The Tucker Carlson Show - Glenn Greenwald： Antisemitism, Attacks on Free Speech, and Everything You Need to Know about Brazil

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00:00:25.680 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.

00:00:27.480 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.

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00:00:43.200 Here's the episode.

00:00:44.260 You arrive at the same conclusions I do 100% of the time, at least on Twitter.

00:00:48.380 Yeah, it's an instinct.

00:00:49.320 It's like, like I said, I think you begin with a certain kind of inclination,

00:00:54.640 like view of who's running the country and how you feel about them and why you hate them.

00:01:00.620 And then like everything else just kind of follows from that.

00:01:03.260 Yeah, and it may even be deeper than that.

00:01:04.440 It's like, what's important to you?

00:01:07.360 Loyalty, honesty, children, dogs.

00:01:11.320 Totally, totally.

00:01:12.100 Yeah, it's like what you get in life too.

00:01:13.720 Yeah, like we're roughly the same age.

00:01:15.120 You're obviously like a lot older, but in general, like we're the same age.

00:01:18.040 Are you older?

00:01:18.940 I think I'm like a year older or two.

00:01:20.500 What year were you?

00:01:20.840 I'm 1967.

00:01:22.620 Okay, so you're two years older than me.

00:01:24.440 Okay, congratulations on your robust youth.

00:01:31.000 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:01:32.460 I think about lies the way I do about alcohol.

00:01:35.740 I just don't want it in me at all.

00:01:37.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:39.240 Well, because you end up deluding yourself, which is the worst.

00:01:41.320 Sometimes you can consciously like deceive other people for whatever goal and you can tell

00:01:44.620 yourself it's justified and maybe sometimes it even is.

00:01:47.040 But the worst thing is to delude yourself, like to deceive yourself.

00:01:51.000 There's nothing worse you can do to yourself.

00:01:52.440 Or be deceived and not know it.

00:01:53.100 I mean, I've repeated so many lies in my life unknowingly that I just don't want to do that again.

00:01:59.740 By the way, thank you for setting up that Snowden meeting.

00:02:02.820 Oh, I knew you guys were going to love each other.

00:02:04.220 I was actually hoping he would change his mind and do an interview.

00:02:07.280 I think it was a good step to doing one.

00:02:09.780 Yeah, and even if I never interview him on camera, I was just grateful to meet him.

00:02:14.500 But so you, you're the reason that we know any of this information.

00:02:21.120 You were the guy who broke the story.

00:02:22.200 It did feel to me like Snowden was, it was more important for the U.S. government to capture

00:02:29.780 and kill Ed Snowden, an American citizen, than like any foreign terrorist.

00:02:33.720 Well, it was the biggest leak of top secret documents from the U.S. security state by far.

00:02:39.280 He, and he like planned it so meticulous.

00:02:41.180 I mean, you're talking about the NSA, which is supposed to be like our leading intelligence

00:02:44.320 agency, he was in it, stealing all their stuff over months, figuring out how not to get caught.

00:02:50.680 He walked out with it.

00:02:51.680 He went to Hong Kong with it, having, they have no idea any of that happened.

00:02:55.800 And he was just waiting for us to come and then pass it all to us and like put it in

00:02:58.900 all secret places.

00:02:59.600 Like the only thing he cared about was getting that out before he ended up, you know, imprisoned

00:03:03.720 or killed or whatever.

00:03:04.660 He was so desperate for us to get there.

00:03:06.020 How did he do it?

00:03:07.560 I mean, I really think it's for the reasons he said, like he really felt betrayed.

00:03:14.020 You know, he went to enlist in the Iraq war.

00:03:16.700 He enlisted in the army.

00:03:17.980 He wanted to go fight in Iraq and obviously do that because you believe the mythology.

00:03:21.480 A hundred percent.

00:03:21.920 Country.

00:03:23.420 And the more he saw, the more he realized it was, you know, a fraud and it makes you

00:03:29.320 like feel betrayed, like ethically betrayed.

00:03:31.480 Like people who want to go fight in wars obviously have like a code of ethics already, right?

00:03:36.840 They're saying, I can risk my life for something that is greater than myself.

00:03:40.740 And then when you realize that like what you're told is greater than yourself is in fact a

00:03:44.620 total lie that you're fighting for completely different reasons, you feel betrayed.

00:03:49.120 And then the question is like, what is really bigger than myself?

00:03:52.040 And he, like I said, he thought he was going to be killed or spend the rest of his life

00:03:55.540 in prison.

00:03:55.960 Like if I had to bet, we weren't even discussing the possibility that he wouldn't end up free.

00:04:00.180 It was inconceivable.

00:04:02.040 Like that was the darkness that hung over this whole thing the whole time when we were

00:04:05.020 doing it.

00:04:05.320 Obviously I was very excited about the story.

00:04:07.860 We were plotting, we were strategizing, like it was under water.

00:04:10.320 But the whole time I felt this like sadness that this person had come to like admire and

00:04:14.600 respect so much.

00:04:15.520 I was never going to stay again.

00:04:16.700 He was going to end up in prison for the rest of his life.

00:04:18.340 Like that was, that wasn't like a possibility.

00:04:20.100 It was like almost inevitable.

00:04:21.920 And he knew that.

00:04:23.480 Yeah, of course.

00:04:24.640 Yeah.

00:04:25.000 I mean, like, obviously you don't, if you're at all ethical, like not just a journalist person,

00:04:29.500 you don't use somebody as a source without making sure they understand the risks they're

00:04:34.200 taking and the likely consequences.

00:04:35.500 But he, you know, I remember the first conversation I had when I started talking about it, he was

00:04:38.760 like all well versed in the Espionage Act and like every single law that would be used

00:04:42.560 against him.

00:04:43.120 He fully understood he was sacrificing his whole life.

00:04:45.400 He had to hide it from his girlfriend who he wanted to marry.

00:04:49.800 That was like, he wasn't, they were totally in love, but he couldn't have her know anything

00:04:53.580 because she would have then been complicit and he was concerned she'd be vulnerable.

00:04:57.340 You know, they would go after her, start charging with her crimes to get at him.

00:05:00.720 So we had to keep it all from her.

00:05:02.360 He just disappeared.

00:05:03.740 He was like, I need to go on a trip related to business.

00:05:06.280 So, I mean, you're describing like one of the most ethical people I've ever met, one of

00:05:10.040 the most principled people ever, it's kind of revealing that he's considered like the

00:05:15.780 criminal, yeah, because he actually exposed real crimes.

00:05:19.540 And that's what always happens is the people who expose the crimes.

00:05:23.180 I mean, like Daniel Ellsberg had documents showing that the U.S.

00:05:26.820 government was telling American citizens they knew they were going to win the war at

00:05:30.000 exactly the same time internally.

00:05:31.400 They said they knew they could never win the war in Vietnam and like many other lies

00:05:35.440 too.

00:05:36.320 It was like, you know, Daniel Ellsberg worked at the highest levels of their government

00:05:39.120 forever.

00:05:39.640 I mean, he got a PhD in nuclear policy and then, you know, was at the, at the Rand

00:05:44.420 Corporation with some of the most secret access ever.

00:05:47.080 And then he just couldn't believe what he was seeing, like inside these documents, comparing

00:05:50.600 them to the public statements.

00:05:51.940 And he was like, how am I going to live with myself for the rest of my life if I

00:05:54.620 don't, you know, make this known?

00:05:57.420 And he was exactly the same thing.

00:05:59.140 But of course, at the time he was completely vilified as a traitor, a Russian agent, the

00:06:02.700 whole thing.

00:06:03.380 A hater of America.

00:06:04.260 Yeah.

00:06:04.580 I mean, everybody like who wasn't on the left hated Daniel Ellsberg.

00:06:07.740 And the only reason he didn't spend the rest of his life in prison is because of the misconduct

00:06:12.300 of breaking it.

00:06:12.880 They broke into a psychoanalyst office to try and discover his psychosexual secrets to discredit

00:06:17.600 him for.

00:06:18.280 That was like that whole CIA group that did the Watergate break.

00:06:21.880 And they also broke into his psychoanalyst office and tried to steal all those files.

00:06:27.100 And then when they couldn't, they wanted to break into the psychoanalyst home.

00:06:29.700 And then that was like the one thing they didn't get permission for.

00:06:32.320 But when that was discovered, the judge threw the case out solely because of government misconduct.

00:06:35.920 Had they not, he would have absolutely been convicted.

00:06:38.080 But he had the, he had the support effectively of the American media.

00:06:41.640 I mean, Daniel Ellsberg.

00:06:42.400 Because he, he commandeered them.

00:06:44.300 That's like the first thing I did with Snowden was I went to, we went to every major media

00:06:48.360 outlet that we wanted to work with in order to get them on our side.

00:06:51.380 Because if we didn't, we would have just been two like outsiders who weren't, they would

00:06:55.700 have called us like non-journalists.

00:06:56.940 That's what they tried to do.

00:06:57.700 That Mike Isikoff piece reported on them trying to assassinate Snowden, but also create theories

00:07:02.080 to arrest myself and Laura calling us information brokers and like Ader.

00:07:06.180 And like the whole time James Clapper would always, whenever he referred to us, he would

00:07:10.020 never call us journalists.

00:07:11.380 He would always call us Snowden's like Ader and Abettors or Snowden's co-conspirators because

00:07:17.680 they were trying to create a theory that they could arrest us.

00:07:19.760 That's why I didn't go back.

00:07:20.460 That's why in the other words, I traveled for a year.

00:07:22.900 They were being super threatening.

00:07:24.680 You know, I had the best lawyers for their guardian, the kinds who could get Eric Holder

00:07:27.260 on the phone.

00:07:28.620 It worked with him, you know, those type of lawyers.

00:07:30.920 And they were like, if he comes back to New York, it comes back to the US.

00:07:34.000 Can you guarantee that he won't be arrested upon arrival?

00:07:36.220 And they're like, right now we can't.

00:07:39.320 So that's why you live out of the country.

00:07:41.480 Well, no, I mean, I had lived in Brazil already, but I was always going back to the US.

00:07:44.820 But for a year, I couldn't travel outside Brazil.

00:07:47.240 The Brazilian government said, we will always protect you because I did a lot of reporting on

00:07:50.300 how the NSA was spying on Brazil.

00:07:52.420 So in Brazil, like the reporting was considered heroic.

00:07:55.780 And they were like, we'll never turn you over, but we can't guarantee your protection if

00:07:59.220 you leave Brazil.

00:08:00.480 So I stayed in Brazil for a year.

00:08:01.800 It's just so funny that the Guardian was one of the places that ran this data, this information.

00:08:08.640 And WikiLeaks.

00:08:09.380 They partnered with WikiLeaks as well.

00:08:10.780 But do you think the Guardian would run something like that now?

00:08:13.260 Nope.

00:08:13.800 Zero chance.

00:08:14.960 Why?

00:08:15.960 I mean, they got taken over by completely different...

00:08:18.700 Like the editor at the time was like one of those old school British editors.

00:08:21.820 Yes.

00:08:22.400 And now it's run by this woman who's like best friends with the editor-in-chief of the...

00:08:26.900 Who was the editor-in-chief of the Intercept who degraded it into a partisan outlet.

00:08:29.940 And they're both just like standard liberal white woman.

00:08:33.100 And they're all into the whole like everything, all that matters is Trump.

00:08:37.640 They have no animosity toward the security state agencies any longer because they perceive

00:08:42.540 them correctly as their political allies.

00:08:44.900 And there's no chance that they would have run a story like that.

00:08:52.600 So they're just totally correct.

00:08:53.620 Do you ever hear any left liberals ever anymore talking about the evils of the CIA, the FBI,

00:08:58.200 the NSA, the US security state?

00:09:00.160 Never, never, ever.

00:09:01.200 Maybe Homeland Security for being too like aggressive with immigrants.

00:09:04.920 But other than that, like that discourse is gone.

00:09:08.580 If you talk about the CIA and the FBI now, people that gets coded as like Trump, Trumpism

00:09:13.780 and like warning about deep state, the deep state.

00:09:16.640 And like they mock the idea that there's a deep state.

00:09:18.900 That's like been fundamental to left-wing politics for as long as I can remember.

00:09:23.020 And now it reads as like, you know, Trumpy and right-wing paranoia.

00:09:27.800 It's, you know, any country run by its intel and law enforcement agencies is an authoritarian

00:09:32.640 country.

00:09:33.240 It's not a democratic country.

00:09:34.280 They were built to be outside of the democratic system.

00:09:37.260 There's no, they're built to be a secret agency within the government that is immune to

00:09:41.860 democratic accountability.

00:09:43.020 And the amazing thing is when they had those hearings, like after the Twitter files and

00:09:46.600 all of that, every single Democrat stood up and said, like when Matt Taibbi won't testify,

00:09:52.580 they were lecturing him saying like, have you ever considered the fact that the people

00:09:56.000 at the CIA and the FBI and our security state agencies are doing this to protect us, not

00:10:01.280 to harm us?

00:10:02.860 Can you imagine like, and like, even though the, like AOC, same thing, like even the

00:10:09.460 left-wing sectors of the democratic party, there's no space to criticize.

00:10:13.920 Are there any, are there any left liberals holding office?

00:10:18.220 Have we started by the way or no?

00:10:19.360 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:20.100 Oh, we're on, we're on.

00:10:21.800 Yeah.

00:10:22.200 I think we're on.

00:10:22.900 I think we'll use this.

00:10:23.580 Yeah.

00:10:23.740 Okay.

00:10:24.720 I didn't know, but I'm fine.

00:10:26.620 You know what an Irish exit is, right?

00:10:28.640 Well, this is when we chat anyway.

00:10:30.340 This is how we chat.

00:10:31.140 So I was like, okay, we're just waiting until, but yeah.

00:10:34.380 So the Irish exit, and I'm not Irish for the record, but is when you sort of leave without

00:10:38.020 saying anything, this is the Irish entrance.

00:10:40.340 You sort of start without saying anything.

00:10:41.540 Exactly.

00:10:42.040 Exactly.

00:10:42.440 Just sit down and start with no, no formal start.

00:10:46.340 Yeah.

00:10:46.700 But I mean, that to me, you know, because it's always so bizarre to me that, you know,

00:10:50.700 for a long time I was considered, you know, like a left-wing kind of leading journalist

00:10:56.500 and finger.

00:10:57.660 And then at some point, like with the emergence of Trump, I had this huge breach with the left

00:11:03.000 and my allies started becoming people on the right.

00:11:06.060 I think that's now changed a little bit more since October 7th and the like, but I haven't

00:11:11.260 changed a single one of my views.

00:11:12.700 I think the primary, the two primary views that I hold that used to be identified with

00:11:17.900 the left that are now identified with the right is free speech, which began as a left-wing

00:11:22.600 movement.

00:11:23.080 I mean, the free speech movement began at Berkeley.

00:11:24.700 Some of the most important first amendment free speech precedents were written by the most

00:11:28.680 left-wing journalists.

00:11:30.000 And like it was left-wing Jewish lawyers at the ACLU who are fighting for the most absolutist

00:11:34.200 versions of free speech.

00:11:35.160 And now free speech codes as a fascist value.

00:11:39.020 And then the second is this critical scrutiny and focus that I've always had on the CIA,

00:11:44.660 the FBI, the NSA, and that two now codes as right-wing.

00:11:48.600 And the reason for that is so disturbing.

00:11:50.580 It's because those agencies became among the leading enemies of the Trump campaign and

00:11:56.620 then the Trump presidency.

00:11:57.720 That's where Russiagate came from, was from the vows of the CIA, the FBI.

00:12:00.520 They were anonymously leaking every day in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

00:12:03.140 All kinds of information that turned out to be false, but that was designed to sabotage

00:12:07.080 Trump's campaign and then presidency.

00:12:08.800 And Democrats looked at that and said, why would we have any problem with these agencies?

00:12:12.400 They're on our side.

00:12:13.320 And they are on that side.

00:12:15.020 And this inversion of politics, and then you add things like neocons almost entirely migrating

00:12:22.040 to the Democratic Party.

00:12:23.440 Whereas when I started talking about politics in 2005, neocons were being talked about as

00:12:27.420 bloodthirsty Hitlerian types, you know, Nazis and the like.

00:12:31.120 Like, that's how liberals talked about them.

00:12:34.040 And now like the most influential pundits in liberal politics are like Bill Kristol and

00:12:38.600 David Frum and Nicole Wallace and all those Bush, Liz Cheney.

00:12:41.980 Liz Cheney was hero of the year by Mother Jones in 2022.

00:12:47.580 Mother Jones is, you know, like a hardcore leftist radical who like broke the law.

00:12:51.900 I mean, the idea that 100 years from now, a newspaper named after her would be naming

00:12:57.180 Liz Cheney as hero of the year.

00:13:01.000 Like when people say like, why have you changed?

00:13:02.900 What have you changed?

00:13:03.440 I'm like, you're the one naming Liz Cheney hero of the year.

00:13:06.860 I hate the Cheneys as much as I hated them 20 years ago.

00:13:09.580 And this inversion of politics is so radical and so visible and, and so transparent and

00:13:16.700 so abrupt, but it's changed almost everything.

00:13:19.860 It does seem like maybe a lot of the kind of ACLU positions, which for the record, I

00:13:26.400 always liked.

00:13:27.140 I always like Nat Hentoff.

00:13:29.060 Yeah.

00:13:29.360 For example.

00:13:30.220 Wonderful man.

00:13:31.560 But, um, it seems like maybe a lot of it wasn't sincere and it was as soon as, you

00:13:38.900 know, the, the ACLU kind of took power over American society.

00:13:42.340 Then it was like, now we have somebody to protect.

00:13:44.140 Now we're not on the side of the underdog.

00:13:45.680 Now we're the overdog.

00:13:46.720 I think there were, I think there was authenticity to the ACLU in the sense that, you know, like

00:13:50.920 the, I remember this from childhood.

00:13:52.700 It was like one of the most influential events for me, even though it was only 10 at the

00:13:57.020 time when it happened, I just became like very interested in it and started reading a lot

00:14:00.820 more about it as a teenager in 1978, which was when the American Nazi party, which was,

00:14:07.860 you know, like a band of like 30 losers and misfits, but they like were walking around

00:14:12.180 in Nazi costumes and stuff.

00:14:14.140 They applied for a parade permit in Skokie, Illinois.

00:14:17.280 North shore, Chicago, overwhelmingly Jewish suburb, not just overwhelming Jewish suburb,

00:14:21.660 but particularly known for having a huge population of Holocaust survivors.

00:14:26.000 People were in actual camps.

00:14:27.480 So imagine the trauma for people like that to see people in actual Nazi uniforms, marching

00:14:33.560 through their town, people with swastikas on their, you know, armband.

00:14:36.900 Pretty heavy.

00:14:37.440 Yeah.

00:14:37.820 And, and, uh, they had their permit rejected on the grounds that it was a threat to public

00:14:43.580 safety or whatever, but obviously it was politically and ideologically driven because

00:14:46.920 the people of Skokie hated the ideology of the Nazi Nazi party for obvious reasons.

00:14:51.440 And the ACLU, despite being composed almost entirely of leftist Jewish lawyers and having

00:14:58.200 donors that were overwhelmingly leftist Jews who were donating to the ACLU in part because

00:15:03.540 they were also defending the civil liberties of communists in the fifties and sixties, you

00:15:07.220 know, communists were barred from becoming lawyers and being admitted to the bar because

00:15:11.040 their ideology was considered to prove poor character and fitness and the like.

00:15:14.780 And a lot of those precedents came out of, you know, the idea that you can suppress communist

00:15:18.920 speech and the ACLU fought to preserve those free speech rights.

00:15:23.000 And then they did the same for the American Nazi party.

00:15:25.420 That position that they took and ultimately prevailed on was something that destroyed the

00:15:32.260 lives of almost every single one of those lawyers in the organization.

00:15:35.340 I mean, almost every Jewish supporter of the ACLU, including ones who worked there, quit

00:15:40.360 and discussed, turned off their donations and discussed and basically destroyed the organization,

00:15:44.540 came very close to bankrupting it forever.

00:15:47.260 And that's what made it so interesting to me was that they were so devoted to this principle

00:15:52.220 that obviously was in defense of a view they obviously found not just disagreeable, but horrific

00:15:59.600 to the point where they were willing to sacrifice their careers and reputations in pursuit of that

00:16:04.020 principle.

