The Charlie Kirk Show - Are Humans Good or Bad? — Part 2 with Tucker Carlson

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00:00:53.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:54.000 Here we go.

00:00:55.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:56.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:58.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:02.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks!

00:01:05.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:06.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:07.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

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00:01:53.000 So you mentioned the Iraq War, and you famously came out, you actually went to Iraq and saw it for yourself.

00:01:57.000 Yes.

00:01:58.000 And I might be misremembering this, but there was like some general that told you a story of a mom who died or something, is that correct?

00:02:04.000 Yeah, it was all so disgusting.

00:02:05.000 It was awful.

00:02:05.000 And then that was the beginning of kind of your eyes opening.

00:02:08.000 Yeah, I mean, like, look, I'm not an intellectual or particularly Wise person but I try to operate on the level of animal instinct to the extent that I can because I think it's probably a clearer guide to right and wrong than most and I remember just having a gut level revulsion as this

00:02:30.000 He may have been a full colonel, actually.

00:02:32.000 But anyway, he was an officer and I think the commanding officer at the time, where I was.

00:02:38.000 But I remember feeling this revulsion as he told me about this woman, this mother, who'd

00:02:43.000 had her legs blown off and then died that day in outside Baghdad.

00:02:48.000 And he was saying that this was just such a beautiful sacrifice for freedom or for America

00:02:51.000 or something.

00:02:52.000 And I just couldn't get...

00:02:53.000 And her husband was with her.

00:02:54.000 And her husband was there.

00:02:55.000 He was in country as well.

00:02:56.000 And I remember thinking, wait a second, are we allowed to send...

00:02:58.000 First of all, what's a woman doing getting her legs blown off? 1.00

00:03:00.000 Second, are we allowed to send a husband and a wife? 0.97

00:03:03.000 And where are the kids?

00:03:05.000 100%.

00:03:06.000 And I had three kids at the time.

00:03:07.000 It shouldn't be a loud period.

00:03:08.000 You can't put a whole family into a theater of war.

00:03:10.000 It's totally immoral.

00:03:11.000 And then I thought, wait a second, I thought we had a military and a police force, for that matter, in order to protect our women and children.

00:03:19.000 That was the whole point of it.

00:03:20.000 I mean, that's why we have a military, is to keep foreigners from hurting our women and children. 1.00

00:03:25.000 That's why we send men to die for their women, our women whom we revere and respect, to the extent we're willing to die for them.

00:03:33.000 And so if we're sending women to go fight our wars, First of all, that's not a liberation movement. 1.00

00:03:41.000 That's a kind of slavery, and it's totally wrong.

00:03:44.000 And so I said something like that to him, and he looked at me like I was a freak.

00:03:48.000 This was at a dinner, so I didn't really have time to think it through.

00:03:54.000 I still haven't fully thought it through, but I just remember thinking, that's disgusting. 0.87

00:03:58.000 It's like walking by a pile of human feces on the sidewalk. 0.76

00:04:01.000 You can explain it away.

00:04:02.000 There are no restrooms here.

00:04:04.000 It's like, no, that's on the sidewalk.

00:04:06.000 Like, I'm against that. 0.86

00:04:07.000 It's just disgusting.

00:04:07.000 I don't need to explain it, actually.

00:04:09.000 That's how I felt about that.

00:04:11.000 And I remember just feeling sick to my stomach.

00:04:14.000 And this guy's reaction to me was like, oh, I thought you were on our side. 0.98

00:04:18.000 Like, I hate you.

00:04:19.000 And I felt like looking at him, I was like, I don't know.

00:04:22.000 I know you have this, you know, this whole uniform on and all these insignia that I was raised to respect.

00:04:27.000 And I do respect.

00:04:28.000 I respect your service. 0.99

00:04:30.000 But I think you're disgusting. 1.00

00:04:31.000 And I think what you just said is evil. 1.00

00:04:33.000 And wow, it set off this chain reaction inside of me.

00:04:35.000 I didn't expect any of this at all.

00:04:39.000 And I've never kind of gotten over it, but it's informed how I feel about a lot of things.

00:04:42.000 Before the Iraq War, did you have any other moments where you started to think that the ruling class, the regime, the people that run the country are not up to the task?

00:04:51.000 Or was the Iraq War really the beginning of your questioning of the management of our country?

00:04:57.000 You know, it's so hard to know.

00:04:58.000 I mean, when the Iraq War broke out, I was 33.

00:05:00.000 I had three small kids, and I was working really hard to pay for everything.

00:05:06.000 So, you know, you're very distracted.

00:05:08.000 I know you know the feeling.

00:05:09.000 Yes, yeah.

00:05:09.000 We have two, and... It's really hard, you know?

00:05:11.000 And we're very blessed financially, and it's hard.

00:05:14.000 I mean, it's just... Yeah!

00:05:14.000 It's hard no matter what.

00:05:15.000 Yeah!

00:05:16.000 And I had grown up in affluent circumstances, but I didn't have any money.

00:05:20.000 So, you know, that's difficult right there.

00:05:23.000 Anyway, whatever, I had a lot on my mind, and I'd also grown up, like, right in the middle of all of this stuff.

00:05:27.000 And so, you know, you don't question the things that you grew up around quite as quickly as you question things you've never seen before.

00:05:34.000 And my dad worked for the government and was involved in all kinds of stuff, and I just never really thought about it.

00:05:43.000 I'll tell you this, just having lived in Washington and Georgetown as a kid and just being there really my whole life, I was never that impressed.

00:05:51.000 I mean, I thought there were smart, interesting people who'd lived in various countries and had a sophisticated view of the world, but I didn't think anyone was like a super genius.

00:05:58.000 It never occurred to me to be impressed by a college degree.

00:06:02.000 Part of the problem with Washington is you get a lot of people moving in from the provinces who are like head of...

00:06:07.000 elected a boy's state to something or did, you know, model UN and they're all sort of, 0.98

00:06:12.000 you know, the hyper first row in the classroom achievers and they get there and they're all

00:06:16.000 very impressed by credentials. Very impressed. And they show up and there's, you know, David

00:06:20.000 Ignatius at the Washington Post and like he knows how the Intel, the IC really operates.

00:06:25.000 He's the CIA spokesperson.

00:06:26.000 Of course he is. But the point, I mean, it's absurd. It's absurd. But they all fall for it.

00:06:31.000 I guess that's the point.

00:06:32.000 Or the Speaker of the House, who's like some probably sort of well-meaning, not very smart guy from Louisiana, all of a sudden becomes Speaker, and they pull him into the Sit Room, and he's texting, I'm in the Sit Room!

00:06:44.000 Like, he's so impressed by all this stuff.

00:06:47.000 And because he's impressed, he's so easily led and manipulated.

00:06:51.000 And so really the only advantage that I had was, I've just been around it, so it's like I'm not that impressed, you know, at all.

00:06:56.000 But it definitely was the Iraq War that got me thinking, A, this is not the kind of left-right divide that I thought it was, because I grew up during the Cold War, so it really was just left-right.

00:07:07.000 Yes.

00:07:08.000 And these categories had been much muddied in the 11 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and I didn't know that, and I learned that.

00:07:16.000 So it was Republicans collaborating or working with Democrats to do this thing.

00:07:21.000 That's the first thing.

00:07:23.000 I began to question, like, what is the point of this project, actually?

00:07:26.000 It doesn't seem to be helping the United States at all.

00:07:28.000 We don't seem like we're very good at this, at being an imperial power.

00:07:32.000 I'm not surprised.

00:07:33.000 I don't think most Americans want to be an imperial power.

00:07:35.000 They just want to be... And what are we sending out into the world?

00:07:38.000 Well, that's the other thing.

00:07:39.000 And that's, you know... It's not like Christianity or something. 0.95

00:07:42.000 We're sending out the LGBT agenda and abortion clinics in Ghana. 1.00

00:07:47.000 Right.

