Glenn Greenwald: The Truth About Epstein, Jake Tapper's Humiliation, & Insane New Push to Nuke Gaza

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Must be a little weird to get scooped by CNN on Joe Biden's dementia.

Like you had no idea.

None of us knew.

But no, that now Jake Tapper has uncovered the truth.

Like, it turns out Joe Biden was in cognitive decline.

Did you know that?

How did he find out?

Just hardcore shoe leather investigators.

He's working his sources.

Working his sources, like calling all the people in Washington, digging up like FOIA documents.

I just find the Epstein file so fascinating because the two biggest issues are: are there people to whom he's trafficked minors?

But nobody has been charged with being the recipient of that sex trafficking.

But the much more interesting question for me is: was he working with or for any foreign intelligence agencies?

Israel is the number one recipient of NSA technology and NSA intelligence.

But at the same time, the documents that describe who are our greatest intelligence threats, who are our greatest intelligence adversaries, who spies on us the most, who is capable of spying out the most, number one on the list is Israel as well.

well.

All right, Glenn, I think last time you were here, I ambushed you just by rolling the cameras.

Not doing that.

We are on camera right now.

Right.

It was, it was funny because every show you ever go on, it always begins in some sort of way to indicate that you're actually starting.

Like, Glenn Greenwald, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Tucker, for having me.

But the last time I was on, we were just sitting here chatting, and it turned out 10 minutes in, I was like, oh, but we're rolling.

Yeah, we've been rolling since we started.

Yeah, but you are one of those people, and this is the highest compliment I can give, who's exactly the same off-camera, exactly the same as you are on camera.

Right.

No, but that's why that's why it's no different.

I thought our conversation was just the conversation that we always have.

And it turned out it was just the show, which made no difference.

Your staff courteously let me see this first 10 minutes.

I was like, yeah, that's what I think.

That's how I, how I speak.

And that's all fine.

Yeah.

There is, if you like Glenn Greenwald, you'll like him at dinner.

Trust me.

That, that's what I can say about you.

So

you are, I think, the dean of alternative media.

You've been doing this longer than anybody

that I know personally.

So it must be a little weird to get scooped by CNN on Joe Biden's dementia.

Like you had no idea.

None of us knew.

You know, I mean, there was that debate and we were all shocked, but we were like, but we were told he had a cold.

So it was like, okay, he's on some cold medication.

Like, who hasn't been there before?

It makes you a little drag, drag, like a little droggy, a little groggy, a little just like dragged.

But no, that now Jake Tapper has uncovered the truth.

Like, it turns out Joe Biden was in cognitive decline.

Did you know that?

How did he find out?

Just hardcore shoe leather investigators.

He's working sources.

Working his sources, like calling all the people in Washington, digging up like FOIA documents.

No, it really, you know,

it's one of those things where you kind of can't believe what you're witnessing because Jake Tappert is pretending to have uncovered a scandal that he himself led the way in the media or one of the leaders in the media in covering up to the point where if somebody would go on his show and say, Joe Biden is obviously in cognitive decline, he can't get a sentence out.

He would say, how dare you bully kids who stutter?

Like, what do you, are you at all ashamed of what you're doing?

That's what he told Laura Trump, which she was like, yeah, I just, I feel bad for Joe Biden.

I wish he could get a sentence out.

And he's like, do you ever think about what you're doing to kids who stutter and the kind of world you're creating for them?

And she's like, what?

Like everyone else, I never even knew Joe Biden had a stutter.

I've been watching him for decades.

I never saw him stutter before.

The whole stuttering thing was just itself.

Did you say that?

Yes.

He told Laura Trump that she was like at an event and she was a very like, you know, benign remark.

She was just saying, yeah, you watched Joe Biden.

Cause we've talked about this before.

I was on your show.

it wasn't even when he was president.

It was in the run-up to the 2020 campaign.

And we were talking about this.

And we always talked about everybody I know did.

No one takes joy in it.

Like, we've all had that experience of watching an older person in our family, you know, go through cognitive decline.

It's actually quite sad.

So the way she was saying it was like, yeah, you know, honestly, as a human being, I watched Joe Biden and he's in the middle of a sentence that he can't finish.

I'm like, come on, Joe, get that out.

And then when he went on, she went on Jake Tapper's show.

He played that tape and he said,

Do you understand the world of bullying that you're creating for kids who stutter?

And she was like,

What?

I'm not sure there are any stuttering kids.

Yeah.

And she's like, I didn't even know he had a stutter.

And he said, and we all know he has a stutter.

And I know that you are mocking his stutter.

And so this was not just a person who didn't speak about Joe Biden's cognitive decline, who's now uncovering this shocking truth that 85% of the public has known for years, according to polls.

He was, he would go on.

I heard him this week saying one of the very few people in the, because he was asked why didn't people in the Democratic Party speak up and say this since they all knew it.

And he said, well, Dean Phillips tried and he got mauled and maligned and his character was attacked by the Democratic Party.

I was like, by the Democratic Party?

Go watch what happened when Dean Phillips went on Jake Tapper's show and said that one of the reasons he was running for president, he was concerned about Joe Biden's age and his infirmities and how he couldn't win and couldn't govern.

And Jake Tapper said to him, do you know that your Democratic colleagues despise you and they've been telling me the worst possible thing?

That's what he did to everybody who went on his show

in order to say, hey, I think Joe Biden's in cognitive decline.

He was, he was, I mean, obviously he wanted Biden to win desperately and would not.

tolerate anyone going on the show and saying that Biden was in cognitive decline.

And now he's making millions of dollars off a book.

But the only good thing is that his credibility is so in tatters from it that he had to hire a PR crisis firm, like the kind that Anthony Weiner had to hire, that like Puffy Combs hired.

Like imagine being a journalist and being exposed is such a fraud that you have to hire a PR crisis team of the kind that like public figures hire when they're involved in some like big, you know, sex scandal or like bribery scandal.

That's who's managing Jake Tapper's behavior and his compartment.

They've tried to place like hit pieces on me and succeed in like, you know, shitty places like the Deli Beast.

But every, and everything he says now is scripted, you know, like every interview he does now.

At first, it was like, what are you talking about?

This is outrageous.

And now every time he's in an interview, he says, I look back on my coverage with humility.

You know, that phrase they feed you to make it seem like you're accepting accountability.

Well, your money is my fault.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's interesting, though, is to, that it wasn't just,

you know, I disagree with you.

Biden seems fine to me.

What's interesting is that he used the kind of most vulgar moral blackmail you can't, like, you're attacking children who stutter.

You're attacking disabled kids when you criticize the president of the United States.

Like, that is so low.

It's hard to believe that happened.

I haven't seen the clip, but.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he claims he called Laura Trump to apologize.

Maybe he should do that on his show since that's where he told his audience she was.

attacking kids who stutter.

Like that's a pretty, that's like one of the worst things pretty much that you could do is like bully kids with disabilities, right?

Like if my kids ever did that, I would punish them for three months,

you know.

So, like, accusing her of having done that, like, probably doesn't warrant a private apology, or maybe it does too.

But also, you know, you go on air and you were like, hey, I did something really despicable.

You know, what's so amazing, too, is they're trying to rewrite history.

Obviously, one of the ways they're trying to rewrite history is to say we were the victims of the fraud.

We in the media were the victims of the fraud, and we're so angry at this inner team of Joe Biden's White House advisors who kept this from us, who hid this,

even though the entire public knew forever but

i you know i've written about this so many times it drives me crazy how easily history is rewritten the first time i ever heard concerns about joe biden's cognitive decline was back in 2018 when the democratic field was coalescing of of you know people who was who were going to run against donald trump And they were really worried Joe Biden was going to get the nomination solely by virtue of name recognition because he was the vice president to Barack Obama for eight years, was viewed as loyal, has been around forever.

and they all knew there was no way he could sustain the rigors of an election because he was in cognitive decline and so it was like these democratic operatives like Andrea Mitchell talked about it Corey Booker and Julian Castro in that 2019 debate all made fun of Biden for not being able to remember what he had said three three seconds ago this it was the democrats who were raising it trying to alert everybody that you shouldn't vote for Joe Biden because he's not the same Joe Biden he was I'm not talking about 2023 I'm talking about 2018 and 2019 remember the minute

it was down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary, that's when all of a sudden the media narrative shifted and it became the only people who are talking about Biden's supposed cognitive decline are Bernie Bros and MAGA people.

And it's absolutely immoral and disgusting.

And that's when I wrote an article saying, what do you mean?

You were the ones who first raised it.

I heard it from you.

You know, those DC insiders.

So it's not, and the only reason why, you know, what saved Joe Biden from that was that COVID happened and he got to run the campaign from his basement where he only talked to like Nicole Wallace, who spoke to him like some, you know, ailing grandpa.

You know, that voice that you use for like your ailing grandpa, like, Mr.

President,

Mr.

Biden, hello.

Oh, and then you do that fake laugh if they get even close to a joke.

Cause those were the kind of interviews he was doing.

And he was in that basement in Delaware.

That's the only reason why he could sustain that campaign.

But it was so widely known.

I mean, his sister, Valerie, told a good friend of mine that she didn't want him to run in 2020 because he had dementia.

My former makeup artist, a makeup artist,

was there in the room when he was injected with amphetamines before an event more than once

during that campaign.

And like I said all that on TV and everyone I knew in DC who knew Biden, I knew Biden said, yeah, no, he's got dementia.

Like every, everybody knew.

Everybody knew.

It wasn't just like some right-wing Twitter thing where people were being cruel.

it was like the people who knew biden knew that so like how could you not well i think the the the the reason this media fraud of all the other media frauds that have been perpetrated is probably the most damaging in 2016 they pushed this whole deranged demented conspiracy theory that vladimir putin had sex tapes on donald trump or he was being urinated on by a prostitute and of course if you know donald trump that's pretty much the last thing that all the people on the planet it's one sin he didn't commit yeah no yeah but but you know it was it was was that sort of thing like they always accuse people on independent media or you know whoever of being conspiracy theorists like think about that conspiracy like donald trump was being blackmailed by the russian government into sacrificing the interests of the united states to serve the interests of the kremlin that really was the predominant media narrative from 2016 to 2018.

so that's what they did to try and stop trump the first time in 2020 you know weeks before the election the new york post had very serious reporting about the biden family unethically exploiting joe biden's influence in ukraine and China to profit not for themselves only, but also for Joe Biden.

And we were told by the media over and over the lie that this is Russian disinformation, that this laptop should be, the contents of it should be ignored because it's inauthentic.

That, of course, was when I left the intercept because they wouldn't let me write about it, claiming that there were doubts about its authenticity when I knew there weren't.

But that was, and then Twitter and Facebook censored it.

But on those kind of questions, like Russia gate, the authenticity of these emails, like for most Americans, they don't have the competence to judge that because they do other things.

But when it comes to

seeing older people and cognitive decline, most of them have had that experience with like a grandparent or a parent or a sibling or a neighbor or whatever, and don't need to be told by quote unquote experts that it's happening because they can see it with their own eyes.

And for the media to have sat there for a year and a half and told everybody, as Joe Scarborough said, this version of Joe Biden is the best Biden we've ever seen.

I mean, imagine being such a state propagandist that you do that and then keep your job.

I think that's why this scandal is so devastating to them.

And why, like, when Jake Tepper stands up to write a book saying, I've uncovered the truth with investigative reporting, you know, everybody is reacting with

justifiable nausea.

You got to admit, it takes some balls to do that, though.

I mean, I famously advocated for the Iraq war, realized in

2003 that it was a bad idea and said I was wrong.

What I didn't do was write a book saying like it was wrong and I always thought it was wrong.

Or like, hey, I'm here to write a book saying why the Iraq war was based on falsehoods.

It's like, we already know, Tucker.

Thank you.

Right.

Like, you didn't go and write that book because you were the one helping to perpetuate that.

Exactly.

I totally agree.

So I guess without repentance, without the acknowledgement of wrongdoing, of dishonesty, without saying, I screwed up and making that the headline, nothing that follows is credible at all.

It's like all fake unless you admit your role in the lie.

Right.

Which, which, and if that happened, if you you said, like, look, I was really swept up in the media bubble I was in.

Yes.

And I want to tell the story of why I did this or how I got, like, convinced myself of this lie,

then there would be some nobility to it.

There would be some value and work.

Yes.

But this is what I mean.

Like, you know, I was, there were several people, but myself was included who was, I was bashing the table every day.

You know, we were compiling tapes of Jake Tapper doing all the things that I had just referenced.

And I remember at the time, Jake Tapper always serving the Democratic Party in these ways.

And

his initial initial response was to send out like publicists to try and plant stories that I was lying, that I was manipulating media.

There was one in the Daily Beast, one in the Huffington Post.

