The Tucker Carlson Show - The Hunter Biden Interview

00:00:00.000 hunter biden thank you for doing this carlson i haven't seen you in 11 years

00:00:08.040 though i've talked about you as you know in the meantime

00:00:12.860 and then i wake up one morning and you're doing candace owens i love candace i do i i do too i do

00:00:21.780 too i've taken a lot of abuse for saying that but i do i know her and i and i do i think she's a

00:00:26.420 great as a person yeah forget the the politics and and anything and and largely why i'm i'm sitting

00:00:34.640 here we've known each other for you know quite tangentially for 30 years yes is that she is a

00:00:43.400 human being is a really, really good person and thoughtful and generous and has a deep faith.

00:00:58.380 And I just vehemently disagree with some of her positions. And it used to be that way.

00:01:05.120 I remember.

00:01:05.680 Remember? I mean, when you and I knew each other, it wasn't as if our politics were much different.

00:01:12.520 right and uh but everything has um everything changed and i and i i attributed to one thing

00:01:20.800 we can get to that but what's the one thing to donald trump i think he i think he i everybody

00:01:27.360 says you know he's a symptom of the disease and the reality is is that i think he's one of the

00:01:32.740 most transformational uh individuals in uh our political history for offer offer uh for ill and

00:01:43.240 um i think he had such an opportunity to do great things and he just decided that all he was going

00:01:50.220 to do was for himself and um but anyway regardless well i mean we got two hours to talk we're from

00:01:57.020 the same place yeah um i grew up with your with your high school girlfriend i think so i mean i

00:02:04.420 you know where i'm very familiar with the world that you're from because i'm sort of from it too

00:02:10.020 and i noticed the change during obama and i'm not blaming obama i'm not blaming anybody but the

00:02:17.520 society changed it was like all of a sudden if you didn't like obama you were a racist yeah and i

00:02:23.800 felt like in our neighborhood that was the violence you couldn't say anything about obama

00:02:27.040 that wasn't positive yeah do you remember that no i mean i and i think that i had a completely

00:02:32.520 uh probably different perspective on that um but i don't um i don't discount if if you say that you

00:02:41.080 felt that way well it was before then like if it was clinton yeah you know i knew a lot of clinton

00:02:45.880 staffers and you could be like really monica lewinsky and they'd be like yeah monica lewinsky

00:02:50.560 or Bush, you know, really the Iraq

00:02:52.620 war? Yeah, the Iraq, you know, it was like

00:02:54.700 but people seemed to

00:02:56.740 lose their sense of humor in 2008.

00:02:58.780 At least my neighbors did. It was like,

00:03:00.600 what did you, I'm sorry, did you say something about Obama that's

00:03:02.640 not flattering?

00:03:04.520 And that, to me. Yeah, I can see how you would get that.

00:03:06.900 You know what I mean? I mean, you're

00:03:08.800 a public figure, you're

00:03:10.680 on TV. No, I mean it like dinner. Yeah, no,

00:03:12.680 I know, but I mean. And it was the ladies 1.00

00:03:14.360 who were all about Obama. 0.66

00:03:17.220 Remember that? It's like all the

00:03:18.500 this whole thing of like 1.00

00:03:20.320 well-educated humorless rich white ladies that all began during that may be the case i that wasn't

00:03:26.680 it understandably was not my experience that it wasn't and so how did you wind up deciding to 0.81

00:03:34.100 speak in public and with first of all with candace which i strongly approve of but i just like how

00:03:39.300 did that happen so the um the first interview that i did um was with andrew callahan and who

00:03:46.900 is a brilliant, in my opinion, journalist and documentarian. And I didn't know anything about

00:03:54.860 him, but I had a lawyer that had done some work for him that had also done some work for me. And

00:03:59.920 he said, hey, you should check this guy out. And I did. And what I noticed about Andrew is that

00:04:06.860 I believe he has a real finger on the pulse of what's happening, particularly to a certain

00:04:13.620 demographic like draft age 18 to 35 year olds and um and he has a wider audience also and it's

00:04:22.860 funny that you say draft age that's that's an interesting way to put it yeah we may we may be

00:04:29.400 coming up to uh anyway do you think we're gonna get a draft uh no no i don't think that they have

00:04:37.740 the um i i no i don't i don't think because that's when like i physically joined the protest at that

00:04:45.220 i mean that's so crazy well i think you should physically join the protest now i mean you're

00:04:49.120 already there and uh but anyway i met with i i i watched a lot of stuff that andrew did i i really

00:04:56.000 liked it and uh and um and i went on and you know i think that the thing that kind of shocked people

00:05:03.240 was my willingness to be completely open about all of the, about everything, is that I don't,

00:05:08.180 I welcome any question. I always say that addiction is never an excuse, but it's often

00:05:16.480 an explanation for some of the things that people, the narrative that they've been told about me.

00:05:25.300 And they did a beautiful thing to me that was ugly in the moment, which was they completely

00:05:32.360 exposed me in a way that I don't know of any public figure or, or a person associated with

00:05:39.160 public figure, particularly family has ever been exposed. You know, I mean, they literally stole

00:05:44.980 22 years of my entire digital footprint from every deleted image to every deleted text to

00:05:53.220 everything. And, and in that total exposure, there was nowhere to hide. And, and for me,

00:06:01.060 I realized is that the only way, um, uh, to out was through is owning the things that were true

00:06:10.300 and, and speaking truth to the things that were false. And, uh, and I did that with Andrew and

00:06:16.680 I thought it would just be a one-off, but then I, I, I, a guy named, uh, well, you, you're close

00:06:23.420 with him and I, I, uh, I consider him a, a friend by text. I don't want to sell you his reputation.

00:06:30.500 yeah is sean ryan and i and i sat down with sean ryan and i and and sean is kind of you know

00:06:38.660 maga adjacent he was um between 2020 and 2024 and um and he had said some pretty rough things

00:06:46.540 about my dad not so much about me but um about my dad that i i vehemently disagreed with um and to

00:06:53.740 this day vehemently disagree with but i thought that sean was a great listener and uh and and i

00:07:00.200 really appreciated his willingness to not allow what he had been instructed to believe to infect

00:07:11.540 the way in which he listened. And I sat down with him and we did close to six hours. And you kind

00:07:19.620 of, I know that it's like, seems like this is a very public thing by virtue of everybody watching

00:07:24.840 here but the fact of the matter is is these experiences in this long format can be very

00:07:31.000 intimate oh big time and um and and it and that was my experience with uh with sean and we and

00:07:40.760 we connected on the thing that i have been able to connect with with almost everyone like universally

00:07:49.400 which is addiction and recovery.

00:07:53.180 And for me, thank God, it's recovery.

00:07:55.380 And I've been sober, clean and sober for,

00:07:59.340 and somebody said, stop saying clean.

00:08:01.240 So I've been substance-free and sober

00:08:03.580 for over seven years now.

00:08:07.120 And I don't think people knew that.

00:08:09.820 I think people conflated my past addiction

00:08:12.900 with my father's presidency

00:08:14.600 and just assumed that I was still using.

00:08:16.440 Because, you know, I mean, New York Post,

00:08:18.060 you know i think they they printed a 1.5 articles about me a day for almost close to four years

00:08:25.400 and and none of it good in all of it with not not positive no not not not much that was positive

00:08:31.060 no not at all anyway long story the long story a lot longer is i'm having that experience the

00:08:37.000 near post at the moment yeah by the way welcome welcome to my world i'm not naked yeah hopefully

00:08:42.940 hopefully hopefully naked pictures don't come out i could call some of our friends

00:08:47.240 no one wants to see those yeah well i didn't think so either but but apparently they do

00:08:53.220 so anyway long story short and long story longer i go um and i do this with sean and sean called

00:09:01.660 and and this is public now i can say it is sean had dinner with candace they live in the same

00:09:06.100 neighborhood down there in nashville and he said you know i really really like her and um and

00:09:12.020 she told my wife that one of the interviews that she most wanted to do was with me, with

00:09:18.300 Hunter Biden. I'm not referring myself in the third person right now. I haven't gotten to that

00:09:23.000 point yet. And, you know, I thought about it and like you, and we've talked about this a little

00:09:34.380 bit, but like you, Candace has said some really, really awful things, not just about me, but also

00:09:39.460 about my dad, you know, the whole Biden crime family thing, but really, really kind of pointed

00:09:44.440 things. And I believe that if I could sit down with her, not to convince her of anything, but to

00:09:52.740 see that I was just as human as she was and that I own my failings and I've been incredibly

00:10:02.880 transparent about them i've been in i i have and i thought that if we could find that you know

00:10:10.740 commonality that we could have an actual conversation and that's what occurred and

00:10:15.580 and uh and i don't agree with candace still on a lot of stuff and i almost feel like like

00:10:23.180 why do i have to make that you know caveat as it relates to it because i never used to have to make

00:10:29.340 that caveat. Going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, how did it change?

00:10:33.120 I truly believe that the level of vitriol, meanness, and cruelty in our politics has

00:10:39.560 always been there, but never like this. Never in a way in which it is practiced with impunity.

00:10:48.600 And that to me has, I mean, I think that I can mark it. Now, it's interesting that you say that,

00:10:56.800 that your experience is that that that kind of division started in 2008. But nothing like this,

00:11:04.240 Tucker. You know, a lot of people hit that afternoon slump and immediately reach for

00:11:07.340 another cup of coffee. Guilty. But is the answer always more caffeine? Well, sometimes you just

00:11:13.460 need hydration. Thing is, a lot of people are already drinking a ton of water, but they are

00:11:18.380 not fully hydrated because water alone isn't always enough. Your body needs something called

00:11:22.660 electrolytes, salts, help absorb the water and use the water. And that's where Relight comes in.

00:11:30.040 Relight is made by Redmond, the company behind Redmond Real Salt. They've been harvesting mineral

00:11:34.340 salt in Utah since 1958, a state famous for salt. And they are totally transparent. You can visit

00:11:41.420 their mine if you want. If you ever show up out there, you can go to the mine and see where it

00:11:44.560 comes from. So Relight's ingredient list is completely clean. There's no sugar, no chemical

00:11:49.800 preservatives, no artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, just sodium, potassium, magnesium,

00:11:55.300 calcium, chloride, and coconut water powder. That's it. So whether you're working out,

00:12:00.960 spending time outside, or just trying to stay sharp throughout a day, Relight is an easy way

00:12:05.220 to replenish your electrolytes, which again, you need. Flavors like lemon-lime, mixed berry,

00:12:09.860 strawberry-lemonade, watermelon-lime, mango, pina colada, you're making me hungry, reading the list.

00:12:14.220 they've got it all of it so if you're ready to give it a try visit redmond.com slash tucker use

00:12:20.580 the code tucker for 15 off your first order redmond.com slash tucker code tucker 15 off

00:12:26.640 your first order or click the link in the video description or you can even scan the qr code on

00:12:31.040 the screen or check the pin comment many ways to get it and you should not well i mean it's not

00:12:36.660 even on partisan lines i mean the divisions are so intense i always thought of divisions as racial

00:12:43.940 or religious you know you're protestant marrying a catholic you know or black person marrying a

00:12:50.600 white person i feel like the divisions now are ideological and political and that's i mean this

00:12:56.280 morning i texted erica kirk and candace owens both within like an hour of each other not related

00:13:02.100 to each other but just because i really like them both and i'm not embarrassed of that and i've

00:13:06.620 and i and that's my right by the way i get to like people whether or not i'm fully aligned

00:13:11.720 with their program right that's my view yeah i've taken so much abuse for that it's like how could

00:13:17.300 you be friends with two people who disagree with each other well i don't know i am right

00:13:21.620 what world do we live in well that's kind of how i feel yeah that's strongly how i feel first of

00:13:28.020 all i decide who i like you don't get to decide who i like yeah don't you feel that i do and i

00:13:33.620 and i think that what it is is it's a reflection of this is that who are you getting that from

00:13:38.700 You're getting that from other people with niche audiences with big microphones in front of them.

00:13:47.920 You're getting that from the comment section that I know you don't read.

00:13:52.320 But other people in your organization read from, you know, on X.

00:13:56.420 You're getting that.

00:13:57.000 I think we have literally been torn apart on purpose.

00:14:03.480 because not not because it was the i don't think that the people that created the social media

00:14:10.260 platforms that rule our lives to this day um thought this is what we're going to do we're

00:14:17.320 going to create something just to tear people apart what i think that they did was they created

00:14:21.540 a a monster in which they realized that it is fueled by division and vitriol and uh uh and

00:14:31.160 conflict and making you question yourself. I mean, let me give you an example. Remember that

00:14:40.380 the whistleblower for Facebook when I think Facebook was still Facebook. It happened like

00:14:45.060 in 2022. She was a senior executive at Facebook and she came up to the Hill and this is a

00:14:50.040 nonpartisan thing. And she came up to the Hill and she had all of that documentation of internal

00:14:54.980 studies within Facebook that showed that there had been something like, and I forget the numbers,

00:15:01.160 so don't hold me to it,

00:15:03.160 but an exponential increase

00:15:05.420 in the number of teenage suicides

00:15:09.540 among girls between the ages of 13 and 17 years old.

00:15:13.240 Exponential.

00:15:14.720 That began with the inception of Instagram.

00:15:20.160 And then,

00:15:21.600 not only an exponential increase

00:15:24.160 in actual suicides among teenage girls,

00:15:26.960 but an even greater increase.

00:15:28.880 If suicides went up triple, girls reporting self-harm went up by like 300% over the course of the inception of Instagram until 2022 when this woman walks in with all the documents.

00:15:46.760 And Instagram knew that and knew that it was literally directly related to their algorithm.

00:15:51.020 sending these uh uh messages to girls that they are not worth that they they they need more that

00:16:00.020 that they that they're whether it's about their bodies or body shaming and continuing to send it

00:16:05.820 over to them knowing the negative impact that is having but it's because it made them money

00:16:12.360 is because you become addicted to that response

00:16:18.760 that Instagram would get with that bag of heroin in your pocket

00:16:25.480 known as an iPhone.