00:07:47.000 So, of course, it's an attack on Christianity.

00:07:49.000 Yes.

00:07:49.000 That's what it really is.

00:07:50.000 It's like we're spreading secular...

00:07:52.000 Thought into a hyper-religious country.

00:07:55.000 Like, that's not gonna work.

00:07:56.000 Well, sure.

00:07:56.000 I mean, our proxy state, the sort of clearest proxy state of the United States is Ukraine right now.

00:08:01.000 Yes.

00:08:02.000 And they've just declared war on Christianity in Ukraine.

00:08:05.000 They're putting priests and nuns in jail.

00:08:07.000 And so, actually, they just banned the Christian denomination, and we're paying for that. 0.99

00:08:11.000 So, I mean, that's kind of the clearest example of it.

00:08:14.000 But, you know, once you see it, you see it everywhere. 0.99

00:08:18.000 And I grieve for what I see because, you know, I grew up in such a different country with such different assumptions, and it's still not clear how many of my assumptions were just stupid—probably a lot of them. 0.84

00:08:28.000 And, you know, how much things have actually changed, I don't know, but I'm aware of it. 0.94

00:08:32.000 And, yeah, we're exporting attacks on Christianity. 0.94

00:08:37.000 And that's, of course, why, you know, the U.S.

00:08:40.000 government is so opposed to Hungary and Russia.

00:08:44.000 I mean, that's the main... You know, probably lots of things... You think, and I agree, the Ukraine-Russian war is deeper than just what they say it is.

00:08:50.000 It's actually... Well, it has nothing to do with what... I mean, they claim it's a war of liberation designed to help the Ukrainians... Or stop the new Hitler.

00:08:57.000 Well, of course, it's absurd.

00:08:59.000 And sure, if you wanted to help Ukraine, you probably wouldn't kill 600,000 Ukrainian men, would you?

00:09:05.000 You wouldn't change the law in Ukraine to allow foreign companies to buy their farmland, which Zelensky has done with the help of the US government.

00:09:14.000 And so no, Ukraine as it existed three years ago is gone.

00:09:18.000 In 10 years, Ukraine will not be owned by Ukrainians, and there won't be Ukrainians living there. 0.96

00:09:22.000 It'll be populated by people from outside Ukraine.

00:09:24.000 So historic Ukraine is over, destroyed by the United States.

00:09:27.000 That's a fact.

00:09:27.000 It's not by Russia.

00:09:28.000 That's a tragedy.

00:09:28.000 Well, it's unbelievable.

00:09:30.000 So the two things that comprise a country, of course, are the people and the land.

00:09:33.000 And if both of them get taken away, one way or another, then you don't have that country anymore.

00:09:38.000 And that's exactly what's happening in Ukraine.

00:09:40.000 And I had a very interesting... I've been trying for the past two years to get a Zelensky interview.

00:09:45.000 And really, really trying hard, much harder than... Good faith trying, yes.

00:09:49.000 Oh yeah, I want to interview Zelensky.

00:09:51.000 By the way, I kind of feel sorry for Zelensky.

00:09:53.000 I don't think he's the root of all problems in Ukraine.

00:09:55.000 It's much more complicated than that.

00:09:57.000 I'm not for Zelensky, but I also don't think that it's all him.

00:10:00.000 I don't think he's really in charge of a lot of things.

00:10:02.000 He's just a surrogate.

00:10:03.000 For sure.

00:10:04.000 But anyway, during the course of these sort of endless negotiations, which are still ongoing to get this interview, I had dinner maybe six weeks ago with a Zelensky ally who came to an American city.

00:10:14.000 I flew there and met him.

00:10:15.000 He was a totally reasonable guy.

00:10:17.000 You know, a lot of Ukrainians, when you meet them, are great people, actually.

00:10:20.000 And this guy was Christian, a patriot, mad at—he doesn't want foreign troops on his soil. 0.93

00:10:25.000 I get it, you know, completely.

00:10:28.000 And he was mad because I had called Zelensky some... A bitty foreigner in a t-shirt?

00:10:33.000 Yeah, dwarf in a tracksuit.

00:10:34.000 I've been, you know, characteristically nasty, which I shouldn't have been, but I was because I can't control myself.

00:10:38.000 I think it's hilarious.

00:10:39.000 Yeah, well, Zelensky didn't like it and he's like, Zelensky's mad that you called him a dwarf in a tracksuit or something.

00:10:43.000 And I said, okay, sorry.

00:10:45.000 I shouldn't have said that.

00:10:45.000 I agree.

00:10:47.000 However...

00:10:48.000 Here's my view of what he's allowing to happen to your country.

00:10:52.000 Your population is being killed, it won't be replaced by Ukrainians, and your actual land, physical Ukraine, is about to be sold off. 1.00

00:11:02.000 To Blackrock.

00:11:04.000 100%.

00:11:04.000 You're not going to own the farmland, the mineral resources, the energy, and it won't be populated by Ukrainians.

00:11:11.000 You think they're not going to move the third world into Ukraine? 0.98

00:11:14.000 Oh, they can't wait to do that.

00:11:15.000 Yes.

00:11:16.000 And he looks me right in the face and goes, I know.

00:11:18.000 And it was one of those moments where you really just felt the tragedy of the situation.

00:11:22.000 I mean, here's a guy, you know, whatever, I have a lot of views on the war in Ukraine,

00:11:26.000 but I certainly felt for this man.

00:11:27.000 You know, I think his motives were pure.

00:11:29.000 He's from Ukraine and he knows that he has lost his country. 1.00

00:11:33.000 So the U.S. State Department, the Biden administration, the U.S. Congress, morons like Speaker Mike 0.99

00:11:38.000 Johnson made that possible. 0.97

00:11:41.000 So you can lecture me for hours about your motives or your intent, but at a certain point I get to judge the effects of what you've done.

00:11:50.000 You can say you're a great dad, but if all your kids are in prison or rehab, I'm saying you're not a great dad, actually, because I judge the tree by its fruits.

00:11:56.000 It's really simple.

00:11:57.000 And so Mike Johnson and the rest of them, all the completely corrupted Republican committee chairs, the entire Democratic Party, and the American business community have destroyed Ukraine.

00:12:11.000 They've destroyed Ukraine. 0.99

00:12:12.000 And by the way, they triggered this war on purpose. 0.50

00:12:15.000 Kamala Harris played a big role in that.

00:12:17.000 Kamala Harris was the pivot point. 0.85

00:12:19.000 That's exactly right. 0.99

00:12:20.000 You send the biggest moron we can to read a teleprompter saying Ukraine's going to join NATO. 1.00

00:12:24.000 You're basically— On camera! 1.00

00:12:27.000 On camera, when Russia has said— And she doesn't know what she's talking about.

00:12:29.000 I mean, of course not.

00:12:30.000 Look, Russia is a separate country.

00:12:32.000 It's not the United States. 0.52

00:12:33.000 It acts in its own interests.

00:12:36.000 Not all of which align with our interests.

00:12:37.000 I get it.

00:12:37.000 I mean, that's the nature of countries.

00:12:39.000 They're separate countries.

00:12:41.000 They're sovereign, or they're supposed to be anyway.

00:12:43.000 And so, yeah, Russia didn't want American missiles on its western border.

00:12:48.000 I get it.

00:12:49.000 And we knew that.

00:12:50.000 Any reasonable person acknowledges that.

00:12:53.000 And there's no reason to have Ukraine in NATO.

00:12:55.000 There's no reason to have NATO in the first place.

00:12:58.000 NATO is very bad for the United States, it's very bad for the rest of the world, it's not a force for good at all, and we all have to pretend that it is. 0.82

00:13:05.000 Why do you say that?

00:13:06.000 Why is it not a force for good?

00:13:07.000 Well, because NATO is much more than a military alliance, actually.

00:13:12.000 So the idea behind NATO, of course, was that Western Europe faces the threat of invasion by the Soviets.

00:13:19.000 You know, probably true.

