The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker and Col. MacGregor Warn How Neocons Are Exploiting the Drug Crisis to Drag America Into War

00:00:00.000 Not to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like we're about to embark on another regime change war like next week.

00:00:07.980 There's so much going on right now in this country that you may not be aware that there is a U.S. naval armada steaming toward Venezuela,

00:00:14.640 which is a large, oil-rich country in South America, not too far from here, actually.

00:00:19.480 And the purpose, the stated purpose of this show of military force is to force the leader of that country, Nicolas Maduro, to leave.

00:00:27.960 And the threat is unless he leaves, vacates the premises, gives up his job, turns over the reins to the opposition party, splits Venezuela for good,

00:00:38.220 the United States will go to war with Venezuela, invade it even.

00:00:44.820 Kind of a big deal. You may not even have known that. Very few people seem to be talking about that.

00:00:50.360 Again, there's a lot else going on, but it's a pretty significant turn of events if you think about it.

00:00:56.600 It's not every day. The United States has another regime change war.

00:00:59.760 In fact, it's been quite some time. We had a narrowly averted regime change war back in June with Iran.

00:01:05.280 They were telling you the point was just to stop its nuclear program.

00:01:09.360 Of course, the point was to change the leadership in Tehran.

00:01:13.240 President Trump pulled back. That didn't happen. Thank God.

00:01:16.380 But we are on the cusp of something very similar happening not too far from here.

00:01:21.860 And an awful lot could go wrong.

00:01:23.360 And yes, we're fully aware that anyone who points out the potential downside possibilities of a war

00:01:30.080 is not only a wuss, but unpatriotic, hysterical.

00:01:33.800 Well, the fact that Caracas, Venezuela, the capital, by the way, you'll be hearing a lot more about it if we go to war there.

00:01:41.660 Caracas, Venezuela, the main population center and capital of Venezuela, is about 475 miles by sea from San Juan, Puerto Rico, the American Protectorate.

00:01:51.020 So really from our country, it's pretty darn close, super close.

00:01:56.600 And that's significant not because Venezuela's SEAL teams are going to blow up Puerto Rico,

00:02:03.180 but because wars tend to precipitate huge movements of people.

00:02:08.060 They cause migrant crises.

00:02:10.920 They cause massive and irreversible demographic change.

00:02:15.440 This has always been true, always been true.

00:02:19.020 But we have a couple of pretty recent reminders.

00:02:22.200 Back in 2015, with the help of the U.S. government, at the urging of our closest ally in the Middle East,

00:02:28.340 the Syrian civil war raged.

00:02:30.320 And there were lots of players in that war, but the United States was certainly one of them.

00:02:34.160 And as the result of the Syrian civil war, which most Americans were not paying attention to,

00:02:38.260 Europe got invaded by migrants.

00:02:39.740 Remember the migrant crisis of 2015?

00:02:43.700 You may not remember because it never ended.

00:02:45.540 In the 10 years since that, 1.3 million-ish, asylum seekers arrived in Western Europe,

00:02:52.900 Western Europe has been completely destroyed.

00:02:55.560 Totally unrecognizable.

00:02:57.260 That's not an overstatement.

00:02:58.480 Go to Paris.

00:02:59.140 Go to London.

00:03:00.400 Go to Oslo.

00:03:02.060 Go to any capital in Western Europe, and it does not look Western European.

00:03:06.400 And clearly, that entire part of the continent is on the dramatic downswing.

00:03:10.440 There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main reason is immigration, mass migration due to war.

00:03:16.960 So that's not a hysterical position.

00:03:20.540 It's not crazy to worry about that, considering we're pretty close to Venezuela.

00:03:25.420 So that could happen.

00:03:26.620 Also, people get killed in war.

00:03:28.920 Whenever you commit troops to a place, even if you bomb a place, there are after effects.

00:03:34.240 There are ripples, and people die, and some of those people are apt to be your people.

00:03:37.860 So if you have a war, it's fair to expect some Americans will die.

00:03:43.820 And, of course, we've had a lot of wars in the last 100 years, and Americans have been prepared to bear that cost.

00:03:50.100 Not usually the same Americans starting the wars or cheering on the wars.

00:03:53.520 They never bear that cost because they never show up at the war.

00:03:57.840 People like Lindsey Graham haven't been to a lot of wars.

00:04:00.400 But most Americans are aware of the fact that when you have a war, people die, including some of our guys.

00:04:08.340 It's sad, but we tell ourselves it's worth the cost.

00:04:11.900 But it's close to inevitable.

00:04:15.100 All of that is just to say, before this happens, it would be nice to know why we're doing this.

00:04:20.520 Why are we having a regime-change war?

00:04:21.900 And, by the way, unlike what happened in June, the people pushing this are just saying it right out loud.

00:04:27.760 The purpose of this adventure is to replace the government of Venezuela.

00:04:33.340 Now, we haven't liked the government of Venezuela for quite some time.

00:04:36.020 It's been at least 10 years.

00:04:37.240 They've been under pretty tough American sanctions.

00:04:39.100 There have been now publicized efforts to get rid of the leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and before him, his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who claimed as he died of cancer that he was infected with cancer by the CIA.

00:04:55.980 No confirmation on that.

00:04:57.540 But the point is, this is a conflict of longstanding.

00:05:01.820 The United States, under a number of different administrations, has said out loud, we would like someone else to run that country.

00:05:09.600 Now, it's a little strange if you think about it, that one country can just say to another country, we don't like your leadership, leave or we'll kill you.

00:05:18.340 But that's what we're doing.

00:05:20.120 Is that a precedent you want to set?

00:05:21.760 Well, we said it long ago.

00:05:23.660 But what's interesting is it's hard to think of all the regime change affected by the United States and its various agencies whose budgets you can't know and whose activities are still, decades later, shrouded in secrecy.

00:05:38.540 Of all those regime changes affected by the U.S. government, how many worked out well?

00:05:44.560 Would anyone say that hanging Saddam Hussein made Iraq better, made the world safer, made America more prosperous?

00:05:51.020 Well, it empowered Iran, for one thing, and so on and so on and so on.

00:05:55.140 And so to say the U.S. does not have a positive track record of regime change that the aftereffects upon examination haven't been worth doing, I mean, that's an understatement.

00:06:08.880 It never works.

00:06:10.600 But we're doing it again, apparently.

00:06:13.960 So the question is why?

00:06:15.680 Why are we doing this?

00:06:17.960 Why are we so opposed to Nicolas Maduro?

00:06:20.680 So if you ask someone on the street, random person, why are we against Nicolas Maduro?

00:06:25.740 The answer you're going to get is who's Nicolas Maduro?

00:06:27.400 But if you find someone in South Florida, for example, who knows who Nicolas Maduro is, who can identify where Venezuela is on a map, that person will almost certainly say, well, because he's a communist or a socialist, he's exceedingly left wing.

00:06:40.400 And that is true.

00:06:41.880 Nicolas Maduro and his government are very left wing on economics, not on social policy, by the way, which is kind of interesting.

00:06:48.320 In Venezuela, gay marriage is banned, abortion is banned, sex changes for transgenderism are banned.

00:06:57.260 It's one of the very few countries in the entire hemisphere with those policies.

00:07:01.080 It is on social policy, not defending the regime, just saying.

00:07:05.600 One of the most conservative countries in North or South or Central America.

00:07:12.720 Only El Salvador really comes close, which is much smaller, of course.

00:07:16.240 And by the way, the U.S.-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela.

00:07:27.700 So to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo, not crazy, actually.

00:07:33.620 So the average person when asked would say, we've got to get rid of the guy because his politics are bad, his ideas are bad.

00:07:38.620 We're in favor of democracy.

00:07:40.260 Of course, that's why we're supporting the unelected dictator in Ukraine, because we're for democracy.

00:07:46.240 That's why we had the 2020 election with the drop boxes and the fake mail-in ballots, because we're for democracy.

00:07:52.020 But democracy, because we have a moral obligation to make sure that good government reigns in our hemisphere.

00:07:57.840 That would be the answer.

00:07:59.680 But that's not really a compelling answer.

00:08:01.560 Is that really the reason?

00:08:02.400 So if we see a leader in our hemisphere or anywhere in the world who's dictatorial, who, I don't know, cancels his own citizens, arrest them for saying bad things, we overthrow that person?

00:08:18.280 That's not really the standard.

00:08:19.440 No, our closest ally in Europe is the U.K.

00:08:24.560 And famously, last year, the U.K. sent three times as many people to jail as Russia did for saying naughty things on social media.

00:08:32.620 So the U.K., the government of Great Britain under Keir Starmer, is authoritarian.

00:08:37.520 Obviously, it's not a democratic government.

00:08:39.380 You can have a democratic government with censorship by definition, of course.

00:08:44.380 If people can't say what they believe is true, they're not free people.

00:08:47.740 It's not a democracy.

00:08:48.780 They don't own the country.

00:08:50.560 They're under the thumb of a dictator.

00:08:53.280 But there's no move to liberate long-suffering Britons from Keir Starmer.

00:08:58.740 Maybe there should be, but there isn't.

00:09:00.720 So I think we can discount, we can safely discount democracy as a reason for affecting regime change in Venezuela.

00:09:09.460 We're not going to go kill Nicolas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people.

00:09:15.020 It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage.

00:09:17.420 That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud.

00:09:20.560 So what could be the other reasons?

00:09:21.780 Well, energy.

00:09:22.900 That's the obvious one.

00:09:24.780 Venezuela has the deepest proven oil reserves, the biggest proven oil reserves in the world.

00:09:29.540 Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia does.

00:09:32.680 Now, it's low-grade oil, dirty oil, and its infrastructure, its oil extraction infrastructure is in terrible shape after 10 years of sanctions and mismanagement by the government, et cetera, et cetera.

00:09:44.720 Again, none of this is a defense of Maduro's economic policies, but they're not that out of whack with a lot of different places, a lot of different countries.

00:09:55.860 In fact, they're not that different from the economic policies of the incoming mayor of New York.

00:09:59.960 Actually, to be honest, the big difference is that Nicolas Maduro is a social conservative and Mom Donnie is all about transiting your kids.

00:10:08.300 But whatever.

00:10:09.760 Oil.

00:10:10.400 People say, well, of course it's about oil.

00:10:11.980 Is it about oil?

00:10:14.040 Hmm.

00:10:15.420 It doesn't seem to be about oil.

00:10:17.700 There are a bunch of American oil companies, big ones and little ones, independent and publicly traded, who would like to get into Venezuela.

00:10:27.060 They can't because of sanctions, but they'd like to change that so they can help Venezuela extract its mineral resources and make money in the process and presumably help the United States in the process.

00:10:37.360 They haven't been allowed to do that.

00:10:38.700 So if your goal was to secure as much oil as you could, as much energy as you could for the United States and help American energy companies build their businesses, employ Americans, of course, you would stop moralizing long enough to let Americans rebuild Venezuela's aging extraction infrastructure.

00:11:02.540 But we're not doing that.

00:11:03.860 So is it really about oil?

