The Tucker Carlson Show - Iran Update： Israel’s Newest Bombing Campaign, the Oncoming War With China and How to Avoid It

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00:00:30.000 colonel wilgerson thank you so much for doing this i think most americans understand this as

00:00:39.700 a war between the united states in partnership with israel against iran but there are of course

00:00:43.780 a lot of other players acting on this drama maybe in ways that we don't perceive china would be

00:00:50.440 the biggest and potentially most threatening to our interest what is china's role in this conflict

00:00:56.840 It's a role, I think, forced upon them at the moment. 0.96

00:01:00.760 Not that they can't handle it.

00:01:02.460 They seem to be quite adaptable with regard to this very frenetic and indeterminate presidency and empire.

00:01:11.240 But it's forced on them because they didn't think that this was going to happen in the way that it's happened, I think. 0.50

00:01:17.740 That is, say, this being the war of choice with Iran.

00:01:21.680 And some things are happening in the war that are probably disturbing to them.

00:01:26.720 For example, the latest completed railroad in their five base road initiative railroads was probably the most strategic one in many ways.

00:01:37.720 It brings China's Pacific ports all the way around on land, and then intended was up the Persian Gulf along the old route that we used to resupply the Soviet Union during World War II, and eventually into the Caucasus and beyond.

00:01:57.840 And now we're bombing it, Israel, and we are bombing that railroad.

00:02:02.400 Now, of course, railroads don't get bombed very well. You could drop all the ordnance in the world on them, and they will get a bunch of people out there and repair them pretty quickly. But nonetheless, it shows that there's something more to this war of choice than perhaps even Trump knows about. I'm sure there are people in the Pentagon who know about it that are happening, and the world is basically ignorant of it.

00:02:27.880 Well, can you expand on that?

00:02:29.800 There are things happening that the president doesn't know about, but that some planners at the Pentagon doubtless do.

00:02:34.700 What would those things be?

00:02:36.560 Well, one of them is bombing that railroad.

00:02:38.560 It just started recently with both Israel and the United States making it a principal target.

00:02:44.860 And one of the things they're trying to do, of course, and this is a hugely geostrategic issue that most people don't.

00:02:53.340 I'm not sure I understand it completely.

00:02:55.540 But if you go back in time to earlier empires when the real power, cultural, technological, economic, military, and otherwise was in the East, you see one of the ways that those empires roughly defeated other empires by shifting maritime commerce to the land because maritime commerce was simply becoming too expensive for them.

00:03:20.680 They put the Portuguese empire out of business, for example.

00:03:23.980 And what they did was they shifted along one of their routes, primary routes, was this route China is now using to eventually go up the Persian Gulf and into Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, the Caucasus, and all northward.

00:03:36.720 Marrying up with the other three base road initiative railroads, which incidentally have been adumbrated seriously by the war in Ukraine.

00:03:44.220 Does that ring a bell with anybody, Geo, strategically?

00:03:47.380 They're not emptying into Europe as they were intended to do.

00:03:51.340 They've stopped pretty much. 0.52

00:03:53.120 And what does that do?

00:03:54.800 Well, basically, those railroads mean that instead of two and a half to three days

00:04:00.000 and very expensive maritime shipping for China's Pacific port produce,

00:04:05.920 it's 16 hours into the heart of Europe.

00:04:08.480 That's a huge change, one that will drive a lot of commerce off the seas 0.54

00:04:13.360 and will, to a certain extent, negate the Babel-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal,

00:04:19.480 maybe even the Panama Canal, although China's built that very, very luxurious state-of-the-art

00:04:26.160 port on the west coast of Peru. But that's looking toward the Pacific and looking toward

00:04:32.540 that aspect of commerce. So don't expect a lot of that to be going through the canal even.

00:04:37.880 These railroads are a game changer in terms of commerce, and think about this for a moment, in terms of one of the United States' supposedly great strengths, it's maritime power, because we won't need to police the seas anymore.

00:04:53.580 It'll all be going over land.

00:04:55.240 I think a lot of Americans are at a great disadvantage in understanding this because they lack a sense of the mechanics of commerce.

00:05:04.740 Products just appear. It's not clear how.

00:05:07.200 And they lack a sense of geography, the idea that, you know, Iran, you could reach China from Iran overland.

00:05:13.980 People, I think, lack the perspective of how exactly that would happen.

00:05:19.100 But clearly the Pentagon understands these questions, right?

00:05:22.920 So they're bombing that railroad for a reason, which would be what, do you think?

00:05:29.020 Well, to set it back and to tell China we know what they're doing and we don't like it.

00:05:35.020 That route is such a serious threat in and of itself because of what you look at in terms of commerce during the period immediately prior to World War II, 0.86

00:05:50.160 when Britain and the United States sneaked into Iran.

00:05:53.840 And I mean that, we sneaked in there.

00:05:55.720 They were Nazi sympathizers at the time.

00:05:58.720 And we built a road and we flanked it with security. 1.00

00:06:01.920 And at that time, the Iranians couldn't challenge it very much. 1.00

00:06:04.960 And we shipped all manner of goods up that road 0.96

00:06:07.980 into the belly of the Soviet Union.

00:06:09.620 Stalingrad would have never held out without that supply route.

00:06:12.740 Hundreds of thousands of trucks and wheel vehicles

00:06:16.400 and other implements of war went up that route.

00:06:19.380 It was second only to Murmansk, and in terms of strategic effect, it was more important than Murmansk.

00:06:26.220 How many Americans even know that?

00:06:27.780 How many Americans even knew that at the time? 0.65

00:06:31.220 So it's a real game changer in terms of the United States, if it has to do anything about China viscerally, if it has to go to war with China, if it has to fight them, it's essential that we control these lines of communication, and we're not.

00:06:49.380 So what's the Chinese perspective on this? 0.53

00:06:53.860 As it has been ever since Deng Xiaoping started capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

00:06:59.940 We do not want a war. 0.60

00:07:02.060 We will beat you without a war.

00:07:04.340 We are going to beat you technologically. 0.97

00:07:06.380 We're going to beat you culturally.

00:07:07.880 We're going to beat you militarily.

00:07:09.520 We're going to beat you every dimension of power that you can imagine.

00:07:12.680 And this latest edict by Xi Jinping, which the American press has completely missed as far as I can tell,

00:07:19.460 He put out the latest in a series of edicts

00:07:23.800 that have come from Chinese premiers from Deng Xiaoping on, 0.98

00:07:27.820 who Jintao was a little bit of an aberration,

00:07:30.340 but that's one reason they got rid of him.

