The Tucker Carlson Show

00:00:00.000 So, here we are on a Wednesday and Chris Cuomo is sitting in my living room.

00:00:14.960 Now why is Chris Cuomo sitting in my living room, formerly of CNN?

00:00:18.440 Well, I'd never met Chris Cuomo before today, and of course for years I was incredibly mean

00:00:24.000 to Chris Cuomo on TV.

00:00:25.640 Why?

00:00:26.640 I can't really say now.

00:00:27.640 But I'll say this, he was one of the very first people to call me, completely out of

00:00:32.980 the blue, no idea how he got my number after I left my job last spring.

00:00:37.120 And that began a series of conversations, very long conversations, in which I discovered

00:00:41.820 that Chris Cuomo is a really interesting person.

00:00:44.820 And though we disagree on some things, we don't disagree on everything at all.

00:00:49.380 And I thought, wow, I wonder how many other people like Chris Cuomo are out there.

00:00:53.500 People I have dismissed or mocked because we disagreed on some things, who actually, if

00:00:58.840 you got to know them, you might learn something.

00:01:01.560 So that might be a useful exercise.

00:01:03.620 And so with that, a conversation with Chris Cuomo begins.

00:01:06.180 Chris, thank you for coming.

00:01:09.020 So one of the reasons I think that you called me was because we'd had such similar lives,

00:01:12.840 and you're one of the few people who kind of understand.

00:01:15.180 And both of us spent decades in one world, were exiled from it.

00:01:21.480 And I think the question is like, what if we learn from this?

00:01:23.900 You first.

00:01:24.900 I'm still trying to figure it out.

00:01:27.680 And I knew it was important to reach out when you were going through your exit, let's call

00:01:34.560 it.

00:01:35.560 And because I knew the pain of it and I knew the challenge of it and everything is different.

00:01:43.020 But I do believe that one of the lessons I've learned is you have to think about how other

00:01:49.940 people are being affected by situations, especially once you have pain in your own life.

00:01:55.800 And it doesn't matter what you agree with, what you like, what you don't like, it's

00:01:59.840 all gotten so far removed from humanity that the idea that I don't like that Tucker Carlson

00:02:05.520 takes a bite out of my ass on his show on a regular basis.

00:02:08.760 I think you have a good reason not to like me.

00:02:10.180 I think that would be fair.

00:02:11.080 But that that means that this is not somebody who you should care about as a human being.

00:02:17.260 And I feel like our culture isn't working anymore.

00:02:22.860 That everybody retreats with their own.

00:02:25.960 And as a result, everybody is against one another for the same kinds of reasons.

00:02:32.480 And it's not working.

00:02:34.320 And if it's not working, then why aren't we trying something different?

00:02:37.680 Why wouldn't I reach out to somebody who has a family and who has a following and is dealing

00:02:43.580 with a hard time to see if I can help and see what's going on in their life and what they're

00:02:49.360 about?

00:02:49.740 And I was concerned about calling you at first because I thought you might be thinking that

00:02:56.400 this is like a spite phone call or something.

00:02:58.380 You know what I mean?

00:02:58.860 Or be like, why are you calling me?

00:03:00.060 What do you want to gloat or something?

00:03:01.200 You know, I didn't want to make anything worse for you.

00:03:05.360 But as you say, there's such tremendous power in conversation.

00:03:10.420 Yes.

00:03:10.880 We only know what we're told about people and the snippets that people want us to see and

00:03:16.700 the context and I'm not saying that, like, you know, you're one benefit of context away

00:03:21.120 from never of saying anything that I don't think you should say.

00:03:23.660 But what is lost by doing this?

00:03:29.060 What what what is lost by this?

00:03:31.020 How can this not be helpful to sit across from somebody and talk to them instead of about

00:03:36.420 them?

00:03:36.640 So, of course, I couldn't agree with you more, which is why we're here.

00:03:42.700 And and I think both of us have tried to talk directly to people that we disagree with legitimately

00:03:48.240 on some things, but because it's it's a really useful and important experience.

00:03:53.720 So why doesn't it happen?

00:03:55.320 It does make you kind of wonder maybe there are forces trying to prevent those conversations.

00:03:59.400 And what are the what's the motive there?

00:04:01.220 I call it the game.

00:04:02.540 You and I have been in the game for a long time.

00:04:08.300 And whether you like it or not, whether you mean it or not, you wind up playing the game.

00:04:12.580 You can especially with the platform that you had, you wind up essentially picking sides

00:04:18.760 and you wind up having agendas either that present themselves to you or are foisted upon

00:04:23.800 you.

00:04:24.140 But either way, you wind up in the same place.

00:04:25.800 And in doing that, it becomes habit.

00:04:29.940 It's what people are celebrating around you.

00:04:31.840 It's what you see around you.

00:04:33.480 People start to come after you.

00:04:34.680 Now you have a natural enemy.

00:04:35.940 These people, I'm resistant to them because they're attacking what I'm saying and they're

00:04:39.640 getting it wrong or they're getting it right.

00:04:41.020 And I still don't like it.

00:04:42.820 That's the culture.

00:04:44.420 And that's what the media enforces.

00:04:46.320 We are not supposed to be doing this.

00:04:49.020 I am doing something bad right now.

00:04:51.740 Not just wrong.

00:04:53.080 This is bad.

00:04:54.400 Like morally bad.

00:04:56.000 I am giving a platform.

00:04:57.860 That's the new word for censoring, right?

00:05:00.300 I'm giving Tucker Carlson a platform.

00:05:02.960 I'm talking to him about who he is and what he's about and why he does what he does.

00:05:06.200 Why he's bad.

00:05:08.040 And that's the end of the analysis.

00:05:09.580 But look where it's gotten us.

00:05:11.140 Nobody talks to each other anymore.

00:05:12.560 You've got politicians resigning because they say, yeah, it turns out nobody really wants

00:05:19.580 us to do anything here but fight and I've kind of had enough.

00:05:22.380 I'm going to go.

00:05:23.900 I mean, whoever thought we would see any of this and yet nobody's trying to remedy it.

00:05:27.520 I think it's really hard.

00:05:28.500 And the one way in which I really sympathize with you, and I said this in public at the

00:05:34.080 time, is that you were attacked and I don't know the details, I'm not going to ask you

00:05:37.940 to reveal them, but felt like you were fired because you remained close to your brother

00:05:43.580 who was governor of New York and he was going through a bunch of stuff.

00:05:47.880 He left office and you were still talking to him and you weren't allowed to.

00:05:51.240 And my take on it from a distance, knowing neither you nor your brother, was you've got

00:05:57.580 to stick with your brother.

00:05:58.640 It's your brother.

00:05:59.740 And that obligation supersedes all others because that's your family.

00:06:04.000 That's like a moral obligation.

00:06:05.460 If my brother committed triple murder, I'd be against triple murder, but I would never

00:06:09.160 abandon my brother because he's my brother.

00:06:10.840 And so anybody who says your obligation to me overrides your obligation to your own brother,

00:06:17.460 that person's evil.

00:06:18.440 That's how I feel about it.

00:06:19.600 And I felt like they were doing that to you.

00:06:21.240 That was just my perspective from watching.

00:06:24.060 People feel differently about family, which was somewhat of a new concept for me.

00:06:30.280 I don't say-

00:06:30.480 In what way?

00:06:32.040 I had a big shot media person say to me in an interview on their platform, I would not

00:06:39.660 have helped my brother.

00:06:40.800 Not if it would have conflicted with my ethical obligations as a journalist.

00:06:46.360 Or your career ambitions is what they're really saying.

00:06:48.460 Well, it's disgusting.

00:06:50.020 Either way.

00:06:51.240 And I said, well, first of all, it didn't because I didn't cover my brother's situation

00:06:57.260 on my show.

00:06:58.280 I've never had the audience give me a hard time until they started hearing things in

00:07:01.940 the media that didn't square with what they had thought.

00:07:05.360 But look.

00:07:06.180 Can I say, whoever said, I don't know who you're talking about, it could have been any of them

00:07:11.360 because they all have the same view, but they're the moral criminals as far as I'm concerned.

00:07:15.820 If someone is going to say, I would sell out my brother because my boss wanted me to, what

00:07:21.840 do you just listen to yourself?

00:07:22.960 Like, that's the ultimate betrayal.

00:07:23.960 Look, people can have their own ethics, their own morals, their own standards.

00:07:28.820 Well, I'm going to judge the crap out of them for that.

00:07:30.560 Knock yourself out.

00:07:31.380 For me, it was more, I got myself into a situation I didn't see coming.

00:07:38.420 And I thought, and my therapist like laughs when I say this.

00:07:43.500 He lived with me all through this.

00:07:45.100 He's been like a life coach to me for a really long time.

00:07:47.360 Great guy in my life.

00:07:48.800 I never say his name because he'll lose all his elevations if anybody knows that he's

00:07:52.880 working with me.

00:07:53.820 But he was like, what do you mean you didn't see this coming?

00:07:58.360 The media was all over your brother.

00:08:00.740 They wanted him to go down.

00:08:02.340 They wanted you to go down.

00:08:03.680 They hated what was happening during the pandemic with you having him on the show and all the

00:08:08.680 admiration you guys were getting.

00:08:10.240 This is a jealous business.

00:08:12.300 And I hear that.

00:08:13.560 I understand it.

00:08:14.220 But I don't want to accept it.

00:08:15.760 And what I have decided was, look, I didn't have any control over how getting fired happened.

00:08:24.600 All I control is what I do next.

00:08:27.440 And I tried to get myself into that place.

00:08:30.140 And that's what made me call you is that that was so hard.

00:08:33.680 It was so hard for me to see all this stuff that I had worked so hard on and I valued so

00:08:40.720 greatly just vanish.

00:08:43.960 And, well, now what am I?

00:08:46.180 And now what do I do?

00:08:47.440 And now is it over for me?

00:08:49.700 Like, is that it?

00:08:50.460 I'll never be number one on a huge platform again.

00:08:54.280 So what am I about?

00:08:55.600 What do I do?

00:08:56.520 Of course, like you, I love my wife.

00:08:59.200 I love my kids.

00:08:59.780 I love my family.

00:09:00.460 I love the family that I choose, my people.

00:09:02.720 I'm there for them.

00:09:04.080 I'm a great friend in crisis.

00:09:06.060 I'm great.

00:09:06.620 I'm not great when things are good, but I'm a great friend in crisis.

00:09:09.500 And I had to really think about things I'd never thought about before.

00:09:14.760 And I wanted to check in with you about that to see how you were negotiating that space

00:09:19.780 because it had been so painful.

00:09:23.320 But when I met you, and, you know, you should, we should talk about this.

00:09:27.540 You were not the way I was.

00:09:29.300 You were ebullient.

00:09:33.840 You were laughing.

00:09:36.020 And you were, yeah, well, let me tell you, it was a favor to me.

00:09:41.000 And this is going to be okay.

00:09:42.760 I'm going to be fine.

00:09:44.020 This is a weird world.

00:09:45.400 And now I know things I didn't know before.

00:09:49.080 Yeah.

00:09:49.500 And I thought that that was a real blessing for you.

00:09:52.260 What did you figure out that you didn't know before?

00:09:54.960 Well, I sort of, I mean, I'll just say, you know, I loved working there.

00:10:01.440 I was there 14 years.

00:10:02.980 They were always nice to me.

00:10:04.200 They never told me what to say.

00:10:06.040 So it's not an attack on them to say that I was hemmed in by the fact that I work for

00:10:11.280 someone else.

00:10:11.940 And that's just the nature of the relationship.

00:10:14.080 No matter how free you think you are, part of you is assessing like, whoa, I actually am

00:10:20.020 an employee.

00:10:21.200 I do have a boss.

00:10:22.580 And I knew that they disagreed with me on a bunch of big topics.

00:10:26.980 And to their great credit, they never tried to change my view on those topics.

00:10:30.620 And I would say that now, you know, even though I'm not there anymore.

00:10:33.660 Good for them.

00:10:34.880 But you aren't fully free if you work for someone else.

00:10:38.640 Like, that's how I felt about it.

00:10:40.660 And I just had reached this time in my life where I felt like there's all these really

00:10:43.160 important things going on.

00:10:44.220 I want to be as honest as I can possibly be at all times.

00:10:46.720 And that was a hindrance to me.

00:10:49.600 So I, and I also had this kind of supernatural sense that everything's going to be fine.

00:10:55.040 And that in the end, you know, you die anyway.

00:10:57.240 So what are you afraid of exactly?

00:11:00.180 And I'd also done it for too long, you know, too long, too long, same gig.

00:11:03.820 It's good to be, and I had been fired before a couple of times.

00:11:06.700 So it's good to be fired because it brings you low and you don't become the overbearing

00:11:10.520 asshole that every TV person is on some level.

00:11:13.480 I mean, I already am that.

00:11:15.060 But I kept it in check a little bit.

00:11:17.800 A little public humiliation is really important for a man.

00:11:21.000 I would recommend it to all men.

00:11:23.240 And so I was very happy from day one, but it was a different, maybe a different time in

00:11:29.400 my life or something.

00:11:30.480 You know, I was ready for it.

00:11:31.420 Everybody who I reached out to about you said, you know, he's changed.

00:11:37.600 He's different because of this.

00:11:40.200 And when I spoke to you recently, not in the beginning, but recently you said, yeah, I'm

00:11:47.720 not that guy anymore.

00:11:50.580 What does that mean for you?

00:11:51.900 Well, it's just, I mean, I had, I don't think I was playing a role ever.

00:11:56.820 I was definitely used by your former employer and mine, CNN, to flack for the Iraq war.

00:12:04.060 And I allowed that without even really knowing what was happening.

00:12:06.660 And I was always bitter about that in the way that you are when you've done something

00:12:11.040 wrong.

00:12:11.900 In other words, if you fight with your wife and it's 100% her fault, you're not that

00:12:14.660 mad.

00:12:15.400 But if it's really your fault, then you're extra mad because you're mad at yourself.

00:12:18.580 And that, and I was, I've been mad at myself for 20 years over the things that I said and

00:12:24.040 was pushed into saying, promoting the Iraq war, which is totally indefensible in my opinion.

00:12:29.460 Now, so, but other than that, I have always, I think, been myself, but I just, you reach

00:12:37.480 a stage in life where I don't, I don't feel like I have anything to prove and I don't

00:12:41.540 need to be nasty to people.

00:12:43.260 I've done that.

00:12:43.980 I have a PhD in it.

00:12:45.040 Like, you were probably the last person I was really, really nasty to, sorry.

00:12:49.240 You got an A in that class, you bastard.

00:12:50.840 I did.

00:12:52.060 So I don't go into things.

00:12:53.640 Like, I just talked to Putin and everyone's like, you gotta be rough on Putin.

00:12:57.420 Actually, you're not my boss.

00:12:59.180 I can do whatever I want.

00:13:01.340 Yeah, I can go in there and tell Putin, you're a, you're a monster.

00:13:05.320 Okay, what do we get out of that?

00:13:07.580 So I can, like, prove that I'm a tough guy?

00:13:09.860 I don't need to prove that.

00:13:11.300 I'm not insecure about that.

00:13:13.240 I'm tough enough anyway.

00:13:15.760 So that, you know, I just don't have a chip on my shoulder at all about any of that.

00:13:20.180 I just don't care.

00:13:21.280 I've got nothing to hide and nothing to prove.

00:13:23.200 And I just want to hear people talk because I think it's interesting.

00:13:25.860 I think it's important to hear people talk.

00:13:28.240 And so I can kind of pull myself out of it more than I was able to before.

00:13:32.560 If you're 31 and trying to make it in TV, you know, you're sort of, you're itching for

00:13:38.000 a confrontation to show your skills.

00:13:40.380 I can win.

00:13:42.200 And now it's like, nah, I've done that.

00:13:44.660 I just, I'm not interested in that.

00:13:46.160 It's totally pointless.

00:13:47.440 I don't elicit any interesting information.

00:13:49.260 It's all about me and my performance.

00:13:52.380 And I know you know what I'm talking about because you've lived the life.

00:13:54.680 But there's a lot of pressure on you to make a moment.

00:13:57.960 And now I'm just like, I've had a lot of moments.

00:14:00.680 You can look them on YouTube if you want.

00:14:03.440 So do you feel that when you, when you look at how you used to do it versus how you're doing

00:14:10.020 it now, was it a function of this will work?

00:14:13.400 How much of it was, this is how I feel?

00:14:15.520 And how much of it was, this will be funny or this will resonate.

00:14:19.120 This will land.

00:14:19.900 This will get clicks or lights or whatever.

00:14:21.840 No, it's not that.

00:14:22.360 No.

00:14:22.700 I mean, I've always been.

00:14:24.520 Convicted.

00:14:24.940 An instinct player, 100%.

00:14:26.760 And the only times I've gone really wrong as with the Iraq war was when I, and I suppressed

00:14:31.960 my instincts and joined a herd.

00:14:34.860 That was really the last time, 2002, that I did that.

00:14:38.040 Now, if somebody gives you that answer, you know, the, the follow-up is, what do you mean?

00:14:42.580 You're a big boy.

00:14:43.620 You're a smart guy.

00:14:44.980 You're supposed to be an intellectual.

00:14:46.420 You got duped by people in a newsroom to be for a war?

00:14:49.620 I got duped by someone in the Bush administration.

00:14:52.220 Ah, so it wasn't CNN.

00:14:54.400 It was not CNN.

00:14:55.260 But I was on a show that was inherently partisan, left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.

00:14:59.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:00.080 And the Republicans were in favor of invading Iraq and the Democrats were opposed.

00:15:05.240 Now, of course, it's inverted completely.

