Ep 114 | Why Tucker Carlson Hates 'Journalists' | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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30 years ago, the world was a much different place.

The internet hadn't taken off.

never mind the iPhone, and the media actually used to practice something called journalism.

Now everything's stored online, and privacy is quickly being replaced by a surveillance state, and nobody seems to notice, or maybe it's we don't care.

Even worse, many in the media are happy to cheer it on, as long as it helps them score political points.

Today's guest knows a good deal about these problems, our privacy, and our media.

He's written stories for some of the biggest names in American journalism, Esquire, Spectator, the New Republic, Politico, GQ, the New York Times.

However, today,

it would take an absolute Moses-style miracle for any of those organizations to ever print anything, any of his work again.

And that's because they've chosen political sides, whether they admit it or not.

As for privacy, between the government snooping on him and then social media, he can't even go to a fly fishing store in Montana without somebody heckling him.

Roving gangs have gathered at his house, knocked on his front door.

At one point, it got so bad that he had to leave Washington, D.C., where he had lived for years.

And to top it all off, our own government may be spying on him right now.

And I say may, giving them, oh my gosh, far too much credit.

He's been called every dirty name in the book, and as we'll discuss today, the corporate media is still trying to destroy him, yet he keeps on going.

He's got a new book out with Simon and Schuster, who hate him.

The book is called The Long Slide, 30 Years in American Journalism.

It's a reflection on his journalistic work over the last three decades, but also a look at what the media used to allow, used to admire, used to encourage.

and how much things have truly changed.

Today on the Glenbeck podcast, Tucker Carlson.

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Hey, Tucker.

Hey, Glenn Beck, thanks for having me.

You're welcome.

I'm sitting here looking at you in your cabin,

and you have Roosevelt dead behind you.

In my office, I have Wilson dead.

Now,

I have it as a celebratory item.

Why do you have Roosevelt dead on your wall?

Because my godfather ran a newspaper.

His family ran a newspaper in New York called the New York Journal American, one of the Hearst papers.

that was hanging on the wall in the newsroom when they closed in the mid-60s.

And so we got, we have a ton of those.

And I'm in Maine.

I'm at our house in Maine where we've been all of our lives.

And it's just filled with just, you know, junk the family has collected.

So I actually had that hanging in my bedroom as a child.

Did you really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Roosevelt did my father hated Roosevelt.

I don't hate Roosevelt at all.

Woodrow Wilson was a loathsome person.

Oh, yeah.

He was bad.

He was bad i don't like um uh roosevelt and i don't like some of the things he did but wilson is in a separate category yeah i totally agree yeah completely so you're uh

you said your grandfather ran the paper for hearst my godfather your godfather okay so yeah

you must i mean you grew up knowing with hearst

you saw the manipulation of of uh newspapers, et cetera.

You knew what it could be, at at least, I'm assuming, with that kind of heritage.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

My dad was a journalist.

My great-grandfather, you know, was the publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

Yeah, I mean, I grew up around journalists my whole life.

I mean, that's the world I grew up in.

That's why I went into it.

So that's one of the reasons I hate them so much.

It's a personal offense.

It's just the worst people have gone into it.

Just the technocratic, dishonest, careerist, stupid, cowards.

I mean, you're supposed to be brave.

That's the, you know, when I was a kid, my dad worked for ABC News, and he would have his cameraman and the sound guy, and they were always over for dinner in the backyard, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, telling stories about, you know, women and places they went and stories they did.

And like, this guy punched me in the face, and I hit him back.

I mean, they were just like, they covered riots.

They'd all covered the Watts riots in LA.

I mean, they were tough and cool.

They'd been places, done things.

These people are just like such wussbacks.

I hate them.

I know.

When I first worked at CNN,

I was interviewed by Paula Zahn,

who, as I was doing the interview, I'm watching her and I'm realizing it's vacant.

She's not even thinking about it.

She's waiting for me to stop

to ask the next question.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

It's just vacant.

And then I saw something worse.

I talked about

because it was a day that somebody had committed suicide and they were an alcoholic.

And I said, said, my mother was a drug addict and she committed suicide.

And all of a sudden, she just zeroed in and I could feel from her, I wonder if I could make him cry about this.

And she made all of these, all of these questions that were just obviously trying to get me to cry.

And it was, I thought, this is despicable.

They're not really interested and they're only interested in ratings.

But I don't think that's it anymore.

They're worse than that.

Well, they're what they're, I mean, they're the Praetorian guard for the ruling class.

They've inverted the most basic rule of journalism, which is hold the powerful accountable.

And now they're, you know, they're all working for some oligarch.

Steve Jobs's idiot widow owns the Atlantic.

Jeff Bezos owns the New York Times.

The Upper West Side of Manhattan.

You know, it's just like, rather, the Washington Post, the New York Times is essentially owned by its subscribers who are, you know, like

every

nonprofit executive on the Upper West Side.

I mean, it's just they're trying to protect what they feel is slipping away, which is their control over the country.

And the thing they hate most, of course, is democracy.

I mean, the idea of voters, the white working class having power, like completely freaks them out.

I mean, completely.

And journalists ought to be calling that out.

They are the Woodrow Wilson dream that the elites will rule and everybody else is just cattle and just go do what cattle do.

You know what I mean?

It will just keep you in little pens.

But they're not even good at it.

I mean, if they were good, if they were improving people's lives, if they were, I mean, during the progressive, I mean, you always have a ruling class because people are hierarchical.

You know, dogs are hierarchical.

And during previous moments in American history, you had rich people running everything.

That was true during the progressive era.

Teddy Roosevelt was from, you know, my my world.