00:07:32.400 But Xi Jinping has been right in there,

00:07:34.680 and this latest one says,

00:07:36.340 we are essentially triumphant in every element of global power but one.

00:07:42.960 Now we're going to take on that one,

00:07:45.440 and that one is financial control.

00:07:48.600 And that means the renminbi being substituted for the dollar and everything from oil sales to you name it, it will become the transactional and reserve currency already is to a great extent for about 40% of the world.

00:08:02.240 They're going to shoot for 60 to 70% of the world.

00:08:05.020 They're going to drive the Bretton Woods system back where it came from.

00:08:08.460 They're going to eliminate SWIFT.

00:08:10.800 They're going to eliminate our ability to sanction countries.

00:08:13.580 That's one of their major purposes.

00:08:15.040 And that's an altruistic purpose for them.

00:08:17.940 They think eliminating our ability to put sanctions on other countries in the world, through which since the turn of this century, we have killed 38 million people, mostly men, women, and children, 38 million people.

00:08:32.620 That rivals Stalin's purges, Mao Zedong's cultural revolution.

00:08:37.320 It almost rivals Hitler in terms of the people that he killed directly in World War II. 0.57

00:08:44.000 Not the whole war with 100 million casualties, but certainly the people he killed directly.

00:08:48.920 So we're looking at the United States, and China looks at us this way,

00:08:53.360 as having done that damage in the world with our financial system,

00:08:57.740 which allowed us to put primary and secondary sanctions on 30% of the world.

00:09:03.820 Go to OFAC and see how many countries we have under sanction.

00:09:07.340 It's incredible.

00:09:08.740 And these sanctions kill men, women, and children over time.

00:09:12.440 We killed 500,000 in Saddam Hussein's Iraq when we had the sanctions on him.

00:09:18.240 Madeleine Albright said when she was confronted with that statistic, 1.00

00:09:22.000 so what, it was worth it. 1.00

00:09:23.980 Madeleine, want to join Hillary in the world of cretins? 0.97

00:09:27.060 she did. This is a serious issue for China, and they want to stop it. 1.00

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00:12:18.640 It's also a moral stand in the United States.

00:12:20.620 And just jumping ahead, it strikes me that once the U.S. government, OFAC,

00:12:25.220 loses the ability to sanction other countries,

00:12:28.000 it will have only the power to sanction American citizens

00:12:30.540 for disobedience with programmable digital currency,

00:12:32.840 and it will do something very similar to us.

00:12:35.640 Bingo.

00:12:36.700 Yeah.

00:12:37.120 I mean, that does seem like, you know.

00:12:40.260 A natural follow-on.

00:12:41.740 Well, it does seem like the things you do to your opponents abroad will be done to your own citizens by the same government.

00:12:48.120 Yes.

00:12:48.400 I mean, that seems like a pretty consistent lesson of history.

00:12:51.180 So that's why empires are bad, because they're bad for your own population. 0.67

00:12:54.800 But I wonder, like, China, we see our competition with China in primarily military terms, I think.

00:13:02.560 That's what we talk about in public.

00:13:03.720 No one ever talks about the relative size of the economies.

00:13:05.720 It's like, how many aircraft carriers do they have?

00:13:08.160 But that's new.

00:13:09.480 That's new.

00:13:10.460 In my administration, my administration, in George W. Bush's administration,

00:13:15.860 Colin Powell was given his head on only one major international issue, and that was China.

00:13:22.600 And I was there when George W. Bush said its importance to Walmart meant Dick needed to stay away from it. 0.82

00:13:30.340 And he meant that.

00:13:31.540 He meant that we were in strategic economic competition with China, and he didn't mind that because he thought we were better than they were at capitalism, and we should certainly hold our head up in the world in that regard.

00:13:45.460 So he gave Colin Powell his head, and Powell was constantly, constantly thwarting the vice president in those terms because Donald Roosevelt and Dick Cheney wanted a hot war or a cold war.

00:14:01.300 They preferred the latter with China, and Bush didn't want it.

00:14:05.840 So he turned cold and loose on Taiwan in particular and wound up at the end of his first term having to repudiate Chen Shui-bian publicly and tell him to shut up about his independence referendum and get off that kick because he knew that was a red line with Beijing.

00:14:23.020 So that's the last president I think we had who understood fundamentally this economic relationship and thought that we could wage it with them and at least tie them, if not win.

00:14:35.840 So the impulse to go to war with China, like an exchange of ballistic missiles, at least, where does that come from? Why would you want that? Why would Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and so many others be advocating for that?

00:14:49.600 I don't think they really wanted a hot war, but the thing that scared me and scared Colin Powell, too, was that they seemed to be willing to accept it if they couldn't get the Cold War.

00:14:59.400 But what they really wanted was a replacement for the Cold War that would put the same pressures on us that the Cold War did, and that would be good in their sense.

00:15:10.320 Cheney occasionally would reveal things like a statement, we don't want people to love us, we want people to fear us.

00:15:19.000 And, you know, that was okay, but it didn't go over that big with, I think, a genuine Christian.

00:15:26.740 I mean, genuine Christian, a Sermon on the Mount type Christian that George W. Bush was.

00:15:32.740 And so, in that sense, that pushed him over into Powell's camp.

00:15:38.340 But they wanted that Cold War for sure because they thought, judging from their experience for their whole lives virtually,

00:15:46.380 that was the only way to keep the empire in power and in check domestically and internationally

00:15:54.040 is to have that huge pressure on them all the time.

00:15:57.220 And it was also the only way for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and a host of others

00:16:01.320 whom Dick loved and Don loved to make a lot of money.

00:16:06.220 But what do you mean when you say a Cold War would be the only way to keep the empire together internally?

00:16:13.100 What does that mean?

00:16:14.380 You need an external enemy.

00:16:15.680 If you've ever read, maybe you're too young, but there was an argument over whether it was a fanciful parody from somebody at the New Yorker or was it a serious study.

00:16:29.740 It was called the Report from Iron Mountain.

00:16:33.340 It was a pamphlet.

00:16:34.720 Lyndon Johnson, when he said it, when he read it, told his staff to get rid of it, ban it.

00:16:41.280 It didn't happen.

00:16:42.500 The New York Times picked up on it.

00:16:44.140 It went viral.

00:16:46.480 Two issues were put out.

