Glenn Greenwald: Dangerous New Escalation in Russia, & Our Blackmailed Politicians

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Visit volvocars.com slash US to learn more. I think we're watching the most evil thing I've ever seen in my lifetime, which is the lame duck administration leaving the next administration with the world war, with the nuclear conflict, by allowing Ukraine, a proxy state of the United States, to strike within Russia.
And I'll just have one editorial comment and then I'm just going to let you go. But I think that people in Washington misunderstand Vladimir Putin and they think he's a monarch with absolute power, which is not true.
And Russian politics is complex and it's lively. And Putin is very concerned with his approval rating within Russia.
He cannot appear weak. That's a huge threat to him.
He feels that, I can confirm. And if he can't hide attacks on him by the United States through Ukraine, either on Moscow or big civilian casualties, I think he will have no choice in his view but to launch a serious response against Ukraine or NATO countries or possibly the United States.
So this seems like the most reckless thing that's ever happened in my life. I hardly have words for it.
Am I overstating it, do you think? No, no, not even remotely. Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.
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Here's the episode. So let me just say specifically what has been authorized.
This is something that some NATO countries, including the United Kingdom, have been pressuring the Biden administration to do for quite a long time, for at least a year. But going all the way back to the beginning of 2022, this was an option that they had, which was that we have these guided missiles called ATAKMs, which are very powerful for attacking inside Russia.
You can guide them specifically and very precisely to where you want them to go. Obviously, you have to get intelligence about where you want to strike.
And the reason we never permitted the Ukrainians to use them is because the Ukrainians can't use those missiles on their own. In other words, if they want to launch these missiles, it's not just the U.S.
giving them the missiles and then telling them, no problem, go and use them. It requires the direct involvement of the United States and or a major NATO country like France or the U.K.
or Germany because the Ukrainians don't have the guiding capability in order to know how to launch these missiles. So this is not just us giving them missiles and saying, go attack deep inside.
Imagine if some major country, China, Iran, Russia, whoever, gave missiles to Canada, if we were at war with them, or Mexico, or Cuba, and said, we're giving you these specifically for you to use them inside the United States. We would consider that a grievous act of war, not just on the part of the country shooting them, but on the part of the country giving them.
What Biden did here is so much worse. He didn't just give Ukrainians missiles and say, feel free to use them inside Russia.
We are going to participate in the bombing of Russia, NATO and or the United States, because there's no way the Ukrainians can launch these missiles on their own, which means we are now, our military, our intelligence community, are participating in missile attacks inside the country of Russia. This is something that even the Biden administration, for all their hawkishness on Russia and Ukraine, feeding that war, fueling it, preventing diplomatic resolutions because they wanted this war, even they were unwilling to do it because they understood the dangers of the escalatory risks.
For Joe Biden, or whoever's acting in his name, to do this just two weeks after the country resoundingly rejected governance by the Democratic Party and the administration, and on his way out as an 81-year-old man, knowing that he has about six weeks left in office, to just say, yeah, I know that these are massive risks, but I'm going to take them. I'm 81.
I don't really care. And then to make it so much more difficult for the following administration to do what they promised to do during the campaign, which the American people voted for and wanted, which is to resolve this war.
Instead, we're risking escalation with the world's largest superpower, nuclear power. Over what? Over what? I mean, placed in context too, this is without precedent.
And I think it's Blinken. I want to ask about that in a second.
So 1956, Soviets invade Hungary and murder a ton of people. 61, they put nuclear weapons in Cuba.
68, they invade Czechoslovakia, murder a bunch of people once again. These are all incredibly provocative acts, far more provocative than invading eastern Ukraine.
And this was the middle of the Cold War, and no American presidents, Democrats and Republicans, in charge during those periods. They didn't respond by attacking Russia.
I mean, there's nothing like this has ever happened. No one's ever been this crazy.
Well, this is, you know, my big breach with the laugh, my big permanent split with whatever they thought I was in terms of associates with them. They hate you.
Oh yeah, I know. And that all happened in 2016 when out of nowhere, Russiagate appeared.
And remember, like it was yesterday, the very first ad from Hillary Clinton's campaign with this like menacing baritone voice. You know, what does Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have in common? What does Russia have on Donald Trump? And journalistically, I just couldn't believe it because it was so redolent of McCarthyism, which is a civil libertarianism, I found.

I was taught it was like one of the worst civil liberties of the 20th century. Me too.
And by the way, I agree. Yeah, I mean, you go around just accusing people of being Russian agents with no evidence, destroying their reputation, their lives, kind of like what they're trying to do to Tulsi Gabbard now, what they tried to do for Donald Trump for the last eight years.
So just on that ground, I was kind of offended by it.

Journalistically, I was so skeptical of it because when you have intelligence agencies leaking anonymously unverified claims to the Washington Post and the New York Times, and they put it on the front page and gather Pulitzers for them, that's usually a sign that a huge disinformation campaign of deceit is underway. That was the exact method used, for example, to sell the war on Iraq to the American people, was that kind of process.
That's why these intelligence agencies need to be rooted out. But what alarmed me most was that the climate was deliberately created in Washington, especially once Hillary lost and they blamed Russia for it, that any communications with Russia, anyone who visits Russia, anyone who

talks to a Russian official is automatically deemed sinister or treasonous. And as you said, during the Cold War, which dominated our American life for 50 years, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire.
They were infinitely more powerful, more threatening, more everything than than Russia is now,

we always communicated

with Soviet leaders.

There were phones all over Washington that rang to the counterparts. They communicated constantly.
After Russiagate, there's basically no communication any longer between the Russian leaders and the American leaders. On either side, and I should just say, I mean- Not because Russia wanted that.
That was something that in Washington got created because they blamed Russia and claimed that Russia was our existential enemy because of the claim that they interfered in the 2016 election. Before that, there was all kinds, the Obama administration and the Putin government cooperated in all sorts of ways around the world.
Of course, but it's the leadership of the Republican Party too. I had a conversation with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and he was about to appropriate tens of billions more for Ukraine.
And I said, well, why don't you check with Putin? You're the Speaker of the House, number three in line from the presidency. Well, Putin, I said, well, I'll see if I can facilitate that.
I'll call the press office, kind of set you up. Why don't you talk to Putin? No, absolutely not.
Will not. Why? Imagine if he had, though, and that leaked.
But I'm not excusing him. Why wouldn't he just say, I mean, I'm not attacking Mike Johnson.
I guess I am attacking Mike Johnson. I don't know what I'm saying.
I'm just reporting what actually happened. I said, you know, like, don't you have a moral duty to get as much information about this war before you fund its continuation and the killing of all these people? Like, shouldn't you know more? No.
I think it is important to say that this war has been 100% bipartisan, although the Biden administration as the leader of the executive branch is primarily responsible. The primary, there's been about, I would say, five or six dozen anti-interventionist Republicans, typically more Trump supporters, both in the House and Senate, who have spoken out from the beginning against funding this war.
But the vast majority of Republicans, to the extent they have a criticism or had a criticism of the Biden administration at all with respect to Ukraine, it was that they didn't do enough. They didn't spend enough money on Ukraine.
They didn't give Ukraine enough weapons. They didn't get more involved more heavily and earlier than they should.
But, you know, the thing that you said about encouraging Mike Johnson to speak to Putin, which, of course, as the third in line to the presidency, as you said, when they're proposing to escalate a major war, of course, you should want to understand the Russian perspective. This is what Tulsi Gabbard did in 2017 when she was a member of Congress and the Obama administration had unleashed this billion-dollar-a-year CIA dirty war to change the government of Syria, to dislodge Basra al-Assad from the government.
And we fought along ISIS and al-Qaeda, who also wanted Assad gone. We were told those were our existential enemies for 15 years.
We fought alongside them to do it. And so many of the weapons we sent ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda and ISIS and other Islamic radical groups in Syria.
And Tulsi Gabbard is a member of the military, but also as a member of Congress with constitutional responsibility to authorize or just authorize a war, wanted to go to Syria and see what was happening for herself. And then she spoke with Syrian officials and got an opportunity to speak with the Syrian

president.

And based solely on that, she's now accused of being a Russian agent, being some sort

of treasonous sympathizer of Bashar al-Assad.

This is the jingoistic climate that has been created, way worse than what prevailed in

the Cold War.

When Nixon went to China, Reagan negotiated all kinds of arms deals with the Soviets, this is now totally prohibited. It's like we live in a Marvel cartoon for children where there's good guys and bad guys where the good guys, you don't speak to the bad guys.
And the good guys are Al-Qaeda and ISIS. They're the good guys.
Yeah, we can fight with them. So her point, I don't want to speak for Tulsi Gabbard, our new Director of National Intelligence nominee, but my view was I don't have any feelings about Assad or Syria, but it's a fact that that government protected religious minorities, including an ancient Christian community there, and the Alawites, of which he's one, in that country for a long time.
He and his dad. So why are they my enemy exactly? I don't understand.
Like, what does why should i be opposed to assad in syria why should i be opposed to vladimir putin i was not supposed to be opposed to the soviets who are anti-christian but now you have a pro-christian president i'm supposed to be against him tell me why it wasn't something explained to me why as a 55 year old american taxpayer i should be against first of all think the principle is that, and this is what Donald Trump read explicitly in 2016, was that we shouldn't be involved in wars designed to change the governments of other countries, rebuild their governments, transform their societies. in part because it's not our place to do it and in part because we're terrible at doing it because they have very complex, rich, long histories

that American intelligence officials

and political leaders

have no understanding of whatsoever.

They don't speak the freaking language.

I mean, they don't know anything.

They know nothing.

And we've proven that over and over in all these failed attempts.

But also when it comes to, I mean, Pelosi Gabbard's entire worldview, and I have spoken

to her about this, I've interviewed her about this, so I feel comfortable saying this, is that she's not in any way anti-war pacifist.

She believes that we should be very militarily aggressive against, say, terrorist groups that actually want to attack the United States or have done so, or American assets or American interests around the world. Her argument is that we should not be involved in regime change wars of the kind we did in Iraq, that she fought in in of the kind we did in syria of the kind we did in libya of the kind that we did in ukraine in 2014 when we actually engineered a coup on the most sensitive part of the kind that we're trying to pull off in russia right now the point of this is to knock out putin yeah to to weaken that regime into the thing is though that what you said about putin is so important which is putin critics, he doesn't have very many liberal critics, meaning people to his left.
Exactly. His real critics are hardcore nationalists.
Exactly. And their criticism of Putin— Who see him as a liberal.
Who see him as weak or insufficiently militaristic when it comes to confronting the West, but particularly on Ukraine. They wanted destruction of Ukraine.
A lot of them are enraged. And as you say, the Russian government has taken the position, warned the United States government privately and publicly that any use of these missiles involving, as they do, direct US or NATO involvement in their launching against Russia will be seen as the entrance of the United States and NATO as belligerents in this war, as a war against Russia, as World War III.
And he will have to treat it as such, even though he's been very constrained, even though he clearly doesn't want a broader war. There are a lot of people inside Moscow who do wield a lot of power who do, and who will demand that he treat it as such.
Why wouldn't they? We are attacking Russia. We're shooting missiles inside Russia.
So I think, as you've said, I don't think we can say it enough. So much of this has been conducted in bad faith, but also so much of that bad faith has been informed by ignorance or uninformed by ignorance, not informed at all.
And I think that people really think that Putin is an absolute dictator who can do whatever he wants. And that is not the case.
It's not the case. Super complex place.
A lot of smart people in Russia, complicated political situation. So I agree completely.
We're pushing him toward that. The view, I think, I know, from Putin is that Blinken is driving this and that Blinken has a lot of hostility.
It is reckless, but has a lot of hostility toward Russia that has nothing to do with the United States at all.

