The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker and Steve Bannon Respond to Israel’s War on Iran and How It Could Destroy MAGA Forever

00:00:00.440 Donald J. Trump gets elected in November on the back of this amazing coalition, unprecedented coalition, different parts of American society.

00:00:08.200 You never thought of anything in common.

00:00:10.100 Trump paints a picture that makes it really obvious that the old structure, left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, is basically BS and a control device, I think.

00:00:21.060 This is my interpretation anyway.

00:00:22.720 So he creates this brand new coalition.

00:00:24.720 New York Times writes almost nothing about it because it's such a massive threat.

00:00:27.180 But this coalition, which you described earlier and more precisely than anybody by far, is the defining fact of American politics.

00:00:38.340 And it kind of feels like it's being blown up over this war on Iran.

00:00:44.220 That's my observation.

00:00:45.940 Correct me.

00:00:47.240 Well, I think if you look at the three planks, stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal alien invasion.

00:00:57.180 And redo the commercial relationships in the world around trade deals and bring high-value-added manufacturing jobs back here.

00:01:05.520 They're trying to shut all three down.

00:01:07.920 Yeah.

00:01:08.320 But the one that they're obsessed with the most, which I find strange, is the forever wars.

00:01:15.800 They've got to be in the forever wars, and particularly in the Middle East.

00:01:18.200 I mean, this is what—and I'm a big supporter of Israel.

00:01:20.960 Yes.

00:01:21.260 And I'm telling people, hey, if we get sucked into this war, which inexorably looks like it's going to happen on the combat side, it's going to not just blow up the coalition.

00:01:31.440 It's also going to thwart what we're doing with the most important thing, which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders that are here.

00:01:38.940 If we don't do that, we don't have a country.

00:01:40.920 And you just see right now, they're doubling and tripled down.

00:01:43.780 This is actually potentially a real civil war in our biggest cities.

00:01:47.780 And President Trump has to have our backing.

00:01:49.560 And so—and this came out of nowhere.

00:01:51.740 I mean, the trade deals, you saw he put together the Liberation Day, but they've been thinking about it a long time.

00:01:56.840 I mean, Trump's been talking about this since Lou Dobbs back in the 90s.

00:01:59.700 He lays that out there.

00:02:00.820 It's very sophisticated.

00:02:02.020 He's got Scott Bessent running around with Lutnik.

00:02:04.240 They're trying to make these deals.

00:02:05.320 He's sealed the border already in the first 60 days.

00:02:09.140 Now we're really going down and actually having the deportation, see the fight.

00:02:13.200 And then out of nowhere comes a war with Persia.

00:02:17.480 It's like a shooting war with Persia, a massive shooting war with Persia.

00:02:20.660 And it's like, how did this happen?

00:02:22.340 And that's why I've been, as a defender of Israel and someone that's very pro-Israel, I've been saying, hey, this is going to be the end of Israel because of the way these decisions have been made.

00:02:31.180 And you have, I think, shockingly today, early when we had you on the show, you bring up a point that we have to address, which I think it's the thing itself.

00:02:42.480 What is it about this apparatus?

00:02:44.820 When you have a coalition that's like 1932 that's coming together, like Roosevelt had Harvard professors and crackers and Democrats and ranchers out west and big city bosses and the Irish and the Italians, and you put it all together and they juggled it.

00:02:59.400 You've got Brooklyn, Butte, Montana, Birmingham, Alabama, and they're all on the same side.

00:03:03.280 How does that happen?

00:03:04.200 And they govern literally almost all the way to Trump.

00:03:07.180 You know, Reagan took out part of it.

00:03:08.460 Newt Gingrich took out part of it.

00:03:09.700 But it was 50, 60, 70 years.

00:03:11.640 We have the same ability.

00:03:13.400 We have hardscrabble Hispanics on the rear Grand Valley of South Texas.

00:03:17.780 We have tech bros.

00:03:20.160 We have, you know, economic nationalists.

00:03:22.740 We have economic populists.

00:03:23.980 We have people that want to stop their forever wars.

00:03:25.780 There's three planks.

00:03:26.500 And right at the beginning of it, you know, and it's on the 10th anniversary of coming down the Golden Escalator.

00:03:31.880 That was 10 years ago, Sunday.

00:03:34.480 And I tell people as many triumphs and tragedies, victories and defeats, good days and horrible days, when we're winning and sometimes we're losing, those 10 years of everything that's gone on.

00:03:45.280 It's just the preamble for where we are today on the convergence of these crises.

00:03:50.240 And now, all of a sudden, a shooting war where they're taking the Nimitz battle group out of the South China Sea and sending three carrier battle groups now to the North Arabian Sea, Red Sea, plus Arleigh Burke destroyers and a whole fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.

00:04:06.540 We're prepping for a major shooting war.

00:04:08.620 And how did it happen?

00:04:09.480 And I think what's most shocking is what you said.

00:04:11.740 Hey, it was like Iraq.

00:04:12.940 You're inexorably just drawn and decisions kind of just happen.

00:04:16.540 It's like, what's happened over the last 72 hours?

00:04:18.240 How do we even get to this point?

00:04:19.760 How did this actually happen?

00:04:21.020 Who made these decisions when we had the intel out there that this was not like a thing?

00:04:26.000 This was something that was going to happen a year or two from now.

00:04:28.900 Bibi admitted to Bret Baier on Sunday night.

00:04:31.600 And so the question before us is not simply the Israel-Persia situation.

00:04:37.280 It's what the fuck is going on in this city that just drives this city, whether you're Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

00:04:43.700 And if we don't sort it out now, and I mean right now, that's what we have to have a throwdown.

00:04:48.360 We have to name names.

00:04:49.620 We have to expose it.

00:04:50.720 If we don't throw it out now, throw it down now in the summer of 2025, we're not going to have a country.

00:04:56.120 Forget the midterms.

00:04:57.060 Forget the next election still.

00:04:59.260 We have to have this.

00:05:00.540 What happened in Ukraine?

00:05:02.920 What the CIA has done?

00:05:04.440 What DNI is doing?

00:05:05.840 What the Justice Department?

00:05:07.240 What the FBI?

00:05:08.760 What DIA and the Pentagon?

00:05:10.500 Because right now we only have a tenuous grip on those.

00:05:13.480 We have two people at the FBI, Cash and Bongino.

00:05:17.080 We've got a handful of people over at the Justice Department in a massive 30-some person, 15,000, 20,000 person operation.

00:05:23.820 We have three or four people at DNI with 17 agencies.

00:05:28.240 We're putting a couple of people in there.

00:05:29.720 At the Pentagon, we've got Pete and a handful of guys.

00:05:33.080 And every time a guy steps up or the team steps up to say they want to stop the forever wars, they're turfed out.

00:05:38.140 He's lost 10 people since we've even got there.

00:05:41.020 And every time Bridge Colby tries to do something, Bridge Colby's on the front page that he's an appeaser.

00:05:47.380 So my point is that now we're getting down to it.

00:05:51.620 With all these converging crises, we have an apparatus that reports to Wall Street, to foreign investors, to Silicon Valley, in business with the Chinese Communist Party that's running the deal.

00:06:04.820 And now's the time we got – if we don't lance the bull over this, this country – you're not going to – if you can't turn around with Trump, the Trump team he has, people like you, myself, and they're blessed to have these apparatuses.

00:06:16.880 If we can't do this now, it's not going to get done.

00:06:20.340 And so that's why, to me, it's gone – of everything we were doing, stopping the forever wars, redoing the commercial relationship with China to bring jobs back, and sealing the border and sending home the – deporting 10 million, which is going to be massive, almost like a civil war in these big cities.

00:06:35.460 Of all of those – and I've always said the deportation is the most – to get our sovereignty back, the war we have to have now, the throwdown we have to have now is with the deep state.

00:06:45.460 And we can't – I think we've looked away too often.

00:06:50.380 We're just kind of kicking the can down the road.

00:06:52.360 And if we can't do it now with Trump, it's not going to get done.

00:06:55.640 It does feel like Fox News is playing – and I never criticize Fox because they were so kind to me – but they are playing like a central role in the propaganda operation here, it feels like.

00:07:10.240 It's the – let's go back to the Iraq War.

00:07:13.180 I mean, you were there.

00:07:14.080 You saw it.

00:07:14.560 Look at the Iraq War.

00:07:15.760 I promoted the Iraq War.

00:07:16.480 When knowing – because of the information you were giving.

00:07:19.220 Knowingly what they did, if you go back to look at Iraq, it's not like these things are successful.

00:07:23.260 They're not successful.

00:07:24.780 They're unsuccessful.

00:07:26.000 They can't be successful because, as Lincoln told us, what you need is popular opinion to have your back.

00:07:32.080 And we don't do enough about educating the American people on what reality is.

00:07:35.760 In fact, they give them the exact opposite.

00:07:37.480 That's why it's all – that's what – this is – the rise of Trump is from two things.

00:07:41.060 The rise of Trump is from the failed Iraq War and from the 2008 financial collapse.

00:07:46.680 Exactly.

00:07:47.000 You had Buchanan before that.

00:07:48.460 We had Perot before that.

00:07:49.580 We had even Reagan from some populism national.

00:07:52.120 You had these sprouts there.

00:07:53.700 You could see people were trying to get there, but they couldn't.

00:07:56.020 It was those two cataclysmic events, right, an epic failed war, right, that we were lied to about everything, the reason we went in.

00:08:04.360 Because remember, at first, the American people supported it, given the information they were given.

00:08:08.280 Then later, they realized that, hey, not just with the initial predicate for this a lie, all the updates were kind of a lie, right?

00:08:15.980 All the updates were a lie.

00:08:17.040 We really weren't winning, right?

00:08:18.760 Until we sent General Kelly to the Anbar province to be the toughest tribe, it was – and it took forever.

00:08:24.720 And what, 8,000 dead, 50,000 wounded, $9 trillion, $7 trillion in Iraq and $2 trillion in Afghanistan?

00:08:33.860 You're just lied about the entire time.

00:08:35.600 That's what's happening here.

00:08:36.760 We're not being dealt with straight, and I'm just saying on the information that's put out, the Israeli position on this has changed three or four times.

00:08:45.000 First, it was the nuclear bomb, the processing – there was going to be something like last weekend.

00:08:51.120 You had to go now.

00:08:52.540 You had to go on Thursday night.

00:08:53.980 It had to happen, right?

00:08:55.380 Then we find out it's a year away at earliest, and then it's a decapitation strike.

00:09:01.620 They're trying to have regime change.

00:09:02.820 That just kind of came up over the weekend and saying, oh, well, since they're there, we're there, we have to do it.

00:09:08.280 Understand they said this is unilateral.

00:09:10.280 We're doing our own.

00:09:11.120 But understanding that they needed American air assets on the defense to protect themselves, and this is why the Arleigh Burke were rushed in, and this is why American air defense assets have been used nonstop.

00:09:22.540 Now they're talking about, oh, by the way, we really can't take out Fedora.

00:09:26.340 We can't take out the hidden, mountainous second part of this.

00:09:30.900 We need American combat sorties.

00:09:33.040 We need American tankers to refuel us.

00:09:34.960 We need the bunker-busting bombs, and we need assets.

00:09:38.560 This thing changes all the time.

00:09:40.180 When Tulsi Gabbard's still out there, as the last thing publicly said by a senior intelligence official, she said in March, they don't have a program.

00:09:49.340 They haven't had a program.

00:09:50.800 And Brett Baier asked – that's why Brett Baier asked Bibi on Sunday night.

00:09:55.660 And Bibi said, well, we have new information, new intelligence.

00:09:58.240 Well, hold it.

00:09:59.040 We were told that we gave you exquisite intelligence.

00:10:01.360 You weren't giving us intelligence.

00:10:03.300 We have to have a total vetting.

00:10:04.680 And by the way, we need to get a vetting on Ukraine.

