The Tucker Carlson Show - Dave Smith： Debating Douglas Murray, the “Woke Right” Narrative, and the Moment He Found God

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00:00:30.000 Dave, I'm really glad to see you.

00:00:32.000 I know you've been here before.

00:00:35.260 But it's nice to have you back.

00:00:37.400 I am an expert in all things Tucker Carlson.

00:00:40.740 So I know you've been asked this a million times,

00:00:44.640 but I'm coming to this late.

00:00:47.380 How do you assess the debate that you had with Douglas Murray?

00:00:52.680 Now, it's been a month.

00:00:53.420 How long has it been?

00:00:54.720 Something like that.

00:00:55.700 Something like a month, right?

00:00:56.600 Yep, a few weeks.

00:00:57.720 Looking back, what was that?

00:01:00.000 It's an interesting question.

00:01:21.860 I mean, I think essentially it was what everyone saw.

00:01:25.840 It was, it's like my first impression of it.

00:01:29.140 My impression during it, during the first half hour of the debate,

00:01:32.380 I was like, well, Douglas just embarrassed himself in front of the world.

00:01:38.920 You felt that in real time.

00:01:40.740 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:01:41.540 Well, I mean, it was, you know, look, he was ridiculous.

00:01:44.400 And it was, it was kind of strange to witness as it was happening.

00:01:50.260 I go, so you decided to open the debate by just chastising everyone as not being as good

00:01:58.040 as you, that the expert class ought to be the ones consulted that you, I mean, you know,

00:02:04.500 you could argue what he exactly he was saying, but he was clearly saying that you, you guys on

00:02:11.900 podcasts are simply not qualified to talk about these subjects.

00:02:17.180 Now, you're saying this on the Joe Rogan experience.

00:02:20.620 Of all places to go and deliver this message, this is the place guaranteed to turn the entire

00:02:27.160 audience against you.

00:02:29.060 And of course, I just think that, um, I think it's a, it's a ridiculous non-argument that

00:02:33.940 never would have made sense, but coming off of the COVID years, the idea that you're going

00:02:39.840 to convince people that you ought to kind of, um, they, they ought to trust your opinions.

00:02:47.580 They ought to, that your class ought to be trusted.

00:02:50.780 Was it ridiculous?

00:02:52.260 But he's not even in that class.

00:02:54.160 I mean, he's not, I know Douglas and I think that I'm always gotten along with him and I

00:02:57.960 think that he's clever, but he's clever in a boarding school way.

00:03:01.060 He went to boarding school, um, as I did, and you instantly recognize it in the way that

00:03:05.660 he debates, which is by dropping references that suggest deep erudition that doesn't actually

00:03:10.980 exist.

00:03:12.360 I think he's clever.

00:03:13.520 He's got a kind of bullshitty boarding school vibe to him again that I recognize that I

00:03:17.140 have sometimes.

00:03:18.100 Right.

00:03:18.260 So I'm not, you know, not trying to be holier than thou, but like the idea that he's an

00:03:21.060 expert is absurd.

00:03:22.620 He's a journalist like the rest of us who's been taken on PR tours in various countries

00:03:26.540 by their governments trying to win his support.

00:03:28.720 Got it.

00:03:29.020 I've done that too.

00:03:30.520 Um, but he's hardly an expert on anything.

00:03:33.260 Well, right.

00:03:33.980 Like what?

00:03:34.640 Well, also it doesn't look all of this in, so the, the analogy that I I've used about

00:03:41.320 it is that like, uh, if you had two UFC fighters that are going to fight, so they've signed

00:03:45.800 the contract, they've done their training camps.

00:03:47.560 They show up to Madison square garden.

00:03:49.240 They both get in the octagon and like one of them puts up his hands and then the other

00:03:53.560 one puts his hands down and goes, you know, I'm such a better fighter than you.

00:03:58.480 And this is ridiculous that me and you are even fighting.

00:04:00.900 It's like, Oh, okay.

00:04:02.140 But we are, but we are.

00:04:04.020 We're here for it.

00:04:05.720 We both accepted.

00:04:06.960 We're both here.

00:04:07.940 So if you are such a better fighter, if you have trained so much more, if you have all

00:04:12.340 these advantages against me, well, then you can't just tell you have to demonstrate that

00:04:17.560 take on the argument.

00:04:18.960 You should be able to then destroy me.

00:04:22.040 And so he weirdly opened with this thing where he was going to turn everybody off, turn everyone

00:04:27.720 against it.

00:04:28.240 Cause the style is bullshit.

00:04:29.640 Even if you're, and I've had lots of people who are pro Israel reach out to me since then

00:04:34.180 and be like, listen, I disagree with you on the issue, but that was ridiculous.

00:04:37.120 The way he attempted to argue.

00:04:40.140 Because weirdly, number one, you're turning everyone against you.

00:04:43.440 And number two, you're just setting the bar so much higher for yourself.

00:04:47.100 Cause now once we start actually getting into the debate, you've already explained that you

00:04:52.460 should be dominating me on every facet of this.

00:04:55.620 And yet you're not.

00:04:57.220 And yet actually, when it comes down to it, you have no answer for the points that I'm

00:05:02.240 making.

00:05:02.720 And that was the theme of the entire knowledge.

00:05:05.320 Yes, that's right.

00:05:06.180 But no, but there was, there were two points in the debate that actually stuck out to me

00:05:11.620 the most.

00:05:13.480 And it wasn't the, have you been, which is, you know, was the funniest thing that everyone's

00:05:18.120 making that, you know, Douglas will be mocked for eternity for, but you know, he made his

00:05:22.820 own bed.

00:05:23.280 Um, but the two points to me that really stuck out in the debate, because this is the way

00:05:27.600 my mind works is that I'm like, oh, if you like, give me something, give me something

00:05:32.900 to challenge me on that will actually keep me up at night.

00:05:35.360 By the way, if you were to be like, no, Dave, you got this completely wrong and you need

00:05:38.840 to read these three books to understand why you're missing all this information.

00:05:42.340 Can I interrupt and say, I knowing you pretty well, I think I mean this, I believe I would

00:05:47.860 take a lie detector test and pass.

00:05:49.460 I believe that if you read those books and found that you were wrong, that you would

00:05:53.180 admit it.

00:05:53.860 Oh yeah.

00:05:54.300 And I've done this lots of times before I have, I have views from a decade ago that

00:05:58.480 are quite embarrassing, uh, in hindsight.

00:06:00.260 I was at one, I was an atheist at one point.

00:06:02.520 I was pro-life, excuse me, I was pro-choice at one point.

00:06:05.940 Um, I've, oh God, this is embarrassing.

00:06:07.920 I was up for open borders at one point.

00:06:09.860 Oh, I've been, I've had all of those views.

00:06:11.380 I've had some really bad views over the years and I've changed my mind all because.

00:06:14.900 Do you think Douglas would admit if he was wrong?

00:06:16.860 Well, of course not.

00:06:17.860 I mean, that's, but that's obvious, right?

00:06:19.320 No, but that's kind of the asset.

00:06:20.240 Well, look, if you can't, if you can get Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and COVID

00:06:25.280 wrong, and then with certainty say you're right about the next one.

00:06:30.360 And then also tell, also arguing that the other person should have some humility.

00:06:35.360 I mean, come on, like, what is this?

00:06:37.900 It's so good.

00:06:38.500 It's just too, you couldn't write, if I just scripted this for you and wrote it on a script,

00:06:42.160 you'd be like, take it down.

00:06:43.320 And this is too ridiculous.

00:06:45.420 No one would believe this, but regardless of that.

00:06:49.260 So there were two moments that actually really stood out to me in the debate, um, were, okay.

00:06:54.200 So number one was in the Ukraine portion.

00:06:57.060 Number two was in the, the Israel portion.

00:06:59.800 So in the Ukraine portion, at one point I said to him, we were talking about the, um,

00:07:05.260 you know, what led up to the war.

00:07:07.080 And so he said something like, he goes, you know, the real question is why all these countries

00:07:12.380 wanted to join NATO.

00:07:13.740 I mean, we didn't incorporate them in NATO through force.

00:07:16.560 And I was like, well, yes, obviously that's the argument.

00:07:19.240 Isn't that we force the governments willingly wanted to join NATO.

00:07:22.900 I was like, that's pretty obvious why you'd want to be subs, you have your defense subsidized.

00:07:27.060 And want to have the most powerful government in the history of the world, guaranteeing

00:07:30.680 your defense.

00:07:31.420 Sure.

00:07:31.680 And also because they're concerned about the former Soviet union, which is still Russia

00:07:36.200 and still, okay.

00:07:37.540 But I was like, but that wasn't the argument.

00:07:39.140 You know, the argument is why would we do this?

00:07:42.060 And so I was like, let me just give you two bullet points, right?

00:07:45.720 Two quick arguments.

00:07:47.020 And the two quick points that I made were number one, uh, the yet means yet memo, which of

00:07:53.240 course, as you know, well, you've talked about this a lot.

00:07:55.000 You talked about this back on your Fox news show was that, uh, uh, Bill Burns later directed

00:08:00.700 the CIA.

00:08:01.260 Yes.

00:08:01.560 The, the CIA director through Joe Biden's four years, who was the CIA director through

00:08:06.260 this entire war up until Trump took back over, but then the ambassador to Russia in 2008,

00:08:10.940 he was the ambassador to Russia.

00:08:12.400 He wrote a private cable to Condoleezza Rice.

00:08:15.140 This was not for the public.

00:08:16.320 This was a private cable that later the heroic Julian Assange released.

00:08:20.040 It's the only reason we know it exists.

00:08:22.100 And he lays out in there that all this talk about Ukrainian entry to NATO is going to lead

00:08:28.360 to a war.

00:08:29.020 And he specifically says that this is the brightest of all red lines for the Russians.

00:08:33.280 And if we keep moving forward, they fear this could result in civil war and, and then

00:08:38.860 they might have to intervene in his words, quote, a choice.

00:08:42.920 The Russians do not want to have to make.

00:08:45.540 So it's like, Hey, there's a pretty compelling piece of evidence.

00:08:48.440 Yes.

00:08:48.700 And then number two, I said, uh, uh, stroll Stoltenberg, I always say this name wrong,

00:08:53.920 but the head of Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, he said that Vladimir Putin in late 2001 put

00:09:01.140 in writing, sent a draft treaty to NATO and said, if you just put into writing that you

00:09:06.740 will not bring Ukraine into NATO, I will not invade the country.

00:09:10.200 This is the head of NATO set.

00:09:11.840 So I give him these two points.

00:09:13.140 Okay.

00:09:13.580 There's, I could talk a lot more about this, but I was like, let's focus on these two.

00:09:16.980 Seems to me that all the powerful people involved are admitting that this war was about Ukrainian

00:09:21.520 entry into NATO.

00:09:22.780 And his response was the war was not about Ukrainian entry into NATO.

00:09:28.540 It was about Vladimir Putin's desires to reconstitute the Soviet union.

00:09:33.920 And I was like, yeah, but what's the response?

00:09:36.740 Like, what's the response to my point?

00:09:38.800 Like I made a point.

00:09:39.940 You made nothing.

00:09:41.120 You just made an assertion.

00:09:42.400 So there was this one where it's like, once you actually get down to it, once you remove

00:09:46.320 all this, like you're an expert, you're not an expert, you've never been, what are you

00:09:50.740 watering?

00:09:51.560 What are the, you've got no actual argument here.

00:09:54.160 Because you're not an expert yourself.

00:09:55.280 Right.

00:09:55.640 But even that, it's like that, again, just the way I work, that doesn't do anything for

00:10:01.680 me.

00:10:01.860 Then you got to have an actual argument.

00:10:03.760 Otherwise you're not going to persuade me.

00:10:05.320 And I think for most of the viewers.

00:10:06.960 And actual knowledge too.

00:10:07.820 Right.

00:10:07.920 I mean, I just refer back to the boarding school thing.

00:10:09.800 It's like the whole point of that style and debating is to create the illusion of knowledge.

00:10:15.900 Well, that's it.

00:10:16.540 Like you have an Aeschylus quote, sort of, you know what I mean?

00:10:19.780 Or you can cite the titles of three D.H.

00:10:22.040 Lawrence novels, but you haven't read the novels.

00:10:23.760 You haven't read Aeschylus.

00:10:24.640 You don't, you don't actually have, you don't have an original thought that's actually yours.

00:10:28.620 But you don't even have the material.

00:10:31.160 You haven't even, you haven't even read the books.

00:10:34.420 It's just, it's a sleight of hand.

00:10:36.940 And that's what they teach you in boarding school.

00:10:39.260 Well, okay.

00:10:40.020 So then the other one, which some people did pick up on this, but this to me was like actually

00:10:45.320 the biggest moment of the debate, I thought.

00:10:48.860 And, and it was sad in a way because Douglas Murray is someone who I have some degree of

00:10:53.380 respect for as a smart person.

00:10:55.480 And it was kind of sad that he was reduced to this.

00:10:57.820 But so he made the argument.

00:10:59.660 He said, first off, he was dishonest where he, and I didn't call him, I knew this, but

00:11:05.240 I let it slide.

00:11:06.380 But he goes, you know, I was very iffy about the war in Libya.

00:11:09.240 And it's like, I've read your columns at the time.

00:11:11.700 No, you fucking Warrens.

00:11:12.640 Okay.

00:11:13.440 Anyway, but he goes, I was very iffy about the war in Libya, but the war in Libya was

00:11:18.180 fought because there was this tremendous fear that Gaddafi was about to go genocidal and

00:11:22.860 it was a humanitarian intervention.

00:11:24.800 And so then I said, okay.

00:11:26.460 Now they have slave markets in Tripoli.

00:11:28.440 Right.

00:11:28.660 It's humanitarian.

00:11:29.760 But even, but forget even the point that, okay, maybe, maybe their argument is they thought

00:11:33.380 he was going to go genocidal and they didn't realize it would be so much worse without

00:11:36.620 him.

00:11:36.900 Like what?

00:11:37.400 But I said, okay, Douglas, so riddle me this then.

00:11:39.540 If it was a humanitarian intervention, how come I have four-star General Wesley Clark

00:11:44.940 telling me 10 years prior that we had already made the plans to go overthrow Gaddafi?

00:11:50.800 Because he said this very clearly to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

00:11:54.340 And then I, I mentioned that he later, uh, actually very recently on, on Pierce Morgan,

00:11:59.840 he clarified, uh, this is really interesting.

00:12:02.700 If people go watch it, Scott Horton, uh, who is amazing by the way, his book provoked is

00:12:07.500 the best book on, uh, Russia, the U S post collapse of the Soviet union relations.

00:12:13.080 His book, uh, enough already is the best book that's been written on the terror wars.

00:12:17.080 So Scott Horton is debating Wesley Clark on Pierce Morgan.

00:12:20.080 And this gets brought up, you know, the fact that you said in 2001, you had already seen

00:12:25.240 in the Pentagon that we were going to overthrow seven countries in five years.

00:12:29.860 And okay.

00:12:31.240 So he says, he goes, well, actually the plans go back to 1991.

00:12:36.180 And I saw them first from Paul Wolfowitz's office.

00:12:39.340 And then basically the plans got killed and then they were revived, uh, uh, by Richard

00:12:45.480 Pearl and a study paid for by the Israelis.

00:12:47.780 This was four star general Wesley Clark's comments on it.

00:12:51.300 So I brought that up and I go, well, look, you're going to say that this is a, um, you

00:12:56.280 know, a humanitarian intervention, but that seems strange because the plans to overthrow

00:13:00.480 Gaddafi were already written many years earlier.

00:13:03.620 And then they had their opportunity and they did it.

00:13:05.400 I think it was more than just a humanitarian intervention.

00:13:08.540 And then his response is this thing about how Paul Wolfowitz's name starts with an animal

00:13:16.120 and ends Jewish.

00:13:18.240 And it was kind of funny the way he said it, but then he just, he went, be careful what

00:13:22.120 you're watering there because you can't, you know, there, a lot of people are going to

00:13:26.260 hate Jews if you just start bringing up Paul Wolfowitz's name.

00:13:30.700 And I just could not believe, by the way, the end result of that is he had no response

00:13:35.540 to what I was saying.

00:13:36.660 He didn't have a response to why this wasn't.

00:13:39.020 But because Paul Wolfowitz has an identifiably Jewish name, you're abetting antisemitism by

00:13:44.320 bringing it up, even though he's a government official who helped get us into this war that

00:13:47.460 killed a million people.

00:13:48.420 Yeah.

00:13:48.680 He's also in other places talked about how Paul Wolfowitz is like a hero in the, in, uh,

00:13:54.880 the Kurds in Iraq consider him a hero because he was the architect of the war that overthrew

00:13:59.980 Saddam Hussein, but like, I'm not allowed to mention him because that, which is, first

00:14:04.380 of all, it's just beside the point, like, forget what this will lead to.

00:14:08.440 What's the truth?

00:14:09.720 That's, that's what matters.

00:14:11.300 So he's of course a very pro-Kurdish, I would imagine.

00:14:14.380 Right.

00:14:14.780 Yes.

00:14:15.160 Yes.

00:14:15.440 I'm sure.

00:14:16.160 Well, I actually have been there.

00:14:17.880 Who have you?

00:14:18.860 Yes, I have been there.

00:14:19.840 And, uh, and I can say firsthand, the most brutal people I've ever met in my life were

00:14:24.100 Kurds.

00:14:24.460 Like actually, I saw it firsthand.

00:14:27.240 So I'm not against the Kurds or whatever, but I, I, it's just interesting.

00:14:30.760 Everyone in Washington, no one's ever met a Kurd or can't define what a Kurd is, but

00:14:36.080 everyone reflexively loves the Kurds.

00:14:38.540 And I, I've never had strong views about the Kurds, but again, I just want to say I've

00:14:41.720 seen it in action in Iraq and I was shocked by the Kurdish behavior personally.

00:14:47.100 Yeah.

00:14:47.360 Well, also, you know, it's, uh, it was all the people who are, you know, we're, we're

00:14:51.720 knocking Donald Trump in his first term when he wanted to pull out of Syria and they were

00:14:55.340 like, what about the Kurds?

00:14:56.300 We can't betray the Kurds.

00:14:57.800 And then those same people will tell you what a great president George HW Bush was, but we

00:15:01.600 can't betray the Kurds, right?

00:15:03.300 There's the guy who really betrayed the Kurds.

00:15:05.700 I mean, told them to rise up against Saddam Hussein and overthrow him and then decided, ah,

00:15:11.160 we're going to back off of that and just allowed them, allowed them to get slaughtered,

00:15:15.280 you know, but, and look, I mean, it was just kind of blatant.

00:15:19.440 It's like, I'm presenting an argument and you're responding with a pure woke tactic,

00:15:25.520 a pure woke tactic to say, which I, as I mentioned to him, I go, but wouldn't this

00:15:30.120 apply to everything you stand for?

00:15:32.760 I mean, everything you stand for about how we shouldn't have so much Muslim immigration

00:15:36.360 into the UK.

00:15:37.300 Okay.

