The Tucker Carlson Show - Michael Knowles： Attacks on Christians, Norm McDonald, and Leaving Atheism for Catholicism

00:00:00.000 So I was thinking about you this morning, and I haven't seen you since 2019.

00:00:04.180 I think that's correct.

00:00:05.060 I think so.

00:00:05.960 And what's interesting, looking back, that was only six years ago, is what a completely different world we live in.

00:00:11.880 So the last time I saw you, you had described, and correct me if I've messed up the details, I probably have, Greta Thunberg as, you weren't even that mean.

00:00:21.300 You're like, she's clearly mentally ill, something like that.

00:00:22.880 I said the left is exploiting this mentally ill Swedish child.

00:00:27.360 So obviously true.

00:00:28.640 So if you said that now, the only reason I'm bringing this up is just to celebrate how much this country has changed and how much freer it is.

00:00:37.620 So you said that in 2019, again, it wasn't the Middle Ages.

00:00:42.160 We had air conditioning and air travel.

00:00:43.460 It was like the modern era.

00:00:44.620 And you were banned from the conservative TV channel, which denounced you as, quote, disgusting for saying that.

00:00:52.780 Now, it's like you don't even think twice about noting the obvious.

00:00:56.320 So I just want to say, I'm glad to see you in this better world.

00:01:00.340 Well, thank you, Tucker.

00:01:21.820 It's good to be in this better world.

00:01:23.000 And you heroically uncancelled me, actually.

00:01:26.960 There were a few people who helped out, but you were one of the people who really helped out when I was being ostracized to St. Helena for making what I felt was a benign observation.

00:01:38.300 Yes.

00:01:38.760 And you said, that's ridiculous.

00:01:41.180 And you kind of forced me back through into TV.

00:01:44.040 Well, I mean, it certainly didn't require heroism.

00:01:47.920 It was just like, that was so stupid.

00:01:49.380 I couldn't believe, you know, it's, I think it's also important to remember that this country went through a protracted moral panic that hurt so many people.

00:01:57.440 Yes.

00:01:57.960 And that we've never really repented of that.

00:01:59.760 And we should.

00:02:00.380 Like, I interviewed one yesterday.

00:02:03.300 I won't even bore you with the story, but he was just another casualty of that five-year period where people were destroyed, driven to suicide in a lot of cases during our cultural revolution.

00:02:13.040 And the perpetrators were never punished for that.

00:02:15.420 They never even apologized.

00:02:16.540 They never even acknowledged.

00:02:17.500 They were never forced to acknowledge their wrongdoing.

00:02:19.180 And the people who called you disgusting for saying something was actually kind of compassionate.

00:02:24.860 That was my view.

00:02:25.660 It was kind of charitable.

00:02:26.700 No, for real.

00:02:27.320 I strive for that.

00:02:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:02:28.720 Why are we exploiting this child who's clearly unwell?

00:02:31.480 Yes.

00:02:31.760 She clearly is unwell.

00:02:33.300 Wielding children in politics generally is unseemly, I think.

00:02:38.520 Yes.

00:02:38.680 And when you're exploiting a truant in order to score some cheap point on the sun monster or something, I think is, I think that's disgraceful, as a matter of fact.

00:02:48.200 But you're the criminal for pointing it out.

00:02:51.140 And the fact that my former employer played along with that and called you disgusting, I think that's the word they use, disgusting.

00:02:57.020 Yes.

00:02:57.200 And I think, look, I'm not saying I'm Fabio, but I wouldn't call myself disgusting.

00:03:00.300 I don't know.

00:03:01.600 But, you know, you mentioned this cultural revolution, and obviously you had all these ideological aspects.

00:03:07.180 It seemed downright Maoist.

00:03:09.140 And then it reached its apotheosis, 2020, 2021, with an actual political lockdown of our whole country.

00:03:17.080 Yes.

00:03:17.480 By all of these same cultural and political forces.

00:03:19.880 Oh, that's smart.

00:03:20.600 I never thought of it that way.

00:03:21.680 And then the fog just lifted.

00:03:25.040 Yeah.

00:03:25.240 It just, something broke.

00:03:26.460 And now it seems like all of that, from the most ideological cultural level, all the way down to just, you know, being free to go out and like see Granny at Christmas.

00:03:34.240 Exactly.

00:03:34.780 It's over.

00:03:35.280 We should celebrate that.

00:03:38.140 We should.

00:03:38.680 How should we celebrate, Tom?

00:03:39.660 I don't know.

00:03:40.480 But I don't think I appreciate the good things enough.

00:03:43.940 I'm too focused on the sadness or things that are, you know, not exactly the way I think they ought to be.

00:03:49.600 And I don't think, speaking for myself, I take enough time to just be grateful for the good things.

00:03:55.060 And that is one of the best things.

00:03:57.120 And I very practically want to celebrate.

00:03:59.200 I came prepared today.

00:04:00.500 I don't know if you're familiar with this product.

00:04:01.820 Yes, I am.

00:04:02.660 I said, I try to, you know, mitigate all these little fun treats that I have, whether it's a donut, whether it's a tasty, but I said, well, if Tucker, I would hate to be inhospitable.

00:04:14.940 So now I have a great excuse to celebrate with it.

00:04:17.560 You are always welcome to use an Alp here.

00:04:20.400 It's been a year this month.

00:04:22.140 I was, I used the other product, Zin.

00:04:24.960 I didn't even know that it was wrong.

00:04:27.120 And it was one of those weird moments where you're sort of shocked into reality.

00:04:31.480 Somebody told me, I think it's true that the majority, like 70% of Zin users use the product rectally.

00:04:38.960 And I was like, are you serious?

00:04:43.220 And he's like, yes, you should try it.

00:04:45.300 And I was like, I don't know what this is, but I'm out.

00:04:48.760 So we started this, which I think is a really good alternative.

00:04:51.840 That's good.

00:04:52.560 I know, I agree.

00:04:53.880 Because it's got to be at least less than 10% of users.

00:04:56.440 No, I think it's 0%.

00:04:57.580 We actually don't allow it.

00:04:58.840 We don't allow it.

00:05:00.040 That's really good.

00:05:00.740 No, but this actually ties in.

00:05:03.240 The fact that we are living in an age now where you're allowed to have some nicotine again.

00:05:10.040 Oh, I know.

00:05:10.560 You remember, you were allowed to have marijuana, fentanyl, anything in between.

00:05:16.420 But the one thing you couldn't have was nicotine.

00:05:17.880 You couldn't have a cigar.

00:05:18.760 You couldn't have a pouch.

00:05:21.340 You couldn't have anything.

00:05:22.360 And now it's just like broken.

00:05:23.440 Because it raises testosterone, whereas weed lowers it.

00:05:26.320 So it makes you less obedient, more free thinking, happier, stronger.

00:05:30.980 And those are all, you know, the last qualities authoritarians want the population to have.

00:05:36.620 I was looking back because I was trying to figure out the morality of it.

00:05:39.780 I've smoked cigars since I was 15.

00:05:41.460 And I was trying to figure out the morality.

00:05:42.740 Is this a vice?

00:05:43.980 And I said, well, I don't think so.

00:05:45.980 There's a story about St. Pius X.

00:05:48.560 He was talking to a cardinal, called him in, offered him a cigar.

00:05:52.040 The cardinal said, I don't have that vice.

00:05:53.260 He says, it's not a vice.

00:05:54.120 You would have it if it were a vice.

00:05:55.480 You have enough vices.

00:05:56.680 And then there was the case of St. Philip Neary, who, one of the devil's advocate in his canonization process, said that he might not be a saint because his body was corrupt.

00:06:07.700 Because part of his nose had worn away.

00:06:09.700 I said, no, no, no.

00:06:10.320 It wasn't corrupted after he died.

00:06:12.220 It was corrupted while he was alive from all the nasal snuff that he did.

00:06:15.080 Yes.

00:06:15.440 And Pope Leo XIII, the most prolific pope ever, wrote the most encyclicals, apparently drank cocaine wine, Van Mariani.

00:06:23.900 Is that true?

00:06:24.900 It is.

00:06:25.220 I've never tried it.

00:06:25.860 Along with Sherlock Holmes, Cocoa Wine.

00:06:27.680 Cocoa Wine, yes.

00:06:28.680 Yeah, I'd probably have written more books that I tried it, but I haven't.

00:06:31.540 It's funny.

00:06:32.240 Somebody told me a really interesting story recently about the number of cardinals, current Catholic cardinals who smoke cigarettes.

00:06:40.220 Yeah.

00:06:41.140 And I just love that.

00:06:42.500 I'm not Catholic, but I have always loved cigarette smoking.

00:06:45.800 I know you're not supposed to say that.

00:06:46.920 I know it's bad.

00:06:47.660 It killed a close relative of mine.

00:06:49.400 You know, I'm aware of the health effects.

00:06:51.520 But I just thought, I don't know.

00:06:52.880 There's something about that.

00:06:53.880 But, and because it's, Benedict XVI loved to smoke cigarettes and he would have one or two a day.

00:06:59.320 When was he Pope?

00:07:00.220 He was, he was the Pope before Francis.

00:07:02.680 So he was Pope.

00:07:03.160 Oh, Benedict, the one we just had.

00:07:04.980 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:05.180 The German Pope.

00:07:06.120 Yes.

00:07:06.360 He would smoke a couple cigarettes a day.

00:07:09.040 And I thought, this is something beautiful.

00:07:10.500 This is another thing that's come back since our cultural revolution.

00:07:12.320 Is that widely known?

00:07:13.800 You know, I don't know.

00:07:14.780 I'm sure they've tried to suppress that.

00:07:16.200 You know, they probably want to make him into like a kombucha drinking, hemp smoking person.

00:07:19.820 Yeah.

00:07:19.960 But no, he liked Marlboro Reds.

00:07:22.700 Good for him.

00:07:23.760 And he would smoke them.

00:07:25.040 This is the chief political virtue.

00:07:27.820 He would smoke them in moderation and with prudence.

00:07:30.940 And this is the thing.

00:07:31.720 We live in this crazy schizophrenic age where you have to be all one thing or all the exact opposite.

00:07:37.900 What does Aristotle tell us?

00:07:39.080 It's virtue is that mean right between the two extremes.

00:07:42.740 You can have, you can have a Marlboro Red every once in a while.

00:07:45.420 Boy, if I could do that, I would still be doing it.

00:07:47.340 I have a friend who's over 80 who smoked two Marlboro Lights, which men should not be smoking those, but whatever, the white ones, every day his whole life.

00:07:56.120 I think it was after Obergefell they let men smoke Marlboro Lights.

00:07:59.320 It was a little red part of that decision.

00:08:01.820 I was out by then.

00:08:03.360 So speaking of gender bending, what do you make of the shooting in Minneapolis?

00:08:07.800 Like, how should we think?

00:08:08.700 There's so many different threads there.

00:08:11.140 I don't really understand.

00:08:13.020 Did you read the manifesto?

00:08:15.120 I did not.

00:08:15.520 So I took a look.

00:08:17.800 I saw they were in Cyrillic script.

00:08:19.340 Yes, Cyrillic.

00:08:20.220 My Cyrillic's not great, but we had some translations done and you could read the writing on the magazines.

00:08:27.080 And the first thing that struck me, I mean, after the horror of it, you know, you just think the most vulnerable people of the church being attacked by this maniac.

00:08:36.580 The first thing that struck me was how apparently incoherent it all was because it's an attack on a Catholic church, on these like innocent little kids in a Catholic church.

00:08:47.220 And then if you look on the guns and on the magazines, it's not just anti-Christian.

00:08:53.040 It's anti-Muslim.

00:08:54.240 It says remove kebab.

00:08:55.500 It's anti-Jewish.

00:08:56.440 Six million wasn't enough.

00:08:57.800 It's nihilistic.

00:08:59.320 It's anti-gay.

00:09:01.000 The guy was a tranny.

00:09:02.600 And then there's the scariest part of it is on this page, there's a picture he drew of himself and it's him looking in a mirror and he's got the gun behind him.

00:09:11.720 And in the mirror is a picture of a demon.

00:09:14.200 And that's scary enough.

00:09:16.040 Like a goat-headed demon.

00:09:16.980 Like a goat-headed Baphomet looking demon.

00:09:19.260 When you read, when you translate the Cyrillic, the first thing that's written, top left of the page is, who am I?

00:09:27.640 And this is really jarring because you recognize that Moses at the burning bush, he asks God, who are you?

00:09:33.280 You know, who will I tell them that you are?

00:09:35.100 And God says, I am who I am.

00:09:37.520 I am.

00:09:38.120 You know, Christ says before Abraham was I am.

00:09:40.220 This is his declaration that he's God.

00:09:41.640 But I am, and a great priest friend of mine, Father Rudder, once observed that when you know, when you're with God, you know who you are.

00:09:51.820 You know your identity.

00:09:53.960 Modernity thinks that you have to leave God and just totally go and make yourself a God and then you'll be truly yourself, you'll find yourself.

00:09:59.360 That's not true.

00:10:00.120 You become much more yourself, much more perfectly yourself if you do what you're supposed to do and align yourself with God.

00:10:05.960 And when you don't identify yourself with I am, then you're left with this pathetic question.

00:10:11.640 Who am I?

00:10:12.640 So you see this obvious demonic influence there.

00:10:14.900 And what struck me too, with all of these apparent contradictions, it's anti-Christian and also anti-Muslim and Jew.

00:10:21.640 It's radically LGBT, but also kind of anti-gay.

00:10:25.460 It's anti-Trump, kill Trump right now, but it's also has all these kind of far right-wing slogans.

00:10:31.360 And it reminded me, which is very important to remember, especially in our line of work, because you're constantly reading all this radical stuff.

00:10:38.300 Right, and you're looking for the easy explanation.

00:10:40.480 Like, this is a representative of this group or this idea that I already dislike, and now you've confirmed that I have every reason to dislike this group.

00:10:47.400 I mean, this is the effect of social media.

00:10:48.960 But this guy, it's like, obviously I'm opposed to the training thing passionately, but...

00:10:53.480 You realize that demons, which are real, they're not under every rock, but they're real.

00:11:00.300 There is such a thing as spirits.

00:11:02.420 And they'll try to get you from any angle.

00:11:06.900 They'll try to get, if they think they're going to bang you from the right, they'll get you from the right.

00:11:09.840 If they're going to get you from the left, they'll get you from up or down.

00:11:12.460 That's right.

00:11:12.740 All they want to do is devour you.

00:11:14.220 It's like Lewis and the Screwtape Letters.

00:11:15.660 All that, just any tactic that will let them get a hold of you.

00:11:19.000 And it's so clear with this guy, because you realize this guy was being obsessed from every angle.

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00:15:26.180 The fact that he drew a picture, and that is one of the few things I saw from the manifesto, pretty clear rendition, too.

00:15:34.520 I mean, he was a decent artist of himself looking in the mirror and a demon staring back at him.

00:15:39.480 I mean, that seems like a page one story.

00:15:42.340 Yes.

00:15:42.640 This guy was possessed or at least influenced by in him was some supernatural force causing him to murder kids.

00:15:51.720 And think about the two opposing errors that have led to this just in the last quarter century.

00:15:57.480 In the 2000s, I remember it vividly because I fell away from faith during this time.

00:16:03.040 There was the new atheism.

00:16:04.380 Materialism, you know, God's a spaghetti monster.

00:16:06.820 Come on, there's nothing but flesh and blood.

00:16:08.740 We're just, you know, synapses firing.

00:16:10.500 It's a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.

00:16:12.640 That was one error.

00:16:13.760 I think that's fallen away.

00:16:15.300 Yeah.

00:16:15.560 I don't think anyone believes that anymore.

00:16:17.680 No.

00:16:18.000 But now we've fallen into the opposing error, which is to say, actually, the material world has nothing to do with who you really are.

00:16:24.000 Your body has nothing to do with who you really are.

00:16:26.440 Your true self is this purely immaterial thing.

00:16:29.300 So, if you're a man, you can really be a woman or what have you.

00:16:32.540 And those are opposing errors that oppose the real dignity of the human person who is both spirit, soul, and body.

00:16:40.340 Once again, something I hadn't thought of.

00:16:45.520 So, we've, interesting.

00:16:47.560 Do you think that the fact that people live their lives digitally has allowed them to imagine that the body has no significance?

00:16:54.000 Precisely.

00:16:54.480 And this is the point that I think a lot of people have not made, which is that, of course, the trans ideology is in many ways deader than disco at this point.

00:17:02.740 The Democrats are running away from it.

00:17:04.500 Are they?

00:17:05.360 I think so.

00:17:06.060 They're downplaying it.

00:17:06.820 It really hurt them in 2024.

00:17:08.460 I think they realize we reached peak sexual madness in 2023.

00:17:12.980 They at least have to publicly back off.

00:17:15.360 However, how did we get to that place?

00:17:19.000 You could say, well, it begins with feminism.

00:17:20.980 You know, the idea that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

00:17:23.720 Men and women are the same.

00:17:24.860 Goes into the LGBT movement, which says men and women are the same.

00:17:27.580 Goes into gay marriage, so-called, which says men and women are the same.

00:17:30.380 So, two men and two women are the same as a man and a woman.

00:17:32.860 Leads into transgenderism.

00:17:34.580 A man can be a woman.

00:17:35.300 Okay, I see that through line.

00:17:37.460 But just think about the technological aspect.

00:17:39.900 If I live my life on this little portal to hell that's in my pocket.

00:17:44.640 It is a portal to hell.

00:17:46.020 All day long, I'm sitting there.

00:17:47.000 It's exactly where it goes.

00:17:48.340 If that's where I live in my own perception, then my body really doesn't matter that much, does it?

00:17:54.940 You know, I'm not like the biggest, you know, Achilles in the world, right?

00:17:58.700 I'm not some hulking Adonis.

00:18:00.800 I'm not an athlete.

00:18:02.200 But it doesn't really matter.

00:18:03.500 I just live in this virtual world.

00:18:05.140 So, is it so crazy to think that your body doesn't matter at that point?

00:18:09.420 I think that's, my instinct has been for the last few years that physical reality does really matter.

00:18:16.120 Even as I feel like I've had a heightened spiritual awareness and the dead certain knowledge that there is a spiritual, an unseen realm that is acting on us all the time.

00:18:24.560 And that that's as real as anything.

00:18:26.720 I sincerely believe that.

00:18:27.860 But on the other hand, I do see a lot of, like, ignoring of the physical reality around us.

00:18:35.120 Yeah.

00:18:35.460 This is why, by the way, you know, like everyone's becoming Catholic now.

00:18:39.420 You've noticed a strange phenomenon.

00:18:41.140 Yes.

00:18:41.860 I think this is a big reason why.

00:18:44.600 It's people, the decline of religion has tapered off.

00:18:47.900 Other denominations and traditions are growing.

00:18:51.140 But Catholicism in particular is exploding.

00:18:53.720 Why?

00:18:55.080 I think it's because it's a sacramental theology.

00:18:57.020 Well, I never would have called that.

00:18:58.700 Isn't it?

00:18:59.140 Yeah.

00:18:59.520 20 years ago, could you imagine?

00:19:00.840 At all.

00:19:01.340 Certainly not.

00:19:01.760 No, the Spotlight series had just come out and you're just like, this church is too corrupt to continue.

00:19:08.440 And I just want to say again, I'm not Catholic, but I strongly agree that there's a revival.

00:19:13.820 And I just see it all around me.

00:19:15.220 And I think this is why, you know, I mean, the words at the sacrifice of the mass are, this is my body, which will be given up for you, you know, and which is mocked.

00:19:24.780 You know, the phrase hocus pocus, like in magic, is a mockery of hocus denum corpus meum.

00:19:29.720 This is my body.

00:19:31.560 You know, this, yeah, it's a kind of a hawk, hawkest corpus, hocus pocus is, at least that's a popular etymology and I'm persuaded by it.

00:19:39.820 So there's this, there's always this mockery in all of the kind of false religions.

00:19:44.080 There's always this mockery of the real sacrifice.

00:19:46.940 But in a lot of religious traditions, and I don't cast aspersions, I had a Baptist grandpa.

00:19:50.680 You know, the Knowleses come from Maine, actually.

00:19:52.540 This is the ancestral homeland of the Knowleses.

00:19:55.300 Amazing.

00:19:55.820 Yes.

00:19:56.120 Yeah.

00:19:56.320 I haven't made it up very often, but a lot of Puritan in the line.

00:20:00.100 But a lot of us had ancestors in Maine and it's, you know, they left.

00:20:04.840 It's kind of cold and barren.

00:20:07.040 It is cold, yes.

00:20:08.200 But I think the reason why the sacramental theology is kicking up again is because we say, huh, you know, I've been living in a computer for 20 years.

00:20:15.880 And I don't even remember if I'm a man or a woman anymore.

00:20:18.780 But maybe my body really has something to do with who I am.

00:20:21.580 And actually, maybe this whole religion is about God becoming man and taking on flesh and dwelling among us and broiling fish.

00:20:29.360 I mean, the first thing you see our Lord doing when he comes back, you know, he's resurrected.

00:20:33.960 Standing on the shores of the lake.

00:20:35.160 He's cooking fish for his friends and eating fish.

00:20:37.080 For breakfast.

00:20:37.860 For breakfast, which is a hardcore.

00:20:39.540 Do they do that in Maine?

00:20:40.220 It's hardcore.

00:20:40.900 Only in Japan do they do that.

00:20:42.620 Yes, in Maine it's lobster.

00:20:43.860 But there is.

00:20:44.440 Brook trout, actually.

00:20:45.400 People eat them with baked beans.

00:20:47.180 I think that's why.

00:20:48.040 I think there's just, and COVID ties into this too.

00:20:51.260 Because during COVID, you were told your grandma has to die alone.

00:20:55.440 And you can't see her.

00:20:56.440 You can't go to Christmas.

00:20:57.380 She has to die alone in a hospital bed.

00:20:58.820 If you're lucky, you can say goodbye on Zoom.

00:21:01.880 And people recoil against that because it's just contrary to human nature.

00:21:06.480 You know, human beings are, we're like the angels in one way because we have reason.

00:21:10.840 We have intellect and will and spirits are, you know, don't have bodies.

00:21:14.700 But we're like the animals in another way.

00:21:16.480 The animals don't have intellect and will.

00:21:17.880 They have instinct and appetite.

00:21:19.660 But they're bodies, you know, and we're kind of in the middle of those two things.

00:21:24.480 And you can't ignore the, you can only ignore the body for so long before people say, no,

00:21:28.600 you know, I'm a man, actually.

00:21:30.060 Believe it or not, even in modernity, I'm a man.

00:21:32.800 I want to do stuff.

00:21:34.620 What's a sacramental religion?

00:21:36.620 How is that, or theology?

00:21:37.800 How is that distinct?

00:21:38.440 What's a non-sacramental theology?

00:21:40.120 It would be like the kind of religion that says that, well, the kind of religion Obama

00:21:44.100 pushed.

00:21:44.660 You remember Obama, he wouldn't talk about freedom of religion, not religion.

00:21:48.320 He'd say, oh, you have freedom of worship.

00:21:50.480 You know, you're free to, we're going to sue nuns.

00:21:52.260 We're going to sue nuns.

00:21:53.360 We're going to persecute Catholics.

00:21:54.820 We're going to, Biden's going to imprison pro-lifers for praying outside of abortion clinics.

00:21:59.260 But you can have your worship in your own head.

00:22:02.400 Close your eyes.

00:22:03.840 You can think things in your own head, but you can't do anything.

