ground. Yes, there are.

Look, I know that there are... What are you talking about? They're not actively fighting Russian forces. What do you mean they're guiding weapons into Russia? Yes. What do you mean they're not actively fighting? They're absolutely actively fighting. Have we declared war?

Of course not. We didn't declare war in Vietnam or Korea. That doesn't mean anything. True. Did in Iraq. We guess we did. That went well. There was a congressional vote. Of course. But the point is, if Trump were to say we're at war with Russia, I can't have an election. I would say that's not legitimate. You do not have the authority to extend, and I don't care, you know, what pretext you make up for it. You can't put your opponents in jail. You can't, but more than anything,

what I'm saying is that this is scary. It's not even blaming Zelensky. There are many power centers within Ukraine. There's the military, the intel services, there's the president's office. There are competing political groups. People say the same things about us, by the way. Of course, it's true.

It's true. Especially true here. It's a huge country. I'm not even blaming Zelensky directly. I'm saying this is the largest country in Europe. We have poured billions of dollars in pretty high-tech weapons systems into this country,

and we're not keeping track of them. We also have biolabs throughout the country. We have biolabs. And we're about to have more them. We also have bio labs throughout the country. We have bio labs. And we're about to have more of a footprint because the now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in the Senate on camera. So there are biolabs in Ukraine with biological weapons in them. Who the hell is keeping track of this stuff? That's all I'm saying.

It's not an attack on Zelensky. We have a moral obligation to keep track of this stuff. There's never been an audit. I have no problem with that. It's fucking crazy. I have no problem with keeping track of it. Talk about destabilization of the world. Like, why are we doing this? So do you believe that we should just back out of what we're doing there now and let Russia take it? Russia take it? I don't know. At this point, Russia has, we're not in charge.

Russia just won. They beat us in their war. In case you haven't noticed, Russia outproduced in munitions, NATO, including the United States, four to one. So we just lost the war. So we are not negotiating from a position of strength. Sorry, I'm not taking Russia's side. I'm on America's side. This is terrible for us. We've exposed how weak we are. We couldn't beat Russia, which many members of the U.S. Senate assured me was, quote, a gas station with... That was McCain's line. What a fucking idiot that guy was. What an idiot he was.

I knew him and I liked him, but he was like an idiot. A gas station with nuclear weapons. Really? See, I saw it the other way, which is we thought Russia was going to roll over Ukraine and they have been unable to really move the line. They rolled over us. They took a big chunk of eastern Ukraine, and for three years, we've progressed toward bankruptcy trying to stop it, and we've not been able to. They won. This is bad.

It's bad for American prestige. It's bad for the projection of American power. Everyone knows what we're capable of and what we're not capable of. It's divided our country. People are flying foreign flags in front of their houses i feel that the division is forced in this country that to me it seems pretty basic that russia can't have ukraine because it doesn't stop what are we gonna do it doesn't stop it we already but okay but at some point it's estonia and latvia and estonia you know it's always some chick, that blonde chick.

I'm president of Estonia. You know, a country of 5 million people that invented the sauna. By the way, I'm part Finnish. I'm not against Estonia. I'm sure it's great. But the idea that some woman who's never been in the armed service, like, setting military policy for the EU. You know, we're going to do this. You can't do anything.

You don't have an army. Britain's army is smaller than the U. You know, we're going to do this. We're going to, you can't do anything. You don't have an army. Britain's army is smaller than the US Marine Corps. NATO, which is a coalition that includes, by the way, Turkey, it's like this huge coalition, couldn't beat Russia. That is the fact. I don't want that to be the fact.

That is the fact. So Americans are like, well, we can't allow this. Well, what are you going to do about it? I don't say that it's a fact because we are not fighting in earnest in that country. So what, what would you i'm just okay here here are the terms we have a nuclear armed power largest nuclear arsenal in the world that is fighting for its very life that is aligned with china okay which is the largest economy well i don't know that russia's fighting

for its life i think putin forced this situation okay whatever leaving aside moral culpability i'm just saying it's a big deal for them it's on on their border. It's their border. Okay. So we don't like it. We weighed in on the other side to fight Russia. We haven't won. So now what are our options? Like, actually, what are our options? The options are what President Trump is doing right now, which is to try to get the parties to the table and draw a line in the sand and make a deal, right? That's the only option I see. I don't see any other options, but I'd love to hear what they are. No, I mean, there's never any other option unless you want to actively fight and take territory and occupy. Who's going to actively fight? There are no Ukrainians left. Well, look, both sides are manpower poor, right? You know, the stories

about Russia emptying the prisons. Russia has 100 million more people. 140 million people. 100 million more people. But have you ever heard of us emptying out the prisons? I mean, why does he have to do that? He's in a desperate place. Because he doesn't want his citizens to have to fight in an unpopular war because he's worried about his popularity because he wants to stay in power.

So it's easier to send convicts to the front. They have done this for centuries. I'm against it, but I'm just saying that's the fact. The point is... You think Putin is concerned about his popularity in a place where he kills all of his opponents on a regular basis? He's very concerned about his popularity.

Really? When he completely engineers the outcome of everything that happens? Russia is a very complicated place with a lot of different competing power centers, including the FSB, which is... And how has he stayed in power so long? because he's really good at politics and he pays very close attention to what the public thinks very close he's got the military just like any country

it's a first of all the you know how lousy life is there for people right well and not just because the economic sanctions right now it just has been i mean you know have you been there recently recently no i've been there we're, no. I've been there twice. We're not allowed in. I've been there twice in the last year. Why are you allowed in? I don't know. I'm an American.

Friend of Putin. I'm a friend of Putin. Because I believe in seeing things and reaching my own conclusion. Oh, me too. I'm just, I'm not allowed in there as a journalist. I'm sure you could call right now

and they will let you in and you should go. Just wouldn't let me out. Wind up like Paul Whalen and you wouldn't be arguing my case. But look, here's the point. No, no, Russia, Putin does not have absolute control of his country,

and they're all kinds of potential rivals. He's been there for 20 years. You sound more sympathetic towards him than towards Zelensky. I mean, well, I'm definitely more sympathetic to Putin than Zelensky for the following reason. I judge,

and I'm not sympathetic to Putin in the sense that I don't want to move to Russia. I don't see Russia as like a close friend of mine at all or a free country or anything like that. I'm just saying, I think it's fair to judge leaders on how they do for their country. They have one job. Do a good job for your country. Make it better. And- You think Russia is doing well? A lot better than Ukraine. I mean, a lot of Ukrainians have fled Ukraine to Russia a lot, a lot. Well, yeah, they're under siege right now. No, but I'm just saying like Russia actually for a country at war is thriving. You know, I think it's got deeper problems. War is not good for any economy over time or any country over time,

but there's been such a massive infusion of Chinese investment into Russia in the past couple of years that people in, say, Moscow, city of 12 million, you know, they don't feel a privation that populations under war typically feel. But there's a reason he made that deal with North Korea to have their people backing them up on the battle lines. I'm sure. I'm sure that's exactly right. I mean, there are a lot of theories on that. I've heard a lot of things, but here's the only point that I'm making from an American perspective. Americans fall into this trap, which is a childish trap, where they superimpose like a really clear moral dichotomy onto foreign conflicts where there's like a great guy and an evil guy. Yes. And they're able to do that because they don't know anything because they've never been anywhere and they don't actually, they're leaders I'm talking about, don't kind of take the time to understand that they don't

understand. The more you know, the more you realize you really don't know, because do you speak Russian? I don't think so. So, like, how the hell do you know what's going on? You don't know. The best you can do is, like, be open-minded and let evidence guide your conclusions. So, from an American perspective, what we've learned is the U.S. capacity for projecting strength through the military is a lot less than we thought it was. We couldn't beat Russia. We didn't beat Russia. They won. Do you really think that America was putting the full force of its might into that situation?