00:15:37.740 Well, someone could take that and that might lead to a rise in hatred of, of Muslim

00:15:42.960 people, but that's not a counter argument.

00:15:45.280 No, that's not an argument.

00:15:46.440 That's like, well, okay, well then maybe you could say you should also add in there.

00:15:50.640 I don't mean all Jewish people are guilty of some conspiracy, but that first of you, I'm

00:15:56.000 Jewish and he's not.

00:15:57.260 So like, what the hell are you talking about?

00:15:58.600 Well, I wouldn't say you're Jewish.

00:15:59.380 So that gets me to, I mean, I don't think you'd convince Douglas that you're Jewish.

00:16:03.440 So I saw that and read the commentary after.

00:16:06.900 And as someone who's always liked Douglas and known him for a while, my first instinct was

00:16:11.940 why he just destroyed his career.

00:16:13.420 Like he's done.

00:16:15.860 No smart person will ever take Douglas seriously again.

00:16:18.660 And I don't, I don't know if he felt that way, but it was clear by a day or two after

00:16:22.580 he realized he destroyed his career.

00:16:24.140 And in response, rather than admitting that and admitting what he'd done wrong, he attacked

00:16:28.900 you, really kind of doubled down in the New York Post.

00:16:31.140 I want to read this because I was offended by this.

00:16:35.360 He goes, the whole column's an attack on you.

00:16:38.100 And I'm quoting, claiming some Jewish ancestry.

00:16:43.300 Smith has spent the last 18 months since October 7th being very unfunny.

00:16:47.920 Indeed.

00:16:48.320 Claiming some Jewish ancestry.

00:16:52.480 Now, I'm not really sure.

00:16:54.440 Well, I'm just going to, I don't know why that just, oh, well, so what, do you claim

00:17:00.080 some Jewish ancestry?

00:17:01.320 I, uh, my mom and dad are probably the big ones.

00:17:05.320 I do.

00:17:06.200 I do claim some Jewish ancestry.

00:17:08.660 Um, but yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it was so, well, first of all, I joke, which I'm not

00:17:12.860 even the first, cause everyone made this joke already about the art, but he says, I haven't

00:17:16.040 been funny and I just, Douglas has never been to one of my comedy shows, so he should come

00:17:22.200 and check it out.

00:17:23.140 And then he could tell me what he thinks.

00:17:24.500 I think I'm pretty damn funny in my shows and the audience seems to think so.

00:17:28.300 But what is your Jewish ancestry?

00:17:31.280 I mean, first of all, he suggests that you're like a fake Jew.

00:17:34.060 Yeah.

00:17:34.680 Yeah.

00:17:35.060 Claiming some Jewish ancestry.

00:17:36.860 It's like you're hiding behind a cloak of ersatz Judaism.

00:17:40.980 Which is in a way, um, you know, one of the things that I thought was so interesting about

00:17:45.700 the piece, uh, was that, and I couldn't imagine, man, I hope I'm never this person.

00:17:51.780 Um, because even now, right?

00:17:53.340 Like there's so, there's so many shots I could take at Douglas, but even when you ask me about

00:17:57.640 the debate, like my first instinct is to go like, well, look, here are the points I

00:18:01.360 made that he didn't have counters to.

00:18:02.960 Cause I'm about the argument, you know, like that's what actually matters.

00:18:06.000 And it's, it's tough for all of us because there is, as, as you know, well, you've talked

00:18:10.480 a lot about this, right?

00:18:11.400 But it's like in this kind of show business news world where we're talking about events

00:18:17.260 and things that matter, but also there's a camera on us and we're talking on a microphone

00:18:22.200 and we're, we're public people.

00:18:24.460 And so it's kind of impossible to completely remove your ego and your own narcissistic

00:18:28.900 tendencies from that.

00:18:30.480 Yes.

00:18:30.740 But like, you got to keep reminding yourself like, yeah, but there's a fucking war going

00:18:34.040 on.

00:18:34.380 Like that's what actually matters.

00:18:36.240 All of this is much less important than like the actual policy.

00:18:39.580 So you try to focus on that, but I could not imagine writing an article about a debate that

00:18:45.600 I had just been in where the reaction was so unfavorable toward me.

00:18:50.120 And in the piece, what you might notice is he does not take on a single one of my arguments.

00:18:55.200 He does not point out something that I got wrong.

00:18:57.780 He does not say Dave argued this, but this is so clearly a reflection of his lack of knowledge

00:19:02.120 on this subject because he didn't account for X, Y, and Z. It's just once it, just like

00:19:07.900 the actual debate, he would only debate me. He wouldn't debate the topic.

00:19:14.120 I was in a restaurant the other night, in fact, this weekend, and I had a little trouble hearing

00:19:18.360 what people were saying. And I thought to myself, I'm a little young to go deaf. Why?

00:19:23.400 Well, because I grew up shooting, bird hunting, target shooting. And I remember my father saying,

00:19:28.560 just stick a Marlboro filter in your opposite ear and you'll be fine.

00:19:31.300 I wish we'd had suppressors, but we didn't. You can now. Check out Silencer Central. Silencers play a

00:19:41.040 crucial role in improving accuracy, maximizing your experience, and protecting your hearing.

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00:20:32.120 Tucker says it best. The credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough.

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00:21:32.080 Daily recommended. So why do you think he did it? I mean, he was basically, it felt to me like he was

00:21:36.960 sent on a kamikaze mission. That's the way it looked. Here, the guy just flies into your craft carrier,

00:21:44.720 doesn't sink it, but it destroys his plane, his career. Like, I don't get it.

00:21:49.280 In a sense, I don't know. I don't think Douglas Murray destroyed his career. I think he destroyed

00:21:53.760 his reputation. And so his reputation amongst the people, but his career is actually going to be

00:21:59.580 fine. Much like Kamala Harris's career is actually going to be fine. And I don't know, you know, I'm

00:22:05.300 speculating a little bit with this because there really, there was not almost any interaction off the

00:22:11.420 podcast. Like Douglas Murray showed up five minutes later, we were recording. He left immediately

00:22:16.380 afterward and me and Rogan hung out for a little. So like, there's nothing more that the viewer didn't

00:22:21.180 see that I saw really hellos and goodbyes. Um, but I think number one, one of my, my guesses,

00:22:29.400 I'm speculating here is that he just didn't, uh, wasn't really prepared for me. And it was like,

00:22:36.620 oh, some, a comedian will be on there. And maybe he came in kind of confident that like he'll be

00:22:41.260 able to handle me. I've had that happen a few times in, in my career. I think it's happening

00:22:46.100 less. I can't imagine he didn't like look into me before the debate, but maybe that's possible.

00:22:52.260 But the feeling that I got as it was going on was kind of, okay. I, do you remember, you remember,

00:22:58.620 I'm sure you do. You remember very well when Kamala Harris was running for president. I know that

00:23:02.840 seems like a long time ago, but that actually happened, which is really crazy. It's like a

00:23:07.360 dream sequence. Now it's not just that Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney endorsed her, but she started

00:23:12.900 bringing Liz Cheney out to campaign events and campaigning with Liz Cheney. Now, if you were

00:23:19.540 just looking at this on paper, you'd go, okay, what demographic of voters is this for? And you'd very

00:23:29.260 quickly realize that that demographic doesn't exist. Are the leftists, they still remember her

00:23:34.340 last name as Cheney. And especially with the year that had proceeded that, like they're kind of

00:23:40.600 anti-war again. And they're not really into like the idea of we've got a Cheney on our side. It's

00:23:45.800 not going to win you. It's not going to get out your base. And then on the other side, I mean,

00:23:50.960 she lost by like 50 points in her congressional run. I mean, she's, it's not like you're bringing

00:23:56.080 Republicans in. And so I think the only thing you could conclude is that, oh, this isn't actually

00:24:00.920 for the voters. There's somebody else who Kamala Harris is talking to here. There's a power source

00:24:06.560 that may be a little concerned about her and she's trying to let them know, don't worry.

00:24:13.160 I'm good for business. I've got Liz Cheney right here. That's kind of my assumption. It seemed to me

00:24:19.760 with the Douglas Murray thing, he wasn't playing in the audience. He certainly wasn't trying to

00:24:24.720 persuade Joe. No. He perhaps was talking to a different audience, which will make sure that

00:24:30.640 his career is just fine going forward. That's the sense I got. If you want to make people paranoid

00:24:35.020 and hateful, act like that. Well, again, look, there's two things that I really want to make

00:24:40.340 sure I express. Number one, with the thing where he's this, this claims some Jewish ancestry thing,

00:24:47.340 which by the way, would be, I think if you were to ever do this to say like a Jewish person who was

00:24:52.980 on your side, you would be like, well, that's a pretty anti-Semitic thing to do, right? To like

00:24:58.240 challenge their Jewishness because they disagree with a policy. But what does your Jewishness have

00:25:03.740 to do with it anyway? Well, right. That's the whole fucking point. And that, you know, it does,

00:25:07.920 I think it's basically like this. I think that particularly when it comes to the Israel stuff,

00:25:13.320 a lot of these guys don't know what to do with me because typically as every American who's ever

00:25:19.840 criticized Israel knows, you get labeled as being a Jew hater. Oh, you must be anti-Semitic. That's

00:25:25.500 why you would say something like that. Like, remember that horrible anti-Semite Pat Buchanan

00:25:31.340 who said that the Israel lobby wanted a war in Iraq? She just hates Jewish people. Like, even though

00:25:37.200 we all know that's true. When you say it, they go, you're an anti-Semite. That's like the game that

00:25:42.500 they play. That's much tougher to do when you're talking to someone who's Jewish. And so in a,

00:25:47.820 in a sense, that ends up being kind of a shield against the accusation. And so they want to remove

00:25:54.360 that shield so that you don't have, but the bottom line is that no one should have that shield.

00:25:59.120 And I am Jewish. My mother and father are both Jewish. I am, I think I was 86% Ashkenazi Jew on my

00:26:05.360 DNA test. I think that's enough. But the point is it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter at all.

00:26:12.160 You should, anybody.

00:26:12.840 We're talking about the behavior of nations, by the way. Nations with militaries and parliaments,

00:26:19.300 congresses, like these are countries. And I, what does this have to do? I mean.

00:26:24.940 Well, first of all, and this isn't even the most important point, but the American taxpayer is

00:26:28.480 forced to pay for this stuff. So, but even if he wasn't, even if you didn't have to pay for it,

00:26:33.500 if you're a human being, forget even an American, if you're a human being, you have a right to have

00:26:38.240 an opinion on any issue you want to have an opinion on. This is what the left did during

00:26:42.420 COVID. It was like, wait a second. It seems like this came from, you're telling me it came from a

00:26:47.040 pangolin in a wet market, a fish market, a mammal sold in a fish market. Somehow, you know, was the

00:26:52.900 genesis of this virus, but there was this level three biolab like a mile away. Maybe that was a

00:26:58.420 source that are like, ah, you hate Asians. And they claimed racism. So you couldn't pursue that line

00:27:04.320 of inquiry. I see people like Douglas Murray supposedly on the right. And there are a lot

00:27:09.020 of others like Douglas Murray saying the same thing. Like you can't, you can't express an

00:27:14.680 opinion about where your tax dollars go or about people dying or else you're a bigot. How is that

00:27:19.640 different? Right. No, it's not. It's the same thing. It's the same kind of pathetic tactic where if you

00:27:26.760 can't, if you can't argue against someone's ideas, you just say, oh, you're a bad person. And that's

00:27:33.180 why you have these ideas to begin with. It's a very, it's a very low grade, like social psychology

00:27:39.660 attempt to shame someone out of having the views that they have. And yeah, it's exactly, it's what

00:27:45.920 the woke did on everything. It's no matter what it was, if anytime is a, I don't, I can't remember who

00:27:51.120 coined the term, but this a racist, is anybody winning an argument against a progressive?

00:27:57.260 Exactly. You know, it's, that's it. And so he's doing the same thing. But then the other thing,

00:28:01.820 which is, is really separate and secondary from that. But the argument that Douglas Murray is

00:28:07.900 making is that if I call out Paul Wolfowitz, or even, you know, more broadly speaking, if I call

00:28:14.220 out the neoconservatives and how they hijacked American foreign policy and how they very much

00:28:19.040 had Israel's interest in mind, which I, I get from reading the neoconservatives. I don't get this

00:28:24.960 from reading critics of them. It's from their, in their own words. He'll, he's saying me calling that

00:28:30.640 out is fertile ground for Jew hatred to rise. And it's like, no, what you're doing is fertile

00:28:38.320 ground. I agree with that. What you telling me, I'm not allowed to call out the deputy defense

00:28:43.040 secretary because his last name is Jewish. That's, that's actually what leads to a rise in people not

00:28:50.140 liking Jews. I couldn't agree more. And I do think Douglas, though he's not an expert or a genius,

00:28:55.840 is smart enough to understand that, but he did it anyway. Yeah. And I don't know his motive, but

00:29:01.320 in the moment that I think made me actually turn it off, I had to stop watching. Um, but it was most

00:29:07.160 revealing of all is when he was after Daryl Cooper, the historian, really one of the great

00:29:12.240 historians in the United States, Daryl Cooper, um, and doesn't know his name. Yeah. And, but goes after

00:29:17.700 him personally as like a Nazi or something. And let me just parenthetically, and I'll shut up after this,

00:29:21.680 but Daryl Cooper is one of the kindest, most reasonable, most fundamentally liberal people.

00:29:27.160 I know anti-Nazi people, you know, a guy who you could give your routing number to would never steal

00:29:32.120 money. Yeah. A guy who, if he had absolute power, would kill nobody. Like a truly decent Christian man

00:29:38.580 basically called him a monster and didn't even know his name. And so that suggested to me that he was

00:29:46.280 like briefed by somebody before. So make sure you get in this Holocaust denier, which he's not.

00:29:50.680 Daryl Cooper. Like, what is that? Well, it's also, you know, if you're, if you're smearing people

00:29:58.460 who, which, and Daryl wasn't the only one, but if you're smearing people whose like names you don't

00:30:03.500 know and who you admit you've never listened to any of their, their work, maybe don't put that right

00:30:10.020 in the middle of an appeal to expertise. You know, like, like maybe don't, maybe have that in a

00:30:15.960 different section than in the section where you're going, you really have to know what you're talking

00:30:19.700 about in order to have an opinion on these things. And so that didn't, that didn't work

00:30:24.660 out very well. Daryl is a, is an amazing guy. He is brilliant. His work is phenomenal. I know him

00:30:33.080 personally and he's like genuinely a great person. He's a humane man. Yes. And it's, it is something,

00:30:39.260 it's a comment on our time and on our society that the guy who essentially, if you, if you

00:30:47.480 actually consume any of Daryl's work as I have consumed a lot of it, basically Daryl's whole

00:30:54.400 kind of, um, his template, the way he operates is he's a, there's basically only like a couple

00:31:00.540 rules. And like, number one is he has to read everything that's available on the subject.

00:31:05.540 So he reads everything. The guy's a machine. His, his depth of knowledge is like second to none.

00:31:12.000 He just knows everything. And then number two is whenever you talk about history,

00:31:17.160 basically his rule is that you have to understand that everyone involved as a human being,

00:31:21.900 every one of them was a three-year-old at one point. So like totally innocent, like good little

00:31:27.080 boy, like my three-year-old that I have at home and that they grew up in real circumstances and

00:31:33.100 real things happen to them. And if you're going to do history, you have to constantly be doing your

00:31:37.600 absolute best to put yourself in this person's shoes and then put yourself in this person's

00:31:41.420 shoes and then put yourself on this side of the conflict and then put yourself on this side of

00:31:44.820 the conflict. That's basically it. It's pure empathy. Like all, and actually, um, as I've

00:31:51.100 mentioned to you personally, and I've told Daryl this personally, he is probably the best shot people

00:31:57.420 have at de-radicalizing people in, in the worst form of being radicalized. He's the guy, listen,

00:32:05.240 for me personally, and I thought I was pretty well-read on the history of, of Israel-Palestine.

00:32:10.320 And he has this, this incredibly long series, like a 30 hour series called Fear and Loathing

00:32:15.280 in the New Jerusalem. And like, the thing is, I knew most of what I knew, not all of it, but most

00:32:21.780 of what I had read about with the Israeli-Palestine conflict, like most people was like starts in

00:32:26.760 1947, 1948.

00:32:28.220 Exactly.

00:32:28.840 And then goes up to today. His series is about, it's like from the 1890s until 1947. So he's

00:32:36.500 talking about the creation of the state from Zionism being created to the state being created

00:32:40.920 and going-

00:32:42.120 From Herzl to Ben-Gurion.

00:32:43.080 Right. Right. Exactly. That's, that's basically the, the whole, you know, he has a little bit

00:32:47.380 where he's talking about the pogroms that preceded, you know, the Zionists, but that's really the,

00:32:51.320 the story. And it actually made me much more sympathetic to the Zionists. You know, as somebody

00:32:57.360 who grew up kind of in that propaganda, in the pro-Israel propaganda, then ultimately turned

00:33:02.160 on it and became a critic of Israel, listening to his series, you understand, it just puts

00:33:06.760 you in the position and you do understand like, oh, okay, these were real men who were

00:33:11.060 reacting to the circumstances of their day. You can kind of understand why a lot of them

00:33:15.540 wanted to do this. By the way, it's pretty amazing that they pulled it off. However you feel

00:33:19.420 I agree completely. However you feel about what the government of Israel is doing. It's

00:33:22.740 amazing that they did this. And yeah, look, the, and of course for the one, this is why

00:33:28.820 I say it's a comment on our time. So there's one guy here who's going like, listen, you

00:33:32.720 got to like really completely educate yourself on a subject and then you have to have empathy

00:33:36.140 toward all sides. And then everyone goes, Nazi, that guy's a Nazi. That's what it is to

00:33:41.560 be a Nazi in 2025.

00:33:43.240 It's just so funny. I'm too old for a lot of this stuff. And so I thought, you know, among

00:33:47.380 the many lessons, great lessons of the second world war that I grew up marinating in, dehumanizing

00:33:53.640 people is bad. Treating them like, treating human beings like they're not human is bad.

00:33:59.140 And I still believe that. I think it's the core of Christianity. And, but it's also just

00:34:03.840 the core of any civil society, any decent society. And that's what Daryl is trying to do.

00:34:09.580 Yeah. And I don't know that I've ever heard anybody try and take apart his, his, you know,

00:34:15.420 factual analysis. It's always, always immediately goes to motive. You're a Nazi. Shut up. You're

00:34:19.600 a Holocaust denier.

00:34:20.400 Or just, right. Or claiming he said something that isn't at all what he said. Like he downplayed

00:34:24.820 the atrocities of the Nazi.

00:34:25.600 Why don't you just ask him?

00:34:26.940 No, he didn't.

00:34:28.680 It's also, um.

00:34:29.820 But, but why? Why? So Daryl Cooper, um, and by the way, a number of my friends, people

00:34:36.020 I really like have been involved in this, like their authority has been marshaled to destroy

00:34:40.740 Daryl Cooper. And I grieve to see it because it's, you know, they're paid to do it. It's

00:34:44.860 so degrading to them and dishonest and sad. But why? Daryl Cooper's like this one guy living

00:34:52.340 in the Pacific Northwest. Why spend all this time and energy to destroy him?

