The Megyn Kelly Show - Tucker Carlson on the Media's Deception, the ADL's Attacks, and Armor Against Criticism

00:00:00.000 Beat, beat, beatboxing actually has hidden health benefits.

00:00:04.340 It can help strengthen and protect your voice from injury.

00:00:08.900 See healthy living differently with Manulife.

00:00:11.160 Visit manulife.ca slash health.

00:00:14.020 Yeah.

00:00:15.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:17.500 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:27.520 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:29.160 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:30.920 Today on the program, I'm joined by my good friend, Tucker Carlson,

00:00:34.800 host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on the Fox News channel,

00:00:38.520 among other offerings that he is putting out into the world these days.

00:00:42.340 Tucker, so good to see you.

00:00:43.440 Thank you so much for doing this.

00:00:45.100 Oh, Megyn, I'm grateful to be here.

00:00:46.620 Thank you.

00:00:47.080 I'm very psyched about this show.

00:00:49.520 Is it true you're in your closet?

00:00:51.740 This is what my team is telling me you're in your,

00:00:53.100 and you do appear to be in a closet.

00:00:55.340 I'm in, I'm in actually our barn where, this is my office.

00:01:00.820 It's a, it's an old, it's a very old barn and our studio's here.

00:01:04.760 So I have an office in it and it looks like a barn.

00:01:07.620 It looks amazing, actually.

00:01:09.080 I really like what I'm seeing there.

00:01:10.920 All right.

00:01:11.440 An undisclosed location.

00:01:12.780 We don't need to get any more specific than that.

00:01:15.760 Can I just start with breaking news today on our moral betters over at CNN?

00:01:20.920 I did a whole segment yesterday with my legal team.

00:01:23.320 I love Mark and Arthur, and we talked about Don Lamont.

00:01:26.240 And he's being sued for sexual assault by a guy who says Lemon fondled himself

00:01:31.940 and rubbed his hands all over the guy's face.

00:01:34.580 I mean, Arthur Idala was saying, that's worth five million.

00:01:37.860 I don't care.

00:01:38.360 Whatever he's asking for, it's too little.

00:01:40.460 And then now today, the news breaks that Chris Cuomo is being accused of sexually harassing a woman

00:01:45.860 several years ago when he was at ABC.

00:01:48.240 His boss, Shelly Ross, has gone on the record in New York Times op-ed saying,

00:01:52.660 we went to a party.

00:01:53.780 I was no longer his boss.

00:01:54.780 I had just shifted off the show or he had shifted off the show, whatever.

00:01:57.860 And he greeted her and he gave her a big bear hug and he grabbed her ass.

00:02:02.140 He squeezed her ass and then like was horrified to see her husband sitting.

00:02:06.940 And I, Tucker, you can't make it up.

00:02:12.200 These, I don't even know if I would have touched the story, right?

00:02:15.560 It's like, it sounds like a Nimrod, stupid ass thing to do.

00:02:19.220 Yeah.

00:02:19.740 You know, it's dumb.

00:02:21.540 And he apologized for it.

00:02:23.240 It's clear he did it because she's got him in writing, admitting that he did something bad.

00:02:27.760 He's sorry.

00:02:28.140 Um, but I'm so sick of these guys every night coming out, attacking regular Americans for

00:02:35.000 being awful because of whatever, you know, some innocuous comment or their immutable characteristics

00:02:39.760 or whatever it is.

00:02:41.200 Meanwhile, you know, these are terrible people behind the scenes.

00:02:43.640 Well, the whole thing is so Freudian.

00:02:46.320 That's exactly, I think that exactly what you said.

00:02:48.020 I think that every single day, I mean, if you're sort of happy with yourself and your

00:02:52.520 relationships with other people, if you have a happy marriage and a cohesive family and

00:02:57.740 your coworkers like you, the people you're in charge of respect you, you know, it gives

00:03:02.720 you a different vantage.

00:03:03.980 If by contrast, you're tormented like a character in Edgar Allen Poe story by your own sins, you

00:03:10.760 know what a completely rotten person you are and your whole life is devoted to creating

00:03:15.120 this facade to protect that truth from being known, then you're apt to lash out against

00:03:19.920 other people.

00:03:20.420 That's why they always accuse you of exactly what they themselves are doing.

00:03:25.840 It's unerring.

00:03:27.120 It's every single time.

00:03:28.540 And all of this grows out of the fact that these are super damaged, unhappy, rotten people.

00:03:33.980 How'd they get in positions of power is my question.

00:03:37.360 How did you wind up?

00:03:38.820 So you had a powerful dad in the media industry whose name was well known.

00:03:42.460 Chris Cuomo had a powerful dad in the politics industry whose name was well known.

00:03:46.680 How did, how did you wind up normal, successful with a nice family?

00:03:50.980 And he winds up being accused of stuff like this out there lecturing everybody night with

00:03:55.620 his stupid muscle building videos.

00:03:57.380 He's obviously got something going on.

00:04:00.140 I don't know what his problem is, but there's not, so there's something not right.

00:04:03.980 And I, you can't root it in being the son of a powerful guy because that doesn't happen

00:04:08.920 to every son of a powerful guy.

00:04:11.300 No, it doesn't.

00:04:12.460 I mean, I, you know, I can only speak for myself, but I, I'm the product of a lot of

00:04:18.860 failures and unhappiness, which, and, you know, suffering, which I think, you know, befalls

00:04:23.900 all of us at some point.

00:04:25.220 I mean, I don't need to tell you, you know, unexpected things happen in your life and

00:04:30.080 you either become much improved and you understand yourself more deeply and you're calmer or the

00:04:36.820 opposite happens.

00:04:37.640 You become crazed and nasty.

00:04:39.340 In my case, you know, I struggled for years with drinking too much.

00:04:42.740 I quit 20 years ago.

00:04:44.480 I got fired and completely ran out of money.

00:04:46.680 Had to sell my house out from under, you know, four kids that really changed my view of everything.

00:04:53.660 Um, and then I was in a plane crash 20 years ago next month.

00:04:57.840 And, and I obviously survived, but all, you know, those are three really bad things, but

00:05:02.860 each one of them completely changed the way I behave.

00:05:06.240 I mean, I don't think I was ever the pig that Chris Cuomo clearly is, but I mean, I, I was

00:05:11.620 a much different person 25 years ago, because like Chris Cuomo, you know, I was pretty successful

00:05:18.220 young.

00:05:18.820 I got on TV in my twenties and, and I think it made me into kind of a jerk.

00:05:24.040 And the only thing that saved me was failing and being humiliated, like really humiliated

00:05:29.240 where your neighbors avert their gaze when you pull into the driveway at night, kind of

00:05:32.520 thing.

00:05:32.680 Like everybody hated me.

00:05:34.160 What?

00:05:34.640 When?

00:05:35.000 People do hate me, but, but that was just so good for my soul.

00:05:39.720 I mean, it really was the best thing that ever happened to me.

00:05:43.080 I don't remember that.

00:05:43.940 I know why people don't like you now, but the lovers outweigh the haters.

00:05:47.140 But when, when did people loathe you before when they're at the CNN crossfire thing?

00:05:51.740 No, I, I left CNN because I, I was really frustrated with working at CNN for eight years.

00:05:59.260 I was there a long time.

00:06:00.220 And then I went to MSNBC and I got the main show there.

00:06:04.440 I was the primetime anchor, like anchoring the lineup next to Keith Oberman.

00:06:08.920 And I failed and I fail, you know, I just failed in the most basic way.

00:06:13.880 I got bad ratings, you know?

00:06:15.640 So it's kind of hard to evade responsibility for that.

00:06:19.040 I mean, you can sort of blame other people, but in the end, if you've got a TV show and

00:06:22.160 your job is to, you know, get into as many living rooms as you can and you fail, it's,

00:06:26.580 it's kind of your fault.

00:06:27.500 And it very much was my fault and I got fired for it.

00:06:29.740 And, um, that was one of those moments where I was like, well, I'm sure they, you know,

00:06:35.320 they screwed me over or whatever.

00:06:36.740 But the truth is I was lazy and entitled and it set off this chain reaction financially.

00:06:42.640 Cause I've never been good at money where I like looked around and I was like, oh wow,

00:06:46.840 I'm living this totally unsustainable life.

00:06:48.940 And I don't, I'm not making any money.

00:06:51.620 So I had to, I had to sell the house that, you know, and I had a young family, I had four

00:06:56.380 children and a wife and I, it was, you know, it was pretty low grade disaster.

00:07:02.000 I mean, I didn't, you know, lose a limb in war, you know, get paralyzed in a car accident.

00:07:06.860 But for me who'd grown up in a pretty privileged world, I mean, it was distressing and, um,

00:07:13.760 and a shock.

00:07:14.560 And the, but the biggest shock was that it was completely my fault.

00:07:18.640 So that really reoriented my, my thinking about everything, mostly about myself.

00:07:23.980 And, and that's sort of the root of my, of my strength.

00:07:28.880 Now it's like, you know, I've already done that.

00:07:31.340 I could be broke again.

00:07:32.960 You know, you can, you can make it as long, you know what I mean?

00:07:35.840 So I was just grateful for that.

00:07:37.620 So I do think you say on, um, it was another podcast where you said something like I've,

00:07:41.900 I failed a lot or I've been fired from jobs a lot.

00:07:44.700 Uh, and I always blamed other people.

00:07:46.260 And then you had sort of not to drop Oprah on you, but you'd had sort of the aha moment

00:07:50.620 where, you know, you lost the job and you lost the house and you realized maybe I should

00:07:55.200 be blaming myself.

00:07:56.300 Maybe there's more empowerment in blaming myself for pretty much everything.

00:08:00.220 Well, it's always your fault.

00:08:01.860 I had the, one of the saddest things ever happened to me.

00:08:04.180 I had a breach in one of my closest relationships, really one of my close, probably my closest

00:08:08.820 friend.

00:08:09.460 And it was over family stuff and, you know, it was over deep stuff.

00:08:12.920 It wasn't like we got drunk and got in an argument and it went on for like about 15

00:08:17.680 years.

00:08:18.080 And it really torment.

00:08:19.280 It was the thing that I would like talk to my wife about in bed on Sunday morning.

00:08:22.160 Like, oh, I'm really hurt by this.

00:08:23.800 And he was just so unreasonable and like being such a jerk.

00:08:27.600 And like, it was all about how he had failed.

00:08:30.060 And one day, literally while walking my many dogs, it dawned on me like, wait a second.

00:08:36.060 I'm being, I mean, I'm implicated in this.

00:08:38.280 And the second I realized that it was my fault too, things got better.

00:08:42.440 And that, that just changed my view of everything.

00:08:46.000 It's always your fault.

00:08:47.380 You can only control yourself.

00:08:49.160 And once you realize that, then you can make things better.

00:08:53.900 Yeah.

00:08:54.240 I couldn't, could not agree more.

00:08:56.220 And that's why I've tried.

00:08:57.480 I don't always succeed, but I've tried to eliminate the word unfair from my vocabulary,

00:09:02.040 right?

00:09:02.560 It's like my life is the natural consequence of my own decisions.

00:09:07.260 Some good, some bad, but I own them all.

00:09:10.280 You know, you become the sum of those parts.

00:09:11.820 And hopefully if you look back, you look into yourself and you say, well, I like where I am

00:09:15.320 or I don't like where I am.

00:09:16.400 It gives you your motivation for the day, right?

00:09:19.040 I mean, it's like you're in charge.

00:09:21.300 That's totally right.

00:09:22.580 And I, I do think in the case of Chris Cuomo, he's clearly getting fired.

00:09:26.760 So for those, oh yeah.

00:09:28.900 I mean, well, of course, I mean, Shelly Ross, I mean, for you've been in the TV business for

00:09:33.780 decades.

00:09:34.340 Shelly Ross is not a, you know, she's not a line producer.

00:09:36.940 Shelly Ross like was the person at ABC news for a long time.

00:09:41.880 Jeff Zucker, who's Chris Cuomo's boss, obviously knows Shelly Ross really well.

00:09:45.860 I know Shelly Ross.

00:09:46.660 Everyone knows Shelly Ross.

00:09:47.720 So, um, it's not a small thing at all.

00:09:50.880 This is a very powerful person accusing Chris Cuomo and proving that he acted like a pig.

00:09:56.700 I just think it's, I think, and I think there's, I mean, I don't think I know, um, because I've

00:10:01.800 actually seen the complaints.

00:10:02.980 There's a lot more.

00:10:03.900 So he's done.

00:10:04.680 And, and I hope, and I, other women, do you mean other women or more from Shelly?

00:10:10.360 Now, I just think, you know, these things are always a pattern of piggish behavior.

00:10:14.300 I have no information.

00:10:15.840 Chris Cuomo broke criminal law.

00:10:18.280 I'm not, or maybe he did.

00:10:19.260 I'm not, I'm hardly a lawyer, but.

00:10:21.280 You know, he acted like the pig that he is.

00:10:23.740 I get it.

00:10:24.380 You know, a lot of people like that in the world.

00:10:25.600 And so I, I think there's no question he's getting fired.

00:10:29.060 I think Chris Cuomo, while he annoys the hell out of me and I focus on his bad qualities,

00:10:34.240 has a ton of energy for one thing, which I love.

00:10:37.720 That's a great thing to have.

00:10:39.620 And I hope that, you know, I really do.

00:10:42.380 I hope for everybody who's wrecked in public, that there's a moment of reckoning and that

00:10:48.320 there's a redemption.

00:10:49.240 I really feel that way.

00:10:50.220 I'm not just, this is not.

00:10:51.700 So I agree with that.

00:10:52.520 If it's a one-off, I really do.

00:10:53.820 I mean, if you say something stupid or whatever you do, even if you do something stupid, I

00:10:57.200 get that.

00:10:57.700 And I, and I'm with you.

00:10:58.620 I mean, I'm a Catholic at heart, so I'm big into forgiveness.

00:11:01.300 And, um, but what I, what I see in him is a, is a pattern of deception and boorish behavior

00:11:07.360 over many, many years.

00:11:08.680 And we could just look back over the past couple of years with a stupid pretending to come out

00:11:12.320 of the basement thing, you know, his miraculous Jesus walk out like, oh, please CNN let him

00:11:18.000 a bit abetted his lies in that respect.

00:11:20.560 He, you know, he, he was out with COVID on the streets.

00:11:24.080 Okay, fine.

00:11:24.680 Whatever.

00:11:25.020 That's what he, he lied about that too.

00:11:26.920 The stuff of helping his brother going right to cancel culture, not listening to the women

00:11:30.860 all while looking into the camera, Tucker, and saying, I care very deeply about these

00:11:35.720 issues.

00:11:36.340 Oh, please.

00:11:36.820 A certain male gesture comes to mind.

00:11:38.780 Um, so it's just one thing after another.

00:11:42.200 And to where I look at this man, I say, this is not an honest broker.

00:11:45.900 He should not be on TV.

00:11:47.100 I don't really want to see a bunch of redemption if it involves him looking into a camera night

00:11:52.000 after night, spewing more lies.

00:11:54.240 I couldn't agree more.

00:11:55.520 And the thread that ties together all of this behavior is falseness.

00:11:59.020 And you can tell, I mean, I know this from having three daughters who I listened to carefully.

00:12:06.040 And one of the things I noticed about their assessments of people is that they're almost

00:12:10.020 all olfactory.

00:12:11.100 Like my girls almost never make an argument on behalf of their position about a person.

