Chris Cuomo

So here we are on a Wednesday and Chris Cuomo is sitting in my living room. Now why is Chris Cuomo sitting in my living room, formerly of CNN? Well I'd never met Chris Cuomo before today and of course for years I was incredibly mean to Chris Cuomo on TV.
Why? I can't really say now. But I'll say this.
He was one of the very first people to call me completely out of the blue. No idea how he got my number after I left my job last spring.
And that began a series of conversations, very long conversations, in which I discovered that Chris Cuomo is a really interesting person. And though we disagree on some things, we don't disagree on everything at all.
And I thought, wow, I wonder how many other people like Chris Cuomo are out there, people I have dismissed or mocked because we disagreed on some things, who actually, if you got to know them, you might learn something. So that might be a useful exercise.
And so with that, a conversation with Chris Cuomo begins. Chris, thank you for coming.
So one of the reasons I think that you

called me was because we'd had such similar lives and you're one of the few people who kind of

understand. And both of us spent decades in one world, were exiled from it.
And I think the

question is like, what if we learn from this? You first. I'm still trying to figure it out.

And I knew it was important to reach out when you were going through your exit, let's call it. And because I knew the pain of it and I knew the challenge of it.
And everything is different. But I do believe that one of the lessons I've learned is you have to think about how other people are being affected by situations, especially once you have pain in your own life.
And it doesn't matter what you agree with, what you like, what you don't like. It's all gotten so far removed from humanity that the idea that, I don't like that Tucker Carlson takes a bite out of my ass on his show.
I think you have a good reason not to like me. I think that that would be fair.
But that that means that this is not somebody who you should care about as a human being. And I feel like our culture isn't working anymore.
That everybody retreats with their own and as a result everybody is against one another for the same kinds of reasons and it's not working. And if it's not working then why aren't we trying something different? Why wouldn't I reach out to somebody who has a family and who has a following and is dealing with a hard time to see if I can help and see what's going on in their life and what they're about.
And I was concerned about calling you at first because I thought you might be thinking that this is like a spite phone call or something. You know what I mean? Or be like, why are you calling me? What do you want to gloat or something? You know, I didn't want to make anything worse for you.
But as you say, there's such tremendous power in conversation. Yes.
We only know what we're told about people and the snippets that people want us to see and the context. And I'm not saying that like, you know, you're one benefit of context away from never of saying anything that I don't think you should say.
But what is lost by doing this? What is lost by this? How can this not be helpful to sit across from somebody and talk to them instead of about them? So, of course, I couldn't agree with you more, which is why we're here. And I think both of us have tried to talk directly to people that we disagree with legitimately on some things, but because it's a really useful and important experience.
So why doesn't it happen? It does make you kind of wonder maybe there are forces trying to prevent those conversations. And what's the motive there? I call it the game.
You and I have been in the game for a long time. And whether you like it or not, whether you mean it or not, you wind up playing the game.
You can, especially with the platform that you had, you wind up essentially picking sides. And you wind up having agendas either that present themselves to you or are foisted upon you.
But But either way, you wind up in the same place. And in doing that, it becomes habit.
It's what people are celebrating around you. It's what you see around you.
People start to come after you. Now you have a natural enemy.
These people, I'm resistant to them because they're attacking what I'm saying and they're getting it wrong or they're getting it right. And I still don't like it.
That's the culture. And that's what the media enforces.
We are not supposed to be doing this. I am doing something bad right now, not just wrong.
This is bad. Like morally bad.
I am giving a platform. That's the new word for censoring, right? I'm giving Tucker Carlson a platform.
I'm talking to him about who he is, what he's about and why he does what he does, why he's bad. And that's the end of the analysis.
But look where it's gotten us. Nobody talks to each other anymore.
You've got politicians resigning because they say, yeah, it turns out nobody really wants us to do anything here but fight and I've kind of had enough, I'm going to go. I mean, whoever thought we would see any of this and yet nobody's trying to remedy it I think it's really hard and the the one way in which I really sympathize with you and I said this in public um at the time is that you were attacked and I don't know the details I'm not gonna ask you to reveal them but felt like you were fired because you remained close to your brother who was governor of New York um and he was going through a bunch of stuff.
He left office and you were still talking to him and you like weren't allowed to. And my take on it from a distance, knowing neither you nor your brother, was you got to stick with your brother.
It's your brother. And that obligation supersedes all others because that's your family.
That's like a moral obligation.

If my brother committed triple murder, I'd be against triple murder. But I would never abandon my brother because he's my brother.
And so anybody who says your obligation to me overrides your obligation to your own brother, that person's evil. That's how I feel about it.
And I felt like they were doing that to you. That was just my perspective from watching.
People feel differently about family, which was somewhat of a new concept for me. In what way?

I had a big shot media person say to me in an interview on their platform,

I would not have helped my brother. Not if it would have conflicted with my ethical obligations

as a journalist. Or your career ambitions is what they're really saying.
It's disgusting. Either way.
And I said, well, first of all, it didn't because I didn't cover my brother's situation on my show. I've never had the audience give me a hard time until they started hearing things in the media that didn't square with what they had thought.
But look, we- Can I say, whoever said, I don't know who you're talking about. It could have been any of them because they all have the same view, but they're the moral criminals as far as I'm concerned.
If someone is going to say, I would sell out my brother because my boss wanted me to, what do you just listen to yourself? Like that's the ultimate betrayal. Look, people can have their own ethics, their own morals, their own standards.
Well, I'm going to judge the crap out of them for that. Knock yourself out.
For me, it was more, I got myself into a situation I didn't see coming. I thought, and my therapist like laughs when I say this.
He lived with me all through this. He's been like a life coach to me for a really long time.
Great guy in my life. I never say his name because he'll lose all his elevations if anybody knows that he's working with me.
But he was like, what do you mean you didn't see this coming? The media was all over your brother. They wanted him to go down.
They wanted you to go down. They hated what was happening during the pandemic with you having him on the show and all the admiration you guys were getting.
This is a jealous business. And I hear that.
I understand it, but I don't want to accept it. And what I have decided was, look, I didn't have any control over how getting fired happened.
All I control is what I do next. And I tried to get myself into that place and that's what made me call you is that that was so hard.
It was so hard for me to see all this stuff that I had worked so hard on and I valued so greatly just vanish. And well now what am I? And now what do I do? And now is it over for me? Like, is that it? I'll never be number one on a huge platform again.
So what am I about? What do I do? Of course, like you, I love my wife. I love my kids.
I love my family. I love the family that I choose, my people.
I'm there for them. I'm a great friend

in crisis. I'm great.
I'm not great when things are good, but I'm a great friend in crisis.

And I had to really think about things I'd never thought about before. And I wanted to check in

with you about that to see how you were negotiating that space because it had been so painful.

But when I met you, and you know, you should, we should talk about this. You were not the way I was.
You were ebullient. You were laughing and you were, yeah, well, let me tell you, it was a favor to me.
And this is going to be okay. I'm going to be fine.
This is a weird world. And now I know things I didn't know before.
And I thought that that was a real blessing for you. What did you figure out that you didn't know before? Well, I mean, I'll just say, you know, I loved working there.
I was there 14 years. They were always nice to me.
They never told me what to say. So it's not an attack on them to say that I was hemmed in by the fact that I work for someone else.
And that's just the nature of the relationship. No matter how free you think you are, part of you is assessing like, whoa, I actually am an employee.
I do have a boss. And I knew that they disagreed with me on a bunch of big topics.
And to their great credit, they never tried to change my view on those topics. And I would say that now, even though I'm not there anymore.
Good for them. But you aren't fully free if you work for someone else.
That's how I felt about it. And I just had reached this time in my life where I feel like there's all these really important things going on.
I want to be as honest as I can possibly be at all times and that was a hindrance to me. So I, and I also had this kind of supernatural sense that everything's gonna be fine and that in the end, you know, you die anyway.
So what are you afraid of exactly? And I'd also done it for too long, you know, too long, too long, same gig. It's good to be, and I had been fired before a couple of times.

So it's good to be fired because it brings you low and you don't become the overbearing asshole that every TV person is on some level. I mean, I already am that, but I kept it in check a little bit.
A little public humiliation is really important for a man. I would recommend it to all men.
And so I was very happy from day one, but it was a different, maybe a different time in my life or something. I was ready for it.
Everybody who I reached out to about you said, you know, he's changed. He's different because of this.
And when I spoke to you recently, not in the beginning, but recently, you said, yeah, I'm not that guy anymore. What does that mean for you? Well, it's just, I mean, I don't think I was playing a role ever.
I was definitely used by your former employer and mine, CNN, to flack for the Iraq war. And I allowed that without even really knowing what was happening.
And I was always bitter about that in the way that you are when you've done something wrong. In other words, if you fight with your wife and it's 100% her fault, you're not that mad.
But if it's really your fault, then you're extra mad because you're mad at yourself. And I've been mad at myself for 20 years over the things that I said and was pushed into saying promoting the Iraq war, which is totally indefensible in my opinion.
Now, so, but other than that, I have always, I think, been myself, but I just, you reach a stage in life where I don't feel like I have anything to prove and I don't need to be nasty to people. I've done that.
I have a PhD in it. You were probably the last person I was really, really nasty to.
Sorry. You got an A in that class, you bastard.
I did. So I don't go into things.
I just talked to Putin and everyone's like, you got to be rough on Putin. Actually, you're not my boss.
I can do whatever I want. Yeah, I can go in there and tell Putin, you're a monster.
Okay. what do we get out of that? So I can prove that I'm a tough guy? I don't need to prove that.
I'm not insecure about that. I'm tough enough anyway.
So I just don't have a chip on my shoulder at all about any of that. I just don't care.
I've got nothing to hide and nothing to prove. And I just want to hear people talk I think it's interesting I think it's important to hear people talk and So I can kind of pull myself out of it more than I was able to before if you're 31 and trying to make it in TV You know, you're sort of you're itching for a confrontation to show your skills.
I can win And now it's like ah, I've done that. I just I'm interested in that.
It's totally pointless. I don't elicit any interesting information.
It's all about me and my performance. And I know you know what I'm talking about because you've lived the life, but there's a lot of pressure on you to make a moment.
And now I'm just like, I've had a lot of moments. You can look up on YouTube if you want.
So do you feel that when you look at how you used to do it versus how you're doing it now, was it a function of this will work? How much of it was this is how I feel and how much of it was this will be funny or this will resonate, this will land, this will get clicks or lights or whatever? No, it's not that. No, I mean I've've always been...
Convicted. ...an instinct player, 100%.
And the only times I've gone really wrong, as with the Iraq War, was when I suppressed my instincts and joined a herd. That was really the last time, 2002, that I did that.
Now, if somebody gives you that answer, you know the follow-up is, what do you mean? You're a big boy. You're a smart guy.
You're supposed to be an intellectual. You got duped by people in a newsroom to be for a war? I got duped by someone in the Bush administration.
Ah, so it wasn't CNN. It was not CNN.
But I was on a show that was inherently partisan, left versus right, Republican versus Democrat. Yeah, yeah.
And the Republicans were in favor of invading Iraq and the Democrats were opposed. Now, of course, it's inverted completely.
But at the time that was so. So there was on the one hand, I didn't want to be on the same side as like Barbara Lee of Berkeley.
I'm still not on her side of most things. And on the other side, I had these people from the Bush administration saying to me, actually, we have a lot of intel that we can't give you.
But it's totally real. And my question, my questions are always the dumbest possible questions.
It's like, what does Saddam have to do with 9-11? Like what? Right. Like explain to me so I can understand.
They're like, look, we can't really tell you. So I just went along with it.
Anyway, it's not that interesting. I think a lot of people did the same, but- It was a big deal though.
Not you making a misjudgment. Yeah, a million people died.
Right. But it was such a big deal because it changed things one congress would never own violence again no they would never vote as the constitution demands oh yeah they gave it to presidents and right and left and they are anyone's going to take the power right you're in the power game you're president you want to give me power as congress i'll take it and we saw it with bush we saw it with clinton uh we saw it with bush we saw it with obama they all take the power but you give up the power it's like you'll never get it back you'll never and they don't want it back they won't even redo the AUMF so what changed then you're a bitch i'm sorry well you can call it that way no self-respect again the benefit of not having a boss.
But what changed? The dynamic one was Congress isn't going to own their responsibility anymore. They'll let the executive go with it.
And if the president screws up, it's on them. And if it goes well, we all win.
Great. Second thing that changed was it started to be okay to give bullshit rationales for military action.
Oh, yeah. Because 9-11, we went into the wrong country and everybody was so angry that if you tell me the guy who did it is in there, I'm not asking any other questions.
Oh, we would have invaded Italy. Oh, for sure.
And if we had had these, then we would have what we're seeing in the Middle East right now. And we're what's happening in this country where people will be like, whoa, what are you doing in Fallujah? What are you doing in Mosul? Wait, where are the bad guys? Who are these people? But they didn't have the exposure.
So that really was a very formative experience for us. Have you felt it? I mean, you must have felt it over the years, something big happens.
And the team has a view? Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Look, I am what they call hard to manage, okay? And that used to bother me. I used to be like, no, I want to be a team player.
I'm a team person. I like being part of a group.
I like that. And I'm not hard to manage.
I just want to know why you want me to do what you want me to do. I'll do anything.
I'll go anywhere. I'll put myself in any kind of danger if I think it's important for people to understand and I have the ability to go and they don't.
I'll go. But I want to know why.
I want to know why it's worth it. And, you know, some people, they don't like the questions.
Just do what I told you to do, meat puppet. You know, this is your job, is you go where I tell you to go.
This is what we're going to do tonight. Stop asking so many questions.
I get that. I get why that would be frustrating for a manager.
But now I embrace it. And people who know me know it's coming from a good place.
I'm not a diva. I'm not difficult for no reason.
I have such a strong sense of purpose. And living through 9-11 taught me such hard, bad lessons about, holy shit, you're supposed to check power.
You got this totally wrong. You did not go after these people the way you were supposed to.
And you didn't do it for the wrong reasons, which were, one, you were covering it, right covering it right and so you know you're kind of into the continuation game and the american people didn't want you checking it do you remember are you speaking of the patriot act specifically well no before when bush said hey stop asking all these questions about the weapons of mass destruction and the yellow cake. You're starting to create bad conditions on the ground for our fighting men and women.
And the American people stopped watching the news. And I remember, I was at ABC, and they stopped watching because it seemed like we were jeopardizing our troops.
And it worked. And everybody pulled back on that and just covered the war.
And we all went in our embed training and everybody went over there and did it. And I never forgot that.
And that's why I'm always chasing members of Congress about something that everybody thinks is a stupid in the weeds issue, which is, hey, why don't you do a vote on this? Why don't you vote on what we're giving Israel?