Short of nuclear conflict, yes. Zelensky has done nothing but complain about us not giving them what they needed. We gave them like high Mars, everything we're giving them. I mean, you know, because you've been studying the situation. I've been there twice during the conflict, and it's like World War I level warfare there. No, it's not. So it's not like we're using our most, now they're using drones from like retail. The most high-tech warfare ever conducted. In fact, it's so high tech,

it's moving so fast that I don't think most people even understand what's going on there. But it's a war by drone. They were digging trenches. Yeah, now there's been an infusion of drone technology that they're using. But they were digging trenches. My point is, what Americans can't,

you just need to change your mind a little bit on this. We don't have the power to do everything that we want around the world. Agreed. We certainly can't do it simultaneously.

Agreed. And my concern about entering into hot wars with anybody is that you expose your weakness. If you enter into a hot war with someone,

you have to win. Otherwise, everyone knows how weak you are. And then... But you don't think that's true for Russia, that they don't look

really weak because they couldn't roll over Ukraine? They said it would be done in three days. I mean, the truth is, it's a silly conversation. Russia's nuclear weapons, it is hypersonic weapons. Russia could eliminate Ukraine in about 10 seconds. Well, it's bombing residential areas.

It's going after infrastructure where they know civilians are. So it's not like they're holding out. I mean, let's just be honest. And I hope they never will. And I hate war. And I hate that Ukrainians are dying. So why haven't they, by the way? Let's say, of course they could.

Their nuclear capabilities. Are you joking? They have hypersonic weapons. But they're not. So why? They could take out the entire city like that. But they're not. Because that's World War III.

That's why. Right. And they want to get out without a nuclear exchange. Right. And what I worry, it without a nuclear exchange. Right. And what I worry, it's not a defense of Russia. By the way, anybody who's trying to avoid a nuclear exchange, I'm on your side. Yes. And that would include almost no Republican members of the Senate. Okay. They're all like full blown. They're old. They don't care. Like I said, don't care about

their grandkids or humanity itself or whatever. They're totally willing to risk nuclear war. Although Lindsey Graham just took a step backwards, which I thought was surprising. It's completely silly. He's blaming, look, a lot's going to come out. We reached an impasse on the question of whether Ukraine is selling weapons. They are. That's a fact. And I bet my house on it. Okay. I know that to be true, but I can't tell you how I know that. So I'm going to have to just wait to be vindicated. But it's not a debate. I'm just saying that it seems that the line has shifted and now Ukraine is the bad guy. Okay. We haven't heard anything about Ukraine for the past three years. You were required, and I got fired over this, so I know, you were required to pretend that Zelensky,

who I think is a complicated person for whom I feel sorry, actually. I feel like he's a pawn among bigger powers. Okay. I feel bad for Zelensky. But we were required to pretend that he was Jesus and that Vladimir Putin was Satan. And my only point is that's not true, actually. It's way more complicated than that. Both of them have good and bad qualities. And moreover, it's not our fight. Like, what are we doing there? This whole thing is so nuts just because you're mad at Russia for some reason that you'll never say out loud. We have to take our country to war there? And by the way, can I just say something? Sure.

I mean, this war has, like most wars that we fight, been promoted by some of the richest people in our country. And I'll name one, Ken Griffin, who is a hedge fund billionaire, has really pushed hard, and I've seen it, behind the scenes to force Republican politicians to support bigger payments to the Zelensky government. It's like, Ken Griffin's a multi-billionaire. He's probably, I don't know, millions of dollars on lobbying on this issue, but he hasn't spent billions on Ukraine. He could send billions of his own money to Ukraine. A lot of the Ukraine war supporters could do it. They could also go fight the war. They're conscripting 50-year-old men, guys with Down syndrome. The videos are all over the internet and they're real. I hear from people in Ukraine on the sub-subject. Those videos I've seen. Yeah. So I haven't noticed any, Bill Kristol's not fighting in Ukraine. Why is that?

Why is Ken Griffin not sending billions to Ukraine? No, what they're doing is pressuring the U.S. media, pressuring the U.S. Congress to do something that they themselves are not willing to do. Up to and including sending American troops, which we have in Ukraine, risking their lives. Why isn't Ken Griffin doing that? I just want to say I think it's one of the most immoral things I've ever seen. I think that you're headed in the right direction now, because I believe that that- You support the war, go pay for it, go fight it. That complaint that the wealthy and powerful are feeding off the rest of us, I think is the one untapped reservoir of populist sentiment in this country.

We have a system- I don't think we're allowed to say that. Well, we have a system where the corporations, right, get to do whatever they want with the money that they make. And they get to work the system to pay as little as possible into the rest of us. They still pay more. And obviously the taxes are paid more by the wealthy than by those who aren't wealthy,

but we find ways around it. And the government then subsidizes those same corporations, even though they don't take care of their own workers. And I think that how the powerful are able to leverage our government is the main fight that we need to have. So you'll have like, let's say Walmart is a great and egregious example. They have more of their people on snap as a percentage, their workers than any other corporation yet they're making a lot of money and then what would we say well they're allowed to give it to their shareholders that's capitalism oh but we tucker carlson and chris we subsidize have to

subsidize your workers i think that that's the main fight now obviously it's not ukraine but what i'm saying is rich people imposing their will on the u.s government to do what they want for them is a real thing i couldn't agree more however i think and i agree with what you said about walmart completely why should i subsidize and not just walmart it's all of them i agree well it's capitalism but i don't actually think i don't think that that's the greatest threat to our democracy or our freedoms or our country. I think because, look, Walmart, the world's biggest retailer or was, a powerful company, obviously. It's got a board of directors.

It's got shareholders. It's a publicly traded company. You can buy Walmart. There's some accountability inherent in that structure. If you have someone like Ken Griffin, not to beat up on poor Ken Griffin, who, you know, I don't think Ken Griffin's evil, it's just silly,

but I'll just name him again. Ken Griffin is like this independent multi-billionaire who's got massive, and there are a lot of these guys, with massive political influence because of the money that he has. And there's no accountability at all. There's no board of directors of Ken Griffin. He's just a billionaire. He is his own power center and he's what we would call if he were

russian an oligarch we put sanctions on him yeah that's the new word in the american vernacular and i'm okay with it i think it applies that's the real threat because like a guy like that i agree can own his own media outlets i agree own his Can own his own politicians. He can, I mean, it's- I don't know why you're not talking about Musk in the same way. I mean- All the tech bros, which I think is a really benign

and casual label for these guys. He's doing everything that we're supposed to be worried about happening in this society right now. And again, I'm not anti-Elon Musk. I'm not. I think he's a genius uh and i just i think that there are things that are happening i can answer your question and i don't think it's

an unfair question at all um because i do think the the world that produced elon is this is a world you need to think about right i think there are some, definitely some threats. Elon specifically will always have my love because he did the most important thing, which is restore free speech in the United States through X. And he took, because, you know, free speech doesn't mean anything if you can't actually speak to an audience. Like I can, you know, lecture the mirror in my living room, but it doesn't mean anything. I have to be able to talk to other people in order to convince them. And there was no place to do that at scale. All the social media apps were controlled, completely controlled. And he has given a real measure of free speech back to the United States, to its citizens, which is really the difference between slavery and freedom is being able to say what you think. There's kind of like a free man can say what he believes is true and a slave can't.