I have a picture of him to my grandfather over my sink.

You know, he was from a very specific, he was from the ruling class.

And

he spent a lot of time thinking about

how do we make people's lives better?

How do we make the streets cleaner?

The parks prettier?

How do we improve the schools?

How do we lower the crime rate?

How do we raise wages?

And that's what noblesse oblige is.

It's people who are privileged looking downward and saying to themselves, I have an obligation to you.

And I would be happy to live under that that system.

I don't mind being, you know, ordered around by people who are more impressive than I am, who have my welfare.

Do you know what I mean?

At heart, these people are just pure parasites, just trying to take what they can from America and go to St.

Bart's.

It's like disgusting.

So I hate them.

That's the one thing that

I think you and I disagree on.

And I don't know how much we disagree on it.

I believe in

the pure freedom of the individual.

And you know what?

Yes.

You know, you don't, I don't need to put a sign on the lawnmower, don't use on roof as a snowblower.

I think

if you fall off the roof and you're, you know,

you know, just chipped by the lawnmower, that's natural selection.

That's fine with me.

You know what I mean?

I agree.

But you just said a minute ago, you know, I don't mind being told, you know, what to do by people who are more impressive.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, I don't have a problem with the idea of experts, and I agree with you completely.

Let people do what they want to the extent that you can.

But what I'm saying is, I don't have a problem with the idea, the platonic ideal of expertise or

rulers or of a ruling class.

I don't think

we're all equal in ability.

I want a heart surgeon to do my cardiac survey.

Correct.

I do.

So I don't have a problem with that.

I'm not like a classic populist at all.

I'm just incredibly angry at the dereliction of duty that I see among our ruling class.

Like they don't feel an obligation to the people beneath them.

And that enrages me.

They don't tip.

They don't love the people of the country.

They hate them.

And whenever you have, I mean, this is like true for everything.

It's true for the military.

It's true for your family.

If you hated your children, they'd be like unbelievably screwed up.

They'd be in prison.

If you hated your troops, they'd all die.

Like you have to love the people you're in charge of and they don't.

And that, that's like, that's it right there for me.

Well, I mean, you know, if you listen to George Washington, that you're never going to get that love from people who are in power and government's not meant to love you.

But I agree that experts.

The problem is, is that these experts will say something.

Let's take COVID.

They've been wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong over and over and over again.

And we know that Fauci is lying about his role in

the

COVID virus, or at least the virus that preceded it.

And yet we are forced to listen to that expert.

We have other experts telling us that you have to listen to that expert.

Well, no,

I'm sorry, but I've got a gut on me, too, and I don't believe them.

I don't believe them.

Something's wrong.

I couldn't agree more.

At some point, though, when all the experts, all the people in charge turn out to be mediocre and clueless, then you have to ask yourself, is the system working?

So these are all products of the system.

Like Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

He's not impressive.

Anthony Fauci is the head

COVID responder in the country.

He's not impressive.

How do these people get to where they are?

So then you take three steps back and you think, well, because we have created this fake meritocracy with merit badges along the way to the top, none of which correspond to actual expertise.

Like, Fauci is not the most impressive physician we could have running our response to COVID.

Mark Milley is clearly not the person who should be running the United States military.

So like our system is broken.

We are not finding in a country of 340 million people the most qualified to do these jobs because we're using irrelevant criteria.

Affirmative action, diversity, equity is a huge part of it.

But it's not just that.

It's more than that.

It's Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Penn.

They are not finding the right people and teaching those people the right things.

I mean, that's our ruling class is created by higher education.

Those are, you know, our Sandhurst is Princeton.

Don't.

And it's not doing a good job.

But don't you think that that comes from

actually

trying to teach the right things in their point of view instead of teaching people how to think?

It's not, I don't want to be taught what to think.

You need to go to an institution of higher learning to show you how to think, how to be able to explore everything and get a balanced view.

That's not happening anymore in our universities.

Not at all.

And you ask why.

Look, people are like animals.

They respond to rewards.

If I do this, I get that.

And what are we incentivizing?

We're incentivizing conformity.

That's what Mark Milley and Anthony Fauci have in common.

They're conformists.

They check in every morning to find out what the party line is.

Oh, white rage is the problem.

Okay, I'll say that in a congressional hearing.

Oh, wear two masks.

Okay, that's today's line.

I'll say that out loud.

People who are independent-minded, who are free thinkers, are being excluded from our system.

And you see it all around you.

I mean, I have dinner all the time with people who are really smart.

Some of them are, you know, kind of genius-level people.

I mean, you've seen this in your own life.

And I'm not, this is not flattery, but you're one of the people who will say something that like other people haven't thought of before.

And you're totally willing to go out on the, no, I'm not joking.

You're willing to go out of the line and be like, actually, I, you know, I think Obama's a racist.

And no one had said that before.

He is a racist.

You're absolutely right.

Most, including me, I had not thought of that at the time.

You were totally right.

You had this weird flash of insight into the guy and you said it.

What was the first response of everyone at the top of American society?

Crush Glenn Beck.

He said something unapproved.

Rather than saying, wait a second, that's kind of, is Obama racist?

Like, we should think about this for a second.

That's a weird insight.

I never thought of that before.

We should incentivize that kind of thinking, open-minded thinking.

We should identify the people who are thinking for themselves, who are having really interesting and cool thoughts, and reward them for it.

Instead, we destroy them for it.

What?

So you wind up with really mediocre people.

Because people also think, you know, in 2008, I was, or 2007, I was talking about a crash that was coming.

And it is because I looked at things

not through the prism of being taught, but just common sense.

