00:00:05.000Another apparent assassination attempt against President Trump is thwarted, and Tucker Carlson made a fool of himself over the weekend with Ambassador Mike Huckabee.
00:00:13.000When Matt Walsh released episode one of Real History with Matt Walsh, The Real History of Slavery, we kind of knew what was going to happen.
00:00:20.000A narrative we had been taught for decades, reinforced by institutions, dramatized by Hollywood, suddenly had to face the truth.
00:00:25.000Well, now Matt is back with the next chapter, episode two: The Real History of the American Indians, is streaming right now exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.
00:02:16.000There are many people who are not feeling good about that because how can you be proud of America in the age of Donald Trump?
00:02:23.000But here's the thing: if Barack Obama were president and we won the American men's hockey gold, I think we'd all feel pretty good about that.
00:02:31.000So, why is it that that changes if you don't like the president of the United States?
00:02:36.000By the way, the actual most spectacular player of the game was the goaltender, Connor Helibuck, who is the reigning NHL MVP and was unbelievable.
00:04:32.000It doesn't matter when the president of the United States calls you on the phone to congratulate you for winning a gold medal on behalf of the United States.
00:04:39.000You take the call and you smile and it's great.
00:05:12.000Well, because it turns out that sports is one of the few areas of American life where we all basically agree a meritocracy is taking place, that the best team wins or the team with the most guts.
00:05:33.000And so watching the hockey team win the gold is awesome because again, sports is the realm of meritocracy.
00:05:39.000Also, one thing that always unites Americans is the fact that there is, in fact, a common enemy.
00:05:44.000When it comes to sports, the common enemy is whoever the United States is playing.
00:05:49.000And this has been true forever, and not just for the United States.
00:05:53.000There is a very famous phrase that was used in the lead up to World War I with regard to the British, saying that the wars that were won on the battlefield were started on the playing fields of Eton, meaning that everybody kind of learned to play as a team in these arenas.
00:06:13.000And then they channel that energy and that sort of masculine energy toward an opponent.
00:06:19.000And so it's easy for Americans to come together when there's a common opponent.
00:06:22.000One of the reasons why the United States has splintered so much over the course of the last several decades is because the United States is in fact a global hegemon.
00:06:29.000And because of that, there's a feeling like most of our conflicts are internal.
00:06:34.000The vast majority of real conflicts on planet Earth are between the United States and other nefarious powers.
00:06:41.000Now, this game meant a lot to America because it was sort of a unifying moment.
00:06:44.000But of course, I'm joking when I equate the Canadians and the Russians.
00:06:48.000If the United States had been defeating a global superpower in hockey that was also geopolitically an enemy, like the Russians or the Chinese, that would have even been bigger.
00:07:23.000Well, this month, PeerTalk celebrated President's Day based because they believe wireless service should only cost you a couple of presidents, a Lincoln and a Jackson.
00:07:30.000That is $25 a month for unlimited talk text, plenty of data.
00:07:33.000Even though the holiday may have passed, the PeerTalk savings have not.
00:08:15.000You'll get 50% off your very first month of coverage.
00:08:17.000Again, that's puretalk.com/slash Shapiro to make the switch to Pure Talk.
00:08:21.000So you're seeing two groups of people who are sort of looking at this wonderful event, this fun and unifying event, and trying to look a gift horse in the mouth.
00:08:32.000One of them are people on the left who are saying, how dare we feel good about America in a time when Donald Trump is president of the United States?
00:08:41.000The Huffington Post had a piece by Monica Torres saying, There's a name for the discomfort you're feeling watching the Olympics right now.
00:08:49.000If waving the American flag or chanting USA turns you off right now, you're not alone.
00:08:53.000Well, I mean, you should be alone because you suck.
00:08:56.000But that's the basic idea here from some members of the left.
00:09:02.000America right now is very, very no good, truly bad, because of the evils of Donald Trump.
00:09:09.000So I'm supposed to feel bad that the American men's hockey team won the gold because you didn't vote for the guy who's currently in the Oval.
00:09:17.000By the way, this is a split between the right and the left in virtually all polling data.
00:09:21.000Conservatives are always patriotic about the country, even when a Democrat is president.