Do you think that's true?

Do you think Blinken is driving this?

Yeah.

I mean, I think Blinken, Jake Sullivan, that's kind of the brain trust as it is.

Obviously, Joe Biden has no involvement in this whatsoever, which I think has been an issue which we've shockingly ignored.

Everyone saw what Joe Biden was long before that debate. Everyone knew it.
The only people who didn't say so were the media and Democratic allies. After the debate, it became untenable for them to deny it any longer that this is an old man who has lost his cognitive capabilities.
Yet he's still the sitting president of the United States. and you had the vice president, understandably, doing nothing for the last four months other than working on her own empowerment through the campaign.
She obviously wasn't involved ever in any decision-making, let alone when she became the nominee. So the question has been all these consequential decisions we made, deploying massive military assets to the Middle East, making decorations about when we would go to war in the Middle East and for whom, escalating the war in Ukraine, now authorizing the use of these long-range missiles.
He's obviously not coming from Joe Biden. He barely understands where he is.
It's not a character flaw in his part, but it's just a disability, a clear disability. He's obviously not making any of these decisions.
I do think that if you look at the national security crowd that emerged from the Obama presidency, especially the people who were associated with the State Department run by Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry, even before Russiagate in 2016, they had an obsession with Russia. In fact, when Hillary Clinton left the administration as Secretary of State and wrote her book, Hard Choices, the only areas in which she was critical of Obama was her view that he wasn't willing to confront Russia sufficiently.
Obama had this view, like sort of this realist view from Brent Scowcroft. Those are the kind of people who like Jim Baker.
That why would we send lethal arms to Ukraine and provoke Russia? Ukraine is not a vital interest to us, but it is to them. He wanted to work with Russia and did to facilitate the Iran deal, to bomb terrorist targets in Syria.
And there was a faction in the Obama administration led by Hillary Clinton. Blinken was there.
All these sort of national security people woven into the, you know, that Victoria, Victoria Nuland was hired by Hillary Clinton. That's how she made her way into the Obama administration.
They viewed Russia as this grave menace. The reason Putin hated Hillary Clinton was because when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the United States openly spent millions of dollars funding opposition groups and organizing protests in Moscow.
I mean, we talk about Putin interfering in our sacred politics and our internal affairs. Hillary Clinton was openly funding protests and anti-Putin agitators inside Russia in the 2010 election, in 2012, 2011 rather, and they were obsessed with Russia well before that.
And I do think that Russia is disliked by a lot of people in Washington because of the perception that they are detrimental to our interests in the Middle East and especially to Israel's interest in the Middle East, including their support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the fact that they have a good relationship with Iran. It doesn't really always have a lot to do with the United States, but with the interest of other countries as well.
So you think that's the prime mover here? Because it is true that Assad is only there because of Russia. I think that's a fair statement.
Yeah, that's their ally in the Middle East. And it's been their ally in the Middle East for decades.
And just like we support our allies around the world, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, you know, very savage, brutal dictatorships, but at least to do our bidding, the Russians have theirs as well. They have a long-term relationship with Venezuela, with Cuba, going back to the Cold War and still do, as well as with Syria.
And yeah, the Russians operate in Syria. They protect Assad in Syria, and as a result, they end up being antagonistic to Israel, which ends up being defined as U.S.
interests as well. Like there's no separation between the two countries.
But strictly speaking, this has kind of nothing to do with us whatsoever. I mean, I don't, I honestly, unless you see Israel as a part of the United States.
You know, I'm not hostile toward Israel, but I think it's a separate country. It seems to me it would be a separate country as well.
It's often not treated as that. I'm just saying, but...
Don't pay taxes there. I wasn't born there.
So from my, just from an American perspective without wishing ill on any other country at all, and I really don't, I have been struggling for really since the 2016 election, but particularly since the war began in February of 2022 to identify what exactly would be the U.S. interest in this.
And I just can't. And I've really, I think, tried hard.
But I just don't see what's in it for us at all. Tucker, there's nobody, I'm certain of this, in the United States, just an average, ordinary American voter, who believes that their life is affected in any way by the question of who rules various provinces in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine.
Nobody thinks about Ukraine, let alone the Donbass, let alone eastern Ukraine. It's an incredibly complex situation there in terms of the people's allegiances, which are far closer to Moscow than they are to Kiev.
The question of what that territory should be. Should it be semi-autonomous, should it be used as a buffer against the West? The whole framework, as you well know, and as other people have pointed out, when Russia agreed to the reunification of Germany, which was obviously an extraordinary thing for the Russians to agree to, given the Russian history in the 20th century with respect to Germany, when the Berlin Wall fell and they allowed the eastern and the western parts of Germany to reunite and to become part of the west and become part of the EU, the only concession they extracted in exchange for that was, okay, with reunification, NATO is now moving eastward closer to our border.
In a country that has devastated our country twice in two world wars, invaded Russia twice, killed tens of millions of Russian citizens. The only thing we need as a security guarantee in exchange for allowing that is that NATO will never expand one inch eastward beyond what was East Germany.
And the United States agreed to that. And immediately in the 90s, under the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration started talking about it and implementing NATO expansion eastward toward Russia.

Exactly what was promised to Gorbachev the United States would not do in exchange for them agreeing to reunification. And why? Why did we need to expand our influence eastward toward Russia? and now it's not just eastward in general,

it's going directly up to the Russian border

on the part of their border

that has been invaded twice in Ukraine

to destroy Russian border on the part of their border that has been invaded twice in Ukraine to destroy Russia in both of those world wars. We also participated in the change of government.
We removed the democratically elected leader of Ukraine before his constitutional term was expired in 2014 because we perceived him as being too friendly to Moscow, which is who the Ukrainians voted for, and replaced him, Victoria Nuland constructed a government and it was replaced by a government that was more pro-U.S. Imagine if the Russians engineered a coup in Mexico to take out the government because they were too friendly to the U.S.
and put in a hardline pro-Russian, anti-American, anti-NATO president. Imagine how threatening we would regard that as.
And that's exactly what we did in Ukraine. The question is, though, this has nothing to do with the national security of the American people.
No American is threatened by who governs Ukraine. What they're threatened by is what the United States is doing in Ukraine, including this most recent act.
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tnusa.com. That's 1 on the brink of a global war.
But can I just say one thing about that? Don't you think think aren't you kind of amazed by how impervious and dismissive media and political elites are of the prospect of nuclear war well i i it's unimaginable and and yes and i mean it's i think it can't happen source of ongoing frustration yeah and i will say the one um thing that trump has said repeatedly over the over the past, certainly since he left the presidency, four years, that he's received no credit for and should get enormous credit for is that nuclear war is the worst thing. He was, of course, been briefed on it as the person who controlled the launch codes.
he knows what it means and anyone who spends five minutes looking into what a nuclear exchange

would actually

do

is He knows what it means. And anyone who spends five minutes looking into what a nuclear exchange would actually do is terrified of it.
But only Trump seems worried about it. I don't understand why.
Yeah, I've said this. I've talked about this so many times.
And I think it goes back to when Trump was president in the early stages of presidency. every time Trump talks about the prospect of nuclear war

he knows that he's limited in what everything he can divulge, but he's so clearly trying to signal, and he often says that these weapons are of a different universe than even the ones we dropped in Japan. That's correct.
And he's obviously, as you said, understands and been briefed on. But you see these morons at the Atlantic Council or AEI or HUD Center or this cluster of the dumbest people in the world, all implicated in the Iraq disaster, say, well, you know, maybe tactical nukes are fine.
That's like such next level crazy. Like that's crazier than any schizophrenic sitting next to you on a public subway.
Well, yeah. I mean, that's crazy.
We constantly call like RFK Jr. They call him crazy.
They call, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz crazy, whoever. These people who have been in power, who have been generating American orthodoxy, especially on foreign policy, are the most insane people on the planet.
It's because the United States has been the most powerful country in the world. No one could constrain it.
No one could stand up to it. And as is true with everything, that level of unconstrained power corrupts people.
And these people have been in control of this power for decades, passed on one to another through this dogma that gets increasingly out of touch and detached from reality. Megalomaniacal.
Exactly. I mean, at least during the Cold War, I'm not saying it was a good thing, but the Soviet Union and the United States were of equal power.
They were competing with one another. They were both very constrained in what they were.
They both were petrified of a nuclear war. We almost came to nuclear apocalypse at least twice, especially in the Cuban Missile Crisis through misperception and miscommunication when a Russian commander of a submarine thought incorrectly that they were using nuclear weapons against the submarine and against Cuba and almost launched the nuclear weapons at the sub-camp, about five minutes away from doing so until someone intervened on that sub and said, I don't think that this is actually an attack.
It's very possible. We've come to the brink of it before.
It probably is the single greatest threat to the survival of the species. Not probably.
Definitely is the use of nuclear weapons. Every time Trump talks about it, you can see the fear that he has he's trying to convey to others.
Every time. And I'm, I mean, Tucker, I'm amazed.
This is like impeachment level stuff for Joe Biden on his way out of the door to involve the U.S. directly in a war for the first time.
We've been very involved in other ways. They should impeach him.
Why doesn't the Speaker of the House impeach him right now? There's a constitutional limitation on the president's ability to involve the U.S. in a war without congressional authorization, which is exactly what has happened through the use of these missiles, which, as I said, we need to help direct.
And the question is, yeah, why? The answer, though, is that the vast majority of the Republican caucus in the House and in the Senate supports what Joe Biden is doing, thinks he should have done this a year ago. And there's probably not a lot of anger in the House and Senate over this, except the question that it's called lame duck for a reason.
A lame duck is supposed to be a duck that really doesn't do much, can't do much, doesn't move much. It's by design pretty limited.
It's like this transition period. Yeah, he's floating in the water because he's been shot.
Yeah, exactly. His legs are broken.
And so he's lame. This is not a lame duck decision.
And it's not like there was any emergency to it. It wasn't, there was no emergency to it.
They just wanted to escalate it because they thought Trump wouldn't. And so they did.
It puts us in this remarkable moment where the only adult is Vladimir Putin. This person we've been told is Hitler and deranged, crazy, dying of nine different kinds of cancer, can't be trusted.
Like the only reason we're not, I mean, we're all relying on his restraint. That's just a fact right now.
How weird is that? Well, I mean, first of all, this is what amazes me is that sometimes propaganda, and propaganda is, you have to respect it. It's a very potent field of human knowledge that has been refined over many decades using every field of discipline, social sciences and psychology and psychiatry.
I mean, propaganda is not just some, you know, intuitive thing that people do. It's not just an argument that you make.
Yeah, and it's very powerful. And we love to talk about how propagandized the Russians are and the Chinese are and how there's no dissent allowed.