That doesn't work with that.

And you're relying on a system that I don't think is going to work.

So looked at it that way.

But I had one member of the media who I won't name here

that

is an individual that deals with money and deals with money issues.

And I brought this up, and the person afterward argued and argued and argued.

And I have respect for this individual.

And I finished the interview, and he wouldn't even look at me.

He was so mad at me.

And I said,

Why?

Do I have it right?

If I have it wrong, but please tell me where I have it wrong.

He said, Without looking at me, he said, You don't have it wrong.

You're just irresponsible.

We have a responsibility to not say those things.

and i was like what kind of

upside down world is that in journalism

it's so per that's such a great story i'm laughing because it's so perfect that is that crystallizes everything that's wrong it's not even a left right thing it's do we allow people to tell obvious truths And the first thing we do with those people is we call them crazy.

I have this new rule where whenever I hear someone denounced as crazy, crazy, and I don't think anyone's been denounced as crazy as much as you have, I pay special attention to what that person says.

And by the way, some of them are kind of crazy.

Yeah.

Totally fine.

Yeah.

I make a huge effort in our hiring.

I want at least one crazy person on staff.

I don't, you know, he doesn't have to have access to firearms, but that person needs to be in our orbit

because that person is much more likely than the rest of us who are, you know, fighting the hurt instinct to see things really clearly.

It's be be like wait a second this doesn't you know if my housekeeper is buying condos in vegas on credit maybe the housing market is too distorted maybe this could wreck the u.s economy just like you know obvious things like that right and

nobody else is going to so it last thing i'll say but if you i was a russian studies major i'm interested in soviet history one of the things the soviets did under stalin and continued to do all the way through you know all the way through till 1991 is they would forcibly incarcerate people in mental institutions.

And rather than just sending them to the gulag, but they would publicly denounce them as crazy.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Glenn Beck, you know, is mentally unstable.

So for his own good, we had to pump him full of thoracine and stick him in a cell.

That was a way, and they did it to people who were free thinkers.

I feel like I'm not saying anyone's getting thrown into the gulag, but that impulse is on display in our society.

Wow, you said something unapproved.

You must be crazy.

Really?

Why don't you assess what I said?

Is it true?

Right.

We have to care about whether things are true or not.

That's the acid test.

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I just read on the air today Alexander Solisnichin's essay from 1974, i think right before he was arrested and then uh exported um and i don't know the last time you read that essay but tucker you should read it it is like it was written today for the united states of america it it's incredible about

yeah

And the sad thing was, you know, he lived out his days in Vermont

and he was weird.

I mean, of course, anyone that deep is going to be weird.

And the Russians are weird and dark anyway and kind of solitary.

Tolstoy was the same.

Dostoevsky was the same.

And they're all kind of, it's in the character.

But how could he have been living in Putney or wherever he was?

He was like driving distance from where I live.

Why wasn't he like a national hero?

Why didn't we, you know, why wasn't he more famous?

He was kind of forgotten at the end.

And I really think looking back, the United States missed a huge opportunity with the fall of the Soviet Union to rethink what the country is about,

to sort of rededicate ourselves to our most, you know, essential values.

And someone like Soltznitson at that moment, because it's always when you win that you're at your most vulnerable.

You know, getting hit in the face actually tends to make you better.

The early church.

Christian church, when it was persecuted, was at its sort of clearest and most faithful and probably closest to what it should have been.

And as it succeeded and took over Europe and became the largest landowner, of course, it became decadent.

We had a reformation as a result of that.

I do think it's when you win that you fall apart.

And winning the Cold War in retrospect may have been like the worst thing that ever happened to the United States.

I think so, too.

But that also goes to something that, you know, for conservatives,

we never had to defend and we always just thought everybody was with us.

You know, we always thought that we all believed the same things about America.

We didn't.

And now I can tell you that most conservatives who are at all thinkers, we can run circles around the left because we're constantly thrown up against the wall and challenged.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, you can't be called a racist fascist for very long before you go, well, what is it that I'm saying?

Is there something that I am saying or that I do believe that is that way?

That's right.

And that's good and healthy.

I couldn't agree with you more.

The upside of this moment, which is obviously the darkest since the Civil War, I would say.

I think it's pretty clearly, it pretty clearly is.

The upside of it is people are traipsing up to the mental attic and discarding things they don't need and really taking stock, taking inventory.

What do I believe?

Why do I believe it?

It's really made most people weaker, but a small number of people much stronger and more purposeful and sharper and more decent.

The number of conversations I've had about God recently, I mean,

it's a little bit, I mean, you're publicly identified as religious, but I mean, I'm an Episcopalian.

I live in a totally secular world.

I never talk to people about God at dinner.

You know, the last five dinners I've had in my barn.

The conversation has gone toward God because people are really thinking about, you know, what comes after this.

And that's a great thing.

We should be thinking about that every day.

We all die.

Like, what happens then?

Why Why is this a national conversation?

Right, right.

And well, you know, it was during our founding.

It was.

That's what, that's what kind of stuff that people talked about.

You know, Franklin swore off unserious people around 19 around 1774, 75, because he said the times don't call for bon vivants.

We have to have serious conversations.

And he kind of switched his path.

And I think America is doing that

maybe perhaps without even recognizing it

yeah the I here's my fear and I think this every single day is that people are going to get really radical democracy is the safety relief valve you know don't storm the Bastille don't burn the federal building you can vote and you can change this if you convince people that their votes don't matter, they have no recourse and they become radical.

If you tell people that everybody, you know, that racial identity is the most important thing about you, identity politics demand that all of us identify by race, this is a majority white country.