00:16:48.940 In that report, which many thought really was a response to Kennedy's June speech at American University, they said impossible.

00:17:01.520 In that report, they went through all the Cold War parameters and such, and they said impossible.

00:17:07.580 You can never have peace.

00:17:09.460 The only way an empire like the United States of America can survive is to have a constant threat.

00:17:16.880 It must have a threat in order to survive.

00:17:19.560 They did say at the end that if you could dream up some other way of creating the same kind of pressure that that sort of threat did,

00:17:28.480 and they even said religion used to do that.

00:17:31.360 You know, the monarchs, the prince, the prelate, they used to threaten the people with God.

00:17:36.860 And that pretty much kept them in line.

00:17:38.600 You're going to burn in hell if you don't do what I tell you to do, that sort of thing. 1.00

00:17:42.760 Torqmada, looking at the Muslims and saying, repent, become a Christian, or I'll cut your throat. 1.00

00:17:50.020 And that's what he did if they didn't repent. 0.99

00:17:51.920 Many of them repented.

00:17:53.580 You could have that, but they thought that was passe, that that kind of threat wouldn't do the sort of thing that an actual state threat would do. 0.96

00:18:02.480 And so their conclusion was Kennedy was nuts.

00:18:05.360 You needed that kind of external threat to keep a country as variegated, as diverse, and as ultimately powerful as America was in check. 0.83

00:18:16.140 You needed that kind of threat. 0.99

00:18:18.640 To keep your own citizens obedient?

00:18:20.840 Yes, very much so.

00:18:22.340 That's a part of it, too.

00:18:23.540 To keep them toeing the line and to keep them paying their taxes and everything that you do in a state that once was a republic and now is an empire.

00:18:32.980 this is not at all related to i i asked you to have this conversation but i can't resist

00:18:39.640 who do you think did kill kennedy i'm fairly certain after a lot of study i'm a hunter i

00:18:46.740 know weapons fairly well i know that weapon that lee rv oswald wielded no way it shot john kennedy

00:18:53.800 and killed him i don't even think he could hit him from there you know the fbi guy the expert

00:18:58.340 Robert tried with that very weapon three times to simulate the Zapruder film intervals and get that many rounds off, even get them off, not just accurately, and he couldn't do it.

00:19:12.680 I think it was a combination of CIA, mafia, and probably Pentagon.

00:19:19.140 And I don't mean organizationally, but I mean dissenters in all three of those groups.

00:19:25.220 And the motive would be what?

00:19:27.260 But they thought, especially with what he had done with regard to Cuba in October of 62, and then the speech in June 10th, I think, of 1963 at American University, that he was serious.

00:19:43.580 He was serious, and his brother was serious with regard to the mafia and policing it up.

00:19:49.520 But Kennedy himself, the president, was serious about seeking first rapprochement with the Soviet Union.

00:19:55.760 Cuba had really, and Berlin too.

00:19:58.380 Berlin was a more serious crisis in the hot summer of 61 than Cuba was.

00:20:03.580 Cuba was 13 days packed into, you know, dynamism and the UN and everything else.

00:20:09.100 And we thought it was serious. 0.73

00:20:10.400 Well, Berlin was strategic for the Russians. 0.76

00:20:13.840 If the GDR disappeared, and it was disappearing at about 10,000 citizens a week, 0.85

00:20:19.060 think of that for a minute, we helped them build the wall.

00:20:22.340 We actually helped them build that wall.

00:20:24.320 When I say helped, I mean our tanks, our machine guns oversaw the parties building the wall to prevent anyone from interfering with them. 0.87

00:20:32.800 We let them build the wall because that was the only way to stanch that flow out of the GDR, East Germany. 0.95

00:20:40.540 And that was strategic for the Russians. 0.88

00:20:42.660 So that was a much more serious crisis.

00:20:44.920 But he'd gone through both of those.

00:20:46.660 And he knew how close we'd come to an exchange of nuclear weapons.

00:20:50.460 And he wanted an end to that.

00:20:52.120 And they thought this was ephemeral wishes and even dangerous wishes.

00:20:57.520 They thought that Soviets would pull a trick on us, you know, all the things you usually throw out there when you don't trust your enemy.

00:21:04.020 And they were willing to take him out in order to prevent that from happening.

00:21:08.640 And they were mad at him for the Bay of Pigs.

00:21:11.640 Where do you think Jack Ruby came from?

00:21:14.020 They found him somewhere.

00:21:15.900 I was at Baylor University at that time.

00:21:18.440 And I remember when the announcement was made, I was absolutely stunned.

00:21:23.400 Me and my roommate could barely talk for about a half an hour.

00:21:26.780 The president's just been shot not too far from us.

00:21:29.280 We were in Waco.

00:21:30.860 And then we were on the TV and we watched this guy walk up to Ruby and shoot him right there. 0.64

00:21:38.260 And at that moment, Bob and I said to ourselves, this stinks. 0.91

00:21:42.980 This really stinks.

00:21:45.180 Yeah. When the lone gunman kills the lone gunman, they're probably not lone gunman.

00:21:49.140 You got it. You think about Charlie Kirk, for example, and what's happening right now with

00:21:53.920 that assassination, which I can't even tell you what's happening. I don't even know the FBI has

00:21:58.360 been so unforthcoming, but I know. I told you I'm a weapons guy. That did not happen the way

00:22:05.580 they're saying it happened. And I doubt very seriously if that guy stuck a 30-06 down his

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00:23:28.960 Slack.

00:23:58.960 It's, yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that the investigation into that has not been as full as Charlie's family and the rest of us deserve. I mean, there's no question about that. So, and I'm sorry to get you sidetracked, but you're obviously really knowledgeable. And I hope you'll come back, by the way, at some point.

00:24:16.240 But back to China. So the United States is, and with Israel, blowing up Chinese built infrastructure. So that seems like a big step. And it seems like in so doing, you could risk Chinese further participation in this conflict. Are we risking that? 0.51

00:24:34.820 I think we are. We're not at the cusp yet, I don't think. I'm waiting to see just exactly how we deal with all the Chinese shipping. That would be, I think, a deal breaker and perhaps get China more infuriated and maybe even doing more than she's already doing.

00:24:53.460 But I know, too, I've been in the Central Party school, one of the few Americans who had. 0.80

00:24:58.660 I've been in China since 1984 and almost every other year or so.

00:25:05.100 And I've done simulations in Beijing with the Chinese.

