The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker Carlson： America After Charlie Kirk

00:00:00.600 Hey, I'm Tucker Carlson. Last week, within just really minutes after Charlie Kirk was shot at

00:00:06.720 that event in Utah, a kind of proxy war broke out over his memory. Who gets to own it? Who gets to

00:00:13.860 use it? While the rest of us were still reeling in shock trying to figure out what happened,

00:00:18.220 a ton of people appeared online, not just in this country, to tell you exactly what happened,

00:00:23.220 exactly what it meant, and exactly what we should do next. And you can see why.

00:00:29.360 With this level of emotion, rage, and grief in the air, it's pretty wise to leverage that much

00:00:37.080 energy. It's almost like nuclear power. It can be used for good or bad. And a lot of people wanted

00:00:42.240 to use it. There's no question about that. So they begin telling you, Charlie died for this. He lived

00:00:47.140 for this, and he died for that. So the crazier reaches of the left, it was, Charlie was a Nazi,

00:00:53.760 and the lesson is, Nazis get killed. It makes sense. He was a bad guy who got what he deserved,

00:00:58.380 and a lot of them said that out loud. Certain parts of the right immediately told you that

00:01:02.840 actually this was about something completely different. You know, Charlie died for Israel.

00:01:06.960 Many began to say the prime minister of Israel said that, and so did a lot of other people.

00:01:11.160 Charlie was a defender of Israel, which he was, by the way, and therefore he died for that cause.

00:01:17.840 But none of these explanations, all self-serving, are really satisfactory. They don't capture who

00:01:22.480 Charlie Kirk was, and on some basic level, they're dishonest. Charlie was not a Nazi. He was not killed

00:01:29.120 because he was a Nazi. Yes, he was a defender of Israel. He didn't die for Israel, however.

00:01:34.000 Why did he die? What was his life about? What was the sin, the core sin that Charlie Kirk committed

00:01:41.080 against somebody, power, that got him killed in the end? And the answer is right in front of us,

00:01:46.920 certainly those of us who knew him, Charlie's life was defined by his Christian faith—not his religious

00:01:53.400 faith, not his spirituality, but his belief in Jesus, his life as a Christian. Everything in his

00:01:59.280 life flowed from those beliefs. Everything—everything he did, said, and believed—came from the fact that

00:02:04.920 he was, above all, a Christian. And that is, and was, and in fact has always been, deeply provocative

00:02:13.360 and offensive to the rest of the world. And why is that? It's worth thinking about it for just a

00:02:19.500 second. Christianity doesn't seem like the kind of religion that would provoke people to anger and

00:02:23.300 violence. In fact, it seems just the opposite. It's the world's most profoundly nonviolent religion,

00:02:28.760 maybe the world's only truly nonviolent religion, a religion based on a man who Christians believe

00:02:34.780 was also God, who, as he was being led away to be tortured to death on made-up charges,

00:02:40.600 scolded one of his disciples for fighting back. This is a religion committed to love, above all,

00:02:48.320 and to living in peace and harmony, truly. It's a universalist religion that believes that every

00:02:53.320 person has a shot at heaven. It's not exclusionary at all. And so you would think it would make sense

00:02:59.400 that if you're a government or if you're in power that you'd want a lot of Christians living in your

00:03:02.900 country, because they're not going to cause massive problems. Not a lot of sincere Christians are

00:03:08.380 fomenting insurrection at any given moment. Pretty much none, most of the time. They're tidy,

00:03:15.400 they get married, they love their children, they pay their taxes, they're commanded to pay their

00:03:19.740 taxes. So why wouldn't you want a nation full of Christians? Why wouldn't you encourage this

00:03:24.220 religious belief, even if it wasn't yours? Why would you hate it? Well, there are a couple of

00:03:29.060 reasons. There are a couple of things about Christianity, and these were evident throughout

00:03:32.360 Charlie's public life, that are deeply provocative to the people in power. And the first is the

00:03:39.560 insistence that Christianity comes with, inherently, that you are not God. You are not God, and neither

00:03:46.160 are your leaders. God is God, and all of us stand before him in the end to be judged, and all of us

00:03:52.560 will be found lacking. Christians believe the only way to heaven is through Jesus, that's the only way,

00:03:56.920 but all of us, whether we believe in Jesus or not, are fallen. We are sinners, we are less than we

00:04:03.700 ought to be, we are not gods, and neither are the people who lead us. And this has a lot of

00:04:09.820 implications. The first being, if you're not God, you don't get to do whatever you want. There are

00:04:14.600 limits, there are rules that you didn't write that you have to abide by. That's not a judgment, that's a

00:04:20.860 statement of fact. Some call it natural law. It's been the basis of every functioning society since the

00:04:26.400 beginning of time. But the basis of our society is the Christian understanding of justice, which

00:04:32.800 flows from that belief. You are not God, God is. He writes the most basic rules, you abide by them.

00:04:40.400 Period. That's the basis of our law. That's the basis of Western law. And that is a threat, a challenge,

00:04:46.720 to people who would ignore the limits on their behavior, very much including our leaders, and very

00:04:51.900 much including the most powerful people in our society, whether they're elected or not. Nobody,

00:04:56.400 wants to be told you're not allowed to do something. And Christianity inherently tells

00:05:01.620 people that. It doesn't judge them, it just states it clearly. No, you do not have the power to kill,

00:05:07.600 except possibly in self-defense, but you can't just go killing people. And you can't go killing people

00:05:13.160 because, and this is the second thing about Christianity that tends to set the teeth of the powerful

00:05:18.260 on edge. Christianity insists that every human being is created by God, every single one. And that means

00:05:26.520 that every human being has a soul, a distinct, unique soul created by God. It is, once again, the only

00:05:35.580 true universalist faith there is. And the New Testament is the story of this, an under-read collection of

00:05:43.280 books. That is not the story of the Old Testament, it is very much the story of the New Testament.

00:05:48.080 In the New Testament, all people are God's chosen, every single one. And the story itself

00:05:52.960 makes that point. The founder of most Christian churches in the early Near East was a former

00:06:01.780 Pharisee, a Jew, who was in charge of killing Christians until he famously met Jesus on the road

00:06:07.300 to Damascus. His name was Saul, he became Paul, and he is the most prolific author in the New Testament

00:06:12.900 and the basis of a lot of Christian theology. And his life tells the story. People can change,

00:06:19.460 no matter what they look like, no matter what they previously believed, no matter where they're from,

00:06:23.500 no matter what language they speak, because they are created by God. And every person, every single

00:06:29.380 person, whether you like them or their relatives or the way they look or not, has that chance because

00:06:34.920 all were created by God and all were loved by God. That is the basis of Christianity. That's the

00:06:40.740 Christian story. And so a sincere Christian proceeds with that belief. There is no tribalism in

00:06:47.840 Christianity. There is no identity politics. It's the opposite. You may prefer to be with people who

00:06:54.240 look like you, that's fine. But God doesn't prefer to be with people who look like you. God prefers to be

00:06:59.800 with all people because he created all people. He's the God of the universe, not just of the people

00:07:05.980 you like. And that, again, has massive implications for the way that sincere Christians live and for

00:07:12.440 the way that Charlie Kirk lived his life. And the first is, if other people have souls, if they, like

00:07:19.740 you, were created by God, then they have freedom of conscience. You can tell them what they ought to

00:07:25.700 think, but you can't make them. You can tell them what they ought to say, but you can't force them.

00:07:31.240 Christianity does not convert by the sword. It can't. It requires free will. And it requires free

00:07:37.620 will because it respects the individual conscience emanating from the distinct soul of every human

00:07:44.100 being. And that is why in the West, which is based on Christianity, our civilization is a Christian

00:07:51.100 civilization, tattered though it currently is, collective punishment, hurting people for the

00:07:57.800 sins of their relatives is unthinkable. It's a crime because each person will stand alone as he was

00:08:07.120 made before God. And every person is equal before God, fundamentally. It doesn't mean each person is

00:08:16.540 equal in his ability. It doesn't mean each person is equal in the choices he makes. Of course not.

00:08:21.560 But it means that every person is a human being with a divine spark inside. That is the core

00:08:27.640 assumption of Christianity. And it was obvious when you watch Charlie Kirk that he believed that.

00:08:33.360 Charlie's been famously quoted for the last couple of days saying he abhors anti-Semitism. That is

00:08:38.500 absolutely right. And he did. He said that in public and he said it very often in private. He meant it too.

00:08:42.980 But he abhorred racism and bigotry on the basis of genetics of all kinds because he was a Christian.

00:08:50.400 And he believed that God created each person. Now, why is this a problem for temporal authorities?

00:08:58.040 Why is it a problem for the people in power? Because once again, it circumscribes what they

00:09:03.440 can do. It sets a limit on their powers. If God created each person, including the infuriating,

00:09:10.040 annoying, disastrously wrong person I'm talking to, then I can't force him to repeat my creed.

00:09:17.280 I'm not in charge of his conscience. Only he is. And that is a limit. So when Charlie Kirk said,

00:09:25.860 I believe in free speech, he didn't simply believe in free speech because it was in the Bill of Rights.

00:09:31.020 He understood that it was in the Bill of Rights because it's in the New Testament.

00:09:34.360 He understood that's a right that comes from God, bestowed on all of us at birth. And he felt his

00:09:41.160 job, his duty, was not simply to protect it, but to live it, to show people what that looks like.

00:09:48.800 I just want to play of the many clips we could play of Charlie Kirk on college campus that he spent

00:09:52.120 his whole life worn out most of the time. As an older man, I often said to him, how the hell do you

00:09:58.360 get on plane after plane after plane? But he felt an evangelical duty, small evangelical duty to do

00:10:04.020 it, to get out there and talk to people. Why? Not simply to build a coalition or get this or that

00:10:09.360 person elected, but because he believed as a Christian that convincing people voluntarily with

00:10:17.940 words, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, so the Gospel of

00:10:25.320 John begins, words are the key to winning people's minds and their souls. And he really meant this. He

00:10:33.920 wasn't just repeating the words. He meant it, and it was obvious in the way that he interacted with

00:10:40.080 people who disagreed with him and people who hated him. Here's one clip that tells part of the story.

00:10:45.980 Would you want someone who is not necessarily stable or ready to bring a child into this world

00:10:52.280 and provide that child the life it deserves? Would you want them to still bring that child

00:10:57.040 into this world? Without a doubt. Every life has a moral obligation to be able to live.

00:11:02.600 If I can't give that child the life it deserves, why am I bringing it to...

00:11:08.780 Got it. This will be my last question. I want you to think about it. If a single mom has two two-year-olds,

00:11:15.440 twins, and she wakes up one day and says, I can't do it anymore. I can't give them the life they deserve.

00:11:19.940 But that's just not the circumstance. Hold on. Should she be able to take out a shotgun and

00:11:23.700 kill both those kids? No. Of course not, because you think that would be objectionable. That's why

00:11:27.740 I think it's objectionable to eliminate two babies that are six weeks old, because they're morally the

00:11:32.200 same thing. One just happens to be bigger. One just happens to be older. One just happens to be

00:11:38.140 outside of the womb. They're both human beings. And you have something in you that says, no way is it

00:11:43.120 okay to kill a two-year-old. That's called your soul talking. You have something in you that tells

00:11:49.040 you the truth. You can call it instinct, if you like. Charlie Kirk referred to it as the soul.

00:11:55.080 But both mean the same thing. You have the spark of the divine, God's spark inside you, and it reacts.

00:12:02.300 It hums. It vibrates like a tuning fork. And you know, on a basic animal level, like your dog knows,

00:12:08.100 when something is wrong. You can feel it. And the whole purpose of modern society, it seems sometimes,

00:12:13.460 is to get the rest of us to ignore what we know, that vibration inside us that tells us the truth

00:12:20.160 always. It never lies to us. Charlie did not ignore that. And you'll notice that in the end,

00:12:25.360 he appealed to it with that young woman. He didn't scream, you're a murderer in his face,

00:12:29.520 though he considered abortion murder, which it is. He felt that deeply. This wasn't a performance.

00:12:34.680 He wasn't, you know, another non-profit phony in D.C., feigning outrage about something. He really

00:12:40.940 believed that taking innocent life was wrong in the womb or in crowded cities, anywhere. He thought

00:12:48.020 it was wrong because his faith tells him it's wrong and because his conscience confirms that belief.

00:12:53.720 And so does yours. And so did hers. So did all of ours. We know when something is wrong. And the

00:12:59.880 people above us shouted us, no, really, there's an explanation for it. That's just your superego

00:13:05.600 barking at you. No. You know, in your heart, deep inside, what every person has known, and that is

00:13:13.940 the murder of innocence is a crime. It's a moral crime. And that girl knew it. And in the end,

00:13:19.820 that was Charlie's appeal. Listen to that divine spark inside you. Listen to your soul speak to you.