Were we actually attacking you?

Oh, yeah.

They were pitching stories.

Yeah.

And there's, you know, they were in like shitty liberal sites that no one, like Huffington Post and the Daily Beast.

There was a couple others.

But they had pitched them like to the New York Post and to the Wall Street Journal, I think, as well.

Like New York Post got in contact with me.

They didn't run it because it was so easy to prove that.

What was the allegation?

That all of these incidents that I just described, and there were others as well, of things he did on his show, were like taken out of context or the video was manipulated, just like they did when people saw Joe Biden wandering around on that D-Day and had to be redirected by Georgia Maloney or having been taken off the stage by this.

That's the other thing.

They didn't just deny it.

They attacked anyone who said it.

People in 2024 who were saying, oh, look, Biden clearly doesn't know where he is, including at that event with Obama, that big George Clooney fundraiser.

The Washington Post wrote an article saying they were using, it was a new phrase, cheap fakes.

Like they weren't exactly fake, but the narrative was fake.

And anyone who said Joe Biden clearly is in cognitive decline, if you look at him at these events, they were called right-wing disinformation agents.

And as it turns out, George Cooney ended up saying, The reason why I wanted Biden not to run was because the Joe Biden I saw at that event was completely unrecognizable.

He was like a, he was, he has dementia.

And at the time when people were saying like, clearly he doesn't know where he is, being let off the stage by Barack Obama.

And none of this was new.

We, we, this is what we have been seeing for so long.

The media affirmatively use that disinformation term that has become their weapon of deception and propaganda and smearing people who tell the truth to label.

all of that disinformation.

And so they were the ones who perpetrated the fraud.

And now they're pretending like they're the ones uncovering it.

And it's, I think the reason they don't get it is because of that insulated bubble that they exist in.

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I think that kind of self-deception is a byproduct of the tribalism that really defines DC.

And it's like, we can't help the other side.

Like we're going to start with the other side is evil and anything that helps them we can't do.

Therefore, we're going to have to make some accommodations that may include lying, but it's not really lying.

It's in the service of the greater good.

Oh, yeah, which is what every person who has ever done anything evil has said to justify it.

I'm not an evil person.

I'm not a sociopath.

I'm doing something that seems evil, but it's for a greater cause.

The end is justify the means.

I mean, that's the most basic, basically a moral statement you can have.

And that's since the emergence of Trump, that is all that journalism has become.

Not just journalism, but so many academia, so many different institutions have renounced their core function, whatever that might be, science,

in order to

devote themselves to this monomaniacal mission of stopping Donald Trump and his movement.

That's right.

And, you know, Sam Harris,

just whether through stupidity or just like

inadvisable candor, you know, was the first one who came out when the Hunter Biden laptop stuff after he realized it was a lie and said, like, yeah, I guess this laptop was true, but at the end of the day, I really don't care.

If they have to lie about it, fine.

the evil of electing donald trump is so much greater and he was the first one to really candidly acknowledge what they are all thinking which is we'll lie we'll spread disinformation we'll you know hide things because the destruction and fear that we have of donald trump in power is so great that anything we do to try and impede it is not just justifiable, but almost like morally imperative.

That is how most of these institutions ended up reasoning.

And that's why they've lost their credit.

We're all Dietrich Bonhoeffer at this point.

Right.

Yeah, well, it's very self-glorifying, too.

Like we're on the front line of fighting fascism.

What, I mean, this is such a tired question, but I've never really gotten an answer that satisfies me.

What is, I mean, I look at Trump and I'm like, you know, this is not a radical person in most ways.

Why?

And a lot of the things that he says are things that the Democratic Party was like officially for 10 years ago.

You know, less wars, pay attention to the forgotten man.

Free trade is kind of bad.

Right, exactly.

Right.

I mean, this is, these are not, he is not a radical right-winger as I would have conceived of a radical right-winger in 1998 or 2018.

So why, why, but the hive like reacted to him like the devil does holy water, just like I can't be near you.

What, what is that?

I still don't fully understand it.

I think it's two things.

One less important, though still not trivial, which is compartmentally, he's just such a radical departure from the way anybody who has ever gotten close to the presidency has conducted themselves.

And I remember so well the time I realized.

Yeah, it's true.

But once you understand what that is,

you can put it

in the proper context and not go insane about it.

I remember the time that I realized just how far gone the media was when it came to this and like the political establishment generally, which was during the 2016 campaign when they kept asking about like collusion with Russia and collusion with Russia and all that.

And he said,

I don't know anything about that.

I have nothing to do with the Russians, but hey, Russians, if you're listening, they were asking him, Did you participate in the hacking?

Yeah.

And he was like, I didn't have anything to do with that.

But hey, like, Russia, if you're listening, maybe you could find Hillary Clinton's like 87,000 deleted emails.

Which was obviously like a joke, just like a bad, just a joke.

Like, I have nothing to do with Russia, but if they're such great hackers, maybe they can find the media took that and they, for over a year, earnestly pretended that this was proof that he was in cahoots with Russia because he submits hacking requests to Russia.

Like, if you have some like back channel, secret

relationship with Russia, the way you're going to like submit your requests is by standing in front of 130 cameras and be like, hey, Putin, this is my latest hacking request.

Go find those emails.

Instead of like me having a, you know, Don Jr.

meet in a parking lot with some like Russian agent or whatever.

I mean, but the fact that they

were willing to, they really thought that that was a smoking gun and could not understand how Trump jokes, how he uses irony, how he like purposely trolls was,

you know, the time that I realized just how far gone they were.

But I think the bigger reason why they were, and I think we've talked about this before, is

I would say since the end of World War II, maybe before that, but certainly since the end of World War II, what we have more or less is a continuity of core Washington dogma on foreign and economic policy.

Correct.

You have, you know, on the margins, things that make it appear like the parties are so different.

They fight about abortion.

They do disagree in abortion or culture war issues, all of that.

But on the question of how power is distributed, on how the U.S.

maintains global hegemony, on feeding the war machine, on how our economic

system functions and who it serves, there is complete continuity between Republicans and Democrats.

Like those permanent power factions in Washington, the corporatism, militarism, don't care at all who wins because their policies prevail no matter what.

You can vote for whoever you want.

You can vote against it.

You can vote for it.

It doesn't matter.

It continues.

Trump, by necessity, because the Republicans had already chosen Jeb Bush as their kindred, we all expected it was going to be another Bush-Clinton race.

It was going to be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

That was the assumption that everyone had.

Hillary would have lost had the DNC not not cheated for her, but they did cheat for her, so she was the nominee.

But the only way Trump could break through, how do you break through against all the Republican money behind Jeb Bush?

You have to run against the Bush family, you have to run against conservative Republican dogma on both financial economics and foreign policy.

He ran against the Iraq War, he ran against permanent war, he ran against serving corporatism at the expense of the working people, against free trade, at the expense of, you know,

like having an industrial base.

And he became a kind of threat.

And Steve Bennon was was the architect of the time.

And Steve Bennon's vision very much was that.

Like the Republican establishment is at least as bad as the Democratic establishment.

And he was a threat to disrupt this bipartisan continuity on which power factions in Washington depend.

And I think that's what made him so anathema to so many different factions.

He was a challenge to the post-war order, basically.

Like questioning the viability of NATO.

I know.

Which it's like walking into a church and saying, like, we sure Jesus is divine?

You know, like, that alone.

That, that actually changed my life when he said that.

I grew up around NATO, grew up supporting NATO unthinkingly, never thought about

NATO keeps the Soviets from rolling into Belgium, you know, and like, that's good.

What's why is that bad?

Of course, we love NATO.

And then he was like, hey, but like, the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.

No one had ever, in a lifetime in D.C., no one had ever mentioned NATO in a way that challenged me to think about what it was or its role until that.

And he just said it offhandedly.

And I was like, NATO, really?

He's against NATO?

How could you be against NATO?

And that began a chain of thinking that totally changed my view of everything.

So I think you're right.

It's dangerous to have people saying stuff like that.

I mean,

what you want is per continuity with the status quo.

And like, who was a more reliable maven of the status quo than Hillary Clinton?

Yes.

Or Joe Biden.

And so that's why they were so desperate, including all, you know, all the neocons and conservatives that you knew.

So many of them openly supported Clinton and Biden.

And many of them, like to this day, like half the Republican Senate caucus at least hates Trump, hates his ideology, hates his policy.

Oh, yeah.

You really think Mike Browns voted for Trump?

I don't think so.

I don't know, but I'm just saying, like, right, those types.

Yeah.

So can I just go back?

I want to ask you more about that and like the place of neoconservatives.

And I guess we're not allowed even to use that term.

So think of a new term as I ask you.

All right, I will.

But before we get to that, you mentioned Russia Gate a couple of times and the hacking and the subsequent leaking of those emails from the DNC.

Who did that?

It's possible, of course, that the Russians did it.

Like sometimes you get the official story and it's possible.

You know, I know Julian Assange a long time.

I know him very well.

And what a good man.

Oh, he's, I think he's like one of the heroes of our lifetime.

I agree.

And not just a hero, but like incredibly consequential.

I mean, just a decent person, too.

And like brilliant and courageous.

I agree.

Not without his personality flaws, but oftentimes that kind of courage.

Whenever people used to complain about Julian's difficult personality, let's use the generous term difficult personality.

I would always say, like, who do you think is going to go and like spill the secrets of the world's most powerful government?

You think it's going to be some like mild mannered like gentle congenial person no it takes a certain personality type yes and uh but in any event he had insinuated several times that it came from within the dnc he had raised the possibility that seth rich was murdered because he was the leaker

and uh

it was julian it was wiki leaks who ran those docs it was wiki leaks who received them yeah but who who shared them with the world who then published them all Exactly.

So it's not a small thing when the guy who runs WikiLeaks suggests something.

Correct.

That said,

if you are the recipient of leaks, as I've been many times, you don't actually know who the kind of, you're not sure if the person bringing you the leaks is the person who actually engineered it.

That could be a cut between, you know, a go-between.

And.

But at the same time, you know, Julian is extremely smart.

You know, I talked to him this day.

He's, I think, not fully recovered.

He'll never be.

I mean, after what he went through but his brain is you know just like a

font of insight

and

i trust his judgment so much you can go back and look at stuff he said and it proved to be so prescient i know and so when he says that i do think julian sees himself for good reason as an enemy of the intelligence agencies in the west i mean that He is that.

So undoubtedly.

We did like seven and a half years in confinement because of it.

Yeah, like eight years in the Ecuadorian Ecuadorian embassy and then four and a half years in the prison that the BBC calls

the British Guantanamo.

Mike Pompeo, the head of CIA, plotted his assassination.

So I think he...

He plotted his assassination, badgered the Ecuadorians into lifting the asylum they had given him and promised him and allowed the London police to go in and, you know,

coerced, threatened, bribed the Ecuadorians to lift that asylum, that grant of asylum so that they could then go in and Mike Pompeo in his like first month as CIA director gave a speech saying, we're going to destroy WikiLeaks.

It's time that they stop hiding behind the First Amendment.

So he was very serious about that.

Mike Pompeo should be charged with plotting someone's assassination.

That's a crime.

You can't do that in the United States.

I mean, there's so many things Mike Pompeo should be charged with, but we know for certain that he was wanting.

I mean, he was the CIA director thinking, oh, now I get to murder people who I want.

Yeah, who embarrassed me, who've never been charged with.

Not who committed crimes.

He'd never been charged with a crime in the United States when that.

Until, like, until 2018, when

they engineered this

obscenely baseless indictment that they knew.

They never wanted to bring him to the United States to stand trial.

He would never have been convicted.

They

wanted to break him psychologically and physically, and they came very close to doing that.

But in any event, so when Julian Hassan says something like that, part of me knows that he views himself as an enemy of the intelligence agencies and wants to use the same methods they use, which is sometimes you spread disinformation for confusion.

But I also believe that he believes there's something to it.

And so

we never had a real investigation into anything relating to Russia Gate at all because in the first term, Trump was, you know, that whole administration was commandeered.

It was run by people who were opposed to Trump's agenda.

for the most part.

And part of this new administration is constructed to avoid that from happening.

And I think they are now going back and looking at a lot of these things.

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what do you think the chances are that those emails came from a dnc employee

honestly i don't know i just i don't like to i'm open to it i'm definitely open to it but i'm not going to affirm it i think it's very strange probable i got from an mpd metropolitan police department officer who was a friend of mine the fact, which I've checked, which is that the FBI immediately took over the murder investigation.

Now, why would the FBI of a routine, supposedly routine, random

type attempted robbery?

Why would the FBI take that over?

Like, is there a good reason for that?

That's bizarre.

Yeah, I know.