00:25:09.900 In fact, I did one in 2009 that was called, are you ready for this, the oil disruption exercise. 0.87

00:25:17.940 We had everybody there.

00:25:19.680 We had MARAD.

00:25:20.620 We had AIG.

00:25:21.840 We had Lloyd's of London.

00:25:22.900 We had all the countries involved, and we took down Rastanora at that time, about 8 million barrels per day, production capacity.

00:25:30.980 And West Texas Intermediate, Brent Crude, went to $200 almost overnight.

00:25:35.300 Shippers wouldn't ship, insurers wouldn't insure. 0.97

00:25:38.180 And, of course, everyone in the room, including the Chinese, this was very instructive, but this was 2009, 0.50

00:25:44.160 agreed to allow the United States Navy and the group of five led by Singapore

00:25:52.020 with their little Navy, about one ship per country,

00:25:55.400 police the Strait of Malacca because that's where we were threatening another act

00:25:59.660 and let the United States Navy almost exclusively clear the Strait of Hormuz

00:26:04.860 and fix the situation at Rastanora.

00:26:08.080 And all it took at that time, because we were much bigger,

00:26:11.500 We put ships in there.

00:26:13.340 We put an aircraft carrier, not too much different from Lincoln right now.

00:26:18.200 And that calmed things down.

00:26:20.120 And people began to realize that if there were further problems, because this was a terrorist attack on Rostandor that we postulated,

00:26:28.000 if things were to get out of hand again, the United States Navy was there and other allied navies were there too.

00:26:35.460 So it calmed down and oil went down again.

00:26:37.840 But very, very dicey moment.

00:26:40.480 It was so dicey on the game floor, Tucker.

00:26:43.440 I've never seen this before, and I've done hundreds of simulations. 0.61

00:26:47.840 The Chinese actually, when the move to shift oil reserves around the world to take care of this problem so there wouldn't be a real global depression developed, had to go back to their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and consult before they could come back to the game floor and make a decision. 0.68

00:27:05.720 Wow.

00:27:06.500 Chaz Freeman, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, was there with us.

00:27:09.760 And at breakfast the next day, they didn't know Chaz was fluent in Mandarin.

00:27:14.300 I couldn't believe that, but they didn't.

00:27:16.100 Their intelligence had failed them on that.

00:27:18.200 So we're at breakfast, and I said, Chaz, what was said?

00:27:21.900 And he told me what was said.

00:27:24.100 It was interesting.

00:27:24.960 I mean, they were actually seriously worried about making a decision that took oil at that

00:27:32.020 moment away from China and, say, gave it to Korea or gave it to some other country like Japan that

00:27:38.140 needed it more desperately than they did, because that's what we did for a time. We divided the oil

00:27:43.580 flows up around the world so they'd be more economic and more helpful to countries that

00:27:48.440 were being hurt. That was the last time I saw a real camaraderie between, I think that's a fair

00:27:56.320 term to use, too, between Chinese diplomats, Chinese. We knew that probably 10% of the

00:28:03.160 Chinese delegation was Intel. Ours was, too. But that was the last time I saw comity and I saw

00:28:11.140 willingness to work together in a significant way. And that was a dicey situation,

00:28:18.180 very dicey on the game floor. How does it get reopened now, do you think?

00:28:23.400 I think it's going to have to be the force of the reality of what we're doing to the globe.

00:28:31.220 I'm looking very closely at economic analyses that tell me by the end of June, if we're not

00:28:36.780 back to reasonable shipping again, we'll be certainly in recession, global recession.

00:28:43.580 And if we go to the end of August, we might be in global depression.

00:28:48.360 And Putin and Trump can say over and over again that we have plenty of LNG and plenty of oil and everything.

00:28:55.300 It doesn't matter.

00:28:56.580 You're not going to survive in that kind of autarchic sense.

00:29:00.580 Economically, you're going to crash too.

00:29:03.220 So we would be looking, I think, at not only that coming to impact us, and at the same time, our incredible debt,

00:29:13.260 coupled with the fact that Xi Jinping would probably accelerate the replacement of the

00:29:18.920 dollar with renminbi because there'd be a moment to do it yeah so at that point i mean you can see

00:29:26.740 chaos right i mean yes yeah right um the lengths the roosevelt administration went to keep the

00:29:33.520 country stable including authoritarian lengths i mean that was their single-minded obsession like

00:29:39.180 depression means people get restive

00:29:41.140 and scary. I just read

00:29:43.220 a history of

00:29:45.220 the, I didn't even know it existed, and

00:29:47.060 a historian lives in Falls Church, he's an

00:29:49.080 old dude, he gave me a copy of it,

00:29:51.020 I almost dropped it, it's so

00:29:53.200 thick, it's called Recall, the

00:29:55.160 Civilian Conservation Corps.

00:29:57.480 It's a wonderful book, it's

00:29:59.220 just full of pictures, but

00:30:00.540 you see what

00:30:03.060 Roosevelt had to do, and the

00:30:05.040 fact that ultimately he had to order

00:30:07.000 the army in to do that

00:30:09.180 principally the army became the ingredient of the ccc that made it work when who ran it everyone

00:30:14.700 forgets who ran the ccc yes macarthur yeah yeah but macarthur was macarthur was a interesting

00:30:23.820 character in roosevelt uh administration more than once fdr said things that made anyone around

00:30:31.460 him realize he knew how dangerous Doug MacArthur was in every sense of the term.

00:30:37.360 And after the bonus marchers and MacArthur's attempt to kill them, Eisenhower was his aid

00:30:45.020 at that time.

00:30:46.120 And you see Eisenhower in some of the pictures in this book, as a matter of fact.

00:30:50.640 I think FDR had a real weather eye for MacArthur, but he made a huge mistake.

00:30:56.240 And he made it because he was frightened of him.

00:30:58.940 He should never have divided command in the Pacific.

00:31:02.020 It cost 100,000 American casualties between Nimitz and MacArthur.

00:31:07.880 Put MacArthur in charge if you've got to do that.

00:31:10.560 But no, Stark and King wouldn't let him.

00:31:12.800 So he had to compensate Stark and King and the Navy and give them the Central Pacific, MacArthur the Southwest Pacific.

00:31:20.640 We had a bloody strategy in the center, a bloody strategy.

00:31:24.960 We didn't have to take half of those islands.

00:31:27.340 MacArthur showed us what to do.