00:15:07.580 But at the time that was, so, so there was on the one hand, I didn't want to be on the

00:15:11.200 same side as like Barbara Lee of Berkeley.

00:15:16.460 I'm still not on her side on most things.

00:15:18.960 And on the other side, I had these people from the Bush administration saying to me, actually,

00:15:22.560 we have a lot of intel that we can't give you, but it's totally real.

00:15:26.080 And my question, my questions are always the dumbest possible questions.

00:15:28.940 It's like, what does Saddam have to do with 9-11?

00:15:30.820 Right.

00:15:31.380 Like, what?

00:15:32.240 Right.

00:15:32.860 Like, explain to me so I can understand.

00:15:34.340 They're like, look, we can't really tell you.

00:15:35.640 So I just went along with it.

00:15:36.900 Anyway, it's not that interesting.

00:15:38.100 I think a lot of people did the same.

00:15:41.180 But I...

00:15:41.500 It was a big deal, though.

00:15:42.600 Not you making a misjudgment.

00:15:44.620 People died.

00:15:45.120 Right.

00:15:45.740 But it was such a big deal because it changed things.

00:15:48.720 One, Congress would never own violence again.

00:15:53.240 No.

00:15:53.520 They would never vote.

00:15:54.400 As the Constitution demands...

00:15:56.840 Oh, yeah.

00:15:57.480 ...they gave it to presidents.

00:15:58.920 Oh, yeah.

00:15:59.280 And right and left.

00:16:00.400 And anyone's going to take the power, right?

00:16:02.460 You're in the power game.

00:16:03.360 You're president.

00:16:03.940 You want to give me power as Congress?

00:16:05.320 I'll take it.

00:16:05.900 And we saw it with Bush.

00:16:07.220 We saw it with Clinton.

00:16:08.740 We saw it with Bush.

00:16:09.940 We saw it with Obama.

00:16:10.900 They all take the power.

00:16:12.000 Once you give up the power, it's like...

00:16:13.840 You'll never get it back.

00:16:14.780 You'll never get it back.

00:16:15.260 And they don't want it back.

00:16:16.100 They won't even redo the AUMF.

00:16:17.660 So what changed?

00:16:18.440 Then you're a bitch.

00:16:19.480 I'm sorry.

00:16:20.300 Well, you can call it that way.

00:16:21.760 You have no self-respect.

00:16:22.420 Again, the benefit of not having a boss.

00:16:24.640 But the...

00:16:26.100 What changed?

00:16:26.680 The dynamic one was...

00:16:29.140 Congress isn't going to own their responsibility anymore.

00:16:31.260 They'll let the executive go with it.

00:16:32.900 And if the president screws up, it's on them.

00:16:34.800 And if it goes well, we all win.

00:16:36.640 Great.

00:16:37.240 Second thing that changed was...

00:16:39.260 It started to be okay to give bullshit rationales for military action.

00:16:43.580 Oh, yeah.

00:16:44.360 Because 9-11, we went into the wrong country.

00:16:48.280 And everybody was so angry that if you tell me the guy who did it is in there, I'm not asking any other questions.

00:16:53.900 Oh, we would have invaded Italy.

00:16:55.320 Oh, for sure.

00:16:55.980 If they wanted to.

00:16:56.340 And if we had had these then, we would have what we're seeing in the Middle East right now.

00:17:01.740 And what's happening in this country.

00:17:03.680 Where people would be like, whoa, what are you doing in Fallujah?

00:17:06.660 What are you doing in Mosul?

00:17:07.840 Wait, where are the bad guys?

00:17:09.900 You know, who are these people?

00:17:11.060 That's totally right.

00:17:11.540 But they didn't have the exposure.

00:17:12.760 So that really was a very formative experience for us.

00:17:18.080 Have you felt it?

00:17:19.040 I mean, you must have felt it over the years.

00:17:20.700 Something big happens.

00:17:22.160 My professional life...

00:17:23.520 And the team has a view.

00:17:24.660 Yes.

00:17:25.280 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:17:25.980 Look, I am what they call hard to manage.

00:17:29.860 Okay?

00:17:30.440 And that used to bother me.

00:17:32.840 I used to be like, no, I want to be a team player.

00:17:35.680 I'm a team person.

00:17:36.580 I like being part of a group.

00:17:38.180 I like that.

00:17:39.680 And I'm not hard to manage.

00:17:41.040 I just want to know why you want me to do what you want me to do.

00:17:43.600 I'll do anything.

00:17:44.800 I'll go anywhere.

00:17:46.100 I'll put myself in any kind of danger.

00:17:47.980 If I think it's important for people to understand and I have the ability to go and they don't,

00:17:53.560 I'll go.

00:17:55.420 But I want to know why.

00:17:56.540 I want to know why it's worth it.

00:17:57.840 And, you know, some people, they don't like the questions.

00:18:01.980 Just do what I told you to do, meat puppet.

00:18:04.220 You know, this is your job.

00:18:05.660 You go where I tell you to go.

00:18:08.000 This is what we're going to do tonight.

00:18:09.280 Stop asking so many questions.

00:18:10.800 I get that.

00:18:11.720 I get why that would be frustrating for a manager.

00:18:13.540 And, but now I embrace it.

00:18:15.620 And people who know me know it's coming from a good place.

00:18:18.960 I'm not a diva.

00:18:19.600 I'm not difficult for no reason.

00:18:20.740 I just want to, I have such a strong sense of purpose.

00:18:23.540 And living through 9-11 taught me such hard, bad lessons about, holy shit, you're supposed

00:18:33.420 to check power.

00:18:34.220 You got this totally wrong.

00:18:35.480 And, you know, you did not go after these people the way you were supposed to.

00:18:40.600 And you didn't do it for the wrong reasons, which were, one, you were covering it, right?

00:18:47.120 And so, you know, you're kind of into the continuation game.

00:18:50.780 And the American people didn't want you checking it.

00:18:56.400 Do you remember?

00:18:58.340 Are you speaking of the Patriot Act specifically?

00:19:00.540 Well, no.

00:19:01.200 Before, when Bush said, hey, stop asking all these questions about the weapons of mass

00:19:06.680 destruction and the yellow cake, you're starting to create bad conditions on the ground for

00:19:11.200 our fighting men and women.

00:19:12.360 And the American people stopped watching the news.

00:19:16.360 And I remember, I was at ABC, and they stopped watching because it seemed like we were jeopardizing

00:19:22.480 our troops.

00:19:23.640 And it worked.

00:19:24.800 And everybody pulled back on that and just covered the war.

00:19:28.080 And we all went in our embed training and everybody went over there and did it.

00:19:30.880 And I never forgot that.

00:19:32.680 And that's why I'm always chasing members of Congress about something that everybody thinks

00:19:38.060 is a stupid in the weeds issue, which is, hey, why don't you do a vote on this?

00:19:42.040 Why don't you vote on what we're giving Israel?

00:19:45.600 Why don't you vote on what we're giving Ukraine?

00:19:48.240 Why don't you vote on what we just did when the Houthis were attacking us?

00:19:52.200 Why aren't you voting on that?

00:19:53.380 Why didn't you vote on when Trump bombed in Syria?

00:19:56.300 Why?

00:19:57.540 That's not a part of America.

00:19:58.700 It's not an immediate interest for us that's personal to us and our safety.

00:20:03.700 I'm sure it's strategic, but that's not what the War of Powers Act is about.

00:20:07.300 That's not what the AUMF is about.

00:20:08.680 That's not what the Constitution is about.

00:20:10.020 And they always brush it off.

00:20:11.560 They always brush it off.

00:20:12.500 Because that's where we are now.

00:20:14.020 We are stuck in a game that's about nothing but advantage.

00:20:16.400 And I had time to think about all this when I got shit-canned and to go back and look at what I had been about and what I had done and what I had not done.

00:20:27.960 And if I were going to come back, because, you know, you're tougher than I am.

00:20:32.380 Not physically.

00:20:33.220 I would literally twist you like a bandit.

00:20:35.520 But you are, you had more resilience about this than I did.

00:20:41.580 But I still feel like I'm on one knee and getting back up.

00:20:47.640 And what motivated me to come back was two things.

00:20:50.880 Three things.

00:20:51.380 One, my wife told me I had to.

00:20:53.300 Two, you know, she was like, you got to get up.

00:20:56.180 And, you know, we got kids.

00:20:57.480 You got to get up.

00:20:58.200 You got to do something with your life that is helping people and making something of this place.

00:21:03.060 That's what we're supposed to be about.

00:21:04.280 You are not about that right now.

00:21:05.660 You are a space rug right now.

00:21:08.920 That's what you are.

00:21:09.540 You're a 230-pound lump on the floor.

00:21:12.660 Get up.

00:21:13.340 Do something with your life.

00:21:14.900 Okay.

00:21:16.020 So, was that your response?

00:21:17.620 Okay.

00:21:18.980 My response was, get away from me and my bottle.

00:21:24.040 More customers, please.

00:21:25.500 Here's more.

00:21:28.000 My response was that I was embarrassed and I knew she was right.

00:21:31.620 But sometimes you know what's right, but you don't have the energy, the will, or the self-confidence or belief to do it.

00:21:39.580 So, if I were going to get back into this, because there's such a price for entry.

00:21:44.480 And another thing, you know, I was thinking when I was walking around outside, you know, you got security outside your house.

00:21:48.800 And I was thinking to myself, God, I know what this is about.

00:21:52.140 You know, and your kids are older, lucky for you, but they're still, they're still aware.

00:21:55.900 They're still exposed.

00:21:57.500 And I put my family through so much that I didn't understand that I was doing at the time because I had blinders on.

00:22:03.700 Got to help Andrew.

00:22:04.760 This is wrong.

00:22:05.560 I got to help.

00:22:06.060 I wasn't thinking that.

00:22:07.240 My son was having to deal with stuff.

00:22:09.740 My daughter's, my daughter making up accounts online to defend her uncle.

00:22:14.420 Kill me.

00:22:15.380 My wife.

00:22:16.280 So, dealing with all those things, and it's fine.

00:22:18.480 First of all, good for her.

00:22:19.880 No, they're good kids.

00:22:20.840 They're good kids.

00:22:21.720 They got a good genetic selection.

00:22:23.680 They got a couple of my good genes, and they got mostly their mom.

00:22:26.080 So, they're in good shape.

00:22:26.900 But I said, I want to come back.

00:22:29.000 I want to do this.

00:22:29.640 But I know why now.

00:22:31.640 And I'm only doing this job the way I want to do it and what I think matters about it.

00:22:37.940 And if that's not good for my employer, then I'm done.

00:22:42.260 And I have the podcast.

00:22:43.940 I'm building the podcast.

00:22:44.980 My own platform.

00:22:46.140 I'm going to talk to who I want about what I want.

00:22:48.280 I'm going to focus on what I think matters.

00:22:49.800 And I'm not playing the game.

00:22:51.360 I'm only going to expose the game.

00:22:53.320 And the reason that this is wrong is because everything is about silos and sides.

00:22:58.360 And people will say, no, no, no.

00:23:00.020 There's a line.

00:23:01.660 And Tucker has crossed that line.

00:23:05.100 And I will say, yeah, says who?

00:23:09.420 Says you in the media who also cast me out?

00:23:13.600 Not the millions of people who want to take it.

00:23:15.580 Well, that makes it even worse.

00:23:17.160 No.

00:23:18.020 It means that he, you already have a platform.

00:23:21.740 You already are relevant.

00:23:23.600 Why wouldn't I want to understand this person better when you have the reach that you have?

00:23:27.160 It doesn't make any sense, except if you're just playing a stupid game that has rules

00:23:31.840 about who you're supposed to like and who you're not supposed to like.

00:23:34.000 And I'm not going to be that for two reasons.

00:23:35.700 One, it's a stupid game.

00:23:36.920 And two, I lost that game.

00:23:39.660 So I'm not going to advance something that I thought was dirty when it was done to me.

00:23:43.640 And I don't think there's value to the American people.

00:23:46.400 They don't know what to believe because nobody ever shares ideas.

00:23:49.280 And, you know, we can go through different stuff that I say, that you say.

00:23:54.420 Because I still want to know why you came after me as much as you did, by the way.

00:23:57.360 Because I'm a dick, probably.

00:23:59.540 Because it was easy.

00:24:00.960 Because I don't like CNN and I really mean that in my heart of hearts.

00:24:04.560 I really just don't.

00:24:05.020 But why me?

00:24:07.400 I don't know.

00:24:09.320 How can you not know?

00:24:10.720 It was so intentional.

00:24:12.440 It was so frequent.

00:24:13.760 Because people kept sending me videos from Instagram.

00:24:16.620 You.

00:24:17.300 It was me.

00:24:17.780 It was you.

00:24:19.520 I sent it the first video and then it was best.

00:24:21.980 What was wrong with me lifting weights?

00:24:24.280 You're an outdoorsman.

00:24:24.640 But I just couldn't.

00:24:26.520 I mean, I was pissed about the COVID thing.

00:24:29.220 That is totally true.

00:24:30.200 I didn't buy any of this from day one.

00:24:32.320 That was totally real.

00:24:34.340 But that's not.

00:24:36.180 What I did was not really a pure refutation of your positions on COVID.

00:24:40.500 It was me taking the cheap shots, which I'm not always above.

00:24:47.860 But you should be.

00:24:48.960 You should be above that.

00:24:50.040 Did it feel good when you would come after me like that?

00:24:52.040 It felt a little dirty.

00:24:53.440 It felt a little dirty.

00:24:54.120 Dirty good?

00:24:55.080 Or dirty dirty?

00:24:55.840 You know, I'm not really a dirty good guy.

00:24:58.500 You know what I mean?

00:25:00.580 Because you enjoy it.

00:25:02.160 Let me tell you.

00:25:03.200 There was no shame in your game.

00:25:05.300 There is a moment in the room.

00:25:05.780 I guess cameras aren't picking up all the people sitting here.

00:25:07.820 But I mean, in the sense that, you know, I don't want to use any kind of sexual metaphor,

00:25:14.840 but there is one for this.

00:25:16.540 It's like something you shouldn't be doing, but there's kind of the animal thrill of doing

00:25:21.680 something wrong, I guess is what I would say.

00:25:24.120 You loved it.

00:25:25.540 You loved it and it worked for you.

00:25:27.720 But I will say this.

00:25:28.180 And my in-laws watch you.

00:25:30.460 Do you know how hard it is to deal with having your in-laws enjoy a joke that makes you want

00:25:41.600 to, you know, do bad things that are going to cost you civil litigation money?

00:25:46.120 Somebody did say, you know, Chris Cuomo is a lot bigger than you.

00:25:49.680 Maybe you should be careful.

00:25:52.600 I just couldn't, you know, I almost, I have weaknesses.

00:25:56.880 I will say I don't, I think I have a weakness for women.

00:25:59.220 I gave up drinking many years ago, but I still, I'm still beset by the weaknesses of the flesh.

00:26:04.560 And one of them is mockery.

00:26:05.880 I just can't help it.

00:26:06.660 And my wife, I will say, who you were just with, is an unusually good person.

00:26:11.360 And would always say, I don't like it when you're mean.

00:26:14.420 You're not a mean person.

00:26:15.700 You shouldn't be mean.

00:26:16.480 Oh, and I'm very dependent on my wife's approval.

00:26:20.200 Like, I'm totally happy to admit that.

00:26:22.620 And she never criticized me, but she, in a gentle, gentle way, like, I don't like it

00:26:27.140 when you're, that's not who you are.

00:26:31.000 It's kind of who I am.

00:26:32.200 That's the problem.

00:26:33.740 But I'm watching your stuff now.

00:26:36.140 You know, I watched a lot of your stuff for this and it's a different vibe, Tucker.

00:26:40.540 I mean, look, if we had been in more contact before you did the Putin interview, I would

00:26:46.100 have told you, you got to check some boxes with this guy.

00:26:48.560 I get, I get why you're going to say, I'm not going to get there and get into a fight

00:26:51.100 with a guy who may not let me out of the country.

00:26:52.680 No, no, no.

00:26:53.180 I was never afraid.

00:26:54.240 I was afraid of the U.S. government, not of Putin at all.

00:26:56.500 Of them doing what?

00:26:57.680 Arresting me when I got back for a sanctions violation.

00:27:00.080 That's what my lawyers told me.

00:27:01.320 If you go talk to Putin and if you don't ask him tough questions, the Biden administration

00:27:06.000 very easily arrest you.

00:27:07.040 It was a big law firm who told me that.

00:27:08.320 A big law firm.

00:27:09.200 One of the biggest law firm.

00:27:09.980 But how bullshit is that?

00:27:11.660 I thought it was and I was like, I don't care.

00:27:13.440 I'm an American citizen.

00:27:14.440 I'm going anyway.

00:27:15.160 But I felt no threat whatsoever.

00:27:16.780 I felt, definitely felt threat.

00:27:18.640 You know, when the story came out that they had arrested somebody in Russia, that got like

00:27:24.300 no attention.

00:27:25.060 One of the things that you have to know about this guy, which I didn't believe, but now

00:27:27.600 I do because I've been looking around his house like a little snoop.

00:27:30.620 You don't watch TV and you don't pay attention to your social media about what's being said

00:27:34.660 about you.

00:27:35.040 No.

00:27:35.160 That's why your hair is so full and so rich in color.

00:27:39.040 No, it's, I know who I am.

00:27:40.540 I don't need to be told by people who don't know me.

00:27:41.720 So you don't monitor it?

00:27:43.420 Not at all.

00:27:44.100 You don't know unless somebody tells you.

00:27:45.920 I never, in my old job, I never, my executive producer sitting right there, I never got the

00:27:49.720 ratings ever, ever, ever, ever.