Why don't you vote on what we're giving Ukraine? Why don't you vote on what we just did when the

Houthis were attacking us? Why aren't you voting on that? Why didn't you vote on when Trump

bombed in Syria? Why? That's not a part of America. It's not an immediate interest for us

that's personal to us and our safety. I'm sure it's strategic, but that's not what the War of Powers Act is about.
That's not what the AUMF is about. That's not what the Constitution is about.
And they always brush it off. They always brush it off because that's where we are now.
We are stuck in a game that's about nothing but advantage. And I had time to think about all this when I got shit canned and to go back and look at what I had been about and what I had done and what I had not done.
And if I were going to come back, because you're tougher than I am, not physically, I would literally twist you like a bandit, but you had more resilience about this than I did. I still feel like I'm on one knee and getting back up.
And what motivated me to come back was two things, three things. One, my wife told me I had to.
Two, you know, she was like, you got to get up. And, you know, we got kids, you got to get up.
You got to do something with your life that is helping people and making something of this place. That's what we're supposed to be about.
You are not about that right now. You are a space rug right now.
That's what you are. You're a 230 pound lump on the floor.
Get up, do something with your life. Okay.
So was that your response? Okay. My response was, get away from me and my bottle.
More Casamigos, please.

Here's more.

My response was that I was embarrassed

and I knew she was right.

But sometimes you know what's right,

but you don't have the energy, the will,

or the self-confidence or belief to do it.

So if I were going to get back into this,

because there's such a price for entry.

And another thing, you know, I was thinking when I was walking around outside, you know, you got security outside your house. And I was thinking to myself, God, I know what this is about.
You know, and your kids are older, lucky for you, but they're still, they're still aware, they're still exposed. And I put my family through so much that I didn't understand that I was doing at the time because I had blinders on.
Got to help Andrew. This is wrong.
I got to help. I wasn't thinking that.
My son was having to deal with stuff. My daughter's, my daughter making up accounts online to defend her uncle.
Cued me. My wife.
So dealing with all those things, that's fine. First of all, good for her.
No, they're good kids. They're good kids.
They got a good genetic selection. They got a couple of my good genes and they got mostly their mom.
So they're in good shape. But I said, I want to come back.
I want to do this, but I know why now. And I'm only doing this job the way I want to do it and what I think matters about it.
And if that's not good for my employer, then I'm done. And I have the podcast.
I'm building the podcast, my own platform. I'm

going to talk to who I want about what I want. I'm going to focus on what I think matters.
And I'm not playing the game. I'm only going to expose the game.
And the reason that this is wrong is because everything is about silos and sides. And people will say, no, no, no, there's a line.
and and tucker is and tucker has crossed that line. And I will say, yeah, says who? Says you in the media who also cast me out? Not the millions of people who want to take it.
Well, it makes it even worse. No, it means that he, you already have a platform.
You already are relevant. Why wouldn't I want to understand this person better when you have the reach that you have? It doesn't make any sense, except if you're just playing a stupid game that has rules about who you're supposed to like and who you're not supposed to like.
And I'm not going to be that for two reasons. One, it's a stupid game.
And two, I lost that game. So I'm not going to advance something that I thought was dirty when it was done to me.
And I don't think there's value to the American people. They don't know what to believe because nobody ever shares ideas.
And we can go through different stuff that I say, that you say, because I still want to know why you came after me as much as you did. Because I'm a dick, probably.
Because it was easy. Because I don't like CNN and I really mean that in my heart of hearts.
I really just don't. But why me? I don't know.
How can you not know? It was so intentional. It was so frequent.
Because people kept sending me videos from Instagram. You.
It was me. It was you.
I sent him the first video and then he was best. What was wrong with me lifting weights? You're an outdoorsman.
But I just couldn't. I mean, I was pissed about the COVID thing.
That is totally true. I didn't buy any of this from day one.
That was totally real. But that's not, what I did was not really a pure refutation of your positions on COVID.
It was me taking the cheap shots, which I'm not always above and uh but you should be you should be above that did it feel good when you would come after me felt a little dirty felt a little dirty good or dirty you know i'm not really a dirty good guy you know what i mean like because you enjoy it let me tell you there was moment in the room. I guess cameras aren't picking up all the people sitting here.
I mean, in the sense that, you know, I don't want to use any kind of sexual metaphor, but there is one for this. It's like something you shouldn't be doing, but there's kind of the animal thrill of doing something wrong, I guess is what I would say.
You loved it. You loved it and it worked for you.
But I will say this. And my in-laws watch you.
Do you know how hard it is to deal with having your in-laws enjoy a joke that makes you want to do bad things that are going to cost you civil litigation money? Somebody did say, you know, Chris Cuomo is a lot bigger than you. Maybe you should be careful.
I just couldn't, you know, I almost, I have weaknesses. I will say I don't, I think I have a weakness for women.
I gave up drinking many years ago, but I'm still beset by the weaknesses of the flesh. And one of them is mockery.
I just can't help it. And my wife, I will say, who we were just with, is an unusually good person and would always say, I don't like it when you're mean.
You're not a mean person. You shouldn't be mean.
And I'm very dependent on my wife's approval. I'm totally happy to admit that.
And she never criticized me, but she, in a gentle way, like, I don't like it weird. That's not who you are.
It's kind of who I am. That's the problem.
But I'm watching your stuff now. You know, I watched a lot of your stuff for this.
And it's a different vibe, Tucker. I mean, look, if we had been in more contact before you did the Putin interview, I would have told you, you got to check some boxes with this guy.
I get why you're going to say, I'm not going to get there and get into a fight with a guy who may not let me out of the country. No, no, no.
I was never afraid. I was afraid of the US government, not of Putin at all.
Of them doing what? Arresting me when I got back for a sanctions violation. That's what my lawyers told me.
If you go talk to Putin, and if you don't ask him tough questions, the Biden administration very easily arrests you. It was a big law firm who told me that.
A big law firm. One of the biggest law firms.
But how bullshit is that? I thought it was, and I was like, I don't care. I'm an American citizen, and I'm going anyway.
But I felt no threat whatsoever. I definitely felt threat.
You know when the story came out that they had arrested somebody in Russia? That got like no attention. One of the things that you have to know about this guy, which I didn't believe, but now I do because I've been looking around his house like a little snoop.
You don't watch TV and you don't pay attention to your social media about what's being said about you. No.
That's why your hair is so full and so rich in color. No, I know who I am.
I don't need to be told by people who don't know me. So you don't monitor it? Not at all.
You don't know unless somebody tells you. I never in my old job, I never, my executive producer sitting right there, I never got the ratings ever, ever, ever, ever.
I don't want to know the ratings. I wasn't on the email list.
I don't do email actually. And so no, I don't want to know that because I'm...
No social media. How am I doing? How's this getting picked up or not? You don't do it.
I don't watch myself on television or on tape or whatever it is. And they don't.
And you don't look at comments. No.
Why would I? Look, I have a big family. My immediate family, which is large, and then a large extended family with whom we're very close.
And so I immediately get word if I'm doing something that offends them, which is not very often, but I have. And they'll tell me immediately.
And so that's what I care about. And I care about, you know, my religious faith.
But why would I care about some commenter? I just don't. And by the way, I think it's really wrong to do that.
Why would you give emotional control to a stranger? Like, don't do that. Because we are, well, look, you've gone on your own now, so it's different.

The metrics are different.

But for a pawn like me, I am somewhat at the mercy of how people decide to feel about me.