00:13:21.000 And so you want a collective security agreement to prevent that from happening.

00:13:23.000 Article 4, right?

00:13:24.000 Article 5?

00:13:25.000 Yep, exactly.

00:13:26.000 Get it.

00:13:26.000 And so the whole structure was designed to keep the West in America's sphere of influence, and I supported that unthinkingly really up until 2016 when I was forced to think about it, when Trump started talking about it, and I'd never thought about it ever.

00:13:39.000 I'm like, Dad, work with NATO.

00:13:40.000 I was like, yeah, NATO, great.

00:13:42.000 And then you have to ask questions like, well, okay, so the Soviet Union hasn't existed since the summer of 1991, so what is the point of NATO now?

00:13:48.000 And no one can answer that question.

00:13:50.000 And so the point is to contain Russia, I guess, but Russia is not expansionist, actually.

00:13:56.000 It's the largest country in the world.

00:13:58.000 It's very hard to run Russia.

00:14:00.000 Very complicated country.

00:14:01.000 12 time zones or something, right, yeah.

00:14:03.000 20% Muslim, multi-ethnic.

00:14:06.000 Yeah, it's really hard to run Russia.

00:14:07.000 They don't want Poland. 1.00

00:14:08.000 What would they do with Poland, right? 1.00

00:14:09.000 So it's also silly, but we're told these lies because the people who benefit from the existence of NATO want to keep NATO going, which is very expensive.

00:14:19.000 And it's also kind of productive to our, I would say, to our prosperity and our freedom here in the United States.

00:14:24.000 But what NATO actually is, is a way to project American cultural values across Eastern Europe.

00:14:29.000 And Eastern Europe is a huge problem because it's Christian and it's anti-communist. 1.00

00:14:33.000 Having spent 40 years under the Soviet jackboot, they're like against a lot of the priorities of Washington's permanent class, you know? 0.99

00:14:41.000 And they're very Christian in a way that the rest of Europe is not. 0.95

00:14:45.000 And so if that's a threat to you for whatever reason, if you hate Christianity, which they do above all, then you're gonna use NATO as a way to influence the domestic policies of those Eastern European countries, particularly Romania. 0.63

00:14:59.000 Belarus.

00:15:00.000 Yeah, but... Hungary, yeah.

00:15:02.000 Well, I mean, Hungary and Romania are part of NATO, right?

00:15:05.000 Right.

00:15:05.000 You know, Belarus is very much in the Russian sphere.

00:15:07.000 But anyway, but the point is, NATO is not... there's no collective security necessary.

00:15:13.000 Like, what?

00:15:14.000 Against what?

00:15:14.000 I mean, is there evidence that Putin is planning to invade Germany?

00:15:20.000 And if there is, tell me what it is. 1.00

00:15:22.000 That's like absurd, and how stupid do you think I am? 0.95

00:15:25.000 If you distill it down, you go to Brookings, Hudson, any one of these neoconservative think tanks, and you get them, they've been in this space for 50 years, PhDs, they will all eventually, if you distill them down, well, what are you going to do if Putin rolls tanks through Paris? 0.99

00:15:41.000 Yeah, okay.

00:15:41.000 And that's where it goes, like immediately.

00:15:44.000 But you're like a child if you're saying that, or more to the point, you think I'm a child if you think I would believe something like that, because it's absurd.

00:15:52.000 And by the way, the rest of the world laughs, actually.

00:15:55.000 So the main problem of the Soviet Union, from my perspective, you know, it was anti-markets, it was anti-Christian. 0.74

00:16:00.000 That's enough for me right there.

00:16:01.000 It was also anti-human in so many ways.

00:16:03.000 It was anti-human.

00:16:03.000 It really was.

00:16:04.000 And the way that you knew that it was anti-human is because it was a purveyor of chaos.

00:16:09.000 And chaos is the marker for evil.

00:16:12.000 God brings what out of chaos?

00:16:14.000 Order.

00:16:15.000 Exactly.

00:16:16.000 And so anybody who is spreading chaos in any sphere, including within the home, it doesn't matter.

00:16:22.000 Like if I'm spreading chaos in my house, wherever, I am acting on behalf of evil.

00:16:27.000 So that's just like the clearest sign of it.

00:16:28.000 And the Soviets, boy, they specialized in exporting chaos from the earliest days post-revolution with the Comintern, whose whole sort of mission was to spread revolution First in Germany and then throughout the world were not 0.93

00:16:41.000 successful, but they certainly destabilized a ton of countries.

00:16:44.000 The poorer the country, the longer it remained destabilized.

00:16:47.000 Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, like they, you know, there are many, many, many countries

00:16:51.000 the Soviets worked to destabilize.

00:16:53.000 But that was the main problem with the Soviets. 0.82

00:16:55.000 They exported chaos.

00:16:57.000 And so if you're on...

00:16:58.000 And this was the sort of turning point for me from seeing the Iraq War firsthand was

00:17:03.000 that we had taken control of Iraq in March of 2003, but not brought order.

00:17:09.000 There had been a kind of order in Iraq, not for Saddam.

00:17:11.000 It's a very difficult country to govern, by the way.

00:17:13.000 One hundred percent.

00:17:14.000 Right.

00:17:14.000 There was no appreciation of that, because when you think you're God, you know that your will is going to be done.

00:17:18.000 It's not exactly easy to—yeah.

00:17:21.000 You're exactly right.

00:17:23.000 The thing that turned my view, really, was seeing the fact that the United States had defeated the Iraqi army, but there was no order there.

00:17:32.000 I got there in December of 2003, the day Saddam was captured.

00:17:35.000 It got worse.

00:17:36.000 Oh, it was completely chaotic.

00:17:37.000 Like, actually chaotic.

00:17:38.000 At the neighborhood, block by block level.

00:17:40.000 Rapes went up, arsons, kidnappings.

00:17:41.000 It was terrible.

00:17:42.000 People would fire automatic weapons.

00:17:43.000 I mean, I saw it, including at the house I was staying in.

00:17:46.000 Fire automatic weapons, like thousands of rounds of 7.62x39.

00:17:49.000 You know, kind of a big...

00:17:52.000 Fairly big round for a residential neighborhood.

00:17:55.000 And then sort of like no one would follow up, there was no police, there was no U.S.

00:17:59.000 military or State Department presence to be like, what was that?

00:18:01.000 Who's firing all this?

00:18:02.000 Is anyone hurt?

00:18:04.000 It was pure chaos.

00:18:06.000 And I remember thinking, wow, we brought chaos.

00:18:10.000 I brought chaos.

00:18:11.000 I'm an American.

00:18:12.000 I advocated this.

00:18:12.000 When the British Empire used to come in, they brought order.

00:18:15.000 Yes.

00:18:16.000 The places they came in contact with.

00:18:18.000 If you want to know, am I doing a good job?

00:18:21.000 Because it's a binary.

00:18:22.000 Am I serving evil or am I serving good?

00:18:23.000 And all of us serve both at various times, obviously.

00:18:27.000 But if you want to know about the success of a project, ask yourself one simple question.

00:18:31.000 Are things more orderly or are they more chaotic?

00:18:35.000 Chaos is totally intolerable.

00:18:36.000 People cannot deal with chaos.

00:18:37.000 They will choose tyranny any day over chaos.

00:18:40.000 The human brain can't deal with it.

00:18:44.000 It's totally intolerant of chaos.

00:18:46.000 So we brought chaos, and I think the same is true now.

00:18:50.000 And I am so sad about that.

00:18:52.000 You know, there are some people who love to beat up on the United States or the Biden administration.

00:18:57.000 I don't.

00:18:57.000 I feel sad about it.

00:18:58.000 I am not a boomer, but I am boomer adjacent.

00:19:02.000 I was born five years after the end of the baby boom.

00:19:05.000 But you know, some of their attitudes I sort of grew up with, and one of them is the United States is a force for good in the world, and we're a better place than other places.