00:27:51.320 I don't want to know the ratings.

00:27:52.140 I wasn't on the email list.

00:27:53.360 I don't do email actually.

00:27:55.060 And so, no, I don't want to know that because I'm...

00:27:58.320 No social media.

00:27:59.540 How am I doing?

00:28:00.240 How's this getting picked up or not?

00:28:01.400 You don't do it.

00:28:02.000 I don't watch myself on television or on tape or whatever it is and they don't...

00:28:06.720 And you don't look at comments?

00:28:07.880 No.

00:28:08.820 Why would I?

00:28:09.380 Look, I have a big family.

00:28:12.000 My, you know, immediate family, which is large, and then a large extended family with whom

00:28:16.380 we're very close.

00:28:17.860 And so, I immediately get word if I'm doing something that offends them, which is not very

00:28:23.760 often, but I have.

00:28:25.020 And they'll tell me immediately.

00:28:26.980 And so, that's what I care about.

00:28:28.700 And I care about, you know, my religious faith.

00:28:31.580 But why would I care about some commenter?

00:28:34.200 I just don't.

00:28:35.120 And by the way, I think it's really wrong to do that.

00:28:37.400 Why would you give emotional control to a stranger?

00:28:40.400 Like, don't do that.

00:28:41.320 Because we are...

00:28:43.200 Well, look, you've gone on your own now, so it's different.

00:28:45.940 The metrics are different.

00:28:46.900 But for a pawn like me, I am somewhat at the mercy of how people decide to feel about

00:28:53.000 me.

00:28:53.080 No, but you...

00:28:54.360 Once you self-liberate, or you liberate yourself from the completely irrelevant opinions of partisans

00:29:03.580 and strangers, and focus only on the people in your world who God has put right in front

00:29:08.860 of you, then you're, like, completely free.

00:29:11.860 And then it's like, well...

00:29:12.800 But our business is all about it.

00:29:14.400 It's totally incestuous.

00:29:15.520 And it's dependent on social media as a proxy of Vox Populi.

00:29:19.820 They believe that's the people speaking.

00:29:21.240 Right.

00:29:21.620 But not caring is, as a practical matter, much more effective.

00:29:26.680 Because then you don't have any voices in your head other than the ones who matter.

00:29:30.440 Yeah, until your boss picks up the phone or the comms person picks up the phone and says,

00:29:34.340 we got to clean this up.

00:29:35.780 These people are not happy online because you use the word mouth breather.

00:29:40.100 And it turns out that that's a form of a breathing thing that people are upset about.

00:29:43.700 And you have to apologize.

00:29:44.620 The sleep apnea lobby is mad at you?

00:29:46.020 Whatever it is.

00:29:47.200 And, you know, you're like, oh, okay.

00:29:48.940 And you look online and it's only 400 people who said this randomized thing.

00:29:54.600 But it now matters.

00:29:56.240 The media has made it matter.

00:29:57.540 And now the Washington Post calls.

00:29:58.760 So I would always say to them, like, if you think you can host a TV show, why don't you?

00:30:04.040 Okay?

00:30:05.080 But actually you're working in the PR shop at some, like, depressing company.

00:30:09.100 Like, you don't know anything.

00:30:10.920 And if you think you're better at my job than I am, why don't you do it?

00:30:13.800 You know?

00:30:14.160 But they can't.

00:30:15.160 And so their whole justification for their sad jobs, at which they're not very good,

00:30:21.200 is to make you feel insecure.

00:30:23.160 And I just, I'm not interested in playing along.

00:30:25.880 Like, why would I care about some 32-year-old, unhappy, unmarried PR person?

00:30:32.340 It's like the single dumbest, most insecure group in America.

00:30:37.560 I get it.

00:30:37.880 And they're like, oh, you've got to do the New York Times Magazine.

00:30:40.220 How about no?

00:30:41.640 Like, no?

00:30:43.220 You know what I mean?

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00:31:19.520 That's Tucker, F-O-R, Hillsdale.com.

00:31:24.160 Tucker says it best.

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00:32:24.140 I get it.

00:32:28.260 I get the turning yourself off to criticism, although I think that's harder to do than to say.

00:32:34.300 No, no, no, not criticism.

00:32:35.960 If my wife looks at me cross-set, she'd bring me to my knees.

00:32:38.480 I'm saying social media criticism.

00:32:40.480 Yes, irrelevant criticism.

00:32:43.100 Why wouldn't you do that?

00:32:44.400 Because it's actually really dangerous not to.

00:32:46.360 It is.

00:32:46.680 I always think this.

00:32:47.260 It's giving a toddler a handgun.

00:32:49.080 I'm a gun person.

00:32:50.680 I shoot a lot.

00:32:52.240 I'm totally for guns, but not in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing with guns,

00:32:56.520 who are irresponsible, because it's too much power, right?

00:32:58.900 And it will be misused.

00:32:59.880 And the same is true with opinions and letting them in to your head.

00:33:05.360 Keep all of that stuff out and just follow the voice.

00:33:09.200 And the more quiet you are, the clearer the voice is.

00:33:13.560 I want to talk to you about where that takes you in terms of what you're doing and how it's the same or different for me.

00:33:21.720 But I got to tell you, on one level, now that I know that you are not responsive to the external in terms of social media, the masses,

00:33:29.920 that makes you coming after me as much as you did even worse, by the way.

00:33:33.420 Because it's not like you were part of some feedback loop where you were like, man, this is reading.

00:33:37.660 I got to keep doing it.

00:33:38.880 It was just you.

00:33:39.640 It was, and I try never to be passive-aggressive.

00:33:42.660 I really pride myself on just aggressive.

00:33:44.500 Yeah, I'll give you that.

00:33:45.540 And not passive-aggressive.

00:33:46.120 You know, I'm a man.

00:33:47.040 Okay, there's no excuse for passive-aggression.

00:33:49.280 But in some sense, that was, I'm not just saying this to spare your feelings, but I mean it.

00:33:53.640 It was passive-

00:33:54.800 Spare my feelings.

00:33:57.600 Spare my feelings.

00:33:58.520 I'm trying to explain.

00:33:59.620 So it was, I think so little of Jeff Zucker, who I texted immediately when he got fired, though, on principle.

00:34:06.300 But I worked for him, and I just, you don't have to comment, but I really have a low opinion of Jeff Zucker.

00:34:11.980 I don't think he's a good person, and I mean that.

00:34:14.340 And a lot of people up and down management at CNN, I know personally since I spent years there.

00:34:18.940 And I felt very hostile toward them.

00:34:22.000 And to some extent, it was like my passive-aggressive way of, I mean, you were the biggest show, of, you know, striking out at CNN.

00:34:31.600 I'll tell you something.

00:34:33.160 One, and people always say I'm saying this gratuitously, but why would I at this point?

00:34:37.780 Zucker is the best maker of television I've ever worked with.

00:34:41.980 And he gave me all the opportunities that put me in a position to succeed.

00:34:46.960 He would not let me go back at you, by the way.

00:34:50.500 Wow.

00:34:51.420 He would not let me do it.

00:34:53.220 He said, one, that's not what we're about here.

00:34:56.420 And where's it going to go?

00:34:59.260 Where's it going to go?

00:35:00.760 You say you want to be trying to be in the arena to make things better.

00:35:04.740 Now, this is the man who fired me.

00:35:06.640 I have a lot of feelings about that.

00:35:08.360 I will say when one of your co-workers, and I cannot remember his name, but he's a very weird guy who did the media show.

00:35:18.240 Brian Stelter.

00:35:20.440 Stelter was about to attack my children and called and told me that.

00:35:23.540 And I threatened him and called him names and all this stuff.

00:35:26.080 And I called him a very bad word.

00:35:28.760 And he called my employer to complain that I was a sexist because I called him this word.

00:35:34.240 Anyway, it was comical but upsetting.

00:35:36.980 I didn't want him to attack my kids.

00:35:37.880 So I did, I called Zucker on his cell and I said, one of your guys is about to attack my kids.

00:35:43.860 And he goes, oh, and he shut it down.

00:35:45.520 So here I'm saying I don't like Zucker.

00:35:47.400 I appreciated that.

00:35:49.640 What the voice tells you to do.

00:35:51.640 I don't disagree that sitting across from Putin and getting into a shouting match or whatever is going to bear much fruit for people.

00:36:00.820 I understand that.

00:36:01.740 And I get that it's a commodity in the media, but I get that it may not be the highest good.

00:36:06.540 Well, it's also just vanity.

00:36:07.900 It's vanity.

00:36:08.840 Right.

00:36:09.440 I'll give you that.

00:36:10.380 There is an aspect of it.

00:36:11.560 But you made choices.

00:36:13.540 Like you didn't ask him about Navalny.

00:36:15.300 You said, well, all killers, all leaders kill.

00:36:18.980 But don't you feel that if you are going to go and sit with someone like that, you have to hold them to account for things that matter?

00:36:26.720 I did.

00:36:27.280 The fact that he may have murdered somebody or a lot of people.

00:36:30.540 Well, I don't, I mean, the Ukrainians say that he didn't kill Navalny.

00:36:34.920 So I think it's, I think.

00:36:36.920 Well, who killed him then?

00:36:38.080 Guy looks good one minute and the next minute he's dead?

00:36:40.200 I mean, in some larger sense, the Russian government.

00:36:42.040 And what Ukrainians say they don't?

00:36:43.460 Zelensky says he killed him.

00:36:44.980 No, he doesn't.

00:36:45.920 No, the Ukrainian government said, no, he died of natural causes.

00:36:48.980 Now, what is actually going on there?

00:36:50.800 I can't even guess.

00:36:52.120 Okay.

00:36:52.880 Navalny died in the middle of the Munich Security Conference.

00:36:55.380 It's also in the middle of the debate over Ukraine funding in the United States.

00:36:59.380 And his death was within hours used by the president of the United States to justify another 60 billion.

00:37:04.520 So those are just facts.

00:37:06.880 I haven't the faintest idea.

00:37:08.220 Putin put him in prison.

00:37:09.420 Okay.

00:37:10.000 So there's that.

00:37:11.120 So in some sense-

00:37:11.620 Poison him.

00:37:12.240 He's responsible.

00:37:13.220 Look, here's what I learned, and I'm hardly a Russia expert, is this is an extremely complicated political environment.

00:37:21.960 Extremely, like next level.

00:37:23.620 Okay.

00:37:24.200 These are the people who dominate world chess.

00:37:26.780 And so their politics are incomprehensible to me.

00:37:30.400 So what's actually happening?

00:37:31.780 I mean, I've been in a lot of countries and covered a lot of stuff abroad.

00:37:36.220 And the one thing I've learned is you actually don't really know what's going on.

00:37:40.340 And so I had a bunch of Navalny questions to answer your question in my, you know, 4,700 questions that I'd written out.

00:37:48.180 And I decided on the fly not to ask it because I felt like, what about Navalny?

00:37:53.660 Well, whatever he's going to say, I'm not going to move the ball at all.

00:37:56.700 There's a war going on that is resetting the world.

00:38:00.320 I'm not for throwing your political opponents in prison.

00:38:02.560 I hate it.

00:38:03.480 I'm mad that the Biden administration is now doing it.

00:38:05.460 But I'm worried about it happening to me.

00:38:07.760 I mean, honestly, I want to get that on the record.

00:38:10.920 So I'm not for that in any sense.

00:38:13.940 I don't choose to live in Russia.

00:38:14.900 I'm not a Putin supporter.

00:38:16.040 But there's a war going on.

00:38:17.740 And it's crushing the United States economy.

00:38:20.600 And most Americans don't understand that.

00:38:22.260 And I just want to talk about that.

00:38:24.360 And so I made that decision.

00:38:25.700 Ashing the economy is not crushing the war economy, though.

00:38:28.820 A lot of that money winds up coming back to the Uniparty, the corporations that do that.

00:38:33.360 No, I totally agree.

00:38:34.320 They always find a way to win.

00:38:36.180 Kicking Russia out of swift, stealing people's stuff, the oligarch stuff.

00:38:41.240 A lot of people have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine.

00:38:44.060 That's not the rules-based order, actually.

00:38:46.840 That's the hardest-edged possible politics being played by the U.S. government using the U.S. dollar and the sanctions regimes to do it.

00:38:53.720 What is the message to the rest of the world?

00:38:55.580 Get the hell away from the United States.

00:38:57.360 These people, if they elect somebody who's senile like Biden or someone who doesn't like us, they will use the dollar and sanctions to destroy us.

00:39:04.660 Get away.

00:39:05.360 It's not a safe haven anymore.

00:39:06.560 And so that fact will change world history, change the course of American history.

00:39:12.100 We're going to live with that for the rest of our lives.

00:39:13.840 Our grandchildren will live with it.

00:39:15.140 I don't think Americans understand that.

00:39:17.380 And I want them to.

00:39:18.460 And I want to hear what Putin's thinking is.

00:39:22.660 And I don't know if I achieved that or not, but that was definitely.

00:39:25.240 But what I didn't want to do is try to convince other journalists, for whom I have no regard at all, for the most part, that I'm a good person.

00:39:34.260 I don't care what they think of me.

00:39:36.000 They call me a Nazi all the time, which I'm not.

00:39:38.540 So, like, their views are totally immaterial.

00:39:42.360 I just want to focus on what I want to focus on.

00:39:45.080 And if you don't like it, don't watch it.

00:39:46.460 You know, that's kind of my view.

00:39:47.460 I agree that every time you go into an interview, one, look, you know.

00:39:53.680 You hear voices in your head, though.

00:39:54.940 Like, you've got to do this.

00:39:55.700 You've got to do that.

00:39:56.640 Right.

00:39:57.080 No, I don't.

00:39:58.160 I can do whatever I want.

00:39:59.640 The first blush of it was Carlson doesn't get to interview Putin.

00:40:03.820 That I absolutely disagreed with.

00:40:05.620 And, in fact, as much as it pained me, I defended that proposition that I don't know.

00:40:10.840 Of course, Tucker Carlson, if he can book Putin, he can interview Putin.

00:40:14.840 That's how it works in our business.

00:40:16.180 If you can get him, you can do the interview.

00:40:18.540 Why Putin chooses Tucker Carlson, what Tucker does with the interview, we'll judge when he does it.

00:40:23.240 This was, so I was abroad and, as noted, not kind of obsessively following the coverage of myself.

00:40:29.180 I don't have a Google alert.

00:40:30.460 They didn't want you to do it because they thought that you would be a stooge for Putin.

00:40:34.380 And then you showed up in Moscow.

00:40:35.460 They won't even be here in five years.

00:40:37.500 I know.

00:40:38.060 Poor John Carl and all these people.

00:40:39.240 But you made it easy.

00:40:40.200 They'll all be gone.

00:40:41.080 But you make it easy for them.

00:40:42.040 You show up in Moscow.

00:40:43.160 You say, this is the best place I've ever been in my life.

00:40:45.420 This city is better than anywhere in America.

00:40:47.580 It is.

00:40:48.260 Get out of here.

00:40:49.200 On what basis?

00:40:49.820 It is so much better on the basis that I described.

00:40:52.740 You're people making like no money.

00:40:54.580 That's why the prices are cheap.

00:40:56.480 Yeah.

00:40:57.000 Well, actually, look, I'm no expert on the Russian economy.

00:41:01.080 I can only tell you what I saw, which is a city of 13 million people, much larger than

00:41:06.160 any city we have.

00:41:07.180 Hard to govern a city like that.

00:41:08.740 And there is, you know, no homelessness, no graffiti.

00:41:16.340 It's spotlessly clean.

00:41:18.500 The public spaces are beautiful.

00:41:20.500 The architecture has not been degraded by postmodern, the oppression of postmodern architecture, which

00:41:25.500 is designed to demoralize and hurt you and destroy your spirit.

00:41:29.340 I believe that because it's true.

00:41:30.760 Do you believe that postmodern architecture is designed to kill your spirit?

00:41:34.480 Of course.

00:41:35.540 Why?

00:41:35.760 What's the message of it?

00:41:36.500 Well, look, anything that we make with our hands, it's the purest expression of our creativity.

00:41:42.680 So there's a purpose behind everything that we make.

00:41:44.840 There's a message behind all of it, as there is in all art.

00:41:47.980 You don't paint a painting with no vision behind it.

00:41:50.120 You paint a painting because you're saying something.

00:41:52.520 And so buildings that are warm and human and that elevate the human spirit are pro-human.

00:42:01.040 And brutalism, for example, or the I am pay glass boxes that crowd every city in the United States, those are not elevating.

00:42:09.220 What's the message of working in a cube in a room with a synthetic drop ceiling and drywall on the walls and fluorescent lighting ahead of you and no privacy at all?

00:42:19.180 What's the message?

00:42:19.780 The message is really clear.

00:42:21.260 You mean nothing.

00:42:22.720 You are replaceable.

00:42:24.120 You are a widget in a bin awaiting assembly.

00:42:27.360 You're just a cog in a machine.

00:42:30.040 You have no value.

00:42:32.100 And everyone kind of ignores this, like, oh, well, that's the way buildings have always been.

00:42:35.800 No, that's not true.

00:42:37.140 And architecture and anything made by human hands is the purest expression of the society that produced it.

00:42:42.900 So we were like, oh, they're handicrafts.

00:42:44.700 No, they're not handicrafts.

00:42:46.700 They're a visible and tangible sign of who you are, not just as a person, but corporately as a society.

00:42:53.120 And if you live in a place that creates nothing beautiful and doesn't provide people uplifting buildings to live and work in, that's a very sick and dark society.

00:43:03.820 And it wasn't always that way.

00:43:04.740 That's the only point I made.

00:43:05.460 Look, Moscow, I'm not moving to Moscow.

