Ep 210 | Tucker Carlson Takes On Critics of His Interview with Putin | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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And now, a Blaze Media Podcast.

Tucker Carlson just did something that no other Western journalist in the world has either been willing or able to do in a very long time.

He traveled to Moscow to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And right on track, cue the collective outrage.

Tucker Carlson is dangerous.

He's a Putin lover.

Will they ban him from coming home?

Is the EU sanctioning him?

The news was actually kind of hilarious and it still is.

Take any war in history, I don't care with whom or which leader, and any journalist worth their salt, they'd be chomping at the bit to interview the leaders on both sides.

But not this one.

Why?

Why is journalism now a crime to journalists?

There's been something that the media has now forgotten.

Maybe the governments have never known it, but it is that open and free dialogue is the foundation for free society.

It is also the foundation that peace can be built upon.

Talk with everyone.

You don't have to trust them, even like them.

But talk to them.

Understand where they're coming from.

It's all very basic, and if anyone currently is criticizing Tucker for interviewing a person who is the leader of the country we're currently involved in a shadow war.

Well, maybe you should just ask Tucker, why did you do it?

Why did you go?

What did you mean by

showing us the subway?

What did you mean by that?

What have you learned?

And what does it mean all going forward?

That's what we're going to do.

We're going to ask him right now for his first interview back from Russia directly.

To Americans, please welcome Tucker Carlson.

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Tucker, welcome.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn.

I'm great.

I get in late last night.

I haven't had a haircut, as you can see.

Yeah.

So pardon my appearance, but I'm grateful that you asked me.

Thanks.

Well,

first of all,

I just want to know, I mean, is this going to be a talk show or are we going to have a serious conversation?

Because I'd like to start with the history of the Beck family starting at 800 BCE.

So

what did you make of that?

What did you make of that?

Well, I was enraged because I thought,

you know, I didn't go into the interview feeling like I had to, you know, posture morally.

You know, I took a look at the last interview you did with a Western journalist, and the entire interview was the reporter from some dumb news outlet being like, I'm a good person, you're a bad person.

You know, and that

I'm not interested in proving I'm a good person.

People can assess.

God can assess.

I just wanted information.

But I was infuriated because I thought he was filibustering.

I asked him a really pretty straightforward, the obvious question, which is, why did you do this?

Why'd you send troops into eastern Ukraine?

And he goes on this long answer.

And so I interrupted him a couple of times.

I tried to.

He got very snippy.

And then I realized, no, this is the answer.

And, you know, he just thinks differently.

I've never met him before.

So wait, wait, wait, wait.

So I don't understand.

I don't understand the story because I had the same question you did at the very end.

So are you saying ancestral homelands should be given back to...

Because where does that end?

Well, I don't believe in that anywhere.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right, neither do I.

Like giving my house back to the Passamaquoddy.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I feel sorry for people who are displaced, but I, you know, there has to be a statute of limitations.

So I thought it was a silly argument to make.

I'm not sure he was making an argument.

And moreover, I'm not sure I understand exactly what he was doing, So I shouldn't pretend that I do.

There's a lot about that interview that I don't really understand.

I don't think he was very effective if his goal was to win a Western audience to his perspective.

It didn't make me more pro-Putin.

No.

Not that I was.

And by the way, I should just say at the outset, I've been accused of being pro-Putin, and I'm not.

But if I was, that's okay too.

Right.

I'm an adult man, an American citizen.

I can like or dislike anyone I want.

I can have any opinion I want.

I'm not ashamed of it.

And the idea that like a small number of people in DC get to decide what I believe is not something I accept.

So I reserve the right to like anybody.

Right.

Period.

And I, and I want, I mean, you like me.

It can't go downhill more than that.

I want to get to that here in a second.

But first, you had

a tough time.

The first time you tried to

interview Putin, the NSA was involved.

Yeah, they read my text messages and leaked them to the New York Times.

How do you know?

I'm not guessing, but okay.

How do you know?

Well, because someone who worked there warned me through a very

close friend of mine.

And I won't bore you with the whole details, but I flew up to Washington to meet this person at his request.

I couldn't believe this.

It scared me.

I immediately called a U.S.

Senator.

I don't know very many U.S.

senators well, but there's one I thought seemed kind of trustworthy.

So I said, I just want to get this on the record.

This has happened.

And then members of Congress went to NSA and they admitted that they had read my email.

And so I wasn't,

and I went on TV and described the whole thing.

And I thought there would be widespread out of it.

I am.

I thought people would be like, outrage.

You can't use a spy agency that we pay for, whose job is to monitor our enemies, our rivals in other countries.

You can't use that against the American population.

And no one seemed to care, but I cared because I grew up.

around the U.S.

government.

My dad ran a federal agency in Washington.

So I sort of knew what the rules were.

And I had a really

strong sense of how much this had changed.

Like this was not allowed 30 years ago.

It was an outrage.

It's a crime.

But no one seems to be bothered by it.

But I am bothered by it.

So I am too.

And I think every citizen should be, especially journalists.

You know, when you have freedom of speech, freedom of press, there's two rights that are going away here.

And nobody seemed to care.

But how, so then what happened the second time?

How did you arrange this?

Well, I

just kept trying.

You know, I kept, actually, I did it myself

with, you know, texting.

And I thought, and I talked to a bunch of different people.

After that happened to me,

I really tried to learn more about privacy and how can you communicate outside the view of state actors, governments.

And you can't.

if you're doing electronically.

That is what I arrived at.

And I think any knowledgeable person would admit that.

There's no privacy, which itself is very distressing, but I just decided I would do it anyway.

And I enlisted some non-Russians I knew who I thought might be able to vouch for me, et cetera.

And it took a couple of years.

And ultimately, they said, yes, we will do this.

But if

news of this interview gets out, we're canceling the interview.

Wow.

So I started to get, so this is the best part.

I got calls.

I got a call from a New York Times reporter, and then a friend of mine got a call from another New York Times reporter asking when I was interviewing Putin.

And there's no way they could have known that.

I didn't tell anybody, you know, my wife, my producers, not even my kids, I didn't tell anybody.

