The Charlie Kirk Show - August 09, 2021


Tucker Carlson Joins the Show

Topics
media freedom American foreign policy uncontrolled immigration America's decline mirrored journalism relationships self-control
Hosted by
Charlie Kirk
Mentioned
Simon Schuster Tucker Carlson Lindsey Graham Brett Kavanaugh David French Tim Scott George Floyd Hunter Biden John Carpe George W. Bush Ann Applebaum Viktor Orban Bill Kristol Dana Carmedy Josh Hawley Joe Biden Saddam Matthew Iglesias Hillary Clinton Muammar Gaddafi and 28 more
Was Jesus a Catholic? Thoughtful Theology with Michael Knowles 19 Senate Republicans Betray America & Cuomo Crumbles

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour

Words per minute

192.96

Word count

11,661

Sentence count

911

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

50

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tucker Carlson is probably the most powerful conservative in American media, a man I really look up to, someone who is phenomenal, wise, brilliant, and a true American. We talk about a lot of different topics, including his new book, The Long Slide, which is about 30 years in American journalism.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, a very special conversation with my friend, Tucker Carlson, who is probably the most powerful conservative in American media, a man I really look up to, someone who is phenomenal, wise, brilliant, and a true American.
00:00:17.000 We talk about a lot of different topics, including his book, which is The Long Slide.
00:00:23.000 Check it out right now: 30 years in American Journalism, Tucker Carlson, The Long Slide.
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00:01:46.000 Tucker Carlson is here.
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00:01:53.000 Buckle up. 0.96
00:01:54.000 Here we go.
00:01:56.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:01:57.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:01:59.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:02:03.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:02:06.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:02:07.000 He's an incredible guy.
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00:02:29.000 You may have heard that I'm recently married.
00:02:30.000 Every married man knows that while it's the greatest gift, it's also a big change. 0.82
00:02:35.000 I'm joyfully adjusting all the habits I formed as a single man all the way down to my sleep schedule.
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00:02:44.000 Want to guess what it is?
00:02:46.000 Every night before going to bed, I still take two capsules of magnesium breakthrough by buy optimizers.
00:02:51.000 Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking any old generic synthetic magnesium pills.
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00:03:32.000 Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:35.000 Backed by Popular Demand and from Hungary is Tucker Carlson.
00:03:39.000 Tucker, welcome back.
00:03:41.000 Charlie Kirk, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for having me.
00:03:44.000 Of course, so you were just in Hungary, according to the activist press.
00:03:48.000 You were contributing to the downfall of Western civilization or whatever in a country of 10 million people that secures their borders. 1.00
00:03:57.000 Tell us about Budapest for a week and how all that kind of came to be.
00:04:02.000 Well, it's just so bewildering because, you know, as a father of four children, I'm very familiar with lying because kids lie.
00:04:10.000 And when kids lie, they lie in a recognizable way.
00:04:13.000 They tell you a version of the story that's, say, 15 or 20 degrees off the truth.
00:04:18.000 Like, did you eat the Oreos?
00:04:19.000 I just had one.
00:04:20.000 No, you had six.
00:04:20.000 Oh, I had two.
00:04:22.000 Right?
00:04:23.000 So that's how conventional people lie.
00:04:24.000 Totalitarians lie in a very different way.
00:04:27.000 They tell you the inverse of the truth, 180 degrees.
00:04:30.000 You ate the cookies.
00:04:34.000 And then they arrest you for eating the cookies.
00:04:36.000 So being in a foreign country, it's one of the reasons I grew up in a family that was kind of focused on the rest of the world because of my dad's job and just the nature of our family.
00:04:44.000 It was interesting to see how other people live.
00:04:47.000 And so one of the beauties of getting out of the United States occasionally is it gives you a little bit of perspective and you really see the dishonesty from the Democratic Party and its servants in the media on clear display.
00:05:00.000 So, I mean, I don't want to bore you with the Hungary thing, but what's so interesting is they're like, oh, Hungary is a threat to democracy.
00:05:06.000 Therefore, we have to make sure that the outcome of the next election in Hungary is to our liking.
00:05:12.000 Really?
00:05:13.000 I thought democracy was the same as self-determination, self-government.
00:05:16.000 It was allowing a country to choose its own leaders.
00:05:18.000 They're not going to do that.
00:05:20.000 They're already working against that by funding this massive NGO infrastructure and propaganda infrastructure within Hungary that's fundamentally not Hungarian.
00:05:28.000 It's American.
00:05:29.000 It's our elites who are doing this to Hungary.
00:05:31.000 So the truth is, look, the lessons of Hungary have nothing to do with the president of who the specific president is or what party is in power, the parliamentary system they have.
00:05:41.000 The government of Hungary and the people of Hungary have reached a basic agreement on what government's supposed to do.
00:05:47.000 Like, not make your life worse.
00:05:50.000 You know, keep the streets clean.
00:05:51.000 Keep crime to a dull war if you can.
00:05:55.000 Do everything you can to make it possible for ordinary people to, I don't know, get married and have children, which is a very basic human desire across all cultures and all periods.
00:06:04.000 People want to find a maiden, reproduce. 1.00
00:06:06.000 It's a biological imperative.
00:06:08.000 It's the source of most people's joy.
00:06:10.000 I mean, it's more important even than working in an investment bank or getting a gig at McKenzie.
00:06:14.000 I don't want to blow anyone's mind here.
00:06:16.000 So if you have a society that puts that first, and you can also have McKinsey and you can also have investment banks and you can also have, you know, cool ethnic restaurants.
00:06:25.000 I mean, I'm not, right?
00:06:27.000 There's a balance.
00:06:28.000 There's a very moderate, sensible balance that puts people's most basic desires at the top.
00:06:34.000 I thought that's what democracy was.
00:06:35.000 It was a form of government that serves what people want, you know, that serves their needs and desires.
00:06:40.000 And the Hungarian government, which probably flawed like all governments are, and its leaders are likely flawed like all people are. 0.92
00:06:47.000 But as a matter of state policy, they put things like cleanliness, order, maintenance of the national internet, of the national borders, you know, the ability to have kids, the health of the middle class.
00:07:01.000 These are at the top of the agenda officially.
00:07:03.000 And I think they kind of are.
00:07:04.000 I mean, if you look around, you know, you see that.
00:07:08.000 We're being told exactly the opposite. 0.99
00:07:10.000 Ann Applebaum, who's like almost everybody in our foreign policy establishment, is like a child, you know, no emotional self-control, totally ignorant, no idea what she's talking about. 0.99
00:07:21.000 Cloaks that with aggression. 0.99
00:07:23.000 I mean, children are the same as people like that.
00:07:27.000 She sent out the most hilarious tweet that I just can't get over. 0.99
00:07:30.000 And she said, Victor Orban, the president of the prime minister of Hungary, you know, is running a fascist state.
00:07:38.000 Over 90% of media outlets in Hungary are aligned with the regime.
00:07:43.000 Businesses that go against the will of the regime are shut down.
00:07:48.000 Their elections are suspect.
00:07:49.000 And most telling of all, political figures in Hungary mysteriously get rich.
00:07:54.000 And I'm thinking, all of those things may be true.
00:07:57.000 They're much more true in my country than in Hungary. 0.89
00:08:00.000 There's no question about that.
00:08:01.000 You can't question the regime in public.
00:08:03.000 You'll lose your job.
00:08:04.000 If you question the administration's COVID policy, its position on transgender athletes, its immigration policy, you'll be shut down, man.
00:08:11.000 Go ahead and try it.