00:16:27.700 And you know what they did?

00:16:29.880 Nothing.

00:16:31.080 They buried the report.

00:16:33.140 They literally did nothing.

00:16:35.460 I mean, nothing.

00:16:36.880 So my question, and then what happened, 1.00

00:16:39.360 this woman whistleblower comes forward she brings all of the evidence that that that facebook meta 0.99

00:16:47.020 knows about this and she said like now what do we do about it and you know what congress did

00:16:53.100 senate house no you know what they did nothing we have done absolutely well it's just suicides

00:17:00.620 of our people i mean not a big deal well that's what i'm trying to say bonkers and and and as it

00:17:05.780 relates to our politics is the same thing. We are being fed the equivalent of a suicide pact

00:17:12.680 by organizations and companies that are run by, by the way, literally a handful of very, very,

00:17:19.980 very, not just generationally, but wealthy people to the degree that we haven't seen since the

00:17:26.180 robber barons at the turn of the 1900s and late 1800s. And those people, I'm not saying are evil,

00:17:34.280 but what they have created is a tool.

00:17:37.400 And a tool can be either a hammer can build a home

00:17:41.600 or it can tear down your house.

00:17:46.180 And they build a tool

00:17:47.700 and they make more money by tearing people down.

00:17:51.960 They make more money by dividing people.

00:17:54.920 They make more money.

00:17:56.120 And so they just let the algorithm roll

00:17:58.000 and it's tearing us apart.

00:18:00.560 And I'm not saying that's the only problem.

00:18:02.200 not myopic enough to say that all of uh all of the issues that we have but going back to

00:18:09.240 donald trump because for me the one existential threat that i think that we face

00:18:17.780 as a country is donald trump i am not this believer that uh trump is a um is merely the

00:18:26.660 symptom of a disease i believe that trump is uh is is uh central to why this disease has

00:18:36.380 gone from a local um uh epidemic to a pandemic in the in the united states of america

00:18:43.900 it's not a defense of trump to ask then why on the big failures of the trump administration

00:18:52.440 the real ones, the ones that, you know, history will record like this war.

00:18:57.700 There's been no pushback from the other side at all.

00:19:01.580 Yeah.

00:19:01.700 So that tells you, I mean, I, you know, you could say lots of things about Trump are bad, 0.98

00:19:06.200 but getting us into a war we can't win in which Americans are dying in Iran that will 0.51

00:19:12.140 only diminish America's power and bankrupt us.

00:19:15.260 I mean, that's the only exit really.

00:19:16.900 Yeah. 1.00

00:19:17.360 And make Iran stronger. 0.90

00:19:18.420 and like no no chuck schumer is like yeah it's bad but of course he endorses like the whole

00:19:24.700 leadership structure endorses that so like can't really say like they like trump now yeah i don't

00:19:31.480 know if they like trump maybe it's like he's obnoxious or whatever but he's doing what they

00:19:36.480 want i think it's a little bit of a at a i well by the way i i don't disagree that that there is

00:19:42.540 an enormous failure of what I call

00:19:47.340 the elite oligarch Epstein class of Washington, D.C.

00:19:54.300 Yes.

00:19:54.840 That you and I both know.

00:19:57.580 Very well.

00:19:58.320 Yes.

00:19:58.600 And that are as interested in protecting

00:20:03.440 their corporate overlords

00:20:06.140 as they are in protecting anything.

00:20:09.000 and I mean just take like the the the issue of stock trading okay yeah my dad in uh in 1972

00:20:17.760 took a vow that he would never own a stock or a bond and he kept that vow since 1972 in over

00:20:23.960 50 uh years of public life and he retired from the presidency as having probably the lowest net worth

00:20:34.020 of anyone that had ever entered the presidency.

00:20:38.100 And meanwhile, he got tagged with this idea

00:20:40.800 that he, you know, is the Biden crime family 0.99

00:20:43.300 and that, you know, all of that crap. 0.99

00:20:45.240 But my point being is this, 0.96

00:20:47.240 is that how is it that we have not been able to pass a law?

00:20:51.680 I couldn't agree more.

00:20:52.760 I know you do agree, but how is it possible?

00:20:56.840 And it's not just Republicans.

00:20:58.220 Pass a law that prohibits members of Congress

00:21:01.500 from trading.

00:21:02.020 Yes, of course.

00:21:02.660 Yeah.

00:21:02.800 I mean, it's the most common sense thing in the world.

00:21:04.980 And it should be in the administration, too.

00:21:06.840 It should be anybody with the access to the most valuable insider information of all.

00:21:10.840 And meanwhile, not only are we not passing the law, Donald Trump is selling $100,000 early access to his true social tweets, which is just a front running for insider trading, literally in the open.

00:21:24.240 And that's what I mean, the quantitative, qualitative difference of Donald Trump as compared to anything I've ever experienced in politics before.

00:21:35.800 is the sense that the rule of law only applies as a weapon

00:21:49.140 rather than as a prophylactic for the Constitution to be able to operate

00:21:55.880 in a way in which the founders envisioned it.

00:21:59.960 Everybody knows that bleach is powerful, and you know that by the smell

00:22:03.900 and the warnings and the gloves.

00:22:05.840 And it makes sense.

00:22:06.660 If something can clean a surface,

00:22:09.140 you may not want to be in the room

00:22:10.460 while it's being cleaned.

00:22:12.120 There's got to be a better way, and there is.

00:22:14.100 Curativa Bay's CuraClean Home Disinfectant.

00:22:16.860 It's a powerful EPA-registered disinfectant.

00:22:19.600 But here's the interesting part.

00:22:21.020 It's what powers it.

00:22:22.880 Hypochlorous acid, HOCL.

00:22:25.060 Now, that's not some weird mystery chemical

00:22:26.940 you're going to find in your potato chips.

00:22:28.940 It is the most organic of all.

00:22:31.040 It's a molecule your own white blood cells

00:22:33.240 naturally produced as part of your body's immune response. So Curativa Bay stabilizes it from

00:22:38.340 ultra-purified water, natural sea salt, and electricity. And that's it. No bleach, no alcohol,

00:22:44.020 peroxide, fragrances, ammonium compounds, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing you don't want in

00:22:47.600 your kitchen. And the results, the stabilized formula, is up to 100 times more powerful than

00:22:53.080 bleach, while it's still all natural and non-toxic for use, including around kids and pets.

00:22:59.020 So that's pretty amazing. That's a very different thing than dragging on a bottle of bleach every

00:23:03.220 time you need to clean your countertop. If you want the whole household system, you can get the

00:23:07.640 Health Freedom Bundle, and that includes home disinfectant, food spray, skin spray, saline

00:23:11.700 nose cleaner for daily nasal hygiene. You can find it all at curativabay.com slash Tucker.

00:23:17.420 The 15% Tucker offer is automatically applied when you check out. Again, curativabay.com slash

00:23:23.320 Tucker. Serious cleaning that doesn't make your house feel like a chemical plant. There's almost

00:23:29.680 no arguing with your point that's true yeah i would just say i think it's been that way for a

00:23:35.060 long time and it's just open now it's open it's just obvious if you're selling truth social access

00:23:43.340 yeah man but it's like pretty like come on it's just okay i saw this guy there's just what there's

00:23:48.920 this incredible guy on uh tiktok and he's a uh the professor but he goes it's a it's a red cup

00:23:55.480 garage he's like a and he have you ever seen this well you don't have any of this he explains things

00:24:02.440 by using red solo cups yeah and he he has this thing everybody go look at it it's uh

00:24:09.920 all of the money that every president uh and of the 45 that came before donald trump

00:24:18.460 made in the presidency okay and it's four blue solo cups okay and then all of the money that

00:24:27.420 donald trump has openly uh said that he made in his financial report in the first 500 days of the

00:24:35.420 presidency and it is over three billion dollars and it takes the entire wall yeah it's like and

00:24:42.740 i mean you can't argue that i mean president shouldn't make any money in office like what is

00:24:46.860 this no and by the way this whole idea of a blind choice and so that's what i mean by the qualitative

00:24:50.880 and the quantitative difference in the idea that um that there are still a group of people out there

00:24:56.440 that voted for donald trump because they thought that they were going to be able to change things

00:25:01.080 you know uh it talked about this uh a little bit and uh before we came on but my hero and i know

00:25:10.600 that you are, as it relates to public life,

00:25:15.000 people that is one of them, with all of his faults,

00:25:18.040 was Teddy Roosevelt.

00:25:19.100 Great.

00:25:19.980 And Teddy Roosevelt...

00:25:20.920 I'll assign a picture of him over there

00:25:21.660 to my great-grandfather.

00:25:22.660 Yeah, I got something for you, by the way.

00:25:26.520 But Teddy Roosevelt, by all accounts,

00:25:34.320 came very close to abusing the power of the executive.

00:25:40.600 Oh, you think? He certainly did. But he did it because he realized that in order for this experiment to be able to continue, you could not have a unfettered oligarch class that drained all of the wealth of a country and put it into their pockets while the other 99...

00:26:10.600 1%. I'm talking the 0.01%. Yes. There are only 9,000, like a little over 9,000 families in this

00:26:20.360 country who are billionaires out of 350 million people. You know what the, the, I, this is

00:26:27.640 shocking to me. You know what puts you in the top 1% of income earners in this country? No.

00:26:34.140 annual $750,000. That's the top 1%? 1%. So the people that I'm talking, I'm not talking about

00:26:41.680 taxing or redistributing wealth among the top 1%. I'm not talking about it even in the top 0.5%,

00:26:48.760 which would be like $10 million. I'm talking about the 0.01%, literally about a little under

00:26:58.980 10 000 individuals in this country that control and that have almost like 40 of the entire wealth

00:27:08.040 of a nation who decide 9 000 families have 40 of the entire i think somebody do the numbers for me

00:27:15.720 i probably screwed that up completely but in an ordinate amount of the of of the entire uh

00:27:21.920 considered wealth of this country well you can't have democracy under those circumstances no you

00:27:26.300 can't and teddy roosevelt knew that and what he did is he went out and he used the power of the

00:27:31.900 executive to be able to go out and bust the trust and and redistribute that wealth it was called it

00:27:37.200 the square deal and then he used the power of the executive to do things that are every single one

00:27:43.280 of us still benefits from today which is for instance the national park system yes the entire

00:27:48.720 national park system was the uh was the brainchild of one person uh as it related to one island which

00:27:56.520 was audubon and he came to teddy roosevelt and he said hey look we're losing a uh this magnificent

00:28:03.400 place uh uh this island off the uh in the in the gulf off the coast of florida and it because it

00:28:10.640 has it's a bird habitat that has i don't know like like half the species of wild birds and he

00:28:18.280 comes to teddy roosevelt and teddy roosevelt just goes out and he says okay and he turned it into

00:28:23.400 the first national park i think and um and then he went out and he did that across the country

00:28:30.560 i mean can you imagine doing that today no no and but you can you even imagine

00:28:37.660 the people in not the people donald trump having a thought

00:28:43.240 about using the power of the executive

00:28:48.000 to benefit anyone but himself first.

00:28:53.840 No.

00:28:54.760 No, and that's the thing.

00:28:56.400 But I also look back on the last 25 years,

00:29:00.100 20 years anyway,

00:29:01.220 and I can't really think of many big executive initiatives

00:29:04.180 that benefited the majority.

00:29:05.960 No, neither do I.

00:29:07.040 And that may be a question about the unitary executive.

00:29:09.920 and the and and but no one has ever done it in a way in which the their um you know

00:29:17.440 where literally i believe that everything that he has done it contains not just a uh you know

00:29:25.960 an underlying current of how does it benefit him personally it is the first thought of everything

00:29:31.700 that he yeah i think that's true yeah the problem i have with focusing on trump and i i'm trying not

00:29:36.120 to be defensive because obviously i campaigned for trump and with trump and spoke at the

00:29:39.940 republican national convention and defended trump for a decade on fox news so i'm definitely

00:29:44.140 implicated in it obviously um but it's not just defensiveness i i think two things one focusing

00:29:51.260 on trump as the source of all evil in the world drives you crazy like i saw that happen to my

00:29:57.080 i don't believe that just you know i don't believe that he's the source of all evil right but you

00:30:01.020 know people who feel that way who literally i've i had one of my closest friends went off the deep

00:30:05.360 end yeah just like trump and all of a sudden trump's under the bed and it's like whoa it's

00:30:10.420 monomania yeah but i also think it's it's like he was under my bed just okay that is funny

00:30:17.500 along with some of his his friends it's so good oh yeah but second it's like exculpatory

00:30:25.520 uh to the rest of us it's like i don't know we i watched a lot of crappy stuff happen in dc

00:30:30.980 over the 35 years I lived there,

00:30:32.560 and I didn't even recognize it as crappy at the time.

00:30:35.960 And we're all kind of implicated in this.

00:30:38.100 We've had a lot of bad leaders, actually,

00:30:39.780 or mediocre leaders. 0.93

00:30:40.720 I don't know, we've had a flamboyantly corrupt leader 0.92

00:30:43.200 like this, and we haven't ever.

00:30:45.440 That's true.

00:30:46.960 We've had a lot of low-grade,

00:30:48.660 kind of like what's-in-it-for-me leadership,

00:30:50.920 and we tolerated it.

00:30:53.220 And we celebrated things that were not impressive at all

00:30:56.700 and pretended they were impressive

00:30:57.860 and ooh, so brave and all. 0.99

00:30:59.600 This is like, it was all crap, actually. 0.98

00:31:01.240 We're kind of, this is the end of like a long cycle of mediocrity. 0.99

00:31:05.640 That's all I'm saying.

00:31:06.280 Okay, so I've owned up.

00:31:08.480 Yeah.

00:31:08.840 Okay.

00:31:09.900 To, like, for instance, is, I'm absolutely certain that my engagement in Washington, D.C.

00:31:20.080 as, you know, when I took on Burisma, when my dad was vice president as a client at the end of the year, 0.99

00:31:25.740 is like, it was a stupid thing to do. 0.99

00:31:27.740 Yeah. 0.99

00:31:27.980 You know, because I wasn't fully aware of what a swamp it was and the narrative that would be able to be spun.