00:19:12.000 We are a special country.

00:19:14.000 And to see our government acting in a way that's the opposite of that, it bums me out.

00:19:19.000 It does not bring me joy to point that out at all.

00:19:21.000 It makes me very down.

00:19:23.000 But I see it everywhere, and I travel a lot internationally.

00:19:26.000 I have in the West.

00:19:27.000 Since I got fired, I've been on the road out of the country a lot, months and months and months out of the country.

00:19:31.000 So interesting.

00:19:32.000 I've really learned so much.

00:19:34.000 But that's one thing I've learned, is the rest of the world sees the United States in its current form as a force for chaos, a destabilizing force.

00:19:41.000 And there's nothing more unpopular than that.

00:19:43.000 There's nothing more resented than that, and there's nothing more destructive than that.

00:19:45.000 So I hope we can change course.

00:19:46.000 And the other thing I would, in one sentence, say, the thing that Americans don't understand is that our foreign policy does not exist in a separate sphere from our domestic policy.

00:19:57.000 Our foreign policy drives our domestic policy.

00:20:00.000 No one in charge in Washington, and I am an expert on this because I know them, they're not interested in domestic policy.

00:20:05.000 There's no effort to cure homelessness or fix the fentanyl crisis.

00:20:10.000 No, they don't care.

00:20:11.000 Immigration.

00:20:12.000 They don't care.

00:20:13.000 They're just not interested at all.

00:20:14.000 What they're interested in is the projection of American power, their power, abroad.

00:20:18.000 But why is that?

00:20:21.000 Because— Read me into the psyche of who these people—because it's

00:20:24.000 so foreign to our audience.

00:20:25.000 They don't understand.

00:20:26.000 They just aren't interested in it.

00:20:28.000 And the psychology is really simple.

00:20:30.000 I mean, you have a lot of well-meaning, kind of limited people showing up in Washington

00:20:36.000 every election cycle to the Congress.

00:20:39.000 And they've been elected from some district, and I think most of them kind of want to do the right thing, and they sort of know why they were elected.

00:20:44.000 And they get there, and they realize, I can't do any of this.

00:20:47.000 I can't do any of this.

00:20:48.000 I can't achieve any of this.

00:20:49.000 How do you fix these problems?

00:20:50.000 How do you fix the debt?

00:20:52.000 It's really complicated.

00:20:53.000 How do you fix immigration? 0.94

00:20:56.000 I mean, there are a few, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's just like monomaniacally focused on the task. 1.00

00:21:00.000 She's hated and resented for that.

00:21:02.000 But most of them are just like, oh, I can't deal with this.

00:21:04.000 So what can I do?

00:21:07.000 Well, I can't, you know, I can't fix Union Station in DC directly across the street from my office.

00:21:13.000 That, you know, I can't clean up the men's rooms there or keep the people dying of drug ODs out of the hallways. 0.60

00:21:20.000 But, you know, I probably could overthrow Putin if I tried hard enough.

00:21:24.000 And that's something I can do.

00:21:26.000 I can feel useful, competent, powerful.

00:21:29.000 These are the things, of course, that every man wants to feel above all.

00:21:32.000 Useful, competent, powerful.

00:21:33.000 And I can achieve that abroad.

00:21:35.000 And I don't need to trouble myself with the details.

00:21:38.000 I don't speak Russian.

00:21:39.000 I don't speak Ukrainian.

00:21:40.000 I don't speak Chinese.

00:21:41.000 I don't really know.

00:21:42.000 It's almost like some natural disaster in Bangladesh. 1.00

00:21:45.000 Like, I don't know.

00:21:47.000 Just tell me the death toll.

00:21:47.000 That's all I need.

00:21:48.000 I don't know the town it happened in.

00:21:49.000 I don't know.

00:21:50.000 I don't need to bother myself with all the details because they don't matter.

00:21:54.000 All I need to do is convince myself that I'm working on behalf of freedom and goodness, and I can feel like a hero.

00:21:59.000 I mean, I had dinner the other night—not the other night—at the Republican convention with this Republican senator who I've known.

00:22:04.000 He's a perfectly nice man.

00:22:07.000 Probably 105 IQ or something.

00:22:10.000 You know, sort of like above average, but barely.

00:22:13.000 And, you know, kind of, you know, thin and fit in his early 60s.

00:22:16.000 He was a perfectly nice person.

00:22:19.000 And, well, that's what he was when he was elected.

00:22:21.000 I knew him then.

00:22:22.000 And I was amazed by what a pompous sort of bore he'd become.

00:22:28.000 And he literally looked at me at dinner with his wife sitting right there and goes, you know, my national security team.

00:22:35.000 My national security team?

00:22:36.000 Really? 1.00

00:22:37.000 Like, you're a senator, like you're an idiot. 1.00

00:22:39.000 No, he's not an idiot. 1.00

00:22:41.000 But I mean, you're not, like, you don't speak any of the languages in these countries you're 0.98

00:22:45.000 trying to control.

00:22:46.000 You don't know anything about the countries at all.

00:22:48.000 You don't read the books, you don't know the music.

00:22:49.000 You don't know anything, and yet you imagine that.

00:22:51.000 What was he saying?

00:22:52.000 Like, my national security team says that.

00:22:54.000 He was just dropping it.

00:22:55.000 Like, I was in Paris recently with my national security team.

00:22:58.000 I was in Paris, he said.

00:22:59.000 That's almost exactly what he said.

00:23:00.000 He said, I was in Paris.

00:23:01.000 And his wife's like, we're in Paris.

00:23:02.000 In Paris, you know, working with the IC over there.

00:23:05.000 And my national security team called me, and I was like, is this real?

00:23:10.000 Like, are you being serious?

00:23:11.000 You're a United States senator, you know?

00:23:13.000 Like, actually, you don't have any power at all.

00:23:16.000 You're not in—really, do you have an army?

00:23:17.000 I don't think you do.

00:23:18.000 Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

00:23:20.000 No.

00:23:20.000 And he just loved the trappings of it, and it made him feel like a significant figure in history.

00:23:25.000 And here I'm judging and being mean.

00:23:27.000 But that is sort of what everyone... No, but none of these people... That's what everyone wants, though.

00:23:30.000 You want to feel like your life matters, you know?

00:23:32.000 They're part of a small group of people that will determine the future of the civilization.

00:23:35.000 Yeah.

00:23:36.000 So what you're getting back is their incentive is, I want to feel important?

00:23:41.000 Oh, 100%.

00:23:41.000 Well, that's... So this is student council running the country.

00:23:45.000 Yeah, but it's also human nature.

00:23:46.000 Like, we're all sort of like that, you know?

00:23:48.000 At some point you realize, I mean, it is...

00:23:53.000 You're the Bible scholar, but is it Ecclesiastes?

00:23:57.000 I think it is.

00:23:58.000 By Solomon?

00:23:59.000 By what?

00:24:00.000 Ecclesiastes, the book.

00:24:01.000 Yes, correct.

00:24:03.000 One of the two books written by Solomon.

00:24:05.000 What is all this?

00:24:06.000 The first line was, this is all meaningless, it's a meaningless God, it's all meaningless.

00:24:09.000 What a depressing book.

00:24:10.000 No, it literally opens up like it's a suicidal 17-year-old goth.

00:24:14.000 No, it totally is!

00:24:15.000 Like, meaningless, meaningless, all that is meaningless.

00:24:18.000 It's Ecclesiastes 1, and you're like, what is this?

00:24:21.000 You've probably read it like 10 times and understand its deeper meaning.

00:24:24.000 It actually gets better because he says, with God, there actually is meaning.

00:24:27.000 No, that's right, and I've read it precisely one time sitting at home.

00:24:31.000 And in the context, Solomon had all the women he wanted, all the trappings, all the splendor, and he's like, it's all meaningless.

00:24:36.000 But that is kind of, that is exactly, that is the one thing that I, not that I have all the women and all the money or whatever, but like you do reach an age in life where you're like, okay, you know, I've achieved all my dumb little goals that I set out for myself.