00:11:05.440 Hmm.

00:11:06.560 Probably not.

00:11:07.280 Well, then it's about drugs.

00:11:10.480 That's what we've been hearing now.

00:11:11.540 It's about drugs.

00:11:13.920 Venezuela is a drug-dealing nation.

00:11:17.900 Its regime is involved in drug trafficking.

00:11:20.300 And by the way, it sounds true.

00:11:23.040 Probably is true.

00:11:24.860 Is Maduro or people around Maduro involved in the drug trade in some way?

00:11:29.240 Probably.

00:11:30.120 Would think so.

00:11:31.700 How many Latin American heads of state aren't?

00:11:34.360 That's a good question.

00:11:35.140 But that's not an excuse.

00:11:37.600 That's bad.

00:11:38.920 But how significant is Venezuela in the hemispheric drug trade?

00:11:44.560 Like, if you're looking at the drug trade in the United States, how much of that comes from Venezuela?

00:11:50.140 Well, we have a fentanyl crisis, famously.

00:11:52.520 Does fentanyl come from Venezuela?

00:11:54.280 No, it doesn't.

00:11:55.580 It actually comes from Mexico.

00:11:58.000 Huh.

00:11:58.800 What about meth?

00:12:00.620 Well, meth also comes from Mexico.

00:12:03.520 Hmm.

00:12:03.880 What about cocaine?

00:12:05.580 That would be Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia.

00:12:08.560 Not to say that drugs don't come from Venezuela.

00:12:11.740 Of course they do.

00:12:12.600 But most drugs that wind up in this country do not come from Venezuela.

00:12:17.520 They're not produced there.

00:12:19.320 They're not trafficked through there.

00:12:21.360 And the cartels that distribute them and kill people in our country are not Venezuelan.

00:12:26.200 They're Mexican.

00:12:27.440 All of them.

00:12:28.200 The top five drug cartels operating in the United States, including the ones that control entire counties in Northern California, huge parts of the American Southwest, Florida, Texas, all over, Northern New England, those are all Mexican.

00:12:44.820 So, probably not about drugs.

00:12:47.800 What is it about?

00:12:49.700 We should know, not simply to argue against it.

00:12:52.500 I mean, we have no control, clearly.

00:12:54.220 No one is asking the American public whether they want another regime change war.

00:12:59.960 No one is asking Trump voters whether they want another regime change war.

00:13:02.640 Nobody cares.

00:13:03.640 So, it's going to happen no matter what people think.

00:13:07.020 In fact, if it does happen, it will likely happen at a time when most Americans had no idea it was about to happen.

00:13:13.080 In other words, it will be a huge surprise to everyone if this happens.

00:13:16.080 Except those 18 people, if it's even that high a number, who still watch the broadcast television Sunday shows.

00:13:26.860 If you're one of those people, likely someone in intensive care, strapped to a gurney, the attendant's going out for a cigarette and taking the remote and you can't change the channel, you may have seen this on Sunday.

00:13:38.400 This is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, redolent with glee, as he describes our plans to kill Nicolas Maduro.

00:13:48.260 Watch.

00:13:49.360 Venezuela is now partnering with Hezbollah.

00:13:52.860 Hezbollah is running out of money because Iran is weak.

00:13:55.880 That's not new.

00:13:56.660 They're partnering with drug cartels in Venezuela.

00:13:59.360 No, it should have stopped.

00:14:00.900 Here's what's new.

00:14:02.980 You've got a commander in chief who's not going to put up with this crap.

00:14:05.700 But we're not going to sit on the sidelines and watch boats full of drugs come to our country.

00:14:11.060 We're going to blow them up and kill the people that want to poison America.

00:14:15.080 And we're now going to expand operations, I think, to the land.

00:14:19.100 We're not going to torture you by replaying that tape.

00:14:21.640 But if you rewind it in your spare time to the point where he says, and I'm quoting, we're going to kill people.

00:14:29.360 You can see a little shiver of excitement go through his aging frame.

00:14:33.260 We're going to kill people.

00:14:35.700 We're going to kill people.

00:14:37.360 And we're going to kill them, as Lindsey Graham just explained, because Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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00:16:54.900 Slash Tucker.

00:16:55.520 We're going to kill people in Venezuela because Hezbollah in Lebanon.

00:16:59.740 And obviously the security of southern Lebanon is a key American objective.

00:17:06.340 It's probably not five people who voted for Donald Trump who didn't do so with the security of southern Lebanon in mind.

00:17:12.720 We've got to get Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon.

00:17:15.240 And anyone who has any connection to Hezbollah must be invaded and killed, of course.

00:17:21.960 And as you learned in school, the main funder of Hezbollah is, of course, Venezuela.

00:17:28.640 They have a lot in common.

00:17:29.760 Language, religion, proximity.

00:17:32.000 What?

00:17:33.680 I mean, okay.

00:17:35.400 So they're Hezbollah guys in Venezuela.

00:17:39.360 Well, they're Hezbollah guys here.

00:17:41.500 They're Hezbollah sympathizers probably in a lot of different countries.

00:17:45.500 Okay.

00:17:46.940 What does that have to do with us?

00:17:49.560 Have a lot of Americans been killed by Hezbollah in the United States with money from Venezuela?

00:17:55.800 If so, when did that happen?

00:17:58.320 Can you prove it?

00:17:59.960 Can you speak slowly so I can understand it?

00:18:01.720 Can you show me the receipts?

00:18:03.860 Can you give me some explanation for what this is and why we're doing this?

00:18:09.920 Hezbollah!

00:18:11.220 Drugs!

00:18:13.460 So it's a mystery.

00:18:14.560 Clearly there's something going on.

00:18:16.720 One obvious partial explanation is there's a big Venezuelan exile community in South Florida.

00:18:23.340 Super nice people, actually.

00:18:24.760 Some of the nicest people you will ever meet.

00:18:27.020 Good values, decent people.

00:18:28.480 They're mad about what happened in Venezuela.

00:18:29.980 They have every reason to be mad about it.

00:18:31.780 A lot of them had all their stuff taken.

00:18:33.620 Had to flee to Florida or a lot of it taken.

00:18:35.620 Not all of it.

00:18:37.260 Judging by their houses.

00:18:38.400 But good people.

00:18:40.120 For real.

00:18:41.780 Venezuelan exiles, Cuban exiles, or a lot of Latin American exiles in South Florida.

00:18:46.060 They're mad about what happened in their home countries.

00:18:48.360 Totally understandable.

00:18:49.640 Easy to be very sympathetic to them.

00:18:51.040 I am personally sympathetic to them.

00:18:52.300 On the other hand, these are people who just got here, and so why would they be using the U.S. military to settle some score in a country that's not America?

00:19:03.620 It doesn't really seem like the way things should work.

00:19:09.540 America offers you refuge.

00:19:11.800 Great.

00:19:12.660 We feel good about it.

00:19:14.020 You feel good about it.

00:19:15.500 We feel morally superior.

00:19:18.540 You work hard and thrive.

00:19:20.340 And that's kind of worked.

00:19:21.440 But the moment when you decide, well, wait a second, I'm going to use the military power of the country that gave me shelter to fix things in the country I came from, you're going to have to tell me why that's a good idea for me and for everyone else, the hundreds of millions of other Americans who didn't come from anywhere else who were born here, whose grandparents were born here.

00:19:45.600 Why should we be paying for that?

00:19:47.860 How is that good for us?

00:19:49.200 Shut up!

00:19:51.400 No one ever asked those questions.

00:19:53.500 So it's possible that there's been quite a bit of lobbying by Venezuelan exiles in South Florida to do this.

00:20:01.480 Of course, we know that that's true.

00:20:03.240 But is that really the reason?

00:20:05.540 It feels like there must be something else going on.

00:20:07.400 You don't send the U.S. Navy to go affect regime change because people in three counties in one state want it, do you?

00:20:17.900 Maybe there's something else.

00:20:20.240 Not exactly sure what it is.

00:20:22.880 Someone should look into this because it's apparently really important.

00:20:28.580 But let's linger on the last explanation, the stated explanation.

00:20:32.500 You'll notice after Lindsey Graham finished hyperventilating about Hezbollah, whatever that is.

00:20:38.700 By the way, he left out the part about why I should care.

00:20:41.240 Oh, they were behind the 1983 barracks bombing.

00:20:43.260 Okay, yeah, I remember that.

00:20:45.200 That was 42 years ago.

00:20:47.160 There's a lot going on.

00:20:49.140 UPS just laid off almost 50,000 workers.

00:20:51.520 So tell me why Hezbollah is the top of my concern list.

00:20:54.740 Oh, shut up.

00:20:55.700 But after he got done with the Hezbollah part and restoring peace to southern Lebanon, key concern for most Americans, he said this is about drugs, bringing boats of drugs.

00:21:08.320 Now, we already went through the numbers.

00:21:10.660 Of course, there are probably drugs coming from Venezuela.

00:21:13.220 It's a chaotic country.

00:21:14.600 It's a poor country.

00:21:15.900 Per capita income is like $8,000.

00:21:18.520 Yeah, there are drugs in Venezuela.

00:21:21.340 But Venezuela is not where most drugs are coming from.

00:21:23.560 So if you wanted to address the drug crisis in the United States, what would you do?

00:21:30.380 Well, first you would acknowledge it's an actual crisis.

00:21:33.280 More Americans have died, many more Americans have died of drug ODs over the last hundred years than in all wars during that time combined, including the Second World War.

00:21:44.140 Something like 416,000 Americans died.

00:21:46.580 The Korean War.

00:21:48.620 Vietnam.

00:21:50.200 Iraq.

00:21:50.980 Afghanistan.

00:21:51.420 All of them put together.

00:21:52.560 We've had far more Americans die from drugs than from all conflicts.

00:21:59.740 So back when 40 years ago when Ronald Reagan was declaring a war on drugs, now widely mocked, it wasn't totally crazy.

00:22:07.840 This is, in its effect, in its death count, in its toll on America, like a war.

00:22:16.900 And you don't even need to know the numbers to know that.

00:22:21.080 There's not a town in America.

00:22:23.280 There's not a person in America who doesn't know someone who knows someone who's died of drugs.

00:22:29.740 It's destroyed a lot of this country.

00:22:31.700 And so if you were going to use the U.S. military to fight the drug problem, you might start here.

00:22:42.700 If you were going to take the national security state and use its awesome power to fix the drug problem,

00:22:50.080 well, I mean, maybe you could start by deporting drug dealers.

00:22:56.360 Because in every state with a drug crisis, the people trafficking the drugs, and in many cases selling the drugs, are foreign nationals.

00:23:04.920 That's true.

00:23:05.720 That is an industry that's been completely outsourced.

00:23:08.400 It's not Americans anymore.

00:23:10.460 Americans aren't growing weed in Mendocino County.

00:23:12.720 Mexican cartels are growing weed in Mendocino County and on Bolt County.

00:23:17.060 They're not, American citizens are not selling meth in New Mexico or fentanyl in Arizona.

00:23:24.640 No, it's Mexican nationals are doing that.