00:34:58.700 Well, I love, uh, you said this, um, I forget a few years ago. I can't remember what it

00:35:04.360 was where you said this, but it was you and I, this really hit home with me. And this

00:35:08.500 isn't like, and you weren't suggesting that this is like a proof. This isn't like a, like

00:35:12.960 a, uh, uh, irrefutable logical argument. It's kind of like a guide, but you know, you said

00:35:17.700 the thing about you could tell when something's infected because you touch it and you recoil

00:35:22.040 and you go, Ooh, something's going on there. Now, what exactly is it? No, it's that

00:35:25.500 doesn't prove what's going on, but look, you can't, the fact that Daryl's moment on,

00:35:31.680 on your podcast sitting right here where I'm sitting, got such a reaction really demonstrates

00:35:38.140 something like something. And, and you see that it's like, Oh, you touched on like a

00:35:43.120 third rail or hurt dog barks. Yes. Well, and, and in the same way, when you, uh, had first,

00:35:48.280 uh, questioned the morality of dropping nuclear weapons on, on cities, and then there's this

00:35:53.280 big freak out over that. And now nobody here has said, Hey, the Nazis were the good guys.

00:35:58.600 The Nazis didn't commit any atrocities. No one's even downplaying. No one even made the

00:36:03.280 argument that I remain anti-Nazi for the work for the record. But I'm saying like, no one

00:36:07.760 even made the argument that like, it was 5.9 million, not six, you know, like there's nothing

00:36:12.880 this, this topic hasn't even been broached. No. But what, what you are attacking is really

00:36:19.400 the underpinning of the origin story of the American empire. Exactly. And that's what

00:36:27.120 you're not allowed to question because, and you see it the way every, every defender of

00:36:32.720 every war, including the current one, if you can call it a war going on in Gaza, I'm not

00:36:38.500 sure war is exactly the right term to describe it. It's the destruction of, of, uh, of a captive

00:36:44.820 people. Um, but every single person who defends it will always invoke world war two at one

00:36:52.040 point, not even arguing that like, not even making an argument that this is why it was

00:36:56.860 justified in world war two. Just like we did it in world war two, we did it in world war

00:37:01.520 two and we're the good guys. So good guys are allowed to slaughter entire peoples. You

00:37:06.320 know, it's like, it is the, and, and look, even if you, even if you accept the official

00:37:12.760 world war two story as being completely correct, it's still something that's used to justify

00:37:18.820 all of these other indefensible wars, every war of my lifetime. And I doubt too many people

00:37:24.440 really want to defend the ones in between world war two. And when I was born, you know, I got

00:37:28.600 it. I don't think anyone's going like, look at Vietnam. It did such a great, it's such a

00:37:31.900 good thing that we did that. And those who are attempting to defend it are pathetic, but

00:37:36.940 you know, Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan. And, um, even the ones when I was a little kid,

00:37:45.860 you know, Serbia, every one of these guys, they always said was Adolf Hitler. Milosevic

00:37:51.240 is Adolf Hitler. Saddam Hussein is Adolf Hitler. Gaddafi is Adolf Hitler. Noriega is Adolf Hitler.

00:37:56.660 Every bad guy has always been, it's like they use this model to justify. You're only ever

00:38:02.600 allowed to learn the lesson in history. That's like Chamberlain was an appeaser, appeasing bad

00:38:07.860 confrontation. Good. As if that's, as if the lessons of history are that aggression is always

00:38:15.100 correct. Trying to work out a deal is always wrong. Yes. And that's why I think it's so important

00:38:20.800 to attack that narrative. Yeah. And from my perspective, it's like not even about principle

00:38:25.880 as much as it is a fact. If what we're doing was working, then I, I guess I wouldn't be interested

00:38:33.180 in, you know, analyzing it so critically, but it's not working. It hasn't worked for the West,

00:38:38.880 which I love. It's where my ancestors are from. It's where my children live. So it's like,

00:38:42.220 I don't know. I think it's fair to ask, like, how did we get here? It's all falling apart. Why?

00:38:47.620 And maybe the assumptions were bad. And what are those assumptions? Well, they're rooted in that war,

00:38:51.260 as you said. It's just interesting that anyone would want to defend that. Like,

00:38:55.260 I don't really, I still don't get the motive. Maybe I never will. Like, why would you want

00:38:58.320 to defend any of that? Why would you want to defend Dresden or Gaza or any things that America did?

00:39:04.340 But by the way, it's not attacking, not attacking, it's not attacking Israel. It's, I'm attacking the

00:39:09.200 U.S. government, which I pay for, which my ancestors helped build. Like, why, why would you ever want to

00:39:15.440 defend bad things? Well, it is, you know, there, there is a tendency by people who, if you're,

00:39:23.960 if you're pulling away, like the underpinnings in someone's entire worldview, they usually get very

00:39:31.180 defensive about that. You're right. You're totally right. I've been there. By the way,

00:39:33.300 I've been there. So I have felt defensive when I first heard Alex Jones question 9-11.

00:39:38.500 I was outraged by, I was totally outraged by it. And so, in a, in a reflexive, stupid way.

00:39:44.820 Well, I remember, um, just because I was like very, um, on, I was very on board with the Ron Paul

00:39:50.420 presidential campaigns. This was my like radicalizing moment was, was Ron Paul running

00:39:54.760 for president. And I remember that you were hosting the, uh, the event that he had. I can't

00:40:00.160 remember what it was called, but it was like, it was the rally for the Republic, rally for the

00:40:03.540 Republic. I guess even remember, I should have remembered 2008, but so I was the MC of that.

00:40:08.080 So at the time it was a really big deal for us that we had you, I remember seeing it. And because

00:40:14.120 it was like, Ron Paul was getting blacked out in all the, the, you know, mainstream media,

00:40:18.600 as we used to call it at the time. Uh, and, but we had Tucker Carlson. We had like one of the big

00:40:23.160 players in that world hosting the event. And I remember, um, when you walked out, well, you,

00:40:28.660 I saw like an interview with you where someone was like, Hey, why'd you walk out of that event?

00:40:32.720 And you were like, I don't know, man, the, the saying 9-11 wasn't inside job stuff was just a

00:40:36.840 bridge too far for me. And honestly, I totally understood that at the time I was just pissed off

00:40:41.940 at, um, Jesse Ventura. Cause I was like, come on, dude, we actually got like a chance here to make

00:40:46.920 a mark and then you're going to go, you know, start spouting out with these conspiracies.

00:40:50.880 But you know, he believed it. I mean, I think Jesse Ventura's a whole rabbit hole. I won't

00:40:55.040 even go down, but I think Jesse Ventura is a very flawed guy. Yeah. Um, for sure. We're all

00:41:00.480 flawed people. I'm a little less judgmental than I used to be. Um, now that I know the depth of my

00:41:04.220 own shittiness, but which I think is important. Yeah. Yeah. Meditate every day on your death and

00:41:09.600 your own flaws and you'll be a happy person with better perspective. But, um, I, I shouldn't have done

00:41:15.480 that. I don't, I don't know why, you know, so my views are so different, but anyway, the point is I

00:41:20.660 understand what you're saying. Well, it's also that you, you know, it's not even, it's not even

00:41:26.820 necessarily that you would have to like all these years later be convinced that he was right. It's

00:41:32.740 just, I think after so many years of seeing how evil our government actually can be that you go

00:41:39.640 like, okay, I'm listening. All right, fine. I dismissed that out of hand, but now I'm more open-minded.

00:41:44.820 The only question that matters is whether or not something is true. Yeah. And I, another way to

00:41:49.720 put it, a phrase that I've coined in my copyright is facts don't care about your feelings. That's a

00:41:54.260 good one. You like that? Someone should really run with that. I like that. That's a good. You

00:41:57.540 could get a long way. You could get like a special deal with Facebook on that, on the basis of that.

00:42:00.760 But, uh, but, but I actually agree. I agree with that. Right. And I agree. I don't think you should

00:42:05.560 hurt people's feelings on purpose, but I think that the core question, the only one that matters

00:42:10.180 is, is something true. And I know that you share that and that's why, and I hate to beat up on poor

00:42:15.520 Douglas, who's like a sad, a sad character, but he had this line in here. Oh, this isn't, sorry. I never

00:42:22.620 go to my notes, but I'm, this is from a guy called Sam Harris. I'm loosely familiar. So one of the easiest

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00:43:29.000 like SimpliSafe. So Sam Harris, wow, he doesn't care for you at all or it looks like me either,

00:43:35.620 but whatever, I'll ignore the stuff about me. I'm not exactly sure who Sam Harris is, but a sad

00:43:41.400 atheist guy, but he describes you as a pure misinformation artist who lies as freely as he

00:43:48.680 breathes. And I just thought as I read this, I could say, you know, Dave Smith, I don't know,

00:43:54.080 whatever, but I feel like that's the opposite of the truth. I feel like maybe you lie under duress,

00:43:59.840 but in general, you are like very focused on what you think is true. Well, I mean, again,

00:44:06.980 I just feel like it's a, I benefit in a way from us having this conversation like after COVID and

00:44:14.200 after kind of all of these insane things that, okay, so Sam Harris, what did I get wrong?

00:44:24.200 Like, I don't think that if you're going to, if you're going to smear me as being a misinformation

00:44:28.800 or which I, you know, I'll take that to, I should make t-shirts about misinformation artists. I'll

00:44:34.160 take that. Pure misinformation. Yes, pure misinformation. Everything you say is a lie. It's like breathing to

00:44:38.380 you. Dude, I got, I got called that throughout all of COVID and I was right about everything I was

00:44:44.280 saying. So keep calling me this. Okay, fine. Make an argument. What have I said that's wrong?

00:44:50.260 And why is he, why is he so mad at you? Oh, well, Sam Harris is a rationalist, right?

00:44:54.120 Oh yeah. Yeah. He's the guy who defended the war in Iraq and torture and fell for the Russiagate

00:45:01.460 bullshit. Thought Trump was a Russian spy, fell for lockdowns and vaccine mandates and all this stuff.

00:45:07.620 So I'll put my misinformation track record up against Sam Harris's, you know, whatever. I mean,

00:45:14.160 I know he's got a meditation app or something like that, but okay.

00:45:17.660 Did you see the Tim Dillon thing the other day?

00:45:18.960 Oh, so, oh, dude, it's so great.

00:45:20.260 That was like, I texted him. I said it was so funny. He, Tim Dillon, the brilliant comedian.

00:45:25.040 He's the best.

00:45:25.800 I'll think about how Sam Harris has a meditation app. I didn't even know that.

00:45:29.780 So by day he's a, he's a meditation guru. And by night he's encouraging like carpet bombing of

00:45:35.480 children. I mean, it's just on, it's just too ridiculous. And, you know, all, you know,

00:45:41.820 all of these guys, it's, it's sad in a way because there it's, you just, you can't contradict

00:45:49.280 yourself on what your entire like purpose was for your entire career without some people noticing.

00:45:57.420 And that's kind of what's going on with all these guys.

00:45:59.620 The emotion. So I notice it even now in our conversation, you are, there's a lightness

00:46:04.460 to the way you describe things. Um, you obviously have passionate views, but you don't seem emotionally

00:46:10.380 overwrought. Douglas seemed emotionally overwrought. This guy Harris seems emotionally overwrought.

00:46:17.380 They seem very emotional. What is that?

00:46:20.260 Well, I mean, I would say that, um, kind of ironically, although not really actually ironic

00:46:28.260 and this kind of goes to, you know, the conversation that you and Brett Weinstein were having the

00:46:32.760 other day. I really love Brett. I think he's, he's great. Um, I'm on your side of that debate,

00:46:38.120 but I think one of, one of the fundamental flaws in atheism is that it doesn't really exist.

00:46:45.920 Yes.

00:46:46.360 They think that's the flaw in believing in God. They see, they think, they think the flaw

00:46:51.140 on believing in God is that God really doesn't exist. God does exist. What doesn't exist are

00:46:55.940 atheists. There's no such thing. And you could even get into an, like, maybe if there was such

00:47:02.080 thing as atheists, it would be a good thing to be one, but there aren't, they don't exist.

00:47:07.360 They all have their religion. And it's, it's almost, it, it's almost by definition that whatever

00:47:14.460 your highest thing is becomes your religion. Um, I don't know if it's quite by definition.

00:47:19.540 And I suppose it is, it is theoretically possible to be an atheist, but almost no one ever is.

00:47:26.300 And so what you're seeing is just that, you know, I'm attacking their religion. And according to them,

00:47:31.840 that makes me guilty of blasphemy.

00:47:33.440 But it's just so interesting that they're so brittle about it. You'd think if you're an

00:47:37.120 atheist, you'd be like, does it really matter? I mean, there's no right or wrong, obviously,

00:47:40.300 because how can, you know, who's the authority on that? Well, there is no authority. So it's all

00:47:44.220 just a matter of preference. And in the end, you just cease to exist. And so the stakes are zero.

00:47:49.460 So what are you so mad about? Like, why do you care? You'd think everyone would be like,

00:47:53.060 well, I'll take it a step further. Sam Harris does not believe in free will.

00:47:58.080 So what is he upset with me about? I have no choice. I have to be a misinformation artist.

00:48:03.500 This is what I'm, I'm wired to be a misinformation artist, right? So what are you upset with? And he's

00:48:08.840 not even making the choice to say that. Listen, anytime, and this was one of, I, again, I really,

00:48:13.660 really like Brett, but I think one of the, the areas where he failed kind of in that conversation

00:48:19.220 with you in that, you know, very friendly debate is that he had to say several times throughout it,

00:48:26.180 yes, yes, I live as if what you're saying is correct, but I view things this way. So yes,

00:48:33.000 I'd much rather live. But if you're, if you're like thesis involves you having to engage in a

00:48:40.620 performative contradiction, then something's not right with your theory. And so Sam Harris will sit

00:48:46.460 here and say, none of us have free will, but I'm still going to act as if all of us have free will.

00:48:52.500 You've got a major flaw in your theory that like, this is just too much. This is, this is too far. You,

00:48:57.940 you can't do that. That's not right. And so yes, again, with all of them, the bottom line, I think

00:49:05.620 with a lot of these people, like, and some have adapted better than others. I think Brett's one of

00:49:09.800 the ones who's really adapted well from like the old academia world to this new podcast world that

00:49:16.520 we're in now. But I think the problem with a lot of them, like, like Sam Harris, and I think Douglas

00:49:21.900 Murray too, is that what they've worked their entire career on has been completely rejected.

00:49:27.720 And that's a tough position to be in. But it's not really. I mean, I spent my whole life in cable

00:49:34.260 news that, you know, obviously is in terminal decline. I had all kinds of views that I argued

00:49:39.860 for passionately. They were totally wrong. I admitted it. I gained perspective and humility,

00:49:45.200 humility in admitting it. You're just a human being.

00:49:49.260 Yeah, but that, that, listen, you, that may have happened kind of naturally for you. I'm just saying

00:49:54.160 when you run it on scale, very few people are able to do that.

00:49:58.760 It's not hard. It's, it's, it's the only act of liberation that's really possible in this life.

00:50:04.260 Is freeing yourself from like the lies. And the number one lie is I'm God.

00:50:09.280 Yeah.

00:50:09.740 And like, I'm omniscient or the, you know, was perfectly wise person, whatever. It's like,

00:50:14.220 you know, you make mistakes. You're, you're a ridiculous primate.

00:50:17.520 It's a little bit.

00:50:18.580 Covered in fur. Like, just admit it.

00:50:20.140 There's just, there, look, you got some things wrong.

00:50:23.500 Yeah.

00:50:24.080 But there's a difference between that and your entire foundation being built on hypocrisy.

00:50:32.020 Hypocrisy and that hypocrisy being shown, you know, look, I mean, you can't make this stuff up,

00:50:36.740 right? Ben Shapiro built a career opposing identity politics as a proud Zionist.

00:50:47.880 Yeah.

00:50:48.640 Now you, listen, feel however you feel about Zionism.

00:50:51.740 It's identity politics. Like, like that is the definition of it. You could not find a better

00:50:58.620 example of a politics built on an identity. And yet you're out here saying facts don't care about

00:51:04.680 your feelings. Identity to politics is wrong. And then while you're saying that your number one

00:51:10.680 priority is this, this manifestation of identity politics. You can only keep that charade going for

00:51:17.220 so long before someone sees through it. There's something in people that the, the lowest part of

00:51:23.320 people that instinctively accuses others of doing what they're doing. And I've never really, I try,

00:51:31.240 man, I don't, that's the one thing I don't want to be as a guy who does that. But I remember Bill

00:51:34.260 Crystal, who I worked for for years and really liked and was grateful to, and he was a great boss

00:51:38.520 in the nineties and came out against me and called me a Nazi and all this stuff like without calling

00:51:44.460 me. By the way, I called him and asked him to lunch. He refused. He wouldn't go to lunch with

00:51:47.740 me. End of our relationship. But one of the criticisms against me, I'll never forget it when

00:51:53.040 I realized this phenomenon was real, is when he accused me of advocating and I'm quoting for an

00:51:57.800 ethnostate. Now I have a lot of flaws. They're all on display. I've never wanted an ethnostate.

00:52:05.560 And it's like, wait, one of us is for an ethnostate and it's not me, but you just said that like of

00:52:11.820 all the possible criticisms. It's just too unbelievable. I mean, it's like, you just like

00:52:16.940 Bill Crystal accusing me of wanting an ethnostate. But you're like, you just, you almost like don't

00:52:22.440 even, you can't even respond. You just have to go like, it's like, I didn't say anything. I was

00:52:27.700 like, okay. Right. Yeah. You know, people can't hear themselves. I mean, you notice when people get

00:52:33.600 old, they, you know, they tell the same stories and you just, you know, when you love them,

00:52:37.980 you're indulgent. But I, I just hope that doesn't happen to me. I hope I don't lose all self-awareness

00:52:44.860 to the point where I've got like lunch on my chin and like accuse other people of doing exactly what

00:52:50.520 I'm doing. Exactly what I'm doing. While you're going, you have lunch on your chin. You don't want

00:52:56.420 to be there. I don't want to be that guy. And I think that there's like, look, obviously like

00:53:02.020 we're, we're living through something, you know, we're probably living through several things that

00:53:06.980 are very profound, but one of the most profound things has been this revolution in, in information

00:53:13.200 and the technology. And this it's led to this like kind of mass decentralization of media and where

00:53:20.760 there's now like, there's so many things and shows and different voices, you know, we, I find people

00:53:26.720 all the time who I've never heard of before, you know, and I'm sure you've had this experience too.

00:53:30.500 You'll find someone, you'll be like, Oh, that guy's actually really smart. People should know

00:53:33.700 about this. How many followers? 7 million. Oh, he's got 7 million. Oh, he's huge. Like I just found

00:53:38.900 some guy who is bigger than anyone on cable news and I didn't even know he existed, you know?