00:12:17.120 They're like, that person's false, or that's a good person.

00:12:19.760 Like they can feel it.

00:12:20.660 They trust their instincts.

00:12:22.540 And, and I try to emulate that because I think it really is the most effective way to

00:12:26.480 assess people.

00:12:27.200 And I look at Cuomo, I look at a bunch of people on the air, just in general, in cable

00:12:32.600 news, on all the channels, actually.

00:12:34.640 And what I see is people hiding who they really are, being false.

00:12:38.760 And once you start pretending to be someone you're not, there's no end to the lies.

00:12:44.620 And it just compounds and distorts you increasingly over time.

00:12:48.800 And so what I guess what I'm saying is I'm not hoping that Chris Cuomo gets another primetime

00:12:52.700 show.

00:12:53.040 Of course not.

00:12:53.680 I'm hoping that Chris Cuomo drops the pretense and presents to the world who he really is,

00:12:59.980 because that is liberation.

00:13:01.500 I mean, really, you want to be free?

00:13:03.960 Freedom is being who you really are in public, being unashamed of it, being willing to explain

00:13:09.300 it, being open.

00:13:10.980 And you can just feel it.

00:13:12.020 You can feel people's spirits, the people who are hiding some secret that they're desperate

00:13:15.660 you not know about.

00:13:16.620 And the people who are just totally transparent.

00:13:19.320 And as I age, I cannot stand to be around the former category.

00:13:22.980 It makes me too nervous.

00:13:24.220 Like, I know you're hiding something really heavy.

00:13:26.900 I don't know what it is, but I can feel it.

00:13:29.340 And across cable news, like everybody is doing that.

00:13:32.580 It's bad.

00:13:33.040 Just last night, he was railing about these border agents down in Texas and calling them

00:13:39.100 racist and they're afraid of the brown skinned people.

00:13:41.900 And he knew this article was about to drop in The New York Times.

00:13:44.420 I mean, they go to the person for comment.

00:13:46.420 So he well.

00:13:47.000 So it's almost like a cover, right?

00:13:49.180 He's going to double down on calling everyone racist when he knows he's going to be exposed

00:13:53.980 as this sexist pig who grabs his former boss's ass at a work party in front of everybody,

00:13:59.460 including her husband, within moments.

00:14:01.360 Right.

00:14:01.480 But he's got it putting as many chips into the woke bank as he can possibly get in before

00:14:05.520 the time story breaks.

00:14:07.060 But that never works.

00:14:09.140 It's so true.

00:14:10.140 And but I mean, of course, it's such an obvious cover.

00:14:12.620 Harvey Weinstein, the second he was outed, donated a bunch of money to now or something.

00:14:17.720 He had spent the better part of two years prior to going down, Tucker, trying to woo

00:14:21.600 my husband and me into his good graces.

00:14:24.800 I'm so dumb.

00:14:25.900 I just thought I was like, oh, that's nice.

00:14:27.760 Oh, yeah.

00:14:28.280 Tucker, Tucker, he wants you to write for him.

00:14:30.340 No, Doug is the smart one.

00:14:31.960 Doug's like, honey.

00:14:32.820 No, no, no.

00:14:34.080 Doug did not go right for Harvey Weinstein.

00:14:36.060 The downside is it really has a corrosive effect on the society.

00:14:40.340 Imagine if you were black or more specifically, if you were a Haitian immigrant and there are

00:14:44.480 a lot of cool, successful Haitian immigrants in this country, particularly in South Florida,

00:14:49.720 and you're like a normal person, you're watching CNN and you see the president of the United

00:14:53.660 States or Chris Cuomo telling you that Haitians coming here are beaten with whips because they're

00:14:59.620 Haitian.

00:15:00.680 Like, how does that make you feel about the United States?

00:15:02.940 Does it make you more secure?

00:15:05.040 Does it make you love the country more?

00:15:06.540 Does it make you paranoid?

00:15:07.760 Does it make you feel persecuted?

00:15:09.060 Like this stuff actually hurts people because it's untrue.

00:15:12.720 But it adds to the perception that this is a racist country whose ideals are not worth

00:15:17.720 defending like Chris Cuomo.

00:15:19.240 I mean it.

00:15:19.740 I don't think it's an overstatement to say this kind of lying really corrodes what holds

00:15:25.300 us together as a country.

00:15:27.240 I know.

00:15:27.880 I love I've heard you talk about this and I couldn't agree with him more.

00:15:30.300 And I thought you had such good insights on how what's left, like what kind of morons would

00:15:35.700 take the fabrics that bind us together, you know, our love of country, our patriotism,

00:15:40.600 and intentionally try to cut them up and and let us drift from one another.

00:15:45.560 What's left?

00:15:46.320 What are we a country?

00:15:48.240 What do we have to bind us together?

00:15:49.700 Why would why do we stick together just because of the contiguous nature of the states?

00:15:53.680 Like, where do we go from there?

00:15:55.480 No, it's totally I mean, you know, this is a very delicate experiment that we're conducting

00:16:01.360 without a lot of precedent, maybe any precedent.

00:16:03.500 There's no precedent for a, you know, a multiracial, multilingual continental country that holds

00:16:09.780 together.

00:16:10.080 If you're China, in the end, you can say, well, we're a Marxist country.

00:16:12.860 We're a market, you know, economy country.

00:16:14.900 It doesn't matter.

00:16:15.740 What you really are is a Han Chinese country.

00:16:18.060 I mean, that's the truth.

00:16:19.520 It's a racial category and very self-conscious on the part of the Chinese.

00:16:24.400 So that's a cohesive country, even if it's a volatile country.

00:16:28.000 We've decided, no, we don't define ourselves by our race.

00:16:31.080 We define ourselves by this idea, you know, that we're all in this together to preserve

00:16:37.240 certain rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

00:16:40.400 And if you take that away, then what do you have?

00:16:44.000 Well, you literally have nothing but warring tribes.

00:16:47.060 And if at the same time you have a leadership that encourages people to think of themselves

00:16:51.520 primarily as members of a tribe, then you're just you're pushing us towards civil war.

00:16:56.800 There's no exit.

00:16:58.260 I mean, this really is a cul-de-sac.

00:16:59.920 There's nowhere to go.

00:17:01.800 And, you know, I can't imagine the motive for doing this.

00:17:06.400 I think it's the darkest thing I can imagine.

00:17:08.360 It's not about, you know, it's wrong to attack white people or what.

00:17:11.780 Yeah.

00:17:11.980 OK, yes, it is.

00:17:13.200 Of course, it's evil.

00:17:14.800 However, there's a much bigger problem, which is national cohesion.

00:17:19.660 And I just I'm my jaws open every single day because you can feel where this is going.

00:17:25.900 We have 50 states.

00:17:27.200 So at certain at a certain point, we're going to balkanize like literally.

00:17:32.480 And if, you know, listeners are interested in what that word means, the etymology, that

00:17:36.560 word, take a look at the history of the Balkans.

00:17:38.760 It's really bad, bloody, horrible, divided, poor, awful.

00:17:43.000 And you just don't want that here.

00:17:44.880 And unfortunately, you know, we're going there until someone figures out a reason for all

00:17:49.740 50 states to hold together as a as a cohesive country.

00:17:53.600 Now, I want to ask you about that, because as you may or may not know, because Tucker wisely

00:17:57.640 avoids the news media about himself.

00:18:00.320 And that's truly the only way you can survive in cable news.

00:18:03.200 But you get so much blowback whenever well, whenever whatever you do.

00:18:06.020 I mean, frankly, whatever you do, you get blowback.

00:18:07.760 And today there's there's more blowback on on whether you've been pushing for the great

00:18:12.720 replacement theory.

00:18:14.380 And you said that this is going to happen on your show last night.

00:18:16.700 Sure enough, on cue, the ADL comes out and comes after you.

00:18:21.320 And I wonder if he's so I'm not on.

00:18:23.660 I know.

00:18:24.180 I don't even want to be the one to tell you because you do a good job of avoiding it.

00:18:27.720 I didn't even know that.

00:18:28.320 I mean, what a liar.

00:18:29.040 They want you to be fired.

00:18:30.080 They're pushing yet again for you to be fired, Tucker.

00:18:32.020 It's it's constant.

00:18:33.480 You know, the ADL was such a noble organization that had a very specific goal, which was to

00:18:39.720 fight anti-Semitism.

00:18:40.740 That's a virtuous goal.

00:18:42.660 I think they were pretty successful over the years.

00:18:45.820 Now it's operated by a guy who's just a Democratic Party, just an apparatchik.

00:18:50.320 Of the Democratic Party.

00:18:51.340 And I have to say it's important for people with moral authority to stand up and say that,

00:18:56.240 you know, because it's very corrosive for someone to take the residual moral weight of

00:19:02.700 an organization that he inherited and use it for partisan ends, which is what they're doing.

00:19:08.820 So the great replacement theory is, in fact, not a theory.

00:19:11.860 It's something that the Democrats brag about constantly up to and including the president.

00:19:15.700 And in one sentence, it's this.

00:19:18.500 Rather than convince the current population that our policies are working and they should

00:19:23.320 vote for us as a result, we can't be bothered to do that.

00:19:26.620 We're instead going to change the composition of the population and bring in people who will

00:19:32.680 vote for us.

00:19:33.940 So that's there isn't actually inherently a racial component to it.

00:19:38.340 And it has nothing.

00:19:39.220 It's a political point you're trying to make.

00:19:41.040 I don't know what the ADL is doing weighing in on this.

00:19:43.800 It has nothing.

00:19:44.920 It has nothing to do.

00:19:45.720 I mean, that's just insane.

00:19:47.980 And obviously, I'm not going to stop saying it because they're saying it.

00:19:51.540 They've written books about it and monographs and endless number of speeches.

00:19:55.860 You know, immigration will make this a more democratic country.

00:19:59.760 OK, that's what they believe.

00:20:00.860 That was Teddy.

00:20:01.380 That was Teddy Kennedy's motive in passing the 1965 immigration law was to change the composition

00:20:07.740 of the country.

00:20:08.380 And I just think that that's anti-democratic.

00:20:11.360 American citizens should control their government and they do it by voting.

00:20:15.060 And if you dilute their voting power with immigration, you are undermining democracy by

00:20:19.660 definition.

00:20:20.320 Well, can I ask you this?

00:20:21.700 Because when I look at this, because I was at Fox News for a number of years where I heard

00:20:25.080 this being argued by sort of immigration hardliners.

00:20:28.180 And the point I always heard them make was this is why the Democrats don't want immigration

00:20:32.900 from Cuba.

00:20:33.780 It's not that they just want a bunch of immigration from people, you know, irrespective of skin

00:20:39.340 color, irrespective of politics.

00:20:40.780 They do care about politics.

00:20:42.560 It's not it's not even about skin color for them.

00:20:44.340 It's about getting liberal Democrat voters.

00:20:48.260 And for Republicans on the other side, what they don't want is to fill the Democrat roster

00:20:52.540 with people who weren't born here.

00:20:54.680 It's not about skin color.

00:20:55.780 It's about how people are likely to vote.

00:20:58.340 Of course it is.

00:20:59.100 And you can see it in the patterns of refugee and immigrant settlement.

00:21:03.160 I mean, it's not, you know, they're not settling massive numbers of so-called refugees from

00:21:08.660 any of these countries into Massachusetts or into Queens.

00:21:13.540 They're enough.

00:21:14.180 They control those places.

00:21:15.640 They're settling them into Texas and the state of Maine and places, you know, places that

00:21:20.200 they go in Tennessee, places that they would like to control.

00:21:23.760 So this is it has nothing to do with race.

00:21:26.160 It certainly has nothing to do with the scope of the ADL's concerns, which is why they should

00:21:30.920 be ashamed to weigh in on something like this, to lie, which is what they're doing.

00:21:35.660 It has nothing to do with any of that.

00:21:36.880 It has to do with electoral politics.

00:21:38.620 This is a political party.

00:21:39.880 Its main concern is maintaining political power, period.

00:21:43.500 And they try to obscure that with this absurd race talk.

00:21:47.300 And I have to say the race stuff is very, very corrosive.

00:21:50.640 I mean, to tell people we don't want anybody who looks like you to come to our country like

00:21:57.200 what?

00:21:57.980 This is the U.S. government.

00:21:59.340 They exist to represent us.

00:22:01.560 You're not allowed to talk like that.

00:22:03.160 I don't care what the race is.

00:22:04.620 That is totally evil and racist.

00:22:07.200 And everyone's too intimidated to say anything about it.

00:22:09.640 And you're talking now about them because you played a soundbite on your show about Biden.

00:22:13.700 And you're talking about the message toward toward white people, I think.

00:22:18.480 Is that what you're saying?

00:22:19.140 Because like last night in the show, they say it out loud.

00:22:21.660 This is.

00:22:21.900 Yeah, this is.

00:22:22.760 Yeah.

00:22:23.200 Anyway, I'll play.

00:22:23.840 I'll play the Biden soundbite to underscore what you're saying.

00:22:26.560 This is this was from Tucker's show last night.

00:22:28.520 It's Biden talking about what.

00:22:30.560 Let me see.

00:22:30.880 What year was this?

00:22:31.900 2015.

00:22:32.960 OK, listen.

00:22:34.920 An unrelenting stream of immigration.

00:22:38.180 Non-stop.

00:22:39.960 Non-stop.

00:22:40.680 Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute

00:22:49.840 minority in the United States of America.

00:22:53.260 Absolute minority.

00:22:55.320 Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock.

00:23:03.340 That's not a bad thing.

00:23:05.140 That's a source of our strength.

00:23:06.780 And your point about that soundbite is why if you reverse the races, if you say like

00:23:12.760 the whites are going to come into the majority and that's not a bad thing, you would sort

00:23:18.060 of understand the racism inherent in that statement.

00:23:21.260 Well, it's disqualifying.

00:23:22.740 No one who talks like that should ever be president.

00:23:25.020 It's eugenicist.

00:23:26.440 I mean, the source of our strength is non-white DNA.

00:23:29.540 I mean, what?

00:23:31.620 How could you say something like that?

00:23:33.900 Really?

00:23:34.400 So people's value to the country is determined by their genes and their skin color?

00:23:40.600 That's like Nazi stuff.

00:23:41.740 What?

00:23:42.360 That's not, you know, I'm 52.

00:23:43.940 I grew up in a country that tried really, really hard, didn't always succeed, but certainly

00:23:47.940 tried as a matter of official policy to be colorblind and to judge people not on their

00:23:52.360 appearances, but on what they do, on the choices that they make, on their character,

00:23:56.140 on their inherent moral value.

00:23:57.980 And that idea was premised on the belief, which has extended from the founding of this

00:24:02.980 country, despite what the propagandists will tell you, that God created all of us.

00:24:07.800 That doesn't mean we're equal in ability.

00:24:09.840 It means we're equal in moral value because we're all created by God, period.

00:24:14.800 And, you know, there were, of course, slavery is a refutation of that, but there were an awful

00:24:20.300 lot of people, including ancestors of mine, I'm proud to say, who made the point that this

00:24:25.140 is totally inconsistent with our most basic belief, which is we're all created in the

00:24:29.040 image of God.

00:24:30.540 So up until very recently, that was the default view of everybody in charge.

00:24:36.020 You can't attack someone for his skin color because he didn't choose his skin color.

00:24:40.120 It wasn't voluntary.

00:24:41.280 It's an accident of birth.