That's why I say I'm open to it, even though

that's been something that is immediately branded like such an obvious conspiracy theory that the second you suggest that you're receptive to it.

But that's exactly when conspiracy theories are often ones that deserve attention.

I don't know.

An American citizen got murdered in my city.

And so I feel like I have an absolute right to ask, why did the FBI take that over and what did they learn?

And like, what is that?

That's a totally fair question.

They don't, you know, it's so funny.

They set themselves up as the arbiters of everything, as the moral arbiters for sure.

And you're like not allowed to ask that question.

It's like, I live, I spent my life in D.C.

I know the street he was shot on.

He's an American just like me.

I have absolutely a fundamental right to ask, like, and same with Epstein.

Why wasn't there a real investigation into this?

And, like, this seems anomalous.

Like, what's the answer?

Well, shut up.

Well, and then the tactic is by like the bench peers of the world and the people who are the same, like the people who have anointed themselves to be the guardians of official versions, or you know, no challenging any sorts of like, why did the USS Liberty happen?

Those kind of things.

Like, what happened with JFK?

Why was JFK?

My favorite was, why was JF Kimberly?

I don't care.

It was a long time ago.

Yeah, it was so long ago.

Yeah, it was a long time ago.

And uh

the present i'm mocked at now is just asking questions they'll be oh it's like i don't know i feel like my job as like a not just a journalist but a human being and a citizen is like i kind of want to be asking questions i don't want to just be ingesting what i'm told because what we've been told has been proven to be deliberate lies so often Also, I like people who ask questions.

I'm uncomfortable with people who make declarative statements exclusively because you actually don't know the answer to most things.

Like I said, where do you think those emails came from?

Podesta's emails, DNC emails.

And you're like, I don't really know, but here are the questions that I have.

Like, that's the honest answer.

Well, also, you know how many times, not just in politics where deliberate lies happen, but in every field of discipline, like physics and chemistry and biology, everything, linguistics, where a certain time arrives and people believe they've discovered an absolute proven truth.

And by the next generation, it's completely debunked.

Like if you don't have, and that's why I believe in the absolute necessity of preserving the right to question everything, that's the scientific method.

Yeah, and it's just basic humility.

It's like to think that human beings have discovered unchallenged truths that can never be disproven and that from here, henceforth, you're not allowed to question.

No, I'm not accepting that from anybody.

Oh, I want to print that and put it on my fridge.

I'll give you, I'll sign it for you.

Good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let me, let me do the apps.

Do you want to talk about the Epstein files in relation to that as well?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, just because I just want to, I just find the Epstein files so fascinating because

all the people who are now in charge of the government under Donald Trump,

particularly Cash Patel and Jan Bungino at the FBI, but others as well throughout the government, were...

Over the last four years, everywhere in the media, on their shows, on every other show, banging on the table, demanding the immediate release of all the Epstein files.

We're now five months into the Trump administration.

We haven't gotten a single document that wasn't previously published of the Epstein files.

They made a humiliating showing of pretending to release it when they called those conservative influence and they all waved around the binder, Epstein files.

We were like, oh my God, what was in them?

And then it turns out, like, nothing.

You know, just every document that was in this binder was already previously released as part of the litigation or journalism that was done.

And the Pam Bondi's new excuse, because I mean, I'm glad that there are a lot of people in the Trump movement and the Mug movement who are not contrary to how they're depicted in some sort of cult.

Like they, they hold these people accountable.

Like they want to understand, like, we were promised these things.

Like, why isn't this happening?

And so, Pam Bondi's excuse now is we have thousands and thousands of sex videos of Jeffrey Epstein having sex with minors, implying that it's obviously going to take a lot of time to go through these videos.

And therefore, we have to be patient before we get them.

And it's like,

I don't care about sex videos of Jeffrey Epstein having sex with children because we already know that Jeffrey Epstein had sex with children.

That's kind of the reason we know who he is.

He's been twice charged with that, once convicted, and then was ready to be charged again.

For me, the two biggest issues are, are there people to whom he trafficked minors

because he was charged with sex trafficking, but nobody has been charged with being the recipient of that sex trafficking.

But the much more interesting question for me

is, and there's a lot of reason to believe it's true, is,

was he working with or for any foreign intelligence agencies?

There is no way they don't already have that answer.

Maybe the answer is no.

Maybe he wasn't working with any.

It would shock me, but maybe that's their answer.

Maybe their answer is he was.

Why don't we have those answers?

Like, have FBI agents, for whatever reason, go through those sex tapes for the next three years.

That's That's fine.

What stops them from releasing that question?

For people who may not be as familiar with the details, what leads you to raise that question?

Is there evidence that suggests he might have been working with a foreign intelligent?

Well, first of all, the source of his wealth has always been mysterious.

I mean,

he wasn't just very rich.

He was living the life of a multi-multi-billionaire.

He had, you know, $50 million properties in Manhattan and West Palm Beach and New Mexico.

Bought that island, New Mexico, flying around on a 747.

This is not just like somebody who's very wealthy.

This is somebody with essentially unlimited resources, right?

Like Bill Gates type wealth.

And

one of the ways, one of the, his primary benefactors is Les Wexner, who is a multi-billionaire, somebody with whom he worked closely.

And I guess the argument or

the claim is he was a brilliant strategist for how to save taxes, how to save money on taxes.

He was like a highly competent accountant, basically.

Yeah, like a tax accountant.

That's what a tax accountant do.

They tell you how, like, what strategies to use to save money.

So maybe Les Wexner valued him so much that he gave him, I don't know, $3 billion.

In general, billionaires don't like to give money away that they don't have to.

Maybe Les Wexner is like super generous.

Like, oh, so grateful you Jeffrey Epstein.

Here's like $2 billion.

But Les Wexner has all sorts of ties to like his main non-money-making endeavor in life is supporting Israel and donating to Israel to pro-Israel groups and working closely with the Israeli government.

Jazane Maxwell, who's now in prison, as having been essentially his right-hand man, her father, Robert Maxwell, who died in a very mysterious way, he slipped off his yacht,

was a known Mossad agent.

He worked with the Mossad.

He had very close ties to Israel.

We all know he.

He was given a state funeral.

Yes, in Israel.

Yes.

And, you know, when I did this noting reporting, people, there's a lot of documents that we released that, and just because there were so many, they're not, not, not all of them got the attention they deserved.

One of the set of files we released described the intelligence relationship that we have with Israel, the NSA has with Israel.

Israel is the number one recipient of NSA technology and NSA intelligence.

We share more with Israel, even more than we do with the Five Eyes partners who developed this technology.

We give more to Israel, more intelligence, raw intelligence about Americans as well, and more intelligence know-how.

But at the same time, the documents that describe who are our greatest intelligence threats, who are our greatest intelligence adversaries, who spies on us the most, who is capable of spying out the most, number one on the list is Israel as well.

Obviously, the Israelis use, you know, some, I mean, the most dangerous spying programs like Pegasus and others come from Israel, are developed by Israel, are controlled by the Israelis, Israelis, by which I simply mean to say that Israel uses every weapon at its disposal, including gathering incriminating information about his enemies.

Some people have suggested that, oh, no, it's not Israel.

It's probably the Qatari intelligence agencies with whom he worked.

Maybe, maybe it was like, maybe it was Peru.

Maybe it was like Indonesia.

People said that Epstein was working with the Qataris.

Yeah.

I want to keep a list of people who make that claim.

Do you know anyone?

I mean,

it's kind of funny.

You know how like Israel, like supporters of like loyalists of Israel and the United States are now constantly trying to convince people that the real foreign government that is exerting extreme amounts of influence over our politicians and our institutions is Qatar?

I find it hilarious.

And I'm always like, you know what?

Let me know when Congress starts passing on a weekly basis pro-Qader resolutions or when like students are being

expelled and deported because they've criticized

Let me know when, like, we start sending billions of dollars a year to Cotter.

Let me know when all that starts to happen.

I'll be receptive to the fact that maybe Qatar.

But anyway, all I'm saying is, I'm not saying it's Israel.

I'm just saying

the nature of what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, the amount of wealth that

it required, the number of the most powerful elites on the planet who were with him, who were involved with him, who were at his island too, despite knowing that he had been convicted in 2010 of

having sex with minors, hiring prostitutes who were underage, who continued to consort with him in the most proximate ways,

something was going on there.

It would be incredibly valuable.

He kept, you know, he had, he had cameras in every part of his house.

He had tapes of everything.

Obviously, that would be of immense value to any foreign intelligence agent.

And American.

I mean, he was close friends with Bill Burns.

Right,

maybe domestic intelligence agencies as well.

But how, like, it really is starting to inflame my suspicions a great deal every day that goes by when we're not getting that information, particularly because the people who have it are the people who spent years demanding its release and promising to facilitate it if they got into power.

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Two facts, data points, as they're now called, that

suggest to me that something's up.

One is the fact that Epstein was represented in his first tangle with the authorities in Florida by Bill Crystal's lawyer, Jay Lefkowitz, and who I know.

And the second is the statement by Alex Acosta, which I think maybe is at the top of your memory about why Epstein got off so easily.

How is this not talked about every day?

Okay, so in Florida, in the United States generally having sex with minors hiring you know using minors as as prostitutes is considered like a pretty terrible crime yeah it's yeah you know most people agree on that yeah you don't really have to debate that that's considered like something that deserves huge amounts of jail time and typically results in huge amounts of jail time

jeffrey epstein barely went to jail for that as part of a plea bargain they had enormous amounts of evidence.

It wasn't a question of could they prove his guilt.

They gave him a plea deal, a plea deal where he spent like six seconds in jail and then like most of the time at home doing community service.

And Alex Acosta, who was the U.S.

Attorney for the Southern District of Florida at the time, which

was in charge of the case, that's where Epstein was.

Ultimately, I ended up in the Justice Department and other roles inside the government.

And so he was constantly asked, why would you give Jeffrey Epstein such a like generous plea deal that nobody would ever get for those crimes?

And he ended up saying, I was told that he's intelligence and therefore leave him alone.

That's what Alex Acosta, the prosecutor, says that he was told about what he should do with the Jeffrey, like leave him alone because he's intelligent.

Well, there were, we're just kind of the conversation just like ended.

Like we know now.

I mean, if the prosecutor says the federal prosecutor in Florida says that, then I think we can assume that that's true.

Right.

So why don't we know what that means?

That's what, you know, like, what would be the reason reason that people inside the Trump administration who have long expressed vehemently, vocally at the top of their agenda, demands that the Epstein files be released?

Why are they not telling us that information?

I think the net effect of this is to drive everyone insane and to make everyone like angry and suspicious and paranoid and conspiracy-minded.

I do think that.

It's like you expect that we're going to hear the truth and then it's like, oh, by the way, way no

everyone assumes the worst i mean why wouldn't you assume the worst well you know that improves american society the thing is like you know i

whenever i talk about independent media including from people who are supporters of it believe it's a positive development they all say oh but you know there's so many conspiracy theories that end up being cultivated and spread that people embrace And that's true.

Yeah, of course it is.

There's been a lot of conspiracy theories embraced by the credible legacy media as well.

I mean, it wasn't like Reddit that convinced Americans Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program.

You know, that Joe Biden was the best version ever.

Right.

Or that like the North Vietnamese were the aggressors in the Gulf of Punkkin, right?

That came from like CBS and Walter Cronkite and the New York Times.

But in any event,

of course, there's going to be Americans who are now amenable to every conspiracy theory.

Because what have we lived through?

The Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, all of the lies from 9-11 and 9-11 itself.

And then if you go back further, like the Vietnam War, but then also COVID.

And like one after the next,

at best,

massive fundamental systemic failure on the part of all the institutions we were taught to trust.

And probably at worst, and probably more accurately, overwhelming deceit and lies and falsehoods and propaganda continuously disseminated by them in order to facilitate what they wanted.

What is going to happen to a society where people lose faith and trust in institutions, not because

charlatans are on the sidelines encouraging them to make that happen, but because rationally

those institutions no longer merit trust or faith?

If you lie too much, I don't believe you.

It's kind of basic.

So the only antidote to that is

transparency is revealing the truth.

And I really worry right now, especially, that this is hardening people's cynicism and rage

and

really at some point nihilism.

Like nothing is true.

That is the conclusion a lot of people are going to nothing is true.

I don't believe anything.

Like it's all fake.

Well, and also, you know, Cash Patel and Dan Maggino are people who were among the most popular among the MAGA base.

I mean, these were the people

among the most respected.

I mean, Dan Bongino's show on Rumble, a platform that still maybe like 30, 40, maybe even 50% of the people in the United States have never even heard of, was getting bigger audiences than almost every daytime cable show.

Cash Patel, you know, the surge of support for him when he was nominated to lead the FBI was massive because people thought, no, that's who we need to like get in and root this out and clean it out.