00:08:13.000 You lose your job over that.
00:08:14.000 I cover this for a living.
00:08:15.000 I'm not guessing.
00:08:16.000 I see it all the time.
00:08:17.000 That is not the case in Hungary.
00:08:19.000 So whatever Hungary's flaws may be, it's a freer society than ours on the basis of the most obvious measure.
00:08:24.000 Can you get fired for disagreeing with the regime?
00:08:26.000 You certainly can where I live.
00:08:28.000 Less likely there.
00:08:30.000 Who's freer?
00:08:31.000 And yet, people like Freedom House, like the ACLU, like the ADL, it's a formerly noble organization that has long outlived its usefulness and now has become the mirror image of what it once was, is telling us that Hungary is less free than South Africa.
00:08:46.000 Like, that's just insane.
00:08:47.000 You know, go to Pretoria, go to Budapest and tell me which is freer.
00:08:51.000 I mean, seriously, like they think people don't have access to airplane tickets.
00:08:55.000 Like, how could you say something like that? 1.00
00:08:57.000 It's too stupid. 1.00
00:08:58.000 It's instantly self-discrediting. 1.00
00:09:00.000 I could go on, but I won't.
00:09:01.000 I'll stop.
00:09:01.000 But you see the point.
00:09:02.000 They're really lying much more profoundly than we thought they were.
00:09:05.000 So when I saw that tweet, I said, it's not true.
00:09:08.000 But even if it was true, only 90% of the media goes with the, I mean, I would love that.
00:09:13.000 Like, immediately what I said is that that sounds wonderful.
00:09:15.000 10% of media freedom would be desirable.
00:09:18.000 But of course, it's not true.
00:09:20.000 But also, there's so much I want to ask you about, like this idea of what is freedom, right?
00:09:24.000 Because I grew up in a conservative movement.
00:09:26.000 You and I have talked about this, where the idea of freedom was like degeneracy, licentiousness, where you can do whatever you want when you want to do it.
00:09:33.000 When in reality, it's actually the order and the discipline that keeps people in a maximum or framework that actually allows you to live flourishing lives.
00:09:42.000 What I found most interesting about your visit to Hungary is as you put your very successful show kind of front and center there is that you were showing the European project that the one kind of dissident voice is actually a more peaceful and a more enjoyable and desirable way to live.
00:10:01.000 Can you talk about how Hungary was like the only country to resist the Merkel kind of consensus that there was this refugee crisis and Hungary's like, yeah, we're not going to play along.
00:10:12.000 And they've kind of showed that the rest of the countries went the wrong direction.
00:10:16.000 Yeah, go to Paris.
00:10:18.000 I mean, I've been going to Europe all my life and I love Europe.
00:10:20.000 I had relatives lived in Europe.
00:10:21.000 I mean, I really, you know, I really love European cities and a lot of them have been destroyed.
00:10:27.000 I mean, they're filthy, you know, they're chaotic. 0.52
00:10:29.000 They're disgusting. 0.99
00:10:30.000 They're dangerous. 0.99
00:10:31.000 Budapest isn't, not because it's fascist or racist or anything like that, but because it controlled its own borders.
00:10:38.000 2015, there was a movement of millions of people from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe.
00:10:45.000 And that happened for a reason.
00:10:47.000 No, it wasn't global climate change.
00:10:48.000 It wasn't your fault for driving a suburban.
00:10:50.000 It was the obvious result of bad American neoconservative foreign policy. 1.00
00:10:57.000 You go and you kill Saddam. 0.90
00:10:58.000 Then for some reason, you just, Hillary Clinton decides to kill Muammar Gaddafi. 0.80
00:11:02.000 Why would you do that?
00:11:03.000 And create a civil war, destroy Libya completely.
00:11:07.000 I wouldn't want to, I'm not defending Qaddafi.
00:11:09.000 I'm not defending Saddam.
00:11:10.000 The question is, did American foreign policy make those countries better?
00:11:15.000 And the answer, of course, is no.
00:11:16.000 It made them so bad that millions of people left.
00:11:19.000 We did that.
00:11:20.000 Bill Crystal did that.
00:11:22.000 Ann Applebaum did that. 1.00
00:11:23.000 George W. Bush did that.
00:11:25.000 And they don't want to admit it because that's a crime, of course.
00:11:29.000 At very least, it's a screw up.
00:11:31.000 But Europe had to deal with the immediate effects of it because Europe is connected to that region.
00:11:36.000 There's a land bridge or, you know, the Straits of Gibraltar are actually not that far apart.
00:11:42.000 And so they, because it's a European Union, because it's a unified political system with some with some autonomy between countries, but basically you have Brussels overseeing the big questions, what you're allowed to do and what you're not, it affected all of Europe.
00:11:57.000 You know, once you cross the border into the EU, you can walk all the way to France and then hitchhike through the channel, you know, and then walk to Scotland.
00:12:07.000 I mean, it's just, it opens up a whole continent to mass migration.
00:12:12.000 And it's not an argument against immigration.
00:12:14.000 I'm not against immigration, but that's not immigration. 0.99
00:12:18.000 That's an invasion.
00:12:19.000 It's completely uncontrolled.
00:12:19.000 That's insanity.
00:12:21.000 So for a lot of different reasons having to do, I think, with the history of the past hundred years, Germany, which controls the EU, let's stop lying.
00:12:29.000 It's the use of the German Empire.
00:12:31.000 No one wants to say that, but that's what it is.
00:12:33.000 The Germans decided, you know, we can't stop this. 0.69
00:12:36.000 We feel bad for what we've done.
00:12:38.000 They have every reason to feel bad, by the way, for the history.
00:12:40.000 I'm not defending their history. 0.96
00:12:41.000 It's disgusting. 0.98
00:12:42.000 But they hate themselves as a result of it. 0.87
00:12:44.000 And they felt, well, this is some kind of penance for what we've done in the past.
00:12:49.000 Now, I would argue that's insane.
00:12:51.000 Self-hatred never produced those wise choices, but for whatever, whatever, they did that.
00:12:56.000 And they tried to enforce this on the rest of the continent, on the other EU member states.
00:13:00.000 You have to take these people.
00:13:01.000 And Hungary uniquely said, no, you know, this is our country and we'll let in the people we want to let in.
00:13:07.000 We're not going to let other people in.
00:13:08.000 It's like kind of up to us because we're a sovereign nation with 900 years of history.
00:13:13.000 Anyway, it's the kind of decision that 15 years ago would have been completely non-controversial.
00:13:18.000 Does a country have a right to determine who lives in it?
00:13:21.000 Well, yeah, what's the point of having a nation state if you don't have that right?
00:13:25.000 You think you own your house.
00:13:26.000 If I tell you that you have no right to determine who sleeps in your bedroom, is it really your house?
00:13:30.000 No, it's not.
00:13:31.000 It's my house.
00:13:33.000 So Hungary made a principled, sensible, I would argue, totally moderate and basic argument on behalf of its own rights as a nation and was immediately attacked by the Annapol bombs.
00:13:44.000 The world is somehow immoral or racist or whatever. 0.56
00:13:46.000 It's crazy.
00:13:47.000 But it's not even worth debating.
00:13:49.000 I think everyone watching your podcast would agree with that.
00:13:52.000 What's interesting is the results.
00:13:53.000 So as I noted, having been to Paris for 40 years fairly regularly, to see what that city has become, not because the people who live there are a different color, but because the way they did immigration, it's not a race-based argument.
00:14:09.000 It's an argument about order and law.
