Tucker Carlson is joined by Congressman Dan Crenshaw to discuss his reporting on the JFK files, the deep state, and the role of a sitting senator in obstructing the release of the documents, and why they should be made public.
00:02:34.000Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand today.
00:02:36.000We've got Congressman Dan Crenshaw on the show, and we're going to be talking about some of Tucker Carlson's reporting, as well as Tucker's relationship with Dan Crenshaw, which seems to be an unusual fisher.
00:02:47.000We taped the conversation with Dan earlier in the week, or at least earlier in human history.
00:02:53.000It's a pretty good conversation, and I think...
00:02:56.000Before we get into that, wherever you're watching us, X, YouTube, wherever, ultimately we want you to make your way to Rumble for Rumble are our friends.
00:03:05.000On Rumble Premium, click the link in the description if you want cheap access and use my code.
00:04:00.000Ultimately, when it comes to making your way through the new media spaces, you have to spot coordinates and work out where you stand in relation to them.
00:04:09.000Can we trust this Maga-Maha coalition, or do we inherit the same global and imperial powers that proceeded even in the new clothes of the Trump?
00:04:20.000Tucker Carlson is talking to Chris Como here about the JFK files and about the nature of the deep state.
00:04:28.000Deep state by very definition means that there are sets of powers that retain control regardless of who's officially in the White House or who ultimately wins elections.
00:04:42.000I have really enjoyed that conversation between Ian Carroll and Joe Rogan.
00:04:45.000Where he said that the conspiracy theory that will remain clandestine is the Jeffrey Epstein files because it leads us to the true root of power, which by his diagnosis is Israel.
00:05:00.000Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about that.
00:05:05.000Here though, let's address not only the Ukraine-Russia war, not just the conflict and controversy in the Middle East.
00:05:13.000But the deep state's defining conspiracy theory, the JFK files.
00:05:19.000Here, Tucker Carlson talks to Chris Como about whether or not they'll be, whether or not they'll ever be revealed, whether or not they'll ever be revealed, and one Democrat senator who has consistently resisted their release.
00:05:32.000Perhaps we can use this to chart a course through the new waters of power.
00:06:12.000Well, I don't know because I haven't seen them.
00:06:14.000But it could be the FBI. It could be the CIA. Okay, so I've always thought that.
00:06:18.000And then in January, you know, there was a scramble over who's going to get what jobs in the new administration.
00:06:23.000And at one point, there was someone who was being discussed for a job in the intel world and a member of the SSCI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Intel Committee.
00:06:34.000I went to the people making the decision and said, you cannot hire this person because this person will be certain to push for the release of the JFK files.
00:06:45.000So this is in 2025, less than two months ago, and you have a sitting member of the United States Senate whose main goal is to keep Those files secret.
00:06:57.000And then you have to ask yourself, why?
00:07:02.000Dan Crenshaw is certainly no friend of Tucker Carlson's, who, you know, for the record and for plain truth, I really love and think he's a fantastic person.
00:07:10.000And in this conversation with Chris Como, Tucker Carlson says that Tom Cotton, Democrat, Senator or Congressman, has been actively resisting the release of the JFK file, something which Tom Cotton...
00:07:34.000Love someone like I do, Tucker Carlson.
00:07:36.000You just tend towards their side on loyalty.
00:07:39.000Let alone when you're dealing with complex issues of national identity or racial identity, like the various conflicts in the world at the moment.
00:07:47.000No wonder people can't chart a course through it.
00:07:50.000Let's look at this conversation between Tucker Carlson and Chris Como and see what we learn about that kind of fealty, loyalty, and what the JFK files would tell us were they fully released.
00:08:02.000Whether you agree with Ian Carroll that the conspiracy theory that has to be protected at all costs is the Jeffrey Epstein Mossad one, or whether you think it goes deeper.
00:08:12.000This is where I'm willing to venture into the supernatural and the paranormal in so much as I believe that there is evil organized power and it goes beyond human power.
00:08:23.000That's where I suppose I have to tap into either the religious or the...
00:08:29.000Either the religious or the more occultist or certainly more esoteric edges of even online spaces.
00:08:35.000Let's have a look at this conversation.
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00:10:38.000If you watch this, in my case, for the same as you, 35 years, watching this stuff carefully, and somebody, you know, gets in office, I'm going to do this, that, and the other thing, and then, like, five days later, they're like, well, actually, someone has called that person to say, there's something you didn't know, here are the consequences of doing that.
00:10:55.000Someone has applied very serious pressure on this person, pressure so serious that that person is willing to...