00:13:27.080 Turn off the music. Turn off the music. Get off the drugs. Push the distractions, which it's hard

00:13:33.000 to believe aren't actually designed to crowd out that humming inside us. And be still for a moment

00:13:38.900 and accept what you already know, what you were born knowing. Listen to that. Only someone who

00:13:46.920 appreciates the person he's speaking to as an actual human being could speak that way. Notice how rare

00:13:53.200 that is. It's been noted in the past couple of days, Charlie was a free speech champion. Absolutely

00:13:58.000 he was. And I pray that that's his legacy. But I also think it's important to explain why that

00:14:03.340 mattered to him. It was not abstract in any sense. It was central. It was the core. Because consider

00:14:10.080 what it means if you don't respect free speech, which is another way of saying free conscience,

00:14:15.600 the right of other people to make up their own minds about the basic questions of what is right or wrong,

00:14:20.620 and to express their views on those issues. If you don't acknowledge the right of other people

00:14:26.260 to do that, and if you take steps to prevent them from doing that, what are you really saying?

00:14:30.920 You're really saying, I don't think you have a soul. I think you're a meat puppet I can control. I

00:14:35.400 think you're an animal, maybe sub-animal. You're a slave. You're a person to whom I can dictate

00:14:41.000 belief. I don't acknowledge that you have the right to come to your own conclusion is another way of

00:14:46.740 saying, I don't acknowledge that you're a human being. It's dark. There's nothing darker than that.

00:14:52.360 And trust me, they believe it, the ones who've thought about it. And there are a lot of those.

00:14:57.960 But for a lot of people, particularly those who are just repeating what they think they should say

00:15:03.600 or responding to the momentary rage of the moment, they just throw stuff out. And we've got to hope

00:15:11.220 that the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, is in that category. She said this just

00:15:16.140 yesterday. Watch. There's free speech, and then there's hate speech. And there is no place,

00:15:22.900 especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.

00:15:28.220 There's free speech, and then there's hate speech. This is the Attorney General of the United States,

00:15:32.500 the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, telling you that there's this other category

00:15:35.960 called hate speech. And of course, the implication is that's a crime. There's almost no sentence that

00:15:43.280 Charlie Kirk, and I'm not running the risk of appropriating his memory for my own ends by saying

00:15:49.080 this. It's provable. There's no sentence that Charlie Kirk would have objected to more than that.

00:15:54.800 And you've got to think the Attorney General didn't think it through and was not attempting to desecrate

00:15:58.600 the memory of the person she was purporting to celebrate, that she just threw that out there,

00:16:03.400 that she hadn't thought about it. You hope that. You hope that Charlie Kirk's death won't be used

00:16:10.040 by a group we now call bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked

00:16:17.640 to build. You hope that. You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of

00:16:25.640 his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is,

00:16:31.940 if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that

00:16:37.420 ever, and there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what

00:16:42.780 to think, there is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human. They don't

00:16:48.060 believe you have a soul. A human being with a soul, a free man, has a right to say what he believes,

00:16:54.340 not to hurt other people, but to express his views. And by the way, that thinking, and not to pile on

00:17:01.060 the attorney general, who's a very nice person, but that thinking that she just articulated on camera

00:17:07.120 there is exactly what got us to a place where some huge and horrifying percentage of young people think

00:17:14.280 it's okay to shoot people you disagree with, to kill Nazis for saying things they don't like.

00:17:19.340 Why do they believe that? How did we get here? Is it the video games? Is it the SSRIs? Yeah,

00:17:25.020 probably. But what it really is, is 12 and then 16 years of indoctrination in our schools at the

00:17:31.760 hands of people who tell them that, who say exactly what the attorney general just said.

00:17:35.940 Well, there's free speech, which of course we all acknowledge is important, so, so important.

00:17:39.560 But then there's this thing called hate speech. Hate speech, of course, is any speech that the

00:17:44.020 people in power hate, but they don't define it that way. They define it as speech that hurts

00:17:48.480 people, speech that is tantamount to violence. And we punish violence, don't we? Of course we do.

00:17:53.860 They've been taught that every year of their lives. And so naturally, most of them believe it.

00:18:00.820 When Charlie Kirk is shot in the throat with a .30-06 on camera, I doubt very many young Americans

00:18:07.600 want to see something like that or actually applaud the death of a man, a father, a husband.

00:18:12.460 But they've been told for their entire lives in schools exactly what Pam Bondi just told them.

00:18:19.620 Well, there's free speech, but then there's also hate speech. And woe to those who engage in it

00:18:23.040 because it's a crime. That's a lie. And it's a lie that denies the humanity of the people you're

00:18:29.340 telling it about. And so any attempt to impose hate speech laws in this country, and trust me,

00:18:36.140 there are a lot of people who would like them. There are a lot of people who'd like to codify their own

00:18:40.380 beliefs by punishing those under the U.S. code who disagree with their beliefs. Any attempt to do

00:18:46.660 that is a denial of the humanity of American citizens and cannot be allowed under any circumstances.

00:18:53.600 That's got to be the red line. Because again, when they can do that, what can't they do?

00:18:59.000 And this is something, by the way, that Charlie thought about a lot and that I had

00:19:02.640 occasion to talk to him about a lot. And I really don't want to make any of this about me because it

00:19:09.100 has nothing to do with me. But I did have reason to have these conversations with Charlie

00:19:13.420 a lot, many, many times over the past three or four months. And this began at an event that he

00:19:21.300 held in Florida in July, the TPUSA MFest event, Turning Point event. I often go, I always have the

00:19:28.200 best time. I always see Charlie ahead of time. We have a cup of coffee in a hotel room, talk about

00:19:32.000 what's going on. In addition to being, of course, a conservative advocate, he was also a conservative

00:19:36.840 organizer, a coalition builder, and he was very involved in politics in a way that I'm not. So

00:19:40.960 it was interesting as hell. But it was also a way to learn what young people are thinking about,

00:19:45.640 talking about, because he was on college campuses all the time. And what is the state of a couple

00:19:50.440 of big debates that are happening within the Republican coalition, particularly around foreign

00:19:54.300 policy. And Charlie's views on foreign policy, which I think are fairly well known now, a lot of

00:19:59.080 people lying about them, were evolving, but had really evolved. And who knows why he reached the

00:20:07.880 conclusions he did. I think his Christian faith informed them mostly. It was also the experience

00:20:12.520 of talking to young people, and his views were very much like theirs. He believed that the war on

00:20:17.620 terror had been a net loss for the United States, and it caused incalculable damage, not just economic

00:20:22.260 and physical damage, but spiritual damage to the United States. It was bad. We got nothing out of it.

00:20:26.320 We were only hurt. And he didn't want to see that again. And he felt very strongly about that.

00:20:31.900 And of course, I agreed. And so before that speech that I gave in July, we had a conversation about

00:20:39.560 this backstage, right before I went on. And I was fulminating and getting all red in the face,

00:20:46.040 like I often do to my shame. And I was mad thinking about this and thinking about the effort by the

00:20:52.220 neocons in the United States to draw us in to another forever war with Iran. Not a defense of

00:20:58.980 Iran, of course. It's merely an acknowledgement that we've done this before. This happened in Iraq,

00:21:04.000 which we entered into at the behest of those same foreign policy strategists. And it didn't work.

00:21:13.120 And so I was going on at some length backstage with Charlie. And I said, you know, probably not

00:21:20.080 going to talk about that. I'm not going to torture you. I know your donors hate this when I say that.

00:21:24.640 And also Epstein was in the news. And it was clear to me that, you know, Epstein is probably not

00:21:30.740 like a Mossad agent or something. But Epstein clearly had contact with Israeli intelligence

00:21:35.580 and American intelligence and French intelligence. But the only one you're not allowed to talk about

00:21:38.980 is Israeli intelligence. But it seemed true to me. And I had done some work on that. I knew a bunch of

00:21:44.720 people pretty close to that story. So I thought that. And I said that to Charlie. And I said,

00:21:49.380 but I'm not going to say that because I don't want to make your donors mad. I know it's going to be

00:21:52.440 like an endless flurry of texts telling you to stop or you're going to lose a bunch of funding.

00:21:59.280 And he looked at me, I'll never forget it, and said, go all the way. Do it. Go all the way. I said,

00:22:05.480 man, you know, a lot of things I can talk about. I don't need to talk about that. And he said,

00:22:09.440 do it. So I did it. By the way, I think that that conversation he had a mic on and so did I

00:22:15.420 probably exists somewhere on somebody's server. But that's, I think, a faithful rendition of what

00:22:19.360 he said. And by the way, I'm not trying to blame him for my remarks. You can agree or disagree with

00:22:24.120 those remarks. But I'm saying this only because I was shocked and sickened by the reaction of the

00:22:31.920 ghoulish and really repulsive reaction of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu,

00:22:37.020 to Charlie's death, basically made it all about him and all about his country, immediately trying

00:22:43.480 to take the energy, the sadness, the grief that people felt over Charlie's murder, and redirect

00:22:50.360 it towards support for whatever project he's involved in. And by the way, Benjamin Netanyahu is

00:22:55.160 not the same as the nation of Israel at all. Bibi is despised by many people in Israel. And if you

00:23:02.460 know people who live there, you know that that's true. There are huge divisions within the Israeli

00:23:06.400 government. I mean, there are certain parts of the intel world in Israel that do not support some

00:23:11.340 things that Benjamin Netanyahu has done recently. So it's not the same as attacking Israel, attacking

00:23:16.240 Bibi. But I don't think I've ever seen anything lower than his attempt to hijack Charlie's memory

00:23:22.840 and use it for his own political ends, particularly because what he said was completely untrue.

00:23:29.380 Charlie didn't hate Jews. He loved Jews. He had tons of friends who were Jews. He loved the state of

00:23:33.560 Israel. He loved going there. He did not like Bibi Netanyahu, and he said that to me many times,

00:23:37.160 and he said it to people around him many times. He felt that Bibi Netanyahu was a very destructive

00:23:43.720 force. He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was above all resentful that he believed

00:23:52.860 Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country, and that it

00:23:59.660 was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States, and he resented it. Didn't hate Netanyahu.

00:24:05.000 He wasn't out there with a placard saying that, but he certainly expressed that to me and a lot of

00:24:10.420 other people. And there's no question that Bibi's defenders on the internet will call me a liar or a

00:24:16.420 kook, but that's a fact. And enough text messages exist that I think it can probably be verified in

00:24:22.640 pretty short order, not that it needs to be, because that is true. Shortly after that speech,

00:24:28.260 there was a very intense attack on Charlie, and to some extent on me, not that I really noticed,

00:24:32.620 but on him. I have no donors. He had $100 million worth of donors, and so because he was involved in

00:24:37.800 a different project from just yapping on the internet, which is what I do for a living,

00:24:41.600 he was dependent to a great extent on his donors, of course. It's a nonprofit. And they went after him

00:24:47.340 and tormented him. Not all, of course, many were supportive, but the ones who were offended by my

00:24:52.360 speech, and there was a small, very intense group who were, tormented Charlie Kirk until the day he

00:24:57.520 died. Two days before he died, he lost a $2 million donation because he had publicly pledged to bring

00:25:05.100 me to the next Turning Point conference in December. And he told me over the past couple of months he was

00:25:10.420 losing a lot of donations over that pledge. They put out a flyer basically saying that I was going to be at

00:25:15.520 this event giving a speech. And so he would text me and say, man, I'm really taking a lot of heat for

00:25:20.120 this, and people are really mad. The American Jewish Committee called in a statement Charlie

00:25:26.420 Kirk an anti-Semite, and quote, dangerous. Charlie Kirk, an anti-Semite. He was not an anti-Semite.

00:25:34.560 He was the opposite, and he was not dangerous. He was a great lover of people and a purveyor of peace.

00:25:41.240 He was the opposite. And he was very stung by that. Those of us who've been called names for a long

00:25:45.480 time are a little bit harder to offend. Charlie was deeply offended by that and expressed some of

00:25:49.680 those feelings on Megyn Kelly's show and in other places. But that did not let up. The reason I'm

00:25:56.000 telling this story is because he called me and then came to see me at my house about this topic.

00:26:01.720 And I said to him every single time, look, I've got my own way to communicate my views.

00:26:08.320 This is actually not the most important issue to me. There are lots of things I can talk about.

00:26:11.840 I don't need to come to turning point. I can take a year off. No problem. I hated seeing how much he

00:26:17.180 was suffering. The hassle he was getting from people, and I was being attacked too. By the way,

00:26:24.000 it was a huge effort. I wasn't fully aware of it, actually, because I don't go online that much.

00:26:28.900 But there was a huge effort by people, some of whom I know and have helped, and like Seth Dillon of the

00:26:33.040 Babylon Bee, for example. Someone who had his own problems with free speech, who was famously canceled.

00:26:38.780 And I like Seth Dillon. I had him on a couple of times. I had dinner with him to show support.