00:14:12.000 And places that have order and law tend to be places you'd want to live, like Hungary. 0.69
00:14:17.000 And places that don't, like Somalia, are places you don't even want to visit because they're too dangerous. 0.99
00:14:20.000 It's really simple.
00:14:21.000 So the more order and law, and the more peace you have, right?
00:14:26.000 The less repressive you need to be.
00:14:29.000 And the results in Germany and in Italy and in Greece and in France and in the UK of uncontrolled immigration have been terrible. 0.87
00:14:41.000 And they don't want you to say that out loud or they call you names if you say that out loud because it implies that they've done a really bad job running their countries. 0.54
00:14:50.000 And our intellectual class, really one of the biggest collection of dumb people ever produced by modern society, see this correctly as a referendum on their leadership. 0.83
00:15:01.000 Like their ideas didn't work. 0.96
00:15:03.000 And so that's why Paris has graffiti on every flat surface.
00:15:06.000 And they're literally burning cathedrals.
00:15:08.000 And how did that happen?
00:15:10.000 It happened because your ideas didn't work and they don't want you to know that.
00:15:13.000 And because this is a continental country and, you know, and I'm American, I'm not going anywhere.
00:15:18.000 I love America first and foremost.
00:15:20.000 That's why I'm staying.
00:15:20.000 And that's why I had all these children here.
00:15:22.000 It's why I have four dogs because I'm rooted in America.
00:15:24.000 I don't have another passport.
00:15:25.000 So I'm not tacking America.
00:15:26.000 But I would say the downside of America is also the best part of America, which is its geographic isolation.
00:15:32.000 You know, we don't have to deal with a lot of problems.
00:15:33.000 Other countries do because we're so far away.
00:15:35.000 We have these oceans protecting us.
00:15:36.000 The downside is sometimes we're, you know, we're late to know the results of the experiment.
00:15:44.000 So like this stuff's already been tried.
00:15:45.000 What the Biden administration is doing now has already happened.
00:15:48.000 So why don't you go to Frankfurt and ask yourself, is this a better city than it was 15 years ago?
00:15:53.000 And the answer is, no, it's a much worse city.
00:15:54.000 Is Stockholm a better place?
00:15:56.000 Is right?
00:15:58.000 Is Norway a better country?
00:15:59.000 No, they're much worse countries now.
00:16:00.000 These ideas didn't work.
00:16:02.000 And if you say that out loud, they flip out and call you a fascist because they're exposed.
00:16:08.000 Who are you busting?
00:16:09.000 Who's the criminal?
00:16:10.000 Me?
00:16:11.000 Because I'm a journalist who is like putting the truth on the screen or them, the people who did this.
00:16:17.000 I'd argue they are, actually.
00:16:19.000 They're the ones with something to be ashamed of.
00:16:20.000 And that's why they're so hysterical.
00:16:22.000 I find it hilarious, actually.
00:16:24.000 It doesn't bother me personally.
00:16:26.000 It's just interesting.
00:16:27.000 Last thing I'll say, you know, when people are guilty, and this is true for children too, because they become hysterical.
00:16:33.000 So if you're innocent, you know, I've been, I was accused, you know, I've been accused of a lot of things I didn't do, but the more unlikely it is, I have a lot of flaws.
00:16:41.000 I probably have a lot of opinions that I wouldn't share.
00:16:44.000 I've never been a racist, much of a white supremacist, whatever that is. 0.72
00:16:47.000 So whenever like, oh, you're a white supremacist.
00:16:49.000 Yeah, okay.
00:16:50.000 You know, it's just like, I don't care because it's, it's so far from the truth, it doesn't bother me.
00:16:57.000 Their reaction tells you a lot about how guilty they are.
00:17:00.000 Oh my God, you can't say that.
00:17:01.000 New York Times got to write three articles about some cable show going on vacation for a week.
00:17:06.000 Really?
00:17:07.000 Why are you so upset about that?
00:17:09.000 Like, what's the answer?
00:17:10.000 Because you're implicated in it.
00:17:12.000 That's why.
00:17:14.000 Well, and they're implicated because all it takes is one example of something that works.
00:17:20.000 And that's why Florida and Hungary, in my opinion, are so similar.
00:17:24.000 Right.
00:17:24.000 Is that Florida is the domestic example of a more orderly, common sense approach to the land of the insane, right?
00:17:32.000 And they hate that.
00:17:33.000 Like, we must crush Ron DeSantis.
00:17:35.000 We must crush Victor Orban, right?
00:17:37.000 Because and right. 0.97
00:17:39.000 And notice that the people calling for crushing other people are the ones calling you a fascist.
00:17:43.000 So the very people who are like, oh, no, it's totally normal to fire someone from his job because I disagree with them.
00:17:48.000 You know, it's totally normal to beat someone up for having a Trump hat on, you know, a political party that I don't support.
00:17:53.000 Yeah, we should beat them up.
00:17:54.000 It's totally cool to burn your cities on the basis of political ideology, BLM, over the last year and a half. 0.96
00:18:00.000 No, it's totally fine.
00:18:01.000 But if you disagree that you're the fascist, it's like at a certain point, you know, I think we're too literal.
00:18:06.000 I know that I certainly am way too literal.
00:18:08.000 Every night, you know, I'm writing my scripts and I'm like, I can't, but that's the opposite of the truth.
00:18:13.000 And at a certain point, that's on me.
00:18:15.000 Of course, it's the opposite of the truth.
00:18:17.000 It's a totalitarian worldview that inverts reality for its own power.
00:18:22.000 Like that's just what it is. 0.99
00:18:24.000 And if I continue to be surprised by it, then I'm the moron. 0.98
00:18:27.000 The question is, what do you do about it? 0.95
00:18:29.000 And I'm not sure I know the answer.
00:18:31.000 I mean, I'm not in charge of anything.
00:18:32.000 I'm just a talk show host.
00:18:33.000 So my job is just to like say it out loud.
00:18:35.000 I think that's a helpful first step.
00:18:37.000 But you can see where this is going.
00:18:39.000 I mean, they're CNN just fired three employees for not getting the vaccine.
00:18:44.000 Just fired them, like right out of, and no one said anything.
00:18:47.000 That's totally normal.
00:18:48.000 Take a man's livelihood away because he won't take a medicine that you want him to take that he may not need.
00:18:53.000 He certainly doesn't want.
00:18:54.000 And he can't work in this country.
00:18:56.000 Like, what?
00:18:56.000 Do you, do we want to live in that country?
00:18:58.000 I don't, you know, I don't.
00:19:00.000 And so that, you know, we're moving there.
00:19:02.000 We're not moving there.
00:19:03.000 We are there.
00:19:05.000 Last thing I'll say, but I asked this guy I was with, who's who is with the government as a spokesman for the government.
00:19:12.000 And I don't pretend to be an expert in Hungarian politics.
00:19:15.000 I don't speak Hungarian.
00:19:16.000 And by the way, just to be clear, you cannot understand a country unless you speak the language.
00:19:21.000 That's so true.
00:19:22.000 I totally agree.
00:19:23.000 100% of the people I see in American television commenting in this very self-confident way about Hungary or Iraq for that matter don't speak Hungarian or Arabic. 0.98
00:19:33.000 So it's like, first of all, shut up. 0.99
00:19:34.000 You know nothing. 1.00
00:19:35.000 Just admit it.
00:19:36.000 And that's a good baseline for continuing the conversation.
00:19:38.000 Our ignorance is important to concede, I would say.
00:19:41.000 It's essential.
00:19:42.000 But the second thing I would say is that if we don't get honest with ourselves about what this is, like, I mean, let's just, let's just stop lying to ourselves.