And I believe that they, there, I believe there is something to that.

I think they are authentic and genuine in that way.

But at the same time, something is constraining them.

And so I asked myself, what kinds of truths would people

be determined to hide who are more powerful than they are?

And when it comes to the Epstein files, I continuously zero in on that question of

who was he working with or for whom.

And I can see

people in government not wanting that answer to be disclosed, just like the same reason we didn't have the JFK files and still don't.

For 65 years.

I know Bongino well.

I think of him as a friend.

I think he is a man of integrity.

And I think his integrity remains pure because of his rage.

Like, Dan's mad at lying.

And so

I don't know what's going on at all.

And to be clear, he said, I know that Epstein killed himself because I've seen the evidence.

So I'm pretty confident in the case of Dan Bongino.

I don't even mind that, but then the question still becomes, like they said, they know how their supporters are going to react to that.

Right.

And they were among the people raising doubts about whether Epstein killed himself.

I'm not that, I'm not,

it wouldn't shock me if Epstein killed himself.

Like you live a life of great wealth and then suddenly you know you're going to spend the prison, spend the rest of your life in prison.

It seems odd to me that you can go to a federal prison and kill yourself.

Like there's not safeguards against that, but whatever.

Think things that are run by the government failed.

I'm not suggesting.

That they're lying about that, but even there, they're saying like, look, I promise you we read the files.

He killed himself.

So then my question is, well, why can't we read those files well that is my that is my question too and um i would just say in the case of bongino i know cash patel but i'm not like a friend of cash patel's i'm a friend of bongino's and i do think that will come out but i think big picture doj is making a huge mistake huge mistake in promising to reveal things and then not revealing them And that gives the whole country a kind of moral blue balls at that point.

And it's bad.

It's really bad.

Like it's going to, that's going to cause a lot of hate.

And second, I think that we underestimate the physical threat that people in Washington face.

It's always like blackmail or ideological affinity that gets people.

No, people are afraid of getting hurt.

I do think that's a component.

I mean, I know that's a component here.

I mean, political assassination, political murder has been going on for as long as politics have.

And the JFK case is an example of the president of the United States having his head blown off.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And you think that that's not ever present or constantly present in the minds of people in Washington?

They killed the president and got away with it for over 60 years.

So, like, clearly, there are forces that are above justice.

Oh, no, don't worry.

Lee Harvey Oswald was killed and Jack Ruby went to prison.

Jack Ruby.

The whole story is Jack Ruby, by the way.

The whole story is Jack Ruby.

I mean, he just walked up to the person they had.

And he just shot him in the stomach.

And there's no evidence he even liked the Kennedys.

There's zero evidence.

He never campaigned for them, never gave them money.

There's not one person who's ever come forward to say, you know, Jack Ruby was passionately attached to JFK.

Not one person.

Right.

So like, what was the motive there?

He was clearly sent there to silence Lee Harvey Oswald.

So by whom is the obvious question.

There are very serious indications by whom, but whatever, I don't know.

But I don't know why everyone spends all this time on Lee Harvey Oswald.

When the key to the story is so clearly Jack Ruby.

Yeah.

I mean, and this is, I think we are so indoctrinated to believe that this sort of thing happens in other countries.

Like how much, think about how much we've heard, for example, about Putin and Nalvani.

Right.

And we're all supposed to like obsess on the idea that in Russia, you know, if you get too much influence, you become too much of a threat to somebody, you get killed or imprisoned.

The funny thing is, Putin didn't even kill Navalny.

I think everybody.

The CIA says that.

Yeah, like that.

Exactly.

There's no evidence.

Yeah, exactly.

After months of

making it obvious that I got blamed for his murder.

I was in Russia when he died.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

I remember that timing.

You were going to go, you had your big Putin interview, and then like two days earlier, Putin killed Naval, and you were like there with Putin.

No, but that's a big part of how that propaganda works.

You know, I grew up thinking that.

Like, these kind of bad things happen.

They just don't happen in our country.

It must be cool to live.

You live outside the country, famously.

Where, you know, you're a foreigner living in a country.

You've been a long time.

You speak the language.

You're engaged in the politics.

So you're like part of it, but you're also from the United States.

So you're not coming at it with that baggage.

You can see, you're just like, you don't lie to yourself about what it is.

Yeah, I do think,

I think one of the great, one of the things for which I'm most grateful is that I was never embedded in the DC political and media scene.

And obviously you removed yourself from it, which is why we're here and not in Georgetown.

It didn't help me being a part of that at all.

I'll tell you,

there's a,

I've had a friendly relationship with Alex Thompson for a while.

I've been, you know, Jake Tapper's co-author in that book.

Former political reporter.

Yes, who now works at Axios.

And I've been very aggressive about praising him, like going back two years when he was one of the only ones working for these news outlets who was on the story of Biden's cognitive decline, getting mauled and attacked by the entire Democratic Party.

I was often praising him and defending him.

You know, I mean, I wouldn't say we're great friends, but, you know, he like sent me a copy of the book with very nice words.

And so when I go to attack jake tapper which is essentially attacking that book of course there's a part of my brain that like you know thinks about like wait what is that going to do to my relationship with alex thompson and then you have to be like i don't care but if

you that is your life you know because i mean alex thomps is not like an important close friend of mine but like if you live in washington and every your whole social scene is integrated into that is why there's no adversarial relationship between the media you know funny so funny

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson were on that shitty PBS show that is now hosted by Jeffrey Goldberg.

So can you imagine?

Jeffrey Goldberg is a PBS show?

Yeah, it's like The Week in Washington.

Jeffrey Goldberg hosts a TV show?

Yeah, a PBS.

Like The Week in Washington.

I know, I know.

You can't find anyone less telegenic.

But anyway, he is the person who sits there like,

anyway.

Jeffrey Goldberg was defending the media, saying like, I think it's outrageous that we're being blamed for this whole thing with Biden and cognitive decline when there was nothing we could do.

And so at the end, he said to Jake Tapper, like, what is the lesson that we have to take from all this?

And Jake Tappert was got very serious.

He like furred his brow, but he only looked down at the table because he just, it was a very weird thing.

Like, he's just kind of, you know, he's on television every day.

You know, you look up, you talk to people, you engage.

He was like looking down.

He had his head bowed,

like the face of somebody who has a PR crisis firm.

And

he said,

What I have realized is that you cannot trust what people in power tell you.

People in power lie.

And when they tell you things, you have to take it with skepticism.

You cannot take it on face value.

So, Jake Tapper, at 56 years old, after 30 years of working in journalism, has discovered what if I were to teach college freshmen a class on journalism would be the thing that I would say on the first day about what the job is, right?

Like why it's important to have journalism, journalism because people in power lie to keep their power.

And this is something that now that Trump's in office, they've suddenly discovered is an important thing to do to be adversarial to people in power.

And I think that is in their mind, like there is an element of truth to their revisionist history that makes them the victim.

Like they are friends with Mike Donnelly and like Anita Dunn.

Their kids go to their same schools.

They live in the same neighborhoods.

They intermarry.

You know, like half these couples are like one in the media, one in politics.

And then then they're robbing Dora.

They constantly switch and they're at lobbyist firms together.

Washington is like, you know, Versailles.

And so it's impossible to be adversarial.

Man, we had dinner without naming names, but with a journalist last night, you and I did here,

who I don't, I'd never met before, nice guy, actually, but from D.C., grew up two blocks from me.

Mother went to the same school that I did.

He went to the same schools as everyone I know.

I mean, it's like, if you're from there, you are connected to every other person who's from there.

Of course.

It's like to a much greater extent than people understand, just physically.

Yes, it's like a British court, like totally incestuous.

It's unbelievable.

But, you know, this is what I think, I think

a lot of times, you know, because I've been a very harsh critic of media corporations and the like, people, you know, ask me like, when did this change or whatever?

And I like.

There's always been a lot of closeness between the media and its supposed heyday in the 50s with like JR with murrow and cronkite and all of that but you know they were you look at time magazine and the new york times they were outposts for u.s propaganda and foreign policy during the cold war but i think you know there was a long time when journalism was considered this like

working class you know outsider profession and the people who went into it didn't want to be like wearing our money suits and you know going to dinner at the white house and with like bless celebrities they were just like you know working class guys who just wanted to like throw rocks at power.

That was their personality, that's why they went into journalism.

And of course, going back even further, like the First Amendment says, you know, all Americans enjoy freedom of the press.

It's there was no such thing as like this secret priesthood of called journalists, like professional.

The press was literally the printing press that everybody could use, and everybody did use.

You didn't have to be a journalist to use it, it was just a means of expressing and disrupting and informing and organizing.

And that's what they protected.

And as huge corporations started buying media outlets, you know, like Westinghouse buys CBS and Don't Buy Biocom, or Disney now owns ABC, you know, that sort of thing, the corporatization of mainstream media.

If you think about the kind of attributes that are required to succeed in large corporations, it's

never being disruptive to anybody who has authority.

It's conformity.

It's,

you know,

just sort of being a good soldier for people in power, which is the exact opposite attributes that make a good journalist.

And the incentive schemes that journalists are now encouraged to follow to rise within media are the kind of people who worship power, who are, who are obedient to it.

Exactly.

And that to me has become the most fundamentally rotted part.

And that's why, you know, what inspired me to go in journalism was like the bloggist fear of like the early 2000s, which are like just all these angry people on the right and left, like hating the media, no credentials, but like seeing things that they weren't seeing, you know, hating the Bush administration, but either from the right or from the left, hating the mainstream media, same thing.

And like you start realizing like, wow, like this mainstream media and politics is like a tiny little, like Obama once described it as, you know, like, well, like John Boehner is supposed to call me a communist, but you know, everyone knows the reality is we just fight within the 40-yard lines.

Like we're basically on the same team.

We just, the 40-yard line.

And you realize there's this whole other space and way of looking at things.

And it was really the internet that gave rise to it, which is why the internet is and controlling it and censoring it is the thing that is on the top of their agenda because it's the biggest threat to them.

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Why do you see things?

Well, I should just say, I think your mom worked at McDonald's, actually.

Yeah, I mean, I think, which is like, I think, which wouldn't be shocking if you were in any other business, but I don't think I know a single other person.

I don't think I know a single other person in our generation in media who can say that.

Yeah, I think like.

I do, I mean, Richard Nixon had this as well.

This, you know, I think Trump has it to an extent too, even though like Trump grew up very wealthy, but it was like outer borough wealth, which is not looked upon kindly by like old money in Manhattan at all.

And then he comes into Manhattan and started building gigantic buildings and being all like flashy about it, you know.

And so he understood that he was looked down upon by those people.

Same with Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon always knew that like the intelligentsia on the East Coast hated him, thought he was disgusting.

And I think if you grow up

feeling excluded from certain kind of power centers, there's always going to be a kind of resentment that you have toward it.

And I suppose in some way that could lead to like a desperation to be integrated into it.

But I think more often than not, and certainly my case, it made me want to

like

deconstruct it and show like the facade that they use to glorify themselves, but the dirt and filth that really lay underneath.

And I think that kind of distance really helps with clarity of vision.

I totally agree.

And traveling.

You were saying last night that you think that traveling is one of the most expanding things you can do.

I had this, I did that interview with Alexander Dugan, and now you've interviewed him too.

And I know we're all supposed to hate him, and he's a fascist, whatever.

But one of the reasons I really loved him is, you know, he's a philosopher.

When I say I loved him, I mean I love talking to him.

He's a philosopher.

And I was like, that was, I know, I sometimes studied philosophy in college.

It was my obsession.

I wanted to teach philosophy.

I ended up being more practical in law school.

But thinking about, you know, things in like terms of their first principles and like always needing a like rationale or a logical training that gets you from the start of your question to the end of whatever answer you think you've embraced is very important to me.

And just thinking about, you know, like not being reflexive.

So one of the things he said to me was he said, you know, I'm always accused of being like a racist or a white supremacist because I'm so devoted to preserving Russian culture.

and Russian civilization.

And he said, actually, the biggest racists by far are Western liberals because they believe that their way of being is so superior that every single other culture should give way to adapting itself to their way of life.

Like the whole world should be homogenized in their vision because they're inherently superior.

Like they find a tribe, some ancient tribe, and they want to immediately like mold it into like Washington neoliberals.

And

what he was saying was like, what makes the world valuable and interesting and ultimately like the way you advance and think about things is that you have all these different traditions, all these different civilizations, like Russian civilization and Chinese civilization and Muslim civilization and, you know, Western civilization.

And preserving those is what ensures that we have this diversity of thought.

And it's like everything.

Yeah, everything contributes something.

Exactly.

And so you are constantly told, and maybe this is universal when you grow up in a society that your way of life is, you know, we're always told like the United States is the greatest country ever to exist in the whole history of the world.