00:31:29.000 You just bypass them and let them wither.

00:31:31.360 Exactly.

00:31:31.700 You don't attack them, but we attacked them in the Central Pacific. 0.79

00:31:37.060 What do you think Israel will do and will have to do if come June or July or August, 0.50

00:31:47.200 when the economic effects become impossible to ignore, dangerous to everybody,

00:31:51.780 regimes around the world teeter and fall in the face of recession and depression?

00:31:56.440 And the United States says, you know, we're just, we're out. That leaves the Iranian regime 0.99

00:32:01.900 really in charge and more powerful than it was on a, you know, February 27th. Can Israel live 0.98

00:32:08.860 with that? I think not. And you probably know what I think about the Jewish state of Israel.

00:32:15.740 I don't think it has a long riddle on life. I don't think it can survive in the Levant because 1.00

00:32:20.800 the original conception was a safe haven and it's anything but a safe haven. And that's been 0.97

00:32:25.580 demonstrated markedly to all of its Jewish citizens, many of whom have left. And probably

00:32:31.640 more would have left if Netanyahu would let them. So I think it can survive as a democracy,

00:32:39.060 a true democracy, that is to say, Palestinian Arabs, Christians, everyone living there,

00:32:44.080 and Jews living there with them. And I don't buy the power of the womb bit. I don't think that 0.68

00:32:50.220 would be so overwhelmingly quick that you couldn't adjust the democracy to be a real democracy, 0.57

00:32:56.480 even if the Jewish citizens of it suddenly became a minority. I don't think it would be suddenly, 0.55

00:33:02.560 as I said, I think it'd be over time, but they don't want to do that. And so I think they're

00:33:07.720 sealing their own demise as a state at all in the Levant, democratic or otherwise. And so you're

00:33:15.480 right, it's a dangerous situation. And what we're doing in Lebanon right now is just unconscionable. 0.87

00:33:20.220 West Bank is bad enough, but Lebanon, we're killing two or three hundred civilians about every 48 or 96 hours.

00:33:27.620 And they're just civilians.

00:33:29.060 We're bombing dry cleaners.

00:33:30.900 We're bombing bars.

00:33:32.120 We're bombing restaurants.

00:33:33.360 We're bombing hotels. 0.84

00:33:35.120 We, I say, I always say we because Israel couldn't do it without us.

00:33:40.760 And we built the most expensive, largest embassy in the world.

00:33:45.360 Where did we build it?

00:33:46.180 We built it in Beirut.

00:33:47.360 Why did we do that?

00:33:48.340 Well, it isn't for diplomacy.

00:33:50.220 We built it there because it's a haven for Mossad, MI6, and CIA, and because we plan on, in that center piece in the eastern Mediterranean, mounting our guns against China and Russia, too, if we have to. 0.94

00:34:06.140 But we don't have any respect for Lebanon. 0.93

00:34:08.620 Lebanon could disappear tomorrow morning. 0.89

00:34:10.460 Our embassy would still be there, fortified to the hill, of course.

00:34:14.140 We just don't care anymore. 0.71

00:34:16.000 And we're lashed up with the wrong people in Lebanon.

00:34:18.700 We always have been, really.

00:34:20.220 who are who are the right people in lebanon the right people are the people that hassan

00:34:25.900 nasrallah was trying to introduce to the political situation cease his uh militaristic angle and

00:34:34.820 become the politician in lebanon who would finally after years and years consolidate the government

00:34:40.460 and have a government that the majority of lebanese could support and netanyahu what did

00:34:45.360 that did Yahoo do? Of course, that's what he kills the people he needs. We pray that the war with 0.97

00:34:50.240 Iran ends immediately, but the truth is it doesn't seem to be. If you're the head of household, 0.77

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00:35:58.600 at screwup.com. So, I mean, what is Israel's goal in Lebanon? Israelis say, I don't know if it's 0.67

00:36:09.260 true, but that the IDF is just stretched to breaking, can't possibly occupy southern

00:36:16.160 Lebanon, much less Beirut all the way down.

00:36:19.060 So what is the point of this? 0.65

00:36:22.380 I've always thought that Israel's real policies, and I've been associated with this for 50 0.66

00:36:28.980 years, with respect to Lebanon, was demolishing periodically its economic capacity.

00:36:38.320 Remember, Lebanon way back there was the pearl of the eastern Mediterranean.

00:36:43.720 Oh, yes.

00:36:44.520 It's a place where everybody wanted to go.

00:36:46.480 Beirut was beautiful.

00:36:48.720 And Israel then came along. 0.56

00:36:50.920 And Israel became, on our dollar to a certain extent, a very capitalistic, predatory capitalistic and successful in that regard economy. 0.73

00:37:02.260 and wanted to stay that way and even wanted to grow and grow 0.92

00:37:05.740 and bring in other people to that economy under the Jewish writ, of course, 0.75

00:37:10.840 but nonetheless come in, Abraham Accords being one latest example. 0.96

00:37:17.960 And so they had to take Lebanon down a peg every time. 0.93

00:37:21.080 If you go back and examine those bombing campaigns, 0.75

00:37:23.400 even the 82 invasion when they were really after PLO and Arafat, 0.83

00:37:28.360 they bombed the bejesus out of the economic structure of Lebanon.

00:37:31.960 And at the time, we military officers were saying, why are they doing that? 0.99

00:37:35.640 That's just making them hate them.

00:37:37.660 Why are they doing that?

00:37:38.660 They don't need to do that. 0.99

00:37:39.560 And then, you know, stupid us, we figured it out after about two or three iterations. 0.99

00:37:43.700 They're bombing the hell out of their economic might. 0.99

00:37:46.320 So they can't, you know, 10 years to get back up again.

00:37:49.480 Then they bomb them again.

00:37:53.340 That's very, very dark.

00:37:54.900 I mean, and we paid for it. 0.54

00:37:56.900 So what do you think, I mean, President Trump didn't explain really why he began this war other than to say Iran can't have a nuke, which is not an adequate explanation.

00:38:10.620 What do you think the real motive was in starting a war with Iran?

00:38:16.020 I think that New York Times piece, as much as I hate to praise the great lady these days, was probably fairly accurate.

00:38:24.440 I think most of his advisors, the principal ones anyway, were saying no or arguing negatively, and Netanyahu persuaded him to do it.

00:38:36.000 Now, why did he listen to Netanyahu when everyone else, Vance, probably everyone but Hegseth, was at least somewhat opposed, if not strongly opposed,

00:38:48.840 which I'm told with some reliable information that Cain was, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others in the military.