00:53:43.380 And so now it's just because of this dynamic, there aren't, you know, as, as you know, the,

00:53:49.820 the corporate media apparatus, like big newspapers and big cable news shows and things was very

00:53:56.340 controlled, very controlled. The range of allowable opinion was very narrow. It's what, uh, my, uh,

00:54:03.720 my good friend and brilliant historian Tom Woods, uh, always called the, uh, was it the, the three by

00:54:09.500 six card of allowable opinion? You know, you get this little area of allowable opinion and then that's

00:54:15.080 where the conversation takes place. That's been shattered into a million pieces.

00:54:19.820 And now there's voices from all over the place and some good and some great and some bad and

00:54:24.500 really bad, but it's just much harder for people to, you know, that control existed so that you

00:54:31.220 don't get exposed so that you don't get exposed so that you could go like, look, even the right

00:54:36.120 winger, John McCain agrees, or even the far left activist, Nancy Pelosi. I mean, it's like,

00:54:42.940 dude, I have to hear Sean Hannity goes the far left, Nancy Pelosi. And it's like,

00:54:48.880 how many leftists have you actually talked to? And you're like, how many leftists have you ever

00:54:52.340 read? You think Nancy Pelosi's a far leftist? Like really?

00:54:56.120 Living on her vineyard in Napa?

00:54:58.280 It's all these different, you know, these different tools of corporations are left and right. But so

00:55:04.660 that's over now. And now I think it's just much, it's much tougher to keep this charade going.

00:55:09.580 And it seems to be collapsing so fast.

00:55:11.980 Yes. Yes. And it's not, again, you could, you could be honest about it and, and kind of maintain

00:55:19.540 some of your respect. But the, the truth is that like, look, even when they'll say these things,

00:55:25.340 like if you, if you accuse Ben Shapiro of having dual loyalty, they go, oh, that's an anti-Semitic

00:55:33.220 trope. That means you hate the Jews. But then he'll sit there in his own words and say,

00:55:38.940 I forget his exact quote, but it was something like my favorite thing about the United States

00:55:42.660 of America is that it protects Israel. And so you're already saying you have loyalty to both

00:55:48.640 of these countries. In fact, I'm not so sure about the, one of the loyalties, but I'm very sure about

00:55:53.580 the other one. And that is not, I'm sorry. That's not a statement against Jewish people. I'm Jewish.

00:55:58.620 I love Jewish people. You know, it's like, I get called a self-hating Jew on Twitter or whatever.

00:56:03.160 It could not be further from the truth. I actually really love Jewish people. There's many things

00:56:06.760 about Jewish culture that have, you know, had a huge impact on me, made me the person I am,

00:56:11.100 made me a better person for their, their impact on me. But this is a foreign government. Like,

00:56:18.480 I'm, I'm sorry. That's we're, we're allowed to talk about that. If you, you know, I saw Glenn Beck

00:56:24.340 the other day had a Douglas Murray on and he wasn't like Glenn Beck, wasn't like mean to me personally,

00:56:30.180 but which I appreciated. But he was just going, I mean, it was just so ridiculous,

00:56:34.960 ridiculous. But it's like, we're sitting here, we're going to, we're having a conversation about

00:56:38.780 a foreign government. You started crying on your show talking about this foreign government.

00:56:46.100 That's fucking weird. That's weird. We should not be doing that. What the hell is going on here?

00:56:53.400 Like, I don't even think you should cry about our own government, you know, but if you're going to

00:56:56.460 cry about one, it should be ours. And no, but no, no one would even think to cry about it. Right.

00:57:00.220 I mean, like, come on, like, let's have a real conversation about this. And if you don't,

00:57:04.920 especially, and by the way, this is not my primary goal. My primary goal is to tell the truth

00:57:09.660 and to advocate for what's good for our country. Um, but if you're concerned about like the young

00:57:18.440 men getting a little bit too radical and, and, you know, being too obsessed with the Jews or too

00:57:24.120 against the Jews, which I do think is a legit concern. It definitely is.

00:57:27.360 You know, that's not good for you. And it's, it's not good for you. It's not good for the

00:57:30.720 conflict. It's not good for the country. I just don't think any of racial collectivism

00:57:35.840 always leads to bad places.

00:57:38.140 I totally agree.

00:57:38.740 You don't want to, you don't want to embrace that stuff. But if you're concerned about that,

00:57:43.400 well, then the first thing you have to do is tell the truth. You can't keep lying to people

00:57:47.660 and you can't, you can't keep sitting here and going like, oh, no, the neoconservative,

00:57:51.320 you can't say neoconservative, right? Isn't that Mark Levin? Didn't he just say,

00:57:56.200 if it's the neoconservative?

00:57:57.220 Mark Levin, who's a, who I also know, I mean, I've been in right-wing world my whole life. I

00:58:02.100 know everybody. I work with Mark and I've always gotten along with Mark, always been nice to me.

00:58:06.580 But yeah, he just accused Trump, the Trump administration of antisemitism for calling

00:58:12.620 someone a neocon. Well, what he, what he did was he accused Steve Witkoff of antisemitism.

00:58:17.940 Right. And I just want to say, I think Steve Witkoff is, if there's anyone who is, you know,

00:58:23.980 has the hand of God on him, it seems to me, right? Sort of overstated, but I feel that way.

00:58:27.580 It's Witkoff who's like a thoroughly decent man and who was running around the world trying to bring

00:58:32.640 peace between nations. And also, by the way, who single-handedly saved 20 Jewish hostages.

00:58:38.220 Well, exactly. I mean, I don't know if they were all Jewish. I think most of them were. I think

00:58:41.700 almost all of them were. But I think they got 20 hostages released in the phase one of the

00:58:45.560 ceasefire that he worked out. Then Israel violated the ceasefire. And so they didn't get the other

00:58:49.580 hostages back. Although, thankfully, the American was just released. But this guy, Witkoff, has

00:58:55.060 actually done more to help those hostages. So here's what, I mean, here's what he said. I

00:58:59.960 actually wrote this down because I was really bothered by it. This is Levin on Twitter, Mark

00:59:07.060 Levin, who works at Fox, which is like basically seems to turn its programming over to advocating

00:59:11.120 for a war with Iran. Neocon is a pejorative for Jew. Unbelievable. And this is in response

00:59:20.260 to Witkoff saying, quote, the Neocon element believes that war is the only way to solve

00:59:24.380 things. So you have Mark Levin calling Steve Witkoff an anti-Semite.

00:59:29.300 Right, right. And again, we've reached peak. I mean, I think Witkoff is Jewish, right?

00:59:33.560 Again, again, but it's I don't even know. But again, it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't really

00:59:37.680 matter. It doesn't matter. He's American and he's on the side of peace. And so I'm for

00:59:42.240 that guy. But, you know, the crazy thing. So I also I at one point in the debate with

00:59:48.300 Douglas Murray where I said something about the neoconservatives and he went, oh, the

00:59:52.500 N word, you know, you know, making a play on the N word or whatever. And it's interesting.

00:59:58.240 I mean, Douglas Murray wrote the book called Neoconservatism, Why We Need It. It was his

01:00:04.840 book. And so what happened was for people who don't like know, you know, a lot about

01:00:09.860 this, it's there was a this was their term. The neoconservative was not a pejorative term

01:00:16.540 until the neoconservatives got control of our foreign policy and ruined everything.

01:00:21.920 And then it became a term that we'll we'll call every war hawk will be like, oh, another

01:00:26.880 neocon. Now, now a lot of times we will use the term when, strictly speaking, this person

01:00:32.580 may not have been a self-identified neoconservative. It's just become a pejorative, a pejorative

01:00:36.920 for someone trying to get us in a stupid war. But the neoconservatives themselves, the original

01:00:41.660 group, this was their name. Oh, I know. For themselves. I was there. And you right. You

01:00:45.180 were there. You worked alongside them. I worked for that. I worked for Bill Kristol for five

01:00:49.200 and a half years. I was a neocon. Yes, it wasn't. And they had no. The Episcopalian neocon.

01:00:54.920 But look, they had no problem using the term until everybody started to hate them. And then

01:00:59.440 they went, you can't call us this. But it's like, you know, you guys like this was your

01:01:03.800 own term that you used for yourself. You can read their own documents and the project for

01:01:09.120 a new American century. You read the clean break memo. They laid out what they wanted

01:01:13.680 their foreign policy to be. I mean, literally, right. Wasn't it? Oh, God, I can't remember

01:01:18.580 whose quote it was. I know that a bunch of them loved sharing it. But what is it that every

01:01:24.240 10 years we got to throw a small, puny little country up against the wall and show them who's

01:01:28.420 boss? This was their foreign policy. We need multiple theaters of war in the Middle East

01:01:34.100 in order to ensure the new century is an American century. So immoral and disgusting. Yes. And

01:01:39.960 also that and look, as anybody can read, I think we talked about this last time I was

01:01:43.880 on, but anybody can read for themselves the clean break memo. It was written by Richard

01:01:48.480 Pearl and David Wormser to Benjamin Netanyahu. That was like, look, here is our plan. And the

01:01:53.820 break was from the peace process. The break was from Oslo. And they go, look, here's the

01:01:58.880 plan. You know how Yitzhak Rabin and all these liberal Jews are saying we have to make peace

01:02:03.800 with the Palestinians so that we can then make peace with the broader Arab world. Well, no,

01:02:08.240 we got a new plan. We're going to break with all of that. We're not doing this land swap

01:02:12.300 thing. We're not giving the Palestinians a state. What we'll do is we'll have America overthrow

01:02:15.940 all of these other governments. That way you never have to make peace with the Palestinians

01:02:19.720 and you can just enjoy domination over the region. And from my reading of it, it does seem to me that

01:02:26.460 a lot of them believed it. You know, I think a lot of them hubris and, you know, yeah, we overthrow

01:02:32.020 Saddam Hussein. This democracy will sweep the region. Then we'll overthrow Gaddafi. Then we'll

01:02:36.860 overthrow the mullahs in Iran. And then the region will be way better, except every time they actually

01:02:40.900 did it, it resulted in nothing but disaster, which really could have been very easily predicted

01:02:45.620 and was predicted by wiser people than the neocons. But all these years later, you either have to like

01:02:53.580 apologize for your role in this catastrophe or defend your role in this catastrophe and talk

01:02:59.380 about how you still really believe it was the right thing to do. But you can't sit here and say

01:03:03.340 you're not an expert and you're a Jew hater if you say the word neoconservative.

01:03:07.360 That's not an appropriate response. But if if Mark Levin is calling the Trump administration

01:03:13.280 anti-Semitic Steve Wyckoff, we're at the end of something and the beginning of something new.

01:03:20.160 I mean, that's right. Right. I mean, that's so I almost called Mark when I saw it because I really

01:03:26.360 I know him, but I really love Steve Wyckoff. And I think his decency, I don't agree with him on

01:03:30.960 everything at all. But his decency is just palpable. I mean, it just comes through his concern for

01:03:36.980 people. His reasonableness is just so obvious. And the effects of what he's done have been so

01:03:42.800 great and great for America, great for the world. So I almost I was so offended. And then I thought

01:03:47.540 I'm not going to solve anything by calling Mark Levin and scolding him.

01:03:52.000 But but I did think like he's not stupid. If you're saying if you're calling Steve Wyckoff an

01:03:59.640 anti-Semite on Twitter, like, you know, you're losing. Right. Is that what that is?

01:04:04.280 And it's such a you know, in the what's what's weird is that at the same time, because I know

01:04:10.060 all of these these people will they'll be lecturing me about how I don't understand like

01:04:15.940 the gravity of anti-Semitism. And it's like, no, actually, I kind of do. And I would never

01:04:22.880 just throw the accusation around like that. I'm very hesitant to ever call any person a

01:04:28.520 bigot or a Jew hater or racist or any of these things, because it's like you're you're

01:04:34.220 intentionally trying to to dehumanize them on the accusation that they're dehumanizing others,

01:04:40.560 scaring the crap out of people. I'm getting texts from people I really love personally,

01:04:44.080 who are very, very, you know, who aren't paying a lot of attention. They just hear that there's

01:04:49.260 anti-Semitism and I'm part of it and hurts their feelings and they're confused and upset. And it's

01:04:54.180 like it. It has such a divisive effect. Yeah. Like for real. And it's I'm a little bit concerned.

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01:06:30.660 Yeah, I mean, I'm concerned about all of it. None of it's particularly good.

01:06:35.860 But there's also something which is, it's interesting to me as somebody who is,

01:06:40.040 I am not a conservative. I mean, I'm a bit of a right-winger, but I'm not a conservative.

01:06:44.980 I'm kind of a radical libertarian.

01:06:47.360 Well, if Tom Tillis is what a conservative is, I'm not a...

01:06:49.960 Yeah, right. I mean, there are some, as a libertarian, like, there certainly are some

01:06:54.540 things that I think ought be conserved, you know? Like, I think, like, the Bill of Rights and

01:06:59.640 our traditions and I think Christianity. I think there's a lot of things that, like, should be

01:07:04.460 conserved. But it's so bizarre to me that now that I'm at this level where it's like I'm talking or

01:07:11.280 talking to, but being lectured to by, like, the leaders of Conservatism, Inc. And I have to explain

01:07:17.280 to them that, like, I don't believe in moral relativism. Like, as if this is, like, a new

01:07:24.640 thing for them to wrap their head around.

01:07:27.580 Have you gotten calls from Con Inc. trying to bring you into line?

01:07:30.760 I've gotten... For the first time in my career, really, I've gotten a few of the calls.

01:07:36.220 But, I mean, it's... I'm too far gone for them. You know, if I... If you were going to get me to

01:07:41.300 sell out, you would have had to get me a while ago. You just shouldn't have let me...

01:07:44.500 Too late!

01:07:45.460 Well, it is... I remember... So, when I... This is, like, I want to say, like, 2000... 2014, 2015.

01:07:52.200 It was somewhere in there where I said... The first time I ever got on television, the first person

01:07:56.460 who ever put me on TV was Kennedy, who I just adore and will for the rest of my days.

01:08:02.680 Sweet girl. I agree.

01:08:03.600 She was just, like, one of the sweetest, kindest. Really funny.

01:08:07.060 Yeah.

01:08:07.240 Really smart.

01:08:08.100 I agree.

01:08:08.460 Weirdly smart.

01:08:09.340 Yes.

01:08:09.660 But, like, when I say weirdly smart, I mean weirdly smart. Like, knows about stuff that

01:08:14.040 no one should know about.

01:08:15.080 And then has, like, a lot of information about it. But she's a wonderful person.

01:08:18.380 So, she was a... She put me on Fox Business. And then Greg Gutfeld and Tom Shalhou, who was

01:08:26.220 hosting Red Eye at the time, they started using me on their Fox News shows. And so, it was,

01:08:29.820 like, the first time in my career I had, like, started getting on TV.

01:08:32.060 And I remember a few people at Fox had told me that they were, like, hey, there's, like,

01:08:39.280 some people in management are, like, interested in you. Like, they're taking, you know, some

01:08:44.060 interest in you. And then it was kind of explained to me, not, like, ever directly, but it was

01:08:48.680 like, you know, you're a little out there for Fox News. And I remember at the time, I was

01:08:55.900 broke. I mean, dead broke.

01:08:58.460 Only on, just to be, put a finer point in that. What do they mean? Not in your personal

01:09:02.440 life. Your personal life is more buttoned down than most people who work at Fox.

01:09:05.480 Well, at the time, it wasn't. This is before I was married and had kids and stuff. But

01:09:08.280 that's, believe me, that's not what they care about.

01:09:09.640 They don't care, trust me.

01:09:10.620 I found out pretty quickly, by just doing shows at Fox News and then going to the bar

01:09:15.060 afterward with some of the people there, you're like, oh, Conservatism Inc. is not exactly

01:09:19.500 what you thought. They're actually pretty liberal when it comes down to the bar hang after

01:09:23.700 the show.

01:09:24.280 I would say.

01:09:24.780 But it was, you know, I was a Ron Paul guy and I was younger. So I was a more, you

01:09:32.080 know, you know, Ron Paul was a country doctor wearing a suit and tie. I was like a kid from

01:09:36.300 Brooklyn who was like, you're all a bunch of killers. You know, like, this is all

01:09:39.300 bullshit.

01:09:40.000 It was the foreign policy stuff.

01:09:41.080 It was all the foreign policy stuff, as it always is. That's always what it's really

01:09:44.780 all about. And I don't say that because I want it to be the case. It's just the fact

01:09:48.620 that that's always really what it's all about.

01:09:50.100 It took me 40 years to figure this out, but yes, you're right. You're correct.

01:09:53.060 By the way, all these, uh, all of these even debates today, the people on Twitter

01:09:57.380 talking about the woke, right? It just happens to be that everyone who's labeled

01:10:02.140 woke, right? Are the ones who are opposing American wars and everybody who's

01:10:05.880 throwing out the accusation all happened to support them.

01:10:08.540 What's woke, right?

01:10:09.520 It's a nonsense term that they're trying to say. It's, it's totally ridiculous, but,

01:10:14.600 but let me just, uh, on the Fox news thing. So I remember then, and this is not, I

01:10:19.300 was broke. I mean, like broke, like where they're like, Hey, let's go grab a beer after

01:10:24.000 the show. I'm like, all right, are you buying? Cause I can't, cause if not, like, let's go

01:10:28.080 grab a six pack at the store and go back to my apartment and sip, cause like I just had

01:10:32.060 no money. And I would have at the time when they said they were like, look, they're thinking

01:10:36.720 about you for one of these contributor ships, you know, it was whatever it is. It may give

01:10:40.020 you like a hundred grand a year or something like that. If you get one would have been like

01:10:42.740 life changing for me, life changing. And I remember consciously at the time thinking,

01:10:48.140 you know, at a time when I'm making 25 grand a year thinking, man, maybe I just don't talk

01:10:53.480 about the foreign policy stuff. Maybe I just do that. And then even in the moment I thought

01:10:57.420 about it, just being like, now Ron Paul's my hero, my hero are the people who tell the

01:11:02.100 truth. So like, I'm just not going to, but so if I didn't, if I didn't sell out then the

01:11:07.700 idea that I'm going to sell out now when I'm doing really well, it's like, no, that's

01:11:12.740 ridiculous. Like, no, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, that's, that's insane.

01:11:16.860 It was just funny that I think that, um, that Murray thought he was administering the kill

01:11:22.300 shot. I think that's what it was supposed to be.

01:11:25.400 But the opposite happened. It's like, I, I, and not to brag, I knew this as I was watching

01:11:30.920 it. I was like, Dave is about to become way more famous, but not just famous, more authoritative

01:11:37.380 more respected, more closely listened to than ever before. Has that been your experience?

01:11:42.480 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's essentially just done nothing except make me bigger, you

01:11:47.600 know?

01:11:47.900 Were you, did you pay Douglas to do that?

01:11:51.460 I did not. I don't have that type of money.

01:11:53.920 Did you throw the fight on purpose?