One of my children was highly annoyed to learn I was in Moscow.

Why didn't you tell me?

I said, because I didn't want to text it, you know?

But no, they clearly did it again.

They leaked it to the New York Times in an effort to scuttle the internet.

And I just, again, I hate to be, you know, Mr.

stubborn principle guy, but that is a principle worth defending.

I'm an American citizen.

I have not committed a crime.

I can speak to anyone I want.

I can have any opinion I want.

And you're not allowed to use your creepy spy agencies against me because I'm your boss.

This is a democracy.

Aren't you always telling me that?

But again, nobody cares, so I'm going to stop the lecture on that.

But it did motivate me to keep going.

But my real motivation was like, I just want to know what's happening there.

We're in a war with Russia.

We've never had a vote in Congress on whether we should be in a war with Russia.

No one's ever explained to me why we should be at war with Russia, why I'm supposed to hate Russians.

Why am I supposed to hate Russians?

We've got an awful lot of things going on here.

The country is in very tough shape, especially right now.

It's completely out of money.

We're bankrupt.

And so it does seem like we should have more information before we send another $60 billion that we don't keep track of to Ukraine.

I mean, that just, I have very straightforward motives, which I've explained many times, but nothing crazy or out of the ordinary or esoteric or anything like that.

Just like, like, what is this?

Let's find out more.

Any feeling on why he chose you?

Probably because I just kept trying.

I mean, that was my sense.

I just kept trying.

And I was one of the few, and I should just say again, and I don't want to be defensive because I'm not defensive, but I've never been a, I don't have anything to do with Russia.

I don't know.

I had never been there before.

I don't Russian.

You know, it's so nuts.

But my first instinct when this happened was that the sanctions were going to destroy the primacy of the U.S.

dollar.

around the world and stealing people's stuff, billions of dollars of people's stuff, because they were, quote, oligarchs.

Correct.

Without any vote on it at all, law enforcement proceeding, much less adjudication much less real evidence that they had anything to do with the invasion of ukraine which a lot of these people didn't you're a russian oligarch said american oligarchs we're taking your stuff i was like whatever happened to the rules-based order you know that's crazy behavior and it's immoral obviously no matter who you're doing it to you can't punish people without a finding of guilt without proof and moreover it's going to convince in short order the rest of the world that you can't trust the u.s dollar because it's become a political instrument instrument that we use to punish people who deviate ideologically or don't do what we want.

And the second the rest of the world understands that, they're going to do everything they can to exit the U.S.

dollar, to find another place to store their money.

And the second they do that, the United States is going to collapse because this is a society, an economy based on debt.

And if that ever comes due, we're done.

This is a poor country.

And this is all super obvious.

And I didn't know why no one was saying that.

None of the geniuses in Congress seemed to even think about this.

They're like, no, we're going to punish Putin because I don't know why.

White Christian country, we hate him.

I really don't know what the motive is.

It's bizarre.

And the effect on us is scary.

It's huge.

Agree with that 100%.

Let me cast out where I stand on this issue.

And then you tell me if it is close to your, because I can't figure out where you are exactly.

And I bet a lot of people feel the same way about me and others.

Because this is a complex issue.

Putin is a bad guy.

Cold-blooded killer, throws people off of roofs.

You know, he's a bad guy, okay?

Period.

Dictator.

But I don't like the Russian leaders either.

They are corrupt and dirty, and I don't think that are Ukrainian, and I don't think the Ukrainian leadership is in it for really anything but money, power, and I'm not sure where all that money is going to.

But when you're spending more than you did for the the Marshall Plan in inflation-adjusted dollars, something isn't right.

And why are we just pushing this through?

So I don't want to support Putin.

I don't want to support the leadership of Ukraine.

And I don't trust Biden and the administration on what they're doing.

They have been in meddling in Russia and Ukraine forever.

So

I can't say I have a horse with any.

I don't want to put my name behind any of the three because I don't trust any of the three.

But I'm still proudly American.

I just don't want to be involved in this because this is a game that's being played where we don't have the information and what the real game is.

Where do you fit in that?

I think I'm pretty close to where you are.

I'm a little more agnostic on global leaders just because maybe I care less.

Having spent a lot of time out of the country, interviewed a bunch of them, I sort of assume every world leader, all leaders by definition, are up to no good on some level.

The only thing I care about is the United States.

And that's it.

And I think the only thing the U.S.

government should care about by definition is the United States.

So to the extent an alliance is good for the United States and my children, then I'm in favor of it.

And to the extent it's bad, then I'm opposed to it.

I mean, I have a very clear lens there.

I have no emotional attachment to any other country.

I just, I frequently go to, say, Finland or Switzerland, England.

I have ancestors from all of those countries.

I like those countries.

I love them, actually.

But I don't have an emotional attachment.

I am American.

That's it.

And so

Russia, Ukraine,

the domestic politics of either one of those countries, the

long-standing conflicts they've had, exactly.

It's of less interest to me, almost very little interest to me, actually.

What I care about is the United States.

That's the first thing.

Second thing is the people around our country are destroying it, and they're doing it on purpose.

And there's no doubt about that in my mind.

And I've withheld judgment for a number of years now.

But with what they've done at the border, completely changing the population of the country, letting in millions and millions of people who have no connection to the United States, can't possibly help our economy, can't possibly unify our very fractured civic culture,

and whose loyalty to and knowledge of the United States is completely in question.

In fact, their identities are in question.

We don't know who they are.

And they're coming through a country in the middle of a drug war.

The whole thing is not, by the way, bad management or they're not doing their job.

No.

They're destroying the United States on purpose.

And so I begin with that.

So the idea that those same people are going to somehow affect positive change in Eastern Europe, a region they know nothing about, and it's demonstrable.

They don't know anything at all, is like insane to me.

And the fact that Republican leaders who really are either in many cases just dumb, they just don't know, or they're controlled, that is true,

are on board with this is just infuriating.

So, but I approach this in a very non-emotional way.

I'm emotional about my country, and I think all Americans, most Americans, feel the same way I do.

So, they care about what happens here because your kids live here.

Right.

And I feel the same way.

But I look at what's happening around the world because at first I just concentrated on us.