00:22:06.600 And that's not what religion is.

00:22:07.980 Religion is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, it's a habit of virtue that inclines the will to

00:22:13.560 give to God what he deserves.

00:22:15.160 And you do it in your whole life.

00:22:16.720 And so a sacrament is the meeting of the material and the immaterial.

00:22:21.820 The clearest example, the highest, you know, blessed sacrament is the Eucharist, which we

00:22:27.560 believe, and certain Protestant traditions also believe, is really Christ, you know,

00:22:33.760 body, blood, soul, and divinity, really, really present.

00:22:37.400 And this is confounding to modern man, who says, well, get me an electron microscope.

00:22:42.320 Let me, I don't see, and actually there have been Eucharistic miracles where the appearance

00:22:46.280 of the bread is not maintained and actually gives way to like cardiac tissue.

00:22:50.060 That's a separate topic.

00:22:52.880 Even in the ordinary sacrament, it's this meeting of the two things.

00:22:57.760 When I go to confession, I confess my terrible sins.

00:23:01.400 I get down on my knees in a box with a priest, and the priest is acting in the person of Christ.

00:23:05.320 It comes from scripture because Christ says to the apostles, you have the power to forgive

00:23:09.760 sins.

00:23:10.260 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven.

00:23:12.040 Whose sins you retain are retained.

00:23:15.380 That's a real authority.

00:23:16.400 He says that to the disciples.

00:23:17.320 Yes, and that's a real authority.

00:23:19.500 It's not just a kind of abstract, you know, you can just forgive sins by, you know, spreading

00:23:25.260 a message or something.

00:23:26.220 No, he's saying you have an actual authority.

00:23:27.560 You can retain sins if the person isn't really repentant.

00:23:30.860 And that means that when I'm in there confessing in a box to a guy in a collar, I'm, God is

00:23:37.400 actually forgiving my sins in the person of the priest or not.

00:23:40.860 But that's a, that's a meeting of something I can see and something I can't see.

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00:27:30.420 Can I ask you, as I've said, a Protestant, I love Martin Luther.

00:27:36.160 I'm sure you hate Martin Luther, but I really love Martin Luther.

00:27:38.460 He had some very funny prose.

00:27:40.100 He was a spicy character.

00:27:42.540 Yes.

00:27:43.180 The real Martin Luther, not Michael Luther who changed his name.

00:27:45.880 Michael Kang who changed his name.

00:27:47.240 But anyway, the actual, the German monk.

00:27:52.080 But one of the things he didn't get rid of indulgences, thank God, in my view, but he

00:27:56.240 also got rid of confession.

00:27:57.980 And I don't understand why.

00:27:59.520 That has always struck me as a mistake and such a great thing that Catholics do.

00:28:03.820 And do you know, I mean, do you know the answer?

00:28:05.380 The Anglicans still have confession.

00:28:06.780 C.S. Lewis confessed every week of his life.

00:28:09.440 I grew up in the Anglican church.

00:28:10.660 We've never had that.

00:28:11.960 I've never heard of it.

00:28:13.180 These days, unfortunately, they used to say the Episcopalians, it was twice the

00:28:17.220 liturgy, half the guilt.

00:28:18.320 Yeah.

00:28:18.520 Well, zero guilt.

00:28:19.340 Yes.

00:28:19.780 Zero guilt.

00:28:20.140 You only feel bad about feeling bad about yourself.

00:28:22.200 I was at the National Prayer Service at the inauguration when that bishopress lady decided

00:28:29.040 to take the occasion to scold the president and vice president.

00:28:31.860 Do you remember that?

00:28:32.660 Do I remember that?

00:28:33.320 It's the head of my church.

00:28:34.180 Yeah.

00:28:34.420 Do I remember it?

00:28:35.220 Yeah.

00:28:35.440 Like every Episcopalian, I know we're all texting each other, former Episcopalian, but

00:28:39.860 yeah, no, she, well, she, I loved that because then the world could see what it's

00:28:44.260 really become.

00:28:45.400 It's just, it's, it's repulsive.

00:28:47.720 It's not Christianity.

00:28:49.020 And she was just so obviously like furious in torment.

00:28:54.260 Yes.

00:28:54.700 Yes.

00:28:54.860 This is not someone who's like experiencing God's forgiving love.

00:28:59.760 This is someone who's filled with hate and they all are filled with hate.

00:29:02.360 It's all a bunch of recovering alcoholic ladies with multiple divorces, deciding they're

00:29:07.780 lesbian, love the little outfits.

00:29:10.520 And then the priests are these kind of beta males or gay guys who love the outfits.

00:29:14.480 The whole thing is fake.

00:29:15.500 Yeah.

00:29:15.700 But what do you really think, Tucker?

00:29:16.820 Hold on.

00:29:17.120 What do you really think about it?

00:29:18.380 About the Episcopal church?

00:29:19.700 I'm joking.

00:29:20.240 How much time do you have?

00:29:21.160 Yeah.

00:29:21.360 That's a, that is a, a similarly, uh, Lutheran or, um, Heller-Bellock like, uh, vituperation.

00:29:29.100 Sorry, I totally get it.

00:29:30.800 I totally get it.

00:29:31.060 I'm not being very Christian, but no, no.

00:29:33.420 I mean, it's had a huge effect on my life.

00:29:35.040 So obviously I'm a little mad about it.

00:29:36.840 I need to repent of my anger, but, um, but I was just delighted that the rest of the

00:29:41.040 world could see what it has become because obviously, you know, the Episcopalians ran

00:29:45.320 the country and did a great job.

00:29:47.740 I would say much better job than the current people around the country, uh, are doing.

00:29:53.100 And they had a wonderful taste.

00:29:55.020 And so they built the prettiest churches, each with a red door.

00:29:57.640 My whole life, we had a red door on our house, always, every house, because we're Episcopalians,

00:30:01.220 you have a red door.

00:30:02.660 And they're just, there's a lot that was good about them.

00:30:05.180 And I think people haven't updated their files and they don't know what goes on inside.

00:30:08.920 And not in every Episcopal church.

00:30:10.320 One of my closest friends is an Episcopal priest and a sincere and wonderful man, godfather

00:30:14.440 one of my kids.

00:30:15.800 But, um, in a lot of Episcopal churches, it's hateful menopausal ladies like that and their

00:30:21.920 gay sidekicks.

00:30:22.920 And it's just the saddest, ugliest, cruelest thing ever.

00:30:27.980 And now everyone saw it.

00:30:29.560 Everyone saw it.

00:30:30.120 And the other thing about it is, if you go, if you go to church and your church is, you

00:30:34.880 know, some, some lady spouting off about, I don't know, like, you know, the latest migration

00:30:40.740 policy and whining about Trump.

00:30:43.060 Then, then put aside the political issue.

00:30:46.100 You just ask yourself, well, why am I going here?

00:30:48.840 Well, that's exactly the question we ask.

00:30:50.920 I get this, I get this six days a week.

00:30:52.800 Why do I need to get this on the seventh day?

00:30:54.580 Especially when I could be in bed with my wife and my dogs.

00:30:57.380 Like, you just ask me to get out of bed and like take a shower at seven in the morning,

00:31:00.820 which I hate doing, to go to church, which I, you know, I really feel like I should be

00:31:05.460 doing.

00:31:05.760 And this is what I get.

00:31:06.660 There's nothing transcendent.

00:31:07.780 It's all you and your little therapy session.

00:31:10.460 And you're like filled with hate.

00:31:12.240 Like, no.

00:31:13.240 But this is why I, this is how, in answer to your question, how did these things sort of

00:31:17.480 decline?

00:31:18.280 I think part of it is, it's, it's a spirit of liberalism that comes out and abstracts

00:31:24.140 everything.

00:31:24.480 First of all, away from time and place and community and family and body and just all like

00:31:29.340 these really tangible things.

00:31:30.480 It abstracts it all into outer space.

00:31:33.440 And then on the other side of it, it brings everything down.

00:31:38.320 That everything has to be totally, not even egalitarian.

00:31:41.240 It's like a kind of Harrison Bergeron handicapping of everything.

00:31:45.280 You've just got to make, you've got to make the church like the world.

00:31:47.840 And there's a great line from, I think it was Fulton Sheen who says that if you wed the

00:31:51.420 spirit of the age, you'll find yourself a widow in the next.

00:31:54.400 And that's what these, and the Catholics are not guiltless in this, by the way, because

00:31:57.380 after the second Vatican council, there was a liturgical reform.

00:32:00.480 To turn everything into some happy, clappy sort of party.

00:32:03.540 The priest then faces the people instead of facing God as, as, you know, leading us all

00:32:07.440 in worship and whatever.

00:32:10.440 The age of Aquarius, I guess, demanded that in the sixties or something.

00:32:13.140 But I think people have had enough of that.

00:32:14.820 And I think people hate the disenchantment and the degradation of the world and just the

00:32:18.660 physical ugliness of it.

00:32:20.240 And we want to look up again.

00:32:23.420 When was the last time someone built like a cathedral?

00:32:26.400 I mean, you go to downtown London, which has got to be the saddest place.

00:32:30.240 On the planet.

00:32:32.700 And if I didn't have family there, I wouldn't go there.

00:32:34.820 But I do.

00:32:35.620 And so I do.

00:32:36.460 And you go and you see that the prettiest buildings in the city were built before electricity.

00:32:40.980 Yeah.

00:32:41.200 Or machines of any kind, actually.

00:32:43.540 And it's, it's also tough to get around London now because my Arabic isn't very good.

00:32:46.780 So I fairly.

00:32:47.820 There's that.

00:32:48.700 My Urdu.

00:32:49.120 By the way, speaking of like things you couldn't have imagined even two years ago, I read Elon

00:32:53.960 is now calling for the repatriation of like a lot of European, non-Europeans out of Europe.

00:33:01.060 Yes.

00:33:02.100 And I'm like, what?

00:33:03.240 Which obviously, you know, I, I understand why he feels that way.

00:33:06.840 But to say something like that, I would just sort of casually drop that yesterday.

00:33:10.460 I think it's like, we're living in a different time.

00:33:13.300 Of course we are.

00:33:14.200 And it's not 2020 anymore.

00:33:15.400 I, I just, I just hope that the return to sanity happens while Angela Merkel is still

00:33:19.800 alive.

00:33:20.160 So she gets to see the undoing of her policies to flood Europe.

00:33:24.260 I mean, it's crazy.

00:33:25.100 To destroy it, to destroy Christian Europe forever.

00:33:27.540 Well, you know, this was the part, I mentioned Hilaire Belloc, who has a similarly, sort of

00:33:31.480 delightfully acerbic style to what you're saying.

00:33:33.400 I don't know, you're allowed to mention him?

00:33:34.920 Belloc, yes.

00:33:35.440 Belloc, are you allowed to say, Belloc is, listen, he was buddies with Chesterton.

00:33:38.840 Chesterton's slightly more clubbable.

00:33:40.220 So maybe you're allowed to mention Belloc.

00:33:41.580 Look, but, but Belloc said in his excellent book on the Crusades, he said, look, excellent,

00:33:46.880 excellent, highly recommended reading.

00:33:49.160 He's, oh, I can't even do justice to the vividness of his prose, this kind of both bloodthirsty

00:33:56.040 and totally charitable way of writing.

00:33:57.680 But he says, look, the Crusades were lost.

00:34:00.380 We lost the battle of Hattin.

00:34:02.120 It was 1187.

00:34:03.360 That was it.

00:34:03.660 It was done.

00:34:04.800 And, and we flatter ourselves.

00:34:07.200 We think that, that Islam is sort of done.

00:34:09.800 He's writing this in the, what, 20s or 30s?

00:34:11.620 Yeah.

00:34:11.980 He says, we think Islam is done and Christianity is strong.

00:34:15.060 He goes, no.

00:34:16.800 Islam remains intact.

00:34:18.640 The only reason it seems like Christendom is on top is because we have certain technological

00:34:22.120 and industrial advantages.

00:34:23.800 He goes, once that passes away, he goes, our moral certitude is totally cracked up.

00:34:29.300 We are in a much worse place than our opponents in the Crusades were.

00:34:32.560 Exactly.

00:34:33.460 I think that's really prescient and wise and true.

00:34:36.200 I mean, it's so obviously true.

00:34:37.620 And it was the affluence born of technology that rotted the soul of the Christian West.

00:34:43.800 I mean, wealth did this just as it does to families.

00:34:46.260 And I'm not against wealth.

00:34:47.320 I mean, I haven't accrued much, but you know, I'm not, I'm not for poverty for sure.

00:34:52.300 But I, it's also true that like generational wealth like makes you into a horrible person.

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00:35:53.040 I mean, this is, I carry around a prayer card.

00:35:55.380 Listen, I haven't, I haven't sold enough cigars yet that I'm too worried about generational wealth.

00:35:58.660 I'm going to ask you about the cigars because I don't, I don't know how did you wind up

00:36:01.280 the cigars, but hold on, but I, I take it too seriously to address it parenthetically.

00:36:05.900 I, so I, I feel as though I've got a really nice life.

00:36:11.620 You know, I got a nice house.

00:36:12.680 I got this beautiful family.

00:36:14.100 I have nice little doodads and things like that.

00:36:16.940 And you have three sons.

00:36:18.100 Three sons.

00:36:18.780 Three sons.

00:36:19.100 I cannot produce.

00:36:20.020 That's true wealth.

00:36:20.440 It is true wealth.

00:36:21.400 And I can't produce a daughter, which means I'm going to go to a nursing home someday.

00:36:24.260 If I don't, I need a daughter.

00:36:26.540 So that's, that is the truest thing.

00:36:29.660 I'm sad for you that you already know that at 35, that your final hours will be spent alone

00:36:34.660 and your boys will be somewhere with some hot girl.

00:36:36.980 Be like, you know, he was a good guy.

00:36:38.100 Whatever happened to him?

00:36:38.880 What was his name?

00:36:39.880 Matt or Mark or something.

00:36:41.500 Anyway, he, uh.

00:36:42.400 Whereas if you had daughters, bedside vigil.

00:36:45.180 Yes.

00:36:45.660 Dad needs a catheter chain, whatever it takes.

00:36:48.260 Like they will do it.

00:36:48.960 This is, that's actually why I need generational wealth is just to pay for my long-term care.

00:36:52.980 But you're going to have some Haitian lady who's out for a cigarette when you croak.

00:36:56.300 You need some daughters, man.

00:36:58.540 But, you know, I carry around a prayer card of St. Jerome who translated the Bible.

00:37:02.500 It was also a great kind of a rhetorical pugilist.

00:37:05.860 And, and there's a great quote from letter 22, I think.

00:37:08.680 He would write all these letters to Roman noble women.

00:37:10.840 And, and it says, whenever you start to be enchanted by the pleasures of this world,

00:37:16.820 it's not that you have to totally, you know, deny them all the time.

00:37:19.640 But whenever you start to be enchanted, think about where you're going.

00:37:24.340 Think about how this is all going to end up.

00:37:26.200 And try to be now what you will be hereafter.

00:37:30.980 Easier said than done.

00:37:32.000 No, it's, yes, I couldn't agree.

00:37:34.780 I don't have my phone right.

00:37:35.640 I would read you my favorite.

00:37:36.380 But, quote, on that exact subject, every New Year's, my wife and I go to church.

00:37:41.260 We don't go to the service because it's Episcopal Church.

00:37:43.700 But we go in the afternoon to say our prayers for the year.

00:37:46.080 And every year, you know, you sort of, I always feel like I get a message or it's like something resonant.

00:37:50.160 Like this year is going to require this quality in order to get through it and thrive in it.

00:37:54.480 And this year, man, the message was so clear.

00:37:57.300 Like this is all passing away.

00:37:59.980 And to the extent that you love, you know, material things and take great, you know, undue pride in your own stupid accomplishments.

00:38:08.700 Like you're a fool.

00:38:10.100 You're a fool.

00:38:11.360 I think you can kind of see this with Trump now, actually.

00:38:14.920 I think Trump is, and I probably, it happened after Butler, Pennsylvania.

00:38:20.960 Something seems to have changed in the way that he speaks.

00:38:23.440 I was just there.

00:38:24.120 I visited the White House to do some interviews and things just a week ago.

00:38:27.920 And what's so amazing is you are at the peak of imperial power on earth.

00:38:33.740 The absolute head of the strongest government maybe that has ever existed.

00:38:39.640 Technologically, certainly that has ever existed.

00:38:41.780 And you walk around and you think, you know, it's great and I'm glad to be here.

00:38:46.760 Even this, it's a government building, first of all.

00:38:50.000 It's kind of drab, which is why Trump's trying to fix it up a little bit.

00:38:51.900 And even this, even this will pass away.

00:38:54.400 Four years.

00:38:55.000 Well, even Trump's been kind of president for 12 years.

00:38:57.700 He's been the dominant figure in public life for 12.

00:38:59.800 His president will have been for eight.

00:39:01.760 And I think even this is going to pass away.

00:39:04.580 And you're going to be sitting in your bed with your Haitian nurse.

00:39:07.900 Oh, it's totally true.

00:39:09.200 What is this about?

00:39:11.640 And she's going to be like listening to some game show at high volume and you're going to want her to turn it down.

00:39:15.860 But you've got a tube in your throat and you can't tell her.

00:39:17.720 No, she doesn't speak English.

00:39:18.700 There's literally nothing you can do about it.

00:39:20.700 You can't extend your life by one day.

00:39:22.660 You have no power, actually, to control the things that matter.

00:39:26.900 And most of our power is destructive power.

00:39:29.840 You can kill people.

00:39:31.000 That's why heads of state love killing people, whatever they say.

00:39:33.280 They love it because it makes them feel like God.

00:39:35.820 Yeah, Obama would joke about it.

00:39:36.960 I got drones.

00:39:37.800 I'm coming for you, Jonas Brothers.

00:39:39.180 They love it.

00:39:39.460 They all love it.

00:39:40.700 I've talked to a lot of them about it.

00:39:42.220 They love it.

00:39:42.840 And the clever ones try to hide the fact they love it.

00:39:45.560 Well, you know, it's the burden of the office.

00:39:48.140 But that's not how they feel.

00:39:49.720 They take delight in it because it's an expression of power.

00:39:54.200 But I mean, it is the weakest kind of most transitory kind of power.

00:39:57.900 Yeah, of course.

00:39:58.560 And, you know, the three.

00:39:59.620 Healing people.

00:40:00.900 The three material things that people want.

00:40:03.160 Fame, money, and power.

00:40:04.460 Yeah.

00:40:04.760 And I'm not saying I don't want them.

00:40:06.880 I'm not saying I haven't enjoyed the modicum I've gotten of any of them.

00:40:10.040 But one thing that happens when you get a little taste of each is you realize that it ultimately is unsatisfying.

00:40:17.460 Yeah.

00:40:17.700 It does.

00:40:18.320 And I was talking to a friend the other day.

00:40:20.240 The prize is not worth winning.

00:40:21.640 Yes.

00:40:22.140 Right.

00:40:22.560 Because you get there and you say, okay, well, now what do I want?

00:40:25.840 And do you know the exact, I've done a scientific analysis, the exact amount of money, fame, and power that will make you happy?

00:40:33.480 Just a little bit more.

00:40:35.820 Just a little bit more.

00:40:37.380 Yeah.

00:40:38.480 Yeah.

00:40:38.840 I get into it so young that I don't feel that way at all anymore.

00:40:42.680 But I do think fame is not something anyone should ever want.

00:40:47.040 I don't see the upside in that at all.

00:40:49.140 I don't know.

00:40:50.340 Like, what could possibly be worth having?

00:40:52.000 I'll tell you the upside.

00:40:52.980 Sometimes you'll get a free appetizer at dinner if someone likes your show or something.

00:40:57.300 That's great.

00:40:57.640 That's great.

00:40:58.020 I like free appetizers.

00:40:58.620 I always feel so obligated.

00:41:00.800 What does that mean?

00:41:01.700 Do I have to name my next kid after you?

00:41:03.320 Like, I don't like presents.

00:41:05.220 You know what I mean?

00:41:05.780 My next child, truffle French fry nose.

00:41:08.100 Yes, yes, ah.

00:41:09.700 After a yes.

00:41:10.400 It's so true.

00:41:11.260 So, but just to go back to what's happening in the Catholic Church, I don't know, is it

00:41:16.260 happening in the Church or is it happening under the sort of wings of the Church, auspices

00:41:21.640 of the Church?

00:41:22.280 Is it happening around the Church or is the Church itself like experiencing a revival?

00:41:26.740 Well, it's, you know, we're all the mystical body of Christ.

00:41:29.160 So, it's, you know, it's at the level of the episcopate, you know, the bishops and the

00:41:33.300 Pope and every, there's a new Pope.

00:41:34.860 And, but the laity too, we're all part of the body of Christ.

00:41:37.480 And there is just something kind of happening.

00:41:40.660 And I think even, you know, I have this doc series called The Pope and the Fuhrer, which

00:41:45.060 is about, it's really about Pius XII, who was the, he was the Pope during World War II

00:41:49.780 until 1958.

00:41:50.920 And he's this image of the old school Pope, you know, the papal tiara, arms extended.

00:41:57.760 You're supposed to feel bad about that Pope.

00:41:59.520 You're supposed to.

00:42:00.720 You caused the war or something, right?

00:42:02.040 Yeah, and it turns out, none of that is true.

00:42:06.560 And so, there was a famous play attacking him.

00:42:09.920 This is how, this is everything you need to know about Pius XII.

00:42:13.440 There was a play that came out in 1963.

00:42:15.580 So, long after the war, five years after.

00:42:18.500 But right before the papal council, I noticed.

00:42:20.600 Right, yes.

00:42:20.980 Right around the time of the, of the Second Vatican Council.

00:42:23.120 Right.

00:42:23.640 How odd.

00:42:24.160 Promoted by the KGB and communists.

00:42:26.640 Interesting.

00:42:27.320 The way that.

00:42:28.320 Literally promoted by communists.

00:42:29.600 And the way that you know that it's all nonsense.

00:42:32.520 First of all, after, after the war and, and, and then after Pius XII died, everybody lauded him.

00:42:39.960 Everybody.

00:42:40.860 Not, not the communists, I guess.

00:42:42.320 But secular, religious, Christians, Jews, everybody lauded this guy.

00:42:47.900 He was an amazing hero.

00:42:49.060 The chief rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism right after the war.

00:42:52.740 What?

00:42:53.020 And took his name.

00:42:54.400 Eugenio.

00:42:55.060 Eugenio Pacelli was the Pope and he was Eugenio Zoli.

00:42:58.120 He said this man was an amazing friend of Jews and all of humanity.

00:43:01.620 He was just an amazing.

00:43:02.640 Because he was painted as a Nazi.

00:43:04.880 Yeah.

00:43:05.500 Hitler's Pope is what these ridiculous people, really promoted by communists, to tell you.

00:43:09.860 But the way that you know it's all nonsense is.

00:43:11.820 Was the point to influence the council?

00:43:14.100 I think really my kind of deep thesis on the pious battles, which really exploded even in the 90s, much, much later, I see it as a kind of intra-Catholic battle.

00:43:25.060 So, in that way, I guess it would involve the second Vatican Council and reforms afterward, which is, you had this man as a symbol of Catholic tradition.

00:43:33.920 And you had people within the church who didn't really like the tradition and maybe wanted to change things.

00:43:39.360 And one thing about the church, you can't change anything.

00:43:41.760 You know, you can't, you can, doctrine develops, but you don't change.

00:43:44.380 And I think it was a battle for the identity of the church.