00:43:08.380 I'm an American.

00:43:08.960 I'm never leaving.

00:43:10.180 But Moscow is not so different from the cities of the United States in my youth.

00:43:14.700 We had a free society, much freer than we have today.

00:43:17.120 We had much more capitalism, free markets, free monopolies.

00:43:19.960 But you're not saying Moscow is a free society.

00:43:21.640 I'm saying the United States was a free society.

00:43:23.820 The country that I grew up in had a semi-functioning capitalist system with competition.

00:43:28.940 It wasn't all like four companies dominating everything, which is what we have now.

00:43:32.060 That's not capitalism.

00:43:33.140 Okay.

00:43:33.580 That's a monopoly economy, which is bad.

00:43:37.100 And you had freedom of speech.

00:43:39.060 I guess there are probably some limits, but I wasn't aware of what they were because they were so broad.

00:43:43.660 And you had safe, for the most part, clean cities.

00:43:48.380 And that's exactly what Moscow is.

00:43:49.580 So, again, as I've said, and I really mean it, and I said it to our producers who we were traveling with at the time, this does not make me love Putin.

00:43:56.860 It makes me despise our leaders.

00:43:59.960 And so I say this for Moscow, and Jon Stewart is just such a tool of power.

00:44:05.140 It's crazy.

00:44:05.640 He's like, whoa, you know, fentanyl ODs are the price of freedom.

00:44:09.560 Really?

00:44:09.860 You're going to try and convince me of that?

00:44:11.540 It's like telling women working at Citibank is liberation.

00:44:14.260 No, it's slavery, actually.

00:44:15.860 That's not liberation.

00:44:17.240 Getting to raise your own children is liberation.

00:44:19.120 Getting to do what you want to satisfy the deepest desires of your heart, that's liberation.

00:44:23.800 They've redefined liberation.

00:44:25.020 Liberation is living in some shithole?

00:44:26.660 No.

00:44:27.260 That's slavery.

00:44:29.120 And so I try to make this point.

00:44:30.200 I don't think it's super subtle or esoteric or complex, but they're like, oh, to live Putin.

00:44:35.420 No, no, no, no, no.

00:44:36.460 You are flacking for the indefensible.

00:44:40.120 That's what's actually happening here.

00:44:41.440 So for you, it's not Putin's better, Russia's better.

00:44:44.640 It's that it gave you perspective on what you think has changed in America for the worse.

00:44:49.440 Of course.

00:44:50.680 I look at everything.

00:44:51.440 It's not how it came across.

00:44:52.580 Well, I'm sure, and I'm sure it was at least in part due to my inability to explain it fully,

00:44:58.100 which has been a problem all my life.

00:45:00.200 It's incumbent on me to explain things.

00:45:01.800 That's my job.

00:45:02.920 And I don't always succeed.

00:45:04.360 So I'm willing to believe that.

00:45:05.420 But it's also a product of intentional distortion of what I'm saying, which is this is an indictment

00:45:10.960 of our leadership class, which deserves to be indicted and imprisoned, in my opinion.

00:45:15.880 And I mean that.

00:45:17.100 So all my views are that.

00:45:20.620 All my views are through an American lens.

00:45:22.480 I've got a big family.

00:45:23.400 I'm not leaving.

00:45:24.000 My family's been here for hundreds of years.

00:45:25.220 I'm not going anywhere.

00:45:25.780 I'm the most American person you've ever met.

00:45:27.660 Don't have another passport.

00:45:28.780 I'm like a lot of other people.

00:45:30.200 And so I'm stuck here by choice and circumstance.

00:45:34.220 And I want my country to be as great as it can possibly be.

00:45:36.740 And that's why I opposed the Ukraine more from day one.

00:45:38.920 This is not going to help us.

00:45:40.360 Period.

00:45:40.880 And they're like, oh, tool of Putin.

00:45:42.060 It's like, no.

00:45:43.500 Tool of America.

00:45:44.480 That's what I want to be.

00:45:45.300 What about the argument that they make that if you allow Russia to exercise reach, it'll

00:45:50.780 keep doing it?

00:45:51.360 I would say, show me the evidence.

00:45:54.480 I would say, show me the evidence.

00:45:56.440 The Soviet-

00:45:57.120 Started in Crimea.

00:45:58.060 Now they're taking at least half of it.

00:45:59.780 Well, they had a referendum in Crimea where they asked the overwhelmingly like 90% Russian

00:46:04.560 population of Crimea, do you want to be part of Ukraine after the coup of 2014 or do you

00:46:10.140 want to be part of Russia?

00:46:11.020 And they said Russia.

00:46:11.860 So that's the democratic process, I would say they are.

00:46:14.480 Right.

00:46:14.700 But you don't change sovereignty over what the popular vote is.

00:46:18.580 Like, you know, like-

00:46:19.480 It depends how committed to democracy you are.

00:46:21.840 I mean, people should-

00:46:22.700 I mean, democracy is the promise of self-government.

00:46:24.620 But if where we are right now decided it wanted to be its own state, they don't get to

00:46:28.500 just go.

00:46:29.460 No, because it wouldn't be-

00:46:30.020 You have a constitution.

00:46:31.100 You have larger ideals involved.

00:46:33.140 Sure.

00:46:33.500 But as a matter of principle and practice, if you're committed to democracy, you should

00:46:38.100 let people choose how they seek to be governed.

00:46:40.740 And, but the truth is Ukraine is not a sovereign country and hasn't been since at least 2014

00:46:45.000 when the West, the CIA, and this has been documented in great detail, staged a coup and

00:46:52.000 with a color revolution and took over their government.

00:46:55.060 And now we know all the details that, you know, we have bio labs and CIA offices and it's

00:46:59.160 not a sovereign country in any sense.

00:47:01.720 So whatever.

00:47:02.220 I mean, look, I don't even care that much.

00:47:04.860 Do you know what I mean?

00:47:05.860 If-

00:47:06.060 It's heavy stuff though.

00:47:07.060 It's very heavy.

00:47:08.360 I mean, of course I care, but I care in the sense that if, you know, Burundi invades Rwanda,

00:47:13.680 which has happened, or Vietnam invades Cambodia, which has also happened, I'm against that because

00:47:19.180 I'm for sovereignty.

00:47:20.460 But what I care about is the country that I live in.

00:47:23.220 I want it to be a sovereign country.

00:47:24.380 It's not.

00:47:25.600 We're, we act at the behest of the demands of other countries.

00:47:29.680 We imperil our own national security on behalf of other countries.

00:47:32.800 That's why we're in NATO.

00:47:33.860 We have a security guarantee with Macedonia.

00:47:36.000 What?

00:47:36.400 I didn't sign up for that.

00:47:37.140 That's not in the constitution.

00:47:38.260 I want my kids to die for Macedonia.

00:47:40.100 No.

00:47:40.600 But their rationale is an extension of collective strength.

00:47:44.280 Now, here's the problem.

00:47:45.400 I don't have any problem with you owning any of these opinions that you do.

00:47:50.360 Well, they seem common sense.

00:47:51.720 I can have my own opinion about the level of sufficiency of your reasoning.

00:47:56.460 But...

00:47:56.820 I think you'd find it unimpeachable.

00:47:58.260 It's that...

00:47:59.140 Oh, it's definitely not unimpeachable.

00:48:01.120 I'm kidding.

00:48:01.500 It is that you shouldn't be demonized for it, though.

00:48:06.160 And to flip it, because your audience is going to very much want to understand this.

00:48:12.380 What do you believe personally, or do you believe people believe, that I say or report

00:48:20.080 or represent that I shouldn't?

00:48:22.800 That you?

00:48:23.420 Yeah, like COVID, for instance.

00:48:24.580 What do I mean to you when it comes to COVID that bothered you about the coverage or the

00:48:29.700 reality or any of it?

00:48:31.540 I was completely opposed to, from the very first day, the idea that you can restrict

00:48:41.140 people's freedom of movement or force them into taking any medical treatment of any kind,

00:48:48.260 period.

00:48:48.800 And I am strongly, and have been really my whole adult life, opposed to abortion, which

00:48:53.980 I think is killing.

00:48:54.900 It is killing.

00:48:56.760 However, the one abortion slogan I always liked was, my body, my choice.

00:49:01.660 I thought that was a good argument.

00:49:03.340 I don't think it's actually your body, so I don't think it's a rational argument if you

00:49:07.560 think it through.

00:49:07.940 But as a slogan, I totally believe it.

00:49:09.840 It's my body, my choice.

00:49:11.000 And the my body, my choice people are like, actually, no.

00:49:13.720 It's not your body or your choice.

00:49:14.920 It's my body and my choice, and you're going to do this, or we're going to hurt you.

00:49:18.580 And I'm just completely opposed to that.

00:49:20.580 And so, anybody who seemed to be endorsing it, as you did, I was completely opposed to

00:49:25.420 that.

00:49:25.660 Growth is essential for every entrepreneur.

00:49:32.920 At BDC, we get that.

00:49:34.840 And the businesses we support grow at double the average rate.

00:49:38.620 Accelerating the pace.

00:49:40.000 We're on it.

00:49:40.960 BDC.

00:49:41.900 Financing.

00:49:42.700 Advising.

00:49:43.400 Know-how.

00:49:43.820 I understand, and I've heard this.

00:49:50.260 I see reproductive rights differently, and I do think that it was a very dangerous...

00:49:56.700 Politically, it's an easy analysis of the dog catching the car and getting rid of Roe

00:50:01.320 v. Wade.

00:50:01.740 Now you have it state by state.

00:50:03.060 You have this IVF thing that happens in Alabama.

00:50:05.200 You're going to have a lot of crazy stuff happen now, and women are going to have to pay

00:50:08.660 the price for it.

00:50:09.300 But, here's where I was coming from on COVID, and I want your take on this.

00:50:14.620 So, we're in this emergency situation that I very much believe was real.

00:50:19.520 And I wanted to believe, President Trump, that this is being hyped, and it's going to

00:50:26.020 go away.

00:50:26.560 There's going to be a few dozen cases, and we'll be okay.

00:50:28.460 I would have loved for that to have been true.

00:50:29.640 I didn't want people to get sick, let alone me.

00:50:31.840 So, then it becomes a really big thing, and I have this unusual set of inside eyes, right?

00:50:39.120 Because my brother is running one of the biggest states and dealing with some of the most cases.

00:50:44.120 So, I'm deeper into it, probably, than anyone else covering it in the country, because I'm

00:50:51.620 watching my brother get overwhelmed by need in the hospital.

00:50:56.300 That's how I got COVID, was going to visit hospitals, because I kept hearing these stories

00:51:00.280 about all these dead people all over the place, and how there were gurneys flying, and they

00:51:04.580 were.

00:51:05.780 And then I wound up catching COVID.

00:51:08.800 The government says, this is what we have to do.

00:51:12.200 And there are similar practices going on around the world.

00:51:15.520 I understand the restriction argument.

00:51:18.120 I totally get the liberty argument.

00:51:21.500 But why was it wrong for me to say, this is what they're telling us to do?

00:51:29.020 And clearly, it's imperfect.

00:51:31.280 All of their answers are imperfect.

00:51:32.740 They don't know what's happening right now.

00:51:34.480 This is a first.

00:51:36.840 But isn't that the job?

00:51:38.860 Is that this is what they're saying?

00:51:40.240 Here's their explanation?

00:51:41.380 Yes.

00:51:41.760 Asking questions about it?

00:51:42.920 That's part of the job.

00:51:43.620 But I wasn't like, pro-vaccine, or pro-mask.

00:51:47.620 I'm the guy who got busted in the New York Post, because I took a run without a mask on,

00:51:51.920 walked back in my lobby, and somebody ratted on me, and then I became a hypocrite.

00:51:56.940 I want you to wear a mask, but I'm not.

00:51:59.320 Not when I'm taking a run.

00:52:00.920 I'm coming back into my apartment building.

00:52:03.400 I'm sweaty.

00:52:04.600 I get it.

00:52:05.920 I didn't wear a mask.

00:52:07.380 You came after me for that.

00:52:08.220 At all.

00:52:08.660 I did, and I'll tell you why.

00:52:09.880 Please.

00:52:10.220 I didn't wear a mask at all.

00:52:12.260 And that's one attack that I will not walk back, because I think it's fair.

00:52:16.180 I didn't wear a mask.

00:52:17.580 And when told to do it on airplanes, I always punched a hole through it.

00:52:21.440 Out of spite?

00:52:22.300 No, because I couldn't breathe.

00:52:23.300 Otherwise, I can't get the cigarette in there if there's a...

00:52:25.480 Yeah, that's right.

00:52:26.040 Just kidding.

00:52:27.220 No.

00:52:28.160 I quit smoking by then.

00:52:29.360 But I couldn't breathe.

00:52:31.920 And it's not good not to get oxygen.

00:52:34.140 I believe in sunshine and air.

00:52:35.600 My wife and I have not slept with our door closed in, I mean, many, many years.

00:52:40.000 No matter what the climate, we sleep with the door open, because we believe in fresh

00:52:42.400 air.

00:52:43.400 And so I believe that.

00:52:45.300 And no one's going to keep me from getting fresh air.

00:52:46.680 Sorry.

00:52:47.660 So, but if it's true that you must wear your mask at all times, then you must wear your

00:52:53.480 mask at all times.

00:52:54.120 Whether it's inconvenient or not, don't go for a run.

00:52:55.620 Well, it wasn't all times.

00:52:57.100 It was a social distancing thing.

00:52:58.860 And I had been jogging.

00:52:59.960 But people are getting arrested on the beach alone.

00:53:02.220 I understand that it went too far.

00:53:04.380 What I didn't understand, I totally get it.

00:53:07.600 And I feel the same way about the vaccine and what was understood and not understood.

00:53:14.840 Wait, but can I just ask you one question that really was the pivot point for me when

00:53:17.960 I realized these people are liars and it's my job not to affirm what they say, but to

00:53:22.400 question and to challenge them, no matter what they call me.

00:53:25.200 And they called me a murderer and all that.

00:53:27.220 But when the BLM riots happened and public health officials said, it's okay because fighting

00:53:33.040 systemic racism, which they never defined, despite my requests, is more important than

00:53:39.580 shielding people from COVID.

00:53:41.480 And I'm like, you may think that as a political matter, but as an epidemiological matter, you've

00:53:46.320 just revealed that you're a freaking quack.

00:53:48.880 And you don't give a shit about public health because you were just telling me that this is

00:53:51.980 not allowed, except when it's a militia helping you.

00:53:55.760 Wait, you're an evil person.

00:53:58.160 That was like my initial...

00:53:59.680 And no one ever explained to me how it's okay to infect people with COVID as long as they're

00:54:05.280 challenging Donald Trump.

00:54:06.780 I understand the argument.

00:54:10.100 I guess the way I was watching it in real time is, well, they can't control...

00:54:14.300 If it's a protest, it's one thing.

00:54:16.280 And you can have rules.

00:54:17.340 But do you really want to go arresting your way into a crowd of people who are already

00:54:22.280 outraged by something, let alone if it becomes...

00:54:26.480 Well, they arrested people on the beach.

00:54:26.740 You're surfing.

00:54:27.780 But people...

00:54:28.360 Look, and I don't like that.

00:54:29.900 But...

00:54:30.420 And I didn't like it then.

00:54:31.500 I never said I did.

00:54:32.180 If a bunch of Nazis came out in the early summer of 2020 and said, we're Nazis, we're

00:54:37.680 from...

00:54:37.740 I don't think they would go mask arresting.

00:54:39.680 Although a lot of those guys do wear masks to hide their identity.

00:54:42.880 Are you kidding?

00:54:43.580 I don't...

00:54:44.280 I don't think they would.

00:54:45.020 They would get mowed down.

00:54:46.120 I just think it would be too dangerous.

00:54:49.100 And I think they felt the same way about those protests.

00:54:50.740 Well, they've got drones and automatic weapons.

00:54:53.060 Like, they...

00:54:53.680 Look, the one thing we know about the people...

00:54:55.920 But you're not going to shoot these people.

00:54:57.260 You know what I'm saying?

00:54:57.680 They shot Ashley Babbitt.

00:54:58.840 You know, she was 5'2 and unarmed.

00:55:00.760 You know, like...

00:55:01.200 And then no one apologized for it.

00:55:02.620 Tucker, they shot Ashley Babbitt.

00:55:05.480 What was she doing at the time?

00:55:06.980 She was pushed against a door going into the Senate chamber.

00:55:11.300 But she was killed without warning.

00:55:14.060 And no one ever said, maybe we shouldn't...

00:55:15.660 I'll just start here.

00:55:16.620 From my perspective, don't shoot girls.

00:55:18.860 That's like my rule.

00:55:20.300 You don't commit violence against women, period.

00:55:22.140 I actually...

00:55:22.620 I'm the last person, apparently, in America who thinks that.

00:55:25.800 An unarmed woman should not be shot under any circumstances.

00:55:29.300 Unless...

00:55:29.700 If she's unarmed and she's 5'2, I think it's totally dishonorable.

00:55:33.920 And to see Joe Scarborough, of all people, of all people, saying that's okay, I'm like...

00:55:44.260 Look, I mean, so many of these situations are so impossible.

00:55:48.000 But I'm getting off the track.

00:55:49.100 Sorry, sorry.

00:55:49.780 No, no, no.

00:55:49.820 Listen, look.

00:55:50.620 No, I think this is the track.

00:55:52.080 Because the whole point is, nobody has these conversations.

00:55:54.220 Yeah.

00:55:54.900 No one...

00:55:56.060 Now, they do in their real lives.

00:55:57.900 People have friends where they don't agree on things.

00:56:00.260 Trump has changed it a little bit.