No, but you, once you self-liberate or you liberate yourself from the completely irrelevant opinions of partisans and strangers

and focus only on the people in your world who God has put right in front of you,

Thank you. completely irrelevant opinions of partisans and strangers and focus only on the people in your world who God has put right in front of you, then you're completely free.
And then it's like, well... But our business is all about it.
It's totally incestuous. But you do better in the business.
And it's dependent on social media as a proxy of Vox Populi. They believe that's the people speaking.
Right. But not caring is, as a practical matter, much more effective because then you don't have any voices in your head other than the ones who matter.
Yeah, until your boss picks up the phone or the comms person picks up the phone and says, we gotta clean this up. These people are not happy online because you use the word mouth breather and it turns out that that's a form of a breathing thing that people are upset about and you have to apologize.
The sleep apnea lobby is mad at you? Oh yeah, whatever it is. And you know, you're like, oh, okay.
And you look online and it's only 400 people who said this randomized thing, but it now matters. The media has made it matter.
Now the Washington Post calls. So I would always say to them like, if you think you can host a TV show, why don't you? Okay.
But actually you're working in the PR shop at some like depressing company. Like you don't know anything.
And if you think you're better at my job than I am, why don't you do it? You know, but they can't. And so their whole justification for their sad jobs, at which they're not very good, is to make you feel insecure.
And I just, I'm not interested in playing along. Like, why would I care about some 32-year-old, unhappy, unmarried PR person? It's like the single dumbest, most insecure group in America.
I get it. And they're like, oh, you got to do the New York Times Magazine.
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I get it. I get the turning yourself off to criticism, although I think that's harder to do.
No, no, not criticism. If my wife looks at me cross-eyed, she'd bring me to my knees.
I'm saying social media criticism. Yes, irrelevant criticism.
Why wouldn't you do that? Because it's actually really dangerous not to. It is, I always think this, it's giving a toddler a handgun.
I'm a gun person. I shoot a lot.
I'm totally for guns, but not in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing with guns who are irresponsible. Because it's too much power, right? And it will be misused.
And the same is true with opinions. And letting them in to your head.
Keep all of that stuff out. And just follow the voice.
And the more quiet you are, the clearer the voice is. I want to talk to you about where that takes you in terms of what you're doing and how it's the same or different for me.
But I got to tell you, on one level, now that I know that you are not responsive to the external in terms of social media, the masses, that makes you coming after me as much as you did even worse, by the way. Because it's not like you were part of some feedback loop

where you were like, man, this is reading. I got to keep doing it.
It was just you.

It was, and I try never to be passive aggressive. I really pride myself on just aggressive.

Yeah. I'll give you that.

You know, I'm a man. Okay.
There's no excuse for passive aggression. But in some sense that was,

I'm not just saying this to spare your feelings, but I mean it. It was passive.
Spare my feelings. Spare my feelings.
I'm trying to explain. So it was, I think so little of Jeff Zucker, who I texted immediately when he got fired though on principle.
But I worked for him and I just, you don't have to comment, but I really have a low opinion of Jeff Zucker. I don't think he's a good person and I mean that.
And a lot of people up and down management at CNN, I know personally since I spent years there and I felt very hostile toward them. And to some extent it was like my passive aggressive way of, I mean, you were the biggest show of, you know, striking out at CNN.

I'll tell you something.

One, and people always say I'm saying this gratuitously, but why would I at this point?

Zucker is the best maker of television I've ever worked with.

And he gave me all the opportunities that put me in a position to succeed.

He would not let me go back at you, by the way.

Wow.

He would not let me do it.

He said, one, that's not what we're about here.

And He would not let me go back at you, by the way. Wow.
He would not let me do it.

He said, one, that's not what we're about here.

And where's it going to go?

Where's it going to go?

You say you want to be trying to be in the arena to make things better.

Now, this is the man who fired me.

I have a lot of feelings about that.

I will say when one of your co-workers, and I cannot remember his name, but he's a very weird guy who did the media show. Brian Stelter.
Stelter was about to attack my children and called and told me that. And I threatened him and called him names and all this stuff.
And I called him a very bad word. And he called my employer to complain that I was a sexist because I called him this word.
Anyway, it was comical but upsetting. I didn't want him to attack my kids.
So I did. I called Zucker on his cell.
And I said, one of your guys is about to attack my kids. And he goes, oh, and he shut it down.
So here I'm saying I don't like Zucker. I appreciated that.
What the voice tells you to do. I don't disagree that sitting across from Putin and getting into a shouting match or whatever is going to bear much fruit for people.
I understand that. And I get that it's a commodity in the media, but I get that it may not be the highest good.
Well, it's also just vanity. It's vanity.
Right. I'll give you that.
There is an aspect of it. But you made choices.
Like, you didn't ask him about Navalny. You said, well, all killers, all leaders kill.
But don't you feel that if you are going to go and sit with someone like that, you have to hold them to account for things that matter? I did. The fact that he may have murdered somebody or a lot of people? Well, I don't...
I mean, the Ukrainians say that he didn't kill Navalny. So I think it's...
Well, who killed him then? Guy looks good one minute, and the next minute he's dead? I mean, in some larger sense, the Russian government... And what Ukrainians say they don't? Zelensky says he killed him.
No, he doesn't. No, the Ukrainian government said, no, he died of natural causes.
Now, what is actually going on there? I can't even guess, okay? Navalny died in the middle of the Munich Security Conference, also in the middle of the debate over Ukraine funding in the United States, and his death was within hours used by the President of the United States to justify another $60 billion. So those are just facts.
I haven't the faintest idea. Putin put him in prison, okay? So there's that.
Poison him. He's responsible.
Here's what I learned, and I'm hardly a Russia expert, is this is an extremely complicated political environment. Extremely, like next level, okay? These are the people who dominate world chess.
And so their politics are incomprehensible to me. So what's actually happening, and I mean, I've been in a lot of countries and covered a lot of stuff abroad.
And the one thing I've learned is you actually don't really know what's going on. And so I had a bunch of Navalny questions to answer your question in my 4,700 questions that I'd written out.
And I decided on the fly not to ask it because I felt like, what about Navalny? Well, whatever he's going to say, I'm not going to move the ball at all. There's a war going on that is resetting the world.
I'm not for throwing your political opponents in prison. I hate it.
I'm mad that the Biden administration is now doing it. I'm worried about it happening to me.
I mean, honestly, I want to get that on the record. So I'm not for that in any sense.
I don't choose to live in Russia. I'm not a Putin supporter, but there's a war going on and it's crushing the United States economy.
And most Americans don't understand that. And I just wanna, I wanna talk about that.
And so I made that decision. Ashing the economy is not crushing the war economy though.
A lot of that money winds up coming back to the Uniparty, the corporations that do that. No, I totally agree, but- They always find a way to win.
Kicking Russia out of SWIFT, stealing people's stuff, the oligarch stuff, a lot of people have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. That's not the rules-based order, actually.
That's the hardest edged possible politics being played by the US government using the US dollar and the sanctions regimes to do it. What is the message to the rest of the world? Get the hell away from the United States.
These people, if they elect somebody who's senile like Biden or someone doesn't like us, they will use the dollar and sanctions to destroy us. Get away.
It's not a safe haven anymore. And so that fact will change world history, change the course of American history.
We're going to live with that for the rest of our lives. Our grandchildren will live with it.
I don't think Americans understand that. And I want them to.
And I want to hear what Putin's thinking is. And I don't know if I achieved that or not, but that was definitely.
But what I didn't want to do is try to convince other journalists for whom I have no regard at all, for the most part,

that I'm a good person.

I don't care what they think of me.

They call me a Nazi all the time,

which I'm not.

So like their views are totally immaterial.

I just want to focus on what I want to focus on.

And if you don't like it, don't watch it.

You know, that's kind of my view.

I agree that every time you go into an interview, one, look, you know. You hear voices in your head, though.
Like, you've got to do this. You've got to do that.
Right. No, I don't.
I can do whatever I want. The first blush of it was Carlson doesn't get to interview Putin.
That I absolutely disagreed with. And in fact, as much as it pained me, I defended that proposition that I don't, of course, Tucker Carlson, if he can book Putin, he can interview Putin.
That's how it works in our business. If you can get him, you can do the interview.
Why Putin chooses Tucker Carlson, what Tucker does with the interview, we'll judge when he does it. So I was abroad and as noted, not kind of obsessively following the coverage of myself.
I don't have a Google alert. They didn't want you to do it because they thought that you would be a stooge for Putin.

And then you showed up in Moscow.

They won't even be here in five years.

None of these people, John Carl and all these people, they'll all be gone.

But you make it easy for them. You show up in Moscow, you say this is the best place I've ever been in my life.

This city is better than anywhere in America.

It is.

Get out of here. On what basis?

It's so much better on the basis that I described. People making like no money.
That's why the prices are cheap. Yeah.
Well, actually, look, I'm no expert on the Russian economy. I can only tell you what I saw, which is a city of 13 million people, larger than any, much larger than any city we have.
Hard to govern a city like that. And there is no homelessness, no graffiti.
It's spotlessly clean. The public spaces are beautiful.
The architecture has not been degraded by postmodern, the oppression of postmodern architecture, which is designed to demoralize and hurt you and destroy your spirit. I believe that because it's true.
Do you believe that postmodern architecture is designed to kill your spirit? Of course. Why? What's the message of it? Well, look, anything that we make with our hands, it's the purest expression of our creativity.
So there's a purpose behind everything that we make. There's a message behind all of it, as there is in all art.
You don't paint a painting with no vision behind it. You paint a painting because you're saying something.
And so buildings that are warm and human and that elevate the human spirit are pro-human. And brutalism, for example, or the I am paid glass boxes that crowd every city in the United States, those are not elevating.
What's the message of working in a cube in a room with a synthetic drop ceiling and drywall on the walls and fluorescent lighting ahead of you and no privacy at all? What's the message? The message is really clear. You mean nothing.
You are replaceable. You are a widget in a bin awaiting assembly.
You're just a cog in a machine. You have no value.
And everyone kind of ignores this like, oh, well, that's the way buildings have always been. No, that's not true.
And architecture and anything made by human hands is the purest expression of the society that produced it. So we were like, oh, they're handicrafts.
No, they're not handicrafts. They're a visible and tangible sign of who you are, not just as a person, but corporately as a society.
And if you live in a place that creates nothing beautiful and doesn't provide people uplifting buildings to live and work in, that's a very sick and dark society. And it wasn't always that way.
That's the only point I made. Look, Moscow, I'm not moving to Moscow.
I'm an American. I'm never leaving.
But Moscow is not so different from the cities of the United States in my youth. We had a free society, much freer than we have today.
We had much more capitalism, free markets, free monopolies. But you're not saying Moscow was a free society.
I'm saying the United States was a free society. The country that I grew up in had a semi-functioning capitalist system with competition.
It wasn't all like four companies dominating everything, which is what we have. Now, that's not capitalism.
Okay. That's a monopoly economy, which is bad.
And you had freedom of speech. I guess there are probably some limits, but I wasn't aware of what they were because they were so broad.
And you had safe, for the most part, clean cities. And that's exactly what Moscow is.
So again, as I've said, and I really mean it, and I said it to our producers who we were traveling with at the time, this does not make me love Putin. It makes me despise our leaders.
And so I say this for Moscow and Jon Stewart is just such a tool of power. It's crazy.
He's like, well, you know, fentanyl ODs are the price of freedom. Really? You're going to try and convince me of that? It's like telling women working at Citibank is liberation.
No, it's slavery, actually. That's not liberation.
Getting to raise your own children is liberation. Getting to do what you want to satisfy the deepest desires of your heart, that's liberation.
They've redefined liberation. Liberation is living in some shithole? No, that's slavery.
And so I try to make this point. I don't think it's super subtle or esoteric or complex but they're like oh to live putin no no no you are flacking for the indefensible that's what's actually happening here so for you it's not putin's better russia's better it's that it gave you perspective on what you think has changed in america for the worse of course i It's not how it came across.
Well, I'm sure. And I'm sure it was at least in part due to my inability to explain it fully, which has been a problem all my life.
It's incumbent on me to explain things. That's my job.
And I don't always succeed. So I'm willing to believe that.
But it's also a product of intentional distortion of what I'm saying, which is this is an indictment of our leadership class, which deserves to be indicted and imprisoned, in my opinion. And I mean that.
So all my views are that. All my views are through an American lens.
I've got a big family. I'm not leaving.
My family's been here for hundreds of years. I'm not going anywhere.
I'm the most American person you've ever met. Don't have another passport.
I'm like a lot of other people. And so I'm stuck here by choice and circumstance, and I want my country to be as great as it can possibly be.
And that's why I oppose the Ukraine war from day one. This is not going to help us, period.
And they're like, oh, tool of Putin. It's like, no, tool of America.
That's what I want to be. What about the argument that they make that if you allow Russia to exercise reach, it'll keep doing it? I would say show me the evidence.
I would say show me the evidence. The Soviet- Started in Crimea.
Now they're taking at least half of it. They had a referendum in Crimea where they asked the overwhelmingly like 90% Russian population of Crimea, do you want to be part of Ukraine after the coup of 2014 or do you want to be part of Russia? And they said Russia.
So that's the democratic process, I would say there. Right.
But you don't change sovereignty over what the popular vote is. It depends how committed to democracy you are.
I mean, democracy is the promise of self-government. But if where we are right now decided it wanted to be its own state, they don't get to just go.
You have a constitution, you have larger ideals involved. Sure.
But as a matter of principle and practice, if you're committed to democracy, you should let people choose how they seek to be governed. But the truth is Ukraine is not a sovereign country and hasn't been since at least 2014 when the West, the CIA, and this has been documented in great detail, staged a coup with a color revolution and took over their government.
And now we know all the details that we have bio labs and CIA offices and it's not a sovereign country in any sense. So whatever.
I mean, look, I don't even care that much. Do you know what I mean? It's heavy stuff though.
It's very heavy. I mean, of course I care, but I care in the sense that if, you know, Burundi invades Rwanda, which has happened, or Vietnam invades Cambodia,