00:16:04.700 And I just remember being so enamored of that posture.

00:16:08.780 So they have proven that they, and even now you have like a few of the remnants, you have

00:16:13.540 a few of these remnants of like old ACLU lawyers, for example, they represent right now the NRA

00:16:20.220 because the Cuomo, the Andrew Cuomo administration sought to destroy the NRA explicitly by threatening

00:16:26.860 banks, by threatening advertisers, by threatening anyone who's doing business with the NRA that

00:16:31.180 they will have their state contracts cut off.

00:16:33.300 And the ACLU, like the old lawyers of the ACLU, like the real free speech ones, looked

00:16:37.400 at that and said, obviously, you can't have the state government setting out to destroy

00:16:41.020 a political advocacy group because of their hatred for their ideology and represented the

00:16:44.800 NRA and sued the state of New York and actually won on the grounds that Andrew Cuomo had violated

00:16:49.240 the free speech laws.

00:16:51.220 But primarily, like so many institutions in the wake of Donald Trump, they became completely

00:16:56.780 corrupted in part because they were, for the first time, you know, they would post like,

00:17:00.820 we're going to take Trump to court on this and we're going to take Trump to court on that.

00:17:03.660 And they were, you know, turned into heroes.

00:17:06.200 Like the ACLU had been pretty marginal all their whole, you know, existence.

00:17:09.900 They were flooded with tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:17:14.460 And they became this very well-funded, powerful organization.

00:17:17.300 And they knew that they were captured as a left liberal advocacy group solely to destroy

00:17:23.480 Trump.

00:17:24.260 And now essentially the entire organization is unrecognizable, you know, and you have

00:17:28.120 that key event where they defended the right of Nazis or white nationalists to march through

00:17:33.460 Charlottesville.

00:17:34.120 They represented them.

00:17:35.020 And then you had that woman who was killed by one of the parade protesters, the white nationalist

00:17:40.140 protester who ran over Heather Heyer.

00:17:42.780 And that caused this huge uproar in the ACLU.

00:17:45.700 People who worked on like LGBT issues or like immigrant issues saying, why are we representing,

00:17:51.160 you know, white nationalists and their free speech rights?

00:17:54.540 And it's like, do you know anything about the organization that you actually applied for

00:17:57.920 a job and then joined?

00:17:58.860 But they didn't.

00:18:00.000 And that was on the ACLU for the first time retreated by issuing this memo saying in the

00:18:04.200 future, we're going to weigh the value of free speech versus other political values.

00:18:09.260 Societal harm, yeah.

00:18:09.920 And so many other instances then where they've taken positions that would have been completely

00:18:14.720 anathema to the ACLU.

00:18:16.020 And to me, this is so illustrative of what happened to like left liberal political culture,

00:18:20.340 the parts of it I used to really like is that it was renounced all in the name of defeating

00:18:25.120 Trump, which in turn had all kinds of financial values and benefits and benefits and power and

00:18:30.520 the like.

00:18:31.680 So if you're paying any attention at all to what's going on in the world, you've probably

00:18:35.580 asked yourself, what would I do, not just for myself, but for the people who love me

00:18:39.100 and I'm responsible for, my family, what would I do if things really went south, either

00:18:43.660 for a short period or a longer period?

00:18:45.200 If there was an emergency, how would I respond?

00:18:47.080 Well, of course, you need food and water, you need security, some way to protect yourself

00:18:51.460 and your loved ones.

00:18:52.320 You probably have taken care of all of that.

00:18:54.320 But one problem you may not have addressed is what do you do about medicine?

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00:20:45.100 So many questions.

00:20:46.880 Just take a quick detour.

00:20:48.360 What's so scary is, you know, I never liked any of the people in the ACLU.

00:20:53.900 Like, I don't think I want to have dinner with them.

00:20:55.540 But I, like you, absolutely admired, almost revered their commitment to principle.

00:21:01.460 You know, I'll die for your right to say something that I hate.

00:21:05.080 Right.

00:21:05.280 Okay, so I love that.

00:21:06.520 And I still do love it.

00:21:07.900 That was on the left.

00:21:08.960 That was the best thing about the left.

00:21:10.440 That and their anti-war instincts, in my opinion.

00:21:12.860 It's all gone.

00:21:13.920 So it kind of migrated right and conservatives start talking a lot about free speech.

00:21:18.800 To my joy.

00:21:21.120 And then, you know.

00:21:22.000 And also, criticism of the U.S. security state are found only on the right now on the

00:21:25.260 right of Trump.

00:21:25.760 All of that.

00:21:26.320 Like, that inversion happened.

00:21:28.320 But then, you know, six months ago, all of a sudden, you have people on the right being

00:21:33.220 like, no, well, you know, that speech is violence.

00:21:37.680 You're making people threatened by saying things they don't like.

00:21:40.700 It's like stealing, almost word for word, the language of the, what do they used to call

00:21:47.240 them?

00:21:47.720 Snowflakes?

00:21:48.520 Yeah.

00:21:48.800 Or like the social justice war.

00:21:50.780 So maybe we need hate speech laws now.

00:21:53.300 And then all the Republicans vote for a hate speech law.

00:21:55.340 And so it is.

00:21:56.500 First of all, let me just say that, like, this has been there for a long time, lurking this

00:22:01.320 huge contradiction in right-wing politics.

00:22:04.420 And I actually have done shows well prior to October 7th that were in articles well prior

00:22:09.160 to October 7th, even with my new alignment with a lot of conservatives who now appreciated

00:22:13.940 my free speech advocacy and my criticism of the U.S. security state.

00:22:17.560 You know, lots of people who said, like you, oh, I used to really, you know, put my trust

00:22:21.480 in the NSA and the NSCIA.

00:22:23.160 And then there was a Snowden reporting and all these other things, seeing their abuses

00:22:26.020 politically against Trump that made me realize, you know, you were right.

00:22:29.760 So I had a lot of new right-wing, if not allies, like people who were followers of my work and

00:22:35.100 readers and the like.

00:22:36.180 But I was always aware of the fact and even saying, you have a huge Israel exception embedded

00:22:42.720 within your worldview because it wasn't just since October 7th, it's been for a long time

00:22:47.040 that while a lot of right-wing speech has been targeted with censorship on campus, and

00:22:50.380 I've been very vocal and objective to that, among the most common and frequent targets

00:22:57.000 of censorship, both on campus and generally in the United States, have long been Israel

00:23:00.500 critics, professors who have lost tenure because of it, who have gotten fired because of it.

00:23:04.580 There was Norman Finkelstein, who had his scholarship approved for tenure at DePaul University, and

00:23:08.880 Alan Dershowitz went on a jihad against him to destroy his career and won and basically made

00:23:14.340 him unemployable.

00:23:15.500 There was a professor at the University of Illinois in 2014, Stephen Salacia, who was given

00:23:19.560 a contract for tenure.

00:23:20.920 They found tweets of his criticizing very harshly Israel for its 2014 bombing of Gaza.

00:23:25.200 And he got fired.

00:23:28.820 University of Illinois had to pay him a million dollars, but they were pressured by donors

00:23:32.860 and by—there were Jewish student groups saying, we don't feel safe on campus with someone

00:23:38.480 who's so harshly critical of Israel.

00:23:39.940 So this has been going on for a long time.

00:23:41.480 This is not a new development.

00:23:43.620 But since October 7th—and, you know, I have a lot of friends in my life who are Jewish,

00:23:49.120 who—but, you know, were either skeptical of Israel or kind of apathetic to it, who got

00:23:54.260 really radicalized after October 7th.

00:23:56.660 So it really—you know, Israel has kind of been on the back burner for a long time,

00:24:00.000 so those contradictions weren't very apparent.

00:24:03.020 Now you listen to the pro-Israel right, and they sound—and not ironically or like, you

00:24:08.820 know, as parody or as some strategic maneuver, they sound exactly like the left liberals who

00:24:14.620 they've been heaping scorn on for the last decade.

00:24:16.640 You cannot enter a discussion with an Israel defender without them immediately accusing

00:24:21.680 you of being a racist if they disagree with you.

00:24:23.640 Oh, you're an anti-Semite.

00:24:25.080 And this is one of the primary right-wing grievances against liberals for the last decade.

00:24:29.620 Oh, the minute you disagree with a liberal, they call you a racist.

00:24:32.040 They call you a bigot.

00:24:32.740 They call you a, you know, transphobe.

00:24:34.580 They call you a misogynist.

00:24:36.420 Try and have an argument, even like a substantive civil argument, disagreement.

00:24:41.280 Criticize Israel just a little bit and count down the number of seconds before you get

00:24:45.500 accused of being motivated by bigotry and hatred.

00:24:49.020 It'll be, you know, seconds.

00:24:50.680 And these are the people who say, oh, I hate the tactic of accusing everyone you disagree

00:24:53.880 with of being a racist.

00:24:54.920 That's their only tactic, their go-to tactic.

00:24:57.240 The minute you question, like, why is the U.S. financing Israel's military in its wars

00:25:01.860 when it not only hurts our own country, but when millions of Israelis are having better

00:25:05.680 standard of living than millions of Americans?

00:25:07.720 You're a Jew hater.

00:25:08.580 You hate—you know, you have some kind of problem with Jews.

00:25:10.260 So it's the same tactic there.

00:25:11.740 Do they say that to you?

00:25:13.380 Constantly.

00:25:13.880 You know, being Jewish is not in any way—does not give you any kind of immunity from that

00:25:18.220 accusation.

00:25:18.800 Like, zero.

00:25:19.860 Are you an anti-Semite?

00:25:21.900 What?

00:25:23.640 It's so crazy.

00:25:25.440 Yeah, I mean, well, it's the same thing.

00:25:27.220 You know, it's like black—you know, this is the other amazing thing is I did a debate

00:25:31.740 with Alan Dershowitz in Manhattan on Tuesday.

00:25:35.860 It's about to come out, which nominally was about whether the U.S. should go bomb yet

00:25:40.080 another enemy of Israel in the Middle East, this one, Iran.

00:25:43.120 But in reality, it turned into this broader debate about neoconservative dogma, and he

00:25:47.340 actually wants regime change.

00:25:49.460 And they did a vote before and after, and like 70% of the audience was with me, which

00:25:53.660 was bizarre because it was the Upper West Side.

00:25:55.440 But the 30% who were not were extremely vocal both during the debate.

00:25:59.660 But then as I was leaving, I was accosted by, I would say, like two dozen of them.

00:26:04.320 And they were hurling insults and screaming and trying to be menacing.

00:26:08.100 And their main argument was, how can you be a Jew and say these things about Israel?

00:26:11.760 And I was trying to say, like, I don't think my being a Jew compels me to have a certain

00:26:15.380 set of ideas about foreign policy or this foreign country.

00:26:18.680 And the amazing thing about that is there has been this sense all the time, like if

00:26:24.160 you, you know, if a liberal sees a black conservative or a gay conservative, they'll immediately say,

00:26:29.780 oh, you're an Uncle Tom.

00:26:30.860 You have some, you know, psychological problem that you're self-hating.

00:26:33.420 How can you be a black conservative?

00:26:34.720 How can you be a gay conservative?

00:26:36.880 As though being part of these, you know, demographic groups somehow compels you to embrace a certain

00:26:42.660 political ideology.

00:26:43.400 Like there's a relationship between your skin color and the political ideology that you have

00:26:46.860 to embrace.

00:26:47.360 That was always some argument on the right.

00:26:49.380 Like, why just because someone's black, are they automatically enslaved to the Democratic

00:26:53.160 Party?

00:26:53.840 And yet so many people on the right now say, oh, if you're a Jew, you have to have unquestioning

00:26:59.480 support for Israel.

00:27:00.200 But like, what if I don't?

00:27:01.240 What if I think the government of Israel is actually wrong?

00:27:03.680 But it's that tactic, like you hate Jews, or if you are Jewish, you're self-hating.

00:27:08.220 And then the hate speech, you know, I've been hearing from liberals for the last decade.

00:27:12.780 Oh, yeah, we want free speech, but some things are over the line in our hate speech, and they

00:27:18.140 endanger minority groups because words are violence and words can incite violence.

00:27:22.300 And this has been the thing that the right has been scoffing out, like, oh, these little

00:27:25.340 left-wing snowflakes on campuses want the administrators to intervene and protect them from ideas that

00:27:30.500 make them uncomfortable.

00:27:31.680 There's nothing that we've heard other than that from the last seven months from right pro-Israel

00:27:37.780 conservatives, other than, oh, these poor little Jewish students at Harvard and Yale and Princeton,

00:27:42.880 who grew up extremely wealthy and go to the most elite colleges, are now somehow endangered,

00:27:47.620 even though there's no record of violence at these protests, like almost none, because hearing chants

00:27:53.900 that are pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli make them feel vulnerable.

00:27:57.740 Like, the conservatives in Congress, like Elise Stefanik and Virginia Fox, Mike Johnson,

00:28:02.860 they had, like, a horde of Jewish students from Harvard coming and saying, I don't feel

00:28:06.840 safe at my school.

00:28:08.200 The very things the conservatives have been mocking so viciously when that came from black

00:28:13.300 students or trans students or immigrants or Muslims or whatever, the hypocrisy, the stench

00:28:18.960 of it is suffocating and nauseating.

00:28:21.660 Well, that's, from my perspective as an American, I think you can have any opinion you want on Israel.

00:28:28.420 I'm not actually that interested.

00:28:29.700 I personally like Israel, whatever.

00:28:32.840 The red line for me is, this is my country.

00:28:35.380 My birthright is free speech.

00:28:36.840 God gave me that, right?

00:28:37.960 You cannot take it away.

00:28:39.060 And if you're telling me what I'm allowed to say in my country, you're my enemy.

00:28:43.300 Like, it's just kind of that simple.

00:28:44.860 You can't tell me what to say or think, period, because I'm an American.

00:28:48.060 Exactly.

00:28:48.660 But if there were a consistent standard, like, let's say there were a consistent standard.

00:28:51.740 No, but period.

00:28:52.260 I agree.

00:28:52.820 Let's just walk back from there.

00:28:53.860 But, but, but, right.

00:28:54.620 If there were some consistent standard, like Western Europeans have hate speech laws, whatever,

00:29:01.400 that kind of, they don't really comply with them consistently, but at least there's like

00:29:04.420 a dogma, like hate speech is not part of free speech.

00:29:06.880 In the United States, we don't have a hate speech exception to the first amendment.

00:29:09.700 There is no such thing.

00:29:10.560 So, if you suddenly now start, you know, and it's not just in the discourse, they're passing

00:29:19.360 laws.

00:29:20.140 Oh, I'm aware.

00:29:21.000 Like, Greg Abbott issued an executive order that said there will be no more anti-Semitism,

00:29:26.080 meaning anti-Semitism speech, anti-Semitic speech or ideas allowed in the state of Texas.

00:29:31.240 And you have, I don't know if you saw the video this week, but there was a video emerging

00:29:34.240 where a school administrator went to a group of pro-Palestinian protesters and said, I just

00:29:38.660 want you to know if you chant from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free or globalize

00:29:44.440 the intifada, you, you will be turned over to law enforcement.

00:29:48.460 We will call the police on you and you will be arrested and held legally accountable.

00:29:52.220 That is now a crime in Texas.

00:29:53.820 They passed a law.

00:29:55.380 Is that actually true?

00:29:56.820 Yes.

00:29:57.200 Yes.

00:29:57.700 The, you, yes.

00:29:58.740 I mean, the whole point of Greg Abbott's executive order was to say no anti-Semitic speech

00:30:05.880 is permissible in Texas any longer.

00:30:07.600 You're allowed to have anti-black racist speech.

00:30:10.160 You're allowed to have anti-Muslim speech.

00:30:12.520 You're allowed to have anti-gay speech.

00:30:14.100 Yeah.

00:30:14.260 You can have anti-white speech.

00:30:15.500 You just can't be anti-Semitic to the point where these students are now being told that

00:30:20.260 if they do these political chants, no violence, no obstruction of buildings, nothing illegal,

00:30:24.460 the chants themselves, the ideas themselves will be decreed illegal.

00:30:29.460 Now, as you say, like, you don't have to hate Israel or whatever, but we talk all the

00:30:35.000 time.

00:30:35.240 Like you have at every pro-Israel rally in the United States, you'll hear people saying

00:30:39.080 wipe out all the Arabs, turn Gaza into a parking lot.

00:30:42.720 Gaza belongs to Israel.

00:30:43.920 We constantly talk about bombing this country, bombing that country.

00:30:47.780 We're always advocating violence against this group, against this country.

00:30:51.000 You know, this country is illegitimate.

00:30:52.860 There's only one country that has the protection of these laws, which is the country of Israel.

00:30:56.700 But you can't have these laws in the first place.

00:30:58.620 No.

00:30:58.800 And it's so obvious.

00:30:59.780 If they were chanting, expel Tucker Carlson from the country.

00:31:03.860 Well, I am Tucker Carlson.

00:31:04.920 So obviously I'm opposed to that.

00:31:06.420 I would have exactly the same position that I have on this or any other speech related

00:31:11.120 matter, which is I'm an American.

00:31:14.040 Every American has the right to say exactly what he thinks at all times, period, period.

00:31:18.600 Like I thought that was the whole point of the country.

00:31:21.260 Isn't it?

00:31:21.820 And let me just say too, that like, just because I hear this argument so much, and I think a lot

00:31:26.140 of people who are conservatives, who understand that they're now veering into this territory,

00:31:31.960 try and justify it by saying, look, we're only doing this because the left has been doing it.

00:31:36.240 We're not going to allow the left to do it.

00:31:37.700 And we're not going to do it right constantly.

00:31:39.340 That's the justification.

00:31:40.520 And the thing is, this is the big delusion, as I was saying, you know, about these protesters

00:31:44.440 being fired as pro-Israel critics have long been one of the most common targets of censorship.

00:31:49.360 I'll just give you an example.

00:31:50.140 There were 23 different red states, including Texas and Greg Abbott, but also New York and

00:31:56.160 Andrew Cuomo, who well before, you know, in the, like in the Obama administration and then

00:32:00.840 in the Trump administration passed laws that said this, it said, if you are a contractor

00:32:06.760 and you work with the state from now on, you have to sign a pledge that you do not believe

00:32:12.600 in and will not participate in a boycott of the state of Israel.

00:32:16.400 And I interviewed this woman and profiled her once.

00:32:18.960 She was this speech pathologist in Austin, Texas.

00:32:22.100 She had, was her specialty was she worked with children who had speech disability.

00:32:24.920 What does that mean, a boycott?

00:32:25.760 So you can't refuse to buy Israeli products?

00:32:28.000 Yeah.

00:32:28.200 Like there's a movement, like, you know, in the 1980s, there was a movement to divest

00:32:31.420 from South Africa, to boycott South Africa, not to go to South Africa, not to buy its goods

00:32:35.640 in order to bring down the apartheid regime.

00:32:38.060 So there's a similar movement called the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

00:32:41.320 Like let's not invest in Israel.

00:32:43.240 Let's not go to Israel.

00:32:44.220 Let's not support its products in order to end the occupation and give the Palestinians

00:32:47.520 a state in the United States, in 24 different states, there was a, there's a law that says

00:32:55.120 you can not get a contract with the state unless you now sign this pledge saying you don't

00:33:00.780 support this boycott and will not participate.

00:33:02.660 You have to sign a loyalty pledge to a foreign country.

00:33:04.920 Only one.

00:33:05.560 This is the amazing thing.

00:33:06.660 You're allowed to boycott any other country in the world, including your own.

00:33:09.380 You can boycott Peru.

00:33:11.660 You can boycott South Korea.

00:33:13.180 You can say, I'm not going to buy a Norwegian good.

00:33:15.000 You can boycott South Dakota.

00:33:15.960 No, that's the other thing.

00:33:16.880 Or Wisconsin.

00:33:17.380 Andrew Cuomo, who did this by executive order, said that anyone who boycotts Israel has no

00:33:23.580 right to have a contract.

00:33:24.880 He wrote a Washington Post op-ed.

00:33:26.200 The headline was, if you boycott Israel, we'll boycott you.