You're going to get massive white identity politics.

I don't want to, I really don't want to live in that country.

Well, I tell you.

I just don't.

It's

missing that.

Honestly, I don't think even most Democrats.

uh want that and i'm not talking about party people i'm talking about the my neighbors who are democrats yes i don't think they want that either, but everything's been so politicized, but you couldn't, you can't tell me that this is designed to help our country.

There's no way

because everything, you talk to any psychologist, psychiatrist, anyone who studies humans, and they all know you're pushing all of the buttons to make people swing out.

That's what they want, unfortunately.

It's totally true.

I mean, when you tell people, oh, by the way, you know, we're withdrawing from Afghanistan, but the war's not over.

The war is here, and it's against white supremacy or people who don't want mandatory vaccination.

And DHS, by the way, is leading the charge to, you know, hunt down the, you know, fifth column within.

And you're now the Taliban.

And which they're saying out loud, you're the Taliban.

Really?

So what does that mean?

You're going to bomb my Tora Bora?

You know,

you are going to create Tim McVays.

like i'm the least paranoid person i know i'm from southern california i always think everyone likes me i think it's going to be great you know what i mean i just have that temperament it's inborn and i'm starting to feel a little bit paranoid i know they're reading my texts for example it's what's making me a little paranoid what if you're already paranoid and you didn't have you know, a wife and four kids and four dogs like I do, and you weren't kind of vested in the society, you had nothing to lose, and you turn on the TV and Joyanne Reid is calling you a white supremacist and calling on DHS to hunt you down.

Why wouldn't that push you over the edge?

I'm serious.

Why wouldn't it?

It would.

And by the way, you can't get a job because of your skin color.

What?

Your kids can't get work because of the way they look?

You are making people really radical.

And at some point, some crazy person is going to do something awful.

That will be used as a pretext to really clamp down.

I mean, you can see where this is going.

It's very obvious.

And I fear that.

I don't want that.

I don't want to

open violence.

I know.

I fear that as well.

I've started talking again about Martin Luther King and his rules of nonviolence,

you know, just to make sure that we're doing everything we can to stop it.

But I mean, I'm a fiction writer, so let me write some fiction on top of that.

Take that same person that you were talking about.

Now, take a government that is colluding with social media and a nefarious guy, again, fiction writing, who

wants somebody to do something.

All you have to do is change the algorithm to keep feeding him more and more, and you can create your own killer.

That's totally right.

I mean,

I've never believed in any conspiracy theory of any kind whatsoever.

And now everybody I know, left and right, looks first to some kind of plot behind everything.

Why do we pull out of Afghanistan this way?

Well, because clearly there are conspiracies, and I don't mean like elaborate Illuminati type conspiracies, but like Biden isn't capable of running the country.

It's too cynical.

Like you, you push a senile guy on the country.

You change the way we vote.

You accelerate the craziness the second he wins.

I'm going to be the unity candidate.

The second he wins, they're like, no, they're intentionally dividing the country against itself.

People, this vaccine mandate stuff is, there's no health justification for this.

It is dividing families and ending friendships.

It is clear, so obviously, an effort to divide people against each other.

So you look at this and you're like, what the hell is going on?

Why would the U.S.

government want Americans to hate each other?

And it changes the way you think about everything.

You don't take anything at face value because you can't because they never stop lying.

So after a while, it changes the mindset of the entire population and there's no trust whatsoever.

Nobody trusts anybody anymore.

And there's just a really dark way of looking at the world.

That is the pre, that is the kind of breeding ground of like actual civil conversation.

Oh, so I mean,

I really did my homework on civil war and revolutions.

And that is exactly how they start.

That's exactly how they start.

And what's really frightening for me on the right

is

if you look at Donald Trump,

he was not the problem.

He was a symptom of the problem.

People could not take it anymore, that they weren't being listened to, that people would go in and not do what they say.

So he's destroyed.

And they become more radical.

The left becomes more radical.

That leaves people in a position of saying, well, if he couldn't couldn't get the job done, if he couldn't stop them, then we need somebody really tough to stop them.

And this just keeps jacked up over and over and over again until you have a country that none of us want to live in.

Well, and that's unfortunately, it's happening.

I mean, you, I don't think any of us understood the degree to which all of our systems were essentially voluntary.

So two weeks ago, the administration decides to re-up the moratorium on rent collection, on eviction.

And they say you can't evict someone from your property because that person doesn't pay you.

So this is, you know, you're voiding property rights.

What does the Supreme Court have to say about this?

The Supreme Court says, well, you can't do this.

The Congress has to vote on it.

You can't just do this by fiat.

It's not an executive, you can't do it in an executive order.

It's a democracy.

Someone has to vote on it.

So Maxine Waters has asked, and she's like, okay, the Supreme Court doesn't like it.

What are they going to do about it?

Nothing.

A bunch of old judges, what, they have guns?

I don't think so.

just ignore them and the biden administration did that and they got away with it because who's going to stop them once people start thinking like that you know we're importing two million people from foreign countries we don't even know their identities but we're just getting them in and flying into your neighborhood because we want to change the you know the electoral balance in the country they're doing that no one's stopping them so once People start to realize that, oh, wait, I don't need to obey.

Why am I paying my taxes?

Honestly, like, why am I participating in this?

There aren't enough cops to arrest me.

I can do, I mean, you can see that anarchy is a lot closer than we think it is.

Once the veil drops and might makes right, and the guy with the most power or the most ammunition gets to do exactly what he wants, then everybody feels that way.

And it's, it's,

I don't know.

I think we're understating what they're destroying right now.

I really think it's going to be very hard to put civil society back together after the Biden administration.