which has also happened, I'm against that because I'm for sovereignty. But what I care about is the

country that I live in. I want it to be a sovereign country.
It's not. We act at the

behest of the demands of other countries. We imperil our own national security on behalf of other countries.
That's why we're in NATO. We have a security guarantee with Macedonia? What? I didn't sign up for that.
That's not in the Constitution. I want my kids to die for Macedonia? No.
But their rationale is an extension of collective strength. Now, here's the problem.
I don't have any problem with you owning any of these opinions that you do. Well, they seem common sense.
I can have my own opinion about the level of sufficiency of your reasoning. I think you'd find it unimpeachable.
Oh, it's definitely not unimpeachable. I'm kidding.
It is that you shouldn't be demonized for it, though. And to flip it, because your audience is going to very much want to understand this, what do you believe personally or do you believe people believe that I say or report or represent that I shouldn't? That you? Yeah, like COVID, for instance.
What do I mean to you when it comes to COVID that bothered you about the coverage or the reality or any of it? I was completely opposed to, from the very first day, the idea that you can restrict people's freedom of movement or force them into taking any medical treatment of any kind, period. And I am strongly and have been really my whole adult life opposed to abortion, which I think is killing, is killing.
However, the one abortion slogan I always liked was my body, my choice. I thought that was a good argument.
I don't think it's actually your body. So I don't think it's a rational argument if you think it through.
But as a slogan, I totally believe it's my body, my choice. And the my body, my choice people are like, actually, no.
It's not your body or your choice. It's my body and my choice.
And you're going to do this or we're going to hurt you. And I'm just completely opposed to that.
And so anybody who seemed to be endorsing it as you did, I was like completely opposed to that. PayPal lets you pay all your pals, like your graduation gifters.
Who's paying for the mattress topper? you We'll see you next time. Glad we can agree on something.
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Not available in all states. I understand, and I've heard this.
I see reproductive rights differently. And I do think that it was a very dangerous, politically, it's an easy analysis of the dog catching the car and getting rid of Roe v.
Wade. Now you have it state by state.
You have this IVF thing that happens in Alabama. You're going to have a lot of crazy stuff happen now and women are going to have to pay the price for it.
But here's where I was coming from on COVID and I want your take on this. So we're in this emergency situation that I very much believe was real.
And I wanted to believe President Trump that this is being hyped and it's going to go away. There's going to be a few dozen cases and we'll be okay.
I would have loved for that have been true. I didn't want people to get sick, let alone me.
So then it becomes like a really big thing. And I have these unusual set of inside eyes, right? Because my brother is running one of the biggest states and dealing with some of the most cases.
So I'm like deeper into it probably than anyone else covering it in the country because I'm watching my brother get overwhelmed by need in the hospital. That's how I got COVID was going to visit hospitals because I kept hearing these stories about all these dead people all over the place and how there were gurneys flying, and they were.
And then I wound up catching COVID. The government says this is what we have to do.
And there are similar practices going on around the world. I understand the restriction argument.
I totally get the liberty argument. But why was it wrong for me to say this is what they're telling us to do? And clearly it's imperfect.
All of their answers are imperfect. They don't know what's happening right now.
This is a first. But isn't that the job? Is that this is what they're saying? Here's their explanation? Yes.
Asking questions about it? That's part of the job. But I wasn't like pro-vaccine or pro-mask.
I'm the guy who got busted in the New York Post because I took a run without a mask on, walked back in my lobby, and somebody ratted on me, and then I became a hypocrite. I want you to wear a mask, but I'm not.
Not when I'm taking a run. I'm coming back into my apartment building.
I'm sweaty. I get it.
I didn't wear a mask at all. You came after me for that.
I did, and I'll tell you why. Please.
I didn't wear a mask at all. And that's one attack that I will not walk back, because I think it's fair.
I didn't wear a mask, and when told to do it on airplanes, I always punched a hole through it. Out of spite? No, because I couldn't breathe.
Otherwise, I can't get the cigarette in there if there's a... Yeah, that's right.
Just kidding. No, I quit smoking by then.
But I couldn't breathe. And it's not good not to get oxygen.
I believe in sunshine and air. My wife and I have not slept with our door closed in, I mean, many, many years.
No matter what the climate, we sleep with the door open because we believe in fresh air. And so I believe that.
And no one's going to keep me from getting fresh air. Sorry.
So, but if it's true that you must wear your mask at all times, then you must wear your mask at all times, whether it's inconvenient or not. Don't go for a run.
Well, it wasn't all times. It was a social distancing thing.
And I had been jogging. But people are getting arrested on the beach alone.
I understand that it went too far. What I didn't understand, I totally get it.
And I feel the same way about the vaccine and what was understood and not understood. Wait, but can I just ask you one question that really was the pivot point for me when I realized these people are liars and it's my job not to affirm what they say, but to question and to challenge them, no matter what they call me, and they called me a murderer and all that.
But when the BLM riots happened and public health officials said, it's okay because fighting systemic racism, which they never defined, despite my requests, is more important than shielding people from COVID. And I'm like, you may think that as a political matter, but as an epidemiological matter, you've just revealed that you're a freaking quack and you don't give a shit about public health because you were just telling me that this is not allowed, except when it's a militia helping you.
You're an evil person. That was like my initial, and no one ever explained to me how it's okay to infect people with COVID as long as they're challenging Donald Trump.
I understand the argument. I guess the way I was watching it in real time is, well, they can't control...
If it's a protest, it's one thing and you can have rules, but do you really want to go arresting your way into a crowd of people who are already outraged by something? Let alone if it becomes... I know, but people...
Look, and I don't like that. But, and I didn't like it then.
I never said I did. If a bunch of Nazis came out in the early summer of 2020 and said, we're Nazis, we're free...
I don't think they would go mask arresting. Although a lot of those guys do wear masks to hide their identity.
Are you kidding? I don't... They would get mowed down.
I mean... I just think it would be too dangerous.
And I think they felt the same way. Well, they've got drones and automatic weapons.
Like they, look, the one thing we know about the people- You're not going to shoot these people. You know what I'm saying? They shot Ashley Babbitt.
You know, she was 5'2 and unarmed, you know, like, and then no one apologized for it. Tucker, they shot Ashley Babbitt.
What was she doing at the time? She was pushed against a door going into the Senate chamber, but she was killed without warning. And no one ever said, maybe we shouldn't.
I'll just start here from my perspective. Don't shoot girls.
That's like my rule. You don't commit violence against women, period.
I actually, I'm the last person apparently in America who thinks that. An unarmed woman should not be shot under any circumstances.
Unless she's unarmed and she's 5'2", I think it's totally dishonorable. And to see Joe Scarborough, of all people, of all people, saying that's okay, I'm like, oh.
Look, I mean, so many of these situations are so impossible. But I'm getting off the track.
Sorry, sorry. No, I think this is the track because the whole point is nobody has these conversations.
Yeah. No one.
Now, they do in their real lives. People have friends where they don't agree on things.
Trump has changed a little bit. The MAGA stuff changed it a little bit for people.
They started being mean to each other in their personal lives. But yes, it's the worst thing that's happened.
You've got to talk like this. Like, do I see it the way you do no uh i think you do on hold on hold on i i don't i don't believe that you should shooting unarmed people is a very dicey proposition i don't make a gender distinction really i know too many women who can kick my ass it you know what i mean like i don't think you know i think that's not true i.
I do. Name one who could kick your ass.
So I'm 6'1". Are you? Or was before I had back surgery.
I was going to say. Yeah.
You know, we're trying to be real with each other here. You know what I mean? Well, you're a lot taller than I am, okay? I'm just saying.
And you're famously a bodybuilder. There's not one woman in America who can kick your ass.
It's just not true. And you know it's not true.
And you have to say it to make the unhappy unmarried women. You went to the UFC fight.
You think you could get in there with the women who are fighting and come out looking like that? No, I'm saying you specifically. Yeah, I'm telling you.
I have a polygraph exam and I don't want to have to do this on camera, but if I applied it to you. I would pass in flying colors because I know how to beat the test.
And I can tell you how if you want to know. That's why they're not admissible in court.
But can I just ask you, like, you know in your heart, you don't actually think there's a single woman. No, I really do.
What's her name? I really do. I know.
The whole point is, is that I don't have to know them by person. Men and women are very different, much more different.
We spend all of our time on racial differences. Your race, my race, and there are differences between races.
There is no difference between races that's a quarter as profound as the difference between sexes. These are biological differences that are physical, they're psychological, they're hormonal.
These are profound differences. But that's kind of the point about drawing racial distinctions is that you're really the same.
And obviously, biologically, you're different. But what I'm saying, I don't see it as a less than.
Can women lift as much weight as men on average? Of course not. No, no, no.
I'm making the opposite argument. It's not less than.
I like women better. And I think that my job, all of our jobs as men, is to treat women differently, comma, and better than we treat men.
That is the idea, oh, that's chivalry. Okay, honey, good luck in a world without it.
And I'm serious. If you got into an argument, and I know you well enough to know, if you're standing in a restaurant and someone's like, fuck you, Chris Cuomo, you'd punch him out.
If a woman did that- Depends where my cash flow is. Okay.
I really don't have a capital right now. You would want to.
You're quick with the punches. I would definitely want to.
I happen to know that. If a woman got way up in your face- I wouldn't.
Exactly. I wouldn't.
Exactly. So it is a bigger sin, not just against her, but against yourself and your dignity and your responsibility as a man.
Your job is to protect women. I'll give you the gender.
I don't see it exactly the same way. Because you don't want to admit it.
You're telling me some girl is going to kick your ass. If you know that's not true.
Hold on. There are women who could.
Okay. There's no question in my mind.
There are all these professional fighters and women who train in self-defense who will beat my ass. I'm a 53 year old guy.
How many female fighters have gone against male fighters that are roughly the same?