00:20:01.000 These are not people who are comfortable with coexistence.
00:20:05.000 They don't want to live with people they disagree with.
00:20:09.000 Now, again, it's not my job to think through the implications of that, but I am against lying.
00:20:14.000 I think we should be honest about it.
00:20:16.000 These are people who would hurt you if they could.
00:20:19.000 So I'm thinking about this and I talked to the spokesman, one of the spokesmen for the Hungarian regime, and I'm like, wow, you know, you're very unpopular abroad.
00:20:26.000 Do you have bodyguards?
00:20:30.000 Do you have armed security?
00:20:31.000 And he's like, no, why would I have armed security?
00:20:33.000 I said, well, because a lot of people don't like you.
00:20:35.000 He goes, oh, yeah, we don't have that here.
00:20:36.000 I said, no, what about the opposition? 0.99
00:20:38.000 No, like dumb question. 0.80
00:20:40.000 Why would you need a bodyguard just because you've got a political view that some people disagree with? 0.86
00:20:43.000 And I said to him, you know, in the United States, people who have views that are, you know, opposed to the regime, that are openly critical of the Biden regime, and this idea is very common to buy.
00:20:52.000 In fact, it's almost universal.
00:20:53.000 If you have a big platform and you're disagreeing with our regime, you need armed security because you get so many death threats.
00:20:58.000 Even if you hate armed security, even if you recognize, which it is, it's totally disruptive of your life.
00:21:04.000 It's terrible.
00:21:05.000 Everything about it is bad.
00:21:06.000 It's not a privilege.
00:21:07.000 It's a curse.
00:21:08.000 You've got no choice.
00:21:10.000 And he's like, really?
00:21:13.000 Tell me how it's a fascist regime compared to what do we have?
00:21:16.000 You know, oh, that's anti-American.
00:21:18.000 No, it's pro-American.
00:21:20.000 I'm 52.
00:21:20.000 I remember a different country really well.
00:21:22.000 I remember a very different country.
00:21:24.000 I want that country back.
00:21:25.000 That was an open, tolerant, liberal, liberal country, liberal in the truest sense.
00:21:31.000 We tolerated disagreement and we don't have that anymore.
00:21:36.000 And Hungary does. 0.87
00:21:36.000 So that's the truth. 0.87
00:21:37.000 Sorry.
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00:22:31.000 Hungary has been unafraid to talk about the form versus the matter, which is you can have a constitutional republic, which is the form, but then the matter also matters, meaning like who are the people you're bringing in?
00:22:43.000 Can you have a constitutional republic in protection of natural rights with a steady flow of millions of people coming into your country every single year?
00:22:50.000 And the Republican Party has only ever talked about the form and never about the matter because they think that they're going to be called a racist or something.
00:22:57.000 But it's just a very basic governing principle that who are the people you're creating a government for?
00:23:01.000 I mean, Montesquieu talked about this, that the spirit of the laws have to connect to the people you're governing.
00:23:06.000 And if you're going to change the body politic, you talk about this in your book.
00:23:09.000 I do want to plug your book, by the way, so I know we've been talking about the Hungarian tourism ministry is going to send us.
00:23:14.000 You got me all wound up, which is the long slide, 30 years in American journalism.
00:23:19.000 Tucker, you mentioned early here that the country just as a population has nearly tripled since you started in journalism.
00:23:26.000 Can you talk about that?
00:23:27.000 Because you make that point so profoundly earlier that, hey, this country has nearly tripled in size, yet we have like a fraction of the freedom.
00:23:36.000 How did that happen?
00:23:37.000 Well, one is a product of the other.
00:23:39.000 I mean, big systems don't work very well.
00:23:41.000 Ask anybody who served in the U.S. Army, you know, every veteran, Vietnam-era veteran, for example.
00:23:47.000 You go over to Vietnam, you fight a ridiculous war, you see people die, you come back, and you still love America.
00:23:53.000 I've never met anyone who served in the military, including my own dad during that time who doesn't love America, truly love America.
00:23:59.000 But if they're on, you know, every one of them will tell you the exactly the same thing, which is, you know, the military is a tough environment as much as we support it, we love it, because it's just too big.
00:24:08.000 And so the decisions that any big organization makes tend to be, you know, there are a lot of unwise decisions.
00:24:15.000 I mean, they get the biggest things right, but the details are hard to pull off.
00:24:19.000 You can't retain your fine motor skills at scale.
00:24:22.000 You just can't.
00:24:23.000 I mean, this is a well-known basically a physics principle.
00:24:26.000 Many business books have been written about this.
00:24:28.000 So the bigger your country gets, the harder it is to manage, the harder cohesion is to pull off, the more likely you are to destroy the natural environment for one thing.
00:24:39.000 I mean, there's a reason that, you know, very few people go on vacation in China.
00:24:44.000 They go on vacation in Switzerland or Barbados or small places.
00:24:49.000 Small is better.
00:24:51.000 You know, I feel no threat whatsoever from my local retailer.
00:24:55.000 I see Amazon as a real threat to my freedom. 0.75
00:24:57.000 And the difference is not simply because, you know, Jeff Bezos is a worse person than Mr. Kim behind the counter down the street, though he definitely is.
00:25:06.000 It's a matter of scale.
00:25:08.000 Amazon is just huge and therefore it's a threat.
00:25:10.000 So having a really, really big country means you're going to do things not as well.
00:25:16.000 You're going to have to clamp down on the population because you can't control them.
00:25:20.000 Consent becomes a smaller factor in government.
00:25:24.000 Force becomes a greater factor in government.
00:25:26.000 Big is bad.
00:25:27.000 And this is just so obvious that it takes an act of real will to pretend that it's not true.
00:25:34.000 And so there's a guy, and I can't even remember his name, but he like, he's like some intellectual and people think he's smart on Twitter.
00:25:40.000 Matthew Wiglesius or something. 0.98
00:25:42.000 The kid's an idiot, but he's been making the case that we need like a billion people in America because GDP or something. 1.00
00:25:49.000 And I'm like, I thought about doing a segment on that. 1.00
00:25:51.000 And I was like, first of all, you're just like a flat out idiot. 1.00
00:25:55.000 Like, do you go outside at all? 1.00
00:25:56.000 Do you have a wife?
00:25:57.000 Do you have kids?
00:25:58.000 Like, have you lived a life?
00:25:59.000 Like, that's so obviously, demonstrably untrue that America would be better with a billion people.
00:26:05.000 And maybe he's trolling.
00:26:06.000 I don't even know if it's a serious argument. 0.99
00:26:08.000 The kid does seem kind of dumb to me. 0.97
00:26:10.000 But leaving that aside, it's like a normal person doesn't need to be told that at all. 0.97
00:26:16.000 And that's why we break our society down into smaller communities.
00:26:20.000 There's no community of a million people, much less 340 million people.
00:26:25.000 There's no, by definition, it can't be.
00:26:27.000 And they pretend, no, the African-American community, Asian community, my favorite, the Hispanic community. 0.61
00:26:32.000 Oh, so people from Brazil, German Brazilians, and indigenous Guatemalans who don't even speak the same language from the same language group, who have different religions, different racial backgrounds, different histories are now part of a community on the basis of what? 0.98
00:26:50.000 Moron.
00:26:52.000 So we know this intuitively because we're people and we know what the truth is. 0.96
00:26:56.000 And so we break off into smaller communities.
00:26:58.000 The smallest is the family.
00:27:00.000 The next level is the neighborhood, then the town.