And then, after Build Back Better became the slogan for every president and prime minister in the entire Western world, I realized: wait a minute, this isn't about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

And this is, we are being led in our own countries, each of us,

to believe that it's us versus the Nazis or us versus, you know, the Democrats.

It's not.

It is the people in each free country in the West against,

I'm not sure yet what it is, but

a really nasty blob up at the top that has their own designs on the world and their own plans on the world.

And

it just seems to me that I haven't found a Winston Churchill anywhere in the world.

Name one that you see currently in office.

Well, there's no difference between most leaders in the West because no Western country, including ours, has sovereignty.

And sovereignty means you get to act in your own interests.

You're a distinct country with

borders and a democratic system where your population decides how it will be governed, sovereignty.

And we don't have that, and no other country does.

So they act as a group.

And I do think, you know, always pay attention to the things you're not allowed to think or say.

And NATO is a huge part of this.

NATO is, in addition to everything else, totally incompetent, totally incompetent.

I mean, NATO is a defense alliance aimed at Russia.

And it turns out that Russia has a 7x military

artillery shell capacity, manufacturing capacity

of all of NATO.

So all the NATO countries together produce one-seventh the number of artillery shells annually that Russia, this country we were told, was a gas station with nuclear weapons, totally incompetent country, produces.

So NATO isn't even good at the military piece.

But NATO is not a military alliance, of course.

It's a political and cultural alliance.

And it's the tool with which, you know, whatever this

multilateral alliance of unelected people uses to express its will.

And it is an offense against our sovereignty.

The U.S.

military, when I sign up for the U.S.

military, I should fight for the United States on behalf of its territorial integrity and its interests.

I shouldn't be fighting for Lithuania.

Like the whole thing is nuts.

And in Washington, criticizing NATO is considered like sinful or something.

It's a religion.

But of course, what it really is, is a scam.

It's a money laundering operation and it's an attack on American sovereignty.

And And like nobody can say that.

You won't find one member of Congress who will say that NATO is terrible for the United States, but of course it is.

It's obvious.

So

let me now go to some of the criticism of you that, you know, Jon Stewart just did a piece.

I don't know if you've seen it on you,

but yeah.

I never watched the meeting.

I know.

So,

you know, you went in, you said Moscow is clean.

The subways are wonderful.

Look at the chandeliers.

Well, you, I know you, Tucker.

You're smart enough to know who built those to look like that and why.

And Duranty went over.

I said it in the piece.

So Walter Duranty denied the existence.

He was a New York Times correspondent in Russia in the 30s.

He denied, of course, the Ukrainian,

which was managed by Stalin.

That's exactly right.

And he denied that the show trials of 1937, 38, that the terror was was happening so

Those were lies, okay?

He told lies, and that's why his pulled surprise was pulled from him posthumously.

I told the truth in order to shame our leaders.

That subway station I showed was built by Stalin in 1939.

Joseph Stalin, probably the worst person in human history.

That was over 80 years ago, and it's still in perfect shape.

Okay, that's the point.

Look at what Moscow has and compare it to what we have.

And you have to ask yourself, like, no, this is an indictment of our leaders.

And I would recommend to every single one of your viewers and listeners, if you can, go spend a week in Moscow.

Not because you love Russia, but because you love your own country.

And compare that city, the largest city in Europe, 13 million people, compare it to the city that you live in or the city near you, which is in better shape.

So actually, it's an indictment.

It's a radicalizing indictment of our rapidly declining standard of living and the horrible mismanagement of our leaders.

Why don't we have a subway like that in any American city?

Single American city with no crime.

Like, what is this?

Right.

Well, I mean, there's not a lot of crime in North Korea either.

There's no drug problem really in China because you could just take them off the street and kill them.

But we didn't have that here.

And I'm only 54 and I remember it.

It's not like you have to be a fascist to have an orderly society.

We had one.

And on Memorial Day 2020 with the drug OD of George Floyd, everything changed.

And what we got was the intentional destruction of American cities.

Now, I don't live in a city because I don't like them.

But what I missed, because I don't live in one, is that you can't have a great country unless you have a great city, period, or a number of great cities.

Cities define your country.

That's not my choice.

It's just a fact.

It's always been true.

And so if every one of your cities is a cesspool, then your country is collapsing.

But they don't need to be that way.

Crime is the easiest thing to fix.

You say, we're just not putting up with this.

We've done it before.

I covered it.

I wrote a book on it in 1994.

I watched New York City go from a very dangerous place to one of the safest cities in the world.

And it didn't take mass executions.

It didn't even take mass incarceration.

It just took paying attention to the details.

If there's graffiti, wipe it off.

If people are jumping over the turnstiles, arrest them.

It's called carrying guns.

It's called the Windows Theory

by James Q.

Wilson and George Kelling, one one of the most famous pieces on criminology and really on social science ever written and true to this day.

But anyway, the point is we have a drug crisis, a fentanyl crisis, a homeless crisis, a crisis of mental illness, and a crime crisis, and a filth crisis, just the dirtiness of it.

That's all on purpose.

That's what I realized when I went to Moscow.

And not just Moscow.

Abu Dhabi, which is not a fascist city at all.

It's much more.

It's a more tolerant place than any place in the West, actually.

If you want your mind blown, spend a week in Abu Dhabi.

It's true in Singapore, which is pretty authoritarian.

It's true in Tokyo, which is kind of authoritarian.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I've been to Abu Dhabi.

They'll cut your hands off for, you know, for theft.

I can't talk about Christ in Abu Dhabi.

So it does have some.

Oh, not true.

Oh, not true.

Abu Dhabi is a bigger Christmas celebration than almost any American city.

Oh, no.

Abu Dhabi, I mean, I don't know when the last time you were there, I was just there last week.

And I've spent a lot.

And look, I'm not flacking for Abu Abu Dhabi, okay?

I'm not about America.

The point is that this is the lie that they tell.

And this is what I've realized after just spending a lot of time going to different places with an open mind, thinking about how the lessons of these cities might apply to the cities that I care about.

Like the city I was born in, San Francisco, the prettiest city in North America, by far.

By far.