Very rare.

Although, did you see that girl who just won the high school wrestling championship?

That was cool.

It must have been a light.

Well, look.

She was in the body.

It was lightweight.

They're extraordinary female athletes.

It's unfair.

By weight and muscle.

It's not just unfair.

It's immoral.

It's totally wrong.

I don't know that it's immoral.

If a woman feels-

It's not immoral.

Then why don't we have a Violence Against Women's Act? If the- Well... Why do we specify in law that it's worse? Hold on.
There's a through line. Yeah.
You have violence against women because you have a cultural preset of victimizing women and putting them in positions that are inferior. and it was important enough that society decided to punish it extra.
No, it's not the, it's illegal to be as, you know, fair to women act. It's not the illegal to.
Should be. Maybe.
You should have that also. Maybe.
Because there's gender inequality. But it's the violence against, violence against women.
Yeah, because you have a culture of where men, you know what the rule of thumb is? The rule of thumb comes from British common law of you can beat your wife with anything that's not thicker than your thumb. It's a stupid culture.
The British Empire is the empire that stopped widow burning in India. There was no force for female liberation more powerful than the British Empire ever until the American Empire showed up and inverted it and started telling women true liberation is working for some soulless company that hates you and will pay for your insurance to freeze your eggs so you can put off what you really want to do in life and work for us.
That's not... Liberation is choice.
Is that you get to make your own choices. People don't make them for you.
Uh-huh. Well- Did you just blow off my point? Well, I did to this extent.
Of course, liberation is choice. But these are choices that individuals don't get to make.
Like, how's your economy structured? And as Elizabeth Warren- There are structural things that take away your choice. That is true.
I think the inability to raise children on a single income is like the biggest change in American society ever. But when you propose something like family leave or allowing men or women to be able to be there with the newborn, nobody wants to give a money for it.
Allowing men to be there with the newborn? Yeah. Huh.
Other countries... What, you didn't spend time with your kids when they were first born? Of course I did.
And I have a lot of children. So I know for a fact, not as a matter of theory, that a child needs two parents and that each parent brings something vital but different to parenting.
But the one thing I definitely know is that there's not one man on the planet who knows intuitively what to do with a newborn. There's a period for the first several months that if

you're not a woman, you are not comfortable making the right choices for a newborn. That's just true.

And if you can find a man who's totally comfortable around a newborn the way any five-year-old girl is,

then I will give you $1,000 because you can't. It's like finding the girl who can beat you up.

You can't because there isn't one. And so the truth is the difference between men and women

I'm not going. And so the truth is the difference between men and women, no one wants to admit it because we're like, oh.
It's not that. It's not that.
It's totally that. Look.
I'm telling you. Our whole conversation is we're like in a hammerlock.
There's a tiny percentage of the US population, which is an overwhelming percentage of the Democratic electorate, which is unhappy, unmarried women, and they control what everyone can say. And they don't want to have the conversation and they're like, oh, you hate women.
I hate women. I don't think I do.
The people who think it's okay to punch them in the face, the people who don't punish rapists, the people who allow you to be afraid on the subway, those people hate women. The ones who are telling you, forgo your family to work at Citibank, those people hate you.
Obviously. There are definitely people that hate women.
There is a real thing. There is definitely a cultural problem we have.
Have abortions. We love you so much.
Allowing women to have the same exercise of options that men have. And we know this.
And different ways to correct it and sometimes you go too far and in the wrong directions but i don't think there's anything wrong but it's always the same direction it's always to give up your family if you read any survey of women what do they want they want a lot of different things we all do but men want that too didn't you didn't you get married to have kids no i got married kids you didn't want to start a family not really no but i got engaged at 21 yeah you were very young yeah i was super young and i was and you guys had been together well i was also especially shallow and i got married because i really liked my wife and i thought she was hot and so i married her and she was the one who's like we should have children i was like oh you know, oh, you know, that's whatever. It's not even interesting.
Well, she had to be thinking, what am I going to get out of this? Like this was, I'm a Christian, so I'm stuck. But this is not what I thought.
I think there's possibly some truth there. But the point is, if you ask women what they want, the overwhelming majority will say, I want to be married and have children.
You don't think men want that also? Yeah, they may do. I mean, I did.
And ultimately, and- That's why I got married. 100%.
I'm talking specifically about women. They want to be married and have children.
And that is the thing that the Democratic Party prevents them from having through policy. And the reason they do that is because the single most important constituency, as you well know, is not black voters.
They always say that it's black voters. No, it's unmarried women of all races.
And so they do a lot of different things to discourage marriage and fertility. One of them is paying single moms not to be married.
Another is constantly promoting anti-fertility measures like abortion and birth control. They actively work to prevent women from forming families.
And I think that's evil. And I don't think it serves women at all.
That's my view. It is your view.
I disagree. I see it differently.
But that doesn't make you evil. You see what I'm saying? A little evil.
No. And I'll tell you what.
You use that word a lot. I don't use it.
I do half ingest. You are more judgmental and stronger in your convictions than I am.
Yes. I have a lot more latitude in how things go.
Like Ashley Babbitt, look, the whole thing was so regrettable. And I didn't think it was right.
It wasn't right to call it an insurrection because an insurrection is a real thing. And I know people get mad at me about this, but- Who gets mad at you about that? There's a real- Just tell me some names.
Is this the girl who's going to beat you up is getting mad at you? There are a lot of women. I'm telling you, Tucker, I'm going to start bringing them around you the next time we see each other.
I'm afraid of these chicks. And you will see.
You went to that UFC fight. If you had said this before and then walked into that fight, Trump even couldn't have saved you.
So this is what I saw there. Insurrection is a crime.
Okay? There's an insurrection act. You have a statute.
You have the whole thing. There has never been an insurrection that was largely unarmed.
OK, and I know people are going to say they had fire extinguishers and sticks. If your intention is to take over the United States government, you're going to come heavy.
You're going to come hard. You're going to be armed.
This was a riot. And that's bad enough.
January 6th was bad enough. It was a riot.
Ashley Babbitt, for good reason, bad reason, no reason, was where she was. She put that officer in fear of his life with like 10 other people.
And that's how she got shot. We don't know that she put him in fear of his life because there was never an investigation into it.
So Michael Byrd, the man who shot her to death, had already been sanctioned for leaving his loaded Glock in the men's room of the Capitol. Now you tell me, I don't know what your view of firearms is, but I have a lot of views on firearms.
You can't leave a loaded, a striker fired handgun with a bullet in the chamber with no safety. And you leave that in the men's room as a cop, you should be fired immediately.
That's negligent and a mortal threat to anyone else who uses the men's room, especially children. So that guy shot her.
Oh, that's great. Winchester pump? That's not my gun.
That is not my, that's not, that is my son.

That's Mario. Oh, I love that.

And that is a, yeah, that's a breech loaded Winchester.

I know my guns.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not anti-weapon, but here's the thing.

There was no investigation.

I know, but hold on.

He's, first of all, the investigation is what we all saw on video.

The, and what he said. Do cops get to shoot people without a warning? I don't think they do, actually.
Cops don't get to shoot you without a warning in a situation where they are exercising a use of force in apprehending you. In a situation where there is a mob descending upon this guy.
He's trying to hold the glass doors because he wants lawmakers to not get hanged or whatever, and they're breaking through, he then made a judgment that his life was going to be for another place.

But what I'm saying, it was a criminal.

And him leaving a weapon somewhere is a bad move, but it doesn't have any relevance in terms of what he did here.

Well, of course it does because it speaks to his judgment.

And here's the point I would make is that Ashley Babbitt was not a mob. She was an individual.
Part of. Right.
But he didn't shoot a mob. He shot an unarmed woman who was under 5'5", who did not pose a mortal threat to him.
And if she did, tell me how. And he killed her.
And so just on the basis of those facts alone, I need to know more. But we don't know more because there was no investigation.
It was just swept under the rug. And then he goes on TV and accuses everyone of racism who doesn't like the killing that he committed.
And then you have people on television saying, I'm so glad that she died. I'm so glad that she was killed.
This is a veteran, by the way, who runs a pool company in San Diego. This is the person who served the country and was getting the least benefit from it.
She runs a freaking pool company. Okay? She's not working at BlackRock.
And her death is like totally fine because we don't like her politics. If they think it's okay to kill Ashley Babbitt when she posed no mortal threat to anybody, not even conceivably, then they'll be happy when I die.
That's how I feel about it. God forbid.
And you're probably not wrong because the fact that there's even a they in your analysis of it shows that we're in the wrong place. Yeah.
Mourning Joe. I'm specifically of Mourning Joe.
Yeah. But what I'm saying, no, no.
But what I'm saying that humanity should be an absolute value. Amen.
when like January 6th, I know people will say it was an insurrection. People, okay, fine.
He wasn't charged with that. And there's a reason he wasn't charged with that.
And it's not a technicality. And your approach and the approach of other people that, hey, this was just, these guys were in the wrong place, the wrong way, but that's all it was.
I don't agree with that. I think it was a riot.
And I think they were way over the line. And I think that they were motivated to go way over the line in part by the president of the United States.
Obviously, we're a riot. But let me ask you a couple of questions.
One is, why can't we know how many federal agents were in the crowd and what they were doing there? I'm fine with knowing. I love transparency.
It is the key to understand. It's the opposite of what we have.
And there are thousands of hours of tape and the release of which will not jeopardize security in the Capitol. You cherry picked that tape, by the way.
I aired what they sent me. You cherry picked it though.
And you made it look like the least. I don't know what that means.
Like you kept showing the Indian guy walking around like it was a shaman guy. The Indian guy did over two years in prison for no crime whatsoever.
I talked to him yesterday. Again, his name is Jake Chansley.
And he's a very smart guy, actually. I think I interviewed him also, by the way.
He's a good dude. Definitely his lawyer.
He's pretty far out, but he's no more far out than Janet Yellen or anybody else. You know what I mean? Yeah, except Janet Yellen wasn't busting into the Capitol and walking around.
Janet Yellen's an actual criminal. I mean, Janet Yellen was Fed chair and then taking millions of dollars in speaking fees from the banks? What? That's criminal behavior.
I'm fine with those types of ethical lapses and how we allow the system to keep going around. Cuff her, baby! Lock her up? Is that what you mean to say?

But I do think that,

look, I think that what I see in January 6th,

what I see when it comes to immigration,

what I see when it comes to Russia,

all of these things

wind up becoming fodder for division.

You have to have a take.

And it winds up having to be

the opposite take

that the other side has.

And I really think that

it's symptomatic of our decline. I totally agree.
January 6th was either no big deal, the BLM stuff was worse, or it was an insurrection. And everybody there is treason.
We don't like what the president does, treason. Or he did nothing.
Everything is like that. Immigration, the migration stuff.
You are hit with the stick of you are forwarding the replacement theory that the Democrats want to bring in as many brown people as possible to replace white people. Well, they've said that.
Who? Well, like three books have been written on it. So what? Three books.
The policy is not to replace white people with brown people. So what I'm interested, and by the way, I've never said white people.