00:27:04.000 But there's a reason that rich people who can do whatever they want are right now moving to like Beaver Creek, Colorado, Aspen, Martha's Vineyard, because those are much more likely to be communities, not simply because they're rich, but because they're small.
00:27:19.000 I live in two small towns personally.
00:27:22.000 And those are actual communities with upsides and bad.
00:27:25.000 They're not perfect places.
00:27:26.000 People aren't perfect.
00:27:27.000 But you could actually conceivably manage them.
00:27:30.000 You might know people.
00:27:32.000 That would have something to do with it.
00:27:34.000 Hungary's size, which I think most Hungarians see as a real problem because they get bossed around by Russia, China, and the United States, you know, 10 million people.
00:27:42.000 They have no SWAT, they have no nuclear weapons.
00:27:45.000 In my view, in a lot of ways, is a huge advantage, you know, a huge advantage.
00:27:51.000 And there's a characteristic also of these kind of smaller countries.
00:27:51.000 Yeah.
00:27:57.000 I mean, Israel, which of course we're not allowed to talk about how Israel managed their immigration stricter than even Hungary, by the way.
00:28:04.000 I mean, and I mean, it's not even close, right?
00:28:07.000 I meant for them.
00:28:08.000 I think it's admirable that Israel has a very clear mission statement that they want to be a certain type of country.
00:28:08.000 Exactly.
00:28:14.000 They want to be a Jewish country. 0.99
00:28:15.000 And most of the American intelligentsia says, yeah, that's perfectly fine.
00:28:19.000 But then if America had a mission statement, it's like, you know, we want to be a generally free society of people that love their country. 0.96
00:28:24.000 It's like, you're a terrible racist.
00:28:25.000 It's like at some point, there's a tension here. 0.84
00:28:28.000 So, Tucker, in your book, I'm really glad you wrote this because I get a picture into the title, which is this descent of the country and of journalism and how they're almost linked together, right?
00:28:40.000 Is that it wasn't as if one they were happening in different universes and then all of a sudden they both kind of hit rock bottom.
00:28:46.000 Like, oh, that's I so here's my question.
00:28:49.000 Um, and just for everyone to understand, I'm still working my way through the book.
00:28:52.000 This is a series of your articles that you wrote for the Weekly Standard.
00:28:55.000 I have to ask you about that, amongst other places, where, and then you have some commentary after that.
00:29:01.000 Which one caused the other?
00:29:02.000 Do you think that the death of journalism, and use the example of the new republic in your book, how they would never publish you anymore, but they published kind of your musings favorably towards Ron Paul?
00:29:13.000 Do you think that was one of the reasons why the country is now in the state that it's in, or is that there were other factors that then kind of made journalism fall?
00:29:21.000 Which one came first?
00:29:22.000 Like, was the causation correlation?
00:29:24.000 I'm just curious from your perspective.
00:29:25.000 It's that's that's a really smart question.
00:29:27.000 And I, and I don't know if I know the answer.
00:29:30.000 They certainly mirrored each other.
00:29:31.000 America's decline mirrored the decline of our intellectual gatekeepers, you know, editors and publishers, journalism and book publishing.
00:29:40.000 What was interesting, so I was under contract from Simon Schuster, for whom I wrote a book several years ago, to write this book, just a collection of magazine journalism.
00:29:49.000 It's my 30th year, it's my 30th wedding anniversary, actually.
00:29:53.000 Oh, thank you.
00:29:55.000 And as I was putting together these stories for over, you know, from 1991 until present, Simon Schuster canceled Josh Hawley's book contract.
00:30:05.000 He was writing a book about the threats of tech, big tech.
00:30:09.000 And they canceled his book contract, not because they didn't believe in the book, they absolutely did believe in the book, or they certainly touted it to him and in public.
00:30:14.000 They canceled it because he cast a vote to pause the electoral count because he thought they were problems in the last election, which, you know, you could debate whether he was right or not, but in the last, the previous two elections, Democrats had done the very same thing.
00:30:30.000 And so, you know, they did that rather than after 16 and they did it after 2004 after Bush won his reelection.
00:30:38.000 So, you know, it wasn't without precedent, but they issued a press release attacking Josh Hawley as an insurrectionist and suggesting he was violent or racist.
00:30:47.000 And then they canceled his book contract.
00:30:48.000 So I'm watching this and I'm like, well, this seems like a, I mean, is this just Simon Schuster acting as an instrument of partisan politics?
00:30:55.000 So I called John Karp, who runs the company, and Dave Carmody, who's the editor of Simon Schuster, and I asked, like, what the hell is this?
00:31:02.000 And we did a Zoom call for an hour and I asked a lot.
00:31:05.000 And to their credit, they agreed.
00:31:08.000 And that conversation forms the basis of the opening of the book.
00:31:11.000 But they basically admitted that, yeah, we did this because the Democratic Party pressured us.
00:31:17.000 And if the Democratic Party doesn't like something, then we're not going to publish it.
00:31:22.000 Meantime, right after I had that conversation, within like three weeks, they sent Hunter Biden millions of dollars to write a book that didn't sell any copies.
00:31:29.000 And they lost a lot of money on that book.
00:31:31.000 And they did it, of course, to suck up to the new administration as a kind of back scratching for Joe Biden and his family. 0.96
00:31:39.000 So that's totally corrupt. 0.99
00:31:40.000 I mean, John Karp is totally corrupt intellectually. 0.95
00:31:43.000 And so is Dan.
00:31:46.000 And I just think it's a huge problem when your cultural and intellectual gatekeepers, the people who determine what ideas are in circulation, become partisan robots.
00:31:58.000 And they have.
00:31:59.000 Now, I told them I'm going to write this book attacking you and you've agreed to publish it.
00:32:04.000 And they are publishing it tomorrow.
00:32:06.000 And I think that their calculation was, well, it's going to be a lot more embarrassing if we cancel his book contract.
00:32:13.000 But, you know, I feel like they crossed a line.
00:32:17.000 And I think that this has implications for the society.
00:32:21.000 I mean, you have to have at least one sphere remaining where people can get provocative ideas into circulation or else your country intellectually dies.
00:32:32.000 I mean, it's medieval at that point.
00:32:33.000 It's like, we know what we know and we're not allowed to say anything else.
00:32:36.000 Like, again, I don't want to live in that country.
00:32:38.000 I'm not sure I can have any effect on it, but I'm doing my part by exposing the villains here.
00:32:45.000 And I would say Simon ⁇ Schuster is a villain, is absolutely a villain here.
00:32:48.000 And I think I proved it.
00:32:49.000 I reported it out.
00:32:50.000 Well, and so your acknowledgement, just because I was going to ask you about this, I find this to be hilarious.