00:24:42.560 So you have no more value because you're one color than you do if you're another color.

00:24:47.020 I mean, that was kind of the point of Dr. Seuss.

00:24:49.020 And it's the reason they canceled Dr. Seuss, because that idea is now unexpressible.

00:24:54.140 It was the core of Martin Luther King's moral power was expressing that specific view.

00:24:59.960 Once you give that up, you're Rwanda at that point, because you're making the case that some

00:25:05.120 people have more value because of how they were born.

00:25:07.700 If you have leaders who say that out loud, they are pushing you toward violence, group

00:25:13.820 against group, tribalism, warfare.

00:25:16.100 Like, that's insane.

00:25:18.000 And it's just so shocking for me that this is happening in public and everyone's too

00:25:23.980 intimidated to say anything about it.

00:25:25.800 But it's totally wrong.

00:25:27.540 And as a Christian, as an American, I just reject it.

00:25:30.900 And I don't care what the color is.

00:25:33.480 So and then as a practical matter, if you know, there are all kinds of other problems

00:25:38.040 with mass immigration, the first one is it just creates a very volatile society.

00:25:42.240 If the population keeps shape, like, look, if you had people constantly moving in and

00:25:47.540 out of your own house, and this country is our home, then that would not be a peaceful

00:25:53.900 household.

00:25:55.020 You could choose to adopt children and make them your own.

00:25:58.420 And that's a virtuous thing to do.

00:25:59.840 It's a great thing.

00:26:00.560 But if you had no control over who was living in your house, what would your household look

00:26:05.160 like?

00:26:05.540 How would your kids experience their own childhood?

00:26:09.240 I mean, that's a hugely disruptive thing to do to any opposing open borders is not racist.

00:26:17.880 It's there are very good reasons to oppose open borders having nothing to do with the

00:26:22.420 race of the people crossing in.

00:26:24.480 There's no question about that.

00:26:25.800 I think Biden's defenders, the people are saying, look, you know, and I know this because

00:26:30.860 I've been living on the Upper West Side for 17 years.

00:26:32.820 They say, you know, we're a nation of immigrants.

00:26:35.040 And he's talking about from the beginning of this country forward, we've had more and

00:26:38.260 more immigrants.

00:26:38.780 And that's not a bad thing.

00:26:39.580 We're a melting pot.

00:26:40.680 And I get all that.

00:26:41.960 I mean, I think that is one of the things that makes America great, just sort of the

00:26:44.940 diversity.

00:26:45.780 You know, you walk out in New York City, you see every color, you see every nationality.

00:26:49.800 But they're all living in New York and they all love New York.

00:26:52.020 I mean, that is one thing sort of on a more microcosm basis that holds us together.

00:26:55.700 We love our city.

00:26:56.960 At least we did before Mayor de Blasio.

00:26:58.960 And on a larger level, it was always we love our country.

00:27:01.840 We're happy to be here.

00:27:02.680 We realize it's a privilege to live in America.

00:27:04.660 That's as I understood your comments.

00:27:05.980 That's what you were starting from.

00:27:07.020 You take away that you take away patriotism, all love of America.

00:27:10.620 And then what are we left with?

00:27:11.860 People like people come from other countries.

00:27:13.680 Well, what are they they're told that we're awful.

00:27:15.620 America sucks and we become more tribal.

00:27:18.660 And where what do we look like?

00:27:20.460 What how do we relate to one another?

00:27:22.100 What are we stand for at that point?

00:27:23.620 Ten years, five, ten years from now.

00:27:25.780 Well, why if the whole thing is so nuts that it's beyond it, first of all, first of all,

00:27:30.960 it's criminal.

00:27:31.980 OK, what the Biden administration doing is doing is criminal.

00:27:34.920 They're abetting.

00:27:35.840 They're encouraging people to break federal law.

00:27:38.960 That's a crime.

00:27:40.140 What they are doing is criminal.

00:27:41.900 It's not a new species of immigration policy.

00:27:44.820 It's in direct violation of current law.

00:27:46.980 OK, so that's the first thing.

00:27:48.360 Second, as a thematic matter, if you're inviting people into your country, you don't simply

00:27:54.100 have a right but an obligation to make certain they're on board with what your country is

00:27:57.680 about.

00:27:58.200 Right.

00:27:58.840 So why would you ever bring anyone in who didn't like your country, who didn't agree

00:28:04.260 with its basic precepts?

00:28:05.460 We don't need to guess as to what those precepts are.

00:28:07.100 They're written down.

00:28:08.100 So how about you read the Bill of Rights to every person who comes and say, you know,

00:28:11.380 are you on board with this?

00:28:12.520 Do you think you're free?

00:28:13.400 And if not, then you're France.

00:28:14.720 I mean, France is dealing with this right now.

00:28:17.600 Why would you ever allow anyone into your country that didn't agree with what your country

00:28:23.000 stands for?

00:28:23.580 It's like it's totally so you could have more Amazon employees.

00:28:26.020 Are you joking?

00:28:27.200 I mean, we haven't even gotten to that.

00:28:28.580 But this is clearly just I mean, this is being funded by driven by the biggest conglomerates

00:28:34.400 in the world.

00:28:35.040 You want to lower the value of labor, obviously.

00:28:37.400 And if the labor union still existed and were anything other than dishonest grifts on behalf

00:28:43.020 of their own leadership, they would say some things they have in generations past.

00:28:46.440 But you need to bring people in who agree with the Bill of Rights, who love the country.

00:28:51.940 The last thing you want to do is import more Ilhan Omar's.

00:28:55.220 The United States rescued her from a refugee camp in Kenya, and she's been attacking the United

00:28:59.240 States ever since on racial grounds.

00:29:02.100 What?

00:29:02.840 She's like an arsonist.

00:29:04.440 If we're importing more people like that, it's suicide.

00:29:08.060 What we're doing instead is trying to get the existing American population to hate the

00:29:11.860 country and what it stands for.

00:29:13.380 And sadly, it's working in huge pockets of America.

00:29:16.800 All right.

00:29:16.980 Stand by because there's so much more to do with Tucker.

00:29:19.560 Coming up, President Biden just made his first comments on those Border Patrol agents, falsely

00:29:23.640 accusing them of whipping the Haitians at the border.

00:29:26.460 Biden now says those agents will pay.

00:29:29.180 That's what Mr. Biden is saying today.

00:29:30.500 We're going to get Tucker's reaction and so much more to go through.

00:29:33.220 So stay with us.

00:29:33.880 Did you know that everyday activities like ASMR can actually be healthy for you?

00:29:40.620 Right now, you're improving your heart health, boosting your brain activity, and lowering

00:29:49.340 your stress.

00:29:50.100 Manulife wants you to see healthy living differently so you can live a longer, healthier life.

00:29:59.320 Visit Manulife.ca slash health to learn more ways Manulife can help.

00:30:04.060 I am joined today by one of my very favorite people, Tucker Carlson, host of the incredibly

00:30:14.080 popular Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, the number one rated show in all of cable news.

00:30:19.340 So I am not alone.

00:30:20.720 I love it, Tucker, because I read an article about you in which you gave an interview and

00:30:24.540 the reporter described you as, and I quote, confusing as hell.

00:30:28.160 I'm like, I love that.

00:30:29.160 Yes, that's great.

00:30:30.000 All right.

00:30:32.840 So before I get back to you, you, the man, Tucker Carlson, let's talk about Joe Biden,

00:30:36.280 the man and what he's saying about the southern border today.

00:30:38.160 Man, the hellstorm that's raining down now on these couple of Border Patrol agents who

00:30:42.740 had the reins of their horses.

00:30:44.100 I have yet to see the video in which they whip anybody.

00:30:46.600 I keep looking.

00:30:47.440 I'm open minded.

00:30:48.320 Take me there.

00:30:48.980 Right.

00:30:49.260 OK, let's see what they did.

00:30:50.460 I haven't seen it.

00:30:51.880 Still looking.

00:30:53.040 But instead, what we've had is everybody pile on, say that they were using whips.

00:30:56.440 Then when it got exposed, they were there actually reins of horses.

00:30:59.160 They said, well, they're whip like they were whip like devices.

00:31:02.520 And now they're just changing the story to, well, you were sort of threatening the people

00:31:06.180 with the horses.

00:31:06.720 It's like, well, the Border Patrol saying, no, actually, you're trying to keep the people

00:31:09.400 safe.

00:31:10.460 You can't get too close to the horse.

00:31:11.940 And by the way, they were you know, we don't know where the people were trying to run or

00:31:15.100 what they were trying to do.

00:31:15.720 But these guys are charged with the security of this area.

00:31:17.820 They're totally outmanned.

00:31:18.940 Thanks to Joe Biden.

00:31:20.420 And Biden, when confronted with all of this, says as follows.

00:31:23.860 Listen, given what we saw at the border this week, have you failed in that promise?

00:31:28.640 And this is happening under your watch.

00:31:30.480 Do you take responsibility for the chaos that's unfolding?

00:31:33.280 Of course, I take responsibility.

00:31:34.740 I'm president.

00:31:35.360 But it was horrible what to see, as you saw.

00:31:37.960 To see people treat it like they did, horses barely running them over, people being strapped.

00:31:43.400 It's outrageous.

00:31:44.620 I promise you, those people will pay.

00:31:47.240 They will be an investigation underway now.

00:31:49.660 And there will be consequences.

00:31:51.780 There will be consequences.

00:31:52.900 It's an embarrassment, but it's beyond an embarrassment.

00:31:56.560 It's dangerous.

00:31:57.600 It's wrong.

00:31:58.700 It sends the wrong message around the world.

00:32:01.080 It sends the wrong message at home.

00:32:02.920 It's simply not who we are.

00:32:05.640 Thank you.

00:32:07.320 Wow.

00:32:07.520 So much energy for that particular question, Tucker.

00:32:10.940 And finally, questions allowed at the White House when he wants to talk about the bad border

00:32:15.540 patrol agents.

00:32:16.260 It's so evil.

00:32:18.640 It's hard even.

00:32:19.920 It's like I feel like my eyelashes get singed even watching that.

00:32:24.720 It's so dishonest and wrong.

00:32:28.560 And as always, landing on some poor guy who makes 60 grand a year for the thankless job

00:32:34.840 of enforcing federal law who did nothing wrong and missing the point that the real victims

00:32:40.640 here are Americans.

00:32:41.920 It's our country, isn't it?

00:32:43.840 I thought it was.

00:32:44.620 I was told that as a child.

00:32:46.440 And you have tens of thousands of people trying to come into our country by force, all of whom

00:32:52.740 are guaranteed the whole suite of taxpayer-funded services when they arrive, free health care,

00:32:58.660 housing, food, everything.

00:33:00.760 And that's wrong.

00:33:02.720 It's an assault on the American people of all colors, including the Haitian Americans who have

00:33:07.840 citizenship and live here.

00:33:09.000 It's not a racial thing.

00:33:10.380 So these people are committing an act of aggression against the United States.

00:33:14.480 And some poor guy or a couple of guys who are paid to, again, enforce federal law passed by the United States Congress.

00:33:22.060 If you don't like it, change it.

00:33:23.440 You control the Congress, but they won't.

00:33:24.840 And those guys are, they're the ones who are going to be crushed.

00:33:29.300 And you know that they will be, because in the past two years, we've seen person after person,

00:33:33.840 always the weakest, crushed, you know, cops or some guy who says something dumb in a Zoom call.

00:33:41.660 But it's always the people without power who get ground into dust beneath the boots of someone like Joe Biden.

00:33:49.140 And it's just it's so awful.

00:33:51.840 The nerve, the nerve, right, of him to finally say something about this.

00:33:56.020 And rather than taking responsibility for putting the country, the migrants and the Border Patrol agents

00:34:02.820 in this position to begin with, he attacks the agents.

00:34:06.720 Right.

00:34:07.000 It's like it's like Afghanistan again.

00:34:09.060 He doesn't take responsibility for anything.

00:34:10.940 He lies right to our faces.

00:34:12.600 And then, you know, when we look back at him and say, what do you what about the migrants?

00:34:16.940 What about the 18000 people who were sitting there?

00:34:20.500 Where's your taking the true taking of responsibility for that?

00:34:23.840 Where's the change in policy?

00:34:25.220 Where are the federal agents who are going to provide backup?

00:34:27.560 So these poor guys aren't out there on their own.

00:34:30.060 Nothing.

00:34:30.740 It's all about a couple of guys who are being wrongly accused, from what I can see, of doing

00:34:34.540 something terrible.

00:34:35.480 But they didn't.

00:34:37.100 Imagine what it would be like to be married to that guy or be his kids.

00:34:40.360 And all of a sudden, the president of the United States is calling your dad or your husband

00:34:44.520 or your brother or your friend like a criminal who's going to be dealt with severely.

00:34:48.140 Like, what?

00:34:48.860 What did he do?

00:34:49.680 He wasn't supposed to be on a horse.

00:34:51.120 Those are federal horses like he was.

00:34:53.360 That's not his horse.

00:34:54.600 He was provided them by a federal agency and told to go out there and do exactly what he

00:35:00.060 did.

00:35:00.740 And he made the mistake of doing it in the presence of someone with an iPhone, got videotaped

00:35:06.560 doing it.

00:35:07.220 And now his life is over.

00:35:08.440 Like he's done.

00:35:09.540 And he's humiliated in front of his loved ones.

00:35:11.600 He thought he was serving the United States of America.

00:35:14.080 Like, this is so evil that it's really hard to digest it.

00:35:19.660 I mean, I just feel overwhelmed by it.

00:35:22.240 I try.

00:35:22.700 God, I try and stay off the Internet because I don't want to be distorted, much less social

00:35:26.540 media, which really is just so filthy and just just it's just unclean that I don't want

00:35:31.160 to be around it.

00:35:31.700 But you see stuff like that and you just you can't believe this is happening in our country.

00:35:36.160 I will spare you the butted sot of Ayanna Pressley, Maxine Waters, Joy Reid and Ilhan Omar

00:35:41.120 calling all these guys white supremacists and the country white supremacists.

00:35:44.920 I like I'm so over it.

00:35:46.480 I get it.

00:35:47.060 OK, everybody's a white supremacist.

00:35:48.680 I mean, sure.

00:35:49.420 That's the prism through which they see everything.

00:35:51.060 I don't know if it's even honest.

00:35:52.360 I don't know if they genuinely believe that.

00:35:53.760 I really don't freaking care.

00:35:55.200 You know what I mean?

00:35:55.700 At this point, we've got to move on past these people who see everything through this

00:35:59.680 prism because we do have a country to save.

00:36:01.700 You know, it's like we do need to relate to one another.

00:36:03.860 We need to root for one another.

00:36:05.100 We need to be more forgiving in our interpretation of other people's behavior, whatever it is.

00:36:08.960 I don't know that we ever get back there, Tucker.

00:36:10.900 You know, you just wrote a book trying to talk about the collapse of journalism.

00:36:14.020 That's my own take on what your book's about.

00:36:16.060 It used to be a real thing.

00:36:17.340 People used to try hard.

00:36:18.420 They used to be able to check their politics, even though they had politics.

00:36:22.480 And the whole book, Tracking What's Happened in Journalism, tracks what happened to the

00:36:27.000 country, too.

00:36:27.980 They're parallel tracks.

00:36:29.820 That's such a smart point.

00:36:31.520 That's exactly right.

00:36:32.520 I mean, journalism doesn't just chronicle what happens in the country.