00:43:48.280 You know, in order to radically change everything, Pius XII had to be slandered and calumniated.

00:43:53.640 The fact that the chief evidence against this man is an eight-hour work of fiction that no one has ever fully staged, absolute garbage by this random playwright, Rock Hoth or something, promoted by the KGB, tells you everything you need to know.

00:44:10.300 Because the facts are just totally contrary to that.

00:44:12.560 The official story on 9-11 is a complete lie.

00:44:16.760 The 9-11 report is a joke.

00:44:19.480 You have the CIA following two men all over the planet and then eventually even to America, right?

00:44:26.540 And you don't tell the FBI.

00:44:28.780 9-11 Commission, cover.

00:44:35.900 So what did happen?

00:44:37.540 What did the government know?

00:44:39.320 What did foreign governments know?

00:44:41.040 There was a cover-up.

00:44:42.800 Why?

00:44:43.520 It's been nearly 25 years.

00:44:44.860 It's time Americans learned what actually happened.

00:44:47.560 We're going to tell you.

00:44:48.300 We're releasing one episode per week.

00:44:50.340 You're not going to want to wait.

00:44:51.440 If you're a member, you don't have to.

00:44:52.880 You get all five episodes the day it drops right then, ad-free.

00:44:56.900 Our first episode airs Thursday, 9-11, September 11th.

00:45:00.580 You will not want to miss it.

00:45:01.540 Join us now at TuckerCarlson.com.

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00:46:13.620 Interesting, but even now, loathe these many years later, that the stench hangs in the air.

00:46:18.560 Yes, it's absurd. It will dissipate with time.

00:46:22.120 You know, the church measures her years not in weeks and months, but in centuries.

00:46:25.860 No, no, no. That's right. That's just interesting.

00:46:28.900 I know so little about it, but my instinct tells me strongly that that was a pivot point in the modern history of the church.

00:46:40.180 What was Vatican II, as we non-Catholics call it?

00:46:44.180 Well, Liz, I'm a trad, a traditionalist in good standing.

00:46:47.600 I attend the traditional Latin mass.

00:46:49.280 I have my totally unexpired trad card.

00:46:53.080 But the trick here is, one can't criticize, one can't totally reject the council.

00:46:58.580 This is an ecumenical council that was legitimately called by the church with dogmatic constitutions.

00:47:03.640 So you don't just say, throw it out.

00:47:05.100 And the funny thing is, people who talk about Vatican II, pro and against, have never read the documents.

00:47:11.860 I certainly haven't.

00:47:12.740 So what was it?

00:47:14.240 Can you just summarize it for us?

00:47:16.160 Well, yes.

00:47:16.680 It was an ecumenical council.

00:47:18.780 There have been many of these.

00:47:19.780 What does that mean, ecumenical council?

00:47:21.140 The bishops all get together.

00:47:22.740 So this is like, you know, the real deal.

00:47:24.560 This goes all the way back to antiquity.

00:47:26.360 And the fact that we talk about this one council as kind of the biggest one in the whole church is silly.

00:47:33.640 You don't talk about the spirit of the fourth laddering council.

00:47:35.680 You don't talk about that.

00:47:36.860 Well, I think the reason that I'm fixated on it is because as someone who's kind of pro-Catholic, I guess.

00:47:43.500 I mean, I...

00:47:44.720 Catholic curious?

00:47:45.800 I'm not Catholic curious.

00:47:47.220 I'm not going there.

00:47:48.100 I'm a Luther man.

00:47:48.880 But the idea that, you know, in 1950, the majority of like immigrant kids in our biggest cities were schooled in Catholic schools.

00:47:59.360 And that, you know, went to church every week and like it provided order and, well, Christianity, which I believe in.

00:48:06.420 And like, I'm very in favor of that.

00:48:08.980 And then post-Vatican II, this is just my like ignorant overview, that all collapsed.

00:48:15.780 And those, I don't know how many Catholic schools there were in 1965.

00:48:20.720 They're probably less than half now.

00:48:22.620 All those churches closed.

00:48:23.780 There are lots of factors.

00:48:24.860 But like, and then you have the molestation scandal, which was to some extent real and horrifying.

00:48:29.000 Yep.

00:48:29.520 And all these people leaving the priesthood and fewer people becoming religious.

00:48:34.300 I don't know.

00:48:35.140 It's hard not to see a connection between the two, but maybe I'm wrong.

00:48:38.180 Pope Benedict, when he stepped down, he kept writing.

00:48:41.840 And he wrote a non-encyclical, but it was...

00:48:44.640 He was the Pope before Francis.

00:48:46.040 The Pope before Francis.

00:48:46.540 He was the cigarette-smoking German.

00:48:47.480 Yes, the cigarette-smoking German.

00:48:49.620 He observed, he said, you know, part of what happened, because you have to distinguish between what the council actually said, which was relatively minor.

00:48:57.640 It's a pastoral council.

00:48:58.660 It's, you know, and then there was this big reform that totally changed the mass and totally, you know, changed the smells and bells and the ornamentations.

00:49:06.780 Which matters because the way we worship dictates how we believe.

00:49:11.540 There's a phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi.

00:49:14.100 You know, if you worship a certain way, obviously, that's going to change how you think about this.

00:49:19.220 Of course.

00:49:20.060 That's going to change how you live your life.

00:49:21.200 And he said, you know, the Catholic Church was swept up, just like every other institution in the entire West, was swept up in this cultural fervor of the 1960s.

00:49:34.240 And in some cases, it helped impel that fervor.

00:49:37.980 And it was like a, I don't know, like a kind of a madness took over, all of these reforms.

00:49:44.080 And then what happened is the fever started to break.

00:49:47.220 And so after Vatican II, you get John Paul I, who was pope for 30 days.

00:49:52.120 And then you get John Paul II.

00:49:54.560 John Paul II, in my mind, is kind of like the Napoleon of the Catholic Church.

00:49:59.140 He's a child of the revolution, but he's also the undoing of the revolution.

00:50:04.680 And is lauded, loved by conservatives, profoundly anti-communist, helped end the Cold War.

00:50:10.880 Really important man, now canonized as saint.

00:50:13.540 After him, you get Benedict.

00:50:14.900 And Benedict said something really brilliant, which has been an, he said many brilliant things, but it's a real antidote to the spirit of the age.

00:50:20.900 He said there were kind of bad actors.

00:50:23.680 I'm reading into this.

00:50:24.860 There were some bad actors who tried to use the council, to exploit the council, to say that everything that came before, that contradicts what we want to do in modernity, that's got to go.

00:50:35.740 We've got to read the past only through the lens of where we are now.

00:50:39.920 This is a broader cultural phenomenon.

00:50:41.380 We do it with American history.

00:50:42.320 We do it everywhere.

00:50:43.780 Everything is just about us and looking back.

00:50:45.720 Of course.

00:50:46.240 And what he said is, no, no, no.

00:50:47.860 We do it generationally.

00:50:49.320 We do it generationally.

00:50:50.300 You can't imagine your parents having sex.

00:50:52.180 Yes.

00:50:52.720 You wouldn't be here if they didn't.

00:50:54.100 Mine did.

00:50:54.480 I don't know about yours, but mine did.

00:50:56.100 Every generation imagines it's inventing everything out of nothing.

00:50:59.480 Yes.

00:51:00.500 What Benedict said was, no, no.

00:51:01.880 There was a hermeneutic of continuity.

00:51:04.280 The way we interpret the past is not by going in reverse.

00:51:08.980 It's that whatever we think in our limited store of reason, in modernity, with all of our fashions and temptations and novel aspects, we have to understand that as being in continuity with the past.

00:51:20.780 And if we think there's been some radical break, we're probably wrong.

00:51:25.380 Who's more likely to be wrong?

00:51:27.220 The smartest, most serious men for 1950 years or like you?

00:51:32.880 It's me.

00:51:33.700 I'm more likely to be wrong, right?

00:51:35.080 And so that was the fog breaking, I think.

00:51:40.260 But can I ask, were there meaningful changes made during that council?

00:51:44.680 Yes.

00:51:45.220 Changes in the sense that there were certain pastoral elements that were discussed and written into dogmatic constitutions.

00:51:52.940 So an understanding of religious liberty.

00:51:55.540 This one is sometimes, Protestants love religious liberty.

00:51:59.720 And Catholics do too, properly understood.

00:52:01.120 But this is sometimes considered somewhat radical because the church also believes error has no rights.

00:52:06.940 Error non abet use.

00:52:08.180 What does that mean, error has no rights?

00:52:10.000 Well, in liberal modernity, we say that every cockamamie idea, every deviant, ridiculous behavior is some human right and we have to protect it with federal subsidies.

00:52:18.400 And the church says, no, no.

00:52:20.360 Error, when you say things that aren't true, when you do things that are contrary to your flourishing and to nature, there's no right to that.

00:52:28.340 But of course, the rejoinder is, error has no rights.

00:52:32.160 Well, that is pretty anti-modern.

00:52:33.880 It's quite anti-modern.

00:52:35.020 Yes.

00:52:35.500 It's about as anti-modern as you can get.

00:52:38.220 And you can say, people who err have rights.

00:52:41.860 It's not saying error has rights, but people who err.

00:52:43.580 And the Catholic Church has a long history of toleration, contrary to what, you know, polemicists in the Enlightenment or what have you would say.

00:52:49.360 But a long, long history of toleration, going all the way back to the earliest days of the church, beautifully articulated by Gregory the Great, all the way up through the Middle Ages.

00:52:56.800 It's, again, these are the stories that no one's taught in school anymore.

00:53:01.380 However, you know, that could be misinterpreted as to saying that, like, I don't know, we have the right to some, like, you know, Satanist display in the courthouse or something, as activists argue today.

00:53:13.280 Totally ridiculous.

00:53:14.060 What else does Vatican II contain?

00:53:16.880 Vatican II.

00:53:18.200 Well, so here's my actual question.

00:53:20.680 So, at the core of Christianity is a claim of exclusivity.

00:53:25.080 Every human being, every human being on earth reaches God only through Jesus.

00:53:31.520 Yes.

00:53:32.820 Period.

00:53:33.660 Yeah.

00:53:33.860 Doesn't matter.

00:53:34.980 Like, nothing else matters.

00:53:36.020 That's it.

00:53:36.520 That's the one, that's your ticket.

00:53:38.380 You can't board the train without it.

00:53:40.000 Yeah.

00:53:40.760 Did that change?

00:53:42.560 No.

00:53:43.120 Okay.

00:53:43.420 The answer, the answer is no.

00:53:45.300 Some of the confusion of this is there's quite a bit of confusion about that.

00:53:49.380 Part of the confusion is there's the claim in Latin, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

00:53:53.980 There's no salvation outside of the church.

00:53:55.740 The church does not change her view on that.

00:53:58.440 However, people are always asked this question, you know, what about my, you know, Protestant grandpa or my, I don't know, my atheist dad or my Jewish or my Hindu or my Muslim or my whatever.

00:54:09.980 No way.

00:54:10.640 And they go to heaven.

00:54:11.360 One of these is not like the others, but that's my view.

00:54:14.740 The Protestants.

00:54:15.540 Yeah, I would say, yes.

00:54:16.860 No, but if you take a really rigorous exclusive claim here and you say, no, sorry, you're all, you know, you're all totally without any hope.

00:54:27.300 And I guess what the council clarifies is that, you know, we pray for these people.

00:54:34.360 There is no salvation outside of Christ.

00:54:36.120 There is no salvation outside of the church.

00:54:38.060 Salvation subsists within the church.

00:54:39.540 However, it allows for some, as a pastoral matter, some greater dialogue in this modern world.

00:54:46.560 Wait, so what's the difference between Jesus and the church?

00:54:50.340 Well, Christ founds the church and Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride.

00:54:54.240 So Catholics, the official church position is unless you're a member of the church, you don't go to heaven.

00:54:59.000 Well, this is something that would be sort of clarified at the Second Vatican Council or maybe not clarified.

00:55:04.860 Maybe it's just leads to more ecumenical dialogue or something like this.

00:55:09.560 But that one could say, when you're baptized, you're a Christian.

00:55:12.220 You might never receive any of the sacraments.

00:55:14.040 You might never go to church.

00:55:15.140 When you're baptized, that's what delineates you as a Christian.

00:55:19.020 Right.

00:55:19.480 And so we pray for the salvation of everyone.

00:55:23.700 A good example would be, because this is coming after the Second World War.

00:55:26.500 So obviously they're addressing the Jews in particular.

00:55:28.300 And the council states clearly that the Jews are our elder brothers in faith, which is another line that's sort of used polemically in all sorts of ways.

00:55:41.260 And so God doesn't revoke his promises to his people.

00:55:45.000 And this can be taken into all different kinds of ideological.

00:55:47.060 That was the conclusion of the council?

00:55:50.240 Well, that's a statement of the council.

00:55:52.420 But this comes from St. Paul.

00:55:53.980 Okay.

00:55:54.240 You know, St. Paul says that for the sake of the gospel, the Jews aren't with it, you know.

00:56:00.680 But for the sake of their forebears, you know, God loves the Jews.

00:56:04.800 And because the call of God and the gifts of God are irrevocable.

00:56:08.040 So what does that mean?

00:56:09.300 This means...

00:56:10.020 But Paul was a Jew, obviously.

00:56:11.320 He was a Pharisee.

00:56:12.540 Yes.

00:56:12.900 Yeah.

00:56:13.360 What this means, and this gets back to what we were talking about at the top with sort of Aristotelian virtue as the mean between two extremes.

00:56:21.180 There are two views on this.

00:56:22.580 One is a view that says that, you know, you don't need Christ to be saved.

00:56:28.160 And specifically the Jews don't need Christ to be saved.

00:56:31.000 And another view is that, you know, God's done with the Jews and forget about the Jews now.

00:56:36.020 And it's just only the church.

00:56:37.900 And what St. Paul is saying and what the council is clarifying is there's kind of a little bit of room for both.

00:56:44.640 There is, you know, Christ is the Savior.

00:56:46.560 He's the one Savior.

00:56:47.400 He's the way.

00:56:48.020 And the road is narrow and he's the way and the truth and the life.

00:56:50.280 And also, God doesn't hate the Jews.

00:56:53.420 And God still has a plan for the Jews.

00:56:55.640 And so, this is something that the Catholic Church does that other denominations and ideologies don't always, they fall to one side or the other, is she brings in, well, what I would call the fullness of truth.

00:57:11.180 So, that means that there are people who can go to heaven without believing in Jesus?

00:57:16.160 Because, no, though, one could sort of unwittingly be following Christ.

00:57:26.440 And one could have a, I don't know, the firmness.

00:57:31.220 Well, really, you can't.

00:57:34.060 I mean, actually, zoom out a little bit again to natural religion.

00:57:38.200 This is another error that, well, was debated in antiquity and still comes up in modernity, which is the notion that, you know, these pagan natural religions, they just have nothing of value.

00:57:51.080 You know, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

00:57:53.040 That sort of thing.

00:57:54.220 But that's not really true because, you know, natural religion does have something to recommend it.

00:58:00.280 And I think Pope Francis got in trouble for recognizing that in all sorts of traditions, there is often a kernel of truth.

00:58:09.500 There is at least some truth in it.

00:58:10.500 In paganism, there's a kernel of truth.

00:58:11.860 You think of C.S. Lewis, Barfield, and those guys loved the myths because it tells us something about our human nature.

00:58:18.780 And the first Vatican Council tells us that the existence of God can be known with certainty from human reason, looking at the created world.

00:58:27.040 There's more to it.

00:58:28.240 You got to keep going.

00:58:29.480 You know, God also reveals himself.

00:58:31.480 But that you can be certain God exists just by looking at his creation?

00:58:34.840 Yes.

00:58:35.680 Using your reason.

00:58:36.240 That's the truest thing ever.

00:58:38.000 Yes.

00:58:38.440 Right.

00:58:39.020 But in modernity.

00:58:39.600 Science gets you to God in the end because there's no.

00:58:42.540 I think so.

00:58:43.580 You think so.

00:58:44.260 Thomas Aquinas thinks so.

00:58:45.380 But a lot of people in the modern world, they say, oh, no, religion is just kind of a private matter of judgment.

00:58:51.280 Well, they're children.

00:58:51.940 They've never thought about it.

00:58:53.020 I mean, that's.

00:58:53.720 And think about there was a new doctor of the church just named just within the last few weeks.

00:58:57.100 That would be John Henry Newman, greatest theologian in the English language.

00:59:00.820 He was made a doctor of the church.

00:59:03.160 And Newman's entire life was spent inveighing against liberalism in religion.

00:59:09.580 You know, this kind of wishy-washy sense.

00:59:12.660 Who is Newman?

00:59:13.540 Newman is great.

00:59:14.120 He was a Protestant and very anti-Catholic.

00:59:17.620 And then he became a Catholic and then he became a cardinal and then he became a saint.

00:59:22.340 And.

00:59:22.660 He was American?

00:59:23.520 No, British.

00:59:24.480 He was British.

00:59:25.540 I don't think we have any American doctors of the church yet.

00:59:28.360 I'm working on it.

00:59:29.220 But unfortunately, I have like a fifth graders understanding of theology.

00:59:32.020 So I don't think I'm going to.

00:59:32.780 Yeah, I don't even have that.

00:59:34.920 But I certainly, I believe, but in a child, a childlike way.

00:59:40.580 Yes.

00:59:40.860 But so Newman was a British Catholic theologian.

00:59:45.100 Yes.

00:59:45.740 And he became Catholic.

00:59:47.460 And one of his conclusions, and it's something that we're coming to grips with today is, we can know things.

00:59:55.340 We can actually know things.

00:59:56.880 That this modern idea that religion is just a matter of private judgment, you know, and so you're a Shinto and I'm a Methodist.

01:00:04.520 And it's like, whatever, man, who knows?

01:00:06.260 You know, you just do you and it's all good.

01:00:08.620 And he says, no, religion is a public thing.

01:00:11.780 It's a scientific thing.

01:00:13.220 We can know something about it.

01:00:14.360 And he wrote a great book.

01:00:15.840 You look at the crises of the universities today.

01:00:17.800 There's a remedy to it, which is a book that he wrote called The Idea of a University.

01:00:22.220 And in this book, he says, you know, it's so crazy.

01:00:24.440 We have these institutions that purport to universal knowledge.

01:00:27.260 And increasingly, they won't even acknowledge God.

01:00:30.480 But just on its face, even if you're like the most hardcore atheist you can imagine, how can you even pretend to universal knowledge while denying God the source and summit of all knowledge?

01:00:43.020 What are we talking about then?

01:00:44.540 We're talking about just like chemistry problems?

01:00:47.980 You know, that's so silly.

01:00:49.740 We're talking about data.

01:00:50.940 We're talking about data.

01:00:51.460 Just an accumulation of numbers.

01:00:52.780 And what they say is, no, no, no, because we live in this world after the crack up of Christendom, where everyone has their own private ideas, you know, there's just no way of knowing anything for certain.

01:01:02.800 So we're just going to settle on certain economic matters.

01:01:06.140 We're all going to try to get rich.

01:01:07.660 We're all going to try to live in relative peace.

01:01:09.460 And we're going to leave that heady stuff.

01:01:11.420 You do that on Sunday morning.

01:01:12.920 And that's obviously impossible.

01:01:14.960 Do you remember 20 years ago there was this phrase?

01:01:16.780 Oh, it hasn't worked.

01:01:19.180 Look around.

01:01:19.960 Well, actually, looking around here, it's okay.

01:01:21.320 But if you look in the city, it's not so great.

01:01:24.360 There was this idea that you can't legislate morality.

01:01:28.160 Do you remember that?

01:01:29.400 Do you remember the idea?

01:01:30.320 It was the operating thesis of the United States of America.

01:01:33.120 And yet, not one person ever practically believed it.

01:01:37.160 Of course not.

01:01:37.960 You can't pass a law about speeding.

01:01:41.480 You can't pass a law about jaywalking without recourse to morality.

01:01:44.780 Of course.

01:01:45.360 And when you come to that conclusion about practical morality, which is ultimately derived from your understanding of religion,

01:01:51.320 you are going to impose a moral view on someone.

01:01:54.580 Maybe someone else is very pro-jaywalking.

01:01:57.420 Maybe someone else deeply feels in their sincere religious beliefs that they need to jaywalk.

01:02:01.520 All rules are based on a moral code.

01:02:03.860 Yes.

01:02:04.340 And they're exclusive.

01:02:07.000 You can't violate the law of non-contradiction.

01:02:09.420 Either you're going to have a law against jaywalking or you're not.

01:02:11.320 Either you're going to have a law against murdering babies or you're not.

01:02:14.660 And you're going to impose that on people.

01:02:17.640 Of course.

01:02:17.920 That's what government is.

01:02:19.980 Well, as soon as people started saying you can't legislate morality,

01:02:22.500 they started giving everybody, very much including me, these moralizing lectures.

01:02:27.700 The country got more rigid and moralistic.

01:02:30.680 It's why you were described as disgusting for noting that Greta Thunberg is unwell when it's obvious.

01:02:35.740 Her mother wrote a book about her.

01:02:36.600 And sad, well, exactly, and sad, and she's worthy of compassion.

01:02:41.860 But that, what happened to you as a result of this epidemic of shallow but highly aggressive moralizing

01:02:50.480 that took the place of something that we had before.

01:02:53.360 Yes.

01:02:53.820 And that's why I think, okay, now we're going to get on our puritanical high horses about pronouns or whatever,

01:03:00.160 you know, like where you must put rainbow flags, which is in front of every doorstep everywhere in the country.

01:03:06.600 We're going to get on our high horse about that, but we're going to shrug our shoulders when it comes to murdering babies,

01:03:11.740 when it comes to the meaning of marriage, when it comes to whether a people can have borders in a nation.

01:03:16.540 With that, we can't know about that, but we can know about some ridiculous Gnostic heresy,

01:03:22.080 about pronouns and identity or whatever.

01:03:24.220 It's totally incoherent.

01:03:25.860 And so what you're seeing, and this to me-

01:03:27.260 Well, they just replaced Christianity with a much less forgiving religion.

01:03:30.380 Yes.

01:03:30.660 A much harsher, crueler, less compassionate religion.

01:03:34.440 And false religion.

01:03:35.240 Well, of course, definitely false.

01:03:38.800 But in its effects, you could tell it was bad because it didn't elevate people or forgive people.

01:03:45.340 It wasn't kind to people.

01:03:46.840 It was cruel and unyielding and vicious.

01:03:49.860 Yes.

01:03:50.080 And I mean, all these people got destroyed, literally driven to suicide.

01:03:54.980 If you don't like the God who loves you, just wait till you meet all the other gods.

01:03:58.980 Yes.

01:04:00.020 Because everyone's got to worship something.

01:04:01.940 You know, Bob Dylan was right about that.

01:04:03.080 So how did you go?

01:04:04.200 So you said that you were an atheist when you were at Yale, I guess?

01:04:07.700 No, when I was 13.

01:04:09.140 I was confirmed at 13.

01:04:11.880 In the Catholic Church?

01:04:12.420 In the Catholic Church.

01:04:13.380 And before my confirmation, I told my mother, I said, you know, I don't believe it.

01:04:17.080 Christopher Hitchens, he's so smart.

01:04:18.580 And, you know, Richard Dawkins, and I'm really taken.

01:04:20.780 I'm such a-

01:04:21.320 You thought Richard Dawkins was smart?

01:04:22.620 Listen, I was 13.

01:04:23.740 Okay, come on.

01:04:24.380 Okay, that's fair.