00:10:07.680 We need to get a vetting on was American intelligence involved because it's a zero probability that without our satellites, without targeting the information, without fire control information, there's no chance that the Ukrainians, as courageous as they are, as much valor as they have, could have pulled out something so complicated.

00:10:28.100 And so this is right now the fight.

00:10:29.640 The fight has to be we have to take on the deep state, we have to name names, and we have to basically take these organizations and take them apart.

00:10:38.020 And then you're going to unmask everybody in D.C. that's not really on your side.

00:10:41.920 You're going to unmask all those people that say they're conservative and say they're Republicans.

00:10:45.920 When they start protecting this, you're going to say, well, hang on for a second.

00:10:49.860 This doesn't mean we're a constitutional republic.

00:10:52.280 Trump's commander in chief.

00:10:53.900 This is what a constitutional republic is about.

00:10:55.820 I don't care if AOC is the president later on or Bernie Sanders or J.D. Vance, another right winger.

00:11:01.180 Right now we have a system that's like the Praetorian Guard.

00:11:05.000 It just it's got its own national security policy.

00:11:08.580 It's got its own reason for existence.

00:11:10.260 And it doesn't care who whether it's progressive like Barack Obama or a economic populist nationalist like Donald Trump.

00:11:17.520 And so that is the fight we have to take on today.

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00:12:42.300 Remember in 2020 when CNN told you the George Floyd riots were mostly peaceful, even as flames rose in the background?

00:12:51.860 It was ridiculous, but it was also a metaphor for the way our leaders run this country.

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00:13:08.160 No one believes that.

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00:15:21.080 There's this mad scramble in Washington on the right to invoke Trump's name and to make the case that, no, no, I represent Trump.

00:15:29.480 He's on my side.

00:15:30.940 I'm true MAGA.

00:15:32.160 And you wind up with these kind of hallucinogenic scenes where you have people who hated Trump or never Trump.

00:15:37.920 Mark Levin, you know, hates Trump, which is fine.

00:15:41.220 But he's like the standard bearer for Trump.

00:15:43.400 But what makes it even more perverse is that these same people are allied with a deep state that is subverting Trump's stated agenda, which is negotiation toward peace, both in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

00:15:58.420 Trump has said, we want to get to an agreement with a lasting peace so we can all be richer, safer, and happier.

00:16:03.480 And in both places, his so-called allies, who secretly hate him, have destroyed that.

00:16:10.320 And most of those guys, almost all of them, to a person for the Ukraine war.

00:16:15.040 People in your audience should understand one principal thing.

00:16:18.860 We are farther down the pike in a kinetic part of a third world war than how World War II started.

00:16:24.660 If you go back from September of 1939, the invasion, the start of the European War, not the Asian, but if you start with the invasion of Poland by the Germans, and you go to June of 1941, the invasion of Russia by the Wehrmacht, and you look at that time, which really they called the Phony War.

00:16:42.180 You look at the casualties from the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the fall of France.

00:16:46.180 You look at what happened in North Africa early on, Finland, throwing 300,000 Finland.

00:16:49.840 You add it all up, it's not half of what's happened between Ukraine and Gaza today, and now in Persia.

00:16:59.100 We are much bloodier.

00:17:00.280 This is a much—we're in a shooting part of the third world war.

00:17:03.820 The third world is not about to start.

00:17:05.540 It has started.

00:17:06.660 And that's what Trump is saying.

00:17:08.220 What he wants to do is have everybody lay their guns down.

00:17:10.700 Let's get to the table and figure out a tenuous, at least, you know, subtle piece that we can then use capital and trade and commerce and try to rebuild these countries, and let's get people back to work and maybe tamp this thing down, whereas the apparatus is exacerbating the conflict part of it.

00:17:30.900 That's where we are right now in the summer of 2025.

00:17:32.960 And that's—this thing is going to be—in the next 200 days, the next 200 days are some of the most perilous times for the American Republic in its history.

00:17:42.480 Because if we don't get this sorted, we're going to be drawn in totally into a conflict as a combatant, as not a supplier of logistics or as an actual combatant, a participant.

00:17:53.040 In the situation in Ukraine, what they did in Russia, in the situation of what Israel is right now doing to the mullahs, as bad as they are and as evil as they are, right?

00:18:02.740 We're going to get sucked into a shooting war of which it'll be 10 years and the casualties will dwarf anything you saw in World War II.

00:18:10.520 One of the lessons that we never talk about from World War II since you evoked the comparison is that the second the shooting war started in Great Britain and the United States, opponents of the war went to jail.

00:18:20.680 And Winston Churchill's entire political opposition went to jail with their wives, with their wives for the duration of the war, and some of them died.

00:18:28.420 That's been completely—it's just a fact.

00:18:29.980 And you can call those people whatever you want, and they may have been terrible people, whatever, but they were his political opponents, and he put them in jail.

00:18:35.480 And Roosevelt did, you know, sick the federal government on opponents of the war, flat out.

00:18:41.440 So if—

00:18:42.380 Lincoln did the same thing.

00:18:43.300 And Lincoln did the same.

00:18:44.220 That's exactly right.

00:18:45.080 I love Lincoln.

00:18:45.760 And in areas that we control in the Revolutionary War, which is not a lot, the same thing happened.

00:18:50.900 That's called war.

00:18:51.740 Exactly.

00:18:52.040 This is what happened.

00:18:52.560 And opponents of war are invariably described as allies of the enemy, and they're persecuted.

00:19:01.800 Do you worry about that happening to you?

00:19:03.340 You just said on camera, I don't want this war, but we're moving toward a third world war.

00:19:08.540 Well, I saw a—look.

00:19:09.460 Are you worried about going back to jail?

00:19:10.820 I went to prison on a misdemeanor, but it was kind of one of the same things.

00:19:14.420 I wouldn't testify—I wouldn't turn—because I said this committee is not legitimate, doesn't have a ranking member, doesn't have a minority council, is totally legitimate, plus he's got executive privilege.

00:19:24.680 That's good enough for me.

00:19:25.700 And if I have to fight this, and I think it's going to go to the Supreme Court, although I've served my prison sentence, I'm taking it up to the Supreme Court because I had a pretty good ruling, not terrible, from the appeals court.

00:19:36.860 A couple of the judges are making arguments about why I should take it further.

00:19:40.340 It's definitely going to happen.

00:19:41.620 Look what's happening to you.

00:19:42.780 I mean, I've known you for a long time, and I sit there and I look at what they're saying about Tucker.

00:19:46.300 I said, what is Tucker saying so bad?

00:19:48.520 He's kind of laying out these arguments that ought to be debated right now in the halls.

00:19:52.600 I feel pretty moderate.

00:19:53.180 Tom Cotton's coming out and saying all these influencers and podcasters aren't—well, let's have a debate.

00:19:58.680 When we had a debate about the Ukraine, about the funding of Ukraine in the Senate, we beat them.

00:20:02.600 This is why Mitch McConnell had to resign.

00:20:05.740 Because why?

00:20:07.060 Because the podcasters and influencers are much closer to the MAGA base and can deliver the heat into the House and the Senate, and they know that.

00:20:16.040 I'm all for having a War Powers Act debate right now.

00:20:18.700 Exactly. I agree.

00:20:19.620 Let's have the American people weigh in, because you're going to see the American people are 90 percent against forever wars.

00:20:26.420 And even people that support Israel are saying exactly what we're doing here.

00:20:30.220 We thought we had this thing in Gaza you had to clean up with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

00:20:34.300 Next thing you know, we're dropping—we're bombing Tehran, and you're taking incomings.

00:20:39.920 What's happened in Tel Aviv over the last 24 hours is pretty shocking, because you're taking these ballistic missiles.

00:20:45.160 What's Trump's been saying? Everybody calm down. Let's get back to the table.

00:20:49.380 I can get actual things. He said, I can get it. We can take it apart.

00:20:52.420 We can blow it up if we want to, but I can cut a deal.

00:20:55.160 And Witkoff and Trump, if you've got to talk about two dealmakers that don't—are not like diplomats, but guys actually going to get stuff done,

00:21:02.440 I feel more confidence with Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump trying to work something out than continue on the shooting war,

00:21:09.660 where, trust me, with a carrier battle group heading over there and all these tankers heading over to the Middle East,

00:21:17.440 we are prepping right now to come in on the offensive side of combat sorties, and that's a game changer.

00:21:23.620 As bad as it is now that we're a combatant, because we are a combatant, which I say, if they're unilateral, why do we get sucked in here?

00:21:30.020 Where is that decision? Where you said, hey, Steve, decisions just get made. You never know how they get made.

00:21:34.500 They're organic. There's never a moment where we stop and we say, do we want to be involved in another Middle Eastern war?

00:21:39.940 You just wind up there, just like everything in life. You're just like, how did I get here?

00:21:43.400 But I think that's why they're attacking you, because you're saying, hang over a second.

00:21:46.560 Let's have a national discussion on this right now before we get in, and they don't want that.

00:21:50.060 But why the viciousness? Not toward me. I mean, I'm kind of punched out of society, but why is it this topic evokes a cruelty and a dishonesty that no other topic does?

00:22:02.900 There's never been questioned like this. There's never been questioned out in the open.

00:22:07.820 We've never had this debate that you've kind of led for the last couple of months, and now we're actually having this debate.

00:22:13.020 They've never had people in government like Tulsi Gabbard, like Bridge Colby, like others.

00:22:19.920 And look, I don't think Bridge is hard enough in the Chinese Communist Party, but his book was amazing, and he's got the pivot to Asia, which we have to get to.

00:22:27.360 If people want to see how the institutions and apparatuses work, and this is why the Democrats are all institutionalists now, right?

00:22:33.880 We're the anti-institutional guys because we see how corrupt they are.

00:22:37.600 You need not look further than CENTCOM. One of the problems we have is that Obama tried it.

00:22:44.500 Obama put his whole presidency on the national security side.

00:22:47.960 We're going to pivot out of Asia. We're going to pivot out of Middle East to Asia, the pivot to Asia.

00:22:52.580 Put Joe Biden in charge. After eight years, he had one combat brigade of Marines, four deployed to Brisbane, Darwin, Australia.

00:23:01.580 That was it. No other changes. No other changes.

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00:24:26.220 So the people trying to wreck our civilization want you to be passive.

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00:25:48.680 Hey, on our first try—

00:25:50.280 I supported that.

00:25:52.380 I despise Obama.

00:25:54.060 I think he wrecked the country.

00:25:55.500 But I don't think that was not a crazy idea to pivot.

00:25:57.840 We're having this debate—I had Flynn on today after you.

00:26:01.000 We're having the same debate today.

00:26:02.900 Remember, the carrier battle group that's over protecting Taiwan in the South China Sea is now en route to the Malacca Straits.

00:26:10.000 The Nimitz battle group is going to the North Arabian Sea.

00:26:13.020 So you're a former naval officer.

00:26:14.580 Give us a sense of the decision-making process that leads to a movement.

00:26:19.080 Well, here's what—on November, what, 5th of 79, I'm a destroyer officer, a navigator on a destroyer in a carrier battle group.

00:26:26.640 We're doing the changeover from San Diego from—we're home point.

00:26:29.560 The 3rd Fleet to the 7th Fleet all takes place in Hawaii, the Hawaiian operator.

00:26:33.640 You do, like, three or four days of workup because they have a certain different lingo and a different tempo.

00:26:38.580 So you've got to get to how they do it.

00:26:40.520 We get called in in the middle of the night in the red phone.

00:26:42.640 Everybody line up single file and head into Pearl Harbor.

00:26:45.500 Well, Pearl Harbor, as a sea detail, is almost impossible to do because it's so narrow, right?

00:26:50.380 And Honolulu is up there.

00:26:51.480 So it's not like World War II.

00:26:52.500 It's very dangerous.

00:26:53.580 We go in there.

00:26:54.320 We hear the hostages have been taken.