00:11:02.000I reckon the reason people like Tucker Carlson is because of moments like that where he reasons his way through what might have happened.
00:11:11.000And undiluted access to truth in so much as all of us have our own biases.
00:11:16.000But I would say the new media climate and template requires that kind of personability.
00:11:22.000And some people do it very naturally and beautifully like Tucker Carlson.
00:11:24.000And probably everybody's trying to emulate or find their own version of this is my authentic take on these events.
00:11:30.000Because now that centralized media, the kind of media that I used to work for, that Tucker used to work for, that Como used to work for has lost its credibility.
00:11:38.000People are now just going to go to voices that they trust in that space.
00:11:43.000It's difficult to think that Kash Patel might be a human being or FBI agents and workers are just human beings.
00:11:49.000And I personally believe, of course, that there is organized evil power exerted through human institutions.
00:11:57.000So that's where I depart from purely rational analysis.
00:11:59.000But I reckon it's easier and probably more sensible to reach people on the level of that which can be measured.
00:12:04.000For obvious reasons, if you can't corroborate it, it just sounds like crazy ranting.
00:13:32.000So when assessing the deep state and its power, what information we have access to and what information we don't have access to, we have to look at several factors simultaneously.
00:13:41.000As Tucker advocates for, rationally and logically, what could be happening?
00:13:45.000Why are those files not being released?
00:13:47.000Oh, someone has got some new information.
00:13:49.000But then we have to look, I suppose, too, at the bigger picture.
00:13:53.000And for me, the bigger picture is this.
00:13:57.000Dark powers behind human powers that use human power to facilitate their ends.
00:14:04.000I recognize that in saying that, I make myself sound like a crackpot, and many people would say that's a pot that cracked a long, long time ago.
00:14:13.000But ultimately, what are the aims and interests of these elites?
00:14:18.000Why do they work so hard to control information, to control resources, to control media, to shut down opponents?
00:14:26.000What is it ultimately that drives them?
00:14:29.000Surely it can't just be the unconscious pursuit of pleasure or money.
00:14:34.000Surely there has to be some dark force at work.
00:14:37.000I believe that only a religious and spiritual life help you to navigate these complex questions.
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00:16:31.000It's awesome to be here in a conversation with you, Russell.
00:16:35.000I feel that I should mention that I've got an Ash Wednesday cross.
00:16:39.000On my head, and I'd also like to mention that when you arrived, you were wearing glasses over your patch, which I thought was a pretty good look, actually.
00:16:49.000Yeah, there's a lot going on on the face.
00:16:54.000Can't have too much stuff on the normal day.
00:16:57.000I'd be able to address that, but, you know, I've got this stuff on, I've got the hat on.
00:17:03.000Congressman, I wanted to talk initially about that time when...
00:17:07.000It was a famous incident when you were on SNL, right?
00:17:12.000After Pete Davidson, who's lost his dad in 9-11, just for anyone who doesn't know that.
00:17:22.000You and he had that moment where he said, thanks for your service.
00:17:25.000I thought, oh, that was a really good example of reconciliation, of left and right coming together, of respect, of service people.
00:17:34.000Now, it's pretty clear that the left...
00:17:36.000Owns a lot of cultural artifacts, among them SNL. These kind of legacy media instruments are completely owned by one side of the conversation.
00:17:47.000Do you think that that kind of reconciliation that was achieved between you and Pete Davidson there, and I thought was kind of rather beautiful, could be achieved between you and some of your detractors, notably Tucker Carlson, who's my friend.
00:18:02.000I love Tucker Carlson, just so you know, we've not met before.
00:18:05.000But I also know that, like any public figure, you attract a lot of ire and criticism.
00:18:10.000Do you see an opportunity for reconciliation?
00:19:30.000Try even harder not to be offended and that's how I'm going to treat this one.
00:19:33.000And then they reached out trying to have me on and do some kind of reconciling on the air and it worked out and he was genuinely ready to apologize for what, again, could have been construed as simply a misstep.
00:19:51.000And there's a huge difference between a misstep and I think, an open hostility.
00:20:00.000And with somebody like Tucker, you know, what's the backstory behind this crazy hot bike story, which I obviously think is kind of the lamest story ever as far as supposed death threats go.
00:20:14.000Of course, I'm not going to actually kill Tucker.
00:20:17.000The thing is, is you got to go a few years back.
00:20:19.000I mean, Tucker has been taking ill-intentioned swipes at me since about 2022, going far worse than Pete Davidson ever did.
00:20:28.000I mean, this really started in the, I can't remember what the, well, the issue I think was probably Ukraine funding and him coming after me completely unprovoked.