00:23:28.100 Americans aren't selling opioids in Market Square in San Francisco.

00:23:34.060 No, it's people from Guatemala.

00:23:35.900 And none of those people are citizens.

00:23:38.520 Why not deport them?

00:23:39.360 It shouldn't just be people with bad foreign policy views that get deported.

00:23:43.900 Also, we should deport drug dealers.

00:23:45.140 So, you know, that would be a good, precise use.

00:23:48.880 A universally popular use of ICE, it seems to me, is to start with the retail dealers.

00:23:57.420 Oh, but that's not the root of the problem.

00:24:00.220 Depends how you think about it.

00:24:02.220 We don't necessarily have to fix the problem at its root to make people's lives better.

00:24:06.220 If there are drug dealers in front of your kid's school, and then the next day they're not there,

00:24:10.760 that's a massive improvement for you and your kids.

00:24:13.200 Did we solve the drug problem?

00:24:15.180 Did we burn the poppy fields?

00:24:16.940 No.

00:24:17.960 But we solved your problem.

00:24:20.120 And solving people's problems is the purpose of government.

00:24:22.800 So let's start there.

00:24:23.660 But maybe even before we did that, we would look clearly at what we're facing.

00:24:33.540 And we would experience the rage and the shame that comes from acknowledging that your priorities are completely backward.

00:24:41.880 Our leaders spend their lives looking across the globe at fading empire and thinking,

00:24:48.140 how do I shore this up?

00:24:49.060 How do I affect change here?

00:24:50.300 How do I knock off that leader?

00:24:52.500 How do I send the CIA paramilitaries or the Delta Force in to do something dramatic?

00:24:57.440 And as they're focused on those problems, they miss what Portland, Oregon looks like.

00:25:06.100 What Portland, Maine looks like.

00:25:09.140 What San Francisco, what every big city in this country looks like.

00:25:15.200 Degraded, filthy, evil.

00:25:20.540 As a reminder, in case you haven't looked it squarely in the face, here's Portland, Oregon.

00:25:25.040 Every Friday, this paraphernalia pop-up opens for business in this busy northwest Portland neighborhood,

00:25:32.180 providing clean needles and pipes to drug users free of charge, no questions asked.

00:25:37.740 The goal?

00:25:38.560 Reducing harm by preventing infections and disease.

00:25:42.240 The problem?

00:25:43.200 The location, right in the middle of a school zone.

00:25:46.000 Essentially, our message is we want them to relocate.

00:25:49.000 Do your outreach.

00:25:50.300 Just don't do it within 550 feet of a kindergarten.

00:25:52.820 Is it that way?

00:25:54.400 Parents and neighbors have since joined forces accusing Portland Street Medicine

00:25:59.060 and the Portland People's Outreach Group, or PPOP,

00:26:03.100 of refusing request after request to move their operations out of the school zone.

00:26:08.600 Videos and photos obtained by Fox 12 show why they're so concerned.

00:26:13.600 They say every week, the free giveaway immediately attracts droves of drug users,

00:26:18.520 followed by a swarm of drug dealers, with the resulting street party lasting for days.

00:26:24.900 Drugs like fentanyl and meth sold in broad daylight.

00:26:28.540 Users disregarding the presence of children nearby.

00:26:31.860 And no evidence of outreach workers providing any treatment literature or sharps containers.

00:26:37.060 The way I see it, what they're doing is, they come into our neighborhood,

00:26:41.720 they pour gasoline on a fire, and the fire gets worse.

00:26:45.540 And it gets worse every week, it gets worse every month, it gets worse every year.

00:26:49.240 They drop needles, they drop the pipes, and then they leave.

00:26:52.080 It's the saddest thing.

00:26:55.560 That's a society completely out of control.

00:26:57.560 It's a civilization in collapse.

00:26:59.660 And the saddest thing of all is the expectations of the neighbors and the parents.

00:27:03.940 Move it out of the school zone.

00:27:05.620 The school zone.

00:27:07.000 The school zone?

00:27:09.240 How about the city?

00:27:10.500 How about the state?

00:27:11.240 How about our country?

00:27:12.160 Get out now.

00:27:13.240 Now, if you're giving drug paraphernalia to drug addicts, you're going to get shut down immediately.

00:27:20.940 If you're a convenience store selling meth pipes and Brillo pads, fake opioids, we're going to shut you down.

00:27:33.060 We're not going to have any tolerance for this.

00:27:34.580 Normal countries have zero tolerance for this.

00:27:36.820 Zero tolerance for it.

00:27:38.380 And because they have zero tolerance for it, when you visit them, you feel immediately that this is a safe country, this is a clean country, this is a country under control with self-respect.

00:27:49.840 They don't put up with that in Japan.

00:27:52.440 They don't put up with that in Doha, Qatar.

00:27:56.320 Sorry.

00:27:57.320 They don't put up that in any civilized country.

00:28:00.460 They don't say, just get out of the school zone.

00:28:02.600 They say, we're not putting up with this because this is our country.

00:28:06.980 You can't just live on the street smoking meth anywhere, school zone, park, anywhere.

00:28:16.500 We're not doing that because we know where it leads.

00:28:19.780 It leads to where it's led in this country.

00:28:21.860 Total devastation and death and degradation and loss of self-respect and chaos and filth.

00:28:27.880 It's not hard.

00:28:29.920 You don't need to kill Nicolas Maduro to fix the problem.

00:28:32.700 You need to shut down the NGOs that are making the problem worse.

00:28:36.980 They're your enemy, your enemy and the enemy of civilization, giving needles and pipes to drug addicts.

00:28:45.700 They'll give you some lecture about harm reduction.

00:28:47.320 How about we just end the harm right now by shutting down those NGOs?

00:28:53.780 It's not complex.

00:28:55.500 You don't need the U.S. Navy to do that.

00:28:58.960 DOJ could do that.

00:29:00.520 The entire state of Oregon and many other states, but Oregon specifically,

00:29:05.720 is in a state of insurrection by its total unwillingness to abide by federal narcotics laws.

00:29:15.900 They just legalized fentanyl and crack.

00:29:20.080 Can you do that?

00:29:21.780 Can you legalize slavery?

00:29:24.600 Can you?

00:29:25.380 Of course you can't.

00:29:26.820 You can't just ignore federal law.

00:29:29.780 And if you can, why are you paying your taxes?

00:29:32.860 Seriously.

00:29:33.300 If Oregon can legalize crack, why are you following any federal law?

00:29:40.620 If it's all optional, if it's a la carte, I don't think I agree with that.

00:29:43.140 I don't think I'm going to do it.

00:29:45.240 Why have a federal government?

00:29:47.940 Maybe we shouldn't have a federal government.

00:29:49.900 Maybe 50 states can live the way they want.

00:29:52.640 Okay, that's a totally different system.

00:29:54.260 Maybe we should try that.

00:29:55.180 But in the system we have right now, federal law supersedes state law.

00:30:02.720 You have to obey.

00:30:04.180 Previous presidents have sent tens of thousands of troops into various states over violations of federal law,

00:30:11.760 the refusal of a state to follow federal law.

00:30:14.780 But when it comes to drugs, we ignore it.

00:30:16.380 But the one thing that is most obviously destroying the United States at its core level,

00:30:21.980 which is to say destroying the people of the United States, we just ignore it.

00:30:27.480 This would be a good time to use force.

00:30:33.000 I know it probably wouldn't fix the Hezbollah problem.

00:30:35.960 Hezbollah!

00:30:37.300 Hezbollah!

00:30:40.140 But it might make people's lives better in our country.

00:30:43.060 Maybe that's why they're not interested in doing it.

00:30:44.420 Maybe that's why Mark Levin isn't calling for it.

00:30:46.380 Because it's just about us.

00:30:47.640 And like, who cares?

00:30:48.680 Shut up and pay.

00:30:50.560 But of course, it would be a mistake to pretend it's just Portland, Oregon.

00:30:56.300 It's also Tampa, Florida.

00:30:59.460 It's also Phoenix, Arizona.

00:31:01.840 It's also Oklahoma City.

00:31:04.400 And it's Bangor.

00:31:06.440 And it's every single city in this country has a deadly drug problem.

00:31:14.540 The Therese State has killed more Americans in the last hundred years than all wars combined.

00:31:20.500 Here's Philadelphia.

00:31:21.780 Watch this.

00:31:22.320 Alarm bells are sounding in Philadelphia about Trank.

00:31:27.660 You'd see people kind of like walking around looking like animals when their knuckles are touching the ground.

00:31:33.740 Now Art L. Malik's hands and knuckles are swollen to three times their natural size from exposure to the animal sedative xylazine, street name Trank.

00:31:43.700 When I was leaving, somebody had to take samples and that's what got me stuck, man.

00:31:48.120 They had samples of pre-dupe.

00:31:49.420 The xylazine now mixed into 90% of Philadelphia's fentanyl and heroin supply, drugs that drive fatal overdoses.

00:31:57.440 Adding a horse tranquilizer, something more sedating, makes it feel like it lasts longer.

00:32:03.820 But now fentanyl addicts newly addicted to xylazine, seen nodding out and falling over along Philadelphia's notorious Kensington Avenue, are also developing dangerous sores on their bodies.

00:32:16.040 Biggest holes all over you, these sores in your legs and wherever, they just pop out of anywhere.

00:32:22.440 Have the doctors told you that you could lose your leg?

00:32:25.380 Yes.

00:32:25.640 And that's not enough to get you to stop?

00:32:28.440 I'm trying.

00:32:29.880 It's a lot easier said than done.

00:32:32.720 The next time someone lectures you to Hamas or Hezbollah, show them that video.

00:32:38.100 That's your country.

00:32:39.240 Those are your countrymen.

00:32:40.360 Those are your people.

00:32:42.660 And not only dying, it's worse than that.

00:32:45.920 They're living death.

00:32:49.100 They're so degraded.

00:32:50.900 You heard the guy say, they live like animals.

00:32:52.760 Killing Maduro, I guess you can make a case for it.

00:32:59.000 It's not going to fix that.

00:33:00.760 It's not going to even touch that.

00:33:02.880 So why don't I go right to the actual problem, which is we put up with this stuff we shouldn't.

00:33:11.840 Our federal government doesn't care.

00:33:14.180 Lindsey Graham has zero interest in solving these problems.

00:33:17.400 But those are the real problems.

00:33:19.360 They're the problems you can walk to.

00:33:21.580 They're problems in your city.

00:33:22.900 They're the reason you don't live in the city you grew up in anymore.

00:33:25.940 They've driven you out of your own city.

00:33:28.960 We're running out of places to run to.

00:33:30.700 And nobody cares.

00:33:35.520 They're not sending the U.S. Navy to fix the city you grew up in.

00:33:41.340 Because it's not Hezbollah.

00:33:45.020 So the question is, are we actually about to embark on a regime change war in Venezuela?

00:33:51.980 What is this naval armada doing on its way to Caracas?

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00:35:08.540 Colonel Douglas McGregor commanded the last, I think, the last tank battle that the U.S. Army participated in during the first Iraq war.