00:26:56.500 And now all of our assets in Korea, in the South China Sea, and in Japan are heading towards the North Arabian Sea, which the United States Navy had never been at.

00:27:06.280 We had a couple of white-painted destroyers in Bahrain, but we were not used to that.

00:27:11.880 So they go.

00:27:12.720 We follow a carrier all the way to Korea because you had to be—we were a gas turbine.

00:27:17.260 We were the only ones who could keep over the carrier.

00:27:18.700 It's 35 knots for, like, two weeks.

00:27:21.400 Damn!

00:27:22.220 We destroyed the ship.

00:27:23.360 We destroyed the sonar dome because you go through a typhoon.

00:27:26.040 You go through some heavy weather because we had a treaty at the time with Korea.

00:27:30.160 We would keep a carrier battle group within a 24-hour strike of North Korea.

00:27:34.180 So we have to get there.

00:27:35.020 Once we get there, they peel us off.

00:27:37.320 Us and our squadron of ships, the famous destroyer squadron 23, Arleigh Burke's Little Beavers, we go to the North Arabian Sea.

00:27:45.580 Why?

00:27:45.900 They're working up for—and that is like a house.

00:27:48.020 I tell people, if you haven't been off the coast of Iran or Persia, as I call it, it's like the landscape of the moon.

00:27:54.520 This is the most inhospitable place on Earth.

00:27:56.760 I've been there.

00:27:57.280 You've been—the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, the North Arabian Sea, and our carrier battle group stayed.

00:28:04.460 We rotated out after about four months.

00:28:06.620 People stayed and eventually, a couple months later, actually did the failed rest guard.

00:28:12.800 We practiced every day.

00:28:14.360 You could see every day.

00:28:15.360 They had the lift capacity.

00:28:17.040 The helicopters were practicing.

00:28:18.260 We were actually going to do plane guard against potential Russian fighters in the Persian Gulf, put the radars up, because nobody knew what was going to happen.

00:28:26.540 It was a failed effort.

00:28:27.760 But I tell people, and it turns out the Nimitz is now about to be decommissioned.

00:28:32.540 This may be their last cruise.

00:28:33.780 They were there 50 years ago as the first time they really got commissioned.

00:28:38.720 Their first assignment was in Gonzo and Camel Station in the North Arabian Sea.

00:28:43.660 So these are big decisions the Pentagon makes when they—particularly today, when they decide to take a carrier battle group, strike group, away from the South China Sea in the defense of Taiwan, given how on pins and needles we are there, because the Chinese Communist Party are not doing exercises.

00:28:59.060 They're doing rehearsals for an invasion.

00:29:01.340 To take that out and to take it to the North Arabian Sea is signaling the world that we're about to do something.

00:29:08.280 And that's what's so scary right now.

00:29:09.760 And when you get to your theory that these decisions, you're just getting inexorably drawn in, now we have all of our basically air assets that are ready to launch combat sorties on Tehran and whatever else happens.

00:29:25.300 They're in place.

00:29:26.120 So it just takes—it's not like you make a decision while it takes a week to get there.

00:29:29.820 They're in place.

00:29:30.460 The tankers are over there.

00:29:31.900 We can do in-tank refueling.

00:29:33.200 So I think in the next 24 to 48 hours, a decision could be made.

00:29:37.780 And that's why I'm getting more and more vocal, not less vocal, that we need to go full stop right now.

00:29:43.080 We need to find out—because there's too many moving pieces.

00:29:45.520 There's moving pieces about exactly what's going on, what's the risk.

00:29:49.300 We haven't had a full debate about this.

00:29:50.980 And I would like to see some voices come forward.

00:29:52.980 And I'd like to see Tulsi Gabbard come forward and tell us, has anything changed in DNI, which is 17 agencies, including the CIA, for this?

00:30:02.260 Has anything changed from what you told the public at a hearing in March?

00:30:05.440 If it's changed, let's just hear it.

00:30:07.460 I would like to have John Ratcliffe go to the sticks.

00:30:09.780 And I think Ratcliffe's a good man.

00:30:11.340 John Ratcliffe should go to the sticks and say two things.

00:30:13.320 Number one, we had no involvement at all in the Ukraine assault under Russia.

00:30:18.460 Just say it.

00:30:19.840 Because he's kind of been in hiding in that.

00:30:21.520 And then he ought to be open to—

00:30:22.880 He's never criticized.

00:30:23.900 No one ever criticizes John Ratcliffe.

00:30:25.640 Well, the reason I think they're not—

00:30:27.140 Ever.

00:30:27.620 I think the reason they're not criticizing John Ratcliffe, and John Ratcliffe's a good man.

00:30:31.680 But you have to remember, John Ratcliffe was a mayor of a small town in Texas that went to Congress, did a great job.

00:30:37.600 People—President Trump likes him a lot.

00:30:40.200 He's got Mike Ellis over there, but there are two guys, right?

00:30:43.380 We don't have 10 political appointees, which we should have.

00:30:45.780 We got two guys running that building.

00:30:48.060 That's the way the agency's structured.

00:30:49.480 There's no civilian control of the CIA.

00:30:51.800 Well, you know better than anybody.

00:30:53.960 But it runs the way it's going to run.

00:30:57.620 I mean, we sent Pompeo over there.

00:30:59.200 It's an army.

00:31:00.060 It's a business.

00:31:00.980 It's a government agency.

00:31:02.740 It's a country.

00:31:03.700 It's a venture capital firm.

00:31:04.520 It's literally a venture capital firm, and its budget is unknown.

00:31:09.220 Its reach is—and, you know—

00:31:11.180 And we have no idea what they're doing.

00:31:12.420 Of course, because the majority of things that they do are not U.S. government employees doing, even the door kickers.

00:31:17.780 No, it's they're working through some exile group they've been funding for 30 years, right?

00:31:22.080 They will also look you right in the eye.

00:31:23.660 Oh, I know.

00:31:24.360 And lie to you.

00:31:25.020 Oh, I know.

00:31:25.300 Because that's the wilderness of mirrors, right?

00:31:28.480 Look, look.

00:31:29.460 And they're smart.

00:31:30.620 Somebody said to me the other day, someone knowledgeable said,

00:31:32.860 And the problem with U.S. government is like, why can't we do this or that?

00:31:35.300 And, like, if you wanted late rail, you know we couldn't do it.

00:31:38.020 And this person said, because all the smartest people in government are at CIA.

00:31:41.740 Yeah.

00:31:42.700 And they also, with the interagency process, they control the entire process.

00:31:46.460 This is why downsizing NSC was so important.

00:31:48.800 When you have this—we had these detailees that come from all the different departments,

00:31:52.900 because NSC should have 30 people, but it had 250.

00:31:56.260 There are 60 political appointees, right?

00:31:59.240 And there's 280 come from different agencies to do all the different paperwork.

00:32:03.120 They have the interagency process.

00:32:04.800 The CIA controls that process.

00:32:06.620 They control the process at the Pentagon.

00:32:08.420 They control the DHF.

00:32:09.500 Yep.

00:32:09.800 They control over the Justice Department.

00:32:11.740 They are embedded deep because they've been around, you know, they've been around so long,

00:32:15.980 and they know how to embed deep, right, with the smartest people out there.

00:32:18.800 And so if you don't get control of that, you're not going to get control—they're like a Praetorian

00:32:23.360 Guard right now.

00:32:24.520 We have to—we have to lance this.

00:32:26.260 This is like the Roman—late stage of the Roman Empire, when the Praetorian Guard kind

00:32:30.560 of ran the deal, and they would put forward every legionary captain that they thought was

00:32:35.020 going to be good for a time.

00:32:36.000 And they are planning right now to thwart President Trump's second term, make sure they

00:32:42.720 wait him out, and they're going to have a hand-selected person for the third term.

00:32:45.920 And I don't say this as a conspiracy theory guy.

00:32:47.820 This is just basic facts.

00:32:49.940 Totally true.

00:32:50.300 They're so clever that if you criticize them, they will leak to people that you work for

00:32:55.020 them.

00:32:55.720 I happen to know.

00:32:57.240 Which is, like, kind of brilliant.

00:32:59.320 Like, if you're an effective critic of CIA, Joe Kent—I've lived this personally, but

00:33:04.960 also Joe Kent, who's just a wonderful man, a totally sincere man.

00:33:08.760 Great man.

00:33:09.260 Former CIA contractor, lost his wife in Syria in Obama's Syria war, and became an opponent

00:33:14.420 of the way things are running.

00:33:15.560 And they—CIA played in his primary.

00:33:19.340 And the way they did it was by convincing Republican primary voters that Joe Kent, who's

00:33:23.760 the single most effective critic of CIA in the United States, was actually working for

00:33:28.980 CIA.

00:33:29.440 I mean, like, wow!

00:33:31.040 I tipped my non-existent hat in deference to the brilliance of that.

00:33:34.800 This is how brilliant they are.

00:33:35.880 You notice from President Trump that the arc that he went through on Friday.

00:33:38.940 I mean, you know something's up when David Ignatius at the Washington Post, which we call

00:33:44.160 the Langley Bugle—he's ahead of the comms of life.

00:33:47.500 Oh, I'm aware!

00:33:48.660 When Ignatius comes out on Morning Joe and says, Trump is doing such a really magnificent

00:33:52.940 job here.

00:33:53.600 He's acting like your commander in chief.

00:33:55.360 That should be the red flare that goes up.

00:33:57.180 It goes, what the fuck?

00:33:59.140 No!

00:33:59.840 So, I mean—

00:34:00.540 It's too frustrating to have a TV because it's too frustrating to watch—like, I don't

00:34:04.860 know a single person who doesn't like David Ignatius personally, and that would include

00:34:08.040 me, and he's just such a courtly man.

00:34:09.980 He's like the Murdochs.

00:34:10.820 He's just like, you can't dislike him.

00:34:11.920 He's just got elaborate, wonderful manners.

00:34:13.840 He's very nice.

00:34:14.920 But, like, he is the spokesman for CIA, and you wonder—

00:34:19.220 And the Washington Post is the Langley Bugle.

00:34:20.240 It's unbelievable!

00:34:20.920 The Langley Bugle.

00:34:22.040 When Louis Joyland West, who was one of the last visitors to Jack Ruby in his cell before

00:34:27.460 he went insane, was a CIA physician and, you know, deeply involved in a lot of really

00:34:34.000 dark—some of the darkest things we've ever done.

00:34:36.020 When he died, I went and looked up the Walter Pincus obit from the Washington Post.

00:34:40.040 Walter Pincus was the CIA.

00:34:41.900 I think Walter Pincus wrote it.

00:34:43.420 And there was no mention in the Washington Post obit that Jolly West worked for CIA.

00:34:48.040 I mean, it's just like, oh my God!

00:34:49.360 It's just like, but you wonder, like, do people watching Morning Joe have any idea who

00:34:54.700 these people are?

00:34:55.540 No.

00:34:56.020 That's the whole—

00:34:56.860 That freaks me out.

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00:36:51.400 There's a great story.

00:36:52.840 You talked about the Kennedy thing today.

00:36:54.680 There's a great story in the book.

00:36:57.360 The guy just came out about the Kennedy assassination and the House and Senate committees, the church committee,

00:37:05.360 the biography of the church committee came out about a year or two years ago.

00:37:08.520 He talks about when his first forum, Frank Church was going to be one thing,

00:37:11.500 but they got Gary Hart in there who had just been elected.

00:37:13.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:14.300 Mike Mansfield, the old head of the, you know, really a guy knew how to run things, right?

00:37:18.240 Mansfield from Montana.

00:37:19.580 Pick both of them.

00:37:20.240 Church to head the committee, but Gary Hart was going to be assigned to the CIA to find

00:37:25.320 out what went on.

00:37:26.560 So Hart's seeing Colby and seeing some of the former directors, and they tell him,

00:37:31.280 he said, hey, the guy you really got to see, all of them tell him, say, nice to have dinner.

00:37:34.340 You got to see Angleton.