01:11:55.000 I don't know. I wish I had that. I'm doing okay. I don't have money like that. I don't

01:11:58.140 have buy off Douglas Murray, uh, money. I think he's getting...

01:12:00.920 I don't think it would take too much.

01:12:02.380 Well, he's, it, it's not just, you know, one of the things that was interesting is that it's

01:12:06.740 not just, so there was the debate, there was the reaction to the debate, but then what

01:12:11.840 was really interesting is that then there was the reaction to just because it became

01:12:15.180 such a big thing, it ended up coming up on Rogan's podcast with other guests like later

01:12:20.100 on. And they're all just kind of making fun of, of Douglas and how ridiculous he was

01:12:24.500 because he was ridiculous. And then it's almost like you see the realization set in with those

01:12:29.540 people that, oh shit, Joe was what, what essentially happened here. Right. And this is, I think

01:12:36.340 for almost everyone to see is that I've been debating all these guys on Israel-Palestine

01:12:42.000 and I've been beating all these guys in these debates. And I'm not saying I'm beating, I'm

01:12:45.460 just saying like the reaction, the Oxford style voting is that I, I win dominantly. And then

01:12:50.140 Douglas Murray was almost brought in as the, the king boss.

01:12:54.020 Dad's here.

01:12:54.440 Right. Like this is the, I mean, Ben Shapiro is not going to do it. He's not going to come

01:12:58.200 debate me. And so who is it? Who's the best guy to come to, well, here's Douglas Murray,

01:13:03.120 the guy who's just known for his prose and his rhetoric and how good he is at debating.

01:13:08.980 I mean, this is what he's known for. And then he came in and couldn't lay a, a land

01:13:13.180 a blow. He couldn't take on one argument. He had to just be resorted to like, it was

01:13:17.960 like you were debating an anti-racist college professor on what, who's just going to tell

01:13:22.540 you the whole time that I'm not even allowed to have this opinion.

01:13:25.160 Yes, totally.

01:13:25.880 It was just that. And so then what do you think the response to that was? Here's, here

01:13:29.820 you have Joe Rogan who has got some of these guys on his show who clearly are making a

01:13:34.280 case where he goes, all right, yeah, this is a pretty good argument that this guy's

01:13:36.940 making. And he brought, you know, as much as Douglas was complaining in his, his op-eds

01:13:42.440 after the fact that it's so unfair that I couldn't just go on alone. I had to go on

01:13:46.660 with this guy who doesn't know what he's talking about. It's like, yeah, but this

01:13:49.280 was your opportunity, man. You could have blown me out of the water and then had

01:13:53.940 Rogan being like, ah, shit, maybe I should have more experts on. Like maybe I've got this

01:13:58.600 comedian guy who I think is making really good points, but then this guy just came

01:14:01.880 in and like totally took him on. And, but he was unwilling or unable to do that. And

01:14:07.520 so that was the next freak out is they realized that like, oh, Joe just got pushed more in

01:14:13.120 my direction as his whole audience did.

01:14:16.280 I wonder though, if there's not something a little more sinister underneath it. I mean,

01:14:20.520 you keep referring to this as debate, but it wasn't, of course it was not a debate. It

01:14:24.640 was Douglas trying to scold Joe into never having you or anyone like you on his show again. It

01:14:31.360 was basically, he was playing the heavy a little bit. It was kind of threatening. I thought like,

01:14:36.340 you know, you don't really know because you were a sitcom actor slash comedian slash bow

01:14:40.500 hunter that actually you're playing with some pretty serious shit, Joe Rogan. And we've been

01:14:45.100 watching and maybe you should stop having these people on.

01:14:48.100 Yeah.

01:14:48.200 That was definitely the vibe I got from it.

01:14:49.960 Oh, no question. It was, they even use the word, um, when he was talking to, uh, Barry

01:14:54.640 Weiss, um, you know, that embodiment of expertise, uh, that is Barry Weiss. Uh, they, they were

01:15:01.020 talking and he used the word platforming that Joe shouldn't be platforming all of these people.

01:15:07.300 It's like, okay, so you're, you look, I'm saying this is just animal farm, right? The end

01:15:11.700 of animal farm where the pigs and the people are indistinguishable. Like if you're a conservative

01:15:16.320 using the word platform as a verb. Yeah. Like how long before you call me a white supremacist

01:15:21.820 actually? Which essentially, I guess white supremacist isn't the term, but anti-Semite

01:15:26.120 is the term that they're going with. It's the exact same playbook.

01:15:28.740 It's, and then they have the balls to whip around and call you woke, right?

01:15:33.400 Yes, that's right. I'm like, right.

01:15:35.660 It's Bill Kristol calling me, you know, calling for an ethnostate.

01:15:39.540 Yes. That's, it's all the same thing, right? You're sitting here there. We have in this

01:15:43.580 country right now, we have speech laws being passed, you know, in the name of students feeling

01:15:50.020 not safe on college campuses. And you get the accusation of bigotry used to shut down real

01:15:57.000 dissent and real conversations. And then they're going to turn around and say the other side is woke.

01:16:01.240 So that's when I stopped laughing. That, I mean, that is, um, shocking to me. And the fact that

01:16:09.480 the Congress had scheduled, it was thanks to Marjorie Taylor Greene, it was pulled off the

01:16:13.120 schedule, but God bless her. But, um, what a weird world we're in where she's the savior.

01:16:19.620 Marjorie Taylor Greene is who, that's where we're at. You know why? Because Marjorie is totally

01:16:22.920 sincere. Yeah. She's actually not a liar. She's sincere. That's why they hate her. Uh, but,

01:16:27.580 but there was a vote scheduled on a bill that would have made it a felony for Americans to

01:16:34.920 participate in a boycott of Israel. And as someone who has zero interest in participating in any kind

01:16:40.320 of boycott, much less against Israel, I'm just not interested. I'm happy to, whatever, buy the hummus

01:16:44.760 and use the software. I don't care. Um, but I probably would have engaged in one just to make the

01:16:51.660 point that I'm a free man in a free country. And we can't like, how could you even consider voting on

01:16:56.380 something like that? And isn't the most outrageous part of it, or at least to me, I mean, I guess it's

01:17:01.860 all outrageous, but the most, the crazy thing is that we've, and we've seen this in, uh, in the last

01:17:08.800 decade where all like Hollywood types and like big musicians would boycott red States. Like if they

01:17:16.180 tried to pass like a six week heartbeat bill for abortion or the bad boycott. Yeah. Boycott. So you

01:17:22.120 could boycott States in our own country, but you can't boycott a foreign country. It's like the,

01:17:29.100 the double standard there. Again, this is why I said the thing about like relativism. Um,

01:17:34.840 because in the same way that, um, you know, that people will talk about constantly and the same

01:17:39.960 people who will harp on, you know, antisemitism on Twitter. And like, I'm not denying something's

01:17:45.460 going on there clearly. Um, like there's, there's a real thing happening here. And it's not,

01:17:50.700 as I've said, and again, this isn't necessarily the most important aspect to it, but personally,

01:17:56.540 one of the things that annoys me about that is like, it's not helping my argument. Like it's not,

01:18:01.460 it's, it's an albatross around my neck. And it's the reason why every goddamn debate that I'm in,

01:18:06.520 the first thing they're going to bring up is we'll look at all these people on Twitter who are saying

01:18:10.140 all this stuff. So I wish those people would knock it off, but you also, okay, we don't need two

01:18:17.080 standards here. One standard will do just fine. Let's have one standard and apply this across the

01:18:22.200 board because the amount of anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-Palestinian bigotry, dehumanizing of the

01:18:28.960 entire Palestinian people is engaged in for 20 years. Yeah, that's right. And then they're going

01:18:33.680 to turn around and be like, Oh my God, there's all this big, there's all this dehumanizing bigotry

01:18:37.740 out there. It's like, yeah, none of that is good. Like that. None of that is good. It's not good for

01:18:42.480 you. It's not good for the conversation. It's just bad. You don't want to dehumanize an entire

01:18:46.940 group of people ever like human beings, you know, and that should be fairly obvious, but also I will

01:18:53.560 say that, you know, Donald Trump, who I voted for and supported in this last election, and I think

01:18:59.720 has done some really good things in his first hundred days or so, and some not so good things,

01:19:05.380 but you know, I mean, he, he would turn in the debate and call Joe Biden a Palestinian.

01:19:10.900 He said this about Chuck Schumer too. He's basically a Palestinian. You're like, Whoa.

01:19:16.060 And for all the people who have been screaming bigotry for the last decade,

01:19:19.620 no one ever thought to be like, Hey, you know, that's not like an insult.

01:19:23.380 It's not an insult to call someone a Palestinian. I've met lots of Palestinians who are really great

01:19:27.800 people. There's nothing wrong with them. And again, like if anyone, if a presidential candidate

01:19:32.800 ever like stood up in the debate and went, Oh, this guy's a real Jew. We'd all be like, Whoa,

01:19:37.320 what the hell is that? I know you don't get to say that in a political debate. I know. And so

01:19:41.540 there's this, there's a ton of this you, you have, um, you know, hit Nikki Haley going over and signing

01:19:47.980 bombs. It's hard to overstate how much I hate that by the way. Yeah. Well, right. And, and I mean,

01:19:52.860 there are a lot of unreasonable Palestinians, of course, there are also some wonderful,

01:19:56.540 a lot of Christian, a lot of Christian Palestinians, a lot of wonderful Muslim Palestinians.

01:20:01.340 Um, so I hate that. Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. It's terrible. It's terrible on any side.

01:20:07.020 You don't dehumanize people like that. Yeah. Um, and so when, what's his name? Um, I'm blanking.

01:20:13.200 What's the, the Congressman in Florida, Randy fine is fine. I don't know, but did you see the stuff

01:20:18.640 he's posted? Oh my God. It's just, you know, so again, okay. You want to talk about one who's

01:20:24.220 like, we want to kill all their children or something. Well, someone basically like a, I think

01:20:28.140 someone tweeted like a picture of a dead Palestinian baby and he said like, good, we need more or

01:20:33.900 something like that. It was something really close to that. I don't want, I don't want to get this

01:20:37.280 wrong. You could vote for someone like that. Trump endorsed him after that. After he said it was good

01:20:43.060 that a baby was dead. I mean, you know, again, I would love to have him pull up the actual tweet

01:20:47.520 on that. Cause I don't want to like misremember it, but it was something really egregious. Um, and he's,

01:20:52.220 you know, there's just, look, there's a lot of this stuff is how you get Nikki Haley signing bombs

01:20:56.820 that are about to go get dropped on women and children. You're like, I'm sorry,

01:21:00.680 that's fucking sickening. Like, what the hell is that? Like it's, what are we a part of some

01:21:05.820 death cult or something? I mean, this is like real. And so of course then, you know,

01:21:09.840 Douglas Murray's book is like democracies and death cults or whatever. And, um, which is kind

01:21:15.460 of funny in a way, uh, to be pro democracies while you're also making the argument for expertise.

01:21:23.820 Cause you would think like, if you're for democracy, the whole point of this,

01:21:27.640 the whole point of experts is to explain it to regular people who will ultimately have the

01:21:32.020 authority of deciding which experts are in charge and which experts are not in charge. You know,

01:21:36.700 there's a little contradiction there, but again, this is my issue. And this is where I think,

01:21:41.120 uh, Tucker, in some way we're really like kindred spirits.

01:21:45.260 What a higher IQ you have than Douglas Murray. It just cracks me up.

01:21:48.620 Well, he's, he's, he's got a very high verbal IQ. He's more talented in a lot of ways than me.

01:21:53.300 I'm just, I'm, I'm telling the truth. Um, no, no. But I mean, that's such a deep

01:21:57.680 contradiction that I doubt he's aware of.

01:22:00.900 Probably not. Um, but I will say this, and this is where I think in some ways,

01:22:04.640 this is why me and you always get along. I think we're kindred spirits in this way,

01:22:08.080 in some sense, but I really do. I mean this, I mean this so sincerely in my soul,

01:22:13.760 in my heart of hearts, I'm a crotchety old right winger. Like that's who I want to be. Okay. That's

01:22:20.460 what I try my best. I want to be, I, I'm a, I'm, I'm not just like a, a Western chauvinist or

01:22:28.060 whatever. Like I think Western society is better than everything else. I think it's, I'm a libertarian

01:22:32.940 and I think it's one of the goofiest things about libertarians in general that they kind of try to

01:22:37.140 run away from that and be egalitarian to some degree. That's ridiculous. What do you tell you?

01:22:41.460 You believe in individual Liberty? Well, then you don't get to say every civilization is equal

01:22:45.360 because only one of them respects individual Liberty and that's the better one. Okay. That's

01:22:50.260 the, I, by your own definition, that's right. So screw all this other egalitarianism is a revolt

01:22:55.960 against nature as the great Murray Rothbard wrote. It's I'm against all of that. I don't believe in

01:23:01.260 relativism. I don't believe in all cultures are equal. I would like to sit here and look down on the

01:23:06.680 Muslim world. That's what I would like to do because my society is so much better. And if anything,

01:23:11.440 I'd be lecturing you, you guys got to do Liberty better. You guys don't really even understand how

01:23:15.780 a free society works. I'd like to be there. That's actually what confirms, that's what confirms my

01:23:21.420 bias is like stuff like that. The problem is I just know too much about our government and what

01:23:26.160 our government's done to these people and not just what we've done to them, but that we've been

01:23:29.880 propping up the Islamists for 40 years. Literally. And so what are we talking about here? You can't then

01:23:35.300 turn around and go, look at them. They're a bunch of Islamists. No, I know what you did. You propped up

01:23:39.700 the Islamists. So you didn't have to deal with the commies. Like, regardless of any of that,

01:23:44.380 I just, again, I insist on one standard for everything. If you're going to say Hamas is a

01:23:49.060 death cult, what the hell is the U.S. government? What is the Israeli government? You get to sit here

01:23:54.800 as my government has in the last 25 years destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen,

01:24:03.420 Ukraine, Ukraine, and now Gaza. That's what my government's done. I don't get to call someone

01:24:09.660 else a death cult. I'd like to. I'd like to just look down at them as a death cult, but sorry,

01:24:14.980 we're the biggest purveyors of violence in the world, not Vladimir Putin. And like, again, it's

01:24:20.740 just, if you look at these things, you just have to have one standard and apply them across the board.

01:24:25.580 This is what I've been arguing the whole time. And if you're going to say, it's like, okay,

01:24:29.060 October 7th was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. Why was it horrible? Oh yeah. Because

01:24:34.600 intentionally killing innocent civilians is like one of the most evil things you could ever do.

01:24:40.220 Okay then. Because people are what matter. Yeah. In the end. Right. And all your theories are valid

01:24:49.000 to the extent that they serve people. And when they hurt people, then they're invalid. You know,

01:24:53.620 I think. Yeah, I think so. So you said that there's this brand new media landscape, information

01:25:00.820 landscape, possibility of true free thinking and free speech. I think it's all true because the old

01:25:07.260 control system has shattered, as you said. So we're living in this just incredible moment. How long can it

01:25:14.720 last? Oh, that's a good question. It's very hard. You know, it's very hard to make predictions

01:25:22.100 because it's such a new model. Right. And it's like, we really don't know much about this. You

01:25:27.220 know, one of the things that I find that I'm, which, you know, you never want to get ahead of

01:25:30.980 yourself, especially these days. Um, and there's so many things that could happen that it's kind of

01:25:35.600 like impossible to even know what 2028 looks like. Yes. But so I'm assuming right now, JD Vance is

01:25:42.920 probably going to be the guy. Hope so. Yeah. I hope so too. Um, and so you're, you look at this

01:25:49.100 dynamic where you go, okay, so part of, so you look at Kamala Harris's campaign and say Joe Biden

01:25:56.320 the same way. And Joe Biden specifically because he was senile, not, you know, Joe Biden, younger Joe

01:26:01.160 Biden, while he was never a very bright guy, maybe would have been a little bit different politically,

01:26:06.600 but Kamala Harris. So she kind of famously, infamously now turned down the Joe Rogan experience.

01:26:13.220 She could have been on the show, but she didn't. Now, a lot of people, uh, were saying,

01:26:17.740 oh, what a stupid move, uh, turning that down. I kind of disagree. I go, it probably was the right

01:26:22.980 move. You know, if you're, if you were in, if you had no soul and you're working for the Kamala

01:26:27.720 Harris campaign and your only objective in this world was to get her elected. And that invite

01:26:31.680 came in, you're probably going, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't, you will be exposed. You can't go

01:26:37.580 do this. The fact is that Kamala Harris, by the nature of who she is as a person and by the nature of

01:26:45.280 what she was running on is not built for a three hour unedited, unscripted new conversation.

01:26:53.000 You can't do that. You know, like say whatever you will about Donald Trump. The man's got a lot

01:26:56.980 of flaws, but he is built for that. He could do eight hours. I think easily, you know, like he's

01:27:01.500 without going to the bathroom, right? Yeah. Which is what I heard. And Joe said he didn't go before

01:27:06.480 or after true. I've never done the Joe Rogan experience and not gone to the bathroom before

01:27:10.480 or after the mid break leak always. Yeah, of course. This is insane. The guy's not human. It's

01:27:14.400 unbelievable. But okay. So going just into 2028, think about what a change this is.

01:27:23.080 This is the new standard to be a presidential candidate. You have to be able to go and do a

01:27:28.660 three hour podcast and actually probably several of them, right? I mean, Trump did a whole bunch of

01:27:33.320 them before he got elected and she didn't and lost. That's it. And so that in itself just changes

01:27:40.040 everything. Now we have to actually see who you are as a person, you know, because it doesn't even

01:27:45.540 matter. It doesn't even matter what you're talking about for three hours. It doesn't even matter if

01:27:49.340 you're getting grilled. So true. It's just I get to see who you are and it comes out. So, okay. No one

01:27:56.100 can play a role for three hours, right? So that's the new normal. You know, that's that in itself is a

01:28:02.320 huge transformation. I think that has to be stopped. I think that has to be stopped. And

01:28:07.600 you know, I don't want to be like too paranoid, but one of the, I think some of the, the anger and

01:28:15.320 the hate online is, you know, is organic and it's rooted in frustration and facts in some cases. And

01:28:23.140 you know, I'm not, it's not all bad, but some of it is so clearly inorganic. It just obviously is

01:28:32.460 that you sort of wonder, like, is this all a pretext for shutting it down? I just can't escape

01:28:37.940 that. Yeah. I, I, I get your point. And certainly, you know, like I never know what is, you know, a

01:28:47.700 pretext or what is not, but it's certainly like, oh, this is going to be used that way. So like,

01:28:52.480 that's another thing. It's very short sighted, you know, for, for anyone, you know, it's kind of

01:28:57.420 like nobody ever, which I get it. It's, it's a little bit difficult to do because it's like second

01:29:02.900 or third order thinking, but no one ever kind of thinks about like what the reaction is going to be

01:29:08.880 to what they're doing. It's just whether they can get away with it in the moment, but it's not the

01:29:12.800 fact that it's like, Hey, there is going to be a correction for this and almost certainly an

01:29:16.500 overcorrection because that's always the case. You know, it doesn't seem like any of those

01:29:20.940 leftists ever thought about when they were pushing like all the trans and the kids stuff.