00:20:39.000I never mentioned Tucker's name ever before that.
00:20:42.000And I actually continue never to mention his name publicly for maybe a year or two after that.
00:20:48.000But he comes after me supposedly on a policy issue, but making it very personal, right?
00:20:52.000Calling me, using my eye patch again as a way to insult me.
00:20:55.000So using my war wounds to insult me, which is funny because Tucker was, of course, one of those people feigning outrage when Pete Davidson did what he did.
00:21:03.000But of course, he's allowed to do it and actually go much further, call me a traitor.
00:21:15.000It's hard to see space for reconciliation in this kind of environment where there's just a complete lack of mutual respect.
00:21:24.000Yeah, you need mutual respect, I suppose, in any discourse.
00:21:28.000You know, I've been part of the culture that...
00:21:32.000Pete Davidson comes from, you know, he's a sort of a movie star and a comedy star and I think a pretty brilliant comic, actually.
00:21:41.000And again, as I started by saying, I was touched that the reconciliation could be achieved, even with something that amounts to media spat, as Pete Davidson, while he might be an artifact that one could argue ultimately belongs to a particular political purview expressed through the culture, he's not a political...
00:22:49.000And my friend Amos experienced injuries in Afghanistan that are not so visible, but like a bunch of skeletal as well as psychological stuff.
00:23:00.000And because I agree with the veneration and valorization of veterans, I agree that if people have served their country, they ought to be afforded a level of respect that most people...
00:23:16.000Can't claim because most of us aren't willing to sacrifice ourselves for our nation or for what we believe in.
00:23:22.000A lot of people in our culture are pretty selfish.
00:23:25.000So I suppose what that means is that a veteran is connected to and tied to sets of values that are...
00:23:32.000Pretty profound and important, and as near to sacred as one might get in a secular conversation.
00:23:40.000I've not followed whatever you've said about Tucker or whatever Tucker said about you.
00:23:43.000I just heard, oh, Dan Crenshaw, Tucker.
00:23:48.000Tucker's one of them super famous people that I know, like Bobby Kennedy, where I feel like I've spent time with them, had good face time, and I feel like, oh, I love Tucker Carlson the same way I love Bobby Kennedy.
00:23:57.000So I can't imagine that Tucker Carlson would be mean.
00:25:37.000With Tucker, there's never any attempt to be funny.
00:25:39.000And the last thing I want to say about that is the reason there's such animosity from me towards him is because he's never made a policy argument.
00:25:48.000People will actually ask me, why does Tucker hate you?
00:25:51.000And I'll be like, well, the fact that you have to even ask that question tells you everything you need to know.
00:25:55.000The fact that he doesn't actually have an explanation from a policy perspective, because this is supposedly a policy debate, and he just smears me personally, accuses me of crimes, accuses me of being sinister, accuses me of being liberal, despite my voting record and everything I do being completely the opposite.
00:26:13.000You know, it's just slanderous and it's ill-intentioned and that's why we just, that's how the reconciliation just won't happen.
00:26:20.000You won't talk about Ukraine, but the thing is, like, Tucker has never really made the arguments against my stances.
00:26:26.000He just calls me a horrible person, which isn't, it's childish.
00:26:31.000That surprises me because, like, when I first met Tucker, I went on, like, Fox News and I'd been schooled that...
00:26:38.000You are not going to like Tucker Carlson, he's a racist, he's a Nazi, he's the worst person in the world.
00:26:44.000So sweet and charming, and I've subsequently got to know him well, and I think he understands American politics really well, and I think sort of out of the independent media, of course there's really few people that can compare to Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan, if you were going to compare him to anyone in the culture, he's like Oprah Winfrey, I figure, like sort of congenerate other stars.
00:27:03.000He's like a galaxy-generating media figure.
00:27:06.000You don't get Theo Vaughn or maybe Huberman, maybe even in my new incarnation, my career has been him.
00:27:13.000Influenced and impacted by the sort of ability and position of Rogan.
00:27:18.000Where I figure that Tucker is distinct is he comes out of legacy media.
00:27:26.000And when I've done live things with him, what I recognize is that Tucker somehow understands and speaks for and to American people in a way that I can appreciate.
00:28:26.000Better, and I felt that there was good faith, and that you'd be able to discern that my jokes were coming from a position of love.
00:28:34.000I would do some jokes, but I don't feel I've earned that, and because I'm trying to talk about things that are somewhat delicate and complex, I wouldn't go there.
00:28:44.000What I feel like is, I'm just guessing, I'm guessing that Tucker must think that there's some sort of financial impropriety connection to military industrial complex companies that are at odds with what you represent in the culture.