00:37:36.280 Angleton runs the deal.

00:37:38.160 Now, he was the counterterrorism.

00:37:39.540 Yeah, counterintelligence.

00:37:40.760 Yeah.

00:37:41.620 Legendary guy.

00:37:42.460 There forever.

00:37:43.100 Yeah.

00:37:43.240 And he goes to, I think, the Metropolitan Club.

00:37:47.100 Of course.

00:37:47.840 For dinner.

00:37:48.880 And Angleton would take a drink.

00:37:50.380 And Gary Hart's sitting there kind of working.

00:37:51.900 And so towards the end of the evening, he can't get up enough courage to ask, like, the question.

00:37:55.840 So finally, he says, you know, it's about over.

00:37:57.760 I got to do this.

00:37:58.320 He says, look, Mr. Angleton, I just got a question from the committee.

00:38:01.960 We need to know, did the CIA have anything to do with the Kennedy assassination?

00:38:07.200 He asked Angleton that?

00:38:08.200 He asked Angleton.

00:38:08.740 It's in the bar.

00:38:09.180 Call it.

00:38:09.800 Angleton takes another drink, puts it down, and goes, Senator Hart, you were a theology major, were you not?

00:38:18.960 And he goes, yeah, as a matter of fact, I was a theology major.

00:38:21.240 So you know the New and Old Testament pretty well?

00:38:25.480 He goes, well, enough.

00:38:27.500 He goes, in my father's house, there are many mansions.

00:38:32.460 Gary Hart goes, what the fuck?

00:38:35.080 Didn't ask another question.

00:38:36.800 Went back to church in Mansfield.

00:38:38.480 Mansfield goes, OK, shut it down.

00:38:40.480 He goes, no, this is why they came out of the CIA.

00:38:42.960 Remember, they had tried to kill guys in the Congo.

00:38:45.340 They even had the cigar in Castro.

00:38:47.500 Nothing about the domestic stuff at all.

00:38:49.240 That all got shut down immediately.

00:38:51.380 And they figured, oh, it was a Lumbumba in Congo.

00:38:56.880 And they had tried to kill or killed three or four other guys, maybe Dag, Hammershaw, who knows.

00:39:01.080 But they got into all these things that the American people were interested in, why are you killing foreign leaders?

00:39:06.460 But they didn't get to the heart of many mansions.

00:39:08.960 Gary Hart goes, I'm not going any farther on this one, right?

00:39:11.840 And within 10 years, Frank Church is dead of galloping cancer.

00:39:15.700 And Gary Hart is totally destroyed in 1988 through the-

00:39:19.580 The leading presidential candidate at the time.

00:39:21.980 Oh, yeah.

00:39:22.780 With a picture-

00:39:23.520 Gets lured onto the monkey business.

00:39:24.980 And then his house, the first time they ever just surrounded his house, remember?

00:39:29.120 Oh, I'll never forget it at all.

00:39:31.080 And boy, and the Washington Post led the charge.

00:39:32.720 And I'm not for Gary Hart or whatever, but he, by today's standards-

00:39:35.440 Don't even cross him, though.

00:39:36.580 You're going to-

00:39:37.160 Oh.

00:39:37.600 There's going to be payback.

00:39:38.700 It's literally unbelievable.

00:39:40.120 But you can't-

00:39:40.900 How do you have a real country in the middle of that?

00:39:44.440 Like, I don't understand-

00:39:45.220 Well, you can't.

00:39:45.800 I think you make the point.

00:39:46.860 Since 1963, we've devolved.

00:39:49.860 And that's why-

00:39:50.500 I'm not kidding.

00:39:51.560 As Elon was the special government employee to do doge to try to get waste-front abuse,

00:39:57.320 I think because we're at war now.

00:39:59.220 And the war we're at is an internal war.

00:40:01.540 It's an internal war with this apparatus that we finally have a leader that will have the

00:40:06.980 back of people that will go in because he wants it taken down.

00:40:10.260 I think he's getting terrible advice around that.

00:40:12.680 Someone like you, not to organize it, but who knows the history of these institutions

00:40:17.540 and, quite frankly, where the bodies are buried, have to come in as a special government employee

00:40:22.820 to help get the people on that they're going to organize.

00:40:25.420 We have to go to war against the deep state now.

00:40:28.100 If we don't go to war with the deep state immediately and have a couple of wins that

00:40:32.780 we can point to and some momentum and put them on their back leg, their back foot, in

00:40:37.240 the next 200 days, nothing in America is going to change.

00:40:40.640 And we should be clear about who's serving its interests.

00:40:43.360 Tom Cotton, who's the chairman of the Senate Intel Committee, the Select Committee on

00:40:46.560 Intelligence, was one of the primary drivers of secrecy around the Kennedy files.

00:40:54.080 So Tom Cotton, I think, was born in the 80s.

00:40:56.000 And I like Tom Cotton a lot.

00:40:57.060 I know him.

00:40:57.800 I know his wife who worked at CIA.

00:40:59.260 Nice, super nice people.

00:41:00.840 But when it came down to it, when Trump gets elected and gets inaugurated in January, Tom

00:41:05.060 Cotton's, he's denied this, but he's lying because it's true.

00:41:07.820 I know for a fact.

00:41:09.000 Tom Cotton's running around being like, whoa, whatever we do, we can't put people in place.

00:41:12.360 We're going to declassify all the Kennedy assassination files.

00:41:14.580 62 years later, I think Tom Cotton was born in the 80s.

00:41:18.460 Why would he care?

00:41:19.260 It's not a sources and methods thing anymore.

00:41:21.080 Yeah, look, what is that?

00:41:22.040 Why would Tom Cotton be so concerned about releasing the Kennedy documents that he's trying

00:41:29.220 to prevent people from getting jobs on the basis of his belief that they might reveal those

00:41:34.580 documents?

00:41:35.000 What is that?

00:41:37.400 Because that's...

00:41:38.360 It's disqualifying.

00:41:39.300 He shouldn't be in the Senate, of course.

00:41:40.720 But he knows that that is the key that can pick the lock, that something happened in

00:41:45.080 1963.

00:41:46.080 We had a coup d'etat.

00:41:47.080 Yep.

00:41:47.340 Yes.

00:41:47.700 The country's never faced up to it.

00:41:49.320 No.

00:41:49.520 The country understands that like 80%, something's dead wrong.

00:41:52.760 They understood at the time the Warren Commission was gun-decked.

00:41:55.480 Yeah.

00:41:55.600 You go back and read this new book, even by a New York Times writer.

00:41:58.800 You see how, what a joke it was, how the FBI stepped in immediately.

00:42:01.960 Jerry Ford was their guy.

00:42:04.140 It was a complete joke.

00:42:05.260 He was a made president without an election.

00:42:06.940 Made president without an election.

00:42:08.000 I'm just saying, there are no coincidences.

00:42:10.320 Jerry Ford of the Warren Commission becomes president without an election.

00:42:14.600 And you're like, hmm.

00:42:16.400 If you go...

00:42:18.260 I read the testimony of the Warren Commission.

00:42:20.080 In the Warren Commission, in the sixth floor, in the depository where the gunman sat, right

00:42:27.720 next to him, the guy, I think his name was Willie Davis.

00:42:29.640 He was a worker.

00:42:30.880 Of the black guys who were up on the top deck, pointing afterwards when the shot took place,

00:42:35.560 he was going to go join those guys.

00:42:36.820 He actually sat there and had his lunch right next to where the assassin was.

00:42:41.600 Now, you know assassins and CIA and Navy SEALs, I mean, their heart's beating out of their

00:42:47.480 chest before that happens because they understand it may be the last time they take a breath

00:42:52.120 on Earth is when they fire.

00:42:54.020 So they are really ready to meet their maker.

00:42:56.640 And they're highly focused.

00:42:57.640 The last thing they're going to do on Earth is get that target.

00:43:00.140 That is just these cartons just suppressing by a few feet.

00:43:04.260 And this guy's giving testimony and it's unbelievable.

00:43:07.680 They go, well, you were there.

00:43:08.620 Yes.

00:43:08.940 What were you doing?

00:43:09.480 He says, I was eating a chicken sandwich, a bag of Fritos and a Coke.

00:43:13.740 And they're going, you're right next to him and everything's going and you're hanging

00:43:17.580 on the edge of it.

00:43:18.820 And then all of a sudden, Jerry Ford steps in and goes, excuse me, I have a question.

00:43:23.560 Do you have a criminal record?

00:43:26.800 And the guy goes, excuse me?

00:43:28.800 He goes, do you have a criminal record?

00:43:30.620 And the guy goes, well, I was picked up.

00:43:32.040 No, no, no.

00:43:32.480 You're a felon, right?

00:43:33.560 And the whole conversation drops.

00:43:35.820 I go, oh, my God.

00:43:37.500 We're literally at the moment.

00:43:40.240 Literally 10 minutes before the shot takes place, we have a witness that's there.

00:43:45.040 And you got to ask him, did you hear anything?

00:43:47.020 Did you see anything?

00:43:47.800 And Jerry Ford told us, as you mentioned, with Angleton and the guys, a few years later,

00:43:54.000 out of nowhere, on Watergate, another operation they were deeply involved in, right?

00:44:02.020 He's made vice president of the United States.

00:44:03.540 Yeah, because the president's most popular president in American history is undone by

00:44:07.380 a naval intel officer posing as a journalist.

00:44:09.780 Exactly.

00:44:11.260 From the Washington Post.

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00:45:39.740 So you wonder, like, a lot of this is taking place in private, and it's one of the great

00:45:44.540 frustrations as an American is you don't know what your government's doing, and you

00:45:47.260 have no way to find out.

00:45:48.480 Even when it's done 60 years ago, you don't know.

00:45:51.300 But some of it's taking place totally in public, the Tom Cotton stuff, and it grieves me to

00:45:54.680 say this because I like Tom, and I think he's smart, really smart, actually, and a good

00:45:58.120 guy in a lot of ways.

00:45:59.360 But he's acting on behalf of CIA, not on behalf of the people of Arkansas, obviously.

00:46:04.500 But then there's Lindsey Graham, who's, like, florid, out in public.

00:46:09.560 Like, there's no kind of hiding who Lindsey Graham is, and how does, what is that?

00:46:13.460 The whole Ukraine thing, he and Pompeo.

00:46:15.940 How the weekend before the drone assault takes place, he's in Ukraine saying something's going

00:46:22.100 to happen.

00:46:22.480 He's in France.

00:46:23.340 I mean, if you talk to people over there, it's like he had inside baseball.

00:46:27.100 He was all jacked up, then good things are going to happen.

00:46:29.580 Pompeo's in, like, Odessa, giving a talk.

00:46:32.880 I mean, what is Mike Pompeo?

00:46:34.200 There's a middle of a war over there.

00:46:35.520 We're trying to extract ourselves.

00:46:36.700 What is Mike Pompeo in Odessa, given some, you know, a rally speech, essentially pump

00:46:41.600 these guys up?

00:46:42.320 And he's talking about certain things that could happen or certain positive things to

00:46:47.160 hang in on this war.

00:46:48.380 Exactly what President Trump's counter to.

00:46:50.280 President Trump is trying to have everybody lay down their guns.

00:46:53.440 And that's because right now, the British paper's report is a million Russians dead or

00:46:57.100 wounded.

00:46:57.760 There's 750,000 Ukrainians dead or wounded.

00:47:01.100 I mean, this has been devastating, like World War I type of casualties.

00:47:05.320 President Trump is sitting there going, we need to put the guns down.

00:47:07.760 I need to get people at the table.

00:47:09.040 We need to talk.

00:47:09.620 We'll even buy your dirt.

00:47:11.020 We'll buy your rare earths.

00:47:12.240 We'll put money in, which we oppose.

00:47:14.080 But if President Trump thinks he needs that for a peace deal, we'll support him.

00:47:17.740 What is Mike Pompeo in Odessa jacking these people up?