00:24:46.000 And they're all very small bore, because they always are.

00:24:49.000 And okay, was that worth it?

00:24:54.000 Was the prize worth winning?

00:24:55.000 Did that bring me joy and fulfillment and knowledge of eternal life?

00:25:02.000 No.

00:25:03.000 And so I do think that is very common.

00:25:06.000 That's almost universal.

00:25:07.000 among middle-aged men who run by and large the US government.

00:25:12.000 And so it's a very natural temptation to be like, you know, what can I achieve?

00:25:16.000 Like you saw this with John McCain.

00:25:18.000 Oh my goodness.

00:25:18.000 Everyone hates John McCain.

00:25:20.000 And I think John McCain was one of the most destructive people like in American political history.

00:25:24.000 But I'll just be totally honest, having spent a lot of time with John McCain,

00:25:29.000 He was totally charming.

00:25:30.000 Very, very charming.

00:25:31.000 So charming in person, on the road I traveled with him for a year.

00:25:34.000 Yeah, you did his campaign, right?

00:25:35.000 Yeah, yeah!

00:25:36.000 And I just, I really enjoyed McCain.

00:25:38.000 He had this, like, he had wonderful manners, for example.

00:25:41.000 Sort of old-school, Episcopalian manners.

00:25:44.000 And he was hilarious.

00:25:46.000 But then, in retrospect, I look back and I'm like, John McCain really hurt the United States in a really serious way.

00:25:50.000 And other countries, too.

00:25:51.000 And I don't mean to upset his hysterical daughter by saying this, or her bizarro husband, but it's just true.

00:25:58.000 And he did, and why did he do that?

00:26:00.000 I don't think he was an evil person, not that I ever noticed, but because he wanted to feel

00:26:05.000 like his life had meaning and like what he couldn't achieve in the United States, he

00:26:09.000 achieved nothing in the United States.

00:26:10.000 He didn't improve the standard of living in the United States at all, he didn't even try,

00:26:14.000 but he could tell himself, well, you know, I freed people in some faraway land and that

00:26:20.000 was really important to him.

00:26:21.000 That was so – I mean that was the driving – Lindsey Graham, same thing.

00:26:24.000 You see in him the gleam of the zealot in his eye, and you're like, what is that?

00:26:31.000 And obviously, he's got a very barren, sad personal life, which everyone makes fun of, including me, and I shouldn't.

00:26:37.000 But the truth is, it's a human desire to feel like my life had consequence.

00:26:42.000 I did something.

00:26:43.000 I made things a little bit better.

00:26:45.000 And they've shifted all of that energy overseas, and because they have, their foreign policy aims absolutely dictate their domestic policy.

00:26:55.000 That's the most profound point of the whole thing.

00:26:58.000 That the IC, the intelligence community, all that, that determines what happens domestically.

00:27:04.000 DC is far more focused about the abstractions abroad than the immediate concerns.

00:27:10.000 But we should have seen it coming!

00:27:13.000 And I should have seen it coming because, I mean, boy, it was way up in my face as a child, as the son of someone who worked for the U.S.

00:27:19.000 government during the Cold War, doing Cold War stuff.

00:27:22.000 You know, the U.S.

00:27:23.000 government used anti-democratic means to protect democracy abroad again and again and again and again.

00:27:30.000 Every two years.

00:27:31.000 And I never thought about that one time.

00:27:33.000 I never thought, hmm.

00:27:35.000 Because it seemed justified, because the Soviet Union was so evil, and I still believe that. 1.00

00:27:38.000 It was.

00:27:39.000 And I was disgusted by how liberals in the United States defended them relentlessly for 70 years.

00:27:45.000 But leaving that aside, I was so caught up in that that I never paused to ask myself,

00:27:50.000 well, wait a second, is there a kind of very obvious moral rot involved here?

00:27:56.000 If we're overthrowing people, democratically elected leaders, to make the world safe for democracy... Like in Iran. 0.93

00:28:04.000 It is like shooting people to save them.

00:28:06.000 Is it not?

00:28:07.000 I mean, it is.

00:28:08.000 That's exactly what it is.

00:28:09.000 It's murdering people in order to save their lives.

00:28:11.000 Like, it's insane.

00:28:12.000 It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:28:14.000 And in the long run, it corrupts the person who does it completely.

00:28:18.000 And it has corrupted our leadership class.

00:28:20.000 The things they've done abroad have changed the way they feel about the United States, its citizens, and have changed the rules for what they can do to us.

00:28:29.000 I think you're pinpointing, you've said this before but it's worth repeating, they hate Trump because of his foreign policy far more than his domestic policy.

00:28:36.000 Of course.

00:28:36.000 Bill Kristol was saying publicly at the time, and I don't mean to even bring up Bill Kristol because he's not...

00:28:42.000 He's not a player anymore.

00:28:44.000 No, of course he's not.

00:28:45.000 But it's just, because I worked for him for so long and I knew him so well, I do think he's sort of a gauge of how permanent Washington feels about things. 0.77

00:28:55.000 And Christo was saying in public, right up until that famous debate in South Carolina about Trump, you know, he's kind of a buffoon, but he could be our buffoon, and maybe we can ride this to power again in Washington over Hillary.

00:29:08.000 This was in 2016. 0.55

00:29:11.000 This has been much noted by people smarter than I, but the second Trump went after the Iraq war, on a core level, like that was not a good idea from day one.

00:29:18.000 When he said that, that was it.

00:29:20.000 And yeah, foreign policy is what they really care about.

00:29:24.000 And it's just a tragedy, but it is the end result of really kind of 80 years of corruption that all of us, very much including me, should have noticed at the time and called out at the time.

00:29:37.000 And we didn't, I didn't.

00:29:38.000 And again, this is like something to remember about life.

00:29:40.000 It's like you can get so focused on what you're fighting against that you fail to honestly assess what you're fighting for and the way that you're fighting for it.

00:29:49.000 And I think it's very important to be honest about our own behavior and to take, you know, relentlessly clear-eyed stock of ourselves.

00:29:59.000 All the time.

00:30:00.000 All the time.

00:30:00.000 Like, I can say, you know, it's easy to be against bad things.

00:30:03.000 You see this in diesel all the time. 0.61

00:30:05.000 But Putin, he's bad! 0.94

00:30:06.000 Hitler's bad! 1.00

00:30:07.000 Great!

00:30:08.000 Okay?

00:30:09.000 But let's talk about you for a minute.

00:30:11.000 Are you good?

00:30:12.000 Are you bad?

00:30:13.000 What exactly are you doing?

00:30:14.000 Putin, bad!

00:30:14.000 What are your aims?

00:30:15.000 Great!

00:30:16.000 Got it.

00:30:16.000 Putin, bad.

00:30:18.000 Message received.

00:30:19.000 But let's talk about you, my leader, for a moment. 1.00

00:30:21.000 Shut up! 1.00

00:30:22.000 Putin bad! 1.00

00:30:23.000 And I think all of us are like that to some extent.

00:30:25.000 I know that I was.

00:30:26.000 Saddam Hussein bad? 0.95

00:30:27.000 Yeah, okay.

00:30:28.000 That's an easy call, I guess.

00:30:30.000 I don't even care actually, but whatever at the time, I was like, he's bad, okay.

00:30:30.000 I guess?

00:30:35.000 He gassed the Kurds, okay. 0.99

00:30:36.000 But how are we responding to it?

00:30:39.000 What I can control is me, to some extent my country, what's done in my name with my money.

00:30:44.000 And we all, I, fell down on the job and did not do that because we were so focused.

00:30:48.000 And I just think this is a recurring problem in human affairs.

00:30:52.000 Are you encouraged at least some of the American right is waking up from this neoconservative spell?

00:30:57.000 That we've made some progress?

00:30:59.000 Well, yeah, and I've been... With J.D.