Do you worry about

your future?

Never.

Never.

I never even think that.

Ever.

You never worry about your job being able to do it.

I never think that.

No, because I'm 52.

My last child went to college yesterday.

I'm not rich.

I don't have a mortgage.

I paid off the mortgage.

I don't have any credit card debt.

So

I'm not, ask anyone who knows me.

I'm the least ostentatious liver you've ever, you know, I fly Southwest.

I just don't have a lot of economic needs.

just I'm being as honest as I can be.

So I don't really care about that.

I love my job, but I can't control it.

I work for a family,

the Murdoch family, that has been totally consistent and very serious about protecting free speech.

I have no idea if they agree with what I say.

I doubt it sometimes, but I don't know.

What I know is they're not going to be bullied into taking me off the air.

So I'm so grateful for that.

It's the thing that I'm most grateful for in my professional life.

On the other hand, God knows where the world is going.

So

I can't worry about it.

I feel like at this point, I fell into this job.

I didn't earn it.

Bill O'Reilly left.

I got the job.

And that was basically an accident or it was through the kindness of Rupert Murdoch.

And I found myself in this position at a certain time of life where I can say what I really think is true and I plan to until they take me off the air.

And then, you know, God knows.

I really admire you, Tucker.

You know, you and I have not always agreed on things, but I have to tell you,

you are one of the only people in the media, on, you know, traditional corporate media that is telling the truth.

It's so well researched, so well done.

And I know I've been in your position.

I know what it takes.

They don't pay people like us a lot of money because we're so talented.

It's because

you give up an awful lot.

And in today's world,

I know what you're going through.

And I really admire you.

I think you're one of the bravest men in America today.

Well, luckily,

I mean, I happen to like, so I live in the woods, obviously, and I like that.

I love nature and I like living in the woods.

And so that kind of suits me.

I've always had a happy marriage.

I was been married 30 years last week.

And so I love my wife and my dogs and my kids.

I'm just kind of happy.

So I don't, I just feel like it was a, it was a, it was an accident that I wound up here.

It doesn't bother me that the Atlantic magazine doesn't like me.

I don't read it.

I don't care what they think.

You know, I have so little respect for them that their opinions are irrelevant to me.

And as long as my wife and our producers and my friends and my children and my dogs still like me, then I'm happy.

And I think they do.

With each passing day, it's obvious that the party who usurped power is falling apart.

The problem is they're taking the entire country and world with them.

That's why I expect maybe

possibly some shortages, you know, of a few things, maybe food.

I'm just saying, mega drought, it's a big threat and threat of more lockdowns, inflation, instability all around the world.

The food supply chain is very fragile, always, but even more so now.

When that happens, it won't be long before food disappears from grocery stores.

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Let me go through a couple of things.

I want to understand your take on Afghanistan.

People are calling you a fascist and you hate immigration and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Are you really?

I'm not on Twitter too.

We are,

I think we're on the same page, but I could be wrong because it appears as though we're polar opposites.

I don't want a bunch of people.

I want people who

want to be an American and know what that means.

I think the more, the merrier of those people who are coming here because they don't have the ability to do what you can only do in America and wants to play by the constitutional rules.

We have most Americans don't want to do that now.

They can make us stronger.

But I don't want open borders.

And from Afghanistan, the way this is looking, we're just, who's on that plane?

I don't even know who's on that plane.

And I don't think we know who's on that plane.

That's right.

Was that your point on Monday?

Of course.

It'll be my point tonight.

We're leading with it again.

I mean, I think of, look, if you're running America, you need to think of it like your house.

Okay.

You're always willing to have house guests and get them a drink and do what, you know, you want and be hospitable.

And, you know,

that's the flavor of life, like having people, we have house guests constantly.

We never don't have house guests in my house.

So I'm all for that.

But you don't take

anyone off the street like you really care because your kids live there too.

You know what I mean?

Ultimately, their welfare is the most important thing.

So I'm not going to invite a child molester to my house because I have four children.

And so you need to approach this with maximum care as if you actually gave a crap about your house and the people who live there.

That's it.

And so I feel like right now in American hit, you know,

this country is too divided.

Our society is too volatile.

I feel like things are falling apart.

I don't think that's an overstatement.

I try not to say things that are, you know, inflammatory for their own sake.

I do feel like things are falling apart.

Look around.

And one of the reasons they are is because Americans haven't decided what unites us.

What do all Americans have in common?

It's not a language.

It's not a religion.

It's not a skin color.

It's not a shared history.

So what is it?

Our unum used to be the Bill of Rights, and it's not anymore.

Right.

Exactly.

So until we can decide corporately together what it is that holds us together, We can't have a single more person, another person move here.

I don't think, I think we need to just like stop and say, okay,

totally happy to have the best people in the world move here, but we need to figure out what it is that unites us because countries don't hang together just because.

It's a physics principle.

I mean, centrifugal force is real, and a continental country will spin apart into its component elements.

We have 50 states.

Why wouldn't they become countries?

Why wouldn't you have a series of wars?

I mean, you could see this really going.

wrong.

And so we need to decide on that.

And we need to, that's a matter, that's an urgent priority i think it's the urgent priority and endless waves of new people

is a terrible idea and it's our fault it's not theirs okay so i i started because we don't tell them people come to the country ilhan omar is rescued from a refugee camp in kenya yeah and she comes here and we don't convince her that this is a good country we tell her it's a terrible country correct So it's our fault.

We're not good at assimilating immigrants anymore.

So in 2016, I started something called the Nazarene Fund that went for the persecuted Christians and Yazidis in Syria and Iraq and moving them mainly to Australia.