Like what a great coincidence for me that I was born in, like, the objectively greatest country to ever be on the planet, not just now, but all of human history.

And there are some parts of the United States that you know, I love and I think are very uniquely valuable for sure.

But

the more you get to know other types of ways of thinking, and you have this experience, like if some neighbor has a politics different than yours and you think they're crazy, and then you go and talk to them and you understand them better.

Yes.

And then that makes you be more open to ways of looking at things.

That

to me is is what, you know, like intellectual vibrancy is

going to places that you don't understand, hearing ideas that you were taught to believe are crazy or evil or wrong.

And then, you know, when you talk to the human beings who believe them, you understand that they actually have as much conviction about it or as much rationale for it as you do for yours.

I just think that's a beautiful sentiment.

And thank you for saying it.

So what you're really arguing for is diversity.

Yeah, like diversity, like not the kind that, you know, we've been told is diversity, where everyone thinks the same thing, but like they have surface level diversity.

The Indian guy, the black guy, and the white lady all went to Princeton and they're diverse.

Yeah, like I remember this initiative where we wanted to diversify our newsroom at the intercept.

And so we hired like.

A black Harvard student whose parents were partners at Golden Sachs.

And then like a Latino person who went to Yale and their partners were at J.P.

Morgan.

And then like, you know, and that was like diversity, like everything but like working class diversity or experiential diversity.

You know, the most like superficial kind, the most easily accommodated kind.

Yeah, I do know very much.

So what did you think?

So you interviewed Dugan in Russia in Moscow.

What did you think of it?

When was the last time you were there?

I had been several times because I visited Snowden and, you know, we in Citizen IV, the one of the last scene of Citizen IV, the film that was made about the Snowden,

our work with Snowden that won the Oscar that Laura Poitches directed was her and myself going to

Russia to interview Snowden about like a next sort of story.

Pardon to interrupt, imagine a Snowden film winning an Oscar now.

I mean, at the time, it was,

we were, when we started winning all the awards and we did the whole like award circuit and we started winning, we were very shocked.

And

at the time, I remember after they announced Citizen IV is the winner of the Oscars, it was Neil Patrick Harris who was the host of of the Oscars.

We had gone on stage and got the word.

And he then said,

Edward Snowden wanted to be here, but he was unable to for some sort of treason.

You know, like playing, doing a wordplay on reason, but like with the word treason.

And it's like,

you fucking idiots.

Like, you're Hollywood.

You went through like the McCarthy era.

You went through all these things that you claim.

Well, he was told to say that.

Yeah, of course, it was part of the script.

But it was a very, you know, War is a brilliant filmmaker.

And i think the it won because of the quality of the film like and the drama inherent in the story not because the politics of it were that we were exposing spying programs developed under president obama largely almost entirely but as you're so right this was before russiagate this was before you know where anything connected to russia was considered like no chance you wouldn't even get it here i don't think it would even yeah they wouldn't even consider it right at this point so you'd been to moscow before but you were just there this winter this spring just yeah a few months ago two three months ago What did you think?

Well, I mean, you know, we talked about this before, but like, I remember the first time I ever went to Russia, I was so shocked by the immense disparity between what I had been taught to think what Russia was like and what I was seeing in front of my own eyes.

And, you know, you can go anywhere.

And like, you know, people come to Brazil to Rio de Janeiro and they only go to the richest neighborhoods.

And they're like, oh, it's, but, you know, there's a whole undergirding of misery and suffering that you don't see because you don't go there.

So I'm very cognizant of that, right?

You can't go to a country and spend like two days there and be shown the best parts and then think, like, oh, wow.

Nonetheless,

it's not only beautiful, it's extremely well run, it's clean.

But the thing that,

you know, that I felt like

was most present was the

richness of Russian history and culture and tradition.

I mean, this is a civilization that has been around for, you know, thousands of years and that has produced the highest in like like literature and music and dance and architecture.

And I mean, and has been through like wars of like

the most difficult kind.

And you just feel the heaviness of all of that, like the

greatness of it.

And obviously, I understand that there's political repression there.

I understand that there's a huge, all kinds of social problems.

I'm not.

denying any of that.

That's true everywhere, right?

Pretty much.

But

understand why Russians have this immense pride in their country and in their civilization.

And

so it didn't feel like a gas station with nuclear weapons, as McCain said?

Exactly.

Right.

I mean, has there ever been an uglier thing that any politician, just a dumber, I mean, McCain was dumb.

I knew him very well.

He was low IQ.

Totally.

Wasp.

I hate to say that, but it's true.

With good qualities.

He had good qualities, but he was an idiot.

But to say something like that out loud is like, there's just, I don't know.

Like, if you're an idiot, keep it to yourself.

A gas station with nuclear weapons.

I just,

yeah, I mean, whatever.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I mean.

Like, you, you know, you're taught in college even like the greatest literature is like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who are the greatest novelists ever.

And, you know, which is true.

Oh, I mean, undoubtedly.

And

also just the history, like the role they played in World War II and like the Bolshevik Revolution and the, you know, the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

And then, you know, the Moscow itself and St.

Petersburg, even more so, are so, you know, beautiful and striking.

Overwhelming.

Like in a way that like the best Western European cities are, you know, like the history of it, the, the grandness of it.

And

so, yeah, I mean, that you have to go see things for yourself and you start realizing how much you're constant, how much, you know, that, this, this, like when I started writing about politics, I'll just tell you this quick story.

Um, I never intended to be a journalist.

I didn't go to school for journalism.

That was not part of my

life plan in any way.

It was just after 9-11, you know, as I saw these radical changes like to our civil liberties and the name of fighting terrorism, but also just the climate became so oppressive in terms of what you could question, what you could say.

That's when I started feeling a need to want to say things that I felt like weren't being said.

And when I started doing that more or less full time, it gave me the luxury of going and looking at things so that I wasn't being told by the New York Times what a document said.

I was able to go spend the three hours to read the document.

And when you go and do that, you have the like luxury of that time, which most people don't have.

They're taking care of their kids, they're working, et cetera.

You, you can't fight propaganda if you don't, you know, have the resources to do it, especially time.

I started realizing how many things I had believed.

And I had like a, you know, high opinion of my intellect.

I thought I was like a high-end political consumer.

You know, I like lived in New York.

I like went to good schools.

In many ways, that makes it worse, not better.

I have learned that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so,

you know, just going back and I basically decided I had to dismantle almost everything because so much of it was just ingested through no critical faculty.

Why would you want to dismantle your assumptions?

I mean, that's such a painful process.

It sucks.

But why would you want that?

Why wouldn't you just say, you know, I believe what I believe and that's it?

Like, I decided in college.

No, this is right, right?

This is like right after 9-11 and the war and terror, like the Iraq war, which everybody was kind of like, wait, what just happened?

We just went and did this massive land war, this invasion on the other side of the country, a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, because we were told they were somehow responsible based on nuclear weapons and chemical weapons they actually didn't have.

Like everybody at that point, more or less, was starting to question.

And, you know, you feel angry and betrayed when inside your brain, you're led to believe things that are just false.

Yes.

And you want to expunge it from yourself.

You want to cleanse yourself of that.

I think that's a virtuous response.

Well, I think you've done that.

That has been.

I have.

It took a little longer, but yeah.

And it was.

Because you were so much more immersive.

It was a little more painful.

Yeah.

It was right in the middle of it.

But a lot of people, you know, didn't do it.

I just want to call to the attention of listeners how rare what you did was.

And that process of self-examination, which is the root of wisdom,

is unusual.

People just don't want to deal with it.

Like Jake Tapper's saying, I don't compon some of my coverage with humility, like that fake kind of like.

Well, there's really nothing more galling than fake humility.

I mean, that's like metaphysics.

Scripted, scripted fake humility.

Because like the one thing you hope is real is humility.

But it's not.

So I got to to ask you about something.

So because of AI, I'm a little suspicious of things I see on the internet because could that really be real?

So someone sent this to me the other day.

This is a person who I confirmed is a real person.

I didn't believe it at first.

Congressman Randy Fine

of

Florida.

And he said this the other day on Fox News last week, quote, in World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis.

We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese.

We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender.

That needs to be the same here in Gaza.

There is something deeply wrong with this culture and it needs to be defeated.

So we're going to nuke Gaza because of its culture.

We're going to kill everybody because we don't like the culture, which by the way, lots of Christians in Gaza, Muslims in Gaza.

Just innocent people in Gaza of all kinds.

Of course, but like to say there's some like Gazan culture that's cohesive.

It's like, what?

But we're going to kill them all

because we don't like their culture.

And so I didn't believe that was real.

I didn't really think he was a member of Congress.

I texted a friend.

He's newly elected, like in the last, he filled Matt.

I think Mike, it was Mike Waltz or Matt Gage's seat, one or the other.

It was Waltz.

Waltz, yeah.

So I texted a friend of mine in Congress.

Is this really a member of Congress?

Yes.

It's like, I don't even know what to say to that, but that, first of all, it's evil.

But how can you say something like that and not get expelled from Congress or the Republican?

How can that person be a member of the Republican Party?

I don't understand.

So let me say two things about that.

And yes, Randy Randy Fine is very real.

I've been watching him for a while now, ever since Trump endorsed him as this America First candidate.

He had served in the Florida Senate, in the Florida legislature, maybe the Florida House, but one of those two bodies.

So he was a member of the Florida.

DeSantis hates him.

He hates DeSantis.

He has a feud with DeSantis.

And

his entire

political existence is centered around a foreign country, which is Israel, not the United States.

He barely ever talks about the United States.

So that's America first?

Right.

America first.

So let me just say two things.

One is this broader point, and then I want to get the more important, more important one.

I started noticing this in like 2006, 2007.

I know you hear this all the time.

World War II

was one of the worst things that has ever happened to humanity.

And the reason it happened was because you had these massive military powers with these new technologies that had never previously been used in war engaged in mass destruction and a madman who was

leading and had started the war for all kinds of reasons.

And you had the world's most powerful factions throughout the world destroying each other in the most inhumane way to the point where we not only used nuclear weapons, but after the war was over, we decided we never wanted to have a war like that again.

We imposed by convention, we agreed to all sorts of limits through the Geneva Convention and all these other treaties and conventions, ways to make sure that what happened in World War II never happens again.

The people who got blamed for it, it was a form of victor's justice at Nuremberg, were put to death.

But at the same time, the Nuremberg trial,

the judges and prosecutors said the only way the principles that we're pronouncing here at the Nuremberg trials will have any value as anything other than victor's justice is if the principles we're enunciating apply to all countries in the future, including

the countries presiding over the tribunal.

It was meant to enunciate universal principles that all countries agreed to on earth because it was so inhumane.

Like it just stripped everybody of their humanity.

And so every time we have a new war or someone wants to sell a new war in the United States, the only

historical framework that they'll use as if they only studied one thing in high school and college, like the only thing they know is World War II.

And either you're on the

screen about World War II by 20th century.

No, but they know all they know is Wikipedia version.

Churchill is good because he went and fought, and Chamberlain is bad because he tried to use diplomacy.

I wrote an article about this one, like six months after I started writing about politics in 2006, how everything was had like superimposed on it was the framework of World War II.

And you are either Churchill or Chamberlain, and you choose one or the other.

And neocons to this very day, by which I mean people who always want the United States to go to war in the Middle East and elsewhere, the minute you say you're not interested in war, you're Chamberlain.

And the minute that you want to go to war, you're heroic Churchill.

And so the idea that because we use nuclear weapons against

Japan, Imperial Japan, filled with enormous amounts of skill and money and know-how and a massive military force allied with Nazi Germany, one of the most industrialized military forces ever,

that because we ended the war with nuclear weapons then, we're supposed to now use it on a completely defenseless population of 2 million people, half of whom are children who have no army of any kind, can't even break out of Gaza, let alone threaten any other country in the world, is absolutely demented.

But that is one of the clear war propaganda themes that are always used is everything is World War II.

And that's the only word that we can reference.

Even though at the time, the idea was we have to prevent all this from ever happening again.

They want to replicate it eternally.

But I don't know that I can support a party with someone like Randy Fine.

so I mean, I don't understand.

Like, how could someone Randy Fine?

I mean, that's so disgusting.

It's demented.

It's, it's, that is, that is, that is psychotic to say that.

Does anyone say that?

But about Randy Fine?

Well,

here's, I think, I think Randy Fine is such an important,

despite how repulsive he is ethically, morally, and physically, despite that, I think he's a very important instrument for looking at this radical contradiction within the Republican Republican Party and especially the America First movement.

So Donald Trump,

obviously there were a lot of Republicans who wanted to run for that Mike Waltz seat and for the Matt Gates seat.

And whoever Trump endorses is essentially guaranteed to be the winner.