00:32:54.000 Published by Simon ⁇ Schuster, you say, I'd like to acknowledge Jonathan Karp of Simon ⁇ Schuster, whose descent from open-minded book editor to cartoonish corporate censor mirrors the decline of America itself. It's been a sad education watching it happen. That's a beautiful paragraph. That's the acknowledgement to the book. Well,
00:33:11.000 yeah, I mean, and it's true. And by the way, I don't think John Karp is like Stalin or anything. I don't think he's the worst person in America, but I do think he has an unusual position where he helps determine what ideas we talk about. And that's a sacred position. And he has allowed his judgment on this and himself,
00:33:29.000 I would argue, to be completely corrupted and to become a tool of the present regime, of a political party. It's hard to imagine anything lower than that. What a betrayal of the ideals, but the bedrock ideals, by the way, of publishing. If you're a publisher, you've got to be against censorship. You have to be. That's a prerequisite for publishing. And rather than oppose it, he has become an eager participant in censorship. And by the way, during this process, I said, no,
00:33:58.000 I hope that you will come on my show and we'll have, I'll devote the hour to talking to you about why did you do this? And you canceled Milanopoulos' book too. And you refused to publish Candace Owens' second book because you didn't like her politics. And like, let's have an open conversation about this. And he agreed. And then he went back on that. So, but I'm not back. And let me just say one other thing. The George Floyd thing happened. Whatever you think of George Floyd's death or how he died or what it means or whatever,
00:34:26.000 you would think that a book publisher would kind of be a little bit above the momentary, you know, political conversation there. And so I take the long view. Simon ⁇ Schuster immediately hired as its editor-in-chief, a woman who had never for one day worked in book publishing. So Simon Schuster is one of the biggest publishers in the world. They hired this woman, Dana Carmedy, who's a, I would say, very political person, but no experience, not one day in publishing,
00:34:53.000 and now she runs it. She's the editor of the whole thing. How insulting is it? And I think she's doing exactly the job that you would imagine she's doing, which is very bad, you know, not a good job. You really, when you hire people on the basis of irrelevant criteria, you get the outcome that you would expect, which is a much worse outcome. You should hire people who know what they're doing, who've earned it, who have relevant experience,
00:35:18.000 who are the smartest that you can find. What they look like is irrelevant. It's always been irrelevant. And, you know, this is happening all over society, but I just got a window into what was happening at Simon ⁇ Schuster. And I talked to other people. I've known a lot of people there for a long time. You're like, what do you, this woman's never been in publishing a single day? Like, she seems like kind of an idiot. She's running it now. And they're like, oh, but you can't say anything about that because then, what, you're the bad person? What? And so, so, Tucker, throughout the book,
00:35:48.000 you talk about a lot of the articles you wrote. I want to focus on something that people on the right don't always talk about, which is the long slide of conservative publications. It wasn't just the long slide of the activist press. We could talk about that all day long, right? That's the more obvious critique. The less obvious one is how discourse and discussion amongst the intelligentsia on the right has actually minimized,
00:36:17.000 and kind of these legacy publications have become almost kind of vanilla versions of the left-wing ruling class. Can you talk about that? Because you wrote extensively for a lot of these kind of legacy publications. Oh,
00:36:33.000 man. Yeah. I worked at the Heritage Foundation. I wrote for the Weekly Standard for six years. I know, yeah, I mean, that's the world that I spent a lot of my life in. Then I went into television and television. You know, I worked at CNN, MSNBC, PBS,
00:36:49.000 ABC for a season, and now Fox for 12 years. And there are a lot of problems with TV. It's a very distinct culture. And I can bore you for days on that subject. But one good thing about TV is that you're constantly measured every day on your performance. I mean, ratings come out at 4:30 and you find out how you did. And it's kind of merciless. You know, there's a real incentive to perform. And it creates a culture that I like. I mean,
00:37:15.000 a lot of things about the culture I don't like. But one thing I've always loved is that it's kind of hard to just, you know, ramble on about something irrelevant because you're judged every day. The think tanks,
00:37:27.000 particularly the think tanks in Washington and some of the publications they produce and the nonprofit, you know, bi-weeklies they produce, are completely insulated from those pressures. And so it's what's always made me laugh. These are people who go on about the free market and the purifying pressures of market economies on people's behavior. And they couldn't be more insulated from the realities of the free market. In other words,
00:37:49.000 perform or die. Like they, that is just not a world they have ever been exposed to. So you get, so these are essentially sine of cures for a lot of really mediocre people. I mean, who would do that? I mean, it, you know, low stakes, low performance, we all die in the end. Again, having an easy job, I hope that I have one at some point. But in the prime of your life, if you're settling for the things they're settling for, you're not an impressive person. It doesn't mean you're an evil person,
00:38:16.000 but it means you're probably not qualified to be the standard bearer for an intellectual movement. You're like kind of dumb and kind of fearful, and you just, you know, want to get through the day. And a lot of them are like that. So when something really intense happens, 0.99
00:38:31.000 like George Floyd or, you know, like the authoritarian change in American political culture, where like real radicals have power, like actual radicals have power, that's the moment when they need to stand up. These people need to stand up and defend the ideas they claim to believe and the citizens who they claim to represent. And they find it in themselves that they can't because they're just not strong enough. They're weak and fearful. Again,
00:38:56.000 I think a lot of them are really nice people, you know, but they're just, they're just not up to it. They're, they're pathetic, actually, you know, so you get like David French, who's like, you know, Mr. Principal or David French. So like only in professional conservatism would David French be considered smart. I mean, imagine sitting next to David French at dinner. Would he like, you know, would, you know, 0.93
00:39:20.000 would you hear the buzz and crackle of his electric intelligence? Would he say something that challenged your views that made you really think about things? No, he's like, he's like some kind of sad guy in mom jeans. He's like kind of dumb, not super dumb, but kind of dumb. And that's the guy who's like, you know, refining conservative ideas for the next millennium. I mean, it's like, it's pathetic. And by the way,
00:39:46.000 what's so interesting is how uninteresting they are and how much they hate truly interesting people. Yes. You know, so like the people, it's just, this is always the test of a healthy system. Are the really interesting people cherished and encouraged? Sometimes the really interesting people shouldn't be in charge of anything. You know,
00:40:06.000 like geniuses can't really run things. Okay. So I'm not, I'm not saying they should be in charge, but a healthy system is confident enough to encourage people to walk on the wild side intellectually once in a while. You know, people who have challenging ideas are not crushed. You know, they're allowed to have those ideas. Conservatism, and certainly the broader society has zero tolerance for them at all. Conservatives are just the first ones to be like, oh, well, you know,
00:40:31.000 that sounds immoral. Shut up. You know, we have nothing to do with that guy. It's like, it's pathetic. And last thing I'll say, but systems like ours, institutional conservatism, produce people like Lindsey Graham, 1.00
00:40:47.000 you know, who are basically the leaders are basically fraudulent. You know, they're really good at performing, you know, at giving some three-minute performance in a judiciary committee hearing on behalf of a Supreme Court nominee who we're all supposed to believe is going to save us,
00:41:05.000 right? Brett Kavanaugh is going to save us. I mean, I never thought that from date one Supreme Court. First of all, you don't want a system in which the Supreme Court makes these kinds of decisions. That's not democracy. Second, I never thought Brett Kavanaugh seemed like super impressive. I hope he is. He never seemed it to me. But Lindsey Graham,
00:41:22.000 who is absolutely a leftist, I mean, just like full-blown, fundamental, his assumptions are the same as the American left. Because he got out and started screaming on cable television for three minutes in defense of Brett Kavanaugh, conservative institutions allowed themselves to ignore his actual behavior, which is working as a handmaiden to the left. And that's exactly, I mean, and if you look at Joe Biden, by the way, has conformed, confirmed more,