00:38:57.660 it was persuasive because Netanyahu said it

00:39:02.520 and I can't tell you whether it was

00:39:04.300 Miriam Adelson's millions or Trump's

00:39:08.360 I don't think he's got a real high regard

00:39:11.880 for Bibi Netanyahu in terms of loving him

00:39:14.160 but something there told him

00:39:17.320 indicated to him that he needed to go

00:39:19.640 against all of his advisors

00:39:20.940 and follow Netanyahu's recommended course of action

00:39:23.840 which of course I think is disastrous

00:39:25.940 and yet he did

00:39:27.300 does america's relationship with israel change after this is over i don't see how it can remain

00:39:37.140 the same um with a new president who's got to pick up on what's happening with the american people

00:39:44.120 um not least of which caused by charlie kirk what's happening with american people even

00:39:51.560 And in the core of MAGA, under 40 in particular, and under 20 on college campuses and things like that, generally, is don't like Israel, period.

00:40:04.420 Even I could use a stronger word than don't like.

00:40:09.240 Why do you connect that to Charlie Kirk?

00:40:12.240 Because I think he was changing his mind, and it was obvious he was changing his mind about being so attached to Israel, both in terms of U.S. security and in terms of just the American people.

00:40:26.200 I think he was beginning to realize that it was poisonous, and that was dangerous. 0.74

00:40:32.100 I don't, for a minute, think that we might not find out down the road something about his assassination that resembles Kennedy's and Martin Luther King's and others who've been shot in our country.

00:40:44.880 Which is, you know, for people overseas sometimes whom I talk to infrequently now, but used to talk to a lot, like in France and England and Germany, they don't understand why we kill people at the rate we kill people, you know.

00:41:00.840 And as an American, I say, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:41:03.260 And they'll tick them off, you know, all the way back to Roosevelt becoming president, you know, because they thought they got rid of him as vice president and all of a sudden McKinley's killed.

00:41:12.980 So they'll tick those things off all the way back to Lincoln, and they'll say, you're a pretty violent country.

00:41:18.520 You assassinate people quite frequently.

00:41:21.240 So I've had a very similar experience in every country I've ever been to other than this one.

00:41:30.240 They don't buy it.

00:41:32.320 But you think that's correct.

00:41:35.340 It's pretty obvious that lone gunmen seem to kill people who are a challenge to entrench power.

00:41:41.620 And maybe that's not an accident.

00:41:43.560 Yes, yes.

00:41:44.680 More often than not, I think it's not an accident.

00:41:47.600 I just, if you go back and you look at any of the empires of old, but particularly the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, the Eastern figured it out by the time it came to the Byzantine Empire.

00:42:01.420 And Constantinople turned around on the then ruling entity's adaptation of Christianity and mellowed out a little bit.

00:42:14.540 That famous period there probably extended their life by years, if not decades and generations.

00:42:21.900 If you look at those people at the head of those groups, whether it's like Mary Beard's new book, The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius' Twelve Caesars, between Julius crossing the Rubicon and walking decidedly into assassination, even though he was warned multiple times, should have known, walks in the Senate, he's assassinated.

00:42:45.320 and then Octavian and the Civil War start

00:42:48.020 and then Octavian becomes Augustus

00:42:50.400 and consolidates the empire

00:42:52.040 and the Roman Republic is gone, gone, totally gone.

00:42:55.780 And you look at the period that she writes about,

00:42:58.260 those 12 Caesars,

00:42:59.940 roughly between Julius Caesar and Suetonius,

00:43:03.060 and you see the depravity.

00:43:05.200 You see Epstein all through it, you know?

00:43:08.000 And you understand what that does to you.

00:43:10.860 Well, from since 45, arguably,

00:43:13.420 with the Cold War as a check on us.

00:43:16.420 And then since the end of the Cold War

00:43:18.420 with no check whatsoever,

00:43:20.600 we have turned into that version

00:43:22.300 of the Western Roman Empire.

00:43:25.980 It's distressing to see it.

00:43:27.660 Can I ask you a bigger question?

00:43:29.620 I remember when I was much younger

00:43:31.520 and I would run into guys,

00:43:33.620 you know, your age who served at,

00:43:35.180 you know, the highest levels of government

00:43:36.700 in Washington.

00:43:37.980 And they were always much more open

00:43:41.540 to the existence of conspiracies.

00:43:44.260 And I just wonder if we deride conspiracy theories,

00:43:48.000 but the people who seem to believe in them the most

00:43:52.120 are also the most knowledgeable.

00:43:53.740 Have you noticed that?

00:43:55.120 I have noticed that, yes.

00:43:57.280 And the people who could talk about them

00:43:58.980 most explicitly and carefully in chambers, as it were.

00:44:03.280 Yes.

00:44:04.200 They're those people.

00:44:06.140 That's so interesting.

00:44:07.240 So when you were, I don't know, 30,

00:44:10.500 you probably didn't believe that that stuff was real, I assume.

00:44:15.160 I did not.

00:44:15.760 I had great faith in my country, great faith in people like George Washington

00:44:21.680 and Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and a host of others.

00:44:24.380 I knew they were flawed, but I had great faith in their building power

00:44:29.660 and in their faith in what they built.

00:44:32.680 I can't say that anymore.

00:44:34.660 I can't say that anymore.

00:44:35.800 And I can even, particularly with Jefferson, I can even, Powell used to quote him to me all the time because he loved Jefferson's inaugural addresses.

00:44:44.440 He would pick out pieces and like pieces like, I know I shall leave this office much more chagrined than I entered it.

00:44:54.300 You know, that sort of thing.

00:44:55.540 Yes.

00:44:56.160 I know I won't survive.

00:44:57.940 My reputation won't survive.

00:45:00.160 Which is one reason why Powell decided in 1995 not to run for president.

00:45:05.400 He essentially said, I understand what Jefferson meant, and I'm not willing to suffer it.

00:45:11.200 But anyway, it's been, you know, I'm 81 now.

00:45:14.760 And I got to say, in the years since I entered in 1993, arguably, or even 89 when I was with him when he was chairman, the highest realms of American power and was exposed to that power.

00:45:28.600 I have really become a cynic about our ability even to survive much longer in a way that is anything like our past.

00:45:41.020 What do you think the future holds?

00:45:43.180 Like 10 years out, what will we be looking at?