And they have, Australia is really good at assimilation.

You have to speak the language, everything else.

But they've been really good.

This on Monday, I called the head of the fund and I said, how can we help?

I mean, because you know there are Christians there.

How do we help?

I'm trying to raise $20 million

in the next two days to be able to get these people out.

We have 3,000 to 5,000 Christians that are verifiable Christians because that was put on their paperwork.

Their paperwork, if you, you know, papers, please.

Our sanctioned government, somehow or another, allowed that to happen beginning in 2009.

And so now these people are the ones who said openly in a very dangerous place, I'm Christian.

So they're not coming to the United States, but they are going to a country that will accept Christians and people from Afghanistan.

Do you have a problem with that?

Well, I'm totally for that.

I mean, one of the reasons that I've always been willing to defend Assad,

who clearly is a bad guy in a lot of ways, is that the Assad family created a refuge for Christians in Syria.

That's just true.

And Christians throughout that whole region, I am Christian.

So I don't think it's weird for me to be interested in the plight of Christians around the world.

It's considered like immoral or something.

I don't care.

But

I'm for helping the Christians because I am Christian.

And this is a majority Christian country.

It began that way.

It's part of who we are.

It triggers the hell out of them when you say that.

But again, I don't care.

That's just true.

And so, yes, the Obama administration, by the way, excluded Christians from Syria.

I know that.

On purpose.

I know.

And nobody said anything about it.

And I mean, don't even get me going, but like, where are our church leaders?

Where are Christian ministers on this?

They said nothing.

And they should have to live with that, in my opinion.

But anyway, no, I'm, look, I'm totally for that.

But I just, my first concern is the United States.

And I mean, housing prices are so out of control.

I'm pretty affluent.

Our family's pretty affluent by, you know, national standards, I guess.

How are my kids going to buy a house?

And they have a lot of advantages, my kids.

If you're not my kid and your dad is an HDAC guy, like you're not buying a house, like period.

And so.

Part of that is a numbers question.

A crowded country is more expensive.

And how, you know, how many people can we take?

I don't know.

I think that's a completely, no one else is asking that question.

So I am.

Like, what's the ideal population?

Is it infinite?

We have 340 million, probably higher than that, actually.

But I don't know.

Like, in the next 10 years, how many people do we want?

Let's start there.

You know,

I don't have a number.

I just have a quality that I'm looking for.

Somebody that believes that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and governments are instituted among men to protect those rights.

That's all I want.

That's all I want.

Let me give you something from the Atlantic because I know you're not reading it.

You are,

you're called a fascist because of the Hungarian prime minister.

The Atlantic writes, under the new, now this is, they're describing Hungary.

Okay, try to not think of the United States on this.

Under the new emergency legislation, his far-right party can effectively govern unchallenged, bypass both parliament and existing laws.

It permits people to hand out jail terms for those deemed to be spreading misinformation.

Though other countries have imposed their own emergency measures to combat the crisis, Hungary's are by far the most far-reaching and the most permanent.

Though the Hungarian government insists these measures will only last as long as the crisis does, the duration is entirely up to the Prime Minister.

You have said Hungary is more free than

we are in many ways.

Much more.

Much more free.

And look, I don't speak Hungarian, just to be clear.

And you can't understand a country adequately or really at all until you speak the language, period.

So,

and I've learned that from traveling around the world.

I've been to many, many countries.

And so I'm not here to defend the Hungarian government.

I can only tell you what I saw, which is you have a country in which the press is much more balanced than here.

The majority of the press in Hungary opposes the regime, opposes Viktor Horban's government, the majority, but not 98%

on one side, as you have here.

The opposition doesn't need armed bodyguards.

If you criticize the regime in this country with a big platform, and I don't need to tell you this, you need armed bodyguards, period, because I'm trying to hurt you.

If you put a poster in your window in a store in downtown New York opposing, I don't know, mandatory vaccines or Black Lives Matter, they'll shut your store down.

They'll break your windows.

That is not true in Budapest at all.

So on the most basic level, there is a lot more freedom there.

And by the way, if you want to know how the political system works, Victor Orban is up in April.

He could very likely lose.

So no one has ever claimed that an election in Hungary was unfair.

I mean, there's far more evidence of voter fraud in the United States than there is in Hungary.

So I don't know what, again,

I don't live there.

Victor Orban is not a

it's it's fair to compare not without defending, isn't it?

Isn't it of course?

I mean,

I don't work for Victor Orban.

He's not a friend of mine.

I mean, whatever.

It's Hungary.

I'm American.

Unlike a lot of the people at the Atlantic, I don't have another passport.

I'm staying here.

I have nowhere to go.

I'm riding this puppy wherever it goes.

So I am as thoroughly American and as thoroughly stuck here as anyone has ever been.

I'm not leaving.

So don't give me that crap.

I mean, it's just so dumb.

What's interesting, though, is what a threat the reality of Hungary is.

I mean, I would just suggest to your audience, go to Budapest for a week.

How many drug addicts do you see living on the sidewalk?

Do you feel like you're going to get stabbed riding the subway?

No.

Is there spray paint everywhere?

No.

Is there soul-destroying modernist architecture just wrecking the landscape?

No.

It's like way nicer.

Are there all kinds of weird chemicals in the food that castrate men?

No.

Do you know what I mean?

So like, why is that bad?

I'm not moving there.

I'm staying here.

But it's not necessary to have all that crap in your society.

This is a choice.

We don't need rapists wandering around pushing people in front of subway cars.

We don't have to live across from a homeless encampment where people are shooting heroin as your kids walk to school.