00:31:36.340 It was a horrible idea.

00:31:38.720 Now, I had my reasons, okay, but they're not good enough.

00:31:42.580 I own that.

00:31:44.160 I own the idea that I do believe that there is this revolving door in Washington, D.C. that needs to be shut, in which people come in and out of administrations.

00:31:54.560 We know them all.

00:31:55.280 They're trading on access.

00:31:56.120 And they're not bad people that are trading on access.

00:31:59.260 I did not trade on access.

00:32:00.780 You can look through 22 years of mine.

00:32:03.060 But I know this.

00:32:04.880 I know that I received incredible privileges that no one else in the world, including to the point of my pardon.

00:32:15.160 No, literally, there's no one else in the world that was in my position that their father happened to have the authority and the power to do it.

00:32:23.520 And I realize how privileged I am.

00:32:26.120 but i think that there is a uh uh i think that there needs to be a reckoning with if i'm willing

00:32:34.200 to do that i think that you and i saw the the the and i like um i like thomas massey i like where

00:32:43.700 where uh um and uh marjorie telegreen is going i like uh that there are people that have kind of

00:32:50.220 woken up to the but a lot of the reason that we're here is because of uh of fox news a lot of it has

00:33:00.960 to do well we're in a war right now because if that we're losing because of fox news i couldn't

00:33:05.800 agree more and so i i i just think that i don't think that every problem this country faces is

00:33:13.160 because of donald trump i don't think that he is the you know the source of all evil i don't even

00:33:18.180 remotely believe that i do believe this though we are at an inflection point in this country

00:33:23.940 whether you it's uh because of the technology as relates to ai and as it relates to our debt

00:33:33.020 and the fact that donald trump is responsible for what 20 of the entire debt of the entire nation

00:33:38.700 over the course of the you know since its inception yeah it's bonkers yeah and we are

00:33:46.040 in desperate desperate need of leadership i agree and so i am i i want i want to reach across

00:33:54.460 to everybody and say like look let's figure out what the things that we can agree on instead of

00:34:02.340 like pointing you know the and constantly and one of the things that i think that we can agree on

00:34:07.920 is that we are we have the exact wrong leadership at the exact wrong time home ownership has always

00:34:14.200 been at the center of the American dream. It is an actual asset, a place people work their entire

00:34:19.380 lives to build, a place of stability and security and real value. Right now, though, too many

00:34:25.460 homeowners are stuck swiping credit cards to cover groceries. There's basically a survival tax of 20

00:34:30.880 percent interest or more. So why keep handing your money to the banks when you could keep it for your

00:34:35.880 family? Interest is what kills you. Our friends at American Financing have a better way. They're

00:34:40.280 helping homeowners use their hard-earned equity, and they're supporting Americans looking to fulfill

00:34:44.540 the dream of owning a home with mortgage rates currently in the fives. American financing saves

00:34:49.980 its customers an average of $800 a month. That's about $10,000 a year. It's not just a loan. It's

00:34:56.080 a true financial reset. We recommend American financing. They're called America's home for

00:35:01.320 home loans for a reason. So get out of credit card debt. I mean, it is just crazy to borrow money.

00:35:08.100 no judgment but it doesn't make any sense to borrow money at that rate if you want out call

00:35:13.300 800-685-5696 800-685-5696 or visit americanfinancing.net slash tucker so i think you're

00:35:25.280 kind of making my point which is that you know finger pointing is unhelpful except when we point

00:35:33.420 fingers at ourselves that is very helpful very helpful very important to say that's kind of what

00:35:38.940 i was inarticulately trying to express to you which is like it gets the rest of us off the

00:35:42.720 hook to point to one guy and be like it's all his fault it's like actually it's all of our fault

00:35:45.920 including mine yeah and i you know famously advocated for the iraq war and thought that

00:35:51.500 was the last stupid thing i was ever going to do it turns out it wasn't i advocated for all kinds

00:35:56.460 of things that i now regret advocating for um particularly the things that you said about me

00:36:04.520 deep regret no i do actually i mean i yeah i mean i yeah regret in the sense that as someone who has

00:36:12.560 dealt with addiction not quite as uh in an exciting way as you did but i've been there

00:36:18.880 for sure uh you know extend grace to people who are out of their minds like you would think i

00:36:24.860 would do that i should have done that more so i do i do regret that but no what i'm saying is like

00:36:30.820 you look back and like i really thought that i could influence trump and talk about not going

00:36:36.960 into this war that's talk about i think that that's a really interesting no i mean that's

00:36:41.000 that's the core of it right there because you said the things that you said about uh trump

00:36:45.980 after 2020 which are famously out there oh when i got pissed in a text with the producer and then 0.90

00:36:53.260 out of context and all that yeah yeah wonderful organization you worked for really ridiculous and 0.93

00:37:00.440 so um and talk about how you came around in 2024 not as it relates to like you just a knee-jerk

00:37:12.140 reaction to being opposed to democrats but what why oh no it was a very specific trajectory i was

00:37:18.400 uh i was this is like such an impossible rich guy thing to say but it's just a fact i was in

00:37:22.480 Europe with my kids yeah on the med the August of 2023 I think and Mar-a-Lago got raided and that

00:37:32.740 was like that was ridiculous on a documents charge really and I'm from the city so like I know a lot

00:37:37.740 about the documents stuff and it was like transparently absurd they're literally sending

00:37:43.320 armed FBI agents into his bathroom like no and so to me what that said was Trump is actually being

00:37:50.560 persecuted by the Uniparty. Therefore, he is its sincere opponent. And my overriding feeling, 0.70

00:37:58.060 since I wrote a whole book on this 10 years ago, is that the problem in Washington is that on the

00:38:01.940 big questions of the economy and foreign policy, both parties agree. It's the agreement that is

00:38:05.920 the threat, not the disagreement. So I thought that, and I thought, well, Trump is clear. They're

00:38:09.840 trying to put him in jail on these nonsense charges, and they are not. They were nonsense.

00:38:14.360 Well, they're nuclear secrets. That's not true. And I was like, so he clearly is their opponent.

00:38:20.000 So I thought, and this is my sin,

00:38:23.180 I can have an effect.

00:38:24.460 And my goal literally from that moment

00:38:26.800 up until February 28th was, 1.00

00:38:28.260 I don't want to go with Iran 1.00

00:38:29.080 because I really saw that as the end of a lot of stuff 1.00

00:38:33.140 of the, well, the post-war order,

00:38:34.560 which is kind of ridiculous,

00:38:35.700 but compared to what? 0.80

00:38:37.680 You know, I'm kind of against the post-war order.

00:38:39.300 On the other hand, 0.95

00:38:40.020 I'm not sure what follows would be better.

00:38:41.860 So I was really focused on this Iran thing. 0.97

00:38:44.000 And I knew that both parties were for it.

00:38:45.260 Schumer's totally for it.

00:38:46.940 Lindsey Graham's totally for it. 0.91

00:38:47.900 They're all colluding against America to start this regime change war with Iran. 0.99

00:38:52.360 And I was like, I'm going to single-mindedly focus on it. 0.67

00:38:55.380 That's all I'm going to do with my life is I'm going to, and I knew a lot of people in the Middle East.

00:38:58.480 And I thought, oh, man, I can do this.

00:39:01.040 And I realized on February 28th, first of all, I had zero power, okay?

00:39:06.640 But it was mostly vanity.

00:39:08.180 I was like, I have a mission.

00:39:09.820 I can do this.

00:39:10.980 and it was it was i overstated my own influence like dramatically in a very embarrassing way

00:39:18.340 and my own importance and like i thought i could do things that like i had no control over any of

00:39:24.660 this stuff and i was humiliated correctly i was humiliated in front of my wife i was like i'm

00:39:31.360 doing a good thing and um and so yeah i was mad at trump but i was also really mad at myself

00:39:37.220 And so that's, that's the story.

00:39:40.240 And I, I've, I actually am really grateful I went through that because it puts your own power in context.

00:39:46.840 You think like you've got all this, you know, whatever, SWAT and you have zero, none.

00:39:52.800 So what next?

00:39:54.560 I have no idea, but I.

00:39:56.940 No, I mean, I mean, really.

00:39:57.940 What, for me?

00:39:58.660 Yeah, not, not just for you, but what next for all of us?

00:40:03.620 Like I am.

00:40:05.440 Uh.

00:40:07.220 I've been out talking to people and completely different audiences, you know, across the board.

00:40:15.480 And the most significant reason of why I decided to go out and talk is that what I realize is that my experience is not only not unique, it's almost universal.

00:40:31.520 Now, to the degree that my experience, my addiction, overwhelm me, is sometimes often exaggerated by virtue of how much attention has been paid to it.

00:40:44.720 You know, there's two years of my life.

00:40:47.080 Some people noticed.

00:40:48.040 Yeah, some people noticed.

00:40:50.960 Oh, yeah, exactly.

00:40:53.720 God, it was awful.

00:40:56.460 I mean, notice to the degree that, you know, my wife and I were living in the hills in L.A., and we had this little place, and it was just early in my recovery, and Trump from the Oval Office invited in these right-wing influencers, these MAGA influencers online, and this is back in 2019.

00:41:26.460 and he started the Where's Hunter thing.

00:41:29.500 And the next day, the New York Post printed an aerial photograph

00:41:33.300 of the house that I live in, where you could stand on the street below

00:41:36.980 to be able to look through the floor and ceiling windows.

00:41:40.960 And a group of men with bullhorns and MAGA hats showed up at the door,

00:41:47.540 banging on the door with my then-pregnant wife, who was home alone,

00:41:52.880 who literally fled the house.

00:41:54.300 they chased her in a car and literally ran her off the road and that was my experience for like

00:42:01.860 a two-year period of time until my dad was elected and then we got secret service and

00:42:07.080 and we had we we'd left that house because we in the middle of the night

00:42:10.740 and a uh and the next house we went to they found us in this uh documentary filmmaker and ended up

00:42:19.240 being like a, he wrote a whole scripted film.

00:42:21.760 He parked a billboard truck.

00:42:24.220 Where, in L.A.?

00:42:25.160 Yeah, in L.A., in Venice.

00:42:26.600 I was right on South Venice Boulevard.

00:42:28.380 He parked a, one of those digital billboard trucks

00:42:31.480 in front of my house

00:42:32.520 that ran all of the nude pictures of me smoking crack.

00:42:37.800 Actually?

00:42:38.860 For a week, straight.

00:42:41.280 And then sat on the canal with bullhorns in a canoe

00:42:46.240 and just shouted at my house over and over again for a week.

00:42:50.320 Then we had to leave that house.

00:42:53.040 Did you know him?

00:42:53.900 Yeah.

00:42:54.460 No, no.

00:42:55.080 God, no. 1.00

00:42:56.580 Some crazy guy. 0.76

00:42:58.680 You know, I mean, he was not crazy.

00:43:00.400 He was, you know, he then went on to make like a whole movie about me.

00:43:06.180 But anyway, my point.

00:43:08.180 Did you see it?

00:43:08.880 What?

00:43:09.360 Did you see it?

00:43:09.820 No, I didn't.

00:43:10.500 I did not see it.

00:43:11.660 Do not go see that movie.

00:43:13.400 I didn't know it existed.

00:43:14.920 But, you know, my point is that I have the total exposure that I've had has given me this incredible gift.

00:43:32.860 And number one is that by that transparency is that I don't have any more secrets and the secrets that I felt ashamed of.

00:43:44.920 like just the word crack like you know i mean it it's so heavy it it shocks people um all of

00:43:52.120 the associations that people make out of particularly of our generation yes and um

00:43:57.560 and uh to be able to speak about it openly and what i found is is this deep connection

00:44:03.400 with people there's no wall between me and them anymore and uh because they know all of my flaws

00:44:11.320 house the ones that you would never want to show anyone and and they know i'm willing to talk about

00:44:18.080 them and in that they're able to come up to me and say i mean everywhere i go when i was got off the

00:44:25.820 plane in the airport someone came up to me told me about their uh their experience in recovery

00:44:31.260 thanks for what i'm doing you know they're uh you know they got their brother just got arrested

00:44:36.600 though is in jail you know you got to do something about the fentanyl deaths here it's it everybody

00:44:43.960 and it's been an incredibly beautiful beautiful experience and i say to everybody is that i'll

00:44:49.800 talk about the politics but it's really the bait to be able to talk about the thing that connects us

00:44:55.560 and so all the way back sitting down with candace is that the thing that candace and i were able to

00:45:03.080 connect on in a very human way. It was her own experience, not personally, but with her family

00:45:10.080 and addiction and the people that she loved. And I don't know anyone that hasn't been impacted by

00:45:16.360 it. That's for sure. Yeah. And I guess what my point is, is that by starting there for me,

00:45:24.120 I feel like our connection as it relates to it. I've known you've been sober for

00:45:28.280 for over well over 20 years now 24 years this month 24 years this month and um and

00:45:35.100 and so your um uh your capacity to be able to understand it at that level and also at a family

00:45:46.160 level oh yeah is makes it a lot easier to like you know see the see the hunter that you thought

00:45:52.680 that you knew um and i i think and by the way i'm not putting words into your mouth no i think that's

00:45:58.100 that's 100 true but the thing for me is that with with with you i the transformation

00:46:05.380 not transformation because it's not a transformation anybody that knows you

00:46:09.280 realizes it's not a transformation is

00:46:13.660 out on your own now and not understandably like anybody that has a job being beholden

00:46:25.160 to corporate structure yeah fox news is that i i feel as if that combined with the incredible

00:46:38.460 ultimate betrayal and i what i mean by betrayal of the the of the promise the singular promise

00:46:45.180 that was important to you as it related to trump yes that we would not get into the potential of

00:46:49.800 ending up in a war a world war three or another incredibly devastating protracted war in that

00:47:00.840 region uh that would expand clearly uh with the entire uh global oil supply in jeopardy it's so

00:47:10.440 it's so crazy i cannot even believe it happened is that it has given um uh an opening for us

00:47:18.400 to be able to have a conversation

00:47:21.960 that is more constructive about a way forward.