01:04:24.620 Come on.

01:04:25.280 And actually, the new atheism really appealed to punk 13-year-olds who thought they were

01:04:29.160 smarter than they are.

01:04:30.100 That is the ideal audience for the new atheism.

01:04:32.560 Really?

01:04:33.060 I think so.

01:04:33.960 And I told her, I said, I don't want to be confirmed.

01:04:37.200 My mother, she's, you're going through a phase.

01:04:42.260 You, kid, you're going through a phase.

01:04:44.240 Wise woman.

01:04:44.940 Wise woman.

01:04:45.480 She goes, receive the sacrament.

01:04:47.600 She wasn't even, like, super-duper religious, but she said, receive the sacrament.

01:04:51.060 You're going to regret it if you don't, and you're going to come to your senses in a few

01:04:53.240 years.

01:04:54.120 She was totally right.

01:04:55.780 So, I did that.

01:04:56.940 I was away from the church.

01:04:57.940 Would have called myself an atheist or at least an agnostic for 10 years.

01:05:00.980 Can I just ask, what did you think was cool about, I mean, Hitchens was, I knew him

01:05:04.580 well, it was, you know.

01:05:06.080 Pretty clever.

01:05:06.860 Yeah, lots of good things about Hitchens, but his life was so sad that he was not really

01:05:13.120 an advertisement for atheism, I didn't think.

01:05:15.340 Yes.

01:05:15.620 But, like, what did you think was cool about that whole...

01:05:18.260 Well, I thought religion was for stupid people.

01:05:20.780 Yeah.

01:05:21.200 I thought religion was for stupid people, and I, of course, didn't know anything and

01:05:25.500 hadn't read anything, and my brain was...

01:05:27.860 You hadn't lived.

01:05:28.560 I hadn't lived, but I was quite wrong, but I was never in doubt, and so I...

01:05:34.300 Been there.

01:05:34.780 Yes, yes.

01:05:36.280 I said, look, I just don't, I don't see God.

01:05:39.320 Bad things happen to good people, and, you know, science has microscopes, and anyway, and...

01:05:45.620 Getting, actually getting back to the point on the reforms of the church and everything

01:05:48.700 changing, it was kind of weak, liturgically, there were all these sappy effeminate hymns

01:05:55.220 that were like, you know, about eagle's wings and stuff that was not really appealing to

01:05:58.360 a young boy, and all this nonsense.

01:06:00.700 The eagle's wings got you, huh?

01:06:01.960 Like, oh, my God, it was such, you know, it wasn't even cool in the 70s when those...

01:06:05.400 No, I know.

01:06:06.220 Oh, I was there.

01:06:06.900 Yeah.

01:06:07.260 Yeah.

01:06:07.680 And so I said, well, look, it's just so obvious.

01:06:10.560 Social proof.

01:06:11.240 All the smart people are atheists.

01:06:13.560 And then I get to college, and everyone's an atheist, and many people are much smarter

01:06:17.480 than me at college.

01:06:19.060 But I did notice the smartest people believed in God.

01:06:23.160 Really?

01:06:23.720 Yes.

01:06:24.200 The Yale?

01:06:24.920 Yes.

01:06:25.500 There weren't a ton of Muslims, though there were a couple, but across the board, the Muslims,

01:06:30.920 the Jews, the Protestants, the Catholics were smarter.

01:06:36.620 They seemed smarter.

01:06:37.600 And maybe their IQs weren't even higher, but they just seemed more with it.

01:06:40.520 They made better arguments than some stupid spaghetti monster nonsense from Christopher Hitchens.

01:06:44.600 And I said, huh.

01:06:46.140 And then I was presented with an argument for the existence of God.

01:06:48.980 That's what an interesting observation.

01:06:50.600 Yeah.

01:06:51.200 There weren't even that many of them there, but you kind of say, oh, wow,

01:06:54.540 it's a little bit the wheat from the chaff, you know?

01:06:56.880 They'd have to be the braver section of the population, too.

01:07:01.380 This is one of the arguments to go to a liberal college is, even just in your own politics,

01:07:06.260 if you can make it through and not be swept along the tide of liberalism,

01:07:11.560 and you make it through to the end, you will have heard every argument.

01:07:14.540 You will have heard every refutation of everything you believe.

01:07:17.960 You will either give up some of your beliefs, maybe some of you should,

01:07:21.200 or you will become much stronger in your beliefs, which is what happened to me.

01:07:24.120 I left Yale much more right-wing than I went in, without question.

01:07:27.600 And I'm not the only one.

01:07:29.180 So I was presented with an argument from a guy who's smarter than me.

01:07:32.400 And he said, you think God doesn't exist?

01:07:35.100 What about the ontological argument?

01:07:37.380 And I won't be tedious with the argument, but the argument is basically,

01:07:40.920 God's the maximally great being.

01:07:42.940 That's this definition.

01:07:45.400 He has all the great-making characteristics, none of the corrupting characteristics.

01:07:49.660 It's better to exist than not to exist.

01:07:52.420 We would all agree with that.

01:07:53.600 We'd go off ourselves right now if we disagreed with that.

01:07:56.900 Therefore, God exists.

01:08:00.140 That's it.

01:08:00.660 That's the argument.

01:08:02.060 And Bertrand Russell, a great logician, atheist,

01:08:05.700 famously threw his tin of tobacco in the air.

01:08:08.040 He would have had Alps if it had been around at the time.

01:08:10.580 He famously threw his tobacco in the air.

01:08:13.320 He said, by golly, the ontological argument is sound.

01:08:17.640 It's easier to think there's a flaw in the argument

01:08:20.180 than to actually point out the flaw.

01:08:22.300 And I said, well, darn, I can't refute that.

01:08:25.920 Then I read Lewis, C.S. Lewis.

01:08:27.960 So who is this person that said that to you?

01:08:29.660 This is my roommate, actually.

01:08:31.280 Whatever happened to him?

01:08:32.340 Oh, he's my best friend.

01:08:33.520 Still?

01:08:33.760 Still to this day, yeah, yeah.

01:08:35.480 Very close.

01:08:36.320 And he's a Christian?

01:08:37.180 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:37.620 And he was a great old Catholic, raised kind of mega church Protestant.

01:08:41.500 And then he reverted to the church.

01:08:44.200 He was confirmed in the church later on.

01:08:46.420 And, but, well, you know, he and I and some other people

01:08:50.540 were kind of going through this together.

01:08:53.300 You know, so I would say 18 to 23, I was really dragging my feet.

01:08:58.340 You know, I said, oh, C.S. Lewis makes good arguments.

01:09:00.180 Chesterton makes good arguments.

01:09:01.480 Maybe I should read the Bible at some point.

01:09:02.860 That might be smart.

01:09:03.420 I'll do that later.

01:09:04.920 And I'm going through, I finally, you know, seriously read the Bible at 23.

01:09:11.260 I said, oh, this is, this is true.

01:09:14.920 This, this is right.

01:09:16.440 You know, first you have to accept that God exists.

01:09:18.500 Then you say, okay, well, is, is Jesus who he says he is?

01:09:21.780 If he's not, that's going to lead me in one direction.

01:09:23.480 If he does, it's going to lead me in another direction.

01:09:25.100 Then you have to ask yourself, well, is the church, what kind of church did he establish?

01:09:29.700 That's going to lead.

01:09:30.200 And there were plenty of Protestants along the way who were really helpful in my return

01:09:33.240 return and thinking.

01:09:34.660 So, you know, I, I, it was very helpful this whole period, but I took the long road.

01:09:39.000 I took the long route.

01:09:39.980 I could have just, you know, Norm Macdonald, the comedian.

01:09:42.900 Of course.

01:09:43.300 Of course.

01:09:43.680 Greatest comedian probably ever.

01:09:45.960 I didn't know him really, but he and I, we would write each other long letters on,

01:09:52.060 on Twitter DMs for, for weeks.

01:09:54.640 This is the strangest thing.

01:09:55.740 Cause I saw he was following me on Twitter and he wasn't following a lot of people.

01:09:59.060 And I was a huge fan of his, so I didn't even want to message him.

01:10:01.520 I was so, and one time he, he sent out a tweet and it sounded kind of despairing.

01:10:07.220 Now we know he was dying of cancer.

01:10:09.080 I thought, I thought it was suicidal or something.

01:10:10.660 I just sent him a note.

01:10:11.400 I said, I feel bad if I didn't.

01:10:12.360 I said, Hey Norm, a huge fan of yours.

01:10:15.200 If I can be of any help, I don't know that I can, but I'd be happy to.

01:10:19.820 And we started writing each other, these letters and, yeah, for, for weeks, every night, just

01:10:25.720 for weeks, long essays, really.

01:10:29.000 To Norm Macdonald on Twitter DM.

01:10:31.100 It's weird.

01:10:32.120 This is one of the strangest.

01:10:33.460 Great.

01:10:33.960 Every night.

01:10:34.280 And he, he, he would do this thing where he'd say, Michael, I can't, I can't do it,

01:10:38.960 Norm.

01:10:39.480 So I, I, I, it would be prideful for me not to take you up on your offer because Michael,

01:10:46.060 I'm not an educated man.

01:10:47.920 You're an educated man.

01:10:48.940 I'm barely having an undergraduate degree.

01:10:50.680 I'm not an educated man.

01:10:51.660 I didn't really go to college.

01:10:52.500 And, and then he would, he would do this thing where he'd make it seem like he's just some

01:10:56.920 old chunk of coal.

01:10:57.960 And then he'd use a word that I didn't know.

01:11:01.280 He was certainly much better read than I am and loved the Russian novelists.

01:11:05.180 And we were talking about religion basically the whole time.

01:11:08.580 And he said to me, I don't know his, I still don't know his particular, the particulars

01:11:14.380 of all of his religious views, but he said, yeah, for me, I,

01:11:17.540 I told him how I converted or reverted.

01:11:20.120 And he said, oh yeah, for me, I just, I've just always known the Bible's true.

01:11:23.740 I just always knew.

01:11:24.920 I just, I'd read it.

01:11:25.720 I just knew.

01:11:26.620 So anyway, that's it.

01:11:27.320 And I thought, well, that's, that's the better, that's the better way.

01:11:30.680 You know, it's, it's like Christ to Thomas, the apostle.

01:11:33.360 He says, you know, blessed are you, you've seen and believed, but blessed are those who

01:11:39.660 have not seen and yet believed.

01:11:41.560 And that was Norm.

01:11:42.940 And yeah, that's another example too of, you think, okay, the whole culture and all

01:11:46.700 these smart people are atheists.

01:11:48.980 Norm is one of the smartest pop culture figures that's been around decades.

01:11:51.760 Yes.

01:11:52.480 And, but he knew.

01:11:53.840 And it's just like, everyone kind of knows deep down.

01:11:58.820 Everyone kind of knows.

01:11:59.700 That's totally right.

01:12:00.920 And that's why they're mad.

01:12:02.720 Yeah.

01:12:03.840 Yeah.

01:12:04.300 People feel judged.

01:12:05.900 They feel judged.

01:12:06.700 I never feel judged by like the earth is flat people, you know, I don't think the earth

01:12:12.280 is flat, but I don't, it doesn't bother me that you do.

01:12:15.580 You know what I mean?

01:12:16.320 I get a kick out of it.

01:12:17.040 I'll go down the.

01:12:17.800 Yeah, whatever.

01:12:18.640 It's not a threat.

01:12:19.580 I don't, because I just, I know in my heart, they're probably not, it's probably not flat.

01:12:25.420 You know what I mean?

01:12:26.000 Yeah.

01:12:26.700 But the ancient Greeks.

01:12:28.560 No, I remember thinking that even in early high school with the question of abortion and,

01:12:33.720 you know, people just get hysterical about it, like hysterical.

01:12:37.540 How dare you judge me?

01:12:38.840 And all this is like, whoa, I wasn't even really judging you, but like, clearly you're

01:12:41.900 judging yourself.

01:12:42.800 Yeah.

01:12:43.560 Because you know that you took a life and I, you know, there are all kinds of extenuating

01:12:47.280 circumstances.

01:12:48.040 I get it.

01:12:48.600 But in the end, you, you killed the kid.

01:12:51.040 And that's how.

01:12:51.620 And you know that you did.

01:12:52.520 The devil gets you this way because he says, and before you commit the sin, he says, it's

01:12:58.040 no big deal.

01:12:58.740 It's no big deal.

01:12:59.440 It's nothing.

01:13:00.000 It's not.

01:13:00.300 It's a clump of cells.

01:13:01.180 It's nothing.

01:13:01.600 It's your freedom.

01:13:02.700 It's your body.

01:13:03.280 It's your choice.

01:13:03.720 It's your, it's, come on.

01:13:04.520 It's no big deal.

01:13:05.520 You're not going to feel bad at me.

01:13:06.820 I mean, she's got to do it.

01:13:08.160 And then you do it.

01:13:09.380 And then the one second later, he's in your ear.

01:13:11.160 He says, you'll never be forgiven.

01:13:12.780 You can never, you can never admit this is wrong.

01:13:14.940 The second you do, you are damned walking the earth.

01:13:17.600 You are done.

01:13:18.460 You're done.

01:13:19.880 And I think that explains a lot of modern behavior.

01:13:23.000 Totally right.

01:13:23.820 It's totally right.

01:13:24.760 If you ever watched a shout your abortion event, it's always like fascinating, weirdly fascinating

01:13:29.300 to me.

01:13:29.660 And I always feel so bad for the girls because they, they, but they never really can muster

01:13:34.600 enthusiasm for the abortions they had because, and you can see it right in their faces.

01:13:39.040 It's like, oh, I feel so sorry for them.

01:13:41.460 Can you imagine?

01:13:42.780 Well, this, you know, to make it fully religious, Peter Kreeft made this observation that even

01:13:47.260 the language of the abortion, this is my body, is a satanic inversion of the Eucharist.

01:13:53.040 This is my body.

01:13:53.760 But everybody knows, I guess it's sort of, I'm just tying to the Norm Macdonald observation,

01:13:57.480 which is, gosh, the truest thing.

01:13:59.260 You read it and you're like, oh, wow, that's true.

01:14:01.340 Even, that was certainly my experience in reading and even things I was like, oh, I don't like

01:14:05.940 that.

01:14:06.220 But I still thought that's true.

01:14:07.500 Yes.

01:14:07.960 A hundred percent true.

01:14:08.800 You know, you all know, because everyone does have a conscience, even if it's darkened by

01:14:12.040 sin and drugs and porn and, you know, like dumb classes in school.

01:14:17.660 Mine was shiny like stainless steel.

01:14:19.620 But yes, I can imagine there are others who had darkened consciences.

01:14:22.660 Yes.

01:14:23.320 And, but, but you all kind of know.

01:14:24.960 And then the other impulse, which is, you know, centuries in the making, well, it really

01:14:29.280 goes back to the fall, but especially politically with liberalism, is this notion that we are really

01:14:34.600 to be gods.

01:14:35.620 Ultimately, we are in control.

01:14:37.360 No gods and no kings, only men.

01:14:39.240 And we, we decide.

01:14:40.440 So I never fell for that.

01:14:41.580 That's so obvious.

01:14:42.560 I fell for it.

01:14:43.380 I totally fell for it.

01:14:44.200 Really?

01:14:44.600 Then I never thought that was for all my many problems and lies I believed and lies I've

01:14:50.680 unwittingly repeated and all my many sins.

01:14:53.260 I never bought the word gods thing because we can't extend our lives, really.

01:14:58.660 And if you can't do that, then you have no power.

01:15:01.040 Tucker, you clearly don't read the news.

01:15:02.960 We're on the brink.

01:15:04.040 We're this close to curing death.

01:15:05.680 I see it every day in the headlines.

01:15:07.580 They've been trying it since Pharaoh, but they're, they're this close now.

01:15:10.540 Don't you know?

01:15:11.000 You know, it's like salmon farming.

01:15:13.520 Salmon farming is my favorite idea because it was something I just thought, because I,

01:15:16.480 I obviously I love to catch, you know, I'm a fisherman.

01:15:18.980 Yeah.

01:15:19.260 I love Atlantic salmon fishing.

01:15:21.880 They're, you know, it's hard to catch them.

01:15:23.760 There aren't that many of them.

01:15:24.620 And so the idea was people love to eat salmon.

01:15:26.400 Let's just, let's just have a salmon farm.

01:15:28.800 I would just make a giant net, just breed them right there in the ocean.

01:15:31.680 Like there's no downside.

01:15:33.060 It cures the problem.

01:15:34.200 Yeah.

01:15:34.400 And salmon farms have basically destroyed wild salmon, both through the pollution and for

01:15:39.020 crossbreeding with the salmon and, and, you know, they don't spawn.

01:15:42.760 And they've, I mean, we're in danger of like losing.

01:15:44.700 We don't spawn either, by the way.

01:15:45.900 No, exactly.

01:15:46.420 No, but we're like in danger of losing Atlantic salmon as a species because of salmon farming.

01:15:53.080 People are just starting to figure this out.

01:15:54.680 And, but it's like, it's a species of the same lie.

01:15:58.200 I'm in control of nature.

01:15:59.500 Oh shit.

01:15:59.800 We'll just salmon farm.

01:16:00.880 Like, duh.

01:16:02.140 You know what I mean?

01:16:02.780 We'll just, whatever it is.

01:16:04.460 I mean, we have done that.

01:16:05.600 We have now exercised increasing control over how we spawn through contraception.

01:16:11.340 Well, that's exactly right.

01:16:12.960 We, oh, now we're in control now.

01:16:14.400 This is going to lead to fishing.

01:16:15.740 We're going to die off.

01:16:17.040 I mean, we have a global population collapse on the horizon.

01:16:19.860 So if you ended up like extending human life to 150 years, like the last 80 years of the

01:16:26.480 life would just be like living hell.

01:16:28.860 Do you know what I mean?

01:16:30.140 I mean, for one thing, I've always thought, this is like one insight I did have when I

01:16:34.680 was young, which is the problem with getting old is not like bladder control and it's not

01:16:40.920 even dementia.

01:16:42.040 It's, it's instead, it's remembering your youth and how much has changed.

01:16:46.600 And it's the burden of the past becomes unbearable.

01:16:48.760 And any old person will tell you this in their moments of lucid thought, they'll tell you

01:16:54.800 like, I'm just, I can't believe how fast it went.

01:16:57.220 And they're, they're crushed by that.

01:16:58.860 Yeah.

01:16:59.340 So imagine living to 150.

01:17:01.920 And think about when they're all promising this, and there are people on the right who

01:17:05.060 are really into this too, radical life extensionals.

01:17:07.380 And I say, Michael, if you could take the pill to live for 500 years, would you do it?

01:17:11.580 I say, not a chance.

01:17:12.220 Dude, I won't take an Advil.

01:17:13.540 Like pills are bad.

01:17:14.780 Okay.

01:17:14.980 Pills are just, let's just start there.

01:17:15.940 Pills are bad.

01:17:16.720 Anyone who wants you to take a pill?

01:17:17.820 Yeah.

01:17:18.760 Fuck off.

01:17:19.380 Okay.

01:17:19.600 That's like, that's how I feel.

01:17:20.960 Yes.

01:17:21.280 I just, I strongly feel that way.

01:17:23.000 But why would you want to live to 150?

01:17:26.740 Of course.

01:17:27.020 And this is the understanding.

01:17:28.260 I mean, you know, the curse, you know, when we fall out of the garden is that we die.

01:17:33.080 But is that really a curse?

01:17:34.340 If you live in a world that's fallen, it's full of like murder and rape.

01:17:37.300 I don't think it's a, it's actually a great mercy.

01:17:40.000 So it depends what you think happens next, I guess.

01:17:42.500 Yes, that's true.

01:17:43.980 And people are, I think, also increasingly aware that something might happen next.

01:17:48.680 You know, they're kind of clinging on to this hope that, well, I hope this is all there is,

01:17:51.920 you know, and I just turned to worm food and take a dirt nap, you know?

01:17:54.020 And I, I don't think that makes sense at all.

01:17:59.020 And the smartest people in history didn't think it made any sense.

01:18:01.620 I don't think anyone in history has really thought that.

01:18:04.100 No.

01:18:04.780 Until Hiroshima, which was the ultimate expression of godlike power.

01:18:08.300 And that, that, that is what killed.

01:18:09.680 I am, I am the destroyer of worlds.

01:18:12.340 That's exactly right.

01:18:12.860 I've become death, you know?

01:18:14.160 Exactly.

01:18:15.000 Yeah.

01:18:15.540 So what, okay.

01:18:16.980 So if all these young people are becoming Catholic of all unfashionable things.

01:18:24.020 Like, that's probably the most unfashionable, you know, but by the standards of 30 years ago,

01:18:27.520 becoming a Catholic.

01:18:28.680 It's crazy.

01:18:29.220 It's crazy.

01:18:29.840 It's insane.

01:18:30.620 Yeah.

01:18:31.180 This is why I think, you know, the vice president is probably the most famous convert in recent years.

01:18:36.000 And people, his political enemies were always saying, oh, he's cynical.

01:18:40.180 He's just changing his views with the times or whatever.

01:18:42.020 I think, hold on, you're telling me a guy who had a tough upbringing, who graduates Yale Law School,

01:18:48.280 wants to, is in Silicon Valley, then goes back, he wants to launch a political career in Ohio.

01:18:54.160 The way he thinks he's going to do that is by becoming Catholic?

01:18:57.320 You think that's going to help you?

01:18:58.300 No.

01:18:58.800 That's like the craziest thing to do if you were thinking cynically or opportunistically.

01:19:04.040 Well, it's a radical move, I guess.

01:19:06.580 And again, I'm not promoting it.

01:19:07.700 I'm not doing it.

01:19:09.180 But I just, as an observer, I'm like, wow, that's pretty wild.

01:19:13.220 So I guess here's my question.

01:19:14.480 It's a political question.

01:19:16.120 If people, if young people are converting to Catholicism, like, what else about their views is changing?

01:19:22.560 Everything.

01:19:23.280 Okay.

01:19:23.880 Everything.

01:19:24.160 So that's my sense.

01:19:25.220 Well, on the political level, and I think this also touches on part of the conversions,

01:19:30.280 we're beginning to realize that history didn't start in 1965.

01:19:34.800 History didn't start in 1865.

01:19:37.380 History didn't start in 1776 or even 1620.

01:19:40.300 We're part of something that's much bigger and much broader and much more beautiful.

01:19:46.400 You know, and even just in our political order, we used to call it Christendom.

01:19:49.720 Now we call it the West.

01:19:51.660 And there has been an attack on that.

01:19:54.240 Going back many decades now, I think of Jesse Jackson marching down Stanford.

01:19:58.180 Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.

01:20:00.760 And people are beginning to realize, you know, it's not that I just want to preserve my town or my 90s liberalism or my what.

01:20:09.240 I want to preserve this great cultural patrimony that I've been given.

01:20:14.440 And that cultural patrimony has to go deeper than just aesthetics.

01:20:19.860 It has to go deeper than just abstract ideology.

01:20:21.860 You know, cult and culture come from the same root word.

01:20:23.900 So what you worship is going to define your culture.

01:20:27.360 And so what's the bottom?

01:20:30.840 What's the foundation?

01:20:31.680 What's the ballast for all of that?

01:20:32.760 I think people, you know, even beyond questions of conviction of the Holy Spirit and rational arguments and all that, they're just saying, well, you know, this thing's pretty sturdy.

01:20:41.920 It's been around a long time.

01:20:43.860 Belloc, again, Belloc keeps coming to mind.