By far.

Totally uninhabitable.

My family's been there since 1850.

So I do feel like some kind of ownership.

I don't have ownership, but I feel a connection to the city.

city.

And it has declined to a place that is third world or worse than third world, actually,

because the people running it wanted that.

It wasn't an accident.

It's not a choice between liberalism and Nazism.

And if you choose liberalism, then you're going to have 50,000 people shooting drugs on your sidewalks or crapping in your doorway.

That's not the choice.

You can have a free society.

We had one for hundreds of years where there's order and politeness and decency and self-respect and concern for the individual.

If you allow people to OD on drugs in your park, what are you saying?

I don't care about their lives.

You are a cruel and vicious person if you allow that.

And we are allowing it.

Our leaders are.

And going to Moscow, I'm like, how the hell do they get this?

I mean, how do, how do, this is Russia, this is the country.

And again, I don't want to live in Russia and I'm not going to, but I should be able to live in a city like that.

And I can't because our leaders, every big city mayor, most governors, the entire Congress of the United States, the White house they step over the bodies of drug addicts of fentanyl addicts maybe the dead bodies every day on their way to work and they don't notice to go appropriate more money for a country they know nothing about and whose language they don't speak like this is peak insanity and so yes of course i knew i was going to be compared to walter duranti and by the way if bill crystal accuses you of not loving america enough bill crystal nope no concern for america whatsoever

like you can just laugh it off you're telling look i have a lot of faults i eat too much i'm I'm kind of a jerk.

I get all that.

But I don't think it's a really serious critique to say, I don't love America enough.

Really?

Who are the people saying that?

They're the ones who've opened our borders, let fentanyl flow in here, kill over 100,000 Americans every year, and it doesn't bother them at all.

And they're telling me, I don't love America.

I'm trying not to use the F-word on your show, but that's how I feel because it's just so insane.

So, Tucker.

You should go to Moscow.

You should go next week.

It will radicalize you.

You will not give up American citizenship.

You'll come back to this country and say, we had cities like this, and if even Moscow can do it, we should do it.

So

I think I agree with you 100%.

Where the sticking point is in America right now is there's a lot of people on the right and the left that are both saying, screw the Constitution.

We need a radicalized leader.

When you look at Orban, I think Orban is great for his country.

That's not our system.

I think

Moscow might be great, love to visit.

That's not our system.

So I think, and I believe you are, you've already said this, but I want to make sure it's very clear on the record.

The only path forward for America is through the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.

Correct?

Of course.

And by the way, I should just be very, very clear.

If I was, I'm like the one person on the planet, you don't need to guess about my motives.

I'll just say them.

And if I was advocating for a different form of government or for authoritarianism,

for a strong man, I would just say so.

I would have no shame in saying that because I really believe that it's within my rights to say what I think.

I've been called a racist.

If I was racist, I would just say it.

I would just say it.

But I'm not.

And I'm not advocating for that.

I'm advocating to a return to America of, say, 1993.

How radical.

Is that really radical?

No, I don't think that's very radical.

In fact, I think we should be demanding it.

And if there's one thing that I will fault Americans for, it's low expectations.

You should not put up with this.

You should not allow them.

The governor of Texas should not allow millions of people to cross his border.

And I don't want to hear the excuses.

And I don't want to hear the excuses for why it's okay to have tens of thousands of people dying on the street or sleeping on the sidewalk in tents handed to them by the Episcopal Church forever.

Like, that's not acceptable.

It's not okay for my kids to use drugs at the the breakfast table.

I'm not going to have a debate about it.

No, is the answer.

I'm within my rights as a father to say that.

The U.S.

government is within its statutory rights as a government to say that.

We don't need more laws.

We have the laws.

They're not being enforced on purpose.

And to your point, why?

And of course, the reason is because people will lose faith in liberal democracy.

And they will welcome a strongman.

And that's exactly what this is about, is the left, and not just the left, I would say that the Quizling right um on capitol hill for whom i just have boundless contempt they're in on this as well yes people are just going to give up they're not going to vote that you they're going to steal the elections just as they stole the last one which they did sorry and they're going to steal the next one and people are just like you know what i don't even care i just totally give up this is crazy just just get get the bums off my street some guy just exposed himself to my daughter or my nephew just died of a fentanyl od make it stop make it stop you can have all the power you want that is absolutely what they're going for and i don't want that.

I want to live in the country we lived in in 1993 or 1985, not ancient history.

Post-Civil Rights Act, we can do that.

Let's do it right now.

That's my point.

You're right on that's what they're doing.

It is, it's amazing to watch.

It's exactly the stuff that I talked about

back at Fox.

It's top down inside out.

It's the way the communists did it.

It's the color revolution, and it's Cloward and Piven.

It's all of it.

And it's happening right in front of our eyes.

It's crazy.

People, Americans need to know that because our sense of reality is shaped digitally and Wikipedia is our history and Instagram is our present and Twitter is our future X you know, people forget that we didn't have this just a few years ago.

And that's why going to places that are different

really

reminds you.

It triggers in you this chain reaction of thoughts, and you realize, I cannot believe I'm putting up with this.

I can't believe there's a homeless encampment in front of Union Station in our nation's capital, directly across from the Capitol building.

That's so much more horrifying to me than anything that happened on January 6th.

That's such an expression of contempt and loathing for the American people.

That's such an admission of defeat and lack of self-respect.

Like, no, you are not allowed to do drugs in front of Union Station.

I don't want to hear your excuse.

I'm not responsible for housing you.

Get out out of here.

Like, it's just, it's not hard.

And that is kind of the society that they have in a lot of other countries, right?

I mean, it's, it's, people should travel and see this stuff.

It'll make you love America more and make you want better for America.

That's the only point.

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So let me go back to the interview.

He Putin was telling you, weaving a story that our president isn't really in control.

Wasn't he?

And did you, of of course, have you done anything

and reached out to try to verify any of this that it was true?

I mean, do you believe him?

That the president's not really in control.

Obviously,

obviously, the policies don't change.

Well, I will tell you,

when I heard him say that to you, I thought of something that George Bush told me in the Oval Office.