00:28:57.000Because I feel like in that SNL moment with Dan Crenshaw, I thought what Dan Crenshaw represents is...
00:29:06.000And in a way that, say, something like Hegsef might now represent, oh, like, even if the left hates this dude, Hegsef, and makes allegations against him or claims there are allegations against him sexually, and Lord alone knows I know what that's like.
00:29:20.000He, ordinary vets, like when I met with them guys recently in DC, they all love him and were, like, well into him.
00:29:26.000So, and I feel like if we're in a moment, congressman, where we're trying to bring about reconciliation, Well, that'd be nice.
00:29:48.000Unfortunately, the incentive structures in modern American politics aren't geared that way.
00:29:55.000Tucker's incentives are not to have any kind of...
00:30:29.000But that's effectively what he's doing.
00:30:30.000Okay, so I guess the narrative goes, well, okay, if you support this policy, then you must be somehow captured by this nebulous military-industrial complex.
00:30:54.000One of the claims was that those of us who serve on the Intelligence Committee, I serve on the Intelligence Committee, are consistently blackmailed and threatened by organizations like the CIA, and that's how they get us to keep funding their activities.
00:31:11.000And he says, well, you know, members have told me this.
00:31:17.000Offer some proof for what you're saying.
00:31:19.000Because even somebody who knows a little bit about civics and how our government works would know that the incentive, like, that just, that doesn't make sense even on the surface.
00:31:29.000Because our particular committee has, this is very different than the UK, for instance, and actually most parliamentary systems.
00:31:36.000We have a very serious set of checks and balances in our government.
00:31:40.000We actually control the authorities and the budget of those agencies.
00:31:44.000So, in fact, the power dynamic that Tucker is describing is exactly the opposite as he describes it.
00:31:50.000They have very much an incentive to be scared of us, not the other way around.
00:31:54.000This idea that we're being blackmailed by them is just utterly insane.
00:31:59.000He also claimed in that particular interview that aliens are living underwater and we have all the evidence and they want I mean, it's just stuff like that that you're like, what are we talking about?
00:32:11.000Or are we trying to give people news and interesting insights?
00:32:15.000Or is it just entertainment for the sake of clicks?
00:32:18.000And this is what I mean by incentive structures that have unfortunately percolated in a massive way, and it's largely because of social media.
00:32:25.000And you're not putting that cap back in the bag, so it is what it is.
00:32:28.000But it has created a different set of incentives around politics where you gain power by engagement and you gain engagement by outrage porn.
00:32:44.000I'm like, and especially conservatives, because I'm like, conservatives especially, because of the way we're sort of wired, we tend to look, we tend to be skeptical.
00:32:55.000But skepticism can turn into paranoia, can turn into conspiratorialism pretty quickly.
00:34:14.000I suppose I'm flattered by it to an extent, but it's also silly and exhausting, and it detracts from, I think, a lot of the serious work we're trying to do.
00:34:22.000That's the unfortunate incentive structures that we see in our political spectrum right now.
00:35:09.000But I also want people to be clear-eyed on who's telling you this and what their incentive structures are for doing so.
00:35:18.000It's difficult to argue with the idea that those of us that occupy a space in the independent media world over time become kind of acclimatized and schooled in what you could refer to, and fairly so as well, as clickbait, because I know that when you title a video or you thumbnail a video or you have to consider a way of presenting it, probably when we pull a video from this conversation, we all...
00:35:43.000Use the idea that we're talking about Tucker Carlson rather than saying we talked about the deep state in a general way because, yeah, for exactly the reasons you've described.
00:35:53.000But with Trump's success being founded both in 2016 and now in 2025, somewhat on that kind of cynicism that you began your argument with, Congressman, do...
00:36:03.000And I hear what you said about, in particular, the Intelligence Committee that you sat on and their relationship with the CIA. Isn't so much of the sort of current MAGA, MAHA movement built on the idea, think, for example, of Doge or the way that Trump has handled Zelensky, on the idea, and to your point about globalism and what you mean, what I mean when I say globalism is that...
00:36:24.000It doesn't matter if you vote for the Republican Party or the Democrat Party.
00:36:28.000There are within state institutions, figures and individuals that have relationships with global entities that could be NATO, could be the WHO, could be WEF, that mean that they stay within a purview and guardrails of a set of agenda that are not in alignment with the democratic will of the Republic of America.
00:36:48.000That's what I mean by globalism, this kind of...
00:37:13.000And I reckon all rhetoric can escalate in exactly the way you described to sort of create, you know, controversy and therefore clicks and ultimately sort of revenue.