00:35:19.360 A graduate of West Point and a frequent guest joins us now to assess the likelihood of a regime change war against Maduro.

00:35:27.040 Doug, thanks so much for coming on.

00:35:28.300 Are we doing this?

00:35:28.960 It looks bad.

00:35:32.720 In fact, it looks like it could happen on 4 or 5 November.

00:35:36.900 The reason I bring that up, it just so happens to be a full moon, which would lend credence to the argument that lunatics are ruling us in Washington, D.C.

00:35:45.400 You know, you've gone down the list of reasons, and there are a couple that I would add, because I recently went into D.C. and I talked to some people.

00:35:54.400 Some of the people I talked to are just below the decision maker level.

00:35:58.280 And these are the usual smug resume builders who come in and out through every administration, hoping that at some point they'll get a high-level appointment.

00:36:08.080 And they said a couple of things that I thought were interesting.

00:36:11.660 First, they said, well, you've got to understand, Doug, we're flipping the chessboard on Russia and China.

00:36:18.840 I said, what?

00:36:20.800 Oh, yes, don't you understand?

00:36:22.720 By going into Venezuela, we're saying a very strong message, because Russia and China have tried to build up and cultivate support there, and we're telling them that they can't do it.

00:36:33.700 We're flipping the chessboard.

00:36:36.200 Well, I said, well, I don't think the Russians are prepared to fight for Venezuela.

00:36:40.000 In fact, I know that Putin has given very explicit instructions to the Venezuelans.

00:36:44.260 You're on your own.

00:36:45.320 We'll give you equipment and assistance if we can, but forget it.

00:36:49.420 We're not going to fight for you.

00:36:51.120 The Chinese certainly aren't going to send the Chinese Navy to the Caribbean to stand off and fight us.

00:36:56.000 That's not going to happen.

00:36:57.280 And I said that.

00:36:58.200 I said, so, you know, you can't make this argument that this has some great strategic value that justifies this enormous task force.

00:37:05.480 And, you know, it ultimately boiled down to it's time for us to be strong again.

00:37:11.900 As though bombing hapless people in Venezuela or Colombia or Nicaragua or anywhere in Latin America is testimony to our greatness as a nation.

00:37:21.380 And then, of course, the final straw is, well, we've got to we've got to destroy the drug problem where it originates.

00:37:27.700 Well, I've got a big flash of the obvious.

00:37:30.260 The drug problem originates here inside the United States.

00:37:34.540 You're not going to get anywhere by bombing Mexico just because Mexico provides most of the fentanyl.

00:37:40.400 And when I say Mexico, we're talking about the cartels.

00:37:42.880 And Mexico is an organized crime state.

00:37:44.800 It has been for a while.

00:37:45.700 Well, they're going to do what they can.

00:37:47.260 But the Mexican army is much more responsive to the cartels than it is to the president of Mexico.

00:37:53.040 So, you know, bombing these places is going to stop anything.

00:37:56.040 It's not going to improve anything.

00:37:57.300 It may turn out to rally all of Latin America against us.

00:38:02.500 The evil Yankee who's intervening yet again inside Central and South America.

00:38:07.480 We're blamed for almost everything that's wrong down there.

00:38:10.380 All we're doing is saying, I guess you're right.

00:38:12.800 Look what we're doing now.

00:38:14.220 It's not going to change anything.

00:38:16.280 But that means you've got to come home.

00:38:18.740 This seems to be the thing that no one in Washington wants to do.

00:38:22.520 Somebody said, Doug, what do you want to come home for?

00:38:25.200 You know, we have troops all over the place.

00:38:26.980 We have, what do you want to come back here for?

00:38:28.660 I said, because what happens here is far more important and existential for us than anything beyond our borders.

00:38:36.120 The world has changed.

00:38:37.880 Putting little packets of troops or ships here or there isn't going to stop things from happening overseas.

00:38:43.800 They're going to happen whether we like it or not.

00:38:45.700 And the good news is most of what happens beyond our borders doesn't matter to us.

00:38:49.980 It's not a reflection on us.

00:38:53.280 We need to focus here.

00:38:54.440 And I said, you know, if you exercise some restraint right now, you bring the forces back to the United States, defend the borders, defend the coastal waters, and then crack down on the peddlers.

00:39:06.540 And I would add child trafficking to the drug trafficking.

00:39:09.880 Of course.

00:39:10.260 And I would impose the death penalty for anybody who engages in it.

00:39:14.040 That means you're going to go to trial.

00:39:15.880 And if you're found guilty, you're going to face the death penalty or reason.

00:39:19.140 Oh, that's terrible.

00:39:20.880 But it's okay to bomb Venezuela.

00:39:22.800 Venezuela, you know, don't execute the drug peddler or the child trafficker, but let's bomb Venezuela.

00:39:29.140 It doesn't make any damn sense whatsoever.

00:39:31.420 That's where people's heads are right now in Washington, D.C.

00:39:34.920 But I worry, I mean, it used to be, well, you're the army officer, you tell me, but my understanding was in a democracy, you know, in our republic, the president has constitutional authority to just send troops and start wars effectively, even without congressional approval, I've noticed.

00:39:56.100 But there was always this expectation that someone would explain why we're doing this.

00:40:01.000 You didn't want to go into a conflict because, of course, you never really know what's going to happen without getting the public on board.

00:40:08.760 And I don't think I know five people who know this is about to happen.

00:40:13.820 Well, you know, you bring something up that's very interesting.

00:40:16.720 Somebody pointed out to me just the other day, Benjamin Franklin told the population that was standing out in front of the Independence Hall when they asked, what sort of government do we have now, Mr. Franklin?

00:40:27.960 This is after the Constitutional Convention.

00:40:31.000 He said, well, you have a republic if you can keep it.

00:40:33.900 And he said, we need to change that because today, if Ben Franklin came back, he would say, you have a drama queen republic if you can keep it.

00:40:42.340 We have a lot of frivolous theatrics in Washington that passes for diplomacy and policy.

00:40:48.340 We have a president, and you know that I like the president personally, always have.

00:40:52.860 But everything is about theatrics and optics and appearances.

00:40:58.400 And now we have the prime minister of Japan, who just made wonderful deals for Japan with us, by the way.

00:41:05.760 Japan is going to continue to buy oil and gas from Russia.

00:41:08.660 There will be no change in that.

00:41:09.840 Japan is going to invest more in the United States.

00:41:14.020 We're already heavily invested here as it is.

00:41:16.060 That's not a big deal.

00:41:17.320 Although Toyota has since come back and said, we're not increasing our investment.

00:41:21.740 Sorry, we didn't make that promise.

00:41:23.140 But she gave Donald Trump the most expensive set of golf clubs in world history.

00:41:30.780 They're beautiful.

00:41:31.600 They're magnificent.

00:41:32.540 And she promised that she would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:41:37.200 And suddenly, President Trump says, this has been a big success.

00:41:42.220 We are winning.

00:41:43.960 So now he goes on to South Korea.

00:41:46.000 I'm sure he'll get some similar treatment there.

00:41:48.460 And oh, by the way, I see no evidence that India is going to stop buying oil and gas from Russia.

00:41:52.940 And now we have this ceasefire that was declared a few weeks ago.

00:41:57.580 That's just completely disastrously violated by the Israelis.

00:42:01.820 And everybody says, OK, that's fine.

00:42:05.420 So what are we dealing with?

00:42:07.160 We're dealing with facades, illusions.

00:42:10.580 And I think Venezuela is another illusion.

00:42:13.540 Instead of doing exactly what you've suggested, turning inward, focusing here at home on what's important.

00:42:20.420 Bring the forces back.

00:42:21.620 If we'll exercise some restraint now, we'll build more capability for the future.

00:42:27.880 But there is no long-term planning.

00:42:30.880 We launched a tariff war.

00:42:32.820 There's no stability in the tariff regime.

00:42:35.260 It's driving everyone crazy.

00:42:37.380 They talk about the dollar as reserve currency.

00:42:39.940 That's all shifting into pure gold now.

00:42:42.420 Ask Nassim Taleb.

00:42:44.060 Ask Ray Dalio.

00:42:45.420 Ask anybody.

00:42:46.620 Gold is the new reserve currency.

00:42:48.860 We're not even prepared for that.

00:42:50.240 We're not paying attention to it.

00:42:52.280 Let's bomb Venezuela.

00:42:54.660 Let's bomb Colombia.

00:42:55.840 Let's punish those bastards.

00:42:58.020 They're the ones that created this drug problem.

00:43:00.340 No, they're not.

00:43:01.820 They're feeding an appetite in North America for something that people will pay a lot of money for.

00:43:07.060 Crack down on the appetite at home.

00:43:09.960 Secure the borders, the coastal waters.

00:43:12.260 And stay out of Central and South America.

00:43:15.860 I don't understand how.

00:43:20.240 I mean, our public conversation is so dominated by Hamas, Hezbollah, all these far away Ukraine, Russia, these far away conflicts.

00:43:28.020 It's groups that are really not connected to the United States and haven't over time posed a meaningful threat to the United States.

00:43:34.900 You're not even allowed to say that.

00:43:37.120 Hamas does not pose a threat to the United States and never has.

00:43:39.660 Like, why am I mad about, more mad about Hamas than I'm mad about the open air drug market in Philadelphia?

00:43:44.580 Why don't any politicians in the Congress put the open air drug market in Philadelphia above the threat of Hamas?

00:43:55.740 What is that?

00:43:56.420 Well, I think you have an answer of sorts.

00:44:00.220 And it comes, interestingly enough, from Mrs. Machado.

00:44:03.380 I don't know if she's married or not, so I call her Mrs.

00:44:06.260 She may just be Mrs. Machado.

00:44:08.040 She's the lady that just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and she's from Venezuela.

00:44:12.200 And she said, if we're liberated by the U.S. armed forces and they remove Maduro, our first act will be to move the Venezuelan embassy to Jerusalem.

00:44:25.800 What does that have to do with?

00:44:28.180 I'm completely confused.

00:44:30.200 Like, what?

00:44:31.000 Well, you can't be that confused.

00:44:32.720 I think she's hit on something very important.

00:44:36.100 She's figured out where the power lies, and she's playing to the audience that makes the decisions.

00:44:40.980 You're talking about this democracy business.

00:44:44.120 We've always been a republic with limited democracy.

00:44:47.020 But I think we can pretty much conclude that we're ruled now by a small group of extraordinarily wealthy people.

00:44:54.780 Billionaire oligarchs.

00:44:56.140 Those are the terms they use in Eastern Europe and places like Ukraine.

00:44:59.860 Yeah.

00:45:00.160 I think they're in charge.

00:45:01.640 I think they're calling the shots.

00:45:03.120 And I think there are interests in the oil resources, oil and gas primarily, although, let's face it, they've got gold mines and emerald mines as well, and other things.

00:45:13.440 I'm told they have a lot of lithium.

00:45:15.440 There may be a true interest in putting in a puppet government and finding a way to extract these resources, because right now, for the first time in 30 years, all the central banks beyond the borders of the United States around the world hold more gold than we do.