I was asking about the policies and how they were going to change, and he said, Glenn, and he tried to make me feel good by saying this.

Glenn, don't worry.

Whoever sits behind this desk in that chair is going to have the same advice given by the same advisors, and they'll realize the president's hands are tied.

I walked out of that room horrified.

Horrified.

Then why do we even have elections?

Yeah,

of course, I couldn't agree more.

And I mean, look, they haven't released the JFK files over 60 years later.

I know.

Okay, no president.

That's just one.

We have over a billion classified documents.

So it's not a democracy in the sense that they told us it was.

And I think it can be fixed.

I think the president's primary power is his communication with the public.

And I continue to think that any president who decided to go right to social media, like a direct feed, here's what I know, here's what's going on, he could harness the power of the population.

And he could make a change.

I mean, look,

the federal government is the largest organization in human history.

You can't, probably not going to change it in four years, but you could make this country more democratic.

And, you know, what you could certainly do is change the conversation away from where they want it, which is getting black people and white people to hate each other.

Okay.

Race hate is a manufactured phenomenon in this country for the most part.

And it's actually provable.

It happened during Occupy Wall Street in 2012.

The mentions of white supremacy and racism in the New York Times went up hundreds of fold.

So this is an intentional strategy to get people to hate each other on the basis of race.

And as I walk around this country, I'm really surprised by how little race hatred there is.

It actually hasn't worked very well.

Most Americans don't want to do that.

And they don't want to talk about foreign policy and the economy, which are the core functions of state.

And on those two topics, like, why do private equity people pay half the tax rate that you do?

Like, that seems like a kind of an interesting conversation.

Shut up.

And why are we sending all this money to Ukraine?

I want to hear an amazing story that just tells you everything about this.

So I'm over in Moscow.

I'm waiting to do this interview.

It gets out that we're doing it.

And I'm immediately denounced by this guy called Boris Johnson, who was for a short time the prime minister of Great Britain.

And Boris Johnson calls me a tool of the Kremlin or something.

And I'm thinking, well, that's kind of, I mean, his name's not actually Boris, as I'm sure you know.

His name is Alex Johnson, and he called himself Boris in high school.

So the guy who calls himself Boris is accusing me of that.

So I was annoyed.

So I put in a request for an interview with Boris Johnson, as I have many times, because he's constantly denouncing me as a tool of the Kremlin.

He says no.

So I'm thinking about getting more annoyed.

So I know a lot of people who know Boris Johnson.

So I reach out to them.

Finally, one of his advisors gets back to me and says, he will talk to you, but it's going to cost you a million dollars.

He wants a million dollars

in U.S.

dollars, gold or Bitcoin.

No, this just happened yesterday or two days ago.

And I'm like, he wants a million dollars.

Yeah.

And then he will talk to you about Ukraine.

He will explain his position on Ukraine and explain what.

So he attacks me without explaining how I'm I'm wrong, of course, or how he's right.

This is, by the way, the guy who single-handedly, at the request of the U.S.

government, stopped the peace deal in Ukraine a year and a half ago and is, I think, for that reason, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

He won't explain any of that to me in an interview until I pay him a million dollars.

And I said to the guy, you know, I just interviewed Vladimir Putin.

I'm not defending Putin, but Putin didn't ask for a million dollars.

So you're telling me that Boris Johnson is a lot sleazier, a lot lower than Vladimir Putin.

Okay.

Which is true.

Yeah.

So this whole thing is a freaking shakedown.

Why $60 billion?

I mean, I could get boring on this because I've learned a lot about it.

But $60 billion is not going to allow Ukraine to prevail over Russia.

No honest person thinks that's going to work.

This is a money laundering operation.

A lot of the people involved in it are making money from it.

And if you're making money off a war, you know, you can deal with God on that because that's really immoral.

Like, that's actually really, really wrong.

So a lot of people are, including Boris Johnson.

So I pointed out that the Ukrainians were funding, really through us, this Nazi, you know, group on the border of Russia.

We had been funding them for quite a while because they were fighting against Russia.

Okay, now I guess it's okay for everybody to be in bed with the Nazis.

When Putin said that,

do you is he just evoking the Nazis because what it means to his people?

Is that really one of his goals?

Is that really

what's happened?

What did you finally get from him on what's happening on his side?

Why is he doing this?

I thought it was stupid, the whole Nazi thing.

I mean, there's no, you know, the Nazi party was a German party, which is obviously repugnant party, but was responding to a specific historical set of circumstances growing out of the Treaty of Versailles.

So Nazi-ism,

there's no das Kapital of Nazism,

right?

And so, it doesn't kind of transfer.

Like, Nazism died in April of 1945 when Hitler shot himself.

So,

you know, there are all kinds of ugly political movements in the world, but let's think of a new name for them.

I think it's like a word.

Or National Socialists.

Yeah, or whatever.

But, like, what ideology are you talking about?

I just don't even understand.

So, like, look,

Russia moved into eastern Ukraine because the Biden administration pushed them to.

There's a war in Ukraine because the Biden administration wanted a war in Ukraine.

And that's very obvious, and it happened in public.

Biden

sent his vice president to the Munich Security Conference days before the invasion, two Februaries ago, to announce in public at a press conference that we wanted Ukraine to join NATO.

That would mean nuclear weapons on Russia's border.

Now, this is not a new conversation.

This has been going on for 30 years.

Russia does not want nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow on its border and has said that's the red line, as it would be for any country.

If the Chinese did that in Mexico, I hope we would say, no, we're going to war before we allow that.

And they knew that, and they pushed him to do this, of course.

Now, their motive,

we can only guess at it, but that absolutely happened.

And you're like, not allowed to say that, but that's true.

Yes, it is.

It's not a defense of Putin.

It's an attack on the craziness of our foreign policy, which is like purely destructive.

Nothing is built, only destroyed.

It's nuts.

Let me switch here for

a second on some things that have happened

just recently while you were gone.

Navalny

went for a walk in the Arctic Circle because he liked to walk outside.

And then he came back.

They say they tried everything they could to resuscitate.

Was he assassinated or not?

Are you asking me if I did it?

Yeah, I did.

No.