00:31:00.000 Vance being the VP with... Yes, and I've been reminded of that in the last 24 hours.

00:31:05.000 I did this interview with the guy who seemed totally reasonable and moderate to me and wasn't saying anything crazy.

00:31:11.000 Daryl Cooper?

00:31:11.000 Daryl Cooper, yeah.

00:31:13.000 Really nice man and a very moderate man.

00:31:15.000 I had dinner with him the night before for like five hours and just talked about history and all.

00:31:19.000 Not that much about the Second World War, actually, but other things.

00:31:22.000 My read on him was he's not a hater, that's for sure, and he's like a reasonable guy, and maybe you disagree with him, but... okay, you know?

00:31:29.000 Um, that's okay.

00:31:30.000 We're each allowed to have our own... That's kind of where I'm... I don't know if I, like, I don't think I agree with a lot of it.

00:31:33.000 It's fine!

00:31:34.000 I mean, I agree with... Well, I'll just say for the record, what I agree with is...

00:31:38.000 The UK is a disaster.

00:31:40.000 Truly... Your analysis of how the UK has become a husk of its former self.

00:31:43.000 Yes, and a disappearing country, and disappearing people, and they're done.

00:31:48.000 And I'm not just saying this because I'm half-English, which I'm not proud of, but I am, and it has nothing to do with that, actually.

00:31:53.000 It just has to do with, this was an amazing country, and now it's a disgusting country, and how did that happen?

00:32:00.000 And if Churchill was such a great leader, how, 80 years later, is his country basically gone?

00:32:05.000 And I think it's important to understand how that happened.

00:32:07.000 And someone should have to answer for that.

00:32:09.000 I totally agree.

00:32:10.000 So, but whatever conclusions you reach... I was amazed in the last 24 hours, you know, you platform... I had Seth Dillon from the Babylon Bee, who's like some anti-woke guy, I guess, text me, I can't believe you platformed him!

00:32:25.000 Platformed?

00:32:25.000 You mean talk to him?

00:32:28.000 I thought you were the anti-woke guy.

00:32:30.000 But anyway, people are very upset.

00:32:33.000 And look, it's okay to be upset about a difference of opinion.

00:32:36.000 I totally get it.

00:32:37.000 I'm frequently upset about differences of opinion.

00:32:39.000 But I can't help but detect in the hysteria over all of this, trying to turn Daryl Cooper, maybe he's got eccentric views or not, but into some sort of a Nazi?

00:32:51.000 And me into a platformer of Nazis? 0.63

00:32:53.000 I detect in that something much bigger, which is a kind of Desperate, hysterical attempt to hold on to certain ideas or founding myths, some of which may be worth holding on to or not or whatever, I'm agnostic.

00:33:07.000 And mythologies can be important, as astutely pointed.

00:33:10.000 I totally agree.

00:33:11.000 Blake Neff made that point, whom I love.

00:33:14.000 Blake's amazing.

00:33:15.000 I totally agree.

00:33:16.000 He made that point to me last night.

00:33:18.000 All societies are founded on myths.

00:33:21.000 And it's important to have a founding method.

00:33:23.000 Maybe this isn't the worst one.

00:33:24.000 I think that's a great point, and he may be absolutely right.

00:33:27.000 But a confident society, a confident ruling class, would be able to explain that in the way that he did, non-hysterically, rationally.

00:33:36.000 And that's not what we're seeing at all.

00:33:38.000 We're seeing people, like, losing control.

00:33:40.000 And I think that is sort of the point of it.

00:33:41.000 They are losing control.

00:33:42.000 For those that didn't listen to the episode quickly, what was the synthesis, would you say?

00:33:47.000 Synthesis was, well, we talked about all kinds of different things.

00:33:51.000 Yes, Jonestown cult, which was something else.

00:33:53.000 The sadness of modern Britain, the destruction of Ireland, which is really a fixation for me, because it's just so bizarre.

00:33:53.000 Completely.

00:33:59.000 Hungary, right.

00:34:01.000 Why would you want to destroy Ireland?

00:34:02.000 What did they do wrong?

00:34:03.000 You know, replace what people want from Ireland? 0.95

00:34:05.000 Have they not suffered enough?

00:34:06.000 I mean... Well, kind of.

00:34:07.000 They were never an imperial power.

00:34:08.000 It's all very weird.

00:34:09.000 But anyway, and it's worth talking about.

00:34:11.000 But, no, Darryl Cooper said, I think the villain of the Second World War period was Churchill.

00:34:21.000 Which is a provocative thing to say for sure, but I don't know.

00:34:25.000 Tell me more.

00:34:25.000 Why do you think that?

00:34:27.000 And his point was, look, there was this regional conflict underway.

00:34:31.000 Germany was pissed about the concessions that it was forced to make under the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, and they wanted their land back and their population, German-speaking, ethnic German population in all these different countries.

00:34:42.000 And so it was a regional conflict, and you can take either side of that, or no side, or whatever, but it was effectively a regional conflict, and Churchill forced it into what it became, which was a global war in which tens of millions of people died.

00:34:55.000 That's his position.

00:34:57.000 Okay.

00:34:57.000 I mean, I think that's a defensible position.

00:35:00.000 It may be a wrong position.

00:35:01.000 I don't think that's, like, crazy.

00:35:04.000 It certainly doesn't justify the hysteria that it provoked, in my opinion.

00:35:11.000 And so the question is, well, why did it provoke that hysteria?

00:35:12.000 That was going to be my question.

00:35:13.000 Because, again, I don't get that much emotion about it.

00:35:15.000 I don't think I agree with that.

00:35:16.000 I agree.

00:35:17.000 But I'm not an expert.

00:35:18.000 I'm not a historian.

00:35:19.000 But it's okay!

00:35:19.000 But also, it doesn't get me screaming, right?

00:35:21.000 So I guess I would ask, which is more dangerous, living in a society where people have all kinds of views, heterodox views about a historical event, or living in a society in which you're not allowed to have?

00:35:35.000 Heterodox views on an event, an 80-year-old event.

00:35:37.000 I mean, you know, it's not a close call for me.

00:35:40.000 You want to live in a free society where inquiry, free inquiry is encouraged.

00:35:45.000 It's certainly allowed.

00:35:46.000 But anyway, but the point is, why the hysteria?

00:35:49.000 And I think if you take three steps back, I think this is right.

00:35:53.000 What you're looking at is like, is a huge, is it the end of an 80-year cycle?

00:35:57.000 And the end of a certain way of thinking about the world, the end of a certain way of administering the world, institutions which have run the West, and to some extent the East, since 1945.

00:36:07.000 That's all kind of going away very fast, actually.

00:36:11.000 Economic power, political power, cultural powers, all moving East.

00:36:16.000 And that's tough for me as an American to accept.

00:36:18.000 It's very upsetting to me, actually.

00:36:19.000 I want America to be preeminent.

00:36:21.000 Of course, I'm American.

00:36:22.000 I think the world's a better place when we are, yeah.

00:36:25.000 You know, we're 4% of the world's population, and so, you know, it's a lot to ask for that to continue forever.

00:36:25.000 I've always thought that.

00:36:30.000 Correct.

00:36:31.000 But at the bottom, whatever we want may be immaterial, because it's not continuing.

00:36:35.000 It's ending, and it's ending very fast.

00:36:37.000 And again, that's upsetting.

00:36:39.000 I'm certainly not...

00:36:41.000 You know, poor Seth Dillon from the Babylon Bee.

00:36:43.000 Like, I kind of get why people are upset.

00:36:45.000 He couldn't quite articulate it, but I get it.

00:36:47.000 You know, they don't want...

00:36:50.000 The reason they're upset is because if people start questioning the myth, then it's like, well, but wait, then what's the justification for all of this?

00:36:57.000 And then we need to accept that we are at the end of a stage of history.

00:37:01.000 And that's a scary thing.

00:37:03.000 It's scary for me, by the way.