I said the current people who are born here, many of them are not white. I don't know how we get to white people.
You contextualize it as white people. You'll say like, well, white people created everything.
They don't want us to have white babies. Why is it coming up? I've never said they don't want us to have white babies.
I haven't said that. No? Though the attacks on white people are one of the biggest things that's ever happened in our country.
The fact that people in the media can just sort of blithely attack an entire group on the basis of their skin color, I just grew up thinking that was completely out of bounds. Does it matter if the group is a majority or a minority? Well, the principle never changes, which is you're not responsible for your skin color.
You're only responsible for what you do. And so you can't attack people on the basis of immutable characteristics.
And if you can, then tell me why segregation was wrong. I don't really understand.
I think segregation was wrong. And I've always thought that.
I think it now. Good.
And I think attacking people on the basis of their skin color is always wrong.

It was every bit as wrong as what's happening now.

Affirmative action, totally immoral.

How can you give someone a job on the basis of a skin color?

How can you deny someone a job on the basis of a skin color?

You're not allowed to do that in our country.

That's what I was taught growing up in a very liberal place in California.

And then I get older and it's like, oh, we're definitely going to do that. And you can't complain about it or you're the racist.
And it's like, no, no, no. You're the one punishing people for how they were born, for their skin color.
I thought that was like Bull Connor stuff. I thought we hated that.
In fact, I thought that was the lodestar of American politics. The one thing we hate is attacking people, denying them opportunity on the base of their skin color.

And they're like, oh, no, no, no. Not only do we do that, but you can't mention it.
Well, I think I can, actually. And boy, I've had a lot of people, Republicans, tell me I can't mention that.
Why? Why? They never explain. Just shut up.
Well, it makes them radioactive. I don't care.
That's wrong. Because it is substituting a level playing field where there isn't one.
So the way affirmative action was supposed to work was that it would enable a merit-based system that people who are minorities were being kept out of for two reasons. One, they didn't have the opportunities early on to build up the tools that a lot of white people did because of what they call now privilege, but really it's opportunity.
And the second reason is that because white people were the majority and didn't like the minority. Okay, so the second- So you had a system that was set up against them, had to be remedied.
That was the theory. It's almost impossible to apply logic to this because it's based on obviously racial hostility and political calculation.
It's not based on any principle of justice. But I'll just ask you.
Hold on. That is justice.
Fairness under law, meaning that just because this person is brown doesn't mean you can treat them like a dog. Oh my gosh, of course not.
But that's what it was supposed to remedy. Just because this person is any color, any color, you should never punish someone for how he was born, period.
But the country did. Of course, and that ended in 1965.
No, it didn't. Okay, well, let me ask you a couple questions then.
If whites become the minority, which I keep reading it's going to happen really soon, should they be beneficiaries of affirmative action? If they start to get discriminated against. discriminated against okay so would you on the basis of that well they're already discriminated against in college admissions in hiring both federal and private sector whites are i just saw this the other day i was kind of shocked by it if you're to break out the country by ethnicity which i hate i don't think we should count by race i think we should address people as they created by God, which is as individuals.
That's fine as long as everybody's getting a fair shake. Whites are not in the top five for income in the United States right now.
Nigerians, on average, make more than whites. So if you're talking about a world that is black and white, and the whites have some sort of entrenched privilege and are beneficiaries of all this stuff, you're really talking about a country that's generations gone.
And so in the current country, virtually every immigrant group has a higher income than native born whites. So I'm not mad about that.
I'm just saying that's not a basis upon which to discriminate against whites. And if you continue to with those numbers in hand, and those are public numbers from the Labor Department, then you're really doing this because you hate whites.
And I don't want to live in a country where we punish people because the people in charge don't like their skin color. Because we've lived in that country before, and I don't want to live in it again.
So how is it that the people in charge are mostly white, but they hate whites? Well, that's a very deep question. And I would say this, I mean, I don't know the answer, but I would say this just as I travel to the extent that I do.

I have never one time been yelled at by a non-white person.

Not one time.

Not one time.

No black person has ever yelled, racist!

I've had way more, never.

I've never had a Spanish person or Asian person, any non-white ever do that.

It's been about 99% 32-year-old female white lawyers. I'm just saying.
What do they say? Racist! Okay. So look, there's a deep psychology here.
I don't fully understand it. There's a lot I don't understand, including this.
But I don't need to. Because in this country, you should never be allowed to punish people on the basis of their skin color.
I just start and end there. And I don't, all these rationales, well, systemic this, systemic that, you don't have the evidence to support your position, not you, but the person making that case.
And even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You can't punish people for the color of their skin.
That's the whole freaking lesson of the entire civil rights movement. We're like pretending it's like the opposite lesson no it's that how do you enable equality if it's not going to happen naturally okay how do you enable it and that's what the policies were about to do that that wouldn't punish people or advantage people either one on the base of their skin color if you could find a way that wouldn't let some people sit

in the front row and others sit in the balcony or give some people, you know, a water fountain in the

lobby and some a water fountain in the utility closet, then we could talk about it. But no scheme

devised or that conceivably could be devised doesn't wind up helping some people on the base

of their skin color and hurting people on the base of their skin color. And they used to tell us for years like, oh, a front of action doesn't hurt white people.
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What are these guys getting bored over here? I don't know what they're doing. I'm loving this.
Anyway, whatever, I'm going on. No, no.
This is supposed to be an interview of you and your dark secrets. What's the worst thing you've ever done? The worst thing I've ever done was to forget what I'm supposed to be about.
Every time, I have an amazing ability to repeat mistakes. Been there.
An amazing ability. And I just started looking into myself more about this.
You know, and in this way, I'm very shy about this stuff, but everything that happens in life, there's very little that you control, right? Most things happen to you, not by you. But with everything that happens, you have an absolute ability to control what it means and how to react to it.
And that is really easy to say and really hard to do. And what I did when I got shit canned, and I really, I gotta be honest, I didn't handle it well.
I really didn't. But can I just ask, just because you're explaining how you keep repeating the same mistakes, which is a very frustrating and very human phenomenon.
But do you think you got fired for mistakes that you made? Yes. Really? I'll tell you why.
Because did I do what they say I did? No, I never lied. I didn't go after my brother's accusers.
And you could say, why not? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? His party has rules. And the rule is an allegation is enough.
And you don't really go after the accuser if they are believed, okay? That's what he signed up for, okay? You're talking about the Democratic Party. That's right.
That's what he signed up. One allegation is enough.
He had more than one, okay? So that's the rule. And that was my conversation with him.
I never went after his accusers. I didn't work the media.
I didn't call up and say, I wouldn't have called you, that's for sure. But I didn't call people up and say, do me a favor.
We're friends. Be nice to my brother.
And here's how we know that has to be true. You don't think that if I had called somebody up and asked for a favor, they'd be raising their hand right now and saying, he called me, he called me.
You don't think that they would immediately announce it? Of course they would. I would have been fine if you'd done that because it's your brother, but that's just, but I'm saying the media would say, no, this is unethical.
I didn't do what they say, but I foolishly believed, and this was a mistake, that my bosses, the media, the people who I thought knew me, would allow this uncomfortable balance to be respected and seen for what it was. And because look, is it a conflict? Of course it's a conflict.
Unless your boss says it's okay, which obviously he did, right? Because obviously there was no secret about me talking to my brother and listening to some of his meetings with his staff. And it was a mistake for me to think that that would be respected and treated fairly.
I should have never thought that way. I should have seen it for the way I would now if someone came to me and said, you think that this is going to be a problem? I'd be like, yeah, it's going to be a problem.
As soon as they find out about this, they're going to be... But can I just ask you...
And it was a mistake. The only part that rings a little false is when you said, to my ear, is when you said that would have been unethical.
And so you're someone who's been in the media your whole life at high levels. ABC News, Fox News, CNN.
News Nation. News Nation.
And News Nation now. But you know because you've lived in that world that ethics in the are like lower than they are among prostitutes? Like, I think.
First of all, you've got to live your own standard, right? Okay, fair. You've got to live your own standard.
And I believe in the media. I believe in it.
I think it's, if not, I don't want to say the most, but it's definitely one of the main signatures of our democracy. And you know from your travels.
I couldn't agree more. And there's no question that's in peril.
So you're saying, to be clear, you believe in the idea of- I believe in the idea. Yeah, yeah.
And do people practice it that way? Not enough. Everything is imperfect.
Everything that is human controlled is imperfect and easily corrupted. some people do it very well certainly better than i do some people suck and are mean and try to do things just for advantage and it works really well because we reward the wrong things negativity is allowed to be a proxy for insight taking you down does lift me up yes and people don't want to hear good things about Tucker Carlson.
They want to hear bad things about Tucker Carlson. If I were to do a profile of you that was making a fair case for all the success you've had, it would get dismissed as a puff piece and I would be seen as a dupe.
If I were to say falsely, but with just a little bit of proof that even regular people who aren't in our business would be like, God, the proof is kind of thin on this, that Tucker Carlson loves to kick puppies, they would say, that's a hard-hitting piece of journalism right there because negativity is the proxy for insight. So that's our business.
So they would, with that mindset, I made it too easy for them to come after me for my situation.

And I sort of seen it.

But more importantly, my real mistake was allowing my family to absorb that blow as if it were just about me and my brother.

And it wasn't.

And it's really hard to have something that goes so wrong in your life where you come out of it like, I don't even know what I would do differently. There's no world where I don't help my brother.
There's no world where I don't help my family, where I don't help my friends. Good.
That's all I am. But what I did to my family, what I did to my kids, I hate myself for it.
And all I can do is to try to be different now, make different choices now. Like, I don't pick fights the way I used to.
I believe that my value at the time on CNN was, I'm going to bring on Tucker Carlson. He's a smart guy.
He's practiced on what he is. I'm going to take him apart tonight.
Not gratuitously, but I'm going to take him on on his own basis. I want him at his best.
Whatever his best argument is, let's have him on and let's get after it. I don't do that the same way anymore.
And... Because you're gun shy or you don't? No, because it's not worth what it did to my family.
But there's been a saving grace, which is what brings me here today to be with you. It doesn't work anymore.
You tearing me apart on any issue, not personally. Let's say it's just policy.
You just kill me on immigration, okay? It doesn't move the needle. The people who believe me think you're an asshole.

And the people who believe you think that I'm an idiot who shouldn't be listened to.

That's it.

It doesn't change any minds.

It doesn't change any minds.

The only thing that can change minds is to change your audience to critical thinkers

and people who are open.

They're not lemmings.

They're not sheeple.

They're not party people.

They're independent.

They're free agents.

They're critical thinkers.

And to have conversations that are uncomfortable.