And I can tell you.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry.

I should never

admit it.

You know, was he assassinated?

I have no idea.

No one in the United States has any idea.

All these buffoons like Chuck Schumer or the RCNIL president jumping up and down Russia did this.

I mean, they don't know that.

They don't know anything about it, actually.

I have no freaking idea.

I can tell you it didn't help Russia to do it.

They put him in prison.

You can argue about whether they had justification for doing that.

I'm not that interested.

Russia Russia is not a free country in the way that the country I grew up in is, was.

And I care about my country being free.

That's all I care about.

So whatever.

I don't know.

I'm not that interested.

I haven't spent a lot of time reading about Navalny.

I know this.

Him dying during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of the debate on Ukraine funding, both of which they're highly aware of, doesn't help Russia.

So the people saying, oh, Putin just had him murdered last week,

they're idiots.

They don't actually know anything.

They don't know anything.

These are the the same people who told us that Ukraine was going to win.

Really?

Russia has 100 million more people and far deeper industrial capacity.

Like that's insane.

No person outside the United States thought that for a second that Ukraine could win.

Maybe they're rooting for Ukraine.

Maybe not.

I mean, who knows?

But as a factual matter, the information desert that we live in is really, really scary.

And sometimes I think maybe the average North Korean knows more about what's happening in the world than the average American who watches NBC News because it's just so distorted.

The lies are like so, it's like a vacuum.

You don't even like, like the two facts I just stated, Russia has 100 million more people and the capacity to produce seven times the number of artillery shells as all of NATO.

Those are just two facts that I'm not sure the average person in this country has ever heard before.

And those are the determinative facts in a ground war.

Do you have more people?

Do you have more materiel?

Do you have more howitzer shells?

And like the people making these decisions, decisions, Anthony Blinken, Anthony Blinken, I can't believe that guy is the Secretary of State.

What a mediocrity.

That he doesn't know that or something?

Like the whole, they're just so ignorant that it's scary.

Super scary.

Why are they scary?

But I don't know if they are ignorant.

Look at the Iranian policy.

Who doesn't know Iran is a terrorist state that really, truly means they're going to burn the Jews in the fire of the Islamic fury?

Who doesn't know that?

Who doesn't know that enough to say, you know what, we shouldn't send over $8 billion.

We just shouldn't do it.

We shouldn't play.

I got to be honest, I don't understand that.

And that was, of course, something that Obama did.

And there was quite a bit of debate with the Democratic Party.

And he, boy, he pushed it through.

And

I've thought about that for almost, it's been almost 10 years.

No, but Biden has.

Biden, I think, has done another, allowed them to dip into another $6 billion,

you know, as long as it's used for peaceful purpose.

You don't, you would never make that deal with Adolf Hitler.

You know who they are.

You know, somebody said to me once, is a rattlesnake a bad pet?

No, it's a perfectly fine pet, as long as you always remember it's a rattlesnake.

We are treating people who are in our own country like enemies and people who are oppressing people,

we're treating them like friends.

Well, yeah, I've noticed that.

And I have to say the disproportionate outrage at the Russians is puzzling to me.

But again, all of it is playing out against the backdrop that I care about, which is life in the United States.

And I feel like we're in a moment where things are moving south at high speed.

Yes.

Particularly the demographic replacement, American citizens being replaced by foreigners who are being encouraged to go into the military.

Let's hand them, we don't know who they are.

They don't know anything about the United States.

They may or may be loyal to it.

Let's give them guns.

I mean, where do you think that's going, Glenn?

I mean, of course, the military will be used as it was on January 6th as a tool of domestic political control, obviously.

And it's much easier to do that with foreigners than it is with people who grew up in this country.

So that's way scarier than anything that happened to Navalny in some Siberian.

I mean, I guess that's kind of what I'm saying.

It's like, I'm against putting Navalny or any political opponents in jail ever, whether it's the January 6th people who are still rotting, whether it's Navalny, whether it's Gonzalo Lira, the American citizen who died in custody in Ukraine.

I mean, I'm opposed to all of that stuff.

But I don't understand this weird externalizing process of emotion that happens for a lot of well-educated Americans where

they're not mad about what's happening around them.

They're mad about what's happening in some country they've never been to.

It's like, what is that?

In other words, it's like

you've got a kid who's a drug addict, but you don't have time to drive him to rehab because you're sending money to the drug company for Kino Pasta or something.

No, but you're sending it to like some kid you've never met in a country you've never been to.

It's like, what is that?

And I, and the last thing I'll say is I've noticed that a lot of the most passionate sort of advocates for this idea that, you know, the only problems are abroad and we need to spend all of our money on those problems.

are people with very weird and hollow personal lives.

I'm sorry, I'm not, I don't want to be mean.

I'm just being honest.

Very dishonest, personalized, creepy personal lives, unsettled inside.

Like a normal person in this and all countries wants, like, I want to have dinner with my wife and play with my dogs and see my kids grow up and have grandchildren.

And I want my neighborhood to be safe.

And I want my friends to be happy.

And I want every, you know what I mean?

Like, those are the kind of core concerns for most people.

It really takes someone like Lindsey Graham, who doesn't have children, to be like, no, the most important thing is

Karkov or something.

Some city in Eastern Europe.

But like, honestly, what does that have to do with El Paso or my kids?

Nothing.

It's a syndrome, kind of.

Do you know what I mean?

I do know

what you mean.

The reason why I brought up Navalny is because Donald Trump this week is in trouble because

he said, well, yeah, Navalny, I mean, that's what happens when you put political prisoners.

behind bar when you take somebody who is is running against you and the state has so much power they pull you off and put you in jail.

Sound familiar?

And while the left has a problem with Navalny, as you would say, oddly so,

they don't see the connection on what we're doing here,

what we're doing with Donald Trump.

Oh, they see it.

Oh, they see it.

They just look.

The one thing they're really good at, they're not good at engineering or building anything or even preserving what our ancestors handed us in New York City, for example.

They'll destroy everything in the physical world, but the one thing they're really talented at is occupying the moral high ground in an unjustified way, is flying into such a hysterical frenzy that they intimidate people into repeating their slogans.