00:37:05.000 I'm certainly not celebrating any of this at all.

00:37:07.000 I feel anxiety.

00:37:08.000 I can feel it.

00:37:09.000 I feel it in the air, too.

00:37:10.000 Yeah. 0.83

00:37:10.000 So I do think that a year from now, the debates that we're having now about Churchill or whatever, they will all seem Silly and antique. 0.83

00:37:21.000 Like, I do think things are changing faster than— Do you mean that we're gonna have real problems?

00:37:25.000 Well, I just think assumptions are changing really fast, and, um, about a lot of different things.

00:37:31.000 I don't think all of it's good, by the way.

00:37:32.000 I'm not for radical change, you know, at all.

00:37:35.000 I'm conservative.

00:37:36.000 Be careful what statutes you take on, right?

00:37:37.000 I totally agree.

00:37:38.000 Completely agree.

00:37:39.000 This is not up to me.

00:37:40.000 I'm just observing.

00:37:41.000 No, no, I mean, just— And there are a million factors!

00:37:42.000 Usually it doesn't go well, right?

00:37:44.000 I agree with that.

00:37:45.000 And certainly, big changes cause a lot of suffering, inevitably.

00:37:45.000 I agree with that.

00:37:49.000 But we're clearly on the cusp of one, or in the middle of one.

00:37:51.000 There's just no way around that.

00:37:53.000 Again, I just want to say, I don't want this to happen.

00:37:56.000 I wouldn't choose any of this.

00:37:58.000 I wish it was 1985 again.

00:37:59.000 I don't want to think about any of this stuff.

00:38:01.000 What a great country that was.

00:38:02.000 It was!

00:38:03.000 It was great.

00:38:03.000 I'd kind of like to go just bird hunting with my dogs and not worry about stuff.

00:38:07.000 But I'm not in charge, none of us is in charge individually of history and we're sort of captives of it and this really is a historical pivot point.

00:38:15.000 I don't think that's grandiose or overstating the case at all.

00:38:18.000 I think it's absolutely true and everyone can feel it and it makes them jumpy and to some extent hysterical.

00:38:26.000 People are coming at me last night by text message And I was sort of confused about it at first because I was maybe being like too autistic about it or too literal or like, no, Daryl Cooper is, you know, a really good and moderate and non-hating person, which is all true, by the way.

00:38:42.000 Absolutely true.

00:38:43.000 I think he's a great historian, whether you agree or disagree, but he's like rigorous.

00:38:47.000 Let's debate what you think he got wrong.

00:38:49.000 Like, I'm coming at it from that perspective.

00:38:51.000 Like, oh, you're mad at him.

00:38:52.000 I want to see him debate Dr. Arnn on Churchill.

00:38:54.000 Who's like THE Churchill guy.

00:38:55.000 100%!

00:38:56.000 Larry Arnn's amazing on Churchill.

00:38:57.000 He's like THE Churchill guy.

00:38:58.000 And I texted him, like, you should talk to him.

00:39:00.000 Completely different perspective.

00:39:01.000 That would be wonderful.

00:39:03.000 I totally agree with that.

00:39:04.000 So that's the, again, kind of probably too literal position that I'm coming at this from.

00:39:10.000 And so I was amazed by just the vituperative nature of this and people really getting upset.

00:39:17.000 And then I thought, you know, rather than just push back and be like, you know, up yours too!

00:39:22.000 Like, what are we watching here?

00:39:23.000 What are we pivoting towards?

00:39:25.000 You say we're pivoting.

00:39:26.000 I don't, you know, that's opaque to me.

00:39:29.000 I don't know.

00:39:29.000 Is the election of a bearing on that?

00:39:31.000 Oh, of course it does.

00:39:33.000 But I don't think it's the sum total of it at all.

00:39:34.000 Sure, I think it's a piece, right?

00:39:35.000 I really don't.

00:39:36.000 But more of the point, I guess the only point I'm making is, like, if people are behaving in a way that you disagree with or despise, you know, or think is disgusting, I do think before pushing back, or maybe in the midst of pushing back, it's worth asking, like, what is this?

00:39:48.000 Like, why are they doing this? 0.98

00:39:50.000 These aren't all stupid people. 1.00

00:39:51.000 They're not all bad people. 0.98

00:39:52.000 A lot of good people, actually.

00:39:54.000 I've always liked Seth Dillon.

00:39:55.000 I'm not, you know what I mean?

00:39:56.000 Like, I don't, so why?

00:39:58.000 What is this about?

00:39:58.000 And I do think it's about the sense that all of us have all of us have That things are now really changing really changing fast and people are afraid of what's next me included absolutely And if you start to question

00:40:14.000 the myths that underpin the current order, that you are really playing with fire and

00:40:19.000 we could get something much worse.

00:40:21.000 And I don't think that's crazy.

00:40:23.000 I don't think it's crazy at all.

00:40:24.000 I get it.

00:40:25.000 But I don't think that these changes are coming because someone questioned whether

00:40:29.000 Churchill was a good leader for Britain.

00:40:32.000 I don't think that.

00:40:33.000 I think it's much deeper than that.

00:40:34.000 But anyway, that's it.

00:40:35.000 People are jumpy right now.

00:40:37.000 Very jumpy.

00:40:37.000 And they have every reason to be.

00:40:38.000 And the last thing I would say about the election... Yeah, because I do want to get your thoughts on that.

00:40:42.000 Yeah, I mean... Because you called 16 correctly.

00:40:44.000 You saw the trends.

00:40:45.000 You wrote that amazing Politico piece.

00:40:47.000 I remember it.

00:40:48.000 You said Trump was vulgar, but he was right.

00:40:50.000 And you talk about how you insulted his hair, and he called you, and he's like, you're right, you have better hair than I do, but I get more... Ladies than you do. 1.00

00:40:57.000 I'm using the nice... Using... He used a cloak wheel term I will not repeat, but... But it was a great piece, and basically I have the quote here.

00:41:03.000 It says, he exists because you failed.

00:41:04.000 Well, that is totally true.

00:41:06.000 And so, but now here we are eight years later, where are we?

00:41:11.000 It's hard to know.

00:41:11.000 I mean, Trump has not done a lot of things that I wish he had done, but the main thing that he has done is revealed, you know, the depth of the corruption at the heart of the enterprise, but it hasn't been corrected.

00:41:26.000 At all.

00:41:27.000 And no one he's implicated has repented of what they've done, admitted it.

00:41:31.000 Repentance means humility, which means higher power, and so it's against the rules in DC.

00:41:35.000 Exactly right.

00:41:35.000 So that puts us in a pretty troubling position.

00:41:38.000 So the people who've benefited from the current system are, they know they're exposed, so they're afraid.

00:41:43.000 They're desperate and they're totally without limits.

00:41:45.000 They'll do anything.

00:41:46.000 So that makes them very, very dangerous.

00:41:49.000 But this is also playing out against the backdrop of a world that is changing really, really fast.

00:41:52.000 It's absolutely beyond our control.

00:41:55.000 The economic structure of the world is changing.

00:41:59.000 With rapidity.

00:42:00.000 Yeah.

00:42:01.000 So that's really the story, is that the money is going east, big time.

00:42:07.000 And it's manufacturing and resources, things that it's always been.

00:42:10.000 You take natural resources and you make things with them.

00:42:12.000 That's your economy.

00:42:13.000 And we went through this period of decades.

00:42:16.000 You mean it's not shorts on the market?

00:42:19.000 It's not.

00:42:20.000 It's not.

00:42:21.000 It's not hedge funds and it's not...

00:42:23.000 No.

00:42:24.000 Loaning money at interest is part of an economy, but if it becomes the basis of your economy,

00:42:27.000 then it's not really a real economy.

00:42:30.000 And no, an economy is based on taking natural resources, things that God made, and making

00:42:34.000 them into something useful for people.

00:42:35.000 And converting them into things that human beings to flourish and survive.

00:42:37.000 Exactly.