So I have to They're not lemmings. They're not sheeple.
They're not party people. They're independent.
They're free agents. They're critical thinkers.
And to have conversations that are uncomfortable. So how could you possibly be upset about being fired? I mean, this sounds like, this is not flattery, it's sincere.
That sounds like a much more enlightened view of the world, a truer view of the world, than the view that cable news encourages. That's a good thing, isn't it? Look, again, bad things happen.
You get an opportunity, what to do with them. I'm choosing to try to create a better professional mode for myself.
But, but, I can't look at what happened to me and not see injury. Now, do I have the ability to say, Chris, I'll show you injury.
Injury is falling off a crane. Injury is getting cancer.
Injury is not being able to feed your family. True.
I am ridiculously blessed. I never think otherwise.
My father would haunt me if I did. I know that for a fact.
But I had a platform, a position at a place where there was incredible reach. And I was able to weigh in on whatever mattered in the world and get an audience that was unfathomable to me before I was at CNN.
And I lost that when I was fired and I'll never get it back. Never.
And my name right now is Chris Cuomo. I'm okay with that.
Comma. Fired by CNN.
I accept that. That's a fact.
Comma. For lying about what he did to help his brother.
That is not true. And it cannot stand.
And I cannot have my kids have to deal with that as a Google search of me. It's not true.
And the people who said it know it's not true. So there's an injury.
You know, I always used to, maybe I'm the one who grew up in the mafia family because I just don't see that. I didn't grow up in a mafia family.
I'm just joking. I just want to take your head and squeeze it.
Is that wrong? Is that evil? It's a little wrong, but I'll accept it. But I just don't, look, lying is bad.
It's always bad. Lying is always bad.
But doing whatever you can to help your family, again, it's just a hierarchy of loyalty. And anyone who tells you that you have, except to God, a higher loyalty than to your own family, that's your enemy.
No, your loyalty is to your family, okay? Period. So I don't, you know, you say you didn't lie, I actually completely believe you.
But if i found out that you did lie i wouldn't judge you it's your brother i mean like what i think it matters if your brother was on the run and he said can you give me 500 bucks for a passport in a second yeah yeah that's how i feel so like how is that a sin i don't know if it's a sin i don't know if it's right i don't know if it's wrong i'm just telling that's the way I am. Yeah.
But. Good.
If I feel. So like, how is that a sin? I don't know if it's a sin.
I don't know if it's right. I don't know if it's wrong.
I'm just telling you that's the way I am. Yeah.
But. Good.
Well, I admire that. If I had been lying, look, I apologized, okay? And this was really hard for me.
Not, I mean, I apologize all the time when you make repeated mistakes the way I do and you lose your temper and you do stupid shit that you didn't mean to do. You wind up apologizing a lot if you're trying to get better.
I apologized for what? For what I did? No. For helping my brother? No.
Because I was told by my boss that people at CNN felt that they had been compromised by what was coming out about what I was doing for my brother. That, I never saw that coming.
And if I had known at the beginning, and I offered offered to leave twice if I knew at the beginning that it was going to be bad for the men and women who were working at CNN doing what they were doing and I was going to compromise their ability to do it I would have quit like that if I can I just say I mean I don't know how long did you spend at CNN over 10 years over 10 years so I didn't spend 10 years. I spent a long time there.
And the idea that they would have moral qualms about that at CNN is just not believable. I just don't believe that.
I mean, they put on from Operation Tailwind when I was there to the Russiagate stuff, which was just factually untrue, to all kinds of other stuff. Like they have no qualms about lying because I've seen it.
They did when I worked there. And so I just don't believe that they were morally offended by a man helping his brother and not even in ridiculous ways.
Like you weren't, you know what I mean? So I guess my question is, I'm used to seeing people taken out for political reasons. You're from one of the most famous Democratic Party families in the world.
You're related by marriage to the Kennedys. Like no one's doubting, right? What side you're on, at least by appearances.
What was the real reason they took you out? I just don't believe that. That they were offended.
I mean, bullshit. I hurt CNN.
How? Because the media saw me and what I was doing as being beneath the level of transparency and ethical obligations that someone should have in the position that I was in. I don't like to swear, you know, but I just can't say bullshit enough.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. But I'm telling you.
Jeff Zucker was like having an affair with an employee, supposedly, according to the media, but, and was later let go because of it, according to the media. But the point is, I just don't believe that.
And my guess, because I don don't know because no one there will talk to me anymore but my guess is they won't talk to me either which really hurts it's crazy though it really hurts but I think it was the testosterone level thing they just don't want a man who doesn't hate himself on tv that's what I think look that's not the reason that was stated people get frustrated with me because I don't go bad on Jeff Zucker, and I won't. Two reasons.
What I said earlier about the opportunities he gave me. And two, that's a bad place.
And I've been there. And if you let yourself get absorbed, it is hard to get out.
So I have so much respect and concern for so many people who are still at cnn and i think it's an amazing place it's capable of amazing things and i really miss what i had there i get it um and it would be easier i guess uh and outwardly more satisfying to be like I I hate them and I hope

bad things no no and I'm glad you don't feel that way I don't feel that way about my last employer I'm not mad at them at all I never feel mad at them and I'm not and I mean it but um I'm mad I'm angry about what happened to me but I just don't there's clearly a reason that's different from the stated reason and I think the most obvious answer…

I was just trouble.

I became trouble. There's clearly a reason that's different from the stated reason.

And I think the most obvious answer... I think I was just trouble.

I became trouble for them.

And the brand matters more.

And when it was working for them, I was the man.

And they couldn't get enough of me.

You were the highest rated show.

Right.

Not even close.

I was the number one show.

But they...

They can't fire you if you've got the number one show.

Oh, yes, they can.

Are you serious? Yeah, like this. And out you go.
Wow. And look.
Wow. I'm going to keep that in mind.
It's a tough business. I understand that.
And here's what I tell myself now. And I think this is important for our audiences also.
This is what I signed up for. The really, really impressive ability you have to separate yourself from the impressions of you.
I don't have that. That's good.
I say that, but I don't have it the way you do. I now tell myself this, and this is what keeps my hands like this instead of like this.
I signed up for this. You want to be forward-facing? You want to be in the media? No, that's true.
You want to have the platform? You want people to listen to what you say? Then you're going to have to listen to what they say. And if they don't like you, you have to take it.
And that's what you signed up for. If you don't like it, that's fine.
Leave. Go work somewhere else.
Go start an electrical services company. And have a different life.
And live it. But if you want to be public facing and you want to be part of the dialogue in the arena right as Teddy Roosevelt said then this is what you signed up for.
And I tell myself that all the time. And it never ends well.
I mean it doesn't. It always ends in tears.
These relationships with these media companies I've lived it. I have to ask though did did anyone, was it Zaslav by the way who did it, do you think? Look, he wasn't in yet, but it's hard for me to believe that Jeff Zucker, I thought he was making that deal happen.
You know, another regret for me on this is, God, you know, Jeff was so important to that place.

He was so valuable.

And because of this dynamic, he wound up being out.

And I never wanted that.

You know, people say, well, at least he got fired.

I feel terribly that he got fired.

Good. And he was so valuable to that place and we see that now.
I don't know who knew and who did what. I'm told things.
I'm not gonna repeat them because I can't prove them. But I don't think it was a one man decision.
It never is. So when you did leave after 10 years as the highest your highest rated show when you didn't leave i was fired when you got shit canned as you said um did any of the other anchors call you to say gosh i'm you got kind of shafted i'm sorry to see you go or no nobody called you no on-air person people called uh uh a of guys, but none of the ones that you know or you recognize with the CNN brand.
Why? Because they were told things that weren't true. And I think in fairness to them, you take care of yourself in those positions.
And you don't get caught in a situation where maybe you'll get swept into the controversy of being on Cuomo's side and he's the wrong side, he's the bad side, I'm on Jeff's side, I'm on C, whatever side. You protect yourself.
But if you work for a company or any organization that prevents you or terrifies you into not making human contact, expressing sympathy to another person. I don't know that they terrified them into it.
I think it's either they didn't want to talk to me because they thought I fucked up or they didn't want to talk to me because they thought I messed up or they didn't know what to do or they were worried about what would happen if they did. And I get it.
But by the way, they're not the only news organization that behaves like this at all. They all do as far as I know.
But isn't that a red flag that you're working for like horrible people? Look, it was an ugly situation. But they're ugly people though.
I mean, like who would do that? If I fired someone who worked for me, who was popular or unpopular or whatever, I would never say to the other people on staff, don't ever reach out to that person. I don't judge it.
You know, Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorite philosophers, right? He was the last of the good emperors, whatever that means in rome and he says the greatest revenge is to not be what you oppose well i agree with that and that is hard to do especially for me i'm ridiculously petty and not just because i'm sicilian no it's probably just because it's well maybe a little bit um but the uh it's really hard to do and i don't judge people for not reaching out to me. I get it.
I get that it was hard. I get that this is really painful for a lot of people in a lot of ways and I really feel badly about that.
I wish I had control over it but I don't. And I am here and I am a phone call away for anybody.
And now people are calling. Yeah.
Now they're calling and I'm good with that. And if I could help, I want to help.
And if, uh, if you want to reach out, I'm here. What do you think the chances are that some of the people who didn't call you, uh, I'm not naming Anderson or Wolf by name.
You just did. Oh, I did.
Sometimes I have trouble discerning between... Inside voice, outside voice? The internal dialogue.
That explains a lot. But that your colleagues will be calling you in a couple years as your former employer does collapse under the weight of its own irrelevance and sort of ask you for guidance on how to live outside the system? Well, look, it is different doing what you're doing now, doing what I'm doing now.
I don't think CNN is going to collapse. I think it's a very powerful organization.
I think everybody's got to retool and find different ways to be effective. If anybody can do it, CNN will.
I don't know the new management team there. I don't know this guy.
I hear positive things about him from people in-house. It's hard times in the media.
It is. News Nation, where I am, is hiring.
I think it's the only cable news outfit that's growing. It's the benefit of starting low, but it is growing.
And I think the main reason that it is, is because there's such a desperation for different and disruption of the norms. And I know it because people say it to me all the time.
The most common thing is,

I don't know what they're going to say after this,

but the most common thing I've heard up until this is,

you know, at CNN, I saw you differently.

Now, sometimes they'll say you were different at CNN.

I don't see that.

I mean, I was certainly different personally

because I hadn't gone through this maelstrom, this crucible.

But they'll say, you know, when you were at CNN, I didn't like this.

But now I do now.

And I think that there's just so much silo thinking that News Nation is not part of that.

And it's getting an opportunity to just be what people see on its air without people thinking, well, I know they're trying to trick me into being this way or that way. And I think that's probably why it's growing.
But I'm sure that's right. I'm the last person who would know, as you know.
But I think it's also important to acknowledge that maybe changes have taken place within you. I mean, your views probably don't agree with all of them.
I know I don't, but you do seem, well, smart, I will say that, but very self-aware and- That's new. So I wonder if like, well, having been fired and humiliated a lot, I've always thought that men need to be humiliated regularly, especially people who are successful because otherwise they become totally unbearable.
And I wonder if that's not the greatest thing that ever happened. It's good to be humiliated.
I think that you can find value in it. There's value in suffering.
There's value in struggle. There's value in pain.
In fact, I do believe that the

things that have shaped my life, when I look back at like what moments mattered and what moves mattered, what events, they're almost all negative. Well, let me flip it around.
Have you ever learned anything important from eating French toast in bed on vacation?

No. No.
The easy moments don't yield that much. So you said, I can't complain.
I don't have cancer. I haven't fallen off a crane.
I think that's what you said. And I hope I never get cancer and I hope I never fall off a crane.
But there is something, I know a lot of people have had cancer and are completely fine and grateful to be alive, of course, and they suffer. But there is a difference between suffering with an ailment that's not your fault and being publicly humiliated as a result of decisions that you and suddenly becoming un unpopular with all the cool kids.
That seems in a lot of ways, I'm not in any way minimizing all the other bad things that happen to people, but that seems like it's in its own category. It's different.
I would argue that I was never really that popular with the cool kids. I've always been kind of boxed out in the media.
Why? Because my name's Cuomo. And when I first wanted to get into this business, I couldn't even get a job at New York One.
The reason that I wound up working at Fox News was because Roger Ailes was the only one who would give me a shot. Everywhere else I went, you know, I, I'd been practicing law and your father's Mario Cuomo, it hurt me.
Among the liberal outlets but it was Roger Ailes who was the only one who gave you a job? That's right. How interesting, why? He said, so, yeah, a little bit of a long story but through mutual relationships relationships, he had seen me on television.
And his joke was, this guy looks like he should be on a soap opera, but he sounds like he's from the inner city. And he said, let me meet him.
And I met him and we talked about a million different things. And he said, look, they're going to make you go to local television and you're going to learn a lot of bad habits.
You're going to learn a lot of good things. I'll bring you in here.
I see something in you and I'll teach you everything I know. Here's the thing, though.
If you fail, you're done because you'll be failing at a place where people are going to see you fail.