00:41:51.000 had more federal judges confirmed in the first six months than anybody in 40 years. Okay. Lindsey Graham is single-handedly, not single-handedly, he has had help, but he has been the prime mover in allowing that to happen in the Senate. So Lindsey Graham is working for the left. He is a fraud,
00:42:09.000 complete fraud, like worse than fraud. And no one says it because, oh, he got mad on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh. It's like, we need to demand more from our leaders, please. Well, it's also, people don't get mad because like, well, at least he's not a Democrat, right? It could get worse, right? It could be worse. I could tell this. I would much rather vote for Tulsi Gabbard any day of the week than Lindsey Graham. Well, at least Tulsi Gabbard is much more. Oh, totally. And she may have all kinds of ideas that I think are, you know, 0.99
00:42:36.000 I don't agree with. She's like a big vegetarian. I'm happy to have a hamburger, as you can probably tell. But she's not going to like cloak her creepy views in some performance designed to hide what she really thinks. Like that's scary. People who behave,
00:42:55.000 Lindsey Graham is kind of a scary guy, you know, and I would say the same thing about Nikki Haley. You know, the riots break out. People are getting killed because Black Lives Matter and Antifa are literally burning our cities and killing defenseless people. That happened. It didn't make it up, it was on TV. And the first thing that Nikki Haley says is, oh, we need this. This is like purifying violence. I mean, she tweeted about it. And yet she's still like some,
00:43:22.000 she's supposed to be the Republican nominee in 2024. There's something very broken in our system. And of course, you know the answer. It's a small number of oligarchs choose the candidates. That's not democracy. Whatever it is, that's not democracy. And by the way, it doesn't even work. If you run a conservative or faith-based business or organizations that accept credit cards for donations, events and merchandise or anything,
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00:44:37.000 that's cornerstone.cc slash K-I-R-K. Let them know I sent you. I hope we're starting to see that change with kind of these new candidates coming online, JD Vance, who I've put my support behind and many others. But you're exactly right. And so just a quick side note that I want to ask you about the most difficult question I have to ask you, which is where all of this is going, 1.00
00:45:01.000 is I feel personally upset about this because I grew up in the conservative movement that was dominated by a lot of these people who told me not to read Russell Kirk, that told me that the Pat Buchanan types were the worst things ever. But you're 18 years old, right? You're 18 years old and you're trying to figure things out. And you get nothing but Hayek pamphlets. You're like, okay, that's the whole world, right? You know,
00:45:26.000 that's what we stand for. Those people are the, they're the branched Davidian types. You know, put them out on a, put them out to pasture. And so I kind of have a chip on my shoulder about this stuff. And yeah, I'd love your thoughts. I mean, just let me just pause. I'll keep it, but if you've been used by people in a very dishonest way, that's what you're describing. Yeah. And that has absolutely happened to me too. Bill Crystal was my assignment editor for six years. Imagine how I feel. Looking back at all these stories, I'm like, wait, 1.00
00:45:54.000 why did he assign me that story? And of course, there was an agenda behind every one of them, which I didn't perceive. When you're young, you don't get the big picture. Again, I'm not young and I still miss the big picture. So it's very easy to use eager young people for your own purposes. And if you've been used, as I have been, it makes you mad, you know, looking back on it. I mean, it's really, it's, and that's, that's exactly, you sound mad because you think you've been used. Yes. And it's, and you feel as if some of your best years,
00:46:24.000 you did not do your best thinking and the best development of it. At least we'ren't given a fair hearing, right? It'll be one thing if like, here's what we think here. And it says like, no, you can't, this is a thought crime. You'll be thrown down a memory hole. You know, you must believe that open borders and degeneracy is the way of the way of living for the future. But thankfully, that's actually changing large in part thanks to your program that has given a platform to a more prudent way to govern. So I want to, so what I, what I want to ask you about the book,
00:46:51.000 and I don't know if you intended this, is that it does kind of tell us, at least in some way, where this is headed and potentially what we can do about this, because this really is kind of a 30-year picture of where America has gone. There's an old Chinese proverb, which I don't quote Chinese proverbs all the time. It's another road ahead, ask those coming back, right? Which is, so what does this tell us about what to do next? Because Tucker,
00:47:15.000 what frustrates me is I get thousands of people messaging us every single day on our podcast and radio show. And they say, Charlie, it's all fine. What do I do? What can we do about this? And so, as you reflect and meditate really on the last 30 years, what is the wisdom you have to share for our audience of what you can actually do to fix this long slide? Well, I mean, I think as a strong, you know, structurally, the only power available to people who dissent is political power, ultimately. You know,
00:47:45.000 I work for some soulless corporation. There's really not much I can do to change their minds because they're just more powerful than I am. The promise of democracy is that every citizen has a voice in government. And I think that's much less true than it should be, but it's really our only hope at this point. So I think it's essential to demand leadership that represents us and more essentially that defends us, that defends us. And by us, I'm not,
00:48:15.000 you know, I'm speaking of just any American who was kind of happy in this country in 1985. And how about that? You know, you can't tell me because I was here. This was not a racist country. It was not a radical country. It was a, it was a flawed country,
00:48:30.000 even in 1985, but it was, it was a peaceful, sensible country. It was, I was here. And so that's what I would kind of aim for. Let's just return to 1985. Well, you know, let's make America great again. What does that look like exactly? It's not 1910. It's 1985. And any leader who's unwilling to do that is unworthy of leadership. And if my constitutionally and God-guaranteed civil liberties are being taken away by the regime,
00:48:58.000 that leader has to stand up on my behalf and defend me. So that's the first thing. Elect good people. Don't elect Lindsey Graham again. Is there Tim Scott? Are you serious? Come on. You know, and I'm not just saying that because Tim Scott, not a genius, but that's not, there are a lot of, I'm not a genius. There are a lot of people who, you know, it's not about intelligence. It's about it. It's about a gut level commitment to defend and uplift the people you're responsible for. Treat the voters as you would your own children,
00:49:27.000 and you may still make a mistake or two, but you're not going to go too far off the path. That is true. If you love the people you lead, in the end, you'll basically do a good job representing them. And Lindsey Graham is just like a completely sinister person who's just lying and pretending to be something he's not. I wouldn't say that of Tim Scott. Tim Scott probably doesn't know anybody. You know,
00:49:47.000 he doesn't have strong beliefs one way or the other. You know, he's just kind of trying to do the best he can or whatever. But, you know, ask for more, demand better. But that's just in the political system. On the other side, I would say, you know, I know that the conservatives are really frustrated. And I think we're a lot closer to something ugly, unfortunately, than people acknowledge in public because the frustration, because this is oppression, what we're living under. I mean,
00:50:13.000 people are actually oppressed. And I could give you a million examples, but your viewers already know them. Violence is not a, I really pray that it doesn't happen. I don't think violence is a solution. I don't, I don't, I've seen it. I think it accelerates. There's kind of no good thing comes out of that. So I think keeping your self-control, your politeness, your dignity,
00:50:35.000 your insistence on seeing the humanity in other people and resisting in that fashion, I think is much more likely to make this a better country. You know, no, I'm not going to, I'm not confrontational. I'm not looking for a fight just because I don't want someone in my face looking for a fight. But no,
00:50:50.000 I'm not, I'm not going to do that. You know, and if you haven't had the vaccine, I mean, this is a tough, this is a tough question. You know, there are a lot of people who shouldn't be getting the vaccine or who have simply determined they don't want to have made the calculation. And that's their right as an American to make that decision. I think a lot of those people are tempted to get fake vaccine cards,
00:51:09.000 and they certainly don't judge that. And many will, many are, I know, I know a lot of people who are. Godspeed. But I personally think we get a lot more out of being honest and saying, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to play along with the lie. I mean, I have reasons for not taking it. And here's what they are. That's the vaccines, the transgender question. You know, I'm not mad at people who want to wear the clothes of the other sex or pretend that they are of the other sex. It's,