00:45:31.820 That's a very important thing to understand.

00:45:36.780 So how do you begin to reverse this process of managed decline, which is really what we've been on now for the last 25 years?

00:45:44.900 Well, oil is part of it.

00:45:47.080 Oil is gold.

00:45:48.060 And even though the oil is exactly what you described, it's heavy oil, high sulfur content, requires a lot of refining.

00:45:55.360 But still, we have the best oil engineers in the world, especially for deep drilling.

00:46:00.540 It will probably, for the same amount of money we pay for one barrel of oil out of the ground in the United States, we can probably get two out of Venezuela.

00:46:08.480 It's still not as good as Iran or Libya, where you can probably get three barrels out for what we spend to drill in the United States.

00:46:17.820 But it doesn't look like we're going to get control of the Iranian oil fields.

00:46:21.280 And I think we've bullied the Emirates and the Saudis not as much as we can at the moment.

00:46:27.920 And Iran stands defiant.

00:46:29.620 So look for another war in the Middle East while all of this is unfolding, because Israel's objectives aren't met.

00:46:36.620 Neither are the objectives of the New York and London banks.

00:46:40.320 I think we're in a lot of trouble financially, and there's a genuine interest in controlling resources to offset that crisis.

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00:48:02.180 So you think this is a resource play, that this is motivated by control?

00:48:07.620 I think it's a big part.

00:48:09.220 But would it actually take an invasion?

00:48:13.140 I mean, Lindsey Graham was salivating at the idea of boots on the ground in Venezuela.

00:48:17.860 That'll confuse the crap out of most Americans if that happens.

00:48:20.280 But why not just go to Maduro?

00:48:24.780 I think he offered.

00:48:27.140 Well, that's what I was just going to tell you, that we didn't have to go to Mr. Maduro.

00:48:31.100 He came to us.

00:48:32.180 Right.

00:48:32.540 And in fact, President Trump was questioned in the Oval Office last week.

00:48:36.120 And they said, we understand that Mr. Maduro approached you through intermediaries, no doubt, and offered you a very lucrative deal.

00:48:44.600 I'm told it was about a stake in the oil and gas industry, all sorts of things like that.

00:48:49.740 And he replied, he said, oh, yes, it was not just a good deal.

00:48:53.240 He offered everything.

00:48:55.000 And so people looked, said, was that not enough?

00:48:58.760 No, that's not enough.

00:49:01.240 I think there's something else going on here beyond that.

00:49:04.220 Clearly.

00:49:05.740 That's what I'm asking.

00:49:07.060 I ask people, and some people have said, well, you remember, Venezuela was involved in that Dominion software scandal.

00:49:14.600 Remember that Dominion software was developed for Hugo Chavez.

00:49:18.360 I said, okay, maybe this is a personal grudge match.

00:49:23.160 I don't know.

00:49:23.800 But I do know that there is this feeling that President Trump needs a win.

00:49:31.140 He wants a win.

00:49:32.260 He's not going to get a win out of Ukraine.

00:49:34.560 Doesn't look like he's going to get a win out of the Middle East.

00:49:37.500 So where does he go for a win?

00:49:40.500 How about Philadelphia or Portland?

00:49:44.700 No, I'm serious.

00:49:46.180 I mean, that was the whole point.

00:49:47.580 That was why people voted for that.

00:49:51.500 It's not hard.

00:49:52.440 And for the resources we're spending just to send the ships to the Caribbean, you know, you could do a lot for downtown Atlanta.

00:49:59.700 Like, isn't that what people want?

00:50:02.380 77 million people voted for exactly what you're describing.

00:50:06.080 There's no question about it.

00:50:07.680 But I don't think that is necessarily the kind of theater that Washington's interested in.

00:50:13.060 And I don't think people on the Hill may also include friends of President Trump and others are necessarily going to profit from any of that activity.

00:50:22.760 I mean, we're watching an awful lot of huge hundred million, billion dollar deals closed all over the place by people connected back to Washington right now.

00:50:32.720 That's not new.

00:50:33.680 We saw that under the Biden and Clinton administrations.

00:50:36.220 But it's certainly vulgar and out in the open right now.

00:50:39.760 You don't close those kinds of deals by shutting down the drug trade and the child trafficking in Philadelphia or Seattle or anywhere else.

00:50:47.760 I do think it's fair for people to say, OK, you know, do your deals, do your crypto or whatever.

00:50:58.180 But we don't want to live like animals and we want, you know, our kids to be able to buy a home.

00:51:05.960 And like there should be more balance here.

00:51:09.880 Like no presidency should be completely dominated by foreign policy concerns.

00:51:14.000 And yet most of them seem to be.

00:51:16.680 Well, they're drawn into it because it's a wonderful platform for them to display their decisiveness, their strength, their courage, their leadership.

00:51:26.380 That's the way people think of it.

00:51:27.920 But you're right.

00:51:29.200 It's an illusion.

00:51:30.620 And, you know, I know President Trump from the standpoint of foreign policy to some extent.

00:51:35.600 It was very clear to me the last time I spoke with him and worked with him that he wanted to get our forces out of Europe.

00:51:41.720 Now, very recently, nobody's paid any attention to it.

00:51:44.500 But suddenly we're finally withdrawing troops from Romania and Bulgaria.

00:51:48.660 That's a very wise thing to do.

00:51:50.260 Thank God.

00:51:50.780 Let's get them out of Poland, get them out of Lithuania, start pulling them out of Germany.

00:51:55.580 We don't need those forces over there.

00:51:57.640 And the Europeans don't need those forces.

00:51:59.720 There is no threat to Europe from Russia.

00:52:01.700 I think he knows that.

00:52:03.240 I think he knows that China isn't going to invade Taiwan.

00:52:06.700 And so you see him moving through Asia diplomatically and behind the scenes.

00:52:10.660 Everybody is telling him, we're not supporting a war with China.

00:52:14.060 China is not a military threat to us.

00:52:17.060 I think he understands that.

00:52:18.280 So I think he wants to focus at home.

00:52:21.760 But this thing in the Caribbean basin is clearly not an original idea on his part.

00:52:26.900 He agrees the threat from Central and South America, but particularly Central America, is very serious.

00:52:32.480 He knows that.

00:52:33.820 But the issue is how do you deal with it?

00:52:35.900 And you deal with it along the lines that we've described.

00:52:38.120 But how do you face people who say, well, I don't want you to arrest someone, and then if they're found guilty, punish them with the death penalty if they're trafficking children or they're trafficking drugs?

00:52:52.220 But the same people that object to that will turn around and say, well, I don't want you to bomb innocent people in Venezuela or Colombia.

00:53:01.100 They need to make up their minds.

00:53:03.220 They need to understand what is required, what is necessary for the survival of the country.

00:53:07.920 You're right.

00:53:08.640 You know, we had a dispute over this federal law issue back in 1861.

00:53:12.560 We solved it.

00:53:13.640 It was ugly, but we did it.

00:53:15.820 And we may have to solve it again.

00:53:18.240 I keep wondering when the John Brown moment arrives.

00:53:21.040 We've got a lot of evidence that one is coming because we can't let governors and mayors stand there and pour filth and abuse all over our federal laws and simply say, no, we won't enforce them.

00:53:33.260 And by the way, we regard you and your police forces as the enemy.

00:53:36.880 Yeah.

00:53:37.240 It's insane.

00:53:38.880 So since you have to ask you a final question about Russia, Ukraine, when does that conflict end?

00:53:46.640 My impression is that since President Trump concluded that he wasn't going to get a ceasefire that he could tout as another great foreign policy achievement, like the last ceasefire in Gaza, he's lost interest.

00:54:02.800 I think he knows that he can't settle that.

00:54:06.800 But remember, he made remarks before he was elected, which were very unfortunate, telling everyone, I can end this with a phone call in 24 hours.

00:54:15.280 No understanding whatsoever of the problem.

00:54:18.020 That is very unfortunate.

00:54:19.960 The problem is far more serious.

00:54:22.400 By the end of this week, he is going to meet.

00:54:24.740 I think it's in the next few days.

00:54:26.780 It may be next week.

00:54:27.640 I don't know.

00:54:28.360 He's going to be meeting with the leaders of the five Central Asian republics, you know, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and so forth.

00:54:37.280 He wants to talk to them about commercial arrangements with us and trade.

00:54:42.420 This is going to be a real serious issue for the Russians and the Chinese.

00:54:46.960 First of all, Moscow has not forgotten our attempted coup at about in January, February of 2022, when we tried to overthrow the government in Uzbekistan.

00:54:58.200 The Russians went in there at the request of the president and stabilized it.

00:55:01.780 This was another one of these color revolutions cooked up by the National Endowment for Democracy, which should be the National Endowment for Anarchy, and, of course, the CIA, always.

00:55:13.700 The CIA mucks around in Central Asia all the time.

00:55:16.280 We're still pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into places like Afghanistan that are really destined to support subversive elements in Central Asia.

00:55:25.040 The Russians don't like it.

00:55:26.580 They don't want it.

00:55:27.280 Neither do the Chinese.

00:55:28.720 They want stability there.

00:55:30.240 They want to build the one belt, one road, which they know will bring prosperity to the people of Central Asia.

00:55:36.240 And they also have a long memory.

00:55:38.540 They don't want Central Asia to become what it was a few hundred years ago, which was the greatest force in the world under someone like Genghis Khan.

00:55:45.600 And people laugh.

00:55:47.400 Well, you don't understand Central Asia and the people that live there.

00:55:50.280 But they could be mobilized.

00:55:52.040 They could be united and present a real danger to everyone.

00:55:55.320 The Russians and the Chinese understand this.

00:55:57.500 They don't want that to happen.

00:55:58.920 But we're in the business of subverting and destabilizing.

00:56:03.040 And this visit now will not be treated as something positive in Moscow.

00:56:07.000 They will see this as another attempt to undermine Russian and Chinese security.

00:56:13.120 That's a meeting he doesn't need to hold.

00:56:15.860 But he's going everywhere.

00:56:17.920 He's selling America.

00:56:19.000 That's his argument.

00:56:20.240 I don't think people understand the implications.

00:56:22.080 So the bottom line is, President Trump has great instincts, but then he walks into the swamp and he gets mugged early.

00:56:31.200 And people distract him into areas where he's not familiar.

00:56:36.340 And they're going to put an end to his presidency if they drag him into Venezuela.

00:56:41.260 That place is a terrible, terrible mess for us.

00:56:44.960 We can't fix it.

00:56:45.980 We shouldn't try.

00:56:47.080 Let the people that live there do it.

00:56:48.580 And if they say, well, they can't, well, that's their problem.

00:56:50.800 It's their home.

00:56:52.180 Remember, Venezuela has 1,700 miles of coastline, 1,370-mile border with Colombia, 1,380-mile border with Brazil.

00:57:04.560 And I'm being told by people with experience down there that you've got 100,000 paramilitaries along their border in Brazil and Colombia that are just can't wait to go into Venezuela and fight us if we go into that country.

00:57:18.580 And this sort of thing will spread.