00:56:01.600 The MAGA stuff changed it a little bit for people.

00:56:03.240 They started being mean to each other in their personal lives.

00:56:06.300 But...

00:56:06.460 Yes, it's like the worst thing that's happened.

00:56:08.280 You've got to talk like this.

00:56:09.760 Like, do I see it the way you do?

00:56:11.340 No.

00:56:12.560 I think you do on some level.

00:56:13.900 Hold on, hold on.

00:56:14.340 I don't believe that you should...

00:56:17.540 Shooting unarmed people is a very dicey proposition.

00:56:20.440 I don't make a gender distinction.

00:56:22.280 Really?

00:56:22.680 I know too many women who can kick my ass.

00:56:24.700 You know what I mean?

00:56:25.580 I don't think you know a...

00:56:26.820 That's not true.

00:56:28.140 I do.

00:56:29.120 Name one who could kick your ass.

00:56:31.100 So, I'm 6'1", or was before I had back surgery.

00:56:34.960 I was going to say.

00:56:35.900 Yeah.

00:56:36.340 You know, we're trying to be real with each other here.

00:56:38.940 You know what I mean?

00:56:39.520 Well, you're a lot taller than I am, okay?

00:56:41.100 I'm just saying.

00:56:42.600 And you're famously a bodybuilder.

00:56:44.240 There's not one woman in America who can kick your ass.

00:56:46.580 It's just not true.

00:56:47.080 And you know it's not true.

00:56:47.900 And you have to say it to make the unhappy, unmarried woman...

00:56:50.920 You went to the UFC fight.

00:56:52.560 You think you could get in there with the women who are fighting and come out looking like that?

00:56:56.880 No, I'm saying you specifically.

00:56:58.560 Yeah, I'm telling you.

00:56:59.200 I have a polygraph exam, and I don't want to have to do this on camera, okay?

00:57:02.360 But if I applied it to you...

00:57:04.080 I would pass in flying colors, because I know how to beat the test.

00:57:07.960 And I can tell you how, if you want to know.

00:57:10.100 No, that's why they're not admissible in court.

00:57:12.820 But can I just ask you, like, you know in your heart you don't actually think there's a single woman in this country...

00:57:18.200 No, I really do.

00:57:19.160 What's her name?

00:57:19.740 I really do.

00:57:20.880 I know.

00:57:21.280 The whole point is that I don't have to know them by person.

00:57:24.360 Men and women are very different, much more different.

00:57:27.640 We spend all of our time on racial differences.

00:57:29.740 Your race, my race, and there are differences between races.

00:57:32.840 There is no difference between races that's a quarter as profound as the difference between sexes.

00:57:38.860 These are biological differences that are physical, they're psychological, they're hormonal.

00:57:42.740 These are profound differences.

00:57:44.220 But that's kind of the point about drawing racial distinctions, is that you're really the same.

00:57:49.160 And obviously, biologically, you're different.

00:57:52.100 But what I'm saying, I don't see it as a less than.

00:57:54.820 Can women lift as much weight as men on average?

00:57:58.140 Of course not.

00:57:58.580 No, no, no.

00:57:58.940 I'm making the opposite argument.

00:58:01.360 It's not less than.

00:58:03.140 I like women better.

00:58:04.520 And I think that my job, all of our jobs as men, is to treat women differently, comma, and better than we treat men.

00:58:13.500 That is the idea.

00:58:14.520 Oh, that's chivalry.

00:58:15.660 Okay, honey.

00:58:16.320 Good luck in a world without it.

00:58:17.980 And I'm serious.

00:58:19.420 If you got into an argument, and I know you well enough to know, if you're standing in a restaurant and someone's like,

00:58:24.620 Fuck you, Chris Cuomo, you'd punch him out.

00:58:27.020 If a woman did that...

00:58:28.120 Depends where my cash flow is.

00:58:30.040 I really don't have a lot of capital right now.

00:58:31.920 You would want to.

00:58:32.060 You would want to.

00:58:32.720 You're quick with the punches.

00:58:33.360 I would definitely want to.

00:58:34.240 I happen to know that.

00:58:35.620 If a woman got way up in your face, you would know...

00:58:38.920 Exactly.

00:58:39.740 I wouldn't.

00:58:40.740 Exactly.

00:58:41.560 So it is a bigger sin, not just against her, but against yourself and your dignity and your responsibility as a man.

00:58:47.780 Your job is to protect women.

00:58:48.840 I'll give you the gender.

00:58:50.460 I don't see it exactly the same way.

00:58:52.640 Because you don't want to admit it.

00:58:53.860 You're telling me some girl is going to kick your ass.

00:58:55.620 No, no.

00:58:55.800 If you know that's not true.

00:58:56.840 Hold on.

00:58:57.080 There are women who could, okay?

00:58:59.640 Who are they?

00:59:00.020 There's no question in my mind.

00:59:01.420 There are all these professional fighters and women who train in self-defense who will beat my ass.

00:59:05.800 I'm a 53-year-old guy.

00:59:07.540 How many female fighters have gone against male fighters that are roughly the same?

00:59:12.520 Very rare.

00:59:13.040 Although, did you see that girl who just won the high school wrestling championship?

00:59:16.860 That was cool.

00:59:17.740 It must have been a light...

00:59:18.680 Well, look.

00:59:19.000 She was in the body.

00:59:19.660 It was lightweight.

00:59:20.500 But they fight women.

00:59:21.820 It's unfair.

00:59:22.740 By weight and muscle, it would be unfair.

00:59:24.060 It's not just unfair.

00:59:24.840 It's immoral.

00:59:25.900 It's totally wrong to use...

00:59:26.740 I don't know that it's immoral.

00:59:27.760 If a woman feels...

00:59:28.400 It's not immoral.

00:59:28.940 Then why do we have a Violence Against Women's Act?

00:59:30.580 If the...

00:59:31.320 Well...

00:59:32.340 Why do we specify in law that it's worse?

00:59:34.660 Hold on.

00:59:35.400 There's a through line.

00:59:37.040 Yeah.

00:59:37.220 You have Violence Against Women because you have a cultural preset of victimizing women

00:59:45.540 and putting them in positions that are inferior.

00:59:49.580 And it was important enough that society decided to punish it extra.

00:59:54.780 No, it's not the...

00:59:56.940 It's illegal to be as, you know, fair to women act.

01:00:01.960 It's not the illegal to...

01:00:03.380 Should be.

01:00:04.180 Maybe.

01:00:04.540 You should have that also.

01:00:05.420 Maybe.

01:00:06.200 Because there's gender inequality.

01:00:07.520 Violence against...

01:00:08.620 Violence against women.

01:00:09.400 Yeah, because you have a culture of where men...

01:00:12.000 You know what the rule of thumb is?

01:00:13.420 The rule of thumb comes from British common law of you can beat your wife with anything

01:00:16.680 that's not thicker than your thumb.

01:00:18.020 Actually...

01:00:18.540 It's a stupid culture.

01:00:19.300 The British Empire is the empire that stopped widow burning in India.

01:00:25.320 There was no force for female liberation more powerful than the British Empire ever

01:00:30.880 until the American Empire showed up and inverted it and started telling women, true liberation

01:00:37.140 is working for some soulless company that hates you and will pay for your insurance to

01:00:43.400 freeze your eggs so you can put off what you really want to do in life and work for us.

01:00:47.740 That's not...

01:00:48.540 Liberation is choice.

01:00:50.280 Is that you get to make your own choices.

01:00:52.040 People don't make them for you.

01:00:53.040 Uh-huh.

01:00:53.720 Well...

01:00:54.920 Did you just blow off my point?

01:00:56.180 Well, I did to this extent.

01:00:58.060 Of course, liberation is choice.

01:00:59.820 But these are choices that individuals don't get to make.

01:01:03.780 Like, how's your economy structured?

01:01:05.140 And as Elizabeth Warren...

01:01:07.200 There are structural things that take away your choice.

01:01:10.260 That is true.

01:01:10.900 I think the inability to raise children on a single income is like the biggest change in

01:01:17.020 American society ever.

01:01:18.020 But when you propose something like family leave or allowing men or women to be able

01:01:23.200 to be there with the newborn, nobody wants to give them money for it.

01:01:26.300 Allowing men to be there with the newborn?

01:01:27.280 Yeah.

01:01:28.420 Huh.

01:01:29.360 Other countries...

01:01:30.040 What?

01:01:30.260 You didn't spend time with your kids when they were first born?

01:01:31.860 Of course I did.

01:01:32.620 And I have a lot of children.

01:01:34.440 But I...

01:01:34.800 So I know for a fact, not as a matter of theory, that a child needs two parents and that each

01:01:40.340 parent brings something vital and... but different to parenting.

01:01:45.680 But the one thing I definitely know is that there's not one man on the planet who knows

01:01:49.940 intuitively what to do with a newborn.

01:01:51.780 There's a period for the first several months that if you're not a woman, you are not comfortable

01:01:56.740 making the right choices for a newborn.

01:01:59.220 That's just true.

01:01:59.940 And if you can find a man who's totally comfortable around a newborn the way any five-year-old girl

01:02:05.100 is, then I will give you $1,000.

01:02:07.520 Because you can't.

01:02:08.220 It's like finding the girl who can beat you up.

01:02:09.700 You can't.

01:02:10.580 Yes, I can.

01:02:10.940 Because there isn't one.

01:02:12.120 I'm telling you.

01:02:12.680 And so the truth is the difference between men and women...

01:02:13.460 You're going to wind up having a woman stop you somewhere and beat you up.

01:02:15.560 No one wants to admit it because we're like, oh...

01:02:17.920 It's not that.

01:02:19.020 It's not that.

01:02:19.420 It's totally that.

01:02:20.280 Look, I'm telling you...

01:02:21.560 Our whole conversation is...

01:02:23.700 We're like in a hammerlock.

01:02:25.480 There's a tiny percentage of the US population, which is an overwhelming percentage of the Democratic

01:02:29.900 electorate, which is unhappy, unmarried women.

01:02:32.700 And they control what everyone can say.

01:02:36.240 And they don't want to have the conversation.

01:02:38.320 And they're like, oh, you hate women.

01:02:39.200 I hate women.

01:02:40.160 I don't think I do.

01:02:41.340 The people who think it's okay to punch them in the face, the people who don't punish rapists,

01:02:45.640 the people who allow you to be afraid on the subway, those people hate women.

01:02:49.740 The ones who are telling you, forgo your family to work at Citibank, those people hate you.

01:02:54.460 Obviously.

01:02:55.160 There are definitely people that hate women.

01:02:58.760 There is a real thing.

01:03:00.320 There is definitely a cultural problem we have in terms of allowing...

01:03:04.060 Have abortions.

01:03:04.080 We love you so much.

01:03:05.240 Allowing women to have the same exercise of options that men have.

01:03:10.520 And we know this.

01:03:11.300 And there are different ways to correct it.

01:03:13.040 And sometimes you go too far and in the wrong directions.

01:03:15.760 But I don't think there's anything wrong.

01:03:18.120 But it's always the same direction.

01:03:19.520 It's always the give up your family.

01:03:21.360 If you read any survey of women, what do they want?

01:03:24.220 They want a lot of different things.

01:03:25.260 We all do.

01:03:25.860 But men want that too.

01:03:26.840 Didn't you get married to have kids?

01:03:28.960 No.

01:03:30.500 You didn't want kids?

01:03:32.380 You didn't want to start a family?

01:03:33.420 Not really, no.

01:03:34.840 But I got engaged at 21.

01:03:36.520 Yeah, you were very young.

01:03:37.360 Yeah, I was super young.

01:03:38.420 And you guys had been together.

01:03:39.660 Well, I was also especially shallow.

01:03:41.280 And I got married because I really liked my wife and I thought she was hot.

01:03:45.240 And so I married her.

01:03:46.540 And she was the one who was like, we should have children.

01:03:48.220 And I was like, oh.

01:03:50.020 Whatever.

01:03:50.480 It's not even interesting.

01:03:51.300 Well, she had to be thinking, what am I going to get out of this?

01:03:54.460 Well, I'm a Christian, so I'm stuck.

01:04:01.420 But this is not what I thought.

01:04:03.320 I think there's possibly some truth there.

01:04:05.060 But the point is, if you ask women what they want, the overwhelming majority will say, I

01:04:11.240 want to be married and have children.

01:04:13.300 You don't think men want that also?

01:04:14.780 Yeah, they may do.

01:04:15.720 I mean, I did.

01:04:16.720 And ultimately.

01:04:17.680 That's why I got married.

01:04:18.600 100%.

01:04:19.040 I'm talking specifically about women.

01:04:20.920 They want to be married and have children.

01:04:22.680 And that is the thing that the Democratic Party prevents them from having through policy.

01:04:29.840 And the reason they do that is because the single most important constituency, as you

01:04:36.040 well know, is not black voters.

01:04:37.900 They always say that it's black voters.

01:04:39.420 No, it's unmarried women of all races.

01:04:42.920 And so they do a lot of different things to discourage marriage and fertility.

01:04:48.000 One of them is paying single moms not to be married.

01:04:51.040 Another is constantly promoting anti-fertility measures like abortion and birth control.

01:04:57.020 They actively work to prevent women from forming families.

01:05:01.520 And I think that's evil.

01:05:02.920 And I don't think it serves women at all.

01:05:05.020 That's my view.

01:05:05.900 It is your view.

01:05:07.220 I disagree.

01:05:08.180 I see it differently.

01:05:09.180 But that doesn't make you evil.

01:05:11.200 You see what I'm saying?

01:05:11.740 A little evil.

01:05:12.460 No.

01:05:13.060 And I'll tell you what.

01:05:14.380 You use that word a lot.

01:05:15.800 I don't use it.

01:05:17.560 You are more judgmental and stronger in your convictions than I am.

01:05:25.700 Yes.

01:05:26.260 I have a lot more latitude in how things go.

01:05:30.000 Like Ashley Babbitt.

01:05:31.000 Look, the whole thing was so regrettable.

01:05:33.300 And I didn't think it was right.

01:05:36.360 It wasn't right to call it an insurrection because an insurrection is a real thing.

01:05:40.560 And I know people get mad at me about this.

01:05:42.400 But who gets mad at you about that?

01:05:44.960 There's a real-

01:05:45.460 Just tell me some names.

01:05:46.680 Is this the girl who's going to beat you up is getting mad at you?

01:05:48.360 There are a lot of women.

01:05:49.200 I'm telling you, Tucker.

01:05:50.000 I'm going to start bringing them around you the next time we see each other.

01:05:52.680 I'm afraid of these chicks.

01:05:53.200 And you will see.

01:05:54.140 You went to that UFC fight.

01:05:55.340 If you had said this before and then walked into that fight, Trump even couldn't have

01:05:59.160 saved you.

01:05:59.920 So this is what I saw there.

01:06:04.000 Insurrection is a crime, okay?

01:06:05.500 There's an Insurrection Act.

01:06:06.640 You have a statute.

01:06:07.960 You have the whole thing.

01:06:08.920 There has never been an insurrection that was largely unarmed, okay?

01:06:12.220 And I know people are going to say they had fire extinguishers and sticks.

01:06:15.680 If your intention is to take over the United States government, you're going to come heavy.

01:06:20.020 You're going to come hard.

01:06:21.060 You're going to be armed.

01:06:22.100 This was a riot.

01:06:23.360 And that's bad enough.

01:06:24.640 January 6th was bad enough.

01:06:26.260 It was a riot.

01:06:27.500 Ashley Babbitt, for good reason, bad reason, no reason, was where she was.

01:06:31.820 She put that officer in fear of his life with like 10 other people.

01:06:36.180 And that's how she got shot.

01:06:37.580 We don't know that she put him in fear of his life because there was never an investigation

01:06:41.600 into it.

01:06:42.740 So Michael Byrd, the man who shot her to death, had already been sanctioned for leaving

01:06:49.360 his loaded Glock in the men's room of the Capitol.

01:06:52.580 Now, you tell me, I don't know what your view of firearms is, but I have a lot of views

01:06:57.880 on firearms.

01:06:59.440 You can't leave a loaded, striker-fired handgun with a bullet in the chamber with no safety

01:07:08.380 and you leave that in the men's room as a cop.

01:07:11.840 You should be fired immediately.

01:07:13.920 That's negligent and a mortal threat to anyone else who uses the men's room, especially children.

01:07:18.560 So that guy shot her.

01:07:21.080 Oh, that's great.

01:07:24.160 So I'm not-

01:07:25.220 Winchester pump?

01:07:25.880 That's not my gun.

01:07:26.820 That's not my, that's not, that is my son.

01:07:30.000 That's Mario.

01:07:30.580 Oh, I love that.

01:07:32.380 And that is a, yeah, that's a breech-loaded Winchester.

01:07:38.000 I know my guns.

01:07:39.300 I'm not, I'm not-

01:07:40.680 No, but I'm just saying-

01:07:41.380 It's anti-weapon, but here's the thing.

01:07:42.380 There was no investigation.

01:07:43.980 I know, but hold on.

01:07:45.100 He's, first of all, the investigation is what we all saw on video.

01:07:48.180 The, and what he said.

01:07:50.280 Do cops get to shoot people without a warning?

01:07:53.240 I don't think they do, actually.

01:07:54.660 Do cops don't get to shoot you without a warning in a situation where they are exercising a

01:08:02.380 use of force in apprehending you.

01:08:04.700 In a situation where there is a mob descending upon this guy, he's trying to hold the glass

01:08:11.320 doors because he wants lawmakers to not get hanged or whatever, and they're breaking through.

01:08:17.400 He then made a judgment that his life was going to be-

01:08:20.100 But what I'm saying, it was a criminal-

01:08:21.440 And him leaving a weapon somewhere is a bad move.