01:20:45.580 He had this line.

01:20:46.240 He says, I am, he said more eloquently, he said, I'm required as a matter of faith to hold that the church is divinely instituted.

01:20:54.680 But for those who doubt it, one proof of its divine institution is that no other group conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

01:21:05.860 Obviously true.

01:21:06.860 Yeah, the best thing I ever heard from a practicing Catholic in the last five years, I was, there was no one around, he was a very close friend of mine and I, and he was going on about Catholicism.

01:21:16.600 I was like, okay, but that Pope is just, I just can't, I won't even tell you what I said, but it was hostile because that's how I felt.

01:21:25.480 And he goes, yeah.

01:21:26.160 Are you sure you're not Catholic?

01:21:26.860 Yeah.

01:21:27.780 It was the greatest thing ever.

01:21:30.040 He goes, yeah, I totally agree.

01:21:32.280 But he's not the worst Pope we've had.

01:21:34.040 Yes.

01:21:34.860 It was like completely non-defensive.

01:21:36.860 This happens.

01:21:37.960 It's like, let me tell you about the 9th century.

01:21:40.740 No, but I think that's right.

01:21:42.200 If you want to win people over, don't be defensive.

01:21:44.480 Yes, totally.

01:21:45.400 Don't tell me that there's no, that what I'm seeing isn't real.

01:21:49.160 Yeah, yeah.

01:21:49.860 Be honest.

01:21:50.600 Of course.

01:21:51.520 Of course.

01:21:51.960 I mean, it is.

01:21:52.380 Okay, but I don't know that I've talked to too many Catholics about Catholicism.

01:21:56.580 Maybe they all feel that way, but I thought that was just a wonderful response.

01:22:00.560 Totally.

01:22:01.060 You know, we have to remember that the Pope is fallible, except when he's infallible.

01:22:04.960 And sometimes God gives us bad popes to make us really grateful for good popes.

01:22:09.840 And the other point I'll mention on Francis, because, you know, obviously I had some questions

01:22:13.760 about the Francis pontificate.

01:22:15.380 Yeah.

01:22:16.000 I reverted during the Francis pontificate.

01:22:18.800 This trend started during Francis.

01:22:22.540 Yes.

01:22:22.900 It might have been in reaction against many of the things that Pope Francis was said to stand for.

01:22:27.380 I don't know exactly how it worked.

01:22:28.900 That's above my pay grade.

01:22:29.800 But that's, you think of like the progress of the church and our whole civilization, and

01:22:35.460 we think of it as just like a straight line, but I think it's a little bit more kind of

01:22:38.960 like this, you know, and the papacy goes to Avignon for a little bit, and there's some

01:22:43.500 king is like arresting the Pope, and you know, it's like kind of a little bit more circuitous,

01:22:47.860 but it's always pointed in the same direction.

01:22:49.600 So there's not, it just reminds me of God using Pharaoh, blinding Pharaoh to the truth

01:22:54.940 in order to save the Jews from slavery.

01:22:56.620 Yeah.

01:22:57.760 Which is what's described.

01:22:59.300 And I always imagine that there's a direct line between the quality of the leadership

01:23:04.860 and the quality of the people.

01:23:07.400 Of course.

01:23:07.980 This is why I can't get...

01:23:09.240 But that's not always true.

01:23:10.880 So as America becomes more prosperous, the people become weaker and sillier.

01:23:16.880 Yes.

01:23:17.180 I mean, that's how I grew up.

01:23:18.400 I grew up in the, you know, richest country in history, and, but there was a steady decline

01:23:22.820 in the quality of thinking, certainly, and of behavior.

01:23:26.820 And of leadership.

01:23:27.880 And of leadership.

01:23:28.800 Yeah.

01:23:29.380 I mean, was it, is it H.G. Wells who said democracy is the theory that, was it?

01:23:35.160 No, I don't know, who was?

01:23:35.880 I forget who it was, who said democracy is the theory that the common people know what

01:23:39.960 they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

01:23:42.720 Is this why I can't get into, I have many...

01:23:46.880 I love the populist movement.

01:23:48.560 I was so into the rise of Trump.

01:23:50.100 I remain into the rise of Trump.

01:23:51.460 Yes.

01:23:51.620 I think this has been the healthiest political awakening in my lifetime.

01:23:55.060 I think I'm all about it.

01:23:56.580 But I can't throw too many stones merely at the leadership class.

01:24:01.440 Because, one, the civil authority is there for our own good.

01:24:04.240 It's, in that way, appointed by God in a certain sense.

01:24:08.180 And also, we kind of get the government that we deserve.

01:24:11.500 And if you don't know anything about your country, and you don't care about your civic

01:24:14.100 life, and you're just going to be greedy, you're either going to, on the left side of

01:24:18.560 things, just indulge in weird social stuff that's purely selfish.

01:24:22.640 And on the right side of things, you can engage in economic selfishness.

01:24:26.260 And no one cares about the common good.

01:24:27.780 And no one cares about the body politic.

01:24:29.280 Then that's kind of where we are right there.

01:24:30.920 Yes.

01:24:31.160 And you're going to get crappy leadership a lot of the time.

01:24:34.520 And sometimes you get a second chance.

01:24:36.860 So, it's just like greed and lust.

01:24:38.840 Those are your choices.

01:24:39.660 Yes.

01:24:40.020 And look, this is classic political philosophy going all the way back, which is that greed,

01:24:46.380 avarice, is the beginning of evils in the city.

01:24:49.040 And it's natural, and you have to try.

01:24:51.340 Worship of money is the root of all evil.

01:24:53.220 Yes, that's right.

01:24:55.200 So, okay.

01:24:56.620 Have you noticed, I mean, I have a lot of young people who work for me.

01:25:01.220 I have children and all that.

01:25:03.000 But like every month or two, I'll run into like a younger person, like at an airport

01:25:08.160 or something, and always check up a conversation.

01:25:10.960 And they'll say things that, you know, super nice or whatever.

01:25:14.320 But like, you just feel like, wow, the attitudes are, people are getting by my middle-aged standards

01:25:19.560 pretty freaking radical.

01:25:21.460 It's crazy.

01:25:22.260 I was talking.

01:25:22.640 Hey, you've had this experience.

01:25:23.860 For sure.

01:25:24.600 I have always been the most right-wing person in any room.

01:25:28.280 Me too.

01:25:28.660 Me too.

01:25:29.280 And I.

01:25:29.920 I've always been the radical.

01:25:31.260 I'm like, man, I better shut up because my thoughts are not welcome in public at all.

01:25:35.660 And all of a sudden, I'm like feeling a little bit more moderate.

01:25:39.100 Yes.

01:25:39.660 Well, that's good.

01:25:40.380 Listen, now we can go on TV and say, look, I'm the moderate.

01:25:43.080 Okay.

01:25:43.540 I've never felt moderate in my life.

01:25:45.920 I was talking to a professor who is very, very right-wing, and he said, Michael, it's

01:25:51.980 the craziest thing.

01:25:52.880 For the first time in my life, I'm being outflanked by my students.

01:25:56.080 I'm being outflanked.

01:25:56.940 He says, it's never happened before.

01:25:58.600 And now, part of this, obviously, is like a pendulum was like so far over here, you know,

01:26:03.360 trans your kids and kill the ones that you don't trans.

01:26:06.000 It's going to fly back in the other direction, which is good.

01:26:09.300 That's a healthy impulse.

01:26:11.040 This is where, however, one must have a solid foundation with proper authority and guard

01:26:18.240 rails and everything.

01:26:19.400 Because you need to make sure that you don't fall into the same error on the other side.

01:26:23.380 You want to get back to sanity and reason and be fully in command of your will and your

01:26:27.260 intellect.

01:26:28.340 And you don't want to center your views on hating people.

01:26:31.240 You certainly don't want that.

01:26:32.080 You need charity.

01:26:32.720 I mean, you know, St. Paul says, if you don't have charity, you got nothing.

01:26:35.620 Yeah.

01:26:36.060 Well, every wedding service in the country.

01:26:38.520 Of course, yeah.

01:26:39.340 One Corinthians 13.

01:26:40.400 So, no, I think that's exactly right.

01:26:42.580 But I just wonder, as like a political matter, here's a few of the things that I sense.

01:26:48.980 People feel free to say what they think in a way that is so inspiring and great and refreshing,

01:26:54.840 but also a little shocking because what they think is like not what they're supposed to

01:26:59.040 think at all or have been supposed to think.

01:27:02.980 I feel like there's a recognition that the whole like, let's put women in charge of everything

01:27:07.860 just didn't work.

01:27:09.040 Cracker Barrel didn't work out?

01:27:10.180 It didn't work.

01:27:11.320 Female leadership just didn't work.

01:27:12.920 I mean, I guess I wanted it to work.

01:27:14.780 I don't know how I felt about it, but it didn't work.

01:27:16.600 Yeah.

01:27:16.960 And people feel free to say that.

01:27:19.740 There's also, I have noticed from talking to younger people, a recognition that the

01:27:25.000 democracy just kind of isn't working or our conception of democracy, I don't meet really

01:27:30.240 anybody who uses the term democracy non-ironically.

01:27:34.040 Yes.

01:27:34.840 Do you?

01:27:35.340 Well, when you go back to the framers of our constitution, you'll recognize that they use

01:27:40.040 the phrase democracy in a derisive way and as a warning of impending peril.

01:27:46.200 Because even the notion that our country is a liberal democracy, that is a self-conception

01:27:50.760 that came up in the 20th century.

01:27:52.120 It started a little bit in the 30s.

01:27:53.560 It really took off after the World War and then it reaches its peak in the 80s.

01:27:59.300 That's when it gets escape velocity.

01:28:01.160 We're not a liberal democracy.

01:28:03.800 We have a democratic element, a healthy democratic element to our country.

01:28:08.480 Actually, in large part, I think it comes in because of Tocqueville's great book, Democracy

01:28:11.700 in America, the best study of America ever.

01:28:14.200 But even there, our regime is a mixed regime.

01:28:18.040 Our regime has a strong democratic element.

01:28:20.720 As it was initially instituted, it has an aristocratic element in the Senate and it has

01:28:24.540 a monarchical element in the president.

01:28:27.000 So you even think today of all the kings around the world, the president of the United States

01:28:31.900 probably has more practical monarchical authority than, say, King Charles, right?

01:28:37.340 Adrian Vermeule made this point the other day.

01:28:38.820 Like, I'm pretty sure the president of the United States is a more robust king than like

01:28:44.360 the king of Norway or whatever.

01:28:46.140 And so our regime, this was intentional, by the way, and it's outlined as the ideal regime

01:28:50.880 in the Summa Theologiae, but it goes all the way back to Polybius, this notion that there's

01:28:55.000 a cycle of regimes because it's a fallen world.

01:28:58.260 And so maybe you have a monarchy, but it's going to degrade over time and it's going to

01:29:01.880 become a tyranny.

01:29:02.840 What's the difference between a monarchy and a tyranny?

01:29:04.300 A monarchy is for the common good.

01:29:05.880 Tyranny is for private interest.

01:29:07.320 You can have an aristocracy, you know, government by lots of, you know, a small number of good

01:29:12.880 people that will degrade into an oligarchy.

01:29:14.860 I think we've seen a lot of that in recent years, common good versus private interest.

01:29:18.640 And you can have a democracy and a democracy can be quite good.

01:29:21.340 You know, the virtue of the early American Republic that can degrade into a kind of mob

01:29:25.600 rule where it's just people pulling for their own factions and their own private interests.

01:29:29.780 And so you're going to have this cycle of revolutions that's going to go on.

01:29:32.320 And what the framers of the Constitution tried to do was escape that cycle by instituting

01:29:38.080 a mixed regime, no matter what they called it, a republic if you can keep it or a constitutional

01:29:41.820 system or whatever.

01:29:42.760 And it has held pretty well.

01:29:44.860 It has been increasingly democratized.

01:29:47.780 So it's probably like leaned a little bit too much onto that side.

01:29:50.620 Trump, I think, now is trying to restore.

01:29:52.640 And this is part of a program that had been going on for decades.

01:29:57.620 Restore a little bit more executive authority to balance the whole thing out.

01:30:00.920 But regimes fall.

01:30:02.820 You know, that's the norm in world history.

01:30:04.520 And so we are at a real risk of that if we don't correct some of the degradations in

01:30:10.160 our own regime.

01:30:11.700 So what would that mean?

01:30:12.500 What degradations need to be corrected in order to forestall revolution?

01:30:15.880 Well, here's one.

01:30:16.680 The 17th Amendment.

01:30:17.260 I do feel like this country is much more volatile than people publicly acknowledge.

01:30:21.460 Oh, yeah.

01:30:22.500 The 17th Amendment creates direct election of senators.

01:30:25.860 Today, we say, what would be wrong with that?

01:30:27.820 There's nothing wrong with it.

01:30:28.480 It's more democracy.

01:30:29.160 Isn't that good?

01:30:29.720 Have you met the senators?

01:30:31.640 I've met a lot of senators.

01:30:32.620 It's the densest collection of douchebags and liars and sex freaks I've ever met in my

01:30:37.380 life.

01:30:38.180 I mean it.

01:30:38.760 And just wait till you go to the house.

01:30:40.540 I work in television.

01:30:42.620 I feel like there are more normal House members, but the Senate.

01:30:45.800 I mean, there are some exceptions who, guys, I liken a lot, but only a handful.

01:30:51.600 I like that.

01:30:51.920 Listen, some of my best friends are senators, but a lot of them.

01:30:54.900 I was just with, I'm friends with a couple of them.

01:30:57.660 And I say, well, these guys are freaks, man.

01:30:59.760 They're all freaks.

01:31:00.520 Like John Cornyn, what's his search history?

01:31:03.100 No, I'm serious.

01:31:03.620 You know, I actually don't know John Cornyn.

01:31:05.680 If you had a hold of that guy's iPhone, like what would you find?

01:31:08.540 Any of these people, Ted Cruz?

01:31:10.720 I love Ted.

01:31:12.080 Oh my gosh.

01:31:12.640 I love, he's a good friend of mine.

01:31:14.060 He is.

01:31:14.560 Okay, but I get, but I'm just saying, I'll leave Ted out.

01:31:17.060 I'm not going to attack Ted.

01:31:18.940 I've always liked his wife, but I'm just, I don't know.

01:31:21.440 Yeah, it's not working.

01:31:22.320 It's not, it's not.

01:31:23.080 And think about how these guys got elected.

01:31:25.000 These guys, it used to be, they would be elected by the states, which meant that the states

01:31:29.520 had a role in the government.

01:31:30.460 You know, we're supposed to have states.

01:31:31.860 Yeah.

01:31:32.120 We don't really have states.

01:31:33.140 No, we certainly don't.

01:31:34.100 They're kind of all vassals for this imperial blob of bureaucracy.

01:31:38.480 But why did we lose that?

01:31:41.840 Antonin Scalia said this to me when I was a student.

01:31:43.660 I got to meet him a couple of times, undergrad.

01:31:45.780 And he said, we asked him about states' rights.

01:31:49.000 He said, why are you asking me about states' rights?

01:31:50.320 I'm a fed.

01:31:51.340 I'm a fed.

01:31:51.920 What do I care about states' rights?

01:31:53.200 You got rid of your states' rights in the progressive amendments when you had the direct

01:31:56.660 election of senators.

01:31:57.620 That's, states' rights are done.

01:31:58.880 And the civil rights movement killed it.

01:32:00.720 Civil rights movement killed it.

01:32:01.980 The interpretation of this.

01:32:03.920 I mean, every government office has a civil rights division now.

01:32:06.360 Of course.

01:32:06.880 Christopher Caldwell, an excellent guest on your show.

01:32:09.160 Wonderful.

01:32:09.400 And a great writer.

01:32:09.840 Wonderful guy.

01:32:10.420 His book, Age of Entitlement, basically proves this thesis that there's a parallel constitution,

01:32:18.140 which is in tension with the old constitution.

01:32:20.240 So you do have a crisis of regime that's coming up.

01:32:24.340 How does that play out?

01:32:26.360 I hope peacefully.

01:32:27.860 I really hope.

01:32:28.400 I think it can play out peacefully.

01:32:29.840 You know, some people on the right, they'll say, I want a civil war.

01:32:33.100 You heard this a lot during BLM and COVID.

01:32:34.860 I want a civil war.

01:32:35.940 On the left and the right, they say, I don't want a civil war.

01:32:37.880 If there's a civil war, I'm going to have to like shoot my cousins.

01:32:41.080 Do you know what you're saying?

01:32:42.420 I want a civil war.

01:32:43.380 Do you know what a civil war is like?

01:32:45.460 So, you know, Dante is one of my favorite writers.

01:32:47.560 Civil war ruined his life.

01:32:49.080 He said, it's like the worst thing that can happen.

01:32:50.980 Because the whole point of a political community is to secure peace and order for the common

01:32:56.340 good so that we can flourish.

01:32:58.400 And when you crack that, I mean, the whole political community is just an extension of a

01:33:03.040 family.

01:33:03.320 The Spanish Civil War ended 85 years ago.

01:33:06.280 And then you go to Spain now, they're still mad about it.

01:33:09.260 It still divides that country.

01:33:12.000 Greece, same way.

01:33:13.380 Yeah.

01:33:13.400 Isn't that so weird?

01:33:13.760 We have to be angry that the communists were defeated.

01:33:17.200 The Bolsheviks who were killing priests.

01:33:19.580 Spain is a uniquely said country.

01:33:21.380 It's a wonderful country and wonderful people.

01:33:23.700 But oh my gosh.

01:33:24.720 Yeah.

01:33:25.200 They had a, that was demonic, obviously.

01:33:27.720 Obviously.

01:33:29.100 They began by shooting a statue of Jesus.

01:33:31.920 So that was kind of a sign.

01:33:33.280 But yeah.

01:33:34.160 Yeah.

01:33:34.380 And every evil person in the United States joined.

01:33:37.620 Yes.

01:33:38.040 What is the Abraham Lincoln Brigades?

01:33:39.720 Abraham Lincoln Brigades.

01:33:40.640 Exactly.

01:33:40.820 I remember when I was a kid, I heard that if some guy died, he was in the Abraham Lincoln.

01:33:43.540 I said, oh, it's Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

01:33:44.760 I looked into it and said, it was a communist.

01:33:47.320 It was Stalinist.

01:33:48.300 Yes.

01:33:48.460 It was Stalinist.

01:33:49.160 Like the entire American left was Stalinist.

01:33:51.480 This is why, talk about the changes in the 60s into the 70s, you know, this is why they

01:33:56.180 had to get Nixon.

01:33:57.480 They never forgave Richard Nixon.

01:33:59.440 I'm aware.

01:34:00.200 He got Alger Hiss.

01:34:01.960 Richard Nixon knew that there were actual communists in the government at the highest

01:34:05.940 levels of the State Department helping to found the United Nations.

01:34:09.620 And he knew it and he got him dead.

01:34:11.380 And he believed Whitaker Chambers and he got him dead to rights.

01:34:13.240 They never forgave him for it.

01:34:14.480 That's totally true.

01:34:15.660 And they made up this whole fake scandal and took out the most popular president in American

01:34:19.020 history.

01:34:19.380 Yes.

01:34:20.100 No, I know.

01:34:20.700 It's very distracting.

01:34:21.820 But anyway, I guess the point is a civil war has, if our own civil war, it's only finally

01:34:27.840 kind of cooling down.

01:34:29.500 And we're relitigating it.

01:34:31.100 Well, because reconstruction never really ended.

01:34:32.980 Right.

01:34:33.300 Let's just humiliate the South and turn its cities into slums, which we've done.

01:34:37.760 So yeah, no, it's all, we don't want a civil war.

01:34:40.980 I totally agree.

01:34:41.220 We don't want a civil war.

01:34:41.800 So how do we avoid that?

01:34:42.980 Well, I think we need strong leadership, which we are getting in Trump.

01:34:47.960 We actually do have an executive on the right who's willing to do things.

01:34:52.000 This has been a big problem for the right because of ideologies that were essentially

01:34:56.900 liberal, where the right said, you need to elect us so that we do nothing.

01:35:00.720 That was their explicit pitch.

01:35:02.060 If you elect me, I won't do anything because I want to principally, with great dignity and

01:35:07.000 integrity and principles, give away all the power.

01:35:09.520 Because if I ever do anything, then the minute the Democrats come into office, they might do

01:35:14.020 all the things they've been doing for 50 years.

01:35:16.000 So we can't have that.

01:35:18.620 Yeah, it was national review republicanism.

01:35:21.700 I was there for that.

01:35:23.020 I mean, Buckley, Buckley at least, I mean, Buckley defended McCarthy, for goodness sakes.

01:35:26.980 He did.

01:35:27.400 He did.

01:35:27.840 He absolutely did.

01:35:28.380 This is-

01:35:29.080 Then he turned on him, but yeah.

01:35:31.840 At a certain point, it was politically incorrect.

01:35:34.480 But you think of those early days, Brent Bozell, who ghost wrote Conscience of a Conservative,

01:35:39.700 an amazing book.

01:35:40.240 Well, Brent Bozell meant it.

01:35:42.280 Right.

01:35:42.560 So he was exiled because he really meant it.

01:35:45.540 He was mentally ill.

01:35:46.820 Okay.

01:35:47.440 And he went over after the Spanish Civil War.

01:35:49.240 Oh, I know.

01:35:49.680 Yeah, yeah, of course.

01:35:50.300 He raised his family in Franco's Spain.

01:35:52.680 Yeah.

01:35:53.000 Oh, I know.

01:35:53.580 He meant it.

01:35:54.380 But that, look, there's always been this hodgepodge on the right of disparate groups,

01:35:59.760 as you well know, that don't totally make sense together.

01:36:02.880 So you have the traditional conservatives.

01:36:05.220 Well, the fusionist coalition was the traditional conservatives and the libertarians and some

01:36:09.120 war hawk Democrats who wanted to take down the Soviet Union.

01:36:11.240 Yes.

01:36:11.480 And I think it made sense at the time.

01:36:13.620 Oh, yeah.

01:36:14.360 It was a common enemy in the Soviet Union.

01:36:15.700 I was there for that.

01:36:16.440 Of course.

01:36:17.260 And it's-

01:36:17.560 I read commentary every month growing up.

01:36:19.440 Did you?

01:36:19.740 We got it at home.

01:36:20.360 Yes, we did.

01:36:20.900 You don't have any copies around here anymore.

01:36:22.480 I don't know where.

01:36:23.180 I was raised on commentary.

01:36:24.680 I mean, we're like this Protestant family getting the official publication of the American

01:36:28.140 Jewish Committee.

01:36:28.600 I read every issue, Arch Puddington, Ruth, Vissa, or whatever.

01:36:32.740 I think they'll hate me now.

01:36:34.360 But whatever.

01:36:35.140 I grew up reading that.

01:36:36.680 One of my favorite lines recently was from Norman Podhoretz, who said, they said, you're

01:36:40.580 the founder of neoconservatism.

01:36:41.900 He said, no, no.

01:36:43.020 I'm so old that I'm now a paleo neoconservative.

01:36:46.560 I'm too old for that.

01:36:47.740 And this is, you know, there's the paleos and the neos and the libertarians and the traditionalists

01:36:52.260 and the this and that.

01:36:53.360 And obscure political monikers are the right-wing version of gender pronouns.

01:36:57.800 No, it's totally right.

01:36:58.380 Everyone's got his own thing.

01:37:00.020 And this is what I love about Trump.

01:37:03.080 Is Trump an ideologue?