00:36:36.860 Journalism reflects the country that produces it.

00:36:39.760 So if all the institutions collapse at once, we shouldn't be surprised that journalists are

00:36:46.700 totally incapable of standing far back enough to acknowledge what's happening, which they

00:36:51.160 haven't been.

00:36:52.680 And it's just it's so bewildering, I guess.

00:36:54.880 I mean, I could go on forever.

00:36:56.680 I'll just sum it up in one sentence.

00:36:57.960 But I think this every day as I read the news, they've gone so far at this point that there's

00:37:04.580 really no going back.

00:37:05.900 I mean, they've really burned their ships like you can't you can't walk back from this

00:37:11.140 many years of lies.

00:37:13.260 You've been exposed as a liar.

00:37:15.180 All of them have.

00:37:16.060 I mean, truly exposed, like provably, you lied on purpose.

00:37:19.620 You misrepresented what happened to help a political party.

00:37:23.140 That's all out in the open.

00:37:24.540 Like everybody knows there are no more secrets.

00:37:26.340 So it's not like they can they can't really surrender now.

00:37:29.780 Do you know what I mean?

00:37:30.980 Yeah, I do.

00:37:31.880 It basically they are going to become much more radical because there's no going back.

00:37:37.360 Right.

00:37:37.820 Once you lift the dress up, you know, you can't see what you what you've seen.

00:37:41.480 We were just talking about this last week in the context of the whole Russiagate thing

00:37:44.800 and those indictments that came down.

00:37:46.340 I mean, like the Russiagate thing and how there's been no accountability and MSNBC just

00:37:50.140 completely tripled down that there's they don't care.

00:37:52.260 You know, Rachel Maddow is going to get thirty five million dollars a year because they like

00:37:54.940 those lies.

00:37:55.460 Those are good lies.

00:37:56.160 Those those lies make people tune into Rachel Maddow.

00:37:58.800 And whether it's true or not, no one really much cares as long as it's pushing the right

00:38:02.320 narrative for their side, I want to tell people that the book is called The Long Slide, 30

00:38:07.380 Years in American Journalism.

00:38:09.860 I think you might be the only journalist in America who both had a primetime show on MSNBC

00:38:14.700 and a primetime show on Fox News, not to mention your time at CNN.

00:38:18.340 Am I right?

00:38:19.060 I don't know.

00:38:19.840 You know, I that was my world for 25 years and I, you know, I knew everyone involved in

00:38:25.880 it and I was really, you know, I was involved in not just professionally, but socially.

00:38:30.360 And then in the past few years, I just it's too repugnant to me and I can't I can't kind

00:38:36.980 of can't be around it anymore because I don't want to become angry or weird.

00:38:41.240 So I pull back and so I I kind of don't keep track of it as much anymore.

00:38:46.160 And moreover, I don't I don't think it's a badge of honor.

00:38:50.420 I mean, I used to I was the youngest anchor in CNN, you know, at CNN ever.

00:38:55.000 And I was kind of and they would always say youngest anchor.

00:38:57.420 And I was always proud of that.

00:38:59.340 Now, I'm I'm not sure I would ever I haven't thought of it in years, actually, but I I don't

00:39:04.720 know if I would brag about it.

00:39:06.680 I mean, I have all these kids and a couple of them are adults.

00:39:10.100 And one of them came to me upon graduating college.

00:39:13.900 Very smart, if I can say much smarter than I am.

00:39:16.640 And I said, you know, you should become a journalist because, you know, many generations in our

00:39:22.380 family have done that.

00:39:23.420 And you should just do it because I think you have the natural aptitude for it.

00:39:26.260 And this kid looked at me and goes, what?

00:39:27.840 No, you know, I would never work with those.

00:39:30.560 They're awful.

00:39:31.540 They're liars.

00:39:32.460 And I was like, it really hurt my feelings.

00:39:34.740 And then you and then you had a beam of pride, too.

00:39:37.940 Yeah, I've never done anything else.

00:39:39.340 I mean, I have no skills other than the ones I exercise daily.

00:39:43.240 Wait, can you tell us on this front?

00:39:44.800 Can you tell us what your dad said to you?

00:39:46.460 And I'll talk about your dad in a minute.

00:39:47.800 He was a big media mogul executive.

00:39:50.740 And you wanted to be in the CIA.

00:39:52.740 You didn't get into the CIA.

00:39:54.080 And so what did your dad tell you about journalism?

00:39:56.500 Well, I was in college and I just completely failed my way through.

00:39:59.720 Well, literally failed.

00:40:00.900 But I just was not thriving at all.

00:40:02.680 And I was just partying like crazy and just being a total rudderless idiot.

00:40:07.280 But I was completely in love with this girl.

00:40:09.420 I've been dating since high school.

00:40:10.520 And I wanted to get married my senior year of college.

00:40:12.820 And her parents are pretty traditional.

00:40:15.020 My family was much less traditional.

00:40:17.240 But her family is very traditional.

00:40:18.680 And her dad said, you know, you have to have a job.

00:40:21.520 You can't marry my daughter without a job.

00:40:22.920 And I was like, oh, yeah, OK, job.

00:40:24.240 So I applied to the CIA.

00:40:26.420 And they were like, no.

00:40:28.500 And I just wanted to work the CIA because I thought it'd be interesting to live abroad.

00:40:31.500 You know, we'd always traveled a lot as kids.

00:40:32.860 My dad worked, you know, in jobs that were related to international stuff.

00:40:36.720 So we had a keen appreciation for the rest of the world.

00:40:38.760 And I wanted to live in another country and do interesting stuff and serve America and all that stuff.

00:40:42.780 And they were like, no, no chance.

00:40:44.820 And so I didn't know what to do.

00:40:46.860 And my dad goes, well, you should just go into journalism.

00:40:48.720 Like, they'll take anybody.

00:40:50.340 You know, it's a but he meant it in a good way.

00:40:52.320 It's like, I mean, my father, you know, joined the Marine Corps at 17 after, you know, getting in trouble with the legal authorities.

00:41:00.820 And he was just really smart and, you know, read a book every day and was like a very intense intellectual.

00:41:06.620 And he thrived in journalism because that's all that mattered.

00:41:10.440 Can you he was a good writer?

00:41:11.400 Can you write?

00:41:12.120 And I could write.

00:41:12.900 That was my one skill.

00:41:13.700 So he's like, you should do that.

00:41:15.980 And so I did for 14,000 a year.

00:41:18.380 And it was great.

00:41:19.600 I've never really regretted it.

00:41:20.940 But it's so painful to see my children look at the career that I chose.

00:41:25.920 And again, I've never done anything else and just have such contempt for it, for the people involved.

00:41:31.700 They're like, oh, they're and my kids would know since they grew up around like everyone at our dinner table, always through their whole childhood.

00:41:37.860 My oldest is 27.

00:41:39.440 It was always a journalist.

00:41:40.340 Like their godparents are journalists, that kind of thing.

00:41:42.760 And they were like, no, no chance, no chance.

00:41:45.720 It's true.

00:41:46.580 No, even my family, too.

00:41:47.600 I'm like, oh, God, no, you don't want to do this.

00:41:49.140 Do it.

00:41:49.340 You know, they look at my husband, who's a writer.

00:41:51.160 They're like, how about becoming a writer?

00:41:52.560 We're all like, yes, do that.

00:41:53.800 Do that.

00:41:54.140 That's right.

00:41:54.500 Write books.

00:41:55.080 That's a nice industry.

00:41:56.500 Although that is cool.

00:41:57.680 What Doug does is cool.

00:41:58.920 Like, no, no, I'm serious.

00:41:59.860 That is cool.

00:42:01.160 You know, well, he writes novels.

00:42:02.280 Right.

00:42:02.600 It is.

00:42:02.980 And he does like historical research.

00:42:04.720 But as you know, the book industry has lost its love and mind, too.

00:42:08.480 I know.

00:42:08.840 I know it has.

00:42:09.560 But I just said to one of my kids who I was trying to convince, one of my favorites, and

00:42:14.920 was thinking, and, you know, all my kids went to a pretty good high school.

00:42:18.280 So I felt like they were well-educated enough.

00:42:20.080 And I've tried to convince all four not to go to college just because I think it's totally

00:42:23.080 counterproductive and stupid and probably pretty bad for you.

00:42:26.580 So I've said to all four.

00:42:27.840 And the last one, I was intent on this child not going to college.

00:42:31.520 It really was my mission to convince her not to go.

00:42:33.940 And I said, you know, I'll pay you the tuition.

00:42:36.640 You'll have some cushion.

00:42:37.540 Well, what would I do?

00:42:38.140 I said, you need to move to Alpine, Switzerland and write novels, you know, and have a bunch

00:42:44.460 of kids and ski every day and then child smart and write novels.

00:42:49.420 And she goes, oh, I want to do that.

00:42:51.620 And I said, well, you should do it.

00:42:53.040 And I'll do whatever I can to help you.

00:42:55.140 And she's like, oh, but I'd be the only person who's doing that.

00:42:58.880 And I it's too weird.

00:43:00.280 And ah, it just broke my heart.

00:43:02.660 No, she's right.

00:43:03.380 At this age, she's got to go out.

00:43:05.080 Plus, you know, she's got to do some stuff, right?

00:43:06.800 I think you probably better writer, especially when it's yeah, if you go out and you do stupid

00:43:11.240 stuff, you got to get fired a few times.

00:43:12.800 You got to do stupid mistakes, have your heart broken, all that needs to be done at a very

00:43:16.980 low level job someplace in New York City.

00:43:19.300 And like, you know, crappy, mice infested apartments.

00:43:22.860 OK, wait, I want to take a quick break.

00:43:24.980 But I want to tell everybody I'm joined today by Tucker Carlson.

00:43:27.180 You know that coming up.

00:43:28.700 There's so much to discuss.

00:43:29.700 We're going to get into cancel culture and how Tucker has built very effective walls around

00:43:34.140 him to protect himself from the negativity, which I really want to talk to him about.

00:43:38.340 Don't go away.

00:43:44.240 I am joined today by Tucker Carlson, host of the hugely popular number one show on cable,

00:43:49.300 Tucker Carlson tonight on the Fox News channel.

00:43:52.280 Tucker, so on the subject of books, Simon and Schuster, they published your book, The

00:44:00.440 Long Slide, 30 Years in American Journalism, and you you did not spare anything for them.

00:44:07.520 You're not happy with the president.

00:44:09.140 You called him a cartoonish corporate censor and use the introduction of your book to attack

00:44:14.620 the company for canceling Senator Josh Hawley's book deal.

00:44:17.740 You called Simon and Schuster a disgusting company run by disgusting people.

00:44:21.180 And it reminded me of a quote that I read of you.

00:44:24.000 I think you were talking to Alex Marlowe of Breitbart, where you said, I'm in this hyper

00:44:27.680 privileged position where I can say whatever the hell I want.

00:44:30.260 My view is I'm just going to.

00:44:32.620 So I freaking love that.

00:44:34.260 And you live that.

00:44:35.480 I mean, anybody who watches your show know that knows that's true of you.

00:44:39.420 How has that like how did that happen that they publish your book and then, you know,

00:44:42.700 you got into this sort of war with them?

00:44:44.720 Well, let me say I hope and I do talk to my wife about this a lot that I do feel like I

00:44:48.660 have the freedom to tell the truth, which is a really rare position to be in.

00:44:52.140 It is in this country.

00:44:53.900 You're in that position, too.

00:44:55.560 And I think it's a great place to be.

00:44:57.440 But it's also you don't want to use that freedom just to attack people.

00:45:02.180 I mean, I don't want to be the person who's just like running around machine gunning everybody

00:45:05.640 because that's, you know, that's bad.

00:45:07.520 But in this specific case, I was under contract to write two books for Simon Schuss to write.

00:45:12.920 I wrote the first one.

00:45:13.820 It was successful.

00:45:14.880 The second one came along and they canceled Josh Hawley's book contract because they came

00:45:20.440 under pressure from the Democratic Party to do that.

00:45:22.480 And my longstanding view has been that American publishers exist to facilitate the intellectual

00:45:27.700 debate that's necessary to have a thriving democracy.

00:45:30.940 It's not a small thing.

00:45:32.560 You can't cancel people at the behest of a political party.

00:45:35.820 And that's exactly what they did.

00:45:36.980 So I called up the president and I said, I think what she did is immoral.

00:45:40.540 I think you're a pig.

00:45:42.160 And I want out of this book contract.

00:45:44.540 And they said, because I don't want to participate in this.

00:45:46.180 I don't want to take money from a company that does this.

00:45:48.340 And their view was write the book or we'll sue you.

00:45:51.440 OK, then I said, well, if you're going to make me write the book, I'm going to tell the

00:45:54.800 truth about how I feel about you because I'm not going to be implicated in this.

00:45:57.660 I don't want to be part of it.

00:45:59.220 You know, I'm taking this dough from a company that crushes people because Nancy Pelosi tells

00:46:04.440 them to like, no way.

00:46:05.600 So I write this and then they have to decide whether to publish it or not.

00:46:09.920 And I think they feared the blowback from canceling a book about how they cancel books would be

00:46:17.940 worse than, you know, the effect of publishing it because they knew that no one was going

00:46:23.320 to write about it.

00:46:24.100 I mean, I have no allies in the rest of the media, so it's basically not been written

00:46:29.680 about at all, which is I don't care either way, but they were probably pretty smart to

00:46:35.340 publish it.

00:46:35.820 But I just felt like I should be honest about it.

00:46:38.560 And so I went and talked to Jonathan Karp, who runs Simon & Schuster, and his deputy, who's

00:46:44.200 really out of it and has literally no experience in book publishing whatsoever, like literally

00:46:48.520 none.

00:46:48.980 And I asked them, why did you do this?

00:46:51.540 And one of the things that I learned in talking to them in great detail is that they're dumb.

00:46:57.060 And that was like a total shock to me.

00:46:59.300 Yeah, they're not that smart.

00:47:00.020 I mean, not dumb or anything, but these are people who can't kind of explain their own

00:47:05.680 actions in a logical way that can't have a linear conversation.

00:47:09.360 They're just not very smart.

00:47:12.100 And yet they're in this position of enormous influence in American society.

00:47:15.580 And it makes you wonder.

00:47:16.680 I mean, Chris Cuomo went to Yale.

00:47:18.860 Like, what?

00:47:19.920 I know.

00:47:20.400 So it makes you realize that.

00:47:22.260 And literally thinks that the First Amendment bans, quote, hate speech.

00:47:26.060 What a dumbass.

00:47:27.140 What a dumbass.

00:47:28.380 Thank you for saying that.

00:47:29.880 Exactly.

00:47:30.480 So it's just another reminder that our system is not meritocratic.

00:47:34.280 It's set up in a way that elevates some of the worst people in this huge country to

00:47:38.860 the positions of the most authority.

00:47:40.540 It's really bad.

00:47:41.280 I mean, our system is not working.

00:47:43.560 The merit badges that people collect along the way are not relevant to leadership.

00:47:48.360 So anyway, it was dispiriting, I would say.

00:47:50.960 Let me tell you, I went to Albany Law School, which is at best a third tier law school.

00:47:55.020 And we learned about the First Amendment, what's actually in it at Albany Law School.

00:47:59.020 So go Albany.

00:48:00.260 And what I'm gleaning here is that there's not going to be a second book deal with Simon

00:48:03.480 and Schuster.