Where are you in Navalny?

Navalny?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm against people being killed, I guess.

I don't know anything about it.

You know what I mean?

And where are you in Navalny?

You don't have a position on Navalny?

He has not spoken on Navalny.

You know, the bail,

which was,

I was like thousands of miles away two days ago in a car, and somebody sends me this piece from the Daily Mail, which used to be kind of a good newspaper.

It's like total garbage at this point, along with the New York Post.

It's like so weird how these papers get captured, but they had some piece like Tucker Carlson has not said a word, issued a statement about Navalny.

Well, I didn't know.

I don't know anything about Navalny.

I didn't know he died.

I didn't know anything.

Nobody.

I've been on an airplane from Dubai.

It was like, you don't have a statement?

And I do think if we're we're going to reclaim our humanity from people who would turn us into slaves, one of the first things we need to say is, I control what I think and what I say.

I can have my own opinions.

And by the way, I don't have to have an opinion.

I don't have an opinion on that.

It's not important to me.

It's okay to say that.

Your priorities don't have to be mine.

Mine don't have to be yours.

And if they do, then I'm no longer a free person.

I'm a slave.

You consider me subhuman.

I'm like your dog.

You can tell me what to care about, what to eat.

But as a free man, no, I don't have to share your priorities.

I don't have to be interested in Navalny's death.

I can be very interested in it or not, but you can't force me to be.

And I think that's really important for people to make the decision that they're going to think independently and not be intimidated by these freaks.

And they are freaks.

By the way, I just, you know, somebody who emailed you something, I just want to say thank you for text messaging me while you're in Russia.

And the NSA is watching.

I just thought that was a great move from a good friend.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I've decided decided

I have all these people come to me.

Well, you need to get this software, do that, or whatever.

You need to break home.

You got to throw your phone away.

No.

In fact, I may send some naked pictures of myself to the NSA just to wreck their day.

No, I'm not.

I don't have to do that.

I'm not.

You know what I mean?

I'm an American citizen.

I do.

You're a criminal, not me.

Not me.

You mean the NSA.

Let me.

With that being said, when you were over and sitting in front of Putin,

who has absolute control and is a former KGB guy,

was there any time that you, because he said several times, like, oh,

I know who you are.

I know you studied history.

I mean, he knew you.

When you got to the question about the Wall Street Journal reporter, did it ever cross your mind that I'm not in my home country?

I'm saying this to a very powerful man who does do what he wants.

Were you ever worried?

No, not at all.

I wasn't worried for a single second.

I was there.

I wasn't worried going over there, not because I trust the Russian government.

I don't, but because my kids are grown and like, I don't really care at this point.

I feel protected.

I say my prayers.

Much more worried about my government, much more worried about my country than I am about Russia because I'm not russian you know i wasn't no i wasn't intimidated at all i was annoyed a couple of times um i thought it was interesting uh

i thought he was interesting he was hostile to me um oh he

somehow

you didn't even ask hard questions

whatever yeah i know did he really say that oh yeah you didn't hear that yeah he he came out and said he was very disappointed you didn't ask any hard questions

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah.

I mean,

what's a hard question to Putin?

I mean,

I just wanted to hear his view.

And I think one of the things, I mean, it's not about me.

That's kind of the point.

And that is one of the uglier things about journalism, if you can call it that.

It's all the hair hats want to make it about them.

Because that's why they're in television in the first place, because they're so, they just like yearn for the adulation of strangers.

They're empty inside.

I don't care about the adulation of strangers.

I just was sincerely interested in who this guy is.

And I still don't think I know, but I learned a few things.

And one of them is he's very

wounded by what he sees as the rejection of the West.

And I think it makes him angry, really angry.

I think he was angry at me about it.

I've got nothing to do with that.

But no, I mean, the Soviet Union ended in August of 1991.

I was on my honeymoon.

I'll never forget it because my family had been involved in the Cold War.

So like this was a topic of conversation.

And the idea was, well, why can't we work together?

If not be friends, at least, you know, be allied in some way that's mutually beneficial?

He in 2000, this is a, he said this in the interview and it's true.

He asked Bill Clinton if Russia could join NATO.

Now, NATO exists as a bulwark against Russia, right?

So if Russia wants to join NATO, then there's no reason to have NATO and we can just call it a big win and go home and build our own country, do something constructive.

And they turned him down.

And it's like, I've never, no one seems to think that's a big thing.

I think it's a very big thing.

Why would NATO, which exists to control Russia, turn down Russia's entry into the alliance?

Like it's insane.

And then he asked again, George W.

Bush, I would like to be in a missile alliance with you against Iran.

And Bush is like, yeah, it sounds like a good idea.

And then Condi Rice, one of the dumbest people ever, is like, no, we can't do that.

Why can't we do that?

Why wouldn't that be in the interest of both of our countries?

And so you sort of come away thinking like, there's a lot more going on here than Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

That's not actually what happened.

Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine.

Yes, it's bad.

Hundreds of thousands have died.

Ukraine's been destroyed.

A small number of people have gotten very rich.

Boris Johnson hopes to get rich from it,

et cetera, et cetera.

But there's a context here that does not make American policymakers look good at all.

In fact, it's shameful.

And the last thing I'll say is, you know, the point is to depose Putin, kill Putin, whatever, get Putin out of office.

What happens then?

So Russia is the largest country in the world by land mass.

It has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

It's an incredibly diverse country.

It's about 20% Muslim, all these different republics, 80 of them, I think.

And so what happens to the nuclear arsenal without Putin?

Is that good for the world?

Like, it sounds like chaos.

It sounds like the kind of chaos that we created in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, Afghanistan.

None of that made the world safer.

None of it helped American interests.

It actually made the world much scarier, more volatile, and allowed China to surpass us us economically, which it has.

So, like, why would we want to do that to the biggest country in the world?

I think that's insane.

If you're powerful and wise, you seek to bring stability and order and predictability and peace.

That's what a father does in his family.

That's what a good CEO does in a company.

It's what a good general does.