You know, George Orwell in the preface to Animal Farm wrote – actually to 1984 – wrote an essay where he was essentially saying that overt totalitarianism of the kind that was taking place in the Soviet Union is repressive, but it's not nearly as effective as subtle repression, the kind where you give the illusion that people are free, but in reality, the flow of information is heavily controlled. Because at least when the guys dressed in black with weapons come and take you and put you in a gulag for criticizing the government, everybody understands the level of repression.
It it often generates a backlash but when you combine repression with the illusion of freedom

that's what's incredibly effective and that's what we have people with an abundant consumer economy

like you know here are your edibles here's your netflix calm down yeah and you can basically get

them to do anything yeah and at the same time there has been a concerted effort to control

what was supposed to be the one innovation that was going to break the centralized control of

and a friend. them to do anything.
Yeah, and at the same time, there has been a concerted effort to control what was supposed to be the one innovation that was going to break the centralized control of information, which is the internet. That's why there's so much attention and energy.
It's why it's the number one priority of Western power centers to control the internet, because it's the one threat to their ability to maintain this propagandist to control. You know, I still can't believe this, that it's not talked about as much, but right after Russia invaded Ukraine and Western governments decided they wanted full-on support for Ukraine and this very simple-minded narrative that they fed their public.
After they started the war, when the Biden administration started, that's my view of it. They knew that Russia would invade if they publicly pushed Zelensky to join NATO.
So they did that. Kamala Harris did it and Russia invaded.
My view is they started this war. Ian Threatt talking openly about expanding NATO to Ukraine.
You can find memos from the highest levels of the U.S. government saying if you do that, it's not just Putin.
It's every political faction in Russia that will see it as a war and they'll annex Crimea and invade eastern Ukraine. Of course the American government knew that.
You can show documents where it says that. But the EU, the minute that war started in earnest with the Russian army invading, one of the very first steps they took legislatively was to ban the platforming, to criminalize the platforming of Russian media.
like uh r Sputnik. They made it a crime and YouTube immediately pulled it off because they didn't want their citizens hearing any information from the Russian perspective.
I mean, you can hate Russia. You can think Russia is evil.
You can think whatever you want about Russia. But why wouldn't you want to hear from the other side? know the new york times used to publish all the

time like the speeches of brezhnev of course and uh yuri and drop off and and khrushchev and you could read what the russians would say they would come to the united states they would speak openly now it's it's practically criminalized putin's speech in february 2022 to to his country nationally televised there

right before the invasion

was absolutely just a remarkable speech which I by the way never got around to even looking at before I got to Moscow and I was like I can interview Putin I think I should watch that speech I read about it never watched it and I think I mean you can agree or disagree you can hate Putin I mean it's totally fine I don't care how people feel about Putin but to most Americans had no idea his thinking in invading Ukraine like no idea what why wouldn't people want to know what it was just the cartoon for he's an evil Hitlerian figure who wants to reconquest all of Europe the way Hitler did Putin has been in office 25 years. He has gone through six different American presidents, every single one of them, until you were not allowed to say it anymore, always said, you meet with Putin, he's incredibly shrewd, he's incredibly smart, you can trust Putin.
If you do a deal with Putin, you can count on the fact that he will adhere to it. Other heads of state still feel that way and say that.
Yeah, well, American presidents said it all the time, starting with Bill Clinton, that he's rational, that he acts in his self-interest, that he's calculating in terms of, and careful. And then suddenly, this is what amazed me, propagandistically, is that overnight, everybody was forced to say that Putin invaded Ukraine simply because suddenly he became this psychotic, evil Hitler-type figure who just wanted out of the blue.
They all believed it, though. A lot of them.
The people who screamed at me at airports for being pro-Putin. Of course, I've never been pro-Putin.
I don't have strong feelings. Either way.
But they really had been convinced, not just by MSNBC and CNN, but by the entire oligarch-controlled internet, that anyone who talked about Putin and raised questions about the war was for Putin putin it like that worked propaganda worked talking about propaganda where especially nationalistic propaganda because human beings evolved over thousands of years to be tribal like we we want to feel part of our group we take pride in our our group like it's why if you're born in america you say i'm an american this is my country i'm this'm loyal to. It comes from these tribalistic instincts, right? It makes sense because we evolved for thousands of years where if you got expelled from your tribe, you would die.
You needed a tribe in order to survive. So we're tribalistic animals.
So if you appeal to people's tribalism and say, we're the good guys, we're the innocent victims. Our enemy are the bad guys.
They're evil. That appeals to people's most visceral instincts.
And the problem, of course, is the countervailing punishment, which is the minute you question it. From the beginning, I had on my show people like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and Jeffrey Sachs, and they were all saying from the beginning, there's no possibility that Ukraine can win this war

as NATO has defined it,

which means the expulsion of every Russian troop

from every inch of Ukrainian soil,

just simply on size grounds alone.

Just saying, just basic understanding of history.

Every one of them, I'm sure,

I think it happened to you too.

I know it happened to me.

Were put on these official lists issued by the Ukrainian government of being pro-Russian propagandist.

Everywhere you went, you get accused of being a Russian propagandist or some sort of agent of the Kremlin simply by questioning our own government's propagandistic views or simply trying to understand things from the Russian perspective. Like, this is, you know, after 9-11, the big question on the minds of all americans after they were traumatized by this extraordinary assault on our soil designed obviously to impose as much suffering and and and uh killing as possible was obviously they asked like why why do they want to do that to us why would people hate us so much that they would devise a scheme as complex and deadly as hijacking planes, passenger planes with box cutters and flying them into major American buildings filled with people? Why would they hate us that much? And they had to – the government had to give an answer to that question because people obviously wanted to know the answer.
And that was when David Frum and Cheney and all the people said, they hate us for our freedoms. They just can't stand the fact that women are allowed to wear bikinis on the beach and that we have a Congress.
And it's like, no one ever thought, well, there's like dozens of countries around the world where women get to wear bikinis and have Congresses like in Japan and Korea and all throughout Latin America and like Scandinavia. Why aren't they attacking those places? And then bin Laden wrote a letter in 2002 to the American people saying, here's why there's so much animosity toward the United States.
And there was, of course, some appeal to religion in it. I made the mistake of reading part of that letter on the air at CNN at the time, not to make a kind of point, but just because super interesting, you know, and 9-11 changed everyone's life, very much including mine.

Lost a friend that day. Like, just like

every American who was an adult on 9-11,

it was like, you felt like it was an event that you participated

in, or it affected you. So I felt like

I had every right to read that letter.

Like, hey, this is, he's now saying

why he did it. I almost got pulled

off the air for doing that. Oh, I know.

Tucker, I just want,

I just have to, not only doesn't that surprise me, a lot of people have forgotten that this happens, but it's actually quite extraordinary. After 9-11, obviously Osama bin Laden was one of the most important people in the world.
He had just perpetrated the worst attack on American soil, at least since Pearl Harbor. And a lot of people wanted to interview him or play clips of interviews.
The states government told called all the network news agencies uh into the white house and said to them you should not and cannot show interview osama bin laden or show any interviews with him and they invented this excuse as to why which is that he might put some sort of code in his interviews that signaled to sleeper cells. Like he might like wiggle his ear like Carol Burnett did, or like, you know, raise his eyebrows three times or blink in a Morse code in a certain way.
And the networks all obeyed. And the most amazing thing was this letter, which you can go read where he says exactly why all the different ways the United States has brought violence to that region has interfered in that region.
Even like our foreign policy is the bottom line. Yeah, well, we've been bombing that region and interfering in them, opposing dictatorships on those people for decades, specifically to suppress the things they believe in.
We don't want popular opinion being prevailing in democratically in the Middle East because we don't perceive it in our interest. So we've been imposing dictators on them, secular dictators.
We've been bombing them. We've been sanctioning them.
We've been invading them. Of course, we support Israel, which in that region, people view as this grave assault on the rights of Palestinians.
But we put bases in Saudi Arabia, which is the most sacred soil to that religion. We imposed a blockade and sanction regime on Iraq, which Madeleine Albright admitted killed 500,000 children, but nonetheless said it was worth it.
So we've been so active in that region, and that's the reason they wanted to attack back. That's the reason al-Qaeda had so much support.
But they banned Osama bin Laden from being heard, just like the EU banned Russian state media from being heard, because, of course, you don't want Americans being exposed to this. And then the amazing thing is that letter, which really didn't get much attention at the time, the only place it existed on the Internet was on The Guardian's website.
And somehow, you know, 22-year-olds on TikTok found that letter, and they started talking about it. And they were like, oh, my God, I was never told this before.
He didn't attack us because he hates us for our freedom. He says specifically here why they're attacking us.
And in other words, they were reading a historical document and discussing it, things that you would want a free citizenry to do. But the fear that they were allowed to not only read, but talk about the document with one another was so intense that in 48 hours, they forced TikTok to ban every discussion of that letter, to remove the hashtags, to find it, to take down any posts or accounts that were talking about it.
And then the Guardian, a news outlet, removed that letter, which had been there for 20 years, which was of obvious historical and journalistic importance. They removed it from their website because they were too frightened that people were going to be able to read it.
Why? Because it prevents the propagandistic narrative from being unchallenged. And that's the same with Russia and Ukraine.
That shows you how we think we're so free. We hear so much dissent because you have a Republican and Democrat bickering on a cable show about trivial things.
You're like, oh, look, we have free debates, open debates. They don't get to have that in Russia and China.
But the minute there's information that actually threatens the government, that they fear people understanding, they clamp down on it and suppress it. And that's what they did there.
You wonder why we put up with that. You wonder why we put up with a government that continues to keep secret files about 9-11.
It's been 23 years.

What could possibly be the justification for not telling me information that I own and

have a right to see, which is what the hell was that?

And they constantly lecturing.

Even the JFK files.

Especially the JFK file.

But much more immediate.

It was 23 years ago.

But I mean, we're both adults.

We remember it very well.

Yeah, I lived in Manhattan.

It affected our lives.

I mean, it was like, I was traumatized by that.

It was a horrible event. Exactly.
And then a lot happened. Our country changed radically because of it.
To this day, the Patriot Act exists. Well, it's never been the same country, and in some ways, you know, it was much more successful in its aims than I even want to admit to myself, because it's so sad to see what it did to this country.
But here's the point. They're constantly, they, meaning the media and the intel agencies, which work together, as you know, are constantly attacking other people for being conspiracy theorists and crazy and desecrating the memory of the 9-11 victims, et cetera, by coming up with explanations that are not authorized.
Okay, then why don't you just tell us what actually happened? Why not just declassify it? I know, what's the answer? It's going to jeopardize sources and methods that's that's not true and we all know that's and you know that this the importance of protecting those secrets keeping those documents that might show the truth not just about not having the jfk that's the most important thing it's the it's in fact the whole point of the second impeachment trial yep which never made any sense why would you bring an impeachment trial against the president on his way out the office? Was because they were petrified that Trump was going to do certain things in that transition, like pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, which he came very close to doing, but especially fulfill his promise to declassify things like the JFK files and other national security files that had been kept hidden with no justification from the American public, even though it happened decades ago, 9-11, JFK. And they told him, if you do that, all the Senate Republicans are going to vote to impeach you.
You're going to be convicted and ineligible to run ever again. That was the sword of Damocles they held over his head precisely to prevent him from bringing transparency to the government and allowing the American people to see what they ought to have a right to know.
But if fear is transparency then you're a criminal i mean that's basically proof i can't think of a better indicator of behavior than the crazed desire to keep that behavior secret right can i want to say something about that which is if you think about what a democracy is supposed to be like what an ideal ideal free society is, whatever you call that, it's supposed to be that everything that public officials do in the name of the public power is supposed to be known to the public with very few exceptions, right? Like if there's a war and they're planning troop movements, they can keep that secret. Yeah, Normandy a week before.
Right. They don't have to tell everyone that they're going to do that.
But outside of those very rare exceptions, we're supposed to know everything about what they do. Of course.

Because they're doing it in our name. They're our employees.
Yeah. And they're supposed to be

accountable to us, but they can't be if we don't know what they're doing.

Conversely, they're not supposed to know anything about what private citizens do.

They're not supposed to track us or eavesdrop on us or keep dossiers on us or know where we are,

where we're going. Unless, again, very rare circumstances.
We're a criminal.