And he endorsed Randy Fine and said, Randy Fine is all America first.

And I remember the day that that happened thinking,

Randy Fine actually is not even concerned about America, let alone placing it first.

His entire political existence is driven by loyalty to a foreign country.

Everything for him is Israel.

Everything.

And to like, even to an extent that is very severe for a Congress that in general prioritizes Israel to a shocking amount, I can't think of a foreign country that is as important.

to as Israel is to the United States that has any other kind of foreign country placing its interest on par with, if not above it.

And so here you have a member of the Republican Party Party who identifies as America first,

who Donald Trump endorsed as a member of America first, and whose loyalty is to a foreign country, who wants to have the American worker fund that foreign country, wants the American worker to pay for their military, give $4 billion automatically every year in a deal negotiated by Obama and Netanyahu when Obama was on his way out.

And every time Israel wants to have a new war, we send them whatever they want, billions more.

We feed them all these weapons paid for by the American taxpayer.

We isolate ourselves from the rest of the world.

We block every UN resolution that the entire world supports in order to tie ourselves to Israel.

We lose our own standing, our own soft power, our own imagery in the world.

We lose massive amounts of money.

All sorts of people have said that the reason we have, there's so much anti-American hatred in the Middle East, the reason why

people want to attack our country, the reason why we can't get things done in the Middle East, a reason where we have a lot of interests, is because of the hatred for the United States, driven primarily by our standing behind and doing everything we certainly bin Laden said that in this manifesto he's spelled it out

I just can we just talk one second about the fact that

bin Laden wrote a note to the American people explaining why

al-Qaeda was driven to attack the United States

And there were some religious references, obviously, because al-Qaeda is a nominally religious organization.

But overwhelmingly, he listed very specific grievances with American foreign policy, all having to do with the fact that we constantly interfere in that region.

We place military bases on sacred Saudi soil.

We impose a sanctions regime on Iraq for years that killed 500,000 Iraqi children that Madal and Albright said was worth it.

We overthrow their leaders and impose the ones that we want that then serve the interests of the United States and Israel.

And we fund and arm Israel to repress and kill Palestinians.

And he said, it's not that you're some country that's just sitting there peacefully and that never bothers us.

And we decided, hey, look over there.

They let their women wear bikinis.

So we better go and attack them, right?

Like we were attacked for our freedom.

So he writes this letter.

I remember the letter at the time.

He was interviewed by

Al Jazeera and previously by

the New Yorker.

So we got to hear from Osama bin Laden.

Although, right after 9-11, the U.S.

government told media outlets to not broadcast any speeches or interviews with Osama bin Laden.

And their reasoning was: we're concerned that he may have embedded within his speech some sort of secret code that will activate sleeper cells inside the United States.

Like he was going to blank Morse code or like have secret phrases, and then people inside the United States would hear it.

So they told ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, do not air any interviews with bin Laden.

When, of course, it was because they didn't want Americans to hear from bin Laden why there was so much anti-American sentiment.

It was because of our interference in the Middle East in general and our support for Israel in particular.

They were selling this lie that it was because we're free and they hate our freedom.

There are a lot of countries that are free.

Like Brazil, women walk around in bikinis.

They have elections.

Al-Qaeda has never attacked Brazil or Japan or South Korea or Norway.

And bin Laden was explaining why there's so many Muslims in that region who hate the United States.

but the United States government didn't want anyone to hear it.

20 years later, while October 7th happened and we're supporting this

ethnic cleansing, and I would call it now a genocide as well in Gaza.

That's what most

genocidal experts, including Israelis and Jewish ones, call it.

And it's hard to say anything else, but whatever.

In the middle of all that, A bunch of young people who were told the history of 9-11 that the U.S.

government wanted everyone to believe discovered the bin Laden letter because it was on the Guardian's website because the Guardian's a British newspaper.

It was not

no American news outlet, despite its historical importance.

And they started passing it around on TikTok

and saying, oh, wow, I never knew any of this.

I never understood that one of the reasons why these people attacked us was because we are so monomaniacally

devoted to Israel and why that we're constantly interfering in that region, bombing them, sanctions, overthrowing their government, overthrowing their leaders.

Of course, people are going to get angry at us and want to attack back.

And the minute that letter started to become well-read by the American people who were, you know, primarily younger, the U.S.

government went ballistic and demanded that TikTok

ban it.

The Guardian, a news outlet, immediately took the letter off their website so nobody could read it any longer.

All those links that people were posting on TikTok to go read that letter would no longer work.

And then TikTok immediately under pressure from the U.S.

government, which is obviously already threatened to close TikTok and ban it from the United States anyway, started banning all the hashtags, bin Laden letter.

You could not anymore read or find.

I mean, this is like the stuff we're taught that the Soviets did, right?

Like hiding letters, hiding documents, erasing history.

And I continued to be shocked by that, by that event that everybody thought that that was fine to take a letter that is of great historical importance

from the person that is alleged to have been responsible for the single worst attack on American soil, maybe on par with Pearl Harbor, but in terms of like a single day casualty count,

explaining from his perspective why he did it.

Like you want to hear from your enemy, right?

Like you want to understand like what the...

I want all relevant information and I'll decide for you.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't want people deciding for you what you can and can't read.

They were petrified that young Americans were going to hear the reasons proffered and they made that letter disappear.

Why would the Guardian, which is supposedly like this left-wing British publication, like, why would they go along with that?

The Guardian is very, you know, supportive of the Western establishment.

The UK is aggressively supportive of Israel, always has been, finds it with arms, does a lot of reconnaissance fights over Gaza to feed the Israeli intelligence.

And when that kind of pressure comes to bear, TikTok, a gigantic multi, multi-billion dollar corporation, The Guardian, one of the oldest newspapers in the West, they fold in a second.

Like they're no match for that kind of pressure.

A pressure that said, we want that letter censored so Americans don't know about it, have never read it, don't hear from it.

So they only hear from us.

But so, okay.

So that was just a,

I'm still amazed every time.

I didn't mean to go into that because so why do you love Osama bin Laden so much?

I mean, of course, that's, and then that I, I remember being shocked by it and saying, like, how can how can it possibly be the case that we're watching this?

And it wasn't, there was no pretext to it.

It was explicit.

Like, we can't have people reading this.

This is terrorist propaganda.

And then, exactly, if you stand up and say, no, I actually think people should be able to read that.

And then they'll say, like, oh, you're pro-al-Qaeda.

You want.

terrorist propaganda to be to spread.

And I'm like, no, I just think adults should have all information that they want to have available to them.

And I don't think the government should be prohibiting certain information from being accessible.

Also, 3,000 Americans were murdered that day.

And I'm an American.

I have an absolute right to know everything, all available information about that.

I don't understand by what, what's the justification for keeping that information from me, an American citizen who faithfully pays his taxes and obeys the laws that was born here.

Well, you know, but this is

the 2022 invasion by the Russians into Ukraine, one of the first things the EU parliament did is made it a crime to platform Russian state media.

So if you wanted to say, you know what?

I want to hear from Russia.

I want to understand like what Russia's argument is for doing this.

You couldn't get it.

I mean, you could, if you looked hard enough, you could.

If you went to Rumble, you could.

That's why they're banned in France because they refused to remove RT and Sputnik.

Think about what that says.

Like, we want to make sure that we...

monopolize the flow of information that our citizenry gets and nothing that disputes what we want them to believe can even be heard or available.

Well, I went to Russia because it drove me.

I had no interest really in going to Russia, but I'm so grateful that I did.

But it drove me so crazy that I wasn't allowed and that Americans were not allowed relevant information about what their government was doing.

Yeah, like I want to hear from them what their perspective is.

Like maybe I'll walk away and think like, oh,

they're murderous, you know, imperialists who just want to consume their neighbor.

Or maybe there's some other way of looking at things that I'm not permitted in the West to do.

I want to know what the truth is.

And that's the whole point of living here is I get to know what the truth is.

I get to decide for myself what's true.

And if you take that away, then why it's not that much.

Well, speaking of that, so let me just finish this thing about Randy Fine, if I could.

Okay, so the

in 2022 and 2023, there were a bunch of MAGA people who were opposed to the funding of the war in Ukraine.

And some non-MAGA people too, like RFK Jr.

And I was obviously very opposed to it from the start.

You were too.

I went on your show many times to talk about that.

And I had a bunch of them on, like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green and RFK Jr., a lot of them.

And

I always had this same plan.

I would ask them, like, why are you opposed to having the U.S.

fund the war in Ukraine?

Like, don't you want the U.S.

to stand up for Ukraine against Russia?

And they would all say, This isn't our business.

This is on the other side of the world.

It doesn't affect my constituents.

Our communities are falling apart.

We have fentanyl addictions sweeping our communities.

Nobody has jobs.

Nobody has health care.

Our country is falling apart.

We don't have the money to keep sending to foreign countries.

And it's outrageous that we keep doing it.

And they would be very passionate and very adamant.

I would encourage them to keep developing that idea.

And they would, and they would say all those things with which I completely agreed.

And then my next question was always: do you apply the same rationale to the United States funding the Israeli military and Israeli society in Israeli wars?

And they would all stutter to try and distinguish why it was that they had one view for Ukraine and a very compelling rationale, but then had to say, oh, no, Israel is different.

To the point that RFK Jr., and I actually really appreciated this about him, when I kept pressing him about it, I said, you're saying we don't have money to fund foreign wars, that our country is falling apart.

Why are we sending billions of dollars?

to Israel when Israelis have a higher standard of living than millions of American workers, than millions of American citizens.

Why is the American worker forced to subsidize Israel?

You said we can't be doing that.

We can't afford it it when you came to Ukraine.

Why doesn't it come?

Why isn't the same applicable to Israel?

And he then finally said, you know what?

I'm going to think about that.

Maybe it is time for Israel to stand on its own.

I was like, oh, you think?

So this is the utterly irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the America First movement, which is America First means we use our resources for ourselves.

We build our military to defend our borders, to defend the American people.

We use our resources to improve their lives materially, to build better roads and better schools and better communities, to offer them addiction services and whatever else they need, healthcare access.

And we do not anymore use it for this globalist agenda of going around the world, giving it to other countries and funding other countries.

That is the America First philosophy, as Trump has articulated it, and many people have articulated it for years, and the foreign policy of America First as well.

Excellent.

And then, on the one, the other hand,

those same people, many

are adamant that we have to fund Israel.

We have to fund its military.

We have to fund its wars.

We have to subsidize society.

We have to sacrifice our own interests to protect theirs.

We have to put the lives of our service members in risk, have American citizens die in order to protect Israel and the wars that it starts with its neighbors.

And there is no reconciling this.

There is no way to take an America First ideology and make it consistent with this constant

prioritization of Israeli interests, let alone what is now happening, which is the aggressive erosion of our free speech rights and core civil liberties guaranteed to us by the Constitution, not to protect our own government from criticism, but to protect this foreign country from criticism.

And I do think there are people now starting finally

to understand that these two things cannot be maintained simultaneously.

Well, it's going to blow up the Trump movement, I think.

I don't think it needs to.

I think there's a,

you know, you could, you could pivot, but I agree just conceptually that those are irreconcilable goals.

They're so blatantly irreconcilable.

And of course, the, the, the proof in the pudding is going to be what happens with Iran.

You know, I woke up today.

I'm here and I saw the New York Times and the lead story on the front page of the New York Times is Israel may attack.

Iran

despite Trump's desire to reach a deal.

And it's like, how can that even be possible?

What do you mean Israel might attack Iran despite Trump's desire to reach a deal?

Their weapons came from the United States.

We pay for the operation of those weapons.

They can't attack Iran without some kind of military and logistical support from the United States.

And who is Israel?

that depends on the United States, that is a vassal state of the United States, supposedly, to say, we don't care what the president of the United States wants in his foreign policy.

We're going to subvert it and undermine it and blow it up and destroy it if we want to.

That's not the behavior of an ally.

And I think that,

you know, as someone who's really tried to avoid this topic and bears no animus toward Israel,

actually like a lot of Israelis, talked to them the other day.

But I think the idea that we're getting a lot out of this, our interests are being served is

clearly not true.

It's the opposite.

Well, you know,

the Israeli government has had a relationship, a close relationship with the Chinese communist government for over 40 years.

And there have been a lot of transfers of military technology from Israel to China, including transfers of American military technology to China.

It's a fact.

People lie about it.

It's not true.

Well, it is true, actually.

And I don't think that's widely known.

I mean, the Chinese help operate the port of Haifa, one of the most beautiful ports in the world.

Wonderful place.

But yeah, they're in the port of Haifa.

So how is it that the main recipient of American support, both financial and moral and legal, and all the things that we have done for our closest ally, how is it that that country is materially supporting our main global adversary?