00:09:25.000Democrats are significantly less patriotic about the country when a Democrat is not president.
00:09:30.000This is a long-term trend line in the United States, which is not a good thing.
00:09:36.000But then there's sort of a bizarre, I'd say, fringe movement on the right trying to suggest that this isn't a cool thing.
00:09:43.000Well, because it turns out that some members of the U.S. men's hockey team are not necessarily the most conservative on every single issue.
00:09:49.000So now we're going to delve into their social media histories and try to determine whether Jack Hughes voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
00:10:12.000It's because, yes, America, we are on the same team.
00:10:14.000I know that a lot of the time it doesn't feel like we're on the same team.
00:10:16.000And yes, there are Americans who are not on our team.
00:10:19.000Usually the people who are not on our team are people actually rooting for foreign powers and who see America as essentially a dispensable nation unless they win, unless they get their way.
00:10:29.000But the reality is that I think the reason why people feel good today about what happened at the Olympics, it was a nice reminder that actually we do share a country and it's good that we share a country.
00:10:38.000It is not bad that we share a country.
00:10:42.000Meanwhile, in other news over the weekend, it appears that another attempted assassination against President Trump was stopped.
00:10:49.000According to the U.S. Secret Service, on February 22nd, around 1:30 a.m., a male in his early 20s was shot by U.S. Secret Service agents and a deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office following an unauthorized entry into the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago.
00:11:02.000The individual whose identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin was pronounced deceased.
00:11:08.000Apparently, he was observed by the North Gate of Mar-a-Lago carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can.
00:11:15.000Here was the West Palm Beach sheriff reporting.
00:11:20.000At 1:30 this morning, the security detail detected that an individual had made his way into the inner perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
00:11:30.000A deputy and two Secret Service agents on the detail went to that area to investigate.
00:11:37.000They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun.
00:11:44.000He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him, at which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position.
00:11:57.000At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons and neutralized the threat.
00:12:05.000Now, we don't have total details on why the shooter, the attempted shooter, did what he did here.
00:12:12.000However, TMZ has obtained text messages apparently sent by the alleged attempted shooter here to a co-worker February 15th, 2026.
00:12:21.000So about a week ago, saying, quote, I don't know if you read up on Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable.
00:12:27.000The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have, tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing, raise awareness.
00:12:36.000Apparently, sources who worked with this person at the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in North Carolina say TMZ, they told TMZ, quote, he became fixated on Epstein following the latest release of information tied to the files.
00:12:46.000Co-workers tell us he was deeply disturbed by what he believed was a government cover-up and often talked about powerful people, quote, getting away with it.
00:12:53.000Apparently, he was outspoken about his Christian faith and political views, and he regularly expressed support for Trump, telling colleagues as recently as late last year, he believed that Trump was a strong leader.
00:13:10.000Again, specific crimes should be prosecuted.
00:13:14.000Evidence should be requested for the allegations that are made.
00:13:17.000This is why we have systems of justice in place.
00:13:20.000Obviously, every single human being who committed crimes related to Jeffrey Epstein should be prosecuted and thrown in jails to the fullest extent of the law or worse, depending on the nature of their crimes.
00:13:30.000But the general gestalt that has been put out into the universe by the idiocy of the internet, which is that Donald Trump is participating in a large-scale cover-up of a gigantic child sex trafficking operation directed at various dignitaries run by foreign influence operations, that sort of allegation, which is unevidenced by millions of files, millions of them, that has permeated the brains of a lot of people, including people who, again, exist on the fringes.
00:13:55.000And I've said before, if you promote theories that are unevidenced and then a fringe actor goes and does something bad that is not directly attributable to you, you do not bear the moral onus for that specific action because you didn't tell them to go shoot Donald Trump or try to.
00:14:12.000However, are you guilty of raising the temperature?
00:14:15.000Is it immoral to spread information that is unevidenced?
00:14:18.000Yes, it actually is immoral to spread information that is unevidenced.
00:14:47.000In international news, the biggest story internationally over the weekend is this extraordinary civil war that has apparently blown up in Mexico.
00:14:57.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Mexico's military killed the country's most powerful drug kingpin, Nemesio Mencho Aceguera, escalating the government's war against cartels amid pressure from President Trump to curb narcotics trafficking and sparking a widespread violent gang response.
