Tucker Carlson left Fox News to start his own company, The Tucker Carlson Network, a company that focuses on journalism, documentaries, and analysis. He talks about why he left Fox and why he decided to go all-in on his new venture.
00:07:23.820One, if you look carefully at almost any story, if you learn the facts about it, and then you compare that to what everyone is saying about it, you know, the spread is just enormous.
00:07:35.160Like, the reality of what's happening bears literally no resemblance, and very often it's the mirror image, of what everyone is saying.
00:07:42.940It can't be an accident if it keeps happening.
00:07:45.360You know, if it turns out the vax is not the thing that saves you but the thing that hurts you, if it turns out that Zelensky is not Churchill, he's actually kind of bears more resemblance to the other guy, you know, that the Ukraine is not a democracy, or whatever.
00:07:57.380I mean, just sort of pick your mass media story that we're bombarded with every day.
00:08:01.560And not only are they not true, they're the inverse of the truth.
00:08:05.620And then you see a pattern, because it's unmistakable, that this is happening on purpose.
00:08:10.400And then you have to sort of wonder about why it's happening.
00:08:12.800Like, what is the point of all of this?
00:08:15.980I've got some thoughts on it, but I don't really know.
00:08:18.120But all I know is I can't, you know, I can't participate in that.
00:08:21.620And I do think, last thing I'll say, is that the key to fighting back is telling the truth with the knowledge that you will sometimes get it wrong.
00:08:29.340But I mean, really telling the truth, really telling the truth, and not simply in public, but in private, trying to become, to the best you can, an honest person.
00:08:38.560No exaggeration, no bullshit, just no lying.
00:08:42.120Just try to be as, and by the way, if there are things you can't say, don't say them.
00:08:45.240But don't participate in a lie knowingly, on any level ever.
00:08:49.540And that's a discipline that's new to me.
00:08:51.240It's amazing how often I fell short of that, and I didn't realize.
00:08:55.640I've always thought of myself as an honest person.
00:08:57.280But if you try to adopt the discipline of honesty, and it is a discipline, you realize how bad you are at it.
00:09:04.520But I think as you progress, you become stronger inside.
00:09:07.740I think the key to strength, and strength is the essential quality right now, is honesty.
00:09:12.560And so, anyway, again, that's not just a question of, like, what I'm doing for work.
00:09:17.240It's a question of the man I want to become.
00:09:19.520But once you do that, like, everything changes in you.
00:09:24.880I want to go, I don't have the, I'll play the heritage clips next.
00:09:28.000But this is very much what your, the key part of your heritage speech was, I thought.
00:09:33.240You talked about American institutions, and then you talked about, it would just become so commonplace to lie or misrepresentation.
00:09:38.560What do you hope to, does this get back to the rot in the country, the rot of the elites, and just the institutions, this continually lying,
00:09:47.380and that the lying and misrepresenting of the truth or spin has now infected all of our institutions?
00:09:53.280I think you used the quote, sad, weak people lead to weak institutions in a weak country.
00:09:59.140Is that the core of this, about lying and about getting back to central truth?
00:11:46.200And so our job is just to tell the truth, not for the sake of hurting people or rattling their cages or giving the finger to the libs or whatever, which I'll be honest, I do enjoy.
00:11:59.020Liberating them and our country is the goal.
00:12:01.440And I think the only way to do that is by telling the truth calmly.
00:12:07.680Was there, because this is also personal, not just professional, you say in your own life, you're doing it now.
00:12:12.740And you're feeling that you're kind of going next level.
00:12:16.960What was the moment, if you can go back and think about it, what was the moment, the catharsis, what was the moment that Tucker Carlson realized that in your own personal life or your own professional life, but institutionally, that this truth was not the central, not the organizing principle?
00:12:31.380Is there any moment you can point to or any time period?
00:13:20.500I can't believe that I participated in something like this.
00:13:22.860I wasn't responsible for the war, but I was one of the cheerleaders, low-grade cheerleaders for it.
00:13:27.740Against my own instincts, by the way, I knew this was a bad idea, but I allowed myself to believe that it wasn't, which is always a mistake.