00:26:43.740 Seth Dillon was out there demanding that Charlie Kirk take me off the roster, pull me off stage,

00:26:48.960 because I had said things that Beebe didn't like or that he didn't like or whatever.

00:26:54.000 Shocking that someone whose whole persona is wrapped up in the idea that we all get to speak,

00:27:00.760 and if you don't like it, make a more compelling case, that that person and many others like him

00:27:07.360 were advocating for me getting pulled off the stage because they don't like what I'm saying.

00:27:15.320 This is a trend and one that we should be really concerned about. It's not just about Israel,

00:27:19.420 by the way, at all. The trend is really simple. People with power don't want to hear disagreement.

00:27:25.100 They don't want to be challenged ever. That's why we have free speech, to acknowledge that even

00:27:29.380 those of us or people with less power still have a right to talk because they're human beings.

00:27:35.620 You don't own them. So time after time, Charlie would call me or come to see me and let me know,

00:27:41.620 wow, or show me text messages. These people are really mad that you're speaking. And I would always

00:27:45.620 have the same thought. Like, I feel pretty moderate, actually. I've never been an Israel hater.

00:27:49.640 Obviously, I'm not an anti-Semite. I just don't want more wars. And I don't want a foreign country

00:27:55.240 humiliating my country and telling us what our laws have to be. I mean, this seems like pretty

00:27:59.220 basic America first stuff. And he would say, I totally agree with you, but they want you off

00:28:03.300 the stage. And I would always say, no problem. And he would say, no, it's important. It's a matter

00:28:10.280 of principle. I want you to be there. Great. By the way, I'm not accusing anyone of being

00:28:19.440 involved in that murder. I'm not trying to mutter darkly or imply anything. There's a lot we don't

00:28:25.480 know about who murdered Charlie and why, but I don't know, and I'm not going to pretend that I do.

00:28:29.980 But I think it's important to say that out loud because it's a fact, and there are many liars out

00:28:36.040 there trying, Bibi Netanyahu, number one among them, shamefully, who are trying to distort the truth,

00:28:42.420 a truth that I know and can prove. And the last thing I'll say about Charlie is that his views were

00:28:48.120 changing on topics that had nothing to do with foreign policy, you know, the famous kind of red

00:28:52.340 line, third rail, can't talk about it. But it's possible that the subject that makes people even

00:28:58.860 matter in Washington, New York, and LA than having non-conventional foreign policy views is having

00:29:05.000 non-conventional economic views. Man, they really don't like that at all. And Charlie's views on

00:29:10.520 economics and on the way that wealth is distributed in the United States were changing fast,

00:29:15.260 really changing fast and hardening. Not because he was a socialist, hardly. He was about as much

00:29:20.620 of a socialist as I am, not at all. But because he lived here and he spent a lot of time with young

00:29:27.060 people and he couldn't help but notice because he was an observant and honest person that they're

00:29:31.000 not thriving at all and that the chances they'll have lives comparable to the ones they had growing

00:29:35.680 up are very small. Most of them won't have houses. They won't own anything. They'll be in debt.

00:29:41.060 And for that reason, they won't get married or have children. And so the people who are born here

00:29:46.180 won't continue their legacy in the United States. It's the end of our civilization.

00:29:52.680 And the root of a lot of this is spiritual, but the root is also economic.

00:29:57.320 And it raises a question, a basic question of fairness. And I tried to address this in the speech

00:30:03.180 that I gave for Charlie in July. I don't think I did a very good job and it was misinterpreted,

00:30:07.200 but I invoked Bill Ackman. And the point I was making had nothing to do with Bill Ackman being

00:30:12.020 a criminal or even being an Epstein friend. I mean, I don't really know anything about that.

00:30:17.280 I don't know much about, I'm not accusing Bill Ackman of a crime and I'm not accusing him of,

00:30:21.480 you know, being a sex creep or I'm a sod agent or anything like that. I don't think that,

00:30:27.000 I don't know that for sure. And I wasn't trying to say it. What I was trying to say is

00:30:30.280 that Bill Ackman is not creative, not particularly intelligent. Bill Ackman is worth $7 billion.

00:30:38.020 So you have to ask, like, how? And it seems to me that Bill Ackman is rich for the same reasons

00:30:45.580 that a lot of other people I know are rich, because he's hyper-aggressive and he's well-connected.

00:30:51.720 And my only point was, if you live in a society that awards the spoils to people on the basis of

00:30:57.180 those two qualities, like the most aggressive, the best-connected people get the richest,

00:31:02.220 that's a dysfunctional society. There should be a reward for creativity and decency and hard work,

00:31:10.580 steadfastness, following the rules. Like, you should have to add to the sum total of your society,

00:31:16.300 you'd think. It's not an argument against the free market. It's the argument against whatever

00:31:20.900 we're living through right now. This is really dark and ugly. And if people like Bill Ackman are

00:31:25.700 getting the richest, what has Bill Ackman done? Shorted the market or something? Talked down

00:31:29.120 Herbalife? I mean, I'm not even saying that should be illegal. All I'm saying is, if that's one of the

00:31:34.280 richest guys in your society, you've got a very sick society. I don't think Bill Ackman's like a

00:31:39.420 drooling idiot or anything, but like, when was the last time you heard Bill Ackman say something

00:31:43.200 constructive or creative? Like, never. So it's just bad. And it's not just about Bill Ackman, of course.

00:31:48.860 I mean, he's just a minor player in the life of the world, but he's a kind of metaphor

00:31:53.060 for how off track we've gone. And that doesn't seem like a socialist point. Once again, I'm hardly

00:31:58.980 a socialist, and neither was Charlie Kirk. That seems like a Christian point. Fairness is at the

00:32:03.740 root of the Christian story. People will be judged not by who their parents were or by how they look,

00:32:11.000 but on their hearts, on themselves, on choices that they made. That's fair. So again, fairness is

00:32:19.060 essential to the gospel, and it's essential to any working society. In a fair society or a society

00:32:26.080 that its citizens believe is fair, people will comply voluntarily with the rules because they

00:32:32.280 don't think the game is rigged. But in a society in which Bill Ackman, Bill Ackman, makes seven

00:32:39.460 billion dollars and like the smartest, hardest working, most interesting, creative young people

00:32:44.280 you know can never own a home. In a society like that, you're going to get Mom Donnie as mayor.

00:32:50.400 You're going to get a lot of bad things because people will opt out of the society because they

00:32:54.460 know it's not fair. It's rigged. That's the only point I was trying to make. And Charlie,

00:32:59.780 not surprisingly, made it much more eloquently, I thought, in an amazing interview, the last

00:33:04.400 interview I did with him late July of this year. Here's part of it.

00:33:08.860 We know how to create wealth, but we don't know how to create it for the generation that

00:33:13.620 needs it most. If you look at the economic conditions, you would think the other conditions

00:33:17.880 surrounding it are like abject poverty. These are the problems that like third world nations

00:33:22.360 have. I know.

00:33:23.220 Our young people can't afford stuff and they have to finance their basic necessities.

00:33:27.020 And yet we're the wealthiest nation in the history of the world on the planet. We have a

00:33:30.800 $37 trillion GDP. We have the greatest companies and we have all this stuff to brag about.

00:33:35.480 And yet all of our problems would beg the question. And it's like this inherent contradiction.

00:33:42.120 We're super wealthy on one side, like a powerhouse juggernaut.

00:33:45.560 And we are like an economic nightmare on the other side. How did that happen?

00:33:52.640 So if there is such a thing as the left in the United States, if it still exists, you would think

00:33:58.820 a message like that would at least get a hearing, a respectful hearing.

00:34:03.540 Like, hey, what about wages? What about the ability of young people to just buy a little

00:34:08.980 house, the little lawn and some subdivision? Like, isn't that kind of what they say they

00:34:14.020 want? Empower, you know, the most vulnerable, the people who try hard and play by the rules.

00:34:20.220 They called him a Nazi. They didn't care that Charlie Kirk in real life spent his time trying

00:34:26.620 trying to stop war, trying to, you know, figure out how young people could buy a little house

00:34:33.220 somewhere. Aren't those like left wing goals? No, they didn't care at all. And in fact, they hated

00:34:41.460 that because they're for war, because they're for death, because they're for the inequality he

00:34:46.540 described. Because it leads to a volatile society that empowers them, of course. They're not a check

00:34:55.400 on power, the professional left, the trans community. They're the shock troops of power.

00:35:01.880 Charlie Kirk was a check on power. Charlie Kirk, inspired by his Christian faith, stood up to people

00:35:08.480 fearlessly to say what he thought was true. And for that, I will always love and admire him.

00:35:18.340 I want to go down to someone else who loved and admired him and knew him well and played a pretty,

00:35:22.600 I think, important role in the final months of his life, and that is my old friend,

00:35:28.740 Megan Kelly. Megan, thanks so much for coming on.

00:35:32.180 Oh, Tucker, thanks for having me. That was a barn burner, man. You hit on some really important big

00:35:37.540 points. I don't even remember what I said, but I meant it. So I just want to start. So you had

00:35:43.380 this experience last week that I've always prayed I never have. You were live when the news came in

00:35:52.700 that our friend had been shot in the throat, and your reaction was captured for all time on camera.

00:35:57.760 And I just want to start by playing it. I thought it was just an incredible moment that said so much

00:36:02.260 about you and about him. So here it is. Oh, well, it looks like we don't have a side. Well, in it,

00:36:09.380 you said, the line that stuck out to me, your first reaction was, he was sent by God. That's the first

00:36:16.400 thing you said. You'd not heard this news before. Why was that your gut reaction to his shooting?

00:36:23.980 Because I had spent so much time with him over the past few years, just on the air, Tucker. You know,

00:36:28.820 I never went out to dinner with Charlie. I didn't know him quite like that, like a personal friend.

00:36:34.180 But I'd had him on the show more than 15 times. I'd been on his show repeatedly. I'd been to multiple

00:36:40.920 Turning Point events and, you know, talked with him backstage quite a bit. Just done a lot with him

00:36:45.700 professionally, a lot. And I mean, I wonder if he's been on anybody's show as much as he was on mine over

00:36:51.700 the past couple of years. And I got to know his thoughts on virtually everything. And I saw what

00:36:58.660 people are seeing now, how they were all infused with his Christian faith, that he was a truly

00:37:06.440 happy warrior, that he gave almost everyone the benefit of the doubt, that he had a much more

00:37:12.540 positive and optimistic outlook on humanity than I do. And I think than you do. I mean,

00:37:18.980 I think we're a couple of cynical mofos. And Charlie wasn't. Charlie was, he was like an angel.

00:37:28.200 This picture that the left is painting of him in the news is totally foreign to my understanding of

00:37:35.060 Charlie or to anything I've known. And I watched Charlie on his show, too. I know, I know the things

00:37:41.360 they say he said that were controversial. They just fundamentally choose to misunderstand and

00:37:47.260 misinterpret him. I mean, he was, you need look no further than Erica in order to see that he was

00:37:54.260 real. Like her goodness, her love, their love story, her strength in the wake of his death.

00:38:00.620 That's the woman he loved. And that's a woman who loved him. Why? Because he was some devil figure?

00:38:06.420 The opposite. These two were as wholesome as you could find. And everything he said was from his love

00:38:14.320 of humanity and his belief that they could do better. I mean, I'm much more like, no, they can't.

00:38:20.880 Let's move on without them. Like we've got to, you know, and Charlie, I mean, in all of these college

00:38:27.160 campus exchanges, whenever talking about most people, he would feel like everyone was, could be

00:38:33.700 redeemed. And if he could just get to them, if he could just talk to them, if he could just buoy them

00:38:38.740 up with hope, they would, they would do better. They could see themselves as Charlie saw them as

00:38:43.640 God sees them. And I just ran into that optimism and that positivity from Charlie so often that I

00:38:50.240 really did see him as God's messenger, Tucker, as an angel sent to us. And it's like, we didn't

00:38:58.800 deserve him. I feel like he's gone now because we, we didn't deserve him.

00:39:03.380 Man, you are too deep for cable news. No wonder you left. That's just such a beautiful

00:39:10.120 summation and so insightful. I'm not sucking up. I mean it. That's, I wish I had said half of that

00:39:16.560 in my open. So, but why is that so provocative? I've been thinking about this since he was murdered.

00:39:23.120 Like what of all the people that we know in our business, you know, the kind of, let me give you

00:39:28.220 my opinion business. Um, I think it's fair to say he was the kindest. I mean, for real and in private

00:39:33.720 too, he, even people he was really mad at, he would always say, well, I try, you know, I understand

00:39:38.560 where that person's coming from. It's like, wow, he, his decency was a challenge to me who struggles

00:39:42.980 to be that. Um, why, why, why was that so offensive to people?