00:15:12.000Oseguera is a former Mexican police officer and was the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
00:15:18.000The cartel also controls vast fuel smuggling schemes and other underworld rackets across Mexico and the United States, according to the Mexican authorities.
00:15:26.000His killing marks the most significant operation yet in Mexico's recent crackdown on cartels.
00:15:31.000Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum has expelled more than 100 convicted drug traffickers to the United States to their arrest.
00:15:38.000She's trying to prevent direct U.S. military involvement in going after the leaders of drug cartels.
00:15:45.000Mexico's security ministry said the country's special forces killed Osaguera in the rural municipality of Tapalpa, which is apparently close to a lakeshore community with a large American retiree community.
00:15:58.000White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Osaguera was a top target for the Mexican and U.S. governments.
00:16:04.000And of course, last year, President Trump had designated his cartel as a foreign terrorist organization.
00:16:11.000He controlled Osaguera, vast swaths of territory in the Jalisco state and beyond, and was known for sophisticated paramilitary tactics.
00:16:20.000There was a $15 million U.S. bounty on him.
00:16:23.000He was mostly at this mountain compound, and he had, again, an entire phalanx of people protecting him, known as the special force of the high command.
00:16:33.000They had heat-seeking shoulder-fired rocket launchers.
00:16:38.000So, again, the goal here was to appease the United States, to go after the cartels.
00:16:42.000This is a change in policy driven by President Trump, no question.
00:16:45.000I mean, here in November 2025, is Claudia Scheinbaum saying that fighting the cartels is not an option, and yet now here is the Mexican government fighting the cartels.
00:16:55.000Since returning to the war against the Narco is not an option, it is not an option.
00:17:02.000First, because it is outside the framework of the law, all these of the right wing that fill their mouths are the words rule of law and defend the war against the narco.
00:17:16.000The war against the narco is outside the law because, as I said or have said, on several occasions, it is permission to kill without any trial.
00:17:27.000Okay, well, it seems that she has changed her mind about all of that.
00:17:31.000Now, what's amazing about this is that actually Osaguera spent several years in the United States.
00:17:35.000He actually was in jail in the United States for three years, convicted of selling heroin and serving three years in a California prison.
00:17:43.000He was then deported to Mexico, where he married the daughter of a boss of a Sinaloa-affiliated gang.
00:17:47.000Imagine if he had just stayed in the United States.
00:17:50.000He could be running around free today.
00:17:52.000By 2011, he was leading his own organization based in Jalisco State.
00:17:56.000And he had recently made an alliance with the Sinaloa faction known as the Chapitos, which is fighting a civil war with a rival gang.
00:18:02.000The killing of Osaguera may unleash gigantic civil war in this particular region.
00:18:08.000There are other neighboring regions where a civil war is already effectively underway.
00:18:11.000The cartels immediately started stopping all traffic in Jalisco and started burning cars.
00:18:19.000Now, it's not apparent at this point how many, if any, people have been killed, but the pictures and videos that are emerging are pretty clear that they are demonstrating they have control of the city.
00:18:33.000And again, Puerto Vallarta, which is located in this area, was one of the cities that was effectively taken over by the cartels.
00:18:42.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the cartel is considered the country's most powerful organized crime group, one that doesn't shy away from conspicuous violence to send a message.
00:18:50.000On Sunday, its gunmen shattered the peace in Mexico's premier Pacific beach destination, among the wealthiest places in Jalisco state.
00:18:58.000Of course, Puerto Vallarta, I've actually been there on a cruise.
00:19:01.000I mean, like it is a very frequently trafficked place.
00:19:04.000A lot of cruise ships stop in Puerto Vallarta, and you can see the smoke emerging.
00:19:09.000Now, there were a bunch of AI videos that were coming out, people supposedly being shot in the streets.
00:19:15.000It seems that this is more of an intimidation tactic than anything else by the cartels to demonstrate that there is a plan in place to take over the mechanisms of law and order in these areas.
00:19:26.000This has been a long time coming, obviously.
00:19:30.000And we'll have to see how all of it unfolds.
00:19:32.000It may very well be that the Mexican government requires the help of the United States to knock off some more leaders of these cartels and take control of the actual country south of our border.