00:33:28.640 Now, six months before that and six months after, by executive order, he required state

00:33:35.960 employees to boycott the state of North Carolina and then the state of Indiana in protest of

00:33:40.840 their bathroom bills that they enacted for, you know, if you have to use the bathroom of

00:33:45.360 your biological choice.

00:33:46.200 So, not only are you allowed to boycott your own country and harm economically the citizens

00:33:52.780 of other states, Andrew Cuomo actually ordered boycotts of American states while at the same

00:33:59.380 time banning anybody from boycotting the state of Israel.

00:34:03.000 It's a single country that has all kinds of special privileges and rights.

00:34:07.300 And let me just tell you another thing.

00:34:08.240 Did anyone say anything about this?

00:34:09.700 Well, I was writing about it all the time, but a few people cared.

00:34:11.980 Finally, those cases got brought to the courts and thankfully courts have overwhelmingly almost

00:34:15.880 unanimously said this is a grave violation of the First Amendment and are being struck

00:34:19.120 down.

00:34:20.140 But the, I'll tell you something so amazing, this just kind of encapsulates it for me.

00:34:24.880 So, Ben Shapiro, a good friend of yours and a longtime political ally, obviously one of

00:34:33.980 the main kind of unifying views of conservatives is that we shouldn't have jobs set aside for

00:34:40.320 certain groups.

00:34:40.960 We shouldn't have, we shouldn't judge people based on the color of their skin or their ethnic group

00:34:45.480 when hiring or their religion or it should be a meritocracy or can you do the job best?

00:34:50.360 Exactly.

00:34:51.200 So, Palantir, which is an intelligence corporation that was started by Peter Thiel and that has

00:35:00.080 all kinds of contracts with the CIA, the Defense Department, but it's run by Jewish vocal

00:35:07.340 supporters of Israel announced in October or November after hearing all this stuff about

00:35:13.420 Jewish students being discriminated against because of their views or whatever.

00:35:16.620 And it was never really Jewish students.

00:35:17.960 It was pro-Israel students, Jews who support the war because a lot of these protests have

00:35:21.960 overwhelming numbers of Jews inside these protests.

00:35:24.920 Yeah, so it's not a hostility toward Jews, it's a hostility toward anyone who supports this

00:35:30.400 war that they're protesting against.

00:35:32.440 Palantir announced that they were creating 180 new jobs that were available exclusively for

00:35:39.220 Jewish students on campus who felt like they were being made uncomfortable.

00:35:43.220 It was 180 jobs, no Christians could apply, no Muslims could apply, no atheists could apply,

00:35:48.700 no black people, only for Jews.

00:35:51.300 Ben Shapiro saw that and he went onto Twitter and above that Palantir announcement said something

00:35:57.160 like, wow, this is fantastic.

00:36:00.340 And then after his own followers spent the day saying, what do you mean?

00:36:03.780 This is exactly the thing you're supposed to oppose.

00:36:06.100 At the end of the day, he was kind of forced to say, yeah, you know what?

00:36:09.200 Maybe it would be best if it were open to everybody.

00:36:12.320 But then like, what's the point of the announcement?

00:36:14.080 He would never have commented on it.

00:36:15.300 Obviously, he was happy about that.

00:36:16.860 Barry Weiss, same thing, you know, Ms.

00:36:19.200 Like anti-woke.

00:36:21.240 This is identity politics as pure as it gets, creating 180 jobs solely for Jewish students.

00:36:27.120 And it's, I think, very hard to make the case that Jewish Americans are like an endangered

00:36:31.280 or marginalized minority in the United States.

00:36:33.380 Very, very hard to make that case.

00:36:34.960 When she saw that announcement, she put this like very excitement, wow, on top of it.

00:36:39.640 And so you see this like utter and complete abandonment of what these people have been

00:36:44.720 claiming were their principles, not even in defense of their own country or people in

00:36:49.500 their own country, but this foreign government in Tel Aviv.

00:36:53.000 And, you know, when you watch something like that and you see a political movement expose

00:36:58.700 itself as a complete fraud.

00:37:00.220 Now, I should say there are a lot of exceptions to like hardcore conservatives like Chris Ruffo

00:37:04.860 has often condemned some of these bills.

00:37:08.220 You have to Candace Owens has to Tom Massey in Congress has been like incredibly steadfast

00:37:13.840 to the point where AIPAC tried to take him out and failed.

00:37:16.080 He just won his primary with like 76.

00:37:18.000 But overwhelmingly, the pro-Israel sector of the American right has proven itself to be

00:37:23.740 such utter and complete frauds about virtually every value they've spent the last decade pretending

00:37:28.440 to champion and believe in.

00:37:29.720 And it's been sickening to watch.

00:37:31.860 The reason it's scary is, again, has nothing to do with Israel at all, about which I have

00:37:39.780 like less emotion than most Americans, apparently.

00:37:42.880 I just don't care that much either way.

00:37:45.280 But what's scary is if there's an alignment between left and right, which is to say everyone

00:37:50.980 with institutional power, on the question of speech, in other words, if you say something

00:37:56.160 I don't like, I can put you in jail, then it's a totalitarian country.

00:38:00.460 By definition.

00:38:01.300 By definition.

00:38:02.040 There is no totalitarian country in history that has offered free speech.

00:38:06.900 And conversely, there's no totalitarian country in history that has refrained from using censorship,

00:38:11.780 which is one of the reasons why it's so bizarre that if you now wave the free speech banner,

00:38:15.580 you're accused that code is like fascist.

00:38:17.360 So it's like, show me the fascist country that actually offers free speech and that

00:38:20.760 doesn't use censorship.

00:38:21.620 It's like a hallmark of fascism to do what you're doing.

00:38:25.400 But, you know, I do.

00:38:26.640 Well, I know.

00:38:27.240 And I've been attacked recently for just asking questions on by the right.

00:38:30.980 I've been on the right my whole life, like since childhood.

00:38:34.700 And just asking, oh, you're just asking questions like, well, yeah, you're that's kind of like

00:38:40.960 important to be.

00:38:41.820 But here's the other thing.

00:38:42.680 First of all, it's my job.

00:38:43.440 This is the other amazing part of it.

00:38:44.680 It's like, you know, very well that under Trump, and I think this is one of the things

00:38:50.000 that Donald Trump has has done that has been very positive is he dragged the Republican

00:38:54.820 Party away from the kind of Bush Cheney neocon orthodoxy and even like going back to the

00:39:00.460 kind of Cold War of endless wars and stuff by saying, like, we shouldn't be focusing on

00:39:04.880 all these other countries.

00:39:05.960 Yes.

00:39:06.400 We should be focused on our own citizens, especially because they're not doing very

00:39:09.240 well by every metric.

00:39:10.360 Every city is filled with like attics and communities that are being devastated and falling

00:39:15.500 infrastructure.

00:39:16.280 You compare the infrastructure of the United States.

00:39:18.420 You know, every time I come here, I like come to an airport and see roads and you go to,

00:39:22.760 you know, Asia or like places in the Gulf or and even in Western Europe, you know, the

00:39:28.480 difference is so obvious.

00:39:29.520 It looks like it's a crumbling country on every level.

00:39:31.640 And we're spending all this money to benefit of their country.

00:39:34.800 So the Republican Party has basically rebranded as America first, you know, based on the

00:39:40.100 idea that our primary priority should be the people of our country.

00:39:43.400 And I can't tell you how many Republican members of Congress or Republican journalists

00:39:47.920 or pundits I've interviewed over the last two and a half years who say we can't be financing

00:39:53.340 the war in Ukraine because we don't have the money to be financing other countries' wars,

00:39:58.380 nor should we be doing that.

00:39:59.600 Our focus should be on our own country.

00:40:01.080 And every single time, well, before even October 7th, I would ask them, does that also

00:40:04.680 apply to Israel?

00:40:05.780 And they would kind of stammer and stutter and not want to say it.

00:40:08.940 But now, you know, you say like you don't care about Israel.

00:40:12.680 And I totally understand that.

00:40:13.780 The problem, though, is, is that Israel has received far more aid from the United States

00:40:18.740 than any other country by far over the last three to four decades.

00:40:21.960 We pay for their military.

00:40:23.560 We pay for every time there's a new war.

00:40:25.840 We send them billions and billions of more on top of the $4 billion a year that Obama negotiated

00:40:29.960 with Netanyahu.

00:40:31.340 Not only do that, but we arm them.

00:40:33.180 The bombs that they use to kill Gazan civilians come from the United States.

00:40:36.900 And I think worst of all, we isolate ourselves from the entire rest of the world.

00:40:40.900 Do you know how many votes there have been at the UN over the past seven months where the

00:40:44.960 entire world is on one side and Israel and the United States stand alone on the other?

00:40:50.160 With, you know, a couple of those tiny little countries that we often bribe, like Micronesia

00:40:53.980 and Marshall Islands, the part of the coalition of the world.

00:40:56.660 It's literally called Micronesia.

00:40:58.380 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:59.420 Micro.

00:41:00.020 It's like, so, you know, it's also just the standing in the world, like our sacrificing

00:41:04.720 of soft power.

00:41:05.660 So we give up so much for Israel in so many other ways that if you're an American citizen,

00:41:11.880 you have to care about it, even if you don't want to.

00:41:14.040 You know, one of the stories we did.

00:41:15.340 Well, what I meant was, I don't, I feel emotional.

00:41:16.980 Like, I just have like gut level affection for it because I've had such a nice time there.

00:41:20.060 And I like so many Israelis personally and know a lot.

00:41:24.340 And I just like, there's nothing more wonderful than having dinner in Jerusalem on a summer

00:41:28.900 night.

00:41:29.180 It's just, I just, so I have a lot of affection.

00:41:30.700 I guess that's what I'm saying.

00:41:31.760 So I'm not sort of animated by, you know, any, anything really.

00:41:37.040 I'm just like trying to, I live here.

00:41:39.220 So do my kids.

00:41:40.220 So did my ancestors.

00:41:41.140 It's like, I just care about this country.

00:41:42.560 And if you're changing my life or stripping my rights from me that we've had for 250 years

00:41:50.220 on behalf of any other place, you are my enemy.

00:41:53.480 Like, it's just that simple.

00:41:55.000 You are my enemy.

00:41:55.720 I mean, I don't know what to say.

00:41:56.720 I don't want even to even have this conversation.

00:41:59.080 Well, that's the amazing thing is that the devotion to Israel is so great and so incomparable

00:42:05.900 to the devotion of any other foreign country that it's to the point that their supporters,

00:42:11.080 supporters of Israel are willing to deconstruct and erode and sacrifice the core basic rights

00:42:18.080 that as Americans, by definition, we're supposed to enjoy.

00:42:20.600 So I won't accept that.

00:42:21.500 I won't accept that.

00:42:22.940 But that is what's happening.

00:42:23.580 This is my country.

00:42:24.660 I'm from here.

00:42:25.340 I'm going to die here.

00:42:26.160 I will not accept that.

00:42:27.240 And I don't care what you call me.

00:42:29.360 You can't take away my right to say what I think.

00:42:32.320 That is the foundational right in the United States of America.

00:42:35.740 And it's the only thing that prevents us from becoming, you know, Stalinist, period.

00:42:41.080 Who came up with the idea that you only vote in November in elections?

00:42:45.520 No, you vote every single day with your time and your money.

00:42:50.320 You show your preferences.

00:42:51.800 You put your support behind things you believe in and you withhold support from things you

00:42:57.140 don't.

00:42:57.520 You can do that with your cell phone, by the way.

00:42:59.980 There's a wireless company that if you're not on board with what's going on in this country

00:43:04.400 at the highest levels, you can make your preference known.

00:43:07.440 It's called Pure Talk.

00:43:09.960 It's probably something you should consider.

00:43:12.260 It is proudly veteran-led.

00:43:14.460 It is led by veterans of the U.S. military.

00:43:16.800 And it supports American jobs by their customer service team.

00:43:22.160 All of them are right here in the United States.

00:43:23.940 What other company can say that, by the way?

00:43:25.820 Not many.

00:43:26.660 It proudly supports great charities, charities that you would support yourself, like America's

00:43:30.680 Warrior Partnership.

00:43:31.560 Every dollar you spend, some of that money goes to those charities every single month.

00:43:36.740 When you switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk, you know what?

00:43:39.880 You will not be sacrificing coverage because Pure Talk puts you on America's most reliable

00:43:44.740 5G network.

00:43:46.540 And with plans starting at just $20 a month for unlimited talk, taxed lots of data, you can

00:43:51.440 literally cut your monthly cell phone bill in half while doing something that you can feel

00:43:55.900 good about and believe in.

00:43:57.120 The average family saves almost $1,000 a year.

00:43:59.840 So no contract, no cancellation fee, and a 30-day, a 30-day money-back guarantee, it

00:44:07.060 makes switching easy.

00:44:08.580 Go to puretalk.com slash Tucker and you'll save an additional 50% off your first month.

00:44:14.840 Once again, that is puretalk.com slash Tucker to switch your cell phone service to a company

00:44:21.140 you can be proud to do business with.

00:44:29.840 Tucker says it best.

00:44:33.580 The credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough.

00:44:38.220 This is Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas.

00:44:40.940 Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act, would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard

00:44:46.740 have on us.

00:44:48.100 Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee and they've

00:44:53.160 been raising it without even telling you.

00:44:55.180 This hurts consumers and every small business owner.

00:44:59.120 In fact, American families are paying $1,100 in hidden swipe fees each year.

00:45:05.000 The fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the world, double candidates

00:45:10.640 and eight times more than Europe's.

00:45:12.960 That's why I've taken action, but I need your help to help get this passed.

00:45:16.960 I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition

00:45:23.320 Act.

00:45:24.400 Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition.

00:45:26.020 Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

00:45:28.300 www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com

00:45:31.220 Well, I remember you and I talked about this on your show, I think three, four weeks, maybe

00:45:39.920 after October 7th, when all these calls for restrictions on speech were starting to emerge.

00:45:45.780 And one of the things you said, which I remember was by some weird inversion or collection of

00:45:51.740 various events, it has been the American right over the last decade that has been defending

00:45:56.300 the cause of free speech, which is absolutely true.

00:45:59.420 It's one of the reasons why I've had more alignment with the right than with the left,

00:46:02.280 because that's a primary cause of mine, always has been, always will be.

00:46:05.380 And you said, if the right now starts abandoning that and advocating for censorship, because

00:46:11.880 now the views that are being targeted are no longer ones they love, but ones they hate,

00:46:17.100 namely criticism of Israel, the right will never have credibility ever again to pretend

00:46:22.380 that it believes in free speech.

00:46:23.520 Because if you go to North Korea, and you praise the government, you're not going to

00:46:28.560 be bothered at all.

00:46:29.900 You can go to any country, any tyrannical country, if you express the views that people in power

00:46:36.280 want to hear, you're always going to enjoy the blessings of free speech.

00:46:40.640 Free speech is for dissidents.

00:46:42.060 Free speech is for people who have opposing views, minority views.

00:46:45.860 And so to watch the right wave the banner of free speech, because it was conservative

00:46:51.420 speech being targeted, everyone will always be in favor of free speech in defense of their

00:46:55.120 own views.

00:46:55.720 The only real task for the authenticity of a free speech advocate is when it comes time

00:47:00.640 to defend free speech for the ideas you hate most, which is why that what the ACLU did

00:47:04.800 was so admirable.

00:47:06.040 I search out on purpose, the cases where the views I hate most are being assaulted and censored

00:47:12.840 to defend free speech there, because that's the only way you can really defend that value

00:47:16.780 in a meaningful way.

00:47:17.780 And defend your country.

00:47:18.760 Like, what does it mean to defend the United States?

00:47:20.620 It means to defend the Bill of Rights, the thing that makes this country, it's on our

00:47:24.540 market economy.

00:47:26.240 It's our system of government is based on the idea that you have rights you were born

00:47:30.600 with that were not conferred to you by government and cannot be taken away by government.

00:47:34.540 And that is that's the unique idea.

00:47:36.140 That is the idea.

00:47:37.260 And if there's any idea worth defending, it's that.

00:47:38.900 And if that goes away, and people who have, you know, more powerful computing power or

00:47:44.020 more money or, you know, access to the levers of power can use violence in a state-sanctioned

00:47:51.320 way, if they can stop you from saying what you think, if they can force you to believe

00:47:55.240 certain things, we're just done.

00:47:57.560 We're done like that.

00:47:59.260 You're not allowed to wreck my country, actually.

00:48:01.080 That's how I feel about it.

00:48:01.920 Well, and also, you know, we were talking about Snowden earlier.

00:48:05.020 I mean, one of the the real cause that motivated Edward Snowden was not so much the right to

00:48:11.260 privacy.

00:48:11.800 Obviously, that was a big part of opposing the surveillance state.

00:48:14.940 What it really was, was preserving this incredibly new and powerful innovation that had emerged

00:48:21.780 in his adolescence that he became very enamored with, which was the Internet.

00:48:26.620 The Internet is a remarkable weapon for citizens to communicate with one another, to spread information,

00:48:32.660 to organize without the ability of state and corporate power to intervene and control it.

00:48:38.520 And he saw the degradation of the free Internet, which was always the principle.

00:48:43.640 You go back to the mid-90s with the proclamations about the importance of the Internet was always

00:48:47.540 a free Internet.

00:48:48.400 Keep your hands off the Internet.

00:48:49.400 That was the whole point.

00:48:50.100 Yeah.

00:48:50.300 And they degraded it into the one of the most powerful systems of surveillance ever created.

00:48:55.620 But this cause of free speech really means now mostly free speech on in the place that

00:49:01.520 where we communicate most, which is the Internet.

00:49:03.600 Now is why the Biden administration systemic attempt to force these big tech companies to

00:49:09.340 remove the scent that two separate courts have now concluded were one of the grave assaults

00:49:14.240 on the First Amendment was so offensive to me.

00:49:16.080 But the similar thing, it comes from the other direction.

00:49:19.840 And if you take away the right of free speech, it not only means it doesn't only mean that

00:49:26.000 people who dissent lose the ability to express that dissent without being punished.

00:49:30.120 What it means even more seriously and I think more destructive that we don't often think about

00:49:34.260 is that it enables power centers to propagandize without challenge.

00:49:38.800 We drown in a closed system of information that power centers approve of because they've eliminated

00:49:44.900 all these other ideas as disinformation or hate speech or incitement to violence or whatever

00:49:48.960 theories they invent to erode free speech.

00:49:52.100 And then we're hopeless.

00:49:53.820 We're totally impotent.

00:49:54.820 Every other right we have doesn't matter because that's the that's our minds are controlled.

00:49:58.820 Our mind, what we believe is manipulated.

00:50:00.840 So we'll be obedient.

00:50:02.460 We'll be conformist.

00:50:03.320 Those other rights won't be necessary because we'll be good conformist, obedient citizens who

00:50:07.660 don't realize how propagandized we are.

00:50:10.420 And that is the what's at stake.

00:50:12.680 And so when you see any group of people, especially ones who claim to believe in free speech,

00:50:18.040 suddenly abandon that and start cheering for censorship as a framework, it's incredibly

00:50:23.520 dangerous because even as a self-interested matter, you know that this system will eventually

00:50:28.320 be used against you, even if it's not at the moment.

00:50:31.580 And conservatives of all people should know how easily it will be weaponized against them.

00:50:35.420 And yet they're cheering for the very systems that they've spent a decade now claiming to hate,

00:50:40.460 along with all these scripts about everyone's a racist who disagrees with me.

00:50:44.420 And no, this isn't free speech.

00:50:46.720 This is hate speech.

00:50:47.920 You know, all or hate, hate speech hoax, hate, hate crimes hoaxes like Jesse Smollett, hate

00:50:53.000 crimes hoaxes like Barry Weiss's site push this idea that there are Jewish students walking

00:50:58.940 around and suddenly being attacked by violent hordes of anti-Semitic mobs and being stabbed

00:51:03.700 in the eye with Palestinian flags.

00:51:06.020 And it all began with this one woman who is a longtime Israel activist who claimed that

00:51:11.080 it happened.

00:51:11.620 And she went all over the media claiming I was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag.

00:51:15.180 There was nothing wrong with her eye.

00:51:16.800 There was nothing wrong with at all because it didn't happen.