00:48:04.500 Got it.

00:48:05.380 Check.

00:48:06.360 Note to self.

00:48:07.860 All right.

00:48:08.180 Coming up, what's it really like working at Fox News?

00:48:11.880 Tucker and I both know a thing or two about that.

00:48:14.020 And we're going to talk about some of our battle scars and how one survives in the toxic

00:48:20.380 environment of cable news.

00:48:22.780 Don't miss that.

00:48:30.160 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.

00:48:31.860 I'm joined today by Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on the Fox News channel.

00:48:37.600 So before there was Tucker Carlson Tonight, there was Tucker Carlson, little boy in California

00:48:42.340 with a dad who was a muckety-muck in the media industry.

00:48:47.220 Dick Carlson was kind of a big deal.

00:48:49.900 Former director of Voice of America, CEO of Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and under

00:48:55.200 Bush, H.W. Bush, U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles.

00:48:58.460 So you write in your book that he was in one of your books that he was smart, curious and

00:49:02.980 relentlessly skeptical.

00:49:04.660 Sounds like the mark of a good reporter.

00:49:06.520 It was impossible to bullshit my father.

00:49:09.080 I was reading it, Tucker, thinking these are big shoes to fill.

00:49:11.840 And I'm wondering whether it inspired you as a little guy or scared you.

00:49:16.100 Oh, my, I was unusually, my brother and I grew up with our dad and we were, and are, he's

00:49:23.940 80, unusually close to him, really, really close to him.

00:49:27.720 And I spent a huge amount of time with him.

00:49:30.940 And so my mother flaked out when I was little and left the country.

00:49:35.160 And at the time, which was in the mid-70s, it was pretty, you know, it was very unusual,

00:49:41.280 really, for a father to be raising kids alone.

00:49:45.480 He later got remarried to just such a wonderful woman who I love and I'm grateful to.

00:49:51.300 But when we were little, we lived with our dad.

00:49:53.340 And it was just a great experience, you know, for all the sadness and all the craziness and

00:49:58.160 all that stuff.

00:49:58.820 It was essentially the greatest childhood ever.

00:50:02.380 I mean, we just, we really loved our dad.

00:50:04.460 And so, no, he was a very kind person, but a very tough person.

00:50:08.780 I mean, he grew up in an orphanage, you know, and he was an orphan.

00:50:13.260 And I mean, literally, I remember being at the beach when I was little and looking at my

00:50:19.320 father, who's a, you know, big guy, been a Marine and, and his legs splayed out.

00:50:25.600 They were like bent.

00:50:26.960 And I said, wow, it's kind of weird.

00:50:28.580 What is that pop?

00:50:29.320 And he said, oh, I had rickets when I was in the orphanage.

00:50:32.160 Well, rickets, I was like, really?

00:50:35.400 That's like, it's like got a 17th century disease.

00:50:38.320 You know what I mean?

00:50:38.940 That's like, you know, Paris in 1650.

00:50:42.140 It's a disease of malnutrition, you know?

00:50:44.400 And, but he had it, it literally bent his legs.

00:50:47.700 So it used to cheerful, you know, sometimes people who undergo hardship as kids become

00:50:54.780 really bitter.

00:50:55.660 And then there's another group that become just relentlessly optimistic and cheerful and

00:50:59.520 never complained about anything and are just always charging forward to a happier future.

00:51:03.460 And that is very much our father.

00:51:05.680 But he's definitely no one to mess with.

00:51:07.380 I mean, at all.

00:51:08.420 Now, all right.

00:51:09.060 So, so which camp are you in?

00:51:10.460 Because you, speaking of your mom flaking out and leaving when you were six, you, you

00:51:14.120 also had something very bad happen to you in your childhood.

00:51:16.460 Yeah, I mean, well, oh, yeah, but I don't, well, I guess I'm in the optimistic camp because

00:51:22.660 I look back at my childhood, it's like the greatest time ever.

00:51:25.960 I mean, you know, by contemporary standards, we were raised without, you know, a ton of

00:51:31.080 the normal guardrails, you know?

00:51:34.100 Well, all of us who were raised in the seventies can say that.

00:51:36.760 I'm right there with you.

00:51:37.780 Well, that was especially true at our house.

00:51:40.360 And I wouldn't even say it because it just sounds, it's so over the top by, by modern standards,

00:51:44.760 but, but so great, so wonderful.

00:51:46.780 So no, my brother and I were still best friends.

00:51:49.120 I named my son after him.

00:51:51.820 Yeah, but, but Buckley and just a great guy and I talked to him this morning as I always

00:51:56.860 do, but he, he and I have a million times said how thankful that we are, that we grew

00:52:03.060 up as we did.

00:52:04.700 No, we really, really loved our dad.

00:52:07.200 And, you know, our father, we grew up in a, in a very affluent little town in Southern

00:52:12.920 California where there weren't a ton of people like my dad at all.

00:52:16.340 And so my father was the kind of guy who, you know, he, he, he is super, he's an intellectual,

00:52:22.900 very intense, intellectual, very intense, intellectual, and just a reader, passionate

00:52:27.140 reader, interested in everything.

00:52:28.580 But, you know, if, you know, if you like pushed him in the shoulder kind of thing, you know,

00:52:32.620 he'd punch you out.

00:52:33.500 He was that kind of guy, you know, he's just from a different time.

00:52:36.100 And there were no, a lot of similarities.

00:52:38.600 Yeah.

00:52:39.000 Other than, other than my dad, he was like the only person in our town like that.

00:52:42.400 So, so people are, when we were little, he was an anchor at ABC in LA and he was sitting

00:52:49.020 on the set in a commercial break.

00:52:50.700 And I think he'd had a few drinks and, um, in a, and he was having a cigarette on the

00:52:55.540 set and he turned and he said, I can't wait till this fucking show is over.

00:53:00.500 And it turned out he was on camera when he said it.

00:53:03.360 And, uh, so it was obviously a big thing at the time.

00:53:06.460 And I went to school the next day at the Buckley school in Sherman Oaks, where we had

00:53:09.660 to wear a tie in first grade.

00:53:11.020 And there was a girl in my class.

00:53:12.480 I'll never forget it.

00:53:13.240 And she was telling someone else and she goes, Tucker's dad's crazy.

00:53:18.680 I remember saying, my dad is not crazy.

00:53:22.720 I just was really, I'd really revered him.

00:53:25.620 And I still do.

00:53:26.660 Oh, he's just got the salty mouth of a Marine.

00:53:29.060 Some of us have it, even if we're not a Marine.

00:53:30.640 Um, so let me ask you, cause I know you don't talk about this a lot, but I just, I do want

00:53:35.740 to follow up on your mom taking off because, um, I looked it up just to see, um, armchair

00:53:42.300 psychiatry, uh, when the child is quote abandoned by his or her mother, it can lead to doubts

00:53:49.920 about you being lovable, difficulty, trusting people.

00:53:53.540 And in most kids that will leave, it'll lead the child to blame himself, uh, because they're

00:53:58.500 so little, I mean, six is little.

00:54:00.660 Did any of that happen to you?

00:54:02.080 How do you think it affected you?

00:54:03.580 Well, I'm sure it did.

00:54:04.520 I mean, I, you know, I had periods in my younger life when I, you know, partied too much, you

00:54:10.380 know, for real, um, not, you know, like not just have like too many beers at a party, but

00:54:15.300 like actually party too much, you know, again, for real.

00:54:19.020 So, um, I look back on that and I think, you know, I learned some stuff from those experiences,

00:54:25.040 but I also wonder like, why did I behave that way?

00:54:28.800 Uh, but I decided, you know, with that, I never talked about this cause I never want to

00:54:33.280 see him whining.

00:54:33.880 And again, I interpret my childhood as a really positive thing.

00:54:37.500 Um, but you know, our mom was not a fan of us and was pretty direct about it.

00:54:43.120 And, you know, that's obviously hurts when you're little, but then I realized you can't

00:54:48.020 control it, you know, you just can't control it.

00:54:50.700 And your mother doesn't like you.

00:54:51.880 Okay.

00:54:52.120 Boo hoo.

00:54:52.660 You know, it sounds really terrible, but it's not sort of up to me how she feels.

00:54:57.360 And so I think in later life, the lesson that I internalized from that was you really can't

00:55:02.780 control other people feel.

00:55:04.240 And so you have to, you just kind of have to be happy with who you are.

00:55:08.520 And really, I think, I mean, I got married at 22 and had four kids.

00:55:12.020 So looking back, like, it's hard to understand yourself except through your behavior.

00:55:15.800 I think that that's, you know, what you're really like that that's how it manifests itself.

00:55:20.880 And I just had this drive to have a really close, normal, happy family dinner together.

00:55:27.580 No, one's doing anything weird.

00:55:29.420 Do you know what I mean?

00:55:30.320 Also, I grew up in Southern California at a time when people were doing really weird

00:55:33.880 stuff, like for real, even by modern standards, people were doing really weird stuff, you know,

00:55:38.060 really weird set, you know, really weird.

00:55:40.020 So, and at the time I knew that, like when I was little in Laurel Canyon in LA, I was

00:55:44.940 like, this is weird.

00:55:45.960 I mean, the Eagles lived next door to us.

00:55:47.480 It was like, you know, it was just a wild time in the country.

00:55:49.940 And so I didn't want that.

00:55:51.460 I wanted a totally happy family where everyone's close and everyone's named after someone else

00:55:55.840 and like everyone gets together all the time.

00:55:57.980 And I've had that and it's the greatest thing in my life.

00:56:01.120 And I really do not take that for granted.

00:56:03.280 And the second thing is criticism from people who hate me doesn't really mean anything to me.

00:56:08.060 I think it really doesn't.

00:56:09.640 I care what the people I love think.

00:56:11.140 I care deeply.

00:56:12.280 If my wife is upset with me, I, you know, I can't even function because I care so much

00:56:16.620 about what she thinks.

00:56:17.360 And my children, same thing.

00:56:18.680 My close friends, I have a bunch of lifelong friends, people I work with.

00:56:22.660 I feel that way about them too.

00:56:24.280 But like some random, you know, the ADL doesn't like me or something.

00:56:29.640 Partisan who runs it.

00:56:30.580 Like, I don't care.

00:56:31.360 Why would I care?

00:56:32.080 I'm not giving those people emotional control over me.

00:56:35.800 I've been through that.

00:56:37.100 I lived through that as a child.

00:56:39.040 I'm not doing that again.

00:56:40.300 On a much more profound level.

00:56:42.200 Well, you're I mean, it's kind of like a Kramer versus Kramer situation, right?

00:56:44.640 They got a divorce and she took off and same age, but she didn't come back.

00:56:48.960 But to your point, if your mom doesn't like you.

00:56:50.860 In fact, I never talked to her again.

00:56:52.280 And when she died a few years ago, I got a call from a relative of mine and she lived

00:56:57.400 in France and said, you know, your mother's dying.

00:57:00.780 And I know, you know, and the funny thing is, I've never talked to this, but, uh, you

00:57:05.800 know, for all those years, I mean, I was a fully adult man working in Fox News when this

00:57:09.600 happened.

00:57:10.400 And I had always said to my wife who I've known, actually, the funny thing is today is

00:57:16.460 the 37th anniversary when we started dating.

00:57:19.020 So it's been a long time.

00:57:20.440 Well, your high school.

00:57:22.680 Yeah.

00:57:23.100 First day, first day, September, 1984.

00:57:25.860 So, but I've always said to her the whole time, I was like, she never met my mother, obviously.

00:57:30.320 And I said, you know, I'm, I feel great about it.

00:57:32.240 I feel totally fine.

00:57:33.240 I'm, I feel very well adjusted, especially when I stopped partying, but I'm kind of worried.

00:57:38.700 I'm going to get a call one day from someone's like, this woman's been found dead.

00:57:41.480 And we think that she's your mother or whatever.

00:57:43.560 I don't know anything about her.

00:57:45.040 I don't know where she is.

00:57:45.900 I'm totally cut off.

00:57:47.000 I mean, I, and I, and I said to my wife for years, I would say, I hope it doesn't trigger

00:57:50.800 some like collapse or something, you know, or I go crazy.

00:57:54.120 And the day it actually happened, um, I got this call, like she's dying and in, in this

00:58:00.100 weird little town and set on a farm that she lived on in Southwestern France.

00:58:03.600 And, and she was basically French at this point, spent her life there.

00:58:07.360 Uh, you should go visit her.

00:58:08.800 And so I called my brother and he's like, what?

00:58:10.680 No, you know, my son's got a soccer game.

00:58:13.180 And I said, I feel the same way.

00:58:14.420 I don't know this person.

00:58:15.360 And, and actually this sounds cold or whatever, but I had already kind of made my peace with

00:58:21.280 this over many decades, over 35 years.

00:58:24.160 And I didn't fall apart at all.

00:58:26.540 I went out to dinner.

00:58:27.460 I mean, I felt sad for her, I guess.

00:58:29.060 I don't know much about her.

00:58:30.820 She was an artist.

00:58:31.560 She had shows.

00:58:32.520 Okay.

00:58:32.860 I guess.

00:58:33.280 And, and all that, but she wasn't part of my life.

00:58:35.660 I wasn't part of hers.

00:58:36.600 And I, I just, I don't know.

00:58:39.940 She wasn't your mother.

00:58:41.920 She, she wasn't your mother.

00:58:43.200 That's how I felt.

00:58:43.980 That's I had a mother.

00:58:45.160 I mean, my dad got remarried to someone I think of as my mother and who I really, really

00:58:49.800 love.

00:58:50.200 So your dad gets remarried to her, her, all I know is her last name is Swanson.

00:58:56.540 And I didn't know it's all the years that we worked together.

00:58:58.480 I did not know that in some way you're heir to the Swanson meat fortune.

00:59:03.860 So are you a rich guy?

00:59:05.520 Was she rich?

00:59:06.180 Did that change your life?

00:59:07.320 Did you suddenly go over like, holy shit, we're rich now.

00:59:10.100 We, we have Swanson chicken.

00:59:12.140 It's funny.

00:59:12.800 I've, I've heard people.

00:59:14.940 I mean, I never comment on anything like this ever.

00:59:17.560 I mean, ever.

00:59:18.100 I never had one time.

00:59:20.220 Um, and I won't now, except to say that I've never gotten a dime.

00:59:23.640 And I mean that, well, that's not true.

00:59:26.040 It had nothing to do with my, um, my step-mom, but, uh, I did.

00:59:30.720 The one thing I did get was a cabin in Maine that we went to our entire lives.

00:59:35.700 That's good.

00:59:36.660 And I did get that, but you know, it cost $50,000.

00:59:40.400 So it wasn't, but no, but it's a lame kind of rich Tucker.

00:59:45.080 It's, it's always been that place.

00:59:47.300 You know, anyone who has a family summer house knows it's like, you know, the generations

00:59:52.400 go to when everyone meets there and all the cousins and all this stuff.

00:59:55.200 It's not, I don't live in a big house.

00:59:57.240 I don't have a big house.

00:59:58.320 My biggest house is 1800 square feet.

00:59:59.860 So I don't like big houses.

01:00:01.120 I never have.

01:00:01.860 As, as evidenced by the room that you were sitting in.

01:00:04.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:00:05.220 Yeah, no, I like, I mean, my favorite place in the world is an off-grid cabin, off-grid

01:00:09.320 cabin that it's a, I use for, for fishing.