00:19:42.000Well, Mexico is certainly taking a risk when it comes to going after the cartels, but it's a risk that is worth taking.
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00:21:03.000The fallout at the same time from the tariff decision made by the Supreme Court on Friday continues.
00:21:08.000President Trump gave a press conference, which we covered live, at which he said a number of things that I thought were not, shall we say, presidential.
00:21:15.000The president attacked the justices who ruled against him as somehow dumb and also maybe in the pay of foreign officials or parties.
00:21:39.000He also signed on to a dissent from Brett Kavanaugh.
00:21:42.000I think if the shoe were on the other foot and it were Joe Biden attempting to declare tariff power over literally all of planet Earth based on a, at best, vague delegation in the IEEPA, I think that would have been struck down.
00:21:54.000President Trump put out a statement based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on tariffs issued yesterday.
00:22:04.000It is not anti-American to say that Article I powers, the tariff power, belongs with the Article I branch, the legislature.
00:22:11.000Anyway, he says, after many months of contemplation by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as president of the United States of America, will be effective immediately, raising the 10% worldwide tariff on countries, many of which have been ripping the U.S. off for decades without retribution until I came along to the fully allowed and legally tested 15% level.
00:22:28.000During the next short number of months, the Trump administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of making America great again, greater than ever before.
00:22:38.000On a political level, I believe the president should have taken the win.
00:22:41.000I really, I think he should have said, listen, I tried my best here.
00:22:47.000But this is one of the few areas in President Trump's agenda list that he actually is a true believer.
00:22:52.000So President Trump is a pragmatist by nature, but when it comes to tariffs, he is a true believer in a very zero-sum game when it comes to trade.
00:23:00.000Now, does he have the legal authority to implement what he's doing here under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act?
00:23:08.000So it sort of comes down to the definition of balance of payments deficits.
00:23:13.000I know it's a little technical, but the president has the ability, because of balance of payments deficits, to unilaterally declare tariffs for 150 days.
00:23:21.000The problem is that that is not balance of trade.
00:23:23.000So the United States has a trade deficit, meaning that we import more than we export.
00:23:27.000That is not the same as a balance of payments deficit.
00:23:31.000A balance of payments deficit, as John Puri writes over at National Review, is a comprehensive measure of all economic transactions between America's residents and the rest of the world.
00:23:43.000That includes not only transactions related to imports and exports, but also to direct investments, loans, and asset purchases.
00:23:50.000Because every dollar that we send abroad must eventually return to the United States for use, the balance of payments over a long enough period should even out to zero.
00:23:58.000So the value of our trade deficit should be matched dollar for dollar by a nearly equal capital account or financial account surplus every year.
00:24:03.000In other words, let's say that we import more than we export, dollars flow outward.
00:24:07.000But do those dollars just live out there?
00:24:13.000They are then invested back in the United States in bonds, in treasuries, in American businesses.
00:24:19.000The most recent year that complete data are available on both the U.S. balance of trading goods and services and its net financial account in 2024, America's current account was $1.185 trillion, the largest trade deficit on planet Earth by far.
00:24:31.000But also the financial account surplus was the largest in the world by far at $1.128 trillion the same year.
00:24:40.000So supposedly this balance of payments deficit is $57 billion, which is 0.2% of the U.S. GDP.
00:24:50.000The reason, by the way, that originally the 1974 Trade Act had a section that allowed for tariffs in order to, for example, get rid of a balance of payment deficit is that we were worried about tremendous outflow of American capital because of the movement away from Bretton Woods.
00:25:28.000President Obama, pretty famously, went in front of members of the Supreme Court when they ruled against him in one case and basically insulted them to their face in the middle of the State of the Union address.
00:25:38.000Not great when President Trump does it either.
00:25:42.000Scott Besant was out there defending the president and suggested that the president of the United States inherently has the power to tariff because he can embargo.
00:26:37.000And it's very interesting that the Supreme Court said that the president can't raise $1 of revenue with tariffs, but he can't put on a full embargo.
00:26:51.000Now, again, that seems to me to be a bad argument.
00:26:54.000It was an argument taken up by Chief Justice Roberts in his actual opinion, and then again by Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence with the opinion.