It's that simple. So if you want to remain free and not enslaved, then you have to have free speech. And no one else seemed to agree with that except this like South African guy. The South African ironic rock. It is it maybe it's ironic. I don't know. I mean, I'm highly opposed to immigration, but I have to say, including my best friend, a lot of the best people I know are immigrants and they appreciate America for what actually makes it great,

which is its core freedoms. And what do you mean you're against immigration? We have too much immigration and we've made the country totally unstable. No, it's the difference between too much and none. Well, not against immigration. You just said that. In theory, we need to shut down all immigration right now until we can retain or regain equilibrium and like figure out what it is that holds us all together as a nation. It's too chaotic.

It's too crazy right now. No more people, period. None. Cap it right now. And then just cooling off, period. 30 or 40 years. Cooling off from what? This is all stuff that Trump has stoked as the biggest problem we have.

It is the biggest problem we have. And I'll tell you exactly why, because it creates chaos and disunity. If you have a continental sized country like we do, the main question you have always every day, you're thinking about all the, how do we hold together? How do 50 states not become 50 countries?

I mean, that will naturally happen, right? Because each governor sees himself as a Caesar. So how do you keep them cohesive? And the only way to do that is short of force. You could just like get nukes and tell everyone to obey. But short of that, short of becoming a totalitarian country, it's by consent. It's because everybody thinks we're in this together. We're all Americans. We have this in

common. And it used to be race and religion. It no longer is. Okay. So what is it? Crickets. What is it? What is it that we all have in common? And no one is even trying to answer that question. And until you can answer that question, you are going to move toward disunity. The drug cartels will take over, you know, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and there'll be their own thing. And, you know, New England will be its own thing. And, you know, God knows what will happen, but it'll break apart because that's just the nature of people, of human society. So we need a period where we can think through what it is to be an American, what unites us, what's our civic religion. It can't just be everyone's gay. That's not enough. Pride flag is not enough to hold a country together.

What is it? And immigration makes it impossible because it's too much churn. Things change too fast. Who are these people? It's how we've populated the country. Not at this scale. We've never had immigration like this as a portion of population. We've never had it. This is, and by the way, it's happening at exactly the time when technology is certain to like overturn our economy and employment structure. Like AI is going to change everything. It's too much change at once. People's brains can't handle this much change. And whoever opened the spigot and flooded our country with 15 or 25 million illegals in the past four years should be in prison for the rest of his life. That's the worst thing that's ever been done to this country. And I don't know if we can recover from it. And I think it'll become obvious

as soon as there's an economic downturn that like the fundamentals have not been tended to at all. I'm really worried about it. Look, I understand that you're worried about it and I understand why you would be, right? But I just wanted to say- It's being preached to you for years.

No, it's not preached to me. I notice it. I notice it. Well, but I'm saying, look, this is- How many Americans want their kids to serve in the military now? Very few. Right. it's not preached to me. I notice it. I notice it. Well, but I'm saying, look, this is... How many Americans want their kids to serve in the military now? Very few.

Right. So that's a huge change. That's been true for a long time, by the way. Not a long time. Longer than the last four years. Oh, for sure. Oh, it precedes Biden,

for sure. But not the last 20. Not the last 20. I don't think you can look at immigration as an unprecedented bad in America. It is America.

Otherwise, you don't have one. Not at this scale. Not at this scale. It's too many people. But even if you wanted to, even if you wanted to look at the people, even if you want to say there are 15 million people

who aren't supposed to be here, they all came in illegally. Okay. One, you see how easier it is to say that than to do something about it, right? Because he was going to come in and round them all up. And now-

It's an unsolvable problem. Well, it's, the question is, is it a problem or is it a challenge and it is a mixed bag you have seven million open jobs in the country that are necessary what does that tell you you don't have enough people to fill them okay um so that means that the 15 million people haven't taken everybody's jobs and why are they government benefits saturated the market um why are we giving government benefits to people here illegally? It's a legitimate political question. Now, no, no, it's not a political question. It's like it's a social question.

It's like a core question. It's like if you want them to fill these jobs, why are you subsidizing them not to work? Well, it's not that they're subsidizing not to work. Why are you subsidizing them at all? Because that was a political. That's what I'm saying. It's a political decision. They decided to do that.

You could decide not to do that. Now, they don't get social security benefits. Very often you'll hear. Well, they're young people. But you have a third of, and again, these are all rough estimates because your point about tracking, we don't do this well here either. You have a third, let's say maybe close to a half of illegal entrants working in this country whose employers pay into social security for them. No, I know all these numbers. They do not get any of the benefits of that. So we should be grateful to the Haitians. entrants working in this country whose employers pay into social security for them no i know they do not get any of the benefits right so we should be grateful to the no no no not grateful but you

got to see it as a mixed bag it's not they are little demons running around i see it as the greatest failure this country's ever presided over which is the failure to encourage its own citizens to buy into the country sufficient to have kids. You have to have an economy that allows young people who aren't rich, whose parents aren't rich, to get married and have kids. And we haven't done that. And the middle class is now the minority of the country. It's super hard for people to get married and have kids. And so rather than fix that problem, because it would, I don't know,

make Larry Fink less rich, you have to import people because, oh, we need workers. Well, what about, I i mean we both grew up in a world where people had kids and they don't know and whose fault is that it's our leader's fault that's like a core fault that's like a true sin it's always been both right i'm second generation in this country so you've always been doing both you've been having babies and you've been bringing in people because that's the american that's the american opportunity no but what you haven't had is the birth rate just like ending for native born Americans, ending. And then you have the thing I referred to earlier, which is the chaos of change. Change produces chaos. Now, hopefully there's, again, an equilibrium that is achieved

over time, but- You don't think Trump made a boogeyman of a legal entrance in this country by saying they're the bad hombres. They're all bringing the murders. And you know that the crime rate among that population isn't the same as the native population. A single crime by an illegal alien is unacceptable. Illegal immigration is unacceptable. The one is too many is a very convenient standard, though. We don't use that anywhere else. You're not from here.

You're not American. What are you doing here? You broke laws of my country to get here. Yes. And you expect me to like it and me to kiss your ass and me to give you housing vouchers and food stamps and free education

for your kids. What? I didn't sign up for that. I was born here. I'm not, I actually like immigrants. I was just trying to say, Elon Musk,

my best friend and business partner, like a million immigrants I love, but inviting people in illegally, immediately putting them on welfare

when they have no relevant skills to a tech economy, which they don't. A lot of them can't read. We don't know the real names. How is that good for America? In no sense is it. It's the destruction of America. And everyone knows that. And everyone's so paralyzed by race guilt, they can't say it. But it's not about race. It's about a basic question that any country has to ask itself, which is, what do I have in common with my neighbors? Why are we all in this together what do i have in common with my neighbors why are we all in this together i got nothing in common with my neighbors now we don't

speak the same language so how is this a country like these are not questions that racists ask these are questions that any normal logical person would ask like what is this but that's why no one wants to fight for the country because they're attacking people who were born here our wars are fought by white men from the south and the midwest i mean actually fought and that's provable that's just a fact you have a lot of minorities in the military also you could argue it's one of their last avenues to equality but the every war that this country has fought so far has been disproportionately fought by those two groups and those are exactly the groups that our leadership class hates hates and it's constantly diversity is designed to hurt those to hurt those people but most of the leadership class are those people

you're absolutely right about that you're absolutely right about that the war on whites is being waged by whites it's 100 true what is that about i'm not sigmund freud i don't know i'm just telling you that if you know our, our entire media establishment and not just our, like, the vibe, the law, diversity is designed to discriminate against those people. So why do they fight your wars? That's just true. And then normal people, I put myself in this class for like, I don't even know what it is that we're fighting for.