00:13:35.660As soon as I said that, as soon as I admitted my own culpability and silliness, and my complicity in something evil, I felt so much better.
00:13:45.000Admitting, it's very easy to tell the truth about other people.
00:14:27.180I remember thinking, that was just absolutely incredible.
00:14:29.400And that's happened to me a few times.
00:14:31.340Like, you know, someone gets in your face, you can't say that, and you stay calm.
00:14:35.840And so I'm just going to say it anyway because I think it's true.
00:14:38.020I experienced this with the Ukraine thing.
00:14:39.360It was so obvious to me that this was a terrible idea for Ukraine and mostly for the United States, that if we continued with this, this regime sanction, stealing people's stuff, we would get hurt.
00:14:55.480We'll return with Tucker Carlson in just a moment.
00:14:57.920I know this is hard to believe, but we're up against another government shutdown later this month, and our wise leaders deal with it how they always do, with more spending.
00:15:10.480While lawmakers are high-fiving, your savings account continues to lose value because more spending weakens the dollar.
00:19:21.780I don't pretend to understand it, but it's unmistakable.
00:19:25.840And I probably should leaven those speeches with the other observation, which is the upside.
00:19:31.080You know, if 95% of the people you know have decided to repeat lies, there's 5% who refuse.
00:19:37.300And those turn out to be the best people, the most honest people, also the most interesting people in the country.
00:19:44.700And so I would say, you know, and I should always say this, that the last four years has been so distressing as you watch, well, I watch the country I grew up in destroyed.
00:19:54.900But it's also been, and lost so many friends, and some people won't talk to me anymore, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:48.340I'm almost always in a good mood, you know.
00:20:51.060But I am, when I think about the future, particularly what's happening with immigration, I'm very concerned about that.
00:20:58.440I don't think you can let in tens of millions of people, young men, and then try to usher them into the military and see that as not ominous.
00:21:29.880When you talk about that, you've been the one guy from Spain to Brazil to Argentina.
00:21:34.400You've been the person that's gone out and been the connective tissue to Hungary multiple times.
00:21:40.280Is this a global phenomenon, not just in this country?
00:21:43.300And do you see a fight back when you go to Spain and see Vox, when you go to Hungary and see Orban, when you see what's happening in Argentina?
00:22:19.380Different countries have, of course, histories and cultures and languages that are different.
00:22:23.440But the theme is the same, and that is the end of democracy, an oligarchy by, you know, a group of unelected people who, you know, have most of the power and are trying to end democracy.
00:22:38.440And democracy simply defined is, you know, giving political power to the majority.
00:24:19.980A lot of our stuff, well, all of our stuff, to some extent, will be premiering on X.
00:24:26.340And then for the full thing, you go to the website.
00:24:29.600A lot of our stuff on X will be the full interview or documentary or whatever.
00:24:33.040But, again, the point is to create a news company that challenges the monopoly and does it in a way that's enduring.
00:24:42.580I mean, my timeline, you know, I'm a very short-term thinker, actually, and I'm just thinking I want to make it to December 2024 because I think it's an absolutely pivotal moment.
00:24:52.060And a lot of things are going to happen, and an almost unimaginable number of changes are going to take place between now and then.
00:24:58.280And I want to have a place where people can know what they are.
00:25:02.900You know, this is the problem with the immigration thing, and I won't be long, but in one sentence, it's completely changing the United States forever.
00:25:11.880And most people have no sense of that at all because they live in their world.
00:31:33.020That would be so poisonous to the Trump second term.
00:31:35.280And President Trump has a very defined, today, the lead story in the Hill, I've got it up on Getter, but the lead story in the Hill, the lead story, was how all this talk about Trump as a dictator has only helped him.
00:31:46.240Because when people say it, he's not saying he's going to be a dictator.
00:31:48.560Remember, he's against these FISA extensions.
00:31:50.620You see cash and people on her all the time.
00:31:53.840He's the one that's sitting there, does not want to spy, does not want to surveil citizens.