00:27:02.000Nonetheless, Scott Besson says that the trade partners that we have want to keep their current trade deals.
00:27:07.000I assume that's true because after all, why would they want to start over again given the inconsistency and vacillation from the administration on trade?
00:27:17.000We've been in touch with our foreign trading partners, and all of them want to keep the trade deals that have been set.
00:27:23.000You know, Dana, we've had great economic results over the past year.
00:27:28.0004.1% second quarter GDP, 4.3%, 4.4% in the third quarter.
00:27:33.000And it would have been a very strong fourth quarter if the Democrats hadn't shut down the government to hurt the American people.
00:27:42.000All that matters in the end is how the economy performs and Americans' perception of the economy.
00:27:48.000The attacks on the Supreme Court, generally a waste of time, whether they are from Democrats or whether they are from Republicans.
00:27:53.000The vice president also attacked the court, suggesting that they had participated in lawlessness, which is pretty astonishing.
00:27:59.000He said today the Supreme Court decided that Congress, despite giving the president the ability to regulate imports, didn't actually mean it.
00:28:05.000First of all, it's regulate dot dot dot imports.
00:28:08.000This is a lawlessness from the court, plain and simple.
00:28:11.000And its only effect will be to make it harder for the president to protect American industries and supply chain resiliency.
00:28:16.000President Trump has a wide range of other tariff powers, and he will use them to defend American workers and advance this administration's trade priorities.
00:28:23.000So, yeah, again, he's taking what you would expect, the president's position on this, that that does not happen to be a legally defensible position, in my opinion.
00:28:31.000Meanwhile, Democrats continue to struggle with basic things like, you know, cleaning up snow.
00:28:36.000So there's a giant freeze-on again in the Northeast.
00:28:39.000And now Zarn Mamdani is calling upon New Yorkers to shovel their snow, but also you need a multiplicity of licenses, apparently, to shovel snow.
00:28:51.000And for those who want to do more to help your neighbors and earn some extra cash, you too can become an emergency snow shoveler.
00:28:57.000Just show up at your local sanitation garage between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow with your paperwork, which is accessible online at nyc.gov slash snow, and you can get started right away.
00:29:12.000So now we're policing for illegal immigration.
00:29:14.000Apparently, according to the New York City Sanitation Department, you can sign up for temporary work helping to remove snow and ice from bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants, and other public areas after heavy snowfalls.
00:29:24.000Exciting, exciting stuff for, I think, all involved.
00:29:27.000All you will need to do is show up with forms of ID.
00:29:31.000You have to bring two small photos, the original and copy of two forms of ID, a social security card, and you have to be able to do physical labor and eligibility to work in the U.S.
00:29:43.000So I can't believe that Dharmam Dhani is policing immigration this way.
00:29:57.000This is a longstanding program and long-standing requirements.
00:30:01.000And this is a way that New Yorkers get paid to shovel snow in assistance with the city's response to a winter storm event.
00:30:09.000Federal law requires that employers get authorization and documentation to pay people for their work.
00:30:16.000We are not allowed to just cut checks to individuals for their work.
00:30:19.000And these are the policies that we've had in place, but I understand that for many, it's the first time that they've ever heard about it.
00:30:27.000Democratic 2028 candidate, AOC, she clearly wants to run, although, again, after her horrific showing in Munich, I'm not sure it's going to go well for her.
00:30:35.000Here she was suggesting that people are angry at Zarmam Dhani because snow doesn't melt at 20 degrees.
00:30:40.000Now, I'll admit there are some people of whom I have heard who do not know at what temperature snow melts.
00:31:40.000From my days in Boston, this is a thing that people used to do.
00:31:44.000The reason, by the way, that she's whispering like a kook is because her husband was asleep in the background and he's just snoring through whatever it is that she thought she was doing.
00:31:52.000If you think that I don't understand foreign policy, because out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I paused to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on earth.
00:32:08.000I'm afraid the issue is not my understanding, but rather the problem is perhaps you've gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks.
00:32:22.000Oh, yes, the husband snoring in the background is classic.
00:32:43.000By the way, she, of course, is a mentee of Bernie Sanders, who is a dullard.