More trans people or whatever. Like, what is this project about? These are all answerable questions, by the way. All is not lost. I'm just saying you need to just pause and think through the basics. I think the country is the best country in the world, totally salvageable. We can turn this around. I'm not talking about the economy. I mean the social fabric, which is much more important than the economy. But we need to do it now and take it seriously and not just like listen to AEI

and measure everything in GDP. Those people are stupid. So you don't understand what it is to be American anymore. Will you tell me? I think- We've got 350 million people here. What unites them?

The opportunity. What opportunity? Economic opportunity? Opportunity to live a life of your own making, to succeed or fail on your own merits. Okay, so the meritocracy, to be judged by what you do, not what you look like. That's right. Okay, so every institution in American life, almost without any exception at all, has abandoned that standard and now has something called dei or diversity hiring not anymore you just had an administration strip it all out they all do still in place i mean

they're fighting it but where were you when every institution decided to hire on the basis of sex and race which is the opposite of the standard you're describing why did they do that that's a really interesting question i mean from my perspective yes it's an attempt to destroy the west and because that i mean what is the way you said it yourself what is america you said it's a place where you can rise or fall on your own merits and that's the one thing that's been destroyed so i actually agree with you but we don't have that anymore and it was destroyed was it destroyed when women were given the vote or when minorities were given the vote? Of course not. Okay. Because there had been a system that was limiting. But women were given the vote in 1919 and minorities were given,

minorities had the vote in a lot of places, some they didn't, but the Civil Rights Act was 1965. So it's been 60 years. The point is, look, I get that. I get what the frustration with DEI was. I understand. No, no, it's not the frustration. It's that it gets to the fundamental question of what is it? I asked you, what's an American? You said, you don't want us to be American. I said, I really don't. I want to. And I think we need to figure that out. And you said, I know what it is. It's anyone who comes here can rise or fall on his own merits. And I said, where were you when that was destroyed? It's totally destroyed.

We need to rebuild it. It's not about white men being bad, white rage. Thank you, Mark Milley. It's about the principle that undergirds the whole country. It's what it is to be American. And they took it away. And no one said anything about it. And anyone who did was called a racist. No, listen I I get the cancel culture concerns and it's not

cancel culture it's like fundamental dude what since we don't have no I'm saying being called racist for saying what you just said is a function of cancel culture and it's unfair about that but what I'm saying is this you didn't have minorities being given the opportunities because they were minorities. That was something that America wanted to correct because it is the opposite of equality. Okay. And it was the same with women. And that's what you should be trying to do. No.

Not to the exclusion of anyone else, not to the exclusion of merit, but you don't want people held back because of who or what they are. Either people, as you said, I'm just quoting you, my oracle. Thank you. That what it is to be an American is to participate in a system that judges you in the basis of what you do. Yes. Who you are, where you came from, what your parents did, what they look like. Land of opportunity. Land of opportunity.

And I pressed, what does that mean? And you said what I just said. And so every institution in American life to this day, the meaningful ones, the universities, the large corporations, the federal government, to this day has abandoned that and moved aggressively in the other direction. There are federal set-asides, the ladders of success, the merit badges that we require to enter these institutions mostly in education totally determined by race and sex and that's the opposite of what you said so then and that's been going on for 60 years so okay so clearly it's not the land of opportunity what is it no i believe a giant

pinata party where the most aggressive person gets the biggest pile so larry fink is the richest guy because he elbowed people in the face the hardest. I mean, that's kind of what it is, actually. There is a little bit of who and how the system gets worked, but I would disagree that it has been destroyed. I would disagree that, because you still have whites in dominant positions everywhere that you can mention.

It's not about whites. It's about people. It's about human beings. Are you going to judge the person on the content of his character, the color of his skin? But you weren't judging them on the content of their character. And when you see... No, it's hard to know that. If you look at corporate studies of what

diversity does to them, it increases productivity, increases... You're talking about the McKinsey study from 2018, which has been... It's a joke. It's a joke. It's been utterly debunked. And they were selling their diversity consultants i'm not referring to that study but i remember there's no study that shows hiring people on the basis of skin color makes a company more on the basis of skin color it's that you remove the restriction there are no restrictions that you won't hire them as often because of their skin color then okay i have a simple solution

if this is called standardized testing. And it was created in order to solve the problem that you described, which is bias. And so standardized testing was a good faith effort by the WASPs, by the way, who ran the big American universities to be fair. They're trying to be fair. It's like, okay, let's just pick people on the basis of their intelligence,

their aptitudes, an aptitude test. Right. And that kind of worked actually. It elevated not just WASPs, but Jews and Catholics and black people and everybody was judged on the basis. And it was imperfect, of course, but basically it worked. And it's why America dominated the world because it had the smartest people in positions of power. And then at the apogee, the top, we abandoned it. And we're like, oh, this isn't working. What do you mean it's not working? It's totally working. It's working because then we get the cream of all the other countries. The smartest people around the world move here, including some of my friends, the best. And then we abandoned it. And we're like, well, that's unfair. How is it unfair? It's the definition of fairness. You're judging someone without even knowing what he looks like or his sex on the basis of his performance.

How is that unfair? They never explained. They just took it away. And now it's gone. And now in federal contracting, if you're a woman-owned business, why do I have an interest in a woman-owned business? I don't care who owns the business. I just want a good business. You're ignoring the impact of the Trump administration, which has been—

Well, it's been six weeks. I know, but I'm saying you strip it out, you'll see what happens. I don't think diversity is our problem. And standardized testing, I don't have a problem with it. I never said diversity was a problem. I'm not saying you did. I'm stating it as a proposition. What I'm saying is that the testing assumes equal starting points. If you and I are both going to take a standardized test right now in an area that I am prepared for and you're not, then we're not going to do the same. Well, go ahead and prepare for it then. I mean, I don't know what to say. What's a better way to do it? The point, I'm not saying there's a better way. I'm saying that I don't have a problem with standardized testing. I don't have a problem with SATs and people having to use them to get into

educational institutions. I don't have any problem with it. I'm saying that you also have to be open to the reality that the kids aren't going to do the same on the test when one has had a good education and one has not had a good education. But it's not, you know, there's a lot of science behind that. And the truth is darker and harder to deal with, okay, which is that intelligence is the product of environment to some extent, but it's mostly genetic. And intelligence is a lot of environment to some extent, but it's mostly genetic. And intelligence is a lot of

factors in success, but intelligence is the single most important over time in big populations. Smarter populations do better. They make more money. They go to jail less often. They stay married. Singapore is a more successful society than the United States for this reason, okay? So that's the truth. If you have a meritocratic society, the smartest people will have most of the money and most of the success. And that doesn't seem fair to people is the truth, actually. And as we got better at sorting the smart people and sending them to Harvard and McKinsey and, you know, onto private equity, it became more obvious. No, it's true though. It became obvious that the meritocracy

was producing an incredibly lopsided society and that freaked people out and it felt unfair to them. And two people in the early 1990s wrote a book on it, Dick Hernstein and Murray, and it was called The Bell Curve. And it had a chapter on race in it,

which was, you know, made a lot of people mad. They could have taken that chapter out and it would have been, I think, the transformative book ever, because it described what I just said, which is the meritocracy produces an outcome that you may not be ready for, actually, because it's rooted in nature, and you can't change it. And Head Start, which was designed to increase the IQ of poor kids, didn't work. And no one even wants to talk about it anymore. It's really hard to change people's intelligence. And intelligence turns out to be the main predictor of economic success.