00:31:59.700Trump's the farthest thing from a dictator.
00:32:02.480People can compare what life was then to what life is now and what we found out.
00:32:07.740And even to the fact that people like Elon Musk, and look, people know I'm no fan of Elon Musk, but even what he's tried to do to Twitter, although I don't think he's a free speech absolutist, it's certainly very different than the FBI-controlled asset it was.
00:32:19.300And Tucker, that's why Tucker's show stood out so much on Fox, because he had actually at least quasi-independence or independents before they fired him.
00:32:30.380And that's what that gap's been in the news and with the Alex Joneses and the War Rooms and other shows like this and the radio content.
00:32:38.540But that's why Tucker's, the Tucker point of view and also he's much more, remember, he's a professional journalist.
00:32:46.680Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, these others, we're not professional journalists.
00:32:50.680I've never, ever said I was a professional journalist.
00:32:54.540I was a professional naval officer and I was a professional financier.
00:33:00.180That was my career until, you know, I started making films, became a filmmaker.
00:33:26.320That's why go check it out, tuckercarlson.com and go check it out.
00:33:29.020And Tucker is going to be at AmFest with us this week.
00:33:31.620And at AmFest, I'm actually going to do a breakout session, trying to do a breakout session, at least one segment of the show, to have people.
00:33:38.880And maybe we can ask questions about the macro of what's happening with gold, the macro geopolitical and financial events that are happening.
00:33:47.700Philip, Patrick, and I, and Philip's going to be back on the show on Saturday.
00:33:56.740Maybe we can fly out there and we do a two-hander.
00:33:59.880But I really want to make sure that a working class, a middle class audience has a really good understanding of the dollar and how important currency is in your life and the strength of that currency, what it means to you.
00:34:14.580And also the macro events that are going on, they're going to drive.
00:37:05.000And Tucker said something that's actually going to be a theme for us on the Charlie Kirk Show and at Turning Point USA, which is repeated throughout the scriptures.
00:37:12.640It is this Hebrew word, Hineni, which means here I am.
00:37:15.980Lord, use me, is the actual translation.
00:37:19.680Willing is really the best translation.
00:38:50.240He's been the one out there in the last year really doing the connective tissue between the Orbans and what's happening in Argentina and Brazil and Spain and all of it.
00:40:01.780I've never impugned her character or said that she's not pleasant or someone that might be really great, you know, at a soccer match for your seven-year-olds that are running around the field.
00:40:12.900We need someone that understands what we're up against, someone that fights to win, that can guard the vote, that understands all the different sophistication of the ballot election laws, not someone that is, you know, the sweetest person to go bring cookies to your neighbor.
00:40:27.020I want a wartime conciliary, to use the godfather term, okay?
00:40:31.740And someone's got to step out of the way, and that's Rana, and we need someone to step up that understands it's going to take 20-hour days, close the Washington, D.C. office, open up operations in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia.
00:40:41.540Now, like immediately, work with the outside grassroots groups, and instead of trying to court or work with turning point action, which is a beast, you know that, Steve.
00:40:51.060And this weekend, we'll show what the Lord has helped bless us with.
00:41:26.700And, Steve, it's not a matter of, well, I hope we win.
00:41:28.880It is mission critical to win in 2024.
00:41:31.420And what a tragedy it would be that the MAGA movement, that Donald Trump, the greatest president of my lifetime, one of the greatest presidents in American history, would not become president because Mitt Romney's niece remained as RNC chair.
00:41:45.500What a tragedy for this beautiful country that would be.
00:42:49.180He needs to – if he's serious about winning, which he is, but there's some people around him that say, oh, no, Rana, we can work with it.
00:42:56.100How many times do we have to go through this, Steve?
00:42:57.440Steve, 2018, 2020, 2022, it's excuse after excuse.
00:43:01.3002023, oh, I can't work with state and I can't work with federal.
00:43:04.660You've got to combine the different forces together, and we've got to win.
00:43:08.280And, Steve, you know it better than anyone else.
00:43:09.760President Trump's instincts are amazing, and he needs the best possible team around him.