00:51:39.000 you know, I'm not mad at them, but you can't propagandize my children with this stuff. And you cannot get me or my children to deny science. Sex is ascertainable through a DNA test. That's a fact. If you think it's not a fact,
00:51:52.000 tell me how it's not. But it is a fact. And we both know that. And so I'm not going to pretend, even a tiny bit to not know that. I'm not going to lie. You can't make me lie. I'm not going to. Period. And the final thing I would say is that don't go quietly. Yes. You know,
00:52:11.000 if your employer says, well, you have to lie or you have to violate your conscience in order to work here. I think the best way to respond is to say, look, I can't do that. I'm an adult man. I have dignity. I can't violate my own conscience. I'm not going to and I shouldn't have to. But if you make me, I can promise you that I will make it painful for you too. You know, I'll, I don't know what I'm going to do, chain myself to your front door, hold a press conference, call every cable news show, demand to go on. I will make it not. And trust me,
00:52:39.000 I'm not suggesting violence. I don't believe in violence. I would never advocate for it because I'm not a leftist. But I am advocating for some kind of civil disobedience. Yes. And just be reasonable. Like, sure, you can fire me,
00:52:51.000 but that's going to be a PR nightmare because you're firing me for ill cause. It's not justified. It's cruel what you're doing. And I'm going to tell everybody and I'm going to get other people to tell everybody. So maybe you just kind of leave me alone. Let's try that. I think that's a really good way for the average person who doesn't have a TV show or a podcast to make the country a little better. Just inform the people misusing their power that their power is not absolute,
00:53:14.000 that there are limits on their power. There's only so much you can do to hurt me. I'm sorry. And then, you know, I'm going to respond. And they're counting on our weakness. And in fact, they're actually weaker than they ever project. And they back down so and we're Tucker. We're representing hundreds of kids,
00:53:32.000 you know, through legal support with our no mandatory vaccine project. And we're winning. We're losing some, but we are winning. I could go through a list of schools where they backed off, got alumni involved, got donors involved. And I was like, okay, fine. You get an exemption. And as soon as that happens, their entire fraud gets exposed. As soon as they blink, the whole apparatus starts to fall apart. And so I just completely agree. So in closing, again, the book is called The Long Slide. Thank you for being so generous, Tucker,
00:54:00.000 with your time. The last question I have is more personal, which is how do you keep of good cheer? And as you talk about this in the first part of your book, that basically there's this kind of really honest sentence where you're like, yeah, we all die and we're going to be irrelevant eventually. Right. Talk about things over the last 30 years as you reflect that really matter. It's not the Twitter followers, the Instagram followers, the cable news channel, you know, riding around in chauffeured cars. Tell our audience,
00:54:28.000 what are the things that really matter and what they should focus on? Not fame, popularity, or TikTok stardom. Well, your relationships are all that matter. I mean, that's it. I mean, ultimately, and I hate to quote Conan O'Brien, you know, I'm not that impressed by it, but he had one great line that I'll never forgot. I've never forgotten. And he said, in the end, all graves go unvisited. Boy, is that true. So, like, really, in the end, what matters is your relationship with God. I mean, it's hard to see,
00:54:55.000 even as a logical matter. Even if you don't believe in God, I think you could acknowledge that. But as, you know, in the here and now, in the temporal world, what matters are your relationships with other people. I'm blessed to be married. 30 years ago tonight, we had a rehearsal dinner at Bailey's Beach, Newport, Rhode Island. I'll never, which I guess we're not supposed to admit because it's like a bad club now, but whatever, that's where it was. And it was great. And I've had a really happy marriage, having nothing to do with me,
00:55:21.000 but just kind of an accident. I just married the right chick. And so that has been the source of my strength as a person and certainly the wellspring of my happiness above and beyond anything else by a factor of a lot. And we had four children who I get along with very well and love and I'm close to and talk to all the time. And so,
00:55:40.000 and my dogs, we have four dogs. So, really, in the end, what matters is your relationships, like more than anything. And if there's one thing that drives me other than bad architecture, which may make me crazier than anything, but the idea that you're going to be happy if you get a better job. I just know having been unemployed a couple of times, then getting exactly the job I wanted,
00:56:07.000 being pretty successful in that job. I've seen kind of both ends. I do think you need a job. Work is a source, particularly for men, of meaning. And so I love work and it's very important. But in the end, I would be, I don't know, I wouldn't even hesitate to give up my job or my career, not that I have a career, but you know what I mean? Like what I do professionally for my relationships, for my wife, my children,
00:56:34.000 my friends. I have really close friends. I don't have a hundred really close friends, but I have, you know, a dozen really close friends. And they're, I'm more loyal to them than I am to, you know, to any, to any company or country, to be honest. You know, your relationships matter more than anything. So, I mean, this is like hardly plowing new ground. It's obvious, but boy, you never know it from listening to people talk. You know,
00:56:59.000 it's all about how do I get a job at a private equity concern. You know, Goldman. Yeah. Right. Goldman. It's so gross. But it's also dumb. Let me just say, I'll stand on this, but you were saying, like, do you have hope for the future? Clearly,
00:57:15.000 all of us who are following this stuff carefully are pretty discouraged because the aggression of the people who oppose us is so overweening. I mean, it's just like they're very aggressive. Like, I've never been that aggressive to anybody in my life and never would. They're very aggressive as a matter of daily practice. So it's intimidating to face off against them. It's like,
00:57:33.000 how can they lose? They're so self-assured. They're so ruthless. They'll do anything. And I am always heartened by how dumb they are. That makes me feel much better. These are really unwise,
00:57:49.000 short-sighted people. They are, you know, they are playing in some sense the long game. They're better at strategy than we are, but they're also really stupid. And I don't mean IQ-wise. So, you know, some of them score pretty high. They went to Harvard,
00:58:05.000 but they lack wisdom. Yes, that's proportion and balance. And they don't, they can't actually think longitudinally. They just can't. They can't help themselves. And they lack emotional control. That's the other thing. They have no self-control. All of them have these bizarre personal lives. That really is the root of their politics. Anyway,
00:58:23.000 they're not that impressive. I guess that's the point I would make. And so if they're the opponent, you know, maybe we'll do okay in the end, actually. Well, I also think the aggression is totally a coping mechanism, though. I mean, they're trying to find a place in the world. They always say there's this religious fervor that, you know,
00:58:38.000 and I actually think that they're much more vulnerable than they would ever lead you to believe. They are paranoid. They are empty. They are unhappy. And the self-control thing is the most important of the whole thing strategically because they will not know when to stop. They'll pick fights they shouldn't. They'll fight amongst themselves. And those of us in the Christian world believe self-control comes from the Lord. It's a fruit of the spirit. It's not something that's easy for a lot of us,
00:59:05.000 right? And they believe self, they believe self-control is the worst thing. Like, how could you dare want to have, you know, control of yourself? You should want to put yourself on a pedestal. And I actually think that's, that's actually, um, that's prone for massive failure. Tucker,
00:59:19.000 anything else on the book or anything you want to mention? I was just thinking, I don't think I've ever passed a pizza I didn't eat. And I don't think I've ever eaten a pizza that didn't lead to a scoop of ice cream. So I don't get just upright just about self-control. It's a daily struggle for me,
00:59:36.000 too. But I mean, they're on another level, man. They just, they, they, you know, they don't have an unexpressed emotion. It's just so true. Yes. Unless they're wearing two masks there, then it is unexpressed. Tucker, thank you so much for joining us. It's the long slide, 30 years in American Journalism. I guess it's published by Simon and Schuster, but it hits Simon and Schuster, which I think is just awesome. And Tucker, thanks so much for joining us. You're the best. Great to talk to you, Charlie. I really enjoyed that. Thanks,
01:00:03.000 man. You bet. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support. Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.