00:45:46.420 I'm really worried about AI.

00:45:48.460 I'm really worried about it.

00:45:49.780 I don't know if you saw that piece the other day by that gentleman, I forget his name now, from Cambridge, I believe, who sold some of his AI development.

00:45:57.220 He's sort of the Oppenheimer of the AI movement to Google.

00:46:01.420 And he said he was on his bench outside his lab or something, and all of a sudden his cell phone rang, and it was his AI.

00:46:08.960 It was checking up on him, and he had an epiphany right there on the bench.

00:46:15.380 This is dangerous, what we're doing.

00:46:20.040 Do you have a clear picture of what some of the effects might be?

00:46:23.140 Well, I'm seeing the effects already on young people whom I stay in contact with at GW and GW and William & Mary.

00:46:34.940 I probably had roughly 600 students over the 16 years I taught, and a lot of them stay in contact with me.

00:46:42.720 One of them was the EA to Mark Carney, and when Mark ran and was elected in Canada, he got shifted to another guy by Mark, and I said, well, who are you working for now?

00:46:55.880 And he said, Mike Bloomberg.

00:46:57.840 So I have students all over the place, and they stay in touch with me, and they reflect the same angst I have, but in a much more visceral way because it's their future.

00:47:10.360 It's their life.

00:47:12.720 and they're extremely worried about AI.

00:47:16.640 Because they think it will eliminate their jobs

00:47:19.200 or eliminate human autonomy.

00:47:21.000 That's part of it,

00:47:21.920 but the latter is the bigger part of it.

00:47:24.120 And there's also a component of it

00:47:26.260 that is there's no way we're going to survive

00:47:28.580 with that in our midst.

00:47:33.320 Because?

00:47:34.540 Not as humans.

00:47:35.560 Your human autonomy business

00:47:37.200 is probably as good a description of it

00:47:39.120 as anything else.

00:47:40.520 But there are a couple of them

00:47:42.320 who think we're going to wind up in a huge conflict

00:47:46.280 between AI-generated, AI-led, AI-whatevered robots and ourselves.

00:47:54.040 And, you know, I'm one who has always read and watched science fiction

00:48:00.720 because more often than not, there's something in that H.G. Wells piece

00:48:06.760 or that Lucas piece or whatever, Star Trek,

00:48:10.620 pick your video adaptation, that's true,

00:48:15.260 that's going to come about.

00:48:17.640 And I see, and I think they see too,

00:48:20.360 because they're much more visual,

00:48:22.740 video-oriented generation than I was.

00:48:25.440 I was mostly the written word-oriented generation.

00:48:29.480 They see that too.

00:48:31.180 They see some of the science fiction

00:48:32.880 that's been most dour, most dour coming about.

00:48:40.480 Is there any way to stop it?

00:48:43.040 That's the question of the hour, I think,

00:48:45.220 with regard to it and robotics too.

00:48:48.160 Are we going to be able to manage it?

00:48:51.580 There was a gentleman not too long ago

00:48:54.040 who made a statement.

00:48:55.880 I think he was a NASA scientist.

00:48:58.380 We have been given incredible powers.

00:49:01.320 We have been given incredible riches, and he was referring to the United States.

00:49:06.360 We have also been given wisdom.

00:49:09.760 The question in the future is going to be, will we use it or will we be overcome?

00:49:16.560 I think that's a huge question.

00:49:19.100 And I don't count myself in the camp of those who think it's impossible to eliminate the human race.

00:49:26.840 It is not impossible.

00:49:28.380 Nuclear weapons, the newest technology in the world, no empire in all of 5,000 years of empires has ever possessed the technological means to destroy itself and others around it.

00:49:43.200 None, not a single one.

00:49:44.900 And to think that human nature will allow us to get through a demise of empire without ultimately trying that method to save it, I think is wishful thinking.

00:49:58.380 and we're we're at that point right now because we're looking at the end of the american empire

00:50:05.760 looking at an actual threat to israel i mean i mean you just described it there's an actual

00:50:11.580 threat for the first time in a long time the greatest threat right and that's a nuclear

00:50:16.300 armed power so and we're we're at that point as you as you well know without a single treaty

00:50:22.500 they're all gone now every single one from the abm treaty all the way to new start gone

00:50:28.320 no treaties. So do you think that this administration can navigate a moment this

00:50:36.440 fraught without either using or allowing its partner in this to use nuclear weapons?

00:50:44.180 I'm not given confidence by a man who argues with the Pope and dresses up as Jesus Christ for

00:50:51.440 an ad. I mean, I know he probably didn't do that intentionally, but he allowed it to happen.

00:50:56.140 And this argument with Leo is just absurd.

00:51:02.200 How would you interpret that?

00:51:05.880 Well, I think he's backing up from it a bit.

00:51:09.100 I wish he'd back up a little more abruptly and a little more apologetically.

00:51:13.100 But it's done.

00:51:15.120 The damage is done.

00:51:16.340 And done at a moment when Leo, the first Augustinian, is headed for Africa to go to Augustus' place and sort of celebrate.

00:51:26.140 I mean, it just didn't make, it was bad timing and it was bad juju all around to do that.

00:51:33.320 And I know from my own experience, and it's, as I said, seven decades of sentient experience anyway, that we've had an effort in this country for a long, long time, very sotovoki, if you will, under the table, to create an American Catholic church and have our own pope.

00:51:54.160 And I remember when Leo's rise was first announced, when his selection was announced,

00:52:01.020 I said, ooh, that'll put a stop to that because an American is now the Pope in Rome. 0.73

00:52:06.460 But I didn't think long enough. 0.88

00:52:08.580 That's not what they want.

00:52:10.040 They want an American Pope, and they want an American Catholic Church.

00:52:14.680 Now, right now, I know it's a minority of Catholics, but it is a powerful minority of Catholics,

00:52:20.420 and they've been around for at least 100 years.

00:52:23.480 not very successfully around, but nonetheless, they've pursued that for a long time.

00:52:30.400 Why would people, and pardon my ignorance as a birthright Protestant, I wasn't even aware of

00:52:34.240 any of this, why would people want an American Catholic Church? Then they wouldn't have to take 0.59

00:52:39.560 any instructions at all from Rome, none at all. Rome would just be out there. There wouldn't be

00:52:46.540 any real power of the Pope in Rome.

00:52:51.240 And I suspect doctrinally,

00:52:53.960 they try to divorce that Pope

00:52:56.060 from the idea of being from God.