01:37:05.180 I know.

01:37:05.680 What kind of ism does Trump ascribe to?

01:37:08.480 Trumpism.

01:37:09.200 Trump, that's what he ascribes to.

01:37:10.920 American ism, I guess.

01:37:12.240 I don't know.

01:37:13.160 This is a man who's brought together a disparate coalition of like weirdo, crunchy hippies

01:37:18.260 and bow tie wearing traditionalists and libertarians and Silicon Valley tech futurists.

01:37:24.000 And like, it's the craziest coalition ever.

01:37:25.780 And he has brought them together and won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years

01:37:29.540 as a Republican.

01:37:30.440 And it's an amazing thing to see in action because he's got a vision and he's just a

01:37:34.620 force of nature.

01:37:35.740 And so the question, I think, on a lot of our minds now, I think this is what all this

01:37:38.920 Trump is dead discourse is about.

01:37:40.680 There's this viral meme that Trump died because he got a bruise on his hand or something.

01:37:44.140 He went to play golf one day.

01:37:45.060 They said he was dead.

01:37:45.760 No, he's still around.

01:37:46.520 He's around.

01:37:47.080 I verified that.

01:37:48.060 Yes, he's still around.

01:37:49.240 And I think a lot of that is an anxiety of, wow, we got this reprieve from all the craziness

01:37:54.600 and all the decay and all the division.

01:37:56.600 And we're actually, we won the popular vote.

01:37:59.020 You know, things are on track.

01:38:00.780 And what happens next?

01:38:03.040 When the patriarch's gone?

01:38:05.420 Well, I mean, you know, what happens in families when the, it can be really hard.

01:38:12.260 Yes.

01:38:12.840 It can be really hard.

01:38:13.820 I have a lot of confidence in J.D. Vance.

01:38:16.600 Yes.

01:38:16.820 I think he's quite clearly at this point set up the vice president as the successor.

01:38:21.600 I hope that's right.

01:38:22.540 It seems like in the cabinet meeting the other day, he said, look, Rubio's done a great job

01:38:26.020 in the 15 jobs that he's doing in the admin.

01:38:28.140 At least.

01:38:28.760 At least 15.

01:38:29.820 But he said in the cabinet meeting the other day, and I noticed it, and no one around me

01:38:34.740 seemed to have heard this line.

01:38:35.820 He goes, everyone was talking about what a great job Rubio was doing.

01:38:38.040 And he said, wow, Marco, you've just been amazing.

01:38:40.820 I frankly, I hope you never run for another office because I want you to do this for the rest of

01:38:44.140 your life.

01:38:45.480 And I said, well, that, that seems like a win.

01:38:47.760 If those are the two most, not popabile, they're most like presidential abile, you know, for

01:38:52.820 2028.

01:38:53.860 So that seems like he's saying, no, it's the vice president is my natural successor.

01:38:57.260 Trump drops these bombs in every conversation you have with him.

01:39:01.680 I don't, I don't, I haven't interviewed him that many times because it's so difficult.

01:39:06.600 Dizzying.

01:39:07.480 Dizzying.

01:39:08.160 Because he does the weave famously.

01:39:09.880 But every time I've interviewed him at like three days later, I'll think, what, did he just

01:39:13.120 say that right in the middle of the, right?

01:39:14.880 Yes.

01:39:15.240 Yesterday, he was doing an interview with the Daily Caller, right in the middle of the

01:39:18.820 interview.

01:39:19.220 He was talking about Israel and I love Israel and no one's done more for Israel than I've

01:39:22.600 done.

01:39:23.000 And, you know, rooting for his age, very pro-Israel, of course.

01:39:26.000 And then he goes.

01:39:27.700 They used to own Congress or whatever.

01:39:29.860 He said that.

01:39:30.720 He goes, you know, the Israel lobbies totally control Congress like nobody else.

01:39:34.880 That's not true anymore.

01:39:36.380 I'm like, did you just say that?

01:39:38.060 Yeah.

01:39:38.820 It was amazing.

01:39:39.900 I mean, I remember in the interview or the press conference with Netanyahu, this was

01:39:44.580 months ago.

01:39:45.600 And I don't think I was taken in by theatricality.

01:39:49.080 I think this was real when he said, and look, what we're going to do is the United States

01:39:53.060 is going to take over Gaza.

01:39:54.660 And you look at Netanyahu and he sort of, he looks at Trump and he kind of looks nervously

01:39:59.180 at the audience.

01:39:59.880 He's kind of laughing, but kind of not laughing.

01:40:02.020 And he's like, what is it?

01:40:03.060 He goes, we're going to take over Gaza.

01:40:04.440 We're going to build a big Trump casino there or whatever.

01:40:06.140 I don't know what he's going to do.

01:40:07.020 You know, we're going to build it.

01:40:07.900 It's going to be beautiful.

01:40:08.400 It's going to be the Riviera of the Middle East.

01:40:10.040 And it was, it was, it was so apparently out of left field.

01:40:15.000 And I'm not even convinced he's totally sincere on that.

01:40:17.780 I think he's a great negotiator and he's working other angles.

01:40:20.240 It was weird.

01:40:20.640 I was actually in the Middle East that day when that happened.

01:40:23.540 And I was eating with a bunch of, you know, local residents who run the government

01:40:28.260 in the country it was in.

01:40:29.600 And I'm like, did what, you know, and I was actually sitting at the table and they played

01:40:34.040 that everyone's staring at this.

01:40:36.560 And I thought, I don't know, what the hell is that?

01:40:39.420 Yes.

01:40:39.660 What do we have to do with Gaza?

01:40:40.920 Like my instinct is always like, we had nothing to do with this.

01:40:43.640 I'm out.

01:40:44.280 I'm good.

01:40:44.720 You know, it's like when girls fight, like I don't want to get involved.

01:40:46.740 I'll take Monica.

01:40:47.420 I'll take the French Riviera.

01:40:48.380 I don't need the Gaza Riviera.

01:40:50.120 That's exactly right.

01:40:51.340 But their reaction was, I have no idea if this is true or not, but it was so interesting.

01:40:56.760 They're sophisticated, very sophisticated.

01:40:58.920 And they're like, oh, no, no, that's an attack on Netanyahu.

01:41:01.120 Yes.

01:41:02.200 That was their gut reaction.

01:41:03.980 He's basically tweaking Netanyahu.

01:41:06.720 It wasn't, it wasn't a, you know, a haymaker.

01:41:10.000 It wasn't, he wasn't clobbering on that.

01:41:11.380 It was a little poke.

01:41:13.000 And I think.

01:41:13.520 Do you think that too?

01:41:14.460 Yes.

01:41:14.640 I think it was a little poke.

01:41:15.680 In what way?

01:41:17.220 In the sense that it's, in the cabinet meeting the other day, Trump was asked, he said, you

01:41:23.020 promised that this war would be over permanently in five seconds after you were inaugurated.

01:41:27.540 And so when are we going to get a definitive conclusion to the war?

01:41:30.240 And he laughs.

01:41:32.440 Definitive, a definitive conclusion.

01:41:34.180 He turns to Steve Wyckoff.

01:41:35.220 He says, hey, Steve, how long this, this, this conflict, this has been going on thousands

01:41:40.540 of years, is it?

01:41:41.660 Yeah.

01:41:42.080 There's no definitive conclusion.

01:41:43.960 We're just trying to stop the bloodshed.

01:41:45.440 We're trying to establish some kind of peace.

01:41:47.420 And it's this brilliant move because in what other way are you going to get the Israelis

01:41:53.760 and the Arab League and the, and the Iranian regime all united in not liking this one plan

01:42:00.500 by suggesting we're going to go in and take it?

01:42:03.200 And, and so, you know, it's, it's a, it's basically an intractable situation.

01:42:06.940 There will not be any permanent resolution probably until the second coming.

01:42:10.120 So what you want to do is just establish some modicum of political order.

01:42:13.080 What I would especially like to see happen is a preservation of the holy sites and, you

01:42:17.360 know, pilgrimage access and all that.

01:42:20.020 But you just want-

01:42:20.440 We should demand that.

01:42:21.340 I mean, that's not even, it's like, no one owns Jerusalem.

01:42:24.740 Sorry.

01:42:25.200 Yeah, of course.

01:42:26.020 But there's easier said than done in a messy neck of the woods.

01:42:30.080 When you're paying for it, you can just be like, look, our first demand is Christians

01:42:33.460 need to be able to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

01:42:35.700 So-

01:42:35.740 Oh, of course.

01:42:36.340 Of course.

01:42:36.740 Well, you know, I don't know.

01:42:38.440 I don't know.

01:42:38.800 It seems to me that the, the holy sites still seem to be okay.

01:42:43.000 In Gaza, there was unfortunately the attack on St. Porphyrios, which I, I grant was accidental.

01:42:49.440 I don't think it was, I don't, I don't see why from a strategic perspective, it would

01:42:53.300 be beneficial to the Israelis to like particularly stick a finger in the eye of the Christians

01:42:58.580 when America is your last political protector.

01:43:00.980 There's been a lot of it.

01:43:01.720 I don't know.

01:43:02.340 I don't understand it.

01:43:03.280 I think it's self-destructive behavior, but, but what I care about is the effect on Christians

01:43:07.700 and it's just not, not good at all.

01:43:09.420 Well, and you have to ask yourself too, okay, what's the conclusion?

01:43:12.100 You could either have the state of Israel take over Gaza again, had Gaza from what, 67

01:43:16.960 until 05, then just gave it away in 05.

01:43:19.960 Hamas gets elected.

01:43:21.580 Hamas runs it for a little bit.

01:43:22.840 And then there's the October 7th attack.

01:43:26.040 Israel's going to say now, okay, this is an unacceptable security risk.

01:43:28.440 We're not dealing with this anymore.

01:43:30.720 So you could have Israel take it over.

01:43:32.160 That's going to be probably an unsatisfactory resolution.

01:43:36.040 You could have the Arab League take it over.

01:43:37.940 Some of Egypt take it over.

01:43:39.320 I don't, I don't know that they really want to do it.

01:43:41.080 No one wants to touch that hot potato.

01:43:42.820 You could have, and then Trump just drops out of the air and he says, yeah, we're taking

01:43:47.420 it and we're going to develop condominiums and we're going to ship all of the residents

01:43:51.060 to South Sudan.

01:43:52.080 That was floated, I think, in the Israeli government, South Sudan, the one place on earth

01:43:55.220 that's less pleasant than Gaza.

01:43:56.520 And I don't think that's going to work out well at all.

01:43:58.480 And, and what, what is, I think Trump is totally sincere in what he says.

01:44:02.460 He goes, my solution here is not some permanent answer that will totally make the Israelis happy

01:44:09.600 and totally irritate all the Arabs and the Persians.

01:44:11.620 My answer is not going to totally make the Israelis unhappy and totally satisfy Egypt or whatever,

01:44:18.520 the Arab League.

01:44:19.280 It's, I just want some semblance of peace, which is where, I feel totally vindicated on this.

01:44:26.600 I've said for years, when everyone is calling Trump the N-word, you know, they always call

01:44:30.340 him the N-word, a nationalist.

01:44:32.580 Oh yeah.

01:44:33.060 Always.

01:44:33.520 They call him the N-word.

01:44:34.420 And I said, I don't really think he's a nationalist.

01:44:37.460 He loves the nation.

01:44:38.480 He's a great patriot.

01:44:39.520 He supports strong borders.

01:44:40.580 But I said, I don't think he's really a nationalist.

01:44:42.980 I think he's kind of an imperialist.

01:44:44.900 He wants to acquire Greenland and invade Canada.

01:44:47.720 I don't think that's not generally what like yeoman farmers do.

01:44:50.600 No.

01:44:50.800 No.

01:44:51.420 No, that's a Teddy Roosevelt move.

01:44:53.240 Yes.

01:44:53.520 I think his vision of America first is that America will take due care to prioritize her

01:45:00.420 national interests, part of which is accepting the political reality that we're the global

01:45:04.840 hegemon and we need to maintain some modicum of world order.

01:45:08.220 And this goes back to the really, a really ancient conception of the political order, which

01:45:13.520 is that the purpose of empire is to just have peace and order.

01:45:20.420 However, this is, you know, this is in the Aeneid, in book six of the Aeneid, Aeneas

01:45:24.040 goes down to his dad in the underworld and the dad gives him this whole view of what's

01:45:29.460 going to happen to Rome.

01:45:30.400 And he says, you know, look, different peoples are given different arts.

01:45:34.380 The, I don't know, the Greeks are good at making soufflaki.

01:45:37.060 The Chinese are good at making bad soup.

01:45:39.860 And the Romans, awful soup.

01:45:42.180 Awful.

01:45:42.640 I've never even tried.

01:45:44.080 The pangolin is good.

01:45:44.820 I've never tried the bad.

01:45:45.480 But he says, the Romans, their art is to govern.

01:45:50.260 And it's, it's not, governing is not like fun.

01:45:52.880 It's not the most glorious necessarily thing, you know, in some ways it'd be more fun to

01:45:57.860 be a writer, be more fun to be a poet, be more fun to go.

01:46:00.520 But that's what the Romans are given is to govern.

01:46:03.120 And it's just a job in the world and someone's got to do it.

01:46:05.540 And you just need to establish relative peace and protect the rights of nations and just

01:46:10.740 keep on keeping on.

01:46:12.160 Do you think we're suited for that?

01:46:13.200 I think, I think Trump is quite suited for it as a, as an individual, as a national

01:46:18.880 leader.

01:46:19.480 Is America suited for it?

01:46:22.040 That's not how we started.

01:46:23.260 We weren't, we weren't looking for it when the country began, but we, we got it.

01:46:26.700 I mean, I, I totally agree.

01:46:29.400 Someone's got to be dad.

01:46:30.840 I mean, that is absolutely just the nature of man and there's no getting around it with

01:46:35.100 in shirking.

01:46:35.980 It doesn't make it go away.

01:46:36.980 So I completely agree with that.

01:46:38.460 That's where I do agree with the neocons, I guess.

01:46:41.200 Yeah, kind of.

01:46:41.800 But, but in a different way, like, cause the neocons at their most extreme would say,

01:46:48.340 we have an obligation because of the demands of history with a capital H to spread liberal

01:46:53.400 democracy around the world.

01:46:54.560 It's the final form.

01:46:54.820 Well, that's just stupid.

01:46:55.920 It's crazy.

01:46:56.400 But like the smart, like I remember David Brooks, who was impressive.

01:47:00.780 I know it's hard to believe, but at one point when I knew him 30 years ago, smart.

01:47:05.060 And he would, he would say, look, you know, someone's got to take control because there

01:47:09.580 has to be order at the center.

01:47:11.220 And I, that's not stupid, um, where I began to really hate the neocons, where my whole

01:47:17.340 politics began to revolve around opposing them as an ideology, not as a, not as individuals,

01:47:23.700 but just the idea is bad.

01:47:24.900 Some of the individuals, some of them.

01:47:26.440 Yeah.

01:47:27.560 John Padaharis.

01:47:28.300 But, uh, no, it's when I went to Iraq and the main takeaway for me is we're not good

01:47:34.340 at it.

01:47:34.800 Yeah.

01:47:35.060 We're just like leaving aside the dumb spread democracy and all that nonsense turned Baghdad

01:47:40.740 into Belgium was stupid.

01:47:42.420 But what's not stupid is the idea that you can't have disorder because it metastasizes.

01:47:47.300 And I'm getting there.

01:47:48.480 My assessment and has not changed in 25 years is we just not, we're not sued for this at

01:47:53.180 all because we don't have the self-confidence required to do it because our society at its

01:47:58.820 core is really thin.

01:48:00.440 There's nothing really there actually, other than some distorted version of capitalism,

01:48:05.580 which is kind of disgusting.

01:48:06.720 Do you think that was true, say in the fifties and sixties and it's changed?

01:48:10.340 I think the fight in the cold war, the battle against the Soviets gave a kind of clarity and

01:48:17.180 purpose.

01:48:17.780 Yeah.

01:48:17.860 But even then, you know, the U S, um, sided with the Viet Minh actually in 1954 at Dien

01:48:26.620 Ben Phu against the French.

01:48:27.900 Like there was never really a kind of consistent, um, that's little known.

01:48:34.300 Yeah.

01:48:34.660 But not even grand strategy, but like a consistent worldview or instinct, like the English for

01:48:39.900 all their many faults at the height of empire, the height of the Victorian period, like they

01:48:43.200 really believe they were superior.

01:48:44.800 Now we deride that as racist, but you have to have that.

01:48:49.020 You have to believe my way is the better way.

01:48:51.260 Or why are we doing this in the first place to extract minerals?

01:48:53.840 Like that's not over time.

01:48:55.120 People can't sustain that.

01:48:56.340 You really have to have an evangelical spirit and we don't have that.

01:48:59.800 Well, and, and think about what Trump's been knocked for, especially in the recent Alaska

01:49:03.300 summit, he's been knocked for shaking hands with Putin and, you know, being nice to him.

01:49:07.620 Yeah.

01:49:08.420 And I, I think, well, hold on.

01:49:09.960 We've tried the other way.

01:49:11.700 Bush, W. Bush tried to talk a little tough or tried to be sweet and then talk tough.

01:49:17.020 And, and, uh, Putin invaded Georgia and then Obama, oh man, he talked tough.

01:49:21.720 After the reset failed and Hillary Clinton couldn't spell a simple word in Russian, then, uh, that

01:49:25.980 failed and he talked really tough.

01:49:27.480 Oh boy, was he tough.

01:49:28.340 And Putin invaded into Crimea.

01:49:30.100 And then you had Trump and everyone just kind of chilled.

01:49:33.940 And then you had Biden, man, no one talked tougher than Biden, huh?

01:49:36.900 Oh, didn't he have such moral clarity?

01:49:38.920 And Putin invaded further into Ukraine.

01:49:41.840 The world order collapsed.

01:49:42.580 But the moral clarity thing is a clear issue.

01:49:43.920 If you think that Joe Biden was a better leader or a better man than Vladimir Putin, like,

01:49:48.460 I don't even know what to say to you.

01:49:49.780 That's insane.

01:49:51.320 There's by no measure, by no measure, did Joe Biden's country, the people he solemnly

01:49:58.140 swore to help and defend, did they thrive?

01:50:01.120 No, they withered.

01:50:02.840 Putin, who's been there for 25 years, his country's improved.

01:50:05.320 The people are happier.

01:50:06.200 They like him, actually.

01:50:08.000 The war has been a little tough on Putin.

01:50:09.260 The war, of course, it's been tough.

01:50:10.580 Of course, it's been tough.

01:50:11.780 I'd be curious about public opinion today, this far into the war.

01:50:15.060 Well, actually, it's measured a lot.

01:50:17.220 Yeah, look it up.

01:50:18.160 And you can say, oh, that's all a lie.

01:50:19.920 Okay, well, show me one.

01:50:21.820 Yeah.

01:50:22.040 Okay, go there.

01:50:23.340 And look, I'm not moving to Russia, but I mean, Putin has been the most effective leader

01:50:30.360 in my lifetime.

01:50:31.560 I can't think of a more effective one.

01:50:33.220 He's been a very stable leader for Russia.

01:50:35.660 But why is he more evil than Joe Biden?

01:50:38.140 Well, I can't even conceptualize that.

01:50:41.740 Like, you know, you could say, look, I don't know his religious views, but he's promoted

01:50:47.840 Christianity within Russia.

01:50:49.020 Aggressively.

01:50:49.500 Yes, to combat, you know, liberalism and all these other forces.

01:50:53.700 Joe Biden has, you know, imprisoned pro-lifers and sued none.

01:50:57.340 Well, exactly.

01:50:58.160 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:50:59.260 But whatever.

01:50:59.860 I guess the reason that I kind of pull away a little bit from the, this is kind of neo-kani

01:51:05.360 to me, is the sort of the purely good and evil.

01:51:08.220 I totally agree with that.

01:51:09.240 And to me, I think, well, look, I'm on the side of my country, even if Joe Biden is running

01:51:14.500 it, which is a great pity if he is.

01:51:16.600 And I am because it's-

01:51:18.600 Dude, I'm with you.

01:51:19.240 Of course.

01:51:20.120 Patriotism is an extension of filial piety.

01:51:22.560 Just like, just like, you know, all liberalism comes down to saying, screw you, dad.

01:51:26.340 Like, I hate my mom or whatever.

01:51:27.800 And I think, no, no, no.

01:51:28.720 We are called to respect our parents and to love our countries.

01:51:31.800 And Russia has interests that are not aligned with ours.

01:51:36.700 And they have missiles pointed at us.

01:51:37.740 And you think, well, okay, Putin, for all of his sins, Putin is defending the interests

01:51:44.100 of Russia.

01:51:44.860 And I think there was a sense.

01:51:46.380 Look, Biden would say he was defending the interests of the United States or NATO or whatever.

01:51:49.720 He didn't do a very good job at it.

01:51:51.460 By the way, NATO, yeah, exactly.

01:51:53.280 And this is why you'll notice Trump doesn't use this good and evil language all the time.

01:51:56.980 And the way he talks about Putin, he says, look, Putin has interests.

01:51:59.780 He has hard interests.

01:52:00.820 That's how I feel.

01:52:01.240 And I have hard interests.

01:52:02.840 And if I can be a little diplomatic with him, I'm going to do it.

01:52:06.260 I'm reminded of, do you remember the Jeffrey Goldberg article in The Atlantic, which said,

01:52:11.320 it was the Obama doctrine.

01:52:13.580 This was back in 2016.

01:52:14.660 Never forget it.

01:52:15.660 This piece.

01:52:16.320 And what's so funny now is.

01:52:18.300 It was a fascinating piece.

01:52:19.860 Fascinating piece.

01:52:20.480 Goldberg is a liar.

01:52:21.600 I know him.

01:52:22.240 And one of the most dishonest people I've ever met.

01:52:24.700 Truly dishonest.

01:52:26.260 But a very talented pro stylist.

01:52:29.500 Yes.

01:52:30.020 And the piece, it's like a.

01:52:30.820 And an interesting reporter.

01:52:32.340 Oh, I read every word of that piece.

01:52:34.000 In that piece, they are lauding Obama for saying things like, Russia's always going to

01:52:38.680 have a.

01:52:38.860 Oh, I remember.

01:52:39.620 Oh, I remember.

01:52:40.060 Oh, Russia's always.

01:52:40.740 They're always going to have escalatory power.

01:52:42.640 Trump says the exact same thing.

01:52:43.980 And all these people.

01:52:44.300 By the way, Obama, who I think kind of wrecked America, comes off as pretty reasonable in

01:52:50.920 that piece.

01:52:51.240 Just being honest.

01:52:51.940 Yes.

01:52:52.100 I mean, if you read that piece now and just like take Obama out and just put another name

01:52:56.280 in there, it's like, I kind of agree with most of this.

01:52:58.260 And Trump is saying most of those things.

01:52:59.960 Oh, I know.

01:53:00.200 Oh, I know.

01:53:00.940 And there's one big difference.

01:53:02.320 Trump can actually implement it.

01:53:04.200 And Obama couldn't really implement it.

01:53:05.720 Of course not.

01:53:06.320 The world order was fraying under him.

01:53:07.480 And so it is so ironic that these people who, you know, accused Trump of being like a KGB

01:53:12.400 agent or whatever, that these people would knock Trump for saying the same thing that

01:53:17.160 they were parroting for years.

01:53:19.440 Well, they're all just children.

01:53:20.800 Like these are not.

01:53:22.060 They're the people who told you that Russia was a gas station with nuclear weapons.