00:47:25.140 That's my feeling.

00:47:26.200 I strongly agree with that.

00:47:27.720 You know, one thing that might make you feel

00:47:28.760 a little better about your life

00:47:30.160 is buying life insurance

00:47:32.080 because life ends and the last thing you want

00:47:36.240 is to leave the ones you love hanging.

00:47:38.680 There's nothing worse than that.

00:47:40.120 If you're providing for a spouse

00:47:41.620 or children or parents,

00:47:43.080 it makes a lot of sense.

00:47:44.340 In fact, it's your obligation

00:47:45.340 to think about what would happen if you left.

00:47:47.920 Well, life insurance for our partners at Ethos

00:47:50.280 is a very easy way to solve that nagging problem.

00:47:54.080 Ethos makes the process super fast and simple.

00:47:56.160 It's 100% online, you get a quote in seconds,

00:47:58.340 you apply in minutes,

00:47:59.600 and in some cases you get coverage the very same day.

00:48:02.200 There is no medical exam.

00:48:03.740 You just answer a few simple health questions,

00:48:05.520 nothing too invasive.

00:48:06.320 You can get up to $3 million in coverage.

00:48:09.320 Some policies start as low as 30 bucks a month.

00:48:11.980 Ethos also has a 4.8 out of five star rating

00:48:15.540 on Trustpilot, over 4,000 reviews.

00:48:18.000 That is pretty good.

00:48:19.560 So for 10 minutes investment,

00:48:21.460 you can figure out if Ethos is the right plan for you.

00:48:24.100 You get a free quote today at ethos.com slash Tucker.

00:48:27.060 Ethos, T-H-O-S.com slash Tucker.

00:48:29.320 Application times and rates obviously vary,

00:48:32.600 but we think they're pretty darn good.

00:48:34.640 And always my, I mean, I've certainly talked about you

00:48:38.840 and all the drama that you went through a lot.

00:48:41.520 I have really only one question,

00:48:43.320 one thing that has bothered me.

00:48:44.680 for years now yeah um uh eight years or whatever six years whatever it's been

00:48:50.860 um and so i just want to ask you directly about it so the laptop comes out or doesn't come out

00:48:56.380 i hear that it's in circulation i get calls from people in that kind of shadowy way that

00:49:01.320 yeah you're familiar way before right i can't you know i can't remember so much drama has happened

00:49:07.480 but you know if you're in the news business or politics like you you know people call you there's

00:49:11.800 this thing you hear everything all the time and like how much is true you don't know i heard about

00:49:17.180 the laptop and um and then i heard no you don't know if it's real and then i heard somebody calls

00:49:24.220 me goes you're on the laptop and because you had written a letter of recommendation for college for

00:49:30.300 my son yeah who didn't end up going to the school or even getting in whatever it didn't help it

00:49:36.320 turns out thanks but anyway i knew that it was real because who would who would know that we

00:49:42.080 knew each other yeah right no one no one could fake that and that our wives were friends and

00:49:47.040 all stuff so um but it's washington you know everybody there so then i hear this story about

00:49:54.540 how then the official story comes out about how the laptop was left you left a couple of laptops

00:50:00.160 in a laptop repair store in greenville delaware which i'm a town i'm very familiar with so and

00:50:05.660 the guy was blind then I interviewed the guy who seemed to totally believe the story John

00:50:09.380 McIsaac I mean he seemed to be telling the truth but the story did not make sense meanwhile I'm

00:50:14.960 getting we get approached by Israelis connected to Benjamin Netanyahu like I know that yeah who

00:50:22.300 are shopping this stuff to me at Fox News yeah and I'm like I don't think that that part of the

00:50:31.040 story the laptop is real i thought that from day one but the way that it entered the bloodstream

00:50:36.060 exactly american media was not real so i just want to ask you point blank did you drop off laptops

00:50:40.540 no and this is the thing that i've said over and over again i have literally zero recollection or

00:50:46.440 memory of ever dropping off a laptop at john paul mcisaac's no the answer is no and john paul

00:50:52.840 so john paul mcisaac who's legally blind yes who on the day when the laptop became public

00:51:00.820 sat outside of his shop and gave an interview

00:51:04.560 and flat out says that he doesn't remember seeing me.

00:51:07.980 He couldn't identify me.

00:51:09.260 And also that his security cameras that he has

00:51:14.180 don't have any footage from that time.

00:51:17.660 And so regardless though, regardless of anything,

00:51:21.540 just this, the laptop, according to Lev Parnas,

00:51:25.860 under oath in his testimony

00:51:27.480 before the House Oversight Committee,

00:51:29.140 was being sought by Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine all the way back in 2018.

00:51:37.780 And so Rudy Giuliani is working with a guy named Andrei Derkash,

00:51:42.580 who was an MP in Ukraine and a known Russian GRU agent.

00:51:47.720 So Rudy goes over there and basically takes his dossier

00:51:51.580 and receives information that Hunter Biden's hard drive, not laptop, is for sale.

00:51:59.140 and uh and the person that they can go to is this uh other uh ukrainian russian oligarch

00:52:05.520 who is living in austria that's what lev parnas and eager fruman were doing getting on the plane

00:52:13.500 before they were arrested so how did before john paul mcisaac was ever a a twinkle in anybody's

00:52:19.420 eye i believe that the story that was always the weak part of the story like yeah he drops off

00:52:24.840 So even John Paul McIsaac, okay, there is no such thing as a laptop.

00:52:29.960 The laptop that he eventually turns over a year later, 18 months later, to the FBI.

00:52:38.020 The thing that he, that is distributed and disseminated that John Paul McIsaac claims that he got off of a device was a hard drive.

00:52:48.980 And that hard drive had a limited amount of information, a limited amount of like gigabytes.

00:52:54.000 I don't know the difference between a gigabyte and a whatever.

00:52:57.500 And that goes into the hands.

00:53:00.760 He somehow can't find anybody.

00:53:04.360 You can't throw a stone in Trolley Square without hitting someone that knows me personally.

00:53:10.580 Right.

00:53:11.100 And he knows that.

00:53:12.060 He's lived there his whole life.

00:53:14.180 Instead, what he finds through this guy, Applebaum, is Rudy Giuliani's lawyer.

00:53:24.000 Bob Costello, he turns over this hard drive.

00:53:27.740 The hard drive becomes the platform

00:53:30.660 from which all of the other stolen information from,

00:53:34.680 which, by the way, every single forensic expert

00:53:38.360 has made it clear,

00:53:39.800 is that there's no possible way

00:53:42.000 all of the information that was eventually

00:53:44.540 labeled as my laptop came from one laptop.

00:53:50.200 It's like, it's way too large.

00:53:52.900 Came off the cloud.

00:53:53.540 exactly they hacked my cloud they um there's a there i write about this in this book so on

00:53:59.960 substack i'm i'm like laying all of this out and and there's a whole uh and you know uh the

00:54:09.300 ndi the whole thing about there's these different silos there's the netanyahu style the israeli side

00:54:18.340 There is a Russian-Ukrainian side of it.

00:54:21.440 And then there are the U.S. actors that include Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Miles Gow, and a whole bunch of, you know, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman and all of these guys.

00:54:33.320 Well, once the material starts circulating, the data from the cloud, you know, all kinds of people get involved and they're shopping it for different reasons.

00:54:41.820 And I agree.

00:54:42.680 Yes.

00:54:43.080 And so, but my point is.

00:54:44.800 But who stole it?

00:54:45.720 Well, from the cloud?

00:54:47.020 Yeah.

00:54:47.400 Well, I don't know.

00:54:48.340 You have as good a guess as mine in terms of actually who was the original hacker of that information, who has the capacity to be able to do it.

00:54:57.040 And so, you know, I have my—

00:54:59.420 But you don't have evidence.

00:55:01.560 I don't have a forensic, a digital forensic evidence that it was hacked by this person or this entity or this organization, that it was Mossad or that it was the GRU or that it was some kid in his basement and, you know, figured it out.

00:55:23.100 But here's the point.

00:55:24.440 Overall, here's the thing, is I get caught in these conversations about all of this.

00:55:28.540 But the reality is this.

00:55:30.220 of what was distributed that was authentic it's all mine all those emails yeah yeah

00:55:37.540 and you know what you know what not a single one of them proves of any criminality of my father

00:55:44.120 whatsoever of any way in which i ever sent an email saying hey dad i need you to get this done

00:55:50.980 on behalf of a client of mine now i think that's this positive and i challenge anybody because it's

00:55:56.420 all out there the entire digital football and i'm not just talking about my emails i'm talking about

00:56:03.660 or 20 years of emails i'm talking about 20 years of text messages i'm talking about erased voicemails

00:56:10.360 like deleted voicemails deleted photographs they don't actually delete what you're saying

00:56:16.960 they clearly don't i mean voicemails from my dad to me and but that's not the only voicemail that

00:56:23.880 was out there there but not a single one of them in which i say hey when my dad is in office or in

00:56:29.420 power as vice president or president in which i say hey dad i need you to do this for me or

00:56:34.540 or even contacting one of his staffers so either i'm incredibly incredibly incredibly good

00:56:41.340 at you know inactive addiction as a crack addict or it doesn't exist it truly literally doesn't

00:56:47.960 exist the entire narrative of the biden crime family i mean i literally unlike anybody else

00:56:54.860 is like i say to everybody okay show me your phone because i showed you mine and you didn't

00:57:00.160 find a goddamn thing not one thing every investigative body in the united states of

00:57:04.420 america has investigated me for over uh 10 years at that point and not one single thing of uh 0.98

00:57:12.400 criminal activity other than use of drugs

00:57:16.560 and all of the things that are associated with addiction

00:57:23.120 is proved by the laptop.

00:57:24.900 So is the world getting more stable or less stable?

00:57:27.460 That's a rhetorical question.

00:57:28.920 We're not in charge of the world,

00:57:30.020 but you are in charge of, in fact,

00:57:31.920 responsible for your own family and your savings.

00:57:35.080 The dollar has lost nearly a third of its purchasing power

00:57:37.660 in six years.

00:57:38.920 That's crazy.

00:57:39.780 You know what hasn't?

00:57:40.460 Gold.

00:57:40.720 And that's one reason you should think about gold right now.

00:57:43.420 It's about 25% below its high from earlier this year, which is amazing.

00:57:47.560 Gold, relative to its power and endurance, is pretty cheap right now.

00:57:51.740 Central banks are reducing their reliance on treasuries and increasing their holdings of, yes, gold.

00:57:57.120 Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund and a friend of ours,

00:58:00.500 recommends holding up to 15% of your portfolio in gold.

00:58:04.240 We started Battalion Metals to give Americans an honest, fair-priced way to buy metals.

00:58:09.520 BattalionMetals.com slash Tucker is the place to go to learn more about buying metals,

00:58:13.600 gold and silver, precious metals, IRAs, secure storage, all of it.

00:58:17.880 BattalionMetals.com slash Tucker.

00:58:24.560 When did you find out that the contents of your digital life were in circulation?

00:58:30.480 That day that the New York Post released it.

00:58:33.480 You had no idea?

00:58:34.540 No idea. None.

00:58:36.340 What were you doing that day? How did you find out?

00:58:38.500 So it was like two weeks before the election, right?

00:58:43.520 October.

00:58:44.280 So up until that day, you had no clue?

00:58:45.760 Because the FBI had the material.

00:58:47.860 None.

00:58:48.320 No clue.

00:58:49.340 Zero.

00:58:50.380 Zero.

00:58:52.220 I'm sorry.

00:58:52.860 I stepped on your answers.

00:58:53.840 What were you doing that day when you found out?

00:58:56.200 I was with Melissa.

00:58:58.200 And Beau was, let's see, about six months old.

00:59:04.800 and a friend of ours we were in LA and a friend of ours said hey come out to uh Palm Springs

00:59:13.460 I got a um Airbnb on like a golf course there and it's really cool you guys never been out there

00:59:21.200 and it's like we're in the home stretch now it's like you know I have survived the

00:59:26.380 I mean because be even before the laptop remember I mean they were beating the shit out of me that's

00:59:31.860 when donald trump was doing the where's hunter thing i didn't have any uh you know security like

00:59:36.880 i don't have today but i didn't have then is you know it was just me and melissa and a baby and

00:59:42.800 with any time we went outside the house is like people would follow us everywhere and and not

00:59:49.620 just to follow us but to harass us and because donald trump was going to his rallies and his

00:59:55.500 big line was and they were selling shirts where's hunter so everybody felt it was incumbent upon them

01:00:00.160 if they supported Trump and MAGA to find Hunter,

01:00:03.780 you know, to go and find where's Hunter.

01:00:06.740 And so we drive out to Palm Springs

01:00:09.380 and we get there and we unpack, you know,

01:00:14.080 put my bag in my room

01:00:15.220 and there's like a little plunge pool

01:00:17.920 out of the back of this little house.

01:00:21.300 And I get a call.

01:00:24.540 And it's a friend of mine

01:00:25.900 who was also my lawyer at the time.

01:00:27.440 and he said some guy saying the new york post saying somebody has your laptop

01:00:33.220 and you know it took me years to piece it all together and so one of the things that i i i've

01:00:45.260 done over the course of the last seven years other than paint which became literally the

01:00:50.260 i've always painted but it was literally the thing that saved my life um it just allowed me to focus

01:00:56.520 and occupy my hands in a productive way

01:01:00.000 in which I felt that I was creating

01:01:03.680 and also allowed me to get out of myself

01:01:07.020 and not be consumed by the shame

01:01:11.180 of my addiction

01:01:17.240 and all the failings that I perceived in myself

01:01:21.580 at that moment in time,

01:01:22.700 which you know in early addiction

01:01:24.040 and not just through your own experience,

01:01:26.240 but through the experience of watching others is a really tenuous time.

01:01:30.940 And I've done a lot of writing and it took me a long time to figure this out.