00:32:48.000It is not worthwhile to go a week without a dullard Bernie Sanders take.
00:32:52.000So he was asked a pretty solid question at a public forum over the course of the last couple of days.
00:32:58.000He was asked, you know, it's weird because Europe has all the same regulations that you want, Bernie Sanders, and they are not world leaders in virtually any industry.
00:33:07.000And Bernie has no answer to this because it turns out that the regulatory state in Britain and the rest of the European Union, it turns out that it's not great for business development.
00:33:19.000And Shorten, I'm asking you to explain not why we have inequality, but why we've had so much growth over the last two decades.
00:33:25.000Because we are very smart people who've been incentivized, who have worked very hard.
00:35:38.000Well, in other news, last Wednesday, Tucker Carlson had flown into Ben-Gurion airport.
00:35:42.000He stayed there for a few hours and then he left, claiming, of course, that he was under dire physical threat.
00:35:49.000Apparently, in his little run-up to the interview that he did with Huckabee, which he released on Friday afternoon, Carlson claimed that he had tried to convey to the Israelis the tail number on his plane because he was afraid they would shoot him down because they are quote unquote the most violent country on earth.
00:36:08.000Truly, if you believe this crap, it's such dumbassery, an epic level of dumbassery.
00:36:14.000And he proceeded, because he really did poorly in his interview with Huckabee.
00:36:17.000He proceeded to do a 25-minute intro in which he claimed that his phone was likely going to be hacked, that he might have been killed coming into Israel, complained that he wasn't given a special interview with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who, like, why would he, considering that Tucker Carlson has essentially called him a genocidal war criminal, and then whined a lot.
00:36:39.000In any case, this interview has had some somewhat far-reaching implications on a wide variety of scores.
00:36:49.000It's a very aggressive interview that he did with Mike Huckabee, the United States ambassador under President Trump to Israel.
00:36:55.000Tucker issued a bit of slander when he suggested that Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, was on Epstein Island.
00:37:01.000He then had to issue an apology for saying that in an attempt, I assume, to cover his legal ass.
00:37:07.000Well, now we've received a long letter from President Herzog's office denying that he went to Epstein's Island.
00:37:15.000In fact, denying unequivocally that he had any contact with Epstein ever.
00:38:16.000And if you believe his honesty and transparency, then there is a very, very large bridge in Brooklyn that is apparently for sale.
00:38:23.000During this interview with Huckabee, Tucker retailed a bunch of specious theories up to and including he suggested that Jews should have to take a DNA test.
00:40:31.000He, of course, also made the claim, did Tucker too, Huckabee, that child soldiers, meaning like 16-year-old boys with an AK-47 pointing it at Israeli soldiers, because they're under, apparently you have to check their ID card when they're pointing a gun at you.
00:40:44.000Told me that 14-year-olds deserve to die because they're working for Hamas.
00:40:48.000My question is, can you hear yourself?
00:41:38.000Well, the other viral moment from this interview, and there are many.
00:41:41.000I mean, aside from the asking for the DNA tests for the Jews and all the rest of it.
00:41:46.000Tucker questioned Mike Huckabee about the Christian Zionist vision of the eschaton of biblical promises in the book of Genesis.
00:41:53.000And this made a bit of a splash because Tucker then cut this out of context to suggest that the Israelis are seeking to invade Syria and Iraq.
00:42:02.000I will explain in a moment why this is idiotic and also wildly dishonest because, of course, the full clip shows Huckabee then saying Israel has no desire to invade any of its neighbors and grab territory promised in the book of Genesis.
00:42:36.000But you're saying that the reason that Israel is illegitimate and has this inherent right to exist is in part because God gave it to his people.
00:42:45.000And I am going to the same Bible that you're referring to and noticing that that is a huge piece of land.
00:42:51.000So if God gave them that land, then they have a right to take it now by your definition, unless I'm missing something completely.
00:42:57.000You're missing something because they're not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.
00:43:14.000But may I ask, though, as because you're appealing, you're explaining what Christian Zionism is and your theological beliefs.
00:43:20.000And I think you just said it would be fine with you if the state of Israel took all of Jordan, all of Syria, all of Lebanon.
00:43:28.000That's that's really not exactly what I'm trying to say.