00:51:19.040 Someone waving a flag was walking past her and it brushed by her.

00:51:23.160 And that was a hate crimes hoax.

00:51:25.100 And then Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, went two days later to the Holocaust Museum and

00:51:29.380 turned that one hate crimes hoax that this one singular incident and said, we are now

00:51:33.960 a country where Jewish students cannot walk out on the street without being endangered of

00:51:38.400 being stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag.

00:51:41.940 So every single component of left-wing culture that the American right has been heaping scorn

00:51:46.700 on and viciously mocking and deriding for a decade are now they're defining beliefs and

00:51:52.220 tactics in defense of this foreign country.

00:51:54.080 So that it's so interesting.

00:51:55.860 So you mentioned Barry Weiss.

00:51:57.120 Barry Weiss is, I think, pretty popular.

00:52:01.020 I don't have strong feelings about Barry Weiss either way, but she seems very popular on

00:52:05.400 the right and some parts of the right.

00:52:07.160 So here's someone who's, you know, a liberal, who's opposed to free speech and is a liar.

00:52:13.120 How did she all of a sudden become, it's like, she's everything conservatives are supposed

00:52:18.460 to dislike or oppose.

00:52:20.060 Maybe not personally.

00:52:21.080 She's very charming, actually.

00:52:22.020 But like, how did she become like a darling of conservatives?

00:52:27.120 Well, I think we've talked about this before, but Barry Weiss got hired away from the Wall

00:52:33.120 Street Journal by the New York Times on the same day that they also hired Brett Stevens

00:52:38.360 away from the Wall Street Journal.

00:52:40.140 And all the liberals were focused on and obsessed with Brett Stevens.

00:52:43.480 They were all up in arms and angry that Brett Stevens was a climate denier.

00:52:47.480 And now he's going to have the space as a New York Times columnist.

00:52:49.680 But I was trying to get everyone to understand that the far more significant hire, the far

00:52:54.720 more consequential person was Barry Weiss because I had seen her.

00:52:58.020 She's extremely shrewd.

00:52:59.100 She's very cunning.

00:53:00.240 She understands how media works.

00:53:02.420 She's very smart.

00:53:03.720 And I know I've gotten to know her personally and she's impossible to dislike as a person.

00:53:08.560 She's like incredibly charming.

00:53:10.480 And, and, and, and I think like genuinely compassionate, like it's, you cannot dislike

00:53:15.540 her as a person.

00:53:16.700 I totally agree.

00:53:17.200 And that's a, that's an important weapon.

00:53:19.540 But what the, one of the reasons why she became a folk hero is because she resigned from the

00:53:24.300 New York Times was such a kind of denunciation of the New York Times, like ideological dogman.

00:53:29.340 There was a lot of truth to that for sure.

00:53:30.880 But then, you know, if you actually look at, and I think this is one of the things that I've

00:53:35.940 only become, I've only come to understand recently is that there are a lot of, there's

00:53:41.220 been a lot of focus over the last, say decade under the banner of anti-woke.

00:53:45.900 And that's really Barry Weiss's kind of brand is like, I'm against woke ideology.

00:53:50.600 I'm against media capture by ideology.

00:53:54.080 And there was all this fixation on college campuses.

00:53:57.800 And a lot of times people are like, why are 40-year-old pundits and journalists constantly

00:54:02.820 talking about what 19 and 20-year-olds are doing on, on, on college campuses?

00:54:06.260 Like almost not just disproportionate, but a little bit creepy.

00:54:09.260 Especially Ivy League college, like actually who gives a shit in a country that's dying

00:54:14.740 of fentanyl ODs where people are so unhappy that life expectancy is declining.

00:54:20.200 Like we're spending a lot of time talking about Columbia students.

00:54:23.240 Exactly.

00:54:23.700 And like, you can say, well, those are the future leaders and it's true.

00:54:27.080 But like 19 and 20, you know how fucking stupid I was when I was 19 and 20?

00:54:31.280 Not as stupid as I was.

00:54:32.220 Like the kind of idealism and naivete and just like my view of the world was so simple

00:54:36.740 because that's part of being young.

00:54:38.200 Like you kind of want that youthful energy.

00:54:39.800 But the real reason is that the thing that is Barry Weiss's obviously animating cause is the

00:54:48.500 cause of Zionism in Israel.

00:54:50.000 That's, I don't think she would even deny that.

00:54:52.080 And there has been this fear on the part of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel movement

00:54:56.540 that the greatest danger of the Israeli causes faces is the activism of students on college

00:55:01.940 campuses where it's the only place where robust criticism of Israel is tolerated.

00:55:07.360 And it's the movement, as we were describing, where this boycott, divestment and sanction

00:55:11.220 movement has taken hold.

00:55:13.180 And that was in part the thing that brought down apartheid South Africa, which is a very

00:55:17.040 close ally of both Israel and the United States.

00:55:18.960 And they were petrified that if that took hold, then that would become a very effective movement

00:55:24.280 against Israel, weakening its position, weakening its standing in the world.

00:55:27.800 And so there were all kinds of strategic memos of saying, we need to target college campuses

00:55:31.780 and make sure that this is, that this climate is transformed.

00:55:37.060 And the whole reason why people like Barry Weiss and Bill Ackman, who uses his billionaire

00:55:42.740 status suddenly to become a political activist, focus so much on college campuses, wanting

00:55:46.840 professors, wanting a university president's fired, Bill Ackman led the way of saying any

00:55:51.520 college student who signs an anti-Israel petition will be permanently blackballed and all his

00:55:56.880 billionaire friends and hedge fund managers and corporate CEOs and people at Palantir joined

00:56:01.520 in, is because they identified college campuses as the place where Israel criticism was bubbling

00:56:09.280 over and was really being active.

00:56:11.160 It's the same reason that TikTok got banned.

00:56:13.780 You know, this TikTok ban, if you think about it, I thought it was because of China.

00:56:18.040 No.

00:56:18.360 Okay.

00:56:18.660 So I'm just kidding.

00:56:20.000 Right.

00:56:20.140 I know.

00:56:20.720 So when it was first introduced, that was the idea, right?

00:56:23.220 Like we can't have the Chinese Communist Party gathering our data as though like all of that

00:56:30.300 data is not available on the open market.

00:56:32.160 Like there was a big scandal that the CIA and intelligence communities were buying on the

00:56:37.820 open market, huge amounts of data about American citizens.

00:56:40.520 They're listening to us on this right now.

00:56:41.820 Everything is tracked.

00:56:42.640 Why would China need to create an app to get all this buying information that they can buy

00:56:46.960 from anywhere else?

00:56:48.180 So and at the same time, like the people who run TikTok are pure capitalists.

00:56:52.980 Like the guy who's the CEO was born in Singapore.

00:56:55.360 He went to the London School of Economics.

00:56:57.600 Then he went to Harvard.

00:56:58.560 He worked for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, like a classic.

00:57:01.480 All he cares about is money.

00:57:03.040 But this idea of banning TikTok has been around for four years and it couldn't get past.

00:57:08.740 It was considered way too extreme, like banning American citizens who voluntarily choose to

00:57:16.040 use this app to find communion, to spread ideas, to make themselves heard, to read news.

00:57:21.360 Taking that away from them or forcing a sale was considered way too extreme.

00:57:25.740 And yet suddenly after October 7th, instantly an overwhelming bipartisan consensus formed in

00:57:32.020 order to ban it.

00:57:32.760 It ran through Congress and President Biden signed it.

00:57:34.980 Why?

00:57:35.540 You go and ask any one of the sponsors of this TikTok ban why it finally got enough people

00:57:41.060 to support it after spending so many years, not even near a majority.

00:57:45.500 And they will all tell you that the reason is because they became convinced that there was

00:57:50.740 far too much Israel criticism being permitted on TikTok.

00:57:54.880 That was the issue that became the tipping point for banning an app that 180 million Americans,

00:58:01.440 a third of the country voluntarily choose to use.

00:58:04.140 It was because of the Israel issue.

00:58:05.600 And I think like we're required so often to tiptoe around this.

00:58:11.720 You know, you get accused of like pushing anti-Semitic tropes that like Jews are behind

00:58:17.820 everything and have too much power.

00:58:18.600 I just want to live in a free country.

00:58:20.500 Just leave me alone.

00:58:21.400 I just want to live in a free country.

00:58:22.800 That's it.

00:58:23.040 Also, it's not just American.

00:58:24.340 I don't care.

00:58:24.920 It's not just American Jews who are inculcated from birth with the idea that they have

00:58:28.340 particular stuff like evangelicals, is people in the national security state.

00:58:32.120 Like this country has such a special status and a hold.

00:58:35.980 And it's not me like speculating that Israel was the reason the people who got the bill

00:58:40.820 through Congress say that the tipping point was that all these members of the Democratic

00:58:45.460 Party who previously was resistant to banning TikTok became convinced that that was one of

00:58:50.660 the major sources that was allowing Israel criticism and pro-Pelitanian speech, meaning

00:58:55.640 like lots of videos circulating about, you know, Gazan children dying.

00:58:59.160 They wanted to ban the app or force it to be sold to a an American conglomerate that

00:59:04.920 would be far more susceptible to pressure from the administration like Google and Facebook

00:59:10.500 have been to censor it, that that was the reason they felt like the reason why young

00:59:14.980 people turned against Israel because they were getting too much information on TikTok

00:59:18.060 and it was too free.

00:59:19.920 That should alarm everybody.

00:59:22.240 Well, it's it's again, if you're an American and you just want to live in a free country,

00:59:26.920 that's completely unacceptable.

00:59:28.360 That's like there's no way to describe that as anything but a state clamped down on free

00:59:35.920 speech, which is not allowed in the United States.

00:59:38.260 That's totalitarian, just super simple.

00:59:40.920 I'm really struck by how non-obvious that seems to be to everybody.

00:59:45.680 And I'm wondering, like, where's the you don't have a bill of rights.

00:59:49.620 You don't have a free country unless someone's fighting for it.

00:59:52.200 And I don't see anyone with power fighting for it.

00:59:55.160 So no, I mean, well, it's so interesting.

00:59:57.220 I mean, first of all, I think we have to acknowledge the reason, you know, the founders, when they

01:00:03.080 created the bill of rights, guaranteed rights that they knew would otherwise be vulnerable

01:00:07.600 if they weren't guaranteed by their rights.

01:00:09.420 Like, that's the whole point.

01:00:10.320 And the very first right guaranteed in the bill of rights and the first amendment is the right

01:00:15.480 of free speech.

01:00:16.180 That was for a reason.

01:00:17.520 They were kind of children of the enlightenment.

01:00:19.040 The idea that there's no more ability for us to put our faith in centralized authority

01:00:24.220 to decree truth.

01:00:25.140 We were endowed with the capacity of reason.

01:00:27.180 And we're supposed to figure that out for ourselves without being so foundational to every

01:00:31.960 You are not a slave.

01:00:32.980 That is the marker of being a human being, the right to think what you want and to say

01:00:39.040 what you want.

01:00:39.820 If you don't have that right, you are not fully human.

01:00:42.660 Right.

01:00:43.180 And I feel that way as a Christian.

01:00:44.220 I'm just going to say, I think God created people.

01:00:46.540 There's inherent value in every person.

01:00:48.620 And that's why it's so important to me.

01:00:50.320 It's actually bigger than America.

01:00:52.320 It's like, are we going to treat people like human beings with dignity?

01:00:55.100 Or we're going to treat them like objects?

01:00:57.220 It's one of the things that ultimately distinguishes us from other animal species is our capacity

01:01:02.180 to reason, to engage in critical analysis.

01:01:05.600 And so, but conversely, the reason that right needed to be guaranteed is because we are all

01:01:11.760 tempted to look at the views we find most threatening and to hate and to want those banned

01:01:16.560 and to kind of invent theories as to why they should be, even if we believe that we're supporters

01:01:22.600 of free speech.

01:01:23.320 Somehow these views that we hate most and find most threatening, those are something

01:01:28.120 different.

01:01:29.360 And you see the left having done that for the past 10 years by claiming that people who

01:01:33.500 question gender ideology or inciting genocide against trans people or people who are opposed

01:01:38.240 to racial reforms or affirmative action or people who hate black people, people opposed

01:01:43.540 to immigration, hate non-white people.

01:01:45.660 So this is how they created these justifications for supporting censorship.

01:01:50.160 And now the American right, I don't want to say now in the sense that they suddenly

01:01:52.920 started because like I said, it's been predating October 7th for a long time.

01:01:56.040 But that's, you know, I don't think it's like so conscious that, oh, we're political

01:02:00.040 censors.

01:02:00.500 I think they view Israel criticism as very dangerous and very threatening.

01:02:04.660 And they don't fight the human temptation that we all have to want the ideas that we

01:02:09.360 most hate to kind of be outlawed.

01:02:11.480 But if you cared about your own country, comma, which you run, which you run, you have an

01:02:16.780 obligation to care about your country since it's your job to administer and run the country

01:02:21.140 and preserve what we have for our children.

01:02:25.180 You can't reach these conclusions.

01:02:27.200 Like if you are an office holder in the United States, you have one job and that's to preserve

01:02:33.160 and improve your country.

01:02:34.540 And if that's not your main, you know, driving desire, then you're betraying your country.

01:02:42.320 Yeah.

01:02:42.460 And I mean, I think, first of all, you know, we are all inculcated with the idea from birth.

01:02:48.100 I know I was that the United States is the greatest country in the world.

01:02:51.180 It represents freedom.

01:02:51.920 I mean, we were born into the Cold War where it was really important to believe that.

01:02:54.540 But even after and we were given explanations as to why that was true, it wasn't just, you

01:02:58.640 know, a declaration.

01:02:59.540 And like, one of the reasons was that we have freedoms guaranteed that other countries don't.

01:03:04.400 That was a free country.

01:03:05.320 Do you remember when people would say it's a free country?

01:03:07.000 Look, and we were taught to revere the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all of the values

01:03:10.360 that it represented.

01:03:11.820 So if you're willing to abandon those and sacrifice those, and this is the thing, it would like

01:03:17.480 the left, the American left has been accused of being, I think, quite validly embracing censorship.

01:03:25.200 But at least they're doing it.

01:03:26.640 I don't mean to justify it.

01:03:27.540 I'm just saying distinguishing it.

01:03:28.740 At least they're doing it in defense of what they consider to be other Americans who live

01:03:34.320 here, minority groups who live here.

01:03:35.700 And they think censorship is important to protect the ability of other Americans who are part

01:03:40.440 of minority groups not to be endangered.

01:03:42.860 It's a totally misguided idea.

01:03:45.020 They exaggerate the extent to which everyone's being endangered.

01:03:47.560 I think racial relations in the United States are better than they've ever been.

01:03:50.580 But that's at least their idea.

01:03:52.640 What the censorship we're talking about now is designed to do is to sacrifice the rights

01:03:57.100 of American citizens in order to benefit this foreign country to which people in the United

01:04:02.720 States have, obviously, more loyalty than they do to their own country.

01:04:07.940 And I don't just mean American Jews.

01:04:09.680 I mean, a lot of evangelicals.

01:04:10.880 I mean, a lot of national security people.

01:04:12.880 And that is the part that is so bizarre and disturbing that the reverence for this foreign

01:04:17.680 country.

01:04:18.300 I mean, you can say anything you want about American leaders, about the leaders of your own

01:04:22.960 country.

01:04:23.240 You can say they're evil, they're criminal, they're corrupt, they're genocidal.

01:04:29.280 Yeah, you can do any of that.

01:04:31.420 You cannot do that about the leaders of this one foreign country.

01:04:34.840 You can have leaders about any other country you want, just not the leaders of this one

01:04:37.980 foreign country.

01:04:39.200 And like I said, I think the time to stop tiptoeing around that has long passed.

01:04:44.620 Well, I agree with that.

01:04:53.300 And I say that as someone who spent, I don't know, a couple of decades just sort of avoiding

01:04:57.340 the topic just because, I mean, almost all my friends love Israel.

01:05:01.660 I have no problem with that at all.

01:05:02.980 Great.

01:05:03.320 Love Israel.

01:05:03.840 I mean, it doesn't bother me at all.

01:05:06.740 I, as I've said three times, and I mean it, I just have great affection for the country

01:05:10.460 and the people who live there.

01:05:11.580 I'm like hardly anti-Israel, like not even a little bit.

01:05:14.620 I just care about my country.

01:05:16.840 And all of a sudden, there's like such a massive threat to our foundational rights

01:05:20.440 stemming from this issue.

01:05:22.060 And I think, of course, you face all sorts of, I mean, I've had people I know and really

01:05:28.160 like and have known for many decades call me or text me, you know, and really attack

01:05:34.720 me, actually.

01:05:35.760 And I say exactly what I'm saying to you because I mean it.

01:05:38.820 Let me ask you, I perceive, and I'm wondering if you do, I do think like for,

01:05:44.300 for the last, say, five or six years when you had your Fox News eight o'clock show, I

01:05:49.420 think it's not controversial to say that you were, if not, I think I would say the most

01:05:55.980 popular and influential voice in American conservative politics, maybe second only to

01:06:00.320 Donald Trump.

01:06:00.820 And I've seen that for a long time, only in the past seven months when you started expressing

01:06:08.360 some dissent on this particular issue.

01:06:10.460 And it wasn't even anti-Israel.

01:06:11.720 It was just, hey, why are we doing all this for this foreign country?

01:06:14.740 Something you've been saying about Ukraine and many other countries.

01:06:16.900 Is there a real animus for the first time among certain factions of the conservative movement

01:06:24.100 in the United States, including very prominent people, not just to criticize you, but to try

01:06:28.120 and exclude you, to try and destroy your reputation.

01:06:31.160 Like we were talking about that fake report that you had launched a new show on Russian

01:06:34.640 TV.

01:06:35.100 And I watched the people who are celebrating that and spreading that.

01:06:37.700 And they were people who a year ago would never have dared criticize you.

01:06:40.820 So this one issue, and same with Candace Owens, who was incredibly popular among conservatives

01:06:47.180 as well, and you can point to other people too, it's this one issue that can just be the

01:06:54.180 ultimate wedge.

01:06:55.040 And I'm wondering if you perceive that.

01:06:56.560 I get, you know, I really try not to think about it.

01:06:59.100 I think I don't want to become angry at all.

01:07:02.860 And I think that, just being as honest as I can be, I do think, and I have noticed this,

01:07:07.980 you know, if you start focusing on the Israel question, you know, people get really angry

01:07:12.580 about this stuff, really angry, and it takes over their brains.

01:07:15.860 And I just don't want that.

01:07:17.020 You know, I'm a, I think, a fundamentally happy person.

01:07:19.800 I have a wonderful family and wonderful friends, and I live in a wonderful place.

01:07:23.680 And I don't want to focus, I don't want to go crazy and be like mad, okay?

01:07:28.540 And I also don't want the concerns of a foreign country or the arguments about that country

01:07:32.060 to define my views.

01:07:33.300 Because I care about where I live and my family and preserving what I grew up with.

01:07:40.600 And I don't mean money.

01:07:41.880 I mean, you know.

01:07:43.900 Your values and your rights and your structure.

01:07:45.880 Yeah.

01:07:46.220 Exactly.

01:07:46.820 So I just have really tried to ignore it and tried not to get involved.

01:07:51.320 And I know that people, you know, love Israel so much, which again, which does not bother

01:07:55.760 me at all.

01:07:56.560 But that it makes them super emotional, whatever.

01:07:59.820 But when you start to tell me that as an American, I can't say certain things in my country,

01:08:05.460 I won't have it.

01:08:06.640 I just won't have it.

01:08:07.720 So I just really feel like I was pushed into saying something.

01:08:10.880 And I also have a special concern for Christians in the Middle East.

01:08:15.200 And so I did, I've only done one interview in my life.

01:08:19.060 Right.

01:08:19.480 That challenged any.

01:08:21.440 Which was with that pastor in the West Bank.

01:08:22.840 Yeah, well, the pastor, I know nothing about him and, you know, I'm not like carrying water

01:08:27.960 for him.

01:08:28.300 I just think it's a totally fair question to say like, well, how are Christians doing

01:08:32.040 in the Middle East?

01:08:33.300 And the answer is not well at all.

01:08:34.880 And maybe we should hear from them.