01:29:25.540 They'd be like, what do you think the result of this is going to be? You go, oh, here's the

01:29:29.160 result. Donald Trump winning every swing state. That's the result. So in a handmaid's tale,

01:29:34.600 like ultimately we're going to have Sharia law. Well, it's, but it does, you know, it's,

01:29:39.720 and then people are always like, really, how did the Muslims take over Europe? Because Europe went

01:29:44.780 tranny. That's why you're going to see white girls begging for Sharia law. And of course,

01:29:50.920 of course, there's like, there's many factors involved, but there's no question that there

01:29:55.540 are these, these cycles. And, um, I do think there's, there's an onus on say people who do,

01:30:05.200 you know, want, who, who were against the censorship regime and were against or are against the U S is

01:30:12.500 Israeli, you know, special relationship. It's like, okay, but if you've got the freedom to

01:30:17.380 actually speak about this now, understand a couple of things, understand that like,

01:30:21.580 you're getting something that generations before you, they never had generations before you there,

01:30:26.440 your career would have been ruined. You never would have been allowed to say these things.

01:30:30.180 And there does, that carries with it a responsibility, you know, it carries with it a

01:30:35.220 responsibility to do this in a way that like, number one, you're getting it right. You're not being

01:30:41.320 sloppy. You're not leading people down a bad path, right? Uh, you're not demonizing people who don't

01:30:47.360 deserve to be demonized, who are not a part of this. And ultimately that you won't be handing the

01:30:52.600 excuse to the other side who obviously, as you said, needs to reign this in. They need, these guys

01:30:59.300 cannot compete in a free market. And so they have to rig the market in their favor. They had forever.

01:31:04.660 They had the market rigged in their favor for the first time. Now they kind of don't,

01:31:07.900 they still do a little bit, but they don't in terms of the conversation, they still certainly

01:31:12.760 do in terms of the power of government, but they don't in terms of the conversation. It's like,

01:31:17.100 okay, what do you want to do with that now? The problem is that so much has been hidden

01:31:23.140 either intentionally or just through kind of the veil of misdirection, um, that people are learning

01:31:30.240 a lot of stuff at once. Yeah. And it's frying some circuits. And I think the thing that I try to

01:31:36.660 meditate on every single day is that I am commanded to and intend to treat each individual as an

01:31:42.480 individual, period, period. Yeah. And when you do that, it keeps you from going totally insane.

01:31:49.760 And it also opens you up to the beauty of life, to the joy of life, which is being surprised by

01:31:54.740 people and their complexity, good and bad. And like the capacity of someone like Steve Wyckoff to like

01:32:00.120 do stuff. If you'd asked me, can Wyckoff do that? I don't know. I mean, I knew Wyckoff before,

01:32:03.980 but like, right. Look what Wyckoff is doing. It's incredible. I don't know. It's just

01:32:07.980 treat people as individuals. You're commanded to do that. And I do think it's harder to do that online.

01:32:13.800 Yes, I agree. And I also, you know, it was weird because so I, you know, it was an interesting

01:32:19.540 experience for me this last month or so, because I've never really, you know, I'm, I think this has

01:32:25.460 helped me in my career is that I didn't like, uh, I didn't blow up out of nowhere. Like I know

01:32:31.420 other people who have in comedy. I know people who were like, you know, just like exploded,

01:32:36.000 you know, they were in open mics with me and then they got an audition for Saturday Night Live and

01:32:40.480 then they got it. And now they're world famous. You know, you go literally from being a complete

01:32:44.920 unknown, not even an established comedian, a newer comedian who can't even work the clubs

01:32:49.600 to being like world famous. I've seen people have that.

01:32:52.480 How'd that work for Britney Spears?

01:32:53.780 It's pretty bad. Well, it's not good.

01:32:55.600 Especially bad when you're young. That's the worst time for it to happen.

01:32:58.140 It happened to me, actually.

01:32:59.140 Right. Yeah. Well, that's right. You, you had that.

01:33:01.320 Luckily, I was humiliated along the way. So it made me more normal, but that's the antidote

01:33:05.840 for it in a weird way, right? I totally agree.

01:33:07.700 Because it's all ego stuff. So the antidote for blowing up your ego is destroying your ego,

01:33:12.680 which is, is very painful, but it's good. Like a hangover, the hangover is actually getting

01:33:17.260 you healthy. Yes.

01:33:18.120 It sucks, but the hangover is the cure. It's getting drunk was the problem.

01:33:21.420 It's hard to become addicted to cocaine. People seem to pull it off anyway, but I never understood

01:33:25.300 that. How could you become addicted to this? You feel horrible.

01:33:27.520 I know it is. Well, that's right. Sorry. Sorry. No, but that's, that's exactly right. But so,

01:33:32.680 okay. So for me, I w it was always like a, like a logical progression, like one step more,

01:33:38.380 one step more, my profile kind of rose, but this, you know, this thing was the biggest thing I've

01:33:44.240 ever done in my career. It was like the biggest reaction to any show or any debate that I've ever

01:33:49.020 done. Cause it was on Rogan's podcast and he doesn't usually do debates and it was the most

01:33:54.360 contentious issue of our day. So it became this big thing. And now I'm at a place where,

01:33:59.520 you know, I'm 42. I have a great wife. I got two little kids that I play with every day. I have a

01:34:06.260 nice house. My life is like set up. Um, I'm, I'm an adult. This isn't so, but when the kind of hate

01:34:14.520 attack, this coordinated attack and everyone who's attacking me just happens to have like,

01:34:21.060 you know, their name written in Hebrew letters and a Jewish star, you know, in their bio and

01:34:25.300 they're all saying the most vicious stuff I've been sitting here and I'm like, wow, dude, if I

01:34:30.700 were 25 and I wasn't Jewish, I could very easily see my response to this just being like, man,

01:34:40.400 screw these people, you know? And like, now I'm not saying that would be correct, but it's just like

01:34:46.480 you feel that because that's the impulse when you're like, but like what you just said, I think

01:34:51.080 is the key point, which is that like, if believing in individualism is like a grounding force, it kind

01:34:58.220 of inoculates you against collectivist nonsense. And when I say that, see, one of the problems here

01:35:03.000 now is that the left, which is what they do is they attack terms and concepts. And so whenever you

01:35:10.580 think about something, you start thinking about the lefty version of it. And it's like, no, no, no,

01:35:14.100 not that at all. So the left kind of made individualism. They kind of mixed it together

01:35:20.240 with like this, like self-actualization type thing. Like, oh, all that really matters is like

01:35:26.500 whatever you're feeling and whatever you're feeling is correct. And it's correct because you're feeling

01:35:31.860 it and you're feeling it because it's correct. And that's like, that's like the devil. That's like,

01:35:35.920 you do not want to go down that path. You do not want to ever say that. Like, well, if you feel

01:35:39.700 something inside of you, then that must be true. That's essentially what the trans thing was all

01:35:44.340 based on. It was this view that, well, if you feel it, then it must be true. Like that's not

01:35:48.720 where you are. That's, that's the path to hell. You don't want to go down that path. You know,

01:35:52.760 that's no, that's, it's not true that because you feel something it therefore should be actualized.

01:35:58.360 And that's terrible. However, more old school individualism, like in the classical liberal

01:36:04.400 enlightenment tradition is understanding that the individual is a, is a unit of analysis that the

01:36:11.280 individual, individuals are how we exist. We act as individuals. We suffer as individuals.

01:36:17.440 We collectivize as individuals.

01:36:19.800 We are born and die as individuals.

01:36:21.680 Exactly. And so, and, and that collectivism, what collectivism used to mean was the idea that

01:36:27.500 the individual ought to be subservient to the larger group. Not that groups don't exist.

01:36:34.080 Not that we shouldn't come together. Of course we come, we create families, we create churches,

01:36:38.580 communities, all of these things are wonderful. But when you do understand like true individualism,

01:36:44.320 like on that, like, like that individuals ought to have rights, right? Things like that.

01:36:49.160 It does, it shields you from a lot of this nonsense.

01:36:53.360 Well, the question is, does the, does the human being have a soul?

01:36:56.660 Yes, exactly.

01:36:57.700 Something that is distinct from all others. There are billions of human beings in this world.

01:37:01.180 You are fundamentally different, not just in your fingerprints and iris skin, but in your soul,

01:37:07.340 this thing that we can't quite define, but that we know is real.

01:37:09.980 Yes. And that's why you have a right. That's why you have rights to anything.

01:37:12.640 That's the only reason. Exactly.

01:37:13.380 That's the only reason you have a right.

01:37:14.660 So this is, I, I, I remember I was watching, um, as I mentioned earlier, I was watching you and

01:37:19.100 Brett Weinstein.

01:37:20.180 Yes.

01:37:20.420 So I was just, uh, yesterday was watching this.

01:37:22.980 And there was one point where Brett said, and I think he was completely right about this.

01:37:27.240 And you guys kind of agreed, but he said, uh, he goes, you know, the, the claim that Israel has

01:37:31.620 a right to exist has always seen a little bit strange to me. And he was like, I mean, they do

01:37:36.120 exist, but do they have a right to exist? Exactly.

01:37:38.660 There's any country have a right to exist.

01:37:39.660 Well, I think the point is almost this countries don't have rights.

01:37:44.020 Individuals have rights.

01:37:44.960 You're using an individualist term and then attempting to apply it to a collective

01:37:50.560 government. That's not how it works. Every single individual who has Israeli citizenship

01:37:56.000 has a right to exist. Every single individual who does not have Israeli citizenship has a right

01:38:00.620 to exist. Every Palestinian, this is why people make these arguments. There never was a country

01:38:04.520 called Palestine. Totally irrelevant. Has nothing to do with anything. It doesn't matter if there

01:38:10.320 was a government or a country. It doesn't matter where the lines on a map are drawn.

01:38:14.140 Now, again, this, I'm not making a lefty argument here. I'm not saying, therefore, you can't have

01:38:19.620 immigration restrictions. Of course you can, because a group of people can own a plot of

01:38:23.900 land and they get to decide who can come and who can't come.

01:38:26.760 That's right.

01:38:27.120 But the point is that if you're trying to apply rights to collectives, you're going to realize

01:38:32.740 that it doesn't make sense. And the same way they do this constantly, where they apply

01:38:36.960 things like, uh, they'll say, does Israel have a right to defend itself? You go, no, individuals

01:38:42.380 have a right to defend themselves. And by the way, when I defend myself, I don't have the

01:38:47.320 right to aggress upon other innocent people who happen to be in the general vicinity of

01:38:52.780 the person who I want to defend myself against.

01:38:54.600 Who have competing rights.

01:38:55.340 Exactly.

01:38:55.940 That are distinct, but equal to mine.

01:38:58.520 Exactly. And that's really all it takes to kind of cure you of a lot of this collectivist

01:39:02.340 nonsense.

01:39:02.800 Yes. And there's, there is something about the form though. I do think form matters in the

01:39:06.700 same way reading a book on Kindle is a different experience from reading one in print.

01:39:09.940 It just is. Wish it wasn't. Uh, there's something about the form of social media that disaggregates

01:39:17.920 people from their souls. And I, or at least that's my experience of it. Like you can just

01:39:22.920 get so pissed off, um, that you forget that every person, what was it? You were telling

01:39:29.500 me this at breakfast this morning. You're, you're telling me at the preamble to Daryl Cooper's

01:39:34.540 world war two series. Can you just say that we say that he's so he's, uh, he hasn't put

01:39:40.260 the series out yet. I think he's, he's working on it. I hope it's out soon. Um, but so Daryl,

01:39:44.940 as he talked about on your show is putting together this big world war two series. And

01:39:48.480 when Daryl Cooper does, we're having him back this summer. I can't wait. I can't wait. Just

01:39:51.860 also just I'm excited for the reaction. Uh, but I actually think a lot of, you know, a lot

01:39:56.800 of people are probably going to be disappointed because he's not going to give them, you know,

01:40:00.500 like it's weirdly full Nazi. Well, that's the thing. Of course not. And it's weirdly

01:40:06.280 the only people, by the way, it's so funny because it's this symbiotic relationship that

01:40:10.860 you see all the time. It's like the only people who want him to, it's like the, the Nazis and

01:40:16.960 the Zionists are the ones who are like, please be a Nazi. Please be a, please. So that we have

01:40:21.900 this, you know, everybody else is like, Oh, great. They're getting paid from the same source.

01:40:25.780 I suspect some of them are. In fact, I don't suspect I know. I'm sure a lot

01:40:30.480 of them are. Yeah. Um, and that's, you know, that's part of this new landscape that, but

01:40:35.300 so he does this, um, he put out the prologue for the series and he had this wonderful part

01:40:41.400 in it. Um, I hope I can kind of do it justice, but it was so beautiful the way he said it,

01:40:45.360 but he was talking about like, when you start to think about, um, you know, the people in

01:40:52.360 Germany in world war two and how there, there were little three-year-old girls and eight-year-old

01:40:58.120 boys and there were women and there were all that, you know, and if you start to kind

01:41:02.000 of humanize them there's, or if you start to dehumanize them as many were making the

01:41:07.060 attempt to do, he said, you, you might find yourself having two competing voices in your

01:41:12.080 head. Like on one level you go, well, of course there were innocent women and innocent

01:41:16.860 children. And of course these are people just like anybody else. And then you might have

01:41:20.660 some other voice that goes, well, they were Germans and it was world war two. So what are

01:41:25.440 you doing? Trying to humanize anyone. And he goes, okay, that second voice is not you.

01:41:30.580 That's not you. That is a spirit outside of you acting on you. And just so you know, it's

01:41:36.560 the same spirit that was acting on the Nazis when they were talking about Jews. And that's

01:41:41.600 dude, it's so funny for people trying to demonize this guy. Like this is who he actually is when

01:41:46.420 he's talking to his audience and he's got a message to give them. This is the message he's

01:41:49.860 giving them. And I, man, he's just so right about that. And it's the same thing as like when

01:41:54.420 you see like some hardcore Israel supporter and then some hardcore like radical pro-Palestinian

01:41:59.700 and like, they're going like all the Jews, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they're

01:42:03.940 going all the Arabs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, you're the same person.

01:42:08.320 Both of you are the same person. And I'm not trying to completely equate it because obviously

01:42:12.240 the Palestinians have lost in this conflict. They're the ones who have been, you know, truly,

01:42:16.880 you know, they've been fucked over in a way that the Israelis haven't. But anytime that

01:42:22.060 you're like dehumanizing an entire group of people setting the stage to then justify some

01:42:27.840 type of brutal aggression that could not be justified without dehumanizing them first,

01:42:33.400 you are participating in the same exercise that is, is the reason throughout all of human

01:42:41.540 history that we've had genocides and wars and ethnic cleansing campaigns and just horrible

01:42:46.740 atrocities. Don't do that. Whatever you do, if you ever find yourself doing that, don't do it.

01:42:53.060 We're not allowed to do that. Yeah. I mean, we play, you play with fire when you do that.

01:42:57.660 And I, and I've stayed silent a lot as I've seen it happen. And I feel shame thinking back on it.

01:43:03.780 When Osama bin Laden's wife was shot, I remember thinking, okay, she got shot and married to Osama

01:43:09.960 bin Laden. That's pretty risky proposition being married to Osama bin Laden and living in Pakistan,

01:43:13.760 got it. So I guess, you know, there are risks and she knew what they were. On the other hand,

01:43:18.720 I'm not cheering an unarmed woman getting shot to death under any circumstances. And I don't,

01:43:23.040 I don't want anyone in my country doing that either because I love my country and I love the

01:43:25.680 people who live here and they're my, my countrymen. And, um, and I think it's bad to just stay silent.

01:43:32.440 Okay. But don't anybody who encourages you to take pleasure at the death of another person

01:43:37.540 is, you know, acting on behalf of forces that we should be rejecting.

01:43:41.360 Yeah. You know, I said this, uh, I don't care who it is. I, I, I, I was on Lex Friedman's,

01:43:46.560 uh, podcast, um, pretty recently. That guy's a good interviewer. He's great. He's a great

01:43:51.180 interviewer. Everyone makes fun of Lex Friedman. I made fun of Lex Friedman probably,

01:43:54.140 or I heard other people do it. I didn't say anything. And then I was interviewed by Lex

01:43:56.820 Friedman. I was like, this guy's weirdly good at this. Yeah. It's really good. It's easy for people

01:44:01.860 to look at it and think they could do it too. It's a skill to interview somebody and he is

01:44:06.380 excellent. Look what he gets. He gets, did he get good? I haven't seen it. Did he get good stuff?

01:44:10.440 Oh, it was great. And he was, you know, he was asking me, like, he started really getting into

01:44:14.760 the detail of like what I believe a just war is and what an immoral war is and why is that? And

01:44:19.680 the example I used, which I think like, I, I know you, cause I've heard you talk about this stuff

01:44:23.680 too. I think you'll agree with me, but I was like, okay, let's take world war two. And let's say

01:44:29.340 that like, not only is the official narrative, right? Let's, let's tweak some things here. It's so much

01:44:34.380 more right than, you know, the Nazis are, if it's possible, they're even worse than the real

01:44:39.300 Nazis were. And if it's possible, they actually were going to take over the world. And actually

01:44:43.540 we would all be speaking German. Like, let's say not only were they going to take over England,

01:44:47.300 they were going to cross the Atlantic and come take over North America also. And the entire world

01:44:52.540 would have fallen into Nazi totalitarianism had they won the war. And let's say in order to stop

01:44:59.440 the Nazis, we had a way where we could do it, where no innocent civilians were killed except one.

01:45:04.860 You know, we could, we could literally just, we could take out the Nazis, save the entire world

01:45:09.780 from totalitarianism. By the way, in this model, there's no Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin's a great

01:45:14.200 guy and the Soviets are a free country. There's no moral questions about who we're working with.

01:45:19.380 Just all of the, all we had to do was we could take out the Nazis by dropping this one super bomb.

01:45:24.860 But one six-year-old girl would be killed. Okay. This is, so I've made it the most clear cut war in

01:45:31.280 human history. Um, in that scenario, I guess you'd go, look, we have to do this. We have no choice

01:45:38.660 other that the whole world will fall to totalitarianism or the whole world can be saved.