00:39:49.080 I guess it was power. It's, it's so much more powerful, frankly, than negativity, negativity

00:39:57.660 and anger. It's infectious. You know, it's a contagion. It, it's like a magnet for people,

00:40:05.080 whether they like him or not, they're drawn to him and he was converting people. So he was a huge

00:40:12.560 threat. That's really like, I've been asking myself this question a lot over the past week,

00:40:18.180 you know, let's take the accused shooter in this case. Yes. And let's say, okay, this, this was,

00:40:25.080 it was motivated exactly as the authorities say. And he was, he thought Charlie is quote,

00:40:29.720 too hateful. And this is a guy who's into furries and he's into trannies and he's living with one

00:40:35.340 and you know, all the things. Why would Charlie have been targeted by this guy for that? Why would

00:40:41.320 it be Charlie? You say all the same things. I say all the same things. Most of the people in our space

00:40:46.120 in conservative or independent media say those things. Why, why Charlie? And sadly, I think it's

00:40:53.600 this factor. It's this magnetism from him, this positivity, this aura, like that this angel like

00:41:01.620 aura around him that was so incredibly threatening, way more threatening than the rest of us because

00:41:07.400 it was, it was powerful and it was winning people over. It was converting people at a rapid rate and

00:41:15.300 not just any people, but young people, you know, the people who had never been converted before the

00:41:20.180 people for whom people who talk like you and talk like me had never even tried. They weren't even

00:41:25.060 players on the field. It was, they were seated in the whole battle. And he said, no, no, no, no,

00:41:30.100 no. We're not seating them. I'm going to start at 18 to speak into them in a way that they can hear

00:41:34.760 and understand me. And I'm going to practice it. You know, for the past 13 years, he practiced.

00:41:40.140 He went out campus after campus in the beginning. He wasn't as good as he was in the end. He was good,

00:41:45.240 but he wasn't as good. And so it was a skill he developed over time that made him more and more

00:41:49.800 threatening, more and more effective. And you look at the, the numbers just in the presidential

00:41:54.760 election. It's not an overstatement to say that Donald Trump has Charlie to thank for his election

00:42:00.380 in November, 2024, swinging the youth vote by nine points. We've never seen anything like it in the

00:42:07.620 past hundred years. You don't swing the youth vote toward a Republican, nothing in modern

00:42:14.040 presidential politics. So he was a really integral, hugely important player, even though he was so

00:42:21.100 understated and projected zero ego. So you didn't see him like that. He didn't have sort of the swagger

00:42:27.520 of that in most of his public appearances. He was quick to subjugate himself to whomever he was

00:42:33.020 talking to, but he was way more important than he ever let on. And I think that's why he was

00:42:40.800 perceived as such a threat. That's why him saying the things others would say carried an extra layer

00:42:46.880 of threat, yet both to this shooter and to Charlie's many detractors. And I just want to add as a period to

00:42:54.360 this, as a footnote, I guess, to this, Tucker, you have a lot of it too. And it is the reason

00:43:00.800 why Charlie is not the only one who's been threatened or was threatened to cut ties with you

00:43:08.240 or not platform you. I too have gotten that, especially since you've been more outspoken on

00:43:13.840 Israel. And I couldn't care less the amount of pressure they put on. I'm like, what are you talking

00:43:19.960 about? This is madness. Why would you want to silence such a powerful, important voice just

00:43:25.720 because you disagree with them on one subject, one on which we've all watched you sincerely evolve as

00:43:31.660 you grapple with principles you've been espousing for years, like America First, like what's happening

00:43:38.160 to Christians, like what's best for us and our kids here? How do I keep them safe? That's my number

00:43:44.020 one priority. And I've been just absolutely disgusted and recoiled from people who have tried to pressure

00:43:49.740 me on it. It, of course, never happened. But I know from speaking to Charlie, he felt it too. You've heard it

00:43:54.680 from Charlie that he felt, and there is a layer here of nefarious pressure to have certain narratives go

00:44:03.000 only one way that must be called out and must be fought.

00:44:07.220 Well, I should have said in my open that when Charlie was denounced as anti-Semitic and quote

00:44:13.740 dangerous by the American Jewish Committee, you were too. That was a press. I don't know if you've

00:44:18.600 ever even seen it. And I just remember when I read that at the time thinking, okay, these are like two

00:44:23.600 of the most pro-Israel, basically pro-Israel people on the internet. I don't understand. So maybe we

00:44:30.980 show this offline, but let's just have it now. I don't get that. Why would you attack? There are

00:44:36.260 definitely people who hate Israel who are not anti-Semites or people who hate Israel who are

00:44:40.400 anti-Semites. There's a whole range. And then there are like people who have like, you know,

00:44:45.180 religious reasons for wanting to blow up Israel. Those are all threats. Why would they be attacking

00:44:49.760 you and Charlie? And honestly, I feel like me. I mean, what is that? Why attack people who are pretty

00:44:57.400 reasonable, who don't want to get into a fight on the topic, who just want to like have their country

00:45:01.740 thrive? Why denounce them as dangerous anti-Semites? What is that?

00:45:07.240 And let me just underscore for your audience what I had said. I mean, the sum total of what I had said

00:45:14.400 when they started coming for me, just to show the absurdity of this. I had said on Piers Morgan

00:45:18.840 that Israel was losing the PR war, that they had lost the Democrats and the independents and were

00:45:24.440 starting to lose the Republican Party in America. And it was time to wrap it up, which was a quote from

00:45:30.280 Donald Trump, who had said it a year earlier when he was still a candidate. Time to wrap it up.

00:45:34.780 That's what I said about Israel. And then at turning point at the at the student action summit

00:45:39.740 with Charlie, we talked all about Epstein in my appearance there. It was all about Pam Bondi,

00:45:44.580 frankly. Right. And we talked about whether he might possibly be an asset for someone. And I said

00:45:49.040 he might be. And Israel, yeah, would make sense to me. Didn't know. But that's one of the things we

00:45:54.120 should consider and look at. And that will conclude the list of things I said about Israel,

00:45:58.560 that after two years of going on the air and defending them every week, turned some weird

00:46:07.220 crowd into she's an anti-Semite. So, I mean, F these people, because it's a lie. It was even

00:46:14.880 more of a lie about Charlie, who had said even less than me. He had said nothing, like absolutely

00:46:20.020 nothing. And they and they use those terms about him because he was on the other side of me when we

00:46:26.880 had that discussion and because he hosted you and because he had the nerve to invite Dave Smith

00:46:31.100 in a in a debate because he allowed one side to be represented and he had the Israel side fully

00:46:37.160 represented, too. So this was just such an unfair accusation. And I don't know why the you know,

00:46:43.420 these very ardent advocates don't accept friendship when you offer it, when you when you've proven that

00:46:49.040 you are genuinely a friend. I've said openly, Tucker, there's no I'm not I don't want to debate.

00:46:54.500 I'm on their side. There's no reason to put somebody on this show so they can convince me

00:46:58.360 that Israel's right. I'm on their side. I agree with that. But in response to those comments and

00:47:02.760 then ultimately having Marjorie Taylor Greene on where we criticized AIPAC. I mean, who defends a

00:47:08.740 lobbyist group? They treated me like I was Mehdi Hassan. Not everybody, you know, but like the loudest

00:47:16.000 Israel defenders. And and to turn around and call Charlie Kirk an anti-Semite is such a disgusting

00:47:21.520 smear. And you're right. He's young. You know, he he was young and wasn't used to being attacked like

00:47:27.640 that by people who supported him and people whose donations are actually really important to the

00:47:33.280 ongoing existence of his organization. And it took a lot for him to say no to them. And it took a lot

00:47:38.320 for him to be honest about the fact that his opinions had evolved. And let's face it, Charlie was

00:47:43.540 like an unofficial spokesperson for the youth of America, in particular, conservative youth.

00:47:49.080 And I don't know if people have checked, but they no longer support Israel. Everybody under 30 is

00:47:54.380 against Israel. Charlie was 31. And so as a friend, he's he's saying to them as same way I as a friend

00:48:00.820 am saying, I am telling you, you you've lost Dems independence and you're starting to lose

00:48:06.160 Republicans. You need to wrap it up. You've had a two year long leash. I know you want your hostages

00:48:12.640 back, but this cannot go on until you have every hostage. That's just not going to you're going to lose

00:48:18.060 every friend you have. And that's what he was saying, because that's what he was hearing from

00:48:22.480 his constituency. And so what he did to them was brave and noble to the donors who who were very,

00:48:29.620 very pro Israel. It was brave and it was noble. He did not deserve to be smeared over it. And look,

00:48:35.080 I like you have zero belief that this had anything to do with his death. But it's part of the larger

00:48:40.480 narrative that you're making, that he was a truth teller, that he was a fearless truth teller,

00:48:45.140 that there were a lot of pockets when he turned to them and said those truths that grew extremely

00:48:51.900 uncomfortable. And whether it was some two online, disgusting, messed up 22 year old in Utah,

00:49:01.260 or, you know, somebody who couldn't stand his messaging that was very frank around race or around

00:49:07.780 Islam, whatever, take your pick. He said the hard picks, hard truths on all of these things.

00:49:12.980 I think a lot of people have to have a really ugly conversation with themselves now in the wake

00:49:17.980 of his death about whether they added to the hate surrounding him.

00:49:21.640 And for Benjamin Netanyahu, really tormented Charlie. We talked about it many times. He

00:49:26.600 tormented Charlie and his advocates tormented Charlie. For him to run around saying that Charlie

00:49:31.080 died for Israel is just too much. It's just disgusting. And as his friend, I feel morally bound

00:49:35.620 his statement was out of line. No, I agree with you. And I'd never talk about Bibi Netanyahu. I

00:49:41.040 don't really, I don't think much about him. I don't, I just don't. I had the opportunity to

00:49:45.580 interview him a couple of months ago and I declined. I'm just, I'm just not, no, I just don't want to,

00:49:50.960 I didn't want to platform him. I didn't actually, frankly, want to do all the work that I would have

00:49:54.300 to do to sufficiently interview him in a way that would be, you know, tough as I do when I have any

00:50:00.020 foreign leader in my crosshairs. I just wasn't interested. I, whatever. For him to do what he did

00:50:05.840 was wrong. It was deeply, it was a moral wrong to sit out there and read part of Charlie's letter

00:50:11.740 and try to have the final say on Charlie's pronunciations about Israel. And he knew that

00:50:17.680 they weren't the full story. And he's a foreign leader. He's not an American leader. So how dare

00:50:21.580 he? You know, at best you come out there, you say, I'm so sorry for this loss. My prayers to his

00:50:27.300 family. That's it. He was out of line, Tucker. And I, as not even a Netanyahu critic, saw it very

00:50:33.600 clearly and talked about it today on the show too. Can I ask you about next steps? I'm always wary of

00:50:38.020 people who want to, I just want to ask you about two issues. One are hate speech laws, which I'm

00:50:43.060 paranoid about, but I think we should be. And two is the effort by one person in Congress, Marjorie

00:50:49.940 Taylor Greene, to get the federal government to ban sex changes for children. And she can't seem to get

00:50:56.560 that done. So are we going to get hate speech laws? Do you think? Pam Bondi seems to suggest we are.

00:51:02.960 And two, are we ever going to ban the mutilation of kids?

00:51:08.700 So on the hate speech comments, that was an absolutely ridiculous comment she made today.

00:51:13.760 I mean, it was absolutely foolhardy. I, there's just no way she doesn't know what she said is

00:51:17.600 legally unsound. She's, there's just no way she was attorney general of the state of Florida and

00:51:21.400 became U S attorney general and doesn't know that. So it does worry me because does that mean she's

00:51:26.820 actually pushing for a policy change? Because there's just no way she doesn't already know what

00:51:30.640 she said is wrong. There's been reams of Supreme court precedent on it. And she knows that. So is

00:51:35.980 this about policy change? She tried to wiggle off of her original point as the day went on,

00:51:40.600 as incoming came almost universally from the right, that she had said something very,

00:51:46.480 very wrong constitutionally and vile as a moral principle. And we've been fighting against this

00:51:52.900 for decades on the right. Like what, what is she saying? She sounded like a Merrick Garland.

00:51:57.260 She sounded like an attorney general Kamala Harris would have put in place. And so she tried to pivot

00:52:01.800 off of it as the day went on and tried to make it smaller into, no, all I'm saying is violent threats,

00:52:08.020 criminal threats are, are going to be punished. Well, yes and no, it depends on the threat. There's

00:52:13.520 actually only a sliver of threats that is actionable under the law. So you're getting

00:52:17.780 closer, but you're not quite there. You're, you're giving again, still wide, too wide a birth

00:52:22.260 to attacking free speech. Um, but yeah, it is true that certain threats, true threats can be ruled

00:52:28.200 unconstitutional. You could go after somebody. So she does worry me and you know, I'm not, Trump was

00:52:33.900 asked about it and he kind of made a funny joke about it going after the ABC news interviewer who asked

00:52:39.160 him the question. Um, but I think Trump will see that there's so much resistance to this on the

00:52:43.920 right that he won't let her do that. He won't let her push for it. He won't let the Republicans do

00:52:47.480 it. I just have to think Trump reads his base better than she does. Yeah, I agree with that.