01:01:36.360 Like what happened?

01:01:37.340 How did this, who was involved?

01:01:39.260 And there's all of these names and there's like a, you know,

01:01:42.600 a list of 20 Russian names and 20, you know, I mean, all of this stuff.

01:01:48.480 And so I decided on Substack,

01:01:52.440 what I could do is I could basically do the first draft of that and get the audience potentially

01:01:58.540 to participate and give me more information. So I'm doing that on Substack now. And the thing

01:02:05.980 about it is this, is that it was a complete and utter surprise to me. I was a little over a year

01:02:15.900 into my recovery.

01:02:18.780 I kind of made it through

01:02:19.840 what I thought was the worst of it.

01:02:23.380 And then we were just literally

01:02:24.620 thrown in the middle of it.

01:02:27.120 And the worst thing happened

01:02:28.760 was is that

01:02:29.960 because they were nude pictures,

01:02:34.020 and this is the only reason

01:02:35.460 that Twitter took them down

01:02:36.820 and Facebook took them down,

01:02:38.540 is they violated their own internal rules

01:02:41.220 as it relates to revenge porn.

01:02:43.300 You're not allowed

01:02:44.220 to publish nude photographs of anyone without their consent,

01:02:52.020 no matter what, for whatever reason.

01:02:55.200 And so that's why on the front page of the New York Post

01:02:59.980 and the story associated on the digital with all of the links

01:03:03.180 were like a ton of nude photos of me.

01:03:06.280 I'm just barely blurred out of the women that were in it.

01:03:10.600 It's all consensual, legal, all those things.

01:03:15.700 Of course, they don't make that point.

01:03:19.400 And that's why they took it down.

01:03:21.680 But then that became the story, you know, the suppression.

01:03:25.940 And this idea that 40 former intelligence officers said it had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

01:03:36.200 No one in that 40, regardless of what you think of them.

01:03:39.960 Not much.

01:03:40.600 Yeah, I know you don't.

01:03:41.540 But no one in the 40s ever said that the laptop wasn't real.

01:03:46.140 But that's what everybody on the right decided to say.

01:03:48.680 First of all, you know, the Intel people are the most dishonest people in our society.

01:03:53.500 By the way, I'm not going to argue on behalf of anybody.

01:03:55.880 All I know is let's just stick to me.

01:03:58.040 No, but I'm just saying, like, the point of that statement was to suggest that the contents were not real.

01:04:04.820 Well, you may think that, but it definitely did not say that.

01:04:08.580 And all I know is this.

01:04:09.720 It became completely out of my control.

01:04:12.860 So therefore, now I was not arguing about what was on it.

01:04:17.520 Remember what Rudy Giuliani did.

01:04:19.400 He went to literally the courthouse steps in Newcastle County with Bernie Carrick,

01:04:25.820 and he held a laptop, which there's no existing laptop.

01:04:28.600 He had taken a hard drive or a thumb drive and put it and pretended like there was a laptop.

01:04:32.420 And the one thing he said was this contains images of minor children. 0.96

01:04:39.720 which bullshit i mean an absolute complete and utter effing lie and that's what he did 0.91

01:04:49.520 because you know what it didn't have on it it had no evidence and they had it for over a year at 0.97

01:04:54.860 this point it had no evidence of anything other than i was a drug user but the problem was

01:05:01.440 and not only drug user but crack at it and the problem was is that i had gone about nine months

01:05:08.860 before and i had done an interview with the new yorker and i admitted everything as it relates to

01:05:14.060 my addiction it's probably one of the smartest decisions i made not in conjunction with anybody

01:05:18.060 but literally me and melissa sitting there and i said i'm gonna i'm gonna tell this guy everything

01:05:23.120 i have to get it off my chest i can't have this hanging out there as as we my dad moves through

01:05:29.000 a presidential campaign and let the chips fall where they may and it totally scooped them and

01:05:34.980 And so what they had to do is create another narrative around it that is evidence of corruption.

01:05:42.040 So when anybody says, Hunter Biden, what's your first thought?

01:05:46.280 Laptop.

01:05:47.700 Can I just say one thing, though, that this is what I experienced during that time?

01:05:52.680 The allegation that there was abusive minors on the laptop, that came from the Israelis.

01:05:58.920 I'm just telling you that. 1.00

01:05:59.680 They came to me with that.

01:06:00.860 So I know that.

01:06:02.280 And one of the things that enraged me

01:06:04.120 about the statement from those sleazy intel guys

01:06:06.700 is that they blame the Russians for it.

01:06:09.040 Now, maybe the Russians had a hand in it, 0.82

01:06:10.700 but it was the Israelis who were pushing that. 1.00

01:06:12.760 Fact, fact. 0.84

01:06:13.960 I mean, literally to me.

01:06:15.340 Yeah.

01:06:15.960 And you've gone through it. 0.96

01:06:17.480 But they're all such slaves to Israel. 0.98

01:06:18.300 Is there anything? 0.90

01:06:19.060 I just want to clear with your entire,

01:06:20.800 like, you know,

01:06:21.700 not a single thing in my anything

01:06:25.960 that is in any way true about that.

01:06:28.600 well that's such a serious crime that i think it's just common sense that if there was evidence

01:06:35.860 of that you think that it's common sense but i'll tell you what about about 40 million people on um

01:06:41.880 on x don't think that you know i mean it's like there was an abusive minors in there if there

01:06:47.440 was evidence you know how many people call me a pedophile to this day anyway yeah i'll i'll spare

01:06:54.820 you but i'm not and what but i agree with you that's exactly right and you know it's um but

01:07:01.020 they were pushing that so hard and all the intel guys are like oh it's russia it's like you lie

01:07:05.080 you lie because they called me i sent one of my producers out to go meet with one of a guy

01:07:12.280 connected to netanyahu they were they were behind that and i felt that everybody in dc knew that

01:07:18.080 but there was so much pressure never to criticize israel in any way that they were just like it's

01:07:22.620 the russians it's the russians they're they're the ones penetrating our political system it's like

01:07:26.940 you lie everyone knows what's actually happening that this was my perspective and it drove me 0.88

01:07:33.140 insane and by the way i didn't say that on fox news i'll admit it i didn't yeah i didn't you're

01:07:38.960 right i just want to say i'm was part of the problem also but i knew it but that's a thing

01:07:43.380 tucker yeah is it is it i so so we're here now yeah no i didn't say no i'm saying what i'm saying

01:07:52.180 but we're here now yeah and that's one of the reasons why just on a purely selfish basis for me

01:07:58.040 is that like i don't know how you could possibly have thought that of me and by not saying it i

01:08:03.880 thought that you thought that of me i mean it was one of it's like the it's like i'm i am it is

01:08:10.960 thought that the child molestation thing or whatever yeah like all the stuff that they were

01:08:15.240 saying or any of it you know what i mean like the the um well people addicted to drugs especially

01:08:20.500 cocaine i know for a fact get pretty dark that's just a fact they do they do they definitely do

01:08:27.400 in it oh yeah and the cocaine thing it's all there no i guess you can watch it all i guess

01:08:32.400 i don't need to tell you that you can see them but i've seen it and you're not the only person

01:08:35.480 i've seen this exactly but there's a big screws up your sex yeah there's a big difference between

01:08:40.880 that and and the reality of what's out there which is the worst thing that you can possibly

01:08:45.380 say about anything and that's my point my point is is that i thought i was over it i was in

01:08:51.060 home springs i was there for about three hours it was the first time that melissa and i'd gone away

01:08:55.820 because remember you're we're still in that kind of covet period and people and so uh we're we're

01:09:02.260 out there and i get this call and i'm and it just like your whole world kind of um uh like

01:09:09.040 you know you just like at this kind of void opens up and you just like think that you're

01:09:16.220 about to get sucked into it because what's the worst thing that you could ever say about

01:09:19.580 someone in my opinion is that oh it's the reality that you're and that's what rudy giuliani was

01:09:26.720 saying and and um you ever close to going back on drugs during this period no no and and because i

01:09:37.000 knew this is that i i don't want to give people the impression that it's not available to them

01:09:47.220 that that but it was a miracle the miracle of my life at that moment despite that uh despite

01:09:56.240 all of these um uh consequences like like just not not i mean landing like nuclear bombs in my life

01:10:06.580 um is that i was in a better place and continue to be in a better place than i've ever been in

01:10:15.360 my life because i would like you know i've been stripped to the bone there's nothing there is no

01:10:22.020 there was no facade like you have to uh the entirety of my ego was uh was destroyed

01:10:30.740 like all of those things that you protect that out of fear what you don't realize that they're

01:10:36.700 out of fear but almost all of them are out of fear it's like what you're talking about um

01:10:42.600 the vanity yeah i believing that you could change the course of the of of the administration of

01:10:51.080 history of being there and that you could overlook all of the things that yeah that that you know of

01:10:56.620 him in order to save the world like that's a beautiful thing to hear someone admit to be

01:11:02.940 being that introspective to be able to do that in the same way i was so emasculated

01:11:10.840 that i had to make a decision to live or die and in the living i had to live in that in that uh

01:11:17.060 that emasculation that uh completely stripping of ego and um and it didn't it was an instant and it

01:11:27.180 wasn't like i um uh woke up the next morning and didn't think like the sun would ever come up which

01:11:34.080 i kind of felt yeah but then bowie woke up you know and it was a little nine month old or six

01:11:41.400 month old at the time and i look at this amazingly magnificent woman that has saved me

01:11:48.380 that is uh lying there and and i thought you know what i have to choose to live

01:11:59.940 like like like i i want this life i want this love i don't want to be afraid i'm going to

01:12:11.500 choose to live and i would and then it just became a matter of moment by moment having to

01:12:17.300 make that choice at the beginning your wife and get sober i know it's crazy story and i wrote

01:12:23.020 i wrote about it and i like i said that if any of my uh children came to me and and uh and told

01:12:30.100 me this story i would probably have them committed but it was truly love at first sight um a long

01:12:36.820 story that what that uh i've written about but uh and i was in active addiction and um staying at a

01:12:44.720 hotel and uh where at the petite hermitage in in west hollywood at the time i know well

01:12:52.740 hotel yeah yeah and um i was at the pool i got kicked out the next day but on the roof on the

01:12:59.860 roof and um and this uh these two people sat down uh next to me where i was alone i was reading a

01:13:07.320 book uh and uh they struck up a conversation as the pool kind of filled up during the day

01:13:15.040 and at one point they turned to each other no i never met them before i said you have to you have

01:13:22.020 to meet our friend Melissa and I said sure sure and um uh and I had no intention of meeting anyone

01:13:30.260 I'd gone to LA basically to to to um to choose the coward's way out of of uh suicide which was

01:13:38.260 I knew that the drugs and drinking would eventually take me and um and I had broken all contact with

01:13:46.760 anyone that cared for me or loved me and they called every day and I just didn't answer now

01:13:53.180 and I'm sitting there and it was an incredibly incredibly dark moment in my life and um the

01:14:01.900 darkest and for some reason I did this thing I said yeah yeah just give me your number I'll call

01:14:08.300 because they insisted they insisted they insisted that I call this this woman and um I said I can

01:14:14.440 remember any number if you tell me a number i can remember it and um and of course i i can't

01:14:23.520 remember a number but it was my way of getting out of the situation and i had left my book there

01:14:29.480 so like two hours later i came back to pick up my book at on the chase line and the woman said

01:14:35.180 what's the number and i said and she said i knew you were lying and she had a pen in her hand and

01:14:42.700 she wrote it on my hand. And that night I was taking a shower and I didn't, I can, the difference

01:14:51.520 between nine o'clock at night and two 30 in the morning, I mean, I literally was staying up 10

01:14:57.380 days at a time. I mean, it was, it was awful. And, and, and I'm about to wash this off my hand.

01:15:06.000 And I think, I should probably really call this woman. 0.91

01:15:11.600 So I texted that number.

01:15:14.240 And I said, hey, your friends gave me your number.

01:15:16.180 Would you like to get a drink?

01:15:18.320 At 2.30 in the morning?

01:15:19.080 2.30 in the morning.

01:15:19.800 And the response I got back was, I'm paraphrasing,

01:15:23.260 but it was like, who the F is this?

01:15:26.080 And it's 2.30 in the morning.

01:15:28.060 No.

01:15:28.420 and um and for some reason i in the in the morning i felt like that was really that's rude to do to a

01:15:41.680 woman like it's not just like funny like you made a mistake or like that you like that that was

01:15:46.760 really rude and i don't know where that it came from in me the the the feeling that i needed to

01:15:53.260 apologize and say i would i would like to buy lunch i didn't realize the time i and and uh and

01:15:59.660 she had no idea who i was i mean none and uh except for her friends met this guy at a pool

01:16:07.080 and so she says that they said you really need to go meet him and she said she'd be over for lunch

01:16:13.340 and then it was one o'clock and then it was two o'clock and then it was you know she'd be there

01:16:18.160 in half an hour and then it was four o'clock and then it was six and finally sometime in the early

01:16:23.340 about this what did you nothing literally nothing just her first time yeah and that's it nothing

01:16:30.040 not a picture not anything and um i walk up and now i'm over at the sunset marquee which is up

01:16:37.860 the hill because you know every hotel i'd say i wouldn't do anything wrong it was just like

01:16:42.560 the the cast of characters that would be in and out of my room they decided that you know in the

01:16:47.780 morning they mr biden we don't have another we don't have availability the hotel looks empty to

01:16:53.000 me yeah well and so i had moved to over to this other hotel um and this is when i still had a

01:17:00.780 little bit of um uh money to be able to pay hotel bills and i wasn't in the you know the super eight 0.99

01:17:06.240 but i walk up and there's this outdoor seating area and i see this woman 1.00

01:17:13.120 and she was wearing a denim shirt 1.00

01:17:16.320 just like this

01:17:17.260 and

01:17:19.520 I walk up to the table

01:17:21.860 and I know this sounds melodramatic

01:17:24.280 and like I'm making it up

01:17:25.540 but I looked in her eyes

01:17:27.060 and I saw eyes

01:17:30.180 that saw me

01:17:31.180 and

01:17:33.420 I said I know

01:17:35.960 that this sounds crazy

01:17:37.540 but

01:17:40.280 I'm in love with you

01:17:43.120 That's the first thing you said to a woman you'd never met before?