Like, we only have that because we allow it.

We don't have to.

Like,

we don't have to have crime.

There's no crime on the scale that we have in Hungary.

And it's not about guns.

It's just like they don't put up with it.

Most societies don't, by the way.

So why are we?

And that's just a really simple question.

Why are we putting up with this?

Because our leaders want it.

You know, that's the answer.

We wouldn't have it if they didn't want it.

Michael Cherdoff said to me years and years ago, this is before social media and everything else.

We were talking about something on the air.

We got off the air and I said, let me email something to you.

And he just smiled and shook his head.

He said, oh, I don't have email.

And

I said,

and I said, really?

And he said, no, if people knew about email and digital communication, I don't think anyone would have it.

Now,

I don't think that's true.

I don't think, I think we've come to a place to where we have convinced ourselves we cannot live or function without it.

And that leads us to all kinds.

I remember being on the air 25, 30 years ago saying,

I'm not giving the government my fingerprint.

Absolutely not.

We give it to Apple gladly.

We have retinal scans so we can get on the airplane faster.

It's insane what's happened.

You have been hit by the NSA and they've been, they unmasked you.

We know this for sure.

They've admitted that they unmasked you, which is not an easy thing.

They would have to have all kinds of reasons for it.

Do you actually think, though, that you're going to find out what really happened?

Do you think that anything is going to stop?

No, of course not.

I mean, look, the only way it stops is if the media decide that, you know, we can't allow this.

I mean, there's a principle at stake that we must defend.

And of course, they're not in the business of defending principles.

They're in the business of destroying them and acting on behalf of the party in power because that's where they think their future, you know, their future lies.

That's their advantage.

So, no, I mean, of course not.

You'll never find out.

And I'm, you know, as a practical matter, I was annoyed because I was trying to get an interview with Putin, which I thought would be really interesting.

It'd be very interesting.

I'm not a Putin worshipper, but why wouldn't you want to interview Putin?

I'm a journalist.

And, you know, it completely spooked the Russians.

So now I don't get my interview with Putin.

And, you know, they were going to use this.

I mean, they leaked it to news organizations that I was trying to set up this interview to make me seem like I was some Russian stooge or whatever.

It's just so dumb.

I mean, anybody who thinks that Russia is the primary threat to America is like an idiot.

And I don't care what you think anyway.

If you think, I mean, that's just too stupid for me.

I can't deal with it.

Obviously, China is the primary threat.

There's kind of no other way to look at it based on the evidence.

And, you know, but you have to ask yourself, why would, again, the U.S.

government want to divide the population against itself, whip up hysteria, start witch hunts, hurt American citizens?

I mean, why aren't we turning that against our enemies?

Why are we doing it to our own people?

I'm a citizen.

I pay taxes.

Like, you can't treat me like that, but they can, and they will until people decide, no, we're not doing that anymore.

Let me end here with some questions just about about where we're headed now, what we should be doing.

First of all, the Democrats are pushing everything they can to fix the election

and change the way we vote.

If that happens, then

it's over.

But

if that doesn't happen,

where should the Republicans be going?

I mean,

you know, you have an interesting balance, and I think we have the same feeling.

Nationalism is not bad

unless it is

you will be an American, and it becomes fascistic.

Populism isn't bad unless it's just out of control.

Those two things aren't bad as long as they're balanced with principles that are

founding documents.

Where is the Republican going and what's the right balance and what should it be concentrating on?

I mean, I couldn't agree with you more.

Nationalism and populism are part of the mix.

I mean, I do think like as a foreign policy question,

every decision ought to,

a top line question ought to be, how does this serve the interests of the United States?

Now we can debate what those interests are.

But that clearly has to be the guiding force behind everything that we do abroad.

Does this help us?

And we hope that it helps other people in the process because we're generous, open-hearted people, but it has to, it's the U.S.

government.

So the U.S.

government has to act on behalf of the population of the United States.

Populism is an expression of frustration that reminds us that this is a republic.

It's a representative government.

Our representatives in Washington ought to be acting on our behalf.

And populism is like a wake-up call.

When you ignore it, it gets much more intense, which is what they've done.

I think the Republican Party at this stage has a really clear mission, and that's to protect its people.

No one else is.

Every power center in the country is on one side.

You know,

every big corporation,

all education, K-through, you know, doctorate, it's all on one side.

The church, this kills me to say it, but many churches are also on that side, the leadership.

And so really the only power available to people who dissent, it's probably 45% of the country, is this party, the Republican Party.

That's it.

They are the last men standing.

They're the defenders.

They have to defend their people because their people have no other means of defense.

And if you abandon your people, then your people decide, well, no one's going to defend me.

I'm buying a gun.

I'm serious.

The people will get super radical if they feel cornered and they feel like, you know, I'm under attack and no one's come to save me.

Yep.

You know, God knows what I'll do at that point.

I'm not joking at all.

And I've told a million Republican office holders.

The problem is that a lot of them

are weak.

And you see this with men.

I got to say, I can't control myself.

I really make an effort to highlight brave people because I think this is a moment that demands bravery.

You know, people, the individuals standing up in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square and saying, no, you're going to have to run me over.

Probably 95% of the people we find and put on the air are women.

Had one last night, a nurse in North Carolina.

I'm sorry.

I'm totally for vaccines.

I'm not going to be forced to take one.

I'm resigning my job.

I'm putting everything on the line.

I had her on.

And I thought to myself, that's about the 20th woman in a row, and I love them all.

And they're heroes.

However, where are the men?

Where are the men?

Something has happened to American men.

We know sperm cancer are the lowest ever recorded.