00:52:52.360 And speaking of reading your base and I've got to thank the presidents for this. I don't know why

00:52:57.220 Speaker Mike Johnson has held it up, but I mean, we don't let kids get tattoos or smoke cigarettes,

00:53:02.600 but we do let ghoulish doctors who are getting money for doing it mutilate children. Like why

00:53:11.280 can't Marjorie Taylor Greene get a, get a hearing on, on this legislation? I don't understand it.

00:53:16.360 I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, like this, they, they chalk this up to,

00:53:20.860 oh, it's a spending resolution. We're just going to continue, you know, the spending that's in place

00:53:24.660 until right. It's like, okay, you're, you're funding mutilations of children and not just the

00:53:28.860 mutilations that are done with surgeries. You're funding with these, you know,

00:53:31.320 puberty blockers into cross sex hormones, sterilization of minors who cannot possibly

00:53:35.680 consent to that and not just sterilization, but actually the end of all potential for sexual

00:53:40.200 pleasure. How does a 12 year old understand that he's sacrificing that with your weird experiments

00:53:45.320 on him? It is truly a moral scourge what we're doing to our children. And I don't actually,

00:53:51.160 I'm sorry to say, I don't have a lot of faith that we're, that's going to get a ban at the federal

00:53:54.600 level, which means it'll be left to the States, which means if you live in a blue state, it's,

00:53:59.480 it's go, you know, have at it, go ahead and mutilate children and sterilize them and deprive

00:54:05.760 them of sexual pleasure because it makes you feel good. It's not dissimilar to the left saying Trump

00:54:11.200 shouldn't add additional law enforcement. They shouldn't accept additional law enforcement

00:54:15.080 where he wants to send it because it's racist to let black people live. It's racist to let them

00:54:20.980 live in peace. It's not be carjacked in these inner cities, which are predominantly African American.

00:54:25.840 That's what the left is telling us that it's racist for Trump to send those troops or, or even

00:54:30.040 volunteer. And they're saying the same that what's, what's good for children, what's, what's kind,

00:54:35.240 what's, you know, the honorable thing to do is to let deranged parents chop off children's healthy

00:54:41.340 body parts and sterilize them because that's what, that's what an evolved person would do.

00:54:47.560 And so the, like, that's another thing that this angel sent to us would speak very frankly about

00:54:52.940 and threaten all these people who have a constituency, whether it's someone with a last

00:54:58.660 name Pritzker, who actually has money invested in the transing of children, that governor's cousin

00:55:04.420 is one of the big funders of all these school pushes on the trans issue, or somebody who just

00:55:11.040 gets Jones out of saying they're, you know, going to open the prisons and let black people not get

00:55:17.020 arrested for the crimes because they just think that's beneficial, I guess, somehow to other black

00:55:21.660 people who are usually their victims, nevermind the race of the victim. It's not beneficial to any

00:55:26.400 of us. In any event, I don't have hope on that front. We're going to keep fighting, but if they

00:55:30.840 don't ban it at the federal level, which I don't think they're going to, um, we're never going to get

00:55:35.000 all 50 States to ban it.

00:55:36.840 I think it'd be worth reading a daily roll call of people standing in the way of that, because that,

00:55:41.360 that, that's the kind of crime that historians will reel in horror, uh, that we allowed. I, I think

00:55:48.220 your remarks about Charlie at the beginning were like some of the wisest I've ever heard. And, um,

00:55:53.160 I'm actually going to look at the tape because I was so impressed by what you said, uh, and moved

00:55:56.880 by it. So Megan Kelly, thank you for taking time late at night to do this. I appreciate it.

00:56:00.280 Great to be with you as always. Thank you.

00:56:06.160 All right. Well, we have, uh, someone joining us now who are just really, really grateful to have,

00:56:12.700 um, someone who has been famous for decades, uh, for a different skill. And in the last 10 years

00:56:21.040 has really emerged as a consistent voice of wisdom, um, online and never interviewed him before,

00:56:27.320 but really happy to, I don't think, uh, Scott Adams joins us now. Scott, thanks very much for doing

00:56:33.660 that. Thanks for having me talking. Yeah. We, we, we talked once before, uh, quite a few years ago

00:56:39.960 and it was on Fox news and I've just erased that whole part of my brain. It's like CTE or something.

00:56:45.580 I can't really remember what I did there. I think I'm ashamed of some of it. Um, but anyway,

00:56:51.460 um, tell us what you think the lesson of Charlie Kirk's life and death, uh, are like what, what

00:57:00.180 strikes you immediately? Well, you know, one of the big questions is how did somebody get to that

00:57:07.200 place where it seemed perfectly reasonable for them to get a gun and, and shoot a living human being.

00:57:12.880 Yes. And, um, some people know when your audience said, I'm also a hypnotist, I'm a trained hypnotist.

00:57:20.220 And so I tend to look at these situations through that filter and through that filter,

00:57:25.100 you can see a really clear cause and effect, you know, starting around, let's say 2016,

00:57:30.840 there was wall to wall, Hitler, Hitler, Nazis, 24 hours. Before that, there had been other Republicans

00:57:38.800 who had been accused of being Hitler, but I think that everybody treated it like hyperbole,

00:57:44.400 you know, it's just, you know, it's a, it's a political insult and it's the most common one.

00:57:49.820 So you don't take it too seriously. Yes. But imagine being a young kid and, uh, growing up when the,

00:57:56.580 the news, the people in nice clothing would go on TV and they would say in all seriousness, I, you know,

00:58:02.920 he's basically Hitler, the Nazis are coming and you would, you would create a mass hysteria.

00:58:09.760 Now a mass hysteria would be worse than TDS or Trump derangement syndrome, because that would be

00:58:15.860 sort of what happens to an individual, you know, that could have TDS. But if you have a lot of people

00:58:21.560 have TDS and they start talking to each other, pretty soon you've got a mass hysteria and the mass

00:58:28.460 hysteria, uh, created this, what I call a Hitlerian bubble, meaning that a lot of people are living in

00:58:35.720 what they think is a reality that is just completely Hitlerized. They see Hitler everywhere and they see

00:58:43.620 it in Trump. They see it in his lieutenants. And this is different. So this is not like what we've

00:58:49.420 seen before. All it takes to completely brainwash somebody to believe ridiculous things, even things

00:58:57.420 that their observations would, should tell them are not true. All you need is people in good suits

00:59:04.000 who, whose job makes them seem incredible to say day after day, it's the repetition that matters.

00:59:11.700 Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. And you convince people that they're living in the hellscape and they better

00:59:17.320 do something about it. So, so the main thing I saw was that, um, and it, you know, what, once the bubble

00:59:25.960 is formed, um, it's, it's hard to get out. I mean, you can't talk people out of it. There's no amount

00:59:32.040 of information that will change their mind. Cognitive dissonance will kick in if you, if you show them

00:59:37.560 a counterexample. And the weird thing about, uh, Charlie, who I'd never met by the way, I, uh, I didn't have

00:59:44.740 the pleasure. Uh, the weird thing is that when I started hearing all the accusations and there were a lot of

00:59:50.600 them, I said to myself, well, I'll bet some of these might be a little bit true. So I started to look for

00:59:56.800 the original quotes, et cetera. None of them are true. And there were a lot of them. They were all

01:00:03.100 either a made up quote or a quote and a context and nothing else. And when you hear people talking

01:00:11.400 about it, especially the young people, they'll say things like he was a bad hater person,

01:00:17.260 but there's no example. So that that's sort of the sign that it's, uh, you know, a mass hysteria

01:00:24.640 because they can't give reasons and they don't seem too interested in the reasons. They're just

01:00:29.880 sure that something has to be done. Now on top of that, for the young people, there's probably also

01:00:34.020 an economic pressure, you know, that they might feel that life doesn't have a positive path. So that

01:00:39.960 might be playing into this a little bit as well. Um, but I do wonder what will happen and I predict

01:00:47.240 that there's going to be another big bubble of psychological distress when the people who

01:00:53.900 have said such bad things about him in public realize that none of it was true because over

01:00:59.900 time, it looks like he's going to be talked about so much that we'll, you know, we'll finally

01:01:04.900 have a complete body of, uh, information about him so we can understand them. And it won't happen

01:01:10.740 to most people. Most people will just have cognitive dissonance. They'll still believe he was,

01:01:15.520 you know, Hitler Jr. But there's, there will be some people, you know, not, not a big percentage,

01:01:21.340 we're going to realize that they did something so shameful that it will haunt them for the rest

01:01:27.300 of their lives. That, that they were part of saying something terrible about one of the best people

01:01:34.420 that we've witnessed. I mean, he, he genuinely was a high character and person and you can see him

01:01:41.360 everything he did. So, uh, there's something big coming up. Yeah. But then another thing that

01:01:47.580 happened that was fascinating to me because I didn't expect it, which was the Democrats have

01:01:54.440 always had what I'd call a machine, which is that since they worked with the media, you know,

01:02:00.000 they had the media in their pocket, you would see it happen when they'd have some, all right,

01:02:04.420 our message this week are these words. And then everybody would say the same words and then the

01:02:10.360 media would just pump it out. So it was like this big, well-functioning machine. And then they had

01:02:15.820 the NGOs and all the funding tricks, et cetera. Uh, but when, uh, Charlie Kirk died, you could almost

01:02:24.160 feel this massive energy being released. You know, he, he sort of controlled it, but when it was

01:02:32.060 released, you know, his, his mortal coil, uh, was no more. Uh, I feel like that energy just went into

01:02:39.260 people. Um, and suddenly tens of millions of people simultaneously said, what can I do? What

01:02:47.800 can I do right now? And that's different. People don't say, I'm going to stop everything. Tell me

01:02:54.540 what to do. I'm going to go to church. A lot of people did. Uh, I'm going to say stuff on social

01:03:00.300 media. I'm going to hunt down the people who said bad things and cancel them, but I'm going to do

01:03:05.760 something. You know, we're, we're, we're going to figure out how to start another chapter of,

01:03:10.520 you know, TP USA. And, uh, all of that's happening and it doesn't seem to be slowing down,

01:03:17.700 you know, the vigils, et cetera. If anything, the energy, it might be growing. Uh, and I've never

01:03:24.780 seen anything like it in my life. I've never seen the Republicans turn into their own machine. And now

01:03:30.980 it is a machine and, uh, it's going to be incredible. I, so, uh, you know, I, uh, I was

01:03:38.180 thinking yesterday, it sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious. The thing that protects the

01:03:43.920 Democrats from, you know, also having some kind of problem like this is that they don't have any

01:03:50.380 leaders that are worth taking off the board. I mean, if, if you said to me, uh, somebody has got a

01:03:56.060 plot to take Tim Walsh off the board, I would say, Oh no, no. If you're a Republican, you ought to keep

01:04:03.220 him there because he, he's not doing a good job. You know, you're, you're Jasmine Crocus, you're Chuck

01:04:09.180 Schumers. I say, please keep them right where they are. They're doing a great job. Nobody, nobody needs

01:04:14.620 to harm them. But on top of that, uh, I don't believe that Republicans, conservatives ever even think

01:04:22.600 that way. I've never heard one say anything suggesting violence, like not even in a, just a

01:04:29.500 casual conversation, the joking way you might do it in private, nothing like that. And I think it has

01:04:35.940 to do with the fact that overall the, uh, the conservatives, the Republicans, MAGA people tend

01:04:43.140 to look at Democrats almost as if they're clowns. They say things that literally make me laugh.

01:04:49.440 No joke. I, uh, I sound like Biden there, but, uh, uh, I literally, that frightened me a little

01:04:57.420 bit. Uh, I literally, uh, will watch the news and watch Republican, you know, prominent people

01:05:04.720 talking because I think it's funny. And when they watch, um, when the left watches the right,

01:05:12.160 they think they're watching monsters. Yes. So you can imagine how that somebody would want

01:05:17.560 to kill a monster, but nobody wants to kill a clown. Well, maybe somebody does, but yeah,

01:05:23.080 so far Republicans have not wanted to kill any clowns. And I do think, um, well, first of all,

01:05:30.680 that the cancellations we're seeing, I have a little bit of mixed feelings about it because my

01:05:35.440 point of view is that the people involved who are getting canceled are themselves brainwashed.