01:08:36.280 That was my only agenda right there.

01:08:39.420 And all of a sudden, like, you know, I get attacked personally as some sort of crazed Nazi

01:08:45.220 or something.

01:08:46.260 That was too unreasonable for me.

01:08:47.760 But even then, I was like, I'm not going to engage.

01:08:50.040 I don't want to have these arguments.

01:08:51.440 It's not worth it.

01:08:52.120 I've got a million different interests.

01:08:53.380 This is not a great interest of mine.

01:08:56.040 And as I've said five times, I just don't care that much.

01:08:59.280 But then the speech thing, when you're wrecking my country and lying constantly and encoding

01:09:05.420 those lies into my laws, then just it's my patriotic duty to be like, no.

01:09:11.780 And yes, do you get destroyed for that?

01:09:14.640 Or do people try to destroy you?

01:09:16.200 Obviously.

01:09:16.560 And all of a sudden, Barry Weiss, who's like, you know, I've always gotten along with Barry

01:09:20.820 Weiss.

01:09:21.020 I'm not a get, you know what I mean?

01:09:22.580 Super charming.

01:09:23.540 Right.

01:09:23.960 Woman.

01:09:24.820 I totally agree.

01:09:25.780 Done a lot of things I like.

01:09:28.100 All of a sudden, she's like telling Eli Lake, who I know.

01:09:31.880 I went to the same college as him.

01:09:32.880 I've always liked Eli Lake.

01:09:34.200 Write some hit piece on me saying that I'm anti-American.

01:09:38.260 And like Ben Shapiro and the whole Daily Wire and that whole sector.

01:09:41.660 Totally.

01:09:42.040 So I actually, I was shocked.

01:09:44.440 I don't read anything about myself.

01:09:45.740 I'm a little bit cut off.

01:09:46.540 So I didn't even know this happened.

01:09:47.340 Someone sent it to me.

01:09:48.320 Eli Lake attacked you.

01:09:49.660 Eli Lake, whatever.

01:09:50.540 I don't, you know, not a huge part of my life, but I've never disliked Eli Lake.

01:09:53.800 So I texted Eli Lake and I was like, you said I hate America in this piece.

01:09:57.880 You've got my text.

01:09:58.720 Of course.

01:09:59.220 I texted him.

01:10:00.320 Why don't you just call me and ask me my views on America?

01:10:02.240 And I would just tell you because I'm, I think, pretty transparent about my views.

01:10:05.400 No response.

01:10:06.140 I said, you wrote a piece about my views.

01:10:08.580 When you have my text, when you know me, why don't you just ask me what my views are?

01:10:11.420 I'm happy to go on the record and tell you what I think of America.

01:10:14.200 He didn't respond.

01:10:15.400 So I hit him again.

01:10:16.100 He's like, yeah, I guess I should have done that.

01:10:18.220 I'm like, no, this is, I mean, again, I'm not going to dwell on it or I don't want to whine.

01:10:24.180 I have no cause for whining at all in my life, period.

01:10:28.000 However, that's so dishonest that I just, it's like, oh, that's how it works.

01:10:35.560 But I think it's such an important point because, so just let me say two things on this.

01:10:40.360 One is, I think the thing that you've talked about most on your show when you had the Fox

01:10:44.880 show, and probably the thing that I've talked about most too over, say, like the last two

01:10:48.760 to three years has been the war in Ukraine.

01:10:50.360 And for very similar reasons, not because like who runs Eastern Donbass or the Crimea

01:10:56.500 is of significance to me.

01:10:58.520 It's really actually not.

01:11:00.180 Me too.

01:11:00.460 It's because our country has become so involved in it, not just with money, but with like our

01:11:05.860 weapons and risking escalation that you feel obligated as an American, given that policymakers

01:11:11.040 in Washington have decided that our country that is now our war.

01:11:14.240 And I think that's the same thing with Israel.

01:11:17.260 It's not like I have some special, I mean, you know, I grew up very much an American Jew.

01:11:22.780 Like all four of my grandparents are Jewish.

01:11:24.120 My parents are Jewish.

01:11:25.240 Most of the people I went to school with were Jewish.

01:11:28.160 You know, I consider myself a Jew.

01:11:29.980 I think like Jewish accomplishment is something to be proud of.

01:11:33.260 I have family in Israel.

01:11:35.460 I have no animus at all.

01:11:37.100 It's to me, it's the same exact, you know, policy principles that led you to criticize the

01:11:42.400 war in Ukraine that have led me to criticize lots of wars, including the one in Ukraine.

01:11:45.760 But the reality is, and I think this is so important, is that it's just is the case.

01:11:50.880 And as someone who grew up, you know, embedded in American Jewish culture, my grandmother fled

01:11:56.520 Nazi Germany in the late 1930s to come to the United States.

01:12:00.880 She was a Jewish immigrant, literally German, Jewish German immigrant who had a big German

01:12:04.240 accent until the day she died.

01:12:05.900 And only she and her younger sister came and the rest of her family stayed and were all

01:12:09.640 killed in the Holocaust.

01:12:10.840 Whoa.

01:12:10.980 So these were, you know, the things I grew up with and fed on and all of that.

01:12:15.980 And for that reason, I know, you know, I went to my, she sent me to like Jewish summer camp.

01:12:20.520 I went for like five straight summers and you sing Jewish prayers and like you're, you know,

01:12:25.320 indoctrinated with like the principles of Jewish culture.

01:12:28.280 American Jews are told and indoctrinated from birth that one of their duties is to be loyal

01:12:34.300 to and defend and protect the state of Israel.

01:12:36.960 Even if you're an American, you're a Jew in Argentina, you're a Jew in wherever, that

01:12:42.060 is something that being Jewish kind of you're told from birth obligates you to do.

01:12:48.340 And then recently evangelicals have also taken on this, this view that Israel is this country

01:12:53.440 of great, special, you know, religious and theological value.

01:12:57.720 And so we do have a lot of people in the United States who for various reasons have decided

01:13:02.980 that this one foreign country has such great importance that if forced to choose between

01:13:09.660 the two, and of course we have different national interest and different strategic interest all

01:13:14.540 the time that protecting and venerating and elevating Israel is a more important goal than even defense

01:13:23.620 to our own country.

01:13:24.520 And that is just the reality.

01:13:25.960 And you see it manifesting in so many ways so that the emotion, and that's why people can

01:13:30.240 tolerate disagreements of almost every kind, you know, but we lost, I think like 15 to 20%

01:13:36.760 of our subscriber base and our viewership, like in the first four weeks of the, after October 7th,

01:13:43.280 because of my position on Israel and people, you know, people will say I can disagree with

01:13:46.660 on anything, but this is the one issue I just can't tolerate.

01:13:48.960 Like I have to run in the opposite direction.

01:13:50.860 And I think it's important to acknowledge how many people are inculcated from birth to believe

01:13:57.180 that.

01:13:57.440 And that's the thing I think is our greatest obligation as human beings, why free speech

01:14:00.760 is so important as well.

01:14:01.820 And the ability to access other information, like I want to read what Russia is saying.

01:14:05.980 The EU made it illegal to platform Russia state media.

01:14:11.300 Adults in the EU, even if they want to, can't read Russian media because now it's illegal.

01:14:16.960 I want to have different information sources other than what my own country is telling me.

01:14:20.260 Because one of the things you have as an adult, I think is the greatest obligation is to go

01:14:23.780 back and reevaluate what you were trained and indoctrinated, inculcated to believe, and not

01:14:30.720 just reflexively continue to believe that in adulthood because it was indoctrinated, but to reassess

01:14:35.740 whether or not those really are your views as a result of your own critical analysis or

01:14:39.980 whether you have different views, including the role of our own country.

01:14:43.660 Like all of these things are so important to not being a propagandized kind of automaton.

01:14:49.200 And it is just true for a lot of American Jews that this indoctrination is so extreme.

01:14:54.420 I think now for evangelicals as well, that it's become the paramount view, like the view

01:15:01.680 that subsumes every other.

01:15:03.560 And I think that's why when you see this conflict between a devotion to protecting the civil

01:15:09.480 liberties and free speech rights of American citizens, when that comes in conflict with

01:15:13.380 this other goal of shielding and protecting Israel, so often the shielding and protecting

01:15:18.340 of Israel wins out, even when it comes time to protect and defend the freedoms of our

01:15:23.660 country.

01:15:24.100 So that's got to be the red line.

01:15:25.280 And again, even for people like me, who, you know, again, I don't have any problem with

01:15:31.700 Israel.

01:15:31.980 I don't have any problem with people who love Israel.

01:15:33.320 People think Israel's great.

01:15:34.580 I don't.

01:15:34.840 Great.

01:15:35.620 I love other countries.

01:15:36.540 Good for you.

01:15:37.520 I love Brazil.

01:15:38.400 I love countries that I visit.

01:15:39.880 You can love other countries.

01:15:41.260 I love Israel as a place to visit, and I'm not against it.

01:15:44.740 If you don't allow me to say what I think or think what I think, you are not treating

01:15:50.440 me as a human being, period.

01:15:52.420 And the defense of human dignity has to be the highest goal, period.

01:15:57.560 And you cannot treat me like a slave.

01:15:59.820 And it's just gotten to this point where, yes, of course, obviously, there are massive

01:16:05.020 drawbacks to saying that out loud.

01:16:08.420 But like, you don't have a choice at this point.

01:16:10.380 You just don't have a choice.

01:16:11.580 Well, and I also think this is what I really believe, too, is that, you know, you've obviously

01:16:15.980 gotten to a place in your career where you have a lot of security, where you have, you

01:16:21.420 know, even with this dissent on this issue, a lot of people who still listen to you and

01:16:25.100 trust you and are going to pay attention to you no matter what.

01:16:28.420 I feel the same way.

01:16:29.540 I mean, I've had like a success in my journalism career.

01:16:32.160 I'm at the point where, you know, I feel I don't ever feel like I need to be captive to

01:16:36.040 my audience or feed them what they want to hear.

01:16:37.760 I've always tried to cultivate an audience that knows that they can't expect to come

01:16:41.840 to me and hear what they want to hear.

01:16:43.460 They're at times they're going to hear things that they violently disagree with.

01:16:47.160 And I'm always going to respect them enough to make an argument.

01:16:48.960 But that's part of what I hope they're coming to me for.

01:16:51.340 But for a lot of people in journalism, especially with the destruction of jobs and the erosion

01:16:56.020 of job security as, you know, every major media outlet is laying off people in huge numbers

01:17:02.720 and it's kind of a collapsing industry, the pressure and need to conform is greater than

01:17:07.720 ever because most people don't have that privilege or that security that you and I both have at

01:17:11.780 this point in our lives and career.

01:17:13.060 And, you know, I can't tell you how many times during Russiagate when I was as vocal of a

01:17:19.300 skeptic of Russiagate as I could possibly be from the very moment I first heard that script

01:17:23.140 get unveiled by the CIA through the New York Times and the Washington Post.

01:17:26.560 So many journalists who work at major media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post and

01:17:31.300 NBC News and others would write to me and say, I'm so thankful for this skepticism that you're

01:17:37.340 expressing.

01:17:37.660 And of course, at some point I was like, well, why aren't you expressing it?

01:17:41.120 But I know why, because if they did even one time, they'd become the target of the liberal

01:17:46.940 mob on Twitter that would put pressure on their editors to fire them.

01:17:50.220 They'd be the first to get laid off, the last to get hired.

01:17:52.940 And so our journalism profession has become one where conformity is by far the highest value.

01:17:59.800 And I think for those of us who aren't quite as vulnerable or as insecure in terms of our,

01:18:05.700 you know, career position or need to keep a job, it's almost like you have an obligation

01:18:10.400 to create that space that a lot of other people can't create.

01:18:13.120 That's really what I feel.

01:18:14.740 And so no one likes having people who are your readers or your viewers or previous supporters

01:18:21.280 like kind of turn against you or denounce you.

01:18:23.140 Nobody likes being called names.

01:18:24.580 It's not fun for anybody.

01:18:26.560 But, you know, if you're going to do a job and have some kind of meaning to it, some kind

01:18:31.320 of purpose to it, some kind of value that it based on, I feel like if you are in that

01:18:37.440 kind of position, you have the obligation to take those risks.

01:18:40.440 Of course you do.

01:18:41.240 And to be as honest as you can be.

01:18:42.840 Yeah.

01:18:43.120 And by the way, to keep to the extent that you can, but try really hard every day to

01:18:47.560 keep the hate out of your heart.

01:18:49.380 If you do find, I mean, there are some people I don't talk about, not many, thank God,

01:18:53.660 but there are some people I don't talk about or write about ever because I'm too mad at

01:18:57.900 them and I just, I don't want to feel that way and I can smell hate on other people.

01:19:03.860 Hate is one of those words that's been weaponized and of course hate, but hate is real and we

01:19:10.480 do feel it and in my religion, you're not allowed to forgive us our trespasses as we

01:19:15.920 forgive those who trespass against us.

01:19:17.520 Like it's like hate the sin, but not the sinner.

01:19:19.720 You absolutely are not allowed to hate people.

01:19:22.860 You have to forgive people.

01:19:23.680 So there are, you know, there are a few people, individuals who I feel like really betrayed

01:19:29.340 by Bill Kristol.

01:19:30.140 I don't talk about Bill Kristol because I'm like, I'm not rational because I work for him

01:19:33.340 for so long and he's gone insane in my opinion.

01:19:36.320 But on this topic, like I, you're not going to stop me from saying what I think is true

01:19:43.020 by accusing me of hate when I know that there isn't any hate.

01:19:46.040 I'm not motivated by some weird animus or something, you know, some irrational dislike

01:19:50.940 of anything.

01:19:51.420 I'm just not going to be, that's not, you're not going to stop me.

01:19:53.200 But I think that's such a, that, that is like the attribute of being secure in yourself

01:19:57.880 and your own values that you don't feel like you have to prove anything or there's an

01:20:01.860 accusation made against you that, you know, is false, that you have no, it doesn't affect

01:20:05.580 you at all because you know, deep down how you live, how you feel, how you smell it on

01:20:09.060 other people.

01:20:09.720 I see people and sometimes like, wow, that guy, there's a lot going on inside and I

01:20:14.440 don't want to be anywhere near that because I may agree with some of his views, but he's

01:20:18.420 this, this rage, it's just, oh, it's.

01:20:20.800 Well, I always, I always had like, um, and I think this has been so important.

01:20:24.320 Like I used to be a lot more vituperative in my rhetoric, like a lot more aggressive

01:20:28.180 in my rhetoric.

01:20:28.760 And I heard, yeah.

01:20:29.400 And you too, I heard you in that show where you talked to Chris Cuomo and you guys were

01:20:32.980 kind of laughing, you in particular talking about our friendship, but you were saying

01:20:36.100 how like nobody was meaner to you.

01:20:37.720 I don't even remember that because I was equally mean to everybody, but I never felt it was

01:20:42.880 like a per, I never felt like I was condemning the person cause I didn't know the person.

01:20:47.360 I felt like I was condemning their views, the role they were playing in the political, but

01:20:51.800 so many times people who I've, you know, like viciously condemned or denounced, I ended up

01:20:56.700 becoming friends with because I never, I never wanted to, even when I'm, I think it's important

01:21:01.480 as a journalist to very harshly criticize and, and, and denounce, you know, especially

01:21:06.380 people with influence and power.

01:21:07.760 It's one of your jobs, but it's important not to let that affect who you are because

01:21:12.280 it's so corrosive to be harboring hatred.

01:21:15.240 And by the way, what matters is people.

01:21:16.780 And I would argue animals also.

01:21:19.320 Um, but that's what matters.

01:21:20.720 And that, I mean, that's why we're having these debates because we're trying to figure

01:21:23.600 out what the best way to govern people, to live our lives, best way to structure a country.

01:21:28.900 But all of those tasks are designed to produce the same outcome, which is happier people.

01:21:35.160 So if you cease to care about people, then like, what is the point of the exercise?

01:21:38.740 Right.

01:21:39.040 I had this really fascinating and like actually transformative experience when I was a law

01:21:44.540 student at NYU, I was like, you know, in my early twenties, you know, I grew up in the

01:21:49.040 eighties, came of age in the eighties as a, as a gay, uh, teenager and like the moral majority

01:21:54.940 and Reagan were like, you know, the, the things I was taught to hate, like that were the threat

01:21:59.220 to me.

01:21:59.540 So anything conservative or socially conservative.

01:22:02.080 And I had a roommate and she started dating, uh, when I was in law school, she started dating

01:22:06.680 this, this guy whose family were like Rush Limbaugh fanatics.

01:22:11.220 And she would go there on the weekend and come back.

01:22:13.340 And then she told me, she came back once and said, there's this forum on the internet where

01:22:17.020 all the Rush Limbaugh conservatives go.

01:22:18.800 It's sponsored by the national review and the heritage foundation.

01:22:21.080 It was in CompuServe.

01:22:22.120 It was some like political forum.

01:22:23.700 She's like, you have to go in there and just like provoke them and troll them and, you know,

01:22:26.760 create all the disruption.

01:22:28.100 So I did.

01:22:28.500 And I started with the all malicious intent of just like angering them and like creating

01:22:32.980 like all kinds of division in there, you know, and just saying the most offensive thing

01:22:36.760 as I could possibly think of.

01:22:37.740 And then like, the more I stayed, the more I started like having debates with them and

01:22:40.840 like conversations with them.

01:22:42.640 And these were like hardcore social conservatives.

01:22:44.980 These were not like the nice conservatives who just believe in some conservative dogma, but then

01:22:49.220 like are very like socially egalitarian.

01:22:51.680 This was like in the early nineties as well, when these, you know, debates were much different

01:22:55.320 than they are now.

01:22:56.320 And just my being gay, my being like a lawyer in Manhattan, these were like, you know, very

01:23:01.380 evangelical people and like the most rural parts of the country.

01:23:04.560 And then it got to the point where I had stayed there for so long and debated with them for so

01:23:08.220 long and talked to them for so long that we started finding commonalities.

01:23:11.240 And then they had this yearly event where everybody would go and meet in person.

01:23:16.000 And they invited me to go and it was in some like suburb of Indiana at some like Hilton.

01:23:21.320 And I was like, you know what?

01:23:22.280 I think I'm going to go.

01:23:23.100 And my friends were like, don't go.

01:23:24.960 You're going to be killed.

01:23:25.880 It's a trap like this.

01:23:26.960 You know, this is how you're taught to perceive your other people.

01:23:30.020 And I went and I spent the weekend there and everybody was so warm, so happy to see me.

01:23:35.040 I was so happy to see them.

01:23:36.480 And these were the people I was taught wanted me dead.

01:23:39.480 These were the people I was taught that I was supposed to hate.

01:23:41.720 And it doesn't mean like I agreed with their politics any more than I did previously or

01:23:45.880 that they agreed with mine.

01:23:46.820 But seeing them as like actually good human beings who have the same concerns in their

01:23:50.740 lives.

01:23:51.040 I know it sounds so simple, but it's such an important lesson that to learn because our

01:23:55.540 society is constantly trying to divide us.

01:23:57.660 And I think that's very purposeful.

01:23:59.180 Well, it's what actually the real nugget in the story is the fact that you went.

01:24:04.160 Well, why did you do that?

01:24:05.640 Because I had been there like eight or nine months and I felt like these connections were real.

01:24:09.300 Um, I just felt, you know, I, it was almost like I had become part of this community and

01:24:15.060 some of them are like around still.

01:24:16.940 They're like writers, like some work for like conservative outlets.

01:24:19.600 And we always like laugh about that.

01:24:22.680 Um, but it was like my first introduction to like internet debate.

01:24:25.620 It was at the time when the internet was still like segregated with AOL or CompuServe.

01:24:29.320 It was like that.

01:24:29.940 It wasn't like interconnected internet.

01:24:31.380 It was like very in the incipient stages.

01:24:33.780 But I went because I felt like I like these people and I kind of felt like they liked me.

01:24:38.620 And I originally went in solely with the purpose to provoke their hatred toward me and to hate

01:24:43.000 them as well.

01:24:43.680 That was like why I went in and just being around them daily after day after day, like

01:24:48.360 first debating and then convert it, it like made me see their humanity and they saw mine.

01:24:53.060 I was just as anathema to them as they were to me.