00:57:20.840 It's the last thing that we need.

00:57:22.920 What we need is stability and peace.

00:57:25.480 I would urge the president to reconsider his rejection of this proposal from Maduro and get out of this business of regime change, particularly when you know that somebody like Machado is playing to the wrong audience.

00:57:39.420 Well, what a joke.

00:57:41.020 Why are we trying to install this woman?

00:57:43.180 It makes no sense.

00:57:44.120 Well, because she'll bring gay marriage to Venezuela, and that's important.

00:57:49.520 I mean, that's what we stand for.

00:57:51.720 Well, you know, you've got some real criminals.

00:57:54.240 Let me just finish up here real quick.

00:57:55.960 On the hills around Caracas, you've got as many as 8,000 Colombian drug criminals.

00:58:01.700 They're there.

00:58:02.260 There's no question about it.

00:58:04.160 Maduro has clamped down on them, contrary to what people here think.

00:58:08.060 He's holding them in check.

00:58:09.560 That's not an easy thing to do in Latin America, as you know.

00:58:12.500 You visited El Salvador.

00:58:13.960 You know the region.

00:58:15.180 You know what it's like.

00:58:16.660 This woman can't do that.

00:58:18.900 So my point is that if you don't like it now, it'll get a lot worse if we go in there.

00:58:24.780 Yeah, but I mean, is he protecting the trans community?

00:58:29.660 No.

00:58:30.540 You know?

00:58:31.120 So let's kill him.

00:58:33.160 Thank you, Doug.

00:58:33.940 Great to see you.

00:58:35.560 Thank you, Tucker.

00:58:37.420 So there are at least two ways, either ends of the telescope, to consider the drug problem.

00:58:42.820 One is at the level of countries, the root problem.

00:58:48.540 And the other is at the level of your experience, your daily life.

00:58:56.020 So Washington is very focused on the macro.

00:58:58.440 We need to sign this treaty.

00:59:01.880 We need to depose this dictator.

00:59:03.660 We need to send military force to this region.

00:59:06.600 We need to change this policy.

00:59:08.540 But most people understand drugs in terms of, like, their niece, who is living on the street,

00:59:15.040 or their nephew, or college roommate's son, or their own daughter, who dies of a fentanyl OD.

00:59:23.060 And the truth is, it's probably easier, less expensive, and much more effective to deal

00:59:33.840 with the drug problem on the level of experience, which is to say, in your daily life, than it

00:59:39.880 is on some international level.

00:59:42.800 Root causes are hard to pin down.

00:59:45.780 Everyone's got a theory about the root cause is for everything.

00:59:47.900 But no one needs to theorize about what a nodding fentanyl addict looks like, or someone having

00:59:56.280 some kind of manic episode on the subway because he smoked too much meth.

01:00:00.120 That is something everybody understands.

01:00:03.000 And authorities, local, state, and federal, have made basically zero effort to fix those

01:00:08.100 problems for the last 30 years.

01:00:09.720 And as a result, hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of thousands of Americans have

01:00:14.820 died, and a much greater number have had their lives destroyed.

01:00:18.100 For a time, a long time, Ginny Burton was one of those.

01:00:21.720 She's from the state of Washington.

01:00:23.600 She was addicted to drugs.

01:00:25.900 She was arrested multiple times.

01:00:27.400 In fact, this is what she looked like.

01:00:28.640 This is a mugshot from Ginny Burton.

01:00:31.340 There she is.

01:00:33.260 At the height of her drug addiction.

01:00:35.340 Look familiar?

01:00:35.800 Here, our parks and our sidewalks in every American city are filled with people who look

01:00:40.560 exactly like that.

01:00:41.400 The difference is that Ginny Burton recovered completely.

01:00:44.860 We've spoken to her before because she has a perspective that people really ought to hear.

01:00:50.060 And that perspective is, what is it like to be the victim of all of this, of these root

01:00:55.200 causes?

01:00:55.740 And what can we do to help people like her, like your niece?

01:01:00.200 Ginny Burton joins us now.

01:01:01.620 Ginny, thanks so much for coming on.

01:01:04.460 Thanks for having me, Tucker.

01:01:05.800 So, these groups that hand out needles and pipes to addicts, this started 40 years ago

01:01:19.600 in Europe, in Switzerland, in Zurich, and was abandoned because it seemed to make the

01:01:24.620 problem worse.

01:01:25.460 But in this country, it's only become better funded, more widespread.

01:01:30.360 No one has really pushed back against it in a meaningful way.

01:01:33.740 What effect does handing pipes to meth heads have on the meth heads, do you think?

01:01:41.440 Well, it exacerbates the problem.

01:01:43.440 It helps us stay stuck in a state of dependency.

01:01:46.580 So, we're actually contributing to the destruction of human life, and we've made an industry out

01:01:52.860 of it in the United States.

01:01:55.200 It does seem like an industry.

01:01:57.180 It seems like it employs an awful lot of people.

01:01:59.840 It employs more people.

01:02:01.120 These NGOs employ more people than drug addicts they're saving.

01:02:07.160 I mean, have you ever heard of any drug addict who's like, oh, a free pipe?

01:02:09.980 I'm going to stop using drugs.

01:02:12.960 Yeah, it really doesn't happen that way.

01:02:16.740 A person has to be removed from the destructive path in order to gain that clarity.

01:02:21.620 I think it's a very, very small percentage of people that can be immersed in the problem

01:02:27.600 in that hypnotic sort of intimate relationship with drugs and actually find their way out.

01:02:32.900 And I'm talking a really small percentage.

01:02:36.160 So, yeah, we're definitely contributing to the problem.

01:02:39.560 Can I share something really interesting with you, actually?

01:02:42.940 Yes.

01:02:43.240 So, in 2001, 9-11 happened.

01:02:46.880 2002, early 2002, George Bush extended unemployment benefits.

01:02:53.500 It was called worker retraining.

01:02:54.880 And he allowed for, I believe it was a 13-week extension for anybody that was going to receive

01:03:05.800 a certificate because they were displaced because of what happened during 9-11.

01:03:10.940 I attended at that time, and I had just gotten out of prison September of 2000.

01:03:16.820 So, I'd been working in a doggy daycare at the time, and I made the decision to go back

01:03:21.420 to school.

01:03:21.800 So, I attended an information session at the Seattle Central Community College.

01:03:26.600 And it was during that time that there were two different industries that were projected

01:03:31.120 to significantly increase within the next 20 to 25 years.

01:03:34.640 One was the biotech industry.

01:03:36.480 There was a certificate program that was being pushed in that industry, but it was also the

01:03:42.140 social service and drug counselor or drug treatment industry.

01:03:47.560 So, it was projected that within the next 20 to 25 years that those two industries were

01:03:53.200 going to explode significantly.

01:03:55.400 And that was something that I never forgot.

01:03:58.000 I kind of put that little piece of information in my pocket.

01:04:02.600 And then when I went to work in social services, which I felt spiritually compelled to do as a

01:04:07.260 recovering addict who didn't really have a lot of experience navigating anything except

01:04:11.680 for that environment, I've watched the decline happen exponentially.

01:04:18.640 And that little memory was sort of brought to the forefront of my mind.

01:04:23.360 And it makes me really believe that this is by design.

01:04:27.900 So, how did you get better?

01:04:30.160 How long were you addicted?

01:04:31.540 And how did you get sober?

01:04:34.840 Yeah, well, I was on drugs the majority of a 30-year period.

01:04:39.580 I started using around the age of seven.

01:04:41.800 I was arrested for my, I don't know how many times I was facing a fourth prison sentence at

01:04:47.400 the age of 40.

01:04:48.820 And it was at that point that I knew that I couldn't keep destroying my life.

01:04:53.760 I knew that the system was only going to provide one dimension of what I needed, which was the

01:04:58.360 separation.

01:04:58.920 Um, and then I utilized, you know, my will and whatever it is that came into the institution

01:05:08.000 treatment or 12-step treatment opportunities and church to actually piece together some

01:05:14.740 sort of process for me to stop screwing myself over.

01:05:17.500 If it weren't for arrest and incarceration, Tucker, I wouldn't be doing the work that I'm

01:05:21.060 doing today.

01:05:22.200 Do you think you'd be alive if you'd never been arrested?

01:05:26.080 Oh, no, I'm pretty sure I'd probably be dead.

01:05:28.460 At this point, especially with what's been happening over the last five years, um, and

01:05:33.260 mind you, we've had this progression, uh, with drugs and the, uh, sort of decrease in

01:05:39.820 law enforcement engagement and court, uh, system, um, separation from the real problem.

01:05:47.080 Um, but specifically over the last five years during COVID and the George Floyd area, I've

01:05:53.300 seen an exponential, uh, spiraling of the drain with the, um, with the people that make up

01:05:59.500 this portion of the population.

01:06:01.240 What do you mean is spiraling?

01:06:02.940 Are there, are the drugs more powerful?

01:06:04.760 Are there different drugs?

01:06:05.780 Are they, yeah, different drugs, heroin is no longer, yeah, heroin is no longer a thing.

01:06:11.120 Fentanyl now dominates the industry.

01:06:13.200 I think the majority of our drugs are coming up through Mexico.

01:06:16.040 We used to produce drugs right here in this country.

01:06:18.880 There were much better drugs.

01:06:19.980 I'll just tell you that than what we're getting today.

01:06:22.320 Um, we've seen disease and destruction and overdose and insanity, like just explode over

01:06:30.940 the last five years specifically.

01:06:32.960 I believe that the first time I, um, remember somebody dying of a fentanyl overdose was about

01:06:40.280 2017, but where we really started to see the increase in the overdose deaths was about

01:06:45.660 2020.

01:06:46.420 I truly believe that if incarceration and separation were not an option for me, I was arrested in

01:06:54.640 2012 and we were not pumping medication assisted treatment drugs into everybody's life at that

01:07:02.120 time, the way that we are now.

01:07:03.680 I truly believe that I would be dead today because of the potent, um, nature of fentanyl, um, the

01:07:13.160 complicitness with the industry and making this problem so accessible that people essentially

01:07:20.780 cannot get themselves out of the maze because when a person goes to a social service agency

01:07:25.880 to get help, they're looking for a way out and what's happening.

01:07:29.820 And this is why I couldn't work in the industry anymore.

01:07:31.820 What's happening is, is when they go to get that help, um, they're being handed the poisons

01:07:37.520 that continue to destroy their life.

01:07:39.420 And so it's like, they're trying to navigate through this maze.

01:07:42.740 And as soon as they get close to the door to get out of the maze, the trap door is dropped

01:07:47.420 and they're rewarded with rotten fish.

01:07:49.600 Essentially they're given the very thing that's destroying their life.

01:07:53.380 And, um, you know, our service, uh, structures are helping them kill themselves.

01:08:01.360 It's really grotesque.

01:08:02.740 Like, but I mean, this is not a complex problem to solve, is it just stop making it easy for

01:08:08.880 drug addicts to be addicted to drugs and you'll save a lot of lives.

01:08:13.460 Yeah.