So these are super complicated questions, but I know that a system that rewards people on the basis of race and punishes others on the basis of race creates hatred and division. I don't think the point is, I don't think you have to do it that way is what I'm saying. And I understand.

I can't get into college. If two people apply to college and they're different colors and the one with the lower SAT score is admitted because of his race, that's penalizing. I understand, which is why it's no longer

the law of the country. It's true in every college in the United States, as you know, especially the selective ones, including the one you went to. But they changed the law. They lie. longer the law of the country. It's true in every college in the United States, as you know, especially the selective ones, including the one you went to. But they changed the law. They lie.

And the Harvard case showed that. You can say they did this with the UC system in California, which was once a great system when I grew up in that state, and it's now a joke because of this. But they basically found out that they were just like, we have too many Asians. You can't have too many Asians. That's exactly right. What was interesting to me about the case is that it wasn't white people. It was Asian people who were saying that they were being like, we have too many Asians, can't have too many Asians. That's exactly right. What was interesting to me about the case is that it wasn't white people.

It was Asian people who were saying that they were being discriminated against. Right, so basically the way they shut down the conversation is by making everyone feel guilty about slavery, which no living person had anything to do with at all, and no living person I've ever met supports. I couldn't be more opposed to it. That's why I'm for free speech,

because I'm against slavery. But look, it's also, it's not a coincidence that people of color, specifically African American, are at a different socioeconomic level given how they were introduced to the country right because race is completely fabricated there is no such thing as race we made it up i don't even know what you're talking about when you cut open a black guy and a white guy their genetics are the same that's okay we made race i don't know what you're we made race we made it we made it a thing just because you look different doesn't mean you're

different species so we created hold on no one's saying anyone's a different species i'm not saying that you are i'm saying i think we may be getting into science still too deep the i don't know i'm saying the science is very simple right she created race and wait wait hold on wait i don't know what you're talking about so you're saying that there's no there are no differences between the races so you for example the genetic predisposition to certain diseases is fake there are cultural there are ethnic cultural there are ethnic pockets right so italians have certain things that are more common because of that group of animals breeding with each other than you'll have with irish people or with polish people sure sure and then as they all know genetics is real of course genetics is real okay so genetics is everything what i'm saying is that race what i'm saying

is everything but race is everything race is race is a social construct okay well race is a social construct in some ways yeah but there's no doubt that there are significant i don't look for irish and italians are different cultures right but they're the same people they're just different cultures speak different ways eat different they're not the same people they don't look the same and they're not genetically the same that's not true they are genetically the same well that's untrue it's factually untrue um and you can see it in all kinds of ways what's what's the percentage of redheads in sicily pretty high i doubt it okay so um what you're saying doesn't make any sense but that doesn't mean it's that doesn't mean it's genetic it's just where people decide to be no hair color is determined

by genetics it's not a cultural i know but i'm saying that having either is height or eye color or iq Having more redheads in Italy is not just about genetics. It's about where people populate. Right? Like, you could take a hue, like, look at Sicily, right? Look at the history of Sicily. When North Africa winds up

being there, right, and in power, you wind up having that mixed into the chemistry of everybody who's Sicilian. Because genetics are real. That's exactly right. But race as a thing, we created. Okay.

I'm not exactly sure I understand the distinctions that you're drawing. I'm just saying that different people, different groups of people, and different individuals have different genetic makeups. They're not wildly different. We're all members of the same species. We are all created by God as a Christian. I believe that, but we didn't have these problems when people were Christian because the underlying assumption was that God created everyone. Everyone has a soul. It's only when this became a secular society that hates God

that you could treat people like animals and objects. Well, slavery was during a time where it was a pretty heavy Christian influence. Sla heavy is nothing compared to ai and transhumanism nothing not so well because slavery you know evil though it is it still exists by the way around the world but um it's evil and christians got rid of it no one no other group did christians got rid of that um because they thought it was evil because they thought god created each person but even under most certainly in the certainly States, even under slavery here, evil as it was, slaves were still considered human. They didn't possess the same rights. But AI and transhumanism, transhumanism specifically, seeks to redefine what a human being is. When you merge people with machines, then you don't acknowledge the existence of a soul.

How could, if you believe that each person has a distinct soul, that God cares about each person like a speck of sand on the beach, each person is accounted for and watched over by God and cared for by God and has a destiny. How could you merge that person with a computer? Because once you do that, then you don't have to acknowledge the soul. Then you can treat that person like the object that you've made them into. And of course, we don't even discuss this, but the point is, look, my only point is, this is a super complicated topic, as I think we're proving, and there are always unintended consequences of any system that you set up. But I know from just watching the world and watching the United States that the second you make race a key for appearance whatever you want to call it um genetics a key component in awarding or punishing then you make everybody hate each other and you wind up like rwanda you don't want to create differences you want to create similarities well there are

differences but you want to find commonalities. Yes. And I think that, look, that's what the land of opportunity is all about. But you treat people as individuals. Why do I give a shit if someone's a woman or black?

I care about that person, him or her. Are you a good person? Do you do a good job? I care about you. Yes. I don't care about all your ancestors, people who look like you.

This whole phrase, this term that we use, community, is totally fake. There's no black community or white community or gay community they're only people no woman ever gave birth to a community that's not a thing god doesn't care but he cares about people it's a social construct no but it's a way for politicians to dehumanize people actually i hate it or fragment people but to treat them as less than human. You're not Chris Cuomo. You're part of the Italian community. You're part of the buff 50-year-old community. You're part of the former talk show host community or whatever. Like, that makes you less than who

you are. No, your name is Chris Cuomo. You have a soul. God knew you before you were born. You have a destiny after you die. Like, to call someone a community? Fuck you, actually. I get all the metaphysical aspects of it. What I'm saying- It's the core of it. But what I'm saying is, when you discover that women aren't given the opportunities because they're women,

or blacks aren't given opportunities because they're black, in America, that's something that we see as corrective. That you want to address that. Well, the correction has made the problem worse. We saw leeches as corrective too. We saw radium theory as corrective too.

Like, just because you claim it's medicine doesn't mean it's not poison. And this has been poison. And this has poisoned our country. It's made everyone way more race conscious. We're roughly the same age. People were not half as race conscious when we were kids as they are now.

They weren't half as angry about race as they are now. And that's a byproduct of the system that was supposed to make things better. It made it much worse. And our politics. I mean, look, the Trump administration, which I think is a very interesting aspect about our conversation. Think about it. You and I have sat together, I don't know how long, if it goes past like that, but we haven't even talked about anything in the news. Really? I mean, we're talking Ukraine. Sorry, I had deeper questions for you, Chris. And I love it, but I'm saying that's the beauty, right?