I don't know. They're not supposed to track us or eavesdrop on us or keep dossiers on us or know where we are or where we're going.
Unless, again, very rare circumstances. We're a criminal.
There's probable cause to spy on us because they've convinced a court, as the Constitution requires, that there's probable cause to believe. But except in those rare circumstances, that's why they're called public officials and we're called private citizens.
We're supposed to have privacy. They're not.
They're supposed to have transparency. Our society is completely reversed.
If you're a private citizen, the government knows everything about you. They keep all kinds of data on you.
That was the Snowden reporting. Obviously, that's what Edward Snowden revealed was the extent to which we were being surveilled by our own government.
Conversely, we know almost nothing about what the government... You know, when I got the Edward Snowden archive, which was hundreds of thousands, if not more, of top secret documents from the NSA, obviously what was surprising is what was in them and what they revealed.
But what even more surprising to me was that the documents, so many of these documents, most of these documents that were marked top secret had no interesting information in them at all. Like, they just reflexively put, like, how to get a parking credential, how to ask your supervisor for a vacation.

These were top secret because everything the government does reflexively is

kept secret from the public.

You have no right to know.

That's the default.

You have no right to know.

Right, exactly.

So everything is inversed.

We,

the government knows everything about what we do and we know nothing about

what they do.

I'm Tucker Carlson for ALP.

Now,

as you know,

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Rated M for Mature.

So a longtime Intel official told me, not that long ago, I guess I should have known this, that the big pornography sites are controlled by the Intel agencies. You have access to the data on those sites.
And the reason that they do, and I think the dating sites too, and the reason that they do, of course, is blackmail. And once you realize that, once you realize that the most embarrassing features of your personal life are known by people who want to control you, then you're controlled.
And you look at the behavior of some of these people who I know personally, and particularly in the Congress, you're like, why are you doing that? You don't agree with that. And you're out there doing it anyway.
We always imagine that it's just donors. They're getting paid to do that.
I think it's more than donors. I've seen politicians turn down donors before.
I've watched it. I don't believe that I'm not doing that.
A lot of people have very safe seats. Not everybody is desperate for donors.
Exactly. Can I just give you an example? So it's not just the carrot.
There's a stick in there. I'm not saying this happened here.
I'm not saying that at all. I have no basis for saying it.
But I had Mike Johnson on my show about two months before, unexpectedly, he became the speaker. When he just ninth you had mike johnson on your show yeah i interviewed mike johnson and the reason i interviewed mike johnson was because he would not go on your show now oh no this is this is why this is so interesting i didn't know this is why so yeah just by chance i interviewed mike johnson the reason was was because Christopher Wray went before a committee on which he sat in the house, and Mike Johnson grilled him about FBI spying, about the involvement of the intelligence communities in our politics, about the attempt to censor the internet coming from the intel agencies.
And he did it with this great kind of intellect but also this very effective demeanor and i could just tell that he passionately felt passionately about these issues and then i started following more and more what he was doing and he was almost single-mindedly focused on spying abuses curbing spying power curbing censorship you're blowing my mind and so we asked him i said you know can you call my show he's like yeah i'm a big fan of of Glenn's I think the work that he's doing great I love to come on Mike Johnson from Louisiana? yeah and he came on my show are you making this up? no go you can go watch the interview I'm hard to shock you are shocking me I had him on my show and after this interview I was like I love him one of the reasons one of the things we spent the most amount of time on was Pfizer reform and the need for Pfizer reform. The fact that – Come on, Glenn.
Tucker, I swear – I'm telling you, Pfizer reform was coming up in about three months where they had to extend the Pfizer law that allows the FBI, the CIA to spy on American citizens, the NSA, without really any reforms. And he was determined.
It was like his big issue. That's why he was on my show.
That's why he liked what my work was. He was like, we cannot allow this FISA law to be renewed.
It is a grave threat to American democracy. At the very least, we need massive fundamental reforms.
I'm totally blown away. And I was like, oh my God.
And he's very smart. He's like a smart lawyer.
He's very informed about these issues. I walked away super impressed.
That is what we spent most of our time on. But also just the- Will you put these clips on the internet? The whole show is on the internet.
No, I know, but will you just post these on social media? Because you're free. I did, but I'll do it again.
Because Mike Johnson becomes a speaker about two months later. I don't mean four years later or two years later.
About two months after that. Three months at the most.
Right when the FISA law is coming up. And I was like, oh, it's so great.
He was made speaker. There's no way this FISA law is getting passed.
Not only did Mike Johnson say, I'm going to allow the FISA renewal to come to the floor with no reforms, not allowing any reforms. He himself said it is urgent that we renew FISA without any reforms.
This is a crucial, critical tool for our intelligence agencies. And I put that clip everywhere when that happened, showing where just two months earlier.
Did you butt them together? Yeah, of course. I was attacking the shit out of Mike Johnson.
And then somebody finally asked him like, but you've been saying all along for years, for the last two years, that you vehemently oppose this. And suddenly now you're for it? What changed your mind? And he was like, yeah, well, when you're a speaker, you get access to a lot of things, and I was taken to this secret room in the CIA, and they showed me these very important things and these sensitive documents about how important these powers are and how devastating it would be if we put any reforms on them.
And so I realized that it was wrong what I had believed. And now I believe this law has to be passed with no reforms.
You don't have smart people like that.

He was already in Congress.

He had access to classified information, getting briefings, secret briefings. You don't have people that invested in position who with one meeting, I can see someone really dumb being affected by that.
Like, oh, these guys with big medals on their chest take you to like a secret, super secret room inside the CIA like with all these locks and codes and things on the wall and you're all impressed like oh my god I can't challenge this he's a very smart guy I don't believe he changes mine so the question is why did he I don't know I really don't but I know that the person that was on my show two months earlier no longer exists wow I can honestly say that's one of the most shocking things I've heard in a long time because i i didn't um i i should also echo what everyone else who's ever met him will say which is nice guy you know not a not a mean man or anything no great guy like he you know he adopted kids he like totally yeah everything he says about decency respect for everybody i totally i i was even saying today that he was you know with the whole thing about the question of whether this new trans lawmaker was going to use the bathrooms. He was asked about it.
He was just like emphasizing the need for respect and decency and civility, even if, you know, things. And I believe he believes that.
Like, I believe he is in connection with the like best parts of Christianity and takes them seriously and conducts himself that way and always has. Nothing against Mike Johnson personally, quite the country, but to watch that happen was, I mean, as cynical as I am.
I don't even know how to respond because I didn't, I have interviewed Mike Johnson over the years, but he was like some guy from Louisiana or whatever. I wasn't paying close attention and it was only after he became speaker on the FISA question and on the question of funding Ukraine.
That That was the other thing. Go on.
I talked about that too.

He was like, you know, he did say he wasn't at all like, you know, say like Matt Gates type or, you know, Tom Massey. Like we can't fund that war.
He wasn't saying that. He was like we can't let Russia win.
But he was still pretty skeptical. But it was really on these questions of FISA and the CIA and the FBI and spying powers and internet censorship powers where he was passionate and vehement.
That's why I had him on. You're making the hair of my arms go up.
Because I agree. Look, I'm not alleging anything because I don't know anything.
I didn't even know that he was that invested on precisely the opposite side, but he's made all these things possible. And, you know, I had a conversation with him off camera, so I probably shouldn't be too detailed about it, but he said something that I thought was like, not only nonsensical, but like insane, crazy.
And it was internally incoherent. And he's not stupid, as you said.
And I got upset upset and i was like that doesn't make any sense at all and um and he just kind of said no it does make sense it does it was like there was no answer it was just like wow this is i saw i saw those with obama too you have to like especially for people who are kind of new to power right like not nancy pelosi or joe biden or mitch mc McConnell. People have been in these positions for decades.
Mike Johnson went from a very backbench of a member of Congress to the third in line who controls the House of Representatives. You can only imagine the intense, just unlimited amount of pressure that comes from multiple directions to force him to align himself with whatever the agenda is of the people who rule Washington.
Same thing happened with Obama. I believed Obama when he talked for two years when running for president about how he's a constitutional law professor, how he believes so much in the core rights of the Constitution like habeas corpus, the right to contest your imprisonment, to have evidence presented against you by places like Antónomo and elsewhere, how he wanted to uproot the worst abuses of the Bush-Cheney war on terror.
Then he gets into office and not only doesn't uproot them, but he starts extending them because, again, these generals come, including the ones he likes who went to Princeton, like David Petraeus, the ones who dazzle Obama, and give him secret briefings about all the blood that's going to be on his hands if he does any of the changes he spent two years promising. And then suddenly on a dime, he switches and there's a lot of other pressure you can imagine as well, like the stick, as you said.
And anyone who thinks that this is, that our intelligence agencies are above these kinds of things, the naivete required to believe that is- Well, they're not above. Of course, they've done it.
This is their currency.

It's just amazing having spent all this time in Washington with all these people I have just – who I know.

And by the way, in some cases, like Mike Johnson, I like, you can't really reach another conclusion other than there's something very heavy duty going on behind the scenes, like really profound going on. And I just don't know why no one has ever emerged from the system to say what it is.
Is there not one, there are very few courageous people. You're one of them, but there just aren't many in this world.
Well, I mean. Why doesn't someone just call these people out? One of the things that made Trump so threatening and that continues to make him so threatening is that in a lot of ways he was pulling the curtain open.
He is that guy. It's the fourth wall's coming down.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I remember he just said openly, yeah, like, as a billionaire, as a businessman, I just gave a candidate, you know, $50,000 and then they would automatically accept my call and do whatever I told them to do. Who says that in the top top level of politics like hey you're i'm running for president i want you to know here's how the system works you give a lot of money to some place that these lawmakers tell you to donate money to and then they do whatever you want they do your bidding when in that 2016 debate when he started rallying against the evil and the stupidity of the Iraq war because his principal opponent at the time was Jeb Bush, who was backed by the establishment, and the audience started booing as though America was rising up in defense of the Bush family.
He was like, oh, these seats here, these are all the big Republican donors. That's the only people who are booing me because they're supporting Jeb Bush.
If you've ever been to a debate, as I know you have, that's exactly how it is. The big donors, both parties, they put their big donors, the partisans, right behind where they get, where their audience hears only their reaction.
So Trump constantly was sort of doing that. Here's how things really work.
And then once he started getting targeted by these agencies, by the CIA, the FBI, starting with Russia Gate, but the Steele dossier, what Jim Comey did, leaking that to the media, and then all those investigations, that's why he started saying these intelligence agencies are corrupted to their core. They're filled with people who have their own politicized agenda.
They were supposed to have an elected leader, democratically elected leader, who supervises these branches and these agencies and the executive branch, and their duty is to carry out his policies. But they don't.
They subverted his policies. They sabotaged them because they didn't agree with them.
They were like their own branch of government, completely powerful. And he's the first one, I guess since Dwight Eisenhower, who tried to warn of this on his way out after spending eight years, and obviously the intelligence community and military industrial complex is way smaller when Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn of how much of a threat it was to democracy in his farewell address.
It was before Vietnam, before the real buildup of the Cold War, obviously before 9-11. They're sprawling now.
They're almost impossible to even analyze or quantify. and Trump is the only one who's trying to say these institutions are radically corrupted.
At their root, they're rotted. And that's why he's trying to choose people.
He picks some comfortable institutionalists and status quo perpetuators like Marco Rubio, Lee Stefanik, John Ratcliffe, people like that, just to give Washington a sense of, okay, there's some people here we're good with.