00:37:22.000But what my feeling is when it comes to more broadly the argument about mistrust of...
00:37:28.000The state, and in particular the deep state, is I say with the CIA in particular, like, I know that there are, I don't know, I heard and believe that there are CIA carve-outs that funded Ukrainian media outlets that claimed that I was a Russian asset, and I'm like, I know that I'm not a Russian asset.
00:37:48.000Like, I know that I've never had a conversation with or money from, and I know that I don't think that Putin's a great guy.
00:37:54.000I just sort of query the origins of that conflict and NATO's involved.
00:38:00.000And all those arguments that come out of the kind of the sceptical position on the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
00:38:09.000In case you care, like my sort of general position is, it's terrible that people keep dying in this war, and there seems to be some complexity in its origins, particularly when you listen to people like Mearsheimer, Sachs, or even recently a brilliant argument from Matlock, the dude Matlock that worked for Reagan and actually translated some of the discourse between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and then was present for James Baker's negotiations with Gorbachev, where he said that how Trump's handling this conflict is good.
00:38:38.000That's a long-winded way of saying that with Trump being, in a sense, the chief beneficiary of much of that cynicism around the deep state, and with Tucker almost being the sort of public face of that, the media face of that aspect of Trump's success and popularity, do you feel that there is legitimacy to the arguments that the Ukraine conflict is somewhat...
00:39:05.000Perpetuated because of the agenda of organizations like Raytheon, Norfolk, Grumman, or what we would loosely term the military-industrial complex.
00:40:11.000And there are people with biases in every organization.
00:40:13.000Now, the difference between a bureaucracy and a private organization is a private organization, all those biases, they don't matter all that much because you're profit-oriented.
00:40:22.000And so there's an effect there that you don't have to control for.
00:40:27.000With a bureaucracy, you better damn well control for it because biases, well, what's the mission?
00:40:54.000And somebody in the right position can either sign something or not sign something, check the box or not check the box, because they're in that position of power.
00:41:02.000And rooting that out is a real key goal of this administration.
00:41:06.000It's a key goal of Republicans, I think, generally.
00:42:52.000Just because there's a profit to be made, does it therefore mean that the profit incentive is the sole cause of the policy decision, or is it possible?
00:43:01.000That there's actually a whole lot of other reasons why policymakers might make the decisions they make.
00:43:06.000And I'll just give you a quick synopsis on campaign finance.
00:43:10.000There is no way for you to be bought off by a defense contractor.
00:43:17.000There's just no way to do it because of our campaign finance limitations.
00:43:54.000You still have to report who's supporting what.
00:43:56.000And in the end, it's never going to change because of our First Amendment.
00:44:00.000You have a right to spend money and whoever you are and make your voice heard.
00:44:05.000But I've never even seen a case where the defense contractors are actually doing an open advocation for this war in particular or any war for that matter.
00:44:17.000And I certainly, I can say at least from my own experience, there's zero pressure, zero, for your policy stance to match whatever we perceive their desires to be.
00:44:30.000And again, I use the word perceive their desires to be because they don't even make them apparent.
00:44:37.000They're much more paranoid about I think a lot of people realize.
00:44:59.000Lobbying, by its very nature, is competitive.
00:45:05.000There's a thousand different industries represented.
00:45:16.000This goes back to the Federalist Papers.
00:45:17.000How does a Federalist system survive over time?
00:45:22.000Well, it survives by competing factions that are freely allowed to yell at one another, compete with one another, and exercise their First Amendment right to lobby.
00:45:32.000They're congressional representatives on what they want.
00:45:35.000And then it's up to you, the congressional representative, to ascertain who's bullshitting you and who isn't.
00:45:41.000And then really just go back to your own personal judgment based on what you ran on and told your constituents you would be for them.
00:46:23.000When I think about what you said about lobbying and donors, sometimes I recognize that when you're inside of an institution, you're of course going to be granted insights that are not available when you have a broad sense that, oh, well, I get my information from a variety of independent media sources, but after a while I... Kind of tend towards figures that have been actually heroic in another sense.
00:46:49.000For example, Assange and Snowden, men that have made sacrifices in order to bring information to the public that's influenced the way that we see these kind of institutions.
00:46:58.000And I recognise that there's a lot of generalisation that goes on, maybe even in, presumably, even in my own reporting when talking about the Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon.
00:47:09.000And I recognise these organisations do a lot outside of...
00:47:13.000But it's difficult for me just instinctively as an outsider not to think that the whole business of lobbying and...