01:08:13.980 I, I, and I think it's a little even more simple than that.

01:08:17.240 It's about accountability, right?

01:08:19.120 So we've removed accountability from, I think every aspect of everything in this country.

01:08:23.440 We're literally in first, let me, I also want to say, thank you for the things that you're

01:08:28.160 covering.

01:08:29.200 Um, thank you for being concerned about the bodies that we're walking over in our own

01:08:33.640 country before you're being concerned about what's going on in other countries, because

01:08:37.360 we're focusing our attention so much on the lives of others.

01:08:42.140 While we are, um, devaluing the lives in our own communities, we are saying that the people

01:08:49.800 that we're walking past that are destroying their lives are less worthy of our support than

01:08:55.920 the people that are being affected by foreign policy, um, in other places.

01:09:01.220 And so that's really, in my opinion, it's none of our business until we can get our own

01:09:05.640 house in order.

01:09:06.360 If I was in my home and my family members were ill and their lives were deteriorating

01:09:12.440 and I was being mandated to go out into my neighborhood to help other families first,

01:09:16.480 I would, I would put, uh, a big break on that.

01:09:20.860 I would not leave my own home to help the people in my neighborhood before I helped my

01:09:25.160 own family.

01:09:25.660 And I feel like that's what we're doing.

01:09:27.300 And so, um, we're, we're spending millions and millions of dollars or excuse me, billions

01:09:33.420 and billions of dollars in other countries, um, while we're spending millions and millions

01:09:39.580 of dollars, actually $1.7 trillion in dependency creating programs that do not help people to

01:09:44.800 overcome their circumstances or their underlying causes in this country, um, and ignoring the

01:09:51.600 fact that these are our community members.

01:09:53.240 We can hold people accountable.

01:09:55.540 That includes the people that are on drugs.

01:09:57.760 The people that are on drugs, drugs are not free.

01:10:00.840 They're committing crimes, they're victimizing people in the community.

01:10:05.120 It is our responsibility to love them enough to remove them from their destructive path.

01:10:11.520 And at the same time, remove the people that are complicit in pushing those drugs, right?

01:10:15.960 And then what we do is we create a, um, an industry that actually supports the overcoming

01:10:21.200 of individuals where we're addressing underlying causes.

01:10:24.440 And then we're helping people to learn how to navigate society successfully outside of the

01:10:28.880 problem.

01:10:30.880 Is there any, it's pretty government agency that you're aware of that does anything like

01:10:34.880 that?

01:10:35.880 Government agencies.

01:10:36.880 I am not, no, I am not aware of any, and I'm going to tell you that, um, NGOs that

01:10:43.360 accept government funding, um, push the policies that feed this problem, which are the two dominant

01:10:51.640 policies are housing first and harm reduction policies.

01:10:53.880 And so, um, our housing first policies, um, have been extremely destructive in the country.

01:11:00.440 They're spreading across the country like wildfire.

01:11:02.720 It's kind of insane to me, actually.

01:11:04.800 So you had named a few cities.

01:11:06.880 I will tell you that when I started to see problems in cities like Missoula, Montana and

01:11:12.220 places in, um, Colorado adopting on these policies and the problems growing those places, I said, this

01:11:18.880 is a problem.

01:11:19.880 And so people are looking to some of the Western states like San Francisco, Portland, Oregon

01:11:25.880 and Seattle as examples of best practices.

01:11:29.880 Um, I don't know how we can ignore the fact that we are walking over the destruction of

01:11:37.600 human life.

01:11:39.520 And we want to model that across the country and call that some kind of success.

01:11:43.820 I don't know any government, um, entities or institutions that are practicing things that

01:11:50.340 are pro human.

01:11:51.980 Can you, well, that's, it's obvious by the results, but the details I think are unknown

01:11:57.460 to most people.

01:11:58.260 Can you explain what the housing first policy is and why it's bad?

01:12:03.500 Yeah.

01:12:04.100 Housing first means that people just need to be housed and that the intention or the thought

01:12:09.460 behind it is that then, um, they will find recovery, which is absolutely, um, untrue.

01:12:16.180 So why is it bad?

01:12:17.700 Because what happens is we're just sweeping the problem on the streets behind closed doors.

01:12:22.460 And what I've noticed is, um, because I worked in the industry for a period of time in the

01:12:27.460 homeless sector, the shelter sector and housing first is that capacity equals funding.

01:12:33.220 Um, so if these spaces, if these beds are not filled, if we're not handing out this many

01:12:39.020 burritos, if we're not giving these many, this many showers, then we're not going to be

01:12:44.540 funded through government funding.

01:12:46.860 Um, there are people that are staffing a lot of these buildings, these housing first buildings,

01:12:53.360 um, who have absolutely no idea what it's like to be in that kind of environment, let alone

01:12:59.620 supervise 90 to 150 bodies of people who are victimizers, who are drug addicts, some who

01:13:08.140 are elderly.

01:13:08.820 They're, they're mixing all of these different people with these, um, pretty extreme levels

01:13:13.500 of vulnerability inside of these buildings.

01:13:15.760 And what we have is we have the catastrophic experiences that we're looking at on our streets,

01:13:22.380 all behind closed doors and trapped.

01:13:25.500 Um, and we're seeing more people actually die of overdose deaths.

01:13:30.060 There's more, um, we, I mean, we have cartel engagement in some of these buildings.

01:13:35.700 We have violent experiences that are going on, murders, rapes, thefts, all kinds of things

01:13:41.060 going on inside of these buildings.

01:13:42.780 And we have our government officials that are claiming that these places are, um, a benefit,

01:13:48.620 that they are blessing people's lives, that they are some sort of solution to the problem.

01:13:53.140 Um, and we're spending a ton of money to exacerbate the problem and we're snowing the voter.

01:14:01.540 We're snowing the taxpayer and telling them that these things are actually working.

01:14:06.940 I assume the landlord is doing pretty well on this deal, like section eight.

01:14:12.060 The landlord is part of the NGOs.

01:14:13.900 Yeah.

01:14:14.220 The NGOs.

01:14:14.880 Yeah.

01:14:15.180 The NGOs.

01:14:15.980 I mean, that's sort of like a crony capitalism sort of piece, right?

01:14:19.360 There are the, the builders, the developers that have the relationships with the politicians

01:14:24.240 who are then going in and building these massive structures.

01:14:27.760 And then we have the NGOs that are fundraising to get the money to buy these buildings and

01:14:32.400 then managing these buildings who are also pushing the harm reduction, um, you know, processes

01:14:39.360 inside of these buildings where inside of these buildings, they're handing out the drug supplies.

01:14:43.600 They're doing everything they can to keep the people suspended in the problem that they're

01:14:47.520 trying to be removed from.

01:14:49.780 Are they allowed to use drugs in the facilities?

01:14:53.300 A hundred percent.

01:14:54.500 A hundred percent.

01:14:55.040 I mean, wouldn't it, I mean, why, what, why would taxpayers pay for the housing of people

01:15:00.680 who are continuing to use drugs?

01:15:02.020 I don't, I mean, especially when there are a lot of kids living at home because they can't

01:15:05.000 afford housing.

01:15:05.580 I don't, I don't get that.

01:15:06.620 Yeah, well, we have to understand that these, um, these buildings, first of all, house people

01:15:12.720 at 30% of their income.

01:15:14.820 So they're low income.

01:15:15.780 So they're federally and locally funded buildings.

01:15:18.400 And if you don't have any money, 0% or $0, 30% of $0 is $0.

01:15:24.180 There are significant amount of residents inside of these buildings who just refuse to pay their

01:15:29.160 rent.

01:15:29.420 And then there's no eviction that takes place.

01:15:31.180 I mean, in Seattle is a really, um, great place to look at if you want to see the failed

01:15:36.300 experiment of housing first.

01:15:38.420 Um, so, you know, and arguably the kids that there's a building in, uh, Bellingham, Washington

01:15:48.480 called 22 North that houses people from 18 on 18 years old and up, uh, where some of these

01:15:56.220 kids have left home and started using drugs.

01:15:58.580 And some of the encampments that are really, um, dominant in this area in Western Washington.

01:16:06.380 Um, and then they go into these youth service agencies and then they get placed in these

01:16:12.840 housing, um, developments and have to pay no rent.

01:16:16.980 And then these, these children are often victimized inside of these buildings.

01:16:21.340 And then they get turned out to, you know, trafficked, what we consider trafficked inside of

01:16:25.960 these buildings and then there's like this fortress that's around them, um, disabling

01:16:31.500 the family unit to have any kind of contact to be able to advocate for.

01:16:35.920 By this time, these kids are so strung out on the drugs.

01:16:39.780 I mean, it's really, really destructive.

01:16:41.320 And then our government is paying for this and they're asking for more money on a regular

01:16:45.680 basis to pay for this.

01:16:47.040 And then they're handing out the drugs and they're doing all of these things.

01:16:49.840 And so I've been doing some research on a lot of this stuff.

01:16:53.340 So we have to understand that, you know, over the last five years, I've been doing a little

01:16:57.700 bit of research, not enough to have a complete story to write yet, but the pharmaceutical

01:17:02.760 companies that are pushing a lot of these medication assisted treatment drugs, like they

01:17:07.480 have a business model and the business model, of course, is to increase funding.

01:17:10.940 We have politicians who are incentivized to, you know, push that kind of legislation as

01:17:17.040 well as the legislation that supports a lot of these NGOs and a lot of these housing, um,

01:17:22.980 structures that are popping up everywhere.

01:17:25.120 And so, and then you have like in Seattle specifically, it, Seattle pushes a lot of the

01:17:31.520 legislation for Washington state around harm reduction and housing first.

01:17:35.000 And so they, um, a lot of these NGOs are working in concert with academics that are doing research.

01:17:43.860 Specifically, we have Caleb Bantegreen here in Washington state, who's been quote unquote,

01:17:49.880 researching, um, medication assisted treatment or harm reduction practices for a period of time.

01:17:55.940 I mean, there's a lot of money being made, you know, through this process, through these industries.

01:18:02.800 It's gross to me.

01:18:04.620 I don't understand why we can't be more intentional and focus on overcoming teaching people the skills

01:18:11.400 necessary to navigate society.

01:18:13.320 I mean, that's what I do in prison and it works and it's cost effective.

01:18:16.480 We could evolve as a country, as opposed to decline and destroy our, our human capital.

01:18:23.120 But no one seems interested in sobriety.

01:18:25.920 I mean, the official government policy doesn't demand sobriety.

01:18:29.660 Sobriety has got to be the goal.

01:18:30.900 Like I'm not on anything.

01:18:31.960 I think clearly I'm like a human being again.

01:18:34.740 Is anyone even trying for that?

01:18:37.960 No, I was, um, recently at a press release in September in Seattle, Bruce Harrell, the

01:18:45.420 mayor there, um, had a press release.

01:18:47.500 He was really excited to talk about $40 million offending that was going to be spent.

01:18:52.940 Uh, what we're experiencing here in Washington state and across the country in different areas

01:18:57.760 is a rebrand.