01:08:24.460 But it doesn't have any relevance in terms of what he did here.

01:08:26.780 Well, of course it does, because it speaks to his judgment.

01:08:29.300 And here's the point I would make, is that Ashley Babbitt was not a mob.

01:08:33.420 She was an individual.

01:08:35.120 Part of.

01:08:36.620 Right, but he didn't shoot a mob.

01:08:38.200 He shot an unarmed woman who was under 5'5", who did not pose a mortal threat to him.

01:08:44.020 And if she did, tell me how.

01:08:46.300 And he killed her.

01:08:48.700 And so just on the basis of those facts alone, I need to know more.

01:08:52.680 But we don't know more, because there was no investigation.

01:08:56.040 It was just swept under the rug.

01:08:57.200 And then he goes on TV and accuses everyone of racism who doesn't like the killing that he committed.

01:09:01.840 And then you have people on television saying, I'm so glad that she died.

01:09:06.600 I'm so glad that she was killed.

01:09:07.780 This is a veteran, by the way, who runs a pool company in San Diego.

01:09:12.740 This is the person who served the country and who was getting the least benefit from her.

01:09:16.740 She runs a freaking pool company, okay?

01:09:18.560 She's not working at BlackRock.

01:09:20.520 And her death is, like, totally fine, because we don't like her politics.

01:09:23.840 If they think it's okay to kill Ashley Babbitt when she posed no mortal threat to anybody, not even conceivably, then they'll be happy when I die.

01:09:30.660 That's how I feel about it.

01:09:31.960 God forbid.

01:09:33.000 And you're probably not wrong, because the fact that there's even a they in your analysis of it shows that we're in the wrong place.

01:09:40.240 Yeah, Mourning Joe.

01:09:40.840 I'm specifically of Mourning Joe.

01:09:42.240 Yeah, but what I'm saying, no, no, but what I'm saying that humanity should be an absolute value, you know?

01:09:50.340 Amen.

01:09:51.040 When, like, January 6th, I know people will say it was an insurrection.

01:09:55.000 People, okay, fine.

01:09:56.440 He wasn't charged with that, and there's a reason he wasn't charged with that, and it's not a technicality.

01:10:01.060 And your approach and the approach of other people that, hey, this was just, you know, these guys were in the wrong place, the wrong way, but that's all it was.

01:10:11.800 I don't agree with that.

01:10:13.060 I think it was a riot.

01:10:14.440 And I think they were way over the line, and I think that they were motivated to go way over the line, in part by the president of the United States.

01:10:21.520 Obviously, we're a riot, but let me ask you just a couple questions.

01:10:23.760 One is, why can't we know how many federal agents were in the crowd and what they were doing there?

01:10:29.460 I'm fine with knowing.

01:10:30.660 I love transparency.

01:10:32.120 It is the key to understand.

01:10:33.160 But it's the opposite of what we have, and there are thousands of hours of tape, and the release of which will not jeopardize security in the Capitol.

01:10:41.620 You cherry-picked that tape, by the way.

01:10:43.560 I aired what they sent me.

01:10:44.980 You cherry-picked it, though, and you made it look like the least.

01:10:47.220 I don't know what that means.

01:10:48.140 Like you kept showing the Indian guy walking around like it was a shaman guy.

01:10:51.400 The Indian guy did over two years in prison for no crime whatsoever.

01:10:55.420 I talked to him yesterday.

01:10:56.400 Again, his name is Jake Chansley, and he's a very smart guy.

01:10:58.760 I think I interviewed him also, by the way.

01:11:00.600 He's a good dude.

01:11:01.140 Definitely his lawyer.

01:11:02.080 Maybe both of them.

01:11:02.560 He's pretty far out, but he's no more far out than Janet Yellen or anybody else.

01:11:06.720 You know what I mean?

01:11:07.460 Yeah, except Janet Yellen wasn't busting into the Capitol and walking around.

01:11:11.520 Well, Janet Yellen's an actual criminal.

01:11:13.100 I mean, Janet Yellen was Fed chair and then taking millions of dollars in speaking fees from the banks?

01:11:17.420 What?

01:11:18.040 But look.

01:11:18.800 That's criminal behavior.

01:11:20.520 I'm fine with those types of ethical lapses and how we allow the system to keep going around.

01:11:25.900 Cuff her, baby!

01:11:27.400 Lock her up.

01:11:28.280 Is that what you mean to say?

01:11:30.120 But I do think that, look, I think that what I see in January 6th, what I see when it comes to immigration, what I see when it comes to Russia, all of these things wind up becoming fodder for division.

01:11:42.440 You have to have a take, and it winds up having to be the opposite take that the other side has.

01:11:48.340 And I really think that it's symptomatic of our decline.

01:11:52.000 I totally agree.

01:11:53.080 January 6th was either no big deal, the BLM stuff was worse, or it was an insurrection, and everybody there is treason.

01:12:00.920 We don't like what the president does, treason.

01:12:04.220 You know, or he did nothing.

01:12:06.020 Everything is like that.

01:12:07.400 Immigration, the migration stuff.

01:12:09.300 You are hit with the stick of you are forwarding the replacement theory, that the Democrats want to bring in as many brown people as possible to replace white people.

01:12:19.160 Well, they've said that.

01:12:20.340 Who?

01:12:21.260 Well, like three books have been written on it.

01:12:23.920 So what, three books.

01:12:25.080 The policy is not to replace white people with brown people.

01:12:29.460 So what I'm interested, and by the way, I've never said white people.

01:12:34.060 I said the current people who are born here, many of whom are not white.

01:12:38.040 I don't know how we get to white people.

01:12:41.060 You contextualize it as white people.

01:12:43.080 You'll say like, well, white people created everything.

01:12:45.780 They don't want us to have white babies.

01:12:47.900 Why is it coming up?

01:12:48.580 Well, I've never said they don't want us to have white babies.

01:12:50.600 I haven't said that.

01:12:51.800 No?

01:12:52.280 Though the attacks on white people are one of the biggest things that's ever happened in our country.

01:12:56.780 The fact that people in the media can just sort of blithely attack an entire group on the basis of their skin color, I just grew up thinking that was completely out of bounds.

01:13:05.820 Does it matter if the group is a majority or a minority?

01:13:09.220 Well, the principle never changes, which is you're not responsible for your skin color.

01:13:13.020 You're only responsible for what you do.

01:13:14.860 Right.

01:13:15.040 And so you can't attack people on the basis of immutable characteristics.

01:13:18.100 And if you can, then tell me why segregation was wrong.

01:13:22.320 I don't really understand.

01:13:23.280 I think segregation was wrong.

01:13:25.400 And I've always thought that.

01:13:26.800 I think it now.

01:13:27.540 Good.

01:13:27.820 And I think attacking people on the basis of their skin color is always wrong.

01:13:32.900 It was every bit as wrong as what's happening now.

01:13:34.900 It's affirmative action, totally immoral.

01:13:37.600 How can you give someone a job on the basis of a skin color?

01:13:40.060 How can you deny someone a job on the basis of a skin color?

01:13:42.640 You're not allowed to do that in our country.

01:13:44.840 That's what I was taught growing up in a very liberal place in California.

01:13:48.020 And then I get older and it's like, oh, we're definitely going to do that.

01:13:51.980 And you can't complain about it or you're the racist.

01:13:54.060 And it's like, no, no, no, you're the one punishing people for how they were born, for

01:13:58.280 their skin color.

01:13:59.380 I thought that was like Bull Connor stuff.

01:14:01.580 I thought we hated that.

01:14:02.520 In fact, I thought that was the lodestar of American politics.

01:14:04.860 The one thing we hate is attacking people, denying them opportunity on the base of their

01:14:10.020 skin color.

01:14:10.480 And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no.

01:14:12.360 Not only do we do that, but you can't mention it.

01:14:15.360 Well, I think I can actually.

01:14:17.040 And boy, I've had a lot of people, Republicans, tell me I can't mention that.

01:14:21.620 Why?

01:14:22.760 Why?

01:14:23.080 Well, they never explain.

01:14:24.260 Just shut up.

01:14:25.940 Well, it makes them radioactive.

01:14:27.980 I don't care.

01:14:28.780 That's wrong.

01:14:29.900 Because it is substituting a level playing field where there isn't one.

01:14:36.360 So the way affirmative action was supposed to work was that it would enable a merit-based

01:14:43.040 system that people who are minorities were being kept out of for two reasons.

01:14:47.680 One, they didn't have the opportunities early on to build up the tools that a lot of white

01:14:54.240 people did because of what they call now privilege, but really it's opportunity.

01:14:58.720 And the second reason is that because white people were the majority and didn't like the

01:15:05.000 minority.

01:15:05.300 So you had a system that was set up against them, had to be remedied.

01:15:09.460 That was the theory.

01:15:10.260 It's almost impossible to apply logic to this because it's based on, obviously, racial hostility

01:15:14.740 and political calculation.

01:15:16.100 It's not based on any principle of justice.

01:15:19.360 But I'll just ask-

01:15:19.720 Well, hold on.

01:15:20.180 That is justice.

01:15:21.460 Fairness under law, meaning that just because this person is brown doesn't mean you can

01:15:25.500 treat them like a dog.

01:15:26.380 Oh my gosh.

01:15:26.940 Of course not.

01:15:27.620 But that's what it was supposed to remedy.

01:15:29.120 Just because this person is any color, any color, you should never punish someone for

01:15:33.960 how he was born.

01:15:34.660 Period.

01:15:35.300 But the country did.

01:15:36.400 Of course.

01:15:36.920 And that ended in 1965.

01:15:38.460 No, it didn't.

01:15:39.220 Okay.

01:15:39.720 Well, let me ask you a couple questions then.

01:15:42.320 If whites become the minority, which I keep reading it's going to happen really soon,

01:15:46.900 should they be beneficiaries of affirmative action?

01:15:48.820 If they start to get discriminated against on the basis of that.

01:15:53.680 Well, they're already discriminated against in college admissions, in hiring, both federal

01:15:58.460 and private sector.

01:16:00.400 Whites are- I just saw this the other day.

01:16:01.800 I was kind of shocked by it.

01:16:02.740 If you're to break out the country by ethnicity, which I hate, I don't think we should count

01:16:06.540 by race.

01:16:07.060 I think we should address people as they were created by God, which is as individuals.

01:16:11.620 That's fine as long as everybody's getting a fair shake.

01:16:15.220 Whites are not in the top five for income in the United States.

01:16:18.820 Right now, Nigerians, on average, make more than whites.

01:16:22.640 So if you're talking about a world that is black and white, and the whites have some

01:16:27.100 sort of entrenched privilege and are beneficiaries of all this stuff, you're really talking about

01:16:30.480 a country that's generations gone.

01:16:33.100 And so in the current country, virtually every immigrant group has a higher income than native-born

01:16:38.540 whites.

01:16:39.680 So I'm not mad about that.

01:16:41.160 I'm just saying that's not a basis upon which to discriminate against whites.

01:16:44.920 And if you continue to with those numbers in hand, and those are public numbers from

01:16:48.600 the Labor Department, then you're really doing this because you hate whites.

01:16:52.760 And I don't want to live in a country where we punish people because the people in charge

01:16:55.640 don't like their skin color.

01:16:56.760 Because we've lived in that country before, and I don't want to live in it again.

01:16:59.220 So how is it that the people in charge are mostly white, but they hate whites?

01:17:03.100 Well, that's a very deep question.

01:17:05.500 And I would say this, I mean, I don't know the answer, but I would say this just as I

01:17:10.720 travel to the extent that I do.

01:17:12.440 I have never one time been yelled at by a non-white person.

01:17:16.180 Not one time.

01:17:17.040 Not one time.

01:17:18.380 No black person has ever yelled, racist!

01:17:20.880 I've had way more, never.

01:17:23.560 I've never had any Spanish person or Asian person, any non-white ever do that.

01:17:27.400 But it's been about 99% 32-year-old female white lawyers.

01:17:33.180 I'm just saying.

01:17:33.980 What do they say?

01:17:35.440 Racist!

01:17:36.640 Okay.

01:17:37.620 So look, there's a deep psychology here.

01:17:39.740 I don't fully understand it.

01:17:41.180 There's a lot I don't understand, including this.

01:17:43.500 But I don't need to.

01:17:44.700 Because in this country, you should never be allowed to punish people on the basis of

01:17:49.520 their skin color.

01:17:50.060 I just start and end there.

01:17:52.040 And I don't, all these rationales, well, systemic this, systemic that.

01:17:55.120 You don't have the evidence to support your position, not you, but the person making that

01:17:58.600 case.

01:17:59.460 And even if you did, it wouldn't matter.

01:18:01.160 You can't punish people for the color of their skin.

01:18:05.360 That's the whole freaking lesson of the entire civil rights movement.

01:18:09.260 You know, we're like pretending it's like the opposite lesson?

01:18:11.640 No, it's that how do you enable equality?

01:18:16.140 If it's not going to happen naturally, how do you enable it?

01:18:19.640 And that's what the policies were about.

01:18:21.240 If you could do that, that wouldn't punish people or advantage people, either one, on

01:18:27.040 the basis of their skin color.

01:18:27.880 If you could find a way that wouldn't let some people sit in the front row and others

01:18:31.200 sit in the balcony or give some people, you know, a water fountain in the lobby and some

01:18:35.960 a water fountain in the utility closet, then we could talk about it.

01:18:39.700 But no scheme devised or that conceivably could be devised doesn't wind up helping some

01:18:45.320 people on the basis of their skin color and hurting people on the basis of their skin

01:18:48.260 color. And they used to tell us for years, like, oh, a front of action doesn't hurt white

01:18:52.240 people. Look at the hiring numbers.

01:18:54.040 The Greeks invented democracy, so if you like democracy, you're Greek. If you've ever voted

01:19:04.580 for a candidate, voted someone off an island, left work early to go to the polls, or lied

01:19:09.800 about going to the polls so you could leave work early, that's good enough. You're Greek.

01:19:14.420 So eat like it. That means ordering delicious and fresh chicken souvlaki with tzatziki from

01:19:19.600 Jimmy the Greek. You deserve it, you pillar of democracy, you. You're Greek. Eat like

01:19:25.360 it with Jimmy the Greek. Hashtag Gimme Jimmy.

01:19:31.240 What are these guys, getting bored over here?

01:19:33.240 I don't know what they're doing.

01:19:34.400 I'm loving this.

01:19:35.760 Anyway, whatever, I'm going on.

01:19:37.360 No, no.

01:19:37.700 So this is supposed to be an interview of you and your dark secrets.

01:19:40.080 What's the worst thing you've ever done?

01:19:41.160 The worst thing I've ever done was to forget what I'm supposed to be about. Every time I

01:19:48.860 have an amazing ability to repeat mistakes.

01:19:52.960 Been there.

01:19:54.100 An amazing ability. And I just started looking into myself more about this. You know, and

01:20:02.240 in this way, I'm very shy about this stuff, but everything that happens in life, there's

01:20:07.480 very little that you control, right? Most things happen to you, not by you. But with everything

01:20:14.100 that happens, you have an absolute ability to control what it means and how to react to

01:20:18.120 it. And that is really easy to say and really hard to do. And what I did when I got shit

01:20:25.300 canned, and I really, I got to be honest, I didn't handle it well. I really didn't.

01:20:31.000 Can I just ask, just because you're explaining how you keep repeating the same mistakes, which

01:20:35.280 is a very frustrating and very human phenomenon. But do you think you got fired for mistakes

01:20:41.600 that you made?

01:20:42.040 Yes.

01:20:43.040 Really?

01:20:43.520 And I'll tell you why. Because did I do what they say I did? No. I never lied. I didn't

01:20:49.640 go after my brother's accusers. And you could say, why not? Isn't that what you're supposed

01:20:53.040 to do? His party has rules. And the rule is an allegation is enough. And you don't really

01:20:58.480 go after the accuser if they are believed. Okay? That's what he signed up for. Okay.

01:21:04.620 I think you're talking about the Democratic Party.

01:21:06.060 That's right. That's what he signed up. One allegation is enough. He had more than one.

01:21:11.780 Okay? So that's the rule. And that was my conversation with him. I never went after

01:21:16.600 his accusers. I didn't work the media. I didn't call up and say, I wouldn't have called you,

01:21:20.760 that's for sure. But I didn't call people up and say, do me a favor. We're friends.

01:21:24.540 Be nice to my brother. And here's how we know that has to be true. Okay? You don't think

01:21:29.600 that if I had called somebody up and asked for a favor, they'd be raising their hand right

01:21:32.920 now and saying, he called me. He called me. You don't think that they would immediately

01:21:37.620 announce it? Of course they would. I would have been fine if you'd done that because

01:21:41.040 it's your brother. But I'm saying the media would say, no, this is unethical. I didn't

01:21:46.500 do what they say. But I foolishly believed, and this was a mistake, that my bosses, the

01:21:58.820 media, the people who I thought knew me, would allow this uncomfortable balance to be respected

01:22:08.740 and seen for what it was. And because look, is it a conflict? Of course it's a conflict.

01:22:14.960 Unless your boss says it's okay. Which obviously he did, right? Because obviously

01:22:20.340 there was no secret about me talking to my brother and listening to some of his meetings

01:22:25.700 with his staff. And it was a mistake for me to think that that would be respected and

01:22:33.480 treated fairly. I should have never thought that way. I should have seen it for the way

01:22:38.780 I would now if someone came to me and said, do you think this is going to be a problem?

01:22:42.120 Yeah, it's going to be a problem. As soon as they find out about this.

01:22:45.760 But can I just ask you, and it was a mistake.