01:05:40.380 And I don't mean that in sort of the, um, I don't know, the, the hypothetical way or anything

01:05:48.120 like, I mean, actually, literally they've been exposed to the strongest brainwashing you

01:05:53.180 would have, which is about eight years of wall to wall, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

01:05:58.160 And, you know, Charlie's one of the generals. So if you can't get to the Hitler, you're thinking,

01:06:04.140 well, you know, maybe, maybe one of the generals will be less protected. And that was the case,

01:06:08.880 but, um, I feel a little bit bad for them because they're, they're victims too. But at the same time,

01:06:16.620 the way society works, you can't let them get away with that. So, you know, there has to be some,

01:06:21.760 some reckoning and I am enjoying, I have to say, being a canceled person myself, I am enjoying the,

01:06:30.100 uh, schadenfreude or the, uh, you know, the, the catharsis of seeing that it can go both ways,

01:06:37.160 at least for now. Uh, and by the way, I do think that the violence goes in both directions,

01:06:42.700 but I don't think that there is a, an equivalent to a massive machine that's been creating a situation

01:06:50.160 that guaranteed there would be violence. If you just keep saying Hitler and you're selling it,

01:06:56.100 not as hyperbole, but you're selling it as absolute fact, the people who don't have access to

01:07:02.860 alternative theories are going to believe that and they're going to act on it. So, uh, and I like the

01:07:10.800 fact that there's a little mutually assured destruction. Uh, the, the left is getting to

01:07:16.140 see a little bit of payback, uh, reminding that the, that the, uh, Republicans aren't going to take

01:07:22.060 infinite abuse. You know, there's going to be a point where it's going to come back.

01:07:26.740 Like, I like that. Um, but I just, uh, you know, overall I wouldn't be proud of it. You know,

01:07:34.040 the, the cancellations, I do believe that they're, they're brainwashed victims.

01:07:39.060 So man, I do wonder, yeah, go ahead.

01:07:42.000 Well, I thought your description of brainwashing seems accurate. It's very distressing to think

01:07:47.680 that could happen in our free Republic, you know, um, the free and brave United States. I thought

01:07:55.480 the people were more independent minded than that. Um, so that's sad. It's probably just human

01:08:00.780 though, a weakness that we all share the susceptibility to propaganda, but that, why would

01:08:07.280 you want to hypnotize a population or a portion of it? Like usually there's a goal in mind. What's

01:08:13.500 the goal here? Well, power is, uh, Democrats know that they can win an election that way.

01:08:19.920 If they had better ideas and better policies and charismatic leaders, I imagine that's what

01:08:26.980 they'd go with. Yeah. But you know, Trump, Trump enters the, uh, the contest that you have the most

01:08:33.420 charismatic, uh, leader with sensational ideas, according to at least his base, what are you going

01:08:41.040 to do? You know, he's the common sense guy. Are you going to say, we really do want the border open?

01:08:46.420 We really do want a little bit more crime in our urban centers. What are you going to do? You don't

01:08:51.920 have any kind of a rational attack to the common sense president who's been here before and knows

01:08:59.200 how to get this stuff done. So it's just all they have. Um, and I don't know that it's, I don't know

01:09:05.180 that it's intentional that they did it so hard that it guaranteed violence. I don't think violence

01:09:10.940 was the intention. I think just winning elections was the intention. Yeah, that sounds right. So

01:09:17.240 thank you for this, by the way, last question, where, where do you foresee this going?

01:09:24.280 Well, you know, it's, it's unpredictable because the cognitive dissonance will cause people to

01:09:29.620 think in a way that's non-standard. That's, that's exactly what it is. So there might be a lot more of

01:09:35.320 that coming, but one of the things that's going to happen is it might be the, the last, um, uh,

01:09:42.760 what would you call it? The last straw that makes the entire Democrat situation collapse. Because if

01:09:48.920 you look at their situation, they're running out of money. They don't have good leaders. They don't

01:09:52.660 have ideas that can, you know, beat the competing ideas and, uh, they don't have momentum. They don't

01:09:58.420 have the podcast world. The conservatives have that pretty nailed down. Um, basically they have

01:10:05.260 the right, the best talent for just about everything right now. I'm just an amazing amount of talent

01:10:10.780 in the, uh, the right side of the world. But then you add on top of that, the, the emotions and the

01:10:18.760 feelings that people got because of, uh, Charlie Kirk's death. And that was probably the only thing

01:10:25.540 missing was no matter what, I'm going to get to the voting booth. You know, you could have a hurricane

01:10:32.540 and, and, uh, conservatives are going to crawl through glass to get to the voting booth. So

01:10:39.420 I suspect we will see a, uh, number of votes from the Republicans like we've never seen before.

01:10:47.100 It could be sensational. Scott Adams. I really am grateful that you took time to do this. Um,

01:10:54.700 you look great. Thank you very much. Godspeed. Thanks. Thanks. I got a text earlier today from

01:11:02.380 someone I sort of know saying, Cenk Uygur, why, why is he on your show? The young Turks guy? Um,

01:11:09.100 isn't this a tribute to Charlie Kirk? Why would you have some like screamy lefty on your show?

01:11:13.660 Well, precisely because Charlie Kirk's life work was speaking with not just two, but with

01:11:22.700 people he disagreed with vehemently. I thought that our next guest who's run the young Turks for

01:11:29.120 probably almost 20 years now, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong. Uh, it was one of the

01:11:33.220 most visible daily broadcasters on the left. The fact that he had this kind of amazing exchange with

01:11:39.320 Charlie Kirk. Well, a couple of them. Um, but one pretty recently, I thought it'd be worth hearing

01:11:44.840 what he thought. Um, so it is, uh, with pride that we announced our next guest. Thank you, Cenk,

01:11:51.580 for coming on. Uh, no problem, Tucker. Thanks for having me on. I think it's important that we have

01:11:56.660 a moment like this where we try to bring the country together. Amen. I so strongly agree. You had

01:12:02.160 this kind of famous exchange with him. I think it was 2018 at Politicon and it got super heated

01:12:08.840 and bitter and it was like, I don't know, things were viral in 2018, but it was viral. Um, and then

01:12:16.220 you came back to a TP USA event and I was amazed and impressed both that he invited you and that you

01:12:23.440 came and you still disagreed on some things, but it was, I mean, the tone was completely different.

01:12:29.620 Can you explain that and better and great? I thought. Yeah. So first of all, in 2018,

01:12:35.880 that was a Politicon that I debated you. Um, we got along pretty well, as I remember we did,

01:12:44.760 we did. Um, and Charlie was debating my nephew, Hassan, um, Hassan Piker. And, but I couldn't help

01:12:51.920 myself because that's who I am. Uh, and I, in the middle of their debate, I said something to Charlie

01:12:56.900 when I, when I, I wasn't on stage, I was in the crowd and he yelled at me, I live like a capitalist

01:13:02.720 every day, Chank. Uh, and then we, by the way, some people then thought that it was a racial slur.

01:13:08.980 No, that was just my name. Uh, he was just slightly mispronouncing it. Um, so, uh, then actually

01:13:16.040 something happened in between, uh, that moment and turning point USA, um, uh, America fest. So we were at the

01:13:24.460 RNC in 2024 and, uh, Charlie came by at our booth and said, Hey, do you guys want to talk?

01:13:33.280 And we were a little bit taken aback by that. We were really surprised by it. And, uh, Anna and I,

01:13:39.740 uh, Anna Kasperians, my co-host on the Young Turks, uh, talked it over and said, yeah, yeah,

01:13:44.320 we would like to talk. And so he came on the show and so we had our disagreements. So for the,

01:13:50.920 it's interesting that you have me on here, you know, partly, uh, for the reasons that, uh, you

01:13:56.360 know, your friend texted you about how well that's strange, right? Left and right. Um, and, and so I,

01:14:01.940 I don't agree with everything that you, Megan and Scott said about Charlie. I'm sure. Right. Uh, but,

01:14:08.880 but I think that's what makes it more interesting. Uh, so the willing that, uh, the willingness to talk

01:14:13.580 to us, even though we were so entrenched, uh, on different sides. Right. And so then when we started

01:14:21.160 the conversation, what wound up happening, uh, surprised us. So did we still have our disagreements

01:14:27.300 about the black pilot line, this, that, and other thing? Of course we did. Right. Uh, but when we

01:14:34.060 started talking about corporate rule, he agreed. And I remember like, I want to go back and watch the

01:14:41.380 first interview we did with him at the RNC there, because I was kind of shocked by it. It's like,

01:14:46.320 really? You're also worried about corporations having too much power and, and right. Because

01:14:54.100 that Tucker, you can understand that was a, that was a left-wing position for a long time in this

01:15:00.020 country. It was, but, but the battle has been joined. And so that is an incredible development

01:15:06.900 in American politics that mainstream media, I think has chosen to ignore because it's inconvenient

01:15:12.460 for them. Uh, then we got into a specific topic, um, which was banning private equity from buying

01:15:20.780 residential real estate. And the idea behind that is private equity is the biggest bankers in the

01:15:27.560 world. Basically they, they're the biggest financial institutions and they've started to buy all of our

01:15:33.340 homes. Now that creates a huge number of problems. Number one, it drives up housing prices. That is

01:15:39.240 why they are artificially high because so much more demand has come into the market. And I went to

01:15:45.180 Wharton business school. So this is not complicated though. This is econ 101 supply and demand. Right.

01:15:51.380 And so, uh, secondly, what the number one, uh, wealth creation asset that the American family has is

01:16:00.020 their homes. That is how we created the greatest middle-class the world has ever seen. And they're

01:16:05.300 taking that from us and they're going to turn us all into renters. And then we're going to be

01:16:10.680 indentured servants to them. Okay. And the way that they are doing this is they are, uh, giving

01:16:16.960 collectively billions of dollars to our politicians. So this issue connects actually the, the money in

01:16:24.920 politics issue connects to everything connects to corporate rule compared it connects to capitalism,

01:16:29.600 by the way, which I want to get back to connects to Israel because it isn't about Israel or any other

01:16:35.900 particular lobby being, uh, evil or dastardly or in charge. It's the money that's in charge. And so if,

01:16:45.160 uh, big pharma Pfizer, Johnson, Johnson, et cetera, give money to our politicians, well, then they pass

01:16:51.940 absurd laws. Like we're not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Right. What in the world? In capitalism,

01:16:58.760 you're not allowed to negotiate prices, right? I know. So, and we talked about that and he said,

01:17:06.380 you're right, that, that is absurd. And we on the right already believe that, that it's absurd and

01:17:11.440 that it's against capitalism. Fantastic. So look, you're right. We've been around a long time on the

01:17:18.320 Young Turks. We were actually the longest running show in internet history. And in that time we've had,

01:17:23.940 you know, we've been on for 23 years, we've had about 21 to 22 years of hardened battle, right?

01:17:31.560 Fighting back and forth, fighting back and forth. Right. And as anybody who's seen me, uh, online

01:17:37.320 knows, I, I can get emotional. I can get passionate and I'm not a wilting flower. I fight back for sure.

01:17:44.340 Right. Um, so what was amazing though, was all of a sudden I didn't have to fight back that on those

01:17:51.880 issues, not every issue and not on all the culture wars, but on these economic issues, we have begun

01:17:56.960 to agree. And why? Because the average guy is getting screwed. Yes. Period. It doesn't matter if

01:18:05.220 you're on the left or the right, you're both going to get screwed. You're both going to have higher

01:18:09.500 housing prices. You're both going to have lower wages. You're both going to have higher drug prices.

01:18:14.180 And the people that brought you that is the donor class. And so when we agreed to that,

01:18:20.840 then I said, okay, well now conversation has become productive. We're not just yelling at each other

01:18:26.480 for the first time ever. We are talking to one another and more importantly, we are listening to

01:18:31.520 one another. So we did it again at the DNC. Uh, and then, uh, Charlie invited me to America fest and

01:18:38.860 I went there and again, we disagreed on gun rights. We disagreed on some trans issues. Uh, but we wound

01:18:47.580 up agreeing on Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell, uh, for example, neither one of us like, I agree.

01:18:56.340 And you know, Tucker, I'll say this, and there's a lot more to talk about in that context, but, um,

01:19:02.660 if you told me you are going to go to a massive right-wing conference in the year 2025, um,

01:19:10.940 and what's going to happen is the crowd in unison is going to boo Dick Cheney. If you told me that

01:19:18.540 when we first started the young Turks and we're railing against Dick Cheney, don't go into Iraq,

01:19:23.240 don't go into Iraq. Cheney's lying. Right. And people are yelling back and support the troops

01:19:28.860 you're for Saddam and all this stuff. If you told me, Oh, don't worry. In 20 some odd years,

01:19:34.160 that crowd will be booing Dick Cheney. And that crowd will be booing Mitch McConnell because they

01:19:39.660 realize that the corporate class, the donor class is in charge and they hate it. I would have said,

01:19:45.860 Oh my God, that must be a beautiful day in America.

01:19:48.220 Well, so this is what I admire about you. You're, you're totally sincere about your principles. Like

01:19:55.960 you, you, you almost don't care who's agreeing with you. You believe in the idea, the principles. So

01:20:01.600 you're willing to make common cause with people you don't agree with in everything. You're not

01:20:05.960 partisan. And, and the second thing I should just, I just want to say it out loud is that young Turks,

01:20:11.180 whatever you think of your politics has had a stated commitment to nonviolence from the very

01:20:15.940 beginning and you mean it. And I just, I just want to say that for people who don't know that.