01:18:58.840 And right after the executive order came out from Donald Trump on homelessness and, and

01:19:03.540 all of the things that we're talking about right now, um, some of the officials that I

01:19:09.060 was just talking about in Seattle essentially expressed via media that, um, you know, well,

01:19:16.640 we're already doing these things, right?

01:19:18.460 So we're just seeing a rebranding of these harm reduction and housing first spaces.

01:19:23.240 And so there was this conversation where Harold was talking about how, how many millions of

01:19:27.920 dollars were going to this organization, how many millions of dollars were going to that

01:19:31.640 organization.

01:19:32.200 And after they were done, I raised my hand and I said, how much of this money is going

01:19:37.460 to be diverted to abstinence-based treatment and environments for people to come to when

01:19:42.620 they want to get their life together?

01:19:44.200 Because I worked in Seattle in the midst of all of this for a period of time and person

01:19:49.540 after person wanted out.

01:19:52.360 First of all, it was such a glacial process with so much red tape for me to actually be able

01:19:57.600 to get somebody into treatment.

01:19:58.980 And this was back in, you know, 2015, 2016, 2017.

01:20:04.880 But I asked him, I said, how much of this money is going to be diverted?

01:20:08.340 And there was a lot of word soup.

01:20:10.280 It was passed from one city leader to another.

01:20:12.920 And eventually the answer came back and it was $0.

01:20:17.180 The thing is, is that, yeah, it was $0.

01:20:21.600 And first they wanted to know, are you with the press?

01:20:24.720 Who are you?

01:20:25.720 I said, no, I'm not with the press.

01:20:27.160 I'm with myself.

01:20:27.940 I said, I'm a former social service worker.

01:20:30.460 And I didn't really talk about the work that I do with the state of Tennessee.

01:20:33.200 And I didn't really talk about the work that I'm doing inside of our prison system.

01:20:36.400 I just represented myself like I always do when I stand up in any of these kinds of meetings.

01:20:41.100 I represent the person just like me, whose life is being destroyed because they can't

01:20:46.280 find a way out.

01:20:47.000 So, you know, we have the executive order in here in Washington state.

01:20:52.120 Our leaders are saying, well, we're already doing this because these methods are a path

01:20:57.940 to, and I can tell you out of the hundreds of people that I served in that industry, I

01:21:03.460 only know two that got clean and sober.

01:21:05.960 And it's almost impossible for it.

01:21:08.180 Yes.

01:21:08.600 And I'm like, not kidding.

01:21:10.400 When I talk about that, it's almost impossible for a person to remove themselves.

01:21:14.920 And I mean, it was for me, I knew that my life was deteriorating, but because I was in an

01:21:23.060 intimate relationship with drugs, Tucker, it was almost impossible for me to remove myself.

01:21:28.840 Thank God for the police.

01:21:30.640 Thank God for the police.

01:21:32.080 We have hobbled our law enforcement across the country.

01:21:36.240 We have shamed our criminal justice system into participating in the illusion that these

01:21:44.420 methods, that these policies are somehow a benefit to the people on the streets.

01:21:50.920 But there are a lot of people making money off of people being sick.

01:21:55.000 And that's what we have to recognize.

01:21:56.840 And so, you know, at the end of the day, this is the thing.

01:22:00.120 I'm not going to be able to dismantle the machine.

01:22:02.920 The machine is big.

01:22:04.240 It is bigger than us.

01:22:05.340 And so we have to stop selling out for dollars because I absolutely refuse to.

01:22:12.620 I will not adopt on the practices of any of these harmful policies, these harmful practices.

01:22:18.740 I will not do it because I know what people are capable of.

01:22:23.060 And so I try my hardest to utilize the space where people are removed, where they're clear

01:22:29.280 of mind, and then implement processes to help them address their underlying causes and connect

01:22:34.200 with the resources necessary once they have cleaned out the inside and refragmented themselves

01:22:41.040 with common sense.

01:22:42.360 And then and only then are the resources that are provided going to be sustainable.

01:22:50.280 And so I've been busy building this in this.

01:22:53.500 I believe it will become an industry.

01:22:56.680 I've been busy building this play field over here to the right because spending my energy

01:23:02.500 to try to dismantle is a pointless endeavor.

01:23:05.680 What I'm doing is I'm collecting data.

01:23:07.940 I'm changing lives.

01:23:09.100 And then when we have some success, will we be able to say no?

01:23:13.720 And this is how it's done.

01:23:15.320 And these are human lives that are connected with the data, not this ambiguous stuff that

01:23:20.880 sounds really good to the person that's totally confused when they look at the where's Waldo

01:23:25.220 poster that says, where am I supposed to start?

01:23:28.660 Right.

01:23:29.000 And I think that that's our that's the common sort of response from a voter or a taxpayer or

01:23:34.140 just your average community member when they are definitely walking over bodies where

01:23:38.800 they have a family member that's affected, because I have been contacted by people all

01:23:42.940 over the world when they saw my pictures.

01:23:45.560 And their question is always, what can I do?

01:23:48.700 Because you've got to imagine if you've never been strung out on drugs, how in the hell are

01:23:52.640 you going to know where to start?

01:23:55.040 Well, you don't.

01:23:55.540 And so in order to do that, we have to have the right people in the right places.

01:24:00.360 And I truly believe that the only way for us to redevelop a system is to influence the

01:24:07.580 lives of those who make up that system.

01:24:10.700 We cannot have a top down solution because honestly, if you haven't been to hell, you don't

01:24:15.540 know how to navigate your way out of it.

01:24:17.120 Well, so we can't expect and I try to not talk about or think about how ineffective the

01:24:25.580 majority of our political leaders, I have a hard time calling them leaders, but I have

01:24:30.260 a really hard time, you know, removing myself from being pissed off all the time because

01:24:35.300 I have I have a hard time looking at the destruction of human life, like really.

01:24:39.020 And so but my anger has to be fueled appropriately.

01:24:41.940 Right.

01:24:42.660 So I've got to be able to help the people that make up the system, change their lives.

01:24:47.460 Then when we show the numbers and the cost effectiveness, then maybe we can do a shift.

01:24:52.640 I have a hard time removing myself from being pissed off.

01:24:55.920 Yeah, I like I like the way you put that, Jenny Burton.

01:24:58.340 I struggle with the same phenomenon.

01:25:00.680 Thank you for that.

01:25:01.760 That was totally compelling.

01:25:03.660 You've got the authority to say it and and just bless you.

01:25:07.140 I'm you're thriving really makes me happy seeing it.

01:25:11.440 So great to see you.

01:25:13.520 Yeah, it's great to see you as well.

01:25:14.760 And, you know, what makes the most sense to me is not my thriving, but being able to contribute

01:25:20.620 to the thriving of the people who would be released from institutions and end up next

01:25:25.960 homeless population.

01:25:27.780 We have disincentivized arrest and accountability.

01:25:31.760 And that is the one thing that enables us to actually be able to change a nation because

01:25:37.460 we have to understand that all of these people are somebody's sons, daughters, mothers, fathers,

01:25:43.740 brothers, sisters, and they're our neighbors.

01:25:46.140 So we can either have them living next to us in a tent.

01:25:50.840 And dying in our front yard, or we can do something to actually influence them to be

01:25:56.920 able to navigate society successfully.

01:25:59.040 So thank you for having me, Tucker.

01:26:00.860 I really appreciate your attention to this.

01:26:03.340 Oh, well, I think there's a few things more important.

01:26:06.100 Jenny Burton, thank you very much.

01:26:07.680 Good to see you.

01:26:08.240 America needs to get sober.

01:26:13.320 Everybody's on something.

01:26:15.040 It's depressing as hell.

01:26:16.960 And so as long as we're spending billions of dollars to overthrow dictators, maybe we

01:26:21.620 should pay attention to the actual drug problems in this country.

01:26:26.260 Hopefully we will.

01:26:27.480 Thanks for joining us.

01:26:28.200 We'll be back live next week.

01:26:29.420 We've got a new website we hope you will visit.

01:26:39.160 It's called newcommissionnow.com, and it refers to a new 9-11 commission.

01:26:46.180 So we spent months putting together our 9-11 documentary series.

01:26:50.240 And if there's one thing we learned, it's that, in fact, there was foreknowledge of the

01:26:55.940 attacks.

01:26:56.920 People knew.

01:26:58.020 The American public deserves to know.

01:27:00.540 We're shocked, actually, to learn that, to have that confirmed.

01:27:02.700 But it's true.

01:27:03.180 The evidence is overwhelming.

01:27:04.560 The CIA, for example, knew the hijackers were here in the United States.

01:27:07.840 They knew they were planning an act of terror.

01:27:10.100 In his passport is a visa to go to the United States of America.

01:27:14.460 A foreign national was caught celebrating as the World Trade Center fell and later said

01:27:19.020 he was in New York, quote, to document the event.

01:27:22.440 I didn't know there would be an event to document in the first place because he had foreknowledge.

01:27:25.980 And maybe most amazingly, somebody, an unknown investor, shorted American Airlines and United

01:27:32.620 Airlines, the companies whose planes the attackers used on 9-11, as well as the banks that were

01:27:37.780 inside the Twin Towers just before the attacks.

01:27:40.200 They made money on the 9-11 attacks because they knew they were coming.

01:27:44.960 Who did that?

01:27:45.840 You have to look at the evidence.

01:27:48.400 The U.S. government learned the name of that investor, but never released it.

01:27:54.660 Maybe there's an instant explanation for all this, but there isn't, actually.

01:27:58.680 And by the way, it doesn't matter whether there is or not.

01:28:01.100 The public deserves to know what the hell that was.

01:28:04.640 How did people know ahead of time?

01:28:06.140 Why was no one ever punished for it?

01:28:08.300 9-11 Commission, the original one, was a fraud.

01:28:11.500 It was fake.

01:28:13.360 Its conclusions were written before the investigation.

01:28:16.000 That's true.

01:28:16.980 And it's outrageous.

01:28:18.740 This country needs a new 9-11 Commission, one that actually tells the truth, that tries

01:28:23.360 to get to the bottom of the story.

01:28:25.660 We can't just move on like nothing happened.

01:28:28.220 9-11 Commission is a cover.

01:28:31.080 Something did happen.

01:28:32.960 We need to force a new investigation into 9-11 almost 25 years later.

01:28:38.180 Sorry, justice demands it.

01:28:40.660 And if you want that, go to newcommissionnow.com to add your name to our petition.

01:28:46.420 We're not getting paid for this.

01:28:47.440 We're doing this because we really mean it.

01:28:49.560 Newcommissionnow.com.

01:28:51.060 Fox News Order, two, one, two, one, one.

01:28:52.640 Yeah, Disney News.

01:28:53.260 Whoa, whoa.

01:28:54.620 Whoa.

01:28:56.060 That's what we heard.

01:28:59.460 Play the game today.

01:29:02.100 Play the game today.

The Tucker Carlson Show - October 30, 2025

Tucker and Col. MacGregor Warn How Neocons Are Exploiting the Drug Crisis to Drag America Into War

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