01:53:25.480 People like John McCain, like 95 IQ and his sad idiot daughter.

01:53:31.680 I mean, these are just like not.

01:53:33.000 I've just gotten along with the daughter.

01:53:34.400 I never met John McCain.

01:53:35.400 She's fine.

01:53:35.920 She's fine.

01:53:36.560 I mean, McCain was charming in his way.

01:53:37.980 I mean, I love McCain actually.

01:53:39.600 Well, when I knew him well, but very charming guy, but like not a serious person at all.

01:53:46.380 He killed the repeal of Obamacare, which is very difficult to get over.

01:53:48.980 But he wasn't serious.

01:53:50.600 He was just a shallow wasp.

01:53:52.660 And he was one of the last of the true hawkish anti-Russia, you know, coming out of the Cold

01:54:01.160 War, though he was younger.

01:54:02.680 You just got to bomb.

01:54:05.120 You just got to, you know, implement your will.

01:54:07.800 But it was this deep.

01:54:08.900 I mean, I spent a lot of time talking to the guy on the road, traveled to various countries

01:54:12.640 with him, knew him, I think, as well as I've ever known a politician.

01:54:15.780 And there was so much to like about the guy.

01:54:17.400 He just really was a charming, very aristocratic bearing, hilarious, vulgar in a way that I

01:54:23.380 always enjoy.

01:54:24.880 But if you pushed him on any issue, like he hadn't spent 15 minutes thinking about anything.

01:54:32.180 Yeah.

01:54:32.320 You know, this is something you notice on Capitol Hill generally is there are some people

01:54:36.840 who are very intelligent and decently well-read.

01:54:38.920 A lot of them, though, their skill is not doing a lot of reading.

01:54:43.220 You know, that's not the skill that's like-

01:54:44.960 Dude, I went to boarding school.

01:54:46.160 I know what that is.

01:54:47.540 That's like, memorize three famous quotes, throw them out like you've read the whole

01:54:51.400 book.

01:54:51.820 Yes.

01:54:51.900 And that was McCain, man.

01:54:53.480 He, on any question, including the foreign policy questions he was supposedly an expert

01:54:58.240 on, he knew nothing.

01:55:00.400 To say Russia's a gas station with nuclear weapons?

01:55:03.080 Like, you're an idiot.

01:55:04.740 This is the nation of, you know, like Tolstoy.

01:55:07.100 Oh, my God.

01:55:07.480 The winner of Powell's game.

01:55:08.380 Tolstoyevsky.

01:55:09.000 St. Petersburg?

01:55:09.900 Right.

01:55:10.100 All right.

01:55:11.100 There's no city in Europe.

01:55:13.740 There's certainly no city in the United States that approaches their two main cities.

01:55:17.500 Well, this is what was fascinating.

01:55:18.960 I mean, I'm now remembering-

01:55:20.420 It's a fact.

01:55:21.060 And the fact that you got to interview Putin.

01:55:23.240 Yeah.

01:55:23.420 And when you listen to that interview, this is a man, say what you will about his yarn

01:55:28.780 that he spun.

01:55:29.960 It was a very compelling yarn.

01:55:31.880 Yeah.

01:55:32.240 He had a view of his own country that was a very strong view.

01:55:35.860 And I wonder, look, Trump in his own way tells a story about America.

01:55:39.980 He hugs the flag.

01:55:40.700 He kisses the flag.

01:55:41.500 He's got it really in his gut.

01:55:42.520 But how many American statesmen today, after all these decades of just dissolution and hatred

01:55:49.260 of country, how many of them can tell a compelling story about what the country is, why we ought

01:55:55.820 to love the country beyond mere filial piety, and where we're going?

01:55:59.020 How many of them are there?

01:55:59.860 It's hard.

01:56:00.620 I mean, because the, you know, who are the American people?

01:56:04.800 That's the question.

01:56:06.160 And that's what really bothers me as someone who is not a race guy.

01:56:10.180 And I don't think your DNA should determine the course of your life or the nation you live in.

01:56:14.880 I just don't.

01:56:15.460 I'm American.

01:56:16.020 I'm from California.

01:56:16.780 I don't feel that way.

01:56:18.080 However, all of history suggests I'm wrong.

01:56:21.540 Because when Putin talks about Russia, he's talking about the Russian people whose DNA you can map.

01:56:29.420 And they're the indigenous population.

01:56:30.540 He's not talking about the Chechnyans, right?

01:56:31.980 He's not.

01:56:32.700 No, by the way, he gets along with them really well.

01:56:34.200 Yeah.

01:56:34.760 Well, that's the other thing.

01:56:35.500 He's got 20% Muslim population.

01:56:37.200 He's promoting Christianity, but the Muslims all like him.

01:56:39.100 Like, how do you do that?

01:56:40.180 Yes.

01:56:40.320 Don't try that at home.

01:56:41.080 That's hard.

01:56:42.340 And it's a skill that is, I mean, this is why I keep coming back to empire,

01:56:45.440 is because our country looks more like an empire than it does like a yeoman republic.

01:56:50.320 Russia certainly looks like an empire.

01:56:51.780 You know, it's got all, it's spanning a continent.

01:56:53.040 It has all these peoples.

01:56:54.260 And so on this question, which is-

01:56:56.160 But we don't even know who lives here.

01:56:57.660 Yeah.

01:56:58.900 Trump said to me recently, we think there are about maybe 50 million people here illegally.

01:57:02.920 Yeah.

01:57:04.480 50 million?

01:57:05.340 I mean, but who no one knows?

01:57:06.320 The president of the United States doesn't really know.

01:57:08.040 We've got facial recognition technology, but somehow we can't know who lives here.

01:57:11.200 And so when you talk about my country, are people who are, you can't even visualize who they are.

01:57:16.560 Yes.

01:57:16.960 And this gets, I mean, you just said, look, I'm not a race guy.

01:57:19.600 I'm not a race guy.

01:57:20.420 Of course, actually.

01:57:21.320 But when you think-

01:57:22.160 I'm a sexist, not a racist.

01:57:23.200 I always say that.

01:57:23.920 No one believes me.

01:57:24.660 I think about sex all the time, actually.

01:57:27.800 I do, too.

01:57:28.820 But when you think, what is America now, you know, in 2025?

01:57:33.580 There was this line where it's, America is just an idea, you know, or diversity is our strength,

01:57:37.940 or what, all these kind of slogans from the 90s and 2000s.

01:57:39.980 Yeah.

01:57:40.500 You think, well, no, it's not, a country is not just an idea.

01:57:43.600 There is a critical aspect of it, but it's not like an idea floating in outer space.

01:57:46.620 What are you talking about?

01:57:47.640 And so, there has to be a real grappling with, okay, well, look, a country is also geography.

01:57:54.460 You know, like, there is no America without the rivers, for instance.

01:57:57.180 Okay?

01:57:57.540 You know, it's not, the rivers aren't just an idea.

01:57:59.180 You're speaking to a fly fisherman now, Mr. Knowles.

01:58:01.440 Yes.

01:58:01.900 It's not a country without trout.

01:58:03.600 It's not a country without the oceans.

01:58:05.260 And it's not a country without people.

01:58:08.380 And this also is where-

01:58:09.940 Someone can just, like, show up from Delhi and, like, start lecturing me about American values.

01:58:17.020 Yes.

01:58:17.780 Can't even speak American English, and no one says anything, like, hey, son, settle down.

01:58:22.760 You just got here.

01:58:23.620 Don't start lecturing someone whose family's been here 400 years about what America is.

01:58:28.500 Then there's kind of no America, actually, at that point.

01:58:31.360 Of course.

01:58:31.980 And so, this is where even the grappling-

01:58:34.620 Scary.

01:58:34.760 Even the grappling with ethnicity, you know, like, what, we've come out of this very liberal period

01:58:38.960 where we have been told there's no such thing as ethnicity or race or anything like that, and-

01:58:45.020 Except it, but simultaneously, it's the most important thing.

01:58:47.620 Except it's convenient.

01:58:47.700 Yes.

01:58:48.440 All that matters is race, but it doesn't exist.

01:58:50.800 Yes.

01:58:51.040 And the reality is, again, to this kind of via media, it's okay.

01:58:57.560 It's okay when Joe DiMaggio hit a home run.

01:59:00.180 It's okay that the Italian-Americans in New York got a special little thrill out of that.

01:59:04.440 It's okay.

01:59:05.100 They say, that guy kind of looks like me, and he hit that home run.

01:59:06.800 That's kind of-

01:59:07.440 That's fine.

01:59:08.740 There's nothing wrong with that.

01:59:09.820 There's nothing wrong with recognizing that there are differences between peoples.

01:59:13.180 There are two simultaneous errors, which we fall into.

01:59:16.580 It seems actually at the same time, which is we say, ethnicity means nothing at all whatsoever,

01:59:21.800 and ethnicity is totally deterministic and means everything.

01:59:24.600 And the reality is, I mean, this is where our Christian heritage, Christianity, which

01:59:28.420 animates the whole civilization, comes in.

01:59:31.040 You say, no, we are in a very real way all children of God.

01:59:36.480 Like, in a very real way, there's only one race, the human race, or whatever the liberals

01:59:39.440 like to say.

01:59:39.980 Right.

01:59:40.060 That is true.

01:59:41.480 And also, there is vibrant diversity among peoples, and that's fine to acknowledge.

01:59:45.740 God created that.

01:59:46.560 God created that.

01:59:47.100 He created different peoples.

01:59:47.980 As long as that is ordered toward charity, as long as a proper love of that which is similar

01:59:53.720 to one is not ordered toward cruelty and is ordered within charity for the common good,

02:00:00.480 yeah, that's called having a country, of course.

02:00:03.620 We're not allowed to say that now?

02:00:05.860 Yeah, I just feel like it's gotten, I don't know.

02:00:10.660 They've been so tough on whites for so long.

02:00:12.820 Yes, of course.

02:00:13.460 So cruel to whites that I think, like, there's a crazy backlash coming.

02:00:18.300 Without question.

02:00:19.220 Yeah.

02:00:19.400 Well-deserved backlash.

02:00:20.720 It's already happening.

02:00:22.040 Is it?

02:00:22.600 I think so.

02:00:23.160 And, you know, as Tucker, you know I'm part Sicilian.

02:00:26.640 Not a non-white people.

02:00:28.080 A non-white.

02:00:28.480 A racially liminal people.

02:00:30.700 We Sicilians.

02:00:31.360 I love Sicilians.

02:00:32.660 Children of the messagiorno, yes.

02:00:34.280 And so you get a kind of look at it, which is, I mean, even early on, I have these wasp ancestors and I got some Irish ancestors in there.

02:00:41.720 The Italians came in a little bit later.

02:00:43.260 And so there's a little mixing of all of Europe in there.

02:00:45.940 And the reality is, in order to have, like, a sense of a country, you do need to have some kind of a sense of a common people.

02:00:56.820 And so to your point on the guy from Delhi, it's not even that the guy from Delhi can't be, like, quite American three generations from now.

02:01:06.300 But you can't just, like, land in a place and because you read a book about America or because you watched a YouTube video, you just totally get America.

02:01:16.060 And to have a country is to have a lived experience that has passed, sometimes ineffably, you know, without words, from generation to generation.

02:01:25.620 I'm looking around your house here.

02:01:27.140 I mean, there's pretty old stuff.

02:01:28.880 And you just kind of do it.

02:01:30.300 And there are habits that are inculcated in people.

02:01:32.300 And there are inclinations that the American people have, observed by Tocqueville back in the 19th century, that they're not even aware of.

02:01:38.960 That it takes some random Frenchman to come in and notice it.

02:01:41.120 I totally agree.

02:01:41.860 You've got to be very careful.

02:01:42.720 But I just want to be clear, since I have a million Indian friends and actually like India a lot as a country.

02:01:48.880 You hate the Indians.

02:01:51.200 I'm, like, probably the most pro-Indian right-winger you'll ever meet, sincerely.

02:01:57.820 But it's not even lecturing, showing up and lecturing me about what it is to be an American.

02:02:03.580 It's showing up and attacking whites.

02:02:05.400 Yeah.

02:02:06.440 And boy, did you see a lot of that.

02:02:08.300 And not just, it wasn't just Indians, but, like, people would, immigrants would show up, you know,

02:02:12.560 taking all these benefits from the country and the permanent population here and then start immediately attacking whites.

02:02:17.300 Now, they attack whites because they were encouraged to do that by a ruling class.

02:02:20.260 Yes.

02:02:20.360 Like, they got into Stanford.

02:02:21.560 The schools.

02:02:22.520 A hundred percent.

02:02:23.540 And then they get to Stanford and it's like, oh, you want to succeed, you have to attack the whites.

02:02:27.140 Yeah.

02:02:27.640 And they just, they're status-oriented.

02:02:29.840 All immigrants just, like, want to fit in and want to do the, get the merit badges that this society demands they get.

02:02:34.480 And one of those merit badges required them to denounce whites.

02:02:37.860 And I felt like that is the most destructive thing.

02:02:41.960 Yes.

02:02:42.460 That you could ever do.

02:02:43.960 You know, I have a solution to this, though.

02:02:45.740 My solution to this, we're always told, you know, it's all just got to be kind of organic from the culture and the people.

02:02:50.240 And that's politics is purely downstream of culture and whatever.

02:02:52.960 I have a little more of a classical political view of that.

02:02:56.240 I think people respond to incentives.

02:02:58.180 Well, that's exactly right.

02:02:59.380 When you mention these institutions, I think, and Trump is very good at this, taking, beating up Harvard, I think was a brilliant political attack.

02:03:06.640 You see some of that in Florida, taking in some of the universities.

02:03:09.080 It's happening around the country.

02:03:11.380 I'll give you a Pete Buttigieg.

02:03:13.400 I don't know Pete Buttigieg.

02:03:14.900 The fake gay guy?

02:03:16.800 I have a friend who thinks he's a fake gay.

02:03:18.480 Dude, my gay producer was always like, he's not gay.

02:03:21.160 He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago.

02:03:24.480 And like, he wants to be the Democratic nominee.

02:03:26.760 It's like time for a gay guy.

02:03:28.260 It's playing the long game.

02:03:29.100 I mean, that is, that's going down.

02:03:30.520 Look.

02:03:30.820 Well, it's suffering for your art.

02:03:32.280 I'll say that.

02:03:34.860 Look, just because I don't know him, I know a hundred Pete Buttigiegs.

02:03:38.740 I know this character.

02:03:40.220 Oh, I do too.

02:03:41.620 And he went to the elite school and then he goes to McKinsey and then he does the checks.

02:03:45.660 And I think.

02:03:46.140 And find some benighted Midwestern town that he can just like become mayor of.

02:03:49.940 Plop, I'm a mayor.

02:03:51.400 Now talk about the great, I was talking to a big Democrat figure.

02:03:54.980 And he said, you know, say what you will about Pete.

02:03:57.100 He's the greatest careerist we've ever seen.

02:03:59.000 You're mayor of this tiny town.

02:04:00.400 You become the secretary of transportation.

02:04:01.820 But of course, but the town kind of sucks.

02:04:04.500 Actually, he didn't do a good job.

02:04:05.800 He didn't have the college.

02:04:06.900 But I've always wanted to interview him.

02:04:08.580 He's never agreed to interview, but I'm going to ask him like some very specific questions

02:04:13.200 about gay sex and see if he can even answer.

02:04:15.240 I doubt he even knows.

02:04:16.680 Where does.

02:04:17.500 Yeah, no, totally.

02:04:18.720 Yeah, I don't.

02:04:19.580 You're not gay, dude.

02:04:20.320 Stop.

02:04:21.800 Think about Pete Buttigieg.

02:04:22.960 If we controlled the universities, if we controlled the culture, and if the incentives in the

02:04:28.960 corporations and all of the DEI offices, we can rename them.

02:04:32.540 If all the incentives were not to be like America hating, gay, liberal, LGBT.

02:04:39.840 Pete Buttigieg, I am convinced.

02:04:41.920 This is, look, this is purely my gut telling me this.

02:04:44.020 He would be like waving the stars and bars doing dip.

02:04:47.580 Like whatever incentive were there, he would go to it.

02:04:51.400 And so I think this is where the Trump, a little more muscular view of politics comes

02:04:56.200 in.

02:04:56.360 He says, no, forget about this stupid, like, everything's just going to be organic.

02:04:59.820 That's never how culture has changed.

02:05:01.360 We're going to go in.

02:05:02.020 I'm going to pummel Harvard into the dirt.

02:05:04.140 I'm going to go in.

02:05:05.020 I'm going to pummel these bureaucracy, the Kennedy Center, whatever.

02:05:07.900 And I'm going to create new incentives such that the best and the brightest and the most

02:05:12.240 ambitious are incentivized to like our country and do good stuff.

02:05:15.740 It's totally right.

02:05:16.400 I'm at the inauguration, January 20th, sitting there and it was indoors for some, I can't

02:05:19.900 remember why, but I'm sitting there chatting away, of course, that next to Laura Ingram,

02:05:24.700 gossiping about Fox and all of a sudden I look up and there's Jeff Bezos sitting like

02:05:29.080 right in front of me.

02:05:30.020 Yes.

02:05:31.000 What's Jeff Bezos doing here?

02:05:32.420 And then all these people firing.

02:05:33.780 John Cook, Sundar Pichai.

02:05:38.320 Wow.

02:05:39.400 Yeah, that's right.

02:05:40.980 I noticed all of a sudden after the inauguration, after the election, really, my phone starts

02:05:46.180 ringing from news networks that have never been interested in talking to me before.

02:05:51.680 And all of a sudden, some of the big corporations that we work with, with my show, they're more

02:05:57.560 interested in helping us.

02:05:59.100 And they want to make sure our experience, I say, oh, this is what power is.

02:06:03.240 Yeah.

02:06:03.500 And it is incumbent upon statesmen, on the happy occasions that they get power from the

02:06:09.840 people, that they actually use it in a good way and make hay while the sun shines.

02:06:14.460 So we have a couple of viewer questions.

02:06:16.020 We've never done this before, but, you know, it's the internet.

02:06:19.540 I'm in.

02:06:20.180 Okay.

02:06:22.300 Lots of people asked this one, my producer said.

02:06:25.360 Michael Knowles, do you miss working with Candace Owens?

02:06:28.480 Well, you know, I still see Candace all the time.

02:06:30.980 You know, I'm the godfather to Candace's daughter.

02:06:34.160 Actually?

02:06:34.720 Yeah, yeah.

02:06:35.100 I'm the godfather to Candace's daughter.

02:06:37.400 I'm very good friends with her husband.

02:06:40.120 And, you know, it's kind of weird for a man to hang out with her.

02:06:42.040 Yeah.

02:06:42.480 We have many Mayflower cigars, you know, over the time.

02:06:46.800 And I still, I don't see Candace at work, obviously, anymore.

02:06:49.320 But I do see her at church.

02:06:51.900 She actually goes to the earlier mass than I do because she converted.

02:06:55.160 You know, she came into the church like a year or something ago.

02:06:58.360 And, in fact, I was the godfather to her daughter before she came into the church.

02:07:03.000 And then all those smells and bells just kept pulling her in.

02:07:06.840 And there was one time I was invited to the baptism of their next kid.

02:07:11.440 And I just couldn't make it.

02:07:12.560 It was, I was visiting my grandma or something.

02:07:14.160 And people kept telling me, like, no, you should really come.

02:07:17.180 I was like, no, look, I mean, I love the farmer family, but I'm,

02:07:20.720 I gotta go see my granny, whatever, you know.

02:07:22.200 And they kept, I said, what's this about?

02:07:23.800 I don't know.

02:07:24.020 They have, like, a kid every six months, so, like, they'll have another one soon.

02:07:27.100 And, but, but then I found out it was because she was being baptized.

02:07:31.260 And she wasn't telling anybody.

02:07:32.480 So, anyway, she came in.

02:07:33.360 And now at least, now at least I get to see her at mass, so.

02:07:36.620 People love her.

02:07:38.260 It is wild.

02:07:39.540 She has actual star quality.

02:07:44.220 I, she has this thing, it, she could tell me something.

02:07:48.220 She could tell me something, not only that I don't agree with,

02:07:50.440 she could tell me something about myself, that she could tell me I have blonde hair,

02:07:54.440 and I would, I would just, the whole time, I'd just be like, go on, tell me everything.

02:07:58.000 Well, it's wild.

02:07:59.020 I mean, I was telling this off air, but I just want to say it.

02:08:01.140 I was in Oslo, Norway, last week, salmon fishing with my kids.

02:08:05.260 And I'm coming, walking back from dinner with one of my kids in downtown Oslo.

02:08:07.980 And this guy goes, Tucker Carlson?

02:08:09.680 Yes.

02:08:11.080 You know Candace Owens?

02:08:12.240 I was like, yes.

02:08:13.220 He goes, tell her that I love her.

02:08:16.800 And I was like, how famous do you have to be where people will come up to you on the street

02:08:20.680 just because you know somebody else?

02:08:23.120 Where people will come up to another very famous guy.

02:08:26.500 No, nothing to do with me at all.

02:08:28.080 You say, hey, you know, hi, I'm Tucker, by the way.

02:08:30.420 No, no, I didn't.

02:08:31.200 No, I was so impressed by it that I, it didn't hurt my feelings at all.

02:08:34.480 Well, I, you know.

02:08:35.460 That is unbelievable.

02:08:36.560 But yes, the main thing that he liked about me was that I knew Candace Owens.

02:08:41.160 I was like, wow, that, that's devotion.

02:08:44.100 So I was impressed.

02:08:45.180 I called her.

02:08:45.980 I said, wow, man, you're really at another level.

02:08:48.220 Got to start trying that at restaurants.

02:08:49.900 Can I, hey, can I get a free dessert or something?

02:08:52.740 I know Candace Owens.

02:08:53.720 Come on.

02:08:54.440 Not my birthday, but okay, this is an interesting one.

02:08:57.300 This is a question.

02:08:57.920 I think I've inadvertently led my two sons, ages 25 and 23,

02:09:02.020 to have a mindset to put off having a family.

02:09:04.780 I think I've made a mistake.

02:09:06.220 How do I convince them to hurry up, get married and have kids?

02:09:09.300 The question, the answer that I would, or the evidence that I would need here is how old

02:09:13.660 the kids are.

02:09:14.620 23 and 25.

02:09:15.920 You got, okay.

02:09:16.620 23 and 25.

02:09:17.600 Hmm.

02:09:18.460 Yeah, you should get serious.

02:09:20.360 You should, I mean, these days you'd be like a child groom at that age, but you need to

02:09:23.240 start getting serious.

02:09:23.860 I guess the reason is this.

02:09:24.920 I had a kid at 25.

02:09:26.180 Yeah.

02:09:26.760 I mean, people, people used to get married.

02:09:28.240 I have a good friend, very successful guy, though.

02:09:30.460 He struggled for a long time.

02:09:31.780 Six kids.

02:09:33.020 Got married at 20 or 19 or something and started spitting out kids right away.

02:09:37.100 And the way to maybe present this to your sons is,

02:09:40.540 we screw up everything in modern life.

02:09:44.680 We just get everything perverted or in front or wrong.

02:09:47.580 And we now view marriage as the capstone to our lives.

02:09:51.800 Exactly.

02:09:52.140 We say, I've lived, now that I've lived, now that I've had sex with a hundred thousand

02:09:55.580 people and I've made a million dollars and now that I've done everything, traveled all

02:09:59.720 over the world, now I'm going to get married.

02:10:03.200 Now that I have drug-resistant chlamydia.