That's the beauty of the forum, of the freedom, of what we're able to do here, which you would never be able to do just by time, let alone by subject inclination. We are very divided, and we are divided in ways that I haven't experienced before. I agree. And I think that a big part of it is that it works. It's working for people who want power and to keep power. Division sells these days. It is, and maybe it always has, and that's why we know what a demagogue is,

but there's no positive opposite term that the Greeks gave us. It's easy to play on people's outrage. But when I see the Trump administration, he came in fomenting division. And I thought it was a very tricky sell for him because if what I hear about him is true, which is he wanted to win again because of legacy mode and be remembered is great. You can't be great as a divider. There's no American figure in our history who was great because they were a divider. Every American leader has been a divider. Every leader is a divider by definition. Us versus them, the enemy versus the homeland.

You know, the first presidents of the United States drove the loyalists to Nova Scotia. Some of them were my relatives, so I know that. So you will divide. The question is on what basis? And the thing that I worry most about in a country this diverse is racial division because it doesn't go away and those wounds just remain forever. Or certainly for generations, we've seen that with slavery, which I do think has left scars. I would not deny that. It's clearly real. So anybody who foments racial division is committing a graver sin than average. And to see Trump get the support of a multiracial coalition, which he did, is the most hopeful thing ever. And so if in the end it becomes Trump against the people who've wrecked our country in the permanent bureaucracies, I'm, you know, I think that's a pretty good outcome. When you see what he's doing right now, you don't see him as, as trying to break things in order to fix them? There's no question. There's no question. There's no question.

And I think you make a fair point. And in general, I am on the side of builders over destroyers because I think it's much easier that, you know, I hate vandalism and just on a gut level, I hate it. I believe in building and improving, but I do think in this case, and I think it's tough and I think it's a tough balance. You know, you can get into a frenzy of destruction. We just break things because they're there. I can't think of anything that the administration is telling us is good and works in our society? Well, let me put it this way. I've watched vandalism in the last, really since Memorial Day 2020, when the George Floyd riots began. I've watched vandalism on a scale I never thought I would ever see in this country, not just physical vandalism, but vandalism of our cherished institutions, whether it's the Episcopal Church that I grew up in, the St. George's School,

the high school I went to, which I love, totally destroyed by this. You got any juice with that school, by the way? They won't let me on campus. They won't? No.

Shoot, my daughter just applied. Oh, it's a beautiful school. I met my wife there and there's a lot of bodies at my children's center. Does she have any juice there? I don't know. She's married to me.

I'm not going to use this. I won't use this. I won't use this, but I'm definitely asking you about it after. Can I tell you a funny story? This is like my is like my favorite so they some a guy who i really like who was a member of in our class there called my wife maybe my wife is hilarious about five or six years ago and it's like you're raising money for this new tennis center and she was captain of the tennis team i played tennis

mostly smoked cigarettes but hacked around the court and um in the 80s and like we're trying to raise this tennis money for tennis like how much are you trying to raise? He's like, it's $11 million or something like that. My wife's like, you know, I feel for you. I've been in this position raising money for a school. You have to call these people. I love the school. I met my husband. They were married there. My dad was headmaster. You know, we love the school. I'll just pay the whole thing i'll just you don't call anybody else we'll cover the whole the whole the whole amount he's like really and she was i just have one request that you name it the tucker carlson tennis center the guy's like oh

let me check it out it's like oh oh you're not you're not gonna do that and he's like um um he's such a nice guy super uncomfortable he knew that if you went back to the school and said we paid for the whole tennis center with one donation uh yeah no they turned it down not that we were gonna give 11 million dollars for a 10 or i don't even have 11 million dollars but if i did i i wouldn't give it to a tennis center in a boarding school but um isn't that funny? So that's how they feel about me. And you are able to laugh at it because? Because I'm happy. I've had a really happy life and we have a really close family.

You also don't respect the basis of their rejection. Of course not. And I know what my sins are. And I've committed a lot of them. Who hasn't? I'm ashamed of myself in a lot of ways but who isn't I'm not ashamed of of anything I've done there you know at all but I'm saying like who who isn't this is I think it's important I think you should be I think you should definitely

be ashamed of what you've done wrong and I am but I also think that you should know what you did wrong and be ashamed for the things that are wrong and not ashamed for the things that aren't wrong you shouldn't just be ashamed because of how people see you. Exactly. I totally, exactly. I agree. And I also, look, I also agree that we're seeing things that we haven't seen in ways. Some of it is because we have reach, right? Because we have so much more media now and ability for things to be seen technologically, but we also do have a growing level of acceptance of destructive and negative

ideas. Look, what bothered me and my big boogeyman is, God forbid, there was another 9-11, would we come together? I want to say yes. I don't know. Certainly, I know how President Trump would handle it, and it would not be the way President Bush did. We've imported a lot of foreign conflicts into this country. I just want to say that. Meaning? Meaning that one of the byproducts of immigration is people bring their ancient resentments with them, and that should not be allowed. Period. Like, you want to come to our country for the opportunity, for the freedom, great. But you cannot, once you arrive,

use the things that you're mad about in your home country to influence my foreign policy. My family's been here a long time. That's not allowed. It's not your country, actually. We're welcoming you, but you can't bring your ancient hatreds with you. And a lot of different groups have. And it affects our foreign policy. I really resent it. It's my money, my children's lives on the line and my country. So, you know, a normal country doesn't allow that. They had a protest of Bangladeshi workers in the UAE earlier this year, and they weren't mad at the government of UAE. They were mad at some issue back in Bangladesh and they marched down the street and the government of UAE deported them that night. Not because they're mad at them, but like we don't import

foreign conflicts in our country because it's not, these aren't our problems. And yet, and yet, here's a counterfactual. What do we see happening in Europe right now that isn't happening here? Them having huge numbers of Muslims from different ethnic extracts in that part of the globe coming into societies, not assimilating.

I agree. That's certainly what the french are dealing with and what the uk is dealing with to a little bit of a lesser extent in america that hasn't happened yes we're farther away but hasn't happened muslims coming to this country it's one of two countries on the face of the planet that have more jews than muslims probably won't stay that way but when they come into this country, they assimilate. And we don't do what the French allowed, which is to have them all living together and separate from the rest of society. America is about assimilation. That's historically been true.

The only things, having spent a lot of time in Europe, I would say, one, I think it's unfair to blame. It's like everyone blames the European populations. Like, you know, you're Algerians or killing people with machetes on the street because you're a racist. That's not fair. It's their country. They're the indigenous population. This was imposed on them by their leaders. Don't blame them.

A. B. Europe is just way smaller. It's way smaller. And so the United States is so big that I've spent my whole life here. There are a lot of parts of the country. I don't know what's going on there. And I travel a lot in this country, and I go to places.

I'm like, what is this? It bears no resemblance to what I thought was here. Totally different. Go to Portland, Maine. It doesn't look anything like the Portland, Maine you remember. And there's no evidence people are assimilating at all. You go to Lewiston, Maine. They imported all these Somalis there 30 years ago.

They've never assimilated at all, at all, in any way. Just kind of take it over downtown Lewiston. It's a slum. It's dangerous. And there's no assimilation whatsoever. No English is spoken. And so, you know, I think the lessons of Europe, the United States, I think, did a really good job of assimilating immigrants, your grandparents, you know, when the great Southern European wave of immigration came at the turn of the last century. And they really like self-conscious, like all public schools, like taught civics and like, this is what it's been American, learn English. Like, did your parents even speak Italian? Oh, yeah. But what did my grandparents want? Be American. Exactly. No, but that's exactly right.