A country really described by the Trump administration as an enemy.

Okay, that's their posture toward, you know, China's an enemy.

And our military technology is going to Israel and then winding up in China.

That's a fact.

Like, how, I don't think, again, I don't think most people know that.

And I don't, I don't know even even if people in the administration know that.

I mean, some do.

How can that?

What's the answer to that, Mark Levin?

Well, well, also, you know, there's this fascinating history, but because it's 30 years ago, a lot of people didn't live through it.

People did forgot about it.

It's been whitewashed.

But the last two presidents that tried to exert independence with respect to Israel.

And that told Israel, you cannot do this if you want to continue to receive our large S, were Ronald Reagan and George H.W.

Bush.

Ronald Reagan called the Israeli bombing of Lebanon a Holocaust.

I know.

And picked up the phone and ordered them to stop, and they did, and then withdrew the military barracks.

1982.

Exactly.

George H.W.

Bush, this is the best.

And then, and then our Marine barracks were bombed a year later.

But then he didn't go to war as they were demanding he did with Iran, whoever they, he said, why are we even there?

But how did our American military, I mean, whatever, without getting into this, but like, did anyone know that the bombing was coming?

Is it possible that information, intel about that bombing was withheld from the United States?

I mean, the Israeli United States do have a lot of their neighbors under extremely heavy surveillance, as you imagine they would.

But the other interesting thing was in the George H.W.

Bush administration, which was run by these kind of realists, like that of the kind, you know, that they didn't call it Southwood America first, but the idea was, you know, we do foreign policy not for benevolence to other countries.

We don't rebuild other countries.

We prioritize American interests.

People like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who were the key foreign policy figures in the Bush 41 administration, he was in the CIA, had a very similar foreign policy.

And their argument was what American presidents have always said, which is that one of the worst threats to American national interests in the Middle East is the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

And the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank was a direct threat to American interests.

And James Baker said, as part of the State Department policy, if you continue to expand West Bank settlements, which prevent an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution that harm our interests, we're going to cease giving you the loan guarantees that you desperately need.

Why are we going to give you loan guarantees if you're directly harming what we keep telling you are our interests?

And what happened was there was this massive smear campaign.

You can go read it in any newspaper.

Remember.

It was led by Bill Clinton, who was preparing to run against George H.W.

Bush, calling the Bush administration anti-Semites,

suggesting that they were inflaming anti-Semitism by disagreeing with Israel in public.

And since then, there has been no president.

James Baker, I mean, this is like one of the most respected, you know, foreign policy operatives in the world.

And I hated James Baker for a lot of what he believed at the time.

would have to probably go back and revise some of that and think about why.

I mean, if only we had that now.

But there was like zero, zero, zero, zero evidence that he harbored any animosity.

Well, there's also evidence that there are plans to commit violence against George H.W.

Bush, the president.

Actually, that's been incredibly alleged.

So whatever.

No, of course, you're absolutely, what you're saying is absolutely right.

And no one wants to deal with being slandered.

And it is slander.

It's not true.

It's unfair.

It's

actually

pretty over the top.

Well, and the irony of it, Tucker, you're transferring American military technology to China.

If they're operating, at least in part, the the port of Haifa, we're supporting you, you have to explain that right away, or else we're going to stop all aid.

Because why would we want to be supporting, why would we want to be helping the transfer of American military technology to China?

What the hell is going on?

So

what is the answer to why the Trump administration, given their views of China, doesn't?

I think that

the first step.

Well, I'll just say my position is probably different from yours, but like, I'm not against Israel.

I like Israel.

I like going there.

Like the Israelis, Israelis, nice people.

I'm not, you know, don't seek any kind of argument.

I'm not anti-Israel.

But I think what America lacks, desperately lacks, and it's gotten to a point where it's dangerous for the country, is like an honest conversation about any of this stuff.

And that's because certain ruthless actors, and it's coordinated online, like attack everyone as like a,

you know, call them really

hurtful names that affect your personal relationships when you raise these questions.

But like someone needs to be brave enough to just say, let's have a rational conversation about our national interest.

I don't think it's harder than that.

But you know what?

The irony of it, the core irony of it is the conservative critique or grievance about the American left over the past 20 years has been the minute you try and have an honest conversation about any kind of policy, you instantly get.

smeared as a racist, a misogynist.

Because of identity politics.

Because of identity politics.

I don't know.

And you may be suggesting that something like that's going on.

Oh, and it might be a little bit similar that the minute you

suggest a question

or even a peep of criticism about Israel, you instantly are branded an anti-Semite.

It seems pretty similar to me to the tactics long used by the American left that the conservatives have been vocally complaining about for a long time.

That's, you know, Glenn, I would love to shout you down and say that's unfair, but it's not.

That is fair.

It's true.

What you're saying is true.

And it's, I agree, and it's, you know, shameful.

So, um, but, you know, the choice is not between

like being a Nazi or being Randy Fine.

There is like a reasonable, sensible, rational

course forward where our country, like every other country, makes its foreign policy decisions on the basis of what's best for its own citizens.

That's like, like you can say, I don't think it serves our interest to keep the war in Ukraine going and paying for it without being a Kremlin agent.

Exactly.

Or saying, I don't know, you know, how is it good that American military technology winds up in China or Pakistani fighters that they receive from China

through Israel?

Like, if that's true, and I think, I think there's a lot of evidence that it is true, like, how is that a good arrangement?

And why is our greatest ally doing that to us?

I don't understand.

I'm like really confused.

Like, why don't you answer the question?

And it's not enough to call me names.

You should have to have an honest conversation about this.

And I do think when that begins, like healing begins.

Things get better when people can be honest.

I think.

I mean, but there's so many mechanisms.

Like we just, I just, I'm still, every, I know I've talked about it so many times, but my mind always gets so blown when we talk about it again.

Talking about honesty and discourse, they banned the bin Laden letter.

There's so many mechanisms designed to prevent

any honest conversation from being held about all sorts of policies that people in power want to keep immune from questioning or challenge.

Like, hey, why are we still in NATO?

That's to me the thing that turned, that turned people against Trump and turned people in the establishment against Trump more than anything.

We already talked about that, but like that's not supposed to be a questionable topic.

Like, why are we still in NATO?

And like, oh, it's a defensive alliance, except like we bombed

Serbia and like Yugoslavia with it, even though they weren't actually posing a threat to Western Europe and had nothing to do with the Soviet Union.

Or like it went to war in Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi because he wanted to start using Libyan oil more for like the benefit of

people.

Okay, Glenn, if I could just say it's a defensive alliance.

Okay.

It was, those are preemptive.

It's a defensive alliance.

It's a defensive alliance.

Not to be defensive.

No, it's, yeah.

No, I, I, look, so there are all those mechanisms, including like calling people racist for a long time who wanted to raise issues about whatever.

Well, sure.

I mean, I remember this in 1991 when I got into this business doing a story on Head Start.

I've never been against Head Start as an idea.

The original idea was like, we're going to literally raise children's IQs

through better nutrition and early childhood education.

That is not a crazy idea.

It didn't strike me as crazy at the time.

And you start asking questions of, well, does it work?

I don't know.

It's supposed to help these kids.

Is it helping them?

Shut up, racist.

I was like, how is that?

I was so confused.

And I realized no one even remembers what Head Start is, but it was a very promising program in the minds of many that didn't work.

But the point of calling you names was to continue doing things the way they'd always been done because some people are benefiting from that.

Exactly.

It had nothing to do with race.

Just as I don't think this argument has anything to necessarily to do with ethnicity or religion.

It's just like that.

The protest movements at college campuses were, I don't want to say led by, because that may be an exaggeration, but in many cases is

definitely true.

But driven in large part by Jewish students vehemently opposed to the destruction of Gaza by Israel.

So the idea that somehow it's anti-Semitic to question either the Israeli destruction of Gaza or the U.S.

financing of it when you have huge numbers of Jews on the streets every day marching in protest against it by itself should reveal how corrupted that that tactic is.

And yet it's, it's just, it's so effective because it's instantaneous, right?

No one wants to be called a racist.

No one wants to be called an anti-Semite.

No.

And it is an effective tactic.

At least like it makes it so that you think like, maybe it's just easier for me to keep my mouth shut about this and talk about something else.

I've always felt that way.

It's way easier.

I don't want to get involved in it.

It's not worth it.

I've got all kinds of concerns about my country, which really is kind of falling apart in key and measurable ways.

Like people are dying younger.

I feel like that's something we should think a lot about and try and fix and everything.

It's like, I don't want to get involved.

And I do grieve when I see our public conversation hijacked by what I consider foreign concerns.

Like both sides.

Like, you know, you shut down Midtown Manhattan because of some conflict thousands of miles away.

It's like we.

Except it's an American war, though.

Well, that is it.

But it's not just Israel.

I mean, you see it all the time.

You see people getting murdered in like the upper Midwest because of like there's a sick Hindu,

you know, whatever.

All that stuff.

I just feel, I do feel like this country needs a lot of care and attention and it's been neglected.

And that's how I feel.

So I...

Or maybe that's how I justify staying out of it.

I don't want to be involved in it.

But you have kind of been a little bit more involved than you used to be.

And I think, but also because...

Well, it's going to destroy the MAGA movement, which I think is really important.

It's in a sense, not just about Trump.

Of course, I love Trump.

I've said that many times.

I have displayed it.

I campaigned for Trump, and I'm glad that I did.

But I feel like if there's one thing that could destroy this essential reform movement, it's like kind of our last chance to make government responsive to the people who own the government, which is the citizenry.

This will destroy it.

Because it's a massive contradiction sitting at the heart of it.

It's not all the stuff we talked about, but also free speech, free expression, not being punished for your views was also a vital part of this movement.

I know that's why I found so much common ground with the American Writing and with the MAGA movement over the last 10 years, because of my vehement opposition to attempts to censor the internet or introduce laws to characterize certain views as hate speech and therefore punishable.

And that's exactly what has been done and is still being done.

I didn't even even believe it.

Like when I always liked DeSantis, I spent a lot of time in Florida.

I was there for part of the pandemic.

And I like DeSantis.

He's smart.

You know, he's not a warm guy or anything, but I'm not looking for new friends.

I like respect DeSantis.

And he's very on it on the details.

Then he signs a hate speech law, travels to a foreign country to sign a hate speech law in Florida.

And I was so confused.

I didn't even think this was real.

And I said to somebody, well, that was a hate speech law.

It's not a hate speech law.

Looks like a hate speech law.

It looks like Sharia law, kind of a version of Sharia law.

In Florida?

Shut up.

And no one said anything about it.

And then like all the DeSantis people start attacking me for noting that I've never talked to DeSantis again

on the basis of that.

Like, I don't, what is that?

How can you do that in the United States?

I mean,

there's this attempt now to impose on colleges, require colleges to adopt, but also enact into American law this radical expansion of what anti-Semitism means.

Like there's laws that say, here's what racism is, here's what, you know, xenophobia is, here's what Islamophobia is, misogyny, whatever, to expand the definition definition of anti-Semitism to include statements not only about Jewish people who should be subjected to critique.

Like you should be able to say, huh, that Ben Shepherd seems to care quite a lot about Israel, maybe even to the point that he cares about it more than the United States.

Like you should be able to express that critique.

So this expanded definition.

prohibits not only statements like that, accusing any Jewish person of having greater oil.

You can have, I can say, oh, that person's Irish.

He seems to really care a lot about Ireland more than the United States.

Or that person is Indian.

He really seems to care a lot about India.

Maybe even more so.

You're not to say all that.

Or in my case, Swedish.

I've been accused of dual loyalty many times.

Oh, yeah.

You're

curious.

So annoying and like very disturbing.

But the other thing is, you cannot say,

this is just one example.

You cannot say Israel is a racist endeavor.

You can say Iran is a racist endeavor.

You can say Hamas is a racist endeavor.

You can say the United States is a racist endeavor.

You can say anything you,

you can be a student at a at a school a month away from completing your PhD with a completely clean record, and you can write an op-ed saying, I think America is a country of violence and imperialism and evil and was founded on racism.

And you'll be totally fine.

You write an op-ed, one-tenth of those criticisms, but about Israel, and ICE is coming to get you and to deport you.

Why is that?

Why is not just our free speech being limited, but being limited, not even to protect our own society and our own government, but to protect a foreign government from critique?

So this is the kind of thing that cannot be sustained by a movement that has certain values that it professes that are being radically assaulted by this one single policy and loyalty toward this other country.

I could not agree more.

I mean, it's no matter, and I, and I do think, and I know people who, you know, love Israel and

believe in the project, and it's fine.

I have a million friends who believe that, and that I'm not mad at them about it.