00:47:20.940 What is Lindsey Graham over there jacking people up about?

00:47:23.780 These questions have to be asked.

00:47:25.280 So we have to ask, what part of our government is going against the commander-in-chief and

00:47:29.600 what the commander-in-chief is trying to do?

00:47:31.340 Is it legal for Lindsey to do that?

00:47:33.180 Well, there's the Logan Act.

00:47:34.420 You know, I called for his arrest.

00:47:36.480 Good.

00:47:37.700 Absolutely.

00:47:38.240 Or cancel his passport.

00:47:40.060 Do two things.

00:47:40.800 Either don't lean back in the country or arresting.

00:47:43.500 And I'm adamant about this, and Pompeo also, because I think there are arguments around

00:47:47.360 the Logan Act that they're over there countering what the commander-in-chief is trying to do.

00:47:51.240 And they have security clearances, too, which I don't have.

00:47:54.560 And you don't have, I assume, a security clearance.

00:47:57.720 Not anymore.

00:47:57.940 Not anymore.

00:47:58.180 Right.

00:47:58.820 But why does...

00:47:59.700 I don't want one right now.

00:48:00.540 No, I don't either.

00:48:02.060 Because you said, hey, I didn't...

00:48:03.540 Don't blame me.

00:48:04.360 Don't blame me.

00:48:05.200 I didn't believe you.

00:48:05.320 But why does Lindsey Graham and why does Mike Pompeo have a security clearance?

00:48:09.160 Well, I think, yeah, it's Mike, because I'm very disappointed in him.

00:48:11.520 I knew him for years.

00:48:13.020 Me too.

00:48:13.580 The guy I know today, the guy I see today, is not the guy I know.

00:48:16.440 And I think people have to...

00:48:17.920 I think they ought to come on when they come on TV, is they ought to have the, like, NASCAR

00:48:21.800 drivers.

00:48:22.600 Like, who's on the...

00:48:23.540 Whose payroll are they on?

00:48:24.740 Exactly.

00:48:25.280 Right?

00:48:25.300 The American people are...

00:48:26.660 At least it ought to be in a chyron who they're taking money from.

00:48:29.800 But who...

00:48:31.020 What's the deal with Lindsey...

00:48:33.080 Let me just say, I've known Lindsey for 25 years.

00:48:36.620 And it's impossible not to like Lindsey Graham.

00:48:39.280 He's one of the most charming, funny...

00:48:41.960 He's just a wonderful person to travel with.

00:48:45.680 He's the most charming person in the world.

00:48:47.220 I'll just say that, because it's just true.

00:48:48.460 I like him.

00:48:48.840 If he was here, I would be having fun with Lindsey Graham.

00:48:51.340 But his effect on the United States is so destructive.

00:48:54.700 I don't understand what that is.

00:48:56.060 What is his motive?

00:48:57.000 You know him well, of course, because you're...

00:48:58.480 Well, I know, look, I think, number one, he's very involved in the Pentagon, on our Services

00:49:04.160 Committee.

00:49:04.860 The Pentagon, the building runs like the building's going to run.

00:49:07.360 I mean, it's a trillion dollar.

00:49:09.040 Why, when President Trump says, we're going to go to a hemispheric defense, from Greenland

00:49:13.900 to block the Russian submarines, to Alaska, maybe Canada for the Arctic, because that's

00:49:18.140 the new great game of the 21st century.

00:49:19.980 To the Panama Canal, because they're going to block the Chinese and Russian Navy, we're

00:49:23.900 going to get the Chinese out of the Caribbean, we'll deal with Venezuela.

00:49:27.020 We'll have the Central Pacific, which has always been kind of our strategic pivot, the

00:49:30.800 three island chains.

00:49:32.060 And America's hermetically sealed.

00:49:33.660 You add a Golden Dome or some sort of ballistic missile, America can live in peace, and we

00:49:38.820 can do...

00:49:39.060 It's the greatest.

00:49:39.580 And we can do expeditionary...

00:49:41.600 Not that we're not engaged in the world, you can do expeditionary forces anywhere you

00:49:45.260 want in the world.

00:49:45.820 You can't put Chinese infrastructure in St. Croix, which they have a lot of, in St.

00:49:49.980 Croix, which we control.

00:49:51.520 Exactly.

00:49:52.200 So you can't let the Chinese control your hemisphere.

00:49:54.280 That seems reasonable.

00:49:55.240 And they'll say to us, okay, get out of Japan.

00:49:57.320 At which point you say, okay.

00:49:59.020 I mean, that seems like logical.

00:50:01.160 This budget is not a trillion dollars going up, right?

00:50:05.500 Because right now it's over a trillion dollars.

00:50:06.960 If you add the supplement that's coming in, the reconciliation bill with the NDAA, you're

00:50:12.020 over a trillion dollars, and it's only going to keep increasing.

00:50:14.360 This is the way the defense contractors make money.

00:50:17.640 They embed it over there.

00:50:19.000 They kind of run the building right now.

00:50:20.720 You don't see any pushback by armed services.

00:50:22.760 In fact, every district's got huge plants.

00:50:24.680 As you know, our industrial policy that we do have is really around arms management.

00:50:29.200 Yes, that's it.

00:50:30.080 Right?

00:50:30.360 And it's a high margin business, and we want to sell weapons to the entire world.

00:50:35.120 It's that system that's running the country.

00:50:37.520 Remember, the difference between President Trump's first term and his second term is what happened

00:50:42.060 under Biden is a massive concentration of power because they didn't back Lena Kahn or the

00:50:46.920 antitrust people like we have now in President Trump's administration, like Gail Slater and

00:50:51.600 what's happening to the FTC under Andrew Ferguson, taking big tech to court and trying to break

00:50:56.420 them up.

00:50:56.700 Right now, you have Wall Street, you have big tech, you have big agriculture, you have big

00:51:03.680 pharma, you have the big healthcare industry, you have the defense contractors, you have

00:51:07.200 the concentration of these massive industries that have every lobbyist, every communications

00:51:13.680 expert, all the big law firms on their payroll.

00:51:16.580 If you and I wanted to start today and say, hey, guess what?

00:51:18.620 We want to take on one of the industries.

00:51:20.160 Let's take on big ag.

00:51:21.380 You literally can't get a great law firm to represent you or a great lobbyist because they're

00:51:26.380 all hired by these guys.

00:51:28.920 That concentration-

00:51:29.440 And they'll set up regulatory hurdles that are insurmountable.

00:51:33.060 This is the regulatory cap.

00:51:34.100 I'm living that in something that we're doing on the side and you just find out that it's

00:51:40.440 crazy.

00:51:42.280 That concentration of power.

00:51:43.420 Oh my God.

00:51:44.200 Regulatory capture and really regulatory merger.

00:51:46.400 We said when we gave China everything after Tiananmen Square, when we gave most favored nation

00:51:52.080 status and WTO and access that the more they get prosperous, because they were a backward

00:51:57.860 agricultural country at the time, the more prosperous they get, the more they'll become

00:52:02.220 like a liberal democracy like the United States.

00:52:04.160 I remember that.

00:52:04.620 We actually have copied the model of the Chinese Communist Party.

00:52:07.680 They have a handful of state-owned industries, very powerful, merged in with the central government,

00:52:13.160 an authoritarian government.

00:52:14.300 That's what we have, and that's what President Trump, the promise of President Trump is to

00:52:19.020 break that.

00:52:19.880 The American people don't want it.

00:52:21.260 They hate it.

00:52:22.140 Now, they need the tools to do it, and that's why I think this next couple hundred days coming

00:52:26.120 after the 10th anniversary of really President Trump, because what happened?

00:52:29.940 At the top of the escalator, Trump was in seventh place, because people didn't know if

00:52:34.180 he was serious about running or not.

00:52:35.420 No, right.

00:52:35.740 He had just gone to CPAC, I think, 90 days before.

00:52:37.960 In the 2015 CPAC, Trump finished seventh in the poll at three and a half percent.

00:52:44.380 I remember.

00:52:44.860 Behind all these guys.

00:52:46.040 At the top of the escalator, he's in seventh.

00:52:49.680 That night, they do a flash poll, I think, on CNN.

00:52:52.400 He's first.

00:52:53.140 Why?

00:52:53.520 That talk was in a nomenclature, in a vernacular that American people hadn't heard from a politician.

00:53:00.480 about the border, about deportations, about China, about bringing jobs back, about ending

00:53:05.960 the forever wars.

00:53:06.840 Remember, as the campaign went on, he goes to South Carolina.

00:53:10.280 I'll never forget it.

00:53:10.900 And in South Carolina, he literally blew up the entire, not just Bush apparatus, kind

00:53:16.000 of Fox and kind of everybody on the right that had been in there.

00:53:19.700 And when he said it, you could hear the audience gasp, and so many commentators came on and

00:53:23.740 said, well, that's the end of him, because-

00:53:25.080 They all said that.

00:53:26.260 Except me, because I was the only one in Fox News who I knew.

00:53:29.700 I was like, yes, thank you for telling the truth, finally.

00:53:34.160 But everybody around you was that, he's finished.

00:53:35.940 They hated me for agreeing with him.

00:53:37.680 They hated me, personally.

00:53:38.400 And he went in a landslide.

00:53:39.880 Karl Rove, never, who was my neighbor, and always got along with him.

00:53:43.380 Again, perfectly charming guy, sort of.

00:53:46.360 Very, not a good person at all, but smart, and, you know, Karl.

00:53:51.420 But after that, that was the moment I realized it was in that Greenville-South Carolina debate

00:53:56.180 that all that mattered to them was a projection of force abroad.

00:54:00.020 That's it.

00:54:00.640 Everything else was just silly.

00:54:01.720 Because they were so shocked he said it and united the fact that he can't win?

00:54:06.160 That's when Bill Kristol turned against him, was that night.

00:54:08.320 And if you look, you could look it up, check his Twitter feed.

00:54:11.400 The day before, Kristol was like, you know, Trump's kind of a pig, but he's our pig, and

00:54:15.620 actually, we can kind of use him, and maybe we should make peace with Trump.

00:54:20.080 Bill Kristol said that, who I used to work for for many years.

00:54:23.040 The day after that Greenville debate, he took the position that he has now, which is, you

00:54:27.600 know, we'll destroy the country to prevent Trump from exercising power.

00:54:30.420 Like, he was a sworn enemy of Donald Trump's after that, when he came out against the Iraq

00:54:34.020 War.

00:54:34.760 How weird.

00:54:37.000 Why?

00:54:38.500 If you hit something, if you killed a child in a DUI, okay, you're drunk, you accidentally

00:54:43.120 run over a child, there's no possibility you could meaningfully advance in American

00:54:48.180 life, because people would say, we've forgiven you, Steve, but you did something that's so

00:54:52.480 horrible.

00:54:52.820 Totally irresponsible.

00:54:53.700 It's just horrible.

00:54:54.640 It was a mistake.

00:54:55.560 Yeah, it was a mistake, but it was horrible.

00:54:57.500 We allowed the architects of the Iraq War, who gravely injured the United States, got all

00:55:02.640 these people killed, Americans killed, to continue to advance.

00:55:06.200 They were never held to account for what they did, ever, at all.

00:55:10.160 They became the head of the World Bank.

00:55:11.520 How did we do that?

00:55:12.420 The specter of that is what we've faced over the last 72 hours.

00:55:16.320 This is exactly the same pitch as the Iraq War.

00:55:19.160 Weapons of mass destruction.

00:55:20.360 Oh, I know.

00:55:20.720 You have to get it.

00:55:21.600 So they understand one thing.

00:55:24.160 They think the playbook works.

00:55:25.880 This is why we have to stop it now.

00:55:27.420 If we don't stop it now, it's going to work all the time.