But then the people that he picked who share his view that these institutions require radical overhaul, they're just undemocratic, unaccountable, corruptive. There are three of them.
Those are the ones they're trying to destroy. Well, there's Tulsi, there's Matt Gaetz, there's RFK Jr., and a little bit to some extent Pete Hegseth.
I mean, he's not really ideologically unaligned, but the problem is that he doesn't come from the Pentagon bureaucracy. That's what they care about most.
That's a trillion-dollar agency. You know how many wheels that greases in Raytheon and Boeing and General Dynamics? That's what they care about most, is making sure that money goes where it's supposed to go.
That's why they're concerned about him. But the people who aren't the ones that Kamal could have picked easily are the ones who they're most out to destroy because that's what these permanent power factions are is they are their own government and they wield the most power.
And they have, sure, considered Mike Johnson no threat at all. Let's take them and do what we have to do.
But you wonder, like, just, I don't know. I mean, look, these guys are under pressure that, you know, we probably can't imagine.
You know, if somebody knew the thing you were most embarrassed about that would destroy your life and make your kids not like you or whatever, I'm not speaking of Johnson specifically, but I know a couple of people who I know are compromised in the U.S. government, and I sort of feel sad for them because how'd you like to be in that position? But it does, all it would take is one brave man to give a press conference.
You know, there was actually a guy, Cokie Roberts' father, Hale Boggs, who stood up in Congress. He was this majority leader in about 1970.
He was on the Warren Commission, and he did not buy the conclusions at all, and he told other people that. He was from Louisiana, and he stood up and made some noises on the floor of the House about how the CIA was doing things they were not supposed to do in domestic politics and had unchecked power, et cetera, and he was immediately denounced as mentally ill, probably an alcoholic, and then he disappeared in a plane crash with Begich in 1972 in Alaska the plane was never seen again so I mean like I'm not saying that he was he was murdered for that though you know I would not at all be surprised if he was but why is he the last guy to say anything like that like well because he died in a plane crash and was declared mentally ill no but I mean this is the thing is you know uh i remember doing this note in reporting when there was all this controversy about government spying on people and the big reaction that i got that had been cultivated for a long time not just by the government but by facebook mark zuckerberg famously said privacy is an archaic value or whatever don't worry about privacy anymore people saying, I don't have anything to hide.
I'm not a terrorist. I'm not a pedophile.
I don't care what my government is spying on me. And I would always say, everybody has things to hide.
There are things that you don't tell anybody. There are things you only tell your psychiatrist, only your spouse, only your best friend, things that you don't want any other people to know that you're petrified if everybody knew about you.
We are private. We need, we're social animals.
We need connection to society and other people, but we also crave privacy. Without privacy we go insane.
And there's no freedom without privacy. None, because that's where dissent and creativity and exploration and rejection of societal mores, that's where it resides in the private realm.

Without that, if you're just being surveilled and watched all the time, that breeds conformity.

And so everybody needs privacy.

Everybody values it.

Everybody has something to hide.

And the ability to surveil people to know everything about, I think what actually happens is we're so inculcated from birth to have this very idealistic image of our country and our government. And in some ways, it's valid.
Like, I think I revere the Constitution. You know, I went to school to study it, and I went to practice it.
Like, I believe in its values. Like, I think it's a genius document.
I do, too. Comes from the Enlightenment.
I mean, just a very, like, intellectually-based,, philosophically based idea of how it was constructed, like very carefully. And there are things very good about the United States.
But if you think that the most powerful country on the planet, the richest and most powerful country arguably ever to exist, doesn't have at its core in terms of the people who run it, who are willing to do anything to preserve their power to augment their power again it just takes a kind of naivete that's almost impossible to fathom people risk death every single day in this country to rob liquor stores for three hundred dollars so you can't tell me that control of a trillion dollar federal agency or of of a multi-trillion-dollar government with vast nuclear arsenal— Or just the power to decide who gets bombed, where wars start. That's what I'm saying.
The most powerful institution in human history— Doesn't have sinister things going on. What would people do to control that? No, the stakes are very high.
And I think the closer you are to it, the more often you forget that. You're like, oh, it's just secretary of whatever.
Who cares? Well, there's, you know, people care. Understandably, people will do anything for power and money.
Wow, that's so distressing. Did you, in your reporting, and I always forget that, you know, you were behind the Snowden thing, and thank you for that.
What a wonderful guy he is. But did you ever get any hint of what the pressure is that's applied to politicians to comply and obey? Yeah.
Well, first of all, I do think, like we were just talking about people who, why don't people stand up? Like Edward Snowden is a perfect example of somebody who believed the mythology of the government, believed in, you know, he went to enlist in order to fight in Iraq. He broke both of his legs.
He couldn't join the military, so he went to work for the CIA and the NSA because he really believed in the, and then what he saw was so horrifying, was so corrupting, was so deceitful that he risked his life and his liberty, which to this day he's deprived of, to inform everybody about what was going on by

stealing under their nose documents that he could give to reporters so that reporters could tell the world what was happening. That is kind of an example of that level of courage of somebody saying, here's what's going on.
What Snowden gave us was a tiny picture of what the NSA does. So obviously, if there had been in their like specific blackmail sort of documents about how they were spying on particular politicians, that's something we would have reported on very aggressively and very early on.
So I can't say I saw that. But what I did see is all sorts of incidents of people at the NSA abusing their authority to spy on people who they had no right to be spying on, including sometimes, you know, just things as trivial as like ex-girlfriends or family members.
But also when in other countries they wanted to impede or harm somebody, they spied on those people all the time and used that information in part to gain power over them. So of course, how can you expect human beings to resist that level of power when it's all operating in the dark? Strong families are built on strong foundations and it all begins with what you bring into your home.
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So, I mean, you can't have anything like representative government with that system in place. The whole idea of having a national security apparatus, an intelligence community that operates in complete secrecy and that just does what it does permanently without end and constantly expands its authorities and powers because there's no political gain.
And its budgets, which are classified. And its budgets, which nobody – that was, that was one of the things we actually were able to see was the Black Book of the intelligence budget.
And we were putting on the things that, you know, we thought were newsworthy about that. There's zero transparency to any of this.
There's no oversight. You technically have like oversight in Congress and the Senate, the Senate intelligence committees, these select committees that were created after the church commission found all these, you know, what the church commission found just by itself, you know, CIA developments of medications to try and like, you know, make people lose control of their brains or inject people with diseases, like really sinister dark stuff that the CIA was doing that nobody knew about, not even the president.
They just did it on their own.

It was a discovery of a secret government inside the government.

So the idea was, well, we need at least some oversight.

This oversight, they tell nothing to these committees.

The people who get put on those committees are people who are the ones who most support

these intelligence communities.

It was run in the Senate for years by Dianne Feinstein.

Her husband was a military contractor. She was embedded in these agencies.
She defended everything that they did. The one time she questioned them, which was when she wanted to investigate the use of torture in the CIA, John Brennan, CIA, spied on Dianne Feinstein and on her entire staff.
He got caught doing it. He lied and said he didn't.
He finally admitted admitted that it was done he apologized and there were no repercussions like let's buy guns we got go google john brennan spying on i'll never i'll never forget it and when that story first broke it was years ago it was at least 10 years it was under the obama he was cia director under obama and i remember thinking i don't think the cia would ever dare spy on the select committee, on the Senate oversight committee of the CIA, of the intel community. I mean, I can't imagine they would have the balls to do something like that.
That's insane. But I had no idea.
And they did it on somebody who was one of their most, their blindest loyalists. The one time she stepped a little bit out of line because she wanted to investigate exactly what happened in the torture program.

So at that point,

like, why don't you,

why have people put up with that?

I mean, I guess Frank Church did die

of incredibly fast acting cancer.

So maybe that's why,

I mean, people must be afraid

because you'd think out of 435,

535 with the Senate,

there'd be somebody who was like,

this is not democracy.

This is totally immoral.

Like, I'm going to just stand up

and take them on.

But Tucker, just let's say that

Thank you. that there'd be somebody who's like, this is not democracy.
This is totally immoral. Like, I'm going to just stand up and take them on.

But, Tucker, let's say that, you know,

people had things on you that would, as you put it,

destroy your reputation,

make your kids think very poorly of you,

would embarrass you for the rest of your life,

would destroy whatever you value in life.

It takes a very rare person to say, ah, F it. I'm going to risk that happening.
And, you know, I think we have this self-preservation tactic. That's why those kind of things like blackmail extortion are so effective is because they can force people to think behaviors.
No, I think you're right. Look at how much these sexual misconduct allegations are used when Julian Assange really got dangerous.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared two women claiming that he quote-unquote raped them because the allegation was they had consensual sex with him, but he didn't use a condom when they had not given their consent to no condom and that became rape under Swedish law. That's what forced him to the Ecuadorian embassy and led to everything that happened subsequently.
Now with Matt Gaetz, the minute Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegg said too, like out of nowhere appears this alleged rape that nobody had heard about, that nobody knew about. It's always, the thing that always amazes me, this is actually the best example in case anybody thinks, oh, our government doesn't do that.
When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and I remember when I first heard about this, I was kind of confounded about why this happened. Obviously, they were saying the normal things you say about people like that.
Like, oh, he's a Soviet asset. He hates America.
He put troops in harm's way because he showed the public that the government was lying for years about the Vietnam War. Like, inside, they were saying, we can never win.
Externally, they were saying, we're on the verge of winning. But what they also did, and it's the only reason Daniel Ellsberg ended up free, is they broke into his psychoanalyst's office because they wanted to steal all the documents about his most intimate admissions to a psychoanalyst about his psychosexual life and fantasies.
Because that was the weapon of choice that they wanted to use to destroy him. That's a fact.
The Nixon administration broke into the psychoanalyst's office of Daniel Ellsberg when they couldn't find the documents they planned to break in at the guy's house. And they finally put a stop to that, but they did break into a psychoanalyst's office and only because of that government misconduct did the judge dismiss the charges against Danielsberg, who otherwise was headed to prison for the rest of his life.
Why would that be a response to a whistleblower revealing to the press that then revealed to the public that the government was systematically lying about the Vietnam War, it's because if you can have that information over somebody and then use it against them, you destroy—I remember when it happened with Julian Assange. No one wanted anything to do with Julian Assange anymore.
No one wanted to mention his name. It's just like, ooh, this person's guilty of—accused of rape.
I just don't want anything to do with that. So if you could have shown that Daniel Alsberg had this fantasy or had done this or had done that in the intimacy and privacy of his own life, it just, everybody would have wanted to avoid it.
It's totally true. Did you ever find yourself on the wrong end of any of that since you were very high profile? I mean, I think the important thing is that if you want to confront the government, if you want to spill secrets, if you want to bring unwanted transparency, which happens

to be the job of a journalist, I know people forget that, but that is the job of a journalist.

If you're going to journalism, that's what you're supposed to try to do.

You have to, as best you can, guard against that.

You have to protect yourself, make sure that your own house is in order as much as possible, because that will be a huge vulnerability. But as I said before, everyone has things to hide.
There's no one who doesn't. One hundred percent.
And it's also true that if, you know, you get really attacked in a scary way, you don't want to talk about it. I mean, I feel that.
I have been, that has happened, you know, not sex stuff, but I've definitely felt a lot of pressure. And you don't want to, you know.
It's not just sex stuff. Yeah, there's all sorts of things in our past that we do that we're embarrassed by.
But did you ever worry the intel agencies would try and hurt you? Yeah, I mean. Don't question.
Here's the thing. Like, you know, I think a lot of people remember, but my husband, who's now deceased, but at the time, he went to Germany because there was a part of the archive that was corrupted and we knew there was a lot of documents there.

And it was with Laura Poitras and she, using her genius, had figured out how to access

it.

No one else could.