01:20:20.540 And I want to thank you for that because I think it's really important. And anyway, but so let me

01:20:25.740 ask you, how were you treated at AmFest at Charlie's event? Yeah. By the way, thank you for saying that

01:20:33.620 Tucker. And the principle of nonviolence extends through everything. So do not be violent to each

01:20:40.160 other. Violence is intellectual surrender. That's saying I can't win the debate with my mind. So I have to

01:20:44.980 act like an animal and try to defeat that person physically, but that means you're surrendering

01:20:49.800 and you're giving up. It is, it's the most immoral thing you could do. It's also the weakest thing

01:20:55.340 you could do. Yes, I agree. And, but that's on, not just on an individual level, that's also on a

01:21:02.440 societal level. So when we go to war, that is in a sense weakness saying we could not use our minds to

01:21:08.760 resolve this issue. We could not resolve this issue as fellow human beings. So now we're going to kill

01:21:13.960 each other. So it, that is why we're anti-war. And that is why one of the most encouraging

01:21:19.380 developments of my life is how anti-war, the right-wing movement has become. So that another

01:21:25.040 great day in America. So it's still plenty of things we disagree on, but, but, but agreeing on

01:21:31.000 anti-war, agreeing on how the donor classes is robbing both of us blind. I mean, those are huge

01:21:38.160 developments, right? So now how was I treated at AmFest? I've got to be honest with you. And, and so

01:21:43.680 the reason why I preface it by saying, I got to be honest with you is because sometimes when we go

01:21:49.340 and talk to the right wing and, and as you said, we haven't moved on a thing, right? So folks come

01:21:55.560 to us and I have a simple principle, take the win. Okay. Take the win. Exactly. Like, so, okay. Now you

01:22:03.800 agree with me that, uh, anti-war is the right position. Is my correct answer that I still hate

01:22:10.220 you? No, that is not the correct answer. The correct answer is, Oh, thank God. Right. And now

01:22:19.160 we'll work on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. But for now, at least we had no

01:22:24.100 agreements before. Now we have had a number of really important agreements. So, but nevertheless,

01:22:29.740 I had my share of critics on the left, you're, you're platforming it. I went to his conference.

01:22:36.700 I wasn't platforming him. He was platforming me. Right. And, and second of all, stop with all the

01:22:42.480 nonsense talk of platforming people. Okay. I agree. Just listen to one another, talk to one another.

01:22:49.360 That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. Oh, but what if you disagree? And of course you're

01:22:56.120 going to disagree. It's America. We're free. We have no two human beings are the same. Of course,

01:23:02.200 we're going to disagree on some issues. So if you can't handle that, then you can't handle

01:23:06.360 politics. You can't handle media. You can't handle America. Right. So, okay. So with that giant

01:23:12.780 preface, I'll say the people there honestly were universally wonderful. Um, so they were. And so you

01:23:21.160 could say, Oh, well, you know, ha ha. That means Jenkson with the right wing. No, I'm just telling

01:23:26.500 you what happened. If they were jerks, I would tell you that they were jerks, but they weren't.

01:23:30.960 Okay. And, and I've got to say like this cancel culture, it's not exclusively left wing.

01:23:37.400 No, I know. Tell me about it. I mean, yeah, the efforts that some people made to keep me from

01:23:45.900 speaking at the next TPUSA thing, people I agree with on a lot of things, by the way, I don't

01:23:50.840 disagree with Seth Dillon and everything, Mr. Free Speech Guy trying to cancel me, but I was like

01:23:55.540 shocked by it. Like they really hassled Charlie and just drove him to, you know, to really fret and

01:24:03.620 drove him to anxiety over this. Oh no, no, no. That impulse is a human impulse and we need to resist it.

01:24:09.500 Yeah. So I love what you guys said about a hate speech and how it's unacceptable to pass laws on that.

01:24:15.060 Not acceptable. Yeah. Under no circumstances. So, and this is what I say on that topic. So

01:24:21.520 Charlie says some things about Islam that, you know, having grown up Muslim, I'm atheist now,

01:24:27.800 but my family's Muslim, my background's Muslim, I'm proud of it. He said some things about Islam

01:24:33.200 that I was not a fan, right? To say the least. I bet. So, so you know what I did in return? I made my case.

01:24:40.720 Huh? So what? Right? Like what's, why is it so like debilitating if someone says something that

01:24:50.080 you find offensive? I've said things that I'm sure others have found offensive. You have,

01:24:54.820 Charlie has, Megan has. So what? Then you say something back. Okay. We don't cancel, we don't

01:25:03.080 kill. And killing is the most extreme form of cancel culture. So I despise cancel culture and

01:25:11.260 I have the honor of being, having been canceled by almost every part of the political spectrum.

01:25:16.380 I know. Man, what an, that was, that was really inspiring. And I'm going to text back the person

01:25:24.820 who texted me and say, did you watch that? That was wonderful. And I so appreciate you're doing this.

01:25:30.900 Thank you. And I hope you don't take too much abuse for it. And I'm sure you will, but I guess you

01:25:37.320 don't care. So good for you. Thank you. That'll bounce off me so quick. I'll just say this one last

01:25:43.520 thing, Tucker. I mean, the idea of making laws against hate speech in honor of Charlie Kerr. No,

01:25:50.960 I know. Okay. That's like, if I passed away and they're like, in honor of Cenk, we're all going to

01:25:55.660 go on a diet. Tell me about it. Or the Tucker Carlson, no pizza law. No, I agree.

01:26:05.660 Come on. That is the opposite of what I've did in my life. And regulating speech is the opposite of

01:26:11.700 what Charlie did in his life. So let's all keep talking to one another. Let's all keep listening

01:26:17.040 to one another and hopefully use this moment not to create further tragedy, but to begin to end the

01:26:24.200 tragedies. Yeah, I'm proud to agree with that, you know, really, really strongly. So thank you for

01:26:29.020 saying it very much. Thank you, Tucker. Great to see you. Thanks. You too.

01:26:33.560 So we want to end tonight the way we began, by talking about Charlie's faith and the effect on

01:26:43.660 all of us from a spiritual perspective of his life, and particularly his death. There were reports

01:26:49.140 that this Sunday church attendance was up dramatically, as people suddenly felt stirrings

01:26:54.680 within them that this, you know, had cosmic significance and that God is real, and this is

01:27:00.520 a reminder that he is, which he is. Josiah Trenum is a Christian minister, and we are honored to have

01:27:08.100 him now to put this in a broader spiritual context. Thank you very much for coming on,

01:27:14.540 Father Trenum. So how would you say we should think about where this goes from here? Like, people seem

01:27:23.820 to have a heightened spiritual awareness in the days after Charlie Kirk's murder. How should we proceed?

01:27:30.520 Well, thanks a lot, Tucker, for having me on. I appreciate your interest and desire to bring

01:27:38.480 a priest into this conversation. I think it's valuable. I would say, up front, we should be

01:27:46.360 very careful to make any sort of conclusion from this during this very intense time of mourning.

01:27:52.320 Yes. You know, we Christians have a tradition, 2,000-year-old tradition, on how to respond to

01:27:59.960 death, and we take our time. This is day seven. This is day seven. Usually for 40 days, we mourn very,

01:28:09.040 very seriously. In the Orthodox tradition, for instance, when a bishop or a major leader of the church dies,

01:28:15.840 he's not replaced until the 40 days is done. And that's not just out of respect for the person in

01:28:24.040 this case. Mourning Charlie, really processing what his loss means is very necessary to do,

01:28:33.480 and it takes time to do that. And we're not going to be able to make good decisions about the future

01:28:39.440 without calming down and processing what we've gone through. So this is the time I think that we should

01:28:47.760 be very careful. We should mourn. We should consign all bad memories to the memory hole, bad experiences.

01:28:59.280 This is what we do for our loved ones when they die. There's no benefit in remembering the bad. We

01:29:04.100 instead honor the good and try to imitate the good. We try to, in the person's name, do good. So this is

01:29:14.500 my first thought, is really, we should mourn. We should be who we are, and this is what Christian

01:29:20.640 people do. We should take our time about this. I'm unfamiliar with this. I'm embarrassed to say I

01:29:28.740 don't know enough about it, but I sense that it's rooted in something important and wise. Can you

01:29:33.840 explain a little more why 40 days and what Christians have done traditionally during that 40 days? What

01:29:39.740 does it mean to mourn seriously? Yeah. Well, I share your sense of it not being something common

01:29:47.320 anymore, which is why I'm presenting it, because it is so universally human, actually, and it's not

01:29:53.400 just Christian. The number 40, of course, is humongous in the Holy Scriptures. It's absolutely

01:30:00.480 humongous. And the 40 days of Christ fasting, for instance, in the desert. 40 is a very important

01:30:08.620 length of time that allows us to truly not make immediate reactions that we would regret.

01:30:17.820 And right now, everything is so raw. Everyone who knows and loves Charlie, like you,

01:30:23.040 this is a very dangerous time. It's a very dangerous time. You're being very courageous,

01:30:29.120 and you're actually processing this with people who have known and respected Charlie, which is a

01:30:34.700 fantastic thing to do. But a lot of people who are in the conservative political movement are raging.

01:30:41.620 They're very angry. I was watching a clip from Matt Walsh yesterday, and I saw that Matt was just

01:30:48.580 out there saying that he is just overcome with anger. I think that's understandable,

01:30:55.120 completely understandable. I have felt that, yes. I'm sure. I'm sure. But for us to respect

01:31:01.800 this Christian tradition, to pray, typically in the Orthodox and the Catholic tradition, both during the

01:31:10.500 40 days, we do good in that person's name. We actually do alms. We do charity in that person's name.

01:31:20.460 In fact, you're doing that. Maybe you weren't intentionally trying to do it in a traditional

01:31:25.280 Christian way, but that is what you're doing by trying to help Erica and support her. I was very,

01:31:31.400 very happy to see that you're doing that because it's what we do. It's what we do in this period.

01:31:36.960 We usually also pray for the person. We don't think that a person, when they die,

01:31:43.420 bing, they've made the transition to the next life instantaneously. There are some in the Protestant

01:31:49.660 tradition who think that. Not all Protestants think that, but there are some. But the vast

01:31:53.300 majority of Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and some, like the Anglicans, we actually pray for the souls

01:31:59.480 of the departed. And we think, we use the image of the story of Lazarus and the rich man from the

01:32:08.080 Gospels, where Lazarus is the poor beggar. He's neglected by the rich man. And when he dies, what

01:32:14.180 happens? An angelic escort comes and picks him up and takes him on the journey to the bosom of Abraham.

01:32:21.600 For us, that is a journey. This process is a journey for Christians of going towards the

01:32:30.180 kingdom of God. But we don't think that it's instantaneous. And so we're collaborating. It's

01:32:35.540 part of what our funerals are too. Our funerals are us gathering around the person and asking the

01:32:42.000 Lord in his great mercy to receive our brother or our sister and place them in paradise until we can see

01:32:50.040 them again. And we're also learning the lesson of sobriety. We're learning the lesson of death.

01:32:57.220 We have to think about death and stare it in the face because one of the great reasons we are so

01:33:02.720 undeveloped, spiritually speaking, as a nation is because we don't face death. Yes. One of the reasons

01:33:09.660 that we have an incredible revival going on all over the United States right now is because of COVID.

01:33:15.700 COVID faced, it caused us to face death. We had been hiding it. You know, we've moved our old people,

01:33:23.900 our parents, and the sick into old folks' homes and hospitals, and they die there, usually not

01:33:29.400 surrounded by their family members. And then some Christian traditions now even do funerals without

01:33:34.840 the body. That is just nuts. It's just nuts. And it steals, it steals from us the very, very important

01:33:43.960 process of mourning and facing death. And it changes you. You know, in the Orthodox tradition,

01:33:50.800 in the Orthodox Christian tradition, the funeral service was written by one of the great theologians

01:33:54.840 of the church. His name is St. John of Damascus. He lived from 650 to 750. An incredible hymnologist,

01:34:01.420 incredible scholar. He actually was a very important political figure at the time that Islam,

01:34:10.700 his father and grandfather, governed the city of Damascus. And when it was taken over by Islam in

01:34:16.660 the 7th century, the Muslims left the Christians in place for about 50 years because Muslims were

01:34:23.280 Bedouin peasants. They didn't have cities. They didn't have development. And they couldn't run

01:34:27.960 a city like Damascus. So they let the Christians do it for about a half a century. And then about 706,

01:34:33.200 that was it. And no more Christians in leadership. And he became a monk at that time, John of Damascus.