02:10:05.060 Now that I have drug-resistant chlamydia and my brain is half melted, now I'm going to

02:10:09.120 get married.

02:10:09.720 And you think, okay, that's not what marriage is.

02:10:12.740 Marriage is when two people leave their families, come together and become one flesh and do something

02:10:17.740 together.

02:10:18.440 And so it's really supposed to be more like the beginning of your life.

02:10:21.440 But here's a real practical reason why you shouldn't do it that way.

02:10:24.480 I married my high school sweetheart.

02:10:26.060 You married your high school sweetheart.

02:10:26.840 Yes, I did.

02:10:27.760 And highly recommend it.

02:10:29.440 And I've seen many, many good marriages where people married their high school sweetheart

02:10:32.800 because it's like our bones.

02:10:35.880 You know, when you grow, your bones are kind of agile and malleable and they grow.

02:10:39.740 Yeah.

02:10:40.080 And then they harden.

02:10:41.340 Yes.

02:10:41.700 And then it's really hard when two people harden into their own ways to mash that together.

02:10:49.180 But if you're still kind of young and a little more malleable, even in your 20s, you're starting

02:10:54.240 to really harden your views.

02:10:56.900 You need to do that in such a way that you're fused together.

02:11:01.080 So, I mean, to me...

02:11:02.000 No, that's right.

02:11:03.220 The notion of divorce...

02:11:05.040 Men get really rigid too as they get older living alone.

02:11:08.040 Yes.

02:11:08.840 Get weird.

02:11:09.540 Oh, so weird.

02:11:10.360 Get weird.

02:11:11.000 And I'm entirely opposed to divorce.

02:11:13.760 I would not divorce under any circumstances.

02:11:15.520 I know people do it.

02:11:16.280 I know it happens.

02:11:17.200 It's a fallen world.

02:11:18.560 But it seems to me that if you're a whole set person and you marry someone and you sign

02:11:25.280 a prenup and you keep separate bank accounts and you just...

02:11:28.980 You're kind of setting yourself up to prepare for when you're just going to crack apart.

02:11:32.840 But if you do it a little bit younger and you're just totally enmeshed...

02:11:36.280 Go all the way.

02:11:36.800 It's unthinkable.

02:11:37.600 Yeah.

02:11:37.720 I also think, you know, young men especially are really concerned about the economy, which

02:11:42.360 has like basically been designed to exclude them.

02:11:45.340 And they feel like they're not going to be able to succeed and provide for their children

02:11:49.960 the lives that they had from their parents.

02:11:53.420 Just as a math question, getting married is like...

02:11:56.320 There's a lot of research on this.

02:11:58.420 Is the single most effective thing you can do to be more successful?

02:12:02.000 Yes.

02:12:02.640 Yes, of course.

02:12:03.400 I was talking to a buddy of mine, even with the kids, you know, when I had my...

02:12:06.920 It took us a couple of years and then we had our first kid.

02:12:09.200 I said, oh, I hope I have enough money.

02:12:11.120 I hope I...

02:12:12.020 Oh, you will.

02:12:13.480 Yes.

02:12:14.340 My friend said that babies are like little money bags.

02:12:18.560 You just make more.

02:12:21.520 You just make it work.

02:12:22.660 You were...

02:12:23.020 Yes.

02:12:23.580 When I had my first, I was working at the Weekly Standard Hard to Believe I ever worked

02:12:28.420 there.

02:12:28.740 But for Bill Kristol, I know it's so shocking, but...

02:12:31.360 You know, he was a teacher of mine.

02:12:33.400 We have that in common.

02:12:34.780 Bill Kristol was a teacher of yours?

02:12:36.180 I did one of these fellowships, like a summer fellowship.

02:12:38.540 He taught me, I don't know, like Machiavelli or something.

02:12:41.360 And to think now, I mean, now his publications have taken shots at me over the years.

02:12:47.860 Oh, of course.

02:12:48.220 And I just think, man, where did you lose the plot, buddy?

02:12:52.400 I don't know what happened.

02:12:53.720 I don't know.

02:12:54.180 It's distressing.

02:12:56.040 But I think he kind of collapsed inside as a person.

02:13:01.540 Depressing.

02:13:01.900 It can happen, by the way.

02:13:02.780 It can happen.

02:13:03.040 You have to be on guard against it.

02:13:03.980 But anyway, I remember I had this editor called Richard Starr.

02:13:06.440 He was such a nice man.

02:13:07.860 And I had this child at 25 and he goes, your life's going to change.

02:13:10.940 And I was like, everyone says that.

02:13:12.140 What do you mean?

02:13:13.180 And he goes, when you have a child, especially when you're young, you realize you will do

02:13:16.860 whatever it takes to provide for that child.

02:13:19.300 You need to rob a fucking liquor store?

02:13:20.720 Yes.

02:13:20.880 No problem.

02:13:21.460 Yes.

02:13:22.340 And I was like, wow, that's so true.

02:13:24.280 It even made me...

02:13:24.840 Not that I ever robbed any liquor stores, but like I wouldn't.

02:13:26.740 But you might have.

02:13:27.440 Yeah.

02:13:27.580 And I might still, I, when we got married, I was a little old.

02:13:31.460 I was maybe 27 when we got engaged, 28 when we got married.

02:13:35.120 That's my one, I kind of wish we'd gotten married younger.

02:13:37.680 We were kind of moving, we're long distance, all this stuff.

02:13:39.880 And it's all works out in Providence, but it's one regret I have.

02:13:43.300 We should have got, my wife says it too, we should have got married younger and started

02:13:46.180 having kids younger.

02:13:46.840 And I remember though, I started my show after I got married or right around the time I got

02:13:51.480 married.

02:13:51.980 And I thought, man, thank goodness I'm not single in, in this career in particular, because

02:13:58.340 you're probably, can you imagine you just, all you do is just like stay up late and go

02:14:02.880 drink and screw around.

02:14:04.040 And that's not, and when you're married and you have kids, you have a sense of purpose

02:14:08.320 that you're doing things for something.

02:14:12.380 Of course.

02:14:13.440 Of course.

02:14:14.000 And if you're under like real stress, if you have, you know, the kind of performing

02:14:17.680 in public or whatever, any job where you're like under pressure and you feel like you're

02:14:21.140 on a tightrope all the time.

02:14:22.220 But if you didn't have a wife, I don't know how you would do that.

02:14:25.100 Yeah.

02:14:25.500 I almost.

02:14:26.140 They all melt down.

02:14:27.320 I mean, you know, you need a wife.

02:14:29.760 Yes.

02:14:30.460 You do.

02:14:30.700 I mean, even my wife will, she'll sometimes say, I'll do my show.

02:14:33.760 She'll listen to my show.

02:14:34.360 She'll go, you know, man, you were a little bit kind of lib over there.

02:14:38.000 You kind of went a little squishy.

02:14:39.920 I'll be like, man, you're the, you know, she's like the rock solid.

02:14:42.720 Well, she's, she's the only person I'll ever let write some of my show.

02:14:47.140 She gets it.

02:14:48.120 Really?

02:14:48.640 Yeah.

02:14:48.800 Yeah.

02:14:48.900 It's not, she was no political nerd or anything like that, but she has a very conservative

02:14:53.600 disposition.

02:14:54.740 Yeah.

02:14:55.060 And she just has this gut instinct.

02:14:56.700 When, when moms go right wing, boy, they're not dicking around at all.

02:15:00.400 I've seen that a lot.

02:15:01.760 Yeah.

02:15:01.980 Members of Congress who I respect 100% have wives who were like, what?

02:15:08.080 No.

02:15:09.040 Yes.

02:15:09.440 You know what I mean?

02:15:10.040 Yes.

02:15:10.860 No, I can think of a couple of them.

02:15:12.320 Okay.

02:15:12.480 Last question.

02:15:13.700 This is kind of a weird one.

02:15:16.180 Michael, do you detest boomers as much as Tucker seems to?

02:15:20.880 I was born in 1951.

02:15:22.660 What's the main thing I ought to do or stop doing to help improve life here in the United

02:15:26.220 States?

02:15:26.800 So this is a boomer, I take it.

02:15:27.880 This is a boomer.

02:15:28.460 Yeah.

02:15:28.640 This is a boomer.

02:15:29.340 Baby boom, 1946, 1964.

02:15:31.840 Yeah.

02:15:32.320 I think.

02:15:33.220 The boomers have attracted a lot of ire.

02:15:35.840 Yes.

02:15:36.280 Rightly so.

02:15:37.040 My defense of the boomers is they came from somewhere.

02:15:41.320 Yeah.

02:15:41.580 They came from somewhere.

02:15:42.440 So even, I mean, you know, the, our grandparents' generation.

02:15:45.320 And they're human beings.

02:15:46.180 I don't mean to talk about them like they're animals.

02:15:47.800 No, but things went really screwy during the boomer generation.

02:15:52.220 You think?

02:15:52.640 You might've noticed.

02:15:53.960 And I think what it has come down to is an ideological selfishness.

02:16:00.100 I'm not even saying, a lot of boomers, like they have all this stress and anxiety for their

02:16:03.520 kids and the future.

02:16:04.720 And, you know, so it's not, it's not like even a personal selfishness.

02:16:07.180 It's an ideological selfishness that says, hey, I'm going to, you know, do what you want.

02:16:12.620 Hey, follow your bliss.

02:16:13.900 Do what makes you happy.

02:16:15.000 And I would say that came from a good place.

02:16:17.800 For a lot of the boomers who are a little hippy-dippy, whatever.

02:16:20.860 I don't think that's helpful to kids.

02:16:23.000 I actually think a little bit more clarity is better.

02:16:26.140 Clarity is charity.

02:16:27.240 And I think a little bit more on the guardrails, a little bit more of saying, hey, son, don't

02:16:33.100 just follow your bliss.

02:16:34.040 You're doing something more.

02:16:34.360 It's an ideological selfishness.

02:16:35.920 Boy, that is, I've never thought of that.

02:16:37.540 That is really smart.

02:16:38.320 Because it is, of course, it's true that boomers, which again, is everybody born between,

02:16:42.820 you know, the end of World War II and just before Woodstock.

02:16:46.440 There are a lot of nice people who really care about their kids and grandkids.

02:16:51.400 But they...

02:16:52.060 But it's ideological.

02:16:53.300 Yes.

02:16:53.860 They can't even...

02:16:55.000 What are you talking about?

02:16:55.820 If I were to say that right is right and wrong is wrong, well, I'd be...

02:16:59.720 That would be, I don't know, authoritarian or judgmental.

02:17:02.900 Yes.

02:17:03.400 Yeah.

02:17:03.520 And you think, well, you have to make judgments in life.

02:17:06.960 And sometimes parents actually do know what's best for their kids.

02:17:10.280 And you just need to, I think, state not...

02:17:12.840 Have the confidence to state that.

02:17:14.400 Have the confidence to help your kid, even if it might make him angry in the short run.

02:17:18.220 Let me...

02:17:18.680 That's a really smart point.

02:17:20.220 Let me just end by asking you, because I'm legit interested.

02:17:24.180 How did you get into the tobacco business?

02:17:28.480 Can I offer you one?

02:17:29.460 I don't want to make you smoke at 10 o'clock in the morning, but...

02:17:32.040 I'm going, shooting after this.

02:17:33.440 I'm going to burn one of these.

02:17:34.340 Okay, great.

02:17:34.780 All right.

02:17:35.120 I can't wait.

02:17:35.840 I have loved cigars since I was 15, which is a little old to start in New York as an Italian-American.

02:17:42.960 But I was, you know...

02:17:43.580 Totally.

02:17:44.000 If I ever get rich, I'm going to start a Nicotine for the Children Foundation,

02:17:46.700 just to make sure that they have enough.

02:17:48.440 I'm serious.

02:17:48.840 It's charity.

02:17:49.420 I couldn't agree more.

02:17:50.460 Of course.

02:17:50.940 I was 15, and I never liked cigarettes.

02:17:53.960 I never liked...

02:17:55.120 But I loved cigars.

02:17:56.960 And a family friend gave me one when I was 15.

02:17:59.740 I really liked it.

02:18:00.660 And I would go grocery shopping in the Bronx, in the Italian neighborhood.

02:18:03.440 And they had these guys rolling the cigars.

02:18:05.240 And I was too young to buy them, so they would just give them to me.

02:18:08.200 They'd give me four a week.

02:18:09.400 And I got into...

02:18:09.980 I smoked them.

02:18:10.700 I really...

02:18:11.300 I wrote my college admission essay about how much I loved cigars.

02:18:14.700 I called it the Count of Monte Cristo.

02:18:16.480 Because they said, write about something you're passionate about.

02:18:18.140 I'm very passionate about cigars.

02:18:20.040 I...

02:18:20.360 They let you into Yale, one of the cigars, say?

02:18:22.340 I probably wouldn't have worked out today.

02:18:24.700 Damn.

02:18:24.860 Yeah.

02:18:25.440 Better than writing about my political views.

02:18:26.840 Were your parents big donors?

02:18:28.260 They were not.

02:18:30.280 Safe to say they were not.

02:18:32.020 And I...

02:18:32.520 So, the story of this company, I wanted to start that for a long time.

02:18:35.100 Because despite my swarthy appearance, I do have this kind of wasp, Mayflower, ancestor.

02:18:39.920 And I said, I want it to be Mayflower.

02:18:43.040 I want it to be patriotic.

02:18:44.560 But I don't want it to just be like, you know, I don't know, guns and fried chicken cigars.

02:18:49.580 I want it to be a little more elevated, but...

02:18:51.420 Yeah.

02:18:51.640 And there's this paradox with the Mayflower, which is kind of like the founding stock.

02:18:54.680 On the one hand, they're blue blood elites.

02:18:56.580 On the other, this is...

02:18:57.540 These are salt of the earth people.

02:18:58.680 Yeah, they're rugged.

02:18:59.680 Rugged weirdos.

02:19:00.920 Oh, big time.

02:19:01.420 And I said, I like that paradox because cigars are a luxury, but they're also very accessible.

02:19:09.560 You can have an amazing cigar for like $12, you know.

02:19:13.280 Yes.

02:19:13.540 And so I said, I want it to be that.

02:19:16.180 And I wanted to work with a particular company.

02:19:19.280 When I was a kid, my mother, shortly before she died, gave me a box of Oliva cigars.

02:19:24.240 Oliva Series O, Robusto for Christmas.

02:19:27.060 Yeah.

02:19:27.300 We did not have a lot of money and this was a really nice present.

02:19:29.540 But when she died, unexpectedly, I still had half the box.

02:19:33.560 And I said, well, these are special.

02:19:35.840 I need to save them for special occasions.

02:19:38.900 Graduate high school, get married, first kid, that kind of thing.

02:19:42.240 Maybe I'll give some to my kids if I have any left over.

02:19:45.720 This is providential.

02:19:47.820 I was trying to start the cigar company.

02:19:49.800 It was kind of tough, you know.

02:19:51.100 Daily Wire was allowing me to kind of explore this and use the platform to start a cigar company.

02:19:56.240 I said, oh, great.

02:19:56.960 But what do I know?

02:19:57.540 I don't know anything about starting that.

02:19:59.540 I'm backstage at a TV show and a guy calls out to me.

02:20:03.220 He says, hey, Knowles, you're a cigar guy, right?

02:20:05.020 I said, yeah, yeah.

02:20:05.620 He's like, oh, yeah, I got this cigar.

02:20:06.800 You got to come by this cigar club that I'm a member of.

02:20:08.980 I said, oh, that's a great idea.

02:20:10.380 I don't know him.

02:20:10.960 He goes, yeah, I'll give you one of mine.

02:20:12.140 It's an Oliva, re-banded Oliva.

02:20:14.600 I said, do you know Oliva cigars?

02:20:16.560 He said, yeah.

02:20:16.980 I said, I can't get in touch with them.

02:20:18.000 He goes, I'll put you in touch.

02:20:20.060 Well, that's fortuitous.

02:20:22.220 15 minutes, we have the deal for production and distribution for a test cigar.

02:20:26.600 Only because of a happenstance of business.

02:20:29.360 It basically couldn't have worked with any other company.

02:20:33.900 We go through it.

02:20:34.820 We blend.

02:20:35.340 I'm blending meticulously.

02:20:37.100 I wanted to go to Nicaragua.

02:20:38.480 Had a little trouble getting into the country of Nicaragua.

02:20:40.460 I'm blending it for long distance.

02:20:42.740 We finally launch it.

02:20:44.900 How hard is it to get to the right blend?

02:20:46.760 If you're obsessive, if you're horrifically obsessive.

02:20:51.980 I was such a terrible person to work with.

02:20:54.000 That's the way to be.

02:20:54.900 But you have to be.

02:20:55.820 Because I said, with those, I said, look, this is something I care about.

02:20:58.480 I'm not really doing this primarily to make money.

02:21:00.320 I'll make money other ways.

02:21:01.860 I'm doing this because this is a thrill.

02:21:04.120 I've wanted to do it for 15 years.

02:21:06.060 And I landed on a blend, a Connecticut blend, which is the Mayflower Dawn.

02:21:10.000 It's kind of the more mainstream one.

02:21:11.660 The Mayflower Dusk, which is an Ecuador Habano wrapper.

02:21:13.700 That was really blended just for my tastes.

02:21:16.440 And a double Maduro, the Mayflower Dream.

02:21:18.540 Comes from a painting by William Halsall of the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor.

02:21:22.740 And it's an orange sky.

02:21:24.600 And you can't tell if the sun is rising or setting on America.

02:21:28.180 Which I love this ambiguous painting.

02:21:29.920 Is it, are we getting it tomorrow or is the light going out?

02:21:32.840 And I said, that's what I want it to be.

02:21:34.300 Dawn, dusk, and dream.

02:21:36.200 We get the cigars.

02:21:38.320 The cigars are made at the same factory that made the box that my mother gave me.

02:21:42.800 No way.

02:21:43.700 Yeah.

02:21:45.080 How do you plan that?

02:21:46.040 Talk about Providence.

02:21:47.040 How do you plan that?

02:21:47.920 That's wild.

02:21:49.420 Yeah.

02:21:50.300 And so-

02:21:51.380 Do you smoke them?

02:21:52.320 All the time.

02:21:53.440 You smoke your own brand.

02:21:54.680 Oh, yes.

02:21:55.300 They were made, they were actually made for my taste.

02:21:57.500 And they are, I say, with no false modesty and true humility, they're exquisite.

02:22:02.640 And so we've got three lines now.

02:22:05.440 I even made the, I was so brutal about it.

02:22:07.360 I made these little mini ones.

02:22:08.560 I call them Mayflower Compacts.

02:22:10.200 They're a little petite Coronas.

02:22:11.520 Yeah, that's pretty funny.

02:22:12.940 Thank you.

02:22:13.820 And they're, but they're a premium hand rolled long filler.

02:22:16.180 So it's not a cigarrillo or something.

02:22:17.780 I, I, I just love them.

02:22:19.580 And they, they sold out immediately.

02:22:22.980 It was a good problem to have because I sold like four months supply in one day.

02:22:25.720 And was out of stock for Black Friday, out of stock for Christmas.

02:22:29.640 Fine.

02:22:29.860 We're picking up production.

02:22:31.160 We're now we're in retail stores.

02:22:33.520 This brings us all the way back to the top of our conversation because one of the reasons

02:22:39.440 I started this company is I want people, especially guys, to get out in the physical

02:22:44.860 world and spend time together and speak the best conversations I've had in my life are over

02:22:49.580 cigars.

02:22:50.060 I agree.

02:22:50.400 And I, I want them to do that, not, not be in their rooms, not be just on Zoom.

02:22:54.900 I want them to be in this and to recognize, uh, you know, thus pass, passeth the glories

02:23:00.200 of the world.

02:23:00.820 Sic trance, gloria, mundi.

02:23:02.360 45 minutes, you have your conversation and it's over and you can light another one.

02:23:06.300 Maybe tomorrow.

02:23:07.240 But, but, uh, I think it's, it's instructive.

02:23:10.640 Uh, and it's whatever people say about the health effects of cigars, I have always found,

02:23:15.640 and I think this quotes, uh, was it George Burns or someone that I've taken more out of

02:23:20.100 cigars than cigars have taken out of me.

02:23:21.600 Oh, I feel that way very, very strongly about tobacco.

02:23:24.300 Can you, can you just like start a cigar company and start selling them?

02:23:28.060 Do you have to go through FDA hoops or?

02:23:30.720 It's, it's so hard and through sheer providential, uh, blessing, I was able to, to leapfrog over

02:23:39.180 a lot of that.

02:23:39.960 It still took me over a year basically to go from beginning the deal to, to launching.

02:23:45.000 To get them into stores is almost impossible.

02:23:47.420 If I started, because of all these stupid regulations, if I started a pot company, I'd

02:23:51.220 probably be in 57 states in the country.

02:23:53.220 Oh, for sure.

02:23:53.580 Yes.

02:23:54.120 It's very different.

02:23:55.060 Certain states I just can't do business in.

02:23:56.400 I wish I could.

02:23:56.940 I have stores begging me for them.

02:23:57.900 I just can't, I can't.

02:23:59.260 Why?

02:23:59.620 The, the regulations are so brutal.

02:24:01.560 I mean, certain places are trying to ban smoking just like forever.

02:24:04.340 Massachusetts, you know, tried to set a, a, a date after which you could just never buy

02:24:08.840 tobacco.

02:24:09.760 So it kept aging with you.

02:24:12.360 So crazy, crazy stuff like that.

02:24:14.260 California is awful on the regs.

02:24:16.300 And so we're, uh, we're trying to sneak them out as best we can.

02:24:20.620 Yeah.

02:24:22.260 It does seem like tobacco should be part of the backlash.

02:24:28.620 Of course.

02:24:29.000 Is it?

02:24:29.240 Well, it's the American crop.

02:24:30.800 First of all.

02:24:30.940 Yes.

02:24:31.300 Helped build the country.

02:24:32.720 Washington grew it.

02:24:33.480 Where did it, where did it come from?

02:24:35.440 The American South.

02:24:36.520 The American Indians.

02:24:37.600 And, oh, originally, that's right.

02:24:38.840 Yeah.

02:24:39.020 It's not native to Europe.

02:24:40.080 It's native to North America.

02:24:41.760 And you know who really discovered it?

02:24:43.100 It was Christopher Columbus.

02:24:44.000 I know.

02:24:44.620 I grabbed the Taino Indians.

02:24:45.740 They would smoke them up their nose, which I don't think I've ever tried.

02:24:48.260 But, uh, yes.

02:24:49.140 The two things he took away in addition to corn, um, tobacco and syphilis.

02:24:54.720 Yeah.

02:24:56.160 And I don't sell syphilis.

02:24:58.340 Or have it.

02:25:00.500 Michael Knowles, that was great.

02:25:02.200 Tucker, thank you for that.

02:25:02.880 And I really, really appreciate it.

02:25:05.100 Um, and it's great to see you after six years.

02:25:07.280 Totally vindicated.

02:25:09.320 You're not the disgusting one, Michael Knowles.

02:25:12.080 Thank you, Tucker.

02:25:13.000 And thank you for your help.

02:25:13.940 Oh, my gosh.

02:25:14.940 It was nothing.

02:25:16.000 Thank you.

02:25:20.700 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

02:25:24.700 We know the people who run it.

02:25:25.620 Good people.

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The Tucker Carlson Show - September 03, 2025

Michael Knowles： Attacks on Christians, Norm McDonald, and Leaving Atheism for Catholicism

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