00:42:38.000 That's what your economy is based on.

00:42:40.000 And ours no longer is.

00:42:41.000 And China's is. 0.91

00:42:42.000 And anyway, you know the story.

00:42:44.000 But the point is, this is all changing super, super fast, and I do think that the one thing that we should keep in mind is that we don't know what happens next.

00:42:56.000 And there's this really interesting phenomenon that I've just noticed as I've gotten older, that Almost always.

00:43:04.000 The things that you think are victories turn out to be disappointing at best and very often failures.

00:43:10.000 And the things that you think are failures are actually victories.

00:43:14.000 It's a biblical principle.

00:43:15.000 Of course it is.

00:43:15.000 Which I didn't realize.

00:43:16.000 The first will be last and the last will be first.

00:43:18.000 That's exactly right.

00:43:18.000 The meek shall inherit the old.

00:43:20.000 The meek?

00:43:20.000 Really?

00:43:20.000 How did the meek win in the end?

00:43:22.000 You could spend your whole year reading that.

00:43:23.000 You're like, I don't understand it.

00:43:25.000 So it's, you know, of course it's a theological truth as revealed by Jesus in the New Testament, but it's also a kind of unerring commentary on the way life really is.

00:43:35.000 And that's true in our lives, and very often—not very often—in my life, a hundred percent of the time, the things that I think are true tragedies are actually, you know, the beginning of rebirth and growth and of joy, the root of my joy.

00:43:49.000 are the bad things that have happened to me.

00:43:51.000 It's just a fact.

00:43:52.000 I didn't make these rules.

00:43:53.000 I just noticed this.

00:43:54.000 In the scriptures it says, count it all a blessing.

00:43:56.000 Count it all a blessing.

00:43:57.000 That has just been true for me.

00:43:58.000 And that your trials are actually a blessing.

00:44:00.000 It's James 1.5.

00:44:01.000 It's exactly right.

00:44:02.000 It is true.

00:44:03.000 I haven't had many bad things happen to me.

00:44:04.000 I've had an incredibly easy and happy life.

00:44:07.000 But, you know, like the little dramas that have happened in my life, which didn't seem little to me when they were happening, have turned out to be like, you know, the foundation of my joy.

00:44:17.000 That's something to remember in the context of American politics.

00:44:19.000 Like, you think, well, we elect this person and all of our problems will be solved, and it might actually turn out the opposite from what you think or expect.

00:44:27.000 Or if we elect this person, we're going down this path, we're going to be Soviet America, which is clearly where we're moving very quickly right now. 0.67

00:44:35.000 I don't know if that's actually true.

00:44:38.000 But what I do know for a fact is that we're not God and we can't know, and so you should always be alive to the possibility that you're completely wrong.

00:44:46.000 That the inverse, that there'll be a sort of paradox baked in, as there is almost invariably in life.

00:44:53.000 Wow, I thought that was a win.

00:44:54.000 How many people do I know personally who, working toward, you know, getting really rich, got really rich... And become miserable.

00:45:01.000 Oh my gosh.

00:45:03.000 Oh, that's a cliche for a reason.

00:45:06.000 How many people do I know who had something really bad happen to them and they realized, wow, you know, that was like the greatest blessing they could have had.

00:45:12.000 Anyway... With limitations.

00:45:13.000 There's some tragedy that's so... For sure.

00:45:17.000 I don't wish tragedy on anyone.

00:45:18.000 I seek to avoid tragedy every day of my life.

00:45:20.000 I'm not embracing tragedy.

00:45:22.000 I'm just saying...

00:45:23.000 It's important to know the limitations of your ability to see the future.

00:45:27.000 Everything you're saying is inherently spiritual.

00:45:29.000 You think there's a spiritual dynamic to all of this.

00:45:31.000 And can you talk just briefly, I know we're running out of time, how your spiritual journey has deepened in the last couple of years.

00:45:38.000 I know you've been reading the Bible even more as an Episcopalian, that seems to be quite an accomplishment.

00:45:45.000 Reading the Bible even more!

00:45:46.000 I didn't read the Bible at all before!

00:45:47.000 I'm being generous.

00:45:50.000 Yeah, I mean, I haven't had much of a spiritual journey.

00:45:53.000 I'm such a flawed person that I don't even want to be associated with Christianity because I don't want to discredit it, but I mean that.

00:46:01.000 That means you're a true Christian.

00:46:02.000 I don't know!

00:46:02.000 I don't want to be called that!

00:46:06.000 I'm very superstitious on that point.

00:46:08.000 No, I'm a really flawed person, obviously.

00:46:11.000 But yeah, I think I will say this.

00:46:16.000 There is a Christian revival underway in the United States, a low-key Christian revival.

00:46:20.000 I see it all around me.

00:46:22.000 It's not the kind of tent revival that you imagine from You know, 1923, it's something else, it's a different manifestation of the same thing.

00:46:31.000 I totally agree, yes.

00:46:32.000 And I see it everywhere, and by everywhere I mean in the conversations that I have with people I'm talking to, where people who've lived totally secular lives, as I have, I've lived a very secular life, are all of a sudden referring to God or some power beyond themselves in a way that would have been really striking five years ago.

00:46:53.000 No one I knew, I mean you're from a different world, a world that's much more in touch with the spiritual, with the transcendent, but I'm not.

00:47:01.000 I'm from a world that's in touch with like what is happening today.

00:47:05.000 That's it.

00:47:06.000 I've never heard people talk like that, ever.

00:47:09.000 And now practically everyone I know is talking like that.

00:47:12.000 What is that?

00:47:13.000 And that's a sign to me that, yes, the spiritual realm is obvious to people who had never thought about it before.

00:47:22.000 What I'm seeing is that people are asking the question, why are they doing this?

00:47:26.000 And the spiritual is the only explanation.

00:47:28.000 Of course.

00:47:29.000 Because it defies reason.

00:47:30.000 That's exactly the conclusion that I have come to.

00:47:35.000 And it didn't make any sense to me because I was looking at politics through the lens of you know, what I thought was accurate 20 years ago.

00:47:43.000 We're having a debate over how to improve people's lives, and now, of course, there's no reference to improving people's lives.

00:47:49.000 In fact, the explicit intent is to crush people's lives.

00:47:51.000 Like, what is that?

00:47:52.000 Well, it's evil.

00:47:53.000 That's what it is.

00:47:54.000 Tucker, last question.

00:47:55.000 We had you on before.

00:47:55.000 Advice for young people right now in America that are listening.

00:48:00.000 We have a lot of younger viewers.

00:48:01.000 Oh, gather your people to you.

00:48:03.000 You know, if you know that, you know, winter's coming, you want to stack up on, you know, cordwood and High-carb snacks.

00:48:11.000 It's like an instinct, you know?

00:48:13.000 Put your acorns away.

00:48:14.000 Yeah, there's a lot of volatility coming.

00:48:15.000 There's no question about it.

00:48:17.000 And so, the only way to protect yourself is with your relationships with the people that you love.

00:48:22.000 And keep them close to you.

00:48:23.000 Stay in touch with them.

00:48:25.000 Marry one of them, if you can.

00:48:26.000 Yes.

00:48:27.000 You know what I mean?

00:48:28.000 Keep your people close.

00:48:29.000 Create more people.

00:48:31.000 I mean, I do think that's the ultimate gesture of defiance in the face of chaos, is to reproduce.

00:48:36.000 I wish I could do more of it, but I'm too old.

00:48:38.000 You would have more kids.

00:48:39.000 Are you joking?

00:48:40.000 Yes!

00:48:41.000 My wife and I always say, I can't believe we only had four kids, but that's what we did.

00:48:45.000 Tucker, thanks so much.

00:48:46.000 Charlie Kirk, great to see you.

00:48:47.000 Thank you.

00:48:48.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:48:49.000 Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:48:51.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 21, 2024

Are Humans Good or Bad? — Part 2 with Tucker Carlson

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