00:00:00.000Hey, 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.
00:00:17.000We talk about a lot of different topics, including his book, which is The Long Slide.
00:00:23.000Check it out right now: 30 years in American Journalism, Tucker Carlson, The Long Slide.
00:00:29.000And I know you guys are going to love this conversation.
00:00:31.000Please consider supporting this program at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:00:38.000That's charliekirk.com/slash support to get behind the work we are doing.
00:00:44.000I want to thank Deborah from Fullerton, California.
00:02:17.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:04:34.000And then they arrest you for eating the cookies.
00:04:36.000So 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.
00:04:44.000It was interesting to see how other people live.
00:04:47.000And 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.
00:05:00.000So, 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.
00:05:06.000Therefore, we have to make sure that the outcome of the next election in Hungary is to our liking.
00:05:20.000They're already working against that by funding this massive NGO infrastructure and propaganda infrastructure within Hungary that's fundamentally not Hungarian.
00:05:29.000It's our elites who are doing this to Hungary.
00:05:31.000So 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.
00:05:41.000The government of Hungary and the people of Hungary have reached a basic agreement on what government's supposed to do.
00:05:55.000Do 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.
00:06:04.000People want to find a maiden, reproduce.
00:06:10.000I mean, it's more important even than working in an investment bank or getting a gig at McKenzie.
00:06:14.000I don't want to blow anyone's mind here.
00:06:16.000So 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.
00:06:35.000It was a form of government that serves what people want, you know, that serves their needs and desires.
00:06:40.000And the Hungarian government, which probably flawed like all governments are, and its leaders are likely flawed like all people are.
00:06:47.000But 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.
00:07:01.000These are at the top of the agenda officially.
00:07:04.000I mean, if you look around, you know, you see that.
00:07:08.000We're being told exactly the opposite.
00:07:10.000Ann 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.
00:08:31.000And 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.
00:09:20.000But also, there's so much I want to ask you about, like this idea of what is freedom, right?
00:09:24.000Because I grew up in a conservative movement.
00:09:26.000You 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.
00:09:33.000When 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.
00:09:42.000What 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.
00:10:01.000Can 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.
00:10:12.000And they've kind of showed that the rest of the countries went the wrong direction.
00:11:31.000But Europe had to deal with the immediate effects of it because Europe is connected to that region.
00:11:36.000There's a land bridge or, you know, the Straits of Gibraltar are actually not that far apart.
00:11:42.000And 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.
00:11:57.000You 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.
00:12:07.000I mean, it's just, it opens up a whole continent to mass migration.
00:12:12.000And it's not an argument against immigration.
00:12:14.000I'm not against immigration, but that's not immigration.
00:12:21.000So 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.
00:13:33.000So 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.
00:13:44.000The world is somehow immoral or racist or whatever.
00:13:53.000So 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.
00:14:29.000And the results in Germany and in Italy and in Greece and in France and in the UK of uncontrolled immigration have been terrible.
00:14:41.000And 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.
00:14:50.000And 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.
00:16:27.000Last thing I'll say, you know, when people are guilty, and this is true for children too, because they become hysterical.
00:16:33.000So 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.
00:16:41.000I probably have a lot of opinions that I wouldn't share.
00:16:44.000I've never been a racist, much of a white supremacist, whatever that is.
00:16:47.000So whenever like, oh, you're a white supremacist.
00:19:23.000100% 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.
00:19:42.000But 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.
00:20:01.000These are not people who are comfortable with coexistence.
00:20:05.000They don't want to live with people they disagree with.
00:20:09.000Now, again, it's not my job to think through the implications of that, but I am against lying.
00:20:16.000These are people who would hurt you if they could.
00:20:19.000So 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.
00:20:40.000Why would you need a bodyguard just because you've got a political view that some people disagree with?
00:20:43.000And 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.
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00:22:31.000Hungary 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?
00:22:43.000Can 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?
00:22:50.000And 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.
00:22:57.000But it's just a very basic governing principle that who are the people you're creating a government for?
00:23:01.000I mean, Montesquieu talked about this, that the spirit of the laws have to connect to the people you're governing.
00:23:06.000And if you're going to change the body politic, you talk about this in your book.
00:23:09.000I 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.
00:23:14.000You got me all wound up, which is the long slide, 30 years in American journalism.
00:23:19.000Tucker, you mentioned early here that the country just as a population has nearly tripled since you started in journalism.
00:23:27.000Because 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.
00:23:39.000I mean, big systems don't work very well.
00:23:41.000Ask anybody who served in the U.S. Army, you know, every veteran, Vietnam-era veteran, for example.
00:23:47.000You go over to Vietnam, you fight a ridiculous war, you see people die, you come back, and you still love America.
00:23:53.000I've never met anyone who served in the military, including my own dad during that time who doesn't love America, truly love America.
00:23:59.000But 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.
00:24:08.000And so the decisions that any big organization makes tend to be, you know, there are a lot of unwise decisions.
00:24:15.000I mean, they get the biggest things right, but the details are hard to pull off.
00:24:19.000You can't retain your fine motor skills at scale.
00:24:23.000I mean, this is a well-known basically a physics principle.
00:24:26.000Many business books have been written about this.
00:24:28.000So 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.
00:24:39.000I mean, there's a reason that, you know, very few people go on vacation in China.
00:24:44.000They go on vacation in Switzerland or Barbados or small places.
00:24:51.000You know, I feel no threat whatsoever from my local retailer.
00:24:55.000I see Amazon as a real threat to my freedom.
00:24:57.000And 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.