But you could believe that and say America's founding documents, its Bill of Rights, is sacrosanct and under no circumstances should American citizens be stripped of their rights, any circumstances, period.

It doesn't matter whether it's in the service of a foreign nation or any service of anything.

Like that's the whole point of America.

Like you could have that position, couldn't you?

I mean,

the whole MAGA movement is about preserving American identity and American values.

So what does that mean?

It certainly has to include America's founding documents.

I don't know what else it would include.

I don't know what else there is.

Right.

So if you cannot simultaneously say that you want to be a movement that is devoted to preserving American identity and American values while at the same time permitting attacks on the core rights and the core founding ideals on which the entire country was founded.

Right.

Right.

No, I couldn't agree more.

I'm

for all my

really sustained efforts to just stay away from the stuff.

I don't want to deal with it.

It upsets people.

It's like not my greatest interest in life.

It's not even on the top 10.

And I shouldn't have to care this much about a foreign country.

That's kind of like my internal monologue on this question.

I feel like it's being pushed to the point where it's in a, this whole species of news stories, ideas,

developments is a threat to

our Bill of Rights.

And that has to be the point where you're like, no, stop.

Right.

I mean,

you know, I, I,

I was said before that you go to other countries and you see all these values of other countries that you're told have none.

But I also said, like, there are certain things about the United States that I consider uniquely valuable.

And one of them is, you know, the stuff that I went and studied in law school, which I became incredibly enamored of and still am, which are like the Federalist Papers and the debates over like how to form this new government to prevent it from replicating the tyrannies of other governments, including the empire that they had just risked all of of their lives to wage war from and gain independence from, and created these documents that to this very day continue to be our guiding principles.

And the idea that we're going to permit the erosion of those for any reason is offensive to me.

But to do so in defense of a foreign country on the other side of the world, because they have so much influence in our politics,

that is, I mean, that is just so offensive to me.

I don't care what impact it has on my career.

I don't care what people say about me.

Like, that is something I will never stop talking about.

I agree.

And I think it's not, it's not sustainable because, as you said, it's the contradiction is just too, it's just too obvious.

And the last thing I'll say is not that it's like a top concern of mine or whatever, but I don't think it's great for Israel, actually, at all.

Like, long term, this is not the way to play.

Well, an Israeli politician, actually, a general just said Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state.

Yeah, that's not, I don't know how that helps.

And you can't transfer American military technology to China.

I just want to say that for the fifth time because I don't think most people know that that's happening, but it is.

I want to ask you one last question.

We had this like long and deep conversation off camera about

what makes people happy.

And there does seem to be quite apart from politics or global affairs, like an epidemic of unhappiness, at least in the world that I live in.

In the West.

In the West.

Not thank God in my family, but everywhere else, people are really unhappy.

It's measurable, suicide rates, all that stuff.

Where do you think?

What is that?

What?

Well, first of all, there's a documentary that is on Netflix that I watched many years ago

called Happiness.

And it measures the rate of happiness in various places around the world.

And it turns out that in some of the poorest countries in the world, the levels of happiness are at its highest.

In some of the richest countries of the world, the rate of happiness is at its lowest.

And

in many of those poorest countries, they live in villages where

they have their children around them all the time.

They have

extreme connectivity and connection to other human beings who live in their community.

They live in a communitarian way.

So they are constantly receiving one of the things.

I might even say the greatest thing that constitutes human happiness, which is connection to other human beings.

We are political and social animals.

We can't survive isolated.

You look at any people who have been put in sustained isolation and they they will say that there's nothing worse than that.

John McCain talked about it all the time, that he was physically savage, but that that was nowhere near as, you know, as horrifying and terrorizing as the sustained isolation that he was kept in, where you have no human beings around to connect to or talk to or interact with.

We need that so fundamentally.

And you look at how the West is now constructed, where people leave their house early in the morning, both couples, you know, both parts of a couple that children don't go run off to.

So everybody's running off in different directions.

When our

parents get sick, we put them at homes.

We don't, you know, when they get old, we put them at homes.

We don't stay together as families anymore.

And then when we work, we all go scatter far away and we spend all day in cubicles.

And then the worst part is the internet encourages us to stay at home.

People got trained during COVID, especially how to live completely isolated from the rest of the world and from everybody else.

They were forced into it.

And if you deprive human beings of of connection, then you can have all the money in the world, all the fame in the world, whatever you think is the thing that will make you happy, and you will never find happiness.

And I think we know we both know Johanna Hari, who's a friend of ours, who wrote this incredibly,

I think, revolutionary book about how to understand addiction.

Yes.

And depression and sadness in general, emptiness.

Right.

He then wrote another book about just like the depression epidemic,

especially among younger people in the West.

That first book about addiction, uh,

the thesis of it was that people think the opposite of addiction is sobriety, when in reality, the opposite of addiction is connection.

And by that, what he means is that all of these things are spiritual diseases, depression and addiction, and anxiety, and all these disorders that people suffer from that are new.

Like you, you talk to anyone in Gen Z.

I have colleagues in Gen Z.

My kids are getting to that age.

You know, they're 16 and 17.

I see their age group.

There's so much like mental disorder.

It's because society is not giving human beings what they want, which is connection.

And that's why like the only, you can go talk to medical doctors about addiction and they will all tell you the same thing, which is like, there is no cure for addiction chemically, medically.

The only cure for addiction.

is going to places like NA or AA or whatever, because there you find this instant and immediate connection based on with any kind of human being based on shared experiences.

And that's the only thing that cures that disease because it's a disease of the spirit, like of the soul.

It's not a biological disease where chemical medications will cure it.

And I think that the ability to be open to human connection, to have it readily available is probably the foundation of human happiness.

And the deprivation of it is what.

will eliminate human happiness.

And all of modern society is about keeping people stratified and isolated and away from each other.

And,

you know, I think there's like surveys that say, you know, people who are in their 20s will say on average, they have like one friend at most or like two friends at most that they rarely see.

People live away from their family.

Everything is about depriving people of connection.

Not saying that was the intent or the plan, but that's the outcome.

And there's no way.

to have human happiness without connection.

I know that in my life, the place where I've seen it most clearly is in AA.

I haven't,

so over many years, haven't been to AA a ton, but the first time I ever went, I was so struck by how what I was seeing was

kind of what people have talked about, but sort of presented an Ursat's replica of like

true connection between people from totally different backgrounds, cultures, races.

It was the diversity we're always promised, but like we're so cynical about, I am so cynical about it.

It's all bullshit.

You go to an AA meeting, and because it begins with stripping away, with basically ritual humiliation, oh, I'm talker, I'm an alcoholic.

It's like,

say that out loud.

It hurts, even if it's true, which in my case is hurt.

And like the first admission is like, I am powerless.

That's exactly right.

Like you're to confess your impotence.

But you have to confess it.

And once that, that strips away all the pretense.

And then you like, you experience people on a level that church promises, but I personally have never experienced in church.

I want to, but where it's just like

you are

dealing with people on the most human level.

Like all that matters is the other person's soul or something.

I don't know.

You know, it's into like the founding, the new, the new pope.

And like, this is the part of Catholicism that I really.

admire so much, like the ethos of the gospels.

You know, Jesus always wanted to minister to the like the lepers and the prostitutes and the outcasts, even though there was no necessary like common bond between them other than their humanity, which is what the gospels teach you to to

uh basically

think about the world as as being about is human connection, as

the ability to look at the lowest people and see their soul, see that they're all equal before God, all of this.

Exactly.

And one of the things diversity does, like diversity in this like modern corporatized HR sense, is it pretends to do that, but it actually is constantly reminding you of these differences and forcing you to think about them?

Like, oh, I have three black co-workers that I'm supposed to get along with, and I have like two gay ones over here.

And like, you're, it is constantly stratifying people across these lines, like categorizing them and counting them based on their differences.

And so, there's any kind of like similarity or connection is forced.

It's like very self-conscious.

Nothing causes more division than that, right?

But you strip everybody down to like

no ego and

have everybody converge based on their greatest weakness and suffering and difficulty.

And

you don't even have to give the slightest thought to, oh, this person is different and yet I'm able to have communion with them.

That's so genuine.

It just happens automatically.

Like it, it, all those things fade away.

Like people can walk into an NA meeting.

and just feel like they're living in a different world and thinking about other people and feeling other people in a way.

And then they walk out and the whole world then reappears that constantly constantly teaches us to, you know, keep everybody at arm's length.

But you walk into those kind of meetings, the idea of it is like you strip down to your deepest core, like foundation of your humanity.

And then on that level, everyone is the same.

And it's the connection that emerges from that is why it works, why people go their whole lives to it.

You know, even if they haven't had a drink or a drug for 25 years, they still need it.

Well, that's why I went.

I have no interest in drinking.

I went because a loved one, you know, someone I love needed to go.

So I brought that person and I was like, I want to go every day.

I've never seen anything.

Because

it makes you see the potential for what the world could be.

That's what everyone wants is the connection.

Right.

Because other people are all that matters.

Just to research it.

Other people are all that matters.

And you, gosh, that's so easy to lose that thread.

Yeah, that's like our humanity.

That's like the soul.

That's like the spirit.

It's everything.

And that is what Western society is assaulting and depriving people of.

And so it's no wonder we have epidemics of addiction and suicide and anxiety disorders and depression.

And distraction.

It's so easy to see why.

You should write.

You should write on this.

Yeah.

I mean, I've thought a lot about it.

I think a lot about it.

I try and like incorporate it.

And at some point, maybe I will.

I hope you will.

You describe it much better than I do.

I'm still trying to sort it out in my head.

I've really, it was less than a year ago I saw this.

I was like, I've not stopped thinking about it.

Yeah, we talked about it last night.

And so then I thought about it last night this morning.

So it's fresh in my mind as well, like in terms of what it means and how to think about it.

But yeah, it's something that is, I think, it's kind of like sitting there right in plain sight.

It's a solution to a lot of things.

But for a lot of reasons, you need a lot of vulnerability and humility to strip yourself down that way, to admit your powerlessness.

We're constantly taught to affirm our invulnerability.

Like, I'm strong, I'm powerful, I can deal with anything.

But human beings are by themselves

not all that powerful.

But there's a lot of things we can do.

There's a lot of things we can't.

And the whole point of these kind of addiction groups or whatever, there's a lot of these different kinds of groups.

I think all communities are like them.

It's like together, like human beings connecting to each other creates a much bigger power than every human being sitting kind of isolated and alone.

Yes.

I mean, I...

I believe in a religion that extols humility,

in which humility is like the cover charge.

Like you don't get anywhere without humility

that teaches that God like submitted to being tortured to death.

So like you get on your knees in a church, you like Islam, you like bow on the ground.

It's exactly right.

It's all an expression of that same.

I remember after 9-11 when I was like, you know, all about attacking Islam, I knew nothing about Islam.

I'm not Muslim, by the way.

I don't work for Qatar.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, despite the paychecks from Qatar.

I'm not a secret shit.

But I remember

hearing someone on, I worked at CNN at the time and like we had all these endless experts, most of whom kind of worked for the CIA, but whatever, I realized that later, but I remember who it was, come on and be like, you know, Islam is bad.

And I was like, sounds bad, you know, whatever.

I don't know if I ever met a Muslim, but he's like, you know what Islam means?

Submission.

And like, let it hang in the air.

Like, that was self-evidently disgusting.

And I was like, I kind of think submission to God is like the whole point of life, but I didn't say anything.

I was like,

I don't think I'm against that, actually.

Anyone who submits to God, like, I'm just for that.

Well, and the, the, the found, I mean, I think a lot of religions seek the same things, just find different ways to think about how to

find them.

But

the whole point of AA and NA, like the foundation of it is that you submit to a higher power.

Yes.

It can be, you know, understanding that there's a lot of people who are now atheists or secular.

It doesn't necessarily have to be some like religious conception of a God.

And so many people go into these groups and they're adamantly contemptuous of this idea.

Like, this is so irrational.

I'm not going to pretend that there's some magic thing.

And, you know, I used to think that way too.

And then I got to the point where I was like, no, you know what actually is irrational?

Thinking that there's no higher power than you.

Like, I am the highest power.

Like, that's the absurd thing.

But it's all about, you know, losing that sense that you're invulnerable and understanding that.

you know, you can find something higher than yourself.

And it could just be the connection of the human group, whatever you want it to be.

Like whatever you recognize as being able to do something being able to do things that you can't do is already an acknowledgement that there's a higher power than you.

But if you're, if you think you're God, you're not allowed.

And I mean, if you think you're God, you're going to have a lot of difficulties in life.

You're going to be Toria Newland.

So it's not good.

Glenn Green.

Well, thank you.

Really, always my favorite person to talk to.

So I appreciate your comment.

Thank you, Tucker.

I always enjoyed it as well.

Thank you.

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