01:17:45.460 The first thing.

01:17:47.460 And again, I know it sounds crazy.

01:17:51.040 Yeah.

01:17:53.880 And the craziest part is, though, the miracle of it is, is that she didn't run.

01:18:00.560 She saw through me.

01:18:03.660 I mean, she saw not through me.

01:18:04.860 She saw me.

01:18:07.100 And within three hours, I had told her everything that I had not told the people that tried to love me back into existence for the previous two years.

01:18:19.860 She literally was, I said, about two hours in, I said, I'm addicted to crack cocaine.

01:18:29.460 Like, I'm killing myself.

01:18:32.200 She said, that ends today.

01:18:33.200 and it didn't end that day it ended the crack ended within a week and then the alcohol yeah

01:18:41.620 and the alcohol ended within within uh like uh 20 days that tapering in june i i count june 1st

01:18:51.740 as my sobriety date and you know from that moment i said that to her we were married 10 days later

01:18:58.120 that's one of the craziest stories i've ever heard in my life and it and it remains a miracle

01:19:05.560 you know my daughters and um there's nothing that i love more in the world than uh than them and the

01:19:12.580 uh and and they spent i always say the greatest sin of my addiction was my absence from

01:19:21.300 my children as you know the one thing about my dad always taught me about uh is that they're

01:19:29.540 being available is and and during a time in their life when they love their uncle beau they love

01:19:38.300 their uncle beau as much as i loved them and he was like a second father to them and in his uh

01:19:44.140 and after Bo died and then they they lost me for a period of time and there's enormous trauma in

01:19:51.880 that and um my point about talking about the girls is that like I don't like my father my family my

01:20:01.420 sister my uncle my aunt my Valerie the my mom you know they all tried to save me I mean they I have

01:20:09.800 I have the most incredible family in the world,

01:20:11.860 but it took a stranger to see the love left in me.

01:20:21.640 And I don't know why, but it was, to me,

01:20:25.880 and I love to think of it this way, by the way,

01:20:28.660 that it was a miracle, that there was something divine about it.

01:20:32.800 And I'm a firm believer in that, in that faith.

01:20:39.800 that sometimes the things that we cannot explain

01:20:45.020 are God acting in our life in a way

01:20:48.340 in which it might as well,

01:20:54.140 that it tried to get to us in every other way possible. 0.80

01:20:56.560 And then finally they have to smack you over the head.

01:20:59.480 Yes. 0.99

01:21:00.320 With a hammer.

01:21:01.160 I believe that so strongly.

01:21:02.040 That is true.

01:21:02.880 It's a fact.

01:21:03.720 Yeah.

01:21:04.560 And for me, that is the truth about all of this

01:21:08.520 is that I think that I've been given a gift

01:21:11.860 and the gift of my addiction

01:21:15.560 that brought me to that point

01:21:17.840 where it could totally break me.

01:21:20.820 Not for me to go out and aggrandize myself

01:21:23.920 in a way in which I tell a different story

01:21:27.300 than what actually happened,

01:21:28.860 but to tell the actual story.

01:21:31.380 That's why I hate talking about the laptop or this

01:21:36.080 or by defending myself.

01:21:39.160 But the story that I get to tell

01:21:40.700 is that there is such a thing as redemption.

01:21:44.980 And that's not the outward redemption.

01:21:46.980 This is not like some,

01:21:48.220 this is the inward,

01:21:50.620 that you can find the person

01:21:53.480 that is worthy of love in yourself.

01:21:58.300 All of the things and all of the mistakes

01:22:00.500 that I made in my life.

01:22:02.460 And I don't mean all of the narrative

01:22:05.820 that has been out there but the mistakes that i've made in my life in terms of relationships

01:22:09.280 in terms of uh you know is have all been based in fear fear not being enough fear not a fear of not

01:22:17.920 living up to some expectation fear of being found out fear of being um embarrassed you know i mean

01:22:25.380 everything from as something as trivial as like you know fear of you know asking the girl to dance

01:22:32.280 yeah you know and i drank over that and i used over that or fear of you know the of having to

01:22:39.360 um come to terms with the trauma of losing my mother and my sister or facing it in any way

01:22:46.220 or fear of being found out that i you know like that i'm not really uh as good as i think that i

01:22:56.120 am. That I am that person that people want to view as the privileged failed son that's

01:23:04.280 never done anything with his life. And all of that fear has evaporated. I'm not without

01:23:10.160 fear. I still. But in a very different way. And there's no way that I could have gotten

01:23:18.200 here without having gone through that and that's the promise of uh

01:23:28.840 of at least not picking up a drink or a drug today is that maybe i can get there i'm saying

01:23:34.120 to somebody i was talking before i don't think that there's anything that is has more um uh

01:23:40.360 guidance in my life than the serenity prayer is being able to really truly understand

01:23:49.940 the things that you can change as compared to the things that you have no control over yes and

01:23:56.400 that's not about feeling powerless but for instance what it made me think of is what you

01:24:04.500 just said yeah i know i agree completely and you you have vanity to think that you can change

01:24:09.520 certain like you're in charge of the world now you're god i mean no you're not yeah and there's

01:24:14.540 that incredible and i don't know if it's apocryphal or if it's true that quote from

01:24:18.540 mother theresa in which she says if if you want to change the world go home and love your family

01:24:23.240 exactly and in loving my family what i also realize is my family is much larger than my um

01:24:33.360 uh my immediate blood and beyond just my just first circle of friends my family is a is a group

01:24:41.340 of people that are still sick and suffering that are literally to step out that door that are um

01:24:48.100 uh that are uh that feel that there is no hope and no way out for them and that they are caught

01:24:57.220 in the cycle of degradation and demoralization and violence because of the drug or the alcohol

01:25:04.060 which is the worst in my opinion worst drug that there is um addicted yeah i agree with that yeah

01:25:11.220 and um and and but it starts you know in the immediate and then hopefully it radiates out

01:25:22.400 if it's done with sincerity and authenticity and and you're not living a double life and you know

01:25:28.100 for whatever reason you're not working on behalf of a corporate chill you're not working on your

01:25:35.020 i'm not uh i'm i'm not pursuing a um a goal of which you know i you know i'm i'm a consultant 0.96

01:25:43.080 in washington dc and i you know uh you know i mean like what what what it was all bullshit 0.72

01:25:50.340 it was all bullshit what was i adding to the conversation what was i adding to the um uh to 0.95

01:25:56.240 the to the discourse what what purpose was you know any uh of of that at the time um 0.97

01:26:03.320 i don't do that anymore and that's why i'm an artist and that's why i write and that's why i'm

01:26:09.260 speaking out and that's why i i work with an organization called peak path health which is

01:26:14.140 great rehab in in la but i'm helping set up a foundation for them for aftercare i work with

01:26:19.560 an organization called boston universal which does uh homeless prevention and um and uh tenants

01:26:27.180 rights advocacy in in la and that's not to say oh i'm such a good guy i mean because i get paid

01:26:32.820 and and i enjoy the work and i think that they're really good people and i and i write a sub stack

01:26:38.960 because i'm i i hope to get paid i hope people go read it so that i can make a living you know

01:26:44.080 i was telling you before my my uh you know uh i really believe in cryptocurrency i really believe

01:26:50.840 in those things i want to do something in that space and you know not because of any other thing

01:26:56.100 than i believe in it but you know what i also want to make some money yeah and that's my life now i

01:27:01.600 get to say that and say but this is me i'm not running for anything you gave me a platform i'm

01:27:08.980 going to use it and not only am i going to use it to benefit myself and my family but hopefully

01:27:12.620 benefit people along the way and i would ask the same of you which i think right now and not this

01:27:18.280 is like who am i to ask is that i think that we have such an opportunity to find common ground

01:27:26.540 to do this a different way you are if not the most in my estimation the most talented communicator

01:27:35.820 of your generation and whatever anybody has to say about you is that there is no doubt

01:27:41.900 is that you are a incredibly effective communicator as is candace by the way yes um

01:27:49.760 and i think that you have an opportunity to uh and this isn't like you know train all uh you know

01:27:59.260 ammunition on the administrator i'm saying the opportunity to find that uh you know common

01:28:07.840 purpose you wonder if it's if it's in the without the vanity of it and i mean it no no i strongly

01:28:13.700 agree i mean we're here for a reason and once you're passed once you get out of debt it's like

01:28:19.960 what's the point of accumulating money i really feel that's right and that's exactly the way i

01:28:24.240 feel just get me out of the dead and that's the other thing people don't like oh you know you like

01:28:28.520 i mean millions of dollars that i uh you know law firms and others and and um

01:28:37.840 yeah anyway sorry yeah you know about that yeah but i i wonder if like there

01:28:44.880 nothing you have said you grew up in a very famous political family i know you grew up in

01:28:50.720 delaware but yeah your world revolved around washington you went to school there you live

01:28:55.700 there went to college there yeah yeah i went to college there um you know the political system

01:29:01.500 really well you've said nothing about it basically you haven't suggested a political solution to any

01:29:07.260 of this i don't think that's an accident because i think there probably isn't a immediate i mean

01:29:13.480 you can make things better in the margins but like the problems that people face are mostly

01:29:18.500 not political problems they're like right so i think that we overstate the importance of like

01:29:25.040 voting for this or that guy i mean to me that's the lesson of trump like i campaign for the guy

01:29:29.160 there are things about him i still like i don't think he's like you know he's complicated like

01:29:34.640 everybody is complicated but but it didn't work it didn't work it didn't matter that you voted

01:29:39.740 for him you got the same thing that you're going to get if you voted for Kamala Harris like you

01:29:44.100 that's that's my perspective on it yeah and so what does that tell you it tells you that you're

01:29:48.660 putting your faith in the wrong thing which is in a political system whereas there's got to be a real

01:29:53.840 solution that begins with changing people's hearts that's what I think exactly exactly because

01:30:00.660 it it comes from us we're trying to find the problem out there exactly and it's here yeah

01:30:09.380 we're the problem yes right no i i've i've discovered that about myself and so all the

01:30:14.900 people out there that have such a problem with me sitting down with you or sitting down with

01:30:19.420 candace and like what the and like i didn't i'm not hard enough on you you got to apologize for

01:30:24.680 this and you got to do this it's like you know what f them here's my here's my point it starts

01:30:30.620 with us like i'm not going to ever change chug i like i like i can get into the whole debate about

01:30:38.480 the democratic party and whether you're not going to label something democratic social or this you

01:30:42.340 know what i think i like people who um believe in what they uh have a conviction yeah and they um

01:30:49.540 And they're honest about it.

01:30:51.440 I totally agree.

01:30:52.500 So I don't agree with everything that Zorohan Mandani does.

01:30:56.000 But you know what?

01:30:56.620 He has conviction.

01:30:57.700 He has competence.

01:30:59.120 And, you know, like, I mean, he balanced the budget.

01:31:02.440 Crime is at record low in New York right now.

01:31:04.860 And regardless of what you think about him, is that, like, so from a political perspective,

01:31:10.700 I don't care if it's Zorohan Mandani or Thomas Massey.

01:31:14.800 And I don't agree with 90% of the stuff that, in terms, well, I think,

01:31:19.080 i don't but i don't think that matters in this moment in time i don't think any of those labels

01:31:24.320 matter in time i want someone with the courage of their conviction principles that is uh but it's

01:31:34.200 all starts here all starts here and everybody else can nitpick around whether you know all of

01:31:41.760 the labels that we apply to each other and and all of the vitriol and there has to be like i think

01:31:47.500 there needs to be uh you know accountability for the people that are literally robbing us

01:31:50.960 effing blind that i think there will be accountability for that i think that but

01:31:56.300 my point is is in this moment can we not all see that we are about to uh reach a point in in the

01:32:05.940 evolution of of humanity that is uh will be a larger step than in the in in the entirety of

01:32:16.400 existence of this earth right and like so what does all of it matter if you have people that

01:32:24.140 drive me crazy like elon musk and every other person that has a um a hand in which is a handful

01:32:30.860 of them and what's happening with ai right now telling us in in easily within the next five

01:32:37.200 years if they haven't already done it that we're going to reach agi and if we reach agi then we're

01:32:44.660 not more than a maximum of another five years,

01:32:49.420 more likely two or three away from superintelligence.

01:32:53.240 And once that happens,

01:32:55.280 we literally have taken a step in the evolution of humanity

01:33:00.360 and of humankind.

01:33:02.400 And the largest singular step that will ever be taken

01:33:06.860 in the exponential way in which things will advance from there

01:33:12.540 is completely outside of our control and the only thing that we can hope for is that we have leaders

01:33:19.060 that are that that have humanity's best interest in mind and i don't know if i can what i shouldn't

01:33:27.680 i say i don't know i do know i think we have the exact wrong leadership i totally agree i saw

01:33:32.320 do you know anybody in your life who you talk to who's like very excited about ai because i don't

01:33:40.180 I don't really know anyone who's really for this.

01:33:42.240 Where's the constituency for this?

01:33:43.760 It seems like the population doesn't want it at all.

01:33:46.700 Yeah, well, I don't know why anyone would want it

01:33:51.360 in the way that it's being offered to us.

01:33:52.920 Look, the thing I say is this. 0.93

01:33:55.180 It's not theirs.

01:33:57.920 What they're building is off the back

01:34:00.440 of the output of all of humanity.

01:34:06.500 I agree.

01:34:07.600 It's ours.

01:34:08.860 It belongs to me.

01:34:09.720 it belongs to me just as much as it belongs to a Sam Bushman in the Kalahari.

01:34:15.200 It belongs to us from the moment that there was a cave painting that was put

01:34:19.920 into a digital database and the,

01:34:22.560 in a context to the poetry of Shakespeare to the book that you wrote to,

01:34:29.480 you know, to my last podcast tape, a transcript.