00:55:30.480 They think that playbook of lulling the American people to sleep and telling them there's these

00:55:35.660 evil people that have to be taken down, or if they're taken down, everything's going to be

00:55:39.260 fine after that, and that we face an apocalypse if that doesn't happen, they're running the

00:55:43.900 Iraq War playbook over again with almost some of the same players, or at least the protégés,

00:55:48.940 right, in the verticals of who those players were.

00:55:50.960 But why does institutional conservatism allow it?

00:55:53.380 If Mike Pompeo shows up at the Republican county of dinner in some state, he's treated

00:56:00.600 as, I was in a restaurant with him recently, and everyone's like, oh, Mike Pompeo.

00:56:03.700 He's treated as like a legitimate person.

00:56:06.360 No one has ever, the right does not hold its own people accountable on the most basic level.

00:56:12.140 Well, I would say the right.

00:56:12.880 The Republican Party is controlled opposition, okay?

00:56:16.000 Because they've never really put in a fight.

00:56:18.100 Let's go back to the three central tenets of Trumpism, you know, immigration, border and

00:56:22.640 sovereignty, trade, and ending forever wars.

00:56:25.240 The official apparatus of the Republican Party hates all three of them and doesn't agree

00:56:30.140 with any of them.

00:56:31.980 Do you think that's still true?

00:56:32.920 It's 100%.

00:56:33.700 Look what happened here in the last 24 hours on the immigration side.

00:56:38.120 All of a sudden, they promulgated that because of big agriculture's needs, that we can no longer

00:56:45.760 have raids on farms, raids in hotels, all of it.

00:56:49.820 That had to be counter of our president Trump saying, hey, there's 20 million illegal aliens.

00:56:52.840 I'm going to get them all out of here, and then today, or this morning, he came out with,

00:56:56.500 we're going to triple down the raids in sanctuary cities, right?

00:56:59.080 I'm going to get all these guys out of here.

00:57:00.780 No, there's huge institutional fight led by Fox News, right?

00:57:04.440 Their biggest is the forever wars.

00:57:06.440 But if you look at the Wall Street Journal, and if you look at Fox News on the trade and

00:57:11.740 bringing jobs back from China, they're very ambivalent about that.

00:57:14.640 They're talking about the cost of living.

00:57:15.980 I mean, they're putting up that, you know, because they're all free traders, which is the

00:57:19.600 way the country got in the first place.

00:57:22.200 They're also quite ambivalent on the immigration and mass deportation.

00:57:27.400 Remember, mass deportation is just not to criminals.

00:57:29.660 You have to get, President Trump said today, 20 million.

00:57:32.140 I say it's 10, came in on Biden's watch.

00:57:34.940 They all have to leave.

00:57:36.320 But you're seeing a lot of ambivalence of that, particularly the Republican Party.

00:57:39.300 They're saying, the Wall Street Journal says, well, no, they add 2%, one and a half to 2%

00:57:43.580 to GDP, right, because they buy so much stuff.

00:57:46.260 Number two, they've driven down wages among particularly low-skilled black and Hispanics.

00:57:51.320 I say, this is why we put the coalition together.

00:57:53.740 This is why 39% of black men are voting for us.

00:57:56.240 This is why South Texas is now MAGA territory, because they understand their wages to be driven

00:58:01.220 down.

00:58:01.980 So I think the Republican Party hates the basic tenets of President Trump's platform, particularly

00:58:07.600 the one they most hate is ending the forever wars.

00:58:10.680 That's tied to both Wall Street.

00:58:12.660 It's tied to the defense industry.

00:58:14.300 It's also tied to this mentality that we have an American empire.

00:58:17.680 Remember, you and I saying, hey, we are actually a republic.

00:58:20.780 We want to go back to being a republic.

00:58:22.620 Like, the founders of our country, when they set the Constitution, they look to Republican

00:58:27.220 Rome.

00:58:27.880 That was their source of things, not the Roman Empire.

00:58:31.320 What we've done, in fact, they said, I think it was General Washington, don't go overseas

00:58:37.400 looking for monsters to slay.

00:58:39.300 Exactly.

00:58:39.660 Right?

00:58:39.860 We have enough to do here.

00:58:41.320 Let's do this.

00:58:42.180 And I think that that's where we've gotten so far off track, and we have an American empire.

00:58:45.560 That empire has to be taken apart brick by brick, because all it's done is to basically destroy

00:58:52.320 the inner workings of the United States, and particularly destroy the very people who are the cannon fodder

00:58:57.980 in these wars, right?

00:58:59.780 And that's why-

00:59:00.360 Destroy the nation.

00:59:01.220 Drive around.

00:59:01.720 Drive around the country.

00:59:02.720 Just get in your vehicle and drive.

00:59:04.480 And I don't see how anybody could say things are better now than they were 15 or 20 years

00:59:10.280 ago or 40 years ago.

00:59:11.340 It's a disaster.

00:59:12.580 And so the empire destroys the country.

00:59:15.120 And you add on top of it the national debt and the trillion dollars every month and the

00:59:18.820 discussions.

00:59:19.580 We have a discussion.

00:59:21.340 Doge goes to a bunch of different places, but they never go to the Pentagon.

00:59:24.800 They're not really allowed to go to the Pentagon.

00:59:26.340 We have a budget that we're talking about, how do we make these cuts?

00:59:29.620 How do you cut Medicaid?

00:59:30.440 How do you cut the food stamp program, which all have to be looked at and done?

00:59:33.860 But it's sacrosity.

00:59:35.020 We can't even talk about defense.

00:59:36.180 We have a trillion dollar defense budget.

00:59:38.060 And I keep saying, Trump's laid out a strategy of hemispheric defense.

00:59:41.760 It's very different than post-war, where we're everywhere, the American empire, and really

00:59:46.720 around the ring of the Eurasian landmass, right?

00:59:49.040 And I said, he's talking about a hemispheric defense.

00:59:51.460 The budget is totally misaligned with the hemispheric defense, both in the allocation

00:59:55.780 to the Navy, taking down big army.

00:59:57.860 But hey, baby, the defense budget is going to go, and you're not going to cut a penny

01:00:02.300 out of it.

01:00:02.660 Because like you, you're raising your voice as someone that likes Israel and agrees with

01:00:08.920 Israeli nationality.

01:00:10.200 You're saying that you raise your voice, and all of a sudden, you're being eviscerated,

01:00:13.600 that you're an enemy of the Jewish people, that you're an anti-Semite.

01:00:16.860 Not just that.

01:00:17.580 You're an appeaser, and he said, Tucker's a pacifist, right?

01:00:22.280 Appeasing a pacifist, because they understand.

01:00:25.000 Show up at my house and find out how far my pacifism extends.

01:00:28.140 No, I mean, it's, no, it's all, it's slander, and it's, it bothers me simply because it does

01:00:34.300 convince people whose opinions I care about, and I, who I care about personally, and it

01:00:39.840 fractures relationships.

01:00:41.420 And it also comes from people I know really well, and that Ari Fleischer, who I've never,

01:00:46.760 you know, like, respected, but I always liked him, and I, he wrote something, somebody sent

01:00:51.080 me this thing yesterday, and, you know, I'm just a carnival barker, and I'm pretending

01:00:54.340 to have my views, and I, I texted him, and I was like, come on, like, this is not, you

01:00:58.840 know, I may be totally wrong, you, of course, disagree with me, that's fine, but you know

01:01:03.180 that I'm sincere, I'm totally sincere, why else would I do this?

01:01:06.400 Of course, he didn't respond to me, but it's painful.

01:01:08.120 Ari, who every day went to the podium and told us, just another day away from finding

01:01:13.540 weapons of mass destruction, how can they sit there and lie to the nation?

01:01:16.440 Now, I am quite serious, given, because you're a product of Washington, D.C., there's no one

01:01:25.520 better in an emergency, we have an emergency, we have a break-the-glass emergency, to actually

01:01:29.780 be an advisor to the president, right, in a temporary thing, than you, who know the whole,

01:01:35.800 you know the canvas, not that you're organized, but you could sit there in the, in the, in

01:01:40.960 the NSC, in the, in the tank, or the tanks of the Pentagon, but down, where the Kennedy

01:01:44.760 room, and actually walk through, this is the apparatus, this is what we have to do, this

01:01:50.060 is what we have to do with the FBI, this is what we have to do with the CIA, this is what

01:01:53.520 we have to do with DNI, the Pentagon, and then we have people execute that.

01:01:56.840 Yeah, I would never survive that, but, I mean, I don't come back, I had breakfast alone in

01:02:01.460 the dining room in the Metropolitan Club this morning, which is a place I love, it's the

01:02:04.640 only person there, it's me and the waiters, who I know well and love, and the second I

01:02:09.440 walk outside that building, I'm like, whoa, the vibe in the city is, can you feel that?

01:02:14.900 I feel it, ever since, ever since President Trump left in January of 2021, because it was

01:02:20.820 an armed camp then, we had around the, I had left by then, I was like, I'm out.

01:02:25.040 You came to the war room, we had a hundred National Guard troops, with two Humvees, Bob

01:02:30.580 bar everywhere, it took from the guys at Fox and One America to come up to the war room,

01:02:35.200 it's only a five minute walk up the hill, 45 minutes to get there, they go through checkpoints.

01:02:39.700 Ever since that time, and I hate to say, with all the positive energy President Trump has

01:02:44.840 brought, it's still a dark specter.

01:02:47.140 This imperial capital is probably, and I tell you why, they understand there's an internal

01:02:52.120 civil war here, that one side's going to win and one side's going to lose.

01:02:55.620 Because their belief is they're going to wait us out, that for all the Tucker Carlson's

01:03:00.800 and Steve Bannon's and other people around President Trump are sitting there going, the

01:03:04.700 Bobby Kennedy's, right, and other people that know how this apparatus works at every level

01:03:09.120 and are sitting there going, we have to do this now, they believe that they will wait

01:03:13.060 President Trump out.

01:03:13.980 And I don't put a possibility of an assassination, if President Trump is to go too far into this

01:03:20.360 and bring you into that, do not think, they would not think of an assassination attempt.

01:03:24.900 They have no intention of turning over control and power of the most powerful empire in man's

01:03:31.960 history.

01:03:32.580 It has to be taken from them.

01:03:34.120 And I tell people, we either do it now, if we don't do it now, this wave of kind of people

01:03:40.120 that have come together, we're not going to be able to do it.

01:03:43.940 And if we don't do it, I'm not sure we win another election.

01:03:47.300 Because I think people are going to, they're going to force us into doing either not deporting

01:03:51.440 the 10 million, right, and not securing the border, not forcing China and not really cutting

01:03:55.940 tough deals that start to bring real high value-added manufacturing jobs back because

01:03:59.540 Wall Street doesn't want that.

01:04:01.040 They think our labor cost is too high.

01:04:03.120 They think the environmental cost is too high.

01:04:04.840 They love the slave labor of Lao Tzai.

01:04:07.040 And most importantly, they're not going to stop the war machine.

01:04:11.040 They're not going to stop.

01:04:11.760 And I'm not a pastor.

01:04:12.500 I spent eight years of my life as a naval officer.

01:04:14.080 My daughter went to West Point.

01:04:15.160 She fought in Iraq in 2010 under Obama, right?

01:04:19.120 It's not that we're pacifists.

01:04:20.600 We see what we see.

01:04:22.540 And what we see now is a very evil specter over this imperial capital.

01:04:27.320 And one side is going to win.

01:04:29.220 The President Trump kind of rebels or revolutionaries versus this Praetorian Guard apparatus.

01:04:34.420 And that's why this fight, to me, is going to happen.

01:04:36.240 The next 200 or 300 days, we're going to know what side this is going to...

01:04:40.600 We're going to know if there's enough momentum on our side to actually win.

01:04:43.800 Yeah, there's a...

01:04:44.560 It's a spiritual thing.

01:04:46.100 And you can...

01:04:46.500 I texted my wife this morning.

01:04:47.680 It's the second this administration's gone.

01:04:49.480 I'm never coming back here.

01:04:50.880 And I mean, I spent...