Speak the language, be American. They were discouraged from speaking Italian, except in the house, because my grandparents didn't speak English. And that, I think, was the rule. And, you know, whatever the language was. So that's no longer true because we don't make any effort to make people American because we can't define what American is. And we need to do that now and just require that everyone who lives here buys into the same, some species, the same program. I don't think we should be North Korea about it, but we need to have a unifying idea or else we will break apart. Do you believe directionally this administration is going the right way?

Well, I think they've identified some things that are really wrong. And in the first six weeks have made way more progress than I ever would have thought at fighting those things. So, but I mean, we have some very, very serious problems and are they equal to that? If anyone is, they are. They've amazed me in the first six weeks, but there's a lot coming. There could be an economic reset, probably likely will. I mean, these are cyclical to some extent. And then there's also the technology question. There's the AI question. And I just don't understand what you're going to do with 15 million new unskilled workers in a society that doesn't need workers. And I'm really worried about that.

I don't know who thought of that. Like on the cusp of the AI revolution, let's open the borders to Haiti. Like what are you doing? That's like the greatest crime that's ever been committed against this country. And I hope I'm wrong. I'm often wrong. So I hope I'm wrong.

I really hope I'm wrong here. That seems like suicidal to me. I think it is. I think that the biggest question, and look, I don't have the answer, but the biggest question is how to unify how to take your fingers and make them into a fist yes what what worried me look what was i got married um uh two months after 9-11 i got engaged 11 days after 9-11 because of 9-11 because i realized

the preciousness of life and i thought that was going to happen all the time i thought it was the new normal that they were just going to be blowing shit up all the time i thought that too and my wife made the you know the one uh bad decision that she's made since i've known her which is she agreed to marry me and was it a tough sell oh yeah if it hadn't been 9-11 she would have never said yes she probably leveraged a terror attack to get out of it now on the basis of impossibility of contract because of duress. So when I saw, like for me, like even like a January 6th to me was we don't all come down on the side of what is right and wrong collectively anymore. You know, that when George Floyd happened, people going down the streets in protest, they're going to be angry. They're going to say angry things.

It's not going to be peaceful in terms of speech. Okay. Destroying buildings, and that's okay. Taking over cities, and that's okay. Not okay. We should have all felt that way. We always had until that point. No, fair. January 6th, you don't do that. You don't go busting into the Capitol. Everybody should have been on the same page. Instead, it was, well, what about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter stuff? That type of discontinuity is very unsettling to me. We all know what's right and wrong on very gross levels, okay? And when you ignore those things for advantage, you start getting into a dangerous situation. I don't know that we do.

I mean, one of my core beliefs is that shouldn't kill kids. Totally opposed to abortion. I think it's like the most obviously evil thing we've ever done. And I know a lot of really nice people I like a lot who totally disagree with me. And I don't know why they do, but they do. And that's like a core. I mean, abortion is not just like some boutique. I'm not an evangelical, by the way, for the record. But I just have always thought like, what? You can't do that. I don't care how inconvenient this is.

Baby. You can't fucking kill babies. But most people I know in my affluent world totally disagree. So I think, and I just would say that's like a core disagreement. So, I think there are a lot of deep disagreements, like real disagreements that have, you know, are pre-existing and maybe haven't surfaced. Right, but here's the difference. And in terms of what it is to be America, what is our national religion? It is the law. The law is our natural religion? Yeah, exactly.

It is the law. The law is our natural religion. Religion is a set of rules, right? You have faith, you have faith. I have faith, I choose to have faith. Can't prove there's a basis of my faith, but I choose it. Religion is a set of rules.

Our set of rules is the law. That's what unites you in this country. That's why it's so important. That's why politicians love the fuck with it as much as they do, because they know it's the essential fabric is that you have fairness under law. So abortion, reproductive rights, however you want to term it, you can feel however you want to feel about it. I can feel however I want to feel about it. Then we have the law right now the law is you decide state by state okay it is the first reversal of a right in our lifetime um where a

light a right had been recognized and then removed uh that was very politically destabilizing i thought turned out not to be in the election turned Turned out it was in the midterms. I mean, no, we had the Volstead Act. No, but this is where there was... You had a right to drink, and then you couldn't, and then you could. No, that's a privilege. We had a right to run for more than two terms as president. That, again, is not a natural right. It was. It was in the Constitution.

There was no... You had a right to run for president. But that is that is different than because it doesn't have an organized screechy unhappy no no no no how many terms you have as president is guaranteed on the constitution you can run for president is not but you can amend the constitution well that's what i'm saying the constitution we make all kinds of changes we consider some things rights and then we decide they're not rights. I mean, there's no natural law that would support abortion. Of course not. That's insane.

You can't take— Well, no, the natural law would be control over your own body. No, the natural law would be a person has a right to be alive. That supersedes your control of your own body. When is it a person has rights attached to it? Well, we'll just start with when the child can live outside the womb. There's no debate there. That is not the line that was drawn even in roe v wade i'm just saying there are plenty of states it happens that is a more generous assessment to people who believe in reproductive rights than the law had been on the roe v wade

kids are aborted every year post viability it's just a fact and they say well the child you know there's lots of reasons for it but so i mean late-term abortions are almost not a thing they happen incredibly infrequently is almost not a thing no but i'm saying that statistically the idea that we had to focus on late-term abortion i don't know was pure politics rape on subway platforms is almost not a thing but i'm concerned about it i don't want it because it's wrong. And anytime a child who can live outside the womb is murdered, like, I'm upset about it. And I don't care how often it happens. It happens one time.

If it even could happen, I'm opposed to it. It's a baby. It wasn't part of the law. Okay, but I'm just saying it happens. But the viability standard. The Goodmocker Institute has the numbers. You can look it up. So, anyway, I'm just saying, like, okay, it's a right. No, these are political institutions that respond to the public will or what they think it is.

But what about human rights? What about natural rights that are bestowed by God that aren't supposed to be infringed on by men? Isn't one of those the control and sanctity of your own body? I don't think that's, I mean, I'm not the Yale Law School graduate here, but but i i'm not i would they don't teach you about god-given rights in law school because that's our founding document is but it is but that's that's not a secular that's not a secular understanding it says that in the document the constitution does not mention god the declaration of independence oh sure but that's not our operative document the constitution is and our constitution does not mention god nothing is pred predicated on God except separation of church and state. We don't identify rights. In the Bill of Rights, how are the rights articulated?

Explained. As a function of the collection, especially the Bill of Rights, which you just referred to, because they sent it out to the states and the states came back with their recommendations. No, no, I know the process, but like, okay. just referred to because they sent it out to the states and the states came back with their recommendations like okay we say they're god-given but the problem with that is you live in a secular society so what if somebody doesn't believe in god do they not have rights of course they do of course they do they're attached by the collective yeah well the yeah the first amendment says that you know the government can't have religious tests so um but i guess that you could just whatever, rabbit hole. But I think we can just like stick with the Bill of Rights and just, we could start there.