01:34:35.500 That is what is AI. It's all of ours.

01:34:39.020 every scientific discovery every single public dollar all of it is we own it and we somehow

01:34:48.540 are going to make like five or six individuals in this country trillionaires by allowing them

01:34:56.800 to literally rob us of that and make it theirs and them decide like do you trust sam altman

01:35:04.360 to decide the fate of humanity

01:35:07.960 or any of them for that matter?

01:35:10.040 I've done thousands of interviews over 35 years

01:35:13.460 and I've never had the feeling

01:35:16.320 of wanting to run out of a room more strongly

01:35:18.360 than I had when I talked to Sam Altman.

01:35:20.280 So he's, out of 350 million Americans,

01:35:22.880 he's probably 350 millionth of who I trust

01:35:26.040 to control the future of humanity.

01:35:29.580 Yet here we are, right?

01:35:32.020 Yeah.

01:35:32.500 Yet here we are.

01:35:33.360 and and uh and and you know what we're doing is i'm supposed to hate tucker carlson because

01:35:40.940 he's an anti-semite and he's this i know you're not you're not an anti-semite i'm 100% know you're

01:35:46.800 not anti-semite no yeah no that's what my point being is that i would just say so my point being

01:35:53.240 is is that like if it's anti-semitic to point out that bb netanyahu is evil incarnate

01:36:01.840 then you know what i don't know what to say to i don't know what to say to people anymore

01:36:06.760 i mean all you have to do is just open your eyes just literally open your eyes open your heart for

01:36:12.700 one minute yeah and realize you know i it's such an obvious lie it's like who's even intimidated

01:36:21.080 by that anymore my point is is like how is it possible that they're dividing us on things like

01:36:27.820 that i agree and i can tell you how it's possible it's the distraction that is being created by

01:36:34.600 a handful of individuals and the people that work for them to keep us divided through our algorithm

01:36:41.340 and as much as you're not a uh uh addicted to um your phone because you're not on social media and

01:36:49.760 things like that the vast vast vast majority of us are myself included is everyone has a pocket

01:36:56.480 full of heroin and they access it literally a thousand times a day so you're saying you got

01:37:03.900 off crack and more impressively alcohol yeah no i'm not i'm not that bad all i'm saying not off

01:37:10.140 your phone no no i am i i'm very i'm not nearly um uh i'm very wary of it i'm very wary of anything

01:37:17.780 like that but what i'm trying to say to people is that i'm no better than anybody else yeah i look

01:37:23.260 of my phone just as you know as much as anybody else i don't feel that it is necessarily a problem

01:37:27.900 but what i do find is like for instance uh is that you gravitate towards the negative things

01:37:35.160 people say about you yes way more than you ever gravitated to the to the beautiful things that

01:37:39.540 people say about that is so true so i'm on x and the amazing thing was is that i i go on x

01:37:46.620 and i start talking about addiction but i also start talking about you know the absurdity of

01:37:52.600 the moment that we live in and some of the players that are that are outsized characters in in this

01:37:58.880 in this morality tale we're living through and and there's these beautiful messages

01:38:07.040 from people about their own struggle and their own addiction and you're you my sister um i showed

01:38:16.440 my sister what you wrote about x y or z and you know she said it gave her the strength to to make

01:38:22.160 get through one more day and these beautiful things where people would say hey i'm a three-time

01:38:25.880 trump voter but i just want to say keep on keeping on brother like i love you for your you know for

01:38:31.380 your recovery it gives me hope and there's thousands of those messages but you know what

01:38:40.720 happens is that you know the the one that catches your eye the one that says you know you're uh 0.99

01:38:46.840 shut up you you know you crackhead pedophile you know you're you know criminal and you stole from 0.98

01:38:52.920 like it's like and it and it was a great lesson for me in the experience that everyone is having 0.99

01:39:00.140 not just on x but across the board in which we're all being and and it's and it's purposeful the

01:39:06.880 thing that i never fully um uh believed and until i read all the this whistleblower is how

01:39:13.480 intentional it is and as long as we're looking at each other as long as we're trying to find

01:39:21.160 all of the things that are wrong with our life in the other and by the way whether it's the other

01:39:26.500 that's the immigrant or whether it's the other that's our neighbor is we're not looking at 0.99

01:39:33.200 ourselves and we're not focused on the things that really matter and one of the things that 0.94

01:39:39.080 really matters is we better wake up wake up to the way in which we're being led by the nose

01:39:45.800 uh and have uh to believe that we all hate each other and it's making us worse i mean there's

01:39:53.540 this one of my favorite scenes in the gospel of luke is you know that the parable to jesus story

01:39:58.280 that jesus tells about the two men who go to pray the temple and one's the pharisee and one's the

01:40:04.000 tax collector and the pharisee looks over and says god thank you for not making me that guy because 0.94

01:40:08.440 he is a pig he's a sinner unlike you know a righteous good person like me and the tax collector 0.99

01:40:14.080 who knows he's a sinner because he's a thief and he knows he's a thief and everyone knows he's a 1.00

01:40:17.820 thief doesn't even look up he can't even look at God and he just says have mercy on me and Jesus

01:40:22.500 says who is justified before God it's not the man who turns to the guy next to him and says I'm

01:40:28.980 better than you it's the man who knows that he's not better than anybody that's the man who's

01:40:33.580 justified before God. And I just feel like all of life is that story. When you stop looking at other

01:40:39.420 people and being like, you suck. Yeah. And look inside and realize that I suck. That's where 1.00

01:40:45.900 wisdom and peace come from. Yeah. There's a, there's a scene in the Gnostic Gospels and I

01:40:54.020 forget what you, the Acts of, I forget, Acts of Philip or something anyway. You know, have you

01:41:00.940 the gnostic and really you got to that they're the whole trove of uh of uh gospels i mean a lot

01:41:09.340 of people would say that it's heresy but but it's the and um emperor you know when constantine unified

01:41:17.100 the church under and uh and uh declared uh catholicism the the christianity the um state

01:41:27.580 religion of state religion of rome um uh they basically effectively chose four gospels and

01:41:35.740 banned all the other ones and they found um in um i forget the in hominy and hominy they these

01:41:46.060 2 000 year old texts which were the other gospels written by mary magdalene and written by um philip

01:41:52.940 and written by um and anyway there's part of one is this is it says jesus is speaking to

01:42:01.340 the disciples and this is before and he says learn to suffer as i do and um and that is that is

01:42:10.700 everything that all wisdom comes through suffering that is true and in that suffering you're able to

01:42:20.380 um uh you're able to love in that suffering you're able to see your see the other it's the

01:42:27.840 exact uh exactly what that you were saying in in luke yeah is that is being able to like not

01:42:36.700 being the person's uh casting judgment rather and by the way it's not mean it doesn't mean that you

01:42:45.480 are uh uh without discretion simply means is that as much as i'm not going to and you know what is

01:42:56.020 the uh the idea of like my empathy overwhelms my my um uh critical thinking yes is not that

01:43:04.920 i'm not talking about that i'm talking about however is uh is if i can feel this strongly

01:43:14.760 about what they're doing to kids in detention centers

01:43:17.940 in the United States of America.

01:43:20.280 I can also feel just as strongly about,

01:43:24.160 or have as much empathy for someone who feels

01:43:32.760 like they have been completely left out

01:43:35.240 and without any options that are living in Bethel, Maine,

01:43:42.080 that feels that this country has completely let them down

01:43:48.580 and is looking for a hope, something,

01:43:55.880 an object for their anger.

01:43:58.940 And I want to bring them into the fold.

01:44:02.860 I want to be able to talk to them,

01:44:05.520 those people that I think voted out of anger

01:44:11.300 and that are still looking for, you know,

01:44:16.980 someone to be their retribution.

01:44:21.100 For people who are dependent on alcohol,

01:44:23.480 which is a lot of people,

01:44:24.800 I think you're absolutely right to say

01:44:26.580 it's the scariest of all drugs

01:44:28.040 because it's the most insidious.

01:44:29.420 It's just ubiquitous everywhere.

01:44:32.080 How do you get off it exactly?

01:44:34.260 You said you got off crack in three days

01:44:36.600 or something like that pretty quick.

01:44:37.880 Yeah, well, that's the thing.

01:44:39.560 How do you get off alcohol?

01:44:41.300 Yeah. Alcohol is the, and I mean this in this sense, and I have people push back on me, but

01:44:46.380 alcohol is the most destructive drug that there is. Not just by virtue of the fact that it is

01:44:53.880 as ubiquitous as it is. It is, and physiologically impacts your body. It impacts every organ,

01:45:02.380 every major organ, and in particular, every major pleasure center of your brain. It's the only drug

01:45:07.880 other than benzodiazepam is that you can die from withdraw from so everybody always you know uh

01:45:12.820 glory you know there's the hollywood version of you know how horrible it is to come off of opiates

01:45:18.160 um or you know um or cocaine and the reality is it's it's really painful and it's uncomfortable

01:45:27.120 and you think you might are going to die but particularly as it relates to cocaine it's out

01:45:33.500 your system in 72 hours there is no more physiological uh need for it and you won't

01:45:39.820 die from withdrawing from it alcohol you'll die you'll go into seizures and um and it stays in

01:45:46.880 your body not just for three days it stays in your body for at least 30 if not more and um

01:45:52.220 and you've created these um you know neurotransmitters in your brain that it's

01:45:57.460 your brain is still crying you know 30 60 90 days later still crying for you to uh to drink

01:46:06.920 and the worst part is all you got to do is walk out your door and usually it's not more than

01:46:13.520 you know particularly if you live in a urban environment you know a quarter of a mile from

01:46:19.040 wherever you and no one looks at you funny when you have a cocktail no exactly and it's encouraged

01:46:24.560 and um so uh for me um it was hard hard work is that i this time didn't i've been to a

01:46:37.440 a number of rehabs and in uh in 2019 after i met melissa and she said this ends is that i started

01:46:49.700 i tapered she had me taper how did she know to do that kind of completely intuitive and um

01:46:59.060 i mean it was really really you know incredible

01:47:03.700 and she tapered me and then at one point it got really bad

01:47:07.460 uh and i had the like true delirium tremors and she called a doctor to come over what's that like

01:47:12.660 uh literally the feeling that you if you don't if you don't remove yourself from your own body that

01:47:21.020 that you're going to die because you you are you know i mean there's there's the real potential

01:47:25.900 of you dying from seizures and it's the most excruciating feeling that i've ever had of any

01:47:32.440 kind of pain and and i'd gone through it before um but i had done it in a clinical environment

01:47:37.920 in which they just, you know,

01:47:41.140 usually use benzodiazepam to wean you that way.

01:47:44.240 And so I had weaned enough,

01:47:46.200 but not enough to stop that.

01:47:49.220 And so I had to go through it.

01:47:50.480 Where were you?

01:47:52.440 Melissa had rented a house,

01:47:54.280 this little house for us up in the hills.

01:47:58.820 I mean, hard to get to from anywhere.

01:48:02.560 Like I couldn't walk.

01:48:03.280 She took my keys. 0.91

01:48:04.140 She took my wallet. 1.00

01:48:04.960 She took my phone. 0.98

01:48:05.860 She raised every number from it.

01:48:07.220 she um that didn't have the name biden in it she you know i mean she had to do the hardest thing 0.99

01:48:13.120 that for anyone that is uh that loves someone is for a period of time she had to be my jailer

01:48:18.860 and um and my nurse and a um and literally you know uh nurse me back to life and it is uh you

01:48:30.060 know it was it's incredibly intense at the beginning you know 24 7 that you have to be there

01:48:36.700 you know

01:48:37.440 because you literally

01:48:38.240 could

01:48:38.500 particularly with alcohol

01:48:40.020 not particularly

01:48:41.280 singularly with alcohol

01:48:42.300 you could

01:48:42.660 you could die

01:48:43.800 how long did it take you

01:48:45.500 to feel better

01:48:46.220 in that instance

01:48:54.120 10 days before I could ever

01:48:55.500 really eat anything

01:48:56.380 and taste it

01:48:57.260 actually

01:48:58.040 yeah

01:48:58.460 you know

01:48:59.080 I mean

01:49:00.500 or have any interest

01:49:01.580 in not being

01:49:02.280 forced to eat something

01:49:03.500 and then

01:49:04.860 um and then you start to you know you have this kind of uh everything is kind of grayscale

01:49:15.240 you know for even after you get a little bit of a a boost around 30 days and then you try to ride

01:49:25.060 that as long as possible but what happens in your brain is that uh somebody explained it to me this

01:49:35.240 way is that you have these little messengers that that alcohol sends to your pleasure centers of

01:49:41.580 your brain and so the messengers imagine with little birds in a normal person the bird flies

01:49:47.040 up to the birdhouse and that's your dopamine or whatever it is in like a normal you know in a

01:49:52.580 normal circumstances like you have a you have a happy experience and you know sends two birds up

01:49:57.760 and you know uh to live in the in the birdhouse and the maximum you're supposed to ever have is

01:50:03.860 like 10 it's like the happiest what alcohol does is it sends 20 birds at a time and so it creates

01:50:09.300 20 birdhouses and then and the next time you use it you want to get you got to get to 30 birdhouses

01:50:14.200 and then it builds 40 birdhouses then you have uh it then there's a thousand birdhouses and when

01:50:20.980 you take the alcohol away and you have a normal happy experience like a cup of coffee in the

01:50:26.920 morning it only sends two birds and your brain says there are 998 other bird houses that you

01:50:34.780 have to feel for me to feel normal and you don't have it and there's nothing in a normal experience

01:50:40.720 that can possibly produce that except the drug and so your brain the thing that you think

01:50:47.160 that everyone of course has to believe is providing you with rational logical information

01:50:56.500 is saying if you don't get this you're going to die yeah and in the case of alcohol it means it

01:51:03.080 you know if you don't get this you're going to die and by the way not only are you going to die 0.90

01:51:07.920 you're going to feel like this for the rest of your life so fix me and so your brain's telling

01:51:14.360 you and so the first time that you face a trauma or an obstacle or a or something good happens

01:51:20.900 your brain says i know how to make it better i know how to fix it i know how to make you not

01:51:27.380 feel this way i know how to make you not have this anxiety i know how to make you not have this fear

01:51:32.180 we've done it before do it and that's um that is the

01:51:41.020 what alcohol at least did as it relates to to me but also i'm positive the science of it

01:51:50.600 is um anyways to me the most interesting i've lived it and that's a amazing description

01:51:57.120 and an accurate one i think how do you stay sober for seven years

01:52:00.680 uh almost everything that i do is no longer with the with the idea that i am um uh

01:52:10.780 like living on a knife's edge in the early days though you really do have to really protect

01:52:16.460 yourself not put yourself in positions of you know i people always say to me like well can i

01:52:23.020 still go to the bar with my friends well not no you know getting clean and sober is really easy

01:52:29.880 all you have to do is change everything yeah and that everything and what i really mean by that is

01:52:34.920 that don't go back and put yourself in the same exact circumstances that you were in where

01:52:41.780 your same group of friends if they are heavy drinkers or you know or your family like if you

01:52:50.500 if you can't go to thanksgiving without everybody getting drunk maybe don't go to thanksgiving this

01:52:54.340 year trying to get sober and so that in terms of changing everything but staying it it i promise

01:53:04.980 you everybody it gets not only easier but there's this thing in in the program that i practice in

01:53:10.540 which they call the promises in which you will know and experience and ease by which life happens

01:53:17.020 as you are able to live life on life's terms and which like everything it doesn't fix everything

01:53:23.940 look at me you know six and you know six felony charges and two trials later and a you know and

01:53:32.100 and it it shouldn't it it didn't it didn't solve anything it didn't solve all the consequences

01:53:39.080 that i had to face but you know what can you imagine what my life would be like i'd be dead

01:53:43.540 i'm 100 long dead if i had decided the only way to be able to fix this is to anesthetize myself

01:53:52.520 I mean, I would be the long dead.