00:47:20.000Party political donations, certainly at the scale of whole political parties rather than individuals, about which obviously you know a lot more than I do, doesn't have an impact because obviously that's why they're doing it.
00:47:31.000And when I pivot to something that I feel a little more comfortable talking about, because I don't know a whole bunch about anything, but certainly not about military-industrial complex or the impact of those organisations on war, but when I think about how the pandemic was litigated, how it was managed globally, and the...
00:47:49.000The way in which organisations like Pfizer and Moderna benefited, the way in which big tech and social media companies censored, and the way that...
00:47:58.000Political movements, in particular democratically elected political parties in my country and yours, behaved.
00:48:04.000I can see what your great comedian George Carlin meant when he said, when interests converge, no conspiracy is required.
00:48:13.000I'm talking now sort of in a general way about the pandemic rather than the military-industrial complex.
00:48:18.000You and I are going to have a lot of agreement on pandemic stuff, I'm sure.
00:48:24.000So, and I suppose that when it comes to that, because I don't know the details in the same way with the Euraphians, Lockheed Martin, etc., what I saw, and I think what a lot of people saw during the pandemic era is, oh, look at how the state, the media, big tech...
00:48:40.000And Big Pharma and the apparently objective regulatory bodies around Big Pharma, the FDA, CDC, NIH, appear to have been influenced financially in ways that dilutes and even corrupts, frankly, their apparent objectivity and undermines their duty, and in so doing, our faith in those institutions.
00:49:47.000So, like, people have, whether it's true or not, people have a sense that Nancy Pelosi is escalating an accumulative wealth during a...
00:49:56.000Period of time where she's been in lawmaking is an indication that she gleans information from the various committees she sits on and her husband, you know, and this is like mostly unusual whales reporting on Exit, I'm talking about here, and I think there's some sense that people feel that that's true.
00:50:11.000So when things are generally true, i.e.
00:50:13.000in the pandemic, it seemed like Big Pharma was able to influence regulatory body, it seems that the government's legislation, or if not legislation, guidelines and governing benefited both The pandemic was really bad,
00:50:43.000really bad for experts, for the public health sector, because they were knowingly giving out, I don't think ill intentions, but...
00:51:47.000You know, if we're defending Trump here, I think he's doing it with the best information he had at the time in a moment where people were demanding action.
00:51:57.000And so I think the blame, this is where I would at least share blame, is, look, when we were doing polls, I mean, I was out on a limb because I never wavered.
00:52:08.000I was out on a limb, unpopular limb, with saying lockdowns are bad, vaccine mandates are bad.
00:52:16.000And I'm not even sure that this obsession with testing is going to get you where you want to be because by the time you test, you're already infected.
00:52:26.000It's just everything they said I had a problem with.
00:52:31.000You can't take the hydroxychloroquine or whatever.
00:52:37.000What's the one Joe Rogan got famous for taking?
00:53:00.000It was so far beyond the scope of common sense, especially the lockdown stuff.
00:53:05.000The lockdowns are ultimately what caused massive global inflation, because what are you doing?
00:53:10.000You're constricting supply, and then on purpose, constricting supply.
00:53:14.000And then Democrats take power, Joe Biden takes power, and they immediately implement the American Rescue Plan and the IRA, which were basically massive injections of free money demand.
00:53:23.000So what happens when you have high demand and low supply?
00:54:19.000You know, the only reason I ever got a vaccine personally was because I had to visit the fucking UK, and the only way I could get into the fucking country was to get this stupid vaccine.
00:54:29.000And I was pissed because I'd already had COVID. I still couldn't smell.
00:54:35.000And I'm not even sure I've totally regained that sense.
00:54:39.000Although that has its benefits, I'll tell you what.
00:54:41.000Not smelling certain things has its benefits, especially when you're raising a small child, as I am.
00:54:48.000Although, sometimes I'd rather smell the poop than have to feel for it.
00:55:15.000The point is, you know, It's a little bit more nuanced and harder to say why people are doing the things they are doing than I think a lot of people want to believe.
00:55:26.000I think a lot of the public, when they see problems, too many people look for easy buttons to press.
00:55:31.000Well, I see this, so it must be this person's fault.
00:55:33.000It's so much easier to blame a specific entity, whatever that entity is, because it just makes your problem solving simpler.
00:55:41.000And I always feel the maybe stupid need because it'd be much easier in my political life if I just simply agreed with everybody.
00:55:49.000But I have to point out sometimes like, ah, your rights, but also there's other things at play here.
00:55:54.000And there were things at play during COVID were massive amounts of public opinion that were like, do something now.