01:24:56.320 Um, I was openly gay and I was a Jewish lawyer and I was working in Manhattan and these were

01:25:00.480 like evangelical, like housewives or like businessmen in like, you know, rural Georgia or like

01:25:07.900 Idaho and I don't know, I guess we just discovered each other's common humanity.

01:25:13.740 And it was a very transformative experience for me about how you'd look at other people.

01:25:24.560 What a wonderful story.

01:25:26.120 Well, obviously in you, maybe latent was like that priority.

01:25:31.460 Other people matter more than anything.

01:25:33.240 Um, yeah.

01:25:34.220 And I also, I think that again, like so much of the reason why we end up with the political

01:25:38.900 views that we have, like sometimes you see political people with political views that

01:25:41.440 you just can't comprehend.

01:25:42.560 You think are like malicious and destructive and insane.

01:25:46.460 A lot of times it's because that's what they were formed to be.

01:25:50.600 That's like the byproduct and of their culture and of their upbringing.

01:25:54.100 And if you had the same upbringing, maybe you would think the same things.

01:25:57.920 And I think like the people who do that for a living and keep these destructive ideologies,

01:26:02.940 those people really weren't your contempt.

01:26:05.180 You know, like the Bill Crystals of the world, the Victoria Nolans of the world, like those

01:26:08.760 kinds of people, the Liz Cheney's.

01:26:10.460 Um, but ordinary people who don't pay much attention to politics, like before I started

01:26:14.020 writing about politics, you know, I was like just reading the New York times and the Atlantic

01:26:17.720 and the New Yorker thinking I was like highly informed, like a high.

01:26:20.360 And then when I started writing about politics and had like full time to go and read original

01:26:24.540 documents, not having information mediated anymore for me, I realized like pretty rapidly,

01:26:30.800 like almost everything I believed about politics was based on a fraud.

01:26:35.140 That was not like my own, you know, my own process of arriving at things critically.

01:26:39.880 I just was stuffed with all these ideas that were not mine that I kind of passively, uh,

01:26:46.000 ingested.

01:26:46.840 And that too was a very eyeopening experience because shocking.

01:26:50.800 Yeah.

01:26:51.000 You know, you think you're a very smart person.

01:26:52.560 You think you're educated.

01:26:53.440 And then you realize like, wow, you're just as susceptible to propaganda as anybody.

01:26:57.040 And I do think smart people are people who believe they're smarter, who have high verbal

01:27:00.360 IQ.

01:27:00.980 You're clearly in that category.

01:27:03.100 To a lesser extent, I am also, they are better at self-deception, I think, than any other

01:27:09.500 group because they're smart and they read the Atlantic and the New Yorker.

01:27:13.020 And I read the New Yorker.

01:27:14.540 I read every issue of the New Yorker from 1993 until 2017.

01:27:19.020 Right.

01:27:19.200 Me too.

01:27:19.440 Every issue.

01:27:20.060 Yeah.

01:27:20.360 Yeah.

01:27:20.620 And I thought it was so informed and so sophisticated.

01:27:23.120 You know, it actually wasn't a really interesting magazine, the Atlantic under Mike Kelly.

01:27:27.420 And after his death, even wonderful magazine like that, you know, younger people won't

01:27:32.340 even know what we're talking about.

01:27:33.280 But like magazines were the way that you sort of.

01:27:35.940 They were like the think pieces.

01:27:37.280 They were.

01:27:37.580 That's right.

01:27:37.680 And they had like a bunch of different ideas in them.

01:27:39.720 That's right.

01:27:39.900 I get on an airplane with my bag and I'd have like nine issues of, you know, the New Yorker,

01:27:43.880 the Atlantic.

01:27:44.140 Like I read every single word in all of them.

01:27:45.780 And then as I got older, I realized like I had no fucking idea what was going on.

01:27:54.780 I was actually more misled than someone who hadn't been told anything who was coming at

01:27:58.040 a cold.

01:27:59.000 Like I was completely propagandized.

01:28:00.660 I didn't even know that.

01:28:01.700 And I thought I was a free thinker.

01:28:03.200 Exactly.

01:28:03.720 You know, I had this other experience.

01:28:05.140 I don't want to romanticize these kind of things, but I was once in Milwaukee and I

01:28:10.080 like in a suburb of Milwaukee and I don't mean to like romanticize like the, you know,

01:28:14.760 middle of the country diners, but I was in a diner and it was right at the time that

01:28:20.220 The Intercept had this scandal because they very poorly mishandled this source reality

01:28:27.540 winner and unintentionally outed her.

01:28:30.480 But the whole story was like she had given a document trying to prove that the Russians

01:28:34.020 were interfering in the election and it made the front page of the New York Times.

01:28:38.040 So these people who are sitting at this like adjacent table who were obviously just like

01:28:41.520 ordinary people, not like on their phone, they saw the top story of the New York Times

01:28:44.460 and it was about this Intercept story.

01:28:45.760 Obviously, they had no idea it was sitting at the next table, but they were really what

01:28:49.400 they were really saying was like, yeah, with all this Russia stuff, it's so hard to

01:28:53.520 figure out what's real and what's not because it's all anonymous and it seems like it's

01:28:56.900 all driven by some agenda.

01:28:58.760 I was like, I almost know nobody who's paid to write about politics, who writes about

01:29:04.920 journalism, who has that recognition.

01:29:07.460 It's totally right.

01:29:07.820 And it's like by through that distance, they're able to see things so much more clearly than

01:29:12.180 the people who are immersed in it.

01:29:14.040 That is the, that is absolutely the truest thing and the most dangerous thing because

01:29:17.160 the people who are immersed in it are the ones making the decisions.

01:29:19.760 Exactly, exactly, exactly.

01:29:21.160 So, um, I don't even really want to get into Russia.

01:29:25.940 I just can't resist asking you about Navalny and his death.

01:29:30.700 That happened the day I left Russia.

01:29:33.580 Right.

01:29:34.060 Right before the Munich Security Conference.

01:29:35.800 I know.

01:29:36.140 Also perfect.

01:29:37.220 Perfect timing for you.

01:29:38.520 And I'm literally on a plane going through Serbia to Geneva or wherever, you know, like

01:29:43.200 I'm totally cut off.

01:29:44.500 And all of a sudden I land and my phone is just exploding.

01:29:46.960 You know, Putin just killed Navalny.

01:29:49.940 What was that?

01:29:51.200 I mean, I, I actually don't have full perspective on it just because I was so far away, but like,

01:29:56.100 what was that story?

01:29:57.540 Well, first of all, you, we did this on our show actually for two weeks after Navalny's

01:30:04.080 death, it was definitively asserted over and over in the most authoritative tones on every

01:30:10.080 cable channel and in every newspaper that Putin ordered Navalny killed.

01:30:15.760 Like he had, he was his murderer.

01:30:17.120 He had ordered his death.

01:30:18.520 And like, you know, I think you talked about this before, but this was at a time when the

01:30:23.340 House Republicans were holding up the $60 billion from Biden.

01:30:27.480 There was no reason in the world that Putin would have.

01:30:30.940 And by the way, like you go back 20 years to every president that ever dealt with Putin,

01:30:35.340 starting with Bill Clinton and going on.

01:30:36.880 And every single one of them has said he's an incredibly rational, restrained, trustworthy

01:30:43.760 person.

01:30:44.340 It was only when he had to be turned into the new Hitler did the whole thing reverse.

01:30:47.980 So he is obviously rational, whatever else you want to say about him.

01:30:51.040 He's very sophisticated.

01:30:52.740 He's very restrained.

01:30:53.980 And actually, we can say that conclusively.

01:30:56.060 Exactly.

01:30:57.060 And so like, why would he just suddenly, you know, tell people it's time for you to kill

01:31:03.160 Navalny?

01:31:03.560 Like it never made any sense, but we were just, we were told this.

01:31:06.580 And also like, we have this like cartoonish idea that he like, not only is manipulating

01:31:11.780 every event in the West, but also every event in Russia.

01:31:15.420 Like he's, it must never sleep and he must have cloned a hundred of him given how much

01:31:19.780 credit he gets for having like manipulated and controlled every event in his country and

01:31:24.900 in our countries.

01:31:26.300 But it then turned out like just, you know, three weeks ago, this happened so many times

01:31:30.980 before that the intelligence community admits that there's no evidence whatsoever that he

01:31:36.020 participated in any way, let alone ordered or requested or wanted Navalny's death.

01:31:41.260 And we obviously have the, you know, we're always told like we have everything in the

01:31:45.760 Kremlin, like under this microscope of surveillance.

01:31:48.260 And you know how many times this has happened where media outlets have made some kind of assertion.

01:31:52.760 Now, Russian prisons are incredibly brutal.

01:31:55.260 Like a lot of countries are, they're very, very cold.

01:31:58.920 They don't get good medical care.

01:32:00.560 So I have no, it's not surprising that a prisoner put in the most brutal Russian prisons would

01:32:06.240 die, but that's a completely different claim than what they were saying, which was that

01:32:11.240 Putin had ordered him to killed.

01:32:13.980 And I, I, if you look at how many times, you know, there was this like story in the New

01:32:18.960 York times, exactly when Trump was trying to withdraw from Afghanistan, that the CIA planted

01:32:24.080 with the New York times and Charlie Savage, the claim that the Russians had put bounties

01:32:28.340 on the heads of American soldiers and were paying the Taliban money for every American

01:32:32.540 soldier that they were killed.

01:32:33.500 And then when Liz Cheney and pro-war Democrats were working together to prevent and block Trump's

01:32:38.460 desire to withdraw from Afghanistan, that was the only story they cited.

01:32:43.140 They kept saying, how can we leave when the Russians are, you know, paying to, we're going

01:32:48.000 to reward Russia.

01:32:48.880 And then three months later or two months later, the intelligence community has very little

01:32:52.700 confidence that that even happened.

01:32:54.700 That has been the story of Russiagate from the very beginning.

01:32:56.940 I mean, every single claim that came out as part of Russiagate, I mean, they, they unleashed

01:33:01.060 Robert Mueller for 18 months with the dream team of prosecutors, unlimited subpoena power,

01:33:06.460 unlimited amounts of money.

01:33:08.300 And he then submitted a report when he was done with his investigation that said, we could

01:33:12.260 not find evidence to establish what became the core conspiracy.

01:33:15.960 The whole thing that initiated this scandal that drowned our politics for three years, which

01:33:20.780 was that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to break into or hack into the emails

01:33:26.300 of the DNC and John Podesta.

01:33:28.360 And everybody just was like, okay, I guess we'll just move on to something else.

01:33:31.780 Like the editor in chief of the New York Times said, we have to confront the fact that what

01:33:36.480 we've led our readers to believe was going to happen, that this information was going

01:33:40.820 to be discovered.

01:33:41.420 These smoking guns, Robert Mueller was going to, you know, unleash it all.

01:33:44.460 And everyone was going to go to prison.

01:33:46.160 None of it turned out to be true.

01:33:47.240 This whole story was a fraud.

01:33:48.560 This was the scandal that the media drowned our politics in for three years, starting with the

01:33:53.940 middle of 2016, up until 2018 or 2019.

01:33:58.540 So again, I'm sorry to interrupt you on the way to explaining Navalny.

01:34:02.300 I really want to hear that.

01:34:03.480 But you just passed over one of the most interesting moments in the last 10 years, which was the

01:34:09.540 hack, hack, I don't know, what was the theft of emails from the DNC and from John Podesta's

01:34:16.060 personal Gmail account that wound up on WikiLeaks.

01:34:18.500 And the Russians were blamed for that.

01:34:19.900 I thought from the first day, I don't know, but I suspected that was not true.

01:34:24.180 What is true about that?

01:34:25.980 So let me just preface that because I know how people react to these things.

01:34:29.340 Like if there's something that gets presented and then implemented as gospel, and the minute

01:34:35.040 you challenge it, you're accused of being like a crazy conspiracy theory because it's

01:34:38.340 something everybody knows is true.

01:34:40.120 So let me just say, if you look at the last, say, 40 years of American history, the one thing

01:34:44.820 that is a constant is that so many of the things we are told are not just true, but unquestionably

01:34:50.400 true, the most consequential things end up being complete lies.

01:34:54.420 The claim that led us into the Vietnam War that caused the Senate to authorize the military

01:34:59.640 force in Vietnam was a claim about the Gulf of Tonkin that was a complete and total fabrication

01:35:04.280 of life.

01:35:04.480 1964.

01:35:04.880 The claim about the claims that led us into the Iraq war that everybody was so certain

01:35:09.760 of was a complete and total lie.

01:35:12.400 The thing that drives me the craziest to this day that I feel has never got enough attention

01:35:15.780 is that when that reporting happened from the New York Post based on the documents from

01:35:19.260 Hunter Biden's laptop about what they were doing in Ukraine and China, everybody in the

01:35:23.140 media united to say this was Russian disinformation when all along that archive was completely authentic

01:35:30.000 and had nothing to do with Russia and it wasn't just information.

01:35:32.940 So many times we're told things so definitively that end up being proven to be lies.

01:35:37.760 Russia, get another example.

01:35:39.040 So the question of how those documents made their way to WikiLeaks, obviously WikiLeaks

01:35:43.920 insists that they had nothing to do with the Russians and didn't get it from the Russians.

01:35:49.420 Now, that may be true.

01:35:51.100 And yet at the same time, the Russians say used a middleman.

01:35:54.740 Yeah.

01:35:55.140 So WikiLeaks might think they're telling the truth.

01:35:57.100 They might actually be telling the truth, but it doesn't say that Russia wasn't involved.

01:35:59.860 Well, their problem is that there are a lot of people who oftentimes won't say it, but

01:36:05.920 who in public, but will tell you in private.

01:36:08.200 I mean, like very well connected people that they radically disbelieve the claim that the

01:36:14.400 Russians hacked it.

01:36:15.860 And the thing is, Aaron Maté is one of the best people, most knowledgeable people on

01:36:20.240 this, but there really isn't a lot of evidence that the Russians did the hacking.

01:36:26.580 You know, this firm that they got is a Democratic Party propaganda firm, which is CrowdStrike.

01:36:31.420 The FBI purposely hid a lot of the information that would have been necessary to examine it.

01:36:36.180 I'm not saying the Russians didn't hack it, but I'm just saying conceptually, if you don't

01:36:40.600 question, especially the truths that are most aggressively shoved down your throat after everything

01:36:44.960 we've seen, I think you're an extremely gullible person.

01:36:48.760 And in this case, specifically, there's also a lot of holes in that story.

01:36:53.540 And I think the big problem, and this was always my problem with Russia gate from the

01:36:57.400 start, was not that the Trump campaign and the Trump administration was being sabotaged

01:37:03.240 by the U.S. security state with a evidence-free scandal.

01:37:07.360 That did bother me journalistically, this evidence-free assertion that dominated our politics.

01:37:12.740 What bothered me much more was the real agenda, obviously, was to blame Russia for everything

01:37:19.060 to such an extent that the Americans started once again viewing Russia as this existential

01:37:23.860 enemy to the point where American diplomats couldn't speak with Russian diplomats.

01:37:27.460 In Washington, everybody was petrified of meeting with the Russian because they would be

01:37:31.000 accused of being a Russian spy.

01:37:32.800 You're talking about the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

01:37:36.760 And I believe there's a straight line from the Russiagate fraud, from convincing people

01:37:40.780 to feed on this anti-Russian narrative, to what we're doing in Ukraine.

01:37:45.600 Which is sitting on the brink of nuclear war.

01:37:47.300 Which Joe Biden said has brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than anything

01:37:52.320 since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

01:37:54.960 And for some reason, we're willing to risk what even Joe Biden says is this massive risk

01:38:01.420 of nuclear war that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has said brought the world closer

01:38:07.440 to midnight, which is extinction-level catastrophe.

01:38:12.780 We're willing to risk all that.

01:38:14.560 Over what?

01:38:15.620 I mean, it was Obama who always said, we have no vital interest in Ukraine.

01:38:18.200 We obviously have no vital interest in Ukraine.

01:38:20.720 And so, so much of this, you know, kind of deliberate intent to once again convince Americans

01:38:27.600 that Russia was our grave enemy, was the existential threat, was interfering in our democracy based

01:38:32.060 on so many lies, had a lot of geostrategic implications and goals, as well as domestic political

01:38:38.960 ones.

01:38:41.100 What's the truth of Navalny's death?

01:38:43.680 Did Putin kill him?

01:38:45.480 I mean, I can't pretend to know.

01:38:47.300 I know that the U.S. Intelligence Committee, the U.S. Intelligence Agency admits he had

01:38:51.780 no role in Navalny's death, or like at least what we were told, that he ordered it.

01:38:56.480 Again, I think it's very possible that Navalny died from the kind of conditions that people

01:39:00.620 often died from in prison.

01:39:02.200 Yes.

01:39:02.400 Those are very brutal conditions.

01:39:03.840 It's extremely cold in those parts of Russia.

01:39:07.340 Siberia?

01:39:07.680 Yeah, exactly.

01:39:08.640 And you're not exactly like given heaters in your cells and blankets.

01:39:12.580 I'm sure he was treated very poorly.

01:39:14.280 And so you can make an argument, I guess, that like Russia, the Russian government ethically

01:39:18.720 is responsible for the death.

01:39:20.060 But what we were told was that Putin ordered it.

01:39:22.580 And that was a complete and utter lies.

01:39:24.520 Like so many of the things we were told definitively about Russia and the Russian government over

01:39:28.800 the last, you know, eight or nine years.

01:39:30.440 That's one of the most insane disinformation campaigns, sustained, enduring, and consequential

01:39:35.240 disinformation campaigns that comes from the very people who insist that they are the sole

01:39:40.860 guardians combating the dangers of disinformation.

01:39:44.740 When does America become a free and honest country again?

01:39:48.520 I think that there are a lot of encouraging signs, even though they seem negative.

01:39:55.700 I love the fact, for example, that Americans hate the media and distrust the media pretty

01:40:01.820 much more than any group that exists except for pedophiles.

01:40:05.560 And the margin is not that large.

01:40:07.480 I think it's incredibly well-deserved.

01:40:10.940 Like Americans have an intuitive understanding that, you know, corporate journalism, that

01:40:16.740 the dominant wing of the media has renounced their journalistic function and are propagandists.

01:40:21.000 They don't trust them.

01:40:21.820 They believe that they lie on purpose for political ends.

01:40:24.120 All of that is completely true.

01:40:25.980 So they're turning away more and more from these media outlets.

01:40:29.780 They don't trust them any longer.

01:40:30.880 They're still, you know, they're gigantic media conglomerates.

01:40:33.760 As you know, you work for one.

01:40:34.800 They have a lot of influence and power, but less than they did before.

01:40:38.200 And again, for me, the cause of the free internet, it's the reason why I moved my show to Rumble

01:40:42.720 and moved everything to Rumble.

01:40:44.200 It's one of the few platforms truly devoted to preserving a space of free speech on the

01:40:49.000 internet, which for me is the biggest cause because the internet and the ability to use

01:40:53.660 it to challenge establishment orthodoxies, to organize against corrupt power centers is for

01:41:00.980 me the real cause of hope, but that only can happen if the internet is protected as a free

01:41:06.420 weapon.

01:41:06.920 And that's what's being assaulted.

01:41:08.200 Establishment sectors always know the greatest threat to them.

01:41:11.500 They always seek to destroy it or to commandeer it.

01:41:13.760 And that's what this whole fabricated disinformation expertise that appeared overnight after 2016,

01:41:20.260 like these are the people who are the disinformation experts, these groups that are now designed to

01:41:24.260 identify disinformation that gets censored.

01:41:26.660 All of that is about eliminating dissent from the internet and, and, and disguising political

01:41:32.120 censorship as some sort of apolitical expertise or science safety measure.

01:41:37.720 Yeah.

01:41:38.260 Online safety experts or online disinformation experts.

01:41:41.600 Like where did this credential come from?

01:41:43.800 It's a, it's a fake credential.

01:41:45.360 Like, but the, you know, like Nina Yankovic is like an online disinformation expert.

01:41:49.320 Have you ever heard her speak?

01:41:50.420 Like, would you trust that woman to like even identify letting the truth of anything, let

01:41:54.980 alone like a floating arbiter of what true is true and false to the point that what she

01:41:59.220 decrees is false gets censored.