01:22:47.520 The only part that rings a little false is when you said, to my ear, is when you said

01:22:51.780 that would have been unethical. And so you're someone who's been in the media your whole

01:22:56.400 life at high levels, ABC News, Fox News, CNN, news nation, news nation now. But like, you

01:23:06.460 know, because you've lived in that world that ethics in the media are like lower than they

01:23:11.780 are among prostitutes. Like, I think, first of all, you got to live your own standard, right?

01:23:18.540 Fair. You got to live your own standard. And I believe in the media. I believe in it. I think

01:23:26.900 it's, if not, I don't want to say the most, but it's definitely one of the main signatures of our

01:23:32.560 democracy. And you know from your travels.

01:23:34.400 I couldn't agree more.

01:23:35.400 And there's no question that's in peril.

01:23:36.920 So you're saying, to be clear, you believe in the idea of...

01:23:39.220 I believe in the idea.

01:23:40.180 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:40.460 And do people practice it that way? Not enough. Everything is imperfect. Everything that is human

01:23:46.300 controlled is imperfect and easily corrupted. Some people do it very well, certainly better

01:23:53.600 than I do. Some people suck and are mean and try to do things just for advantage. And it works

01:23:59.820 really well because we reward the wrong things. Negativity is allowed to be a proxy for insight.

01:24:06.080 Taking you down does lift me up. And people don't want to hear good things about Tucker Carlson.

01:24:13.740 They want to hear bad things about Tucker Carlson. If I were to do a profile of you that was

01:24:21.140 making a fair case for all the success you've had, it would get dismissed as a puff piece and I would

01:24:28.760 be seen as a dupe. If I were to say falsely, but with just a little bit of proof that even regular

01:24:35.620 people who aren't in our business would be like, God, the proof is kind of thin on this,

01:24:39.300 that Tucker Carlson loves to kick puppies, they would say, that's a hard-hitting piece

01:24:43.780 of journalism right there. Because negativity is the proxy for insight. So that's our business.

01:24:49.280 So they would look with that mindset. I made it too easy for them to come after me for my situation.

01:24:57.520 And I sort of seen it, but more importantly, my real mistake was allowing my family to absorb

01:25:02.520 that blow as if it were just about me and my brother. And it wasn't. And it's really hard to

01:25:10.100 have something that goes so wrong in your life where you come out of it like, I don't even know

01:25:15.420 what I would do differently. There's no world where I don't help my brother. There's no world where I

01:25:19.940 don't help my family, where I don't help my friends. That's all I am. But what I did to my family,

01:25:28.700 what I did to my kids, I hate myself for it. And all I can do is to try to be different now,

01:25:39.120 make different choices now. Like, I don't pick fights the way I used to. I believed that my value

01:25:47.400 at the time on CNN was, I'm going to bring on Tucker Carlson. He's a smart guy. He's practiced on what

01:25:53.440 he is. I'm going to take him apart tonight. Not gratuitously, but I'm going to take him on on his own

01:25:57.480 basis. I want him at his best. Whatever his best argument is, let's have him on and let's get after

01:26:02.120 it. I don't do that the same way anymore. And- Because you're gun shy or you- No, because it's

01:26:09.300 not worth what it did to my family. But there's been a saving grace, which is what brings me here

01:26:18.020 today to be with you. It doesn't work anymore. Yeah. You tearing me apart on any issue. Not

01:26:24.160 personally. Let's say it's just policy. You just kill me on immigration. Okay? It doesn't move the

01:26:29.940 needle. The people who believe me think you're an asshole. And the people who believe you think

01:26:34.380 that I'm an idiot who shouldn't be listened to. That's it. It doesn't change any minds. It doesn't

01:26:39.660 change any minds. It's true. The only thing that can change minds is to change your audience to

01:26:44.320 critical thinkers and people who are open. They're not lemmings. They're not sheeple. They're not party

01:26:49.300 people. They're independent. They're free agents. They're critical thinkers. And to have conversations

01:26:54.980 that are uncomfortable. So how could you possibly be upset about being fired? I mean, this sounds

01:26:59.840 like, this is not flattery, it's sincere. That sounds like a much more enlightened view of the

01:27:05.940 world, a truer view of the world than the view that cable news encourages. That's a good thing,

01:27:12.120 isn't it? Look, again, bad things happen. You get an opportunity, what to do with them. I'm

01:27:18.340 choosing to try to create a better professional mode for myself. But, but, I can't look at what

01:27:30.000 happened to me and not see injury. Now, do I have the ability to say, Chris, I'll show you injury.

01:27:36.800 Injury has fallen off a crane. Injury is getting cancer. Injury is not being able to feed your family.

01:27:41.900 True. I am ridiculously blessed. I never think otherwise. My father would haunt me if I did.

01:27:48.040 I know that for a fact. But, I had a platform, a position at a place where there was incredible

01:27:59.320 reach. And I was able to weigh in on whatever mattered in the world and get an audience that

01:28:06.200 was unfathomable to me before I was at CNN. And I lost that when I was fired. And I'll never get it

01:28:13.340 back. Never. And my name right now is Chris Cuomo. I'm okay with that. Comma. Fired by CNN. I accept

01:28:24.900 that. That's a fact. Comma. For lying about what he did to help his brother. That is not true. And it

01:28:34.240 cannot stand. And I cannot have my kids have to deal with that as a Google search of me. It's not true.

01:28:40.940 And the people who said it know it's not true. So, there's an injury. You know, I always used to,

01:28:48.980 maybe I'm the one who grew up in the mafia family because I just don't see that. I didn't grow up in

01:28:52.800 a mafia family. I know. I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I just want to take your head and squeeze it.

01:28:58.540 No. No. Is that wrong? Is that evil? It's a little wrong. But I'll accept it. But I just don't,

01:29:06.720 look, lying is bad. It's always bad. Lying is always bad. But doing whatever you can to help

01:29:13.100 your family, again, it's just a hierarchy of loyalty. And anyone who tells you that you have,

01:29:18.560 except to God, a higher loyalty than to your own family, that's your enemy. No,

01:29:25.200 your loyalty is to your family. Okay? Period. So, I don't, you know, you say you didn't lie. I actually

01:29:30.460 completely believe you. But if I found out that you did lie, I wouldn't judge you. It's your brother.

01:29:36.120 I mean, like, what? I think it matters. If your brother was on the run and he said,

01:29:41.020 can you give me 500 bucks for a big passport? I give it to you. In a second. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I feel.

01:29:47.440 So, like, how is that a sin? I don't know if it's a sin. I don't know if it's right. I don't know if

01:29:51.780 it's wrong. I'm just telling you that's the way I am. Yeah. But. Good. Well, I admire that.

01:29:56.600 If I had been lying, look, I apologized. Okay? And this was really hard for me. Not,

01:30:01.760 I mean, I apologize all the time when you make repeated mistakes the way I do. And you lose

01:30:06.180 your temper and you do stupid shit that you didn't mean to do. You wind up apologizing a lot if you're

01:30:10.740 trying to get better. I apologized for what? For what I did? No. For helping my brother? No. Because

01:30:18.500 I was told by my boss that people at CNN felt that they'd been compromised by what was coming out

01:30:25.120 about what I was doing for my brother. That, I never, I never saw that coming. And if I had

01:30:30.480 known at the beginning, and I offered to leave twice, if I knew at the beginning that it was

01:30:35.720 going to be bad for the men and women who were working at CNN doing what they were doing and

01:30:40.640 I was going to compromise their ability to do it, I would have quit like that if I had known.

01:30:45.400 Can I just say, I mean, I don't know, how long did you spend at CNN?

01:30:49.140 Over 10 years. Over 10 years. So I didn't spend quite 10 years. I spent a long time there.

01:30:52.820 And the idea that they would have moral qualms about that at CNN is just not believable. Just

01:30:57.380 don't believe that. I mean, they put on from Operation Tailwind when I was there to the

01:31:02.360 Russiagate stuff, which was just factually untrue, to all kinds of other stuff. Like they have no

01:31:06.560 qualms about lying because I've seen it. They did when I worked there. And so I just don't believe that

01:31:12.120 they were morally offended by a man helping his brother and not even in ridiculous ways. Like you

01:31:16.680 weren't, you know what I mean? So I guess my question is, I'm used to seeing people taken out for

01:31:22.160 political reasons. You're from one of the most famous Democratic Party families in the world.

01:31:27.840 You're related by marriage to the Kennedys. Like no one's doubting, right? What side you're on,

01:31:31.680 at least by appearances. Why? What was the real reason they took you out? I just don't believe that.

01:31:36.880 That they were offended. I mean, bullshit.

01:31:39.060 I hurt CNN. How? Because the media saw me and what I was doing as being beneath the level of

01:31:49.380 transparency and ethical obligations that someone should have in the position that I was in.

01:31:55.380 I don't like to swear, you know, but I just can't say bullshit enough. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

01:31:59.700 I'm telling you. Jeff Zucker was like having an affair with an employee, supposedly, according to the

01:32:04.400 media. But, and was later let go because of it, according to the media. But the point is,

01:32:09.540 I just don't believe that. And my guess, because I don't know, because no one there will talk to me

01:32:14.400 anymore. But my guess is. They won't talk to me either. Which really hurts. It's crazy though.

01:32:19.660 It really hurts. But I'll tell you what though. But I think it was the testosterone level thing.

01:32:22.760 They just don't want a man who doesn't hate himself on TV. That's what I think. Look, that's not the

01:32:28.940 reason that was stated. People get frustrated with me because I don't go bad on Jeff Zucker. And I

01:32:35.360 won't. Two reasons. What I said earlier about the opportunities he gave me. And two, that's a bad

01:32:41.700 place. And I've been there. And if you let yourself get absorbed. I get it. It is hard to get out. So

01:32:48.360 I have so much respect and concern for so many people who are still at CNN. And I think it's an

01:32:57.680 amazing place that's capable of amazing things. And I really miss what I had there.

01:33:04.240 I get it.

01:33:05.880 And it would be easier, I guess, and outwardly more satisfying to be like, I hate them. And I hope

01:33:12.420 bad things happen. No, no, no. And I'm glad you don't feel that way. I don't feel that way about

01:33:16.000 my last employer. I'm not mad at them at all. I never feel mad at them. And I'm not. And I mean it.

01:33:21.600 But. I'm mad. I'm angry about what happened to me.

01:33:25.620 I just don't. There's clearly a reason that's different from the stated reason.

01:33:31.160 And I think the most obvious answer. I think I was just trouble. I became trouble for them.

01:33:37.060 And the brand matters more. And when it was working for them, I was the man. And they couldn't get

01:33:42.640 enough of me. You were the highest rated show. Right. Not even close. I was the number one show.

01:33:47.400 But they. They can't fire you if you've got the number one show. Oh, yes, they can.

01:33:51.420 Are you serious? Yeah, like this. And out you go. Wow.

01:33:54.700 And look. Wow. But I keep that in mind. It's a tough business. I understand that. And here's

01:34:01.400 what I tell myself now. And I think this is important for our audiences also. This is what

01:34:05.980 I signed up for. The really, really impressive ability you have to separate yourself from the

01:34:13.600 impressions of you. I don't have that. That's good. I say that, but I don't have it the way you do.

01:34:19.920 I now tell myself this. And this is what keeps my hands like this instead of like this.

01:34:26.880 I signed up for this. You want to be forward facing? No. You want to be in the media? No,

01:34:31.540 that's true. You want to have the platform? You want people to listen to what you say?

01:34:35.300 Then you're going to have to listen to what they say. And if they don't like you, you have to take

01:34:38.500 it. And that's what you signed up for. If you don't like it, that's fine. Leave. Go work somewhere

01:34:44.220 else. Go start an electrical services company and have a different life and live it. But if you

01:34:52.640 want to be public facing and you want to be part of the dialogue in the arena, right, as Teddy

01:34:58.220 Roosevelt said, then this is what you signed up for. And I tell myself that all the time.

01:35:04.100 And it never ends well. I mean, it doesn't. It always ends in tears. These relationships with

01:35:08.320 these media companies have lived it. I have to ask, though, did anyone, well, was it Zasloff,

01:35:14.160 by the way, who did it, do you think? Look, he wasn't in yet. But it's hard for me to believe

01:35:23.220 that, you know, Jeff Zucker, I thought he like was making that deal happen. You know, another regret

01:35:31.820 for me on this is, God, you know, Jeff was so important to that place. He was so valuable.

01:35:39.560 And because of this dynamic, he wound up being out. And I never wanted that. You know, people

01:35:47.120 say, well, at least he got fired. I feel terribly that he got fired. Good. And he was so valuable

01:35:53.700 to that place. I mean, we see that now. I don't know who knew and who did what. I'm

01:36:01.620 told things. I'm not going to repeat them because I can't prove them. But I don't

01:36:06.220 think it was a one man decision. It never is. So when you did leave after 10 years as

01:36:12.040 the highest, your highest rated show when you were. I didn't leave. I was fired. When

01:36:16.420 you got shit canned, as you said. Did any of the other anchors call you to say, gosh,

01:36:22.760 I got kind of shafted. I'm sorry to see you go or. No. Nobody called you. No on air

01:36:30.000 person. People called. A couple of guys, but none of the ones that you know or you recognize

01:36:36.620 with the CNN brand. Why? Because they were told things that weren't true. And I think

01:36:46.980 in fairness to them, you take care of yourself in those positions and you don't get caught

01:36:53.400 in a situation where maybe you'll get swept into the controversy of being on Cuomo's side

01:36:59.600 and he's the wrong side. He's the bad side. I'm on Jeff's side. I'm on C whatever side

01:37:05.580 you protect yourself. But if you work for a company or any organization that prevents you

01:37:11.640 or terrifies you into not making human contact, expressing sympathy. I don't know that they

01:37:17.560 terrified him into it. I think it's I think it's either they didn't want to talk to me because

01:37:21.620 they thought I fucked up or they didn't want to talk to me because they thought I messed

01:37:26.000 up or they didn't know what to do or they were worried about what would happen if they

01:37:35.580 did. And I get it. But by the way, they're not the only news organization that behaves

01:37:40.620 like this at all. They all do as far as I know. But isn't that a red flag that you're

01:37:45.080 working for like horrible people? Look, it was an ugly situation. But they're ugly people

01:37:49.240 though. I mean, like who would do that if I, you know, if I fired someone who worked

01:37:53.940 for me, who was popular or unpopular or whatever, I would never say to the other people on staff,

01:37:58.520 don't ever reach out to that person. I don't judge it. You know, Marcus Aurelius is one of

01:38:05.440 my favorite philosophers, right? He was the last of the good emperors, whatever that means

01:38:10.620 in Rome. And he says the greatest revenge is to not be what you oppose. I agree with that.

01:38:18.140 And that is hard to do, especially for me. I'm ridiculously petty. And not just because

01:38:23.540 I'm Sicilian.

01:38:24.980 No, it's probably just because it's Sicilian.

01:38:26.180 Well, maybe a little bit. But it's really hard to do. And I don't judge people for not

01:38:33.000 reaching out to me. I get it. I get that it was hard. I get that this is really painful

01:38:39.620 for a lot of people in a lot of ways. And I really feel badly about that. I wish I had

01:38:44.500 control over it. But I don't. And I am here. And I am a phone call away for anybody. And

01:38:53.940 now people are calling. Now they're calling. And I'm good with that. And if I can help,

01:39:00.900 I want to help. And if you want to reach out, I'm here.

01:39:06.300 What do you think the chances are that some of the people who didn't call you, I'm not

01:39:11.400 naming Anderson or Wolf by name.

01:39:13.660 You just did.

01:39:14.660 Oh, I did. Sometimes I have trouble discerning between-

01:39:17.740 Inside voice, outside voice?

01:39:19.260 The internal dialogue monologue.

01:39:20.960 That explains it a lot.

01:39:23.080 But that your colleagues will be calling you in a couple years as your former employer does

01:39:28.620 collapse under the weight of its own irrelevance and sort of ask you for guidance on how to

01:39:33.180 live outside the system.

01:39:35.300 Well, look, it is different doing what you're doing now, doing what I'm doing now. I don't

01:39:42.900 think CNN is going to collapse. I think it's a very powerful organization. I think everybody's

01:39:49.000 got to retool and find different ways to be effective. If anybody can do it, CNN will.

01:39:53.780 I don't know the new management team there. I don't know this guy. I hear positive things

01:39:58.520 about him from people in-house. It's hard times in the media. It is. News Nation, where

01:40:05.860 I am, is hiring. I think it's the only cable news outfit that's growing. It's the benefit

01:40:14.120 of starting low. But it is growing. And I think the main reason that it is, is because there's

01:40:20.900 such a desperation for different and disruption of the norms. And I know it because people

01:40:29.780 say it to me all the time. The most common thing is, I don't know what they're going to

01:40:33.380 say after this, but the most common thing I've heard up until this is, you know, at CNN,

01:40:39.060 I saw you differently. Now, sometimes they'll say you were different at CNN. I don't see that.

01:40:46.360 I mean, I was certainly different personally because I hadn't gone through this maelstrom,

01:40:50.740 this crucible. But they'll say, you know, when you were at CNN, I didn't like this. But now I do

01:40:56.320 now. And I think that there's just so much silo thinking that News Nation is not part of that.

01:41:04.740 And it's getting an opportunity to just be what people see on its air without people thinking,

01:41:10.780 well, I know they're trying to trick me into being this way or that way. And I think that's

01:41:15.080 probably why it's growing. But I'm sure that's right. I'm the last person who would know,

01:41:21.040 as you know. But I think it's also important to acknowledge that maybe changes have taken place

01:41:27.580 within you. I mean, your views probably don't agree with all of them. I know I don't.