01:00:11.680 It's on our stream in Maine and we have no electricity or running water.

01:00:15.020 I spend, I spend a lot of time there.

01:00:16.700 I stay there, but, um, no, I never got any money.

01:00:20.040 Not, I mean, no money, um, ever.

01:00:22.580 And that's why when, but, you know, which is fine.

01:00:25.040 I mean, most people don't, um, what I did get was a childhood, um, you know, a very,

01:00:31.500 a privileged childhood in the sense that I went to expensive schools from, you know,

01:00:35.500 from kindergarten through college.

01:00:37.860 And I grew up in a world of rich people and I grew up in La Jolla in Georgetown.

01:00:43.620 So, you know, I'm hardly the son of a mill worker.

01:00:46.580 You know, I did get that.

01:00:47.580 I mean, I got full immersion in a very specific.

01:00:50.220 Well, but how did you stay so connected to the people?

01:00:53.280 Because even with the background that you acknowledge has had a lot of advantages, if,

01:00:57.060 if not rich, just rubbing elbows with people of privilege and so on.

01:00:59.840 Cause you never, I, you, you to me are more working class than a lot of people who really

01:01:05.960 are from the working class, you know, and you just never seem to have lost that connection.

01:01:09.940 So how did you get it in the first place and not be corrupted by the elite media circles

01:01:14.680 and so on?

01:01:15.960 Well, I mean, I don't, you know, I never pretend to be, I mean, I'm,

01:01:19.860 I think one of the reasons people are so in Washington, where I spent most of my life

01:01:23.520 are so offended by me personally, is that I am absolutely from the world I'm describing.

01:01:28.980 So I know it very, very, I know it intimately.

01:01:30.940 It's my world.

01:01:32.000 So I know how mediocre they are.

01:01:34.220 I know what the scam is and I'm not afraid to say so.

01:01:36.380 So they're very offended by the fact that I would do that, but you know, screw them.

01:01:40.760 Uh, I would say one, my father is an aggressive egalitarian.

01:01:46.880 He just really believed that everyone is born with equal moral value.

01:01:51.500 Not everyone is equally capable.

01:01:52.880 That's for certain, but everyone, you know, that those kinds of hierarchies of, oh, I'm

01:01:58.980 not going to talk to the housekeeper or whatever.

01:02:01.420 That's like, that's fake.

01:02:03.580 So people with a true aristocratic temperament invite the housekeeper to dinner because why

01:02:08.260 wouldn't you, you know, she's a person, you like her, she works for you.

01:02:11.040 Like don't see the world.

01:02:13.100 I mean, only fake new money posers do the whole thing.

01:02:17.280 Like, oh, well, you know, I'm the help.

01:02:19.520 I hate that shit.

01:02:20.920 It's fake.

01:02:22.020 Um, and the other thing that I had going for me was we spent, you know, months a year,

01:02:26.320 really six, six months a year at this point in, uh, you know, one of the poorest zip codes

01:02:31.680 in America and, and, and my whole life.

01:02:34.260 So I've gone to the same town my whole life.

01:02:36.260 I know everybody, I don't feel like I'm parachuting in as like some random rich guy.

01:02:42.980 You know, I've come here when I was, you know, seven years old and made no money.

01:02:46.860 I was here when I got fired.

01:02:48.300 I've been here the whole time.

01:02:49.640 So I've really been immersed in a, a very different world for a good chunk of the year,

01:02:54.600 my entire life.

01:02:55.760 There are no summer people where we live, none, just us.

01:02:58.900 And so I just, I don't know.

01:03:01.080 I've really been affected.

01:03:02.200 I've really been affected by that.

01:03:03.360 And the last thing I'll say is I believe in skills.

01:03:05.380 I've always thought this, I think it's super important for people, particularly men,

01:03:10.060 I'll just say it to have some kind of physical skill.

01:03:12.820 Like, what can you do?

01:03:14.160 We'll pause Tucker.

01:03:15.120 We'll do a break.

01:03:15.820 We'll come back and we'll pick it up.

01:03:17.060 Cause I want, I do want to hear that story.

01:03:18.520 Don't you want to hear about the skills.

01:03:21.180 Um, and by the way, we'd love to get your thoughts on anything that we have discussed

01:03:24.300 today.

01:03:24.880 So give us a call in just a bit.

01:03:26.820 We'll take your calls at 833-44-MEGAN, M-E-G-Y-N.

01:03:30.040 That's 833-44-634-9-6.

01:03:34.320 And we're going to talk in a minute about Tucker's complete eschewing of technology.

01:03:38.840 No TVs, no internet, no social media.

01:03:41.880 How on earth does he consume the news?

01:03:48.020 Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show joined today by Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson

01:03:52.320 tonight on the Fox news channel.

01:03:53.820 In less than 20 minutes, we're going to be taking your calls on the interview, anything

01:03:57.320 that's on your mind.

01:03:58.700 So Tucker, you were talking about how you sort of asked, you know, you think it's important

01:04:02.060 for men in particular to be able to build things.

01:04:04.500 And I have to say, just to kick it off, Doug has said this too.

01:04:07.660 One day we were sitting in our apartment in Manhattan.

01:04:09.180 Doug's like, you know, just had a thought.

01:04:10.700 Like if the grid went down, like if I had to go hunt and get us food here in New York

01:04:15.720 City, how would I do it?

01:04:16.980 Like, how can you get air conditioning into an apartment?

01:04:19.600 Like, how does how does a man build that?

01:04:21.860 And he's like, I have no idea.

01:04:22.960 I couldn't like how how do they build that chair?

01:04:25.000 And he's like, you look at Adam, the super like he can do all this stuff.

01:04:28.200 I can't do any of this stuff.

01:04:29.040 And whereupon Adam, the super started to look very attractive to me.

01:04:34.260 I can't vouch for Adam's appearance.

01:04:38.740 That's hilarious, though.

01:04:39.860 No, I think it's essential.

01:04:41.700 I mean, if you want to and it's not just about masculinity and all that, it's, you know,

01:04:45.860 being useful is the point of one of the points of life, I think.

01:04:50.520 And self-sufficiency is far underrated.

01:04:53.240 I mean, it really is.

01:04:54.980 So I like that.

01:04:56.020 I mean, I've hunted and fished my whole life and I continue to.

01:05:00.720 Partridge season opens tomorrow, actually.

01:05:02.680 I got all four of my spaniels who were out this morning getting ready for it.

01:05:06.820 And I fish a ton and always have.

01:05:10.100 And so that's, you know, getting out into nature, learning how things work, learning about

01:05:15.800 trees and birds and bear and deer and all that stuff.

01:05:18.720 I just think it meets a very essential need.

01:05:22.200 But I also think doing things with your hands, particularly if you're trapped in your office,

01:05:26.760 writing TV scripts or reading, you know, into a camera every night as I am.

01:05:31.200 It's so important.

01:05:32.120 I mean, I have a wood shop directly outside my studio.

01:05:34.400 I mean, you walk out my studio.

01:05:35.680 There's a workbench.

01:05:36.820 Wow.

01:05:37.220 And a wood shop.

01:05:38.220 So and that's, you know, I've always had that.

01:05:41.140 I've always really.

01:05:42.560 In fact, seconds before I sat down to talk to you, I fixed a chair.

01:05:48.020 I mean, it's not difficult at all, but it's deeply.

01:05:50.920 And trust me, I'm not doing anything impressive.

01:05:53.980 But I mean, I always try and build a couple pieces of furniture every year just because

01:05:58.440 it makes me feel useful.

01:05:59.940 I tie a ton, million trout flies and saltwater flies and salmon flies.

01:06:05.580 And I like because I like to fish.

01:06:06.940 But I tie to myself because I find it deeply rewarding.

01:06:09.280 And also my flies are better than most people's.

01:06:11.440 I have to say I've done a lot of fly fishing out in Montana and there's nothing like it.

01:06:16.340 There's there's nothing.

01:06:17.080 We brought our kids out there when we were.

01:06:19.300 I was there and my oldest son caught his first fish and he was thrilled and I was thrilled.

01:06:25.440 We were jumping up and down and I was like, it's so exciting, isn't it, Yates?

01:06:28.940 And he said, yes, I said that the amount of excitement you feel is disproportionate to

01:06:33.980 the event.

01:06:34.620 And he said, not for the fish.

01:06:39.200 Wow, he's a smart kid.

01:06:40.660 I'm impressed.

01:06:42.280 But it's true.

01:06:43.100 I mean, so I got it.

01:06:43.860 You got to work with your hands and you got to build up more than your television skills.

01:06:46.940 But I do I don't understand how Tucker Carlson lives in the middle of nowhere, lives the

01:06:51.720 life of a Luddite and manages to consume news because you don't have TVs.

01:06:56.420 You don't use the Internet.

01:06:57.840 You don't go on social media.

01:06:59.500 I know you use your phone.

01:07:00.540 You are weird in one respect where you will still call people.

01:07:03.320 I love that about you.

01:07:04.280 You'll pick up the phone and call me like, oh, Tucker talks on the phone still.

01:07:07.460 This is awesome.

01:07:08.540 But how do you how do you stay abreast of the news without using any of those things?

01:07:14.840 By text message.

01:07:17.860 I take a sauna every day.

01:07:20.060 It's one of my weird.

01:07:21.420 We're obviously Scandinavian, given our name.

01:07:23.380 And so we grew up with saunas in the house always.

01:07:25.900 And I take a sauna every day.

01:07:27.260 I believe in it.

01:07:28.360 And I won't bore you with all my views on it.

01:07:30.880 I could literally write a book on sauna, but I'm not going to.

01:07:33.160 But anyway, but I take the sauna and then I sit outside my sauna, usually in a towel.

01:07:38.060 And I make calls and text and then I repeat the process every single day of the year.

01:07:44.160 And I get all my information from people.

01:07:46.720 I have a text relationship with probably four or five hundred people, but a huge cross-section

01:07:55.000 of the country.

01:07:56.280 One of my favorites, who I text with this morning, was a waitress that I had at a restaurant

01:08:00.280 in Big Sur years ago who turned out to be like a complete genius.

01:08:03.920 And a lot of a lot of people, you know, members of Congress, but there's some there's sometimes

01:08:07.980 the least interesting because they have such an agenda.

01:08:10.040 But there's a lot of people.

01:08:11.440 And I just get a massive flow of information through that, you know, and every I spend hours

01:08:18.340 at it every day.

01:08:19.020 It's not a small thing for me.

01:08:20.100 I mean, it's the main thing.

01:08:21.980 So we have an overnight news digest that's prepared by a guy who works for us.

01:08:28.240 You probably know him, Tom Fox, who's just like a complete genius.

01:08:32.000 You know, so I have a lot of sources of news.

01:08:33.340 But one thing I don't do is like hang around on Twitter or, you know, zoom around the CNN

01:08:38.060 website or because it that stuff gets in your head.

01:08:41.280 I don't I'm not reading The New York Times or The Washington Post like ever.

01:08:45.520 You know, why would I do that?

01:08:46.780 It's garbage.

01:08:47.820 So that's that's a requirement of the job, is it not?

01:08:50.020 Because, you know, we we kicked it off talking about the ADL yet again, trying to get you

01:08:53.820 fired, which isn't going to happen.

01:08:56.220 But that don't you think that's a requirement?

01:08:58.340 Because I will tell you, you know, one of the reasons I left Fox was the toxicity of

01:09:03.460 the cable news business and the industry.

01:09:05.740 I mean, mostly I just wanted to raise my own kids.

01:09:07.360 But I also looked around while not seeing my kids and said, what am I doing instead?

01:09:12.300 Oh, wait, this fucking sucks.

01:09:14.940 Like, what am I doing here?

01:09:17.120 And I was not as smart as you because I did not make myself impervious to that incoming

01:09:22.200 and it did affect my headspace.

01:09:24.700 Well, that's it right there.

01:09:25.660 I mean, and you've I'm just I can't overstate this, how thrilled I am by what you're doing.

01:09:30.360 I'm just thrilled.

01:09:30.980 I think this is not flattery.

01:09:32.560 I'm not a flatterer.

01:09:33.660 And I told your producers before.

01:09:35.340 I think you are one of the only people I've ever met who is a true natural talent for what

01:09:40.520 you do.

01:09:40.940 Like you were just born to do it.

01:09:42.360 It's unbelievable.

01:09:43.020 And so the fact that they tried to take you offline for a while and you didn't have a

01:09:49.280 huge platform just drove me crazy.

01:09:51.560 Just even even if I disagreed with you and I don't.

01:09:53.940 But if I did, I would still feel that way because it's so important for people who are

01:09:58.080 great at doing something to get have a chance to do that thing.

01:10:01.420 And so I'm just so I'm so thrilled by what you're doing.

01:10:05.040 I really am.

01:10:05.660 But you took full control of your life and that's how you can think clearly.

01:10:10.860 And I think that's really the only option.

01:10:13.520 You can't.

01:10:14.040 I mean, it's one thing to get fired.

01:10:15.040 When everyone gets fired, you know, it's one thing to get sick.

01:10:18.180 Everyone gets sick.

01:10:19.240 You cannot let them into your head.

01:10:20.640 You cannot give them control of your brain.

01:10:22.520 You can't let them determine what your relationships with the people you love are like.

01:10:26.620 Like these are things you have to protect at all costs.

01:10:29.960 And, you know, everyone finds a different way to do it.

01:10:31.760 But you have to make that a priority.

01:10:33.240 You can't let Twitter into your bedroom.

01:10:36.020 I mean, in my life, that's a big that's a big thing.

01:10:38.340 Like we don't do phones in the bedroom.

01:10:39.940 Like the bedroom, you know, is for bed.

01:10:42.020 And for beverage stuff, you know what I mean?

01:10:44.280 Right.

01:10:45.240 Well, but let me ask you that because it's one thing you married your high school sweetheart.

01:10:50.300 We talked about Susie a minute ago.

01:10:52.020 It's one thing to protect yourself.

01:10:53.440 And it's one thing to know that you're being attacked.

01:10:55.460 You know, you've been there.

01:10:56.380 I've been there many times.

01:10:57.320 It's another to is a it's another for the spouse to watch it.

01:11:01.800 And it's another for you to now watch your own spouse be attacked.

01:11:05.980 I thank God I haven't had that yet.

01:11:07.760 But your wife, I mean, your home in which your wife was present was literally stormed by a bunch of losers who didn't like you, who didn't like what you had to say on the news.

01:11:17.820 I mean, well, how low of a person do you have to be to be driven to go harass a news anchor and his wife at their home where children could be present because you don't like what he says on the news?

01:11:29.200 It's insane.

01:11:30.400 But that's a level of stress that's, I mean, almost unprecedented in our business, Tucker.

01:11:35.680 And you've been right at the center of that.

01:11:37.660 Yeah, I mean, luckily, my wife is very rooted.

01:11:42.600 My wife is a very intense reader.

01:11:45.400 So she gets and she reads aloud sometimes, which is my favorite thing.

01:11:49.340 And she's a you know, she loves P.G.

01:11:51.540 Woodhouse and she's she's a very literate person.

01:11:54.700 And so she you know, she's very involved.

01:11:56.640 We don't have TV, as I said, and she just it wouldn't even wouldn't even occur to her to like she's never been on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

01:12:04.960 She's just not a world.

01:12:06.100 So we just yeah, that was traumatic.

01:12:09.540 But she's she's tough.

01:12:11.500 You know, she's an outdoors person.