01:42:01.160 But that's the industry.

01:42:03.060 What really happened is in 2016, you had these dual traumas to Western liberalism writ large.

01:42:10.020 One was the decision of the British people to leave the EU, which was an, an extraordinary

01:42:14.400 thing for a country to do followed three months or four months later by Donald Trump's obviously

01:42:19.360 traumatic victory over Hillary Clinton from a liberal perspective.

01:42:23.160 I mean, like real trauma, like psychologists were saying they're, they've been flooded

01:42:27.360 with patients who are neurotic and like, can't cope with reality because of their devastation

01:42:31.900 that Hillary Clinton lost.

01:42:33.040 That like, it's like a real thing.

01:42:34.360 And what they decided, meaning like liberal Western elite was that we could no longer afford

01:42:39.400 a free internet because when the internet is free, they can't control how people think,

01:42:43.140 how they behave and how they vote.

01:42:44.520 And that is when you can trace, you can follow the emergence of this extremely well-funded

01:42:50.100 disinformation industry that was designed to assert an authority over controlling what

01:42:56.740 information is and isn't online.

01:42:58.660 So for me, as long as a free internet continues to exist, you see this all throughout the West

01:43:03.980 and the democratic world, people are abandoning their faith in institutions of authority and

01:43:09.440 that abandonment of faith and trust in institutions of authority for me is the most promising development.

01:43:14.520 I couldn't agree with you more.

01:43:22.740 I would say it's followed in the close second position by the collapse of the neocon governor

01:43:29.620 of South Dakota, Kristi Noem.

01:43:32.260 I mean, I've never seen a more instant act of self-destruction.

01:43:36.720 So how would you describe it?

01:43:37.880 Like, give me the timeline on Kristi Noem, who, by the way, is like a screaming neocon and

01:43:42.420 sort of a conventional liberal posing as a conservative or whatever.

01:43:46.280 I mean, I've had a lot of problems with Kristi Noem over the years.

01:43:48.580 It makes me sad that people bought her bullshit.

01:43:50.900 But what happened to Kristi Noem makes me think that Americans are really nice people,

01:43:54.860 actually, it turns out.

01:43:56.280 And that was reaffirmed for me.

01:43:57.340 But describe what happened to her.

01:43:58.380 Yeah.

01:43:58.600 I mean, first of all, she's always been an obvious lightweight.

01:44:00.620 I mean, she got elected to the House in South Dakota, working her way through the political

01:44:06.240 system.

01:44:06.940 And then from that became governor.

01:44:09.640 And I think people attributed to her a lot more talent and substance because of that than

01:44:14.280 she actually had.

01:44:15.320 So she was never an impressive force at all.

01:44:18.480 She's a very mindless kind of herd animal who just follows whatever dominant ideology she

01:44:23.700 has to embrace in order to advance her career.

01:44:25.540 But I think her calculation was this kind of culture work calculation that if she talked

01:44:33.800 about what she perceives to be these farming values, that it was going to provoke the disgust

01:44:40.560 and anger of the liberal elite and that conservatives would rise in her defense and say, no, these

01:44:44.600 are the kinds of traditional values that have been lost and that the American liberal elite

01:44:49.340 are to divorce from.

01:44:50.400 The problem is, is that not putting bullets into the skulls of puppies in order to kill

01:44:56.980 them because you hate them isn't just a liberal elite value.

01:45:01.020 One of the things that has happened is that Americans love their dogs for a lot of really

01:45:04.600 interesting reasons.

01:45:05.220 I think it gives people a sense of spirituality, of connection, all the things that have been

01:45:09.060 lost when we now live in cities and work in cubicles.

01:45:13.400 People crave this kind of connection.

01:45:14.960 People don't have children.

01:45:15.840 They don't like across the political spectrum and dogs open people up.

01:45:20.220 Dogs have evolved to love and be loyal, trusted companions of humans and humans to dogs.

01:45:27.180 It's a very deep bond developed over thousands of years of evolution.

01:45:31.120 So there's a lot of things she could have done that might have worked in that way.

01:45:34.340 But talking about how she pumped this puppy's skull full of bullets because, quote, I hated

01:45:40.460 that dog is something that provoked almost universal contempt.

01:45:46.060 And that was gave me a lot of optimism.

01:45:47.580 And it was even a worse story.

01:45:48.780 Like if you listen to her, her audio book, she has an audio book where she tells the whole

01:45:52.720 story.

01:45:53.340 She shot the dog, but didn't kill it.

01:45:55.920 She had to go back to her truck while the dog was suffering and from a wound.

01:45:59.160 She had to then kill it with a second shot.

01:46:01.400 She then took a goat like minutes later that she also hated because she said it smelled and

01:46:06.220 was mean, put him in the same gravel pit and murdered him.

01:46:10.000 And then she tells the story that her brother and her uncle, or I think that's two close

01:46:15.940 relatives, said when she came back, we heard about this like rampage of animal slaughter

01:46:22.840 that you went on.

01:46:23.480 We're going to get out of here before you shoot us.

01:46:25.640 And this was in her book that she read in her own voice.

01:46:28.260 Like even the members of her family thought she was like a psychopath to the point where

01:46:32.400 she was being endangered.

01:46:33.400 They were in date, they were endangered because she was off on some like murderous rampage

01:46:38.200 and how she thought that that would engender any sympathy for her of any kind, rather than

01:46:44.780 making her look like this deranged monster is completely beyond me.

01:46:50.880 Well, she was trying to pose as some sort of rural hunter or something.

01:46:55.500 Exactly.

01:46:56.340 And as someone who actually has bird dogs and hunts them a lot, it was preposterous.

01:47:01.080 Like she has no idea what she's talking about.

01:47:02.460 She shot the dog.

01:47:03.880 She killed her own puppy because the dog chased and killed chickens.

01:47:08.100 No, it's a bird dog.

01:47:09.180 Right.

01:47:09.540 Chickens are birds.

01:47:10.400 Its instinct is to do that.

01:47:11.660 Of course.

01:47:11.920 That's why you get those dogs.

01:47:13.040 Of course.

01:47:14.460 And the idea that this is like common in rural America, it's shooting a bird dog.

01:47:19.940 It's defamation against farmers.

01:47:21.800 Like, no, farmers just go around like repeatedly murdering their dogs the minute that they don't

01:47:25.440 like their personality.

01:47:26.660 She could have obviously given a delay to all kinds of animal rescue groups.

01:47:29.660 There were all sorts of things she could have done.

01:47:31.740 But I do think it was that calculation, but it was a huge miscalculation.

01:47:35.400 I do think there was like this legitimate conflict between, you know, East Coast cosmopolitan

01:47:40.140 liberals and people in like more traditional farming communities.

01:47:43.920 And that's a real issue.

01:47:46.900 But it's not about murdering your dogs.

01:47:51.760 And then.

01:47:52.940 So it's cruelty masquerading as strength.

01:47:56.820 Well, I think cruelty is not strength.

01:48:00.060 Strong people are not cruel at all.

01:48:02.220 Why would they be?

01:48:03.020 Strong people are compassionate, actually.

01:48:06.000 Right.

01:48:06.560 I think we need to inflict gratuitous suffering or death on others is a sign of extreme physical

01:48:14.700 and moral weakness.

01:48:15.560 And this is why you see all these people in Washington, neocons like Bill Kristol and David

01:48:20.880 Frum, but then also like people like Lindsey Graham.

01:48:23.600 And you see this in the British commentariat where, you know, they had this empire that

01:48:28.060 they've now lost.

01:48:28.920 There's this like weak, broken, impotent, irrelevant, marginalized empire.

01:48:33.960 And they speak about the glories and importance of war more than anybody, because it's a way that

01:48:38.600 they feel strong and purposeful.

01:48:40.420 And you have all these people in Washington who constantly, whatever war is proposed,

01:48:46.660 immediately embrace it because it's a way that they get to feel strong themselves, like

01:48:52.100 compensating for the internal weakness and cowardice that they have.

01:48:55.380 I mean, if you live your whole life and you never display moral or physical courage,

01:48:59.800 you know that about yourself.

01:49:01.180 It pains you.

01:49:02.440 And instead of then doing something that requires courage, you instead send other people to

01:49:08.320 go risk their lives in a war that you cheerlead, it's like such a psychologically warped way

01:49:13.860 of finding it.

01:49:14.980 It's like stolen valor.

01:49:16.080 It's a it's it is obviously courageous to go and fight in war for cause, but not to send

01:49:22.380 other people to fight in a war for cause that requires no courage at all.

01:49:26.440 But that is the kind of courage that in Washington, people constantly embrace in lieu of actual

01:49:32.660 courage.

01:49:33.220 It's really like a psychological pathology and it's so transparent.

01:49:37.240 The weaker the leader, the more arbitrary and cruel to other people, the leader is.

01:49:42.300 Yeah.

01:49:42.460 And you see it on the interpersonal level, too, like the way, you know, people who treat

01:49:45.880 people who have less power than them, who have less influence than them, who have less

01:49:49.820 control.

01:49:51.360 There are a lot of people who abuse those kind of people, and it's almost always because

01:49:54.300 those people are weak and that's the way they feel strong.

01:49:56.760 People who are secure in their own strength treat everybody, as you say, compassionately.

01:50:00.740 I think that extends to animals as well.

01:50:03.140 How many dogs do you have?

01:50:04.400 26 at home.

01:50:05.800 And then realizing that that was unsustainable, we then started this shelter where we have

01:50:10.660 another like 200 or so.

01:50:13.300 Why do you have so many dogs?

01:50:15.740 It just happened organically.

01:50:17.440 I mean, both my husband and I love dogs.

01:50:19.320 We started rescuing dogs.

01:50:20.680 And then, you know, I remember when we had five, we were like, no, five's our limit.

01:50:24.440 And then like, you know, someone calls up and says, oh, I just found two dogs that

01:50:27.980 were hit by a car on a street and they need, you know, surgeries or they're going to die.

01:50:33.100 They're suffering.

01:50:33.720 And we were like, okay, let's take those because what's the difference between five and seven?

01:50:37.660 And then you're like, it's seven.

01:50:39.120 And you're like, yeah, what's the difference between seven and nine?

01:50:41.260 And then that's how you get to 26 dogs.

01:50:43.700 But, you know, they're all rescue dogs.

01:50:45.980 They're all dogs who have been found on the street by us usually, but also by friends who

01:50:50.060 were in various states of distress.

01:50:51.900 Lots of them have been abandoned.

01:50:53.360 They're like, you know, petrified and traumatized and abused.

01:50:57.780 And when you have, you know, the ability of like the blessing of financial security, you

01:51:04.540 can use it for pure material consumption, just buying more things, you know, trying to get

01:51:09.520 another house, a private plane, whatever.

01:51:12.960 Honestly, it just provides me with no happiness or satisfaction at all.

01:51:17.500 It really doesn't.

01:51:18.340 And it just doesn't do anything for me and the ability to use it to help those in need

01:51:24.820 gives me so much more happiness and gratification.

01:51:28.340 You can almost say it's like a selfish endeavor because it just provides me a happiness that

01:51:32.140 other things don't.

01:51:33.960 And, you know, also like when you have a shelter, there's nothing more beautiful than connecting

01:51:39.620 a dog with a family.

01:51:41.080 And then hearing like three months later about how the dog is integrated into the family's

01:51:44.440 life and seeing pictures of that dog laying on a sofa, you know, with this family when

01:51:48.680 they had been on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, like virtually dead from starvation or from

01:51:52.920 disease and you nurse them back to health and then you place them in a family.

01:51:56.480 Like you have to figure out what are the things that actually give you meaning and purpose

01:51:59.740 and happiness in life.

01:52:00.720 And often these are not the things that society tells us are the things we should strive after.

01:52:04.820 And that was a lesson I had to learn by chasing all the things that society teaches

01:52:09.260 you you're supposed to chase.

01:52:10.440 And then when I grabbed them and I thought it was going to make me happy and found it actually

01:52:14.180 made me more vacant and emptier than I knew that I had to find the things that actually

01:52:19.780 gave me happiness.

01:52:21.280 I think it's one of the most important lessons you can learn.

01:52:24.600 How old were you when you made these realizations?

01:52:27.340 I mean, I always loved dogs.

01:52:29.160 Like when I was young, like we had these two dogs that live next door and I was like get

01:52:33.120 home from school and the first thing I would do is look for them and call them and they

01:52:35.640 would hang out in my house.

01:52:37.260 And I remember they just opened things up for me and so well.

01:52:40.660 But it was really like in my late 30s and early 40s when I had like professional success

01:52:46.260 and financial stability and none of that was, you know, my work was known and it wasn't

01:52:51.040 really providing a lot of personal happiness.

01:52:52.980 And so I was like, I don't want to keep chasing after things that don't actually provide me

01:52:58.200 happiness.

01:52:58.580 Even if society respects those, that we started being open more to the things that gave us

01:53:05.040 happiness.

01:53:05.400 And like ultimately, um, I'll tell you this quick story, which is, uh, I never wanted

01:53:10.760 to be a father ever.

01:53:11.880 It was never part of my identity.

01:53:13.560 I never thought I would be a good father.

01:53:15.380 I hate imposing authority on other people.

01:53:17.580 I hate telling other people what to do.

01:53:19.640 And my husband's like, was always like being a dad was his dream.

01:53:23.380 It was who he was.

01:53:24.700 And he spent years like convincing, persuading, cajoling, pressuring, manipulating me to want

01:53:29.520 to adopt kids.

01:53:30.160 We would go out to dinner and coincidentally, there'd be a couple at the next table who he had

01:53:33.760 arranged to be there and we were talking, they had adopted kids and would tell, talked

01:53:36.600 about all the joys of it took years to convince me.

01:53:39.820 And when I finally said, yes, we miraculously found the two perfect kids in this like orphanage

01:53:45.720 in Northeastern Brazil.

01:53:47.200 And the transition obviously to our lives couldn't have been a more radically or abruptly different.

01:53:52.880 It's like, you know, adopting a kid out of poverty in Mississippi and bringing them

01:53:56.380 to like a, you know, high rise apartment in Manhattan.

01:53:59.100 It's obviously everything is different.

01:54:00.980 And I think the thing that helped most in the transition was as soon as they got there,

01:54:04.460 we were like, you have all these dogs.

01:54:06.360 They had a dog at their orphanage.

01:54:08.020 So they already like dogs.

01:54:09.060 And we were like, pick one.

01:54:10.080 And that dog is going to be your dog.

01:54:11.480 You take care of it.

01:54:12.220 You sleep.

01:54:12.700 And they picked like one of the sweetest, like most affectionate dogs in the pack.

01:54:17.520 And she became like the thing they were always hugging.

01:54:20.480 And I think she did more to like give them comfort and security and safety being ganked out

01:54:26.180 of one environment and put in a totally new one.

01:54:28.120 And so the capacity for dogs to like transform people or, you know, you know, there's all

01:54:34.020 kinds of studies about how animals can reach autistic children when nothing else can, or

01:54:38.280 to even like rehabilitate prisoners.

01:54:41.060 You know, you get these like hard and violent criminals.

01:54:43.480 Now they have these dog programs where they take them in and they connect to these dogs

01:54:46.660 and care for them in ways they've never done with humans before.

01:54:50.060 Obviously there's something, you know, but that's the reason why if you see cruelty to

01:54:53.580 animals, not just dogs, it's the thing that like riles people up the most on the internet.

01:54:57.480 But obviously animals are here, they're beautiful, they're majestic.

01:55:01.440 We've always hunted them and killed them for food, but we've also obviously have something

01:55:06.480 in us that makes us feel an extraordinary empathy to them.

01:55:09.660 And to me, they're like the thing, one of the most beautiful things the planet has to

01:55:12.720 offer.

01:55:13.140 And especially dogs.

01:55:14.100 I mean, I don't, I don't think we understand why dogs are here, why we have this relationship

01:55:18.600 with them.

01:55:19.700 Dogs are the only carnivore capable of killing people that people have ever domesticated.

01:55:25.360 And that domestication occurred like much earlier than we ever thought.

01:55:28.900 Right.

01:55:29.120 I think at the beginning of recorded history.

01:55:30.460 Uh-huh.

01:55:31.340 And like-

01:55:31.780 You see those old fossil drawings of like man and dog.

01:55:34.940 100%.

01:55:35.300 Yeah.

01:55:35.600 And, you know, it does make you think that there's some purpose, some supernatural element

01:55:41.740 here.

01:55:42.220 Like, what is that?

01:55:42.860 I mean, that's the thing is, you know, I've seen just over and over and over, not just

01:55:46.260 in my work with dogs, but personally, like in my relationship with dogs, they can do things

01:55:51.560 for you and reach you and connect to you empathetically and emotionally in a way that other human beings

01:55:56.680 can't.

01:55:57.000 They obviously, you know they perceive things physically that we can perceive.

01:56:00.660 They hear sounds that we can't.

01:56:02.060 They anticipate things, they feel things in the atmosphere that are threats and react to

01:56:05.980 them before we even know that they're here.

01:56:07.300 So, we know they have perceptive abilities that human beings don't have.

01:56:10.140 Proven by quote science.

01:56:11.080 Yeah.

01:56:11.320 I mean, yeah.

01:56:12.040 But I'm saying even emotionally, like you can deceive another human about the state of

01:56:17.660 your emotion so much more easily than you can deceive your dog.

01:56:21.020 Like your dogs know when you're sad.

01:56:22.740 They know when you're happy.

01:56:23.540 They know when you're excited in a way that you can't hide that from them.

01:56:26.920 Like they just perceive it.

01:56:28.100 They're so connected to you.

01:56:29.460 And obviously, there's the whole thing about teaching about unconditional love and loyalty

01:56:33.480 that we can learn from dogs as well.

01:56:36.840 But yeah, you just see.

01:56:38.240 And that's why I think the Christy Noem thing was such a fact because there are very few

01:56:41.480 things at this point that can unite everyone in America, all Americans, independent of political

01:56:47.620 ideology or socioeconomic background or anything else.

01:56:50.260 And the fact that she was so cruel to this dog created a revulsion that transcended almost

01:56:57.860 every single category.

01:56:59.020 She really united people in contempt for what she had done.

01:57:02.220 And I found the ability of dogs to do that so fascinating.

01:57:05.840 It's one of the great joys in life.

01:57:08.460 I've experienced it really intensely.

01:57:11.200 Let me just ask you about Brazil.

01:57:12.640 So you have this kind of fearlessness about you that puts you in these coalitions for a

01:57:21.900 time.

01:57:22.240 And then you sort of you're abandoned by them and attacked by former allies or whatever.

01:57:26.600 But you're in this weird position where you're living in a country that the former president,

01:57:30.880 Gerbal Sonoro, at one point threatened to put you in prison.

01:57:34.880 Now.

01:57:35.500 And they brought.

01:57:36.640 I was criminally indicted.

01:57:37.820 I forgot about that.

01:57:39.400 And now Lula is running your country, I guess, sort of, at least in name.

01:57:43.920 In name.

01:57:44.480 In name.

01:57:45.420 And there's a very left regime in charge.

01:57:48.580 Left, whatever that is.

01:57:50.440 But globalist type government.

01:57:54.500 How has life in Brazil changed under this new government?

01:57:57.720 And how has it affected you?

01:58:00.280 So there's this phrase, Brazil is not for amateurs, which is basically designed to indicate that

01:58:07.900 there's really oftentimes no ideology or no, like, obvious political alliances.

01:58:12.020 It's very transactional.

01:58:13.840 Usually the people running Brazil are not the president or the elected officials or these

01:58:17.500 permanent power factions, similar to in Washington.

01:58:22.020 And, you know, my I never wanted to be involved in politics, but my husband ended up as a, you

01:58:27.420 know, elected official.

01:58:28.140 He was first elected as a city council in Rio and then an elected member of Congress in

01:58:33.420 Brazil.

01:58:34.260 I started a Brazilian version of the Intercept, the Intercept Brazil.

01:58:40.360 So, and I did a lot of reporting during the Snowden thing on Brazil.

01:58:43.280 So I became very integrated into the Brazilian media.

01:58:45.120 He was obviously integrated into Brazilian politics.