01:41:32.260 But you do seem, well, smart, I will say that, but very self-aware.

01:41:39.040 And that's new.

01:41:41.940 So I wonder if like, well, having been fired and humiliated a lot, I've always thought that

01:41:47.340 men need to be humiliated regularly, especially people who are successful, because otherwise they

01:41:52.620 become totally unbearable. And I wonder if that's like not the greatest thing that ever happened.

01:41:57.800 It's good to be humiliated.

01:42:00.620 I think that you can find value in it. There's value in suffering. There's value in struggle.

01:42:08.160 There's value in pain. In fact, I do believe that the things that have shaped my life, when

01:42:13.480 I look back at like what moments mattered and what moves mattered, what events, they're

01:42:19.280 almost all negative.

01:42:27.040 Well, let me flip it around. Have you ever learned anything important from eating French

01:42:32.440 toast in bed on vacation?

01:42:34.460 No. No. The easy moments don't yield that much.

01:42:41.300 So you said, I can't complain. I don't have cancer. I haven't fallen off a crane, I think

01:42:46.060 is what you said. And I hope I never get cancer and I hope I never fall off a crane. But there

01:42:51.920 is something, I know a lot of people have had cancer and are completely fine and grateful

01:42:57.300 to be alive, of course, and they suffer. But there is a difference between suffering with

01:43:02.820 an ailment that's not your fault and being publicly humiliated as a result of decisions

01:43:09.700 that you made and suddenly becoming unpopular with all the cool kids. Like that seems in a

01:43:15.780 lot of ways, I'm not in any way minimizing all the other bad things that happen to people,

01:43:19.200 but that seems like it's in its own category.

01:43:21.640 It's different. I would argue that I was never really that popular with the cool kids.

01:43:28.200 I've always been kind of boxed out in the media. Why? Because my name's Cuomo. And when I first

01:43:37.100 wanted to get into this business, I couldn't even get a job at New York One. The reason that

01:43:41.560 I wound up working at Fox News was because Roger Ailes was the only one who would give

01:43:47.920 me a shot. Everywhere else I went, you know, I was a lawyer. I'd been practicing law. And

01:43:53.700 your father's Mario Cuomo, it hurt me.

01:43:56.900 Among the liberal outlets, but it was Roger Ailes who was the only one who gave me a job.

01:44:01.600 How interesting. Why?

01:44:02.760 He said, so, yeah, a little bit of a long story, but through mutual relationships, he had seen me

01:44:11.480 on television. And his joke was, this guy looks like he should be on a soap opera, but he sounds

01:44:20.340 like he's from the inner city. And he said, let me meet him. And I met him and we talked

01:44:28.800 about a million different things. And he said, look, they're going to make you go to local

01:44:34.040 television and you're going to learn a lot of bad habits. You're going to learn a lot

01:44:37.040 of good things. I'll bring you in here. I see something in you and I'll teach you everything

01:44:42.600 I know. Here's the thing though. If you fail, you're done because you'll be failing at a

01:44:49.660 place where people are going to see you fail. This is not West Virginia. But if you don't

01:44:54.560 fail and you pick it up, you're going to leapfrog ahead of where you would have been

01:44:58.880 otherwise. He said, and here's the good news. You don't seem to give a shit whether you

01:45:03.380 succeeded this or not, because I wasn't going into it because I wanted to be a star. I thought

01:45:08.420 there was an incredible opportunity to contact people and to show them things and mess with

01:45:17.620 how they feel about things that wasn't being used. It seemed so cookie cutter to me at the

01:45:23.000 time. When I entered the business, they would talk to me about how I tracked and that these

01:45:30.040 aren't movie lines, Chris. You know, you have to read them. You know, there's an intonation

01:45:33.980 and your hands kind of keep your hands down. By the time I left, I was like a model of like,

01:45:39.700 you don't use your hands more. You know, you got to be more natural. Those sound like everybody

01:45:42.720 real. Things change. So I went there and Roger made good on his promise. He sent me all over

01:45:49.620 the country covering crime, learning the skills of being a broadcaster and an interviewer,

01:45:56.220 the trinity of interviewing. He said to me, pointed at this here and here. He said, you've

01:46:03.060 got to balance your head, your heart and your balls. And there's a time to be ballsy. There's

01:46:08.840 a time to be compassionate. There's a time to be smart. And you got to figure out what

01:46:12.860 the balance is, the alchemy of them. And he gave me those opportunities. And he told

01:46:18.400 me when I left to go to ABC News, he said, you're making a mistake. He said, they will

01:46:24.700 never accept you. And I said, they don't accept me now because we're at Fox News. I was like,

01:46:30.020 you know, this is, I got to go. This is like the real place. And he was like, they're never

01:46:33.980 going to accept you. Was he right? I think to a certain extent, there's been a selective

01:46:42.120 kind of exclusion, but it never really mattered to me. I didn't go into this business to be a star

01:46:48.560 to make friends. I got my people and I'm not really friends with a lot of people who are in

01:46:53.240 the media. I never have been. And if I am, it's because our friendship transcends media. It's not

01:47:01.080 based of it. And the relationships that I had that were largely media based,

01:47:06.100 they disappeared when I got shit canned with a few exceptions.

01:47:09.200 Because they're not loyal people.

01:47:10.940 I think that it's like you stop going to the nightclub. You know, I hang out in the nightclub.

01:47:16.660 I go to the nightclub. You're not allowed in the nightclub anymore. I guess I'm not going to see

01:47:19.960 you that much. And that's what the relationship was about.

01:47:23.360 I never have brunch with Wolf Blitzer anymore. It's weird.

01:47:26.040 I love Wolf Blitzer. I called him the captain. I thought that he was such, is such. I don't know

01:47:35.140 what I'm talking about in past tense. Wolf is such a great exemplar of what I wanted to be in that

01:47:41.940 business. He's unfailingly kind. He does what he thinks is right and he works his ass off.

01:47:48.540 Um, uh, I, I called him the captain. I, I miss him. Um, I miss a lot of them, but life goes on.

01:47:57.100 He's unfailingly polite. I would definitely say that having worked with him.

01:48:00.820 Oh, it's more than that. If you talk to the people who stars are usually not nice to,

01:48:06.180 you know how they'll say, Oh, he or she, they're a little hard on the furniture.

01:48:11.120 Furniture is a metaphor for these other human beings that are doing jobs in production.

01:48:16.220 And he, you won't find someone. He's the kind of person that if you say you don't like Wolf,

01:48:23.180 there's something wrong with you. It's not because it's not because of him. Me, you can dislike.

01:48:28.380 Like I have people who have the same last name who will say, hold on. I love the guy. These are

01:48:33.260 things I don't like. I'll tell you one thing you and I share you. I noticed this when people talk

01:48:37.880 about your wife, when they talk about your wife, they talk the same way they do about my wife.

01:48:42.620 Yeah. Oh, when you meet her, she's the nicest person. She is a good person. And then a little

01:48:53.340 subtly, it's like, as opposed to the guy she's married to. We have a phrase to that in my house.

01:49:00.520 It's called DA, the designated asshole. And that's my job. That's my job, baby.

01:49:05.380 I own it. I own it. But I'm trying. And I believe that even this is a function of that. People aren't

01:49:12.340 going to like this. They're either going to say that I should have basically been raking you over

01:49:17.740 the coals all the time. Otherwise, there's no value to this. I'm just allowing people to not see you for

01:49:24.240 what you are. And I just don't think that gets us anywhere. And I think people can make their own

01:49:28.940 minds up about things. That's just a silly partisan point on either side. And of course, that's the past.

01:49:34.980 I do think it's bigger of me, though, than you. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I was

01:49:40.080 thinking about this, actually, during the conversation. One, you're less injured by what

01:49:45.800 happened to you than I am. You are killing it business-wise, right? Everything you do is huge.

01:49:52.700 And your boy Musk, meeting with Trump, by the way, to fund his campaign now. I want to get your head on

01:49:58.420 that. But I feel like this was really... I'm surprised that I was able to listen to our council

01:50:10.580 and say, wait, no, this guy has done nothing but hit me like a pinata. And I decided, you know what,

01:50:18.700 that was them. And let me meet him on his own terms.

01:50:21.900 The funny thing is... But that was big for me. I'm a very small person.

01:50:24.640 I barely remember that. I know. I hate that. I hate it. Because I remember all of them.

01:50:29.880 So I have a really good friend who I talked to this morning. He's just a wonderful man.

01:50:34.400 And his name is Glenn Greenwald. And you can agree or disagree with his views on...

01:50:38.400 He has also kicked my ass on a regular basis.

01:50:40.620 No one was ever meaner to me than Glenn Greenwald. No one ever. And he must have written 50 pieces

01:50:46.360 calling me various names, all unpleasant names. And we ended up six or seven years ago meeting

01:50:53.780 and finding that we agreed on some things, not everything, obviously, but some things.

01:50:58.540 And that friendship, and I think it's fair to call it a friendship, has just brought me so much joy.

01:51:03.800 It's so nice to see that someone is like... That you're wrong about your assessment of somebody.

01:51:09.580 And the person is almost like way better. And I have to say, I've had that experience so much

01:51:12.780 in my life. It's the greatest privilege of this job is to meet people and find that they're nothing

01:51:17.500 like the caricature. Occasionally, they're worse. You know, but that is...

01:51:21.220 Or you're right about whatever they are.

01:51:22.740 Or you're right. That's exactly right. That has happened to me, having interviewed thousands

01:51:25.520 of people, as you have. But I would say most of the time, I'm like, I like that guy.

01:51:30.680 Do you know what I mean? I really have felt that.

01:51:33.020 Depends how you meet him and, you know, the context. I think the context matters.

01:51:36.840 Sometimes people are in performance mode. They're being what they think they need to

01:51:40.040 be in a thing. What did Greenwald say when you said you were going to talk to me?

01:51:44.600 I didn't. I didn't tell him. Yeah, we were talking about something else.

01:51:47.540 What do you think he would have said? What do you think he will say?

01:51:49.300 I don't know. I didn't know he was opposed to you.

01:51:52.600 I don't know that he's opposed. I don't think that I really matter to him. But I mean,

01:51:55.500 you know, he's coming after me now and again. I'm an easy target of opportunity. I get that now.

01:52:01.220 You know, having a year of not being on and watching TV, which I don't do a lot of news

01:52:10.580 watching. I don't like it to confuse what I think the right angles and the right things

01:52:17.620 are for me to do on my show. But having that time to watch and think, I'd probably come

01:52:25.880 after me too.

01:52:26.400 Well, I will say it's fun. I'm just being honest. You should do that.

01:52:31.420 It's really not my way, by the way. But I got to tell you, you made it hard to try to not play

01:52:36.840 the game that was being played on the other side of it. But I do know this and I know this. And

01:52:42.360 I know it again, what I signed up for. I know two things about our business, okay? One is

01:52:51.540 the two-party system has failed us. Yes. And Trump versus Biden, all due respect to them and their

01:52:58.160 fans, okay? I'm not impugning them as people. Although Trump, I could go down the road with.

01:53:03.740 The fact that they're the choices and that the country sees that they are inadequate choices

01:53:11.420 only has one source, the party system. It has failed us. It's not the Constitution. It's not

01:53:18.560 a creature of law. It's just tradition. The Supreme Court said that in the 1970s. It's got to go.

01:53:23.700 I don't know how it goes. I don't need to know how to go to know that it's a problem.

01:53:27.500 When you go to Thanksgiving, a family Thanksgiving, I mean, you're the son and brother of two of the

01:53:32.460 most famous governors in the last 50 years. This does not go over well. It doesn't, okay.

01:53:36.780 Because I have real Democrats and real Republicans in my family. And what I say to them is,

01:53:42.620 you know, which by the way, I say very little because, you know, I'm trying to get my holiday

01:53:48.540 on here. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But what is your party even about? What are you

01:53:53.400 except they suck? What are you? What are Republicans now? Because I remember back in the day,

01:53:58.920 I married into a real Republican family. They are real people of character, of fiscal austerity.

01:54:05.240 They have a different position than the current orthodoxy about what policy should be abroad.

01:54:10.680 Character counts. You know, they were real conservatives, okay? That's not what that party

01:54:14.920 is anymore. Democrats, my father's Democratic Party, he was all about workers. He was about the

01:54:21.260 underclass. But he was about government does everything you need it to do and nothing more.

01:54:28.060 You help the people who can't help themselves. That's what it was supposed to do. And it was

01:54:31.740 supposed to try to find ways for people to cooperate. That's what he was all about.

01:54:35.980 I remember sitting in the executive mansion in Albany, and he had the head of the Senate,

01:54:42.060 Italian guy, Ralph Marino. They were absolutely at each other's throats, okay? Budgets and stuff like

01:54:50.620 that, right? Pop was the governor. This guy was the head of the Republican Party, basically.

01:54:56.540 He brings Ralph Marino over. They sit on the couch, opens a bottle of wine, or I think I actually opened

01:55:01.900 the bottle of wine. And they started talking, and my father was like, you know, Ralph,

01:55:08.780 you know, I don't want to hear this and this about me. Ralph's like, fine, you're right. That went too far.

01:55:14.860 But what you're trying to do with this is, this just is not right. And you're trying to force it on

01:55:20.860 us and you're holding this thing. And they had this whole conversation. A Republican and a Democrat.

01:55:27.580 This guy was the leader on the Senate, you know, state side, okay? He had no business by today's

01:55:35.100 rules being in that house, let alone making a deal. Not a bad deal, not subterfuge, but I get it. We

01:55:44.620 disagree, but we got too hot. And that's a mistake. Now, how do we make this budget? How do we get this

01:55:50.220 done? That's what it was about. And by the way, that was tortured enough. What we are now is you're

01:55:58.300 a traitor if you're in that room. Of course. And I know two things. The two-party system has failed

01:56:02.940 us. And we have to have more voices and more conversation, not less. I know it. And that

01:56:10.460 doesn't mean that people have to agree. In fact, the opposite is better. And I know I'm going to get

01:56:15.500 beat up for it. And that's okay, because that's what I signed up for. But I'm happy that we did this.

01:56:21.500 I think there's value in it to people. And some won't think that, but I'm not going for all.

01:56:27.020 I'm only going for some because there's only a small slice of people right now who have an open

01:56:30.860 mind about anything. The winnables. My firing is not more important than your firing.

01:56:37.100 Why do you think that you were the one? Like, you know, you're getting my head on why it was me.

01:56:42.540 Yeah. Why do you think it was you?

01:56:46.380 I mean, strictly speaking, I have no idea. I've never been told. I've heard a lot of people

01:56:52.300 throw around theories, but I don't know which are true. And I don't really care.

01:56:57.580 But more broadly, I understand why. It's called destiny.

01:57:02.380 You know, your life has an arc and a path and you don't know what it is, but you can feel it

01:57:09.740 happen. But you didn't say, why me? What about all these other people?

01:57:13.100 No. I felt like this was always going to happen. I mean, I was shocked for like three minutes,

01:57:19.500 but that was it. Well, I talked to you right after, I think within a couple of days. And no,

01:57:23.100 I was, this is my path. And there will come a time when you, you know, you show up for your annual

01:57:27.740 physical and he's like stage four pancreatic. And you're like, okay. You know, I mean, that's just,

01:57:31.420 that's just what, that's what it is. And so I'm almost never really shocked by anything that happens,

01:57:37.260 but that I just immediately saw the upside. And cause I wasn't mad and I wasn't mad actually.

01:57:45.580 And, um, are you on medication?

01:57:47.100 I don't, I don't take Advil, like even Advil.

01:57:49.820 Really? So this is just you. Oh, you'll never meet anyone who's more opposed to pills than I am

01:57:54.940 or any, any intoxicants of any kind other than nicotine and coffee. That's it.

01:57:58.300 That's where our roads diverge.

01:57:59.980 Dude, I am. I am about better life through chemistry.

01:58:05.020 No, I don't take anything ever, like ever. In fact, I had a back spasm yesterday. I've had back

01:58:09.900 surgery and it hurt. It's like, I'm not taking Advil. Um, no, I'm just totally opposed to that.

01:58:14.620 That's a whole nother conversation. But, um, yeah, I'm with, who's that weird actor in Scientology?

01:58:20.060 I can't remember. Tom Cruise.

01:58:22.220 You had the reach for Tom Cruise's name?

01:58:24.700 I couldn't, I'm sorry. I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember.

01:58:27.820 But he gave some speech on TV a few years ago or several years ago, 10 years ago,

01:58:31.980 about how SSRIs and all that stuff is evil. And everyone's like, he's crazy.

01:58:36.540 But I was like the only person. It's like, you go, Tom Cruise.

01:58:40.540 You were on the wrong side of that.

01:58:42.140 No, dude, I was so, I'm all about that. Anyway, no, I, I really felt that it was destiny as I feel

01:58:48.540 that most things are. I think there is a plan. Anyway, I just want to thank you. That was like

01:58:52.860 the most interesting conversation I've had in a long time. And I sincerely enjoyed it.

01:58:57.500 I believe in conversation.

01:58:58.700 Amen.

01:58:59.260 I appreciate an invitation to your house.

01:59:00.700 Thank you.

01:59:01.260 And the lines are open.

01:59:03.820 I'll be texting.

01:59:04.620 All right.

01:59:05.500 I'll be telling you how much everybody hates me for this, because you won't be paying attention.

01:59:09.660 No, I won't. At all.

01:59:12.940 You'll be laughing.

01:59:14.140 I'll be crying.

01:59:15.660 But I won't be. This was the right thing to do.

01:59:17.660 Thank you, Tucker.

01:59:18.300 Fuck that.

01:59:19.340 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - March 11, 2024

Chris Cuomo

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