01:12:12.700 So she's she's a tough person.

01:12:14.220 You know, it's the other part of it, which is harder.

01:12:18.440 You know, if you have children out in the out in the world, I mean, it's it's tough.

01:12:22.980 And I think it's been very tough for them.

01:12:26.360 One of my daughters, my kids are actually hilarious.

01:12:29.480 And all four of them have a have great senses of humor and have some ironic distance from their own lives, I think.

01:12:35.360 But one of them, who's one of my funniest kids, called me the other day.

01:12:39.460 She's a senior in college.

01:12:40.800 And this girl's really, really funny.

01:12:42.940 And what she said to me, she's talking about her friend who is the same last name, Carlson.

01:12:46.640 It's not a very unusual last name, I don't think.

01:12:49.660 And said that they were out to dinner and the girls a year younger than my daughter and said, you know, last year when I got to school, all the teachers were the professors were mean to me.

01:12:59.560 All my professors were mean to me.

01:13:00.920 They were like rude to me.

01:13:01.900 And I didn't know what was going on.

01:13:03.340 And a classmate said, you know, they think you're Tucker Carlson's daughter.

01:13:08.540 So my daughter was howling with laughter.

01:13:10.500 She thought it was the funniest thing ever.

01:13:11.800 But then I thought, wait, you actually are my daughter.

01:13:14.600 What's your life like?

01:13:16.220 But, you know, my kids are, you know, they're wasps.

01:13:19.020 They don't like to complain.

01:13:20.040 They will not complain.

01:13:20.880 So it's hard to know because my wife is very anti-complaining and we're from an anti-complaining culture.

01:13:26.460 So like very anti-complaining.

01:13:28.460 Like it's better to die than complain about being anti-complaining.

01:13:30.760 No, you're truly like, so my mom left me when I was six.

01:13:32.820 I'm good.

01:13:34.600 Well, I don't know.

01:13:35.440 You don't get anything out of complaining.

01:13:36.980 And by the way, as my father said to me when I was little and it's proven to be true, you know, almost all unhappiness in the world derives from self-kitty.

01:13:46.880 Totally true.

01:13:48.080 Have you ever been truly unhappy except when you were feeling sorry for yourself?

01:13:53.540 No, self-pity is the root of all sadness and self-pity is a species of narcissism.

01:13:59.160 So like stop thinking about it.

01:14:00.240 When I was a kid, we'd always be forced, of course, to write thank you notes.

01:14:03.240 And my father would come in and prove them.

01:14:05.360 And he was very liberal about a lot of things, but not this kind of thing.

01:14:08.420 He was very tough.

01:14:09.260 And if we began more than one sentence with the word I in the thank you note, my father would always say, oh, is it what's about you?

01:14:14.740 I thought this was a note to thank someone else for giving you something.

01:14:18.500 But every sentence begins with I.

01:14:20.020 So it's really kind of a, you know, a swim in Lake Me, isn't it?

01:14:23.700 Why don't you rewrite that and make it about me?

01:14:25.820 Swim in Lake Me.

01:14:26.720 That's good.

01:14:27.500 Yeah.

01:14:29.420 What a good perspective.

01:14:31.560 I know.

01:14:31.820 But like back to the sort of topic where you're in an industry that's Lake Me.

01:14:36.940 I mean, the narcissism in cable news, you look around everywhere.

01:14:41.040 I mean, I it's not it's not a Fox News problem.

01:14:43.820 It's a cable news.

01:14:44.580 It's a news problem.

01:14:45.560 Trust me.

01:14:45.980 I had a much worse time at NBC than I ever did at Fox News in terms of egos and so on.

01:14:51.540 But I don't know.

01:14:52.320 You tell me because I've said the other day that there was a point at which I looked around Fox in particular and said this is under the Ailes era, not presently.

01:14:59.520 And I felt like I'd been working in a cult.

01:15:02.300 You know, I'd been I'd been going to a cult every day where the leader was revered and there was no dissent allowed.

01:15:08.340 And you look around, you realize you've chosen very unhealthy lifestyle, you know, set up.

01:15:13.800 Well, it's definitely an unhealthy lifestyle.

01:15:16.280 And you need to, you know, you need to take it very seriously.

01:15:19.780 You need to take your own life very seriously.

01:15:21.520 If you enter into this business and sort of let your life happen to you, you will be destroyed.

01:15:27.120 There's no question about that.

01:15:28.440 And there's a long roster of people who are living testament to that because they've been destroyed.

01:15:32.700 I know them all.

01:15:33.280 And you do, too.

01:15:34.500 So but you just have to take active steps.

01:15:36.160 It's just like anything else.

01:15:37.060 You know, you just have to be thoughtful about your life.

01:15:39.280 And if you are, you'll be fine.

01:15:41.140 But you have to be very serious about it.

01:15:42.980 And we're we're very serious about like the simple steps that we take not to go crazy.

01:15:49.600 And if you do that, you'll be fine.

01:15:51.180 And the number one thing is just remembering in the end, all graves go unvisited.

01:15:56.100 But in the end, this is just a point on a long continuum called human history.

01:16:00.760 You're not changing the world.

01:16:02.440 You're not Jesus.

01:16:03.360 You're just some dude with a job and just calm down and not.

01:16:07.420 You know what I mean?

01:16:08.020 So true.

01:16:08.840 It's so true.

01:16:10.360 No, I've talked about this with respect to Paul Newman, because if you could find somebody who lived his life, quote, perfectly, he'd be as close as you could get.

01:16:17.380 Good looking guy, huge film career, married the woman of his dreams, absolutely loved her their whole life long.

01:16:22.660 Great family went on to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to charity through his next endeavor.

01:16:27.600 You know, universally beloved, blah, blah, blah.

01:16:29.440 He's still dead and buried in the ground, just like we're all going to wind up.

01:16:32.260 Of course.

01:16:33.460 There's no there's no preventing that by living, quote, the perfect life.

01:16:37.840 But he Paul Newman also pursued like his personal interests, his passions as aggressively as anyone could.

01:16:47.040 So I always love that.

01:16:48.800 But I mean, I'm not into cars or car racing or whatever, but Paul Newman was.

01:16:52.420 And he spent, you know, huge amounts of time and money and intensity on the thing that he loved that fulfilled him.

01:17:00.340 And I just I think that's a model like you have to.

01:17:02.760 And not everything is about expressing your opinions or being on camera like you need to be really passionate about things that are affirming and life giving.

01:17:13.100 So, yeah, keep it in perspective.

01:17:14.960 Let me ask you about that, because I know that you're you're a big reader and your wife's a big reader.

01:17:18.940 You mentioned that and you would be without a television.

01:17:21.000 So how do you decide what to read?

01:17:23.220 Because I remember either somebody told me this about you or I read it.

01:17:26.400 I can't remember, but you were sitting behind a wall full of books and you said, and I've read them all.

01:17:31.200 And so how do you decide, you know, because if you sort of space out your life and realize you don't have that much time to read that many books, you know?

01:17:37.760 Yes.

01:17:38.300 So how do you choose what's next?

01:17:41.980 So funny.

01:17:42.760 This is like another ongoing.

01:17:44.260 I know I'm making my childhood sound like a lecture after lecture.

01:17:46.540 It wasn't.

01:17:47.100 But there were a couple of things.

01:17:48.420 No, I'm loving your dad.

01:17:50.220 Take it in in our family.

01:17:51.760 And one of them was what to read.

01:17:52.900 That was like a and I remember my father saying my my my real mother, my birth mother was was smart.

01:17:57.900 It was a high IQ person, but great backgammon player, for example.

01:18:01.300 But and in a in a reader.

01:18:04.180 But I remember my father saying contemptuously, but she read magazines.

01:18:10.480 She didn't have the self-discipline.

01:18:12.860 And, you know, it was a New Yorker or whatever, I guess, semi-serious sort of, you know, middlebrow stuff.

01:18:16.920 But she wasn't self-disciplined enough to think through, like, what should I be reading?

01:18:22.380 And it's not you don't have to always read the, you know, decline and fall to the empire, which I did make myself read once took like three months.

01:18:28.960 It was horrible.

01:18:29.720 But anyway, but you should be thoughtful about it.

01:18:32.940 It's like with lunch.

01:18:33.980 I for years, decades, I had lunch every single day, five days a week with someone different because that's like important.

01:18:39.780 And I realized at a certain point when I turned 40, I said to my wife, I'm never eating with someone I dislike again.

01:18:44.180 I'm never doing that because how many lunches do I have?

01:18:46.920 And so I only take book advice from a really small number of people.

01:18:52.160 I started last night, actually.

01:18:53.300 I started the history of the North Sea by this British historian.

01:18:56.440 His last name is Pi.

01:18:57.420 I'm about I don't know.

01:18:58.640 I just finished the intro, which is like 30 pages long.

01:19:01.180 But I got it from a buddy of mine who was so excited about reading it that he took screenshots of different pages and sent them to me.

01:19:08.700 So I'm reading that.

01:19:09.540 I just got on a Stalingrad kick.

01:19:12.580 I'm interested in the Battle of Stalingrad, the biggest battle in human history.

01:19:16.260 Oh, Lord, you and Doug would bore each other to tears.

01:19:18.920 Susie and I'd be over talking about something more exciting, I hope.

01:19:21.580 But my God, this is like my husband.

01:19:23.780 Well, no, I do read a huge number of books on fly fishing.

01:19:27.240 I just read we have Springer Spaniels.

01:19:29.560 I really love Spaniels.

01:19:30.660 And so we we have four of them.

01:19:32.140 So I just finished a book on training Springer Spaniels.

01:19:35.880 I don't know, whatever.

01:19:36.640 I mean, I'm not a deeply serious person.

01:19:39.600 I'm hardly like some, you know, deep intellectual.

01:19:42.380 I'm not.

01:19:43.720 But I just have a lot of interest and I try to indulge them.

01:19:46.480 That's good to hear.

01:19:47.200 So it's not all Bob Woodward and, you know, Michael Wolfe.

01:19:50.300 I never read that shit.

01:19:51.260 It's so stupid.

01:19:52.420 Same.

01:19:53.040 If I can get the four paragraph precess of it.

01:19:56.000 I mean, I don't.

01:19:56.620 Why would it?

01:19:57.000 Why would you?

01:19:57.600 First of all, I lived there.

01:19:59.360 So I know a lot about D.C.

01:20:00.940 I don't need to know more.

01:20:02.200 I know I have a full Ph.D. on Washington and a Bob Woodward, who I know.

01:20:06.520 So like I don't.

01:20:07.660 But I didn't know anything about Stalingrad or what happened to the guys who were captured

01:20:11.920 and the whatever.

01:20:13.220 I won't bore you with it.

01:20:13.800 But but there's just a lot that I don't know.

01:20:16.400 And I want to know more.

01:20:18.180 And and then I do.

01:20:19.380 I do love like my wife.

01:20:21.180 I love P.G.

01:20:22.160 Woodhouse, who wrote like one hundred and eight novels.

01:20:24.620 So, you know, that's a lifetime endeavor.

01:20:26.740 All right.

01:20:26.840 So let me talk to you a little bit about the competitiveness of our industry and cable,

01:20:30.520 because one of the things I've noticed on your show is you're pissed off at Lindsey

01:20:33.640 Graham and you're mad at Governor Abbott down in Texas.

01:20:36.100 And I know why they won't come on your show.

01:20:38.080 They won't come just answer questions.

01:20:39.720 It's the Fox News channel.

01:20:41.160 You got the number one show on cable.

01:20:42.580 Just come on and answer a few questions.

01:20:44.600 Why won't they do it?

01:20:46.020 And how big a problem do you think it is?

01:20:48.860 Right.

01:20:49.040 When you're when you're as unabashed about going after people and expressing your thoughts

01:20:53.200 on the news as you are, sometimes it can be an impediment to getting people who are

01:20:57.220 a little weak in the knees to come talk to you.

01:20:59.200 Well, we can't really have any debates on the show because no one will will come on.

01:21:04.700 There's been a full boycott from Democrats.

01:21:07.000 Unfortunately, I'm sad about it for, I don't know, almost three years now.

01:21:12.000 So we can't have a single Democrat.

01:21:13.460 No Democrat will come on.

01:21:14.540 I have a lot of leftists on who I love and admire.

01:21:18.380 I don't agree with them on everything, but I think they're brave and free thinking people.

01:21:22.260 I mean, I love Glenn Greenwald, who's had him on last night or, you know, Matt Taibbi.

01:21:27.760 Welcome on my show.

01:21:28.860 Any amazing.

01:21:29.660 I have a lot of friends on the on the I hate to use the phrase far left, but on the free

01:21:34.780 thinking on the old fashioned one, Michael Tracy, I had him on two nights ago.

01:21:37.940 He's great.

01:21:38.680 These are all people who are their leftists.

01:21:41.100 OK, but and again, I don't agree with everything, but I just want someone who's honest.

01:21:45.660 That's all I care about.

01:21:46.920 As for Lindsey Graham, specifically, Lindsey Graham's a fraud.

01:21:51.340 And that drives me nuts, especially now.

01:21:54.020 Like so people are really under attack.

01:21:56.660 I mean, people are having their most basic civil liberties taken away from them.

01:22:01.180 So somebody needs to defend them.

01:22:03.080 And you look around.

01:22:03.600 Well, whose job is that?

01:22:04.580 Well, the people who got their positions because the people who are being attacked voted for

01:22:09.780 them, those are their constituents.

01:22:11.040 So they should be defending them.

01:22:12.820 I'm a I'm a freaking cable news host.

01:22:14.760 I have no power at all.

01:22:16.100 I'm just a you know, you know, you've done the job.

01:22:18.700 So, yeah, I don't have any power.

01:22:20.820 My only power is the ability to point this out.

01:22:24.100 And I'm deeply frustrated by people shirking their duty in a time of crisis.

01:22:29.000 And I believe it is an actual crisis.

01:22:30.980 And so if there's a if the ship is going down, you have to help the weaker into the

01:22:35.660 lifeboats first.

01:22:36.480 That is your moral duty.

01:22:37.700 And if you hop in the lifeboat and row away with open seats, you are a monster and you

01:22:44.620 should be held to account for that.

01:22:46.480 And that's how I feel.

01:22:47.320 So in some sense, I matter at Lindsey Graham than I am at AOC.

01:22:51.100 I mean, she's just a grifter trying to get ahead in a tough world and she's succeeding.

01:22:55.340 You know, I'm not mad at her actually at all.

01:22:57.760 I think she's got some talent.

01:22:59.040 I disagree with everything she says.

01:23:00.400 I think she's racially divisive, which I really hate.

01:23:03.100 But I also recognize, you know, this is a talented person who is totally self-made.

01:23:09.100 So I'm not.

01:23:09.640 And she's also transparent.

01:23:10.620 Like, you know who she is.

01:23:11.560 I get it.

01:23:12.560 Lindsey Graham pretends to be one thing, but he's entirely another.

01:23:16.040 I'm really bothered by that.

01:23:17.740 Greg Abbott, I like.

01:23:19.020 I'm not against Greg Abbott at all.

01:23:20.880 I just at this moment, he could fix the problem or help fix it.

01:23:24.760 And he's not.

01:23:25.480 And I just want to do all I can to encourage him to help fix it because it needs to be fixed.

01:23:29.760 Well, I just don't get why they don't come on.

01:23:31.800 So come on.

01:23:32.200 So be a man, you know, be a woman.