01:58:46.880 And so we both were part of this kind of faction that we never really wanted to be part

01:58:50.520 of, but like, just takes you there.

01:58:52.000 The most significant reporting I did was in 2019, where there was this sprawling anti-corruption

01:59:00.760 probe and the judge who was leading it became this national hero.

01:59:04.820 And when Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, a big break from prior Brazilian elections were usually

01:59:11.800 center-left or left-wing parties.

01:59:13.300 One, he made that judge who led the anti-corruption probe the most powerful person in the country.

01:59:19.980 He was the minister of, not just the minister of justice and national security.

01:59:23.620 It was like kind of this fused position specifically for him that put the entire security service

01:59:28.640 under his control.

01:59:30.240 About two months into the Bolsonaro president, he was a judge, but he then left the judge

01:59:34.360 to become part of the, and he led the probe that put Lula in jail.

01:59:38.680 When Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, Lula was in prison on corruption charges that this

01:59:43.220 judge, Sergio Moro, oversaw and convicted Lula.

01:59:46.960 There's not a jury trial in Brazil, convicted him and then sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

01:59:51.280 I mean, Lula was a two-term president, a giant on the world stage, left office with an 86%

01:59:55.760 approval rating, and they turned him into a criminal.

01:59:58.580 And they arrested a lot of other people on corruption charges, like billionaires and oligarchs

02:00:03.720 in a way that a lot of people were supportive of at first, including me.

02:00:07.420 Two months into Bolsonaro presidency, I got a contact from a source who had hacked into

02:00:12.380 the phones of that judge, prosecutors, the most powerful people in the country, said there

02:00:18.120 was evidence of all kinds of corruption, turned it over to me, the entire file, similar to

02:00:23.200 what happened with Snowden.

02:00:24.900 And we were able, based on that reporting, to expose this judge as one of the most corrupt

02:00:30.380 people in the country.

02:00:31.520 I mean, he used corruption and illegal means to put the people he wanted to imprison, including

02:00:37.160 Lula.

02:00:37.960 And so six months after we began the reporting, Lula was let out of jail as a result of our

02:00:41.960 reporting.

02:00:42.760 I became enemy number one, along with my husband, of the Bolsonaro movement.

02:00:47.600 I mean, it's hard to overstate the level of threats we got, the attacks on our personal

02:00:53.440 lives, like the fabricated stories, and then ultimately culminating in a criminal indictment

02:00:58.140 that charged me with like 126 felonies as a co-conspirator with my source.

02:01:02.740 So it wasn't a game, and Bolsonaro hated me.

02:01:05.400 But you never, did you ever consider just running away?

02:01:08.360 You're not Brazilian by birth.

02:01:10.260 No, but by this point, you know, not only is my husband Brazilian, but by now we have

02:01:15.420 children and they're Brazilian.

02:01:16.860 So, and I'm a permanent resident.

02:01:18.420 I consider America my country.

02:01:19.680 I'm a citizen of the United States.

02:01:20.840 That's the only country of which I'm a citizen ever have been.

02:01:23.340 But, you know, the fact that my children are Brazilian, I see it as their country and

02:01:27.700 a country that I want to fight for, not flee from.

02:01:29.760 I never for a moment considered leaving.

02:01:31.320 I just, like, absent some very imminent threat, I just would never do that, even if, you can't

02:01:37.360 look yourself in the mirror.

02:01:38.440 Like, Snowden taught me that a lot, you know?

02:01:40.360 Snowden did something, and so did Julian Assange, that they knew had a serious risk of putting

02:01:45.120 them in prison.

02:01:45.700 Daniel Allsberg, one of my childhood heroes, did the same.

02:01:48.720 And so that, to me, became kind of the thing that I aspired to.

02:01:51.620 And, like, the idea of running away from a threat because you're scared of something and

02:01:55.940 sacrificing a cause you believe is right would just make me look at myself in a very negative

02:02:02.260 way for the rest of my life.

02:02:03.380 I would not want that on my conscience.

02:02:04.700 I wouldn't want to think of myself that way or my life having been formed by fleeing or

02:02:09.040 by running away out of fear.

02:02:10.280 Amen.

02:02:10.500 So it was very trying, though, but we stayed, and, you know, everything we did ultimately

02:02:18.040 ended up having a huge effect.

02:02:20.220 It changed the course of the country.

02:02:21.400 I mean, Lula was out of prison.

02:02:22.980 His convictions were reversed.

02:02:24.680 This judge went from universally beloved hero to, you know, a hated figure.

02:02:29.180 He ended up leaving the Bolsonaro government.

02:02:32.540 So that all happened, and we were heroes of the left and hated more than anything by the

02:02:37.360 Brazilian right.

02:02:37.940 At the same time, when Bolsonaro was elected, there started to become this reaction to him,

02:02:44.660 not just by the Brazilian left, but by the Brazilian establishment, by the Brazilian center

02:02:49.440 right, very similar to the way that in the United States, those kind of never-Trump center

02:02:53.620 right establishmentarians, all of our institutions of authority had this, like, extreme fear of

02:03:00.080 Trump because he represented a populist uprising, this, like, challenge to establishment power.

02:03:04.920 The same thing happened in Brazil.

02:03:06.360 So, and you had this one judge on the Supreme Court, and supported by a lot of others, he

02:03:10.200 was never a leftist.

02:03:11.400 He's not a leftist.

02:03:12.280 He comes from this very center-right politics.

02:03:14.740 He's sort of like a Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell figure.

02:03:18.640 And he became the leader of this effort to crush the Bolsonaro movement and Bolsonaro himself

02:03:23.980 using extra legal means, just like we're seeing in the United States with these fabricated

02:03:28.900 prosecutions of lawfare against Donald Trump.

02:03:30.820 And despite the fact that I was a hero of the left and utterly hated by Bolsonaro and his

02:03:35.380 movement to the point they really tried to imprison me or deport me, I began speaking

02:03:39.300 out very vocally against this judge.

02:03:41.960 And one of the main tactics he used was political censorship.

02:03:44.940 They started imprisoning people for questioning COVID, but particularly for defending the Bolsonaro

02:03:50.780 movement.

02:03:51.200 He started having exiles like journalists and bloggers and activists fleeing the country for

02:03:55.940 very good reason to the United States to avoid prosecution at the hands of this one judge who

02:04:00.760 became completely lawless.

02:04:02.700 But he became a hero of the left because he was basically imposing authoritarianism and

02:04:08.200 tyranny against Bolsonaro and his movement.

02:04:11.300 And this was a guy who, because he was on the center-right, was hated by the left for years,

02:04:15.640 you know, as a racist, fascist, all the things they call people when they hate them.

02:04:19.140 But he became, through this consolidation of judicial power and his use of it in ways that

02:04:24.800 are classically authoritarian, as a hero of the left and the number one figure of the

02:04:29.420 hated right.

02:04:29.980 And I was one of the only people who was not a Bolsonaro-easter, who was not on the Bolsonaro

02:04:34.920 right, to speak out.

02:04:36.780 And I didn't just speak out.

02:04:37.680 I mean, I denounced it constantly.

02:04:39.340 I'm a columnist with the biggest Brazilian paper.

02:04:41.400 I was using my column to just attack him constantly.

02:04:43.700 And he was the same kind of hero as that prior judge was, who had the anti-corruption

02:04:48.540 probe, who's reporting we were able to use our reporting to expose.

02:04:53.800 And so overnight, I started to become an enemy of the left and made a lot of new friends

02:04:59.100 among Bolsonaroistas, including the ones who were trying to imprison me just two years

02:05:03.340 earlier.

02:05:04.140 And I have to say, like, you never really think you're going to see actual tyranny.

02:05:10.260 And this was the closest I've ever gotten.

02:05:13.780 Like, we've had authoritarian things in the United States that have happened.

02:05:18.260 It's what impelled me to write about journalism, the abuses of civil liberties after the war

02:05:21.820 on terror in the name of terrorism, but nothing like a figure of this sort.

02:05:26.380 And this is the first time in my career as a journalist where I ever had a fear of what

02:05:34.540 would happen if I actually criticized this political figure.

02:05:37.120 And you know you're living in a repressive regime when you feel a fear, even somebody

02:05:42.100 like myself who has a lot of protection, a lot of platform, a lot of, like, international

02:05:46.740 notoriety.

02:05:47.980 But I really did worry about what would happen if I was going to criticize him because other

02:05:51.820 people who did were punished and put into prison.

02:05:55.660 And I've been doing it very vocally and loudly since.

02:05:58.560 They've attacked similar people.

02:05:59.860 He opened a criminal investigation into Michael Schellenberger.

02:06:02.280 And the journalist who did the Brazil Twitter files, they actually opened a criminal investigation

02:06:08.020 into them.

02:06:09.060 They've never done it against me.

02:06:10.740 I think, again, because I have a certain kind of platform and protection, including

02:06:14.280 the fact that the current president of Brazil is out of prison because of my reporting, something

02:06:19.380 he's often publicly stated.

02:06:21.580 The minute he got out of prison, the first person he called when he got home was me to

02:06:25.160 thank me for everything I had done.

02:06:27.220 So I think it's very difficult to do that.

02:06:28.960 But again, like, if you have that kind of platform, I think you're obligated to use it

02:06:33.340 in ways that other people can't because of their fear.

02:06:36.180 Because if you don't, then who will?

02:06:38.760 Who is the judge?

02:06:40.700 Alessandro Demarese is his name.

02:06:42.700 It's the person that Elon Musk began attacking because, you know, Rumble, which is where my

02:06:47.980 show is, is no longer accessible in Brazil unless you use a VPN.

02:06:52.580 I can't watch my own show in Brazil because if you try and access Rumble in Brazil, you'll

02:06:57.140 get a thing saying this site is blocked because of how many censorship orders Rumble was getting

02:07:04.040 from the Brazilian courts that they refused to comply with.

02:07:06.980 And that was what Elon Musk vowed to do was he said, we're getting so many unjust censorship

02:07:11.020 orders that we're going to refuse to obey them, even if it means we get kicked out of

02:07:15.200 Brazil.

02:07:15.620 Now, he didn't follow through on that.

02:07:17.020 But the fact that he made that a scandal, he talked about this judge, Alessandro Demarese

02:07:22.760 being this kind of like repressive figure, created a kind of debate that was well needed.

02:07:29.820 But Twitter didn't end up following through.

02:07:32.820 They actually ended up saying, no, no, we will obey all the censorship orders in order

02:07:36.340 to stay in Brazil.

02:07:38.020 But, you know, this is real repression.

02:07:41.080 But it's not a left wing kind of repression.

02:07:43.180 It doesn't come from Lula.

02:07:44.280 This guy is not a leftist.

02:07:46.360 What he is, is part of that establishment power that was fearful of and contemptuous

02:07:51.220 of Bolsonaro and used authoritarian power to stop the Bolsonaro movement, to protect

02:07:55.620 establishment authority.

02:07:56.700 Very, very similar to what's happening in the United States with respect to Trump and

02:08:00.400 his movement.

02:08:02.400 How long can you stay there?

02:08:04.020 I mean, I'm going to stay in depth.

02:08:05.920 Again, my kids are, you know, teenagers.

02:08:08.740 They're now teenagers.

02:08:10.360 Their life is in Brazil.

02:08:12.000 They're Brazilian.

02:08:12.540 They've never known any of the country.

02:08:13.520 I'm not going to uproot them, to force them to live in another country.

02:08:17.820 I'm obviously not going to abandon them.

02:08:19.520 They're the thing by far most important to me.

02:08:22.260 And I feel like the work I'm doing is in defense of a country that I want to be free

02:08:26.560 because that's theirs.

02:08:29.000 I'm not saying there's never anything that could force me to leave Brazil.

02:08:32.020 If I really felt an immediate imminent threat to my personal safety or my family's, who knows?

02:08:38.300 But if you find yourself running away from those kinds of fears, it defines the person that

02:08:44.920 you are.

02:08:45.360 I completely agree.

02:08:46.240 And as you said correctly, you can't face yourself if you know that you're a coward.

02:08:52.180 On the other hand, Brazil, which I think is a wonderful country for the record, is also

02:08:56.760 the kind of country where they could have you killed to make it look like crime.

02:09:01.080 Yeah.

02:09:01.320 And I mean, obviously, during the Snowden reporting, we took a lot of precautions because

02:09:05.120 we had an archive that was the most valuable archive, not just to the US government, but

02:09:10.340 to every other government on the planet and to all kinds of non-state actors.

02:09:13.280 I would carry around with me on my backpack the archive on thumbnails because I didn't want

02:09:17.840 to leave them at home that contained some of the most sensitive documents that exist

02:09:22.380 on this planet.

02:09:23.040 There were obviously a lot of security risks at the time.

02:09:25.540 We had to have security at our house, constantly security everywhere we left.

02:09:28.940 Same thing when I was doing the reporting that freed Lula from prison.

02:09:31.840 We had constant threats to our physical safety.

02:09:33.760 I couldn't leave the house without armed guards.

02:09:35.600 Neither could my husband or my kids.

02:09:37.980 So, you know, I don't just walk around freely on the street because I realize that there are

02:09:43.080 threats that I'm not paranoid about them.

02:09:45.480 I don't want to turn our house into a fortress.

02:09:48.540 But, you know, you take precautions against them.

02:09:50.200 But there's never risks that you can completely eliminate.

02:09:53.980 Do you think that – my last question.

02:09:56.960 Do you think this – the authoritarianism that's obviously descending on the world,

02:10:04.460 is it a permanent state?

02:10:05.980 Is this accelerating?

02:10:07.240 Or is this just a sort of an interlude that we're going to laugh about ruefully in 10 years?

02:10:12.460 Well, this is what – the point I always make, you know, because I talk a lot about

02:10:16.100 on my show, which primarily has an American audience, about what's happening in Brazil.

02:10:20.380 And I stress the reason they should care isn't just because Brazil is this very large country

02:10:25.620 with huge resources and a lot of importance on the geopolitical stage, the second largest

02:10:30.540 in our hemisphere, which would be reason enough.

02:10:33.440 It's because the United States is on exactly the same trajectory, maybe just a couple steps

02:10:37.880 behind.

02:10:38.340 And what all of these countries in the democratic world are doing in Western Europe, in Canada – you

02:10:44.160 know, I was just in Canada because there's this shockingly repressive law that provides

02:10:48.940 for prison sentences, for hate speech on the internet, prison sentences.

02:10:53.120 Up to seven years.

02:10:53.860 Yeah.

02:10:54.060 And actually, if you're accused of inciting or defending genocide, you can be put into

02:10:58.380 prison for life under this bill.

02:11:00.120 I mean, this bill is shocking.

02:11:01.780 I went to Canada to do events against the censorship law, not because I'm Canadian or

02:11:06.940 care about Canada, but because what's happening is every one of these countries is using the

02:11:10.820 other as a laboratory for how far they can go.

02:11:13.560 So every time one country takes another step toward consolidating control over the internet

02:11:18.160 and what can and can't be said, that shows other countries the space that they now have

02:11:23.320 to go forward as well.

02:11:24.600 It's completely interconnected.

02:11:26.080 Every time the EU or the UK or Ireland or Canada or Brazil take steps forward to consolidate

02:11:32.740 censorship control over the internet –

02:11:34.100 Of course, the norms change.

02:11:35.160 Exactly.

02:11:35.700 And it completely transforms what the population comes to think is normal.

02:11:41.100 Again, though, is it inexorable, this move toward 1984?

02:11:45.320 The internet is such a fascinating innovation because it has such a dual-edge potential.

02:11:53.960 On the one hand, it can be this unique and unprecedented tool of emancipation and liberation

02:12:00.220 that was its promise and potential.

02:12:02.600 On the other hand, it can also be a tool of unprecedented coercion and control because

02:12:07.380 if it is no longer free, if it can be used as a method of ubiquitous surveillance and information

02:12:14.340 control, I think it can become a closed system that is almost impossible to work your way

02:12:18.980 out of.

02:12:19.400 And that's why, to me, there is no more important battle than keeping the internet free, free

02:12:24.200 in terms of privacy and free in terms of speech because it is increasingly the only way

02:12:29.200 that we really communicate and spread ideas with one another.

02:12:31.820 Does AI technology make that more or less likely to happen?

02:12:36.520 I think it makes it a lot more likely to happen.

02:12:38.400 And that's why it was so alarming to see those original versions of AI like ChatGPT that obviously

02:12:44.780 had all kinds of political ideology imposed on it where you couldn't even get factual answers

02:12:49.380 to certain questions because the designers of ChatGPT wanted ideological lines to supersede

02:12:57.960 factual accuracy.

02:12:59.540 And so you would ask questions of it and the answers that you got were completely dependent

02:13:03.620 upon the ideological perspective of those who had designed it.

02:13:07.360 And I found that extremely alarming.

02:13:10.640 Is there any indication that that's going to change?

02:13:14.760 I mean, again, it goes back to what we talked about a little bit earlier, which is that I think

02:13:20.680 there is this extreme unrest and dissatisfaction on the part of populations in Western governments

02:13:27.600 that even if they don't follow politics closely, even if they're not very engaged, it's amazing

02:13:33.160 that the biggest voting bloc in the United States are people who just don't vote, choose

02:13:37.040 not to vote because they don't think it matters one way or the other.

02:13:39.700 And on some level, they're probably right about that.

02:13:42.320 But even people who aren't very politically engaged have this intuitive sense that there's

02:13:47.040 just something deeply corrupt about power factions and institutions of authority.

02:13:53.020 And I think that kind of dissatisfaction that is being exploited by some clever politicians

02:13:58.740 in positive ways or in negative ways is obviously a prerequisite.

02:14:02.880 If everybody is content and happy and believes they're free and that things are going well,

02:14:07.820 then it's impossible to get people to uprise and change.

02:14:10.480 But when they start really believing that things are radically awry, that's why there's all these

02:14:17.340 politicians who have nothing in common other than the fact that they promise to hate and wage

02:14:21.320 war against the establishment forces that are controlling people's lives.

02:14:25.060 And people want those agents of disruption and subversion in there because they know that

02:14:31.900 the status quo is something that is kind of very evil and very repressive.

02:14:35.240 And that sense is incredibly important to preserve.

02:14:38.760 Do you think that the forces of light have a chance against the forces of darkness?

02:14:44.880 I think everybody who does what you do or I do, who wakes up and talks about these issues and works

02:14:53.220 on them inherently has a sense of optimism because if you didn't, you wouldn't do it.

02:14:57.680 What would be the point?

02:14:58.820 The only reason to do any of these things is because you believe that what you're doing can

02:15:03.300 actually have an impact and make a positive outcome and help to contribute to a positive outcome.

02:15:08.740 So I really believe in the capacity of human reason, of human persuasion, but also just

02:15:14.120 like an intuitive sense that human beings have to understand almost intuitively when they're

02:15:21.800 being threatened, when they're being deceived, when they're being subject to corrupt and abusive

02:15:29.180 power.

02:15:29.940 And all of history is uprisings and rebellions and revolutions against establishment authority,

02:15:36.360 including ones that seem completely entrenched and invulnerable.

02:15:39.200 I mean, the whole enlightenment was to overthrow, you know, monarchs and churches that had dominated

02:15:45.140 intellectual life for centuries.

02:15:47.160 And we've seen that over and over.

02:15:49.000 And I think it's very hard to look at human history and conclude anything other than any

02:15:53.560 kind of structure that is built by human beings can be warred against and torn down and replaced

02:16:00.280 by other human beings.

02:16:01.340 And I absolutely think that the tools are here and those are the tools we have to defend.

02:16:07.140 Glenn Greenwald.

02:16:08.280 Thank you.

02:16:08.840 Yeah, it was good talking to you, Tucker.

02:16:09.740 It was always great to talk to you.

02:16:10.620 Thank you.

02:16:12.500 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.

02:16:14.400 If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made.

02:16:19.060 The complete library.

02:16:21.280 tuckercarlson.com.

02:16:23.120 Um, of course we have this cover book, which is done.

02:16:26.560 It's thick.

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02:16:27.400 It's thick.

02:16:27.860 This looks dużo.

02:16:28.620 It's thick.

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02:16:32.420 It's thick.

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The Tucker Carlson Show - June 18, 2024

Glenn Greenwald： Antisemitism, Attacks on Free Speech, and Everything You Need to Know about Brazil

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