01:45:43.320 And one six-year-old girl is going to get killed. Okay. I can understand being like, we're making an

01:45:48.380 impossible decision. We have to do this every year on the anniversary of that war. We should all like

01:45:54.280 weep to ourselves. We should all feel horrible that we had to do that because it's a six-year-old

01:45:59.260 girl got killed. Like I have a six-year-old girl is the most, this is the most horrible thing in

01:46:04.040 the world that you would ever like kill a six-year-old girl. I mean, my God, I would set

01:46:09.200 the whole world on fire to stop someone from doing anything to my little girl. And like, so if that

01:46:14.200 were in this very clear cut scenario, not the complexity of real history in this scenario that

01:46:18.840 I'm laying out, we should still all be nothing but pity and sorrow that it ever came to that. And we

01:46:24.100 should rack our brains every day thinking, was there any alternative to that? Was there any way that we

01:46:29.020 could have done that without this little girl getting killed? And like, people could say that's

01:46:32.420 kind of like pie in the sky or hippie-ish or whatever. But at the very least, dude, when you're

01:46:38.020 talking about like inflicting this level of human suffering on people, like the onus is always on

01:46:44.060 the people who are advocating for it to absolutely prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there's no

01:46:50.040 other option, that we've exhausted everything else we could do. It has to be this. And if you come to

01:46:55.280 the conclusion it has to be this, you should still be really sad and somber about it. This spiking the

01:47:01.360 football stuff, having a Bob Hope special after a war, the stuff that America got involved in after

01:47:07.480 the Second World War, it became like kind of like this business of war, this, this we're spiking the

01:47:12.900 football. It's just like, it's disgusting. And then you're telling me about how some other society is a

01:47:18.400 death cult. Like, let's examine our own. Well, it is disgusting. And I think you don't have to know

01:47:25.160 the right answer going forward to know what the wrong answer is. Right. And it's just, again, you

01:47:30.220 want to treat, you want to approach life and state craft and bureaucracy and everything in your life

01:47:36.880 with humility. Like, I don't always know the outcome. Yeah. Not God. I have limited power. I think

01:47:43.360 I know that murdering a six-year-old girl will bring world peace, but what if it doesn't? Right,

01:47:47.640 right. Whatever. I think dropping an atomic bomb. On the off chance? Yeah. It doesn't work out?

01:47:52.300 On the off chance? I think, you know, dropping the atom bomb will stop an invasion of Japan. Okay. I

01:47:57.640 think dimming the sun will stop global warming, but maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe I'm wrong because

01:48:02.340 I'm a person. And it's when people stop remembering the limits to their own wisdom and power that

01:48:09.180 things like that you get genocides and stuff. Well, also, again, like I said before,

01:48:12.960 because this is always just my, it's the way my neurotic brain works or whatever, but I just like

01:48:17.860 can't, like, I have this consistency obsession or whatever. But, you know, I was listening to your

01:48:23.320 show with Matt Walsh the other day, and I kind of, I did appreciate some of the things he said

01:48:28.740 about me and the debate with Douglas. For a Daily Wire employee, I think that's about as nice,

01:48:34.020 that's about as good a reaction as I'm going to get. But he was like at one point saying that he was

01:48:39.360 like, well, you know, so then the real important, the good point that he said that Douglas Murray made

01:48:44.920 was when he asked me, well, then how do you get rid of Hamas? Like, what's your plan? So number one,

01:48:53.000 it's not a point, it's a question. But then Matt Walsh was saying like, well, look, I can understand

01:48:58.460 you saying you're against what Israel is doing, but then what should they do to get rid of Hamas? And

01:49:04.220 it's just interesting to me to see any conservative going, wait a minute, so you're against

01:49:10.280 these babies being killed. And it's like, yes, yes, let's call this, I don't know, let me think

01:49:16.520 of a term for it, the pro-life position. Let's call it that. Remember, remember the foundational

01:49:22.840 principle that you've been talking about for your entire career? But wait, hold on. So first of all,

01:49:28.120 before, which by the way, there are lots of other ways to deal with Hamas, obviously, but no,

01:49:33.060 actually, I don't have to solve that problem before I can object to killing innocent children,

01:49:40.740 right? Like, no, it is not incumbent on the pro-life person to work out a plan for like the

01:49:46.940 adoption. Or the college tuition. No, actually, no, I'm allowed for my starting point to be,

01:49:54.100 you can't murder babies, right? I mean, come on. And you know, the other thing, which I did want to

01:50:01.580 say is that I do think, and look, by the way, as I'm saying, we're both here kind of coming out

01:50:07.680 against the excesses on both sides. I'm against racial collectivism. I'm against collective guilt,

01:50:13.900 against collective judgment, even. Punishment, yes. Yes, collective punishment, for sure.

01:50:19.340 But, so like, I'm not saying, you have to like, you shouldn't hate Jews, and you don't even have to

01:50:24.920 hate Israelis. I think you shouldn't hate Israel. No, there are lots of great Israelis. I know some.

01:50:29.760 Yeah, they're awesome people. There's lots of really, really great people there. And their

01:50:33.940 government's just done a lot of messed up stuff. But like, so is ours. And so have lots of governments

01:50:37.260 around the world, probably all of them. Probably a direct correlation to how much power they have

01:50:41.760 and how much evil stuff they can do. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, I do think it's a little

01:50:46.000 bit of a cop-out for some people who I like very much. You know, like, I like Matt Walsh. I've never

01:50:51.260 met him. But I think his documentaries are great. I think he's been an important voice in the

01:50:55.320 national conversation, like a very important voice. I like Tim Poole very much. I've done

01:50:59.980 his shows lots of times. I've met him lots of times. I think he's a great guy. But there

01:51:04.300 are these guys who will basically say, like, I'm a non-interventionist. I only care about

01:51:09.720 America. I don't care about these other countries. So I don't care. I don't have an opinion on

01:51:13.960 it. And it just seems to me like that's a cop-out. It's kind of like in 2006 saying, you

01:51:18.660 don't have an opinion on Iraq. I don't care about Iraq. I only care about America. It's

01:51:22.880 like, well, we're in Iraq right now. Well, I agree with that. That's right. And that's

01:51:26.980 why I felt from the beginning kind of like Shanghai'd into this. I mean, I don't care

01:51:31.540 on the level that I just want to focus on my own country. But if we're deeply involved

01:51:36.360 in it, then I have an obligation to care if it's my job to pay attention to what our

01:51:40.240 country's doing, which it is. Right. Well, listen, I have no argument to anybody who

01:51:45.020 goes, I'm just not going to pay attention to politics. My best friend in the world is

01:51:49.640 Louis J. Gomez, who came on your show and he's the best. And literally, and this is,

01:51:54.440 he is being completely sincere. When you asked him on your show, you go like, so what are

01:51:58.240 your politics? And he goes, politics is gay. And that's literally his only answer. And

01:52:02.920 I have in all of my years, I'm literally, I'm his best friend. I don't have a counter

01:52:06.440 to that. I go, that is a pretty good point. I married you a woman like that. Yeah. Yeah,

01:52:10.780 me too. You know? And like, so it's like, I have no argument against that if you, but if

01:52:14.920 you're in this world where we're talking about these things, then you, you don't get to just

01:52:20.440 say, well, look, taking this opinion, which is the obvious logical conclusion of my stated

01:52:27.200 principles. But if I take them to their conclusion, that will cause me grief. Therefore, I'm going

01:52:34.380 to say, I don't really care about that because look, here's the thing. If you don't, if you

01:52:37.860 do care about being America first and you care about America, not getting into another stupid

01:52:41.900 catastrophic war in the Middle East. Well, who's pushing us in that direction? And this

01:52:47.520 is not a conspiracy theory. This is like totally out in the open, right? I mean, the longest

01:52:52.460 serving prime minister in Israeli history is John, uh, Benjamin Netanyahu. Okay. Right.

01:52:58.140 Benjamin Netanyahu came to the U S Congress in 2002 and testified as a regional expert that

01:53:05.760 we should go overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq because democracy will sweep the region. He then

01:53:10.640 also said in front of a congressional testimony that we should overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in

01:53:15.080 Libya and that we should overthrow the mullahs in Iran. Okay. He's been advocating. He's been

01:53:19.920 John McCain. He's been Dick Cheney this whole time advocating that we fight this next war and

01:53:24.480 this next one, this next war they're right now. What was it? Uh, uh, three, four weeks ago,

01:53:28.700 they drew up war plans, including us to go to war with Iran. It's only because Donald Trump,

01:53:35.160 who seems to be willing to help them ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip, but said that's a bridge too far

01:53:39.900 for me. I'm not going to war here. And so thank God now we're in negotiations with the Iranians.

01:53:44.840 But if you know this, then like for you to be a non-interventionist America first,

01:53:49.720 it has to at least come with, and Hey, we should cut Israel off and we should not listen to Benjamin

01:53:54.180 Netanyahu. Like, I'm sorry. That's just totally reasonable.

01:53:57.400 Or Keir Starmer or any of them.

01:53:59.220 That's right. So, okay. Just take the position, which is the obvious one. We should stop funding

01:54:05.040 what Israel is doing. We should stop propping them up. It's been quite a while. The country

01:54:09.400 was created in 1948. It is 2025. You can either go with this alone or you can't come on.

01:54:17.200 And those are fair terms, by the way. I mean, those are the terms that the rest of us live

01:54:20.000 our lives on. You know, I mean, you, you make budget decisions in your home on the basis of

01:54:24.620 what you can afford. And there's some things you don't do, you know? Um, no, all of us mere mortals

01:54:30.540 have those constrictions on our behavior. Like they're the things I want to do. And they're

01:54:34.000 the things that I think I'm capable of doing. Yeah. And if difference. And if I was sitting

01:54:37.800 here and giving like these bravado, you know, infused speeches about all of the things that

01:54:44.500 I can do, but really it relied on me borrowing the money from you in order to do it, you'd be

01:54:49.220 like, Hey, maybe stop giving this speech. Maybe, maybe Benjamin Netanyahu should stop going to

01:54:53.820 the UN and going, there's nowhere that Israel can't touch. Actually, there's lots of places

01:54:58.980 Israel can't touch. Oh, I know. There's nowhere the U.S. can't touch. I know. I just think it's,

01:55:03.820 it's getting too out in the open. And, and I do, I mean, I guess I fret too much in general,

01:55:08.420 but I, I do worry now that it's like super obvious. Yeah. What's going on that things will

01:55:14.360 just devolve into like somewhere very ugly. Well, that's why if you have any sense about you

01:55:21.460 and you don't want to see things devolve into something ugly, that's why you want to make sure we

01:55:26.400 don't get into another war right now. I totally agree. It's unbelievable. It's,

01:55:31.520 it's so, it's remarkable. I'll, I'll tell you this, right? And I, I'm somebody who has

01:55:36.060 really, you know, been focused on this stuff for a long time. Um, you know, I mean, I host,

01:55:43.020 I do a show four days a week and I, I'm always reading about this stuff and I've done all the

01:55:47.520 background reading. I mean, I know a lot about like the neoconservatives and what motivates them,

01:55:52.560 what their worldview was. I will tell you the first thing that really surprised me. And I was,

01:55:57.060 I was genuinely so, and I hate the neoconservatives. Like I'm not, it's not that I don't understand how

01:56:01.840 evil they're, what they believe is. I was really surprised that the Ukraine thing,

01:56:08.640 the Nazis in Ukraine didn't mess with them at all. I was shocked. I was really surprised. You know,

01:56:13.740 I know why they support all the wars they have supported. I thought that for the neoconservatives,

01:56:19.260 real deal, not even neo Nazis, Nazis, like the grandsons of, you know, the Nazis who perpetrated

01:56:28.060 the Holocaust in Ukraine, proudly wearing swastikas, uh, tattoos and waving flags. I mean,

01:56:33.760 like they threw their support behind that as of battalion, this was very strange. Like this was

01:56:40.200 aligned to me. I was like, Oh wow, they'll really go that far. But I'll tell you, I am blown away

01:56:46.480 by the fact that anybody who is out there shrieking about the rise in antisemitism

01:56:52.480 is not wise enough to go. We can not fight a war with Iran right now, because if we get into a war

01:56:59.820 right now, that's clearly on Israel's behalf after 25 years of terror wars, which were pretty clearly,

01:57:07.660 at least partially on it. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to go quite as far as like Jeffrey Sachs,

01:57:11.660 although I get, you know, he's an expert and I'm not, so I guess he's right and I'm not, but you

01:57:16.320 know, I wouldn't quite say that, you know, we outsourced our foreign policy to Israel. Like I,

01:57:21.260 you know, there's a lot of truth to that statement. Was it, was it Mearsheimer or Sachs who said,

01:57:25.980 I view Benjamin Netanyahu as the worst U.S. president of the 21st century. It's pretty hilarious.

01:57:32.660 And there's, there's a lot of truth to that, but it's not like 100% true. It's like, okay, but

01:57:37.040 look, it's obviously, as I just said, Israel has been using its considerable influence to convince

01:57:43.860 us to go to war in Iraq and Libya and Syria and all of these places. I think Yemen was more for

01:57:50.600 the Saudis. Afghanistan was our own thing, but those wars, particularly Israel was really on board with.

01:57:56.580 And if we were to go get into a war with Iran right now, which will be a much bigger disaster

01:58:00.980 than any of the previous terror wars, there's, there's really no argument about that. It's the

01:58:05.260 Iran is just not a pushover like, uh, these other countries at all. Yeah, that's right.

01:58:09.600 They can take out a lot of our guys and then, and then what do we do after that? And well,

01:58:13.560 they can also destroy Israel with conventional weapons. Yeah. There's, there's a lot that they

01:58:17.260 can do. Um, but if we actually go to this war on behalf of Israel, I mean, what do you think that

01:58:23.920 does to the level of antisemitism? Now, by the way, I'm not saying that's not the number one reason not

01:58:28.060 to do it. That's like the number six reason not to do it. But for these people who are so concerned,

01:58:32.740 they're so concerned about the existential threat to Israel. Well, here's the thing,

01:58:36.940 right? Hamas, while they did pull off October 7th, which was by far the biggest attack Hamas has ever

01:58:42.300 pulled off. Um, Hamas was never an existential threat to Israel, but this actually is what they're

01:58:49.940 doing right now in some sick self-fulfilling, you know, uh, prophecy. This actually is creating like

01:58:56.600 an existential threat to them. I completely agree. I, if I live there, um, and I think enough of

01:59:02.500 Jerusalem that I would like to live in Jerusalem, I think it's the most incredible city in the world.

01:59:06.160 I truly love it, but I would leave because I think, I think there, um, and I said this to an

01:59:11.820 Israeli friend of mine recently, like I'm a little bit concerned, not that it's my job to be concerned

01:59:15.840 for your country. Lots of other people have that taken care of, but just as a bystander, it's like,

01:59:19.780 whoa, this is not good. Yeah. And, um, I didn't, you know, he had no sense of what I was talking

01:59:25.900 about, but I, uh, yeah, no, I think the one area where I agree with Mark Levin, um, is that Israel

01:59:32.900 is really in danger. And I think it's people like Mark Levin who are putting Israel in danger.

01:59:37.720 Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that's right. Maybe I'm wrong, but no, I think that's right. I think

01:59:41.440 just like I was saying at Douglas Murray, it's actually like, no, you're creating fertile ground for

01:59:45.360 anti-Semitism by telling me I'm not allowed to criticize a guy with the Jewish last name

01:59:49.160 in the same sense that you claim some Jewish ancestry, but that's so low. It's so low to

01:59:56.540 debate like that. It's really, you're the famous debater. Yeah. And like in an op-ed after you lose

02:00:02.340 a debate or not even lose, after you refuse to debate and kind of be clown yourself and then

02:00:08.460 you're writing an op-ed and you don't take on one argument I made, but you do attack whether I'm

02:00:13.420 really Jew as though, by the way, as he'll criticize the just asking questions people, well, what the

02:00:19.140 hell is that? What the hell is that? That's me, by the way, that's who they're talking about.

02:00:22.600 Right. I know. I know. It's all, it's all so pathetic. It's so funny. The first time I heard

02:00:25.800 that I was like, wait, are you actually mad that I asked a question? Isn't anyone who's tries,

02:00:31.520 who's trying to shut down questions, isn't that person by definition on the wrong side?

02:00:34.900 Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. Like what world are we living in? I've lived too long. I should have

02:00:41.120 died 10 years ago. Well, you know, what's so funny about it too, is that there's, because there's all

02:00:45.560 these different techniques for control and one of them is just framing. Like how you frame a

02:00:52.520 conversation really, like with the Israel thing, it's obvious, right? Like, look, I mean, however

02:00:56.840 you feel about the conflict, the fact is that Israel has occupied Palestine since 1967. You know, okay,

02:01:02.900 I know that they're, no, we disengaged in 2005. No, you didn't. But like, whatever. I'm not even like,

02:01:07.780 I've had this debate enough times. I'm just saying this is the fact, is that Israel's occupied

02:01:10.820 Palestine since 1967. That's the fact. And then the conversation they go, does Israel have a right

02:01:15.660 to defend itself? And you're like, well, that's a hell of a way to start. You know, like you're the

02:01:19.640 ones doing the occupying and you want to start every debate with whether you have a right to

02:01:24.000 defend yourself. Okay. But with all these things, there's kind of, you know, like this is what was

02:01:28.560 interesting to me about the conversation with you and Brett Weinstein about the, you know, about God

02:01:33.540 adverse atheism and all this stuff. Is that like, so people, it's very easy to have the framing of

02:01:39.720 going like, oh, you're telling me you believe there's an invisible man up in the sky who created

02:01:44.620 all things. That's pretty goofy, right? It's like, yeah, if you just frame it like that, sure. It's

02:01:49.240 pretty goofy. I'm sorry. What's your belief? You believe everything used to fit on the top of a pin

02:01:54.040 and then it exploded into everything. Everything came from nothing and then exploded into, this is just

02:01:59.660 as ridiculous as anything anyone's ever believed. So like, as soon as you look at both sides and

02:02:03.900 apply the same standard to both. And, you know, there's been a, one of the things that were very

02:02:07.360 interesting dynamic to me, because I've seen this a lot when people will try to attack you,

02:02:11.640 where what they'll do is they'll pull like kind of the five things you've said that seem like almost

02:02:19.160 the goofiest of all the things. Well, he said this thing about like a demon attacking him. Okay.

02:02:23.560 He said this thing about, you know, like, right, right. Sorry, I didn't want to.

02:02:27.860 No, but look, but look, even yes, in itself, but like, okay, that sounds like an outlandish claim.

02:02:33.880 Like I'm not, but then it's almost like they're trying to ignore the totality. I see this a lot

02:02:38.620 with Bobby Kennedy. This has been one of the most interesting things about Bobby is that the people

02:02:42.980 who attack him, they pick on the five, you know, goofiest things they can find that they think he

02:02:49.620 said, you know, he blamed the wifi for this, or he said something about whatever the COVID targeting

02:02:55.620 certain genetics and not other genetics. And it's like, look, even if I grant you, there are these

02:03:00.960 five claims, which I don't know if I, you know, Bobby said some things that I'm like, I don't know

02:03:04.460 if he's right about that or not. It seems kind of, but this, but they're trying to remove the central

02:03:09.400 thing that he said and the central, this is Trump in a nutshell too, right? The central thing that

02:03:14.780 Bobby Kennedy said is that we spend more money than any other country on healthcare and we're the

02:03:19.200 sickest. Exactly. Now, until you can take on that, you're never going to win by just trying to knock

02:03:25.020 out these other good, because at least he's talking about the major thing. And by the way, not only did

02:03:28.980 he say that, none of you have ever mentioned that. I've watched every presidential campaign. It's never

02:03:34.040 once come up. Well, and in fact, everything they do mention is a way to avoid mentioning. Exactly. But we had

02:03:39.720 a whole, we had a whole debate in this country about health insurance and this never came up. We had the

02:03:45.600 Obamacare debate and like, and no one even ever mentioned. I didn't know it until Bobby came on

02:03:50.640 my show. Yeah. Me neither. He was banned. Yeah, no. But I have to say the thing that I have learned

02:03:56.260 really above all other things is the only way to assess a claim is on the basis of whether or not

02:04:02.860 it's true. Right. Right. Not on whether or not I want to hear it, on whether or not I've thought of

02:04:07.540 it before, whether or not I'm shocked by the fact that you asked the question. The only thing that

02:04:12.140 matters is, is it true? Now, can I know? Most of the time, no, I can't know. But I want my

02:04:17.320 orientation, the way I approach each question to be the same every single time, which is, is that

02:04:22.300 true? And the second I stopped caring about whether it's true, then I'm acting on behalf of evil.