But she didn't trust anybody, including the Guardian, to give it to, to bring to me.

The only person she trusted was David.

I couldn't travel outside Brazil because there was a concern that I would be arrested by

the US.

So I had to stay in Brazil.

So only David could go and get those documents.

And the way we talked about it was in a very secure, secret way where we're using the highest

I'll see stay in Brazil. So only David could go and get those documents.
And the way we talked about it was in a very secure, secret way. We were using the highest levels of encryption at the time that Snowden insisted on.
And when David went to Germany, he came back home through Heathrow. But at Heathrow, the British arrested him and detained him and threatened to prosecute him under an anti-terrorism law.
And the only reason they let him out was because the Brazilian government, it became a huge story in Brazil. The Brazilian government was like, give us back our citizen immediately.
And so they let him go. And then David sued the British government over human rights abuses because they were detaining him for journalism.
And the British government said in their papers, when they defended their actions, we knew exactly what he was doing in Germany. We knew exactly what he was carrying.
And that's the reason why we detained him because we wanted to prevent this, these secret documents from getting out into the public because it harms British national security. Now, obviously we got the archive anyway, and we reported on those documents, but they admitted, they knew and were listening to our conversations about why he was going there.
They knew when he was going there. They, everything was being tracked.
And so when you know- Did you ever figure out how? I knew they were using- I mean, part of the reporting that we did was that the NSA had cracked even the most sophisticated levels of encryption. So things that people thought were safe, there's nothing 100% foolproof.
And at the time, we were among the most watched people in the world because we had in our hands the most sensitive secrets from the world's most powerful government that we were going around the world publishing to inform people of, journalistically. And so, of course, we knew we were being spied on by probably a lot of people.
It's just that the British were forced to admit it. And when you get that confirmation as opposed to like a belief or suspicion, the level of invasiveness you feel is hard to express because they're not just listening to the parts of your conversations where you're talking about the Snowden documents.
Oh, I know. Oh, I know firsthand.
Yeah. No, I know.
Yeah, I mean, you had private conversations leaked as well when you were trying to interview President Putin. Oh, yeah, and we got followed and had massive problems with Ukrainian intel service, et cetera, et cetera.
It's not about me. I don't hold any institutional power.
It's just interesting if you see what happens in your own life, just by talking about it. I haven't done anything ever.
Just sit around the studio, talk to people. But, you know, you see the pressure they apply to you.
Like, what would it be like to be, you know, the chairman of the intel committee or the speaker of the House or the President of the United States? Exactly. I mean, I can't even imagine.
And it just shows you what a remarkable person Trump is. He is just, he's weirdly resistant to that stuff.
And that is, that's why they hate him. I mean, remember all the stuff that came out in 2016 when they thought he might win, like the Access Hollywood tape that came out of nowhere.
And, you know, the Storm the Stormy Daniels stuff, they threw everything out there. And Trump is a very rare person who's just kind of shameless.
Like he doesn't feel a sense of shame and he doesn't back down no matter what. He gets more aggressive against people who try to force him to.
It's just his instinct to who he is. I watched him for many decades when I was a lawyer in New York, when he was a big real estate vocal, constantly being sued in lawsuits.
Everybody knew how he was. And that's what is so threatening about him.
It's not his ideology or his beliefs or the fact that they think he's in Russia. It's the fact that he's immune.
Immigration, racism, it's all bullshit. No one cares about that.
No one believes that. It's the fact that he's immune to the type of control that for decades they've been able to impose on people who wield any power, let alone the power of the presidency.
Just to type the current state of U.S.-Russia relations or the war that we're about to get? How do you think this ends? I mean, if you're sitting in Moscow, obviously, if there's a barrage of weapons aimed at Moscow, St. Petersburg, your major cities, that's one thing.
If there's a limited number of missiles aimed in Kursk where Ukrainian forces are, that's another. And obviously, they know what we talked about, which is that in about seven weeks, there's going to be a new American president with whom they've dealt extensively.
And despite claims that he's some sort of, you know, lackey of Putin, he basically did the two things that were most threatening to Russian interest. He sent lethal arms to Ukraine after Obama refused to.
Trump did. I didn't agree with it, but that's what he did.
And what he did even more so that was more threatening, damaging to Russia is he spent years trying to batter the Europeans out of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Press them on energy.
He was like, why would you be buying gas from Russia? You're getting dependent on Russia, and we're the ones who pay for your protection. You should be buying it from us.
Selling natural gas to Europe was the anchor, the key to Russian vital interests, and Trump threatened those vital interests continuously. So the idea, anyone who's even a little bit rationally thinking would understand that this claim that he's being blackmailed by Putin, while at the same time he's simultaneously doing the two most threatening things to Russian vital national interests, you would immediately recognize what a fictitious claim that was.
So he's being blackbanned by the U.S. intel agencies, and in fact...
More so. Our government is the fascist state that they claim Russia is.
Exactly. So...
Unfortunately. So...
And that's not to say Russia's not dressing. But, but, so I think they know that, you know, they obviously know Trump's coming in, and, and they feel like he wants to go in a different direction with the war.
And so even though there is going to be pressure on Putin, as there would be on the United States and any other country, to respond in kind to NATO and the United States now bombing Russia, basically, I think as long as it's limited, as long as it stays limited to Kursk, as long as it's not, you know, in large numbers. Knowing that Trump is coming into office, I think they understand that that's an opportunity to try and end this war without its escalation.
I hope. Again, as you said, we're depending on Putin's restraint and rationality.
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Switch to Essilor Eyes and Lenses and find your Mika. And Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
They have a very low-rated show on MSNBC, which I do think has outsized influence. The numbers are really small.
People in Washington watch it. That's exactly it.
That's exactly right. So I think the show does have influence.
I disagree with every single word ever uttered on that show, but I don't think it's totally insignificant. You know, it's not Joy Reid.
So they went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. Like, what do you make? And then now they're saying, well, we went because we were afraid that we're going to be persecuted if we didn't kiss the ring or something.
No, it's what their excuse is even more pathetic, which we're journalists you have to go and talk to the people in power um but uh i think those two in particular are singularly pathetic and i realize saying singularly pathetic in the context of employees of the corporate media seems like a designation that no one deserves alone but i think in their case they really merit that distinction because I think like most of the people who work in corporate media, like the Rachel Maddows, like the Lawrence O'Donnells and the Don Loke Lemons and those kinds of people, I think they believe all the insane unhinged stuff. Like I think they really believe that Trump is a Russian agent, that Putin is blackmailing him, that Trump wants to like put them in camps.
think it's insane, but credit for at least actually saying what they really believe is as preposterous and laughable as it is. Joe Scarborough has no beliefs other than his own advancement and self-importance.
Okay, let's remember in the 1990s, he was elected, not as a Republican congressman, but as a radical conservative one with the whole new Gingrich, like young firebrands

were going to go in and radically

reform, change the

country and Washington.

No more of that anywhere in

Joe Scarborough, like this radical transformation

of institutional power. And then

as Megyn Kelly said,

no show did more

to boost Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016

in the Republican primary

than Joe and Mika. They were down at Mar-a-Lago all the time.
They loved Trump. They were best friends with Trump.
They laughed with him. They let him call in on their show all the time, in part because it was very beneficial to that show.
It was the only thing that raided. Trump saved all their jobs.
But they also loved just being proximate to power like that. That's the thing that they crave most.
And then once what really happened was Scarborough thought that he was going to be chosen as Trump's vice president, he really wanted to. And when Trump rejected him in favor of Mike Pence, and then also MSNBC turned into this fanatical anti-Trump network where the only people who watched were Trump haters.
Both at a personal affront, but also at a survival, they had to turn into a full-on Trump-hating show. You couldn't have the morning show of three hours be someone positive toward or neutral about Trump when the whole rest of the network, everyone who watched.
May I just ask you to pause for a sec? I'm just digesting this. Scarborough, who I used to know really well, he thought he was going to be VE.
Yeah, yeah. Remember how close they were? No, I remember that.
I didn't know. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You should come to the United States more often. I learn a lot.
I think my distance is what enables me to learn things. So, yeah, that was a big part of it.
But also, it was survival at MSNBC. And so they turned into these, you know, Joe Scarborough, Mr.
Radical Conservative, let's change all Washington work, became Mr. Institutionalist.
You know, the people he had on his show are like Richard Haast and like Norm Ornstein, like all these like Council on Foreign Relations and think tanks people who were obsessed with hating Trump as well. and it became grounds of Europe for Trumpist Hitler.
They were saying as recently as two months ago or a month ago, like Trump is comparable to Adolf Hitler. He is a Nazi figure.
Mika Brzezinski went on The View and cried and said Trump wants to murder women. Women are going to die because of Donald Trump.
He's a fascist. He's a racist.
They said it every day over and over. and then Trump wins and their whole influence was because they were

Joe Biden's a racist. They said it every day, over and over.

And then Trump wins.

And their whole influence was because they were

Joe Biden's favorite show.

Joe Biden would wake up

at like 6 a.m.,

like many geriatrics do,

because he went to bed

at like 7 o'clock p.m.,

and he would watch Morning Joe,

and then he would hear,

you know,

Joe Biden is the greatest president

in the art.

Joe Scarborough said that

he personally can assure the country,

having spent so much time

around Joe Biden,

that he's sharper than ever.

He runs intellectual circles around

I'm close to the White House. He was at the White House all the time.
Now Biden's gone.iden's not an asset anymore trump is back in power and one of the things that has happened amazingly since the since kamla's loss is that the msnbc audience which is already tiny has basically completely disappeared like the number of people watching those shows when they're live in prime time with that big gigantic corporate power behind them promoting it it's it's less than a lot of like youtube shows including like yeah including like i don't mean like the cumulative audience of how many people watch youtube oh youtube video at the end of the day i just mean live watching like dan bongino show has i think unrumble has like five or six or seven times more viewers than msnbc's prime time this is on rumble you know which a lot of people don't even know about don't even watch um that audience is gone in part because they feel disillusioned that the people they trusted who told them trump was going to prison the whole trump family was going to prison trump could never win he was going to be in jail before the election all the women were going to rise up and vote for Kamala out of anger toward Trump. None of that happened.
And they're like, I've been watching this show every day for nothing. It was, I was, none of it happened.
None of it was true. And that audience is gone.
Half out of disillusionment and anger, but half out of just like kind of checking out through impotence and helplessness. And I think that they're desperate.
The only way they think they can get people to come back on is to have Trump come back on their show. And Trump is going to make them crawl around on the floor multiple times.
Bark like a dog. Yeah.
They were like, Joe and Mika were like, Trump was incredibly cheerful and happy. Of course he was.
He loves seeing you humiliate yourself because he knows you need them now. I don't think that, you know, a weekly interview with Trump, which is not going to happen anyway, but even if it did, was going to save MSNBC.
No, because who would watch it? Because no conservatives are going to trust that show or MSNBC. And no liberals want to see MSNBC host.
Do you know how angry liberals are about just even the fact that Joe and Mika went to Mar-a-Lago? Who's the audience for that? They're caught. Like Liz Cheney.
I have to say, of all the reasons I'm so grateful that Kamala lost, seeing Democrats turn on Liz Cheney and seeing her stranded between the parties and no man's land it's the best honestly i can't there's a piece by john nichols in the nation today i don't read the nation much anymore but you know occasionally the nation is like kind of true to itself not always but sometimes i don't agree with it but john nichols wrote this piece about kamala harris say where he he goes through like all the places that she went with, Liz Cheney went with Kamala Harris. And, like, the only did it not work.
She turned off Republicans. Like, the idea was, you know, we've got Liz Cheney campaigning with us.
A lot of Republicans are like, Donald Trump will vote for us. It's like, just the opposite happened.
You know, it was so predictable and so obvious at the time. It was predictable.
Also, like, what made Kamala's campaign, like, for the six seconds that it seemed like it had some, like, air to it was this, like, vibrancy of young people, you know, like, celebrating the emergence. Right, right, right, yeah, totally.
And so you then take Liz Cheney and like send Bill Clinton to Michigan to like lecture everybody in the Muslim community and the Arab community who already hates you because you've been buying Israel about how the Israelis are totally right and it's all the fault of the Arabs. And then you take Liz Dick Cheney's daughter with you through the Rust Belt where like all those policies devastated their lives, all those wars.
And you think Liz – think about – I mean this is the thing. Think about how out of touch and cloistered and in a bubble you have to be to think that you're going to win an election depending on people who are in the working class who feel alienated from society, who feel like DC doesn't work for you by taking the daughter of like the face of the American establishment, Dick Cheney around with you as if she's your running mate and people are craving change.
And you have sitting there with

Liz Cheney, like the people only know because she's, she was the vice president's daughter.