00:56:59.000I think the reason we ended up discussing it is because it was epochal, and there's no question that I imagine that after the pandemic, there was an evolution and change in the political perspectives in your country that have been at the end led to...
00:57:17.000Bobby Kennedy being part of the MAGA movement.
00:57:21.000I reckon that's one of the indicators that you don't have an unbiased media because legacy media could have assessed that particular alliance as well as Tulsi Gabbard's new position of prominence as an indication that MAGA 2025 is not Trump 2016. And those conversations aren't taking place because there isn't an objective media upon which those conversations can happen.
00:57:44.000Now, I wonder what you feel about Trump's top line appointments, whether it's Kash Patel, our very own from Rumble, Dan Bongino at the FBI, or Bobby Kennedy at the HHS.
00:57:54.000And I wonder what you feel about Trump's public diplomacy on the international stage, in so much as the way that he campaigned, he appears to be governing in the way that he campaigned.
00:58:07.000And with, for example, his bellicosity and belligerence and overtness, when it comes to, say, dealing with Zelensky, do you feel, as I do, that what Trump does publicly, political figures have often done in more clandestine and discreet ways?
00:58:21.000And do you feel that when it comes to the Ukraine-Russia conflict in particular, Trump's style of diplomacy is going to bring about peace?
00:58:28.000And what do you, in general, think, Congressman, about his position when it comes to making deals where American aid is undergirded by Ukrainian resources?
00:58:39.000And perhaps you can speak for a while on that basis about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and how, in general, the Republican movement has not been supportive of ongoing aid to Ukraine.
01:00:00.000And, you know, just a simple idea that we want to make America more healthy and talk about things like, I don't know, modern nutrition and exercise.
01:03:38.000And that's what eventually gave birth to what I think the basic tenets of Western civilization.
01:03:44.000Western civilization is something worth protecting.
01:03:47.000Another major day, there might be a lot more that I'm missing, but let me skip over like a thousand years or two of history and go to D-Day.
01:03:55.000When America decided that we were going to stop a tyrannical...
01:04:00.000Psychopath in Europe from just destroying Europe and aligning with Japan, eventually destroying us, and making The Man in High Castle, that series on Netflix, the reality.
01:04:14.000After 80% of people decided we weren't going to do it, we eventually did it.
01:04:19.000A huge sacrifice that, in hindsight, could have been less sacrifice had we acted earlier.
01:04:27.000It happened, nevertheless, in the 80 years since then have been a very, very different history, one that humankind has never really had and certainly doesn't seem to appreciate very much right now and is now only recently being threatened.
01:04:42.000State-on-state wars of conquest have not happened since World War II. And people might be like, wow, you invaded Iraq, invaded Afghanistan.
01:04:52.000Yeah, but we immediately, and maybe almost too soon, tried to hold elections and hand over power back to them.
01:04:56.000We kick ourselves out because they vote on it.
01:04:59.000I mean, I'm not sure if that's conquest.
01:05:11.000You get disruptions to a global economy that we all benefit from massively.
01:05:16.000For me, this has never been about Ukraine specifically.
01:05:19.000It's about Russia and Russian actions and their propensity to invade what are considered by everyone to be sovereign states.
01:05:28.000And we could argue back and forth about whether they had to or they felt they need to or they felt threatened by NATO. And we can disagree on that all day.
01:05:35.000I'm not even sure it's worth it because in the end, they did it.
01:05:38.000In the end, there's a decision that has to be made once they do it.
01:05:42.000And do you allow a situation where if we had done nothing, if we give them no weapons to begin with, well, they'd end up with their entire army still intact, crush Ukraine, subjugate it, take all the resources and be on the border of four more NATO countries.
01:05:58.000With a message from NATO, which is, you know, we don't really, we say we're going to defend our allies, because we told, we killed Ukraine without the security assertances back when they gave up their nuclear weapons in the mid-90s.
01:06:08.000But of course, Putin doesn't believe we're going to actually defend our allies anymore.
01:06:12.000And you actually set yourself up for a potentially catastrophic miscalculation from both sides, where Putin says, you know, they probably won't defend the Baltics.
01:06:20.000And the Baltics are definitely next on my list.
01:06:39.000And we've successfully prevented it and turned it into a stalemate, which has been very bad for Russia.
01:06:45.000People, it's somewhat beneficial for the US. Contrary to popular belief about our military-industrial complex, the reality is it's been largely decimated over the last two decades because our primary focus has been counterterrorism, not big power competition.
01:07:05.000We haven't been making the exquisite weaponry that would be required to deter China from invading Taiwan.