00:53:00.080 Huh, is there like an ideological motivation

00:53:03.240 or theological motivation?

00:53:04.900 I think it's all power.

00:53:06.320 I do, I really do.

00:53:07.640 I think people who have come out of great awakenings,

00:53:11.360 and I, by the way, think this is our fourth one.

00:53:14.120 And most historians won't go with me yet, but I bet you in 10 or 20 years, they will look back on this period and they will call it a great awakening.

00:53:22.220 Just like they did the one that produced prohibition and an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit alcohol and then an amendment to rescind it.

00:53:31.160 Very damaging periods in our history, whether it was burning witches or prohibition.

00:53:36.700 That prohibition really generated the momentum for organized crime.

00:53:42.220 crime al capone was the first you know organized criminal if you will um so they're dangerous

00:53:49.200 periods and if we get out of this one without any more danger i mean hexeth is holding i got it

00:53:56.760 yesterday i couldn't believe it i just couldn't believe that this this had developed osw protocol

00:54:03.640 prayer services have been going on every week for 13 months um and always with the same line

00:54:11.660 General officers and admirals will have reserve seats in the front rows.

00:54:17.300 All else will sit elsewhere.

00:54:19.940 No one is allowed to come in but those invited.

00:54:22.860 It's all on the invitation.

00:54:25.060 This is not very American. 0.52

00:54:28.020 This is uncommonly un-American, really.

00:54:30.820 It makes religion and the military the way Hegseth is doing it.

00:54:35.580 It's very dangerous.

00:54:36.920 And he's also preacher packing, we used to say in South Carolina, putting the rotten strawberries on the bottom and the fresh strawberries on the top, the ranks.

00:54:48.480 He's making sure very carefully that he's eliminating flag and admiral officers who are or might be opposed to the military becoming a defender of Christianity as the national religion.

00:55:02.620 And he's doing the lower ranks, too, and he's doing them by doing such things as exceeding Congress's limits on mental Category 4 recruits.

00:55:13.800 They think McNamara's 100,000, if you will.

00:55:16.840 They can't even read their name on a guard roster.

00:55:19.500 They usually come from the mountains of West Virginia or from the interior of Oklahoma or my state of South Carolina or Alabama.

00:55:26.320 I hate to blame those states, but nonetheless, they produce these people at an alarming rate.

00:55:32.620 And he's getting them in at the tune.

00:55:35.500 Congress put a 4% cap on it.

00:55:38.040 Well, he got 11% the last time around.

00:55:40.880 The inspector general, brave man he, went over and told the Congress.

00:55:46.140 And what Hexeth told the Congress when they called him over to testify was,

00:55:49.980 well, we created a school within the Army.

00:55:55.000 This is the Army.

00:55:56.720 And that school taught them how to pass the entrance exam.

00:56:01.980 You don't know what they did.

00:56:02.960 They taught the test.

00:56:04.380 And so then they gave them the test again, and all of a sudden, they leapt up into mental category four.

00:56:10.280 And 7% of them did that, so we didn't exceed your cap.

00:56:14.520 We kept your cap, 4%.

00:56:16.480 That's just a dog and pony show.

00:56:19.220 They're taking people in who are, what shall I say, well, a good example of it that's very, very illustrative.

00:56:31.000 is the 50 or 60 that go out of basic training into the river there at Fort Jackson

00:56:37.180 and get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ

00:56:40.200 and are told by the chaplain when they rise from the water that they are soldiers for Christ.

00:56:46.740 What Hegseth wants is even the oath changed from to the Constitution.

00:56:52.780 The oath should be to Jesus Christ.

00:56:55.500 But, I mean, the Gospels don't provide any basis for that theology at all.

00:57:03.240 I mean, that's not—the Sermon on the Mount would preclude a lot of things the U.S. military are doing right now in Iran.

00:57:11.860 So I guess my concern would be the corruption of the Gospels by this.

00:57:17.260 Absolutely.

00:57:17.680 Absolutely. And talk about corruption. Franklin Graham in the center courtyard of the Pentagon, where I've been a number of times for ceremonies with old secretaries of defense, once escorted McNamara in there.

00:57:31.920 Had a good talk with him about Vietnam as I escorted him. And he was very contrite. He was actually contrite as we walked in. I was a lieutenant colonel at the time.

00:57:41.600 And Billy Graham, or Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, of course, and Billy Graham must be rolling in his grave because I knew him.

00:57:48.760 He was not this way.

00:57:50.700 Franklin Graham gave a sermon for Hegseth on those grounds that would make Ted Cruz happy.

00:57:58.760 He resurrected all the stuff Cruz was talking about in an interview with you, I believe, from Genesis, and talked about how you had to sometimes kill everything in sight, men, women, children, and so forth, in the center courtyard of the Pentagon.

00:58:19.000 Well, that's like blasphemy, it seems to me.

00:58:22.240 It is to me, too.

00:58:23.400 I mean, I'm a Christian, but I'm not that kind of Christian.

00:58:27.320 Yeah.

00:58:27.840 Well, I don't think there is that kind of Christian, is my view. 0.97

00:58:31.260 What an amazing, unexpected conversation. 0.98

00:58:33.960 I'm sorry to take you on all these different tangents.

00:58:36.760 I hope you will come back because the scope of your thinking and the grasp of history that you have is amazing.

00:58:44.320 So I appreciate it.

00:58:45.440 Colonel Wilkinson, thank you very much.

00:58:46.760 Well, I appreciate the opportunity, and I must say I'm impressed with yours, too.

00:58:51.160 Well, not really, but I'm interested.

00:58:54.560 I think it matters.

00:58:55.180 No, I've watched a lot of your interviews, and I'm impressed with what, particularly when you do things like what you did with Ted Cruz.

00:59:04.600 Well, that was easy. 0.99

00:59:06.180 Just ask dumb questions. 0.97

00:59:07.700 The very idea that I consult Genesis for national security decision-making just drove me back against the wall. 0.99

00:59:14.580 I couldn't believe that.

00:59:16.140 Especially when he didn't know it was in Genesis.

00:59:20.820 It's unbelievable.

00:59:22.600 Anyway, thank you very much.

00:59:23.860 Great to talk to you.

00:59:24.560 Thank you. Take care.

The Tucker Carlson Show - May 04, 2026

Iran Update： Israel’s Newest Bombing Campaign, the Oncoming War With China and How to Avoid It

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