Her, her dad was Dick Cheney and not just Dick Cheney, but somebody who supports a whole range

of policies that Americans vehemently reject now. And I think that's more than anything,

what people like people in media

have finally had to come to

Thank you. And not just Dick Cheney, but somebody who supports a whole range of policies that Americans vehemently reject now.
And I think that's more than anything what people in the media have finally had to come to grips with is, first of all, it's good that Liz Cheney actually isn't the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State. That also is good, even though there are a couple of people in Trump's campaign who have very similar views like Mark Ruby and Liz Cheney and Elise Stefanik.
But be that aside, it's good that Liz Cheney specifically is not any of those positions. But I think the best thing is that you have all these people inside these cloistered bubbles in Washington who really thought that they were the conscience of the nation, the voice of the nation.
And not only were they applauding the decision to take Liz Cheney, but they have been spending eight years claiming that Donald Trump is a white supremacist who wants to put minorities in camp. And not only did Donald Trump win the election, but there was millions of non-white voters who for the first time left the Democratic Party and went to vote for Trump.
So imagine you've wasted eight years of your life screaming and screeching like a petulant bird who has been like shot. Donald Trump's a racist.
He's a fascist. He hates, he only likes white people.
And then you watch millions of Latino people and black people and Asian people and Muslims refuse to vote for Kamala Harris. You obviously like, I have no influence at all.
I'm completely out of touch. Well, but it's so good to know that about yourself.
I mean, this happened to me, by the way, they're all kind of vehemently opposed to abortion, which I think is like horrifying. And, but lots of people don't agree with me.
And so I see this, you know, Roe v. Wade comes down and you see these ballot initiatives and say, you know, we're going to allow abortion until birth.
And I'm like, wow, I'm so glad it's up for a vote. And then it turns out the voters just don't agree with me at all.
And even in red states, it's true. It's true.
Like that was hard for me to accept because I am, I never talked about it, but I was just so, I'm so sincere on the subject. I'm just, I'm not for abortion, period.
And so, but you have to be real. Like, okay, sometimes people agree with you.
Sometimes they don't. But there's something about the democratic base, which really is just basically just like unhappy college educated white ladies.
That's really who it is. Honestly.
I mean, and they say that they're like, we're relying on affluent women in the suburbs. That's their base.
That's exactly, but the unhappy ones, I mean, I'm related to some happy ones that are not voting for Kamala Harris, but the ones who are sort of disappointed in their husbands and are in their lives or whatever, I get it. I'm not being mean, but it's just true.
But they should know that they're in the subset of a subset and that not everyone agrees with them. I think that's the beginning of wisdom.
I mean, it has been for me. Like, not everyone agrees with me.
That's okay. But the thing is, like, you were just saying you read The Nation sometimes.
Yeah. I go out of my way to read everything, everybody.
Yeah, me too. You know, I try and have people in my life who have very different views on, you know, I have a lot of people in my life in Brazil, for example, who worship Lua.
I have a lot of people in my life who hate Lua, worship Bolsonaro, people who are in between. I want that.
Like, I want to hear constantly from, you want to be challenged all the time, not be ossified. I'm telling you, I know a lot of these people.
I used to be on MSNBC all the time. I've been friends with a lot of the people.
Who do they hate you now though? Oh, they despise me with burning passion. But in part because nobody hates things things more than no one the person always most hated is the one perceived as the heretic of course you know but but i was never really on their side in the way that they thought actually anyway but anyway it doesn't matter the i know i know a lot of these people and what has happened on msnbc is that or or places like the Times op-ed page, similar.
People who support Trump don't exist in that world. There's not one op-ed writer at the New York Times of the dozens who is a Trump supporter, even though half the country is, more than half the country is.
Right. Like Ross Dufau is like the person closest to, like sort of understanding the Trump movement, but he certainly doesn't like Donald Trump at all.
And other than that, they just don't have, it doesn't exist in the world. There's nobody ever on MSNBC on their shows who brings that perspective of why they support Donald Trump.
So if you're only talking to people who are like-minded and a lot of them have now left Twitter trying to go to some other platform where only they're only there, they don't want it. They really don't want to hear any dissent and you're living a certain kind of life.
You know, they're well-paid. They like are cloistered in these like affluent places in the United States, like in the East Coast, like Brooklyn and Manhattan and Washington and Northern Virginia.
How do you not realize that the life you're leading is so fundamentally different from the people on whose behalf you claim to be speaking? and I do think a lot of them, even though they're going to resist it and battle it, have to swallow this election as a complete repudiation of not just themselves, but their entire purpose in life, their entire function. Do you think that they, again, I just want to say how nonjudgmental I feel about this.
That has happened to me. I've been fired.
I have found my views repudiated by the public at large. Those are very important moments to me personally.
They made me a better person. So I am hoping that they internalize the pain and learn from it.
Do you think they will? Yeah. I mean, what always amazes me is like, you know, I really did grow up like in a working class environment, but like my whole life, that was the only one.
Yeah. No, I mean, there are other people who grew up like, you know, I wasn't like poor, but I was not even near middle class.
Didn't your mom work at McDonald's? Yeah, my mom worked at McDonald's. She like, my parents got divorced when I was seven.
My father was an accountant. He had three marriages.
Well, actually, you are alone. Like, I don't know anybody.
And I mean this. I don't know anybody in journalism.
I know people whose mom worked at McDonald's. i don't know anyone in journalism whose mom worked at mcdonald's well i'm just i guess my point is that like of course that shaped me for a long time but i realize now that that's not my life any longer like and it hasn't been for you know 10 years 15 years like my life has been very separate from that so i have a great amount of humility about my ability to speak for people who have a different kind of life because you're of course the way you live shapes your perspective shapes your understanding shapes your priorities and it amazes me that these people don't have that humility at all and so i i think they're resisting it like they're you know that was what obama did remember when he was like yeah i know there's a lot of black men who don't want to vote for kamala who are going to vote for Trump.
That's because you all hate women and you're misogynist. And then they're basically saying the reason a lot of Latino men— What an arrogant douchebag to say something like that.
And there's a perfect example. He spends all his time in Richard Branson's yacht.
Yeah, I know. And just with the highest level of jet set, and then he thinks he's going to go and speak to black working class men.
If you disagree me you're a bigot that's like that's such a crazy place to start any conversation it's so alienating you know i think i think this kind of condescension that but the other thing is like the main argument is that like they're all stupid like they're victims of disinformation they're misled they have all these alternative media they're listening to that don't have the controls that have with us with They're getting false. You know, basically they're stupid.
They're easily misled. They're gullible.
So either they're racist or misogynist or stupid. That's their explanation.
That's the thing they're clinging to. You know, like, oh, they don't realize how good they had it under Biden, how great the economy is, how much Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did for them.
They just don't because they were told that it was untrue. They can't figure it out on their own.
Like the condescension reeks out of, it oozes out of every pore of their being. And then they wonder why people despise them and their culture and their subculture.
Who wants that? It is nauseating. But despite, so what I'm saying is that they're not, they don't have the attitude you had, which is like, oh, it's actually good to be humbled, to like realize that things that you thought about the world need to be reevaluated.
There's no self-criticism, no reflection. In fact, every Democrat thinks like, oh yeah, I know why we lost.
It's been what I was saying all along. None of them are saying that, but you know, they're like, Democrats did this and Kamala did that.
They all are trying to pretend that if people had just listened to them, the Democrats would have won, even though all on, they were like, oh, Kamala is running the most brilliant campaign ever. But what I'm saying is that the result is so overwhelming, so kind of pointed and devastating to their worldview.
As I said, I think the thing that has really shaken them the most, even though they're fighting it, they're not embracing it, they're fighting it, but they can't, is that so many non-white voters are, and Trump made huge gains in almost every non-white sector of society. I mean, Trump was saying that New Jersey and New York are swing states and people were laughing at him.
And he only lost New Jersey by five points and did the best any Republican has done in New York City in many, many years because of how many black and Latino and Asians and Muslims voted for Trump, non-white voters. and so when that happens like you don't even get to blame white people but you you have to accept that the people

who you think you own, who have mindless loyalty to you, disobeyed you and didn't listen to you. That's what makes them feel really shaken inside.
It's a slave revolt. And if you read the accounts of people who live through slave revolts, not just in the American South, but like in Haiti or anywhere.
They're always

wherever you have slavery, you've got slave revolts at some point.

They're always so shocked.

Like they

can't believe

that like the nanny

came after them with a knife. Like

we thought you loved us.

It's so crucial to their

worldview to believe.

Those people, central

to their worldview is that

they're benevolent leaders

Thank you. It's so crucial to their worldview to believe.
I mean, those people, central to their worldview, is that they're benevolent leaders of these people. It's like that scene at Animal House.

Otis, he loves us.

Sure he does, drunk frat boy.

No, people always imagine that the people they control, their employees, their serfs, love them.

And what they need to understand, I think this is just true in life, is that the people subordinate to you resent you. They may like you, but they also resent you.
Just the subordinates alone breeds resentment. That's what I'm saying.
Right. And it's one of the reasons you see hostility among women toward men just in general.
It's not a defining characteristic, but there's a little bit of that. If you're in the subordinate sexual position, you're like a little mad about it.
I'm sorry to channel Dr. Freud, but there's some truth in that.

Mm-hmm.

And I mean,

it's what we were talking about before about you.

I've said this so many times.

Like,

just,

if you belong to one of these so-called marginalized groups

that liberals think they own

and have an entitlement to control,

you will never see

more naked and unadorned bigotry, contemptuous bigotry than you will see toward individuals within that group who disobey. Obviously, I remember when I really started splitting from the left, I'd never had real homophobia in my entire life before.
I only started seeing it like once I had that brief. Oh, once you questioned, uh, before you were a member of the LBGT community, you questioned a marginalized figure.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
And a pedophile, whatever, you know, all the things. And then, are you serious? Oh yeah.
And, and then, you know, like the, the way they have always talked about, I'm sorry to laugh. No, it's, it's amazing.
It's hilarious. The way they talk about Clarence Thomas, you know, the way they have always talked about Clarence Thomas.
No, it's amazing.

It's hilarious.