01:04:52.760 Got here in 1985.

01:04:54.060 And it's really shocking.

01:04:55.600 You feel that, though, when you're here.

01:04:57.340 Oh!

01:04:58.420 Yeah, it's just dark.

01:04:59.660 It's super dark.

01:05:01.140 And where I live normally is very...

01:05:03.800 You know, it's not thriving at all.

01:05:05.140 It's poor.

01:05:05.500 And there are lots of problems.

01:05:06.400 And people die of drug ODs and all that.

01:05:08.340 But you don't feel...

01:05:09.700 A lot of people die of drug ODs.

01:05:10.800 But you do not feel this kind of...

01:05:13.720 When we sold our house five years ago, my wife sold it over the phone.

01:05:18.120 And next thing I know, there is a...

01:05:20.180 It was a great, beautiful house.

01:05:21.480 Super pretty house.

01:05:22.780 Not huge, but beautiful.

01:05:24.540 In the District of Columbia.

01:05:25.800 And she sells it to a CIA officer.

01:05:29.400 Pays the cash.

01:05:30.560 And the next thing you know, there's a Ukraine flag flying from my flagpole.

01:05:34.900 And I'm not making this up.

01:05:35.960 And my neighbor sent it to me.

01:05:37.120 He's like, oh, look what happened to your house.

01:05:38.780 A house I really loved.

01:05:40.460 And I was like, wow, that's just a metaphor.

01:05:43.060 But okay, so let me ask you.

01:05:44.460 You've made a couple of allusions.

01:05:46.660 I almost don't want to ask you because it's upsetting.

01:05:48.460 But to the country coming apart.

01:05:50.920 Yeah.

01:05:51.520 To conflict here.

01:05:52.600 Clearly, there's been a rise in violence.

01:05:54.080 This weird Minnesota story, which I'm not even going to ask you about because I don't understand it at all.

01:05:59.060 I don't think anybody does.

01:06:00.580 But I want to ask you about what's happening in California.

01:06:02.960 It does seem like resisting federal authority on immigration is an act of sedition more profound than anything they did at Fort Sumter in 1861.

01:06:12.320 And this is not resolved.

01:06:15.260 Like, I don't – what are we watching right now in California with Gavin Newsom?

01:06:18.520 You're from D.C.

01:06:19.660 I'm from Richmond.

01:06:20.640 Yeah.

01:06:20.760 I'm raised in Richmond.

01:06:21.620 And I keep telling people, I thought we settled this about federal law and states' rights and succession in the mid-1860s.

01:06:30.720 We had a civil war to determine the outcome of this.

01:06:33.500 We've had that discussion.

01:06:34.540 We've had that argument.

01:06:35.380 It's been settled.

01:06:36.000 I said this to President Trump in the first term, that this whole thing of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states is absolutely a neoconfederate mentality that you can have.

01:06:47.200 Gavin Newsom, right?

01:06:49.080 Have you said that on War Room?

01:06:50.660 Yes, I've said that.

01:06:51.100 That it's neoconfederate.

01:06:52.140 It's so smart.

01:06:53.060 It's a neoconfederate.

01:06:54.260 It is.

01:06:54.900 That's exactly what it is.

01:06:56.360 I'm stealing that, by the way.

01:06:57.540 No, no, no.

01:06:58.040 So good.

01:06:58.780 But Jackson, look, he had this thing before the Civil War with Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun on tariffs.

01:07:05.420 Remember, the landed aristocracy in South Carolina were some of the richest people.

01:07:09.860 I think Charleston had more what would be equivalent to billionaires at the start of the Civil War than any place on Earth.

01:07:15.220 And it shows in the battery down there.

01:07:17.280 Battery.

01:07:17.620 It's a magnificent city today.

01:07:20.840 John C. Calhoun, as his vice president, was going to stop and go down and defend South Carolina.

01:07:25.800 He said, we're not going to do these tariffs.

01:07:27.120 And Jackson said, I'm going to call the Army down there.

01:07:31.300 And if Calhoun's defying me, I'm going to hang him from the first lamppost.

01:07:34.580 I mean, Jackson was a guy who was going to take immediate action.

01:07:37.200 What's happening in California is kind of the equivalent.

01:07:40.340 You've had the sanctuary cities.

01:07:41.460 And if President Trump had not sent the troops in and federalized the National Guard, what would happen in L.A. was what we see in all these cities.

01:07:47.980 It would explode.

01:07:48.760 It would have been the summer of love of 2025, where there was a lot more rhetoric than actually action.

01:07:53.820 And one of the reasons President Trump had Bill Barr and Esper and all these people that wouldn't execute what he wanted.

01:07:59.000 Now he's got a team.

01:08:00.520 And that's why I'm so glad he came out last night and says, I'm doubling and tripling down the rates.

01:08:05.100 My recommendation on the show the day after this stuff happened over that weekend was President Trump ought to triple the ICE raids.

01:08:12.080 And he ought to go to, you know, he ought to go to schools or, hey, they got to go, right?

01:08:16.760 They have to go.

01:08:17.560 And it's not pleasant.

01:08:18.340 We've got to be very humane about it.

01:08:19.960 But you have to have a show of force.

01:08:21.760 And if you need to send in the Army, if you need to send in the Federalized National Guard, we have to do it.

01:08:26.080 California is the railhead of this.

01:08:28.440 That's why you have to break it there.

01:08:29.840 It's going to obviously pop up in Chicago and New York.

01:08:32.340 But you have to take in.

01:08:33.740 Stephen Miller said this.

01:08:34.800 I've known Stephen a long time ago.

01:08:36.140 Andrew and Stephen Miller and Ben Shapiro, Alex Martin, they all came out of kind of West L.A., right?

01:08:41.460 Ben may have been in the Valley, but they're all West L.A. guys.

01:08:44.360 Stephen Miller has been saying since the time I knew him, the war for America is going to be won or lost on the streets of Los Angeles.

01:08:51.420 He said this now for almost 20 years.

01:08:53.320 And this is what this fight and this is what's so disturbing about the timing.

01:08:57.320 We're totally focused on that.

01:08:59.020 And President Trump actually implementing the deportations of mass deportations.

01:09:03.540 And all of a sudden this thing breaks out in Persia, in the Middle East, and now the whole country is just focused on that.

01:09:09.160 But it's almost like a time diversion to get our attention.

01:09:12.180 It does feel that way.

01:09:13.280 Because B.B. gave it up.

01:09:15.220 There was no – it didn't have to happen on Thursday night.

01:09:18.780 We were told what was leaks, oh, there's a bomb and they're going to have it.

01:09:22.080 And, you know, this is something they have to have immediately, immediately, immediately.

01:09:24.760 He comes on Bret Baier and says, well, it's 12 or 13 months.

01:09:27.320 We've heard the 12 or 13 months for 20 years.

01:09:30.240 Maybe it is 12 or 13 months.

01:09:31.620 But that doesn't mean you have to act on Friday.

01:09:33.600 Why is it Thursday and Friday when we're in the middle of actually the most important part of this Third World War is the 10 million invaders we've had in this country or 20 million, according to President Trump.

01:09:43.780 They all have to go.

01:09:45.260 You understand that there's many bad actors that came in on this, right, that are now sleeper cells in this country.

01:09:51.340 Everybody's got to go.

01:09:52.360 And we have to do it.

01:09:53.180 That is the – when I talk about Third World War, the central battlefront for the United States of America is internal to the United States of America.

01:10:00.740 This is why we have to focus on this in the timing because there's no coincidences of how all of a sudden we're asked to do bombing runs in Iran a half a world away and it sucks up all the media attention that you don't even – there's not even a discussion on this.

01:10:16.500 And that's why President Trump coming out and doubling down.

01:10:18.640 And Homan and Stephen Miller, there ought to be three more raids tomorrow and we've got to get the focus back on that.

01:10:23.360 How should you deal with – I mean when Orville Faubus, who was the governor of Arkansas in 1956, presides over the state that refuses to desegregate, after the Supreme Court says you have to desegregate in Brown v. Board.

01:10:36.680 And Dwight Eisenhower, who's not a liberal, says you can't ignore federal authority on a federal issue.

01:10:44.960 This is a Supreme Court decision.

01:10:45.880 And he sends the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, to Central High School, and says, sorry, you're going to desegregate.

01:10:50.960 Now, whatever you think of that, it's kind of disgusting in certain ways, but it's also essential to preserving the union.

01:10:58.360 I mean I don't understand.

01:11:00.040 Like how can you have your biggest state being like, no, to the federal government?

01:11:06.640 Like what –

01:11:07.760 On a central issue.

01:11:08.940 On a central issue.

01:11:09.840 On a central –

01:11:10.480 Who lives here?

01:11:11.300 Yes.

01:11:11.640 Who takes federal benefits?

01:11:12.660 Who's actually a citizen?

01:11:14.300 Who has allegiance to this country?

01:11:15.980 Who gets to choose our leadership in a democratic system?

01:11:19.080 This is why this radical neo-Marxist Democratic Party will fight.

01:11:23.180 This is the hill they will die on.

01:11:24.720 But I don't understand how you can put up with that.

01:11:28.000 How can you put up with that?

01:11:28.840 That's like maybe a little more important than whether Iran gets the bomb.

01:11:31.660 Well, you can't – and by the way, the American people don't.

01:11:35.120 I think it's like 60-40 where they agree with President Trump on these mass deportations.

01:11:39.440 Remember, one of the reasons we're winning the African-American vote is President Trump does not believe like the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris in mass incarcerations.

01:11:47.440 He believes in mass deportation.

01:11:48.800 When I was in prison, the only thing I put up from Danbury was like on the 26th of August.

01:11:52.640 I said, hey, victory's at hand.

01:11:53.900 I can tell from the prisoners in Danbury, the young Hispanics and blacks who hate the Democratic Party.

01:11:59.560 And they particularly hated Kamala Harris.

01:12:01.580 You guys said, look, the Democratic Party is for mass incarcerations to break our families and to make us dependent upon the government.

01:12:07.640 I mean, these guys were smarter than guys going to Yale and the political science department because it's a lived experience of them.

01:12:13.120 And they support mass deportations because in a place like Danbury, 10 percent of the prison is bad hombres from these other countries that are the most dangerous criminals, convicts you have in these prisons.

01:12:24.720 People at the street level have our back on this.

01:12:28.100 This is this new coalition.

01:12:29.640 But we have to succeed in this.

01:12:32.440 We have to succeed in the deportations and getting wages to rise.

01:12:35.700 In fact, I think there was just something in the Wall Street Journal.

01:12:37.560 They said wages for low skilled workers are coming up.

01:12:40.560 Yeah. Right.

01:12:40.900 Because guess what?

01:12:41.980 You have less non-citizens here competing as a people in their own country shouldn't have to compete against a non-citizen for a job.

01:12:50.240 This is President Trump's the centerpiece of the entire Make America Great Again movement.

01:12:55.220 And that's why it has to succeed.

01:12:56.740 And everybody now in the official political apparatus is trying to thwart him in this.

01:13:02.680 And this is why it's so important for him to go in the deep state is also remember one of the reasons that DHS is burning through money and there's not as many deportations.

01:13:11.900 You talk to the guys at the White House, you talk to the guys at DHS, they're still playing by the old playbook.

01:13:17.080 In other words, they have to have a deportation order from a court.

01:13:19.860 They go to a guy's house and make sure there's no kids around.

01:13:22.580 They take like 20 agents a week to go serve on two people and get them out of here.

01:13:27.680 Well, obviously, that's the old playbook.

01:13:30.160 You have to get much more aggressive on your deportations.

01:13:33.180 I think Miller and Holman are trying to change the culture over there to actually do it.

01:13:37.360 But even there, the apparatus, it's the administrative state's got its own mind on how they're going to do things.

01:13:42.940 I think this is one of President Trump's big battles.

01:13:45.740 My last question has to do with like the first principle from which these positions flow, which is there's a certain segment of our population.