01:34:38.280 And he wrote this incredible funeral service for one of his dear brothers. And it's used to this day

01:34:45.980 for the last 13 centuries. And it's a deep reflection on the misery of death, where John is looking into the

01:34:53.500 grave. And he is contemplating how horrible it is for a Christian person to die and hit, to see his soul be

01:35:02.520 removed from his body, which is what death is. It's the separation of the soul from the body. It no longer

01:35:07.460 animates the body and it's lifeless. And to see the body decay. And he says it happens to the rich and to the poor

01:35:14.500 exactly the same way. All of the human, you know, differentiations that we make to honor the rich and

01:35:23.880 to neglect them, all gone, all gone, all normalized, all brought to the dust by death. So I don't mean to

01:35:32.480 belabor this, but I think it's important for us. It's important, of course, for the immediate family,

01:35:36.500 for all of Charlie's close family and friends to take their time, not expect that they're going to be

01:35:41.740 able to just bounce back instantaneously and get right back at Turning Point's work. No doubt

01:35:47.580 they will eventually, but I hope that they'll take the time right now to pray, to mourn,

01:35:56.940 to think deeply about the future and about how they can honor Charlie's name. This is my hope.

01:36:06.380 I think that's such a profound thing to say. And anyone who has been present at the death of

01:36:11.540 loved ones, I think can confirm that it's one of the most powerful and obviously crushingly sad,

01:36:19.740 but also beautiful and inspiring things. I mean, it absolutely changes you and it's hard to remain

01:36:25.800 an atheist after something like that. And we have been robbed of that experience.

01:36:29.620 So what are the signs of hope that you see now?

01:36:34.340 You know, I would say before hope, the sorrow of what has happened to Charlie is so illustrative

01:36:44.380 of a descent into a level of violence that at least in my lifetime, and I'm only two years

01:36:49.580 older than you. I was born in 67. I think you were born in 69.

01:36:52.920 You're a San Franciscan. I'm an Angelino, born and raised in Los Angeles. I have never seen

01:36:59.740 anything like this, Tucker. I have never seen anything like the violence that exists today

01:37:04.400 in our towns. When I grew up in Pasadena, I, as a young boy, I went walking to school. My mother

01:37:14.140 let me stay out every night until the lights went on. When the lights went on, I had to be home for

01:37:18.780 dinner. If I wasn't home for dinner, I was in trouble. But she had no worries. She had no worries.

01:37:24.460 No, in this last period, 10, 15 years especially, violence has just absolutely exploded. You know,

01:37:31.380 Charlie reposed on the 10th of September. Of course, the next day was the horrible, you know,

01:37:38.180 remembrance of 9-11. He died on 9-10. We have 9-11. This coming December is going to be the 10-year

01:37:45.980 anniversary of the terrible terrorist attack right here in the Inland Empire, just 10 miles from where

01:37:53.280 I am right now, when 14 people were murdered and 22 people wounded by a Pakistani Muslim couple that

01:38:01.660 thought that they would do something for Islam by shooting their co-workers. This is, they were from

01:38:07.960 a mosque one mile from me right now. That mosque already had two of their members in prison because

01:38:17.220 of terrorist ambitions. My own parish, just four months after that, was visited in the middle of

01:38:24.800 a Sunday liturgy by a group of Muslim young men who thought it would be fun to bring bullhorns in the

01:38:33.480 middle of our service and come outside the church and scream Allahu Akbar at our church.

01:38:42.780 And then, and this is, of course, Muslim terrorism, but now we also have this rise of very, very

01:38:50.880 serious leftist violence. And the whole country, I think, is reeling from the assassination attempts

01:38:56.900 on our president and now an attack on Charlie, who wasn't a politician at all. So I would say that

01:39:04.320 if we're going to look for hope, it can't be fake. It can't be fake. We have to assess where we are.

01:39:11.100 And violence has a, as a sin, violence has a very special, serious place. You know, if you read the

01:39:20.020 patriarchal histories and the opening books of the Bible, you read Genesis, for instance, chapter six,

01:39:26.120 this is the account of God regretting that he had made the human race. What could the human being have

01:39:32.380 possibly been doing to make God regret having made us? And the consequence, Moses tells us, is that he

01:39:40.520 sent a worldwide universal flood. Yes. Moses articulated the reason, the reason God did that and had to start

01:39:46.800 over with Noah. And in fact, he made Noah a second Adam. He gave the same commission to Noah that he

01:39:51.720 gave to Adam, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule it and subdue it. Why did he do that?

01:39:57.120 It says because the world had become full of violence. Yes. When you attack another man, when you attack

01:40:04.640 another man, you attack God. Because every human being, as you were just saying so beautifully, is made in

01:40:10.800 the image of God. And so to attack a human is a direct divine offense. Violence is extremely serious.

01:40:18.180 I'm not surprised that we have this level of violence in a culture that murders unborn children

01:40:24.580 at the rate that we do and have sustained it for the decades that we have. Yes. Really, is any violence

01:40:32.060 surprising? Do we have hope? That's what you asked me. So forgive me, but that's the background.

01:40:39.580 That is how black it is. Yes. That is how black it is. Do we have hope? And what's the future? I would

01:40:48.080 say that from without a belief that God is merciful and that he loves the human race and that there's

01:40:58.760 no sin so great that if we repent of it, he will not send his love and forgiveness. Without that belief,

01:41:06.280 certainly we have no future. The statistics are horrible for our country. We are so captured

01:41:11.980 by an ideology that is hopeless, atheism, strict secularism, which is running our country now. It

01:41:20.320 is extremely hopeless. Yes. And without a major reconsideration on the part of our people, a return

01:41:29.340 to classic American virtues, a recovery of Christian faith, without that, certainly we're doomed. But

01:41:39.520 we know from Christian history that repentance is possible. And it usually takes, in a national sense,

01:41:48.920 in a personal sense, it's up to us to repent and to believe. In a national sense, it takes leadership,

01:41:54.540 leadership that is willing to address the important things at the heart of a national catastrophe. And we

01:42:03.540 have been living through national catastrophe. We have lost our faith in God. All of our institutions

01:42:09.300 have been captured by strict secularism. Our law is godless. Our universities exclude God.

01:42:20.900 Our country has gone down a very, very serious, deep hole. If we're going to get out, if we're going to

01:42:31.480 have hope as a nation, we need leadership. Leadership in the likes of George Washington. I think our

01:42:37.720 forebears, our forebears are ashamed. My grandparents, they're ashamed of where we are, Tucker, as a nation.

01:42:47.780 Our relationship to faith, our explicit commitment to God are excluding him from everything that's

01:42:54.440 important in American life. We have to repent. And we need someone. Give us, God, someone like a King

01:43:00.400 David. Give us someone like my patron saint, Josiah, who was the last great king of Israel, who himself

01:43:06.740 lived at a terrible time. His father and his grandfather were both awful kings who had completely

01:43:12.440 apostatized, abandoned the heritage of Israel, led the people to copy the pagan practices of the

01:43:20.560 surrounding nations. And forgive me, we're way worse than pagans. I always tell people, look, don't call

01:43:27.360 the secular nonsense that's going on in America pagan. That's an insult to the pagans. The pagans

01:43:33.700 believed in the divine order. They believed in the gods. Okay, we don't believe that there are gods.

01:43:39.260 There is one god. But the pagans at least knew they were accountable to the divine order. They were

01:43:45.400 accountable to the gods and that they had to live with respect to the wishes of the gods. To call

01:43:50.220 America, which has no reference, most of our leaders make no reference to God at all. They act as though

01:43:56.860 they are not accountable to God's law. And I think that's far, far worse than paganism and a full-blown

01:44:04.080 insult to pagans. To call it pagan. No. Unless we have a leader who's going to address this. It needs to be addressed

01:44:10.220 right? Directly. We need to repent. And we need to recover our faith. If we do that, times of refreshing

01:44:19.140 will come from God. We can be changed. A new day can arise. But it's not going to be with a little fix.

01:44:27.120 It's not going to be with a little something here or a little something there. I've never seen,

01:44:33.760 I've been a priest for almost 33 years. I've never seen the radical interest in faith that we're seeing

01:44:44.700 right now. I'll tell you, if I use my parish just as a little example, I have maybe, I don't know,

01:44:51.780 little more than a thousand active parishioners that are here regularly. And over the years of my ministry,

01:44:58.960 I've catechized, I've instructed and prepared people for baptism. You know, maybe 20, 30, 40, a really great year

01:45:05.160 would be 40 people. I have over 200 people in catechism right now. And this is happening all across the

01:45:13.840 country. People are moving towards God, moving towards faith. If this continues, and it translates

01:45:21.180 into lives that are rooted, lives that are where faith is important, where true repentance has

01:45:31.140 happened, where this quest for just biological life as though that somehow the sum total of value

01:45:41.500 is rejected. You know, if you study the scriptures, there's three types of life that are described in

01:45:47.200 scriptures. There's biological life. In Greek, it's called dios, from where we get biological, right?

01:45:53.220 There's the life of the soul. Many Americans don't even know that that exists. That's called psiki.

01:45:59.000 It's the life, it's the most noble part of you, right? Even the Greek pagans, to use this again,

01:46:03.740 knew that. The body is like a chariot, and the soul is like the charioteer, leading the person in

01:46:10.400 nobility, said that the body does virtue. The body does something beautiful, right? If you don't

01:46:16.220 think you have psiki, if you think you're just the body, and you don't have a soul, which, by the

01:46:21.340 way, is the worldview of the major tech titans of our country. This is why someone as noble as Elon Musk

01:46:29.460 is becoming, would stand up and speak to the protesters in England when they were saying,

01:46:36.040 what can we do? What's our future? And he said, what? He said, technology and AI. I promise you,

01:46:42.600 Tucker, technology is not going to save us. It's not going to save us. And to say that is so hopeless.

01:46:50.160 If we are soulless, and we have greater technology, then the soulless are going to use that greater

01:46:55.620 technology to oppress us. Of course.

01:46:57.600 We need to affirm what all reasonable human beings in civilized countries, except the modern

01:47:04.600 nuts, secular West, if we don't recognize that a human being is more than his body, he has more

01:47:11.200 than veos, more than biological life. He has the life of his soul, psiki, and then there's something

01:47:15.620 that's most important, which is eternal life. Aeonia zoe, it's called in the scriptures. Eternal life.

01:47:24.040 This is the life of God's kingdom. These are the three fundamental lives. Two of them we have

01:47:30.220 stopped talking about for many decades, and the consequences have been tragic.

01:47:35.600 What a wonderful explanation. Charlie Kirk was very interested in orthodoxy, as I'm sure you know,

01:47:44.280 and he was knowledgeable on it too. I'm not, but I know that, but I'm interested. But he was very

01:47:49.800 interested in it. Were you aware of that? He interviewed a friend of mine, Father John Strickland,

01:47:58.980 who's a very respected orthodox priest and a Russian scholar who's published extensively on

01:48:03.920 Russian history, and Charlie was very interested in that. And I watched that interview, and a few

01:48:09.580 comments that he made afterwards in which he actually got very much into the mind of us orthodox

01:48:16.780 Christians and explained why so many people are converting to holy orthodoxy. And I thought

01:48:22.280 actually he was spot on, very much spot on. He said people are becoming orthodox because they want

01:48:28.700 something that is time-tested. They want something that's substantial. They want something that actually

01:48:33.100 informs culture, something that isn't just a plaything and can be categorized over just here.

01:48:39.280 Orthodox Christian, traditional Christianity in general, it is a lifestyle. It impacts everything

01:48:46.780 because Christ is king, and he's king over every aspect of our life and over civilization. This is

01:48:53.700 common knowledge. Europe, of course, you take a train through Europe. Every town you go through,

01:49:00.520 you're going to go through a town that has the best land given to the church, and the church is going

01:49:05.280 to be the highest building. Because everyone knew, if you don't enthrone worship at the center of your

01:49:11.400 community, if you don't make the heavenly attachment to your earthly life, you're robbing yourself of

01:49:17.240 significance, and you're trivializing yourself to just be limited to time. The best thing that can

01:49:23.540 happen in America is that people go to church, root themselves in the one holy catholic and apostolic

01:49:29.500 church, because the river of life comes from the altar, out the doors of the church, and vivifies

01:49:34.360 society. And do we ever need to be vivified today?

01:49:39.840 Beautiful. Father, thank you. And before you go, I'm going to spell your name. For anyone who's made

01:49:46.620 it to the end of this, I never do this, but I think what you said is so wonderful that I know that people

01:49:50.900 are going to want to follow up. J-O-S-I-A-H, Trenham, T-R-E-N-H-A-M, Senior Pastor and Director

01:50:00.280 of your church. So I know that people will want to know more about you, and now they can. So thanks

01:50:08.060 very much for joining us. I appreciate it. Keep going, Carter. Keep going. Thank you very much.

01:50:13.200 Well, we're going to. And we're going to. We will keep going. We'll see if this format works. I kind

01:50:19.700 of like it. Thanks a lot for joining us for an hour and 50 minutes. We'll be back soon.

The Tucker Carlson Show - September 17, 2025

Tucker Carlson： America After Charlie Kirk

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