But an abusive,

abusive husband or father

creates instability intentionally, always keeping people on the edge.

exactly can i ask you you were such a

um

i don't i don't mean this as a bad thing you're just such an odd individual in the fact that your dad was in government he was kind of obliquely in intelligence too wasn't he

or not well i applied to the ciao okay yeah okay but yeah but you're

but you're

i grew up in a world like that for sure yeah okay and by the way i couldn't think less of the cia now just to be completely clear.

I'm so grateful he turned.

Yeah, I know.

I used to have real respect for our agencies.

I think they're enemies of the state, quite honestly, or the people.

Let me

help me understand how you grew up.

I grew up working class.

And now I live a different life, but I always feel like I'm still working class, even though I'm not.

Okay.

You've never really been working class.

You've You've always been that upper class in the, in all of the places that make people

into the leaders of tomorrow that are, that don't care about the people.

How, how is it that you have

held on to

something I don't think you ever really had, and that is that

average everyday citizen that is going out punching a time clock

and coming in and just trying to make ends meet.

Where did that come from with you?

Well, I mean, I don't have that perspective.

I never have.

I mean, I've never, you know, I mean, no, I'm not from that background at all.

I'm from the opposite background for sure, every day of my life.

And so I would never pretend to be the voice of the working class.

No, I know, but the opposite.

Right.

I don't think that.

No, no, my motive comes from not, and I actually now live in a, in a working class area and I love the people there, but I'm not, that's not my world.

I'm motivated by my loathing of the people in charge.

The one thing I know a lot about are the people who populate the ruling class because I spent my whole life with them.

I'm not against ruling classes.

Every society has one.

Someone's got to be in charge.

There's always an elect that runs everything.

They're always Brahmins, okay?

Always, and there always will be.

So I'm not against it.

I'm not a populist in that sense.

I'm just against incompetent, selfish, nasty, stupid people being in charge.

And that's exactly who we have.

And I'm so mad about it because I know exactly who they are.

And so when you're telling me that Anthony Blinken is a statesman, I'm like, no, he's not.

He's like a low IQ political hack who's acting for like personal reasons, have nothing to do with the welfare of the United States in his Ukraine policy.

And I know that.

And I know them all.

And I know I live next to them my whole life, 35 years in D.C.

So it's like, I'm not fooled by that.

Oh,

you know, we're, I went to Harvard and, you know, and then HBS.

And I'm at the, you know, I spoke at Aspen this summer.

It's like, I know how mediocre that is because I've been around it my whole life.

So I'm just not impressed.

I don't want anything from them at all.

I'm not rich.

I have enough.

So it's like, I'm just in this weird position where I know exactly who they are.

I don't want their stupid little merit badges.

I couldn't have more contempt for them.

And I'm old enough now that like, why not just say it?

Right.

And I am.

And I just don't, I just don't care.

I'm going to keep saying it.

That's what makes you so dangerous.

So dangerous.

So let me end.

We've just got a couple of minutes.

Let me end with,

you know, Max Benz, and I heard your podcast with him.

Mike Benz.

No, it's Max, isn't it?

Max Benz.

Yeah.

No, no, Mike Benz.

That guy's so smart.

So smart, so smart.

And

what he says is truly remarkable.

And you kind of listen to it and say, wow, all of this makes sense.

I think it's probably accurate and no way out, no way out.

That, you know, that doesn't help America at all.

It doesn't help us to think no way out.

I'm much more of a optimistic catastrophist.

I think you're just generally an optimistic guy.

How do we navigate the next eight, nine months?

How do we bring people together with the armada that is arrayed against Americans?

I think it's really important to create a hierarchy of importance just in life and in public policy and just every sphere of life, like decide what's most important, what do I do first.

And my smartest friend, my wisest friend, who's been really successful,

just because he's wise, always says, look, it comes down to food, water, energy.

You know, the country's rise and fall on the basis of food, water, energy.

And every time he talks like that, he talks in terms of fundamentals, like what actually matters.

It's not really about trans swimmers or Black Lives Matter.

It's about energy, food, water, and it's about the use of force.

And so the number one one thing you need to worry about in any country is the military.

And we just don't have a history of worrying about the military, but we should be very worried about the military because that's where the guns are.

And so if you wanted to take a continental-sized country like ours with a population of 350 million people and you wanted to subdue them, you would need force.

And so it's the, what was so striking about what Ben said was it's the DOD, it's the military that is censoring us and they're doing it for political reasons.

And that is a completely different thing from, say, the Democratic National Committee or even the FBI.

The military has to be nonpartisan.

It has to be controlled by elected officials, civilian control.

So the voters have some control over the military.

And conservatives, and it's such a wonderful and clever op on the part of the left because conservatives just imagine the people who serve in the military are just like them, but the officer corps is not.

at all.

They're like speaking at the Aspen Institute.

They don't share your values.

They hate you.

They hate Christianity.

And they're dangerous.

Now, the average NCO or a lot of the illustrious guys are great.

And they're red-blooded Americans and all that.

But the leadership of the military is dangerous.

They're dangerous.

They're dangerous not simply because of the many failed wars

they've been involved in, but because they're dangerous because they could be used against the U.S.

population.

That's not crazy.

And adding

hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to the military over the next 10 years, which they absolutely plan to do.

Oh.

And so I just think if you want to make the country better, focus on the big things.

Let's make sure the power grid works.

Let's make sure the military is not politicized and used against the population.

Like, let's just start there.

And those are the things that conservatives just miss because they're off on all this other stuff.

No, no.

Energy, force of arms, these are big things.

The bigger it is, the more important it is.

That's why I'm focused on Ukraine because it's like, it's a war.

People are getting killed.

What's more important than that?

Oh, shut up.

Leave it to the experts.

No.

No, thanks.

I'm a citizen.

You know what I mean?

I can have a view.

Tucker,

I think at first, both of us years ago, years ago, didn't know what to make of one another.

But tough times

brings out the best in people.

And I have watched you over the last

five years just become one of the

most frank honest

journalists in America.

And

it's an honor to know you, especially at this time.

I hope you write down everything that you're doing every day because you are playing a big role in history.

You are.

You are.

You are.

Well, it's accidental, trust me.

Thank you.

God bless you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

God bless you.

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.