The way they talk about Clarence Thomas. Oh, I know.
You know, any black person who's been a conservative, same with like women who are, you know, Gloria Steinem said about the people, the young women who were refusing to vote for Hillary and voting for Bernie when asked like why they were doing that. She's like, because young girls go where the boys are, you know, like the most demeaning, insulting thing you can say about women that they, they don't think on their own.
They just like mindlessly do whatever the boys are that. And so now you're seeing this like, oh yeah, like Latinos, like are very misogynistic and primitive.
So are black men. They hate women.
You know, they're easily misled. They're low information voters.
You know, the amount of contempt that liberal elites have for these non-white voters who didn't do as they're told is almost scary. Well, it is scary because it's a psychological condition.
That's, of course, why they hate whites, that they've been because they're losing the white vote. And the second they start to lose the white vote, then whites became the problem in the country.
It's like, where's all this anti-white hate coming from? Well, it's coming from the Democratic Party institutionally because they're being rejected by white voters. Yeah, and they were ready to, they thought they were going to get white women to get to embrace, like white women were going to rise up and join them against Trump, but a majority of white women voted for Trump.
Incredible. So they're going to get, I mean, I will say to Hispanics in the United States, you're about to be the subject of a hate campaign.
Oh, and Muslims too who didn't want to vote for Kamala because they were feeding Israel. I can't tell you how many times I've seen, I can't wait till you people are deported.
I can't wait to see you blown up in Gaza. There's this sentiment like you're going to get what you deserve and I'm going to laugh about it and I'm going to cheer it.
Same with Latinos. I can't wait till you're deported.
You're going to get what you deserve when your abuela is deported. Like really sick stuff.
Joy Reid, I'm not talking about obscure people on the internet. She's gone on the air almost every night and talked that way.
Attack the Hispanics. Yeah, and Muslims and Arabs.
Well, so the best part about this is the language barrier and so few so few liberals like even bother to listen to what people actually think or say. They just, they're not interested.
You know, it's like they treat everyone like a three-year-old. But when they find out the social views of your average Central American, which I find hilarious and kind of great, but whatever, leaving my views aside, the average social views of a Central American just on the social issues are so far out of what's considered acceptable.
But they have no idea. Which is so ironic because Democratic strategists used to openly boast about what, if you say you'll get called as a white supremacist of the replacement theory, that, oh, we're going to import all these people into the United States, make them citizens, and they're going to be supporters of the Democratic Party, and we're going to reign forever, like a thousand years, because these are all our voters.
And they get here, and they find out that actually, but I have to say, like, there's a great article in New York Magazine, which is words that pass my lips very, very rarely, where this writer, who actually wrote a very critical profile of me, like five years ago, so... Who is it? His name is Simon.
I just talked to him today about this article because it's a great article. I'm embarrassed.
I don't know his name, but I can't remember his last name. It's hyphenated, so it's just a little complicated.
But anyway, I really recommend this article. What he did was he purposely went to black, Latino, Asian neighborhoods where there was a lot of Trump votes.
And he just walked around on the street and talked to as many people as he could who voted for Trump about why. And what I think people don't understand is that the Latino and black NGO presidents who get put on TV, who are supposedly there to speak for, have less in common with the people on whose behalf they're speaking than like the white host of these shows.
Oh, way less. And so you go there- Certainly less than me.
I mean, I have like attitudes that are pretty popular in those communities. Right, exactly.
But still like, a lot of them were just like, far from being like, you know, deceived by disinformation. They were like, there's the Democratic Party that supported NAFTA.
Like, we're having trouble paying for our healthcare or food for our kids, and they're sending billions of dollars to Ukraine and to Israel, to all these other countries. They're just talking about the struggles that they have in their lives and the way in which the government doesn't care.
There's some social issue stuff too. But once you get to the United States, you become a citizen, you integrate pretty quickly.
And the thing you don't sit around thinking about trans people or whatever, gay marriage, or these are ancillary issues, even if they don't agree with the Democratic Party on, that might contribute to the alienation.

The fact that, you know, they had, that's why that Kamala ad was effective, not because people are sitting around thinking about whether trans people should get government funded sexual assignment surgeries in prison, but because it was like a proxy for explaining that these people have nothing in common with your lives. They don't care about you.
They don't care about your values. Had they felt economically satisfied, I don't think that would have resonated because that's not what people care about.
But most of them are just worried about the same thing everybody else is worried about. And they finally got to the point where they realized we've been voting.
But they have less power, so they're even more worried. Exactly.
They're the people who get most affected, especially by immigration. Totally.
I mean, the people who lose their jobs with immigration often are non-white people, black working class, Latino working class, and they feel resentful about everything that's being done for, you know, there was a lot of, oh, they're giving free housing and free meals to illegal immigrants while I can't feed my family. I really recommend the article.
It's not done with caricature. It's not like handpicking a few comments.
It's a very long article, and it just lets these people speak for themselves in a very revealing way. What's just so funny is you live in Brazil, which is another continent.
It is. You've been there a while.
20 years. 20 years.
20 I bet if I had called you the week before the election, which I should have done, but I got busy. But if I'd said like, what do you think black and Latino people, men, married people in New York City, around the country, what do you think they think politically? I bet you would have been pretty close.
I know you would have figured this out. Yeah, I was talking about this.
But you don't even live here. here i know but i lived here like for the first 38 years of my life it's the only country of which i've ever been a citizen i'm here all the time but i do think that and how do you know that and they don't that's the point i think that distance gives you a perspective like the fact that i'm my friends are not media and political people in new york and washington that i'm hooked into their worldview, that I'm not subsumed with it, that I'm not dependent upon it in any way, gives me, I think, a broader perspective.
Like, if you live in Northern Virginia and you, like, spend all your time in Washington in green rooms or New York, you're going to be so distorted in the things that you think about the world. but also I think you have to like go out of your way to, okay, I don't want to be told what people think by other people who are reporting to their spokespeople.
I want to hear from them directly. I want to look at the polling data.
I want to understand what they're thinking. And you could just see it.
You could hear it. You could feel it.
You could observe it analytically in data. But they just, I remember people on CNN saying, you know it was Van Jones or – no, it was Bakari Sellers who was like, I don't care what the polls say.
I can guarantee you there won't be more than 5% of black men voting for Donald Trump. I don't care what the polls say.
There won't be anywhere near 15% of – He, Bakari Sellers, said that? Oh, yeah. Just like I don't care what the polls say.
I'm not like a huge, you know, I'm not a huge expert on black America and I don't have a million black friends, but I have some actual, like, actual friends. I don't know a liberal black guy.
I know some who vote for Democrats or whatever, but I don't know. I literally don't know, except like the guys you see in green rooms who went to Princeton or like fake preachers or something, but like actual black men,

I don't know any.

The only ones are in the media.

The ones that get put on the stand-up.

I just don't know any person.

I've never even met one.

Right.

So like, what is this? But this has been,

if you think about the Democratic Party,

the thing you fear most

is that these groups

that have been voting for you for generations

and have been passed,

had loyalties passed down

from their parents and grandparents who don't even think about not voting for you for generations and have been passed, had loyalties passed down from their parents, their grandparents who don't even think about not voting for you every election. Once that breaks, I'm not saying that those people who voted for Trump will never vote Democrat again, but now they know there's an option.
They're free people. They get to decide for themselves who they want and nothing is more alarming or, or, orifying to democratic party elites than seeing that i think it's really good it's good for the country um the democratic party in its you know current iteration is just is almost purely destructive um and shouldn't be you you need a two-party system where both parties are represent it's integrated.
I remember the smartest Republicans, like J.D. Vance, Josh Hotley, the ones who really understand that you can't have the same Republican Party as you did in 1980, have always been describing the future of the Republican Party as a multiracial working-class coalition.
And to watch people identifying primarily based on their citizenship and their class. That's what you want.
As opposed to constantly being divided by race. That's what you want.
Is so promising to see. Well, it's essential or else you have Rwanda.
I mean, because, you know, your class can change, but your race doesn't change. And so if you engender conflict on the basis of immutable characteristics, it's not solvable.
And so you don't want to ever do that. You make people hate each other based on how much they make.
Okay. Where they live even, but their skin color.
Well, as you say, that gives them the idea of change. Like, Hey, we can change the government.
Well, that's exactly right. Exactly.
Whereas immutable characteristic by definition, don't change. No, no, no.
That's like, that's feud that lasts 800 years. Like, you can't do that.
But that has been the predominant liberal mindset, is to encourage people to see themselves as part of insulated factions who hate other factions based on those characteristics. And there's almost nothing more offensive to me about what American liberalism writ large has done than try and impose that framework on people, to divide people based on things that, in fact, don't divide them.
Well, yeah, especially since the experience of just living in this country is so different from what they describe. I have always been on the right.
I've never had anybody, anybody who's black or Hispanic or non-white ever attack me one time in public as a racist i've only had affluent white women attack me that way i don't see people hating each other on the basis of race i don't i'm sure there's racism i know that there is because people are flawed but it's not a defining fact in this country that i have ever known i don't know what the hell they're talking about i mean they're trying to scare the shit out of people to get their votes that's it one obviously millions non-white people agree with you. Yeah, because— And voted for the white candidate over the black one.
I know. And the white candidate who they were told was Adolf Hitler and wanted to put all non-white people in camps.
They were looking around, they're like, that's not my experience. So I got to—one last question.
Like, we began the conversation with the war

that we're now in. We're in a war with Russia.

And that

really is something that the Biden administration

is doing to punish

the incoming Trump administration,

I think, and to prevent it from acting

with the autonomy any administration

should have. But they're also

going to leave behind all kinds of...

I mean, they're not going to spend the next seven weeks doing nothing. And one of the things they're going to try to do is increase censorship, I think, over the next seven weeks.
Or am I just being paranoid? I think you're right. They're obviously not going to do nothing.
They're going to try and fortify everything as much as possible from the kind of change that the American people just voted for. The Party of Democracy is going to do that um censorship in my view began like systemic censorship on the internet began as a reaction to 2016 without question both to brexit but especially to trump that's right that's when you saw the emergence of these highly well-funded disinformation experts the concoction of this fake expertise called disinformation experts what how did people get to be that? Where do you go to school to be a disinformation expert, like a floating arbiter of truth? But they needed to radically intensify censorship because they blamed free speech and the free flow of information on, they blamed that for Brexit first, but especially for Trump's victory.
And they wanted to crack down on that. There's always now an ongoing effort to try and crack down on that.
I think, though, what they're going to try and do is look at the areas that they believe Trump is trying most radically to change, beginning with foreign policy. That's foreign policy the thing that they value most.
That's the centerpiece of how America runs in their view. And they're going to spend as much of their time subverting him and sabotaging him in advance even though he just won the election by a pretty like solid margin and there are some things that'll be reversible but if you escalate the war in ukraine and trump now is coming into a war that the that the Russians perceive accurately to be not just a proxy war with the West behind Ukraine, but where NATO is actually bombing Russia, it becomes infinitely more difficult to keep under control and to resolve.

The problem is, is that the risks of this are so great that it actually sickens me more than almost anything I've ever seen that they're willing to do this on the way out. To just prevent this worth mending and trifling with the risk of a nuclear exchange.
And with the lives of every person on Earth. Yeah.
I just got to close by saying there's been in journalism whole life i you know spent a lot of time around journalists bragging about the risks they take i've never known a journalist who's been threatened with prison more times than you have um probably once every six months i just check to make sure that you're not in prison yeah my friends do that too i'm always assuming you're going to wind up in prison for challenging the powerful and revealing what they're actually doing. So I just want to say congratulations on remaining free.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
It's not always been such an easy task. There have been times when I've gotten pretty close, including recently.
But I feel like if you're not hated by and perceived as a threat by people in power, you're not doing your job. That's for sure.

That's what I really believe.

Well, then by that measure,

you're the most successful journalist of our generation,

which I already thought anyway,

but congratulations.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, Tucker.

Glenn Greenwald.

Always great to see you.

Thank you.

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