We know testosterone is the lowest ever recorded.

We know that it's falling.

That has massive consequences.

What the hell?

NIH is funding precisely zero studies on this.

What?

We're not going to be able to continue the species, but that's not a subject of concern or interest to you.

What?

What the hell is going on?

But you see it in their behavior.

So someone like Ben Sass, who I consider really smart and thoughtful and a decent person, I'm sure he's a good dad.

and whatever.

I think the same of Mitt Romney, actually.

Mitt Romney's kids seem to like him.

I disagree with Mitt Romney, but I think Mitt Romney's like not a bad guy at all.

I mean, if he was, I'd let him babysit my children.

I'm being serious.

And there are a lot of them like this.

Roger Wicker of Mississippi, I think he's probably a good guy.

They're weak.

There's something in them that's weak, and they've decided, I'm not, you know, the other side is ascendant.

The left is winning.

I'm not going to push any buttons that, you know, might infuriate them.

They're just,

they're not lionhearted.

And this is a moment when you need people who aren't, you know, vicious, lashing out, crazy, that I hate that, but who are legitimately strong, who will say, here are my principles.

I will clearly articulate them for you.

And by the way, I'll die for them because that's what principles are, you know, real principles, not BS, you know, this is the tax rate I want, but like people should be allowed to say what they really believe.

That's called freedom of speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

That's a non-negotiable point, period.

Someone who will do that.

And they're like none of them.

The only ones who will do it are women.

And that has a lot of consequences.

For one thing, it drives the women crazy.

A lot of really angry women right now, have you noticed?

And I think a lot of them are angry because their men are weak.

I do think that.

I mean, I don't think that.

I know that.

And I've been married to the same woman for 30 years.

And if you want to make her mad, you know, weak men, this is true for a lot of, I have three daughters.

I see this.

I see this all the time.

Weak men make them mad because it's wrong.

And this is like basic and human.

You All the true, basic, human things are the things we're not allowed to talk about.

We can talk about our dumb theories, but the way that people really are, nature, nature itself is so offensive to our leaders because it challenges their totally unnatural program.

There's nothing less natural than neoliberalism.

It's an assault on nature.

It's a denial of nature.

But at its core, nature is about sex differences.

Men and women are different.

Does and stags are different.

Their difference is the central fact of the natural world.

And

if something falls out of balance in that relationship between male and female, everything else is affected by it.

Everything.

And so at the core of the volatility and the craziness and the too rapid to digest change that's going on is this weird lack of balance between men and women.

And I think it's physiological.

I don't think this is not just a cultural phenomenon.

You know, the massive increase in trans-identifying kids, it's not just a result of propaganda from the schools.

And that's part of it.

But it's bigger than that.

This has never happened in human history, in all human history.

This has never happened.

So that's a red flag right there.

What the hell is this?

Now, you could be totally for it.

Or you could be totally opposed.

It doesn't even matter how you feel about it.

As a phenomenon, it's worth studying.

What is going on?

And it's the one thing that nobody mentions.

And I just have noticed this.

I mean, just like empirically, just around me.

And I'm hardly a genius and I'm not a scientist, but this is so obvious, you'd have to be a liar to ignore it, and we should not ignore it.

What is your theory that that is causing it?

You know, I don't even have an operative theory on it.

I mean, everyone you ask who's thought about it says, well, I think there are plastics in the food.

Clearly, you know, and I have no idea.

I can't, I don't have the tools to assess that.

Clearly, our food is garbage.

I mean, there's no question about that.

No question.

Everyone's down on cigarette smoking.

Oh, cigarettes are so bad.

Really?

Are they worse than wheat thins?

I'm not sure they are, actually.

Man, you've processed food.

I mean, maybe they are.

Tell me how.

But

processed food in this country, and this is not true in all countries, it's just in Europe.

is very, very different.

Again, I don't have deep knowledge about this.

i'm just noticing what is very very obvious there's something and there was just a remarkable book written about this by a former new york times reporter who i interviewed who said you know no our food is so engineered just like everything else in our world just like just like the iphone it's engineered to hook you so is our food but over time it has physiological effects i remember as a kid on hosting crossfire in my 20s defending gmos and like bro there's nothing wrong with gmos i had no freaking idea what a gmo was but that was like the right-wing position to defend gmos

Do I work for agribusiness now?

Like, why the hell was I doing that?

I have no idea.

Because I was a kid.

I was an idiot.

I was just a shill.

I was like a, you know, you could get me to say the things I thought I had to say.

Now that I'm older, I still don't know much about GMOs, but I mean, why don't we talk about this?

You're engineering food

because it's more efficient.

Are there physiological effects of that?

No human population in history has ever eaten this stuff.

Is it good for you?

I mean, why don't don't we have that conversation?

Like, so things like food, sex,

water, these are the basic things in life.

And when they change, everything else changes.

I would add one thing.

Again, I'll just last thing I'll say: nobody talks about it, but we should talk about it.

I would add one thing to that list: communication.

We don't.

We have done the biggest experiment on humankind, and we have all just adopted it, except for the kids of the people that run Silicon Valley, right?

And we're just these slab rats and we have no idea.

I mean, I think that has done so much damage all around the world.

We look at the good things.

You know, it kills me.

The Taliban used Twitter to

organize, to go into different cities and take them over, but Donald Trump can't.

You know, Twitter, Twitter won't help the people in Cuba.

It's, I mean, we're just being led around by a nose ring.

Tucker, it is.

It's great to talk to you.

Thank you so much.

Oh, I loved it.

Thank you for having me, Glenn.

It was super fun.

Yeah.

God bless.

Bye-bye.

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