02:04:27.900 Right. It's that simple. Right. Right? Yeah. No, I completely agree. So Bobby Kennedy's like,

02:04:31.940 oh, COVID's, you know, targeted on the basis of genes. I was like, really? Is that true?

02:04:36.760 Yeah. Well, I kind of felt I felt the same way. And I think particularly what I think it's very

02:04:42.360 similar to talking about the 9-11 truth or stuff with Jesse Ventura. It's like what what ends up

02:04:47.400 happening is that after you're kind of red pilled about so much. Yes. The claims don't seem quite as

02:04:53.980 outlandish. There's that. That's not saying that they're right. You know, like and I've you know,

02:04:58.640 with with the 9-11 conspiracy stuff, I've never been like completely sold. I think there are a lot

02:05:04.080 of people who jump to conclusions that are and like, actually, the evidence isn't nearly as strong

02:05:09.380 as you think it is. You're kind of you're doing what everyone does, where you start with a

02:05:12.620 conclusion and then you work your way backward from there. And there's a lot of that. But at the

02:05:17.560 same time, it's like the people who go, well, our government would never you're like, now that

02:05:21.800 doesn't work anymore. Sorry. So, yeah, they totally would. They actually totally would. I'm not even

02:05:26.980 saying they did in this case, but they totally were. It's so painful to reexamine the worldview I've built

02:05:31.880 on what might be a fake assumption that I'm not going to do it. I'm going to yell at you instead

02:05:36.200 for challenging that worldview. Like that doesn't work either because it's already happened. You

02:05:40.420 can only lose your virginity once. Right. Right. And once you realize that the Warren Commission

02:05:44.840 really was a cover up, I mean, it just was. And on the base of evidence, I've concluded that then

02:05:50.420 it's like, OK, if if the U.S. government will hide details about the murder of a democratically

02:05:56.300 elected U.S. president, then there's really nothing that they wouldn't do. Right. And then if you

02:06:00.500 and then the Nixon one is a big one to punch, you know, because you realize that like, oh,

02:06:04.980 the guy who became the villain, you know, like the guy who was like supposed to be remembered

02:06:10.740 as the most corrupt president was actually the most popular president ever who was totally

02:06:15.900 set up was, you know, and you're like, OK, well, then we're just not living in the country

02:06:20.040 that. So I came to that independently, having known a lot of those people. I know Bob Woodward

02:06:25.240 personally, and I I lived in that world for my whole life. And Nixon had the highest popular

02:06:33.820 vote percentage of any president in American history. I didn't in 72. I just didn't even

02:06:38.620 know that. And when I found that Bob Woodward was a naval intelligence officer detailed to

02:06:43.760 the Nixon White House, then the next year gets the biggest story in journalism history handed

02:06:47.980 to him. And how old was he? 30, 28, something like that. That happens a lot. That's totally

02:06:53.720 that's totally normal. What? And Deep Throat was the deputy director of the FBI and the guy

02:06:58.520 they installed as president was on the Warren Commission? Yeah. Yeah. I never liked Gerald

02:07:03.880 Ford because of the withdrawal from Saigon on April 30th, 1975. I just thought that was

02:07:10.120 like everything about that was so ugly. But anyway, whatever. Yes, I agree. So it's not

02:07:15.200 enough to say I'm not allowed to think something. Right. Or that or once you but once you recognize

02:07:21.260 those things, it's just impossible. It's impossible to reconstruct the image of America that you once

02:07:29.220 had. You're like, oh, that's not at all what this government is. And that doesn't make you an

02:07:32.300 anti-American bigot. No. Any more than saying like criticizing a government does not make you a bad

02:07:38.020 person. No, this is it's it's this is what's it? It's Frederick Bastiat stuff. Like this was

02:07:44.880 already figured out a long time ago. Society and the government are not interchangeable

02:07:50.020 things. They are different. You know, criticizing Joe Biden is not criticizing America. I'm not

02:07:55.520 criticizing the hills and the lakes. I'm criticizing this one senile criminal or my neighbors or my

02:08:01.440 relatives or people I love. There's so many of them. So last last question, you made reference to

02:08:07.020 the Brett Weinstein conversation we had last week about creationism versus Darwinism,

02:08:12.860 et cetera, et cetera, the existence of God. Do you find in your life, this is a quiz I give a lot

02:08:17.240 of people, more people, you know, personally talking about God than you did say 10 years ago?

02:08:23.960 Yes. And I am that person. I mean, I was an atheist 10 years ago. What happened?

02:08:28.820 I had my daughter. Yeah. That's, you know, as I found God the day my wife delivered our first

02:08:34.340 child and which is a fairly common experience. I know other people who have had the same thing

02:08:41.580 were atheists until that moment. And, um, what, what can, what changed in you?

02:08:46.780 So, all right. So it was, uh, basically, so I met my, so, you know, it's a fairly normal story,

02:08:53.740 but I met my wife and we got engaged and then, um, we got married. Um, so my wife's like the most

02:09:00.120 amazing chick. She's just great. And I know this is, it's always a thing to say. It's like,

02:09:04.600 my wife's better than your wife type thing, but everybody who knows my wife, I don't mean you,

02:09:08.900 I've never met your wife, but, but she is better. And I'm just kidding.

02:09:13.260 No, I don't, I don't hear people compliment their spouses enough. Actually. I don't think

02:09:17.240 everyone always says that. I wish people said that more often.

02:09:19.600 Well, I do, you know, it's not me. She's really just the best. Everyone who knows her

02:09:23.900 would agree. I mean, like, it's just like, she's like the most amazing woman. She's just gorgeous.

02:09:28.040 And she's really super smart and she's really sweet and kind. Um, and she's just like, she,

02:09:33.820 she puts everyone above herself. She's like, I really hit the lottery with her and I was never,

02:09:40.320 you know, I was like habitually single. I was never a relationship guy and I never really wanted

02:09:45.580 to get married. I kind of always had this view of like, you know, women are trying to change you

02:09:50.140 or trying to control you. Every girl that I ever dated always wanted a relationship. And then they

02:09:54.740 always wanted me to not do this or not do that. And my wife was just, she just had my back.

02:10:00.000 She just always like wanted to make my life better. And she did. And I just, I fell in love

02:10:05.180 with her. And I was like, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this woman. And so then we,

02:10:11.240 uh, when she got pregnant, I was just very excited. It was like, you know, I just got married,

02:10:15.920 got a baby on the way. Um, I was just like, this is going to be, this is the best. Like,

02:10:20.100 I'm really excited to do this. And, um, and I was right. It was the best thing I've ever done.

02:10:24.780 Um, and so the, uh, the day that, uh, was, um, well, she was over her due date. So then they,

02:10:32.160 they scheduled to come in to induce pregnancy because they don't let you go too long now

02:10:36.140 these days. Um, which I guess is there, maybe they're right about that. I don't know. But

02:10:39.620 anyway, so we go to the hospital, they get the Pitocin out. Yes, that's right. So we're at,

02:10:43.180 uh, Lenox Hill hospital in the upper East side of Manhattan. And, um, by the way, I should,

02:10:49.980 I should add just leading into the story over the, I had been like a militant atheist when I was

02:10:54.180 younger. I had started to open up my mind a little bit to being like, I w I was seeing some

02:10:58.380 of the holes in the atheist arguments, but I still was not like a believer in God. And so we were at

02:11:04.080 Lenox, Lenox Hill hospital. And this is how, this was the first one. This is how it started was, um,

02:11:09.400 the, uh, the anesthesiologist came in to give my wife an epidural and at Lenox Hill, or at least this

02:11:16.380 guy, they asked me to leave the room. Um, they said, they ask the fathers to leave the room when they do

02:11:22.140 but you know, cause they're, they're putting a spinal thing in and they have to be very,

02:11:25.840 very precise. Yeah. Right. So like, and, and they don't want, I guess they don't want you there to

02:11:30.540 react cause then she might react. Right. And so they don't want to, so I go at, and she can't see

02:11:34.740 what's happening. Right. Right. She can't see, but she could see you seeing. And so they want people

02:11:38.380 with a straight poker face who have seen this a lot of times and are not watching it happen to their

02:11:42.060 wife and baby, you know, so it's a reasonable ask. But so I go, I go out and I'm in the,

02:11:46.900 the hallway in the maternity ward at Lenox Hill hospital. And I'm just, and it just hit me.

02:11:53.040 It was like for the first time, I guess I had not really thought about this. I was just so excited

02:11:57.300 to get my family started. But for the first time it hit me that like something could go wrong

02:12:02.700 and that I could leave here alone, you know, like something could go wrong that I could lose the

02:12:08.440 baby. I could lose my wife and it's totally out of my control. And like, as this started hitting,

02:12:12.980 I started like really getting emotional and it's like, I'm out there and I'm like, I'm crying in

02:12:18.180 the hallway of this maternity ward. And immediately I just started talking to God. And I just started

02:12:25.920 not just talking to God, but like negotiating with God. And I was just like, you know, like,

02:12:31.220 like dear Lord, if you, if you make sure that they're okay, I'm going to do like, I'm going to

02:12:36.860 be the best husband and the best father. And I will do this. And you know, like all the different

02:12:41.000 things in your life ever prayed before, no, never once in my life. Um, and it all, you know,

02:12:45.520 like all the things that, you know, you're supposed to be doing that you're not doing that. Well,

02:12:48.620 you know, like I was like, okay, I'll clean this up. You know, I'll call my mom more often. I'll do

02:12:52.600 this thing. I'll do. And so anyway, so I just started like praying to God and not just praying,

02:12:56.780 but like negotiating. So anyway, everything was fine with that. But my, my wife, this was the first of

02:13:02.160 many times she had a very, there were a bunch of complications in the pregnancy. Everyone came out.

02:13:05.680 Okay. Thank God. Um, but so I ended up talking to God a lot that day and then just like,

02:13:12.420 as the days went on, it's so interesting. It's organic. Well, that's right. I'm of not believing.

02:13:17.260 And then yeah, just start. And so this is almost like what intellectually, you know, converted me

02:13:22.960 later was I was like, Hey, what the hell was that? I mean, I could, I can't look back and just ignore

02:13:29.020 that. And, um, and there was one, you know, like, again, I'm, I'm almost a little uncomfortable

02:13:33.960 talking about these things. Cause I like talking about things where I have like a real tight

02:13:36.740 argument that I can prove is irrefutable, but it was something where I was like, look,

02:13:42.820 so in the moment when it was really all on the line and out of my control, I wasn't thinking

02:13:47.620 maybe God exists. I knew for a 100% certainty, unlike nothing I've ever known in my life,

02:13:54.300 that not only did I know that God existed, but I knew what he wanted from me. Like I knew what my

02:14:00.020 negotiating power in this was is that I could, you know what I'm saying? Like I could promise

02:14:04.780 I'll be a good person. I'll do. So not only did I know God existed, I knew that God wanted

02:14:09.760 me to be a good person. And there was, and look, this is something that people who have found God

02:14:14.880 know and people who don't believe in God maybe will not accept, but there is something to when

02:14:21.480 you open yourself up like that to God, like you find out that he's real. And I, it's not like he

02:14:30.280 speaks to you or he hallucinates. I don't like see a fiery bush and the words of God started talking,

02:14:35.120 but like he fills you. Like you, when you open yourself like that to it, you get filled by it.

02:14:41.040 And there's no, there's no more debate in your mind over whether that's a real phenomenon or not.

02:14:45.640 You're like any more than like, if I were to leave here and someone were to be like,

02:14:49.260 do you believe in Tucker Carlson? And like, I'd be like, no, I know for certain,

02:14:53.180 like I know for a certainty that Tucker Carlson exists. I was just with him. It's like that.

02:14:58.080 And so it was, and it's never, it's, it changed my life. And ever since I'm, I regularly pray to

02:15:04.060 God. It's something I'm conscious of every single day, every day, every day. And always,

02:15:08.920 I don't even pray exactly. I don't ask for things ever. I ask for one thing ever from God,

02:15:15.420 which is that my, my wife and my kids are healthy and safe. It's the only thing I ever pray for.

02:15:21.000 I don't ask for anything. The only other thing that I do is I, I, um, I express gratitude.

02:15:26.220 I forgot. Like I just say, thank you for everything I have. So that's, but that's the extent of it.

02:15:31.720 But I think that I cannot overstate how much I think that's made me a better person.

02:15:36.060 Really? Yeah. Just, it's, it's very, very good for you to constantly remind yourself how lucky you

02:15:41.140 are that you have all the things that you have. It's, it's very easy to get away from that. And

02:15:46.340 that's where, that's where you, you ruin your inner happiness, your inner joy is if you start,

02:15:51.880 you start taking the things you have for granted, because once you like, you know,

02:15:55.880 once you, when you think you could lose everything you already have, and then you don't,

02:16:00.920 that's when you really appreciate it. You know, you really appreciate what,

02:16:04.360 how lucky we all are. Well, not to be like too blunt or too personal, but you're on the cusp of

02:16:09.520 like change in your life on the basis of what's happened in the last month in your life. I've

02:16:13.680 just seen this story so many times. Yeah. So to be vulgar, your income in this year will be higher

02:16:19.140 than last year. I'm just telling you that because you're way more famous and you're also on the right

02:16:24.920 side of history, I think. Yeah, I hope so. And, uh, and certainly on the right side of popular opinion.

02:16:31.280 So like that, do you think, I mean, the danger in life is getting what you want and finding

02:16:39.060 yourself unhappier. Are you worried about that? No, I'm really not. Um, and I do just think that

02:16:45.800 it's because again, if this was happening to me at 25 or at 30, I would be very concerned about that

02:16:51.820 danger. Literally like what I just told you is kind of already happened in my life. I know who I am as a

02:16:57.460 person. I kind of know what money actually means. Like there's lots of nice things. I'm not downplaying

02:17:01.520 money. It's, it's very important, particularly in my position. It's very important for me to be able

02:17:05.760 to protect my wife and kids that we have some money. You know what I mean? So that I can do that.

02:17:11.280 Um, but no, I'm not, I'm really not worried about that at this point. I think I've kind of like my

02:17:16.420 wife herself is a very grounding force for me. She's the person whose approval I seek. Yes. She's the

02:17:21.680 person whose opinion I really care about, you know? And so like that's, and she keeps me very

02:17:26.460 grounded. Also just, as you know, you know, having these little kids just keeps you grounded because

02:17:31.180 they're, uh, they're, they just don't care at all. Like literally at all. My six-year-old the other

02:17:36.300 day we were out to dinner. Um, and so we're out to dinner and we're sitting down, my wife, my, my

02:17:40.780 six-year-old girl and my three-year-old boy and the, uh, the owner of the restaurant is like a fan of

02:17:45.180 mine. So he comes over the table. He goes, Oh, thank you guys so much for coming. I just wanted to shake

02:17:48.700 your hand. I really appreciate everything you're doing. And I was like, Oh, thank you so much. I

02:17:51.800 appreciate that. So he leaves. And then my daughter was six-year-old who's kind of 17, but she's six.

02:17:57.140 She turns over at me and she goes, why'd he come over and say hi to you, dad? Cause you're famous.

02:18:01.720 And then just turned right back to her menu. I mean, it was like, she could not have just

02:18:05.700 undercut me more than that. I was like, Oh yeah, I guess I'm not really that cool. All right. But,

02:18:11.000 but that, that stuff helps. It's the best. I'm really lucky that I didn't have this moment

02:18:18.080 15 years ago that I had it now. So I think, I think I'll be good. But then, you know,

02:18:23.680 you cut back to me in a year. I come back here, I got like the shades on or something.

02:18:28.160 It's totally ruined me.

02:18:30.280 Pellegrino, not Perrier.

02:18:33.100 Dave, it's, it's wonderful to see you. No matter how many times you've been here,

02:18:37.300 I hope you'll return.

02:18:38.140 I hope to, to be in again. Um, and can I just say, by the way, just the last thing I'll say,

02:18:43.340 and then, uh, we get in, but I will say that, you know, a big part of like the reason why I'm

02:18:48.400 able to do what I do and be kind of protected because I'm not like, I'm not vulnerable. At

02:18:54.060 least I don't think, I hope I don't live to eat these words, but I don't think I'm going to be

02:18:57.580 ruined or canceled or anything like that. And a big part of it is that Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson

02:19:04.500 have my back and you kind of can't really cancel someone in today's world as long as those guys have

02:19:09.940 your back. And so, no, but I'm saying you're providing a lot of cover for people to be able

02:19:14.320 to tell the truth and know that like, Oh, you're not going to be able to like shut this person out

02:19:19.340 of the conversation for the crime of telling them. Well, the money thing is important to that extent.

02:19:24.020 Money does not make you happy, but being dependent on other people's money can make you

02:19:28.320 enslaved and not having, um, debt, not having investors. Uh, we don't have debt or investors.

02:19:35.220 That makes a huge difference in my life. And, and, and I, and, but you also have like actual

02:19:41.260 skills that you can just go do shows for the rest of your life. Do you know what I mean?

02:19:45.440 And I'm quite happy to do that.

02:19:46.600 That's what I'm saying. So actually you were talking about Matt Walsh, who, who I really do

02:19:50.600 like. And I, and I thought for, you know, to the extent that, you know, he said what he said

02:19:54.800 kind of impressive considering he works at the Daily Wire. He still works at the Daily Wire,

02:19:58.280 however. And I know I'm not mocking him at all. I worked at Fox News for, you know, 15 years

02:20:03.020 and you do have like in the back of your mind, like, oh, can I say that? Or, you know,

02:20:09.220 you self-censor even when you're not aware that you do. But if you're, if you're truly

02:20:13.740 independent, then you can be independent.

02:20:15.400 Yeah. Which is the best.

02:20:17.720 The best.

02:20:18.940 It's really just so great.

02:20:20.480 Well, I, I think you're funny, even if Douglas doesn't. Dave, thank you.

02:20:24.440 Thank you, Tucker.

02:20:24.980 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the

02:20:33.420 people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the

02:20:38.860 bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually

02:20:43.640 matter. Telling the truth always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit

02:20:48.620 the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.

The Tucker Carlson Show - May 12, 2025

Dave Smith： Debating Douglas Murray, the “Woke Right” Narrative, and the Moment He Found God

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