Yeah. And say that, you know, those are the rights that our government exists to protect, right? Wherever they emanate from. And the first one is the freedom of speech. And when you see the entire leadership class of the country opposing the first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights, then, you know, the whole project is bullshit and the people running it don't believe in it. And you set the stage for a revolution, which is really scary. Here's my problem with it. I am totally with you about having to tolerate the things that

you don't like and you don't want to listen to in a democracy. 100%. Marketplace of ideas, 100%. And I would even argue that it is better to have more ideas that are offensive because it makes it easier for the better ideas to rise to the top. I honestly believe that. I'm very worried about any kind of concerted effort to limit speech, 100%. Here's what I'm struggling with. Our jurisprudence has moved in the opposite direction as our culture. Our culture has been getting a little bit more finicky with what it likes people talking about, right? That's cancel culture, censorious. The law has been expanding, right? When you look back at Chaplinsky in the 1920s, 1940s jurisprudence, they used to say at the Supreme Court level,

you know, the First Amendment wasn't created for Tucker Carlson to figure out how to say the meanest shit he can to Chris Cuomo and be protected from it. And then you had fighting words doctrine, which is, hey, Tucker Carlson can't walk up to Chris Cuomo and say something about his mom and expect not to get a punch in the nose.

And then they expanded it even more. And then you say, well, you can't say fire in a crowded theater. Yeah, you probably can under the Supreme Court law. There's a new test of whether it's reasonably conceived to create violence. So they kept expanding the rights. So the First Amendment jurisprudentially from the Supreme Court has been getting broader and broader. And I wonder if it has come with a culture cost. And I don't like to look at Mike Tyson as any kind of philosophical basis. But he said once, social media has made people forget that sometimes what comes out of your mouth is going to get you punched in the face. That's right. And I do wonder these days, maybe it's the angry old man in me coming out,

but do you think we've gone too far in allowing things to be okay to be said, not as political thought, but as invective, as insults, and how people are allowed to treat each other now? And if I do anything about it, if you do anything about it, you're the one in trouble. I would say there, I would just make two slippery slope. I know, but I struggle. No, not slippery at all. There are two obvious points to make. One is that if you live in a society where you're not allowed to criticize the people in charge, you live in a tyranny. Yes. As in Ukraine. Agreed. Not about Ukraine, but I agree with the principle. Murdered Gonzalo Lira for criticizing the government. So yeah. And we have done that here. And I'm opposed. So, that's like a super easy test. If you are not allowed to criticize the people who have more power than you do, you're not living in a free country.

I still think it's weird that you look at Ukraine and not Russia for the immediate example. I'm not funding Russia. And my tax dollars are funding Ukraine. So, that's kind of why I have a special interest any country that we fund we have a right to look carefully at where our money's going no no issue with that any country okay so i would say that and the second point is of course i think the public discourse is completely out of control i think pornography is disgusting and i think the cruelty that i see all the time is shocking to me and really sad and i hate it And there's clearly like some deep rage going on inside people. I think I understand where it comes from,

but I'm totally opposed to it. And what do you do about it? Well, all I can say for myself is I try not to add to it. I certainly have added to it, you know, sometimes. And I'm sorry about that. I really try not to now. Probably should have started a little earlier,

but I still do. But anyway, I don't know what you do about it. I don't know not to now. Probably should have started a little earlier, but I still do. But anyway, I don't know what you do about it. I don't know what to do. Just try and model reasonable, decent. Last thing I'll say, I think it's the most important thing when you're talking to another person to remember that it's a person you're talking to.

I saw something happen. People are going to get angry at me about this. But by the way, I think that as much as this is remarkable for people, I don't care about why people are interested in you and I talking to each other. I know it's part of the solution. And it doesn't matter. People can listen to this and think everything that we both just said is completely a waste of the time that they spent watching it. I'm okay with that. I still know that it's part of it because one, when we were working at two different places, we would have never been allowed to do this. And part of being in those places would be adversarial with each other. And you were much better at that than I was, by the way. But I'm truly an asshole deep down. It's not that deep. But what I'm saying is

I know that we're not supposed to be doing this and we're some of the only ones who do. Yes. And I appreciate you and respect you for that. I'm hanging out at a place that I love to go to

during the summertime. And there are MAGA hats all over the place. A guy in the MAGA hat is a little drunk, a little out of it. And gets into it with somebody who does not have a MAGA hat on. And eventually, the guy without the MAGA hat on smacks the MAGA hat off the guy's head.

The guy gets angry, punches the guy who smacked it off his head. Cops come, arrest the MAGA hat guy because he punched the other guy in the face and there were all these other people there. And I was going to talk about it on the show and didn't because I realized that what I was going to say was not embracing of the law, but to me felt like what would have been right in the situation. And i have never really figured

this out i could read a hundred i could give you a hundred different arguments of what's right and what's wrong but how i feel is when the guy smacked the hat off the head of the other guy. It seemed to me that it was not more wrong than the guy punching him. You know, it didn't seem like he had high ground. You smacked the hat off the guy's head. Before that, it had been this. And there was plenty of ugliness going back and forth. He then smacks the hat off. The guy punches him. He didn't hit him with a two by four, but he punched him. He opened him up. He was bleeding. And everyone I would talk to about it would say,

well, come on, Chris. I mean, you can't do that. Why? Because it's the law. Okay, why is it the law? Because we want to enforce civilization, but we're not that civilized. I get it.

We give ourselves too much credit for civility, especially in America. Everything we embrace is violent and aggressive. Why does everybody like The Rock? Because he's a great actor? No, it's that symbology of what he represents as a male. And I know that it's wrong, but I feel like you can't be punching everybody in the face that you disagree with. I know, of course. But

it's now like we empower people to be their absolute worst all the time and they gain advantage of it. People say things, they're not just criticizing you. They don't just criticize me. They say horrible things about people, their families, whatever it is. And I don't know how that's making us any better. Is that just what we have to tolerate to be in a democracy? Or have we fucked it up? It's pretty clear. I mean, of course, I know exactly what you're saying, and I agree with you.

And I think that none of that is an excuse for the people in power to shut down criticism of themselves as has happened in europe and australia hope it doesn't happen here on the other hand i do think you know if you don't think of other people as human you can there's no limit to what you can do to them and i do think that's like the key thing to remember is these are people they have identical value in the eyes of god that you do and you should always remember that no matter how pissed you are at them. And no, you can't kill them. No, no, no. Of course.

But I'm saying that, I don't know, man. I just feel like we're getting less civilized even though the law is expanding. Can I say one last thing? Go ahead. Yeah, thank the internet for that. But I am thrilled that you're enjoying yourself outside of the confines of the business we were both in. And even if I disagree with you on certain things, I just think it's inspirational to see a free man. I appreciate you.

I like coming down to see you. And I think that the point is as simple as that, Tucker. We're not going to agree on everything, okay? But I know you do because there's not one Sicilian man in America who doesn't love Trump. There's not one. And I don't believe you're that man. I've done a survey of every Sicilian man in America

and every Sicilian man in America in his heart is like, you go, Trump. Well, finally, then I'm special. I don't believe you. Because I am Sicilian and I definitely don't love Trump. I know that you do. You can speak for himself. If I know, if I can x-ray your Sicilian soul you'd be like you go big orange big orange what i'm saying is this i believe that

look you're gonna have people say why are you talking to that guy i'm gonna have people say why are you talking to that guy and i love answering the question because conversation is the cure you don't have to agree, but you got to listen and you have to feel each other out and you got to take it in. And I'm happy to do it with you and I look forward to doing it again. Amen.

Thank you. Good to see you, man. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter. Telling the truth always, you will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.