This is not West Virginia.

But if you don't fail and you pick it up, you're going to leapfrog ahead of where you would have been otherwise. He said, and here's the good news.
You don't seem to give a shit whether you succeed at this or not because I wasn't going into it because I wanted to be a star. I thought there was an incredible opportunity to contact people and to show them things and mess with how they feel about things that wasn't being used.
It seemed so cookie cutter to me at the time. When I entered the business, they would talk to me about how I tracked and that these aren't movie lines, Chris.
You know, you have to read them. You know, there's an intonation and your hands kind of keep your hands down.
By the time I left, I was like a model of like, you gotta use your hands more. You know, you gotta be more natural.
Those sound like everybody else. Things change.
So I went there and Roger made good on his promise. He sent me all over the country covering crime, learning the skills of being a broadcaster and an interviewer, the trinity of interviewing.
He said to me, he pointed at this, here and here. He said, you've got to balance your head, your heart, and your balls.
And there's a time to be ballsy. There's a time to be compassionate.
There's a time to be smart.

And you've got to figure out what the balance is, the alchemy of them.

And he gave me those opportunities. And he told me when I left to go to ABC News, he said, you're making a mistake.

He said, they will never accept you.

And I said, they don't accept me now because I work at Fox News.

I was like, you know, this is I got to go.

This is like the real place. And he was like, they're never going to accept you.
Was he right? I think to a certain extent, there's been a selective kind of exclusion, but it never really mattered to me. I didn't go into this business to be a star, to make friends.
I got my people. And I'm not really friends with a lot of people who are in the media.
I never have been. And if I am, it's because our friendship transcends media.
It's not based of it. And the relationships that I had that were largely media-based, they disappeared when I got shit-canned with a few exceptions.
Because they're not loyal people. I think that it's like you stopped going to the nightclub.

You know, I hang out in the nightclub.

I go to the nightclub.

You're not allowed in the nightclub anymore.

I guess I'm not going to see you that much.

And that's what the relationship was about.

I never have brunch with Wolf Blitzer anymore.

It's weird.

I love Wolf Blitzer.

I called him the captain.

I thought that he was such, is such. I don't know what I'm talking about in past tense.
Wolf is such a great exemplar of what I wanted to be in that business. He's unfailingly kind.
He does what he thinks is right and he works his ass off. I called him the captain I miss him I miss a lot of him

but life goes on. He's unfailingly polite, I would definitely say that, having worked with him.
Oh, it's more than that. If you talk to the people who stars are usually not nice to, you know how they'll say, oh, he or she, they're a little hard on the furniture.
Furniture is a metaphor for these other human beings that are doing jobs in production. No, it's so true.
And you won't find someone. He's the kind of person that if you say you don't like Wolf, there's something wrong with you.
It's not because of him. Me, you can dislike.
Like I have people who have the same last name who will say, hold on, I love the guy. These are things I don't like.
I'll tell you one thing you and I share. I notice this when people talk about your wife.
When they talk about your wife, they talk the same way they do about my wife. Yeah.
Oh, when you meet her, she's the nicest person. She is a good person.
And then a little subtly, it's like, as opposed to the guy she's married to. We have a phrase to that in my house.
It's called DA, the designated asshole. And that's my job.
That's my job, baby. I own it.
I own it. But I'm trying.
And I believe that even this is a function of that. People aren't going to like this.
They're either going to say that I should have basically been raking you over the coals all the time. Otherwise, there's no value to this.
I'm just allowing people to not see you for what you are. And I just don't think that gets us anywhere.
And I think people can make their own minds up about things. That's just a silly partisan point on either side and of course that's the past.
I do think it's bigger of me though than you and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why. I was thinking about this actually during the conversation.
One, you're less injured by what happened to you than I am. You are killing it business-wise, right? Everything you do is huge.
And your boy Musk, meeting with Trump, by the way, to fund his campaign now. I want to get your head on that.
But I feel like this was really, I'm surprised that I was able to listen to our council and say, wait, no, this guy has done nothing but hit me like a pinata. And I decided, you know what? That was them.
And let me meet him on his own terms. The funny thing is...
But that was big for me. I'm a very small person.
I barely remember that. I know.
I hate that. I hate it.
Because I remember all of them. So I have a really good friend who I talked to this morning.
He's just a wonderful man. And his name is Glenn Greenwald.
And you can agree or disagree with his views. He has also kicked my ass on a regular basis.
No one was ever meaner to me than Glenn Greenwald. No one ever.
And he must have written 50 pieces calling me various names, all unpleasant names. And we ended up six or seven years ago meeting and finding that we agreed on some things, not everything obviously, but some things.
And that friendship, and I think it's fair to call it a friendship, has just brought me so much joy. It's so nice to see that someone is like, that you're wrong about your assessment of somebody.
And the person someone's like way better. And I have to say, I've had that experience so much in my life.
It's the greatest privilege of this job is to meet people and find that they're nothing like the caricature. Occasionally they're worse.
Or you're right about whatever they are. Or you're right.
That's exactly right. That has happened to me, having interviewed thousands of people, as you have.
But I would say most of the time, I'm like, I like that guy. Do you know what I mean it I really have felt that depends how you meet him and you know the context I think the context matters sometimes people are in performance mode they're being what they think they need to be in a thing what did Greenwald say when you said you were going to talk to me I didn't I didn't tell him yeah we were talking about something else what do you think he would have said what do you think he will say I don't know I didn he was opposed to you.
I don't know that he's opposed. I don't think that I really matter to him.
But I mean, you know, he's coming after me now and again. I'm an easy target of opportunity.
I get that now. You know, having a year of not being on and watching TV, which I don't do a lot of news watching.
I don't like it to confuse what I think the right angles and the right things are for me to do on my show. But having that time to watch and to think, I'd probably come after me too.
Well, I will say it's fun. I'm just being honest.
You should do that. It's really not my's really not my way by the way but i gotta tell you you made it hard to try to not play the game that was being played on the other side of it but i do but i do know this and i know this and i i know i know it again what i signed up for i know two things about our business okay One is the two-party system has failed us.

Yes.

And Trump versus Biden, all due respect to them and their fans, okay?

I'm not impugning them as people, although Trump I could go down the road with.

The fact that they're the choices and that the country sees that they are inadequate choices. Only has one source, the party system.
It has failed us. It's not the constitution.
It's not a creature of law. It's just tradition.
The Supreme Court said that in the 1970s. It's got to go.
I don't know how it goes. I don't need to know how to go to know that it's a problem.
But that's the first thing I know. When you go to Thanksgiving, the family Thanksgiving, I mean, you're the son and brother of two of the most famous governors in the last 15 years.
This does not go over well. It doesn't, okay.
Because I have real Democrats and real Republicans in my family. And what I say to them is, you know, which, by the way, I say very little because, you know, I'm trying to get my holiday on here.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But what is your party even about? What are you except they suck? What are you? What are Republicans now? Because I remember back in the day, I married into a real Republican family.
They are real people of character, of fiscal austerity. They have a different position than the current orthodoxy about what policy should be abroad.
Character counts. You know, they were real conservatives, okay? It's not what that party is anymore.
Democrats, my father's Democratic Party, he was all about workers. He was about the underclass.
But he was about government does everything you need it to do and nothing more. You help the people who can't help themselves.
That's what it was supposed to do. And it was supposed to try to find ways for people to cooperate.
That's what he was all about. I remember sitting in the executive mansion in Albany, and he had the head of the Senate, Italian guy, Ralph Marino.
They were absolutely at each other's throats, okay? Budgets and stuff like that, right? Pop was the governor. This guy was the head of the Republican Party, basically.
He brings Ralph Marino over. They sit on the couch, opens a bottle of wine, or I think I actually opened the bottle of wine, and they started talking, and my father was like, you know, Ralph, you know, I don't want to hear this and this about me.alph's like fine you're right that went too far but what you're trying to do this is uh this just is not right and you're trying to force it on us and you're holding this thing and they had this whole conversation a republican and a democrat this guy was the leader on the senate you know Senate state side.
He had no business by today's

rules being in that house, let alone making a deal. Not a bad deal, not subterfuge, but

I get it. We disagree, but we got too hot.
And that's a mistake. Now, how do we make this budget?

How do we get this done? That's what it was about. And by the way, that was tortured enough

I'm sorry. And that's a mistake.
Now, how do we make this budget? How do we get this done? That's what it was about.

And by the way, that was tortured enough.

What we are now is you're a traitor if you're in that room.

Of course.

And I know two things.

The two-party system has failed us.

And we have to have more voices and more conversation, not less.

I know it.

And that doesn't mean that people have to agree.

In fact, the opposite is better. And I know I'm going to get beat up for it.
And that's okay,

because that's what I signed up for. But I'm happy that we did this.
I think there's value

in it to people. And some won't think that, but I'm not going for all.
I'm only going for some,

because there's only a small slice of people right now who have an open mind about it. The winnables.
My firing is not more important than your firing. Why do you think that you were the one? Like, you know, you're getting my head on why it was me.
Yeah. Why do you think it was you? I mean, strictly speaking, I have no idea.
I've never been told. I've heard a lot of people throw around theories, but I don't know which are true.
And I don't really care. But more broadly, I understand why.
It's called destiny. You know, your life has an arc and a path, and you don't know what it is, but you can feel it happen.
But you didn't say, why me? What about all these other people? No. I felt like this was always going to happen.
I mean, I was shocked for like three minutes, but that was it. Well, I talked to you right after, I think, within a couple of days.
And no, this is my path. And there will come a time when you show up for annual physical and he's like, stage four pancreatic.
And you're like, okay. I mean, that's just what it is.
And so I'm almost never really shocked by anything that happens. But that, I just immediately saw the upside because I wasn't mad.
And I wasn't mad, actually. Are you on medication? I don't take Advil.
Like even Advil. So this is just you? Oh, you'll never meet anyone who's more opposed to pills than I am.
Or any intoxicants of any kind other than nicotine and coffee. That's it.
That's where our roads diverge. Dude, I am.
I am about better life through chemistry. No, I don't take anything ever.
Like ever. In fact, I had a back spasm yesterday.
I've had back surgery and it hurt. It's like I'm not taking advil um no i'm just totally opposed to that that's a whole other conversation but um yeah i'm with who's that weird actor in scientology i can't remember tom cruise you had the reach for tom cruise's name i couldn't you didn't just i'm sorry i couldn't remember i couldn't remember but he gave some speech on tv a few years ago or ago, 10 years ago, about how SSRIs all stuff is evil.
And everyone's like, he's crazy. But I was like the only person.
It's like, you go, Tom Cruise. You were on the wrong side of that.
No, dude. I was so, I'm all about that.
Anyway, no. I really felt that it was destiny as I feel that most things are.
I think there is a plan. Anyway, I just want to thank you.
That was like the most interesting conversation I've had in a long time and I sincerely enjoyed it. I believe in conversation.
Amen. I appreciate an invitation to your house.
Thank you. And the lines are open.
I'll be texting. Thank you.
I'll be telling you how much everybody hates me for this because you won't be paying attention. No, I won't.
At all.

You'll be laughing.

I'll be crying.

But I won't be.

This was the right thing to do.

Thank you, Tucker.

Fuck them.

Thank you.