01:07:10.000And when you don't make things on a production line, Well, the millions, maybe not millions, but certainly thousands of small businesses that create the little wicket that goes into that particular missile, well, they start to go out of business, and the people start to retire because they're not getting orders anymore.
01:07:27.000So there's been this atrophy, actually, in the military-industrial complex that the Ukraine war has helped awaken.
01:07:34.000Given a lot more insight into how we might fight wars of the future, specifically with cheaper drones.
01:07:39.000And so it's really given us amazing insight into how we might protect Taiwan, ideally deter Taiwan, because I don't think anybody wants to go to war over Taiwan.
01:07:51.000But that doesn't mean that you just keep doing that forever either.
01:07:55.000And Trump's election was the perfect timing for this because Biden had escalated, probably too late in my opinion, but he had escalated at least to allow American weapons to be used inside Russia.
01:08:05.000He tightened a little bit of screws on sanctions, although there's a lot further we could go against Russia on that if, for instance, they want to embarrass Trump and not come to the table, which is still a possibility.
01:08:54.000The critical minerals problem, that's a whole different subject, but it's a real problem because we've let the Chinese corner that market to an amazing degree.
01:09:54.000Now, the way this would work best is if Europeans were actually scary for once and were on the back end kind of playing bad cop.
01:10:00.000Now, the English and the French are at least thinking about that.
01:10:06.000And I think an ultimate deal would have to have security guarantees that include European forces actually securing those because you can never trust Putin.
01:10:46.000Made me mad at that White House meeting because I think he just did not read the room correctly and started to try and litigate, you know, past injustices of diplomacy by Putin.
01:10:56.000It's like, dude, you might be totally right.
01:12:39.000I guess there's some validity to that.
01:12:42.000And, you know, our five-meter target, our short-term, near-term threat is fentanyl production from the Mexican drug cartels, right?
01:12:51.000You know, we lose 2023, maybe 80,000 people a year.
01:12:56.000Now that's gone down fairly significantly.
01:12:58.000There's been some gains on that, personally.
01:13:02.000We've gotten legislation through that allows us to actually collect intelligence on cartels.
01:13:07.000You know, we tie our own hands behind our back, don't even let ourselves use some of our best capabilities to collect intelligence on certain cartel members or the Chinese companies that developed the precursors.
01:13:19.000Although that was more contentious of a vote than you would initially think.
01:13:25.000So that's why it's a big priority of mine.
01:13:27.000You know, it really came to a head for me when we were passing HR2, when we had just taken the majority, and our flagship, you know, one of our first bills was HR2, and it was on the border, right?
01:13:42.000It never got passed into law because Democrats had the Senate.
01:13:50.000If we could just be king for a day is what we would do to change certain asylum laws, immigration laws, things like that, that would fix the border.
01:13:58.000And I noticed it had nothing to do with cartels, and that made me mad.
01:14:01.000And so Kevin McCarthy, speaker at the time, placed me in charge of the cartel task force.
01:14:10.000Interviewing, meeting with officials inside, outside of government, former cartel members, former Tijuana police officers, just trying to build as much expertise as possible on the cartels.
01:14:21.000Developing a blue force picture, it's a military term, it just means developing a picture of who on our side is doing what.
01:14:58.000I think there's a lot to look forward to on this, but there's a lot of work to do.
01:15:02.000And the biggest obstacle we face is really just Mexico letting us in.
01:15:06.000I mean, they're very sensitive diplomatically and politically about American involvement in their country, more so than, say, the best side-by-side example would be Colombia.
01:17:11.000And really understood those political sensitivities and how we have to work through them diplomatically to get what we both want, which is to tackle a mutual enemy.
01:17:20.000The mutual enemy destroys us with fentanyl production and supplies, but it's destroying Mexico in a much more profound way.
01:17:27.000And I mean, to the point where, like, Mexico to me seems like Colombia in the early 90s, like at a true tipping point.
01:19:14.000Well, Congressman, this is the type of conversation that's required where, in a sense, I'd like to, if it's possible, set out an area for us to discuss whether it's sort of seemingly personal or geopolitical or biographical.
01:19:30.000And I think your last answer really helped me to understand why you would have that position given your peripatetic childhood there.
01:19:37.000You're probably pretty lucky you don't remember Aberdeen, because if you did, that would be something I suggested you had bleached from your mind.
01:19:44.000That's a very particular part of Scotland that you happen to have been born in.
01:19:49.000Congressman Dan Crenshaw, thank you so much for joining us today.
01:19:53.000Thank you for being so transparent and open to discussing difficult and complex topics.
01:19:58.000Thank you for your devotion and your service to your country.
01:20:01.000And thank you for making time for us today.