00:44:09.000Then there is the actual borders that Moses is commanded to have the children of Israel, the various tribes, conquer when he enters Israel.
00:44:18.000That appears in Numbers chapter 34, verses 1 through 15.
00:44:28.000Okay, now, what you may notice is actually smaller in the south than the current land of Israel and does not really extend into any of the areas that Tucker Carlson is talking about.
00:44:38.000So was Moses not fulfilling the biblical promise?
00:44:41.000Moses, is that the contention of Tucker Carlson here?
00:44:46.000The idea of the biblical promise is that Abraham is wedded to the land, but the core of the biblical promise is the area where the kingdom of David was, namely Judea, Samaria, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
00:45:02.000Those borders are largely mirrored in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 47, 13 through 30.
00:45:06.000But here's the thing: no matter what the biblical promise is, the question on the table from Christian Zionists is, and for I think anyone who is a biblically based Zionist, do Jews have an inherent biblical connection to the land of Israel?
00:45:22.000You can say, well, is it all the way to the Euphrates?
00:45:24.000And you can make the answer no, well, really, no, because they've never conquered that area.
00:45:30.000When you talk about does a country have a right to exist, first of all, this entire argument is really stupid because countries don't inherently have quote unquote rights to exist.
00:45:37.000They either create their own existence and effectuate their own existence or they don't.
00:45:43.000In the world of international politics, a polity that can defend itself, quote unquote, has a right to exist.
00:45:51.000A polity that can defend itself effectuates its own existence.
00:45:56.000The idea of some sort of adjudicatory body that determines a quote-unquote right to exist.
00:46:02.000I never see this applied to Saudi Arabia.
00:46:04.000I never see this applied to Syria as it is currently constituted or Iraq or Iran, all of whose borders were drawn after World War I during the same time period that the modern state of Israel was included in the Balfour Declaration.
00:46:16.000But of course, Tucker doesn't care about any of this.
00:46:18.000And by the way, one thing you will notice, Tucker has now interviewed a wide variety of Islamic leaders.
00:46:25.000Has he ever asked a single one of them about the Quranic promises of territorial domination?
00:46:48.000The whole shebang, New York, Chicago, LA, Tucker's cabin in Maine, all of it.
00:46:55.000Has he ever asked any of these people about the Islamic will to power and the promise that all the world shall indeed be Islamic?
00:47:04.000I mean, speaking of which, I mean, theoretically, if you're going to take this to the biblical context, it does say in the book of Philippians that every knee shall bow.
00:47:11.000So, does that mean that there is now a mandate for everyone to be forcibly converted to Christianity?
00:47:17.000I think there are very few Christians in the United States who believe that everyone should be forcibly converted to Christianity.
00:47:22.000When it comes to the complexities of biblical prophecy and actual effectuation of biblical morality, that is where human beings come in.
00:48:02.000So, why don't you give us the state of play with regard to the White House and Tucker Carlson?
00:48:05.000Obviously, Tucker has very warm relations with an enormous number of members of the administration, the president, very clearly, the vice president.
00:48:13.000What is that state of play right now in the White House with regard to Tucker Carlson?
00:48:17.000I think since the summer, there has been a steady con of call from a lot of the president's supporters saying, why is Tucker Carlson attacking more, you know, the majority of your supporters, Mr. President, who are pro-Israel, who supported Operation Midnight Hammer and generally think that, you know, you're doing the right things in the presidency, in your presidency when it comes to foreign policy.
00:48:40.000And for a long time, I think the White House was sort of like, well, we don't really want to get involved in this.
00:48:46.000He's going to do what he's going to do.
00:48:47.000But the calls have been getting louder and the critiques from Tucker Carlson have become, you know, kind of, he's been steadily up in the ante.
00:48:56.000And he's been, you know, talking about the Epstein files and how the government is hiding still more of them, even though they've released an unprecedented number of things that, in my view, probably should never have seen the light of day because they were like internal law enforcement investigative notes.
00:49:11.000But let's leaving all that aside, when it comes to Israel and particularly what Trump is trying to do now with Iran in trying to at least kind of engage in gunboat diplomacy and having a credible threat to unleash a military attack if they do not give up their nuclear and missile programs and their support for terrorism abroad, that it's become, from both a policy and political perspective, kind of an untenable situation.