01:53:55.380 And that's what they were hoping.

01:53:58.420 And I truly, truly do believe that.

01:54:01.300 I believe that they knew that the singular,

01:54:05.900 what they perceived as my father's Achilles heel

01:54:08.640 was his family.

01:54:10.700 That regardless of what anybody says about Joe Biden,

01:54:13.160 that there was nothing more important to him

01:54:15.060 than his family.

01:54:16.120 And that he had just lost Beau.

01:54:17.880 and um and that the idea that that i i truly believe that they wanted me to relapse which

01:54:24.200 was equivalent to to death i'm i'm positive they did what does that tell you about i mean why would

01:54:31.400 one thing i noticed just being living in georgetown as a kid and knowing you know million

01:54:36.640 people from political families is the families were all dealing with tragedies that on a bigger

01:54:42.920 scale than normal people like there's something about that environment that is really hard on the

01:54:47.760 on families and you see it in the most famous political families.

01:54:51.160 They're all a lot of casuals.

01:54:52.520 I don't know.

01:54:52.980 See, that's one of the things that, well, number one is I really truly didn't grow up

01:54:57.860 in D.C.

01:54:58.820 Right.

01:54:59.500 Yeah.

01:54:59.860 And, you know, we really were in Delaware and which was different.

01:55:04.700 And, but to your point is that what I found is this, is that I lived it publicly.

01:55:11.560 But, you know, what I found is that I was in a, I forget where I was, a stranger, somebody's driving me, and he told me a story, he told me about their life and their addiction and that their, you know, their brother was in jail and their father, you know, just got arrested and addicts.

01:55:39.980 And I think everybody has those stories.

01:55:45.260 Everybody.

01:55:45.640 That's for sure.

01:55:46.180 Except mine played out on the front page of the New York Post in a way that literally I don't think it had for anybody, any political family ever.

01:55:55.020 I mean, even the Kennedy's to the degree in which they, you know, and I really mean that.

01:55:59.340 Like, I mean, the total evisceration of anything or even the notion that I deserved any privacy.

01:56:06.680 i mean i i really like i i look at some people and i say like just put yourself in my shoes for

01:56:14.740 one minute on what level on what level is it do you think that that was right you know i i look

01:56:24.440 like somebody like miranda divine and just on what level could would if that was if that was

01:56:30.180 Ivanka, and I'm not talking about, like, just take her existing 20-year digital footprint, everything that she's ever done.

01:56:39.040 It's like, I guarantee you, and I don't know, I guarantee you, everybody has a nude.

01:56:45.120 Everybody has a picture that they don't want to see.

01:56:47.240 Everybody has a text message out of context.

01:56:49.760 Everybody has a voicemail they wish that they hadn't left.

01:56:52.680 Everybody has an email in which it doesn't have the entirety of the email chain.

01:56:59.020 Like, you know how many conspiracy theories were born out of the fact that I wrote Buckley a recommendation to a school, which you reminded me he didn't get into.

01:57:08.660 You know what I mean?

01:57:09.240 Like, out of context, you are able to do something.

01:57:13.600 And how is that in any way fair?

01:57:16.100 However, that's what happened.

01:57:19.160 And what's your wife think?

01:57:21.920 I mean, I just was thinking about like, she's like, talk about.

01:57:27.100 She didn't sign up for this.

01:57:28.800 yeah like talk about like you know yeah she is so tough she's like a she is a a um

01:57:39.120 she is a warrior he's amazing she is absolutely amazing i mean look i mean i wasn't there's no

01:57:51.380 way that i could even prepare for it and i and this had been my life none that i could prepare

01:57:58.060 for it the fact she didn't run it says everything that you need to know about her because

01:58:08.140 one much other upside well the truth is that uh

01:58:15.260 bowie beat bowie's the the ultimate upside so but she she is she is one amazing person

01:58:29.140 what's your plan you're on a path yeah it seems like you kind of moved into it sideways maybe not

01:58:37.840 with a plan i don't know but you're clearly moving in some direction where is that headed

01:58:43.500 I don't know, and that's one of the things, is that I know the things that I care about.

01:58:53.200 I care about reaching people that are still sick and suffering.

01:58:56.940 I really do, because, by the way, not because I'm a hero, not because I'm some saint and I want...

01:59:02.500 You know why?

01:59:03.440 Because it's the most rewarding thing that I've ever done in my life.

01:59:07.500 It gives me sustenance.

01:59:09.520 It makes me feel good about myself.

01:59:11.840 i mean it like it makes it it makes it easier for me to make it through the day

01:59:18.380 and so it's purely selfish and that's one of the things about sobriety that i tell everybody is

01:59:25.780 that the ultimate goal is to get to the end and particularly as it relates to the program that i

01:59:29.980 practice as you get the end of the steps and the whole thing is so that you can be of service to

01:59:34.640 somebody else and not because you are sainted at the end and all of a sudden you're saint francis

01:59:40.820 walking among the, you know, the forest.

01:59:42.760 It's because it's the thing that saves you.

01:59:45.980 The only way to truly get out of yourself

01:59:47.980 is to do for somebody else.

01:59:51.000 Is to, you know, to sit here and, for me,

01:59:56.860 the easiest is to find other people

01:59:59.600 that have had, you know, same and similar experience.

02:00:01.700 And it's not like you have to look far.

02:00:06.780 I mean, it's around every single corner, there's somebody.

02:00:09.460 and that was the beautiful discovery that i had so there's that i want to meet i want to reach a

02:00:16.880 million people in recovery and i want i've created this thing at hunter biden.com uh backslash

02:00:22.980 recovery in which uh anonymously for nothing other than to create a a storyboard a story core

02:00:30.740 is people get to share their experience strength and hope because what i would what helped save me

02:00:35.740 was realizing i wasn't alone and i want to write about it and i put it on substack and part of it's

02:00:41.880 free and part of a subscription and i and and i want to continue to practice my art and um and

02:00:50.440 ultimately at the end of the day is that like anybody else is that you know i want to um i

02:00:58.280 want to have the financial security to be able to, you know, to, uh, to not constantly feel as

02:01:05.740 it, I have to make, um, you know, choices that I don't want to have to make like anybody else,

02:01:10.200 like anybody else in their life. How close are you to financial security? Uh, like I'm a million

02:01:15.120 miles away. Um, I'm several million miles away. Yeah, I am. But, um, yeah, uh, you know, my, uh,

02:01:23.740 Winston Strachan wants their money.

02:01:28.800 Lawyers.

02:01:30.380 Oh, yeah.

02:01:31.400 It's all legal bills.

02:01:32.900 Yeah.

02:01:35.940 Anyway.

02:01:36.700 Like tens of thousands of dollars?

02:01:38.240 Oh, no.

02:01:38.640 Millions of dollars.

02:01:39.760 Millions of dollars.

02:01:41.220 Millions.

02:01:41.900 I mean, just the, I don't know exactly what it is.

02:01:45.060 I think it's between four and six million that Winston Strachan says that I owe them for my.

02:01:53.740 a couple of convictions and anyway yeah yeah it's a lot of money how do you how does that

02:01:59.780 affect you i don't know i i would hope that they uh oh how does it affect me it affects me in this

02:02:07.760 way is that um i have to find a sensible solution and a way through um i really am uh uh i've wanted

02:02:17.740 to avoid um bankruptcy uh because the the road back from that is just so long and i'm 56 years

02:02:25.420 old but i don't allow it to consume me you know what i mean i really don't i and and i can't um

02:02:34.460 uh it is uh i don't want it to be the principal motivating factor for for everything i do because

02:02:42.380 because the truth of the matter is the mountain is such a long climb

02:02:47.320 that I don't see the solution to it right now.

02:02:51.420 But one won't present itself.

02:02:54.100 And I think cooler heads will prevail.

02:02:55.400 And I'll be able to...

02:03:02.400 I just have faith.

02:03:06.280 I don't know, man. I just have faith.

02:03:07.620 Not blind faith. Just work hard.

02:03:10.320 I mean, shit, I'm really working my asshole. 1.00

02:03:13.580 I mean, everybody says, oh, go get a job. 1.00

02:03:15.020 I have two jobs.

02:03:15.940 I have two jobs.

02:03:16.680 And then on top of that, I have all of this that I'm trying to do.

02:03:19.800 And then I'm, you know, a whole thing that I've been trying to build is relates in that, you know, I'm working my butt off and doing that.

02:03:30.000 But, you know, they took away my law license, which means that that avenue that I spent, you know, 25 years working towards to graduate from Yale Law School is not open to me right now.

02:03:44.000 And so I have to, in many ways, you know, reinvent myself, but not out of whole cloth.

02:03:52.400 And spending the past seven years, you know, I'm really, really dedicated to my art.

02:03:56.940 I'm really dedicated to the work of writing.

02:04:01.160 You know, you're a brilliant writer, and you know this better than anybody.

02:04:06.420 It is a practice as much as an art.

02:04:10.400 It's a discipline as much as it is.

02:04:11.940 Absolutely right.

02:04:12.920 And so I've been practicing that discipline since I wrote my first book.

02:04:18.380 And so I have a lot to say, and there's ways to be able to do that now.

02:04:27.660 And ways to be able to do that that can, you know,

02:04:32.280 that like I think it's really important for me

02:04:34.360 to be authentic about everything,

02:04:35.600 but also the ways in which I can do it

02:04:37.260 in which I hopefully can put food on the table.

02:04:42.640 Last question is about faith.

02:04:44.180 How has this affected how you feel about God

02:04:47.220 and changed your relationship?

02:04:51.340 I don't know whether I would say that it's changed,

02:04:53.800 but it is deep in my belief, whether you want to call it, I do, as God,

02:05:02.620 is the absolute certainty of this.

02:05:10.240 There is literally, in both the theological but also metaphysical sense,

02:05:18.420 no distance between me and you or anyone. We are all literally connected. And that connection,

02:05:33.060 that universal connection to everything is what I refer to as God, is us realizing

02:05:40.180 that all of our fear is delusion, is being separated.

02:05:47.460 It's all the idea.

02:05:50.760 And so my faith is in the fact that I know

02:05:56.300 that there is not a sentient being

02:06:05.940 that literally is me.

02:06:13.980 And I don't know if that makes sense to you,

02:06:17.660 but I truly believe that there has been a real thing in my life

02:06:34.060 that has saved me time and time and time again and that has taught me hard lessons

02:06:42.940 uh and that i believe that i cannot explain by other than what i choose to call god

02:06:52.600 no question about that and we do get glimpses of the connection between people all people

02:06:58.900 i think that's what we refer to as a transcendent moment when we like rise above all the things

02:07:06.140 we're concerned with and sort of look down just for a split second but this happens to people

02:07:09.740 throughout life and you're like oh wait a second yeah you know people are really connected to each

02:07:14.460 other in a real way yeah yeah and when you when you start to get honest with yourself

02:07:24.480 like really really get honest with yourself and i'm not talking about everybody has to go through

02:07:29.040 what i went through to be able to get honest with themselves i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy

02:07:33.780 um but you know i think that there are spiritual practices that i did not either have the courage

02:07:42.920 or the patience to endure you know i say like it's not like i was moving to rishi cash to sit

02:07:49.920 in the cave and meditate for seven years instead what i got is a trial by fire and um and and like

02:07:58.900 i said that the complete eradication of an ego not by courage or conviction on my part but by

02:08:07.460 uh necessary choice to survive i had to choose to either stay in bed or get out and live and if i

02:08:16.540 was going to live i had to let go of that yes and i did and uh and for now today it's a beautiful

02:08:27.180 beautiful thing it's a beautiful thing it doesn't solve everything it doesn't solve my debt it

02:08:32.340 doesn't solve my you know uh you know i i still gotta you know uh put on my uh pants like everybody

02:08:40.160 else. And, and, and, uh, and I still have, you know, to deal with a relationship that, you know,

02:08:46.400 like anybody else, um, and, and a family that I love drives me crazy. I love it's like everybody

02:08:55.140 else, but I don't have to live a lie. Hunter Biden, thank you very much. Thanks.

02:09:10.160 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - August 10, 2026

The Hunter Biden Interview

Episode Stats

Transcript