01:13:53.460 I think the majority of you think the U.S. government's job is to help American citizens in America.

01:13:58.620 But there is another very powerful segment, which is most of the U.S. government, that believes the opposite.

01:14:02.960 Ten years ago, I'm on an Amtrak train to New York from Washington for work at Fox.

01:14:07.260 And I get a call from a neocon writer called Julia Ioffi, who I think is Russian-born, writing for the New Republic.

01:14:13.760 And she says to me, and at this point, I'm like, she thinks I'm a neocon or something.

01:14:18.040 But she's calling me for like, what do we make of Trump?

01:14:20.560 And she goes, Trump's calling himself a nationalist.

01:14:23.900 She was like way offended.

01:14:25.300 And it was just prima facie, like nationalism bad.

01:14:27.300 And I said, well, I'm a nationalist.

01:14:30.160 And she goes, she's not stupid.

01:14:31.800 And she goes, you're a nationalist?

01:14:34.240 I said, well, I don't know.

01:14:35.120 I think I am.

01:14:35.780 I mean, I like America.

01:14:36.860 I think the U.S. government should work for America.

01:14:38.780 She was like horrified.

01:14:40.380 And I don't think I've ever spoken to her again.

01:14:43.460 Why does that idea, which is non-threatening, it's not a Nazi idea.

01:14:47.760 It's like a basic idea.

01:14:49.080 It was the founder's idea that the U.S. government should act on behalf of Americans.

01:14:52.620 Why is that offensive?

01:14:53.780 So offensive to some people.

01:14:55.120 What is that?

01:14:55.460 I'm going to tell my Mark Levin story, because I like Mark a lot, and I think he's one of

01:14:58.860 the smartest guys in the Constitution.

01:15:00.600 Although, I will say, I think we're opposed on every big topic dealing with Maggie.

01:15:05.620 President Trump, just saying.

01:15:07.080 Because Mark is a neoliberal neocon, and that's what Fox is, right?

01:15:10.220 Which is different than populism nationally.

01:15:12.580 Right.

01:15:12.820 Totally different.

01:15:13.440 They're two different, totally different.

01:15:14.400 And I've always gotten along with Mark.

01:15:15.640 Yeah.

01:15:15.860 And this is why neoliberals, this is why neoliberal neocons, the whole Fox apparatus, this

01:15:20.400 is what the Murdochs are.

01:15:21.640 They're much, there's just a difference.

01:15:23.100 As Gore Vidal said, it's just two sides of kind of the same coin that run the American

01:15:27.040 Empire.

01:15:27.220 Yeah.

01:15:27.480 Because the American Empire is run on neoliberal principles and neocon principles.

01:15:31.220 So Mark, when I kept saying nationalism and populism and nationalism, he calls me up.

01:15:36.020 And Mark, he goes, Bannon, he goes, you got to drop nationalism.

01:15:39.620 And I go, this is 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I was first doing it at Breitbart.

01:15:43.200 And I go, why?

01:15:44.780 He says, it's Americanism.

01:15:46.460 And I go, no, Mark, it's actually nationalism, right?

01:15:48.680 And I try to walk him through, he goes, no, no, no, no, it's Americanism.

01:15:51.400 And then he puts out a book later, I think, Americanism, which talks about certain tenets

01:15:56.080 of nationalism.

01:15:56.720 But they don't want to use that phrase, I think, because of connotations that came from

01:16:01.300 Europe in the 19th century.

01:16:02.880 And then obviously in the 20th century, I said, this is completely different.

01:16:06.820 It is populist nationalism.

01:16:08.300 It is a populist movement that puts America first and American citizens first.

01:16:13.640 That's the big part of the nationalism they never get to.

01:16:15.880 That is what unites us.

01:16:17.360 But how can they see that as bad?

01:16:18.920 I'm honestly, 10 years in, I'm baffled by it.

01:16:21.460 Like, what's bad about that?

01:16:22.520 If you mention that word, they just, they get lit up.

01:16:26.000 I have still many people today.

01:16:27.800 People accuse me, oh, in fact, Ben, and Ben Shepard is one of the smartest guys in the

01:16:32.360 country.

01:16:33.120 Ben said when I was running Breitbart, when he left, whether he left Arizona Quarter or fired

01:16:38.600 him is still a matter of debate.

01:16:40.100 It's still a matter of debate.

01:16:42.060 Ben goes, I turned Breitbart into Trump Pravda.

01:16:45.880 Right.

01:16:46.340 But the populist nationalism and away from Andrew's court tennis.

01:16:49.980 So listen, that is an ideological fight about nomenclature, which is very important in us

01:16:54.780 going forward.

01:16:55.620 But the tenets of it and what we're trying to do, I think, is what you're seeing President

01:16:59.300 Trump do.

01:17:00.060 We have a government apparatus of these people that when institutions carry on year after

01:17:07.180 year after year and pass the baton and they control.

01:17:10.740 And you know many of these people, most of them come from middle class backgrounds.

01:17:14.000 They're not coming just from elite.

01:17:15.800 No, they're not Rockefellers.

01:17:16.980 Not Rockefellers.

01:17:17.360 No.

01:17:17.620 There are some Rockefellers and there's some Nepo babies.

01:17:20.360 But they're irrelevant.

01:17:21.340 Yeah.

01:17:21.580 Mainly just middle class people.

01:17:23.240 Strivers.

01:17:23.700 But they're in control of the greatest, most powerful apparatus on earth.

01:17:28.640 And you mentioned earlier today the thought of going into war and actually killing people.

01:17:33.460 That's something that turns certain people on, the power of it right now.

01:17:38.360 And that's why I tell people, when you come to Washington, you can really feel it's a spiritual

01:17:43.160 war.

01:17:43.640 Yes.

01:17:44.060 Because of the dark spectrum that hangs over this town.

01:17:46.300 Now, that spiritual war manifests itself in money and power.

01:17:50.100 Yes.

01:17:50.540 And you see so many people I've seen come here in Congress and people I've known that

01:17:55.080 come here and they get corrupted.

01:17:57.020 And they get corrupted because that basic human nature of being attracted to money and

01:18:03.420 power is very tough.

01:18:05.660 And we're in a situation now that people we admire, people we like, people we've known,

01:18:11.080 we have to go to war with them.

01:18:12.660 This war against this apparatus is going to be as brutal as the war we're fighting in the

01:18:19.180 streets of Los Angeles today to make sure that actually Los Angeles is part of this American

01:18:24.220 Republic because right now California is not, but the major cities in this country led by

01:18:28.940 Los Angeles and San Francisco are definitely not.

01:18:31.360 They're a totally different entity.

01:18:32.940 I'm sad that you say that because the last thing I want to do is spend my day arguing with

01:18:37.320 Ben Shapiro or Mark Levin.

01:18:39.100 I mean, I agree with those guys on a lot and I know them, of course.

01:18:42.220 I'm not mad at them personally, even now.

01:18:44.840 I don't want to fight with them.

01:18:46.260 You know what I mean?

01:18:46.880 I want to fight with George Soros or something or Gavin Newsom.

01:18:50.560 And, but I feel like they are making it impossible.

01:18:53.680 This is my read, probably self-serving, but I feel like they are making it impossible

01:18:56.780 to sit back in silence as they wreck the country.

01:19:01.660 Yeah.

01:19:02.040 And that fight, as important as that is, to me is a secondary, tertiary fight right now.

01:19:08.320 Then the fight that we need you on and the fight we need you on, you have a unique historical

01:19:13.120 understanding of the institutions of this town and the smarts.

01:19:17.200 Because we need a handful of smart people around President Trump.

01:19:21.440 They're saying, this is the, look, we put Cash and Bongino in the FBI.

01:19:25.520 We've put Ellis in Ratcliffe, the CIA.

01:19:28.900 We put a handful of great people at DOJ.

01:19:31.140 We put Pete in a handful of great people at defense.

01:19:33.500 We put Tulsi and Joe Kent in a handful of people at DNI.

01:19:36.120 It's not enough.

01:19:37.820 The apparatus still runs the deal.

01:19:40.280 We are hanging on in a very tenuous shape.

01:19:42.520 We need to go to war like they want to go to war in Persia.

01:19:47.500 We need to go to war with them.

01:19:48.940 And I mean, take the sword out of the scabbard and throw away the scabbard.

01:19:52.880 We have to do that now.

01:19:53.920 Damn, if I got anywhere near any kind of institutional power, which I've never sought and I don't seek

01:19:58.340 now, but if I ever did, you know, I think the Tom Cottons and the donors and people like

01:20:05.580 that, I mean, I think they'd put, I mean, I think that would be really hard.

01:20:08.820 I think they'd put kiddie porn on my computer and get pancreatic cancer.

01:20:13.660 I don't know, man.

01:20:14.820 First off, just the announcement of that, the intention of that would unmask.

01:20:21.080 Part of this is going through an unmasking.

01:20:23.240 Who's on our side and who's not on our side?

01:20:26.020 Because a lot of people that are pretending to be on our side are on the opposite side.

01:20:30.660 And we can go through a great unmasking.

01:20:32.300 What they fear is sincerity because I'm hardly the smartest person in D.C.

01:20:35.720 Well, not in D.C., but I'm hardly the smartest person in this conversation at all.

01:20:39.820 And I don't think I'm like, you know, have like brilliant, cohesive, philosophical ideas

01:20:44.760 or anything like that.

01:20:45.720 I'm just sort of a bumbling, middle-aged, you know, hopefully try to be Christian person.

01:20:51.400 But I'm totally sincere.

01:20:53.800 And that's why they hated MTG.

01:20:56.400 Who's also, you know.

01:20:57.740 Marginal.

01:20:58.560 We've probably got the same SAT score.

01:21:00.340 You know what I mean?

01:21:00.920 It's like, but she's not kidding.

01:21:03.460 She's totally in that kind of what you see in that chick way where they get mad.

01:21:07.320 And they just like start telling the truth.

01:21:08.640 What you see is what you only women do that.

01:21:10.600 Yeah.

01:21:10.960 No, she looks.

01:21:12.320 She's central to MAGA.

01:21:13.300 I mean, what do you mean?

01:21:13.880 She's been.

01:21:14.920 She's written out today by Mark Levin.

01:21:16.920 I know she and I don't always agree on everything, but she's 100 percent MAGA.

01:21:20.480 It's not a good question.

01:21:21.100 That shows you the level they're prepared to go to.

01:21:23.120 No, what you have is, which is tough in this town to get, is actually historical understanding

01:21:31.500 of these institutions.

01:21:33.140 The only other person, and this would be great if you did it, the only other person I

01:21:37.620 know that has that is Bobby Kennedy.

01:21:40.880 Bobby Kennedy has that understanding, obviously what his family's gone through.

01:21:45.020 But he, at a very deep level, he knows the interconnections.

01:21:47.760 Good friend of mine.

01:21:48.620 Seeing him tomorrow morning.

01:21:49.360 Steve Bannon, thank you for taking the time to do this.

01:21:53.800 I am grateful.

01:21:54.880 And Godspeed in this city.

01:21:56.740 Thanks.

01:21:57.500 Tucker, it's amazing.

01:21:58.760 I can't wait till you get your appointment.

01:22:01.440 Can you?

01:22:02.040 Be the first interview on.

01:22:04.700 Roar room after he gets it.

01:22:06.060 I'm not kidding.

01:22:07.000 When I get, hey, I've had longer odds on things than this.

01:22:10.380 So, stand by.

01:22:11.320 Oh, my gosh.

01:22:12.280 Thank you.

01:22:12.740 Thank you, sir.

01:22:13.280 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

01:22:21.620 We know the people who run it, good people.

01:22:23.600 While you're here, do us a favor.

01:22:25.360 Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

01:22:29.600 We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter.

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01:22:38.840 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - June 17, 2025

Tucker and Steve Bannon Respond to Israel’s War on Iran and How It Could Destroy MAGA Forever

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