00:49:37.000So what I'm reporting is that in January, Trump privately asked Tucker to just tone it down with the kind of internal MA Civil War stuff over Israel.
00:49:48.000And I think that Tucker has taken that seriously.
00:49:51.000He spoke with the nationalist conservative nationalist philosopher, writer Yoram Hazoni.
00:50:00.000He revealed those private conversations.
00:50:02.000Then Yoram Hazzoni posted on his ex account even more details.
00:50:07.000But basically, Tucker was like, all right, what do I need to do so people stop calling me anti-Semitic?
00:50:12.000And I think he also wanted to have a meeting, a private meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:50:16.000So that is the state of play right now.
00:50:19.000But I think there was a lot of hope in the White House, a lot of hope for people who support Trump that this interview with Ambassador Huckabee might be the beginning of a kind of way to sort of say, all right, we're through with this internal fighting.
00:50:31.000Instead, I would say it opened up a new front.
00:50:33.000It caused a minor diplomatic incident because Tucker Carlson's team put out a deceptively edited clip that made it seem like Ambassador Huckabee endorsed this notion that Israel was going to rule over the entire Middle East, which is not what he said.
00:50:49.000So if anything, I think it made it worse.
00:50:52.000And, you know, I've heard that they are meeting this week, if not today, in the White House, Tucker and the president.
00:51:05.000But I do think that there is more and more pressure on him to do so.
00:51:09.000I mean, I do wonder exactly how far Tucker Carlson would have to go in order for there to be some sort of distance drawn between the White House and Carlson, given the fact that, again, this was apparently, according to Melissa Francis, who basically brokered this interview between Tucker and Huckabee, she had said that the whole goal of this was to sort of find an off-ramp here to say, okay, we'll agree to disagree.
00:51:30.000We can both have legitimate points of view.
00:51:31.000And instead, Carlson came in, made a bunch of false, like overtly false allegations about what happened to him, for example, at the airport, proceeded to spew sort of a weird stew of conspiracy theory and false allegations, ranging from one that he actually had to come out and denounce himself.
00:51:48.000He claimed that Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, was on Epstein Island, which is clearly not true.
00:51:54.000And he actually had to back off it, I assume, under threat of lawsuit.
00:51:57.000He also made the claim that the Israeli security had to be assured, or he was seeking assurances that he wouldn't be shot down like an Iranian drone.
00:52:14.000He was asserting that Israel was behind the pressure campaign to launch the original Iraq war in 2003.
00:52:22.000And that's just not true because, I mean, Benjamin Nanyahu at the time was a private citizen.
00:52:27.000He testified before Congress that he was in favor of it.
00:52:30.000But the actual head of the Israeli state, Ariel Sharon, counseled privately for George W. Bush not to go into Iraq.
00:52:38.000And so there's a lot of kind of fake history and half-truths that are mixed in that he asserts as if these are facts and he is a truth-seeking journalist.
00:52:47.000I say at the end of my piece that he poses as a journalist on his show, but he's acting like a movement leader.
00:52:55.000And in that respect, he's much more of a kind of political animal than the charade that he puts out there that he's like, you know, just out there trying to get the story and everything else.
00:53:06.000And I would say that this is also about the future of the conservative movement, something you've done a lot, I think, to sort of stake out the higher ground here, which is where does this party go after Trump?
00:53:21.000And if it goes in the Tucker direction, I just think it's not only the end of the Republican Party politically, but it says something about the soul of the American right.
00:53:32.000It'll be interesting to see what sort of calculations are made, because I think that, as you say, there's sort of a political risk-reward game that is being played at very high levels.
00:53:41.000On the one hand, there are people who believe that if they alienate Tucker, they will lose a large chunk of his audience, or that Tucker may himself try to run for office and sort of lead a movement himself.
00:53:50.000And on the other hand, there is what I think is the reality, which is that once you get off of X, Tucker's views are not held even by a vast majority of people who listen to Tucker's show, which has been shown by some polling data.
00:54:00.000It'll be interesting to see how the White House plays it.
00:54:02.000Eli, thanks so much for your reporting.
00:54:03.000And you can check out Eli's work over at the Free Press.