01:23:33.880 Stand up.

01:23:34.640 Take a few tough questions, even if it gets critical or contentious.

01:23:37.840 I mean, good Lord, they're politicians.

01:23:39.340 It's like I don't totally understand it, but I agree with the calling out.

01:23:42.640 It's only women who come on, by the way.

01:23:44.260 If that's what this other thing, which someday I'm going to really get time to think through.

01:23:48.620 But like I asked my producer that we try to highlight people who aren't going along with the bullshit, who are brave.

01:23:53.960 We're standing up.

01:23:54.620 We have them on, you know, some nurse who's like, I'm not going to push around.

01:23:57.360 OK, great.

01:23:58.760 Well, I said to my producer, we had this amazing nurse on the other day.

01:24:01.200 This woman was so brave and clear speaking, clear thinking, just totally fearless.

01:24:05.780 And I said to my producer, what percentage of these people we have them on every week have been women?

01:24:11.180 He goes, that's an interesting question.

01:24:12.840 Probably 90 percent of them.

01:24:15.040 That's great.

01:24:15.720 I mean, I have three daughters and I couldn't be more pro women.

01:24:19.080 You know, I like women more than men.

01:24:20.000 I always have.

01:24:20.700 But you need men to wear the men.

01:24:24.120 And I asked my producer that.

01:24:25.320 He's like, that's such a good question.

01:24:26.380 I don't know where the men like, why aren't the men standing up?

01:24:29.180 And I don't know.

01:24:29.720 That's fascinating.

01:24:30.080 But this is weird.

01:24:31.300 Well, can I tell you, especially on the covid stuff, when it's when it involves your children,

01:24:35.420 you know, it's like it that'll get a mama bear madder than anything, as you know,

01:24:40.020 as a man who spent a lot of time in the wilderness.

01:24:42.380 And that's that's what covid has done.

01:24:44.380 I think it's activated a lot of moms and also CRT in our schools.

01:24:47.800 You're indoctrinating our kids.

01:24:49.460 You're brainwashing them.

01:24:50.540 You're muzzling them with masks that they don't need in the school setting.

01:24:54.060 You won't be honest about the science.

01:24:55.700 It all goes on interminably with no end date in sight.

01:24:59.900 And and when when that's why I love watching somebody like you push back against some of

01:25:03.840 this nonsense, because it's like, you know how it is.

01:25:06.340 YouTube, any any place you push back on masks.

01:25:09.120 Rand Paul got videos taken down because he pushed back on masks.

01:25:12.620 They they will shut you up.

01:25:14.600 And one of the beauties of Fox News and you is you're allowed to say what you feel.

01:25:18.300 You're allowed to push back.

01:25:19.420 You man or woman, you can push back on the sort of the mainstream narrative.

01:25:23.860 And Tucker, we're losing that by the day.

01:25:26.880 It's totally scary because where does it end up?

01:25:30.900 I mean, I just don't.

01:25:33.040 I, you know, I think so many.

01:25:34.860 I'm not going to be boring about it.

01:25:35.780 But yes, I think this is an actual crisis.

01:25:38.060 You have to have free thinking in order to have a civilized country, period.

01:25:42.500 You have to allow ordinary people to express their views.

01:25:46.240 Maybe we could agree that there are some views that are so terrifying and dangerous that shouldn't

01:25:50.500 express them in public.

01:25:51.380 OK, let's have that comment.

01:25:52.180 One of those use.

01:25:52.840 Tell me, you know, and let's talk about it.

01:25:54.820 But overwhelmingly, you need to have people feel free to say what they really think.

01:26:00.460 And you absolutely under no circumstances can force citizens, free people to violate their

01:26:06.040 own consciences, period.

01:26:07.540 You cannot do that.

01:26:08.580 You're not allowed to do that.

01:26:10.080 But, you know, they say just espousing the word, just saying the words, right?

01:26:13.520 Like if you're not pro vaccine, if you're not pro mask, that it's disinformation, that it

01:26:18.880 needs to be stifled, that you you'll have blood on your hands.

01:26:21.820 I mean, that's the narrative and it's working.

01:26:24.500 The number of people.

01:26:25.580 I mean, yeah, I had a child who was pretty badly hurt by a vaccine and years ago by a

01:26:32.420 flu vaccine and it was totally real.

01:26:34.420 I had no idea.

01:26:35.520 I grew up next to Salk Institute in La Jolla and I was totally pro vaccine.

01:26:38.440 I still am totally pro vaccine.

01:26:39.980 I've had a million vaccines and so have my kids, including after this kid got hurt by

01:26:43.680 the vaccine.

01:26:45.060 But so I'm not I'm hardly an anti-vaxxer, just the opposite.

01:26:48.680 I'm totally pro science, pro medicine, pro vaccine.

01:26:51.080 But you have to be allowed to say if there is a side effect of a medicine, you can't

01:26:58.440 be pushed to deny the physical reality of the effect of a medicine.

01:27:03.780 You just that's that's crazy.

01:27:05.840 That's total dark ages witchcraft stuff like no.

01:27:10.920 And the number of people come to me and say, you know, I had this or one of my children

01:27:16.200 had this or my spouse said this.

01:27:17.920 I mean, there's a lot of it out there.

01:27:19.080 And those people are attacked for being injured by something they were forced to take and called

01:27:25.440 anti-vaxxers like it's so grotesque.

01:27:28.540 I don't you know, I don't know what to say.

01:27:30.060 I've done a couple of shows on this and, you know, I mean, they try to shut us down for

01:27:34.340 saying that.

01:27:34.960 Think about that.

01:27:36.060 Yeah, they're trying to hurt you for explaining as honestly as you can using federal statistics,

01:27:42.240 the harm rate from a medicine they're requiring.

01:27:44.960 I mean, I'm trying not to use the F word on your show, but like, honestly, think of just

01:27:48.760 like meditate on that for three minutes.

01:27:50.260 This is what I think about the sauna.

01:27:51.380 I'm like, this is just too dark.

01:27:52.800 That's great.

01:27:53.740 So let me ask you this.

01:27:55.420 I heard you say something like the one thing, you know, is a major change is coming, you

01:27:59.500 know, between the big government takeover of our lives, big tech running everything.

01:28:04.040 And yet we can't vote them out of office.

01:28:06.400 We're stuck with these masters over whom we have no control.

01:28:10.120 To the contrary, they control us.

01:28:12.460 And so we feel disempowered.

01:28:14.340 Our leaders dividing us, taking away the fibers of patriotism and loving our country that used

01:28:19.900 to bind us together, no matter our race, our gender, what have you.

01:28:23.120 Just this growing frustration and upset in the country.

01:28:27.120 And you say a major change is coming.

01:28:29.320 What does that look like?

01:28:30.960 Well, you know, first of all, I mean, don't take my word for it.

01:28:34.020 Watch the people in charge.

01:28:35.300 They're terrified.

01:28:36.620 This is how people behave when they're afraid.

01:28:39.560 You know, if you're firmly in control of your sons, you don't screech at them.

01:28:43.720 I mean, right, because, you know, they respect you and they know you're their mom.

01:28:48.660 So, like, you don't need to, like, smack them in the face if they disobey.

01:28:51.940 You can reason with them and be like, no, you know, we do it this way for this reason.

01:28:55.940 I'm like, OK, mom, because you're in charge.

01:28:58.080 You're their mom.

01:28:58.620 So the second you start using force rather than reason, you are signaling that you have

01:29:05.600 lost control.

01:29:06.420 And you know you have.

01:29:07.260 That's why you're doing it.

01:29:08.060 You're becoming hysterical because your control is going away.

01:29:10.720 So these people in charge now know their control is tenuous.

01:29:15.120 That's why, you know, they're calling out the National Guard to enforce their stupid mandate.

01:29:19.500 A, B, every action provokes an equal and opposite reaction.

01:29:25.440 That's physics, but it's also human nature.

01:29:27.380 So if you have massive change in a society, it comes out of nowhere.

01:29:31.540 You know, George Floyd dies.

01:29:33.200 COVID arrives from China.

01:29:34.500 Two facts in the past two years have completely, completely changed American society forever.

01:29:40.140 They came out of nowhere.

01:29:41.020 Nobody expected either one to happen.

01:29:42.640 It happened, like, so quickly that most of us were caught completely unaware.

01:29:46.260 That is such a huge change that we are going to have all kinds of equally huge reactions

01:29:54.600 to it, period.

01:29:56.040 This we know.

01:29:56.600 Now, the shape of those reactions, their nature, you know, that's not knowable.

01:30:01.180 We can only guess.

01:30:02.220 But where we are right now is where we are right now.

01:30:05.440 But again, this is just a point on a continuum.

01:30:07.300 This country is going to look extremely different five years from now.

01:30:10.460 I mean, that's just guaranteed.

01:30:11.480 And as one of my smartest friends said to me, this is what it looks like when one system

01:30:16.800 gives way to another.

01:30:18.580 And clearly, that's true.

01:30:19.860 I just don't know what the next system is.

01:30:21.780 I have my hopes, but I don't know.

01:30:24.060 But it will not, you know, it's not like we're going back to 2004, 1998, or any other

01:30:30.100 previous time in American history.

01:30:31.420 We're going towards something new.

01:30:34.340 Untethered from reality in too many circumstances, which is why I'm so happy to have you out there,

01:30:38.740 Tucker.

01:30:38.920 I mean, I haven't done all that many things that I feel really proud about.

01:30:41.680 But saying Tucker Carlson really needs to be in the prime time of Fox News is definitely

01:30:46.440 on the list.

01:30:47.500 Not that I'm responsible.

01:30:49.460 I mean, there were a lot of people that didn't want me to get the job, but you made all the

01:30:54.780 difference because at that point, you know, you were by far the most powerful person on

01:31:01.120 our air and and the person they listened to the most carefully.

01:31:04.940 So to have out of nowhere, I should just say for our audience, I certainly didn't expect

01:31:09.340 you to go to bat for me.

01:31:10.400 I was like, what?

01:31:11.660 I still have no idea why you did that.

01:31:13.500 But it was obvious because you're such a talent.

01:31:16.760 I mean, it was like if you're just paying attention, it was obvious you you were able

01:31:20.120 to understand Trump before anybody.

01:31:21.820 Your analysis is always so well informed, so well read, so spot on.

01:31:26.120 And not like everybody else's.

01:31:27.580 It's not like just talking points that you'd pick up off the Internet.

01:31:29.860 Now we know why, by the way, he doesn't go on the Internet, just so always affable and

01:31:34.940 rooting for others.

01:31:35.700 And I still see you that way.

01:31:37.600 Grateful to know you, to call you a friend and to be able to tune into your show every

01:31:41.780 night.

01:31:42.120 Tucker, thank you so much.

01:31:44.360 Thanks a million, Megan.

01:31:45.220 This has been wonderful for me, too.

01:31:47.360 Lots of love.

01:31:48.260 Tucker Carlson, everybody.

01:31:49.260 Yay.

01:31:49.620 Yay.

01:31:49.800 So happy to be able to talk to him again.

01:31:51.840 We're going to take your calls up next at 833-44-MEGAN-MEGYN.

01:31:55.620 That's 833-446-3496.

01:31:58.180 What did you think about Tucker?

01:31:59.960 What did you think about Chris Cuomo?

01:32:01.220 Is he getting fired?

01:32:01.980 Oh, call me quickly.

01:32:06.000 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show, everyone.

01:32:07.700 The phone lines are open.

01:32:08.560 Call us at 833-44-MEGYN, 833-446-3496.

01:32:14.080 I want to take our first caller, who is Greg in Pennsylvania.

01:32:17.860 Hey, Greg, what's on your mind?

01:32:19.120 Hi, Megan.

01:32:19.640 Nice to talk to you.

01:32:20.980 Boy, I'll tell you, I always like to hear stories about successful people that their early

01:32:27.140 lives, like Tucker was talking about.

01:32:30.480 I had a similar situation.

01:32:31.640 I was 21.

01:32:32.380 I got married early and had a couple kids, divorced eventually.

01:32:36.560 But I was also interested in his fishing and hunting as well.

01:32:44.480 I do both.

01:32:46.080 I'm retired now.

01:32:48.140 I retired, actually retired early.

01:32:49.720 I worked in the factory for about 10 years.

01:32:53.460 And I decided I was going to take the postal test and worked for the postal service for

01:32:57.000 27 years and retired early at the age of 58, I think.

01:33:02.140 I'll be 67 next month.

01:33:04.360 But anyway, my wife is a teacher here in Erie and in the poorest zip code in Pennsylvania.

01:33:13.400 I might be the poorest zip code in the country.

01:33:15.740 As a matter of fact, she called me today or texted me today and told me that she had

01:33:19.860 a student that had the sniffles.

01:33:23.660 So they relocated everybody to the library and then they sent this child home.

01:33:31.060 And what she's going through...

01:33:32.420 Sorry, Greg, you've got to get to the point there because I want to get another caller

01:33:35.880 before we hit the break.

01:33:37.260 Okay, I'm sorry.

01:33:38.760 Anyway, what's going on with this COVID situation is just driving me crazy.

01:33:44.560 We've both been vaccinated.

01:33:47.560 What exactly...

01:33:49.480 Where do you think we're headed with this thing?

01:33:52.040 Yeah, well, it's nowhere good.

01:33:53.960 I mean, just today, the CDC took down the guidelines on when you can take off masks in schools.

01:33:59.400 And they did that for a reason, because it would have led us to an earlier date than they

01:34:02.980 would like.

01:34:03.540 So our leaders are in favor of government control, not reason.

01:34:07.240 And I'm concerned it's not going to end unless the people get out into the streets and

01:34:11.240 insist that it end.

01:34:13.240 Okay, hold on a second.

01:34:14.280 I want to get another caller and say, let's see.

01:34:17.280 Oh, that's funny.

01:34:18.080 Okay.

01:34:18.780 Bob from Texas has got some thoughts.

01:34:20.920 Bob, what's on your mind today?

01:34:22.320 Yeah, Megan.

01:34:22.940 You know, I served 14 years on the team in the military.

01:34:26.140 And the things that I saw overseas and in the military do not scare me as much as what's

01:34:32.800 going on with our country.

01:34:34.680 What's going on with our country is as people don't realize, as we get more people crossing

01:34:41.180 the border, as we get more, how do I put it, far left politicians staying in politics, the

01:34:51.860 more freedoms we lose.

01:34:53.640 And you can see it happening by the way they take certain freedoms actually from certain

01:34:59.600 people.

01:35:00.140 For instance, when they call, talk about the unvaxxed and things of that sort.

01:35:04.980 Listen, Bob, if we let it happen, then we deserve what happens next.

01:35:08.600 We deserve the results.

01:35:09.940 And right now we've been letting it happen.

01:35:11.780 People really need to reflect on that.

01:35:13.200 Listen, thank you for calling.

01:35:14.220 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

01:35:15.820 Want to tell you that coming up next week, Tulsi Gabbard is going to be here on Tuesday.

01:35:19.860 She's going to react live to General Mark Milley's testimony before Congress.

01:35:23.220 That'll be amazing.

01:35:23.980 Plus, Glenn Beck will also be here.

01:35:25.700 You can download episodes of The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, and Stitcher.

01:35:29.500 Also, you can watch the show, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

01:35:33.080 Have a great weekend.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 24, 2021

Tucker Carlson on the Media's Deception, the ADL's Attacks, and Armor Against Criticism ｜ Ep. 167

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript