The Tucker Carlson Show - Glenn Greenwald： Propaganda, Putin, AOC, and the New Movement Rising From the Ashes of MAGA

00:00:00 Want to see your rewards go further?

00:00:03 Now at Shell, ScenePlus members can fill up on points at the pump, on snacks, car wash and more.

00:00:09 Plus, Scotiabank and Tangerine cardholders can get up to 10 cents per liter in value with a linked card.

00:00:16 New rewards partners, new ways to save and earn at Shell.

00:00:19 Get more, go further.

00:00:21 At participating Shell locations, conditions and limits apply. Actual value may be lower.

00:00:26 Visit shell.ca slash loyalty for full details.

00:00:30 Glenn Greenwald, thank you so much for doing this.

00:00:36 I'm so pleased that you're coming right now

00:00:38 because I need someone smarter than I am

00:00:40 to explain the connection that I feel

00:00:43 but can't quite articulate, and it's this.

00:00:45 So the Free Press, run by Barry Weiss,

00:00:48 and financed by others, of course,

00:00:50 just put out a video defending flock cameras.

00:00:54 And rather than playing it,

00:00:55 you can find it on the internet.

00:00:56 I'm just going to read you the description

00:00:57 in the headline, and here's what it is.

00:00:59 Ever feel like you're being watched?

00:01:01 This is the free press headline.

00:01:03 You might be right, but flock safety cameras aren't interested in you

00:01:07 unless you're a kidnapper, a thief, or up to no good. 0.77

00:01:12 And it's like literally Soviet propaganda. 0.51

00:01:15 You know, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

00:01:18 As long as your soul is right with the party, you're okay.

00:01:22 Don't worry about the Panopticon. 0.94

00:01:25 So this is obviously disgusting. 0.68

00:01:27 it's anti-American, it's totalitarian, but it's also not that surprising coming from 0.69

00:01:33 the neocon oracle known as the free press. I can't quite explain why that's not surprising to me.

00:01:39 Why is their support of flock cameras consistent with their support of, say, the war with Iran?

00:01:46 Well, let's remember it was about 12, 13 years ago that we started the Snowden reporting

00:01:50 that really was the first meaningful, broad-based reporting that showed that the goal of the U.S.

00:01:58 government was to create an absolutely ubiquitous surveillance state that monitored, collected,

00:02:04 stored highly invasive and revealing information, not about terror suspects or potential pedophiles,

00:02:09 but about every single one of us. A ubiquitous surveillance state is how they described it

00:02:13 internally and what it was. And obviously it had all sorts of connections to the military and to

00:02:20 foreign policy goals. In fact, its basis was in the NSA, which is a key part of the Defense

00:02:27 Department, of the military planning unit, the U.S. security state. And all along, they also had

00:02:32 a very close, really indispensable partnership with Silicon Valley, with the largest tech

00:02:37 companies. In fact, one of the earliest stories we did was about how the tech companies were just

00:02:42 handing over en masse whatever information the NSA wanted without warrants or anything else,

00:02:47 because those companies need to keep a good relationship with the government because that's

00:02:51 where they get most of their largest contracts from. There's really no separation between the

00:02:55 private and public sector. But the companies and the sector that is most financially interested

00:03:01 in this surveillance state are the people in Silicon Valley, the people who, for example,

00:03:07 are running Palantir and have gotten unimaginably wealthy, multi-billionaire wealth from helping not

00:03:15 only to create a surveillance state but then merging it with the u.s military and this is what

00:03:19 the israelis of course set up in in gaza and it's one of the reasons why a lot of people one of the

00:03:24 loudest ones being charlie kirk were so incredulous that october 7th could happen and the israeli

00:03:30 government just had no idea that it was coming because they have gaza under one of the most

00:03:34 extreme surveillance systems ever to exist in all of human history and a lot of the reporting we did

00:03:40 was about the partnership between the NSA and the Israelis

00:03:45 and the amount of just raw intelligence

00:03:47 the NSA turns over about American citizens

00:03:49 to the Israeli government.

00:03:51 So you have all these component parts,

00:03:53 Peter Thiel and Palantir and Alex Karp,

00:03:55 Andreessen Horowitz that has invested

00:03:57 in a lot of these AI surveillance companies,

00:04:01 also invested in Palantir,

00:04:03 also a major investor in the free press.

00:04:06 And this is all part of the same group that,

00:04:09 as you say, is inextricably linked, not just to building a domestic surveillance state,

00:04:13 but also a foreign policy that is very neocon in nature, very warmongering in nature. They all

00:04:18 wanted the war in Iran. They all love and worship and revere Israel. And of course, 0.98

00:04:23 it is in the interest of people who wield the greatest power to find out and know as much about

00:04:28 that they can as their domestic population, because that gives them the greatest control.

00:04:32 And that's always been what the surveillance state is about.

00:04:35 But the irony of it is just is inescapable.

00:04:39 I mean, we're fighting these wars abroad so we can be free here in the United States.

00:04:43 We're fighting tyrants on behalf of freedom and democracy.

00:04:46 And that's basically what we're doing.

00:04:48 I mean, there's no one really making the argument that Iran was a physical threat to the United States.

00:04:53 I mean, the fringe Mark Levin types do.

00:04:56 But most people would not make that case.

00:04:58 They would say this is a tyranny.

00:05:00 They're killing their own people. 1.00

00:05:01 They're throwing gays off the roof. 1.00

00:05:03 They're shooting protesters. 1.00

00:05:04 And because and same with China, same with North Korea, same with Russia, because they allow their own citizens no freedom, we have to kill their governments. 0.92

00:05:13 But those same people making that argument are now endorsing tyranny and totalitarianism at home.

00:05:19 So it's like, what could possibly be the justification for their foreign policy?

00:05:23 you know as somebody who has really had to immerse myself in u.s war propaganda and just

00:05:30 war propaganda generally as somebody who has opposed pretty much every war that the united

00:05:34 states has fought over the last say 25 years there are a lot of things about war propaganda

00:05:38 that i think are universal that aren't that surprising it's a very effective science it's

00:05:42 been developed over decades really centuries using multiple fields of discipline and anthropology and

00:05:47 psychology and psychiatry it's a very precise science it's not surprising that it works but

00:05:53 sometimes there are things that are so brazen about it that even my respect for the efficacy

00:05:59 of propaganda makes me shocked that it does work. And one of the things that I find most shocking

00:06:03 is this idea that the United States goes to war against the tyrannical and dictatorial

00:06:12 government to the world because we want to free the oppressed people and bring them freedom and

00:06:15 democracy. When if you know anything about American history, our history is exactly the

00:06:20 opposite. We've spent so many decades overthrowing democratically elected leaders and imposing on

00:06:25 those countries some of the most brutal military dictatorships ever known in human history,

00:06:30 including, of course, in Iran and countless other places. Right now, our closest allies

00:06:34 that Trump loves most are the most brutal regimes in Saudi Arabia, the Emiratis, the Egyptians,

00:06:41 all over the world. That has always been our goal. And anyone who believed, there was actually an

00:06:45 article last week in the New York Times about how these idiotic Iranian exiles who have 0.99

00:06:50 lived for decades in london and toronto and and and chicago and la somehow got held up as the 1.00

00:06:57 voice of the iranian people who were saying please please come and bomb our country we want you to

00:07:01 free us now are saying oh my god we're so disillusioned it turns out trump really wasn't

00:07:06 interested in freeing the iranian people nor was netanyahu they were fighting the war solely for

00:07:10 their own interests and they're willing to kill as many of us as possible in order to advance that

00:07:15 and it's like oh that just occurred to you that that so yes there if you were to believe that 0.57

00:07:21 neocons and the like and their war propaganda about how they want to free the repressed people

00:07:25 of the worlds were actually real you would then find it oddly contradictory that they're imposing

00:07:30 this tyrannical surveillance state at home but if you understand which i think most reasonably

00:07:36 perceptive people do that spreading freedom and democracy have nothing to do with why we fight

00:07:42 wars. In fact, if anything, we're more interested in undercutting freedom and democracy. We prefer

00:07:46 dictatorships at our service who control their countries and suppress their populations for us.

00:07:52 Then it makes all the sense in the world that those same people would want to maintain as much

00:07:56 of a grip on the domestic population as they do on the rest of the world. And nothing, there is

00:08:01 nothing. This is, I think, the other point, Tucker, when we were doing the stoner reporting

00:08:06 and people really understood, oh, wow, it turns out that our government really was converting

00:08:12 What we were told was this very liberatory,

00:08:15 emancipatory technology, which was the internet.

00:08:18 They were actually converting it into its exact opposite,

00:08:20 the most coercive and potent means of human control

00:08:25 ever in human history.

00:08:27 I remember when we did one story about the ubiquity 0.83

00:08:32 of the ability to spy, people from the Stasi,

00:08:35 like who were actually in the Stasi in East Germany,

00:08:37 came out and expressed this kind of envy.

00:08:39 And they were like, oh, wow, we never dreamed

00:08:41 of being able to have powers that were this significant.

00:08:44 And one of the big responses was,

00:08:47 well, look, you know, the NSA tried to encourage people

00:08:49 to think this, all the other corporations did as well.

00:08:52 You don't need privacy. 0.98

00:08:53 Privacy is for losers and criminals. 1.00

00:08:55 It's for pedophiles and terrorists. 1.00

00:08:57 And if you don't have anything to hide, 0.88

00:09:00 then why do you need privacy?

00:09:01 And of course, every single person has something to hide.

00:09:05 We all do things in secret and in private

00:09:07 that we wouldn't do in public.

00:09:09 Every single one of us has that division in our lives.

00:09:12 It's very healthy.

00:09:12 It's kind of fundamental to how human beings operate.

00:09:15 In a surveillance state, nothing gives greater tyrannical power to a centralized power than

00:09:21 the ability to surveil and monitor and know what people are doing at all times.

00:09:24 And to see Barry Weiss and the free press justifying it, cheering it, making it seem

00:09:28 all benign is exactly what you would expect of people who have that as their goal.

00:09:34 And not just benign, not just, you know, harmless and non-threatening.

00:09:38 They've actually taken it, I think, a step beyond that,

00:09:40 and they're scolding anyone who wants privacy.

00:09:45 And by the way, these are all pro-choice people

00:09:47 who believe Griswold versus Connecticut,

00:09:49 the 67 decision that gave us the right to privacy,

00:09:52 is really important, but you don't actually get the privacy.

00:09:54 So just to restate the headline,

00:09:58 it says, they're not interested in you

00:10:01 unless you're a kidnapper, a thief, or up to no good.

00:10:04 So basically, if you're worried about flock cameras,

00:10:07 You're up to no good. 1.00

00:10:08 You're a thief. 1.00

00:10:09 You're a kidnapper. 1.00

00:10:10 I mean, like they're yelling at us for caring.

00:10:13 Well, what they're trying to do is to essentially say that if you are somebody who craves privacy in your life, who wants to have areas of your life that are free of government or corporate monitoring and scrutiny, then essentially you're admitting that you do things that are wrong.

00:10:30 In fact, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google for many years, that's actually one time exactly

00:10:37 what he said when people were raising questions about the invasiveness of Google and how it's

00:10:41 creating this dragnet of ubiquitous surveillance.

00:10:44 He said, well, why don't you think about it this way?

00:10:46 If you're doing something that you don't want other people to know about it, maybe you should

00:10:49 stop doing it.

00:10:50 Maybe that's something that you ought not to be doing.

00:10:53 As though the mere fact that human beings crave privacy in any realm at any point in

00:10:58 our lives for any purpose suggests that we are somehow bad people because we want to hide things.

00:11:04 And the only reason to hide things is if you're a pedophile or otherwise engaged in dangerous

00:11:09 conduct that you shouldn't be engaged in. And ultimately, I think you're right. That is the

00:11:12 most pernicious and sinister part of this, which is to start trying to convince people that anybody

00:11:17 who actually cares about privacy cares about privacy only because they're doing things that

00:11:21 you should want the government to know about because they're probably really bad and dangerous

00:11:25 people. I just, I think sometimes we forget like how un-American that is. You know, when I went to

00:11:30 law school and like, you know, you study the Federalist Papers and the constitution and the

00:11:34 layout of it. I remember being kind of amazed. Like it really struck me how the founders had

00:11:40 this debate and they purposely imposed restrictions on police power, on state power,

00:11:48 knowing that it would make it easier for violent criminals, rapists, pedophiles to often escape.

00:11:55 And to do some more, like the police would be able to catch so many more criminals if they could just barge into your home at any time or search whatever it is that they wanted.

00:12:04 Privacy is so foundational to, you know, the state can't just come into your home and use your house to quarter their soldiers.

00:12:10 This is all the value of privacy that pervades every part of the Bill of Rights.

00:12:14 And what it means to be American and the idea that you should give up your privacy, that only bad people care about privacy, could not be any more anti-American in its ethos.

00:12:23 Lots of people are using peptides to get in shape.

00:12:25 Not all peptides are the same.

00:12:27 If you take them, do you really know what you're ingesting?

00:12:30 Probably not.

00:12:31 Joy and Blokes makes it very simple.

00:12:33 You start with an easy online health assessment.

00:12:35 Then, if necessary, your licensed clinician will order comprehensive lab work

00:12:39 to understand exactly what prescription is best for you.

00:12:41 Not everybody, just for you.

00:12:44 It's a complete review to ensure the best results.

00:12:47 Your peptide protocol is built specifically around you.

00:12:50 So there's no guesswork.

00:12:51 There's not a one-size-fits-all plan.

00:12:53 It's totally customized.

00:12:55 Prescriptions are filled by American-based pharmacies using ingredients sourced from FDA-registered facilities.

00:13:01 Tons of quality testing, no stone unturned.

00:13:04 You're getting the best.

00:13:05 You don't have to guess about what's going in your body.

00:13:08 Starting now, this show's listeners can get 65% off labs plus 20% off peptides and supplements by going to joyandblokes.com slash Tucker and using the code Tucker at checkout.

00:13:18 This is one of the biggest discounts any of our partners have ever offered.

00:13:21 That's joinblokes.com.

00:13:51 for more details.

00:13:53 Want to see your rewards go further?

00:13:56 Now at Shell,

00:13:57 Scene Plus members can fill up on points at the pump,

00:14:00 on snacks, car wash, and more.

00:14:02 Plus, Scotiabank and Tangerine cardholders

00:14:05 can get up to 10 cents per liter in value

00:14:07 with a linked card.

00:14:09 New rewards partners,

00:14:10 new ways to save and earn at Shell.

00:14:12 Get more, go further.

00:14:14 At participating Shell locations,

00:14:16 conditions and limits apply.

00:14:18 Actual value may be lower.

00:14:19 Visit shell.ca slash loyalty for full details.

00:14:23 Tucker, I don't think you would talk to your own population that way if you liked them.

00:14:30 I mean, the normal reaction to complaint, if someone you love says, you know, I don't

00:14:36 like what you're doing, part of you is like, okay, well, I love this person.

00:14:40 I'm going to listen.

00:14:41 I don't whip around and scream at the person for complaining.

00:14:43 And yet, again and again and again, you see this impulse from our leaders, particularly the ones who are pushing the war in Iran, the neocons, that suggest deep contempt for the American population.

00:14:57 And you saw it in the last 10 days in the debate over food inflation. 0.93

00:15:03 Rather than just make the argument that, no, the numbers aren't real, your lived experience is imaginary, it doesn't actually cost more to eat than it did five years ago, you're making it up in your mind, you're crazy.

00:15:13 they they've been scolding people like yelling at them like you know how dare you complain

00:15:19 about a 20 burrito you're not doing it right what is that you know this is i mean this is one of the

00:15:27 things that i think we've gotten away from so severely and maybe it was too gradual and it

00:15:32 kind of like the the the frog in the the boiling water metaphor but the whole idea of why congress

00:15:39 was supposed to approve wars was because war is something that by necessity affects every single

00:15:45 person in very fundamental ways. I mean, there was an assumption, even though it proved not to be

00:15:50 true, that obviously in times of war, you're going to have to pay more taxes because someone has to

00:15:55 pay for the war. They didn't know that we were just going to create this fiat system of money

00:15:58 and borrow trillions from China. But anyway, that was their assumption. But it would also affect

00:16:02 the country in every single other way. Your sons would be endangered because they were the ones

00:16:07 who would have to go fight.

00:16:08 And so it needed buy-in from the American people.

00:16:10 And the way to do that was to ensure

00:16:12 that the only way the president could start a war

00:16:17 is if the American people,

00:16:18 through their Congress, approved.

00:16:20 We just completely got rid of that.

00:16:22 That no longer exists.

00:16:23 It's like we just rewrote the Constitution.

00:16:26 And even though there hasn't been a declaration of war,

00:16:28 typically, political leaders have wanted

00:16:32 the buy-in of the American people before starting a war.

00:16:34 That was what the whole 18-month campaign

00:16:36 of what turned out to be lies,

00:16:37 But still, it was an 18-month PR campaign by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the rest to convince Americans why we needed to go and invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein.

00:16:46 They thought it was important that Americans got on board, and they did.

00:16:49 Two-thirds or more of Americans favored the war in Iraq at the time that it began.

00:16:53 That does not exist anymore.

00:16:55 There was no campaign of any kind, no pretense of caring about the American population thought when trying to sell this war in Iran that basically came out of nowhere.

00:17:03 polls showed that americans overwhelmingly were opposed to it and they've only gotten more opposed

00:17:08 and the the the reaction is who cares who cares what the american people think who cares if they

00:17:14 think it's not worth it to pay more gas prices and more at the supermarket when they're already

00:17:18 facing economic difficulties too bad for them they need to shut up and and accept it and take it

00:17:23 because our goals are more important it's a it's such a overtly contemptuous message as you say

00:17:29 that is being sent by our elite.

00:17:31 And then these are the same people who turn around

00:17:33 and wonder why Americans are so disgusted

00:17:35 by elite institutions that they're willing to vote

00:17:38 for anybody, left, right, socialist, far right,

00:17:42 whatever you call them,

00:17:43 that they see are radically opposing the establishment

00:17:47 and the people in power

00:17:48 because they have very good reasons,

00:17:50 so many good reasons to hate them.

00:17:52 So you're describing a political system

00:17:54 that's becoming legitimately volatile.

00:17:56 You know, people who had no chance at all,

00:17:59 who are truly fringe and ideas that were truly fringe,

00:18:02 including some that I personally have and articulate a lot,

00:18:05 are now much more mainstream.

00:18:07 So that suggests that the system is changing really fast

00:18:10 in a way that is good in some ways,

00:18:13 but also kind of scary in other ways.

00:18:14 And that's exactly why you don't, as you said,

00:18:19 embark on a massive project like a war

00:18:21 without the buy-in of the public, right?

00:18:23 Because it could hurt you.

00:18:24 But these people didn't even flinch.

00:18:27 And on a bipartisan level,

00:18:29 I mean, Trump did it, but, you know, there were Democrats, Democratic leaders were for it also.

00:18:34 So why aren't they afraid and still are?

00:18:37 Why aren't they afraid?

00:18:39 OK, so this is where I think this gets back to your first question.

00:18:42 And this is what I think.

00:18:43 Ultimately, I almost wrote a book on this one.

00:18:44 Actually, I was about to write a book on it when I met someone named Edward Snowden that kind of derailed me for a few years.

00:18:50 I remember growing up, I didn't know any rich people.

00:18:54 And one of the very first few rich people I really met or ever talked to was right when I started my blog early on.

00:19:00 I had this guy who was like a major high-level mathematician at one of the most lucrative hedge funds making enormous sums of money.

00:19:08 And I remember after the 2008 financial crisis, you know, I was doing a lot of reading about oligarchs in the past and how frightened they were of the public.

00:19:17 Like the greatest fear that the very wealthy had in America was of a populist uprising.

00:19:22 And that was how FDR was able to sell them on the New Deal was, look, you may not like

00:19:26 the New Deal, but if we don't make these people's lives better in some way, you know, you can

00:19:30 say goodbye to the whole capitalist system.

00:19:33 And they used to have yachts where they had safes full of their jewels because they thought

00:19:36 any moment they were going to, you know, have a kind of Bolshevik revolution.

00:19:40 And that's why like John Rockefeller and Henry Ford used to ride down the street handing

00:19:43 money out.

00:19:43 That's where philanthropy came from to convince Americans to know they were good people because

00:19:48 they were scared.

00:19:49 And I remember after the financial crisis,

00:19:51 I said, you know, it really seems like

00:19:52 the elite class has completely lost its fear.

00:19:55 Like the greed that drove the financial crisis

00:19:58 and then the insistence that all the money be used

00:20:01 to bail out the richest people who caused it

00:20:03 and let everybody else drown,

00:20:04 like the entire middle class with foreclosures 0.80

00:20:06 and mortgages and all of that,

00:20:08 signals a kind of utter indifference to,

00:20:11 like that fear is gone.

00:20:13 And I think one of the,

00:20:15 and one of the things he says is,

00:20:16 yeah, I think it's absolutely gone.

00:20:17 And I think the reason it's gone is because they believe that the police state that they've

00:20:21 constructed is enough to keep them safe, no matter how angry the peasants are.

00:20:28 And I think that is a lot of where this surveillance state comes from.

00:20:31 Like if you have this massive wealth inequality, there are two ways to, I think, maintain it.

00:20:37 One is to play keep the public, the majority just enough so that they don't really feel

00:20:42 like it's worth it to go risk their lives and wage violence and a revolution because

00:20:47 they're at least minimally fed they have a enough of a decent life um just above the

00:20:51 assistance level but if you're not going to do that the alternative is just paramilitarize the

00:20:57 society build huge walls behind which all the rich live uh give extreme authorities uh of violence

00:21:04 and and surveillance to the police forces that you fund and construct that are there really to

00:21:09 protect that system and to protect you and i think so much of this mass surveillance and everything

00:21:14 else is that the recognition that that is the path that has been chosen. And, you know, I mean,

00:21:21 I guess the French elite thought that they were safe behind the walls of Versailles.

00:21:24 And to some extent, you can probably make yourself pretty safe. But at some point,

00:21:29 if you keep creating this kind of complete loss and of faith and trust in institutions of authority

00:21:35 and a belief, a very well-rounded belief that the suffering that people have in their lives

00:21:40 is due to those in power, not left, right, not Democrat versus Republican, not pro or anti-abortion

00:21:45 or pro and anti-trans or whatever. But based on what is being done with the distribution of power

00:21:50 and wealth, I don't think that even the greatest amount of paramilitarization and surveillance

00:21:56 will be enough to stop it. But that is definitely the goal. And it's tied into their ability to go

00:22:01 around having wars and not care if people are supportive of it or angry about it because they

00:22:06 They just believe, you know, Peter Thiel believes he can build his own private island and have Palantir surveil everybody, and he'll always know whatever threats are emerging.

00:22:13 And I think that is the mentality that they have opted for.

00:22:17 I've always thought that pharma played a role in this.

00:22:20 It is not simply surveilling and threatening people into obedience, but it's also changing the nature of people through benzodiazepines and SSRIs.

00:22:28 And there's the whole cornucopia of sort of suppressive drugs that to hand it out,

00:22:34 you can get them online without ever seeing a doctor.

00:22:37 And that seems like an instrument of social policy to me, of social control.

00:22:44 Yeah, I think marijuana is part of that as well.

00:22:46 I mean, I'm definitely somebody who believes in the legalization of marijuana

00:22:49 just because it gives the state way too much power to criminalize it.

00:22:52 Um, but the fact that so many people are ingesting so many substances that are being given to them, fed to them, recommended to them, promoted to them that are basically designed to just almost create a zombie state.

00:23:05 like sometimes anxiety is good yes anger is good these are the things that you know are are drivers

00:23:12 of us wanting better lives and if you sandpaper all the edges off of humanity and just turn them

00:23:18 into kind of like doped up narcoticized you know people who are willing to accept that

00:23:25 everything and anything and just kind of be content with it that is i mean it's very dystopian

00:23:31 And it sounds very dystopian, but it's also in a large, to a large extent, if you know people in your life, which you probably do, who are taking a large amount of antidepressants or Xanax or any of these medications, marijuana too, to put themselves constantly in a state of tranquility and acceptance and submission.

00:23:48 You can see the effects of it in their daily lives, but also on this kind of macro level that is very, very beneficial to people in power.

00:23:54 You want a population that's content and happy.

00:23:57 Turns out opium is the opium of the masses, right?

00:23:59 Drugs are the opium.

00:24:00 We are strongly pro-dog on this show.

00:24:03 We make no secret of that.

00:24:04 Dogs are one of the great blessings of this life. 0.58

00:24:07 And to keep them healthy, we recommend Dutch.

00:24:09 It's the solution to skyrocketing veterinary costs.

00:24:12 Why are those costs so high?

00:24:14 Well, private equity, in case you didn't already know that.

00:24:17 Big investors have bought up veterinary clinics across the country

00:24:19 and doubled the amount they charge.

00:24:22 So they're exploiting your love for animals to make money.

00:24:26 And are they providing better services?

00:24:27 Well, if you can't afford to go to the vet, you get no services at all.

00:24:31 We did a whole show on this, and it's really distressing. 1.00

00:24:34 Dutch is the solution to this.

00:24:36 Licensed veterinarians, easy remote appointments, start with the code TUCKER, plans at just $82 per year.

00:24:44 That's like nothing compared to what you will get if you walk into a private equity-owned vet.

00:24:49 50% of Dutch customers say they had not seen a vet in three years because they couldn't afford it.

00:24:54 Dutch fixes that.

00:24:56 10-minute calls, no waiting room,

00:24:58 no clinic markup, free shipping on products,

00:25:01 coverage for up to five pets.

00:25:03 Visit dutch.com slash Tucker.

00:25:05 Use the code Tucker for $50 off. 1.00

00:25:08 Truly, Dutch is real. 1.00

00:25:10 It works.

00:25:11 We did a lot of research into this,

00:25:13 used it before recommending it.

00:25:15 Dutch.com slash Tucker.

00:25:20 Whether life serves you an ace

00:25:22 or an unexpected backhand,

00:25:24 The high-protein yogurt Oikos Pro is there to feed your strength and help you turn every challenge into a smash.

00:25:30 Oikos Pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar.

00:25:37 Because true strength isn't about being able to take the hits.

00:25:40 It's about being able to bounce back.

00:25:42 Oikos Pro. Feed your strength.

00:25:45 Visit oikos.ca for more details.

00:25:48 Want to see your rewards go further?

00:25:51 Now at Shell, Scene Plus members can fill up on points at the pump,

00:25:55 on snacks, car wash, and more.

00:25:57 Plus, Scotiabank and Tangerine cardholders can get up to 10 cents per liter in value with a linked card.

00:26:04 New rewards partners, new ways to save and earn at Shell.

00:26:07 Get more, go further.

00:26:09 At participating Shell locations, conditions and limits apply.

00:26:13 Actual value may be lower.

00:26:14 Visit shell.ca slash loyalty for full details.

00:26:17 so but can you expand i i snorted in agreement but i would if you wouldn't mind just explaining

00:26:24 a little more precisely your point that anxiety can be good because i do think americans are

00:26:31 trained to see pain in general but specifically anxiety is like the last thing you ever want to

00:26:37 deal with you should do whatever it takes to avoid ever feeling anxious why do you disagree

00:26:41 why do you think it can be hopeful? All of these human emotions that we have,

00:26:47 all of these human instincts that we have, these are fundamental to our survival. They're the

00:26:52 reason why natural selection has produced human beings that are capable of feeling all these

00:26:58 things and who do react in these ways to all of these events, because these are the sentiments

00:27:03 and feelings that maximize your chance of survival and not just survival, but you're thriving and

00:27:08 you're prospering and your ability to find happiness. And it's sort of like fear. Nobody

00:27:14 likes feeling fear, but I'm really glad that I have the ability to feel fear if something actually

00:27:19 dangerous is nearby because then I'll either protect myself from it or I'll try and flee or

00:27:24 I'll try and do things to save myself. If I just took pills that constantly eliminated my sense of

00:27:29 fear, I might feel better day to day, but it would also drastically impede the capabilities that I

00:27:35 have that are fundamental to my being a human being who can survive and thrive in the world.

00:27:39 And the same is true of anxiety. Anxiety is what tells us there's something wrong.

00:27:43 You know, anxiety tells us there's things that are going on that are not as they should be.

00:27:48 This is one of the most, this is what drives intellectual achievement. It's what drives

00:27:53 social and political change and revolutions. If you are willing to just take medication every day

00:28:00 in order to drown that out or suffocate it or kill it, you're taking away one of the most

00:28:05 important, valuable drivers that you have as a human being. And you'll just kind of stagnate.

00:28:09 You may be happier in the sense that people who perceive nothing are happy. You know,

00:28:14 if you perceive nothing, if you just limit what you know to a very small number of things,

00:28:20 you might be kind of that ignorance is bliss kind of formula. There is a level of happiness to it,

00:28:25 but it's very shallow. It's very superficial. And ultimately it's designed to make you accept

00:28:30 things that really you want not to accept, not to feel good about, not to be happy about.

00:28:34 It also reframes reality in a way that's very dishonest. So basically, therapy culture tells you it's on you. Like you've got this trauma that you're carrying around with, all of which, you know, there's truth in all of that, by the way, I'm not dismissing it.

00:28:49 But like big picture, a lot of Americans are really unhappy because the system is working against them.

00:28:55 The system that they did not create into which they were born, which has changed a lot over the past 30 years.

00:29:00 It is bad for you.

00:29:02 The way we're living is bad for you.

00:29:03 And that's the result of decisions that others made.

00:29:08 But when you get prescribed SSRIs or benzos, what is the therapist really saying?

00:29:13 Like your real problems are internal.

00:29:15 It's like, yeah, I've got internal problems, but I don't know, a $20 burrito and a lifetime

00:29:20 of debt, other people decided to create that system and it's hurting me.

00:29:26 So do you see what I'm saying?

00:29:27 You kind of like shift the blame from the guilty to yourself.

00:29:33 Yeah.

00:29:33 I mean, you do want all the tools as an individual that you can acquire to kind of combat external

00:29:40 forces and to keep yourself from, because sometimes those, those, those human instincts

00:29:46 can become excessive or off kilter. You know, fear is good, but paranoia isn't. Of course.

00:29:52 Anxiety is good, but you know, like crippling anxiety is, is a disorder. So it's not as though

00:29:57 those things can't go wrong and you want to always like turn them up to 10 and maximize them.

00:30:01 And sometimes those things can help, you know, individuals who are struggling with some sort of

00:30:05 disorder, you know, get themselves in order, but in general, and, you know, this was, this is,

00:30:11 you know, this has become, you know, such a common anecdote now when, when, when Trump won in 2016,

00:30:19 which is very shocking to most people, but to especially the liberals, to, to liberals,

00:30:23 you know, in every city and every, every part of the country, therapists reported that they had so

00:30:29 many patients seeking out therapy as a way of dealing with Trump's victory that they couldn't

00:30:34 even accommodate a portion of them. During COVID, people basically went insane, and they should have

00:30:41 because the conditions in which we were forced to live were so completely divergent from what

00:30:48 human beings need, just the minimum things you need of interactivity and going outside and

00:30:52 just normal human life, that those kinds of things are positive reactions. Those are the

00:30:58 kinds of things that make you angry and say, no, we're not going to accept this. But you're right.

00:31:02 In our culture, we've been told that if we're dissatisfied with something, if we're angry

00:31:06 about something, if we feel anxious about something, you go and take a pill for it or

00:31:11 you go and fix it.

00:31:12 And sometimes it shouldn't be fixed.

00:31:14 Sometimes you feel those things because you should feel those things.

00:31:18 And, you know, again, I mean, there's from the 1950s and 1940s, there's, you know, books

00:31:24 by Orwell and Huxley and all these kinds of dystopian books about what to them was the

00:31:29 future, but to us as our present, based on the idea that we were essentially going to

00:31:33 be just kept in this constant state of chemical or entertainment, distraction, tranquility

00:31:42 in a way that would allow those in power to exploit us as much as they want, because

00:31:47 we've turned off those reactions that are so vital to resisting it.

00:31:52 Why is distraction bad?

00:31:54 you mentioned it's so interesting you mentioned distraction which is a tool of control but it's

00:31:59 also a source of suffering what what role does distraction play

00:32:03 well it's interesting i mean i don't think distraction as an in an absolute sense is bad

00:32:12 i think distraction sometimes can be a positive you know you go in you watch some sporting event

00:32:18 with your family or you watch some yep good film or read a good book you know you're in a way part

00:32:23 of what its value is, is it, it takes you away from your reality and puts you into a different

00:32:28 reality. So I don't think if, if, if managed and limited, it's, it's necessarily a bad thing,

00:32:34 but distraction has, is, is very addictive. I mean, we have companies that build products that

00:32:39 are designed to do nothing, but to addict you to the distraction that they provide. I mean,

00:32:44 I still think one of the most amazing articles was a, by the New York times interviewed a bunch

00:32:49 of parents who work for Silicon Valley companies, and they were always saying, I would never,

00:32:56 ever allow my kids to use the products that I'm creating for kids because I know what

00:33:01 they're designed to do, which is to completely distort and trap their brain into this never

00:33:07 ending need for just constant stimulation that has nothing to do with the real world.

00:33:12 They're designed to be addictive, like cigarettes were or all other kinds of substances were.

00:33:17 And if you can just keep people continuously distracted,

00:33:21 meaning not focused on reality,

00:33:23 then the people who are focused on reality

00:33:25 have a gigantic advantage,

00:33:26 which is that they can do anything that they want

00:33:28 and very few people will pay attention.

00:33:31 And you just feed them enough propaganda,

00:33:32 you feed them enough justification

00:33:34 and they're more eager to get back to that distraction,

00:33:38 which really becomes an addiction.

00:33:41 Well, you certainly see it in the country

00:33:43 since February 28th,

00:33:45 you know, the day that the war with Iran started and kind of the certain precipitous decline of

00:33:51 the United States began. Obviously, there's kind of no way out without a readjustment downward

00:33:56 in our standard of living. Like we know that's going to happen. And yet people don't seem as

00:34:03 agitated about it as you might have expected at the beginning. And most interesting of all,

00:34:09 there have been almost no protests, anti-war protests.

00:34:13 And having seen a lot of anti-war protests in my life,

00:34:17 I'm baffled.

00:34:18 This is the most significant war that we have fought,

00:34:21 I would argue, since the Second World War,

00:34:23 in that it'll change balance of power globally.

00:34:25 And there are no protests?

00:34:27 Like, what is going on?

00:34:30 Well, I think if you look at what has sparked

00:34:34 anti-war protests in the past,

00:34:37 it basically requires some visceral interaction with the war that makes people horrified and

00:34:43 sickened by what's happening the vietnam war protests were almost certainly induced primarily

00:34:49 by the fact that huge numbers of coffins and body bags were coming back to the united states on a

00:34:55 very regular basis and so people's neighbors and communities and people who they went to school

00:35:00 with or who worked with all had kids who were going over to the jungles of vietnam and coming

00:35:04 back dead um but it was also you know one of the first really televised wars i mean it wasn't

00:35:10 televised in the sense that the first iraq war was the gulf war or the wars now are but it was

00:35:15 still there was enough of a you know with with the the reporting that was done on some of the

00:35:21 massacres by the u.s military and the amount of death that was taking place so people felt that

00:35:26 in their neighborhoods they felt it in their communities there was no way to avoid it and

00:35:29 then even wars that have sparked anti-war protests more recently that didn't involve

00:35:34 american troops coming back home like the u.s funded and armed israeli destruction of gaza

00:35:39 was one where every single day people were seeing the most horrific carnage you know babies having

00:35:44 their limbs blown apart entire families being incinerated intense even though they were

00:35:48 completely defenseless basically the most horrific things you could possibly think of

00:35:52 and i think anyone with a basic moral conscience knowing that their government was paying for it

00:35:56 that their money was being used for it,

00:35:58 that their government's forces

00:35:59 were being diplomatically and militarily harnessed

00:36:02 to participate in it and to protect it,

00:36:05 felt this kind of immediacy,

00:36:06 this visceral disgust

00:36:08 that also caused them to protest.

00:36:10 We don't really have that,

00:36:11 either of those in Iran.

00:36:12 The number of American deaths

00:36:14 have been relatively limited

00:36:15 by virtue of the fact that Trump

00:36:16 has not ordered ground troops into Iran.

00:36:19 At the same time,

00:36:21 we've gotten very little visual

00:36:25 idea of how many people who are civilians have been killed in iran the very first day we know

00:36:32 that we killed 165 schoolgirls the very people we claim we were going to war to liberate

00:36:36 by just dropping a gigantic missile on their school and then a second missile when people 0.88

00:36:44 showed up to help them the notorious double strike missiles that the israelis use constantly

00:36:48 in gaza so it's not like this war has been free of atrocities and the like but i think it's been

00:36:55 kept hidden enough. We don't know the names of Iranian victims. We don't really get a full

00:36:59 glimpse of it is. And at the same time, given the few number of people who are fighting the war,

00:37:04 the fact that not many of them are coming back dead, I think it's been enough to just kind of

00:37:07 numb people and make them think, well, this isn't really something that's affecting me directly,

00:37:12 even though I'm paying more. I think there's a pretty high trigger for when people are going

00:37:17 to go out into the street and actually protest. I should also add, Tucker, this is something to

00:37:21 consider as well is the protest movement that occurred on American campuses about the war in

00:37:29 Gaza did not just peter out. Those were crushed. They were crushed through a combination of police

00:37:35 violence, but especially essentially the criminalization of those protests. Many of

00:37:39 those protesters got expelled. A lot of them got deported. They made very clear the government did

00:37:45 that they regarded protests against government policy, even though it's one of our most

00:37:49 foundational rights that's protected by the Constitution as something that was going to be

00:37:53 crushed through the use of police force and state punishments of all kind. And when you create a

00:37:58 climate where people know if they protest the government's war policies, there's a good chance

00:38:03 they're going to suffer personally. I think you raise the bar by design even higher for when people

00:38:07 are willing to go out into the streets. Home ownership has always been at the center of the

00:38:11 American dream. It is an actual asset, a place people work their entire lives to build, a place

00:38:17 stability and security and real value. Right now, though, too many homeowners are stuck

00:38:22 swiping credit cards to cover groceries. There's basically a survival tax of 20% interest or more.

00:38:28 So why keep handing your money to the banks when you could keep it for your family? Interest is

00:38:33 what kills you. Our friends at American Financing have a better way. They're helping homeowners

00:38:37 use their hard-earned equity, and they're supporting Americans looking to fulfill

00:38:41 the dream of owning a home with mortgage rates currently in the fives. American Financing saves

00:38:46 its customers an average of $800 a month. That's about 10 grand a year. It's not just a loan. It's

00:38:52 a true financial reset. We recommend American financing. They're called America's home for

00:38:57 home loans for a reason. So get out of credit card debt. I mean, it is just crazy to borrow money.

00:39:05 No judgment, but it doesn't make any sense to borrow money at that rate. If you want out,

00:39:09 Call 800-685-5696, 800-685-5696 or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Tucker.

00:39:21 One of the reasons those protests took place is because there was evidence, as you just said, of what was happening in Gaza.

00:39:27 But there really, there's no coverage of the war and run or for that matter, coverage of the war against Russia from Russia's perspective.

00:39:35 So when the first Gulf War broke out in the winter of 1990 and 1991, CNN famously was there in Baghdad as the United States began its barrage of Baghdad.

00:39:45 And you could watch it live on television. 0.60

00:39:47 That's been true for every war.

00:39:48 It was even true in Afghanistan to some extent and Iraq.

00:39:51 But this war, how many American network correspondents are in Tehran right now?

00:39:57 How many are in Moscow covering that side? 0.83

00:39:59 It does seem intentional.

00:40:02 Like the propaganda is founded on lack of information, I think.

00:40:09 I mean, I think this is so crucial that the easiest way to prevent public outrage about public policy or public behavior that deserves outrage is simply to hide it.

00:40:22 You know, I did a lot of reporting on the atrocities inside factory farms, the way factory food is produced through the torture and slaughter of billions of animals.

00:40:32 And not just their slaughter, but their actual horrific torture, but also the grotesque public health conditions in which these animals are kept that contaminate the food pile, the risk of epidemics from antibiotics, et cetera, et cetera.

00:40:45 And so one of the ways this industry purposely ensures that nobody gets outraged by it is to cover it up.

00:40:50 They actually got used their control of state legislatures and all of the farming states to pass what are called ag-gag laws that made it a criminal offense for anybody to go get a job inside a factory farm and then film what was taking place, which was basically the way the only way that we ever got to a glimpse of what was happening there.

00:41:09 They criminalized it.

00:41:10 Eventually, courts overturned it as the obvious prohibition, violation of the First Amendment

00:41:14 that it was.

00:41:15 But that was their goal was to say, OK, we're going to use barbarism and savagery.

00:41:20 But as long as we prevent the public from knowing about it, they can't care because

00:41:24 they will never see it. 0.61

00:41:25 That has been very much the case with war. 0.64

00:41:28 I remember one time, I don't remember this, but in 2015, there was this kind of like lone

00:41:33 gunman attack on the parliament, the Canadian parliament in Ottawa. 0.52

00:41:38 And it turned out the guy, even though he was Muslim, was mostly just psychiatrically ill, 0.95

00:41:44 had a long history of psychiatric illness. 0.95

00:41:46 And he killed one young guard who stood outside the parliament and nobody else.

00:41:51 And that guy became kind of an icon in Canada.

00:41:54 I was there the whole week.

00:41:55 They had marches in his name.

00:41:58 They interviewed all his family members.

00:42:00 And so there was a sense of, wow, our society has really suffered the loss of this valuable,

00:42:05 precious human life, which it has.

00:42:07 When have you ever heard the name of one of our victims from all the countries that we

00:42:13 bomb and have been bombing for 25 years, all throughout the war on terror, all always now,

00:42:18 all these bombs that dropped, these drones that have dropped on wedding parties, they're

00:42:21 all just dehumanized.

00:42:22 They're all kind of just swept under the rug.

00:42:24 Did you hear of any of the families of the 165 schoolgirls who we killed on the first

00:42:28 day of the war in Iran?

00:42:29 No, that's a very deliberate strategy to make sure that Americans don't think about and

00:42:34 don't focus on the amount of carnage and suffering and bloodshed that our military is causing against

00:42:39 innocent people, because that is the only way that you can get populations to accept these

00:42:45 constant wars is if you don't let them realize what actually it entails. And I think the reason

00:42:51 Gaza was an exception was because so many people in Gaza had so many cameras in their hand and 0.55

00:42:56 were uploading and had allies who could upload the actual carnage and the actual inhumanity

00:43:02 that was taking place in every day

00:43:03 and people couldn't avoid it.

00:43:05 But they made a lot of efforts

00:43:06 to try and prevent that from being seen as well.

00:43:09 That was what the ban of TikTok was ultimately about,

00:43:11 was it was not a fear of China

00:43:14 because that had been around forever.

00:43:16 The idea that we have to ban TikTok 1.00

00:43:17 because the Chinese have too much power

00:43:20 and that went nowhere. 1.00

00:43:21 The only time the TikTok ban picked up enough steam

00:43:23 and got votes in both parties

00:43:24 in the support of the Biden White House

00:43:25 was when the ADL came out and said,

00:43:27 the reason young people are being turned against Israel

00:43:30 in the war in Gaza

00:43:30 is because there's too many of these videos

00:43:32 circulating on TikTok.

00:43:34 And that's when the government intervened and said,

00:43:36 we can't allow TikTok to become

00:43:38 this uncontrolled realm of free speech

00:43:40 because it contaminates our youth

00:43:42 with the things we don't want them to know.

00:43:44 And that's why they took it out of the hands of ByteDance

00:43:46 and basically put it in the hands of Mark Andreessen

00:43:49 and Larry Ellison and people like that. 0.99

00:43:51 How bitterly ironic that it was a Chinese-owned company 1.00

00:43:54 that was bringing too much free speech 1.00

00:43:56 into the United States. 0.57

00:43:57 yeah well i mean that is one of the issues is for no one thinks china is a beacon of free speech 0.91

00:44:04 especially when it comes to their own people that's for sure but in a way they were the only

00:44:09 outlet that the u.s government couldn't fully control right like during covid the u.s government

00:44:14 had no problem whatsoever cracking down on any debates about the origins of covid about the

00:44:19 efficacies of the mask or social distancing or school lockdowns and its advisability they were

00:44:24 easily able to censor it because they had basic control over all of the American big tech platforms

00:44:30 because those big tech platforms need the U.S. government for all their defense contracts,

00:44:34 all the other contracts to get with the CIA and the Pentagon. They're never going to be

00:44:37 adversarial to the U.S. government. ByteDance didn't really have that vested interest in the

00:44:41 United States government and didn't need to obey the U.S. government censorship orders. And so,

00:44:45 as you say, ironically, it was one of the only vestiges of a large platform that the American

00:44:51 government couldn't censor and that is why it had to be taken out of their hands not because

00:44:56 americans wanted to make sure we were free of chinese repression imagine the sensation if you

00:45:01 will of going to sleep feeling like you're floating then waking up rested with no soreness from a hard

00:45:06 or stiff mattress that is the daily experience of people who use brooklyn bedding we can probably

00:45:13 guess what you're thinking a mattress like that is super expensive only bill gates uses a mattress

00:45:19 like that it's probably made in bangladesh anyway oh wrong on all counts brooklyn bedding is an

00:45:24 american company with a seriously impressive 650 000 square foot manufacturing facility in arizona

00:45:31 the company started by a guy called john and he built it from the ground up right here in the u.s

00:45:37 with no college degree by the way brooklyn makes mattresses for every sleep style and body type

00:45:42 plus uses temperature regulation to make sure you stay cool throughout the night they offer a 120

00:45:47 20-night sleep trial. Many nights. So you can return your mattress if you don't love it. Don't

00:45:52 expect that to happen, though, because Brooklyn Bedding has been awarded the best mattress by

00:45:56 CNET and the best hybrid mattress by Wirecutter. People love it. Check for yourself, brooklynbedding.com.

00:46:03 Use the promo code Tucker at checkout for 30% off site-wide. Everything on the site, 30% off.

00:46:10 That's brooklynbedding.com, promo code Tucker, 30% off site-wide all summer.

00:46:16 My concern about the censorship that just covers all the main facts of these two wars in progress in Russia and Iran is that obviously it hardens us to the effects of what our policies actually do.

00:46:32 But it also makes it hard to make wise decisions because you have no idea the other side's perspective.

00:46:38 So, for example, I keep, including at dinner last night,

00:46:40 running into people who sincerely believe

00:46:43 that Ukraine is winning the war against Russia

00:46:45 and who have no idea that the United States

00:46:47 is actually fighting that war, NATO, but our proxy NATO.

00:46:50 But we're, the CIA is allowing all the targeting

00:46:53 to take place and we're running Ukraine.

00:46:56 But they don't, no one seems to know that.

00:46:58 And they seem, so it seems like a feedback loop,

00:47:01 like we're winning, or Ukraine is winning, amazingly,

00:47:04 and Rush is going to surrender at any moment now

00:47:08 and give back to the Donbass.

00:47:11 If you really believe that,

00:47:13 and it's not true, of course,

00:47:14 but if you believe that, 0.91

00:47:15 you're likely to do really dumb things that could, 0.83

00:47:19 well, God knows where they could wind up. 0.96

00:47:21 Do you see that happening?

00:47:23 Oh, I mean, I'm sure you've had this experience,

00:47:26 but sometimes I see things that happen

00:47:28 that actually shock and amaze me

00:47:31 and don't fully understand

00:47:32 why it doesn't produce more shock

00:47:35 and indignation in other people.

00:47:37 And so I just, everywhere I go,

00:47:38 I just try and bring it up

00:47:39 and just remind people,

00:47:40 hey, remember when that happened?

00:47:41 Hoping that one day people understand

00:47:43 how not just alarming it is on its own,

00:47:47 but how reflective it is

00:47:48 of how severely our discourse is controlled.

00:47:51 One of them was when young people on TikTok

00:47:53 discovered the Bin Laden letter

00:47:55 and started passing it around

00:47:56 and they bullied the Guardian

00:47:57 into taking that document off of its site.

00:47:59 So the links no longer worked

00:48:00 and they got TikTok to ban

00:48:02 any discussion of the bin Laden letter

00:48:03 because a bunch of young people were like,

00:48:04 wait a minute, I never knew before

00:48:06 that this is why people said

00:48:08 there was so much hatred

00:48:09 toward the United States and the Middle East

00:48:10 because we sanctioned Iraq 0.57

00:48:12 and killed 100,000 children,

00:48:14 put our military on their most sacred soil in Saudi Arabia, 0.80

00:48:18 but also have been funding Israel 0.82

00:48:20 in the middle of their region

00:48:21 to win all this aggression.

00:48:22 I always thought it was because what we were told, 1.00

00:48:24 like these Muslims hated women 1.00

00:48:25 walking around in bikinis 0.99

00:48:26 and hated the fact that we vote. 0.98

00:48:29 And they were shocked to discover this history

00:48:31 that they had never been told.

00:48:32 And immediately the attempt was

00:48:33 take it off the Guardian website

00:48:35 so that there's nowhere

00:48:36 they can read that letter

00:48:38 and then make TikTok

00:48:40 shut down the hashtag.

00:48:42 And that's one of the examples

00:48:43 that I always bring up.

00:48:45 But the other one is

00:48:46 right after the Russian invasion

00:48:50 of Ukraine in February of 2022,

00:48:54 the EU parliament

00:48:55 quickly enacted a law

00:48:58 that made it a criminal offense

00:49:00 to platform any Russian state media.

00:49:04 So if you're an adult citizen of the Netherlands

00:49:07 or Spain or wherever,

00:49:09 and you want to hear the Russian side of the story,

00:49:12 or you want to hear what Russia is saying

00:49:14 about why they decided to do this

00:49:17 or what's actually happening,

00:49:19 you can't because it's a crime now

00:49:21 to platform Russian state media.

00:49:24 European citizens were not allowed to hear it.

00:49:27 And when I was at Rumble,

00:49:28 they came to rumble and said the french government did and said you have rt and sputnik that you

00:49:35 allow on your site and you need to take those down because you law doesn't permit the dissemination

00:49:39 of those media outlets in our in our countries and when rumble said no they banned all of rumble at

00:49:45 the ip level so rumble was not available in france that's how rigorously enforced it was

00:49:50 now even at the height of the cold war you could go to the new york times and khrushchev would come

00:49:56 to the United States and give a speech and they would print the full text of the speech. He would

00:49:59 be interviewed. We would always hear from Soviet leaders. The Soviet Union, Richard Nixon would go

00:50:03 to the Soviet Union. He would go on national television and talk about the virtues of

00:50:07 capitalism and freedom and the like. This is a level of censorship so extreme that it shocks me

00:50:13 that people tolerate. But the reason for it is, is because if you actually hear the perspective

00:50:18 of the Russians, and I know you did this and I have gone to Russia and I've interviewed Russian

00:50:23 officials, because I do want to hear what they're saying. I do want to hear the perspective of the

00:50:27 other side in a war, but it's become almost like treasonous. You know, this climate has been

00:50:32 created where you're not supposed to listen to them. And any journalist who publish it or talk

00:50:37 about it are somehow traitors to the country or, or accused of being on the payroll of propaganda

00:50:43 simply for reporting what their perspective is, not just what our government officials want you

00:50:48 to know. And it is, you know, nothing makes propagandizing a population easier than if you

00:50:56 get to just banish the population from hearing any alternative views. What do you think the

00:51:02 purpose of this is? Like, what's the goal in the war against Russia? Like, what's the end game?

00:51:09 I mean, I'll just say in one sentence, from my perspective, it's the biggest country in the

00:51:13 world. It's a civilization as well as a nation state. And it has the world's largest nuclear

00:51:18 arsenal. So you're probably not going to defeat Russia, right? Let's just start there. 0.92

00:51:23 So, but do they not know that? Or what, you know, like, what is the plan here?

00:51:30 You know, I have to confess, I've never had a clear answer. I've never gotten a clear answer.

00:51:36 I've never settled on a clear explanation for why the U.S. national security state has so much deep

00:51:44 animosity toward Russia and wants to destroy it.

00:51:47 And because this goes back way before Russiagate, it's one of the reasons why I hated Russiagate

00:51:50 so much, not just because it was a scandal with no evidence, but because I thought it

00:51:53 was dangerous in the extreme to start feeding Americans again on this idea that the gravest

00:51:58 threat to our democracy, the existential threat, happens to be the country with the largest

00:52:03 nuclear stockpile that we've all been trained for generations to hate and fear.

00:52:07 I just knew that that was not just dangerous, but very purposeful. 0.98

00:52:10 And if you go back even to 2010, 2011, Hillary Clinton at the State Department was absolutely obsessed with undermining and subverting Russia. 0.91

00:52:20 She was openly funding, in the name of, of course, democracy, anti-Putin opposition groups.

00:52:26 A lot of the protests that appeared on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and other places were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy under Hillary Clinton's orders, all kinds of covert operations.

00:52:36 When Hillary Clinton wrote her book, Hard Choices, when she got the Obama administration, the only real topic on which she clearly criticized Obama was what she thought was his refusal to, quote-unquote, confront Russia, both in Syria and in Ukraine.

00:52:54 And there has been this, you know, at neocons,

00:52:56 I mean, Jeffrey Goldberg did this interview with Obama

00:52:59 when he was on his way out

00:53:00 about the so-called Obama doctrine.

00:53:02 And Jeffrey Goldberg, as much as he reveres Obama,

00:53:04 was indignant and asking him,

00:53:06 why did you let Russia annex Crimea?

00:53:10 And why didn't you do more to stop Russia

00:53:12 when it came to Ukraine or Syria?

00:53:14 And Obama said, and if you go back and read this,

00:53:16 you're going to have a kind of different view of Obama.

00:53:18 He said, everybody in this town loves to beat their chest

00:53:22 and talk about how we're going to go to war

00:53:23 and we're going to, you know,

00:53:25 take not allow this and stand up to this.

00:53:27 And he said,

00:53:28 we don't have any vital interests in Ukraine.

00:53:30 We never have and we never will. 0.98

00:53:32 And Russia will always have, 0.93

00:53:34 look at Ukraine right on its border,

00:53:36 one of the most vulnerable hearts of its border

00:53:37 as a vital interest for obvious reasons,

00:53:41 the same way Mexico and Canada

00:53:42 are always going to be a vital interest to us.

00:53:44 And we're never going to,

00:53:46 they're always going to have 0.83

00:53:46 escalatory dominance there.

00:53:48 And if anyone in this town wants to stand up and say,

00:53:50 we should go to war with russia risk war with russia over who governs various provinces in

00:53:56 the donbass then let them actually say it but to me that's kind of insane and and it's just odd

00:54:03 because that was 2016 and it was just a couple months later when the entire democratic party 0.75

00:54:07 became utterly fixated on the grave threat posed by russia and you know i'll just tell you this

00:54:14 quick story tucker that i find that always sticks with me it's so interesting uh when i went to

00:54:19 russia one time i think it was like the second or third time after working with snowden there was a

00:54:25 time when snowden was trapped inside the international airport and the u.s government

00:54:30 didn't want anything more in the world than to get their hands on snowden and he was in russian

00:54:34 custody but inside the the airport because russia hadn't let him in and he couldn't and he couldn't

00:54:38 leave they were offering the russians everything that the russians wanted you may have all these

00:54:43 russian fugitives i'll hand them over to you and the russians refused and i thought for sure

00:54:47 Snowden was going to be handed over to the U.S., given what a high priority it was for the U.S.

00:54:52 And when I went to Russia, I asked, like, there was such an obvious deal there to be made. Why

00:54:56 wasn't the deal made? And what I was told was, in part, it's because Russia has, the Russian 0.95

00:55:03 identity has always been about offering free haven to those oppressed and persecuted in the West,

00:55:09 and they seeking refuge in Russia is kind of fundamental to Russia. And so if Putin turned

00:55:15 Snowden over to the U.S., it would be seen as anti-Russian, would be. I know a lot of people

00:55:19 in the U.S. think he's a totalitarian leader who doesn't have to care about Russian public opinion.

00:55:23 Of course, that's an absurd fairy tale. And they said he probably just would provoke so much

00:55:28 outrage that nothing would be really worth it. But they said the real reason is that so often

00:55:33 the U.S. and Russia end up not being able to do deals that are so obviously in both sides,

00:55:38 rational self-interest, because there's like this DNA, generationally cultivated hatred

00:55:43 within the military and intelligence establishments

00:55:46 of both countries that still believe

00:55:49 the other is this existential enemy

00:55:50 long after the Cold War is over

00:55:52 that just almost like inertia

00:55:54 drive each country to want to harm the other.

00:55:58 So I don't know why, Tucker.

00:55:59 I mean, it seems to me like the US and Russia

00:56:01 could do a lot of business.

00:56:02 It did do a lot of business under Obama.

00:56:04 They helped negotiate the Iran deal.

00:56:07 They were fundamental in fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS

00:56:11 alongside the U.S. in Syria with Assad.

00:56:15 And for some reason,

00:56:17 people in the national security state

00:56:18 for all kinds of,

00:56:19 I'll tell you one quick part of it too.

00:56:23 You know, a lot of the most hawkish neocons

00:56:26 in the United States 0.57

00:56:27 are people who are refugees,

00:56:30 Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union,

00:56:33 Ukraine and every part of the Soviet Union.

00:56:37 And Russia, when it was the USSR,

00:56:39 was considered pretty hostile toward Israel.

00:56:42 And so a lot of people who feel alignment with Israel,

00:56:44 who are loyal to Israel,

00:56:46 have long looked at Russia, the Russians, the Soviets,

00:56:49 as being one of their worst enemies

00:56:51 because they were adversarial to Israel.

00:56:54 They often were aligned with the Arabs in the Middle East.

00:56:56 And I think a lot of it is that residual

00:56:59 kind of cultural allegiance

00:57:03 that these people continue to harbor

00:57:05 even once they come and become American

00:57:07 cannon and start working in the U.S. national security state. For the last 50 years or so,

00:57:11 oil has been priced pretty much exclusively in U.S. dollars. It's called the petrodollar. And

00:57:16 the point was to give the dollar our currency built in demand around the world. And it's worked

00:57:21 pretty well, but it's changing fast. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations are increasingly selling

00:57:26 oil trades in Chinese yuan or other currencies. So the dollar's share of global reserves has

00:57:31 dropped to its lowest level in a quarter century. Central banks around the world now have more gold

00:57:36 than they've had in decades.

00:57:37 China's buying so much gold,

00:57:39 it's affecting the global price.

00:57:40 Don't wait until the dollar continues to lose value.

00:57:43 You can protect your wealth today

00:57:44 by opening a precious metals IRA

00:57:46 or by buying gold,

00:57:47 having it shipped to your home or stored for you.

00:57:50 That's why we started Battalion Metals,

00:57:51 to give Americans an honest, fair-priced way

00:57:54 to buy precious metals.

00:57:55 It's not a scam.

00:57:56 You know exactly what we're making.

00:57:57 It's like three points over spot.

00:57:59 BattalionMetals.com slash Tucker is the address.

00:58:02 BattalionMetals.com slash Tucker to learn more.

00:58:06 but a lot of these people well i mean jeffrey goldberg at the atlantic for example tory and

00:58:16 newland uh formerly at dick cheney's office and then the state department i mean these

00:58:20 are american-born people they're not from they're american soviet moldova or wherever

00:58:26 yeah no but their families are from there you know it's i mean marco rubio is an american-born

00:58:32 American, but his parents come from Cuba. And if you grew up in an immigrant home, I didn't,

00:58:38 but I know plenty of people who did. My grandparents were, two of my grandparents

00:58:41 were immigrants. You hear and then develop a kind of affinity for the worldview that looks at that

00:58:48 country, that country of origin as a very special country to which you owe some kind of an allegiance.

00:58:53 And so you don't have to come from that country, although some of them do. But I think one of the

00:58:58 reasons why Marco Rubio is so eager to rule Cuba, which he absolutely is and is on the verge of

00:59:03 doing, is because that was the lifelong dream of his parents and his extended family and community

00:59:08 was that the United States government, the power of it, would be used to fix what they always

00:59:12 regarded as their country, the one to which they always planned to go back to once it was fixed.

00:59:17 And that's now what Marco Rubio is going to do. And the fact that he sees the world through this

00:59:21 Cuban immigrant experience obviously has a major role in that. I think that's true for a lot of

00:59:25 different groups, including people who were Soviet Jews or whose families became refugees from Soviet

00:59:33 Russia. Why the fixation on? I don't know. You tell me what you think is. Well, I think there's

00:59:39 something I don't know. First of all, I don't know the answer, but I do know because I've listened

00:59:44 very carefully as someone who's been agnostic on Russia my entire life. I'd never had strong

00:59:50 feelings about it ever. But I've listened carefully to people describe it in Washington

00:59:55 at the policymaking level. And you always get this sense that they feel, and sometimes even

01:00:02 just say it, that they have a right to control what happens in Russia. And I've always been

01:00:07 confused by that. Where does that right come from? It's like, it's almost like an ownership. Like

01:00:11 it was ours and this guy called Putin showed up and like took it over and he's illegitimate.

01:00:17 And from my American perspective, I'm like, I don't know, whatever you think of Putin, but it's not my country.

01:00:22 He was elected.

01:00:23 He is very popular.

01:00:24 No one can dispute that.

01:00:26 All polls show that.

01:00:27 Putin is way more popular than Trump or any American leader has ever been since Teddy Roosevelt.

01:00:32 So it's like, I don't, where do you get this feeling that you have a right to control what happens in this country?

01:00:38 But I have always noticed that a lot of these people seem to feel they have that right.

01:00:41 well there's a you know one of the i mean i i still think russiagate of all the moral panics

01:00:47 that we had you know like aoc yesterday called wokeism quote-unquote crazy um even they're

01:00:53 being forced now to acknowledge that was some insane moral panic i'm just trying to laugh it

01:00:57 off like it was just some fun zany trivial thing that went a little awry as opposed to this deeply 0.70

01:01:01 repressive mccarthyite you know bloodthirsty campaign to destroy people's lives for the 0.89

01:01:08 slightest deviation or thought crimes. But in any event, that was one. COVID was one. We've had a

01:01:12 lot of these. And I still think Russiagate was probably among the most deranged, especially the

01:01:18 one that got the most buy-in. And when people started saying with a straight face, oh, this is

01:01:24 the Russians trying to interfere in our secret democracy. And so that was something that only

01:01:29 the Russians do, that there's some kind of unprecedented crime. There's a Time Magazine 0.85

01:01:35 cover story from 1992 or 1993 where they have on the cover uncle sam and then two like prominent

01:01:43 clinton adjacent political advisors and a big picture of boris yeltsin and i forget exactly

01:01:49 the headline is but it's something like how americans help boris yeltsin win and it was

01:01:54 basically an armada of americans political consultants and strategists and the like going

01:01:59 over and creating the brand of boris yeltsin so that we could kind of control the privatization

01:02:04 process and every other aspect of Russian public life, which is one of the absolute worst moments

01:02:09 for Russians in all of their history. And they've had a lot of terrible moments,

01:02:13 but that post-Gorbachev, post-Cold War privatization, Yeltsin era, Russia was

01:02:18 absolutely sickening and atrocious in terms of the suffering that it brought. 0.94

01:02:22 And Americans were boasting of the role that they played, the central role they played 0.88

01:02:26 in causing all that to happen so that they could have basically an American puppet,

01:02:30 it, which was Boris Yeltsin, at the helm of Russia. And I think you're right that when

01:02:35 Putin came in, and this is so often what drives American foreign policy, is obviously has nothing

01:02:41 to do with whether a country is or a leader is democratic or repressive. We love more than

01:02:46 anything pro-American dictators. The more savage, the better. The thing we can't abide, the things

01:02:52 that causes us to want to overthrow countries and governments and do coups and the like, is when we

01:02:57 can't control a particular leader. We had the war in Libya once Gaddafi wanted to use revenues from

01:03:03 oil reserves to fund his own people instead of sending all that foreign capital out while his

01:03:08 country lived in poverty and misery. That's typically what happens. And Putin very much

01:03:12 represented this kind of nationalistic figure who wasn't hostile at all to the West, but also

01:03:17 wanted to preserve his own country's traditions and especially its sovereignty. Well, I think

01:03:23 that's really worth saying. I mean, Putin on the spectrum of Russian politics is firmly on the

01:03:29 moderate side. I mean, yes, right. And pro-European in his early career was in Europe and East Germany

01:03:36 as a KGB officer famously speaks German. I mean, he's tried to join NATO. So this idea that like

01:03:42 he is a Russian nationalist who hates the West on principle or for ideological reasons or whatever

01:03:47 is like totally insane. 0.51

01:03:49 And I do think we're going to see someone like that 0.68

01:03:52 lead Russia next.

01:03:53 There's no doubt in my mind.

01:03:55 But where did that,

01:03:56 why the fixation on lying to us

01:03:59 about who Putin is and what that system is,

01:04:01 it seems crazy to me.

01:04:05 I mean, this is what the US government does

01:04:08 and its allied media institutions do

01:04:11 when they want to demonize a foreign leader

01:04:13 to justify a war.

01:04:14 I mean, I, you know,

01:04:15 So the Democratic Party, and not just, you know, say like the Chuck Schumer wing of the Democratic Party, but AOC, Ilhan Omar, the whole squad, like every as far left as you can go to the far center right as you can go, were unanimous from the start in wanting to take hundreds of billions of dollars that they claim they really want to use to improve the material lives of American citizens at home.

01:04:41 and they wanted to send it to the coffers of Raytheon and Boeing and Palantir in order to

01:04:47 fuel the NATO war that does not save Ukraine. It sacrifices Ukraine for the geopolitical of

01:04:53 weakening Russia. Not a single Democrat dissented. I think now there was recently some exchange where

01:05:00 Ilhan Omar and Summer Lee said something, accused some neocon member of the Senate with whom they

01:05:07 were arguing online well you're the one who paid for the bombs that are dropping on on these people

01:05:12 and he reminded them no you're at you you also voted to send the money to to buy those bombs

01:05:17 for for ukraine and i think some of them are starting to have a little bit of second thoughts

01:05:21 once they see just how this war is escalating it's still very dangerous but that is when you

01:05:28 can create a kind of demonized single-headed figure and it's always based on this lie that

01:05:34 he's an absolute

01:05:36 autocrat. You just

01:05:38 make the country personalized into

01:05:40 that leader. It's a very standard neocon pro-war

01:05:42 propaganda technique. It's like,

01:05:44 I don't know if you remember, but back in 2008,

01:05:46 2010, we were constantly told that

01:05:47 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the

01:05:50 new Hitler. There's been so

01:05:52 many new Hitlers since and before.

01:05:54 He served two constitutional

01:05:56 terms, walked out of office

01:05:57 peacefully. No one has ever heard of him again until recently

01:06:00 when apparently the Israelis were trying to

01:06:01 reinstall him as the new leader.

01:06:04 of Iran, like the new Hitler. And of course, you know, Saddam, all these people we were once 0.97

01:06:08 aligned with, did business with, suddenly become overnight, you know, this wild caricature. If you

01:06:14 go back and look at what every American leader has said, who dealt with Vladimir Putin, going

01:06:18 back to Bill Clinton and George Bush and Obama, they always said he's a very rational, trustworthy,

01:06:24 you know, calculating leader. You can do agreements with him. And again, both Bush and Obama worked

01:06:30 closely with putin in all sorts of ways and then suddenly when it was time to fuel a war and to 0.85

01:06:35 re-demonize russia suddenly became putin is this madman unlike anything we've seen since hitler

01:06:41 you know overnight the the narrative changes and so many people uh succumb to it and that is one of

01:06:50 the main prongs of war propaganda is just to demonize these other political leaders so if

01:06:55 If AOC is describing wokeness as excessive or trying to make it laugh it off, or I saw

01:07:02 that she said yesterday that calling for the abolition of police, that's just something

01:07:06 you say during a pandemic.

01:07:08 I mean, just kind of joking around.

01:07:09 It's just a Halloween costume she wore for a day and discarded.

01:07:13 If she's talking like that, she's running for president, obviously.

01:07:17 How would you evaluate her politics?

01:07:20 If you're trying to understand, particularly for someone like me who's not a lifelong Democrat,

01:07:25 Who is she and how different is she from, say, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Steny Hoyer or just the Democratic leadership?

01:07:35 I think the person who understood much earlier than almost anybody else who AOC was is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

01:07:47 Marjorie Taylor Greene,

01:07:48 even before what kind of became

01:07:49 her eye-opening and awakening

01:07:51 and transformation,

01:07:53 used to always object to this notion

01:07:55 that AOC was some kind of radical,

01:07:57 some kind of threat to establishment,

01:08:00 status quo dogma.

01:08:01 And she would always say,

01:08:02 AOC is not a radical.

01:08:04 AOC is a fraud. 1.00

01:08:05 She's a partisan hack. 1.00

01:08:07 She's there to put a kind of happier face 1.00

01:08:10 for younger people to commandeer 0.94

01:08:12 and steer them into the Democratic Party

01:08:14 and make them feel as though

01:08:15 they're joining a party.

01:08:16 that isn't really chuck schumer and joe biden's party or bill clinton and hillary clinton's party

01:08:21 it's like a nicer more socialistic kind of softer younger hipper version and in that way she kind

01:08:27 of becomes the democratic party's principal tool there's nothing in aoc's life remotely that

01:08:31 suggests any kind of anti-establishment or uh radical impulses of any kind you know she got

01:08:40 lucky she ran against uh one of these kind of guys who even though he is extremely powerful

01:08:46 within dc you know spends all his time in the back rooms yeah uh with lobbyists writing the

01:08:50 laws which is joe crawley who was going to be the successor nancy pelosi he's the kind of guy that

01:08:55 never goes on any shows no one in his district knows him doesn't know his name hasn't seen him

01:08:59 he has nothing to do with his district except he like nominally represents it so because she took

01:09:04 out a member of the Democratic establishment and was nominally part of DSA. Her branding was that

01:09:11 suited her that she was this very radical figure. She's anything but that. To me, she already has

01:09:16 morphed into Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi used to at one time be considered far too to the left from 1.00

01:09:22 San Francisco. And then all she did was she actually became extremely hawkish. Nancy Pelosi 1.00

01:09:26 made this very provocative visit to Taiwan to treat the Taiwanese. It was almost like a state

01:09:31 visit. It was very provocative to the Chinese 1.00

01:09:33 against what the Biden administration

01:09:34 was willing to do. She was an absolute hawk

01:09:37 on Israel and Iran and pretty

01:09:39 much everything else. She was

01:09:41 few people served corporate power 0.96

01:09:43 and corporate interests more than Nancy Pelosi. 1.00

01:09:45 AOC is well on her way to being that. 0.91

01:09:47 And we've seen it.

01:09:49 I mean, I could give you a thousand examples, but

01:09:50 suffice to say that that's who she really is.

01:09:54 The DSA

01:09:55 is descendant, obviously, and

01:09:57 DSA candidates are starting to win in primaries,

01:09:59 famously New York 3-1.

01:10:01 um are there dsa-led protests against the war with russia because it seems to me if you were

01:10:07 like actually against the establishment there's no bigger establishment project in the war against

01:10:12 russia it's been ongoing as you just said for 30 years and it enriches raytheon and boeing and the

01:10:18 rest of the defense contractors so like if you were a radical political party you'd start by

01:10:25 opposing that, are they? Well, some are. And I'll tell you this interesting thing. When I first

01:10:33 started really kind of connecting to and immersing myself in critiques of foreign policy and U.S.

01:10:40 oligarchy and the like, the models that I used were kind of what you might now call the old left,

01:10:46 like the ACLU civil libertarian. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:10:48 skokie you know even noam chomsky who was like just you know who thought that the intelligence

01:10:54 agencies and and the military industrial complex were the greatest evil what is the last time you

01:10:59 heard anybody associated on the left with any kind of platform like bernie sanders or aoc

01:11:04 talk about the evils of the cia or the uh or the the nsa oh they endorse abigail spanberger

01:11:11 as the cia literally takes over the commonwealth of virginia exactly at least and of the democratic 1.00

01:11:17 Party. And the reason is in so many ways, because Russiagate was a, basically it was a hoax that

01:11:23 emanated from the CIA and the FBI. And those people became the allies of the Democratic Party

01:11:28 against Trump. And they aligned with those people. Just to give you a very quick little

01:11:34 anecdote into that, well, Matt Taibbi went to testify about the Twitter files that showed this

01:11:40 constant, endless, coercive pressure from the Biden administration on big tech, including

01:11:45 Twitter to censor COVID dissidents, they had this guy, Colin Allred, who was a, who's a

01:11:51 Democratic congressman from Texas who said, you know, you should take off your tinfoil hat and

01:11:56 realize that maybe the good folks of the CIA and the FBI are censoring, not for any nefarious

01:12:01 purposes, but because they want to keep you safe. I was like, that's a democratic party is now the

01:12:08 one that tells you that you should be grateful for CIA censorship because all they want to do

01:12:12 is just help the good people stay safe and that's what the democratic party has become and that's

01:12:16 why there was basically no opposition to the you know they were told russia was what put trump in

01:12:21 office that that russia was the absolute aggressor and this was these were war crimes similar to the

01:12:28 worst wars you can imagine they all got just overnight convinced to to want to pour hundreds

01:12:32 of billions of dollars into the uh arms industry one of the candidates who won in new york dara 1.00

01:12:38 Liza Chevalier, who was actually one of the least likely to win. She ran against that 0.99

01:12:43 eight-year incumbent who was the head of the House Progressive Hispanic Caucus, and she won.

01:12:50 She was actually somebody who has a history of saying, we're not going to support this NATO war.

01:12:55 Why are we spending all this money to fund the NATO war against Russia, that sacrificing Ukrainians?

01:13:03 I was so happy to finally find someone on the left who reconnected to that old. 0.53

01:13:08 And, you know, she kind of quickly has downplayed it because Ukraine remains a religion on the left.

01:13:12 So there is some of that more positive radicalism among some of these DSA candidates.

01:13:17 The problem, though, Tucker, you see this with Trump and the MAGA movement, and you've definitely seen it with a lot of these supposedly radical candidates who became adjacent to the Democratic Party,

01:13:27 is you can think that you're taking over these parties

01:13:30 in order to like commandeer them

01:13:32 and their power to change their dogma to yours,

01:13:35 but infinitely more likely for so many reasons

01:13:38 is that it will commandeer you 0.99

01:13:40 and it will suck you in 0.99

01:13:42 and it will severely limit,

01:13:44 even if you have radical ideas or impulses

01:13:46 or outside of the norm or anti-establishment thoughts,

01:13:49 will severely limit your ability to advocate them

01:13:52 and to impose them.

01:13:53 that is uh the most bracing fact and i'm glad you said that but i'm also sort of sorry you said that

01:14:01 because it's so depressing do you see i mean is there anywhere and i almost hate to use the word

01:14:07 radical because i think this is also reasonable and pro-human like don't fight wars if you don't

01:14:12 have to don't you know lie to your own population these are not right these are not radical they

01:14:18 should be like foundational beliefs. But anyway, they're radical in this context

01:14:22 of our politics. Do you see any movement, actual reform movement rising out of the betrayal of

01:14:31 MAGA and the corruption of everyone else? I mean, the problem is, is that

01:14:37 our system of government has been constantly fortified each decade to make it harder and

01:14:45 harder to exist outside of the duopoly. And the reason is obvious that all politicians are either

01:14:51 members of the Republican or Democratic Party. And one of their most common interests is to make

01:14:55 sure that you only have the Democratic and Republican Party and that it's virtually

01:14:58 impossible for anyone to compete in a meaningful way with it. And so every law that gets passed,

01:15:05 every time there's election laws rewritten, every time it's in the direction of making it

01:15:09 increasingly more difficult for any kind of independent party or movement or third party

01:15:14 that wants to remain independent of both parties

01:15:16 to have any meaningful success.

01:15:18 I have to say, you know,

01:15:19 there are countries like in Europe,

01:15:22 in South America, including in Brazil,

01:15:23 that have a multi-party system.

01:15:26 Brazil has been like 26 parties, for example,

01:15:28 represented in the Congress.

01:15:30 But even in the democratic world,

01:15:32 things are starting to get polarized as well

01:15:34 between whether it's the populist and the populist right

01:15:37 or the populist right and the establishment left,

01:15:40 because people are just living on this politics of fear.

01:15:42 Like you don't have to like who you support

01:15:44 as long as they're less scary than the alternative.

01:15:47 So that's kind of a cultural norm

01:15:50 that has been developed and imposed

01:15:52 that further strengthens this difficulty.

01:15:55 At the same time,

01:15:56 like everything we've been talking about

01:15:57 throughout this entire discussion

01:15:59 is about the fact that Americans are,

01:16:02 you know, and this is for me what led to

01:16:03 not just selection of Trump, by the way,

01:16:05 but actually Obama as well, more than anything else,

01:16:07 is these were figures so unlikely in the past

01:16:10 and became possible only because people wanted

01:16:13 unlikely figures. They wanted the figures that didn't look like they came from the establishment

01:16:18 that they've come more and more to hate with good reason every year. And that is creating an

01:16:23 instability, which as you said before, can be scary because instability can lead to things

01:16:27 that are even worse than what you're rebelling against in the first place. But instability also

01:16:32 entails a lot of opportunity. And I can't tell you exactly how or when, but we are getting to

01:16:37 the point, I think, where people who never before would have considered it are going to be much more

01:16:42 open to identifying with movements or even kind of campaigns or parties that are not connected to

01:16:50 or identifying as Republican or Democrat. We've seen ones in the past that have worked like

01:16:55 Ross Perot. Of course, he was a billionaire, which is maybe what you need. But he had a very

01:17:02 successful third party candidacy based on the support by both Clinton and Bush 41 for a free

01:17:08 trade that, as he very presciently warned, would de-industrialize the country, suck out all jobs.

01:17:13 And, you know, you've seen that before, but I think we've never been more right for it because

01:17:18 both parties are hated and the system itself is hated. And I think people are craving

01:17:25 a credible alternative. It's just hard to create a credible alternative,

01:17:28 given all the barriers that have been deliberately erected.

01:17:32 But something is coming. You feel that?

01:17:33 for sure i mean no doubt how can it not i mean this is you know the biggest myth the biggest

01:17:40 lie of our political system is that the two political parties can't agree on anything they're

01:17:45 always at each other's throats it's always so polarized the reality is that the two political

01:17:49 parties agree on 90 at least of major policy issues the only time the media covers it is in

01:17:57 those very few cases when they disagree and it casts the appearance that they're always disagreeing

01:18:01 Obama himself, when, you know, they used to use this very vitriolic language against him,

01:18:05 like John Boehner and the House Republicans, he would always say in private, we all know it's

01:18:09 theater. We're all playing within the 40-yard line, you know, the two 40-yard lines. That's

01:18:14 the reality of the two political parties in the United States. This myth that there's these vast

01:18:19 fundamental differences between these two parties is crucial to giving you the sense that you have

01:18:23 this wild freedom, that everything is just so free-spirited and nothing is controlled or

01:18:29 limited when in reality, there's lockdown on most policy debates because both parties are fully

01:18:33 on board because they serve the same donor classes. They serve the same interests. And that is, I

01:18:40 think more and more people are realizing that. And I mean, the fact that we elected Donald Trump

01:18:45 twice, for me, pretty much proves that anything is possible. You have this amazing ability to

01:18:52 crystallize and explain things I've suspected or believed, but better than I ever could is

01:18:58 really the smartest. Glenn Greenwald, thank you

01:19:00 very much for that.

01:19:02 Always great talking to you, Dunker.

01:19:03 Thanks.

`witch hunt`	Both words, anywhere in the episode.
`"witch hunt"`	The exact phrase.
`witch OR hunt`	Either word.
`"alpha male" -"high value"`	The first phrase, but not the second.
`(feminist OR feminism) AND (marriage OR divorce)`	Parentheses group alternatives.
`"decline civilization"~5`	Both words within 5 words of each other.

`misogyn*`	Any word starting with "misogyn": misogyny, misogynist, misogynistic…
`feminizm~1`	Words one letter off: catches typos and transcription errors.

`person:"Andrew Tate"`	Episodes where they host, guest, or are mentioned.
`host:"Glenn Beck"`	Episodes they host.
`guest:"Jordan Peterson"`	Episodes they appear on as a guest.
`mentioned:"Andrew Tate" -host:"Andrew Tate"`	Talked about on other people's shows.
`show:"Bannon's War Room"`	Episodes from one show.

`topics:abortion`	Episodes tagged with a topic (see the Topics page).
`summary:"Andrew Tate"`	Words in the episode summary. Summaries are machine-written and can be wrong.

`"great replacement" AND episode_date:[NOW-1YEAR TO NOW]`	From the past 12 months.
`lockdown AND episode_date:[2020-01-01T00:00:00Z TO 2020-12-31T23:59:59Z]`	From one year. Dates need the full time, as shown.
`"high value" AND misogyny_count:[100 TO *]`	Episodes with 100 or more sentences flagged as misogynistic. Also: hate_speech_count, toxicity_count, word_count.

The Tucker Carlson Show - August 14, 2026

Glenn Greenwald： Propaganda, Putin, AOC, and the New Movement Rising From the Ashes of MAGA

Episode Stats

Transcript