00:26:10.000But leaving that aside, it's like a normal person doesn't need to be told that at all.
00:26:16.000And that's why we break our society down into smaller communities.
00:26:20.000There's no community of a million people, much less 340 million people.
00:26:25.000There's no, by definition, it can't be.
00:26:27.000And they pretend, no, the African-American community, Asian community, my favorite, the Hispanic community.
00:26:32.000Oh, 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?
00:27:00.000The next level is the neighborhood, then the town.
00:27:04.000But 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.
00:27:32.000That would have something to do with it.
00:27:34.000Hungary'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.
00:27:42.000They have no SWAT, they have no nuclear weapons.
00:27:45.000In my view, in a lot of ways, is a huge advantage, you know, a huge advantage.
00:27:51.000And there's a characteristic also of these kind of smaller countries.
00:27:57.000I mean, Israel, which of course we're not allowed to talk about how Israel managed their immigration stricter than even Hungary, by the way.
00:28:04.000I mean, and I mean, it's not even close, right?
00:28:15.000And most of the American intelligentsia says, yeah, that's perfectly fine.
00:28:19.000But 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.
00:28:25.000It's like at some point, there's a tension here.
00:28:28.000So, 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?
00:28:40.000Is 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.
00:28:46.000Like, oh, that's I so here's my question.
00:28:49.000Um, and just for everyone to understand, I'm still working my way through the book.
00:28:52.000This is a series of your articles that you wrote for the Weekly Standard.
00:28:55.000I have to ask you about that, amongst other places, where, and then you have some commentary after that.
00:29:02.000Do 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?
00:29:13.000Do 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?
00:29:31.000America's decline mirrored the decline of our intellectual gatekeepers, you know, editors and publishers, journalism and book publishing.
00:29:40.000What 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.
00:29:49.000It's my 30th year, it's my 30th wedding anniversary, actually.
00:29:55.000And as I was putting together these stories for over, you know, from 1991 until present, Simon Schuster canceled Josh Hawley's book contract.
00:30:05.000He was writing a book about the threats of tech, big tech.
00:30:09.000And 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.
00:30:14.000They 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.
00:30:30.000And so, you know, they did that rather than after 16 and they did it after 2004 after Bush won his reelection.
00:30:38.000So, 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.
00:30:47.000And then they canceled his book contract.
00:30:48.000So 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?
00:30:55.000So 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?
00:31:02.000And we did a Zoom call for an hour and I asked a lot.
00:31:08.000And that conversation forms the basis of the opening of the book.
00:31:11.000But they basically admitted that, yeah, we did this because the Democratic Party pressured us.
00:31:17.000And if the Democratic Party doesn't like something, then we're not going to publish it.
00:31:22.000Meantime, 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.
00:31:29.000And they lost a lot of money on that book.
00:31:31.000And they did it, of course, to suck up to the new administration as a kind of back scratching for Joe Biden and his family.
00:31:46.000And 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.
00:32:06.000And I think that their calculation was, well, it's going to be a lot more embarrassing if we cancel his book contract.
00:32:13.000But, you know, I feel like they crossed a line.
00:32:17.000And I think that this has implications for the society.
00:32:21.000I mean, you have to have at least one sphere remaining where people can get provocative ideas into circulation or else your country intellectually dies.
00:32:50.000Well, and so your acknowledgement, just because I was going to ask you about this, I find this to be hilarious.
00:32:54.000Published 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,
00:33:11.000yeah, 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,
00:33:29.000I 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,
00:33:58.000I 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,
00:34:26.000you 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,
00:34:53.000and 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,
00:35:18.000who 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,
00:35:48.000you 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,
00:36:17.000and 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,
00:36:33.000man. 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,
00:36:49.000ABC 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,
00:37:15.000a 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,
00:37:27.000particularly 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,
00:37:49.000perform 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,
00:38:16.000but 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,
00:38:31.000like 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,
00:38:56.000I 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,
00:39:20.000would 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,
00:39:46.000what'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,
00:40:06.000like 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,
00:40:31.000that 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,
00:40:47.000you 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,
00:41:05.000right? 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,
00:41:22.000who 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,
00:41:51.000had 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,
00:42:09.000complete 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,
00:42:36.000I 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,
00:42:55.000Lindsey 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,
00:43:22.000she'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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00:44:37.000that'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,
00:45:01.000is 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,
00:45:26.000that'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,
00:45:54.000why 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,
00:46:24.000you 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,
00:46:51.000and 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,
00:47:15.000what 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,
00:47:45.000I 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,
00:48:15.000you 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,
00:48:30.000even 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,
00:48:58.000that 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,
00:49:27.000and 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,
00:49:47.000he 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,
00:50:13.000people 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,
00:50:35.000your 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,
00:50:50.000I'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,
00:51:09.000and 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,
00:51:39.000you 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,
00:51:52.000tell 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,
00:52:11.000if 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,
00:52:39.000I'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,
00:52:51.000but 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,
00:53:14.000that 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,
00:53:32.000you 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,
00:54:00.000with 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,
00:54:28.000what 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,
00:54:55.000even 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,
00:55:21.000but 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,
00:55:40.000and 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,
00:56:07.000being 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,
00:56:34.000my 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,
00:56:59.000it'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,
00:57:15.000all 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,
00:57:33.000how 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,
00:57:49.000short-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,
00:58:05.000but 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,
00:58:23.000they'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,
00:58:38.000and 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,
00:59:05.000right? 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,
00:59:19.000anything 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,
00:59:36.000too. 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,
01:00:03.000man. 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.